Category: Biographies
Lest it should appear that in this book I have worked the personal pronoun to death, I wish to explain my reasons for describing always my own feelings, my own experiences, my own thoughts. I feel that the lay public who did not fly in the war, and knew little of its excitemen...
"That's funny!" I remark. "I nearly always have the wind up--you ask Jimmy--but I haven't to-night. I am rather looking forward to it. Of course I have the usual cold feet, like...
10. Part 10The seconds slowly pass. People cease talking. Then, somewhere--its position cannot be located by the ear--there is a dull thud. That is the shell actually striking the ground....
7. Part 7"Couldn't do it, Jimmy. I'm _awfully_ sorry. It's this beastly signal light system. It isn't direct enough; I wish I could guide you better. It isn't your fault, but I can't sto...
6. Part 6These airmen continued their raids, a little disdainful of the fuss and excitement about the Handley-Pages. They realised that they were doing the job, and that four bombs dropp...
9. Part 9I stand up and look down at the dim pattern of the docks. This is the most exciting moment of the raid. I know the fourteen bombs are going down--the Germans do not know it, and...
14. Part 14"Roy! Roy! Oh! He's dead, dead--dead--in the sea--drowned in the wreck...." And throwing myself on a seat, I drop my face on to my arms on the table and burst into sobs, which s...
5. Part 5A little past Boulogne the low-drifting clouds were left behind, and we flew into glorious April weather. On the left, to my great joy, was the sea and the surf-lined sweep of t...
2. Part 2A Handley-Page then seemed a grotesque giant. There had been no intermediate steps between small machines and this Colossus, which rumour had it could carry twenty-two men. It w...
12. Part 12I hurry to the little hut by the mess and pass through the door. Over the long desk leans the grave-faced squadron commander, the great pioneer of night-bombing. With a pencil a...
4. Part 4Far away on the moon-ward horizon a luminous silver mist veiled the distant view. Below, the scenery of thin white roads, soft patchwork forests, little tightly-clustered villag...
1. Part 1Lest it should appear that in this book I have worked the personal pronoun to death, I wish to explain my reasons for describing always my own feelings, my own experiences, my o...
11. Part 11Letter after letter is read through and initialled, and I get no nearer to the soul of such of the writers as I know personally. Then I hear a bugle blow the Rum call, and I pro...
3. Part 3In the old cathedral I saw one of the most crude and striking examples of modernity which I have ever met. As I sat in the tall and gloomy building at twilight one day, the verg...
8. Part 8A thin pencil of light flashes upwards from the coast-line east of Dunkerque. Four times it flashes--long, long, short, long. It goes out, and one is conscious of the town wrink...
15. Part 15Over towards the dark olive groves of Gaba Tepe--those olive groves which so long sheltered a great gun whose position could not be discovered--lies the grey outline of a battle...