AN AIRMAN LOOKS BACK.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1920, Page 4

AN AIRMAN LOOKS BACK.

vßy Mr Pan) Bewsher, who served with distinction as a night bomber during Die war, and is the author, of two books of air. poems, lie made the description of night-bombing his particular study, and his book “Green Balls) was an outstanding air vol* ume), I have not flown lor two years. Like countless other war-airmen I have settled clown to town life, and, like them, 1 have no longing ever to fly again. That is one of the curious facts of flying—unlike the spa, it leaves no lure. r iJiio sailor is not really happy unless be is within sight of the ocean; the motorist never loses his love of the road; the mountain-dweller is miserable in the cities of the plain, but the airman—who for so long has been wont to roar at a hundred miles an hour through the vast loneliness above the clouds—he counts Treasury notes over the counter.of a hank, he adds up figures in a gloomy counting-bquse, lie taps- the keys of a typewriter contentedly, and his hand never itches to hold again the control wheel, his eyes dp not long for the fiftymile vision.

Every day do I meet ex-airmen—• never do I hear one express a desire to fly again. Yet certain qualities remain, certain phases of thought do not fade. * » * if « «

Every man who has flown for any consideration length of time never loses his “landing-ground eye.” Whenever he travels, by railway or road, he never looks at the countryside in quite the same way as other people, hut always from an airman’s point of view. ILe is always seeing things where he would land if he had engine trouble and was compelled to descend. He judges mentally the length of every field, he notes the. nature of its surface, and he looks out for trees or buildings which might he in the way of a descending machine.

An ex-bomber, too, looks on railway sidings, docks, factories, power-houses, dockyards, and other objectives with a professional interest. He considers how it would be best to approach them if he were a tacking them from the air, whether they would be easy to find, [ and, if found, easy to hit, and—this with an evil joy—how they would be affected by the bombs. I have found, too, that when I travel by road through a stretch of country over which I have flown many times I am conscious of a curious and indescribable sensation. A feeling of familiarity is awakened without any thought or intention, and for a time I seem to be once more in tlieair looking down on the intricate patterns of the hedges and fields and roads.

An airman forgets much. He Remembers little of the technical side of flying —because he never thinks of it, but the instincts remain. Just as a man who has not swum for many years can swim when the need arrives, so I feel sure that if in several years to come I was in an aeroplane and I had to fly it, I could do so.

An ex-airman on the ground watching a machine in flight is very conscious of what that machine is doing, realises when it is is error, and can tell whether it is being safely navigated or not. Flying itself, however, like the war, seems to leave no impression.