AIRMEN’S 13 SUPERSTITION

Hokitika Guardian, 21 December 1929, Page 6

AIRMEN’S 13 SUPERSTITION

CAPT. MACMILLAN’S WAR STORIES. Captain Norman Macmillian in his stirring book (Into the Blue) lias given an admirable account of his expei iences as an airman during the war. Like so many of our fighting men, lie writes well and he is also no mean poet. His work in the air was done between the early spring of 1910 and the early weeks of 1918, when he was teiribly burnt and temporarily blinded That it was brilliant all who served in France and Italy know. One painful fact appears from Iris pages—that for months our airmen had to fly types of machine inferior to the German because of strikes in the air industry. In No. 45 Squadron (his squadron), the casualties in the old machines for three months before re-equipment with the new type totalled 52 and, after work commenced with the new type they fell to 12 during the ensuing months, when the type was still unfamiliar by comparison The

strikers may have got more money, but it was money that was bought by the lives of others, money that was tainted with the tears of the mothers of men. In those old days which . already seen} remote the personnel of the R.F. C. (Royal Flying Corps) were on the whole very superstitious. . . In almost every Service Camp there was a certain ill-omened hut, tent, or bed, Something always happened to the •mail who slept there. . . . They would not sit down 13 at a table. They were unwilling to take up a ’bus with a nuni her like 3,523, the units of which add up to 13. WONDERFUL FIELD V ISION. Captain MacMillan is very emphatic on the joys of flying and “the wonderful field vision on a really clear day” Thus he tells how on one such day flying at 10,000 feet east of Ypres, lie saw a vast expanse of land and sea. Ahead was the coast of France and Belgium, with its yellow fringe of sand foreshore . . . .To the right front the yellow fringe ran north for miles to the island off the Dutch and German coasts. To the left front was the real wonder. There England lay with that comfortable shallow of green sea mirroring between. Her white cliffs to right and left. To the le<6t, dimly seen, lay the Isle of Wight. . . .

It struck me as curious how the more distant places—the islands of Borkuin Merkel, and Ylissingen, the Isle of AVight and the'North Foreland—appeared tilted up at an angle, while the shipping in the Channel looked as though it was sailing in the sky. From the east of Ypres to the Isle of Wight is 180 miles, and to Borkum more than 200 miles.

The deeds of N. 45 Squadron are recounted in breathless pages. One proof of its magnificent work is given by the cold fact that* in Italy it destroyed 114 enemy aeroplanes with a loss of only six machines; in France it destroyed 50 enemy machines, but apparently with' much heavier losses.