CANTERBURY AIRMAN IN FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 August 1916, Page 10

CANTERBURY AIRMAN IN FRANCE.

]!A!IJIN ; <; KXKMV AKKUPLAXKS. Flight Sub-Lieutenant Don llarkness, K.M.A.iS. (formerly a student of Canterbury College), writes under date 25tii ."May to a friend in Christchurch:— We all went on a raid on a German aerodrome, near Ostend, the fort, and other tilings, three or four days ago, and Vine" did not return. Nothing has been heard of him since, and we all miss him very much. ITe was an awfully decent sort,, and we only hope he has not struck anything serious. He was, by the way, a holder of a D.5.0., which he got for bombing and sinking a Herman submarine round this way a month or so back, and that seems usually to bring a fellow bad luck. Flight Sub-Lieutenant Sims, of No. 1 Winjf brought down ,throe Hun machine* recently and was just about to leave for England to receive the D.S.O. when he had it fight with it Hun, and had to land in the sea, himself and his observer being drowned. It was mighty hard luck, wasn't it? A friend, of mine is crossing to England to-morrow on sick leave, so 'is taking this letter with him to post there. Hope to go across myself at the beginning of next month for about a week's leave in London. I shall probably return by air across the Channel, flying a new machine from Brooklands to here. 1 would much sooner do that, as the trip t. kes only about an hour the whole way, instead of a long, weary train journey, and a rotten and usually rough, trip across the Channel in a torpedo boat destroyer.

Since last writing I have been on three more night raids over German territory, and in each case returned safely. The papers sometimes say quite a lot about our doings and at other times say nothing. T was amused at a photo which appeared in last Tuesday's Daily Mirror of "A Giant Battleplane used on the British-Belgian Frontier." That is just an ordinary dual Caudron, and the actual machine is now too old for active service flying, but is used by "us at No. 5 vVing for "joy-riding" and just knocking about the country in. One of our pilots went tip to La Pamme irt it the other day to see another one of our number v;ho was in hospital there, and landed on the beach. Somebody came along then, took the photo, and sent it to the Paily Mirror

Well, to refer to the aforementioned raid—the. first was organised against the Mariakerque Aerodoine at Ostend. I went on a dual Caudron, with four (iolb bombs, and had a pretty exciting time. Xot arriving there soon enough, it was getting quite light by the time I reached the objective, so the Germans could sec me well, and showed it, too. Some time before 1 got there the sliells began i:o burst all round about me, and some knirked. up such a row that they nearly deafened me. However, 1 managed to get over the aerodrome, somehow or other, dropped my homlis, turned, and cleared out to sea again as hard as I could. The bombs, I think, burst round (heir own aerodrome and must have done some damage or at least given the people a scare. At any rate the shells did that to me, for they bounced the machine about all over the place, and it whs not before 1 had got live or six miles out to sea again that the firing ceased. On returning to our aerodrome I found that no fewer than six different lumps of shell bad ploughed their way through my machine on their way cutting through two important wires, nearly cutting right through two wing spars, passing through one of the engine exhaust pipes and one piece coming right lilt into the passenger's seat (fortunately (hen l was no -passenger]. Altogether (here were three pieces of shell remaining stuck in the woodwork of the machine which now remain interesting souvenirs in my collection of war curios.

iln the next raid we went up inland over the line-', near Ypres, to a large i'erodrome a good many miles inland from Ostcnd. As it happened, the Germans were at the same time carrying out a raid '.T a, Belgian aerodrome, and we arrived to find their landing lights all going and their aerodrojntf lit up beautifully. Our first pilo't to arrive i!ro|«ied his bombs in the middle of the lights and extinguished them instantaneously T got there a minute or two afterwards and dropped my four pills alongside one of the two parallel rows of sheds. We. were very tickled about the way we "bluffed" the Huns thiij time, for not only did their gunners not fire at us in the darkness, thinking we were Germans, but their landing lights ftavc v* sni excellent guide to their aerodrome. At any rate they were so disgusted with us, or at what' we did, that they organised a big raid with Zeps. and aeroplanes on us and Dunkirk that night. All night long their buying engines seemed to come droning overhead, shrapnel shells filling the sky, and bombs came shrieking and whistling down. I must say it was not altogether pleasant, for we had no dugouts, and had simply to lie along the banks of the adjoining canal. However, it gave us an excellent idea, of how we must' scare the Huns stiff with our night raids, using, as we do, bombs over three times the size of theirs.

We got so disgusted with them disturbing our night's rest that we got up another raid on the Ostend aerodrome next night, and gave them something to go on with. As it was very dark when T got over there, they did not sec me at all, so I glided down from the sea over where I judged the aerodrome to be, droped four eggs, and made oil' out to sea. According to my own observations, and th; position of searchlights and other things round about, also by the report ot another pilot lower down, my bombs foil right in the middle of their aerodrome, iind must lnive knocked things about a lot. With that, and the fact that we, with the French and Belgians, have brought down several of their Kiichines in this quarter within the last day or twq, I think they will have to lie low.