After reading John Morrow’s very technical history of the WWI air war, The Great War in the Air, I felt the need for a more personal account. I’d read Cecil Lewis’ Sagittarius Rising a couple of years ago, which was widely suggested, but not this book, which was described in several places as one of the best accounts of flying in WWI. It’s a novelised account of VM Yeates own experiences as a pilot in the last year of the war. Writing one’s war memoirs as a novel seems to have been the thing to do, with Seigfried Sassoon’s books being the case in point. Perhaps the memories were just too painful to relate directly? If the book is anything like the truth Yeates seems to have been through a pretty awful time. He died at the age of 37 shortly after publishing the book and one wonders if his early death was thanks to the stresses of war.

The hero of the book is Tom Cundall. We meet him as a newly minted 20 year old pilot, soon after he’d arrived at a combat squadron on the Western Front in the spring of 1918. They fly Sopwith Camels, described in the book as nimble, but dangerous to their pilots. Of the three main British types in 1918, Cundall describes the Camel as the underdog in relation to the faster and higher flying SE5s and Bristol F2s. Whatever the Camel’s shortcomings he revels in his mastery of it. There are wonderful descriptions of the joy of flying. Cundall often takes a Camel out simply for a joy ride when there’s no war flying to do. He loves to go “contour chasing”; flying low over the terrain at 100MPH dodging houses and telegraph poles, and frightening senior officers in their staff cars. The descriptions of dog fights are also brilliant and terrifying. Cundall appears to have a guardian angel. He crashes Camels one after another with little damage to himself. At one point his major tells him to “stop breaking Camels; we don’t have an infinite supply!” He crashes in no-mans-land between the lines and spends a horrible night in a shell hole before being rescued.

The squadron soon find themselves assigned a ground attack role during the German spring offensive, bombing and strafing the attacking army. It’s incredibly dangerous work and casualties are heavy. Cundall’s flight leader is a heroic and fearless man named Beal, who leads them on ever more dangerous low level missions. He is eventually shot down by German ground fire and Cundall feels very guilty at privately celebrating his death. This is followed by a quieter period in a northern part of the line, before the book ends with Cundall’s squadron back at the Somme flying low level ground attack missions as the German armies crumble during the final war-ending allied offensive. Close friends are made and then die. Cundall becomes ever more cynical and desperate as time goes on. Yeates expertly puts you in Cundall’s mind (his mind I suppose) as he drinks ever vaster quantities of whiskey to deaden the heartache of lost comrades and the ever increasing fear of his own death. The climax comes at the end, just a couple of days before his tour of duty ends, when his last best friend Williamson is shot down, and he finds himself totally emotionally and physically washed out.

The detailed day to day descriptions of the young pilots lives; their conversations, the food and drink, their relations with the French - particularly the women, are particularly vivid. When times are quiet, it seems almost a pleasant life. Cundall is a cynic about the war, but something of an idealist when it comes to how society should be organised. The most tedious parts of the book are the long monologues of sixth form philosophy that Cundall bores his fellow pilots with. I did wonder if Yeates was relating what people actually talked about during the war, or was merely using the book to air his own half baked ideas? At one point I skipped a few pages rather than wade through it. But with that small caveat, this really was a marvelous read. I can understand why it’s hailed as a classic of its time.