RAMBLES IN A BOOKSHOP.
230
The Ypres Times.
two machines of No. 45 Squadron crossed the lines at 6.35 p.m. under the clouds at 4,500
feet over Deulemont. Whilst passing under a gap in the clouds two Albatross scouts
dived on them firing continuously. One of our machines replied and one Albatross burst
into flames at 2,000 feet from the ground and crashed into the canal immediately to the
left of Deulemont. The second enemy scout attacked the second British machine from
the side, and one bullet passed through both the main petrol tanks and wounded the pilot
seriously in the back. The observer meanwhile got in a double drum at the enemy from
very close quarters, and it went down and crashed near the first machine. The pilot of
the British aeroplane then fainted and the machine got into a spin. The observer, unable
to make the pilot hear, climbed over the side and forward along the plane to the pilot's-
cockpit and found the control lever wedged between his legs. He then pulled the pilot
back and pushed the lever forward, and the machine came out of the spin and the pilot
almost immediately recovered and eventually landed his observer safely near Poperinghe.
Personnel of the 15th Divisional Ammunition Column, where the machine landed, saw the
observer standing on the side of the machine, and heard him encouraging the pilot, saying
Pull her up, sir," as they were about to crash into some hop poles. The pilot did pull her
up and landed on the other side with very little damage. On September 25, 1917,
Lieutenant Worstenholme (pilot) and Lieutenant McGreary (observer), while on Contact
Patrol over Gheluvelt were attacked by an enemy aeroplane Lieutenant Worstenholme
was killed instantly and Lieutenant McGreary was wounded in the hand. The latter,
although he had never flown a machine before, drove off the enemy aeroplane single
handed twice, and with the aid of the spare joystick brought the machine back to the
aerodrome. At 200 feet, however, he got into a spin and crashed, but sustained no
injuries. J. MORRIS, Air Historical Branch.
It is scarcely the thing to be rambling round
the bookshops now that summer is with us and I
fear my adventures with the contents of their
shelves have been very perfunctory these days in
spite of the quite attractive fare they present. But I
did alight on one bookor rather two, for it is
in two volumeswhich I do not think any reader
of the Ypres Times should miss, and that is Mr.
Rudyard Kipling's The Irish Guards in the Great
War, which Messrs. Macmillan publish at 40s.
That sounds a lot of money, but it is perhaps not
too much for the best war history yet written.
To write a unit's history, to make it living and
yet bring it into relation to the general history of
the war is about as difficult a task as a writer can
undertake, and the extreme readableness of Mr.
Kipling's history shows the measure of his success.
The general course of the war is only touched on
sufficiently to make the narrative intelligible and
interest is concentrated on the exploits in the line
and out of it of the two battalions of the Guards.
Mr. Kipling has utilised with brilliant success the
mass of odd correspondence and anecdote at his
disposal, and scarce an incident goes unillumined
by a quotation from an uncensored letter or the
piquant remark of an anonymous private. It is a
plain record, revealing a restraint and a sensitive
ness which one does not always associate with the
pre-war Kipling, but it has the authentic spirit of
these days of passionate life, that medley of what
he calls brilliance, squalor, unreason and heaped
boredom," which all of us who lived in that unreal
world will remember as one remembers a dream.
The record of the Irish Guardsof the old-
seasoned First Battalion, heroes of many battles,
as well as for the new Second Battalion, which
created its own fine recordneed not be touched
on here. The spirit that kept the Old Army veterans
alive and surging down the long roads from Mons
to the Marne never flagged. It carried their suc
cessors, many of them raw lads and unfledged boys,
through the agony of Ypres I., the blood bath for
the Somme, the misery of Ypres III., and the fine
defence of Gouzeaucourt in 1917. The Second
Battalion was blooded at Loos, was taken heavy
toll of on the Somme and Ypres III., and when
the Fourth Guards Brigade held the Germans at
the Lys during the last desperate rush to the sea.
These were big battles viewed from any angle,
but with fine instinct Mr. Kipling sticks to the
little episodes which every battalion hugs as its
own peculiar contribution to the final victorya
contribution which is only imperfectly realised
through that terrible roll of the dead with which
the history ends. And it is perhaps significant that
the anecdotes which remain in the reader's mind
are connected with the Salient. Here is a vivid
picture of Ypres I., when the sledge-hammer blows
of the enemy in overwhelming numbers were
gradually forcing our line back on the town
The line was near breaking point by then, but
Company after Company delivered what blow it
