Biggles: Comment for Roads to the Great War

 

Biggles was primarily responsible for my own life-long interest in aviation and the Great War. As a boy, I learned of places such as Cambrai, Polygon Wood, Arras, Amiens etc from the Biggles books. W E Johns flew DH4s with 55 Sqdn before being shot down and made a POW for the last few weeks of the war; his 19 year-old observer 2/Lt Alfred Amey was killed. Johns does not glorify war; at several points he has Biggles musing on the "futility of it all".

The original WW1 books were originally written for adults. In one story, the General orders a particularly troublesome Kite Balloon to be shot down, and promises that the squadron that does so will receive a prize of a crate of the "finest lemonade"! Even as a boy this didn't sound right to me, and much later I learned that in the original story, it was a crate of whisky!

It isn't quite true that no WW1 fighter pilots flew in action in WW2. One pilot was an ace in both wars - Theodore Osterkamp was a 35 victory ace in WW1, the top ace of the MarineJagdflieger units on the Western Front, and then commanded JG52 during the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain being credited with six more victories. A few other Germans flew in both wars. The British were stricter on the age limits, but Air Vice-Marshal William "Bull" Staton was a Bristol Fighter ace in the Great War, and flew on bomber operations at the beginning of WW2, before becoming a POW of the Japanese where he had all his teeth pulled out under torture. W E Johns' CO of 55 Sqdn in WW1 was Major B J Silly; as an Air Commodore he was also a POW of the Japanese and died in captivity in 1943.