Goodbye to All That

The Great War ended, but the dying continued

One hundred years ago, World War I, the “war to end all wars,” ended. My grandfather, Frederic Barr Shaw, was based at an airfield (literally an open field, as runways had not yet been invented) near Nancy, France, in the Ardennes region not far from the Belgium border. He was part of 100 Squadron, flying giant twin-engine O/400 Handley Page bombers performing night raids on German industrial sites.

            He had arrived at the front just two weeks before, on Oct. 30, following a months-long recuperation and retraining after being injured in a crash during his initial flight training in March. The 250-kilometer drive from Paris took nearly 8½ hours. The Ardennes had been site of the first great battle of the Western Front. Many of the villages had been severely damaged; the landscape in places was unrecognizable. The roads were muddy and nearly impassable. Several times the driver got lost. 

            “Never been so cold in my life,” my grandfather wrote in his diary. “Thought I would surely freeze to death.” Arriving into the camp at 3 am, he was shown to his corrugated Quonset hut, which thankfully had a stove in it. 

Fred Shaw, on left, at camp near the front.

           The next day, he filled out all the customary forms, next-of-kin, etc. (the life expectancy of pilots at the front averaged three weeks). Then,with nothing else to do, he went for walk to see a nearby village—what was left of it. “There isn’t enough left of it to shelter a mosquito,” he wrote. Back at camp, he watched as German planes (the “Huns”) flew over. Luckily, they only dropped propaganda. As they flew back over the lines, he watched the tracers of Allied anti-aircraft fire (or “Archie”) chase after them. In the distance, he heard the rumble of the guns. At night, they lit up the sky.

            The front was less than 20 miles away. Up until that moment, the war—that is, actual conflict—had been a distant thing for Shaw. But if he felt any anxiety being at the front he didn’t betray it in his letters home or in his diary. As for death and injury, he had seen plenty of that during his flight training (See “The Few, the Brave, the Lucky,” February 9, 2018), so whatever heroic fantasies he had of war had surely been dispelled. Many of the pilots he trained with were already dead. But so far he had been lucky. His time recuperating in the hospital helped him outlast many of his comrades.

Above: Map showing Nancy, France (at bottom center), with the front line and the location of bombing targets at various  ranges. Below, aerial photo of zipper-shaped trench lines with the potmarked scars of artillery bombardment.

            German planes continued to fly over the field, taking photographs. But for the most part low clouds and rain made flying impossible. “It is as cold as Greenland,” Shaw complained in a letter home. Worse than the cold or the incessant shelling at night was the boredom. Most days Shaw spent an orderly officer standing guard, a flares officer designated to help guide planes to landing (of which there were few due to the weather), or just hanging around.

            Everyone knew the war was winding down. The Bulgarians, Austrians and Turks had all capitulated by the end of October. This left the Germans on their heals. Rumors of an armistice swirled. Still the war grinded along. On Nov. 4 Shaw learned that that a close friend and fellow Canadian from flight training, Dick Stata, was killed in a DH-9 near Dunkirk. This made Shaw the last of “the old Vendome quartet”—four Canadian recruits who became fast friends. Shaw, miraculously, had yet to fly a combat mission.

            On November 10, Sunday, something seemed afoot.  “Firing very light,” Shaw wrote. At 11 a.m. the next morning, he wrote, “Fighting stopped.” The war was over. 

            

Following a night of celebration, Shaw and the rest of the squadron were part of a victory parade through Nancy. Athough hostilities had ended, dangers remained. Shaw returned to camp and awaited orders. On November 16, the 100 Squadron packed up and Shaw, flying a Handley Page, took off for the 240-mile flight to Le Bourget field in Paris. Climbing to an altitude of 5,000 feet, Shaw battled headwinds and turbulence, averaging 80 miles per hour en route. 

            For the better part of a month, Shaw sat around, attending lectures on rigging or engine mechanics, doing drills or practicing gunnery as the higher-ups figured what to do with him. "It is awful," he wrote. On December 12, Shaw was ordered, along with two other pilots, to join a crew of mechanics and riggers to travel to a former German airfield in Morville, Belgium, to fly back a number of twin-engine Friedrichshafen G.III bombers abandoned by the Germans. 

German Gotha GV twin-engine bomber.

           “Am setting out this afternoon to fly a German bus back here,” he cheerfully wrote to his parents. “Don’t know what kind of bus it is but should be able to handle it OK.”

            By truck they drove north from Paris to the town of Doullens, then northeastwards  to Albert, Bapaume, Cambrai, Valenciennes, into Belgium and the towns of Mons, Charleroi and Florennes.  It was on this trip that Shaw first witnessed the scale of the destruction that occurred.

        Shortly after leaving Doullens signs of war showed in the countryside and by the time we reached Albert they were frightful. Not a single house is standing there. It was pitiful to see the inhabitants waiting for the mayor. Of course the cathedral is blown to smithereens. Never saw such destruction. Stopped and looked at the La Boiselle crater—one of the biggest of the war—fully 300 feet across and 60 feet deep.

         After we left Albert we passed Courcellette, Le Sars, etc. There are bricks and walls left of Albert but of the towns between Albert and Bapaume there is not even a brick. It is hard to believe but the only way you could tell that such towns existed is by a sign on the side of the road: “Courcellette”. Even the bricks have been blown to dust. 

         From Albert to Bapaume there is not a house, tree or living thing. One huge wide desert with derelict tanks scattered here and there. Shell cases, helmets, parts of guns, etc.  I have a helmet and some shell cases for souvenirs. Passed the Hindenberg Line which is nothing but a forest of barbed wire and a trench, concrete in parts. There must be millions of miles of barbed wire. There are all the German signs along the road and live shells lining the sides of the road for miles. Nothing but shells, shells, shells. 

Abandoned tanks amid the destruction.

The ruins of Ypres, Belgium.

Spent artillery shells. 

           Arriving at Morville, no one greeted them, but they located a chateau occupied by other RAF officers and set up a temporary home. The next morning they set about checking out the German aircraft. 

            “Totally different from anything I have seen. No one knows anything about them—engine, rigging, petrol system or anything. It is quite a dangerous thing. They are twin-engine pushers about 70-80 foot span, with seemingly millions of gadgets of which the meaning of no one here knows. By experimenting we have found out what some of the different gadgets are for, but things are in a very harum-scarum state and we are beginning to see that this is no picnic we are on. I don’t know but I am not very confident, nor are pilots Roy or Hall. “

            After consulting with headquarters, it was agreed the planes were in no shape to fly. The pilots were ordered to return to Paris, leaving the mechanics behind to work on the planes. After a night in Brussels, they headed to Paris via a different route, through Ypres, center of five major battles during the war which resulted in which there were more than 1 million casualties.  “To describe the scene of such desolation is impossible,” wrote Shaw. “There isn’t a foot of ground in the whole Ypres district that hasn’t been hit with a shell.”

Handley Page bomber converted for carrying passengers.

Between poor weather and general disorganization, Shaw spent most of his days sitting around.  On the few days he could fly, he ferried mail and passengers aboard a converted Handley Page. On January 15, he and five other pilots were trucked back to Belgium to recover German aircraft from the Bickendorf airfield. This time, the RAF pressed German pilots into service to help the allied pilots. Shaw sat in the rear seat of an AEG twin-engine bomber as a German pilots demonstrated how to fly the plane, but Shaw was skeptical of the whole enterprise. 

            “It is suicide,” he wrote. “Every one who has flown one (of twin-engine Gotha bombers) has been killed—13 machines, 26 people. Also word that Hall had forced landing in a Friedrichshafen. Machine caught fire. He and passengers had a wonderful escape. The people responsible for making us fly the Hun machines should be shot,” As for the pilot Roy? We never learn his fate.

            Shaw spent several days at Bickendorf waiting as mechanics prepared the AEG for ferrying. One day Shaw looked up: “Two Camels collided at about 300 ft. Wings tore off one and the other caught on fire. Terrible sight. One machine fell like a stone. The other pilot tried to sideslip, but the whole machine was a mass of flame and he struck the ground in a vertical nose dive. Both pilots helpless. Were killed instantly. ”

             On the day Shaw was to fly the German AEG aircraft, another pilot asked Shaw if he could take his place. Shaw was only too happy to accommodate. After returning to Paris, Shaw bided his time. He got occasional assignments flying mail and passengers, which he undoubtedly preferred to flying the German deathtraps. By March, he was the sole remaining pilot in 100 Squadron—the others having been killed or sent home—so he was reassigned to 216 Squadron. 

            On April 7, Shaw flew his last flight, taking a load of mail from Paris to Cologne. His observer, however, proved useless. Midway en route “the idiot let the map fly overboard,” so Shaw decided to regroup and land. He picked his way through the haze and mist to an airfield he knew was in Leige, Belgium, but he got lost, and ended up putting the plane down in a small field on side of hill where he was unable to take off again. He unloaded the mail and hitched a ride to a local postmaster, then took a train back to Paris.

            On his return, he was ordered to pack his gear for a trip to London and then home. His war was over. “Guess I have finished flying,” he wrote. “My last was a narrow squeak.”

            With that, the diary ends. And, as far as I know, Shaw never flew again.