Tag: Books

  • The War That Ended Peace

    The War That Ended Peace

    The Road to 1914

    Margaret MacMillan
    Penguin Books, © Margaret MacMillan 2013

    The War That Ended Peace is a giant doorstop of a book: more than 700 pages (with notes) in the Penguin trade paperback. But then, it’s tackling a big, difficult question: how could Europe — so peaceful, prosperous, and powerful in 1914 — plunge itself into the horrors of The Great War? Margaret MacMillan’s previous work (History’s People, Nixon and Mao, Women of the Raj…) has focussed more on social and personal history than military or diplomatic. However, her sharp analytical skills and keen eye, both for individual human behaviour and its broader social context, equips her well for this particular task.

    The Setting

    MacMillan begins with a broad survey of European society and politics in the years leading up to 1914. After the cauldron of the Napoleonic wars, the 19th Century had been a time of relative peace during which the larger European nations grew into the great powers of the globe. By 1914 they had the most productive and advanced industry, the most powerful armies, and the richest and best educated citizens. European colonies and dependencies sent their wealth to Britain and the continent from every corner of the planet. At sea, the Royal Navy’s pax Brittanica kept the peace and guaranteed trade wherever there was water enough to float its ships.

    As the 20th Century began cracks were appearing in the brilliant facade, though. The rapid urbanization, industrialization, and scientific advancement of the 19th Century had also brought an almost overwhelming amount of social change. While those who had risen to the top (or been born there) celebrated European cultural, commercial, and military superiority, others endured an often unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and benefits. The middle classes chafed that their growing economic importance was not represented in the top ranks of military and government, where the traditional aristocracy still clung to its perquisites. The spread of education to the new urban working classes produced divergent social movements: a growing sense of national identity — even nationalism — among the traditional and patriotic, and support for pan-national pacifist and socialist causes among the more radical and idealistic.

    Jealousies and resentments of historic wrongs festered between nations too. Russia and Austro-Hungary, vast backward multi-national empires both, were falling behind in the race to modernize, while suffering more than most from the centrifugal social forces that progress was unleashing. Although Germany had become the leading land power, her late development left her behind in the race for overseas colonies, feeding a seething envy of Britain’s naval power and overseas empire. France, in her turn, nursed a patient grudge against Germany for taking the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in 1870.

    HMS Dreadnought
    HMS Dreadnought

    These strains were growing in an environment that increasingly took peace for granted. As memories of the terrible wars of Napoleon dimmed (there had been wars since 1815, but limited ones or far from the heart of Europe) European states became readier to gamble on armed conflict to solve their diplomatic issues — in the words of von Clausewitz, to treat war as “the continuation of politics by other means”. This was especially true of the declining empires who feared their time in the sun was running out. The long peace, and increasing domestication of modern life, also produced a generation of young men who felt that they had not been tested as their grandfathers had — that they had not yet found a great cause in which to prove their own worth. A series of diplomatic crisis in the first years of the new century repeatedly tested the European powers, and repeatedly they averted war through good luck more than good judgement. Which may have led them to overestimate both their luck and their abilities.

    The Dramitis Personae

    Regardless, in 1914 their luck ran out. Unlike World War Two, which has a clear cause in Nazi aggression, World War One (it ceased being “The Great War” when there was a second) was the product of errors and miscalculations by all the great powers. MacMillan approaches these events through a series of character sketches. These intimate portraits of kings, prime ministers, and foreign ministers (and their Fin de siècle lifestyles — all mistresses, grand parties, and country manors) are fascinating in their own right, but also a superb introduction to each nation’s situation and ambitions as they themselves understood them at the time. Taken together, MacMillan’s dramatis personae embody the insecurities and ambitions that built road to war, and the failures of imagination that set Europe sleep-walking down it.

    The first steps fell in June 1914, when slav nationalists assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The independent Balkan states on Austria-Hungary’s southern flank had long supported slav separatism including, it was soon discovered, harbouring the assassin. The Austrian Chief of Staff, Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf responded with an ultimatum to Serbia whose harsh terms he knew would be unacceptable. When Serbia refused, Austria-Hungary would have casus belli to crush its small but irksome neighbour once and for all.

    As the Balkan states enjoyed the protection of their fellow slavs in the Russian Empire, this immediately provoked a European crisis. Alone, Austria-Hungary was the weakest of the great powers, but Hötzendorf was counting on his own allies. Austria-Hungary had joined a Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy in 1882. This was ostensibly a defensive treaty but Germany, aggressively pursuing a naval race with Britain, was ready to challenge the status quo. At one time Germany’s “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck, would have tempered these ambitions with realpolitik, but the immature and headstrong Kaiser Wilhelm II had sacked him in 1890. In the decades since Wilhelm had turned to less thoughtful advisors: the ambitious von Tirpitz (Secretary of State for the Imperial Navy), the technically clever but morally weak von Moltke (Chief of the General Staff), and the manipulative Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (Chancellor). With their help Kaiser Wilhelm turned Germany (still an absolute monarchy) into the most erratic member of the great power club, but it was Bethmann-Hollweg who concealed Britain’s offer to mediate the Serbian crisis and who assured Austria of Germany’s full support in any resulting conflict (the infamous “blank cheque”).

    Hotzendorf
    Hotzendorf

    The emboldened Hötzendorf prepared to crush Serbia, undeterred by the contradictory signals sent by the powers who should have opposed such naked aggression. In Russia the weak and wavering Tzar Nicholas II feared war and opposed military action, but was only sporadically able to impose his authority on his bellicose Foreign Minister, Sergey Sazonov, who was more concerned with restoring Russia’s wavering influence in the Middle East. The ensuing muddle was bad enough for Hötzendorf to think he could wage a Serbian war without Russian interference.

    France had formed a common cause with Russia against Germany in a series of treaties signed between 1891 and ’94. The alliance was based on common interests (France had extensive investments in the empire) and common fears of Germany’s growing power. However, in this crisis, France remained paralyzed between her fear of a general war on one hand, and her desire for the return of Alsace-Lorraine (taken by Germany in 1871) on the other. In consequence, it remained ambiguous whether France’s support for her ally would go so far as military intervention (especially if Russia could be portrayed as the aggressor).

    Finally, Britain was dragged into the crisis through her historic guarantees of Belgian neutrality (the traditional German invasion route into France). However, as a naval power with a prejudice against continental entanglements, she too attempted to keep her options open. A conservative aristocrat, British Foreign Minister Edward Grey was reluctant to offer military guarantees on the continent (something Britain had avoided since 1815), while also briefing his government that abandoning Belgium entirely would be an unacceptable stain on British honour. The Germans interpreted this as meaning they could keep Britain out of any coming war by promising to restore French & Belgian territory after their victory. [1]

    The diplomatic fumbling ended on 28 July 1914 when an undeterred Austria-Hungary launched its war on Serbia. Despite the onset of what could be described as a nervous breakdown, Sazanov responded with Russian mobilization. This set off a rush to war. The surplus wealth generated by industrialized economies had enabled the continental powers to train vast citizen armies, rotating fresh batches of youths into active service as the previous intake returned to civilian life. Mobilizing these reserves took time, but going to war without them meant fighting outnumbered. Thus, Russian mobilization was a loaded gun pointed at the Triple Alliance.

    Three days later Germany declared war on Russia. As the conflagration spread, France’s dithering did not save her. The 19th Century had seen Europe covered by dense networks of railroads, the only quick and efficient way to move the new mass armies. But, railroads consist of fixed paths and trains must adhere to rigid timetables. Accordingly, von Moltke had produced an incredibly complex plan to use Germany’s superior network for a quick knock-out blow against France (the smaller of his two foes) before turning on Russia. Germany thus declared war on France only a few days after Russia. Worse, to widen and speed his deployment of forces, von Moltke intended to march the right flank of his armies through Belgium.

    Even Kaiser Wilhelm trembled at a plan that brought France, Belgium, and Britain (should she honour her guarantees) into the war, when smarter diplomacy might have kept them neutral. But von Moltke was adamant that the railroad timetables were too complex, and the forces involved too large, to change plans at this late stage. So, caught in a trap of their own making, Germany’s leaders flung their armies westward.


    [1] When Britain did respond to the German invasion by sending troops to Belgium, the Kaiser complained that they had intervened against all logic, an eery echo of Hitler’s complaint twenty-five years later that France and Britain, by honouring their obligations to Poland, were the ones responsible for starting a European war — against all logic!

    The Past

    Even as the shooting started, the belligerents hoped the war could be limited, like those of the previous century. Modern weaponry consumed munitions and materiel so rapaciously that many believed their economies would be exhausted after a single campaign, and that any war lasting beyond Christmas would wreck the complex system of international finance. (The Napoleonic Wars went on for so long because they were exactly that, a series of wars — most lasting only a single season.)

    The Somme
    The Somme

    They should have known better. The US Civil War had staggered on for four long years, demonstrating the ability of modern bureaucratic states to mobilize industry and manpower on scales previously unimaginable. France’s popular resistance to Germany’s 1870 invasion also showed how the strengthening of national identities was creating a popular patriotism capable of vast sacrifices.

    The great powers had played with fire, only to find they’d filled their house with inflammable materials:

    • Belgium resisted the German offensive strongly enough to save France from a knock-out blow and Britain did commit its army to the continent in honour of its guaranties, creating a stalemate in the West;
    • European states did, indeed, prove capable of mobilizing their industry on the massive scale needed to sustain modern total war; and
    • The international peace movements that had seemed so strong before the war were swept away by an inchoate tide of working class patriotism that would support mass mobilization through four years of horrific casualties.

    What’s more, the increased firepower of modern weaponry created a defensive advantage that cut down offensive after offensive in a welter of mud and blood. New tactics to overcome this only emerged in the final year of the war. Meanwhile, the immense size of the new citizen armies enabled them to extend across whole fronts in continuous lines, eliminating open flanks and, with them, possibilities for strategic manoeuvre. As BH Liddell Hart observed: “strategy became the handmaiden of tactics, while tactics became a cripple”.

    As the sacrifices of industrialized warfare mounted, they could only be justified by total victory. So the war became a fight to the death, only ending when the Triple Alliance collapsed under the weight of revolution, starvation, and military defeat. It was the hollowest of victories. Four years of total war left even the victors bankrupt and morally exhausted. The vicious peace terms they imposed, in the wake of so much suffering, set in motion a series of unforeseen events that would plunge Europe into a second, even more destructive, world war only twenty years later. In the meantime, buried in swathes amongst the ruined countryside from Flanders to Galicia, eight million young men lay dead.

    The Present

    The past is never dead. It’s not even past
    William Faulkner

    So, what were the causes of The Great War and the ensuing destruction of the old world order (in MacMillan’s words, the war that ended peace)? Clearly there were ample root circumstances, whether social (the growth of nationalism and its accompanying separatist movements), political (great power rivalries between rising and declining powers), or technological (developments in firepower and the growth of mass armies). Once war started, the alliance system dividing Europe into two armed camps almost ensured it would spread across the continent.

    But, this tinder had been drying for decades. It needed a spark to ignite it and Austria-Hungary (with its enabler, Imperial Germany) was the aggressor of 1914 — even if it intended only a limited war. That makes Count von Hötzendorf and Bethmann-Hollweg the villains of the piece, with the assistance of Wilhelm II, von Tirpitz, von Moltke, Bethmann-Hollweg, and Sazonov. The French and British, though not blameless, were sinners more by omission than commission.

    The Principals

    These decision-makers share an interesting distinction. MacMillan notes that all of them were blinded by a certain lack of imagination, an obliviousness to contrary possibilities so deep that it seems rooted in the culture of the time. Whether it was the long years of peace fostering a too sanguine attitude toward the dangers of war, or a feeling of being overwhelmed by the pace of social change and technological advancement, our actors too often threw up their hands and surrendered in the face of events (often in response to bad advice from their technocratic generals). “I had no choice”, wailed by supposedly powerful and mighty men, was the soundtrack of the Serbian crisis.

    None of this absolves them of personal responsibility. Here MacMillan draws an interesting parallel with US President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He too received military advice to escalate the confrontation, but instead opened communications with Khrushchev and was able to negotiate a peaceful solution. In a rebuke to the architects of 1914, Kennedy showed that leaders can rise above events — that there is always a choice. Would we be so wise today? With so many eerie echoes of 1914 now sounding, this is no hypothetical question. We too are now facing the stress of significant social change after a long period of peace and prosperity. [2]

    In 1914 change took the form of extending legal equality and democratic participation to all citizens; today it is driven by the recognition that these are not, in themselves, sufficient conditions for a genuinely equal society in which all have the opportunity to participate fully. Women, minority, and marginalized individuals, by advocating for true equality, have spread awareness of the social attitudes and invisible barriers in the way of anyone who doesn’t fit a traditional mould. As we recognize our shared humanity, and finally accept its implications in full, the results are being seen in changing hiring practices, employment regulations, recognition of diversity, and greater representation in all areas of life, particularly the arts.

    Of course, any attempt to level the playing field is easily portrayed as a loss by those at the top. Consequently, a generation of populists has risen to exploit fear of change and champion white males as the real “victims” here (as though human society hasn’t been in a constant state of evolution since it began). In another echo of the past, numbers of young (mostly) men are again chafing at the mundanity of domestic life. Some are finding their cause in the alt-right and white-supremacy groups at the extremes of the counter-movement against change. Their numbers and penchant for violence now make these a significant domestic terror threat.

    As in 1914 these social tensions contrast with a complacent inability to imagine how terrible the consequences can be of political pyromania. The UK voted for BREXIT after a “remain” campaign that never took the danger of losing seriously and a “leave” campaign that traded in lies and nostalgia for an England that never existed. This is usually framed as a trade story (and BREXIT is already damaging the UK economy) but we should remember that the EU was originally formed as a peace agreement — to bind the warring nations of Europe in commercial ties. Moreover, in its haste to leave, the UK casually disregarded the consequences for the Good Friday Agreement governing the Ireland – Ulster border (also a peace agreement). The US is currently emerging from four years of the Donald Trump presidency, during which Russian interference was ignored, international agreements torn up, and trade wars started with allies and rivals alike. Those allies were treated of use only as scapegoats — whenever they could be attacked and demeaned to score cheap points at home. The most frequent such target being NATO, a treaty specifically drafted in the wake of WWII to prevent a third such tragedy. Although Trump is now out of office, uncomfortable numbers of voters remain supporters of him and his bomb-throwing approach to the world (perhaps the most erratic foreign policy since Kaiser Wilhelm II).

    Populism hasn’t gained as much traction in Canada (reflecting perhaps the lack of Rupert Murdoch owned broadcasters and newspapers here), but a similar unseriousness still cramps our ability to take real action on large problems. Environmental policies are only pursued when they cost next to nothing, while foreign policy is utterly neglected — despite the sea change wrought by the loss of US leadership and the rise of authoritarian states. Popular activism is as likely to take the form of demonstrating against basic public health measures (in the midst of a global pandemic) as it is advocating for more effective environmental policies, or a more engaged foreign policy.

    For all its faults, the world of the 21st Century is more comfortable, more free, and more full of opportunities for more people than any other time in human history. This is the brilliant façade of our age. But, as in 1914, the cracks are beginning to widen: a disruptive Russia and a rising China pose an authoritarian challenge to the liberal democracies. The stresses of social change need a better response than right-wing populism, as do the implications of globalization and technological developments for labour rights and the distribution of wealth. Meanwhile, climate change is the existential danger of our age.

    If we let peace and comfort dull our ability to imagine the consequences of failing to meet these challenges, then the tragedy 1914 shows how easily the existing order can be swept away. History never quite repeats itself, but the study of the past provides the critical tools needed to understand the present. The events of 1914 remain as relevant today as ever, and Margaret McMillan’s vivid account is a brilliant reminder that peace can never be taken for granted.

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  • A Writer at War

    A Writer at War

    “The ruthless truth of war…”
    Vasily Grossman, Edited & Translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova
    Vintage Books 2007

    In 1941 Vasily Grossman was a Russian-Jewish intellectual and novelist living in Moscow. When Germany invaded, he promptly volunteered for service, but was too old and unfit for combat. Instead he was sent to The Red Star, the army’s official newspaper, as a special correspondent – where a much better use was found for his skills. After a quick course on how to wear a uniform and whom to salute, he spent the rest of the war accompanying the Red Army as a front-line reporter. He was with them through the long retreats of Autumn (barely escaping Orel before it fell) and at the winter battles for Moscow. He was in Stalingrad for much of that epic struggle and was at the liberation of Treblinka death camp. Finally, he accompanied the leading troops into Berlin for the final victory.


    Grossman’s sympathy for the common soldier, and his willingness to share their dangers and hardships, put him as close as any non-combatant can be to what he called “the ruthless truth of war”. With his novelist’s ear for language, and his eye for the telling detail, he turned his interviews and eye-witness accounts into something close to poetry. It’s easy to understand why he’s considered one of the great war correspondents (along with such as Earnie Pyle).

    A Writer at War is a collection of his wartime journalism, edited and translated by the always excellent Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova. Unsurprisingly, Grossman tended to run afoul of the authorities, who often edited his articles to tone down the horror, add stock heroic sentiments, and write out bad behaviour by Soviet side. In consequence Beevor makes heavy use of Grossman’s unpublished diary and notebooks. These were kept private – as notes, observations, and raw material for his articles – and so escaped the eye of the censor. The result is an unvarnished picture of the human face of war.

    Modern historians no longer buy into the mythology of operationally brilliant Germans always beating up the primitive Soviets (if it weren’t for that darned Hitler!), but Russian original sources are still rare and hard to access. In consequence the Soviet side still tends to remain somewhat faceless, while the Germans receive vivid portraits of their plans and personalities. Grossman is a useful corrective with his eye-witness accounts of generals and common soldiers, farmers, bureaucrats, and village girls.

    He talked to a fighter squadron shortly after a pilot was awarded a medal for ramming a German plane and the surviving pilots argue vigorously about how easy it is to ram an enemy — not heroic or worthy of a medal — and what a waste it is of all that precious ammunition carried by the plane! His interviews with commanders complaining about their drunken and/or unreliable subordinates puts a human face on the Red Army’s attempts to modernize and improve.

    The famous soulfulness of the Russian personality comes through in his interviews with common soldiers as they wrestle with accepting their almost certain death, albeit in a worthy cause, against regret for everything they’ve left behind or haven’t yet experienced. (A horrifying number of these stories do end with an obituary.) He doesn’t neglect the civilian victims of war, and the book is a reminder that even so vast and “empty” a country as Russia was covered with a network of agricultural towns and villages. Wrenching choices had to be made in many of these about which was the greater danger – flight or occupation.

    A common thread throughout A Writer at War is the absolute faith of almost every Russian soldier in both the rightness of their cause and their superior skill and bravery compared to their German foes. In the West we’ve become used to the Wehrmacht’s portrayal as a skilled but under-equipped foe, only defeated by our superior firepower and resources. So, it’s jaw dropping to read Russian complaints about how the rich Germans win only because of their lavish supplies of aircraft, tanks, and ammunition. The interviews are full of eloquent criticism about how terrified German infantry is of close combat, fighting in forests, and fighting at night (unlike brave Russians!), relying instead on crushing weights of artillery fire.
    Grossman follows many of his subjects for extended periods, conducting multiple interviews and these, eventually, build to a complex portrayal of the strange mixture of inferiority complex, macho pride, and veneration for culture that makes up the personality of these soldiers. In contrast to the macho bragging above, when they find liberated Russian villages half destroyed and filth-ridden, they often sadly observe that the Germans are supposed to be the “cultured” race. When the Red Army enters East Prussia, the tidy towns, good roads, and luxurious homes cause many of them to ask: “why would the Nazis invade our poor country when it’s so nice here?”

    Grossman is too observant and too honest just to be a Red Army cheerleader, though. He is appalled at the common practice among higher commanders of taking a “campaign wife” from the young women in signals or nursing units. Likewise, he’s not a fan of how many of even the more professional officers keep up the tradition of physically striking their subordinates. And, in occupied Germany, his interview subjects include many locals abused and women raped by Russian soldiers.

    The centrepiece of the book, though, is his long account of the liberation of Treblinka death camp, which Beevor includes in full. The Germans attempted to cover up any evidence of Treblinka’s existence before retreating, but bits of bone and clothing were already poking above the surface of the empty fields when the Russians arrived. And most of the work of burning and burying the dead was done by prisoners, a few of whom were able to escape into the nearby woods before they too became victims of the final round of murders. Grossman interviewed all of them. And let me tell you, even if you think you know about the holocaust, his account of how Treblinka was operated will absolutely harrow you. He explains, with detailed stories and examples, exactly how the Germans used psychological tricks and manipulation to keep their victims docile, so as to reduce the number of staff needed to handle them. The same urge to efficiency kept the camp staff constantly developing their techniques for mass murder and the disposal of remains to keep up with the ever-increasing trainloads of men, women, and children arriving at the camp.
    Seventy-five years later this remains a vital and important record.

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    Note: If you want more Grossman, his post-war novel, Life and Fate, is a classic and widely available in translation.

  • The Black Flight

    The Black Flight

    The Memoir of Raymond Collishaw, CB, DSO, DSC, DFC

    Raymond Collishaw
    CEF Books 2008

    It’s remarkable that four of the greatest British flying aces of WWI are Canadian. Billy Bishop, with 72 officially credited victories, has the top score for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) while Raymond Collishaw, at 60, tops the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Donald MacLaren, at 54, is not far behind and achieved more victories in Sopwith Camels than anyone else. William Barker, with 50 victories, won the VC in one of the most celebrated air combats of all time, ending the war as the most highly decorated pilot in British service.


    Amazingly, all four survived the war, and three returned to Canada to be celebrated and showered with business and professional opportunities. Billy Bishop even became a figure of pop culture and appears in various media to this day. You don’t have to be a history nerd to recognize his name. Donald MacLaren was a major pioneer in BC aviation history. And anyone with any interest in air combat at all knows of William Barker’s famous final duel, alone in his Sopwith Snipe, taking on fifteen or more Fokker D.VIIs.

    Raymond Collishaw, in comparison, has remained obscure — despite being, perhaps, the most extraordinary member of this quite extraordinary group. Perhaps this is because he flew for the publicity averse RNAS, or because he continued in British service after the war. But it’s typical that his 1973 memoir, Air Command, wasn’t even released in Canada. Fortunately, it has been republished as The Black Flight (2008) and is now more widely available. I purchased a copy at The Museum of the Regiments during a recent visit to Calgary.

    If there’s any justice, this new edition will introduce Collishaw to a wider audience. It’s a slender volume at 272 pages (with notes) and moves along briskly, concentrating on the highlights of his well-packed military career. Significant events are recalled in sharp detail, though, including things Collishaw couldn’t have known at the time. So the text has also clearly benefited from some post mortem research. (The original release, Air Command was written with the help of ex-RCAF historian Ronald Dodds.) There’s not a lot in the way of personal or family detail, but the book is well written, with a wry sense of humour, that seems to capture Collishaw’s personality.

    The story begins in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where Collishaw was born to British parents who had immigrated in search of adventure and fortune in the gold fields. Their son soon showed that the apple doesn’t drop far from the tree. He joined the Fisheries Protection Service (a sort of proto-Coast Guard) as a cabin boy at the age of just fifteen. Having worked his way up to rank of First Officer by the time war broke out in 1914, he promptly sought a transfer to the Royal Navy. This looked to be a slow process, but the air service was short of flyers and actively recruiting in Canada. The only hitch was the requirement to have your own flying certificate before applying. Collishaw promptly raised the necessary cash and headed to Toronto for private lessons at the only flying school then operating in Canada. He was in a navy uniform and on his way to England by January 1916.

    World War I

    After completing advanced flying training, he was posted to 3 Naval Wing in the Alsace region. This was flying the first independent bombing missions against deep targets and pioneering the techniques of what we would now call strategic bombing. Collishaw flew escort to these raids in Sopwith 1 ½ Strutters and, despite the weather often limiting their flying, soon showed himself a skilled and useful combat pilot.

    After some home leave, and promotion to Flight Commander, he was posted to 10 Naval Squadron, near Ypres. There he achieved what fame he does have with air enthusiasts, commanding the famous “Black Flight”, an elite, all-Canadian flight of black-nosed Sopwith Triplanes. 10 Squadron amassed an extraordinary combat record during the dangerous days of 1917, shooting down 84 enemy aircraft in the critical period of April to July alone. Collishaw accounted for 27 of these himself in his personal Triplane, Black Maria.

    On average only one of the original flyers in each five-plane flight survived Bloody April unwounded. Remarkably, and despite several close calls, Collishaw came through unscathed. More than once enemy bullets passed close enough to shatter his goggles. On another occasion his controls were shot away, resulting in a crash landing. Once, in thick fog, he landed on a German airfield by accident. Upon noticing the black crosses on the other planes, he cracked the throttle open and barely managed to take off before capture. In one dogfight he even manoeuvred so severely, to avoid a collision, that his seat belt snapped and he was flung out of the cockpit. He managed to grab onto the upper wing struts of his Triplane and, despite the plane’s uncontrolled swoops and lunges, eventually levered his legs back inside and regained control.

    Collishaw in a Sopwith Camel
    Collishaw in a Sopwith Camel

    Various observers of this period have noted Collishaw’s outstanding qualities as a leader. To boost the confidence of new pilots, for example, he would take them up as his wingman for their first few flights. If they found a German aircraft, he would lead them into an attack, with the new pilot typically filling the sky with holes while Collishaw put a few short, well-aimed bursts into the enemy’s vitals. Upon return, Collishaw would clap the novice on the back and exclaim: “Well done, old boy — you bagged your first hun!” The terrified and confused novice would swell with pride, and the new-found confidence probably boosted his chances of survival significantly. More than one commentator has calculated that Collishaw’s official victory tally would be significantly higher if it included all the kills he gave away.

    Typically, Collishaw himself says nothing of this. Throughout The Black Flight he does pause the narrative occasionally to comment on various topics, including the true nature of chivalry in the air war, how pilots coped with the dangers they faced, the role of a combat leader, and so on. These asides are always thoughtful and interesting but, the one time he discusses victory claims, it’s only to note how fleeting and fraught are the circumstances in which they’re made, and therefore how unreliable they are (regardless of even good faith efforts to verify them).

    After a period of leave in Canada, and promotion to Squadron Commander, Collishaw commanded a coastal defence squadron for most of 1918, racking up yet more kills in Sopwith Camels. Despite the drastic downsizing of the services at the end of the European war, he was offered and accepted a permanent commission in the newly formed Royal Air Force (which absorbed the old RFC and RNAS).

    Russia

    Western participation in the Russian Civil War has become an obscure footnote of history, but this became the scene of yet more dramatic adventures for Collishaw. He was offered the poisoned chalice of commanding the air contingent being sent to assist White Russian forces against the Bolsheviks. Although this meant cancelling a planned attempt at the first cross-Atlantic flight, Collishaw’s reaction was immediate: “what I had thus far heard about the Bolshies led me to believe they were a thoroughly bad lot, and I accepted without hesitation.”

    Between his arrival in south Russia in June 1919, and the collapse of the enterprise in March 1920, Collishaw’s mixed squadron of fighters and bombers gave air support to Deniken’s White Army. To cope with the vast distances, all his ground support elements were based out of three steam trains (one per flight). Thus organized they could quickly deploy forward or back, hastily setting up flying strips wherever they stopped. For months on end the rapidly changing fortunes of war took Collishaw and his squadron all across Southern Russia. He took part in several missions and even shot down a Red Army Nieuport himself to increase his final score to 60 victories. Less happily, he caught typhus at one point and almost died, surviving only by the lucky chance of falling into the care of a refugee Russian Countess who had been trained as a nurse.

    Collishaw in Russia
    Collishaw in Russia

    When the White cause began to fall apart, Collishaw consolidated his remaining aircraft onto a single train and began a fraught retreat, over the snow-covered countryside, to Crimea and the last Allied held port. Their progress was frequently slowed by weather and the need to repair rails torn up by local Red sympathizers. And, soon, a Bolshevik train was spotted behind them in hot pursuit. This was only kept at bay by frantically tearing up the newly repaired rails as they passed. The fate for anyone who fell prisoner in that murderous internecine conflict didn’t bear thinking about, but the air contingent reached port without losing a man – a remarkable feat of leadership. Collishaw and his squadron remained in Russia almost until the end; when the last Intervention Forces were finally evacuated, he brought the remaining elements of his squadron home with almost no loss of life from their Russian service.

    Between the Wars

    Seemingly allergic to a quiet life, Collishaw then commanded RAF squadrons in Iraq and Palestine, pioneering air re-supply techniques and the use of punitive air raids to quell local rebellions with minimum loss of life (and expense). Energetic and open to new ideas, a typical Collishaw scheme was his decision to fill the inner tube of a bomber tire with water to see if this could speed up re-supply by air. The test, however, did not go well: “The wretched tire and inner tube hit the ground as planned, but as if possessed of some evil intelligence immediately bounced up onto a rolling position and changed course for the hanger line. Those who saw the 750-pound monster bounding toward them at close to 100 miles per hour took violent evasion action, but nothing could save the hanger…” (The book is full of anecdotes like this, though many are such that the other parties must remain nameless.)

    Service with a home squadron in England followed, which he describes as the most boring period of his whole career. This gave him the time, though, to finally marry his sweetheart, the sister of a fellow pilot he met while on leave in Canada. He hadn’t felt able to marry during the war (possibly leaving her a widow), and active service in Russia and the Middle East had interfered since, so it had been a Very Long Engagement indeed. Now happily joined, the couple promptly produced two daughters.

    World War II

    Service on an aircraft carrier followed, and then command of the Desert Air Force in Egypt. Here Collishaw seems to have been in his element, improvising madly as he prepared for another world war in a secondary theatre that would receive only very limited resources. When the Italians attacked out of Libya in 1940, he put his theories of air power to the test, hitting their ground elements with pinprick raids that caused them to disperse their much superior Air Force in a futile attempt to defend everywhere. The odds were so uneven he resorted to rigging machine guns on the undercarriages of his old bombers to make up for the lack of proper fighter escorts. His only modern fighter (a single Hurricane) was kept busy moving from field to field and flying one plane patrols over different sectors each day in an attempt to fool the Italians about his strength. When a supply of ancient (and probably unsafe) 20 lb bombs were found in a warehouse, he had bombers fly over the the Italian positions at night with the crew manually fusing and flinging them out an open door. The 20 pounders were too small to do much damage, but they could ruin the sleep of the infantry.

    Then Collishaw struck with concentrated force, not letting his own squadrons be tied down defending static positions. Despite having to divert planes to Greece and then Crete, he supported the British desert offensive so successfully that the Italian Air Force was almost completely swept from the skies. All for remarkably little loss to his own squadrons.
    Things got tougher when the Germans arrived, of course, but by then Collishaw was approaching fifty – ancient by the standards of wartime command. The reward for his accomplishments was promotion (to the permanent rank of Air Vice-Marshall) and being shuffled off to a quiet command in Scotland. In 1943 he was retired from the service, to spend the rest of the war in the UK as a civil air liaison.

    Retirement

    In 1945 Collishaw and family returned to Canada, laden with decorations and honours: Companion of the Order of the Bath, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, DSO, DFC, Croix de guerre, etc, etc. Unsurprisingly he approached civilian life with the same energy he’d shown in military service. Settling in Vancouver he took up the family business and, for the next two decades, initiated various mineral exploration and mining operations in northern British Columbia. For five years he was president of Craigmont Mines. In 1976 Raymond Collishaw passed away, unknown to most of his fellow Canadians.

    Fortunately, he completed this book before then, in whatever free time his other activities allowed. The Black Fight is a terrific account of a remarkable personality. Amazingly, for a senior officer’s wartime memoir, it is entirely without rancour or score-settling. Collishaw seems to have been that most rare of animals: a hugely successful person who remained utterly humble, self-aware, and at peace with himself. The final paragraph is typical of his tone, so he gets the last word: “I am often asked whether – If I had it to do all over again – I would do it differently. So far as the basic pattern of my life is concerned, I do not think so, although I might try to do everything just a bit better. I must qualify this, though, for my wife may some day read this book. Perhaps, given another chance, I should not wait so long to get married.”

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