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Sixty had not to wait long for its first taste of serious fighting. The “aerial offensive,” which always precedes any “push,” was already well developed when the squadron commenced war flying. Casualties were heavy, and on July 3, two days after the official commencement of the Somme battle, Ferdy Waldron was shot down and killed on the “other side.” He considered it his duty to try and do one job per day over the line, and on this particular morning he led “A” Flight’s 80 h.p. “bullets” over at 4 a.m. in perfect weather. The other members of the patrol were Smith-Barry, Armstrong, Simpson, and Balfour. The last-named thus describes the fight: “Both Armstrong and Simpson fell out, through engine trouble, before we reached Arras. Armstrong landed by a kite balloon section and breakfasted with Radford (Basil Hallam, the actor), whose kite balloon was attacked a few days later, and who met his death through the failure of his parachute. Waldron led the remaining two along the Arras-Cambrai road. We crossed at about 8,000 feet, and just before reaching Cambrai we were about 9,000, when I suddenly saw a large formation of machines about our height coming from the sun towards us. There must have been at least twelve. They were two-seaters led by one Fokker (monoplane) and followed by two others. I am sure they were not contemplating ‘war’ at all, but Ferdy pointed us towards them and led us straight in.

“My next impressions were rather mixed. I seemed to be surrounded by Huns in two-seaters. I remember diving on one, pulling out of the dive, and then swerving as another came for me. I can recollect also looking down and seeing a Morane about 800 feet below me going down in a slow spiral, with a Fokker hovering above it following every turn. I dived on the Fokker, who swallowed the bait and came after me, but unsuccessfully, as I had taken care to pull out of my dive while still above him. The Morane I watched gliding down under control, doing perfect turns, to about 2,000 feet, when I lost sight of it. I thought he must have been hit in the engine. After an indecisive combat with the Fokker I turned home, the two-seaters having disappeared. Smith-Barry I never saw from start to finish of the fight. I landed at Vert Galant and reported that Ferdy had ‘gone down under control.’ We all thought he was a prisoner, but heard soon afterwards that he had landed safely but died of wounds that night, having been hit during the scrap.

“About twenty minutes after I had landed, Smith-Barry came back. He had not seen us, but had been fighting the back two Fokkers, which he drove east, but not before he had been shot about by them, one bullet entering the tail and passing up the fuselage straight for his back until it hit the last cross-member, which deflected the course of the missile sufficiently to save him.”

This was the end of a first-class squadron commander, and, coming so early in our fighting career, was a heavy blow. If he had lived, Waldron must have made a great name for himself in the R.F.C.

Smith-Barry now took over the squadron. He was a great “character”—an Irishman with all an Irishman’s charm. A trifle eccentric, he was a fine pilot. He had crashed badly near Amiens in the retreat from Mons, the first Flying Corps casualty, breaking both his legs, which left him permanently lame. Although beloved by his squadron, his superiors sometimes found him a little trying officially. It is often said, half admiringly, of a man by his friends that “he doesn’t care a damn for anyone.” I believe this to have been almost literally true of Smith-Barry. He could do anything with an aeroplane, and delighted in frightening his friends with incredible aerial antics. He was a fine, if original, squadron commander, almost too original, in fact, even for the R.F.C., where, if anywhere in the fighting services, originality was encouraged. At a later stage (in 1917) in Smith-Barry’s career he rendered a very great service to the Corps and to the country by bringing his contempt for precedent and genius for instruction to bear on the question of teaching pilots to fly. It is no exaggeration to say that he revolutionised instruction in aviation, and, having been given almost a free hand by General J. Salmond, he organised his Gosport School of Special Flying, which afterwards developed into a station where all flying instructors were trained.

He has been seen to walk down the Strand in full uniform with an umbrella.

When promoted in 1918 to the command of a brigade, he, having come into conflict with authority, dispatched the following telegrams on the same day to his immediate superior: (1) “Am returning to Gosport. Smith-Barry, Brig.-Gen.” (2) “Have arrived at Gosport. Smith-Barry, Lieut.-Col.”

Smith-Barry’s batman was a French boy named Doby, a refugee from Lille, whom Nicolson, sometime private secretary to General Seely and one of the early pilots of the R.F.C., had picked up during the retreat from Mons and taken back to England with him. When Nicolson was killed at Gosport, Smith-Barry appointed Doby as his batman and, in order to take him to France, dressed him in R.F.C. uniform and called him Air Mechanic Doby. This boy was most useful, being competent to bargain with his compatriots for the goods which the mess required. When a year had gone by and there had been several changes in command, nobody knew his history, and he was regarded as a genuine member of the Corps. History does not relate how he was eventually “demobilised.”

This, then, was the kind of man who took over the squadron on Waldron’s death—at a critical point in its career.

Those who were most conspicuous during the battles of the Somme were: Ball (who joined from 11 Squadron in August), Summers and Tower (two of the original flight commanders), Gilchrist, Latta, Grenfell, Meintjies, A. D. Bell Irving, Phillippi, Hill, Foot, Vincent, Armstrong, and Walters. Foot, as one of the most skilful pilots, was given a “Spad,” on which he did great execution during the autumn.

The fighting was mainly over places like Bapaume, Courcelette, Martinpuich, Busigny, St. Quentin, Cambrai, Havrincourt, etc.

Ball began to show very prominently about this time, several times destroying two or more hostile aeroplanes, and hardly a day passed without at least one Hun being added to his bag. Much has been written about Albert Ball, so much that at this date it is difficult to add anything of interest to the accounts which are already so widely known; but this at least can confidently be said, that never during the war has any single officer made a more striking contribution to the art of war in the air than he, who was the first to make what may be called a business of killing Huns. He allowed nothing to interfere with what he conceived to be the reason of his presence in an aeroplane in France—the destruction of the enemy wherever and whenever he could be found. He was a man—a boy in truth—of a kindly nature, possessed by a high sense of duty and patriotism. These months (August and September 1916) saw Ball at his best, and though it is true that he was awarded the Victoria Cross after his death in an heroic fight in the spring of 1917, when he was a flight commander in 56 Squadron, yet it was in the summer and autumn of 1916 in 11 and 60 Squadrons that he began to show the Flying Corps what fighting in the air really meant. The copy of a report rendered to R.F.C. H.Q. is given below: