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The West, busy with the opening up of new frontiers to the northward, was totally unprepared for the events that were to jolt it to its very core on that fateful day, August 4, 1914, when the declaration of war with Germany struck like a thunderbolt from the blue. By stuttering telegraph key word sped over the wires to Lesser Slave Lake, to Peace River Crossing and to the much-advertised but diminutive Dunvegan. From Grande Prairie, Spirit River and The Waterhole the “moccasin telegraph” soon carried the word into the remotest parts.

Billy Griesbach, son of the first man to enlist in the North West Mounted Police—and a former trooper of “C” Squadron of the Strathcona Horse who had seen his own share of battle and hardship in South Africa during the Boer War—now proceeded to organize the famed 49th Battalion, or Edmonton Regiment. Soon it gathered into its ranks not only raw recruits from the Silent Places but many original members of the North West Mounted Police who had also served throughout the South African campaign.

Not until 1916 was “Wop” May able to join, with his friend, Ray Ross, the 202nd, or so-called “Sportsman’s Battalion,” under the command of Colonel P. E. Bowen, the present Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta.

Already the Uhlans, the eyes and ears of the German Army, had been superseded by the aeroplane, and dog-fights in the skies above contending armies had become an accepted part of the battle picture.

Thumbing through a copy of The Illustrated London News a few weeks before joining up, “Wop’s” eyes lighted at the picture of Allied planes strafing a column of retreating German Infantry frantically attempting to escape the merciless leaden hail that poured down upon them. Another artist’s drawing depicted a German Staff car undergoing a similar aerial bombardment. “That,” “Wop” chuckled as he tossed the periodical to Ray, “is the way to fight. When you’re up in the air like that you’ve got them where you want them. Why, you’re moving so fast they haven’t a chance to pick you off. To hell with slogging through Flanders mud on foot. It’s me for the Flying Corps!”

Finding that only the Infantry lay open to them they made a virtue of necessity and permitted their spirit of patriotism and adventure to land them in the ranks of the 202nd Battalion, hoping to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps later in England. After a short but intensive period of training they were on their way to France.

A year and a half later “Wop” had his wish fulfilled. From a Sergeant in the Machine Gun section of the 202nd he found himself transferred to England for a course of training in the now vastly expanding Royal Flying Corps. “Wop” has left a brief but illuminating record of what that training was like:

In those days I trained on a Caudron aeroplane fighter machine with rotary engine. It was a tractor ’plane. Instead of the regular ailerons the wings were made of bamboo, and they certainly warped and bent, so it doesn’t require much imagination to visualize the kind of machines they were. You didn’t learn to fly in the usual way. They taught you to fly up the field, take off in the field—and land in the field again. The first trip I made I was feeling pretty cocky. I was in the air at last! I took it into my head that I’d like to show them a little fancy flying. I performed the figure eight in the ether, strictly contrary to the accepted letter of instructions, and succeeded in landing in an adjoining field right side up—much to the wrathful astonishment of my Instructor, who figured we should both have been killed.

My first real trip was even more eventful and, once again, a beneficent Providence must have been hovering over me. I was taken in a Bristol Fighter to Northolt Airport along with an observer when, from out of the blue, an R. E. 8 landed squarely on top of us. Yet, by some miracle, not one of us got scratched.

Somehow, by the divine intervention of Providence, I succeeded in getting through my training—and, believe me, it was rough—without breaking any bones, or creating any casualties, much to the surprise of my instructors and the Mess—who foretold for me a quick and early demise—and was posted to a Scout.

My first solo, in a Camel, was not devoid of startling incidents. We were to pick up a single-seater aircraft at Northolt Airport. Whilst heading there to take over, I saw my prospective machine come down on my Instructor in a mass of tangled wreckage. Next moment there was a thundering detonation, a blinding sheet of flame and wreckage being spewed in all directions to the cacophony of screaming sirens as crash cars, ambulances and fire-trucks hurtled to the spot.

As I watched the rescue crews haul the charred and mutilated remains of my former Instructor from the twisted wreckage I lost all heart for any more flying that day. But, the training was tough and the first thing I knew I was in the air, solo. Somehow I managed to fly ten thousand faltering feet without even turning—my mind still tortured by the tragedy I’d witnessed. Next day I was ordered to Scotland for my gunnery course. I got there that night. The following afternoon I was hustled back to London. My “gunnery course” was over!

Promptly I was shipped across to France. Times were grim, and even raw pilots were needed to replace the terrific loss being sustained in the Flying Corps as the Fifth Army was battered relentlessly westward. I found myself posted to a pilot’s pool at St. Omar, just west of the Belgian border, where we were to remain until sent as replacements for those shot out of the sky. I soon found myself rubbing shoulders with other lads from the Land of the Maple Leaf: that wirey atom of human dynamite, “Con” Farrell from Minnedosa; the ubiquitous Walter Gilbert from Cardinal, with his sardonic sense of humour; stolid Lieutenant George Gorman, always wrapped in sombre aloofness, and a dozen others I was to meet again years later winging their crates through the frigid skies of Canada’s Northwest Territories in that unending yen for adventure that was sparked on these bloodstained battlefields.

Around the Mess I ran into another air-minded chap I’d met in the old 49th. As we lifted our elbows at the bar he suggested I take a flier with him over the enemy lines next morning. Somehow I wasn’t able to make it. Poor devil, his ship was shot out of the air in a blaze of pyrotechnics, and what reached the ground you couldn’t have put in a match-box. Finally, I was posted to the 9th Naval Squadron at Bertangles. I was in the Royal Naval Air Service at last!

Believe me, there’s quite a difference between the training squadrons over in Blighty and the highly-disciplined and orderly Royal Naval Air Service. Having still retained a little of the old, independent Western spirit, and not yet fully appreciative of the difference, I accepted the invitation of a congenial buddy to accompany him on an unscheduled motor trip of a hundred and fifty-odd miles to some spot that still remains vague in my mind. We had the time of our lives. Days and nights merged into one grand fling. The wine was like nectar—the girls positively enchanting. I was stepping on golden clouds! When I finally got back to my squadron, somewhat bedraggled both in mind and appearance, and unable to determine how I was going to explain this time-lapse, Major Butler, the stern and dignified British Officer Commanding, proved to be regretfully lacking in the saving grace of humour.

Granite-faced, and oozing discipline from every pore, he laid down the law in no uncertain terms. He was through with me, he snapped in clipped, incisive tones. He was having no part of me at all. He was returning me, forthwith—and without his blessing—to the pilots’ pool and ... be damned to me!

I slunk out of his vitriolic presence with my tail between my legs to report to the Adjutant and take my medicine. Feeling mighty sorry for myself, I glanced around and found myself staring into the familiar, square-jawed face of Roy Brown, my old friend of Victoria High School days in Edmonton. Captain Brown now, he was Flight Leader in the 209th Squadron near Bertangles. But, this wasn’t the Roy Brown I’d known in Edmonton. This man was lean and haggard, his face criss-crossed with lines of fatigue from the tension of too many nerve-wracking, whirling aerial combats. He looked as though he’d just come out of hospital except for that undiminished glint in his grey eyes.

“For God’s sake—‘Wop’!” He emitted an astonished roar and pounded me on the back. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

He laughed when I finished relating my madcap escapade. “I’ll try and fix things up. I’ll speak to your O.C., and tell him I’ll be responsible for you and take you into my flight in exchange for one of my own men.” He flashed his big, friendly smile. “I’m sure things will come out all right.”

The ensuing minutes seemed like hours as I gazed disconsolately through the window of the Orderly Room at the huge Bossaneau hangars and waited whilst Roy remained closeted with Major Butler. Finally he emerged, and I knew by the grin on his face everything was O.K.

Brown’s squadron, under the command of Major C. H. Butler, D.S.C., was located at Bertangles, co-operating with the British Fifth Army on the Amiens front. Back at the base there, “Wop” learned that Roy, after leaving Edmonton, had gone to Wright’s Flying School at Dayton, Ohio, to study aviation at his own expense. With this United States training he had gained a commission as a Flight Sub-Lieutenant in the British Royal Navy in September, 1915, and had sailed in December from New York for England. While undergoing combat training at Chingford he had crashed, fractured a spinal vertebra, and been confined to hospital till 1917.

Until April 1, 1918, Brown had flown with the Royal Navy Air Squadron No. 9, assigned to duty in France, his unit patrolling the Belgian coast, and escorting bombing raids far behind the German lines. Officially, he was credited with having knocked down twelve enemy planes, though his buddies insisted that this figure did not begin to approach the actual number of German machines he had blasted from the skies. Despite the modesty of his reports, he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in recognition of his work.

Fourteen months of the strain and uncertainty of constant aerial combat and hair-raising escapes combined with longer days and nights in the shell-torn war zone had placed their mark on Roy. Shattered nerves and a refractory stomach, “Wop” learned, had necessitated his living for the past four weeks on a daily diet of brandy and milk.

May, Roy discovered, was one of a group of airmen whose advanced training in England had been abruptly terminated due to the fact that pilots were so desperately needed in France to replace the many lost in action above the Somme.

“Roy gave me as much training as he could behind the lines, which wasn’t much,” May wrote in April, 1918. “He’d lead us over the lines in his cherry-nosed Sopwith Camel to get shot-up by anti-aircraft fire. It wasn’t very accurate in those days, and rarely did the burst come close enough to give us much concern.”

Around the Mess at Bertangles there was one dominant topic of conversation. The astounding exploits and invulnerability of the daring and resourceful Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the so-called Red Knight of the Air, and his flying circus of deadly Albatross Scouts and Fokkers D VII’s, who was raising more than his fair share of blazing hell, tearing ragged holes in the pilots’ pool and all but dominating the air in whatever section he was flying his scarlet-painted triplane.

Born in Breslau on May 2, 1892, the son of an officer in the dreaded Uhlan Regiment who had spent his lifetime fighting—adding, between times, his own share of trophies of the hunt to the already considerable number decorating the walls of his ancestral home in Schweidnitz, German Silesia—Richthofen was imbued from childhood with the primitive urge to hunt and kill. By the summer of 1918 he had shot down eighty enemy planes in matching his life against that of his adversaries. It was said, however, that he fought not with hate but for the pure love of aerial combat. It had become his one absorbing joy and passion. Wounded, and decorated, he had become a national hero and the youth of the German nation made him their idol. He had the courage to kill, and be killed.

Despite the many to fall victim to his flying circus, the Flying Corps recognized something sporting in the unflinching code of the handsome, bold-eyed War Ace for, into the grisly story of blood and carnage, there came a refreshing gleam of the chivalry of old when the pick of Allied and German youth carried the war into the skies. In this Knighthood of the Heavens Richthofen had been awarded a place of the highest merit by those who fought both with and against him. In other words, he won, and held, the admiration that brave foes hold in their breasts for each other.

Richthofen’s Circus had its headquarters just east of the little village of Cappy. On the morning of April 21 he rose with a feeling of elation, the congratulations of his pilots still ringing in his ears from his eightieth victory of the day before. Added to this exultation was the happy prospect of going home on leave two days hence, and big game hunting in the Black Forest. He and Lieutenant Wolff had already planned to spend their leave together, flying their machines back to Friedberg if the weather permitted. As an alternative they agreed to use the railroad—and had already purchased their tickets.

Captain W. R. “Wop” May.

Con Farrell.

C. H. “Punch” Dickins.

“Wop” May with Caudron plane.

Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Knight of Germany.

Anzac riflemen fire volley over Richthofen’s grave.

As Richthofen stepped out of his quarters, radiating pride, robust health and self-confidence, he was serenaded by a regimental band which had been sent over to the airdrome by a nearby Division Commander who desired, in this way, to tender his personal congratulations to the invincible Ace. But, somehow, the music did not appeal to him. In company with Wolff, he hurried over to the hangar where mechanics were tuning up his plane. One of the men stepped forward with a postcard addressed to his son back in Germany and asked the Baron to autograph it. “So! You think I won’t return!” He smiled grimly as he inscribed his signature.

At exactly 10:30 British time, Staffell II, comprising three groups of five planes each, soared into the air. The Red Knight led the first group while Lieutenants Karjus and Wolff headed the others. At the same time Staffell V, also under Richthofen’s command, took to the air and headed west towards the Front.

Twenty-odd miles away, separated by the thousands of mud-begrimed human moles burrowing in fox-holes and trenches who comprised the fighting units of two mighty military forces engaged in mortal combat, Roy Brown rolled from his bunk with his usual queasy stomach and shattered nerves, tossed down his breakfast of brandy and milk and headed for the hangars.

Camel after Camel was rolled out. Ground crews swarmed over them and Clerget engines broke into life, coughing and barking unevenly. Composed of three flights of five planes each, Roy’s squadron took to the air at about the same time as Richthofen’s. When Brown noticed that Major Butler and his five planes had been lost sight of he promptly assumed command and signalled the rest of the flight to take position behind him.

Flying in wide arcs, the squadron gained an altitude of 15,000-feet and, with a characteristic aggressiveness, proceeded to probe into the enemy air-zone. The throaty bass roar of ten engines flooded the ether to the exclusion of all other sound. Wings glistening in the April sunshine, rising and falling gently like small boats on soft sea swells, the planes prowled the sky, each pilot alone with his thoughts as he scanned the blue for signs of enemy planes.

May, sitting stiffly in his bucket seat, was flying in the last position on the left leg of Brown’s flight. A thin, gossamer haze lessened the visibility but, in the distance, he could barely see the front sectors, jagged and overcast with smoke-needled pin-pricks of orange gunfire. An hour droned by, a dull, boring hour that rasped taut nerves keyed for action. Then came the first break in the monotonous patrol—a prelude to the bitter dog-fight to come.

A great gust of black smoke unfolded like a suddenly-opened umbrella as one of his squadron mates slipped up on an Albatross D-5 and sent it reeling down in flames with his first burst. Other Camels trailed after the aggressive pilot, giving him tail-protection, and then more Camels, their pilots sensing action at last, broke formation and raced after the trio.

Far below, Brown spotted a couple of hard-pressed, antiquated R 8 observation planes desperately attempting to shake off four hungry enemy Fokkers. Old, slow, creaking two-seaters, they were no match for the attacking “tripes.” Brown waggled his wings, the signal for attack, thrust forward the control stick and slammed downward in a long, bowling dive towards the uneven engagement. “Wop” recalled what happened in vivid words:

With the limited experience I had I didn’t see what Brown was going down on when he wobbled his wings to attack. Just before we took off, Roy had given me instructions since this was to be my initiation in actual combat. I was to stay up on top when he went down to attack enemy aircraft and just watch and see how things went. “If we tangle with the Jerries,” he told me, “stay clear. If you get an opportunity to pick off one, remember—dive on him. Give him a burst then—streak like hell for home. If you down an e.a., swell! If you don’t—and run for home—nobody’s going to hold it against you. Remember—don’t let yourself get dragged into any dog-fight!”

As instructed, I stayed up, circling, but didn’t see an enemy aircraft till one of them materialized right beneath me. I dived to the attack, missed—and followed him down. In the midst of a droning swarm of enemy planes that seemed to hurtle up from every direction, I continued my attack—let go still another hail of gunfire and saw my quarry mushroom into an ebony cloud of trailing smoke and plummet like a fiery meteor towards the earth.

Enemy “tripes” were coming at me from all sides now. The sky was alive with combat planes. Wings were all about me, the staccato roar of machine-gun fire rising above the vicious drone of the motors. Some, I missed by inches. Overwhelmed by the fury of the attacking squadrons, I went into a vertical turn, held my guns open and sought to spray as many as I could. The fight was at such incredibly close quarters that dozens of enemy planes dipped and swooped about me. Next moment my guns jammed—first one and then the other—leaving me defenceless. Somehow, I spun out of the fierce dog-fight and headed west for home.

After I regained my breath and levelled off I gazed around me but not a soul was on my tail. I patted myself on the back at my miraculous escape, climbed to ten thousand feet and proceeded to work my way west. But my feeling of elation wasn’t destined to last long. The first thing I knew I received a burst of gunfire from the rear. Unable to fight back, all I could do was to try and dodge my pursuer. I noticed it was a flaming red triplane—but if I’d realized it was Richthofen, the dreaded Red Knight of the Air, I’d have probably passed out on the spot!

I kept dodging, spinning, looping—doing every trick I knew—until I ran out of sky and was forced to hedge-hop over the ground. Richthofen was giving me burst after burst from his twin Spandau machine-guns. The only thing that saved me was my awful flying! I didn’t know what I was doing myself, and I’m certain Richthofen couldn’t figure out what I was going to do next. Ground-fire sprayed us as we passed over, first, the German, then the British lines.

After almost slicing off the tops of some of the hedges, I found myself skimming the surface of the Somme, with Richthofen still hanging onto my tail, and proceeded to round a curve in the river near Corbie. But Richthofen beat me to it and swooped down on me from over the hill. I knew I was a sitting duck. I must have died a dozen deaths. Every second I expected the stream of Spandau bullets to tear a hole right through me. I was too low down between the banks to make a turn away from him. He simply had me, cold! I was in such a state of mind that I had to restrain myself from pushing the stick forward and diving into the water. In my mind’s eye I could see the leather-helmeted head of my enemy, his goggled-eyes lining his Spandau for the kill.

Another plane flitted past the tail of my eye, followed by a burst of gunfire and—a sudden silence! As I threw a fearful glance over my shoulder I saw Richthofen do a half-spin and hit the ground. A second glance showed me that the second plane was one of our own.

Not until I headed towards the airport with my rescuer did I realize that I owed my life to my old school-chum, Roy Brown. Two enemy aircraft, he told me later, were on his tail when he happened to see Richthofen’s red triplane dive upon me like a hawk. Hurtling in pursuit, he’d found the Red Knight so engrossed in knocking me down that he’d succeeded in getting into firing position and giving him one short burst. The bullet entered the Baron’s back, near the shoulder, and penetrated his heart—killing him instantly.

That the Baron didn’t hit me with any of his fire can be attributed, without doubt, to my unrehearsed aerobatics and extraordinarily bad flying—all of which, unquestionably, saved my life. The only bullet holes in my machine were through the wings and fusilage. When Brown landed beside me at Bertangles there were fifty bullet holes in his plane—and only half the cylinders working.

I was told, afterwards, that Richthofen didn’t fly with his Circus but preferred to stay aloft in the sun, where he couldn’t be seen, waiting for cripples to limp out of a dog-fight then he’d swoop down on them and shatter them to pieces, with little danger to himself. Perhaps this explains why I was allowed to stagger out of the dog-fight, unmolested—to be left to Richthofen’s “tender mercy”!

Hardly had the news of Roy Brown’s victory over Germany’s Air Ace reached the trenches than a bitter controversy split the ranks. An Australian air-gunner claimed that the red “tripe” had been shot out of the air, as it glided over the Australian lines, by Corporal Wilson of the 64th Artillery Battery. To settle the question, a post-mortem was held by Army and Air medical officers who agreed that Richthofen had died from a single bullet which, after entering his back on the right had traversed his heart and emerged through his left breast. Having probed the wound, they went on record to the effect that “the situation and exit of wounds are such that they could not have been caused by ground fire.” Yet, despite this finding, the controversy has continued on down the years, with little to bolster the Australian claim.

While doubt continued to exist on the Allied side as to who had actually brought the Red Knight of the Air down, the entire German Air Force was stunned. For the first time in his long and successful career the Baron had failed to return! Was he killed—or captured?

Lieutenant Wolff, who regarded himself as the German air-leader’s appointed protector, scoffed at the idea that any British pilot could have shot down his friend from the rear. German pilots flew over the lines, desperately searching out the red triplane—which their observers reported as having landed near Corbie. Ground officers scoured the sky with powerful range-finders in the vain hope of sighting the missing Fokker. Ugly rumours swept the German lines. Richthofen, it was charged, had been shot in cold blood after making a normal landing behind the British lines. Threats of reprisal filled the air.

The last hope that the Baron had survived was shattered on the night of April 21 when his death was announced through official British channels. The following day, as Richthofen’s body lay in state in a British tent-hangar at Bertangles, all British airmen who could be present paid a silent tribute to their fallen foe.

Of the scarlet Fokker with the twin Spandau machine-guns, which had sent so many of the boys to a merciless death, little remained when souvenir-hunters got through with it. Despite his ultimate fate, an aura of good luck seemed to surround the equipment of the man whose tremendous and lasting success in the air had blazoned his name throughout the world, and many of the boys indulged in sub-conscious superstition by ripping off bits of fabric to carry with them on their hazardous flights aloft.

But Roy Brown, like “Wop,” kept aloof from the death-tent, the Spandaus and the wreckage. While comrades invaded his quarters to congratulate him on his victory, Roy displayed an aversion to discussing the subject. As the body of the Red Knight lay in state Brown was in the air again, engaging the embittered units of Staffell II, now really out for blood to avenge their fallen leader.

Brown had no recollection of returning from that patrol, and recalled little that happened during the ensuing weeks. Landing his Camel safely back behind the lines, he collapsed in the pilot’s seat and was rushed to hospital at Amiens, suffering from a serious stomach and intestinal ailment aggravated by intense nervous and physical strain. Placed on the critical list, he remained for three weeks in a semi-delirious state. Within six weeks, however, he resumed duty as Combat Instructor in England, where the Prince of Wales pinned an additional Bar on his Distinguished Flying Cross.

Providence, which had looked after young May so effectively, did not desert him, and many of the veterans of the First Great War still recall how, misled by the blond youngster’s disarming manner, they had been foolhardy enough to let him take them up for a flip. When they staggered from the plane, green around the gills, with rubbery knees, and the heavens still spinning crazily about them, they recounted, in awed tones, to their buddies of how, once away from terra firma, their quiet and unassuming pilot had been transformed into a veritable dare-devil—looping, side-slipping, roaring perpendicularly skyward like a rocket, then yanking the joy-stick and plunging with frightening celerity and bullet-like directness straight towards the earth. Of how he had looped-the-loop, and put the ship through still more fantastic and terror-provoking evolutions. Few had been beguiled into sharing a second demonstration of May’s prowess in the air. Some even called it a “misguided sense of humour”!

By the end of the war, May had acquired credit for thirteen enemy aircraft shot down, in addition to five not fully confirmed, and sailed back to Canada, gazetted as a Captain, with two wound stripes and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

There were others, too, beside “Wop,” who had fought in the skies over France and were headed back towards the shores of Canada. Over a decade later “Wop” was to again meet “Con” Farrell, Walter Gilbert, “Andy” Cruickshank and a host of former war-birds engaged in a different but equally hazardous and exacting fight—the fight to beat down the age-old barriers of the Northland’s isolation and gain supremacy over the Arctic skies, the rock-bound lakes and rivers of the Silent Places, and the almost untrodden, and unmapped, Barren Lands.