My Grandfather was born in a small Cambridgeshire village in 1891. He was one of many children and when 1914 came along he volunteered for the Cambridgeshire Regiment of the Territorial Army and went off to war. His brothers also went off to war. One, his favourite older brother Captain Alfred Langley, was to die near Hollebeke, Belgium on September 20th 1917, successfully taking a German machine gun post which had his men pinned down near a railway embankment.
He went through the trenches for all those years and fought in many of the ugliest major engagements. At the end of the war he was one of only 11 men from the original Regiment who was still alive.
He saw a great number of things by 1919 when he finally came home to stay and unlike many men of that era, he didn't mind too much talking about them with his grandson. He was always descriptive, amazingly not bitter, sometimes critical and analytical, but because I asked questions he always gave me very complete answers. I learned a great deal from him.
One of the things he talked about with me was about the fledgling air force, the Royal Flying Corps, and their role in the conflict as he saw it from the ground. He mentioned to me that the majority of the pilots were officers and that they were accorded a very special and rather glamorous status, flying above the filth and degradation of the trenches, but was honest enough to say that their lifespan was often short and once shot at, they had no means of escape from their burning aircraft, as parachutes did not exist at that time.
He also mentioned to me that there were also Sergeant pilots, many of whom were mechanics who fixed the aircraft and who were required to fly repaired aircraft before they were returned to active duty to ensure that the mechanical and physical repairs had been done properly. He told me that when they flew, they flew unarmed, and that many were in fact caught in the air by German raiders, and many were killed because of this.
I never had any cause to doubt any single thing that was told me by my Grandfather. In fact I relied heavily on the truths the man taught me. The undeniable fact that Sergeant pilots existed in the RFC was an absolute truth to me.
After the turn of the 21st century, 90 years after this vile conflict, as a collector of military aviation history, I tried to make contact with the Royal Air Force Museum in London and with the Imperial War Museum, also in London, to discover some more facts about these enlisted pilots. I received a simple denial that such enlisted men had ever been awarded their flying badge. At first I was puzzled and queried this statement and received some apparent ridicule for my insistence that an eyewitness account had verified their existance. I contacted another Canadian who "wrote the book" on the history of the development of flying badges in the RFC and early RAF and asked what he knew. He also denied that there had been enlisted (Sergeant) pilots and referenced "many conversations with the curatorial staff at the RAFM and the IWM" and said that there was absolutely NO EVIDENCE of sergeant pilots having existed in the Royal Flying Corps.
I must confess that I took this as an insult to my intelligence and to my Grandfather. I knew that there must be evidence. I knew it must be that there had been Sergeant pilots in the RFC, simply because my Grandfather told me so.
This simmered inside me. Time passed and I knew that something would materialise if I kept raising the question and kept the thought alive.
Then one day on Ebay I found an old photograph for sale.....a photo of a man wearing the enlisted uniform of the RFC, wearing the rank of Sergeant....and undeniably wearing the pilot flying badge. I immediately copied that image and mailed it out worldwide to a very strong network of collectors, with my story and quickly I was contacted by a man in the USA who had MANY old photographs he had collected of Sergeant Pilots wearing RFC uniform.
He copied all of these images to me. I must confess to a very excited self satisfied sense of rightness. I had known that my Grandfather would not have created these men. I sent some of the images to the two official recording museological institutions and what happened next was amazing. Absolutely NOTHING happened. Silence.
Next, with this material in hand, I asked a fellow who lived near Kew in UK where the National Archives are kept, if he would join with me and undertake a detailed search of written documents (of which there were many thousands to be searched) and soon we found official War Ministry correspondance referring to Sergeant pilots and regulations referring to NCO pilots. This again was sent to the official museological bodies and still there was no response.
By now I was flabbergasted at this reaction. I was also very happy because I knew that my trust in my Grandfather's word, which was absolute, had proven true.
However what pleased me the most was that these obviously forgotten men, who had served their nation so loyally and at great cost to themselves, were finally acknowledged, at least by the evidence if not by a grateful nation.
I know that my Grandfather would be totally delighted that his tales told to a small boy were remembered and used to bring back these long gone warriors. Its worth listening to the words of old men.....there is truth in them.
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