CHAPTER XVIII

LIEUTENANT ALLAN BOTT, M.C.

Lieutenant Allan Bott, who has been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and devotion to duty in the field, is a member of the editorial staff of the _Daily Chronicle_, and when war broke out acted for a time as a special correspondent in France and Switzerland. He went to Lake Constance to investigate the building of super-Zeppelins, and while at Kreuzlingen, a small Swiss town which is really a suburb of Constance, made an involuntary trip into Germany by entering the wrong train. He spent some hours in Constance, and managed to escape detection at the frontier by travelling under the seat of a cab driven by a friendly Swiss who was going back to Kreuzlingen.

On his return to England, in November, 1914, Mr. Bott joined the O.T.C., and after training received a commission in the R.G.A., whence he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. Since the deeds which have won Mr. Bott the Military Cross he has been promoted from the rank of Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant. The story of his flight on a blazing aeroplane has been told modestly by the young officer in a letter to his parents:

‘All at once our fuselage shivered, and looking down it, I saw that Archie had left his card in the form of a piece of burning H.E.

‘“Fuselage burning—pass the fire extinguisher,” I shouted down the speaking-tube to my pilot. But the pilot’s earpiece had slipped from his cap during the dive, and he heard nothing. I stood up, leaned across and shook his shoulder. “Pass the fire extinguisher,” I yelled.

‘“Hun down on the left,” he shouted back, my words having been lost in the roar of the engine.

‘“Fire extinguisher,” I called again.

‘“Why don’t you fire at that Hun?” was the reply.

‘Seeing that the flames were licking their way back to the tail, I abandoned the attempt to get the extinguisher, and crawled down the fuselage to the scene of the fire. I managed to beat out the flames, which had eaten half-way through one of the longerons.

‘Meanwhile, the pilot had been attacking one of the enemy machines, and a bullet had gone into our petrol tank. Confronted with a diminishing pressure, we decided to make for Allied territory at once, and turned west.

‘Five minutes later, by which time the number of revolutions had dropped alarmingly, we found the way barred by two more Boche machines. My gun having jammed, the pilot did the only thing possible—he went straight at the nearest German, firing all the time. The Boche swerved just in time to avoid a collision, but had obviously been hit, for his machine all but did a nose-dive, and he only landed with great difficulty.

‘Then our engine petered out altogether, and there was nothing for it but to do a long glide and try to reach the lines. We were at 4,000 feet when we started to glide, and for a long time we didn’t know if we had sufficient height to get us across.

‘But the pilot took advantage of a small salient, and we managed to glide over the trenches at a height of about 400 yards, fired at by machine-guns and rifles, besides dear old Archie. We landed just behind the second-line trenches of a certain part of the French line, and, to our joy and astonishment, we were not shelled on the ground.’

It was an exciting adventure, showing the mettle of our aviators. There have been many such thrilling incidents on the various battle-fronts, some coming to light and winning well-deserved awards, others going to make up the great and glorious number of unrecorded deeds of gallantry.