CHAPTER XXII

FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT HAROLD ROSHER, R.N.A.S.

All are conscious of the fact that to our Royal Naval Air Service the highest praise is due. The service is rich in heroic pilots. Few, however, are known by name to the wider public. But we must not suppose that our Navy has not in its service a goodly share of skilful and heroic pilots.

The letter, for instance, of Flight-Lieutenant Harold Rosher, R.N.A.S., written to his family and published by Chatto and Windus, reveals an aviator of fine character. ‘One wonders,’ a friend writes, ‘whether most to admire the man in him, the gentleman, or the accomplished pilot of the skies who took all risks, keeping his head among them, because that way lay duty and achievement.’ He is well reflected in his quiet, modest manner of writing. Here is a little picture of the difficulties of flying at a great altitude, ‘absolutely lost’ and in search of bearings:

‘I nose-dived, side-slipped, stalled, &c., &c., time after time, my speed varying from practically nothing to over a hundred miles an hour. I kept my head, but was absolutely scared stiff. I didn’t get out of the clouds, which, lower down, turned into a snowstorm and hail, until I was only 1,500 feet up. I came out diving headlong for the earth.’

Mastery of the air becomes still more difficult when making a raid, as Lieutenant Rosher did more than once, on the German fortifications along the Belgian coast. ‘A few seconds passed,’ he writes, ‘and the shrapnel burst a good deal short of me, but direction and height perfect. I turned out to sea and put another two miles between me and the coast. By now a regular cannonade was going on. All along the coast the guns were firing hasty, vicious flashes, and then a puff of smoke as the shrapnel burst. I steered a zigzag course and made steadily to sea, climbing hard.’

Of another time when he was under fire and travelling faster than he had ever travelled before, he writes: ‘My chief impressions were the great speed, the flaming bullets streaking by, the incessant rattle of the machine-gun and rifle fire, and one or two shells bursting close by, knocking my machine all sideways and pretty nearly deafening me.’

There is inspiration in the letters, chiefly, perhaps, on account of the fact that they were written for the late Lieutenant Rosher’s dearest friends. He was killed at Dover, while trying a doubtful machine before allowing a fellow-aviator to ascend—a hero’s death.

He has been described as one of the most promising officers in the Service. ‘He was not merely a first-class pilot; he was a born organizer and leader of men, and, moreover, he had the heaven-sent gift of being personally popular with all ranks without losing his control over those below him.’ Knowing personally all the senior officers under whom he served, they all had the highest regard for his personal qualities and for his ability as an officer.

‘One may deduce,’ says a writer in the _Aeroplane_, ‘that his letters may fairly be taken as expressing the views, experiences, and feelings of the best class of R.N.A.S. officer, and his father, Mr. Frank Rosher, has done well in publishing them, for they give a vivid and intimate picture of life in the Royal Naval Air Service during the early days of the war. The naval censorship is to be congratulated on having left untouched certain passages which indicate to those who have understanding some of the mistakes made in those early days in the supply or choice of the engines, aeroplanes, and landing grounds. There is no grumbling in the letters themselves, but plain statements are set down.’

The letters begin with Lieutenant Rosher’s early experiences at the Bristol School at Brooklands, whither he went to learn as much as he could between applying for and receiving his commission, and the fact that he took this course is evidence of the keenness which in his short flying life carried him so far in the Service.

In one of his letters Lieutenant Rosher describes thus how he came through a curtain of fire: ‘I found myself across the yards and felt a mild sort of surprise. My eyes must have been sticking out of my head like a shrimp’s! I know I was gasping for breath, and crouching down in the fuselage.’ He was too brave a man to be afraid of admitting that he was afraid.

Later in the book there is a story like a nightmare of how, when he went to attack an airship shed at Brussels, he was instead chased by a Zeppelin, which was already in the air when he got there, and so high up that his old machine could not reach it: the machine was, in fact, barely able to go fast enough to keep out of the way of the airship.

Lieutenant Rosher, although highly imaginative and impressionable, was, as we have seen, of the ‘stuff’ of which heroes are made. All who knew him join in acclaiming him a young officer of heroic mettle.