In a quieter day than yesterday, Greg was down to do a counter-battery patrol. But the weather was dud, as confirmed on a brief test flight with Capt. Gordon (and his dog, Waso). This evening saw the opening under allied auspices of the Nouveau Théâtre Lille with a performance by Leslie Henson’s Gaieties entertainment troupe.
Log Book
Date: 3.11.18 Time Out: 15.20 Rounds Fired – Lewis: - Rounds Fired – Vickers: - Bombs: - Time on RE8s: 187 hrs 15 mins RE8: 2517 Observer: Cpt. Gordon War Flying: 0 hrs 10 mins Height: 500 Course/Remarks: Weather test. C.B.P. Dud.
Weather Test
Aircraft serial no. 2517 was back in service for the test at 3:20pm, thereby demonstrating that it took no more than a day to repair or replace an RE8’s petrol tank.
The weather test flight was mentioned in Capt. Gordon’s letter home to his mother today. In the letter he says kind words about Greg, who he reports wasn’t well*. Is it possible that these emollient words belied some sort of anxiety, following yesterday‘s brave/reckless (delete according to taste) adventure, in which they both could easily have died? Perhaps that is to read in too much.
3 November, letter to darlingest Mother from 42 Squadron, RAF, BEF, France
All goes well, but the weather alas has taken a turn for the worse. I am getting on quite well & am less lonely than I was before Waso’s return. I am beginning to get to know some of the people here. Waso went up today for a 10 mins joy ride. She didn’t enjoy it much!
I have moved downstairs in my billet & have got a very nice room. The people are very nice. The old lady thought the stairs were too much for me! & so they moved out themselves, which was extraordinarily good of them.
Leslie Henson (K. will know who he is, he was in Theodore & Co) is giving a show somewhere near here tomorrow evening. I hope to go & see him.
The Day’s Activities
I expect I ought to tell you what I have done today! Not very interesting but still, here goes. This morning I woke about 7.10am & read in bed. ‘A Knight on Wheels’, ‘till about 8am when I lightly leapt up & dressed etc. Breakfast, bacon & fried bread, then down to the aerodrome, pausing en route for the odd word with one or two fellows, on arrival at the aerodrome I found the weather was dud., so I went & looked at the workshops & got the SM (that stands for Sergeant Major) to explain engines & bits of engines. I then went & played about with a Lewis gun. I can’t remember what I did then until lunch time.
After lunch I hung about as I was meant to be flying, but the machine wasn’t ready & the weather was dud. I & Waso & the pilot went up for a test of a few mins. Waso didn’t care much about it. My pilot was a fellow called Gregory, a very nice fellow, about 19 years old. He isn’t very well having a touch of flu. After that I went & tidied up my room & had tea & read a paper, & here I am now writing to the dearest old mater in the world. I fear all this is dull to you.
And to End..
I wonder if Karf could very kindly buy & borrow the things on the attached list & send them out to me soonish. I lost a good bit while I was on leave! I am sending a quid along for expenses. I hope you all are flourishing. I wish often that I was back with you again. I did have a deuc’d fine leave.
The old war will soon be over really. It’s good all these other countries having come out of it. Very best love darlingest. God bless you. This would have been Donald’s birthday. Your v v loving Cedric
[Letter reproduced by kind permission of Keith Gordon, Capt. Gordon’s nephew.]
* Note added on 11 November 2018 at 10:30pm: I was rather taken with Rob’s initial suggestion that Greg’s ‘touch of flu’ was actually a hangover resulting from too many snifters (a very Greg word) the previous evening after his harrowing afternoon!
However, Rob subsequently revised his theory on learning that Greg didn’t fly for the next five days: maybe it actually was flu. The post for 21 June 1918 recounted the time when Greg had flu at Rely (‘Merville fever’, he called it then). And from the brief discourse on the epidemiology of Spanish Flu in that post, it can be seen that it had a second wave in early November 1918. So Spanish Flu is a good candidate to explain Capt. Gordon’s reference to Greg being unwell, and why he didn’t fly for the next few days.
The Gaieties Reopen the Nouveau Théâtre Lille
Capt. Gordon says that “Leslie Henson…is giving a show somewhere near here tomorrow evening”. In fact, that was to be the second of two performances opening the Nouveau Théâtre Lille, which is now the Opéra de Lille, under Allied auspices. The first was this evening. We don’t know on which night Greg travelled the 5 miles (8 km) from Ascq into Lille to see the show, but he seems to have gone to one of them as the programme is among his papers:
Programme
This must have been a hot-ticket occasion. In a fascinating article entitled ‘Lille under German Rule‘ on the Remembrance Trails – Northern France website, Claudine Wallart, the Head Curator of Heritage at the Archives Départementales du Nord, tells the story of the theatre during the First World War:
Destroyed in the fire of 1903, Lille theatre (now the Opera) was in the process of being rebuilt when war broke out. The occupiers completed the job and named it the “German Theatre”, opening with much pomp and ceremony at Christmas 1915 in the presence of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria and Lille’s governor General Heinrich. Artists from Berlin performed Iphigenia in Tauris by Goethe, a symphonic prelude and Liszt’s Festklange. On subsequent occasions the Ring of the Nibelungen and various light operas were also performed there but, although invited, the civilian population of Lille kept away. The German artists remained at the Opera until the end of September 1918 when they destroyed the sets and stage machinery and left.
In the intervening weeks since the Germans left, repairs had evidently made the theatre ready enough for tonight’s performance. No doubt General Heinrich and the German high command would have been aghast at the cultural plummet from Goethe, Liszt and Wagner to a singalong with Louis J. Seymour and crowd. And equally, no doubt tonight’s audience wouldn’t have given a toss. But how they would have relished William Ewart Noble’s ‘Advice to Another William’!
Leslie Henson’s ‘Gaieties’
The Nouveau Théâtre Lille was not the first venue at which Greg had seen Leslie Henson’s ‘Gaieties’ Army Entertainers. Exactly three months earlier, a few days before the beginning of what would be the Allies’ final offensive, The Gaieties had put on a show for 42 Squadron in the hangar at Rely:
The names mentioned in August are still there. Bert Errol, the ‘noted female impersonator’ had pieces in both halves of the Lille show. (You have to wonder what the ‘camouflage’ was in ‘Camouflage & Cacophony’!) Teddie Holton was there, as of course was Leslie Henson. A little over a month later, The Gaieties were still performing at Lille, as this Imperial War Museum photograph shows:
Next Up…
The next flight recorded in Greg’s log book is on 9 November 1918. But there are a few other bits and pieces to share each day before then.