After yesterday‘s crash on take-off from Rely, Marsh and McDonald both died in hospital. Greg did not fly – his final day off flying after the flu.
Monday June 24th. Marsh & Macdonald [sic, should be McDonald] both died in hospital. Marsh buried in afternoon. Did not fly.
So neither of them made it. 2nd Lt. Marsh, who had had such a lucky escape earlier in the month, had celebrated his 24th birthday just two days earlier, on 22 June 1918. Lt. McDonald was 19, the same age as Greg. A reminder, if one was needed, of how dangerous flying was even before anyone wished you harm.
Greg’s first day out of bed (just) after the flu was a bad day for the squadron, with a crash at Rely aerodrome.
Diary
Sunday 23rd. Got up, & walked round a bit feeling groggy. Macdonald [sic, should be McDonald] & Marsh spun into the ground & caught fire, both rescued & taken to hospital.
McDonald & Marsh Crash at Rely
Lt Hugh McDonald (as his name was spelt in the official report) was the pilot.
And 2nd Lt Cuthbert Alban Marsh was the observer, and was also Greg’s observer on his near-disastrous first day on the Front, when they crashed in crops at Trézennes. On that occasion, Marsh was thrown clear:
There were two hospital facilities at Aire-sur-la-Lys at the time. User mhifle of The Great War Forum says that the 54th Casualty Clearing Station came to Aire on 16 April 1918. This CCS was also known as the ‘1/2nd London CCS’. He gives its previous locations with the BEF in France as:
Hazebrouck 1 April 1915 to 31 July 1915
Merville 1 Aug 1915 to 28 March 1918
Haverskerque 29 March 1918 to 15 April 1918
At Aire, the 54th CCS joined No 39 Stationary Hospital, which was there from May 1917 to July 1918 according to The Long, Long Trail. So McDonald and Marsh may have been taken to one of these hospital facilities.
“British Casualty Clearing Station”
The Greg’s War collection includes the following aerial photograph captioned “British Casualty Clearing Station”, which is otherwise unidentified.
High-angle oblique aerial photograph from the Greg’s War Collection entitled “British Casualty Clearing Station”. Click for larger image.
It is possible that this was the 54th CCS at Aire (maybe with No 39 Stationary Hospital also in shot). The landscape looks similar to that just west of Aire, upstream along the Lys valley, near the village of Mametz – Mametz (Pas de Calais) that is, not Mametz (Somme).
A high-angle oblique view created in Google maps. (It’s not entirely successful, as Google has not 3D-imaged the area.) The aspect is looking northeast from just south of the Route de Mametz. Click to go to Google maps to see the location.
But I’m not entirely sure that this is the same place. In this instance, it’s hard to tell how much the landscape has changed over the years. Without any hard evidence of where the photo was taken, and without even knowing just where in or around Aire the 54th CCS was located, I can only identify it provisionally.
This was Greg’s first day on the Western Front, and it nearly ended in disaster, as his log book (laconically) and diary (rather more more fully) explain:
Log book
Date: 4.6.18
Hour: 10 am
Machine type and No.: RE8
No.: E102
Passenger: Lt. Marsh
Time: 1 hr
Height: 2500
Course: Inspection of line.
Remarks: Engine conked. Crashed at Triezennes (102 written off)
Diary
Tuesday June 4th 1918. RE8. E102.
Went up at 10am with Lt Marsh as observer.
At 11pm [sic, sc. 11am] engine cut out east of St Flories, just over our line, due to inlet valve stuck open.
Managed to make disused aerodrome at Triezennes but found Infantry Battalion on parade.
Turned off into an adjoining field, – standing crops 6 feet high.
Crashed very badly, machine turned complete somersault.
Observer thrown clear, – self buried under debris, succeeded in getting out safely, – sprained shoulder & split lip.
Had lunch with C.O. of the Battalion & returned to Squadron by tender.
The day’s events are shown on this map:
Greg’s first visit to the front, shown on 1:40,000 map (each numbered square is 1,000 yds). Rely to St Floris is ~10 miles (16 km). Click for larger image. Credit: IWM/TNA/GreatWarDigital
The Front Line at St Floris
St Floris, a settlement on the River Lys just to the east of St Venant, was where the British Amusories-Havaskerque-La Motte Line – a line just behind the most forward positions – crossed the canalised river:
St Floris and St Venant from a 1:10,000 scale trench map, revised to 22 June 1918. Each numbered square is 1,000 yds. Click for larger image. Credit: IWM/TNA/GreatWarDigital
At this point, Greg was 10 miles (16 km) from the squadron’s airfield at Rely, and needed somewhere nearer to land. He had 2,500ft of altitude to play with.
Trézennes
Trézennes, also variously spelt as Treizennes and Tresennes, was an airfield just south east of Aire-sur-la-Lys. The admirable Anciens Aerodromes website gives the location of Trézennes aerodrome as 50°37’24″N, 2°25’25″E (here on Google maps).
The airfield was known to 42 Squadron, as the squadron had moved there from Chocques on 9 April 1918 when Operation Michael of the Spring Offensives began:
The squadron’s subsequent move from Trézennes to Rely was on 25 April 1918.
Although from Greg’s description Trézennes airfield had clearly been colonised by the army on 4 June 1918 (even if, as he was later to say, “they had no bloody business being there”) the Imperial War Museum has a couple of aerial photos of Trézennes that pose a bit of a puzzle. They are described as showing the airfield in use by 14 Squadron RNAS (Hadley Page bombers) on 1 June 1918. Here is one of the photos:
It is rather hard to reconcile this description with Greg’s experience three days later. And it is odd that the IWM description should refer to the RNAS when it had ceased to exist on 1 April 1918. Possibly the IWM photographs are mis-dated.
“Standing Crops 6 feet High”
Although 6 ft (1.8 m) may seem implausible for a crop height to modern readers, it is easy to forget that today’s crops of cereals such as wheat and barley are ultra-dwarf varieties. Their forebears of the decades and centuries before the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s were much taller. For example, an ancient Italian variety of wheat (Mirabella) could reportedly grow 84 inches (7 ft, 2.1 m) tall, as reported here. Or, of course, the crop might not have been a cereal but may have been something like sunflowers! So, even allowing for a less than perfectly accurate assessment of its height by Greg, something growing to 6 ft in the field was perfectly feasible.
The Official Casualty Report
The official casualty report bears out Greg’s account of the day. This image is courtesy of Andrew Pentland of the hugely informative www.airhistory.org.uk website:
Casualty report – click for larger image. Credit: Andrew Pentland.
Short report: Pilot and Observer uninjured. Machine left aerodrome 10.0am. R.P.M. dropped to 750 and engine backfiring badly, tried to land on TREIZENNES Aerodrome, found ground covered with troops drilling, turned to the right and had to land in standing crops, turning upside down at 11.0am.
Damage:- All main planes damaged. Fin and rudder damaged. 2 rear upper cross members of fuselage broken. 2 centre section struts broken and all fittings damaged. L.H. joint plate L & M damaged. Fuselage fitting R.H. at top of No 3 strut damaged. Undercarriage damaged. Scarff gun mounting wrecked. L.H. and R.H. magnetos damaged. Magneto platform broken. Camshaft doubtful. Exhaust pipes damaged. Recommended to be struck off charge of No 42 Squadron and transferred to No 1 A.D. for repair.
Recommended to be struck off charge of 1st (Corps) Wing and No 42 Squadron and transferred to No 1 A.D. for repair.
So, a mere three days after E102 had been accepted by 42 Squadron, it was struck off its charge. Not quite a write-off, but certainly a major repair job.
“Pilot and Observer uninjured”
Both Greg and 2nd Lt. Marsh were evidently very lucky on this occasion. It was probably truer to say that Greg was only slightly injured (hurt shoulder, split lip) rather than uninjured. And all his life he had a slightly weepy left eye, as his tear duct became permanently blocked when the bridge of his nose banged on the combing above the dashboard. On that subject, Rob Parsons (Greg’s son-in-law and my stepfather) remembers him saying that when he recovered he tried to get in the same position on another aircraft, but found it impossible to get the whole of his body below the level of the cockpit combing, where he had been trapped.
2nd Lt. Marsh’s luck, however, was to desert him before the month was out.
