The Courage of the Early Morning Read online

  Another appropriate recollection of the people of Owen Sound was “the time Billy built and flew an airplane.” It was rather less an achievement than that, but it contained enough of a grain of truth to justify its recollection by his admiring fellow residents. The modest fact was that in 1909 the papers were full of the achievement of John McCurdy, who flew an airplane off the frozen surface of Baddeck Lake in Nova Scotia, and thus became the first British subject to fly a powered heavier-than-air machine. Billy decided to build a plane of his own. He studied newspaper photographs of McCurdy’s Silver Dart and assembled his own version, using boards, bedsheets, an orange crate, cardboard and much strong string.

  Laboriously he hauled it to the roof of the family home, took his place in the orange-crate cockpit, and skidded down the steep roof into space. His descent was more a nosedive than a flight. The 28-foot fall demolished the machine, but Billy scrambled out of the wreckage with no more than a bruised knee and a scratched ear. Actually the incident is worth recording only because it happened to be the first of many violent contacts between the earth’s surface and aircraft piloted by William Avery Bishop, near-disasters which became known simply as “Bishop landings.”

  The only witness to Billy’s first flight was his sister, Louie, his long-suffering supporter-defender in various adventures and misadventures. She helped him out of the wreck, tended his bruises, and helped him hide the scattered remnants of his aircraft before it could be discovered and lead to punishment.

  A few weeks later Louie asked Billy for a favour in return for hushing up the airplane incident. A girlfriend of hers would be entertaining a house guest from Toronto next weekend. Would Billy take her dancing on Saturday night?

  “I don’t need any more girls,” said Billy ungallantly. “I’ve got enough.”

  Louie knew this was true, but she wheedled. “Margaret is a lovely girl and belongs to a prominent Toronto family,” she said. “We have to see that she enjoys her visit to Owen Sound.”

  Billy was unimpressed. “I’ll take her for two dollars—provided I like the look of her.”

  Louie arranged to have the girls over for tea on the veranda of the Bishop home. Billy could look at Margaret from behind the curtains of the dining-room windows without being seen.

  Billy liked what he saw. Margaret Burden was a vivacious girl with auburn hair and hazel eyes, quietly but beautifully dressed. “She’s class,” Billy told himself, peering at her from behind the curtains. But later when Louie confronted him he assumed an air of indifference. “She’s not so much,” he said. “It will cost you five dollars.”

  Thus unromantically did Billy Bishop meet the girl he was to marry. It was a strangely democratic confrontation of the grandson of the least successful merchant of Owen Sound and the grand-daughter of the most successful merchant of all Canada. In the same year that Eleazar Bishop was opening his doomed leather shop, Timothy Eaton was taking over the bankrupt stock of a dry-goods merchant in Toronto and opening his own small store on Toronto’s Yonge Street. At the time when Eleazar’s grandson took Timothy’s granddaughter dancing, Eleazar had not earned a dollar for many a year—and Timothy had ceased counting his millions.

  On his seventeenth birthday, in February, 1911, Billy decided to apply for entrance to Royal Military College, the Canadian equivalent of England’s Sandhurst or the United States military academy at West Point. Billy had no desire for a military career, but he chose RMC rather than a regular university for several good reasons.

  In the first place, entrance to RMC was by examination instead of general academic standing and Bishop felt he might be able to pass a test even though his scholastic record was mediocre. Furthermore, Billy’s brother, Worth, had achieved the highest standing of any cadet in the history of RMC, and he felt that this would reflect to his credit. He was a superb rifle shot, and surely this should be an asset at a military school. Finally, he could ride a horse well, which should be an advantage in cavalry training. But an even more pertinent stimulus was Louie’s needling: “You’ll be lucky if you end up as a foundry hand. More likely you’ll always be a grocery delivery boy.” This was a reference to the fact that Billy had worked summers as a delivery boy for the local Loblaw store.

  Tom Murray, the school principal, was even more discouraging. When Billy told him he planned to try the RMC entrance examinations, Murray told him bluntly that he hadn’t got the brains.

  But two or three of Billy’s teachers did not share the principal’s low opinion of Billy—or, more likely, the latter persuaded them into helping him after school. At any rate Billy left for Toronto, where the exams were held, so crammed with “instant knowledge” that he passed the tests and was accepted as a recruit at RMC.

  Late one evening at the end of August Billy and forty other nervous recruits entered the ancient complex of stone buildings on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where the mighty river flows out of Lake Ontario, across the harbour from the city of Kingston, Ontario. The college buildings had originally been the main dockyard of England’s Great Lakes fleet in the War of 1812. The dormitory to which Billy was assigned had once been a storehouse for the shipbuilders. Later, when it was used as the winter quarters for sailors, it was fitted out with all the accoutrements of a land-borne warship and named “the stone frigate.”

  Billy soon learned that there was nothing romantic in being a recruit at RMC. “We are, ”he wrote home gloomily, “the lowest form of military life—of any life, for that matter.”

  A recruit has no privileges, he was informed by senior classmen. A recruit will run at all times when on the parade square. In Kingston on his afternoon off (there were to be few of these) he will march, but always at attention, eyes front—no loitering or window-shopping.

  Infractions—and apparently almost everything a recruit did could be interpreted as an infraction by ever-watchful upper classmen—earned a sharp blow from a swagger stick across the rump, or extra drill at six o’clock in the morning. And on the theory that even the vigilant seniors must have missed some cadet crimes during the week, each first-year man was soundly trounced every Friday night.

  A recruit was assigned to a senior as his “fag” or batman; in effect a servant who tidied the senior’s room, made his bed, looked after his wardrobe and generally catered to his comforts. For Billy this servitude took on a weird aspect. The senior who was his master was Vivien Bishop. They were not related, but because of the coincidence Billy was required to kiss the older Bishop on the forehead and bid him “Goodnight, Daddy” every night.

  Punishment at RMC was sometimes more macabre than merely physical. Once when he was late for parade Billy was ordered to clean out a Martello tower, a gun turret that was a relic of the old navy days. The senior who inspected the finished job discovered that Billy had overlooked a spider. He ordered Billy to eat it in the presence of his classmates.

  Billy was profoundly depressed by the indignities of his first year, especially since he had been so much his own master until then. At any rate, he failed his examinations. Billy was too ashamed to face his family and friends in Owen Sound that summer. He begged his brother, Worth, then a rising young government engineer, to find him a job. Worth was then helping to build the unique lift locks at Peterborough, Ontario, on the Trent Canal navigation system. Billy worked there as a timekeeper, swallowed periodic doses of good advice from Worth, and promised solemnly to work hard and keep out of mischief when he went back to RMC.

  He did too—for a full year. There were strong inducements, of course. Although he was accorded provisional second-year status, his failure in his first-year examinations meant that he would have to take an extra year to graduate, and a second failure would mean the end of his career. He passed that second test with something to spare.

  But a whole year of good behaviour was all that Billy Bishop’s ebullient high spirits could endure. His third year was an epic of rules broken and discipline scorned. His regular sorties—legal and illegal—into Kingston town to rendezvou
s with girls became the talk of the stone frigate. The RMC yearbook devoted a page to Billy’s behaviour, with this opening scene:

  Voice from cadet with telescope peering out of his window: “There’s a red coat on Fort Henry hill. There’s an umbrella too with a couple of people behind it. Wonder who it can be?”

  Voice from the next room: “Come on, Steve, Bill Bishop is out. Let’s swipe his tobacco . . .”

  One evening early in the spring of 1914 Billy and a classmate arranged to meet two Kingston girls at Cedar Island, just across Deadman Bay from the college. Before they had embarked for the island they had already broken two college rules and one criminal law: they had left RMC grounds after dark without leave; they carried, and had already taken a few drinks from, a bottle of gin; and they stole a canoe.

  A quarter of a mile from shore the canoe overturned. By clinging to it and swimming desperately, they managed to reach shore and to sneak back to their quarters. The other boy was so thoroughly chilled that he told Billy he would have to report to the infirmary.

  “Well, change into dry clothes first,” Billy told him, “and don’t say a word about this.” His companion promised, and Billy went serenely to bed. Unfortunately a staff officer had witnessed the whole thing. When the cadet in the infirmary was faced with this evidence, he assumed that Billy had also been informed that there was an eyewitness to the crime, and confessed. But Billy had admitted nothing. When he was unceremoniously routed from bed and paraded before Adjutant Charles Perreau he blandly denied the charge. When he was told that the other boy had admitted everything, he felt he was in too deep to change his story, and stoutly proclaimed his innocence. Perreau lost his patience and hurled at the defiant youth the most damning accusation that could be charged against a Gentleman Cadet: “Bishop, you’re a liar!”

  For his offence Billy was assessed twenty-eight days’ “restricted leave,” the equivalent of house arrest. It was the longest penalty of its kind ever imposed on a cadet up to that time. But worse was yet to come. In May, 1914, when he sat his examinations, he was caught cheating. Actually, he caught himself. He had hidden crib notes up his sleeve, and when he turned in his paper he absentmindedly handed in his notes with it.

  With Billy once more up before him, Adjutant Perreau had only a few terse words for the culprit; the punishment would be held in abeyance during the summer holidays. There is little doubt that the adjutant was intensifying the penalty by making Billy worry about it all summer long. It was almost certain that the verdict would be dismissal.

  As it turned out, Billy did not return to Royal Military College. (Not as a cadet, that is; but three years later, with a breastful of medals including the Victoria Cross, he was the honoured guest of the staff officers who not long before had described him, with some justification, as “the worst cadet RMC ever had.”) Most of the senior cadets did not return, either. Before the start of the fall term, the First World War had broken out. Canada was woefully short of officers. Billy Bishop’s military training, albeit incomplete, and his ability to ride a horse won him quick acceptance into the Mississauga Horse, a Toronto militia regiment.

  THREE

  CAVALRYMAN

  THE THOUGHT of becoming an aviator simply never occurred to any Canadian who joined up at the outbreak of war. Although two Canadians, Casey Baldwin and John McCurdy, as early as 1908 had made powered flights in heavier-than-air craft, and the great Alexander Graham Bell had put his genius into the design of pioneer Canadian planes, the country’s impressive war effort did not include the vestige of an air force.

  Or rather, there was a vestige of an air force, a comedy of errors consisting of two men and one airplane that never got off the ground. The brief inglorious history of the first Canadian Aviation Corps was recalled years later by the Canadian military historian John Swettenham:

  The corps owed its enthusiastic if shaky start to Canada’s unpredictable defence minister, Sir Sam Hughes. Hughes appointed as provisional commander Captain E. L. Janney, a 21-year-old aviation enthusiast from Galt, Ontario, who claimed flying experience in the United States. With five thousand dollars allocated by Hughes, Janney bought a Burgess-Dunne machine in Massachusetts and took off for Quebec.

  But meanwhile the eccentric Hughes had apparently forgotten all about Canada’s new air force. When Janney landed to refuel at Sorel, Quebec, on his way to Camp Valcartier he was arrested as a German spy and detained on Hughes’ order. Matters were straightened out, and Janney reached Valcartier where he first met his newly enrolled deputy, Lieut. W. F. Sharpe, a native of Prescott, Ontario. The plane was crated and stowed aboard the English-bound liner Athenia.

  In England, Janney proposed forming a flight squadron at an estimated annual cost of over $116,000. The Canadian turned the proposal down, and to add to Janney’s chagrin neither he nor Sharpe possessed any official status. Their appointments had not been gazetted—and they were not being paid.

  In December, 1914, Janney had had enough of the army. He acquired an English plane which he planned to use in Canada for flying exhibitions, hoping to raise money to fit out a squadron of his own. Eventually he opened a private flying school near Toronto. No disciplinary action was ever taken against him for so summarily divesting himself of his commission, presumably since there was no record that he had ever taken the oath of allegiance.

  Sharpe joined the Royal Flying Corps and was killed on his first solo flight in February, 1915—Canada’s first air force casualty.

  Meanwhile Canada’s five-thousand-dollar airplane had vanished somewhere in England. Neither Janney nor Sharpe had taken any interest in it after it crossed the Atlantic. Sharpe had described it as an old machine, useless for military purposes, and had noted that it had been damaged in transit. A Canadian major reported seeing it lying on the road opposite the ordnance depot at Salisbury and said he had ordered it removed to a place of safety. It turned up next at the Upavon Central Flying School, and in December, 1914, the airplane was on the move again, to the Canadian Division at Larkhill. But for some reason the ordnance depot at Salisbury kept its propeller.

  Nothing was heard of the airplane for several months, until a sergeant reported it was still at Larkhill. The report was passed along to Canadian authorities with the cautious comment: “What do you think?” Apparently the Canadians preferred not to think about it.

  In May, 1915, there were rumours of a plane abandoned “somewhere on Salisbury Plain,” and in June an officer who had been “rather successful in finding bicycles and other properties” in the Salisbury area was detailed to trace the machine.

  The search was thorough but unrewarding. A contractor who was given the job of clearing up after the Canadians at Larkhill said he had found some airplane parts and sold them for scrap, but he could not be sure they came from the missing Burgess-Dunne. A few spare parts were found in a clump of woods near the Canadian encampment. At a garage in Salisbury the radiator was salvaged in good condition, and two inner tubes turned up, mysteriously, at the Bustard Inn. That is all that is known about Canada’s first military aircraft.

  Certainly aviation was the remotest thing from the mind of Lieutenant Bishop of the Mississauga Horse. When the First Contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force sailed from Quebec City on October 1, 1914—the largest armed force ever to cross the Atlantic until then—Bishop was not even among those present. He was in a military hospital with pneumonia plus an unidentified allergy. One doctor attributed it to the horses. Another thought it was the army food. Bishop, whose opinion wasn’t asked, blamed the dust of the parade ground. Not that he really cared; he was comfortable and getting lots of attention.

  A girl he had courted in Kingston ordered fresh flowers to be delivered to his bedside every morning. Bishop found this flattering, but dangerous to his romance with Margaret Burden, who visited him every afternoon. So he arranged with his sister to call at the hospital every day at lunchtime, and insisted on presenting her with the daily bouquet. Louie, who was studying law in Toro
nto, probably saw through his dilemma, but she accepted the flowers graciously and without comment, thereby saving her brother from embarrassing questions.

  Soon after Bishop left the hospital he was transferred to an active service unit, the Seventh Canadian Mounted Rifles, then mobilizing in London, Ontario, under Colonel Ibbotson “Ibb” Leonard. Bishop was the youngest officer in the regiment—not quite twenty-one years old. Because of his skill in shooting and in dismantling and reassembling weapons he was put in charge of the machine-gun section.

  A few weeks later Bishop’s career nearly came to an untimely end. On a training exercise he had an accident that was reported thus in the local newspaper: “Lieutenant Bishop of the Seventh CMR was seriously injured and had a close call from being killed this afternoon when a horse he was riding suddenly reared and, losing its balance, fell backward on him, fracturing a rib and shaking him up very seriously. The horse escaped injury.”

  Early in June when the Seventh got its orders to sail for England Billy formally proposed to Margaret Burden. She accepted him, but at the romantic moment when he should have slipped the ring on her finger he realized in panic that he had forgotten to buy a ring. Margaret was gracious about the oversight. “Your RMC class ring will do for now,” she said.

  In Montreal a week later the Seventh and their seven hundred horses crowded aboard the cattle ship Caledonia. The Atlantic voyage lasted fourteen days, but seemed interminable. The Caledonia carried more men—to say nothing of more horses—than she had been built for. The sea was rough. The horses became seasick, and so did the men. Many horses died and had to be thrown overboard. The men lived under miserable conditions, and in constant fear of being sent to the bottom by torpedoes. Halfway across a thoroughly despondent Billy Bishop wrote to Margaret: “I wonder if I shall ever come back to you.”