"The best I think predominate."
When No.2 Cadet Wing of the Royal Flying Corps moved to Hastings, in early October 1917, their place at Hursley was soon taken by members of “The Wireless and Observers School”, who had themselves been forced to move from Brooklands to accommodate the need for additional space by the Royal Aircraft Factory as they strove to increase aircraft production.
"The Wireless and Observers School” provided advanced training and instruction in the skills required by Royal Flying Corps Observers in their vital role of aerial reconnaissance and artillery spotting. However, their move to Hursley was in reality only ever intended to be an interim one.
The original plan was that a new aerodrome would be established to the north of Winchester, using the open area of the old Winchester Race Track at Worthy Down. Construction of this new aerodrome had only just started in October 1917 and, although it was possible to fly from the aerodrome, there were no facilities to accommodate the men or to provide classrooms. In consequence the “Wireless & Observers School”, or “Artillery and Infantry Cooperation School” as it was soon renamed, were based in Hursley but travelled across Winchester to Worthy Down for flying. An arrangement one student, Lt. George Marsh, was particularly unimpressed by,
“The camp is 4 miles on one side of Winchester and the aerodrome is 6 miles on the other side. Silly arrangement. The quarters are rotten, it’s always raining but the mess isn’t so bad. I thought Yatesbury was pretty rotten, but it is like paradise compared to this foggy, wet, damp, muddy, slimy, sticky, dinghy hole.”
The training was primarily advanced techniques in artillery observation, bomb dropping, wireless communication and signalling plus photography.
For some, like Lt. Welch, this was a continuation of the training he had received a few months earlier at Hursley as a young cadet.
For others, it was a chance to learn new techniques and, as one experienced observer who had been reluctantly dragged back from France expecting it to be a waste of his time, a chance to find out what the Artillery did with the signals he had been passing on without thought in France!
Alongside the aviators many of the roles that kept the camp running smoothly were performed by women like Eddie Walker and her cousins from Twyford who worked as clerks in the camp, their offices located in the stable-block of Hursley House. Other women worked as drivers, cooks, waitresses. Indeed, practically any role that could free jobs for the men to fight.
Technically part of the Womens’ Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) the women wore the Royal Flying Corps badges and insignia and were considered part of the RFC.
On 1st April 1918 the Royal Flying Corps became the Royal Air Force and, as Worthy Down neared completion, their time at Hursley began to draw to a close. As it did so a new Chaplain, the Rev. Tobias arrived. His letters detailed both the beauty of Hursley in spring together with an impression of the camp and a picture of the type of men who were in the RAF at that time, comparing them, not altogether favourably, with the American doctors and nurses who were beginning to arrive and take over the camp from the British in May 1918.
“The officers under instruction are a very floating population. Every day some arrive & others go. Work begins at 7:30 or 8 & goes on ‘til 6pm.
Much more drinking goes on among these lads than I have seen anywhere else in the army.
There are two sorts of men among them
(1) a fine keen adventurous type drawn largely from other branches of the service
(2) youngsters who want a Commission & find the Air Force the quickest one and don’t like roughing it & think the Air Force the most luxurious way of being in the war. They hope to spend much time in training & to swing the lead later.
So we have the best & the rottenest in the Air Service – The best I think predominate.”
What he saw as their lack of religion and godliness is perhaps best summed up in a letter to his family in South Africa on 13th May 1918 when he remarked that on Ascension Day,
“There was little ascending in heart and mind but much ascending in aeroplanes.”
The attitude held by these young flyers may be, in part, explained by the knowledge that their life expectancy was actually worse than that of those in the trenches.
Even worse, the casualty rate in training was as much as double that of in combat. A stark statistic made very real by the presence in Hursley’s graveyard of two Australian flyers, Lt. J.S.W. Lord and Lt. L.E. George, who died in flying accidents at Worthy Down on 12th May 1918.
