Harding, Geoffrey: Escape Fever

These memoirs of an officer in the Royal Flying Corps about his escape from captivity in the autumn of 1917 were published in the early 1930s, towards the end of the flood of personal war accounts that were printed in the years after the armistice. He was one of about 25 officers in the British Air Force who managed to escape, out of a total of about 1,700 who had been captured. Harding was an observer in a Bristol FE2b of the RFC's 25 Squadron; he had previously served for eighteen months in the 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment and had been awarded the first Military Cross for his bravery in leading a successful trench attack near Mametz on the Somme in December 1915. His aircraft, piloted by Lieutenant Gerald French, was shot down by a member of Richthofen's recently formed Flying Circus flying an Albatross Scout. His career with the squadron had been very short, as he had only joined after the Battle of Arras began on 9 April 1917. After several weeks of captivity in Karlsruhe, he was transferred to Strohen. He was determined to escape and was assisted in this by Roy FitzGerald, a New Zealand-born officer who had been captured while serving with the 12th Glosters. Although it is a relatively short book, like so many memoirs of escaped officers, it is consistently well observed, from his first arrival at his squadron onwards, and it conveys a lasting impression of life in a prisoner-of-war camp, its boredom punctuated by plans and preparations for escape. As he himself admits, many prisoners were content to see out the war, so accounts such as Harding's are far from typical of the average prisoner of war. No matter how many accounts one reads of escapes back to Britain, one is always struck by the extraordinary ingenuity displayed in escaping and obtaining the necessary materials from the most unlikely objects. Perhaps even more impressive is how these young men mustered so much perseverance and fortitude, and yes, courage, to attempt the initial escape and then (in this case) survive several days on the run in enemy territory, even though they spoke hardly a word of German. Lieutenant FitzGerald was sadly killed before the end of the war. After returning to England, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, but was killed in aerial combat on 1 July 1918 while flying as an observer in an aeroplane over Morlancourt (Somme). Harding's account is written in the restrained style typical of British memoirs. It appeared late in the flood of post-war publications. In his comments, he notes that many of the memoirs published at the time are among the bestsellers that deal with the dirty side of human nature .... What stands out particularly against the dreary backdrop of prison life is the good camaraderie of my fellow prisoners.