Charles Family's War by Alan Fewster

Author:Alan Fewster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2015-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Edwin in the grounds of his bungalow at RAF Risalpur, Northwest Frontier Province, India, September 1943.

Edwin honed his skills in Harvards and Hurricanes, undertaking aerobatics, cross country, low flying and ‘ciné attacks’. All work ceased at midday because of the intense heat. One of his instructors was a raffish RAF squadron leader with a drinking problem, ‘Bunny’ Stone, who had won a DFC while leading a famous RAF unit, No.17 squadron, in the defence of Burma.

By the early 1930s, following successes in Aden, Peshawar and Kurdistan, ‘air control’—defined by one RAF theorist as ‘the use of aircraft as the primary aim to support the political administration of an undeveloped country for the purpose of restoring law and order’—had become doctrine. Unlike the punitive column, the aircraft was not hindered by terrain and guerrilla attack and could penetrate to the trouble spot quickly. As the same writer noted, against aircraft, ‘uncivilised people are almost helpless for they have practically no means of retaliation’. In a fine distinction, he suggested that air operations in such circumstances were ‘not planned to spread death or suffering but to wear down the tribesman’s morale, dislocate his normal life and thus make his existence wretched and miserable’.

Such action was, however, always a last resort. Insurgents were to be first warned that ‘certain requirements’ were necessary and of the consequences of non-compliance. Alternatively, blood and destruction could be averted ‘by landing a Political Officer in the midst of the culprits’. On the Northwest Frontier, the wise pilot carried insurance. If Edwin was required to make a forced landing and found himself in the hands of unfriendly tribesmen, he was immediately to hand over his ‘goolie chit’. This document promised the recipient in several local languages a substantial ransom if the donor returned to civilisation with his genitals intact.

The proponents of air control did not dwell on such matters. In addition to the speed, safety and relative precision with which it could be delivered, air control could be maintained ‘indefinitely’ and ‘if a particularly truculent tribe requires heavier punishment’, calibrated accordingly. In 1933 the RAF felt able to claim that air control had not left those upon whom it had been applied ‘more alienated ... or with a special legacy of hatred’. On the Northwest Frontier, for example, ‘no signs of personal rancour over air operations’ were reported among tribesmen. Indeed, they showed ‘a marked respect for officers of the RAF and the work that they do’.

If men like Arsala Khan might bear no grudges, those who opposed air control on moral or humanitarian rounds were, the theorists believed, guilty of ‘loose thinking’. In the early 1930s, RAF doctrine held that the bomb, which was ‘always preceded by an ultimatum’, was no more indiscriminate than the shell which had often been fired without warning to non-combatants, and ‘as used in undeveloped countries, the bomb is certainly far less inhumane than the machine gun, rifle or bayonet.’

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Rosalie was visiting a friend from Murwillumbah, Ethel McBurney, in

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