BOMBS AND BOMBERS
This five page
article is written about bombing – a subject about which W E. Johns knows a
great deal, being a former bomber pilot.
One only has to read the opening lines about how “It is likely that I
have killed hundreds of people; but I lose no sleep on that account”. “You can take it from me that the very last
thing in our minds was the people underneath.
Our one concern was to get to the objective and get rid of our bombs so
that we could go home and continue the card game we left off”. “If ever you are caught in a raid, remember
that the poor devil aloft is probably a good deal more frightened that you are”. “One of our regular objectives was
Karlsruhe. We bombed it with 112 – and 230-lb.
bombs time and time again, until I imagined – subconsciously, since I gave it
no serious thought – that Karlsruhe was a heap of ruins”. “In due course I met the inevitable fate of
the long-distance bomber. Returning by
myself from a raid on Mannheim, I was suddenly confronted by the disagreeable spectacle
of seventeen Fokker D.VII’s. The end was
a foregone conclusion. My gunner dead
behind me, and myself forming a resting-place for two bullets, the shattered
remnant of my machine crashed, with me inside it, in Germany. I merely mention this in order to account for
my presence in Karlsruhe in the autumn of 1918.
Believe it or not, I marched through that very handsome town without
seeing a single wrecked house. There were
some, of course, and I saw them later, but the damage was nothing like one
would expect”.