Night ride in a balloon
From the autobiography of the great WWI artist, Christopher RW Nevinson:
One day I received a note: “I understand you know Robert Ross. Do come and dine with me. I am in the sausage balloons next to you at St. Nicolas. RICHMOND TEMPLE”
I went, to have a dinner and to meet a truly remarkable man. We had many things in common, and in the circumstances I was more than delighted to meet him. He is now an organizing genius of the Savoy, Claridge's, the Berkeley, and such places. After dinner we saw a concert-party performance of outstanding vulgarity. The lewd enjoyment of the audience, most of whom were back from the line for a short time only, made me sorry I did not see the end of it. An order was brought in for Temple. He was to go up in his balloon immediately, and he asked me to go with him.
Slightly bewildered, I demanded to know what he could see in the dark, and he explained that this was the best time for spotting gun flashes. Like ourselves, the Germans were continually altering the position of their guns. I was strapped to a parachute, given a knife to cut myself out of trees, and up we went.
It was a weird experience. After the aeroplanes I had been accustomed to, the silence was painful. I cannot say how far up we went, but it was a long way. The movement was like that of a small boat, an illusion which was heightened when I heard the sighing of the wind through our ropes. Above, the stars were blotted out by our sausage. Gradually the various sounds came to me from below; the hooves of the horses and mules, the engines of cars and lorries, the regimental band in Arras, and innumerable gramophones making an orchestra of the wildest modernism. Then came the crashes of the heavies behind us, the sharper banging of the Field Artillery ahead, and the stealthy sound of hostile shells slipping their way through the night to Arras, where they fell with a flash and then came the roar.
I was enthralled until a German plane saw us and zoomed down with a hail of bullets from his machine gun. So far my life had been varied, but never before had I been hung up in the sky for a foreign gentleman to exercise his skill on me. Fortunately he proved to be no crack shot, and after the first few bursts from his gun the anti-aircraft, or Archies, took up the cudgels on our behalf. Those well-meaning people brought me no consolation whatever. It was kind of them to put a barrage round us, but they seemed to forget that their shrapnel whistled all round us as well as the foreign gentleman's, and I expected the balloon to go up in flames.
Richmond Temple seemed to regard this state of imminent disaster as an incident comparable with a cut from a safety razor, but I was glad to realize that we were being hauled down. The barrage had its effect on the Boche, who turned away, but unaccountably he suddenly appeared from another quarter. That machine gun of his was wasted in his hands. Back came the Boche bungler and nearly got a bull's-eye; and at the same moment I was horrified to hear Temple telephone below to stop the descent. I inquired if he was partial to being used as live bait, but he only grinned and told me it would be unwise to drop lower as we should probably have to jump and we must leave a safety margin for the parachute to open.
Jump! Jump from that basket! I told Temple I couldn't jump, it was bad enough jumping into a swimming bath. But out into the void - well! However, all the world knows that the English are famous for compromise, and it was arranged that I should sit on the edge of the basket and Temple would push me over. While we were arguing we suddenly noticed that things had become quiet. The foreign gentleman had gone home to supper. The Archies ceased fire. Down we went, so very slowly that I was convinced they were not really trying below.
After this, I was able to spend a good deal of time in the balloons, and I did some drawings from the air. I also did a sketch for my lithograph, "Hauling Down a Sausage at Night".
The whole book can be read here http://www.archive.o...ejudic027098mbp , and there is much of interest (though it is inaccurate and/or highly subjective in places!). Nevinson served in France in 1914-15 as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Red Cross, and later joined up as a private in the RAMC, but was invalided out. Subsequent attempts to get a commission foundered on his disability, but admirers in high places managed to pull strings, and he was appointed an (unpaid) official war artist. As such, he returned to France in 1917, attached to 4th Division under Lambton, and it was there that he encountered Temple and his balloon near Arras.
Richmond Temple (1893-1958) was commissioned as a 2nd Lt in the RFC in Aug 1916. He went (presumably for training) to the Kite Balloon Station at Roehampton in Sept, before being posted as temp 2nd Lt to No 28 KB Section in November... but embarked for France on Boxing Day 1916
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