WGFB: Brief Glory: The Life of Arthur Rhys Davids DSO MC and Bar

[fast.git]

Book Title:

WGFB: Brief Glory: The Life of Arthur Rhys Davids DSO MC and Bar

Author:

Alex Revell

ISBN:

ISBN-13: 978-1848841628

Category:

Biography

Format:

Hardback

Summary:

From the Publisher:

Arthur Rhys Davids was shot down and killed in October 1917. He was just twenty and had been flying over the Western Front with 56 Squadron for six months. He had entered the Royal Flying Corps direct from Eton College. In his brief operational career he was awarded the Military Cross twice and the Distinguished Service Order once. In the opinion of the commanding officer of his squadron he deserved the Victoria Cross. He came to public fame through shooting down the German ace Werner Voss.

Rhys Davids was more than an outstanding fighter pilot; he was a man of thought as well as a man of action. Coming from an intellectual family, he was a brilliant classicist and popular with his fellow pilots in the RFC including James McCudden.

Alex Revell has written a sensitive and deeply moving biography. It is based on letters from Rhys Davids early boyhood days at Eton to his last letter written on the night before he died.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pen and Sword (June 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848841620
• ISBN-13: 978-1848841628
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

---------------------------------------------------------------------

“…if one was ever over the Salient in the autumn of 1917 and saw an SE5 fighting like Hell amidst a heap of Huns, one would find nine times out of ten that the SE was flown by Rhys Davids.”

James McCudden VC, in his memoir, Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps

I first came across mention of Rhys Davids in Barry Diggens’ very good biography of Werner Voss, September Evening: The Life and Final Combat of the 48-Victory Ace Werner Voss. As the man eventually credited with bringing down Voss, Rhys Davids received some mention, but not much more than that accorded James McCudden or the other 56 Squadron pilots engaged with Voss in what has come to be considered one of the most famous dogfights.

I continued to come across favorable mention of this young man in a number of titles, most notably those written by men who served with him in 56 Squadron: James McCudden (Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps), Cecil Lewis (Sagittarius Rising), and Thomas Marson (Scarlet and Khaki). Each spoke of Rhys Davids in glowing terms, but the picture was far from complete and rarely strayed from his actions in the cockpit of an SE.

It wasn’t until I picked up Alex Revell’s insightful biography, Brief Glory: The Life of Arthur Rhys Davids, DSO, MC and Bar, that I began to take the full measure of the man. Based largely on the Rhys Davids family papers left to the Pali Text Society at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, the tale that unfolds is one of a complex, brilliant Eton-educated classicist and (in the opinion of 56 Squadron’s commanding officer at the time of his death, R. Balcombe-Brown) one of “three officers I know whom I consider the bravest and unfortunately most reckless in the RFC.”

The narrative subtly weaves together excerpts from Rhys Davids’ personal letters, first-hand accounts of those who knew him, contemporary photographs (37), and Revell's knowledge of air operations in World War I into the compelling and surprisingly personal story of yet another brilliant light lost to the darkness that was the Great War of 1914-1918.

Arthur Percival Foley Rhys Davids may be best known as the RFC pilot who shot down and killed the man many consider to be the Luftstreitkräfte’s most talented pilot, the 48-victory ace Werner Voss on 23 September 1917, but he was not long to enjoy his fame. Fewer than five weeks later, having scored 25 aerial victories, the 20-year-old member of No. 56 Squadron failed to return after flying an offensive patrol over German lines.

The circumstances of his last fight and fall were to remain a mystery for nearly a century, when a study of German records identified him as a victim of Leutnant Karl Gallwitz, Staffelführer of Jasta Boelcke.

Like Voss, Rhys Davids has no known grave.

This is a title I recommend without reservation. Clocking in at just over 200 pages, this is a book I could not put down and finished in a single evening.

---------------------------------------------------------------------