In the Great War I was a petty officer in the Royal Naval Air Service operating with a fleet of light cruisers and destroyers in the North Sea ready for the German fleet should it care to put to sea after the Battle of Jutland.
The Zeppelins used to unload hundreds of bombs on us from a great height. On the first attack I was with a young officer in the basket of a kite balloon being towed by a destroyer at a thousand feet.
I never saw one bomb hit any of the ships and it made me think of those words: “If God be with us, who could be against us?”
In 1915-16 I served in France with the No. 6 Kite Balloon Section and we found so many valuable targets that we were often commended. Our height was usually three thousand feet and we needed anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes to protect us.
Officers did most of the observing and we had one brilliant spotter, a light-weighted Scotsman, who, sadly, lost his life to an enemy shell.
As an ex-fisherman, with a full knowledge of knotting and splicing, I kept the balloon rigging in repair – often by the light of the sky at night so that no spotting time should be lost.
Splicing a wire in a steel nine-strand wire balloon cable was not any man’s job and I became the commanding officer’s blue-eyed boy. When I had an urgent operation on an abscess on my appendix he visited me and brought me a box of peppermint creams.
After passing an examination, I was promoted to a Petty Officer Instructor and later became an anti-gas instructor. I also won a competition for folding parachutes. On joining the Fleet at Harwich in 1917 I folded all the parachutes used there and was commended for their quick opening.
Life for me in the service went with a swing and I must have had a guardian angel.
R. D. Dale
80 Nelson Road
Whitstable
