Flying Corps Headquarters 1914-1918: Maurice Baring 1968 1st edition hardback

Author: Maurice Baring

Publisher:Blackwood & Sons Ltd.

Pagination: 325

Format: hardback

Condition: Good, ex-library, with edge wear and library stamps, labels and inscriptions inside cover.

1st Edition.

One of the most unlikely midwives to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps was the literary, fashionable and unsoldierly figure of Maurice Baring.

In 1914, aged 40, he obtained a commission in the Intelligence Corps, bought himself some khaki, got help with the tying of his puttees, and set off for France to be Private Secretary to the RFC’s senior officer, a post held from 1915 by the redoubtable ‘Boom’ Trenchard.

Flying Corps HQ, drawn from Baring’s letters and diaries, describes the momentous and historic war years that forged the flying services, where Trenchard’s resounding ‘Make a note of that, Baring’ became a well worn RFC expression.

The embryo RAF was fortunate in having Baring the staff officer, and also in having so witty and observant a writer to chronicle its early years.

There is much here that is painful, but much too that is enlightening or downright funny. A valuable classic account of the Royal Flying Corp during the First World War.