The Incomparable Billy Bishop: the Man and the Myths
HISTORY DND Photo NAC AH-740-A DND Photo NAC William Avery Bishop, VC. THE INCOMPARABLE BILLY BISHOP: THE MAN AND THE MYTHS by Lieutenant-Colonel David Bashow Think of the audace of it. acclaimed second book, Winged Peace, much of his vision was embodied in the United Nations International Civil Aviation Maurice Baring Organization (ICAO) in 1947. However, all these achieve- ments would occur long after he won his spurs in the skies over o spoke the renowned British poet and diplomat, the Somme, the Douai Plain and Flanders in 1917 and 1918. Maurice Baring, while serving as private secretary to There, he was the product of his circumstances: a war-weary Major General Hugh Trenchard at Royal Flying Empire in need of a charismatic hero. His war record would Corps Headquarters in France, upon hearing the eventually generate mountains of controversy, but only, for the news of Billy Bishop’s daring dawn raid on a most part, well after his death in 1956. SGerman airfield on 2 June 1917. Indeed, William Avery Bishop, Canada’s first aerial Victoria Cross winner, was auda- Billy Bishop was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, in 1894 of cious. He was also an imperfect human being and a study in upper middle class parents. A “disinterested student with poor contradictions, frequently at odds with the perceptions of an grades” who preferred solitary sports to team efforts, he was adoring public. While often a proud, ambitious risk-taker and, unable to meet the entrance requirements for the University of occasionally, a self-absorbed embellisher of the truth, he was Toronto, and followed his older brother Worth to the Royal also a skilled, courageous and resourceful warrior who served Military College at Kingston in 1911.
[Show full text]