Alan Bott (1) (1893–1952)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/eastern-nights-and-flights-a-record-of-oriental-...

Alan Bott (1893-1952) is best remembered these days as the founder of Pan Books, the main paperback publishing rival to Penguin, and the first to publish James Bond, Modesty Blaise, and a bit later (long after he had died) The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He married Josephine Blumenfeld in 1930, and they had three children, the youngest of whom died in 2018.

However, he was also a British airman ace in show more the First World War, and shot down three German aircraft in France in September 1916 and then two more in the Sinai in April 1918, before being himself shot down and captured by Ottoman forces later that month. His book Eastern Nights – and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure is a record of his captivity and ultimate escape.

It’s a thrilling tale, as Bott along with other Allied prisoners is transported from Palestine, to Damascus, to a dreadful prisoner-of-war camp in Afion-kara-Hissar in Anatolia, to Constantinople where, after some time faking mental illness, he escapes on a Ukrainian steamer to Odessa, and makes his way from there to Varna in Bulgaria, finally arriving at Thessalonica just as the Armistice is declared. The cultural history of the First World War, in the UK anyway, tends to concentrate on the Western Front, and it’s a useful reminder that there was a lot more going on elsewhere.

It’s also a healthy reminder that transport around that region, even in the late days of the war, was in some ways much easier in 1918 than it would be today. Bott’s observations on the cultural differences among the various cultures through which he travels are somewhat bigoted (there’s a horrible anti-Semitic passage about the Jews of Odessa) but still vivid and interesting. His favourite city is Damascus, which chimes with what I have heard from other Syria experts.

The whole book is online at Project Gutenberg, and you’ll read it very quickly, if you want. show less

One of the revolutionary aspects of combat during World War I was the new battlefield in the skies. At the start of the conflict the Wright brothers' flight was barely a decade in the past, yet by the fall both sides contested for position in the skies of the Western Front. Some of the novelty of this is captured in Alan Bott's account of service in the Royal Flying Corps. Published under the pseudonym "Contact", it is a collection of his experiences as an observer in 1916 , recounting show more stories of his service in the skies of Belgium and northern France.

Written in an enjoyably accessible style, Bott's memoir is an interesting account of the air war on the Western Front. Published in the midst of the war, it lacks perspective and is annoyingly vague on some of the details (such as in what planes he flew), but his stories convey something of what it was like to fight and serve in this new branch of warfare. This sense of novelty is reinforced by W. S. Brancker, the deputy director-general of military aeronautics, whose introduction to the book reflects just how unusual Bott's experiences were at the time. Taken together, they make for a valuable record of the early years of flight, one that captures the experience of aerial combat in the First World War. show less

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