Victor Maslin Yeates
Encyclopedia
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
fighter pilot in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
who wrote what is widely regarded as one of the most realistic and moving accounts of aerial combat and the futility of war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
.
Background
Yeates, who was born at DulwichDulwich
Dulwich is an area of South London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth...
, and educated at Colfe's School
Colfe's School
Colfe's is a co-educational independent day school in Horn Park in the London Borough of Greenwich. The school is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The official Visitor to the school is HRH Prince Michael of Kent.-History:...
where according to Henry Williamson
Henry Williamson
Henry William Williamson was an English naturalist, farmer and prolific author known for his natural and social history novels. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter....
he used to read Keats under the desk during Maths, explored woods, fields and ponds and kept a tame tawny owl
Tawny Owl
The Tawny Owl or Brown Owl is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of Eurasia. Its underparts are pale with dark streaks, and the upperparts are either brown or grey. Several of the eleven recognised subspecies have both variants...
. Yeates joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in 1916 and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps
Royal Flying Corps
The Royal Flying Corps was the over-land air arm of the British military during most of the First World War. During the early part of the war, the RFC's responsibilities were centred on support of the British Army, via artillery co-operation and photographic reconnaissance...
(later the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
) in May 1917. Serving with No. 46 Squadron
No. 46 Squadron RAF
No. 46 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force, formed in 1916, was disbanded and re-formed three times before its last disbandment in 1975. It served in both World War I and World War II.- World War I :...
, to which he was posted in February 1918, he flew 248 hours in Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Camel
The Sopwith Camel was a British First World War single-seat biplane fighter introduced on the Western Front in 1917. Manufactured by Sopwith Aviation Company, it had a short-coupled fuselage, heavy, powerful rotary engine, and concentrated fire from twin synchronized machine guns. Though difficult...
s, crashed four times, was shot down twice and scored five victories thereby achieving "ace" status.
After the war, he died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in Fairlight Sanatorium at Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
in 1934. He was survived by his wife Norah Phelps Yeates (née Richards) and his four children Mary, Joy Elinor (later married Christopher David Vowles), Guy Maslin (later married Binnie Yeates) and Rosalind (later married Edward Cullinan
Edward Cullinan
Edward Cullinan, CBE, is a British architect.Cullinan was educated at Cambridge University, the Architectural Association, and the University of California, Berkeley before working for Denys Lasdun where he designed the student residences for the University of East Anglia.Cullinan's practice,...
); all of whom had lived with Yeates in a small house in Kent on the Sidcup by-pass of the Dover Road.
Winged Victory
Yeates is now best known for his semi-autobiographical book Winged Victory, which remains well regarded as an authentic depiction of World War I aerial combat. Yeates's school friend Henry WilliamsonHenry Williamson
Henry William Williamson was an English naturalist, farmer and prolific author known for his natural and social history novels. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter....
contributed a foreword to a republished edition of Winged Victory. There he supported a review in the New York Saturday Review of Literature that it was "one of the great books of our time."
Yeates wrote in the flyleaf of Williamson's copy of Winged Victory that:"I started [writing the book] in April 1933 in Colindale Hospital. I could not write there, so walked out one morning, the doctor threatening death. I wrote daily till the end of the year. My chief difficulty was to compromise between truth and art, for I was writing a novel that was to be an exact reproduction of the period and an exact analysis and synthesis of a state of mind."
Descriptions of aerial combat
The novel's discursiveness and realism make it one of the most intriguing descriptions of life on the Western Front: the interactions with French residents, the diet of the officer's mess, travel on home leave and recuperation at Army Medical facilities; what officers talked about, the tunes on the gramophone, the food on offer, the narrator's heroic drinking. Yeates is also interested in the management styles of the series of squadron commanders who pass through, and their efforts to make the narrator a more aggressive fighter pilot. The narrator is tormented by his inability to match the out-and-out warriors and aces who constitute the ideal. He is deeply honest about the growing stress and debilitation as his friends die one by one, and he longs for his tour of duty to reach its end.
Philosophy about war
In Winged Victory Yeates regularly expresses disillusionment with the war, with his senior officers, and with the causes of warWar
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, more typical of the 1930s than of the time he describes:
But the novel, while occasionally over-written or unduly discursive, contains a realistic portrait of RFC and then RAF life and operations on the Western Front starting with the launch of the gigantic German Spring Offensive on March 21, 1918. The narrator and his squadron are ground steadily down by the pressure on the Camels to bear the lion's share of the ground attack role against the German army, as the Allied Armies fight for their lives, while faster scouts (fighters) such as the SE5 and the Bristol Fighter are given the high altitude air superiority roles. The Camels' role is unglamorous and very dangerous, machine gunning trenches and approach routes at 100mph a few hundred feet up in un-armoured aircraft, with constant threat of the machine guns of the soldiers beneath them.
External links
- Victor Yeates. The Aerodrome website. *Biographical information (last accessed 16 July 2009)