Night Bombing with the Bedouins: By One of the Squadron

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919-01-01. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good+/No DJ. Hardcover with all 4 B&W plates, First Edition 1919 Houghton Mifflin 99 pages. Very Good+, No DJ. Just a touch of shelf/edge wear to dark blue cloth boards - corners sharp with a touch of wear to the tips. Spine faded. No previous owner markings - all pages are clean and unmarked. Frontispiece tissue guard still intact. Binding solid. Last few pages have a publishers crease in them (most likely a binding error). The "Bedouin" Squadron, so called because as a unit it was constantly moved from place to place, and because its members as individuals were wanderers at heart, was formed in September, 1917, equipped with the large Handley-Page bombing planes, and sent to the Nancy front (northeast corner of France, formerly the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, and then the French province of the same name) to carry out pioneer work in long-distance bombing. The "Bedouins," as the officers of this squadron were called, first saw the light of day in England, Scotland, Ireland, America, India, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. Before becoming aviators many of them had fought in the infantry on the western front, in Gallipoli, and in Egypt; some as officers, some as privates, but for no general reason, they one by one in diverse ways drifted into the Flying Corps, and flew different types of machines on different fronts until brought together and formed into the Bedouin Squadron. Accounts of bomber squadrons are comparatively rare compared with those of ‘scout’ squadrons so this narrative is particularly interesting. First Editions are scarce. LOC SSE-05