Stookes on how he became Borneo's first flying doc before the war
Published on: Sunday, August 06, 2017
TO GO right back to the beginning of things means starting sometime early as 1915, when various people in high places realized that horses were perhaps not going to be of great use at that particular stage of that particular war and thought that dashing young cavalrymen would stake good pilots. At the time I was a second lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, the only Scottish cavalry regiment, and welcomed the "paths of glory" distance which attachment to the Royal Flying Corps appeared to offer! About June, I was sent to No. 13 Squadron and was trained as an observer by being flown around the south of England in the old Gnome-engined Bleriots and Caudrons or Farman!
ADVERTISEMENT
These machines, at any rate taught one an infinite trust in Providence, because there was not much else to trust. Bitter disappointment followed when was transferred to the newly formed No. 14 Squadron and missed the chance of being with No. 13 when it received 70 horsepower Renault B.E.2c's and flew, off to France. However, very soon afterwards, B.E.'s and sun helmets were, issued to No. 14, and in September at departed for some mysterious destination in the East.We found ourselves in Egypt, where we dug up a knit, lost flight, mounted on Maurice Farman:, which had been there on its own since about the beginning of the War. From the air we fought the Turks in Sinai and the wild Senussi in the Lybian Desert.
ADVERTISEMENT
On the ground we fought heat, flies and everlasting sand which penetrated food and engines alike. We thought it, was a pretty good if somewhat prolonged war.
ADVERTISEMENT
Preparations for the great Somme offensive in 1916 shattered our satisfaction and which mighty rivers flow. On the coasts drafted many of us back to England, to learn to fly fighting scouts, or pursuit jobs.After that training. I had the good luck to be sent to the famous No. 60 squadron. Albert Ball. One of the pilots, had just received his second D.S.O. for bringing down an unprecedented number of German planes. We flew Morane parasols, biplanes and Bullets and spent the daylight hours or two-hour patrols with four-hour rests between which were often interrupted by an S.O.S. from artillery observation machines needing protection from attacking German fighters. Our job was to look for trouble, and we found frequently! Promotion was rapid in those days, one period of six weeks, our squadron of eighteen pilots had forty-five casualties. I soon found myself a flight-commander. That did not last long. That job also only lasted a few months, because the authorities realised that the Army was getting short of document combed all the combatant forces who had gone off fighting. Instead of helping repair the damages.My flying days were finished for time being. We move forward ten years to North Borneo, a land of hills and thick jungles through nil which mighty rivers How. On the coasts, and on the river banks. Enterprising white men are felling the jungle for lumber, and planting coconuts, rubber, hemp, coffee and other tropical products. The labor employed is partly native and partly Chinese. Some of the companies realize that their labor works better and cost them less when it is healthy, and they therefore employ doctors to fight the malaria, dysentery and hookworms which are the enemies of man in the tropics. A map of North Borneo shows very little beside the coast-line, the larger rivers and one or two specially conspicuous mountains. The rest is there, but no surveyor is as yet sufficiently familiar with it to commit himself on paper. Roads exist only in and a few miles around the towns, while the so-called "bridle paths." which appear to connect some places with others, are trails which are sometimes passable in dry weather. As the rainfall is well over 100 inches a year, the occurrence of dry weather is not frequent. There are no bridle paths on the East coast. Traveling in 1927 was largely a matter of sitting in a steam launch, moving at six to seven miles per hour against a four-mile current, until one arrived. This was very nice for contemplation, reading or study, but to anyone wishing to be "up and doing," it was unutterably boring after the first few trips. The conservatism of the locals, both white and coloured, could visualize no faster transport, and when I acquired one of the British Power Boat Company's twenty-five-knot gas boats, my early death was universally predicted. This boat made things easier, especially when I learned to visit the more distant places at the full moon so as to be able to run at ten hours dual sandwiched in between dismantling and packing the Sikorsky, making boxes and crates for cameras, apes, bears and so on, while the ponderous machinery of Government revolved in agonies as it sought to discover how I and the ship were to be licensed. Such a thing had never been thought of before in Borneo. The Martin Johnson expedition departed and left me to my own devices. I demonstrated that I could reach a camp of bark-cutters in the swamps in thirty-five minutes, give them the necessary medical attention and return by midday. Formerly this job had meant an absence from Sandakan of two days and a night. The next trip was to visit a rubber plantation on the Segama River which was so isolated that no doctor had been there for six or seven years.It lies in a valley with high trees along the river banks and rocks and snags in the river itself which has no straight stretch long enough to get off and get clear of the trees before going around a bend. I can assure you that, with my few recent flying hours behind me, I went round that place four or five times, my heart in my mouth. Studying every detail, before I made up my mind to go down. However, I got in, and better still, out again without mishap. After that, inquiries began to come in from isolated camps and plantations, asking whether I could land on their river or bay or what-not, and what they could do to make it easier for me.The country gradually became sprinkled with home-made buoys and wind-socks. In the meantime, a hangar and ramp had been built in a sheltered corner of Sandakan Harbour, where there was protection from the full force of monsoons (it is surprising what a sea can get up in the harbour in a short time), and the services of Stephen Shidlovski as a mechanic had been obtained through the help of the Far Eastern Flying Training School in Hongkong. Everything was going swimmingly. It is now more than a year since VR-OAA, as she is numbered,arrived here and, although during that time I had a two months' vacation. I have averaged nearly four-teen hours of flying a month. I make a regular round every Thursday, with occasional visits on Tuesdays. Sundays are usually spent at my farm on the Kinabatangan River, where I can forget about work and revel in the society of cows, pigs and poultry. My longest flight was a recent week-end trip to Brunei, the 300 miles being covered in just under four hours.With a stop at Jesselton to refuel. Monday found me back in the office by noon, with another 300 miles and a couple of medical visits behind me. The journeys back from the farm on Sunday evenings, laden with the week's supply of fruit and vegetables, are still a source of amusement to everyone, but they save me the four-hour trip by boat which used to occupy time better spent in other ways. My fuel consumption is just under two and one-half gallons per hour and my oil consumption nil. except at twenty-hour changes. My speed between points is, on an average, sixty miles per hour at a height which rarely exceeds 2,000 feet unless there are hills to cross. Costs work out at roughly, $12.50 (Borneo) per hour, including licenses.Instruction, assembly of the machine, wages, fuel and oil, building the hangar and ramp and various other items, but not depreciation of the ship. Very few spares are carried, or have been needed. A few gaskets, valves and springs and recently a complete set of control wires have been placed in stock. Our worst trouble has been corrosion which, in this climate and on salt water, is unbelievable to one who has not seen its ravages in spite of all pre-cautions. No engine failure has occurred, which is just as well because, even if one managed to get down safety on a river. A forced landing would almost certainly mean slow death from starvation, and a landing in the jungle, even if one survived the initial contact, would be worse.I know something of wandering in Borneo jungle, having once been lost, despite the help of two guides and a compass, between two camps only five miles apart. After two days and nights without food in a trifle" of rain that recorded in the settlement to which I eventually took the party as having amounted to twelve inches. I don't want to do it again, and the Aeronca is such a little lady that I don't think she will ask me to. Talking of rain reminds me that we have no meteorological service. No telegraph office opens before 9a.m., so that flights have to be started in blissful ignorance of what the weather may be 100 miles away. We are afflicted by sudden thunder storms, accompanied by miniature typhoons of gale force, which blot out all visibility for anything between a few minutes and several hours and deposit anything up to ten inches of rain. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
Daily Express Malaysia
