03
From chapter: ‘Pilots of the Future’
Written in a ‘journalistic’ style.
A big part of Ira’s job was to move a gun carriage, along with other gunners, from one battle site to the next. German troops would try to ambush gunners who were on the move in this way, and one of their favourite tricks, he told me, was to attack the lead horse. This would lead to the next horse crashing into it and panicking on the ground, kicking and breaking the legs of the other horses behind.
It was during an ambush of this kind in 1916 that my grandfather was badly injured. He was riding the lead horse, with five behind him, when a German jumped out and thrust a bayonet at the stomach of his horse. Reacting quickly, Ira put his foot in the way, and the bayonet went through his ankle. This was actually his second injury, and it was the more serious one. It was enough to send him home, and it was while he was recuperating in a hospital in Manchester that he met my grandmother, Dorothy. But it wasn’t in the hospital itself that they met; she was working as a clippy on the trams, and he happened to travel on her tram one day. I’d love to know what exactly went on when they met, but we have to imagine.