Harold Rosher was born at Beckenham on the 18th November, 1893, and was educated at The Dene, Caterham, and subsequently at Woodbridge. Although as a boy he suffered severely from acute asthma and bronchitis, he did well at school; and the pluck which carried him through the moral distresses of asthma helped him to hold his own in games, despite the fact that up to the age of sixteen he was considerably under the average height. As his health did not cease to give anxiety, he was taken for a holiday to India (being with his father the guest of the Maharajah Ranjitsinhji, Jam Sahib of Nawanagar) in 1909. In 1913, for the same reason, he made a trip to South Africa with his sister. It was his health again which helped to decide his career. An open-air life was considered to be essential, and he became a student at the South Eastern Agricultural College, Wye, remaining there until the outbreak of the war. One of Harold's greatest chums at the Agricultural College was a young and rich German landowner named K——. At the latter's invitation Harold spent the summer vacation of 1913 in Germany, and the two young men toured on motor-cycles through a great part of Germany and Austria. In August 1914 K—— was to celebrate his majority, and had asked Harold to the festivities. But on August 2nd, when war appeared inevitable, he wrote a letter of farewell to Harold in which he said that he did not expect they would ever meet again. The next day he telephoned from Charing Cross as he was leaving England, and Harold was overheard saying to him on the telephone: "Well, if we meet, mind you don't shoot straight."

On the day of the declaration of war, Harold applied for a commission in the Royal Naval Air Service, and in order to save time he went immediately as a civilian pupil to Brooklands, where several months previously he had once been taken up in the air as a passenger. In the few days which elapsed before the War Office commandeered the Brooklands Aerodrome and ejected every civilian Harold progressed rapidly in the craft of flying. He was gazetted a Probationary Flight Sub-Lieutenant in the R.N.A.S. on August 18th and reported himself at Hendon. He remained there about six weeks, obtaining his aviator's certificate. The letters which form this book were written between August 1914 and February 1916. They are spontaneous and utterly unstudied documents, and they have been printed almost exactly as Harold wrote them. Many of them are quite ordinary; most are spiced with slang; the long ones describing his share in the great historic raids are thrillingly dramatic. But it would not be wise to set some letters above others. None should be missed. Each contributes its due realistic share to the complete picture of an airman's life in war.

It is well that we should have every opportunity of estimating what that life is. For the air service is still quite a new service. Its birth lies within the memory of schoolboys. Few outsiders can imaginatively conceive for themselves the conditions of it, conditions in which the hour of greatest danger is precisely the hour of spiritual solitude and separation from all mankind. Further, the air service is now actually engaged in creating those superb precedents which members of the older services find ready for their fortifying and encouragement when the crisis comes, and this fact alone entitles it to a most special sympathetic attention from the laity. So far as my knowledge goes, no other such picture, so full and so convincing, of the air-fighters' existence has yet been offered to the public. Here, perhaps, I may mention that some organs of the London Press long ago desired to print the principal descriptive letters of Harold Rosher, which in private had aroused the admiration of journalists and literary men; but it was felt that complete publication of the entire series within the covers of a volume would be more proper and more effective.

Three days after the date of the last letter Harold was killed. On 27th February, Major Risk, the C.O. of the Dover Aeroplane Station being away on duty, Harold, as second in command, was in charge. Among other duties he had to train new pilots on fast machines, and he would always personally test a new machine or a newly-repaired machine before allowing anybody else to try it. On that Sunday morning he ordered a number of machines to be brought out of the sheds for practice flights. Among them was one which had just been repaired after a mishap three weeks earlier. The pilot had already got into his machine. Harold told him to get out as the machine was untested, and himself took it up for a trial flight of eight or ten minutes. Everything seemed to go right until Harold began the descent about a mile away from the Aerodrome. Then, at a height of 300 feet or less, the machine suddenly made a nose-dive and crashed to the ground. Harold was killed instantly. The disaster occupied seven seconds, At the inquest nothing was ascertained as to the cause of the accident. One theory is that the controls jammed. Harold was buried on the 2nd March at Charlton Cemetery, with full naval honours. The cemetery is on the cliffs within sight of the Aerodrome, and while his body was being lowered into the grave aeroplanes were flying overhead.

It is permissible to quote a few Service opinions about Harold Rosher's attainments and achievements during his short career as an airman. Commodore Murray F. Sueter, C.B., R.N., wrote to Mr. Frank Rosher, Harold's father: "In my opinion he was one of our best pilots; always ready for any service he was called upon to perform. Mr. Winston Churchill was very pleased with his work in the early part of the war, and had he been spared I am sure he would have made a great name for himself." Wing Commander Arthur N. Longmore, R.N., under whom Harold had served longest, wrote: "You have the consolation of knowing his splendid record at Dunkirk. He was among the finest pilots I ever had out there, always cheerful and ready for his work. He will be a great loss to the Air Service, which loses not only a first-class pilot, but also an excellent officer." Major Charles E. Risk, Squadron Commander, R.N., wrote: "Harold, or Rosh as we always used to call him, was one of my very best pals and a very fine officer and First Lieutenant. Everyone loved him. He was an absolute 'Sahib,' a very good pilot, hard-working, and absolutely trustworthy." And Captain Charles L. Lamb, R.N., wrote: "He returned with some of the others from abroad last autumn for a rest, and very shortly afterwards I selected him from a large number of officers to become the Executive Officer of the Dover Air Station, which was then starting. Although quite young, he immediately displayed great organizing abilities, and also possessed the gift of command of men, which is unusual without previous training, and fully justified my selection. At his own request he was shortly proceeding abroad in command of a Flight, and would undoubtedly have gained his promotion in the near future. I have said little as regards his skill as a pilot, since this was probably well known to you, but he was undoubtedly in the first flight. This skill, however, I consider of secondary importance in life as compared with the far rarer gifts of command and organization which he undoubtedly possessed."

I had the acquaintance of Harold Rosher, and when I met him I was quite extraordinarily impressed by his bearing and his speech. In age and appearance he was a mere boy—a handsome boy, too, in my opinion—but the gestures of youth were restrained. He was very modest, but he was not diffident. In the presence of men older than his father he upheld in the most charming and effective way the dignity of his own generation. He talked quietly, but nobody could escape the conviction that he knew just what he was talking about. All his statements were cautious, and in giving a description or an opinion he seemed to dread superlatives. He had the eye and the voice of one who feared no responsibility, and who, having ruled himself, was thoroughly equal to ruling others. He was twenty-two when he died at work.