William Faulkner, Cadet

WILLIAM FAULKNER, CADET MICHAEL MILLGATE Mr. Gordon Price-Stephens, in an admirable article On "Faulkner and the Royal Air Force,'" has recently cleared away much of the confusion, mystery, and TUmour which has so long surrounded Faulkner's brief military career. As Mr. Price-Stephens makes clear, Faulkner joined the Royal Air Force in Toronto in July 1918, the Royal Flying Corps having gone out of existence On April 1, 1918, and had not finally completed his training at the time of the Armistice the following November: he did not go to France, therefore, or see combat.' In attempting to find out something more about this little-known period of Faulkner's life, I have been greatly aided not only by Mr. Price-Stephens's article but also by his generosity in making available to me the results of his own meticulous research. Using the information he supplied, it has been a relatively simple matter to discover in Toronto a number of men whose R.A.F. experience closely paralleled Faulkner's and, in particular, two who had known Faulkner at that time and could tell something of the young man they remembered. It may be useful to give, first of all, a brief description of the British /lying training programme in Canada during the First World War. Late in 1916, the British War Office determined to establish thirty-five new training squadrons for the Royal Flying Corps in order to replace the heavy losses suffered during the Battle of the Somme and to keep pace with the rapid development of aerial operations On the Western Front as a whole. In December 1916 it was decided to establish twenty of the new squadrons in Canada and to equip them with American Curtiss IN-4 training aircraft built in Canada under licence. An advance party from Britain, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel (later BrigadierGeneral ) C. G. Hoare, arrived in Canada in January 1917. Airfield sites were chosen, hangars built, and men recruited with quite extraordinary rapidity, so that before the end of February that same year some Bying training had begun· As time went on, standardized training procedures were instituted, and by the summer of 1918, when Faulkner joined what had by that time become the Royal Air Force, recruits arriving in Toronto passed through a number of quite distinct stages. Volume xxxv, Number 2, January, 1966 lIB MICHAEL MILLGATE All recruits, whether destined for Bying duties or for ground-staff, were inducted at the Recruits' Depot, then located in the Jesse Ketchum School, which had been loaned by the Toronto Board of Education: here they were issued with kit and uniforms, given some elementary drill, and lectured on such topics as discipline and personal hygiene.' The next step, for those intending to become pilots or observers, was a posting to the Cadet Wing, camped under canvas at Long Branch, on the shore of Lake Ontario just west of Toronto. At Long Branch, d,e recruit underwent the full rigour of basic military training: In the summer of 1918, the wing was on the lines of an infantry battalion, with four squadrons and a headquarters company. Drill, physical training, wireless, topography and air force law were in the curriculum, but the essential and psychological duty of this unit was to impress on the new recruit those fundamental precepts of military discipline, honour and self respect on which his future career alone could be successfully based.5 Alan Sullivan's Aviation in Canada, 1917-1918, the source of that somewhat forbidding description, also comains a good deal of information about the next step in the training programme, No. 4 School of Military Aeronautics. The University of Toronto, which had provided accommodation for the Cadet Wing during the early stages of the Canadian training programme, subsequendy made available a great deal of additional space for the School of Aeronautics. Among the buildings wholly or pardy occupied by the School, Sullivan mentions the East and South residences of University College, the Medical Building, the School of Practical Science, the Thermodynamics Building , Convocation Hall, Burwash Hall, and dining halls in University College and Victoria College. In December 1917, following a large increase in the number of...