['14-'18aviationcollector]

Hi Fill,

You have raised a very important point, and I agree, this forum is an ideal place for such accounts to be published. I always had every intention of meeting as many WW1 pilots as I could while they were still with us. I even wanted to meet TOM Sopwith! As it turned out, due to lack of time and money in the years I was trying to establish a career, I did not meet any of these pilots, but did meet one a few years later. I have discussed this issue on this forum in the past, but I will do so again, because I know it will be of interest to at least some of the members of this site.

The pilot I met on a few occasions was Gerald Muir, who also seems to have been known as Gerald Jensen Muir. Whether the name Jensen was hyphenated with Muir or was his middle name, I don't know. Relatively little seems to be known about him, and he seemed to be a bit protective about information relating to his war service as a pilot. He told me that he was born in 1901, which would suggest to me that he probably flew Snipes and Camels - as he told me he did - in the Army of Occupation in 1919, rather than in combat during the war. Still, if this was the case I would not have judged him because he did not fly in combat. Gerald was also a collector of photographs, which I subsequently purchased, an author and an artist. It seems to me that he was probably also a founding member of Cross and Cockade, if not he would have at least been one of the first contibutors to it. I have a very incomplete collection of Cross and Cockade publications, and relatively litle time to go through those I do have to find out what I can about Gerald, but I have seen some of his art work and articles from time to time. I am sure that many of you will be familiar with the photograph of the 208 Squadron Sopwith Snipe. This photograph was also produced as a stereo view. Gerald told me that is him in the photograph. Whether it is or not, I don't know, but it sure does look like him, and the pilot in the photograph is about the right height. Gerald was very tall, as is the pilot in the photograph, even when he was aged in his early 90's, as he was when I first met him.

On every occasion I was with Gerald I experienced a very strong desire to record as much information as I could. Gerald could open the pages of his photograph albums to almost any page and tell a story about almost every photo! Given that there are about 5,000 photos in the collection, the process of getting the story of each photo, writing it down or recording it in some other way such as a tape recording would have been extremely time consuming. Gerald had very limited patience at times, and tended to get tired easily of course at his age, so both visits relating to the photograph albums were cut short by him. I managed to get a tape recording during the first visit, but during the second visit, he did not allow me to take a tape recording unfortunately. As a result, most of the stories relating to most of the photographs have gone with Gerald. Even the tape recorded conversation would be difficult to decipher. We were quickly skipping through each of the twelve albums due to the fact that there are so many photographs, and they take so long to go through, and Gerald's limited strength and energy at that time. He was very strong and lively for a 91 or 92 year old man but he did get tired relatively quickly - by which I mean within a few hours or so which is not too bad, but I had to make the most of the time I had.

My overwhelming feeling was one of hopelessness. Every time I was with Gerald I knew that he would be very happy to pass as many stories on as possible, but I was only able to get down to see him occasionally, and it had to be a mutually agreeable time of course. Even though I am sure he would have spent a lot of time on his own and would have been very happy to talk about his photograph albums and his experiences as a pilot the number of factors which had to come together simultaneously meant that relatively little time was able to be spent with Gerald discussing these issues. I knew that most of what he had to say was going to be lost but I did not feel that I was in a position to do any more to preserve this priceless information than I was already doing. Provided I am able to locate the tape recording, which I am sure I will be able to, and have the time to review it, I am sure that I will be able to match some of the stories Gerald told me with some of the photographs. At the time I had very small scraps of paper which I numbered 1st album viewed, 2nd album viewed, etc. The reason for this was that when I review the tape recording, I will have a much better chance of matching Gerald's comments with the photograph he was referring to at the time. In the following years though I found that these pieces of paper fell out of their albums from time to time when I have been moving the albums, or when people have borrowed them or have been looking at them. As a result I might not necessarily be able to match each comment with the photograph it was intended for, but I will certainly do the best I can.

As you mentioned, people such as Alex, Dan San and Norman will have countless information they could post here on this subject, and I certainly like to see as much such information posted here as possible. I will try to post as much as I can here on this forum, and I know from experience that it would be a huge task for these researchers and authors to contribute as much information as they possibly can to this forum.

Regards,

David.