WWI D.F.C. GROUP OF 5 MEDALS TO CAPT. H.N. LOCH, R.A.F.

Distinguished Flying Cross Gazetted 3 June 1919 (France).

Humphrey Norman Loch was born at Muttra, India on 11 Nov 1895 and educated at Marlborough College. Commissioned into the Indian Army on 15 Aug 1914, Loch served in France with the Royal Welch Fusiliers from 31 Mar-8 Sep 1915. Transferred to the 8th Gurkhas, he saw action in Mesopotamia from 6 Sep-18 Oct 1916. Loch then joined the Royal Flying Corps and underwent pilot training, crash landing during a snowstorm, managing to escape any serious injury. He was moved south and began with the aeroplane ferrying sorties over the Channel from Lympne. In a letter to his mother Loch recorded:

“DH.4 No A4714 St Omer 13th Aug 1917 - I am writing this in a bus on my way back to Lympne. I am passenger so have the use of my hands. I came over this morning and am on my way back. A wonderful view as we go across France with the Channel in sight. We are now at 3,000 feet and going at 85 mph. The fields and woods stretch out for miles. It's a dull day so it's not as pretty as it might be. Here's Calais on our right and Boulogne miles over on the left. You can just see England. There was a raid on when I got back last night but none of our people saw anything. The sun's coming out. The effect above the clouds is very pretty. Please excuse the writing, the wind's blowing the paper about. We shall be in to the clouds soon. We're now 4,000 feet up and just over Calais. We're over the clouds now in a regular Switzerland of cotton wool. Now we're over the channel and can see England in the haze. The boats are like little water beetles leaving white trails. Absolutely blue sky above us and down on the ground it's a dull stuffy day. It's getting beastly cold as we are over 7,000 feet now and still climbing. One man fell in the sea today but was picked up. You may be pleased to hear that I have now flown our great bombing machine the DH.4 and that I've been promised to be allowed to fly the SE5 which is the best scout in use. So things are looking up. I'm liking flying again. I can hear a Hun machine and there go the guns again. They'll grin on the other side of their faces when our new bombing busses are released from the entanglements of red tape and get at them.”

Loch’s memoirs record in great detail his aerial combats and near scrapes, right up to Armistice Day:

“I am flying a Bristol fighter and like it. The aerodrome or rather the mess here is top hole. Bristol is quite a good spot and I'm not keen on rushing back to Lympne so am in a way glad the weather's dud. Bad weather was a nasty trial. But in addition to ranging guns, we had a multitude of other duties such as night reconnaissance, short day reconnaissance, photographing, dropping bombs, machine gunning the ground and flying low along the front line to keep in contact with the infantry. Before returning after each shoot, we were supposed to drop our bombs and loose off a few rounds of machine gun fire into the enemy back areas. What good this ever did, I do not know. No doubt it was one of the ultimate reasons why we are supposed to have won the war i.e. we did more useless things and encouraged more waste than the Germans. Occasionally the tedium of a shoot was broken by the appearance of enemy aircraft. Perhaps one was attacked. But if one had a wakeful observer this never needed to happen as we were permitted, even encouraged, to keep out of the way of aerial combats. Few of us deliberately broke this rule. Nor did many of us attack the enemy balloons which were so thoughtfully strung along the enemy back areas. Sometimes a dare devil pilot who had even been known to loop an R.E.8 and come out alive, did actually bring down a balloon or an enemy scout. But for the most part we attended strictly to our own business and left the long bombers and the scouts and the fighters to do whatever dirty work they pleased without giving them the faintest cause to imagine we were trespassing on their preserves. The tranquillity of my existence was only disturbed when I got more than one shoot to do a day, had to go on a night reconnaissance - which I loathed - and finally when a solitary Bristol Fighter was introduced to the squadron for the purpose of carrying out special long range shoots with nine point two guns on special mountings for harassing back areas. For these shoots one had to get up to a greet height - for an artillery observer who spent most of his flying life between five and three thousand feet - and wireless telephony was introduced. This machine was also used for long reconnaissance and it was on these solitary flights that one used to get into trouble as the enemy scouts, which never patrolled in numbers less than three, were always ready and waiting to gulp up a solitary two seater. On one occasion after looking for some time at the faint smoke coming from the muzzles of three elegantly painted machines, I noticed what I took to be the smoke of a fire in our engine and hastily went into a spin. Fortunately it proved to be only steam from a bullet pierced cylinder. However I was glad to be out of it as my machine was well shot up and my observer wounded. On another occasion, thinking to gain a little cheap glory, we attacked a scout which was sitting on the tail of an R.E.8, and hearing the unpleasant noise of machine guns not my own, looked around and found myself the objective of half a dozen German comrades. Once again my unfortunate observer was wounded, this time very badly and I side slipped out of the fray. The advance began and presently, we left St Omer and dumped ourselves down on Linselles not far from Lille. This had been an old German aerodrome. The wooden hangers were pierced with the machine gun bullets of raiding scouts and the field was dotted with the tails of twenty pound Hale's bombs which had been dropped from a low height and failed to explode. We erected canvas hangers and were billeted among the small houses which surrounded the aerodrome. Here it was that we did our last war flying helping to tickle up the stern of the German army as it retreated. The armistice came, heralded with the blowing off of numberless Very lights. We could not believe it.”

Loch returned to the Indian Army and rejoined the 5th Gurkha Rifles for the operations in Mesopotamia. He was in Command of 'B' Company when the unit, numbering 12 Officers and 742 Gurkha other ranks left Kakul on 14 September 1920. He was with his Company when they came under heavy fire during the action at the Iman Abdulla Bridge on 20 Oct (History of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles: 1858 to 1928, Colonel Weekes, refers). Retired from the Indian Army, he married and took up work which took him to North America and the Far East, eventually settling in British Colombia. Loch died at Coquitlan on 3 Aug 1977.