#billy bishop

[theworldofwars]

William ‘Billy’ Bishop (1894-1956) was Canada’s highest-scoring fighter pilot and one of the war’s top flying aces. Bishop served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in December 1915. He is credited with 72 victories and was awarded the Victoria Cross for a solo attack on a German aerodrome on 2 June 1917. Bishop survived the war and went on to become an Air Marshal in charge of recruitment during the Second World War.

[witch-breaker]

Canadian pilot Billy Bishop was credited with downing 72 enemy aircraft and was celebrated as both Canada’s top ace and the British Empire’s leading flyer.

During his time at the airbase he was photographed with a pig, later he began painting German crosses on it to mark each of his victories.

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[apostate-in-an-alcove]

So my latest profile picture is of Wee Billy from the Billy Bishop Museum and I'm so amused by this stupid miniature version of Billy Bishop. Like look at him:

I couldn't even tell you WHEN the museum got him though I'm certain he was made by a local artist.

He's always being moved around the museum (which was Billy Bishop's childhood home) and having his little photo ops on their social media pages.

Look at him posing for tea time:

Christmas:

Games night:

And with Bishop's uniform:

I love him. I want one.

[pinturas-gran-guerra-aire]

1918 06 19 RAF SE5a Wolseley Viper 85 Sqn Billy Bishop victories 69 and 70 (collision) - Taras Shtyk - Roden

[cosmogyros]

Billy Come Home

Songwriting is so wild. I woke up this morning thinking about the Animals’ cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and how they did such a damn good job of turning a traditional folk song into a nice heavy rock ballad. And then I thought, hey, it could be fun to write my own “old folk tune with the potential to be covered as a rock song”. What a delightful challenge!

While I was making breakfast, the chorus spontaneously came to me: “Billy, come home / Don’t you stay away so long / Billy, come home / Don’t you leave me no more.” I quickly sat down and recorded that bit so I wouldn’t forget it.

My musical concept for this song was clear right away: I wanted to write something in the tradition of the Scottish folk ballads, a genre that greatly influenced me in my youth. That meant it should have a solid sing-along chorus and be comparatively “plain”, lyrically speaking.

Now it was time to write the verses… but that required some thought.

I decided that, despite the lyrics of the chorus, the song overall would be from the point of view of a man going away, and the chorus is the part that’s sung from the point of view of his girlfriend back at home. What do men go away for? Traditionally, war. So I decided this would be a song sung by a soldier missing his lady at home.

Next question: where is he going away from? I have a soft spot for Canada, so this would be a song about a Canadian soldier. I wrote the classic line with which to start this type of song – “I had a girl back in [blank]” – and then sat there wondering what “blank” should be. I looked up various historically significant Canadian port cities, but none of their names felt quite right.

I wanted it to sound kind of generic. I wanted it to be a song that Canadians would instantly recognize as being about Canada, but people of other nationalities might easily mistake for a song about their own country instead. One of those conveniently vague lyrics that all different kinds of people can relate to.

From researching Canadian cities of historical import, I somehow shifted to reading about Canadian participation in the World Wars. Since I wanted this to be an old song, obviously World War I was the way to go. I read about some famous Canadians who’d fought in the Great War. Scrolling through black-and-white photos of young men in their military attire and mustaches, I was stopped in my tracks by this dashing fellow and the caption: “Billy Bishop is one of Canada’s most famous aviators, claiming 72 victories across the First World War.”

Boom. Serendipity. There was my Billy. I’d never known before this moment that he even existed, but now it was clear what my song was about.

From that point, it was easy. I opened up Billy Bishop’s Wikipedia article and eagerly read about his entire life. He was quite a dandy in his youth: well-dressed, spoke with a lisp, attended dancing classes with the girls, and didn’t care for team sports, preferring solitary activities such as riding and shooting. Naturally this made him a target of teasing by the other boys, but Billy was quite a scrapper and had no qualms about getting into fights to defend himself. He was also very good-looking and popular with the ladies, but unfortunately both a slacker and a cheater in his schoolwork. And aspired to fly from a young age…

From Wikipedia: “In 1910, at the age of 16, after reading a newspaper article, Bishop built a glider out of cardboard, wooden crates, bedsheets, and twine, and made an attempt to fly off the roof of his three-story house. He was dug, unharmed, out of the wreckage by his sister Louise. After she helped him hide the wreckage, she insisted he owed her a favor, and insisted he date her girlfriend Margaret Burden.”

It was love at first sight for Billy and Margaret, but he had to leave her behind when he enlisted on his 17th birthday. He was then transferred from Kingston to London, Ontario for cavalry training before boarding the ship Caledonia and starting off across the ocean (but not without first slipping away to propose to Margaret and give her his military academy ring, to hold her over until he could charm her parents enough to be allowed to offer her a real one).

The Canada-to-England journey was hellish – everyone was terrifically seasick, man and beast alike. Many of the horses on board died during the crossing and their corpses had to be thrown overboard. Additionally, the ship was attacked by a German submarine near the end of its voyage, resulting in 300 Canadian casualties.

Billy Bishop survived, however, and was rewarded with more horrific conditions: undergoing further training in an absolute swamp of mud and horse manure in England. Eventually he got so sick and tired of being on the disgusting, dirty ground that he applied to the Royal Flying Corps instead – after having observed to a friend one day, while watching an airplane land: "You don't get any mud or horseshit on you up there. If you died, it would be a clean death."

It may have been cleaner, but it wasn’t necessarily more enjoyable. He crashed, was shot down, and suffered various injuries (including, on one long flight, frostbite so severe that it split his cheek open). But during all this time, he started familiarizing himself with the concept of planes that could shoot at the enemy from the air – brand new technology back then.

On medical leave, he finally convinced Margaret Burden’s parents that he was a suitable match for their daughter, and gave her a proper engagement ring at last. Then it was back to Europe a few months later, where, stationed in France, he began shooting down German planes with so much success that the Germans nicknamed him “Hell’s Handmaiden”. In his blue-nosed plane, Bishop was a fearless flyer – after one flight he landed with 210 bullet holes in his fuselage. Some say he exaggerated his successes, but whether it was all based in truth or not, he was considered the top flying ace for the Allies.

And eventually, in 1917, he got another opportunity to return home to Canada, welcomed as a hero – and finally married his beloved Margaret, after a years-long engagement.

I learned all of this and completed the majority of the song in about 45 minutes. Most of the verses practically wrote themselves. One minute, I’d been idly singing the words “Billy, come home” to myself, with no context or connotation and no idea who “Billy” might be; an hour later, I knew all this history and had all-but-finished a song about his life.

One line was still missing, so I texted some friends about it, asking for creative assistance. One informed me that fighter planes were sometimes referred to as “kites” back then, and that gave me the inspiration I needed to finish up the song.

(I intentionally took a few mild creative liberties with the historical facts, but hey, that’s something else that old folk songs traditionally do. Despite that, most of the lyric is still true!)

Anyway, if you want to hear the tune, I made a rough demo of it:

Visit Original Link

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Who says Canada's buffalo are extinct? Here is a scene from Goose Lake, near Wainright, Alta, showing a part of the great herd on the government reserve there. Science is attempting to cross-breed these buffalo with cattle to produce a hard milch-cow for northern climes.

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Another visit from US financiers to Canada's gold mines in Northern Ontario has been made, this time vis aeroplane. Gene Tunney, retired undefeated heavyweight champion of the world, was one of the party of 11, some of whom are shown at top. Col. W. A. Bishop, Canada's war ace, was also member of the party which included a number of prominent shining men. In the group shown at the top are, left to right - D. M. McKeon, New York financier; Col. W. A. Bishop; B. F. Smith, New York, financier; Gene Tunney, David Sloan, Vancouver, managing director of the Plonser mine, P. S. Arguimbau, New York financier; Eddle Dowling, comedian and singer, New York and Paris: and Heard P. Gimpel, of the New York department store bearing his name. In the lower picture at left is a close-up of Tunney, twice conqueror of Jack Dempsy for the world's heavyweight boxing title, now wealthy business man and politician. At right is shown, left to right - J. P. Bickell, president of McIntyre Mines, from whose home in Port Credit, Ontario, the party left; Ed Flynn, prominent New York politician and friend of President Roosevelt, and Hon. Chas. McCrae, Ontario minister of mines. The party bound for McIntyre mines near Timmins, Ontario."

- from the Kingston Whig-Standard. June 26, 1933. Page 10.

[thedaily-beer]

Le Bilboquet Billy Bishop Double IPA (Picked up at IGA in Montreal). A 3 of 4. Lots of herbal notes on top of some fainter citrus and grapefruit hop notes. The body has quite a bit of caramel malt sweetness and bitterness to it, and is quite balanced throughout. Solid.

[wordanjitterart]