[WWI] Dresses, anyone?

[Douglas Anderson]

REading these exchanges has sparked a memory from deep in teh recesses of my mind (or what is left of it anyway). I have a book at home that describes an incident where I think Germans reported coming across a female fighter pilot. If the olf grey matter is working, I seem to recall that this chap was an actor or something, and would often fly with a wig on, and in his stage dress. I think he was a female imressionist.
   
  Also, does anyone know of a balloonist during the great war who was also an actor in his previous life. This man would parachute down wearing a top hat and tails and, with his walking stick, pretend to be walking while the silk carried him to Earth?

Jan Vihonen <jan.vihonen at helsinki.fi> wrote:
  Mike Kavanaugh wrote:

>>>Phillip Prothero, 56 Squadron.
>>>Rick G.
> 
> Sans anything over or under??? Either an unfeeling eunuch or the courage that
> defeats entire armies. Gives an entirely new meaning to the term, "Freezing
> your a** off".
> 
To cite Ralph Barker's The Royal Flying Corps in World War I: "The 
red-haired Prothero, as McCudden soon discovered, was an extrovert. A 
true Scotsman, with a burr hard to decipher after a dram or two, he 
insisted on wearing a kilt at all times. When he returned from a patrol 
his knees would be blue from the cold 'and the hair thereon would stick 
out like bristles on a hog', according to Canadian collegue V.P. 'Versh' 
Cronyn. One day Cronyn asked him why he punished himself in this way, to 
which prothero replied: 'You wouldna have me taken prisoner in disguise, 
would you now, laddie?'"

With his name I was able to find the passus he was mentionned in. Quite 
a character, I say.

Jan


 
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