Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

81 than the 19 with which he is sometimes credited. But if this is so, how come the citation for his MC states that ‘ On many occasions [my emphasis] he has, at various altitudes, attacked and destroyed or driven down hostile machines’? 135 There’s a continuing mystery here that needs the research of a more adept military historian than the present writer to resolve. And what of Gregory vs the Red Baron? None of the sources that allude to Gregory shooting down Manfred von Richthofen claims unequivocally that he did so, yet the mere fact that this was a possibility is intriguing. In fact, von Richthofen was only shot down once, on 6 July 1917; and Gregory most certainly was not involved in that incident. But four months earlier, on 9 March, the Red Baron had been forced to land, under control, after his fuel tanks were holed as a result of fire from an FE8 of 40 Squadron; and more than one reputable source states that Gregory was ‘probably’ the pilot concerned. 136 The distinction between being ‘shot down’ and ‘forced down under control’ may seem a minor one, but a distinction was certainly drawn at the time: by this stage of the war the latter would not have been scored as a ‘victory’. As a matter of fact, therefore, it is wrong to say that Gregory either actually or possibly ‘shot down’ the Red Baron, even though he may have caused him to end one of his missions prematurely. And from the fact that we know that von Richthofen was back in the air later on 9 March, albeit in a different aircraft, it is clear that his downing on that day was of no great significance, military or otherwise; whether or not Gregory was directly responsible, which we can never know. 137 Finally, we come to the circumstances of Gregory’s death. There is consensus nowadays that he was shot down in error by an Italian plane during a test flight, 138 in what today would be called a friendly fire incident. So, ‘killed in action’ perhaps; but not in combat. At the time of his death, his family was told that he passed out at the controls of his Sopwith Camel because of an adverse reaction to a recent immunisation; this was almost certainly a cover-up. The date of 23 January 1918 is confirmed in contemporary sources, but the place of death may not have been the usually-cited location of ‘Grossa, near Padua’ (which is where 66 Squadron was based): the squadron history states that his plane was found as ‘a complete wreck’ at Monastiero, which is a hamlet around 15 km north-east of Grossa, and 30 km north of Padua. So it seems that the recorded place of Gregory’s death, as well as that of his birth, will need to be changed. Robert Gregory was, by all accounts, a successful and popular pilot. He was also, despite the risks of his job, a contented one. The DIB and his centenary tribute record that it was as an airman that he truly found himself. He is reported as telling George Bernard Shaw that his combat 135 The Times , 19 July 1917. 136 Peter McManus, Richthofen Jagdstaffel Ahead, Grub Street, 2008; and the essay by James Pethica cited earlier. 137 There is no combat report in Gregory’s name for 9 March 1917. The suggestion in Gerald Siggins and James Fitzgerald’s Ireland’s 100 Cricket Greats (Nonsuch Publishing, 2006) that Gregory died the day after he was ‘believed to have shot down the famous Red Baron’ is simply wrong. 138 His death is reported in these terms in the near-contemporary History of 66 Squadron , National Archives ref AIR1/694/21/20/66. In the Wickets