Eventually B Flight reached the port of Novorossisk, where again it was supposed to reequip and rejoin the conflict. But once more British plans were thwarted by the pace of the Bolshevik advance. Then came a final indignity. “We hauled the Camels from the flatcars to the nearest dock,” Aten recorded. “There a tank lumbered over them, reducing the fuselages to torn fabric, splintered spruce and tangled wires, and the engines to twisted scrap.” Next to be destroyed were 40 new D.H.9s, still in their packing cases. “Then the tank, in turn, with controls set and engine running, was sent waddling over the dock into the bay.”

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Meanwhile Collishaw, with A and Z flights, had been conducting a fighting retreat from the Kharkov front, moving toward Rostov. Z Flight’s train with Holman aboard made it across Rostov bridge. But when A Flight with Collishaw tried to follow, they found the Red cavalry had cut the rail lines. This forced them to head southwest to the Crimea, with a Red armored train in hot pursuit. At one fuel stop the Reds sent an unmanned locomotive hurtling into the rear of Collishaw’s train, destroying eight wagons but miraculously causing no casualties. A Flight’s nightmare journey ended when it reached the Crimea on January 4, 1920.

From a new base at Djankoi, Collishaw and his D.H.9As flew on in support of Denikin’s retreating forces. In late February, during a raid on an armored train, Collishaw’s D.H.9A was hit by groundfire and he was forced to land. With a sputtering engine, he and his observer taxied 20 miles across the snow to Djankoi. Later, between leading bombing and strafing sorties, Collishaw dropped supplies to an ice-bound White vessel in the Sea of Azov. On March 29, he landed after what turned out to be the squadron’s last raid to find orders to hand over its aircraft to the Whites and proceed to Theodosia for evacuation to Constantinople.

B and C flights had sailed from Novorossisk a few days earlier amid harrowing scenes, as terrified White refugees sought to escape the vengeance of the fast-approaching Bolsheviks. “The waterfront was black with human beings,” Aten wrote. “A solid mass of people covered the shore, the quay, the piers, the mole and the breakwater. As we left the train and started towards the ship the refugees pressed around us, shrieking, begging, imploring….A mob of desperate refugees suddenly rushed the steamer gangplank and machine guns on the deck cut loose. Ten men and women fell, twenty, thirty, and I could watch no more.”

Among those who did get away by sea was General Denikin. He was succeeded as commander in chief by Wrangel, who fought doggedly on in the Crimea until October 1920. So ended what British War Minister Winston Churchill called “a war with little valour and no mercy.”

For his gallantry in south Russia Aten received the DFC. The Russians awarded him the St. George’s Cross 4th Class and the Order of St. Vladimir 4th Class with Swords. In July 1920, having signed up for another seven years in the RAF, he went directly from Constantinople to No. 70 Squadron in Egypt, flying Vickers Vimy bomber-transports. After a flying instructor’s course in England, in late 1921 he returned to the Middle East for a second stint with 70 Squadron, piloting Vimys and later Vernons in Iraq. Aten was mentioned in dispatches in June 1924 for distinguished service in Kurdistan. After a tour with No. 12 (Bomber) Squadron in England, he left the RAF on November 25, 1927. Aten then returned to the United States, where he lived until his death in May 1961.

The other members of B Flight were less fortunate. Burns Thomson died in a flying accident in Egypt in November 1922, as did Daly in England in June 1924. Kinkead, who received a DSO for his leadership in Russia, was killed at Calshot on March 12, 1928, during a world speed record attempt in the Supermarine S5 floatplane N221. Only the seemingly indestructible Collishaw went on to greater glory, as an air vice marshal in the Middle East during World War II and later into a vigorous old age.

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