brought to the office of the aerodrome and
encouraged by sympathetic questions to tell what they had seen and done,
was a system which grew up at once under his command. His intuitive
understanding of the men who served under him, his quickness in learning
the lessons of experience, and his resourcefulness and daring in
immediately applying these lessons for the bettering of the Flying
Corps, have been worth many brigades to his country. His name will occur
often in this record, but here, at his first entry, he must be
introduced to the reader.

He was born in 1873, the son of Captain Montague Trenchard, of the
King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was educated privately, and
after several failures in examination entered the army by way of the
militia, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal
Scots Fusiliers. After some years in India he served in the South
African War, at first with the Imperial Yeomanry Bushman Corps, and
later with the Canadian Scouts. During the operations west of Pretoria,
in the autumn of 1900, he was dangerously wounded, but served again,
during the concluding years of the war, with the mounted infantry in the
Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and the Cape Colony. There followed
a period of distinguished service in Nigeria, and then he was at home
for a time. In February 1912, three months before the Royal Flying Corps
came into being, he applied for employment with the mounted branch of
the Colonial Defence Forces, in Australia, or New Zealand, or South
Africa. In May he applied for employment with the Macedonian
Gendarmerie. These applications were noted for consideration at the War
Office; in the meantime his mind turned to the newly-formed Flying
Corps. Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith tells the story of how he learned to fly.

'Major Trenchard (as he was then) arrived at my School at Brooklands
one morning in August 1912. He told me that the War Office had given him
ten days in which to learn to fly and pass his tests for an aviator's
certificate, adding that if he could not pass by that date he would be
over age. It was no easy performance to undertake, but Major Trenchard
tackled it with a wonderful spirit. He was out at dawn every morning,
and only too keen to do anything to expedite tuition. He passed in about
one week from first going into the air as a passenger. He was a model
pupil from whom many younger men should have taken a lead.'

On the 13th of August 1912 he took