The Two-Headed Eagle поп-3

by Джон Биггинс

  The Italians fired a second salvo after three minutes or so, just as we were coming back over them. It was more closely grouped this time, and it landed only four hundred metres or so from our gun. Meanwhile our third shot went wide again: two hundred metres over and one hundred too far right. Damn them, what was wrong with our gunners this morn­ing? Heavy artillery shooting was never an exact science: shot falls varied because of wind and air density and the precise chemistry of each propel­lant charge—and by 1916 Austrian cordite was becoming very uneven in quality. But even so their shooting was not up to the usually high standards of the Imperial and Royal Artillery. Did they realise what peril they were in? At this rate it was more than likely that the Italian battery would find them before they found the Italians.

  Watched from my position, four hundred metres up in the singing cold air, there was something dreadfully, sickeningly fascinating about observing this duel of monsters taking place below us: watching the great flashes that shook the trees and the sudden plumes of smoke, feeling the aeroplane shudder around us as the shock waves reached it. Sitting there like some indifferent god, tapping the Morse key and pencilling crosses on the map, it was only too easy to forget that in a few minutes one battery or the other would be reduced to a smoking pile of twisted steel, smeared with the blood and entrails of perhaps fifty of my fellow-men. What would happen if the wireless broke down, or if the Italian flak gunners managed to knock us out of the sky? We had been at this for some ten minutes now. The Italians were well up in wireless and might soon contrive to jam our signal. The terrible iron logic of war had taken over. Down there was a large number of young Italian soldiers who had never done me the slight­est harm and whom I would cheerfully greet as friends if I met them in some cafe. Yet here I was, bending all my efforts to secure their deaths as if we had always been the most mortal of enemies. Sitting here in an armchair it sounds completely insane; but up there that morning a lifetime ago it made chilling sense.

  In the end it was them and not us. The Skoda gun’s fifth shell landed just on the edge of the hundred-metre circle within which I judged a shell- burst would put the battery out of action. After that, things happened with bewildering rapidity. The smoke dispersed in the breeze to reveal a patch of devastated forest. But then a confused series of flashes and spurts of fire began to spread through the still standing trees. I suppose that it was the usual story: that in his haste to load and fire the battery commander had allowed too many propellant charges to accumulate on the lines, so that the flash of one catching fire set off the next in a powder-train which finally led back to the ammunition dump. I hope that some of the Italians survived, crouching terrified in their slit-trenches as the world exploded about them. But somehow I doubt it: not when I saw the entire ponderous carriage of one of the howitzers being tossed into the air as casually as a child’s toy. Within a few seconds a vast ochre-coloured cloud of smoke was boiling into the summer sky like some obscene toadstool. By the time we were safely back over our side of Monte Nero it must have been visible to the Austrian gunners down in their emplacement, deafened and dazed with muzzle-blast despite their padded helmets. I tapped the signal “V” on the Morse key, then followed it in a fit of patriotic exultation with a display of white and red rockets and the message “V-I-V-A-T.” Our mis­sion had been accomplished.

  Our orders were that once firing had ceased we were to make for the flying field of Flik 2 at Veldes. Our route would take us over the long, narrow Wocheiner Lake which lay in a deep trough of the mountains be­low the Triglav massif, about ten kilometres to the east. I shut down the transmitter and scribbled another note in Latin to direct Toth to Veldes, where we would land and rest awhile before refuelling and heading back to Caprovizza—once more over the Italian side of the lines, if we took any notice of Kraliczek’s mysterious orders. The only thing that puzzled me was where that damned Eindecker of ours had got to. It should have been waiting over Monte Nero for us when we arrived, but I had seen no sign of it. Engine trouble? Muddied instructions from the Air Liaison Officer at Marburg? Probably the latter, I thought: none of us had much of an opinion of staff officers. Anyway, it scarcely mattered now that we were on our way home.

  I first saw the speck in the sky to the north-east as we came within sight of the Wocheinersee. Must be the Eindecker, I thought, and peered at it more out of curiosity than anything else. It was a rather disturbing sensation to find as I tried to steady my binoculars on the cockpit edge that instead of the expected monoplane front-view of an Eindecker, I was looking at what was quite unmistakably a small, rotary-engined biplane with its lower wings markedly shorter than the upper and with a machine gun mounted on the top wing.

  I dropped the binoculars and scrawled a note for Toth: “Festina— hostis insequitur nobis!” He turned around and nodded, but did noth­ing. I thumped him on the back and wrote “Accelera, inepte!” so fiercely that the point of my pencil snapped off. The Nieuport was gaining on us fast as we ambled along, seemingly unconcerned. What was the matter with this Hungarian imbecile? Did he want us to die? Before long the Italian was only about twenty metres astern, jockeying on our tail some way above us now that he had seen that we carried no machine gun. No doubt he was congratulating himself on having surprised two such dim- witted Austrians, and was not in too much of a hurry to despatch us, much as a cat will play for a while with a sparrow before biting its head off. I turned to shake my pilot and urge him to give full throttle—and saw the Italian pilot laugh as he watched his victims now apparently fighting one another. I drew my Steyr pistol from its holster, intent on making even a futile attempt to defend ourselves. As for Toth though, he merely looked over his shoulder at the Italian single-seater. His face wore the malicious half-smile of an idiot child. Then he put our nose down a little and opened the throttle. The Italian brought his nose down too to take aim, evidently thinking that we were going to try diving away from him. He had come so close that I could see his tongue clenched in concentration between his white teeth. He would lower his nose until we were in his sights—an unmissable target at less than fifteen metres—and a sudden flickering orange flash would obscure the gun muzzle above his upper wing. That would probably be my last sight in this world. Yet despite the imminence of death, I found that sight of the Nieuport intensely interesting, as I suppose the closeness of danger sharpens all the senses. It was such a pretty little machine I thought, so delicately French: painted a smart silver-grey with black edges to the wings and with the Italian red-white-green tricolour on the rudder. So pleasing to look at, yet so deadly, like a poisonous snake.

  I was sure that he was just about to fire when Toth pushed the throttle forward and put our nose down a little more (he had a motor-car mirror fixed above the windshield and had been watching the Italian intently all the time with one eye). The Italian laughed, and brought his nose down as well to regain his aim. Toth replied by making our dive a little steeper. The Italian followed: if we expected to escape him by diving away then we were even greater buffoons than we had seemed at first. His nose came down, and he fired a burst which cracked over our upper wing, snicking the fabric in places. With magisterial calm, Toth merely increased our angle of dive and eased the throttle forward to full speed. We were screaming down at forty-five degrees now as the cobalt-blue lake rushed up towards us. The Italian fired another burst, which just missed. It was certain death for us now, either from bullets or from diving into the lake. I looked about me in terror as the wind howled past. I saw that the fabric on our wings was beginning to ripple and surge as the airframe creaked ominously above the roar of the engine. Then I looked back at the Italian above us, still trying to take aim. We had only a few seconds now to pull out of our dive, and when we did we would come into his sights and be shot to tatters.

  It began as a slight flexing of his lower wings, starting at the wingtips and spreading inward to the roots. He tried to pull back the stick, but it was too late: with a great shudder the upper wing of the Nieuport shook itself,
then broke away to fly astern, turning over and over in the air like a giant sycamore seed. He hurtled past us out of control and breaking up as Toth lugged at the column to pull us out of our own plunge, only metres above the waters of the lake. I thought that our own airframe was going to break up under the strain, but somehow we managed to level out, then bank away to port to come back to the place where we had parted company with our pursuer. It was a flower-sprinkled Alpine meadow between two pine woods at the head of the lake. Toth brought us in to land on the lush grass while a herd of cows rushed away in panic, bells clunking wildly. We jumped out as the Lloyd came to a halt and set out to look for the wreck as soldiers camped in the next field came running over to join us.

  I had never expected that such a flimsy thing as an aeroplane could embed itself so deeply in the ground. Only the shattered wings and part of the tailplane had been left on the surface. As for the pilot, there was no sign of him. We entered the cool, dark silent glade of pine trees, the carpet of needles deadening our footsteps. Toth stopped and seized my arm. “Vide,” he said, and pointed. It was a windless morning, but one of the pine trees was shuddering slightly. We looked up. Blood was dripping slowly through the branches from thirty metres above. In the end we had to borrow a two-handed saw from a pioneer battalion camped near by, and cut down the tree before we could remove him. His identity disc pro­claimed him as Sergente-Pilota Antonio Patinelli, aged twenty-three, from Ferrara. We stayed at Althammer for his funeral and saw that everything was fittingly done: guard of honour, flag over the coffin and the Italian anthem played by special permission of the local corps commander. It was the least we could do for an enemy whose tenacity had been greater than the structural strength of his machine. We felt sure that he and his com­rades would have done the same for us, had the positions been reversed.

  When my nerves had calmed down sufficiently from the morning’s excitements I took Toth aside for a confessional session in a mixture of Latin and Service German. I found that he spoke Latin well, though with a marked Magyar accent and often having to grope for a while (as I did also) to find words to describe things unknown to the ancients. I was keen to question him because that morning’s reckless adventure had set my mind working about events a few days earlier over Palmanova.

  “Di mihi, O Toth,” I said, “how on earth did you get us out of that spin?” I was extremely curious to know how he had done it. An English airman, Major Hawker, was reported to have pulled out of a spin in the summer of 1914, but the outbreak of the war had prevented us from asking him how he had done it. Now Toth had performed the same feat, and I suspected that it was not by sheer good luck. Toth considered for a while, then spoke.

  “Res facilis est,” he said, grinning that disturbing smile of his. “I slow down, then start to spin . . . so.” He held out his arms then dropped to one side suddenly. “Gemein Flieger—aviator vulgarus—try to bring his wing up, so. But his wing is already stalled, so it only makes worse. Nihil bonum est.” He shook his head. “But I allow the aeroplane to spin a few times, make the controls central, then work the rudder: gubernaculum dexter sinister dexter, so. Then no more spin.” He grinned broadly.

  “I see,” I said, “and did you discover this yourself?” “Gehorsamstmelde jawohl, Herr Leutnant. Inveniego ipse. Zugs- fuhrer Toth Magyarus est . . .” He tapped the side of his head. “He has good brain—cerebrum bonum habet, nicht wahr?”

  I considered this for a while, then called over a Hungarian sergeant who was working on our aeroplane. I was far from sure how much German Toth understood, since he spoke it so villainously, and I wanted there to be no ambiguity about what I said. I also admit that sixteen years after leaving school I had no great confidence in my own ability to com­pose impromptu Latin orations. The sergeant agreed to act as our inter­preter, so I was able to have my say in German.

  “Very good, Toth. It is my considered opinion, after having flown with you twice, and after what you have just told me, that you are a dan­gerous madman and perhaps more of a threat to the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe than to the enemy. You have just hazarded our lives and one of the King of Hungary’s aircraft by wantonly engaging an enemy single-seater in direct disobedience to my orders, while a few days before, on your own admission, you tried to kill the pair of us by deliberately putting us into a spin. I could have you court-martialled on both counts if I were so minded. However, it seems to me as a qualified pilot myself that you are an exceptionally talented flier, and that the system of my telling you how to fly the aeroplane is a remarkably poor one, regardless of whether I give the orders in Latin, German, Magyar or colloquial Hottentot. Therefore I have decided that from now on, as long as we fly together, I shall leave you in effective command of the aeroplane while we are in the air. I shall give you only general instructions beforehand as to where we are to go, and I shall leave it entirely to your own best judgement how we get there. I know that I could be court-martialled for suggesting this, since I am still technically in command of the aeroplane, but I feel that the present system cannot work on active service, and that we must therefore move with the times. However, I will impose two conditions. The first is that you should never breathe a word to anyone about this understanding of ours; the second is that if you feel an overwhelming urge to kill yourself coming upon you, you will be so kind as to tell me first so that I can get out at the next stop. If you really wish to die and leave that charming girl of yours alone in the world then I would suggest either placing a pistol to your head or asking to be posted back to the trenches. Both methods will be cheaper and will not involve me in making out official reports. Now, would you like these remarks of mine in Latin as well? Perhaps on vellum with my official seal attached?”

  He grinned, and nodded to signify that everything was perfectly clear as it was. So from that day onwards a historic compromise was struck. Aboard at least one of His Imperial Royal and Apostolic Majesty’s aero­planes, regardless of what the regulations might say, the man in the pilot’s seat would be the man in charge.

  We had to remain at Veldes for the rest of that day while minor repairs were carried out to the Lloyd. The airframe was badly out of joint after our headlong dive and the engine sounded like a chaff-cutter, but Flik 2’s mechanics assured us that they could patch it up sufficiently to get us back home. While we were there, that same afternoon, we received a personal telegram from General Boroevic. He congratulated the two of us in the warmest terms for having made possible the destruction of the Italian battery that had plagued our men for so long.

  We landed at Caprovizza early next morning. Hauptmann Kraliczek was waiting for us as we came to a stop and Toth switched off the engine. Our commanding officer was clearly not in a benign mood: in fact he even went so far as to put his foot in the stirrup in the fuselage side and hoist himself up to confront me still sitting in the cockpit. His pallid bespec­tacled face glowered at me as I removed my flying helmet. I saluted.

  “Good morning, Herr Kommandant. Up early I see. And in what may I perhaps be of service to you?”

  “Prohaska, I want to know the meaning of this.”

  I smiled. “Of what, Herr Kommandant?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about: your damned dis­obedience to orders.”

  “Begging your pardon, to what disobedience can you possibly be referring, Herr Kommandant? Zugsfuhrer Toth and I carried out our assignments to the letter . . .”

  “Damn and blast you both, I could have you court-matrialled and shot for cowardice! Your orders were to proceed to the scene of action over the enemy side of the lines and to return by the same route, not skulk in safety behind our lines. You are guilty of avoiding contact with the enemy, that’s the truth of it.”

  I breathed deeply and tried to count up to ten: the temptation to use violence against a brother-officer was overwhelming.

  “Herr Kommandant, I choose to ignore your accusations of cow­ardice: so far as I understand the term, skulking is something that one does in Kanzlei huts,
not in the air. As to your orders for us to proceed to Monte Nero to the west of the lines, they were not clearly expressed and I chose to interpret them as seemed most sensible at the time. If you care to examine this map you will see that the most direct route from here to the operational area keeps us well to the east of the trench lines almost all the way. I could see no point whatever in risking our mission by flying unarmed over Italian territory.” He fairly exploded at this, spluttering with all the fury of a damp firework.

  “Not see any sense in it? Who are you to question orders, you degener­ate! The whole point of a long-range reconnaissance unit is to fly as many kilometres as possible over enemy territory. You would have added at least a hundred kilometres to our total for August!”

  “I see. Might I obediently enquire, then, whether we could bring for­ward some kilometres on account from September? Or perhaps borrow some unused kilometres from another unit if it helps balance the books? I know for a fact that Flik 4 at Wippach have been grounded for most of July. Surely they would help us out if we asked nicely . . .”

  “Be quiet! And there’s the matter of your shooting down an Italian aeroplane, clean contrary to your orders not to engage the enemy . . .”

  “. . . By your leave, Herr Kommandant, the enemy engaged us, not we him. And incidentally, we didn’t shoot him down: he tried to follow us into a dive and broke up in mid-air.”

  This information seemed merely to enrage Kraliczek even further— so far as I could gather on the grounds that destroying enemy aircraft without the aid of bullets would make nonsense of his monthly returns for expenditure of ammunition. At last he recovered himself sufficiently to speak.

  “Herr Linienschiffsleutnant, you are henceforth sentenced by me as your commanding officer to a week’s confinement to this airfield. As to your pilot here—five days’ solitary arrest on bread and water! Abtreten sofort.”