The Two-Headed Eagle поп-3

by Джон Биггинс

  Somehow we managed to climb away and evade the flak shells coming up at us from the batteries below. I can only assume that they failed to hit us because they were expecting attack only from the landward side and we took them by surprise. At any rate, after five minutes we were clear of it all, flying over the mainland. The fighter aircraft from Alberone flying field would be up after us by now, but we had a head-start on them and, relieved of its bombs, our Brandenburger was not much slower than a Nieuport in level flight. We would head across country to the River Brenta and then follow it northward to where it entered the Alpine foothills at Bassano. After that it would be a simple matter to fly along the mountain valleys and cross the front line to reach Pergine.

  The Camposampiero lay below us now as we gained height, a monotonous expanse of drained marshland east of the Brenta. It should have taken us about half an hour to reach the river and turn north—had our engine not suddenly begun to splutter and misfire. Before long we were losing altitude as the revs fell away. I suspected trouble with the ignition magnetoes, to judge by the noise: at any rate, all the cylinders seemed to be firing, but fitfully, so that the engine was shaking and jolting like a cement mixer. No, there was nothing for it but to land and try to clear the trouble ourselves, then get airborne again before we were noticed. I looked down. At least the fields hereabouts looked level—mostly green pasture—and there were few villages. I shook Toth’s shoulder and pointed down. He nodded, and a couple of minutes later we were bumping down on to as remote a stretch of meadow as I had been able to find.

  It sounds hazardous I know, touching down on a field in enemy terri­tory; but flying in those days was utterly remote from anything practised nowadays, and emergency landings were an occurrence so normal as to be scarcely worth remarking upon. With her large-wheeled, generously sprung undercarriage and a landing-run not much longer than a football pitch, our Brandenburger had little to fear from a forced landing—in fact could probably have landed across a freshly ploughed field without coming to any harm. In any case, the field on which we touched down was a smooth expanse of grass preferable in every respect to the rut­ted, stone-littered stretch of ex-ploughland so grandly described as k.u.k. Fliegerfeld Caprovizza. As we slowed down and the tail-skid bit the grass I pointed Toth towards a clump of poplars. The Brandenburger would be horribly conspicuous on the ground with its pale yellow wings and tailplane, so I was concerned to get us into the shadow of the trees as quickly as possible. Our pursuers would not be far behind us, but I hoped that they would be too intent on scanning the sky ahead to look down­wards. I have always found that people tend to miss things they do not expect to see.

  This turned out to have been a very bad decision on my part. We discovered as much when our slow, wobbling progress across the field suddenly became glutinous, then stopped altogether even though the pro­peller was still spinning as before. I clambered over the cockpit edge and sprang to the ground to see what was the matter—and promptly sank up to my ankles in the soft cattle-trodden mud. We had taxied into a patch of grass-covered marsh and were now embedded up to our wheel hubs. Rev the engine as he might, Toth could not dislodge us, stuck now like some immense bluebottle buzzing frantically on a fly-paper. I squelched around to the tail and shoved my shoulder under the tail-skid to lift it, hoping to lessen the drag. But the wheels only sank further into the soft, black ground. We both cut brushwood to lay beneath the wheels, and tried levering under the axle with a fallen branch, but it was no use. We were trapped, stuck fast in a field deep in enemy territory with no hope whatever of getting free unless we could find horses or a motor lorry to drag us out. Toth turned off the engine as I leant against the fuselage, wiping my brow and panting from exertion.

  It was only then that I saw them. They must have been standing there for some minutes watching us as we strained and heaved. They stood silent, in a row, gazing at us with black eyes and tanned, dark-whiskery faces: straw-hatted and dressed in ragged shirts and trousers, each of them carrying a bill-hook or a fork. We were captives. No doubt these vil­lagers had come to prevent our escape while others had gone to fetch the carabinieri. I wondered suddenly what one did to pass the time in a prisoner-of-war camp. Then a sudden mad urge took hold of me. Why not? We had nothing to lose, and these labourers were certainly poor and probably illiterate as well, living in a remote area and incapable of reading even newspaper headlines, let alone aircraft-recognition handbooks. It was certainly worth a try. Why had I sweated through four years of Italian classes at the Marine Academy if not for such moments as this? I decided to address myself to a sturdy middle-aged man who looked as if he might be some sort of foreman or village elder.

  “Buon giorno,” I bade him, smiling. “As you see, we have been forced to land here by engine trouble. I wonder, might you have a telephone near by, or failing that, might you be able to help us extract our aeroplane from the mud so that we can take off and fly on our way?”

  “Who are you, strangers, and where are you from?”

  “Two airmen of the Corpo Aereo flying from our base at Venice to the airfield at Bassano. But tell me,” I asked, “do you have a carabiniere or a priest in your village?” I was worried that even if there was no police­man hereabouts there might at least be a priest who would be well enough informed about the world to recognise an Austrian aeroplane when he saw one.

  “There is no priest in our village, and no carabinieri nearer than the barracks in Castelfranco.”

  “Good—I mean, what a pity. Can you then perhaps help us to get free?”

  The man turned to a small boy standing near by, gaping at us. “Mauro, run to the house of Ronchelli and tell him to bring his plough-oxen; also a coil of rope.”

  The barefooted child scampered away. Really, this was all too easy. I supposed that it was quite possible that these ignorant rustics had never seen an aeroplane before, at least on the ground.

  I began to feel myself a rotter for having deceived them so smoothly.

  “My friends,” I said, “we will see that you are well rewarded for your trouble when we reach our airfield. What is the name of this village?”

  “Busovecchio di Camposampiero, if it’s any business of yours,” said the foreman. “But tell me one thing that puzzles me: what’s the meaning of those black crosses on your aeroplane?”

  I swallowed hard—then a brilliant idea struck me.

  “They are to signify that the aircraft was blessed by the Pope, at a ceremony in Rome earlier this year. He anointed it with holy oil and the crosses were painted on to mark the places where he applied it. As you will see, they represent the five wounds of Our Lord.”

  He grunted and craned his neck to look at the markings on the upper wing. “I see. In that case then His Holiness must have used a step-ladder to get up there.” He sounded dubious, but I supposed that this was just his way, since he seemed a surly man at the best of times.

  By now the small boy had reappeared, leading two wheezing, steam­ing, cream-coloured oxen and with a coil of plaited straw rope slung about his shoulder. We attached this to the undercarriage axle, and after five minutes or so of straining and lugging we had the aeroplane free, standing once more upon firm ground. While this was going on we had stopped to look up into the sky as a flight of aeroplanes passed by, head­ing north at speed. There seemed to be four Nieuports and a two-seater of some kind, but they had evidently not seen us. So much the better, I thought; we can get airborne and proceed to Pergine at a discreet distance behind them.

  The farm labourers watched as Toth and I removed the aluminium panels around the engine so that we could get at the two magnetoes on the front of the cylinder block. I was thankful now that my first subma­rine command, U8, had been powered by Austro-Daimler petrol engines and that my Chief Engineer had given me a thorough course of instruc­tion in their workings. It would be me who would have to get the engine running again. Toth was a superb flier, but with him it was as entirely a matter of instinct as with an eagle. Otherwise he was a
bout as completely unmechanical as it is possible to be. If he had not been, then I think he would not have been such a formidable pilot, since only a man totally in­different to machinery could have maltreated airframes and engines with such ruthless disregard.

  Like most Porsche-designed inline engines the Austro-Daimler had two spark plugs in each cylinder, each row run off its own magneto and coil. This was to guard against spark failure and should have been foolproof since it was most unlikely that both magnetoes would fail at once. But as I removed the bakelite magneto cover I saw that, if both were still working, both were in an equally decrepit state. The contact- breaker electrodes were badly eroded. They must have been made from some wretched wartime alloy and the constant sparking was wearing them away. Standing orders were to change each magneto every fifty flying hours, so that one would always be near-new; but over the past month Feldwebel Prokesch had been forced to ignore this instruction owing to the lack of spares from the Fliegeretappenpark. All that I could do now was dismantle the two contact breakers and clean them up as best I could with a file, then put the whole thing back together again and hope for the best.

  It was not until after midday that we finally put the cowling panels back in place and prepared to leave. While I worked on the magnetoes I had been obliged to field a barrage of embarrassing questions from the villagers, who had now been joined by a crowd of women and children. “Your man doesn’t say much does he? Is he a deaf-mute?”

  “No, he’s a little quiet it is true, but he’s an excellent pilot. It’s just that he’s a Sardinian.”

  “Sardinian? Looks more like an ape to me. Get him to say something in Sardinian then.” I turned desperately to Toth and whispered:

  “Toth, di aliquid, per misericordiam Dei.” He obliged with a few sentences of Magyar.

  “Couldn’t understand a word of it. That’s the trouble with the Sards: all pig-ignorant Mauritanos. Worse even than Sicilians.”

  At last we were ready. I swung the propeller and at the second attempt, to my intense relief, the engine sprang into life, firing with less than per­fect smoothness but certainly well enough to get us airborne and over the mountains to Pergine. It warmed up, straining the undercarriage against the logs which we had stuck beneath the wheels as chocks, while I climbed into the cockpit behind Toth. The village elder climbed up behind me and presented me with a large rush basket covered with a cloth. It contained some loaves, a cheese, a large black-smoked country sausage and a straw- wrapped bottle of brown local wine. I turned to thank him, ashamed to have practised such a suave deception upon these simple people. A sud­den horrible thought had struck me. Suppose that word got around later and they were hauled in by the authorities on a charge of aiding and com­forting the enemy? From what I knew of the Italian military I doubted whether a plea of terminal ignorance would save them from an army penal battalion.

  “Some provisions for your journey,” shouted the head-man above the noise of the engine. “Remember to send us a postcard when you get back to Austria.”

  I was speechless for a few moments.

  “Austria . . . but . . . we are Italians.”

  “Don’t give me that horse-shit, Austriaco. We may be poor here but we aren’t stupid.”

  “But . . . why did you help us then?”

  “We’re anarcho-syndicalists in this village. Anyone who’s against the landlords and the carabinieri is on our side. If we lived in Austria we’d help Italian fliers just the same. That’s why we don’t have a priest here: we burnt the bugger out ten years ago and since then no black-frock has dared show his nose in these parts. We’ll do the landlords next, come the revolution. Here, here’s some reading-matter for your flight.” He thrust a wad of papers into my hand: pamphlets with titles like “The Death of Property” by Proudhon and Prince Kropotkin’s “Uselessness of Laws.” There were also some copies of the newspaper La Rivolta. I glanced at the back page of one of them and saw an article entitled “Chemistry in the Home, No. 35: The Properties of Nitro-Glycerine.” “Anyway,” he said, “be on your way now before the carabinieri arrive and be thankful you landed among us and not elsewhere.”

  I shook hands with him and thanked him as he stepped down to the ground and Toth revved up the engine. As we began to trundle across the field they all waved and gave us clenched-fist salutes. “Arrivederci!” the foreman shouted, “and remember, mankind will never be happy until we’ve hanged the last priest with the guts of the last king. When you get home tell your old Emperor from us that when we’ve finished with King Vittorio the Short-Arsed we’re coming for him next!”

  So we climbed away from that field as the cawing rooks flapped around the poplars below us and the villagers stood waving. In the years since, I have never heard anarchists mentioned except as wolves in the guise of men: bomb tossers, assassins and enemies of the human race. Yet these were the only anarchists that I ever met in person, and I must say that they treated us with every kindness.

  We landed at k.u.k. Fliegerfeld Pergine at about three that afternoon af­ter an uneventful flight, following the River Brenta as far as Bassano del Grappa then climbing over the hills and the front line until we saw the twin lakes of Caldonazzo gleaming in the distance. The Pergine fly­ing field, home of Fliegerkompagnie 7, was as rudimentary as all other airfields on the Italian Front in those days: a hummocky grass field sur­rounded by a makeshift jumble of wooden huts and canvas tent-hangars. What made it different from Caprovizza was the alarming approach along the side of a vineyard-clad mountain with a rather vulgar nineteenth- century mock-Renaissance castle half-way up. Down-draughts and ther­mals from the mountainside made us skip and bounce like a rubber ball as Toth brought us in to land.

  Nor were matters at all helped by the fact that after an hour or so of relatively smooth running, the engine was beginning to misfire once more. One thing was certain: that before we flew another kilometre on our circuitous journey back to Caprovizza we would have to get the magnetoes replaced. Flying over the Alps in October would be a risky enough enterprise without having a faltering engine to contend with. As Toth taxied up to the aircraft parking area in front of the hangars (I was walking alongside to guide him since he could not see direct ahead), I had decided that I would report to the commanding officer of Flik 7, then place the aeroplane in the hands of their workshop while I telephoned Caprovizza to tell them that our mission had been successful, but that we would be getting home late.

  Toth switched off the engine and climbed stiffly down from the cock­pit, red-eyed and grimy-faced after four hours in the air and three hours or so standing by in a muddy field while I filed away at the contact break­ers. He stretched his arms and yawned while I strode up the steps of the Kanzlei hut. We had fired the agreed yellow and white flares as we came in to land, but no one had watched our arrival. In fact there was nobody to be seen. Had there been an outbreak of cholera, I wondered? Had the Allies chosen the place to try out a death ray, or some devastating new poison gas that made its victims evaporate into thin air? I opened the door and entered the outer office. Still no one to be seen. I peered into the inner office just as a young Oberleutnant with an unbuttoned tunic and dangling braces caught sight of me. He made no effort to rise from his desk.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  I saluted smartly. “Ottokar Ritter von Prohaska, Linienshiffsleutnant of the Imperial and Royal Navy, currently attached to k.u.k. Fliegertruppe Flik 19F at Fliegerfeld Caprovizza.” He stared at me, uncomprehending. I continued. “I have the honour to report that my pilot Zugsfuhrer Toth and I have just landed after successful completion of a bombing mission against the lagoon bridge at Venice.”

  He went on staring at me, as completely baffled as if I had just an­nounced my arrival from Valparaiso by way of Winnipeg.

  “What are you doing here then?” I began to wonder whether I was dealing with a mental case, perhaps posted here as a convalescent after acute shell-shock. So I tried to be patient.