The Iron Shadow

by Stefano Siggia

He followed the Major as a commotion began near the landing strip. Pilots and ground crew men began running towards it, joining the others. A large group was already there. Shouts of joy echoed throughout the aerodrome. It was as if they had just won the war. The bell from the watch tower that usually signalled the arrival of an airplane kept ringing loudly, without signs of wanting to slow down. Men ran out of tents to join the confusion and excitement as curiosity took hold of the entire Squadron.

  He looked up to the sky to see the incoming airplane but there was nothing, not a single trace of a flying machine in the air.

  He could not make out what was happening when he reached the cluttering of men that had formed a wall on the landing strip. They were all looking straight ahead, shouting and laughing. Some had incredulous expressions on their faces.

  Major Webb-Bowen made his way through crowd and was lost in the middle of the chaos.

  The bell never stopped ringing.

  He circumvented the group until there was enough space for him to see what was going on. What he saw was quite a surprise.

  At the end of the landing strip, coming towards the aerodrome, was a donkey pulling a cart. An old man held the reigns seated on the front.

  Two more men sat on the back.

  They seemed shaken but in good shape. One seemed shorter and had blonde hair while the other with brown hair waved at the crowd. Dirt covered their faces and their clothes, and the blonde one clenched his arm as if he was hurt. The brown haired young man had his goggles on his forehead as he held his headpiece in his hand. The other held a wooden box in between his legs, his goggles and head piece at his feet on the cart. Both had kept on their fur coats.

  “Melbourne!”

  “Douglas!”

  Shouts of joy and the cheering increased as the cart drew nearer. The brown-haired boy, which he guessed was Lieutenant Melbourne Summers, kept waving at the crowd. A few of the men ran towards the cart to join their fellow pilots. Major Webb-Bowen stood at the front of the group smiling and cheering as well.

  He then turned to no one in particular and shouted, “Call the laboratory men!”

  As the cart reached the middle of the landing strip the group huddled around it. Pats on the back were exchanged.

  “That is quite a nice ride Melbourne! Don’t tell me you traded it for your airplane!” one of the Squadron members shouted.

  Melbourne stood up on the cart. “I present to you Paul, my fair steed for the rest of my stay here in the Squadron,” he said.

  “Are you going to go on a reconnaissance mission in enemy territory with it?” another one asked.

  “It certainly solves the problem of those damn Archies,” he said.

  “Coming through! Coming through!”

  Two men made way through the crowd and reached the cart. Douglas handed them the wooden box containing the glass plates with the photographs he had taken. Then men hurried away to their laboratory.

  The cheers and the jokes died down and were quickly substituted by curiosity. Melbourne recounted his adventures to the stupefied men.

  “We knew we could never reach the aerodrome with a leaking nacelle. Our only chance was to land somewhere close by and make our way back somehow, so we crash landed near a farm and this kind bloke helped us come back to you lot of scoundrels. Of course, for a little money.” Melbourne winked.

  At the sound of word ‘money’ his fellow pilots backed away from the cart and began ignoring him completely. The silence was quickly broken as one of the crew men began laughing heartily. They all followed in.

  Melbourne and Douglas were helped out of the cart as an officer paid the due money to the man who had brought them back. Douglas still clenched his arm, visibly in pain, and was escorted to the infirmary by one of his fellow observers.

  “Lieutenant Summers,” called out Major Webb-Bowen as he approached Melbourne.

  Melbourne saluted him.

  “I am glad to see you are back, Lieutenant,” he said with a genuine smile.

  “Thank you, Sir. So am I,” said Melbourne.

  “You do know that airplanes do not grow on trees, Lieutenant?”

  Melbourne smiled. “The engine is still salvageable. But I’m afraid the airplane is napoo, Sir.”

  “Nothing new under the sun there. Did you manage to take the photographs?”

  “We did. And the flash signals were correct. The Germans have artillery hidden within the village, although we couldn’t tell where the men had moved.”

  “Excellent work, Lieutenant. The photographs shall determine the rest of the information we need. For now, take a rest. Get cleaned up and report back to me as soon as you are ready. There is someone here for you.”

  *

  The sun had already set by the time Melbourne bathed in the icy cold waters of the canal. The bath lasted only a minute, just enough to rub off all the dirt from the day and the whale grease from his face. A little while longer and he felt that he would freeze into a statue of ice.

  He dried up and changed into a fresh set of clothes. He was exhausted but the cold water had given him a small jolt of energy he thought he didn’t have.

  It had been a long day. A very long day.

  He should have been happy to be alive, despite all that had happened. He had become the talk of No. 2 Squadron, again. His life had been granted an extension that he knew may not last until the next mission. Not many would have come back from that sort of adventure.

  He gathered his old clothes and headed back to his tent to drop them off before meeting the Major when one of the men from the photographic laboratory ran up to him.

  “Melbourne! We need you at the laboratory, now!” He was short of breath.

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “The photographic plates… they’re broken.”

  III

  The night had fallen on the Squadron’s aerodrome. Torches had begun to be lit around the camp by soldiers, their warm, dancing flames casting long shadows on the ground and on the old barn where the machine and wood shops were kept. The vast ocean of tents seemed to Melbourne like a sea of resting fireflies; the lights of flickering candles and steady lanterns was a beautiful sight at night.

  Douglas turned around and waited for Melbourne to catch up with him.

  “How is your arm doing?” Melbourne pointed at the bandaging job done by the camp’s nurses.

  “Could be better. Nothing broken, at least. You realise that’s the seventh time you almost killed me.”

  “Sixth.” Melbourne scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  They quickened their pace up the muddied dirt road.

  “I’m told that a few of the plates were broken.” Douglas shook his head. “We should have turned back.”

  “We needed the shots from the other angle. How do you think we were supposed to find those Archies?”

  “There are other ways apart from being blown to bits. So, what do they want to ask us?”

  “I don’t know, but I am truly excited to find out.”

  The two continued up the road until before them loomed the large and luminous tent that belonged to the Squadron’s photographic laboratory. Housing thirty or so photographers and analysts, it was the biggest tent in the entire aerodrome. The men worked around the clock, at all hours of the day, to deliver the clearest prints that would determine the course of war. A single frame could hold the destiny of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

  Melbourne opened the tent’s flap and entered the laboratory. The strong smell of chemicals hit him instantly as his nose began to tickle. He placed a hand over it and proceeded inside with Douglas.

  Around them in the pervasive red light, men were developing, washing, and hanging up prints of all kinds of terrains on the cloth walls of the tent. Others were very carefully mixing chemicals in jars, away from anyone who might knock over their delicate work. A few other men hunched over tables were filing, indexing, and numbering the plates and photographs with little slips of papers, writing the d
ate and location of where each was taken. Some were trimming and cutting the photographs, throwing away what was not needed and keeping certain details that had to be studied later on. Each person had their own job to do in the chain of the laboratory.

  Melbourne and Douglas made their way through the well-ordered chaos, past metres of walls covered in photographs of all sizes and shades of grey. They seemed like mosaics from a distance. Cameras of different kinds loaded with fresh magazines and plates were to be found on tables nearby, ready for action whenever it was required of them. The scientists and photographers greeted the two men as they walked by.

  They passed a man washing some large prints, while another next to him placed them on a rack to dry in alcohol. The smell of the fumes was almost sickening. Melbourne remembered when one the men began dancing and laughing hysterically a while ago, the chemical fumes having given him a high. They sure know how to have fun here.

  “Ah, gentlemen, here you are,” Major Webb-Bowen said.

  “Ready to enter the scorpion nest?” Melbourne asked Douglas under his breath.

  The scorpion nest, as Melbourne liked calling it, was made up of a small band of officers whose shouts and general unhappiness with just about anything that surrounded them made up Melbourne’s daily diet of annoyance. Together with a few laboratory technicians, they were huddled around a table at the far end of the tent, in a quieter corner whose seeming silence was only broken by the sound of a printing machine clattering off every once and while. It wasn’t long before they began murmuring and sighing loudly at the sight of Melbourne and Douglas.

  “Lieutenant Summers,” one of the officers said. Melbourne already hated the way he pronounced his name. “Are you ever going to be able to bring back one of our precious airplanes intact?” The cumbersome man spoke every word carefully, his tone slightly higher than normal.

  Melbourne looked around at the faces of the decrepit band who probably didn’t even know what a nacelle was. His eyes locked onto a new face, someone a little younger than the rest who definitely had seen worse days judging by the scar that ran down from his cheek to his neck. He turned back towards the cumbersome officer. “Well sir, you see, flying is not the problem. It’s landing where the obstacles begin.”

  Douglas tried to suppress a grin.

  “Does that seem humorous to you, Lieutenant? Well, this is the result.” The officer pointed at a series of shards lying on the table in front of him.

  Major Webb-Bowen cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to say that less than half of your plates made it through. There are just a few intact images, however.”

  Melbourne looked over at the table in front of them and saw the pictures. There were only three, one with a missing corner where a plate had cracked. Douglas shook his head.

  “What we have here is good but not enough,” said Edward, the Photographic Officer.

  “Good but not enough,” the most ancient looking of all the officers echoed in his high-pitched voice.

  “We can learn some things, but we need more information.” Webb-Bowen said. “Tell us what you saw,”

  Melbourne picked up one of the outsized pictures and began studying it. It was the first one, the one that Douglas had taken before the attack. The destruction of the village showed quite clearly in monochromatic colours. But nothing of strategic interest.

  He turned it over, found a stub of a pencil nearby, and began drawing a crude map.

  “What these photographs don’t show is the situation behind the village. Just outside of it we found three sets of artillery batteries, each consisting of about three guns.” He drew three boxes with three cannons each facing towards the village. “There were blast marks on the grass just below them. I’ve seen similar ones while flying over Frelinghien. From my guess is that they were most likely 21cm or 24cm long cannons, or a similar heavy gun.”

  “That would confirm our readings of the flash reports, sir,” one of the officers said.

  “What of the Archie?” Webb-Bowen asked.

  Douglas took the pencil from Melbourne and drew a thick dot on the map. “Just about here.”

  “But that is not all,” Melbourne said. “I noticed another gun here.” He picked the pencil up and heard a swoosh coming from his right. He looked over and saw that the scarred man had lit a match, ready to light the pipe that was already in his mouth. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sir, lest you want to blow this tent over enemy lines.”

  The scarred officer removed his pipe from his mouth and blew the flame out.

  Melbourne went back to his drawing and drew a dot with a square around it. “It was surrounded by what looked like a square encasement, and next to it was a German observation post, meaning — ”

  “A Minenwerfer,” one of the officers said.

  “Exactly,” Melbourne said, “which means one of the nearby buildings is most likely used to stockpile munitions.”

  “And troops?” Webb-Bowen asked.

  Melbourne flipped one of the photographs around.

  “Just here.” He pointed. “There were tracks moving north-west.”

  “They’re at our bloody doorstep!” the derelict officer said.

  A man from the laboratory stepped in and placed a new set of photographs on the table. “Fresh prints.”

  The first photograph of the pile – a half shot made from a broken plate – showed the German airplane just below the Farman, moving upwards for an attack. Whispers began amongst the officers.

  “What is that?” one of them said.

  “I’m so glad you caught that, Douglas,” Melbourne said. “That’s the airplane that attacked us. Single wing, single pilot, no observer. It was fast, versatile, and agile.”

  “A Fokker Eindecker.” It was the scarred officer.

  They all turned around to stare at him.

  The man walked around the table and took the photograph, holding it up to study it. “A brand-new design of the Germanics. Quite lethal. You were unlucky to have encountered one of these. They are still uncommon, but I warn you all, you should start getting used to seeing them. They will soon be filling our skies.”

  “You should also get word out, it can fire through its propeller,” Melbourne said. “I have no idea how it does it without shattering the thing. But it means one man can both fight and fly. That’s going to give us quite a headache.”

  “Indeed.” The scarred stranger placed the photograph back on the table and turned to Melbourne and Douglas. “I require further assistance from you.”

  “I believe we haven’t met yet,” Melbourne said. A new member of the scorpion nest, he thought. Just what he wanted.

  “I’m sorry, I believe I did not present myself earlier. Colonel Alan Dunn-Hamming, Foreign Section.”

  “Foreign Section of…” Melbourne said.

  “Intelligence.”

  Melbourne turned to Douglas whose expression showed as much confusion as his own.

  “Colonel, you’re free to use my office while I work here for a little while longer,” Webb-Bowen said.

  “I thank you, Major. This way, Lieutenant.” Dunn-Hamming pointed towards the exit.

  Melbourne and Douglas began walking away from the table when the Colonel stopped Douglas with a hand. “Just Lieutenant Summers.”

  IV

  “Please, take a seat, Lieutenant.”

  Melbourne sat in the wooden chair on the other side of the Major’s desk. He looked around at Webb-Bowen’s office as Colonel Dunn-Hamming lit an oil lamp on a small table nearby. A faint yellowish glow began illuminating the room. He had never been there before but it matched what he had imagined. Located in a room of the farm’s main house, it harboured stacks upon stacks of papers, plans, and maps of all sorts, ranging from towns to entire countries. Melbourne felt slightly cosy in the midst of the all the chaos.

  Colonel Dunn-Hamming took a seat in what was the Major’s chair. His gaze was unemotional, almost lifeless. What in the world did somebody from Intelligence want from him?
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  “Excuse me for the privacy of this room but I cannot risk having unwanted ears listening to our conversation. Spies seem to be everywhere these days. I believe they are here too, in this very camp.” Dunn-Hamming pulled a pipe from his jacket. “Lieutenant Melbourne Summers.”

  It didn’t seem to be a question, so Melbourne didn’t respond.

  Dunn-Hamming produced a small bag of tobacco from another pocket and began to fill the pipe. Next came a box of matches. The Colonel removed a match and lit it with a loud resounding swoosh. He drew until the pipe was smouldering and let out a few smoke rings.

  “Lieutenant Melbourne Summers,” he said once more. His voice was husky, as if his throat had suffered some sort of painful event in the past. “What do you know about spies?”

  Melbourne felt surprised by the question. “I have never encountered one. I wouldn’t know where they could be lurking in this camp — ”

  “Not in this camp. In general. What do you know about spies?”

  Melbourne pursed his lips. “Not much, I guess.”

  Dunn-Hamming studied Melbourne’s face intensely before letting out a puff of smoke. “You seem to have quite a reputation in this Squadron. Still alive after missions that would have killed most men. Destruction of nearly every airplane you have flown, including todays. Trouble listening to orders. Reckless.”

  “Well, recklessness can sometimes save your life up there.”

  “So I see. Yet, you seem to accomplish every mission that is asked of you. That is quite impressive given the circumstances you’re in and those infernal machines you fly on. Bravery for the Crown must always be praised.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “However, I have not come here to either judge or congratulate you on your work. I have come here with a specific set of questions.” He took a puff of his pipe and let out a black cloud of smoke. “Could you confirm that your brother is Captain Henry Arthur Summers?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the latest news you have had of him?”

  Why was Intelligence asking about Henry? “Well, the last I had heard from him, he was still in Canterbury working for the relief fund but is due to be shipped to the Front fairly soon. Verdun, I believe.”