The captain slid down the seat and reached out his hand. “M’dear fella ... delighted to hear it ... I’m related distantly to ‘Stonewall’ Jackson ... on m’mother’s side, y’know. Delighted to have you over here with us. Glad you’ve joined the Flying Corps.” He slid back to his corner and lit a fresh cigarette.
Boyd, fiddling with pipe and tobacco, asked him, “Are you by any chance on your way to Shoreham, sir?”
“Yes, by Jove. Got my ticket at Brooklands Flyin’ School in ’twelve. Damn nonsensical bore havin’ to go through the military flyin’ rigmarole, what? One would think that with a hundred hours and winnin’ a couple of air races, one would be considered competent, what?” The Lancer raised his eyebrows and looked in turn at Boyd and Holt. Then he scowled at the two Gunner subalterns and barked, “You two warts comin’ flyin’ too?”
They said they were.
Holt produced a cigar case and offered it around, but no one accepted. The captain took copies of The Taller, The Bystander and Punch from an attaché case and reclined in his corner, tugging his moustche, running his right index finger along the lines of print and moving his lips as he worked out all the words of more than two syllables. The two Gunners chattered sotto voce, moving their feet respectfully from time to time to avoid touching the cavalryman’s long, thin legs, stretched over their share of the floor. His boots were a marvel to behold, with a sheen and depth of polish that outshone anything Holt had ever seen; or imagined. Boyd returned to reading his Strand and trying to keep his cherry-wood pipe alight.
Holt sat back, watching the autumn countryside and wishing he knew how to get these guys to talk or play poker. From time to time he wondered about Boyd. What did you have to do to get a Military Cross? How old was he? He looked a boy, but there had been nothing boyish about the way he took charge and quelled an incipient row between himself and ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s distant cousin. He grinned at the thought of this exquisite officer being connected with the inelegance of the Civil War, however remotely; or any war, with its coarsenesses. He took a large leather-covered flask from his haversack and addressed the whole carriage: “Anyone care for a shot of bourbon?”
All four heads turned towards him.
The Gunners both said “No, thank you.” The captain said “Nyah, thenks. Prefer Scotch,” and dug out a flask of his own.
Boyd, diffidently, said “I’ve never tried it.”
Holt put the flask on the seat beside Boyd and took a collapsible aluminium tumbler from his bag. “Time you did, then, Nick. Help yourself.” He passed the tumbler over. Boyd poured some whiskey into it. Holt poured considerably more into the cup-top of his flask. “Here’s lookin’ at ya.” He raised his cup.
Boyd mumbled “Good luck,” and took a sip.
“Well, now,” said Holt, “so you have thirty minutes’ flying time, right?” He felt pleased that he had persuaded Boyd to take a drink with him, and thus drawn him into conversation.
“As a passenger.”
“Do you know what kind of aeroplanes they fly at Shoreham?”
“’Fraid not.”
Holt looked towards the far corner. “You know, Captain?”
The captain looked up. “Know what, m’ dear fella?”
“What they fly at Shoreham?”
“Farman Shorthorns and Longhorns ... the odd BE2.”
“I know what they are, but I haven’t flown them. What have you flown, sir?”
“Oh ... a Blériot monoplane and various Roe machines ... biplanes and triplanes.”
“I’ve heard about them of course, but never seen one.” Holt waited for someone to ask him about his experience; but evidently the British didn’t ask questions. He wondered whether it was because of a massive indifference or a reluctance to appear to be personal.
Presently Boyd, perhaps sensing his predicament, asked, “Have you flown a lot of different machines?”
“Various Wrights, and a couple of Farmans and Blériots we built from designs we had sent over ... and two or three I tried to design for myself, down at the ranch.”
“You must have a fair number of hours, then?”
Gratified, Holt announced. “225.”
There was no reaction from the captain, who was again immersed in spelling out bits of Punch to himself and occasionally chortling.
Boyd, probably warmed by the whiskey and not accustomed to drinking at mid-morning, and no doubt sensing the American’s loneliness and homesickness, but still not asking a direct personal question, said: “Bally good show so many of your chaps getting together in France and forming an American squadron ... l’Escadrille Americaine. Pity they didn’t come to us with the idea, instead of the Frogs: I hear they weren’t at all encouraging at first; but I should think the War Office would have been jolly keen.”
“Yeah, I hear they’re a bunch of real good guys. I know a couple of ’em. Bill Thaw, why, he had his own hydroplane while he was a sophomore at Yale ...”
“Sophomore?” Boyd wrinkled his brow.
“Don’t you use that word over here? Boy, I’m going to have to learn me a whole new vocabulary. A second-year student. Some of the other guys have quite a lot of air experience and some of them had none. But I guess they can all speak French ... most of ’em were studying or working in France before the war ... Vic Chapman – he’s a Harvard man – transferred from the Foreign Legion, for godsake ... some transferred from the American Ambulance Field Service ... that was formed by a doctor called Edmund Gros ... I guess several of the guys were French-American like him ... well, I can’t speak the lingo.” He laughed. “I’m going to have enough trouble learning British English, I guess.”
“Lonely for you, here.”
“I reckon not, once I shake down in a good outfit. There’s a special kind of bond between aviators ... haven’t you noticed?”
Boyd nodded. “Yes, I have. It seemed odd to me, when I used to visit the Two Squadron mess, that the chaps used to talk about the Hun pilots ... and observers ... with a kind of admiration ... sympathy ... as though they didn’t really want to shoot them down.”
“Maybe I’m not in favour of carrying it quite that far ... but I understand what you mean. I wouldn’t say I’m a real professional flyer: I’m a rancher, like my folks; but I sure have mixed with the ... the fraternity, and I guess the feeling is kind of international. Anyway, I’ve come a long journey and I’m sure as hell not going back until this war is finished: so I’ve got to like life in the Royal Flying Corps. Just so they don’t try to make me an instructor, is all I ask.”
An unexpected contribution came from the cavalryman, but he spoke without raising his eyes from his magazine. “You didn’t fly over here, by any chance?” Evidently the 225 hours and the assumption of an instructor’s calibre of skill had been too much for him.
But Holt was mellowed by the bourbon and by his instant liking for Boyd. He sighed and replied, “Captain, sir, if you go on that way, I really will have to invite you outside.” He paused, but the captain did not deign to look up. Perhaps, thought Holt, he’s scared to look me in the eye. He added, for good measure and in the Lancer’s own sarcastic tone: “If you wanted to cross the Herring Pond, I guess you’d walk, huh?”
This bold excursion into the fringes of blasphemy brought a frown and a deep flush to the captain, but he still didn’t look up. One of the Gunner subalterns uttered a choking laugh and rushed into the corridor. The other buried his face in his handkerchief and blew his nose several times, his shoulders shaking.
Boyd at first looked startled, went a trifle pink, then smiled and said, “If you live on a ranch, I suppose you’ve been riding all your life? Since before you could walk, perhaps? They say horsemen make the best pilots because they have the hands.”
The cavalryman’s frown turned to a scowl. Then, evidently on reflection, his face cleared and he began to look quite pleased with life.
*
At Brighton Station a harassed-looking RFC second lieutenant waited by the ticket
barrier with a clipboard in his hand. Several lieutenants and a captain or two in the uniform of diverse regiments and corps were already grouped near him when Holt, Boyd and the two Gunners arrived there behind the cavalry captain.
“Ah,” said the Lancer, “the welcoming wart, I presume.”
“Captain Sir Anthony Hannington, sir?”
“I am.”
Holt pulled a face at Boyd and whispered “Is he a lord?”
“No, only a baronet.”
“What’s that?”
“A kind of hereditary knight. A knight with knobs on, so to speak.”
“Gee ... a baronet, huh? Wait till I write my folks.”
Two Crossley tenders took them, seated on forms, to their messes, and a third followed with the luggage.
The officers’ mess was in a row of bungalows on the seafront: faintly redolent of draught beer, not excessively tidy. The sleeping quarters were in old railway coaches, partitioned into small bedrooms and warmed by oil stoves that exuded a cosy, if sickly, odour.
“This is rather different from my Regimental Depot,” Boyd told Holt. “It’s warmer and dryer than being in a dugout, but that’s all I can say for it.”
“We won’t be here long.”
“You won’t, with your 200 hours plus, but I’ve got to learn from scratch.”
“You’ll pick it up fast.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence; but I can’t even drive a motorcar.”
“If you want to learn to drive an automobile, we can rent one and I’ll teach you.”
“One thing at a time, old boy.”
The mess was a friendly and cheerful place at lunch, and afterwards a lorry took the new arrivals to the aerodrome. It was good to see the row of corrugated iron hangars and the assortment of aeroplanes standing on the tarmac outside them.
“Farman Longhorns,” Holt said, pointing to some primitive-looking aircraft with most of their frames visible, the wings covered with white canvas, the nacelles with blue. They got their name from the long booms projecting in front of the nacelle, with a rudder and elevators at the end. He showed Boyd some others, without these booms, and the rudder and elevators astern: “Farman Shorthorns which they tell me are called Flying Incinerators.” He laughed. “Any machine is an incinerator if you don’t treat it right.”
“Are you always so encouraging?” Boyd was beginning to feel that he should have stayed in the infantry.
The Adjutant was bluff and jovial, a middle-aged Sapper who had transferred to the RFC and proudly wore its tunic, with a pilot’s brevet he had acquired in 1913 with a total of ten hours’ flying. “You’ll find life here damned busy, but free from irksome demands: we have very few parades, no drill, and no compulsory church; in fact Sunday is a working day: we’ve got to take advantage of every possible chance to fly; at this time of year, we don’t get enough fine weather as it is, without ruling out Sundays.” He broke off to exclaim: “By Jove! There’s a brand new DH2 just taking off: it brought a message over for the CO from Farnborough. Made a beautiful landing. Come and watch.”
Boyd, Holt and the four others with them (the new arrivals were being shown in to the Adjutant six at a time) crowded to the two windows that overlooked the flying field.
The DH2’s engine sounded loudly in the office even with the windows shut. It seemed to accelerate with breathtaking speed and to glide into the air after an astonishingly short run. They watched it climb as straight as an arrow. It dwindled over the treetops and roofs on the far side of the aerodrome, its engine note still audible.
“Five hundred feet,” Captain Hannington remarked knowledgeably. “Not a bad rate of climb ...”
The sound of the DH2’s engine died. The Adjutant flung a window open and leaned out. Still no sign of life in the engine reached them.
Holt said “He’ll have to land straight ahead: I hope there are no houses or trees in his path ... My God! He’s turning back ...”
“Keep straight on, you damned fool,” Hannington muttered.
Boyd could not understand their anxiety but their faces showed great concern. The Adjutant looked equally worried; and frightened. He said “He’s hoping he’s got enough height to land back here.”
The aeroplane had completed half its turn to the left. It continued turning. The nose dropped suddenly. Three seconds later the port wing dropped and it spun sharply. One complete turn, and the nose went down even more and the spin accelerated. The aircraft was inside the aerodrome boundary by now. It hit the ground and by the time the thud of the impact reached the Adjutant’s office, smoke and flames were leaping up from the wreckage.
The Adjutant slammed his window shut and turned, ashen-faced, to gesture the others away from it. “Bad luck,” he said. “Poor chap. But let it be a lesson to you all never to turn back if you get an engine failure.”
Boyd caught Holt’s eye and Holt nodded grimly. “Damn right you don’t,” he said quietly.
*
Flying men already had a reputation for wildness and Boyd had looked forward to being in their company. He had supposed that the atmosphere at a flying school would be as friendly and cheerful as he had found it on his visits to No 2 Squadron many months ago.
He had experienced the bullying and rank-consciousness of many regular regiments and the misery inflicted on the most junior officers in their messes. He had sat dumbly at table while captains and majors discussed the failings of himself and other ‘warts’ as though they were not there. He had been told to shut up and wait until he was spoken to, when he had ventured some civil comment. It was an extension of the most primitive and brutal puerilities of school life, and he had been shocked and insulted to find adults treating others with such studied rudeness. But he had had to suffer it.
As a pupil pilot he found himself once again at the bottom of a hierarchy where position was judged by flying experience. Those with a few hours in the air did not deign to talk to the new arrivals and fawned on the instructors. Most of the latter treated their pupils with patronage and displayed little of the RFC conviviality among themselves. Few had served in France and many seemed prejudiced against anyone who had; Boyd found that his MC provoked more irritation than respect.
On the morning after their arrival, Boyd and his new companions went to the aerodrome full of expectation that they would be given an immediate introduction to piloting. Holt and Hannington had both been giving the sky long, searching looks and exchanging comments on cloud height and wind strength.
Riding in the back of a Crossley tender from the mess, Boyd had asked “What d’you make of it, Elliot?”
“Not much, I reckon. Cloud about 1,000 feet, wind maybe fifteen miles an hour. Not suitable for novice pilots in those old boxkites. What say, Cap’n Hannington?”
“I agree, m’dear fella. They may give ticketed pilots a chance, though, if they’ve got a serviceable BE2 in one of the hangars. I hear some of the test pilots at Farnborough have looped them, so they should be pretty stable, what?”
Arrived at the aerodrome, they joined a group of other pupils and instructors on the tarmac, where one of the latter was making ready to take off on a weather test. Air mechanics wheeled a blue-nacelled Shorthorn on to the grass and the pilot clambered into the front seat. One of the mechanics pulled the propeller through a couple of times, the pilot switched on, he swung again and the Renault eight-cylinder air-cooled engine burst into a loud chunter, a timid rather than an aggressive sound.
The Shorthorn ambled into wind and trundled across the grass with an air of uncertainty about both its ability to avoid falling apart and to get into the air. Presently it rose clumsily and began sedately to climb. The pilot took it up in a sweeping spiral, banking gently and taking care not to raise its nose enough to risk a stall and spin. He circled the aerodrome several times, climbing cautiously, then, at a-point at which Holt said quietly to Boyd, “He’s about 800 feet, I guess,” the watchers saw him change attitude and the aeroplane began to grow larger as it continued its
spiral path, but descending.
The pilot landed, taxied to the tarmac, cut the engine and climbed out, pushing his goggles up on to his forehead. He was frowning. A rash pupil asked “Are we flying this morning, sir?”
Without looking at him, the instructor barked “No,” and stalked off to the instructors’ room.
Boyd and the rest waited all day at the aerodrome. In the afternoon a few of the senior pupils were allowed up for half an hour or so. And that was the end of Boyd’s first day as a pupil pilot.
In the mess that evening, Boyd asked Holt: “Isn’t there anything one can do to get out of a spin?”
“Nothing I know, to correct either a spin or a stall.” Hannington took his cigarette holder out of his mouth and said “Matter of fact, chap has recovered from a spin ... saw it myself ... but he’s not sure how he did it.”
Full of interest, Holt asked “When was that, sir?”
“Military trials on Salisbury Plain, in ’twelve ... fella called Parke ... Wilfred Parke, in the RNAS ... a lieutenant, only, but a damn fine pilot.”
“And you saw it?” Holt was incredulous.
“With my own eyes, m’dear fella.”
“Gee, that’s amazing. Have you ever seen a loop?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ve seen a guy do it, in a Blériot. He was taught by Adolphe Pégoud.” He turned to Boyd and explained: “Pégoud was the first man ever to loop, you know.”
“They’ve done it at the air displays at Hendon,” said Hannington, “but I was never there when it happened.”
“I think looping is going to be very necessary for military aviators,” Holt suggested. “In a fight, it could baffle the other guy ... and maybe help to get in a position to shoot him down.”
“I’ve seen a few air fights in France,” Boyd said, “and I’ve heard the Two Squadron chaps talking about it. Apparently the best position is above and behind.”
Hannington agreed. “When I’ve watched air fightin’ in France it has always seemed to me that the Hun gets out of trouble by diving; but he starts off by trying to get as high as he can. I’ve watched our fellows, and they don’t seem to have the speed to do either very well: they rely on letting the enemy have a go at them, and being able to hit him when he comes close enough. It’s time we introduced some real cavalry thinkin’ into air battles.”
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