With an air of innocence, Boyd suggested: “Perhaps most of the German pilots are ex-Uhlans, sir.”
Hannington gave him a reflective stare, then said “Of course they are, young Boyd: everyone knows the best pilots come from the cavalry; even Huns. Hands, you know!”
For the next three days they went to the aerodrome every morning and the weather permitted several hours’ flying, but none of them was given a chance to go up. One of the older hands explained briefly, “Too few instructors and aeroplanes, too many pupils.” On the fourth afternoon after their arrival, both Hannington and Holt were taken up by the chief instructor. The rest watched enviously.
Neither of them was much enthused by the experience.
“Damn fella says I’ve got to do at least two hours’ dual in these damned things before he’ll consider letting me solo,” Hannington fumed.
“Same here,” said Holt. “I don’t think many of the instructors have as many hours as we have.” Hannington looked gratified by his tact, but made no comment.
Two days later Boyd contrived to bring himself to the attention of one of the instructors by the expedient of being almost under his feet all day. Eventually the instructor said “Come on, then – what’s your name? Boyd? – into the rear cockpit with you,” and he found himself wriggling through a maze of wires and struts, clumsy in his unaccustomed long leather coat, clambering over the boom, on to a wheel and into the pupil’s seat.
A week later, landing after his sixth dual flight and with three hours and ten minutes in his logbook, he was astonished when his instructor stopped taxiing some yards from the tarmac, turned and yelled at him: “Off you go. And remember not to dive steeply, or you’ll strain the engine and may tear the wings off. And don’t stall, either. Good luck,” and walked away.
His heart thumping like a runaway trip-hammer, Boyd took hold of the handle-bar type control lever, opened the throttle and was flung forward by the unexpected jerk as the aeroplane accelerated abruptly. He was airborne before he was ready for it, and in a mild panic he put the nose down, felt himself swoop towards some treetops, raised the nose again, remembered the warning about a stall, and then settled down sensibly.
When he had climbed to 1,000 feet he began gingerly to turn to the left ... straightened out ... tried a right turn ... straight and level again. His air-speed indicator showed fifty-four miles an hour, so he raised the nose a bit. The speed fell to thirty-eight and he pushed the nose down once more.
He returned to the aerodrome, circled it, and landed with a succession of kangaroo hops.
“Not bad,” his instructor said.
“You have aptitude,” Holt told him.
Hannington said “If you can learn not to land like a damn marsupial, young Boyd, you might make a fair to middlin’ pilot yet.”
When he had done six solos, Boyd was posted to Gosport for advanced training. Holt and Hannington had preceded him there by four days. During his two weeks at Shoreham one of the Gunner subalterns who had travelled down with him crashed and went to hospital with several broken bones; three other pupils were also injured and two killed.
Gosport was no more welcoming than Shoreham had been. The qualified pilots would not speak to the unqualified: a new squadron was being formed there and a clear dividing line was evident between its members and the mere pupils. Boyd was given quarters in an old fort and was pleased to find Holt in the adjacent room.
“What is the form here?” he asked.
“We have BE2s, Martinsydes and Caudrons. The ground instruction is pretty intensive: the usual stuff on aerodynamics, engines and rigging; and we have to send and read Morse pretty good.”
“Pretty well,” murmured Hannington, who was present.
“Like I said: pretty good.” But Holt had long ago ceased to be annoyed by Hannington’s ways. When they were alone, he confided to Boyd: “This guy Hannington is crazy: he’s impatient to finish the course, like I am; so he says he’s going to loop a BE2 right over the middle of the ’drome. I told him, they know he’s a competent flyer already; all he has to do is stay with the ground stuff and get his Morse up to scratch and he can be out of here in another couple of weeks.”
“I’d like to see him loop,” said Boyd.
“If he does it, they’ll throw him off the course for being irresponsible and deliberately breaking orders. I want to loop, too, but I’m going to wait till I get to France.”
“What are the BE and the Caudron and the Martinsyde like to fly?”
“I haven’t flown the Martinsyde yet, but the others are good. The Caudron glides steeply, though; and it taxis very fast, with the tail up: that’s to avoid dragging the tail booms along the ground and slowing it down.”
“What are the instructors like?”
Holt grinned. “Oh, they want to get us off their hands as quickly as they can: they’ll send you off solo after half an hour on each type, if possible. Even if it’s not strictly possible, too!”
Two days later, Boyd’s instructor took him up in a Caudron. The pupil’s cockpit was in front and a panel had to be unscrewed to let him enter; and was replaced when he was in position, which made Boyd wonder how he could scramble out if they crashed and caught fire. The Farman was the only RFC trainer with dual controls. In the Caudron, Boyd could only sit like a dummy.
This was his first tractor type of aeroplane and he was dazed and deafened by the noise and flames emitted by the engine. By the time they had been airborne ten minutes he was feeling nauseated by the stench of the castor-oil fumes flung back by the propeller wash. Hot oil spattered his face and goggles. He was not happy. After half an hour they landed and his instructor tapped him on the, shoulder. Turning, Boyd saw him getting out and waving him into the back seat. A mechanic unscrewed the panel, Boyd transferred, the instructor shouted “Remember she stalls at forty-two,” and left him on his own.
After a total of six weeks and two days since arriving at Shoreham, and with thirty-four hours’ flying-time to his credit, Boyd went from Gosport to the Central Flying School, Upavon, in the usual Crossley tender, with several of his fellows, to be examined on his knowledge of airmanship; and to undergo a Morse test.
The next day he was told that he had passed and was entitled to wear pilot’s wings. He felt more gratified even than when he had been awarded his MC.
After two weeks’ leave, during which Elliot Holt paid severals visits to his home in Wimbledon and he spent several evenings dining, dancing and going to the theatre in London with Holt and a couple of pretty girls, Boyd received orders to report to No 59 Squadron in France.
He and Holt travelled together and were joined at Dover by Hannington, who had driven there the previous night in his Rolls-Royce, which his chauffeur would take away. With him were a lively girl from the Gaiety chorus and a huge hamper from Fortnum and Mason.
Hannington wore a British warm, on which badges of rank were not sported. “Frightful bore,” he told the other two. “I’ve had to drop a pip now I’m seconded to the RFC.”
Gravely, Holt said, “Welcome to the warts’ club ... Tony.”
Three
Boyd, Holt and Hannington arrived with a dozen other pilots and observers at the St Omer railway station at seven o’clock in the morning of the second day after leaving Dover. The headquarters of the British Army and Royal Flying Corps were in the town and its streets were thronged. Soldiers and civilians jostled on the pavements. Military lorries ground along in low gear, horse-drawn GS wagons rumbled and swayed, staff cars sounded their klaxons imperiously, smartly turned out staff officers trotted well-groomed chargers through the traffic with an air of urgency. Dispatch riders on motorcycles frightened the horses and annoyed other drivers.
“Base-wallahs,” said Boyd with a rare flash of scorn, about two well-mounted red-tabbed captains.
“Damn fellas should be ridin’ bicycles, not horses,” Hannington observed. “Look at that dolt over there: got a seat like a sack of potatoes.”
With assumed
innocence, Holt said “Gee, I thought all these guys on horseback must be cavalry.”
For a moment Hannington glared at him; then, recognising the taunting glint in Holt’s eyes, said “A sergeant roughrider would give them hell. And we don’t say ‘horseback’: where else could a chap sit except on its bally back?”
“Some of the chaps I’ve seen around here are halfway up their horses’ necks; or sliding off their rumps.”
Hannington brayed and slapped his knee. “Jolly good description, old man.”
Three hours after reporting to Headquarters all the new arrivals were riding in the back of a Crossley tender yet again, bound for their various squadrons. It stopped three times to drop pilots and observers, both officers and sergeants, at aerodromes: a tented guardroom by a five-barred gate into a field; a row of canvas Bessenau hangars, tents, perhaps a wooden or corrugated iron hut or two, perhaps a farmhouse and barn, stables and cowshed.
Boyd, Holt, Hannington, a sergeant pilot and two observers, one a subaltern the other a sergeant, remained. Boyd asked the two observers where they were posted. “Fifty-nine Squadron,” the subaltern replied. “Both of us.”
Boyd and Holt exchanged a look of surprise. “I heard the 59th has DH2s,” Holt said.
“And BE2s,” the observer told him. “Also a few old Farman Shorthorns.”
“That’s the usual form, I’m afraid,” said Hannington. “Most of the squadrons are still a mixed bag.”
Boyd looked glum. “I hope they don’t start us off on Shorthorns.”
“Don’t worry,” Hannington assured him, “they won’t.” The others looked at him inquiringly but he smiled and kept silent.
Boyd had come to like him during the six weeks they had spent at Shoreham and Gosport, and suspected that most of his irascibility and prejudices were assumed. Hannington had served in France since before even Boyd had arrived there, and been wounded. He had spent the four months prior to their flying course in hospital and a temporary staff job at Aldershot. Boyd wondered what he had up his sleeve now to make him so sure that the new arrivals would not be condemned to a retrogressive stint on Shorthorns.
They arrived at their aerodrome in the early afternoon after stopping at an estaminet for omelettes, cheese and a red wine that put their teeth on edge.
As they approached the front line they passed Indian and Gurkha troops who huddled grey-faced with cold into their greatcoats and stamped their feet in misery. They saw tall men in Australian slouch hats, who, even when they were lounging with their hands in their pockets, exuded an incomparable air of self-confidence and defiance. They rattled past field hospitals, rows of tents with red crosses on the roofs; artillery parks, ammunition dumps, great piles of crated stores surrounded by barbed wire, transport pools where lorries, wagons and horses stood in long lines.
The roll of heavy guns reached them from their own artillery positions and they heard also the distant noise of bursting enemy shells over the trenches.
They saw wounded men jolting by in ambulances or the backs of lorries, they saw columns of weary troops, unshaven and mud-caked, trudging back from the line.
Boyd, after more than two months’ absence from the battlefield, felt the old sour tightness in his stomach as the familiar sights reminded him of what lay in store. But, he told himself, as an airman he would at least have his fate to some extent in his own hands; he would not just be a sitting duck for the enemy to shoot at. The sky was wide and deep and he would be moving in three dimensions. He would see his enemy instead of cowering in a shell hole or dug-out under bombardment or running across open ground with unseen machine-gunners and riflemen trying to kill him. Then he remembered the existence of anti-aircraft guns and wondered what it felt like to see and feel shells bursting all round your aircraft, that vulnerable structure of wood and fabric.
The squadron had put a proper barrier at the entrance to its aerodrome, a swinging counter-weighted red-and-white striped bar that replaced the original farm gate. A ridge tent beside it housed the guardroom. A sentry raised the bar to admit their tender and saluted smartly.
“Well,” said Holt, “this is it. At last.” He craned his head round through the open back of the lorry to look for aeroplanes: a BE2 was circling overhead. “I can’t see any Shorthorns.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Hannington, “they are saving them until your arrival, what?”
“Man, if they try to put me in one of those slow old boxkites I’ll head right back for the States. Or transfer to the Escadrille Americaine, or the Lafayette or whatever they’re calling it now.”
The tender stopped outside an archway that led into a courtyard on the far side of which was the usual single-storey farmhouse of the region. The other buildings around the yard had been cowsheds and barns. On either side of the farm building bell-tents, ridge tents and a few marquees were ranged. On the far side of the two large fields which flanked the farmhouse, between which a hedge had been demolished, stood four canvas hangars and several aeroplanes.
Hannington led the way with jaunty confidence towards the main building. He knocked on a door marked ‘Adjutant’, and they filed in.
A pale lieutenant in an RFC tunic greeted them, asked them to sign the arrival book, and took them into the squadron commander.
Major Dunnett, tall, heavy, swarthy and Roman-nosed, wore the same regimental badges as Hannington; and now Hannington’s jauntiness was explained. The major did not invite anyone to sit, and indeed there were only two chairs in the room; but did rumble, through his bushy moustache, “Glad to have you all on the squadron ... we’re in for a busy time ... talk to each of you individually later ... cut along now and report to your flight commanders ... Adjutant will tell you your flights ... come back and see me when you’ve met your flight commander, Anthony ... carry on.
The Adjutant told the sergeant pilot to report to A Flight, the two observers to C, and the other three to B. “Captain Chandler is your flight commander,” he told them. Then, looking at Hannington, “He’s Seventh Dragoons.”
“Ah,” drawled Hannington, “an authentic donkey-walloper, what? Well, I must say this is the smartest aerodrome I’ve ever seen: no mistakin’ the cavalry touch.”
The Adjutant grinned and said “I’m mere RFC, I’m afraid.”
“Never mind, old chap, we’re all in the same boat now.”
B Flight’s commander had his office in a partitioned corner of the barn. His three replacement pilots went first to the flight Orderly Room, where a corpulent RFC sergeant and his clerk leaped to attention.
They filed into Captain Chandler’s office and he got up from his desk to shake hands. Boyd recognised the signs of strain he had seen in most of his comrades in the infantry. Chandler was probably about twenty-eight years old and carried himself with the springy ease of a good athlete, but furrows marked his cheeks and the corners of his eyes. The eyes themselves glowed with the feverish brightness that betrayed nervous tension and lack of rest, and were pouched and red-rimmed from that day’s labours both mental and physical. He was of medium height, deep-chested and fair-haired, with a broken nose, a dented right cheekbone and scars on his forehead and cheeks: legacies of flying and riding accidents; two when he had been shot down, two when stunting before the war, and one when his engine had cut and he had suddenly had to learn to glide.
He asked them how many flying-hours they each had. Boyd felt embarrassed in the company of the other two, but Chandler betrayed no evidence of being impressed by Hannington’s total of well over a hundred or Holt’s of twice that amount.
“How many hours of Service flying?” he wanted to know. And when they told him “Twenty-six” and Boyd said “Thirty-four,” he kicked a table-leg and exclaimed “Great Jehosaphat! It’s scandalous. It’s tantamount to putting a recruit on a seaside donkey for half an hour and calling him a trained trooper. Damn it all, a pilot should have at least fifty hours before he’s inflicted on a long-suffering squadron or flight commander. Has any of you ever fired a machi
ne-gun? From an aeroplane, I mean.”
No, they had not. But they had fired a Lewis gun at a target on which an aeroplane was painted, mounted on a trolley and dragged along thirty yards of rail by a cable and motor-winch.
“As much use as a sick headache,” Chandler snorted. “How often did you do that?”
“Once,” they all said, and he shouted “Great, jumping Jehosaphat, it’s disgraceful,” and hacked his table once more.
Boyd felt alarmed. Would this choleric young captain pack them all off for further training? Worse, would he, despite Hannington’s assurance, restrict them to flying Shorthorns and BE2s? Was it drink that made him so irritable and impetuous? He had served with men who kept themselves going beyond the point of breakdown and exhaustion by the bottle; they had been dangerous enough to their comrades on the ground; in the air, where he did not yet know how to look after himself, a tipsy CO could be more lethal than the enemy.
Chandler walked round the office, kicking chairs and lockers, then stood facing them with his hands deep in his breeches’ pockets. “Right, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to fly until your backsides have to be soaked off your aeroplanes’ seats with boiling water: you’re going to be glued to them until you’re safe to let loose. This flight is the best flight in the squadron. In fact it is the best in the RFC. We are the offensive flight of 59 Squadron. We have the only DH2s on this squadron. Until recently, air operations have been more or less passive: the main task has been reconnaissance. All that is changing ... has started to change already ... we go looking for the enemy in the air. We seek combat. We are aggressive. Any of you flown the BE2? No? Very well, you’ll start now. We have two on the flight. I shall take each of you up immediately and you will then fly until it is too dark to see. Tomorrow you begin on the DH2. You will learn to handle it and you will shoot at targets on the ground. You will practise formation flying until you can do it with your eyes shut. And one week from today I intend that you shall be proficient for action.” His tone softened a trifle. “It is not your fault that you’ve been sent here immediately out of the egg; but in your present state you are a menace to the rest of us. And I cannot afford any liabilities on my flight. Every man must be able to look after himself. It’s going to be dark very soon, so there’s no time to go and unpack your flying-kit. We’ll stay down at 1,000 feet, so you won’t be too cold.” He uttered an unexpected barking laugh. “To keep it fair and even, I won’t wear mine either. Just my greatcoat, like the rest of you, and no helmet. Come on ... no time to waste.”
Dusk Patrol Page 4