Hannington frowned. “As far as I’m concerned, I shot down an enemy aeroplane.”
“I’d have been more pleased to see mine land behind our lines,” said Boyd. “It seemed ... just a bit too quick ... as though I’d taken some kind of unfair advantage.” He looked embarrassed.
“That was how I felt this afternoon,” Holt said. “The first time, this morning, I didn’t have time to think about it and when it was over I just felt glad he hadn’t got me. But the second time, I felt real bad: I had flown so close to the guy, I could see him as clearly as I can see you two. After we’d been dodging round each other for a few minutes I felt like I was getting to know him like an opponent on the football field. I began to think I ought to be tackling him, not killing him. That felt bad.” He quickly emptied his glass and refilled it.
On the way back to camp they lolled in the back seat and passed the remains of the Armagnac to each other, and sang
“Take the cylinder out of my kidneys,
The connecting rod out of my brain,
From the small of my back take the camshaft,
And assemble the engine again.”
And Boyd reflected that perhaps, until they learned how to emerge from stalls and spins, an airman’s life was just as likely to be ended by an accident as by a bullet or an Archie shell.
Before he went to bed, before the effects of all he had drunk wore off, he sat at the small table in his tent and wrote a letter.
It began “Dear Marjorie” and ended “Yours sincerely”, and in between he wrote: “I have been thinking about you and how much it would improve my rather spartan quarters if they were adorned by your photograph ... we are under canvas, but the mess, in a large farmhouse, is quite comfortable ... I’m looking forward to my next leave and some more shows ...” He resisted the temptation to tell her about his first victory; not because he felt remorse but because he had been brought up not to talk about himself or appear to brag.
Five
Day and night the ground shook from the recoil of heavy guns and the bursting of their shells. By day the grey light was pocked by red and yellow splashes from gun muzzles and shell explosions. By night the horizon quivered with white and violet flashes.
From the aerodrome the British observation balloons were visible day by day, sliding majestically up the sky on the ends of their thick cables; coming down with no pretence of dignity when sweating winch crews frantically brought them to earth if the enemy attacked.
Every day, on the far side of the German trenches, the enemy’s observation balloons hung ranged across the sky, also watching. It was not easy to work up a great feeling of hatred for those bloated objects, floating above the shattered countryside like City aldermen after a convivial luncheon. After all, they were only doing the same job as one’s own fellows. And they carried no arms, offered no aggression themselves. Also, the artillery bombardments they directed had nothing personal about them. They certainly could not reach the aerodrome. Boyd knew well enough how personal their attentions were to the men in the trenches, but he was leading another life now and shooting at defenceless targets did not appeal to him.
Until the day when his own old regiment was in his squadron’s sector of the line.
The German assault on Verdun, far to the south-east, was in full vigour. The French Service Aéronautique was ripening in experience and technical advance as rapidly as plants in a hothouse. The names and reputations of outstanding French airmen were ringing round the RFC, as admired as their own heroes’. The Germans were solidifying their positions, preparing for their next lunge forward. The British were making ready for the coming battle that would go down in history as the Battle of the Somme.
All this beastliness was going on in a pastoral countryside where the rolling grassland was reminiscent of the peaceful downs of Sussex, the shallow, reedy Somme river ran sluggishly through gentle valleys, dusty roads cut arrow-straight between avenues of tall poplar trees. When Boyd was in the air he could see both the peacefulness and the devastation; the ordinary life of farm and village continuing within sound of the guns but beyond their reach; the mud and blood, ruined buildings and rusty metal of the battlefield. He lived with a strange mental dichotomy, a part yet apart. Hours aloft in the thin air, breathing too little oxygen, both body and senses anaesthetised by the cold, he existed in a kind of trance when he had been flying for long at 10,000 or 12,000 feet. It distorted judgment, induced euphoria, could produce delusions of many sorts.
German pilots’ names were becoming well known to the RFC, and l’Aviation Militaire as well. Every flying man had heard of Oswald Boelcke, Max Immelmann and Manfred von Richthofen. Everyone paid them a grudging respect yet would have sacrificed all future leave for the opportunity to shoot any one of them down. If, in that era, psychiatric jargon had foisted the term ‘love-hate relationship’ on a semi-comprehending public, the mutual attitude of enemy airmen would have been a fair example of this piece of hackneyed mumbo-jumbo.
The 50th Rifles were in the front line and Boyd was flying the customary single-handed patrol of the period.
Chandler, more enlightened and innovative than most of his contemporaries and junior commanders, took every opportunity to send his pilots to patrol in pairs or threes. But his was not the last word, and Major Dunnett, emerging now and then from the part-stupor in which he appeared to pass his days, would give orders. Edicts which seemed, to Chandler, suitable only for what he stigmatised as ‘bow-and-arrow warfare’: the 1914 to 1915 period when British and Germans were concerned only with reconnaissance and artillery spotting, and intruded on each other by mere accident. Times when they took pot-shots at each other with revolver, rifle or shotgun and neither expected to hit nor be hit. Times when air fighting was more a formality, a pistols-for-two-at-dawn affair of personal honour, than a determinedly lethal engagement: a display of courage made with the comforting assurance that it was charade rather than reality.
Major Dunnett had emerged from hibernation one morning and taken to the air, albeit somewhat shakily, himself. To Chandler’s fury he had done so in one of his cherished DH2s. Major Lanoe Hawker, VC had recently brought a new squadron to France, No 24, equipped entirely with the DH2. Dunnett, in his obtuse fashion, supposed that anything that chap Hawker could do, so could he. It was just a question of being in the right place at the right time. When his own squadron was issued with some of the same aircraft, his sluggish ambition was stirred. Perhaps he recalled stirring deeds on the veldt, when as a newly-commissioned subaltern he had charged with lowered lance after the Boers; and skewered not a few.
He took off into scattered clouds and climbed until the fumes of alcohol cleared from his head. The widow lady had been more than customarily Bacchanalian the evening before. When clear vision was restored and a quick nip from his brandy flask had moistened his dry throat, he surveyed the sunlit cloud tops and the cerulean blue overhead with benign detachment. His eyes lit on two unmistakable DH2s flitting across his bows some distance ahead and three more, in V-formation, far away.
Major Dunnett reefed his DH2 round in a turn that made him giddy, and plunged into the cloud immediately beneath him. He did not know exactly where he was, but intended to get back before the other DHs and give Chandler a piece of his mind for wasting effort.
He emerged from cloud to find himself confronted by a large silver sausage. Astonished, he flew on for a few seconds. The distance between them shrank from a hundred yards to fifty. The sausage was distinctively German. He seized the grip of his Lewis gun with his left hand and pressed the trigger. The old forty-seven-round pan had recently been replaced by one holding ninety-seven cartridges. In his drum, an armourer had loaded tracer. A stream of sparkling bullets raced towards the vast gasbag. He was about to collide with it and banked towards the tail, still shooting. His fire ripped almost the whole length of the balloon and with a ‘whumpf’ that he could hear above the noise of his engine and his gun, it began to burn briskly. Delightedly, Major Dunnett uttered
a wild hunting-field yell and flung his aircraft into an about-turn. Beneath him he saw a mass of flames and an instant later the blast of hot air rising from them shot him up as though he were in a lift. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. Seldom had he known such exhilaration. The burning balloon was sinking rapidly; and now that it was out of their way, the German anti-aircraft gunners were suddenly active.
A shell-burst close beneath tossed him farther up and another threw him sideways. He bored hastily into the nearest cloud and turned in what he hoped was the right direction to take him back behind the British lines.
In consequence, Boyd found himself alone that afternoon and under orders to attack balloons. Chandler had been in no sweet temper when he dispatched him. His parting words were: “Hang on to your ammunition until you have to turn back. Look for balloons only if you haven’t been able to find any Hun aeroplanes.”
The 50th had moved up from reserve the night before. Boyd thought of his friends in the rat-infested ditches beneath his wings. He compared the canvas bed and dry tent in which he would sleep that night with their damp dug-outs and chicken-wire bunks. He reminded himself that he was immune, on the ground, from shellfire and mortar bombs, from grenades, rifles and machine-guns. He could sleep soundly with no fear of a raiding party bursting into his quarters.
For the first time his enthusiasm for hunting enemy aircraft waned and his hatred of observation balloons waxed.
After a month on the squadron he had grown used to flying in company and at first he sat uneasily in his cockpit, knowing there was no help at hand or other eyes to search for trouble. The enemy was going as high as 12,000 or 14,000 feet in order to ensure height advantage and he was resigned to clambering up there himself, where he knew he would be chilled to the marrow despite all his warm clothing, and fuddled by lack of oxygen. Fatigue and oxygen-starvation had already caused him to see things that were not there, on three occasions. He prayed that he would not fail to see an enemy aircraft which was there.
He crossed the lines at 4,000 feet and was met by enemy anti-aircraft fire, which he weaved through. Familiarity with it certainly did not breed contempt. The only way to be reasonably safe was to make at leat 8,000 feet before crossing, and no one could afford the time. It took twenty-five minutes to gain 10,000 feet, in the best conditions.
He was almost at 10,000 when he passed over the widely spaced array of German balloons, and still climbing. He noticed a clutch of aeroplanes far below and recognised from their behaviour that they were a British artillery spotter, a BE2 or a surviving Farman Shorthorn, escorted by other BE2s and perhaps a couple of DH2s.
He looked for bursting shells that would show him where the target was and after a while he saw grey-white puffs that looked as small as mushrooms at that great distance. The British shells were falling on a group of houses, where, presumably, an enemy headquarters or supply depot was.
His legs were covered by serge slacks and fleece-lined leather over-trousers. His body was swaddled in a sweater, tunic and leather greatcoat. But warmth was comparative and, at ground level, he would have complained of the cold. It struck through his helmet so that his head and ears tingled. It penetrated his three pairs of gloves, silk, wool and leather. It deadened his cheeks and nose and seared his lungs. His feet felt as though he were resting them on a block of ice, the cold cutting up through the soles of his boots and two pairs of socks. From time to time his eyes watered or his nose ran and the liquid froze. His neck was stiff and sore from its eternal twisting to search ... always search ... unending vigilance, even though the senses were blunted by cold and anoxia, the reactions slow, the aeroplane clumsy in the thin air.
Oh, for an enemy to appear and relieve the monotony; and give him a focus for his ever-present fear. There was nothing to be ashamed of in being afraid, as long as you didn’t succumb to it or talk about it. He had discovered during his first week in France in 1914 that fear kept even the bravest men alive.
Away to the east there was drifting smoke in the sky and he saw a dark cruciform shape falling with fire spurting from it ... and another. But the fight would long be over before he could get there, even with the wind behind him.
And then it was time to turn for home and he wheeled about thankfully, disappointed that he had made no contact with the enemy but glad to know that in another hour he would be warm.
At 6,000 feet he was within five miles of the nearest enemy balloon. Shells burst around him, on every side, above and below. He dipped and soared, swung left and right, corkscrewed first one way and then another. He flew through drifting layers of black smoke with its evil stink. His aeroplane bucked and yawed and rocked from one wingtip to the other. He was seized by a deep hatred of that damned balloon because it was so heavily protected and he wondered how many deaths among his friends the men in its nacelle had caused that afternoon. He flew towards it and 2,000 feet above.
When he was a mile away he saw that it was going down and he pushed the stick forward to follow it. His altimeter needle turned fast from right to left. The wind shrieked in his struts and wires, made the Lewis gun shake on its poor mounting, was deflected upward from his tiny windscreen to beat about his head.
The anti-aircraft gunners adjusted their sights and their shells trailed him down, but always behind. He was holding a straight line now, diving directly at the target and relying on speed for immunity.
At 2,000 feet he was within a quarter of a mile and after one final flurry of misses the guns ceased fire. Machine-guns took over, tracer leaping and curving at him. And the balloon kept going down.
At 1,600 feet he was a furlong away and opened fire. He saw one of the two men in its nacelle kneeling with a rifle at his shoulder, steadied on the basket’s edge. A bullet slapped into the fabric near his ankles. He shifted his aim from the balloon to its nacelle and the rifleman toppled back. He raised his nose again and drew closer to the balloon, firing at a hundred yards’ range. His pan emptied.
He turned aside, seeing a parachute open under the nacelle of the balloon, and tried to get the pan off the Lewis gun while he flew with his feet and knees. The pan jammed. And the machine-gun fire intensified. He was at 1,300 feet, well within range of the Parabellum Spandaus. Damn the ammunition pan. And damn the balloon. It ws sagging as it deflated. He had killed one observer and damaged the balloon: it would be sensible to leave it alone. But he did not feel sensible, after the extreme cold and the poor supply of oxygen to his brain, and his knowledge that his old comrades were the victims of the balloon’s reporting to its gun positions. He released the ammunition pan and pulled the stick back to climb directly over the gasbag. Taking one of the Mills bombs that hung in a rack with his Verey pistol and cartridges he pulled its pin, leaned out from ten feet above the balloon and dropped it on to the dimpled envelope. Four seconds later he was clear of the balloon and saw the grenade explode, tearing a huge hole in the gasbag and setting it afire.
With machine-gun bullets striking his wings and fuselage, fearful lest a control wire should be cut, he dived until he was barely above rooftop height. A hamlet came in view and disappeared. He raced towards a tree-clad hillock and skimmed over it. He saw men’s faces upturned in a support trench and saw rifles aimed at him and spurts of flame and smoke as they fired. Then he was over the German front-line trench and there was more rifle fire and machine-guns opened up once more. Over the soggy, cratered stretch of neutral territory ... dead and wounded men sprawled and huddled, in khaki and field grey, waiting for nightfall and stretcher bearers ... bodies sagging on barbed wire ... abandoned rifles ... rusting tins ...
Flying low over the British trenches, he saw men waving and cheering and suddenly he felt warm and safe; and angry that that stubborn rifleman in the balloon basket had not jumped with his companion instead of compelling him to kill him when he had no chance of getting out of the way. In a perverse fashion it made him hate balloons even more. He felt demeaned by what had been forced on him. He had attacked to destroy the balloon, not the almost
defenceless men who flew with it.
Chandler was flying when Boyd landed. Holt had just come down, and asked “Any luck?”
Scrubbing oil and smuts from his face with a khaki handkerchief, Boyd replied, “A balloon.”
“You don’t look too pleased about it. Why not? A balloon counts the same as an enemy aircraft.”
“I’m not a butcher.”
“You mean the guy didn’t get out?”
“There were two of them. One fired at me with a rifle ... hit, too ... I gave him a burst ... I had to.”
“Sure, what the hell! He asked for it.”
“He had a lot of pluck ... I should have kept cool and kept shooting at the bloody sausage.”
Holt looked thoughtfully at his friend, who seldom swore; then clapped him on the shoulder and said “Buck up, Nick: there’s some mail for you in the Orderly Room.”
Boyd did not answer. He was watching Chandler land, recognisable as always by the streamers on his struts. Chandler pushed his goggles up and stamped across to them. His pugilist’s face was pale with tiredness but his eyes shone and his thin lips parted in his smile that always looked cynical even when his intentions were benevolent. “Not bad, Boyd. I had a grandstand view. Get that ammunition pan seen to.”
“Where were you?”
“Following the major’s orders. The best way of proving that balloon-potting is a waste of time for the DHs is to get a huge bag of them. He’ll think it’s easy, and something for the BEs to take on. Then we can get back to really offensive patrols; in sections.”
“How many balloons did you bag, sir?”
“A brace. I was behind you in case you foozled yours.”
Boyd flushed. “I obviously didn’t watch my tail.”
Dusk Patrol Page 7