Dusk Patrol

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The Adjutant said, “One of them speaks a bit of English, sir, but the other doesn’t seem to know a word.”

  “Just being bally obstreperous, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Dunnett. “Better see if you can get an interpreter down from Intelligence.”

  Holt stepped forward. “Perhaps I can help, sir.” He turned to the prisoners. “Wenn man wirklich kein englisch spricht, werde ich gerne verdolmetschen.”

  The Germans looked surprised and pleased.

  “Good God!” said Major Dunnett. “Didn’t know you could speak the lingo, Holt, what?”

  Boyd gave his friend a wondering glance.

  Holt, looking strangely pale and serious, replied “I majored in modern languages at college, sir.”

  “Majored?” repeated Dunnett, as uncomprehendingly disapproving as though the American had just confessed to having shot a fox.

  “I have a degree in German and Spanish, sir,” Holt explained with evident exasperation.

  Dunnett smoothed his heavy moustache and gave a well pickled chuckle. “Spanish, eh? Fat lot of use that is, what? Tell these fellas they can come along to the mess and have a drink: if their friends hadn’t wanted not to make things uncomfortable for them, the Fokkers would have come down and strafed us. Provided, of course, they’d managed to shoot Chandler down in the first place.” He slapped his thigh and treated the assembly to his whisky-and-tobacco-hoarse cackle. “The whole squadron would have been caught out in the open. We owe ’em a drink for being spared that: those Fokker pilots knew how unpopular these two would have been after a strafing, what? What?” He slapped his leg again in an access of joviality.

  “I’ll pass on your invitation, sir.”

  Holt began to speak to the perplexed-looking prisoners, and Boyd thought again how unwontedly disturbed he seemed to be.

  The Commanding Officer had taken a pace or two in the direction of the farmhouse. He stopped and turned to face Chandler. “Oh, by the way, Henry: not at all a bad show. Come along and explain to me exactly how you did it. But cut along and change, first, what? Can’t have chaps comin’ into mess in flyin’ dress.” He shifted his gaze to Holt and the prisoners, who were following. “Explain that to these two Huns, will you, Holt? See they’re properly dressed before you bring them in, what?”

  Nine

  Holt had been quiet and reflective all day. He had not hesitated to speak to the two captured German airmen in their own language, but immediately he had done so he had regretted it. They had looked at him speculatively after the first few sentences and he knew why. Although he spoke with no foreign accent, he was aware that they could not place the origin of his speech. He was also aware that his style and vocabulary were old-fashioned: he still spoke the kind of German that his great-grandparents had brought with them to their new country. If he did not speak it like an American, he did not speak it like a modern-day German either.

  It had not been long before the observer (in the German Air Force it was he who was the captain of the aircraft, not his pilot) asked: “You are of German extraction?”

  “Obviously. You don’t suppose I’d speak without an American accent otherwise, do you?”

  “So you are American, not British? But despite your good accent, Holt is not a German name.”

  “No, but Holz is.”

  “So! Holz, eh? I see no resemblance, and it is a common enough name; but by accident we happen to have a Leutnant Emil Holz in our lot.”

  Holt felt his cheeks burning. Boyd, watching him, asked “What has he said, Elliot?”

  Holt quickly answered “Nothing. Nothing that matters.”

  Major Dunnett meanwhile was attempting a conversation with the pilot, who had rudimentary English. Holt was glad that the other officers present (most of them were up in the air, practising stalls and spins) were paying little attention to the observer and himself. He wished Nick Boyd would not be so interested in them.

  Holt asked the German: “Where does this fellow Holz come from?”

  “He is a Bavarian. Actually he speaks English well ... studied in America.”

  “At Yale,” muttered Holt, half to himself.

  “Yes, yes, that is so. You know him, then?”

  “It is possible we have met.”

  The German’s face brightened with a taunting smile. “He is a relation, perhaps?”

  Sharply, Holt said “We are all related, I suppose, through Adam.”

  The German laughed. “I can understand how awkward it must be for you. You are a citizen of a neutral country: why didn’t you come and join us if you wanted to get into a fight?”

  “Because I happen to believe that the British and French are fighting in a just cause. Right is on their side.”

  The German looked angry. “As a guest here, you have me at a disadvantage. I cannot speak my mind.”

  Boyd interrupted. “You both seem to be getting a bit heated, Elliot. What’s up?”

  “Just a slight difference of opinion. You’re right, we should break it up.” Holt moved towards the other group.

  Dunnett turned to him and said “I’m trying to make him understand that we’d like them to stay to luncheon with us, and then I’m afraid we’ll have to hand them over to Intelligence and the Provost-Marshal. Will you tell him I think they put up a damn good show trying to burn their aeroplane before we could get to it.”

  “At least the Fokker pilot didn’t have to bother about that,” said Hannington with macabre wit.

  “I say, Anthony, that’s a bit thick, what?” The major was taken aback.

  “No offence meant, Major Rupert,” (In their regiment, Christian names were always used in mess, with the concession of his rank to the CO) “but it’s Henry who would have been carbonisé, as the Frogs say, if things had gone the other way.”

  “Ask them if they’ve ever seen a recovery from a spin or stall before, Holt,” said Chandler.

  Holt spoke to the two guests, who looked at one another and then nodded.

  “Ask them how it’s done, then,” Hannington suggested.

  “I understand what you say,” the pilot said, “but it is geheim ... we cannot say of it ...”

  “Geheim is a secret,” Holt explained.

  “So secret that it is a total bally mystery,” laughed Hannington. “Come on, admit you had never seen it before.”

  “You will find out,” the pilot replied.

  “I don’t suppose you know how to loop, either,” Hannington persisted.

  The German pilot smiled. “Lend me an aeroplane and I will show you.”

  Major Dunnett guffawed. “Bally good, by Jove. That deserves a spot of bubbly, what?” He shouted to a batman to fetch champagne.

  Holt thought that lunch was an incongruously convivial meal. Most of the pilots and observers would be flying during the afternoon, and those who had still to practise recovery from spin and stall certainly could not afford to touch a drop of alcohol beforehand. But those who had already done it during the morning felt they had something to celebrate. The two Germans frankly over-indulged themselves in the last opportunity they were likely to have for a long time.

  Holt himself, Boyd and Hannington were among the many who did not touch a drop. Chandler, to whom hard drinking was part of the masculine ritual of physical accomplishment, like draining a flask of whisky in the course of a day’s hunting or consuming a bibulous lunch in the middle of a day’s shooting, drank his share with confidence that it would not impair his performance if he decided to fly that afternoon.

  Major Dunnett proposed a toast to the incinerated Fokker pilot and another to a comfortable imprisonment for their two guests.

  The Germans, with a touch of defiance, proposed a toast to all the British airmen they had shot down in the past. And, with blatant insolence which provoked laughter, another in anticipation to all those who would be shot down in the future by their squadron.

  The fierce-looking non-combatant captain wearing a Provost armband who came to take them away looked askance
when the prisoners staggered drunkenly out of the squadron mess.

  When he had seen them on their way, Major Dunnett announced: “About bally time I put m’self through the hoop, what? Just run through this recovery business once again, will you, Henry? I think I’ve got it, but better make sure, what? Opposite stick and rudder, did you say? Is that what it says in that bumf that came through from the Air Ministry today? I see ... yes ... sounds jolly simple, what?”

  “I think, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so,” suggested Chandler, “it might be better to have your first go tomorrow morning before the air gets bumpy.”

  “Nonsense, m’dear fella. No time like the present, what?”

  Who knows what grape-induced delusions filled the poor booby’s head? Although he had conceded recently that his DH2s were best employed in strength against enemy Fokkers, he himself still took delight in stalking observation balloons. Indeed, when in his normal afternoon state of intoxication, he would agitate the observers in British balloons by carrying out dummy attacks on them. For practice, he said. But British observers seeing an aeroplane with British markings approaching with apparently evil intent naturally assumed that it was one the enemy had captured; and ordered their balloons to be hauled down with all speed.

  Dunnett’s fun came to an abrupt stop when one balloon observer, a short-tempered Highlander seconded to the RFC, victim for the second time of one of Dunnett’s practical jokes, fired a rifle at him: and servered the little toe of his right foot.

  The major had only just recovered sufficiently from the injury to be able to walk without hobbling. No doubt he was now looking for fresh fields to conquer; and mastery of stall, spin and even the loop would enable him to triumph.

  Before reluctantly accompanying his Commanding Officer to his aircraft to explain the recovery drill to him for a final time, Chandler told the pilots of his flight to await him before they took off.

  When he joined them Major Dunnett was just airborne. He shook his head resignedly and said “Hope to God he doesn’t try it over the ’drome.”

  “It’ll at least save the trouble of having to send the ambulance somewhere else to scrape him up,” said Hannington.

  “I’d rather that than have him delay our flying programme by making a damn great hole in the ’drome. Or dump a flaming pile of wreckage on it.”

  “Rupert will be all right,” said Hannington. “Got a head for liquor like a balk of teak. I’ve seen him win a point-to-point after drinkin’ all night and not goin’ to bed.”

  “If you fall off a horse, you only fall a few feet,” Chandler reminded him. “If you fall out of the sky you come down rather harder. As I know from personal experience.”

  They stood in silence watching the DH2 climb overhead. When at last it steepened its ascent to achieve a stall, Holt felt his spine tingle with unpleasant anticipation.

  Its nose fell abruptly and it accelerated with the throttle opened so violently that the noise made them start. They watched it streak almost vertically down the sky.

  “God! He’ll tear his wings off,” Chandler murmured.

  But the aeroplane came out of the dive somehow and made its way up again to 4,000 feet or so. It stalled again, and this time the recovery was less drastic.

  “Now for it,” Chandler said. “He was lucky the first time. If he doesn’t handle his first spin better, he won’t ...”

  Before he could complete the sentence Dunnett had induced a spin to starboard and the DH was whirling round like a Catherine wheel.

  Holt counted aloud as it completed each full turn. By the time he reached “eight”, men were pouring out of hangars and tents to see what was happening, drawn by the increasing noise of the engine.

  Chandler cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled “Start up the ambulance.” The Crossley’s driver was already in the cab. A man ran forward and began swinging the starting handle.

  The DH2 was down to 500 feet when, against anyone’s expectations, it pulled out of the spin and into a straight dive. It was at fifty feet when Dunnett managed to haul its nose up into level flight. And both wings, on both sides, folded up. Still travelling forward under its own impetus, the aircraft also dropped like a lead plummet. It hit the ground near the middle of the aerodrome, but fortunately well clear of the cinder track that served as runway. The Crossley was already jolting across the stubble and everyone on foot was pelting towards it in the wake of a second tender carrying fire extinguishers.

  There was very little blood, but as Chandler said, almost every bone in Major Dunnett’s body must have been broken. He was unconscious and breathing stertorously when they hauled him out of the heap of torn canvas, snarled wires and splintered wood, and the ambulance drove off to the nearest field hospital with the squadron medical officer crouching over his patient.

  “All right, Holt,” said Chandler, “you’ve got more flying hours in your logbook than any of the others. You go first. Anthony, you’re next. Then Boyd ... Eastman ... Sergeant Jorkins.”

  Holt strode towards his aircraft, looking grim. He wondered if disgraceful episodes such as the squadron had just witnessed ever occurred in the French Air Force ... or the German. He was so angry and contemptuous that he had absolutely no pity at all for the egregious Dunnett. It was preposterous that even a fool like that should lose his life or be crippled as a result of the policy that allowed people as incompetent and alcohol-besotted as he to fly and to be in command of other men’s lives. It was inexcusable that the General Staff deliberately showed a hostile, derogatory attitude towards the RFC and stifled even a poor fish like Dunnett because he was a flyer and therefore tolerated the wildness of his aircrews and supported their viewpoints.

  Were his fellow volunteers from the USA suffering the same insulting, callous attitude from the French? Did the famous French pilots ... Garros … Guynemer … Nungesser, have to put up with such crass ignorance in their ultimate superiors?

  He doubted if Boelcke, von Richthofen or Immelmann had to carry such a burden of misunderstanding and suspicion.

  He was, anyway, in a thoroughly bad mood and determined to make those, so often infuriating, Limeys whom he had come in the last few months to love like brothers, sit up and take notice. He may have a deep affection and admiration for them, but he still deplored the way in which they let themselves be humiliated and endangered by pig-headed senior officers with red tabs on their lapels.

  At 4,000 feet he poked the DH’s nose up as steeply as the side of a house and it stalled with a viciousness that snatched his breath away and must have done the same for his comrades below. He gentled the aeroplane out of the stall and instantly stalled it again. At a mere 3,000 feet he spun it and counted eight gyrations before he put it straight and level above the treetops. Then a climb to 5,000 followed by a series of left and right spins. When he was down to 1,000 feet he did something publicly that he had already done clandestinely several times: but not confided even to Nick, because he knew Nick would immediately go out and try it. He took the machine up in a perfect loop as round and true as a hoop.

  When he climbed out of the cockpit he felt much better. “Who the devil told you to loop?” was Chandler’s greeting.

  “Well, I guess now that we know how to correct a spin, why, we have no reason not to loop.”

  “H’m. It wasn’t good enough. Go up again, somewhere well away from here, and put in an hour’s practice.”

  Nothing could have pleased Holt more at that moment and he returned to his aeroplane to comply, with his habitual good humour almost restored.

  Just the same, he remained close enough to the aerodrome to be able to watch the others; particularly Nick.

  Hannington, who was a highly successful competitor in equestrian events, proved that an exceptionally good horseman’s hands did have the magic in an aeroplane that the cavalry claimed. His spins were a joy to behold and when he finished with a loop it was faultless.

  Holt waited with some anxiety to see what kind of showing Nick Bo
yd would make. He flew a wide orbit well outside the airfield boundary and watched him make altitude. After two stalls, Boyd disturbed him by taking his machine up to 5,000 feet. He spun it and recovered, went quickly up again, then nearly gave Holt heart failure by spinning to port and starboard repeatedly until he levelled off so low that he was barely above the roofs of the hangars. After that, to Holt’s alarm, he climbed once more and carried out a loop. It was a clumsy pear-shaped affair, it was true, but it demanded a vast amount of courage to attempt. Holt felt proud of him.

  But when they gathered in the mess for tea, Holt’s grey mood assailed him once more. His thoughts reverted to the morning’s conversation with the German observer. There may be a lot of pilots called Emil Holz in the enemy air force, but there could only be one who had studied for a year at Yale and hailed from Bavaria. And now a first cousin with whom he had grown up was on the enemy side as well as that more distant relation.

  He tried to push his dejection aside by joining in the general boisterous conversation. The veto on talking ‘shop’ in mess that was traditional in the British Army had quickly been cast aside by the RFC. They agreed unreservedly that it was boring to talk about soldiering in one’s off-duty hours. But flying could never be a bore. They had joined the Corps because flying was their greatest enthusiasm. There was something new to be learned about it every day. It was the common interest and danger which bound them together, closer in some ways than they could ever be even to their families. So now there were no inhibitions about shop talk in mess.

  “I saw you do your stuff, Nick,” said Holt.

  Boyd gave a brief, shy smile. “My first loop was awful beyond words.”

  “You dived too steeply to build up speed and then you climbed too sharply.”

  “I thought that was you, hanging around and watching.”

  “How did you get on after that?”