Dusk Patrol
Page 15
He himself had seen many worse sights than the manner of Mather’s dying: it had been quick, mercifully. Even Holt, with his much shorter experience of war, had seen comrades burned alive in a spinning aeroplane, or, without parachutes, falling alive from a cockpit at 10,000 feet. He should not be so afflicted.
And he was lifting his elbow rather powerfully. It had started with a couple of whiskies in the balloon company’s mess; then Elliot had insisted on stopping at an estaminet on the way back to camp, for a glass of brandy which had developed into two and a red wine chaser. He had evidently come into the mess early, for he was already there when Boyd arrived; and not very coherent in his speech.
Boyd saw Chandler watching Holt across the dinner-table, with his own peculiar brand of sympathy and understanding. Not that anyone who did not know him well would have recognised those emotions behind his sharp glances and the angry glint in his eyes. But Boyd knew that any anger Chandler felt was directed at events and not at their victims. He had berated HQ on the telephone because Intelligence had not been aware of the new forward gun on the Rumpler Cl. He had been scathingly critical of the German pilot for killing Mather when he was in the act of abandoning his post.
In his own tough, uncompromising style, Chandler was protective and compassionate towards the men who served under him. It was, Boyd supposed, a human application of the mathematical fact about equal and opposite forces: fire a gun and its recoil is equivalent to the force of the discharge. So with Chandler. He hated, and was contemptuous of, the Germans. He despised and ridiculed the staff. With the one cowardly pilot who had been detected on the squadron in Boyd’s time he had been ruthless. In contrast, he was a vigilant tiger in defence of those who deserved it.
Major Dunnett had bequeathed to the mess the civilised observance of passing the port after dinner every night and not only when they dined-in formally.
When Chandler had set the decanter on its clockwise round, he rapped lightly on the table. Conversation stopped and everyone turned to look at him.
“We’re getting our first four Nieuport Elevens: one for me and one for each flight. Hannington, Boyd and Holt are coming to Le Bourget with me tomorrow to fetch them.”
In the buzz of pleased comment that followed, Boyd and Holt, seated next to each other, exchanged a surprised look; this was the first either had heard of it. Boyd felt himself flush with pleasure and Holt was smiling like a schoolboy who has just robbed a particularly juicy apple orchard.
Later, Hannington joined them in the ante-room and said: “We’ll leave in my car at eight tomorrow. Straight to Le Bourget to make sure the Bébés are in perfect fettle, and we’ll fly them here the next day.”
“What’s wrong with bringing them straight back, Tony?” asked Holt.
Hannington raised an eyebrow. “The major thinks we all deserve a night in Paris, old bean.”
Twelve
After the great battle that began on 1st July 1916 and officially ended on 18th November, Winston Churchill wrote, describing the preparation for it: “The British armies were so ardent, their leaders so confident ... no human power could have prevented the attempt.”
And that was how it seemed to the four RFC officers who travelled by road to Paris on a sunlit morning in May. The roads were crowded with lorries, horse-drawn transport and marching, singing battalions of men. All were on their way to be massacred; but all were under the delusion that they were about to end the war with a great victory on the Somme.
Despite the heavy bloodshed that was still being inflicted on the French armies at Verdun, and perhaps because the Germans had pushed so near the capital, there was a spirit of frenzied festivity in Paris. The city had never been gayer, even if the gaiety was fevered, and falsified a great fear and desperation at heart.
The Delauney-Belleville wound through Amiens, where troops bivouacked in the main square while field kitchens cooked for the multitude. Down Route Nationale 16, with acres of tentage on either hand where reinforcements from all over the Empire were gathering for the kill: their own. Into the cluster of villages which ringed Paris and merged into its suburbs. On the right-hand side, Le Bourget bristled and hummed with activity: aeroplanes landing and taking off all the time: Nieuports and Morane Saulniers; Blériots, Breguets, Voisins, Farmans. A DH or two, BEs, a few FEs.
Chandler consulted his watch as the chauffeur swung in at the gate and stopped at the sentry-box. “An hour should be enough. We’ll be in good time for a decent lunch at the Café de la Paix. I’ll get someone to book us a table: in your name, Anthony, as you’re the nearest thing to an English milord we can produce.”
Boyd had been thinking throughout the journey about his first flight in a Bébé. The great massing of men and arms he had seen had made only a blurred general imprint on his mind. Flying was his concern, not grand strategy. And such a concourse of troops, vehicles and guns was no new sight for one who had formed part of the gun-fodder for earlier battles which the British Expeditionary Force had entered with equal ardour and confidence.
He had asked Chandler question after question about the handling of the Bébé and drawn on his own memory of all that Nungesser had told them; until at last Chandler had said “Don’t be a bore, Nick. There’s nothing more I can tell you. You’ll find out soon enough for yourself. Now sit back and enjoy the ride. Just look at these hordes of PBI and thank your lucky stars you’re out of it and leading a life of luxury in the RFC.”
His first sight of the four Nieuport XIs that stood on their own with a group of RFC air mechanics around them gave him the same tremor of excitement as he had felt when he made his first dual flight as a pupil. Here at last was a machine that could exceed the magic 100 miles an hour. Was it really possible that anything so small could achieve such speed? But he had seen the Bébé dive often enough and watched Nungesser make a run across the aerodrome at no more than fifty feet, hurtling in and out of sight in a few seconds; so he knew it was true. It was still incredible and unnerving that he himself was going to do the same presently.
A thousand feet up, climbing at over eighty miles an hour, he began to sing from sheer exhilaration.
“If by some delightful chance,
When you’re flying out in France,
Some old Boche machine you meet,
Very slow and obsolete,
Don’t turn round to watch your tail,
Tricks like that are getting stale,
Just put down your bally nose
And murmur ‘Chaps, here goes!’”
The snag was that there were no slow and obsolete enemy machines these days, with the exception of the Taube; and they kept out of the way. If you did see one, a hundred-to-one it was a decoy while half a dozen Fokkers sat upstairs waiting for a dupe to dive on it: “Chaps, here goes!”
But with the Bébé, one could afford to follow the advice of whoever concocted that popular bit of doggerel, and just put down one’s bally nose in the knowledge that one could outdive and outmanoeuvre any machine the Boche had.
He walked away from the Bébé forty minutes later, wishing he could go up again at once, with his gun loaded, and find himself a nice fat Fokker.
But there were acceptance papers to sign and he had to assure Chandler that all was in order with the machine he had tested, before Chandler would commit himself. There were points about tuning the rigging that had to be discussed with the RFC sergeant in charge of the ground party, and Chandler himself had something to say about a fancied roughness in his own machine’s engine. The new Rogers mounting had to be fitted, so that the Lewis gun which fired over the top wing could be pulled down on a curved steel track to be reloaded.
One of the French Air Force Nieuport XIs parked near the four RFC machines drew the attention of the British pilots. Mounted one above the other on the outside of each of the V-struts that braced the wings, were four strange objects.
“Those things look like Guy Fawkes Night rockets,” remarked Boyd.
The sergeant told him: “S
ame thing, sir. They’re called Le Prieur rockets. For shooting down balloons.”
“We’ll try them one of these days,” said Chandler. “It should be possible to hit an aeroplane with them. Anyway, if we fired a salvo of them into a Hun formation it would cause them to scatter in panic and leave easy pickings for us. Remind me to get some rockets, Nick.”
The Paris pavements were thronged with fashionably dressed women and a distasteful number of apparently able-bodied civilian men. Whoever was responsible for such events had had the bad taste to revive the Spring Flower Show, which had been decently suppressed in 1915. People flocked to race meetings at Auteuil and Longchamps. While a huge portion of their country reeled under the devastation of bombardment and enemy occupation, Parisians indulged in sybaritic extravagance.
Hannington had reserved a two-bedroom suite at the Ritz for Chandler and himself. Holt, who was liberally supplied with money by his parents and could have afforded the same, did as Boyd did, who had to live on his pay, and was glad enough to have the comfort of a well-sprung bed and his own bathroom. This was greater luxury than Boyd had ever before sampled: his previous short leaves in Paris had been spent in much more modest quarters.
In the evening, Hannington produced four attractive girls to keep them company at dinner at Maxim’s and afterwards at the Folies Bergére to listen to Mistinguett.
The auburn-haired enchantress with whom Boyd had been paired spoke with wide-eyed breathlessness of her boundless admiration for ‘les aviateurs’ and let her hand fall lightly on his thigh. Her shoulder pressed against his whenever opportunity allowed, and she lavished many languishing glances and dewy-lipped smiles on him throughout the evening.
But when, long after midnight, Chandler and Hannington retired to their suite accompanied by their two lady friends, and Holt, after a brief call at the hotel to pick up his toothbrush and razor, took his home, Boyd, with Marjorie Randall in his thoughts, saw the redhead to her door in a fiacre and returned alone to bed. There had been a moment of considerable temptation when, in the darkness of the cab, she had turned and kissed him with a practised gusto that made him weaker at the knees than when he had found himself alone in a Farman Longhorn for the first time. And she had pouted and flounced and muttered angrily under her breath when he refused her invitation indoors. But he was steadier of hand and clearer of eye than any of his companions when they took off next morning for the flight back to base.
Dear Mother, Thank you for the marvellous Dundee cake, which arrived safely a couple of days ago. I would have written sooner to thank you, but have been away on a short trip to Paris. Guess what? We have just been given some of the excellent new French scouts – they call them fighters – the Nieuport XIs. They are wonderful little machines and a delight to fly. I know Father will be interested to hear that I have now been at over 100 miles per hour!
We are all looking forward to doing wonders with these new machines.
It was pleasant to see Paris again, even briefly, but I was disgusted by the self-indulgence of the people there, who seem to have no concern about what is happening to their many divisions at Verdun. However, I enjoyed having a comfortable bed for the night and the delicious meals. We went to see Mistinguett at the Folies Bergére, although I think I would have preferred a visit to the Odéon, where they are doing Manon. One of the big picture palaces is showing a new film of Salammbó which I would also have liked to see. But one has to fit in with one’s friends and their tastes.
I did manage to look in at the Louvre for half an hour and found the quietness and beauty most resftul and refreshing.
Anthony Hannington, who apparently has friends everywhere, invited four stunning girls to accompany us for the evening, which brightened things up. We went dancing at a place in Montmartre and I was persuaded to try the tango. I felt a regular lounge lizard, I must confess!
Dear Marjorie, Thank you very much for the beautifully knitted balaclava, which fits perfectly and is keeping me nice and warm in the air.
I had to go to Paris for a few hours this week, and have brought back a bottle of scent which I hope you will like. I’ll post it well parcelled up to prevent breakage. Or theft!
I enjoyed sampling some really good French cooking again – it is many months since I was last in Paris – but did not do anything else much, apart from a visit to the Louvre.
People always say how pretty and smart the Parisiennes are, but I honestly didn’t see anyone who was prettier or smarter than the girls one sees all over London. Or in Wimbledon!
Everything is going very well over here and there is a tremendous air of optimism among everyone. Even the French, who have had such a bad time, are in high spirits. The atmosphere in Paris is like it is in the London Season. Smart people everywhere, enjoying themselves, in a kind of combined Ascot, Henley and Chelsea Flower Show.
I expect I shall be able to wangle a week’s leave in another two or three months. I shall leave it to you to pick out all the best shows in Town for us to see. I hope?
With only one Nieuport XI per flight, apart from the machine that was sacrosanct to Chandler, the flight commanders allowed only their best pilots to fly them. And, because these aircraft were such a precious few, the pilots were ordered to familiarise themselves with all their characteristics rather than risk them in combat.
On B Flight, only Hannington himself and Boyd, Holt, Eastman and Sergeant Jorkins were permitted to handle the Bébé. The whole of May passed without any member of the squadron having the chance to try one in a fight.
In June, thanks to a new policy for which Trenchard was responsible, more squadrons were homogenously equipped and No 59 had its BE2s and DH2s replaced entirely by Nieuport XIs.
“Now we can really get down to business,” Chandler told his pilots.
The acquisition of the first Bébés and a therapeutic night in Paris had restored Holt to his former equable outlook, but Boyd noticed that he was still, sometimes, apt to lapse into long, withdrawn periods of reflection. Flying beside him, he could not fail to notice that whenever they sighted a Rumpler Cl he became tense and grim. Twice they were in battle with these aeroplanes and shot them down, and on returning to base Boyd had been disturbed by his friend’s distress: a state of mind he tried to conceal but which Boyd, who knew and liked him so well, was able to perceive. As time drew on and the squadron suffered its share of losses by death and injury, the nerves of the survivors like Boyd, Holt, Hannington, Eastman and Sergeant Jorkins became more frayed. Thus the signs that betrayed the emotion that Holt tried to suppress became more apparent.
Even the nimble Bébé was susceptible to fire. Now they flew a tractor aeroplane, the petrol tank was in front of them and if the engine caught fire the backwash of the propeller and the rush of air from its forward motion combined to fling the flames backward: to ignite first the petrol and then the pilot.
If a machine was hit in the engine, switching off the ignition did not necessarily prevent a conflagration. The propeller would windmill and continue to produce sparks from the magneto, which could ignite petrol vapour. Often, petrol sprayed back over the pilot and it was he whom such a spark set alight.
Airmen began referring to petrol as Witch’s Water and Hell-Brew.
It was still customary to fly with a revolver at one’s belt, in case of a landing in enemy territory. Many pilots carried them also for another reason: to put a quick end to their agony if they were trapped in a burning aircraft.
Altogether, there were more terrors in a flying man’s life than could be banished from the mind by the delights of Paris, the fleshpots of Amiens or Rouen, or the congenial conviviality of mess life.
The Battle of Verdun was drawing to its end and the build-up of vast stocks of artillery ammunition and seventy-five divisions of fighting men was almost complete when, at dusk on 18th June, three Nieuports of 59 Squadron took off to patrol far ahead of a reconnaissance flight consisting of two FE2s of another squadron escorted by ten more Bébés of their own.
Boyd’s senses were sharp with impatience. He liked Eastman well enough, but was often irritated by his stolid caution. Holt was always eager to attack, despite his equable social temperament. Boyd often reminisced mentally and smiled inwardly about their first meeting on the Brighton train, when Holt had threatened to punch Hannington on the nose after only a short verbal exchange and on first acquaintance. No doubt their flight commander had made up the section in the hope that the leader would restrain his two companions from rashness.
To Boyd, this meant losing the chance of a fight if the enemy turned away while Eastman weighed up the situation. He knew Holt felt the same way. It had been some days since they last fired their guns, for the enemy had been concentrating on a final all-out effort over Verdun.
They climbed to 12,000 feet and the summer warmth gave way to biting cold. Boyd was grateful for his balaclava over his flying helmet. He had adjusted it over his mouth to muffle it against the chill wind that made a man’s throat red raw.
Now that he had flown several hours in the Bébé the first enchantment was wearing off. In the maligned DH2 the Lewis gun had been directly to hand and easy to shoot. To fire the wing-mounted Lewis, he had to stretch up almost to arm’s length to reach the trigger. Already he hankered after a machine with a gun right in front of the pilot’s eyes, synchronised to fire between the propeller blades. The Bébé’s gun had to fire above the propeller arc.
There was one great tactical advantage, though, in the Foster-mounted upper-wing gun. You could attack an enemy from below and behind, with the gun aimed up at forty-five degrees, where he could neither see you nor hit you. That was Ball’s favourite way of going about it with his Nieuport.
A synchronised gun would be better, however, and the word was that a new Sopwith fighter would soon be in service that would provide the RFC with a better aeroplane than any other yet in operation. That was something to look forward to.