Dusk Patrol

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Meanwhile, where was the bally Hun?

  There, surely?

  Hadn’t that old ass Eastman seen it?

  Elliot had: they looked across the intervening distance at each other and both simultaneously pointed.

  Yes, Eastman had spotted it too. He was making hand signals and looking from side to side to ensure that they had noticed.

  The ‘it’ became ‘they’: three Rumpler C1s at 10,000 feet and three Fokkers at 14,000.

  Eastman led the Nieuports up towards the Fokkers. Boyd kept an eye on the Rumplers: if they came up to join the E3s, he and his friends would have their hands more than full: Rumpler observers were famous for their accurate shooting, and now that the pilot had a gun as well the Rumpler had virtually all-around fire-power.

  The Nieuports flitted lightly up to join battle with the Fokkers and the Rumplers had started to mount higher also.

  Diving at forty-five degrees, the Fokkers opened their attack from 200 feet above. Instinctively, Boyd swung away to the right in a flat turn. He had shot down seven of the enemy by now and fought more than thirty air battles. The moves and countermoves came readily.

  The Fokker which had singled him out banked and turned slightly and fired again. Now was the time, Boyd decided, to try the manoeuvre he had discussed some time ago with Holt. If he went into an inverted spin, he would drop so fast that he would leave the other two on their own; but the urge to try a roll was irresistible. Conscious that his pulse was going at a good 125 to the minute, he put the stick hard over to the left and felt the blood first drain from his head and then rush back. Next came a strong pressure on his neck and shoulders and the ground beneath swung in a crazy pattern of tilted, blurring green and brown patchwork; and he was upright once more: with the Fokker in front and turning back towards him.

  He reached up, forcing his arm against the rushing air, and gripped the handle of his Lewis gun. His finger curled round the trigger. Bullets laced into the Fokker and it faltered as its engine misfired and its nose dropped. It was passing right beneath him. He throttled back quickly, heaved up, stalled and applied hard right rudder and aileron to drop on to its tail. Another burst from the Lewis and the first flames broke out above the Fokker’s engine cowling. There was no need to do any more.

  How were the others getting on?

  One of the Fokkers was haring away into the distance, and whichever of the other two had been chasing it let it go and turned to rejoin the fight. The enemy’s gun must have jambed, Boyd concluded. Fokker pilots did not give up from cowardice. And that would be sufficient reason, too, for either Elliot or Eastman to allow it to escape.

  Just below him, he saw Holt turning tightly with a Fokker on his tail and at once began diving to his aid. But Holt did not need his help: he pulled up in a loop, and rolling out at the top, side-slipped, perfectly timed to catch his adversary as it passed across him.

  Tracer was sizzling all around now. Eastman was back in the fight. The Rumplers had separated and were coming in from different directions. Holt was in the best position. Eastman was still out of range. Boyd himself was in the crossfire of two of the enemy and had to wriggle all over the place to avoid their bullets.

  He saw Holt plunge towards one of the Rumplers that was bothering him, and waited for it to jink out of the way. But as Holt came within range of it, he abruptly pulled up and skimmed above it. Boyd saw the German pilot look up and make a gesture of defiance or derision as Holt flashed over his head.

  The other Rumpler was still shooting at Boyd, and he pulled round in a half-circle to get on its tail; but below, so that the observer could not shoot at him.

  Holt abandoned the easier attack, on the one from which he had broken away, and turned his attention to the one at which Boyd had decided to shoot. Let him get on with it, he thought, puzzled. He shifted his eyes back to Holt’s original target. It was screwing round to get on Holt’s tail. The pilot opened fire and tracer made holes in the Bébé’s rear fuselage.

  Boyd saw, for the first time, the crossed woodman’s axes painted in bright red on its fuselage. This was the swine who had shot poor Mather when he was helpless, and by any decent standards, out of bounds. It would be a pleasure to even the account. He saw the observer swing his gun round at him, and hurriedly dropped the Bébé’s nose. Tracer hummed a few inches past his ears.

  What the devil was Elliot doing? He must have seen the identity of the Rumpler pilot. Why had he broken off the attack? And where was he now?

  No time to bother with that, for the moment ... the Rumpler he was after was diving into a turn to give the observer another shot at him and bring the pilot’s gun to bear as well, if he let it complete its turn. Boyd didn’t. For the second time he rolled the Nieuport around its axis, to the confusion of Emil Holz. When he completed his roll the Rumpler had changed direction and was momentarily straight and level; just ahead and below. He emptied half a pan of ammunition into it, killing both occupants.

  Another Rumpler was going down, with flames shooting out of its engine. Close behind was the Nieuport which had shot it down; and the Nieuport’s propeller was windmilling.

  Boyd’s heart jumped with momentary anxiety for Elliot Holt. Then he saw that it was Eastman who had the dead engine and was on his way to a probable forced landing behind enemy lines.

  There was no sign of the other Rumpler, but now Holt’s Bébé appeared, chasing after Eastman. Boyd hurried after them.

  Eastman was holding the shallowest possible dive and steering for the nearest part of the British lines; but Boyd doubted if he would reach their safety.

  Thirteen

  By the time they were down to 4,000 feet and attracting an unpleasant amount of attention from the enemy anti-aircraft guns, Boyd and Holt circling anxiously round Eastman, Boyd made up his mind to, as he put it to himself, take the bull by the horns.

  Banking inwards and leaning from his cockpit, he urgently signed to Eastman to land immediately. They were still far enough from the front to be out of range of machine-guns and out of danger of immediate capture.

  Still gesticulating, Boyd tried to convey to Eastman, whose brain did not function with noticeable speed at any time, that he would also land, cram him into the cockpit and take him home. The dimensions of the Bébé made this barely feasible, but it was the only hope of avoiding death or capture for Eastman. Death, because the enemy would continue shooting at him all the way down. Capture, because at best he would come down near the German support trenches.

  Eastman at first goggled at him uncomprehendingly, then shook his head. Exasperated, Boyd repeated his urgent gestures. He admitted that Eastman, as the section leader, had the right to make decisions, as well as the duty. But surely the fathead must see that he could not hold his glide far enough and that if he went on much longer he would be hit again, and much worse this time. So he tightened his turn and cut close across Eastman’s bows, forcing him to sharpen his descent.

  Holt was also signalling the same instructions, and at last Eastman nodded. His face was a picture of misery, and he in turn flung his arms and hands about in entreaty to the other two to abandon him.

  Now Boyd had to impose his will on Holt. He was much the senior, and automatically in command if anything happened to their section leader. But that would not cut any ice with Holt, who was proudly independent. As he expected, Holt kept tapping himself on the chest and pointing down. Boyd as persistently kept shaking his head and making signs that Holt should orbit Eastman and himself for the short time they were on the ground. He patted his Lewis gun, to indicate that it would be Holt’s job to shoot at any Germans who tried to take them prisoner.

  Time was running out quickly. Although the Bébé stalled less readily than the Farman or DH, it would still be dangerous to turn it, when gliding, at under 500 feet. They must therefore find a place where they could land and take off again, which Eastman could reach without having to continue corkscrewing.

  Boyd saw a suitable meadow within Eastman’s range.
It had a decided slope, but that would help to brake him. He jabbed his finger towards it and turned in that direction. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the others following him.

  Eastman was too high. He put the nose of the Bébé farther down. Boyd bit his lip: at that angle, he would go in dangerously fast. They had long been too low for the ack-ack to bother to shoot at them, and the absence of shell bursts seemed uncanny and ominous.

  A squad of German soldiers was running from a farm cottage, towards the meadow. Boyd aimed his Lewis gun at them and fired. Three or four of them fell; the others kept running, bayonets fixed. Now he had taken an irrevocable step. They would wreak vengeance on Eastman – and himself – if they got their hands on them. His plan had to succeed. He fired again. More men fell. The others threw themselves down and hugged the earth.

  He looked for the Nieuport again. It was on the verge of setting its wheels down on the grass. But at too steep an angle. Eastman rounded out and the aircraft landed so hard that it bounced. It came down again, rocking from wheel to wheel, and bounced again. And again. It ran into a tree and Eastman was thrown forward hard.

  Boyd glanced up. Holt was low overhead, orbiting in a steep bank.

  He wheeled his own aeroplane round tightly and set it down where he judged it would have the right amount of momentum to roll as far as Eastman’s without running into a tree or hedge. He turned across the slope as he was stopping, so that the Bébé would not run backwards while he left it.

  Eastman was making dazed, sluggish efforts to extricate himself. More Germans with fixed bayonets were in sight. He heard the rattle of Holt’s gun.

  “Are you all right, Ted?” Boyd shouted.

  Eastman, pale, unsteady on his feet, made a step towards him and nearly fell. “Hit in the arm ... banged my head ... leg a bit twisted ...” Boyd saw blood trickling from the left sleeve of his leather coat.

  With Eastman leaning on him, he retraced his steps to his aeroplane. Eastman was breathing heavily with pain and one foot kept dragging.

  Gasping, Boyd told him: “You’re ... going to ... have to work ... the rudder bar ... can you ... manage?”

  “Y-Yes I’m ... all ... right ...”

  “I’ll sit on your lap ... stick and throttle ... you ... rudder ...”

  “All right.”

  Four of the Germans were unpleasantly close and two of them had stopped to kneel and take aim. What a rotten way to die, Boyd thought. He searched for Holt: he was changing his ammunition drum.

  Two bullets zipped past within inches. He heard another shot and felt a blow on his right shoulder. Blood appeared through his coat.

  Then, mercifully, the sound of Holt’s gun again ... and four dead Germans rolling down the sloping field.

  Heaving, gasping, exhorting, the two wounded men helped each other to scramble into the Bébé. Eastman tumbled heavily into the seat and Boyd flopped on to his lap; opened the throttle; shouted “left rudder,” and the Bébé trundled round to face the downward slope.

  “Hold her steady,” Boyd yelled, pushing the throttle wide open. With the weight of two men aboard, the Bébé needed a long run and no wavering off a clean line. They tore downhill and he lifted off to skim over the heads of a group of Germans who cowered as they cleared them by inches, then put their rifles to the shoulder to shoot at them.

  A shadow fell across the cockpit and Boyd, sitting half out of the aeroplane, looked up to wave, as he thought, at Holt.

  Instead, he saw a Fokker between himself and the sun, about to open fire.

  He heard a burst of shooting, the unmistakable sound of a Lewis gun, and saw the Fokker yaw violently, drop a wing, and stall in with a flash of flame.

  An instant later, Holt was alongside and they flew home together.

  *

  The first thing they heard when they landed was that the observer of one of the FE2s the rest of the squadron had been escorting, a Corporal Waller, had shot down a Fokker 3E that was identified as Max Immelmann’s: in flames.

  The news made Boyd forget the pain of his wound for a moment, and he was as saddened as though he had heard of a comrade’s death instead of an enemy’s.

  There was much to mark 18th June 1916 as a memorable day and one which he would recall to mind throughout his life. But however much he savoured his own successes on that day, any feeling of triumph was always tainted with vicarious remorse for the passing of a gallant man.

  Holt had taken a Spandau bullet through the thigh from the first Fokker he had engaged, then his aircraft had been hit by Emil Holt’s observer, and he had been wounded again when German riflemen fired a volley at him while he was covering the other two. A bullet had broken two ribs; he was lucky it had not been an inch closer, or he would have been hit in the stomach.

  Their stay in a field hospital was short: after three days, they were allowed to rejoin the squadron.

  Boyd was more bothered by Holt’s silence and depression than by his own wound. The American scarcely joined in when he and Eastman relived the episode. All he would say, at any mention of the whole dusk patrol, was “It was my fault. If I hadn’t let that Rumpler get away, we would have knocked them all down and Ted wouldn’t have been hit.”

  He told Chandler and Hannington the same when they visited the hospital. “Ted Eastman would have been OK if I hadn’t hesitated over that Rumpler.”

  “I wasn’t there: what Rumpler d’you mean?” asked Chandler.

  “One with a pair of crossed axes as a kind of personal symbol.” Holt looked away and fiddled uneasily with his blanket.

  “You didn’t let him get away,” Boyd put in. “You distracted his attention and set him up to make an easy shot for me ... and overshot before you could put a burst in yourself.”

  “Guess I didn’t make my mind up quick enough,” he muttered.

  “Rot. Isn’t that so, Ted?”

  Eastman, over-readily, agreed. “Yes ... of course ... but I was a bit too far to see exactly ... I’d been chasing that Fokker that decided to leg it for home early on in the scrap.”

  On the evening that they returned to camp, Eastman came to Boyd’s tent while he was resting for a while before going to mess. His bovine face bore a puzzled expression. “I say, Nick ... I’m a bit worried about Elliot ... as deputy flight commander and as a friend. He’s devilish down in the dumps still. What’s all this about letting that Rumpler off?”

  “Sheer imagination, Ted. I was right with him when he was going in to attack it ... and he just misjudged, that was all.”

  Eastman rubbed his chin. “H’m. Lot of fuss about nothing, seems to me. Can’t you convince him he’s got nothing to blame himself about?”

  “I think the less said the better. Least said, soonest mended. If I bring it up, he’ll only start brooding about it again.”

  “Looks to me as though he’s brooding all the time already. Only one remedy for his condition, old man: we’ve got to get him good and plastered.”

  But that didn’t work out exactly as planned. When, very late that night, Boyd went unsteadily towards his tent and bed, Holt, swaying beside him and thick of speech, mumbled “Wanna tell you something, Nick. You’re a go-good g-guy ... real buddy ... wanna tell you ...”

  “Sure, old b-boy ... what’s on your mind? Not that damn silly business about the Rumpler again, I hope?”

  “You gotta listen.” Holt subsided into the tent’s only chair. Boyd flung himself flat on the bed. “I’m telling you this because you’re my pal.” He looked owlishly at him. “Pilot of that Rumpler ... know him ... fella called Emil Holz ...” He repeated “Holz ... almost same as my name ... kind of distant relation ... well, not so distant, I guess ... came to visit with us in the States last year ...”

  Boyd thrust himself up on to his elbows and turned a face full of compassion towards his friend. “You poor old ... blighter ... God! How ruddy awful ... Did you recognise him that time in the balloon ... when he killed poor old Mather ... ?”

  Holt nodded in misery. “Y
ep. After that, half my mind was set on shoooting the bastard down ... and half of it was scared stiff I’d meet him again and ... and do just what I did ... find I couldn’t make myself do it.”

  Boyd sat right up and swung his legs off the bed, leaning forward in an earnestness that had little to do with being more than a trifle drunk. “You were right, Elliot. Absolutely right. I’d ... I’d have thought less of you if you had shot him down in cold blood ...”

  Holt gave a harsh laugh. “Cold? My blood was boiling ... but I still couldn’t do it.”

  “All the more ... to your credit. Shows you’re a ... a human being ... not an animal ... which your ... your ... this Hun ... Holz ... obviously was. You ought to be proud, not ashamed.”

  Flushed and embarrassed, at the same time his eyes full of gratitude, Holt looked straight at his friend. “You really mean that, Nick?”

  “Couldn’t mean it more, m’dear chap ... and I’m not being so bally solemn ... sen-sen-ten-tious just because I’m a bit ... just a very little ... tight ... I really do mean it.”

  “Thank you, Nick,” said Holt quietly. He stood up. “I guess I’ll sleep tonight ... first time in three nights.”

  *

  In the morning, Boyd was standing by the hangars, watching other people take off and land, his arm in a sling, when he became aware of Hannington at his side.

  It was the first time he had seen his flight commander that day, and in accordance with custom he greeted him formally. A salute, and “Good morning, sir.”

  “’Morning Nick. How’s the shoulder feeling?”

  “Should be fit to fly in a day or two, Anthony.”

  “Good. Thought you’d like to know: we’ve put you up for a bar to your MC.”

  Boyd, taken by surprise, felt himself colouring. “Th-Thank you. But what about the others?”

  “Their turn will come.” It was apparently a topic not to be discussed; Hannington changed course: “Heard about the new Sopwith One-and-a-half Strutter?”