It had been an effort to get to church at all. She rode a tricycle, perched high and swaying from side to side with the effort of each push of the pedals. A basket was attached to the handlebar, there was a carrier between the back wheels: thus she carried home her purchases when she went shopping.
Ilse bicycled at her side, sometimes almost losing her balance as she kept her speed down to her mother’s.
Herr Foreman Gratz, who, besides having the fecundity of a rabbit, was a sidesman, awaited them at the west door, looking lugubrious. That was, anyway, his Sabbath countenance but this morning he wore it also because he felt guilty about Horst Nauroth, his old friend and colleague. He took his responsibilities seriously. He was not in any measure responsible for an enemy bomb singling Horst Nauroth out as a direct target, but whatever happened on his shift caused him distress or elation. In this instance, the former.
Beside Herr Gratz, Oberfeldwebel Uwe Gratz looked very well in his smartly pressed field-grey and polished jackboots. He had succumbed to vanity and taken off his greatcoat, despite the cold, to display the pilot’s badge and Iron Cross on his left breast. He was canny enough to have donned a sweater under his tunic: he always wore one when flying, and drew his tunics from the quartermaster a size larger than he really needed.
He saluted the widow and her daughter and murmured a good morning.
Frau Nauroth nodded, mopping her eyes.
Ilse managed a subdued “Good morning, Uwe.”
Frau Gratz was already in the family’s usual pew, with her two unmarried daughters and her youngest son.
She felt that Frau Nauroth’s grief was overdone. She allowed, however, that the poor creature was an invalid and it must therefore be harder for her to sustain a loss. Although she had had some practice, Heaven knew, with two sons killed in the war.
Frau Gratz knew something about grief, too. Her second and fourth sons had been taken from her: one drowned at sea, his U-boat sunk by a British destroyer, the other shot by a British sniper. Now Uwe risked his life every day and so did her eldest son, who was an artilleryman at the Western Front.
Folk round about here had many grudges against the English and the French. It was mostly the English, because it happened that the regiments which recruited in this area were fighting in their sector.
After the service the pastor had a special word for the newly bereaved and for those who had received news during the week that “loved ones”, as he cloyingly put it, had been wounded.
“Your husband was just as much a casualty at the Front as any soldier or sailor,” he told Frau Nauroth. “The Front is wherever the enemy happens to carry his cruel offensive. For the space of fifteen minutes, Fichtewald was in the front line and your husband gave his life for all of us; killed as he was, on duty.”
This brought no comfort to the widow, who burst into tears anew.
In the afternoon the whole Gratz family called and were regaled with coffee and cake: neither really palatable, despite Ilse’s skill at the oven.
Uwe and his father smoked cigars and their aroma brought to mind the missing head of the Nauroth family; but Frau Nauroth was by now too enfeebled by that morning’s expression of grief to have strength left for any more. Instead, she listlessly let her eyes dwell on Uwe, told herself what a fine young man he was and wished Ilse would show enough sense to encourage him.
What if he did have the unsavoury nickname “Stoat” in the neighbourhood? Young men always had to sow their wild oats and it was better that he did so somewhere else than hang around this house getting her daughter in trouble. It wasn’t Christian behaviour, of course, but then neither were so many other things that men did, and one had to accept them if one were to come to terms with life. He would make Ilse a good husband and eventually he would go far in his profession.
Frau Nauroth inhaled the cigar smoke, communed mentally with her departed husband about the welfare of their daughter, recalled her sons to mind and counted her blessings. They were few enough, but in the security of her familiar surroundings in that quiet corner of Germany on a Sunday afternoon they gave her comfort.
The cheerful fire in the grate, the brightly patterned wallpaper, the large-patterned red curtains made the room cosy. The grey winter day beyond the window seemed to belong to another planet.
Frau Nauroth, her daughter and their friends felt secure.
The air raid of a few nights before had manifestly been a mistake or a freak of some kind. It was incredible that the enemy would ever return.
Uwe Gratz’s eyes kept returning to Ilse, while she demurely seemed unaware of it; except that the rigid way in which she avoided looking at him was plain indication to everyone else present that she could not take her thoughts off him.
At the back of her mind was the constant reminder that she did not like short men or fat men, and that Uwe was one day going to be as stout as the father he resembled facially and in stature.
Her head had been full of romantic notions ever since she was 14 years of age. Her reading of German and French novels and translations of English fiction had caused her to imagine that there must be, somewhere, a tall and handsome young man who was seeking just her. The lonely and introspective life that had been forced on her by her mother’s illness had heightened her imaginings and longings.
She admitted to herself that Uwe had a kind nature and was serious-minded, he shared her interest in music and literature. But although he was a companion who did not bore her, the fact remained that he was a groper; and there was a certain repugnance about the knowledge that he had been fumbling and tumbling and tupping girls all over the place ever since he was in his mid-teens.
Goodness only knew what he had been up to in France and Belgium. The Army recruited local women of loose character and set up official military brothels. They did the same in the Fatherland. There was something grubby about the thought of Uwe taking his turn in a queue to consort with public women and then coming after her to do exactly the same.
Apart from the feeling it gave her that it made her want to scratch herself all over and bathe in disinfectant, there was the other consideration: who knew but that he had already contracted a disease? Even if he had been cured of it, that would make his embraces no more pleasant to contemplate, let alone to accept.
His presence disturbed her, none the less. There were very few young men in the village nowadays and she was a healthy young woman. Naturally Uwe held a strong carnal appeal. But she really didn’t want those fat stubby fingers of his on her skin.
He was speaking, and obviously it was mainly for her benefit. He was boasting about the latest aeroplanes, and, by implication, about his own prowess. It was like a boy showing off about his skill at some sport in an oblique way. By talking about the skills of an opponent, he intended his audience to infer his own superior skills.
“The Fokker Triplane, now,” Uwe was saying, “there’s a machine for you. What d’you think of climbing to four thousand two hundred metres in fifteen minutes, eh? And being able to do over a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour when you get up there? And there are two machine-guns with which to shoot the Tommies down. But that’s nothing compared with the new Fokker D7 that’s coming along. That will reach more than two hundred kilometres an hour and can climb to six thousand five hundred metres.”
“It is a miracle that man can live at such heights and speeds,” his mother exclaimed with admiration.
All this talk made Frau Nauroth’s head spin. She looked at Uwe with total lack of comprehension of what it could be like to fly at all. She found great difficulty in pedalling her tricycle.
The elder Gratz said smugly, “I hear tell that they’re going to put barrage balloons up around the junction. That isn’t going to be popular.”
“Why not?” asked Frau Nauroth.
“The government makes the company whose property is being protected contribute to the cost. The directors of the railway are mean enough about our wages; they’ll raise a terrible fuss about paying
to protect us as well. Of course, they’ll try to make out the balloons are there for the benefit of the railway staff and the whole village population, not the track and rolling-stock.”
Frau Nauroth made no concurring comment. The railway had been good to her over her husband’s death and the pension she was to receive.
Ilse said, looking at Uwe at last, “Surely it would be better not to put an airfield at Schutzstadt or to position balloons here? Why attract the attention of the enemy to the fact that we have a railway junction and factories to defend? The war has been going on for nearly three and a half years without them finding it worth their while to bother about this region.”
Uwe quickly took the chance to display his esoteric knowledge.
“Until now! They couldn’t reach all the way here before, because their machines did not have the range. Stationing fighters at Schutzstadt and putting up a balloon barrage here will not be an invitation to the enemy; it will be a warning to keep away.”
“I would still prefer it if your Kest, or whatever you call it, did not base itself so close to this village.”
With gallantry and a smile, he said, “That is not very complimentary to me, gnädiges Fraulein.”
It wasn’t meant to be, Fathead, she thought.
“I’d rather you and your friends went and climbed to four thousand metres, or whatever it is, somewhere else.”
“But we shall be elsewhere. The whole purpose of posting us at Schutzstadt is to stop the enemy before they can get anywhere near this area. You won’t even hear or see us. We shall be patrolling far away, to put a barrier between here and the enemy.”
“You can’t have much confidence in your ability to stop them if they do come, if the government is going to put a balloon barrage around here as well, then.”
Uwe looked annoyed and his usually friendly, merry eyes became hostile.
“I seem to remember that your father used to wear a belt as well as braces.”
“What has my dear husband got to do with you young people’s wrangling?” asked Frau Nauroth with tears instantly springing to her eyes at mention of her Horst.
“I was trying to explain to Ilse that sensible people take double precautions, that was all.”
The three youngest Gratz children began to giggle at the mental picture of the late Herr Nauroth’s trousers collapsing about his knees.
Their mother and hostess, both divining the reason for their amusement, looked embarrassed.
Their father cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say to change the subject. All he could think of was that he also wore both belt and braces; and that seemed an undignified contribution to a conversation that was already causing these young imps unseemly glee.
He said, “The news from the Front has been better lately.”
In a sour tone, Uwe replied, “That is because the armies on both sides of the line are snowed in and can’t move.” He looked proud and pleased in a sulky sort of way and boasted, “But we flyers can. The weather creates all sorts of difficulties for us, but at the worst we can fly above it. Snow doesn’t stop us leaving the ground.”
He looked at Ilse with an air of triumph.
“Then it won’t stop the English, either,” she retorted.
Chapter Seven
The aeroplane which was coming in to land on the wing’s aerodrome cast a monstrous shadow on the snow.
“As if the Houses of Parliament were airborne,” Tearle said.
He stood beside Yardley, Wotton and several others, watching it.
Nearby, Lieutenant-Colonel Quinn, the wing adjutant, Brigadier-General Pollard and Captain Ogilvy-Smith formed another group.
The officer commanding the FE2 squadron, with several of his pilots and observers, had also turned out to see the Handley Page arrive: the first of the third squadron on the wing. More were expected in that day and for the next few days.
They had all seen the HP O/100 before. Since November 1916 it had been serving at the Western Front. However, the first squadron to be equipped with it was in a Royal Naval Air Service wing and the RFC’s acquaintance with it was, for many months, limited to seeing its enormous 100 ft wings and 63 ft fuselage with double tail planes and treble fins, in the air.
It was already the subject of amazed discussion and admiration long before it was issued to RFC squadrons. It was a behemoth and compared with any other aircraft in the Service it was like a pumpkin to a pea.
The HP O/100 had a bomb-load far surpassing any known before, except in the bomb-racks of an airship. It was designed to carry 16 112 lb bombs internally and two more slung under the wings. In addition, the air gunner, who manned two Lewis guns in a cockpit several yards astern of the pilot, was supplied with six Cooper bombs, weighing 24 lb each, which he could drop by hand.
Well forward of the pilot, in a cockpit right in the nose, the observer sat with two more Lewis guns.
A fifth Lewis, manned by a fourth member of the crew, projected through a trapdoor in the fuselage floor, behind the pilot.
This giant was propelled by two Eagle engines which gave it a speed of 95 m.p.h. at ground-level and an endurance of eight hours. Its ceiling was a modest 7,000 ft but it made up for this with an astonishingly modern feature: to enable it to enter hangars of the size used in the field, its wings were hinged so that they could fold back just outboard of the first strut between upper and lower planes on either side.
Neither Yardley nor anyone else on his squadron had ever inspected a Handley Page on the ground, but when they strolled towards it after it landed no one would have suspected how eager they were to take a close look at it now.
This machine was an improved version of the original one, a HP O/400, which had come into service in April 1917. Both marks had originally been used for day bombing and then, in April 1917, the earlier one had gone over to night operations. The following October, the second type followed suit.
The O/400 had the same engines as the O/100, but could squeeze two more miles an hour out of them, attain 8,000 ft and carry, in its internal bays, either 16 112 lb or three 550 lb or one 1,650 lb bomb.
Wotton, when it came to his turn to climb aboard, took a look first at the dorsal gunner’s position before he went forward to see what the observer’s cockpit was like.
As soon as he looked towards the pilot’s cockpit, he called to Yardley, who was already in the pilot’s seat. “Major! See what I see? Behind you.”
Yardley twisted around, looked at the contraption on the upper surface of the fuselage between pilot and dorsal gunner and grimaced.
“I don’t believe it, Alec.”
“What did I tell you, sir? Great minds think alike, eh?”
Between the two cockpits ran an endless belt with empty Verey cartridges attached to it into which messages could be tucked so that pilot and dorsal gunner could keep in touch.
“There isn’t room for exactly the same arrangement on the DH,” said Yardley.
“No, but with this as a model we can soon fix something up.”
Walking away from the Handley Page after they had looked all over it, Yardley wore a thoughtful air.
“The technical blokes told me this morning that there is a new modification out for the DH4. We can have an extra petrol tank under the pilot’s seat, to increase endurance from three and a half to five and a half hours. Of course that means sacrificing one of our bombs, but I’d been thinking it might be worthwhile; at least for one flight. But now that I’ve seen this giant, with its load capacity of two thousand pounds, I wouldn’t have the gall to fly all that way to a target with even fewer bombs than we can lift already.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Major,” Wotton said. “I wouldn’t fancy another two hours of freezing cold and sucking oxygen.”
Very recently a crude oxygen supply, fed through a tube into a mask over nose and mouth, had been devised. It was switched on at 16,000 ft; by which time, a degree of anoxia had already affected the airmen. The device was unpopular: it was un
comfortable to wear and aggravated sore skin already chapped by bitter winds.
When he had returned to his office, followed by Tearle and the three flight commanders, Yardley took up his favourite position with his chair tilted back and his feet up, and looked reflective.
“The HPs are going to make life more difficult for us,” he said. “They’ll be able to penetrate about three hundred and twenty miles into Germany, allowing for head winds and other vagaries of the weather. That’ll mean Jerry becoming really alarmed. Which, in turn, will mean that he’ll react by doing the same sort of thing he’s always done behind the Front: standing patrols waiting for us.”
“That’ll mean a hell of a lot more searchlights, or the patrols won’t spot us.”
“The Archie sound-predictors will pick us up, and they can fire star-shell to illuminate us as well as shooting H.E. at us.”
“We’ll have to stay above cloud as much as possible,” Tearle said. Then he looked forlorn and added, “Sorry. I can’t get out of the habit of saying ‘we’. I’ll be sitting warm and safe on the ground while the rest of you chaps are doing the hard work.”
“Don’t worry, Harold,” Yardley told him, “I’m doing all I can to get the MOs to agree to pass you fully fit. You’ll be freezing and sucking in oxygen with the rest of us before long.”
“I hope so. Meanwhile, the Colonel, with HQ’s blessing, has issued orders about target priorities. Here they are.”
“Read them out for us, will you, Harold? The rest of you had better take notes and pass them on to your chaps.”
The three captains fumbled for notebooks and pencils. They knew that their CO’s polite “you’d better...” was an order and that he would check at the end of the day that they had briefed their crews.
“Well,” Tearle began, “railways are first priority. After that, factories making aircraft engines and components, and components for U-boats and railway engines. Next, munitions factories and chemical works. Then power stations and iron or steel foundries. Factories making any kind of war materials end the list. And in future there is always to be a secondary target; so that if, for any reason, the main target can’t be attacked, the sortie isn’t wasted and no one has to go hunting around looking for something obvious to bomb: like a blast-furnace, which shows up from miles away.”
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