“Sounds reasonable,” Yardley commented.
“There’s a new navigation aid, too.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Right, sir. A system of beacons is being laid out in an arc 25 miles to the north and east of the local aerodromes. They’ll flash Morse letters and figures, visible at two thousand feet. In that way, people returning from a raid will be able to recognise their position and it’ll help them to get back to base.”
“Good wheeze.”
The flight commanders, busily jotting it all down, mumbled assent.
Yardley looked around at his four captains. He would greatly like to see Harold Tearle back flying, but that would mean losing him to another squadron. He did not want to give up any of his flight commanders. There was one solution, if Tearle did not feel hurt at not being given a flight to command. He could be re-posted to the squadron as a pilot, supernumerary. Then he could take his place on any of the flights. It would be a good arrangement, for he was out of practice after six months on the ground. And Tearle was not the sort of person to object. He would even come down to Lieutenant in order to stay with the squadron.
“Same target again tonight,” Yardley said. “Railway yards at Fichtewald. And we’d better improve on the first performance, if we want to stay on night ops.”
*
The pilot’s cockpit of the DH4 was roomy and comfortable. The instruments were easy to read and the controls convenient to the hand.
It was ten minutes to one o’clock in the morning when Yardley strapped himself in and began his preparation for a 1 a.m. takeoff.
Mounted in front of him were the Vickers gun, its Aldis sight and a rectangular windscreen of laminated Triplex glass.
On the facia panel were arrayed an illuminated compass, airspeed indicator, altimeter and inclinometer; a map board, clock, thermometer and pressure pump.
To the left, there was another pressure pump, for the gravity tank. Beside it, there were the regulator which controlled the petrol and air mixture according to altitude, the ignition control lever with which the firing of the cylinders could be advanced or retarded, and gauges showing oil pressure and fuel-tank content. Among them the petrol cocks and pipes looked not unlike organs and entrails, in the glow of the compass light.
On the opposite side of the cockpit ran a shelf where the Verey cartridges were stowed, and the wires controlling the shutters over the radiator. Beside them was the pump which brought into use the Constantinesco-Colley gear for synchronising the Vickers gun with the rotation of the propeller blades.
A lorry stood facing the aircraft, with its radiator close to the latter’s nose. The Hucks starter was mounted on this vehicle: a device which engaged an arm with the propeller and swung it.
Wotton, in his observer’s cockpit, had an airspeed indicator, altimeter, throttle, control stick and manual rudder-control grips; so that he could try to land the machine if Yardley were killed or incapacitated. He had two Lewis guns: mounted on a Scarf ring which allowed him to traverse them in almost a complete circle, and two ratchets which enabled them to be elevated or depressed. He could slide his seat forward, and behind it were stowed spare 97-round magazines for the Lewis guns, the camera in its well, and spare photographic plates.
Both men wore the new Sidcot suits in preference to the long leather coats and sheepskin thigh-boots that were the alternative. Under their Sidcots they had pullovers and tunics and on their hands they wore two pairs of gloves, one silk and the other leather. Now that oxygen masks had been introduced, they could no longer cover their mouths and noses with woollen scarves, but they each had one wrapped around the neck. Both had also smeared Vaseline over their faces to combat chapped skin. They wore knitted balaclavas under their leather helmets and they kept their goggles over their eyes all the time.
Yardley’s biggest worry was about getting all eighteen aircraft on the operation to the target. The previous time, all the pilots had navigated correctly and arrived over the marshalling yard within 15 minutes of his own arrival. They had not been able to keep in touch on the way. It had been a moonless night. There was no wireless communication between aeroplanes, and neither bombers nor fighters kept wireless touch with the ground. Wireless signalling was used only by specialist squadrons spotting for the artillery.
Tonight there was some moonlight and by taking off at half-minute intervals the whole squadron should be able to keep together. Some of them should be able to see each other, although nobody would be able to see all the accompanying machines.
Yardley had ordered a procedure which would help them to maintain a rough formation. It had to be followed carefully, to avoid collision.
A searchlight a mile to the north would be switched on two minutes before one o’clock. It would shine vertically. Two others would intersect it and shift slowly up and down between 1,000 ft and 2,000 ft. These would expose precisely at one a.m.
Each section of three aircraft would climb to a given height immediately on take-off and circle the vertical beam. The angled lights would illuminate them for the benefit of the other crews. On reaching its designated altitude, each section, flying in a loose V, would set course. There would be a separation of 30 seconds and 200 ft between sections, with the leading section at 16,000 ft and the rest stepped down towards the rear. Each section should be able to see the one above it, at least, silhouetted against the moon and stars.
They would be above cloud and would stay there until Yardley calculated that they were within 15 miles of the target. He would then fire a white Verey light and begin his descent to break cloud. The other two machines in his section would accompany him and, on reaching cloud, would move further to the flanks to reduce collision risk.
The following sections would follow suit at 45-second intervals.
Yardley’s section would level out 200 ft below cloud and the remainder successively at 200 ft steps beneath.
If anyone were forced to abandon the sortie, he would fire the usual green Verey signal.
A red Verey cartridge from Yardley would mean that he had decided to abandon the operation and they must all turn back. This he would do only if the weather deteriorated enough to enforce it.
For those times, all this was a complicated arrangement, but the best that Yardley could devise to try to ensure that they stayed close together and did not collide.
Precautions of this kind were unnecessary on daytime raids. The latter were, however, flown in close formation and collisions were commonplace. Aero engines were still so unreliable, and differences in the rigging, even of aircraft which were similar in all other respects, so considerable, that station-keeping was immensely difficult. Aircraft of the same type did not all have the same speed or rate of climb, and a faltering engine could cause one to drop suddenly and touch another. Someone’s wheels were always bursting through someone else’s canvas; aircraft would lock fatally together; an engine would surge without warning and tip a machine into its neighbour, crumpling wings. Aircraft were so light that air currents and pockets flung them about easily, and often into one another.
Every pilot and observer on the squadron had been through months or years on the Western Front, flying daylight operations in conditions which had become steadily worse as the war progressed. Many of them had been wounded, or injured in accidents and forced landings; some more than once.
All had experienced the limit of fear and come close to, or passed beyond, the amount of stress human mind and body could take without breaking down.
The change from day to night operations was relief from much of the danger and strain under which they had been used to flying. Moving from aerodromes close to the trench lines and operating in the battle area, to new aerodromes further east, and flying their sorties well away from the Flying Circus hunting packs, was like a reprieve from a death sentence.
The hazards of unpredicted bad weather and of engine failures on long journeys in the dark had already proved to be almost as great as those others they had face
d at the Front. Even the massive Handley Pages were vulnerable to the weather and to the errors inherent in crude navigational instruments.
Yardley’s squadron was still climbing after having left the searchlights which had enabled them to climb and form up in safety, when they saw the first crimson splodges in the sky where the anti-aircraft guns were probing for them. A few minutes later the shells were bursting close enough for them to see the puffs of smoke around the red centres.
They had not yet entered cloud on their way to cruising height, when they could hear the explosions as well as see them; and feel the turbulent air rocking them from side to side and making them pitch and yaw.
Searchlight beams were fastening on them as they started to see the first wraiths of vapour swirling around them and felt the damp chill of the clouds. The flak seemed to have grown more intense and Yardley’s machine was tossed violently up and sideways, so that he momentarily lost control. Correcting the involuntary bank, he did not know whether he had over-corrected and were banking in the opposite direction.
These were the conditions in which a pilot could not be certain of his aeroplane’s attitude. He might even be completely upside-down.
There was no point in holding what he thought was a climb, if in fact he was not on an even keel and climbing. He pushed the stick forward and opened the throttle further. Several seconds later the DH4 thrust its nose out of the cloud and he saw that he had been flying at a tilt. He corrected his attitude and climbed into the clouds again, forging his way up to clear air, hoping that nobody had come to grief under that sudden battering from the guns and the clouds’ treachery.
Chapter Eight
Ilse had been feeling uneasy all day.
She kept telling herself that it was hypocritical of her to have accepted Uwe’s invitation to the concert, when there was so much more about him that she disliked than liked.
It was also unfair, she thought, because she was not prepared to grant him the kind of thanks he expected.
Her mother had been in a querulous mood since Sunday, intermittently chiding her for having been impolite to Uwe. Scolding made Ilse resentful. Part of her had always felt aggrieved by the sacrifice she was making. Nobody would have expected either of her brothers to give up his career and stay at home to look after their mother: but she, as a mere female, would have been reviled throughout the village if she had not accepted the burden as a matter of course.
Although she made allowances for her mother’s affliction and the shock of her father’s sudden death, she rebelled against this outbreak of shrewishness. Yet she knew that her mother was genuinely concerned for her good. Every mother wanted to see her daughter married to a man who would prosper. That automatically constituted a happy marriage. What it really meant was that it made the mother happy.
No parent, particularly the female, ever seemed to consider that a girl might prefer to follow a career or enter a convent; or might just not like men.
This morning, her mother woke in a better frame of mind.
“This is the evening you are going to the concert with Uwe, isn’t it, dear?”
“If I still feel like it.”
“Of course you’ll go. You mustn’t worry about me. Frieda Gratz is coming to keep me company.” Frau Nauroth and Uwe’s mother had been school friends.
Ilse felt that she was being pushed into Uwe’s company, that there was a conspiracy.
“Well, just the same, I shall probably change my mind.”
“Not on my account, Ilse dear, please.”
“No, Mother; on mine.”
“My dear child! Why?”
“I am not a child, Mother. That’s just it: everyone seems to expect me to do this, that and the next thing. I am an adult and I don’t happen to be in the least enamoured of Uwe Gratz. I don’t even always like him.”
Frau Nauroth smiled.
“That is one of the surest signs that you are interested in him.”
“Not in the way you mean, Mother.” In a tone of exasperation she demanded, “Have you never noticed how coarse his skin is? He has craters on his nose, all full of blackheads. When he was a boy he used to get boils on his neck.”
“That doesn’t make him any less of a man and any worse as a husband.”
“For someone else.”
“I sometimes don’t know what to make of you; my own daughter.”
You never spoke a truer word, thought Ilse. And you could change that “sometimes” to “never”.
“He takes too much for granted.”
“Blame the war for that. It intensifies men’s feelings and makes them hasty.”
“I’d rather he expressed his intense and hasty feelings somewhere else. There are plenty of other girls in Fichtewald — and in Schutzstadt, come to that — who would welcome him with open arms.”
And more! she added to herself.
“Any sensible girl would.”
“Then I must join the ranks of the un-sensible, Mother.”
Her mother heaved a sigh and began to get out of bed.
“I am feeling better this morning than I have for many days. I shall go into the village and do some shopping.”
This, Ilse knew, was one of her mother’s ploys for impressing on her that there was no need for her to stay at home. Her mother had a great capacity for self-deception and had convinced herself that any expression of dissatisfaction with Uwe Gratz was merely a sign of affection for him.
Her mother was the kind of woman who talked about “a lover’s tiff.”
God in Heaven! Ilse thought angrily, I will let that fat, self-satisfied lump take me out this evening. Anything to get away from the house for a few hours. And the music will be lovely. And I don’t find Uwe a bore when he keeps off the subjects of myself and of his damned aeroplanes. As long as he’s not courting or boasting, he’s good company. At least, he understands music and he can talk interestingly about France and Belgium and about modern science.
“All right, Mother,” she said, “I’ll keep my promise to go out with Uwe.”
“You are a sensible girl really, Ilse. And when you come home I’ll have a good supper waiting for you both. We’ve got all that ham to finish.”
Despite prowling government inspectors, it was always easy enough for those who kept pigs and chickens and ducks and grew vegetables to supplement their rations clandestinely.
“I don’t think ham is good for blackheads and greasy skin,” Ilse said with a touch of venom that made her mother blink.
It was noon and while her mother was washing and dressing there was work to do in the greenhouse. As she went about her chores she still had a strong current of discontent running through her. Disgruntled, that’s what I am, she acknowledged. And it’s as much from a sense of something missing from my life as from positive antipathy to Uwe, or the war or Mother’s reproaches.
By the time that Uwe came to fetch her, she had overcome her reluctance to spend the evening in his company.
She took his arm and walked briskly in step with him to the railway station, chatting, animated, her cheeks glowing in the cold. As they went down the main street many greeted them and heads turned in benign approval as kindly, well-wishing eyes followed them. There were not a few mothers of nubile daughters, too, who wished she would break a leg or fall under a tram when she got to Schutzstadt. They did not have to announce whither they were bound: anyone in the village who was going in the direction of the station at that time must be going to the town.
“It’s as good as calling the banns, to walk arm-in-arm through the village,” Uwe said with a chuckle.
Ilse laughed. “One of these days I’ll tuck a cushion under my coat and see what that does for the local gossips.”
Uwe blushed. “Ilse!”
“It’s all right, Uwe, you needn’t worry about your precious reputation. I’ll tell everyone you are not the father.”
He groaned. “To hear you, one would think you were so different from the sweet girl you really are. Yo
u surprise me, you really do: you talk as though you were some sophisticated, almost immodest girl who was brought up in a big city.”
“Physically, I may never have been more than fifty kilometres from here; but, mentally, I have explored the whole world.”
“Yes, you were always a great reader, weren’t you?”
“Yes, always, ever since I was little. And geography and history were my favourite subjects at school. So, you see, I have always wandered in spirit far beyond the boundaries of Fichtewald and Schutzstadt.”
“You would enjoy travelling.”
“Very much.”
“That is one of the attractions of being an aeronautical engineer. When the war is over and I am back in civilian life, I intend to travel all over the world in my work.”
And I hope you’ll learn some subtlety when it comes to dangling bait in front of a girl, she thought.
“I feel sorry for whomever you marry, then. She will be condemned to a life of loneliness.”
And that might be preferable to watching this one increase steadily in girth until finally he is totally spherical, like his father.
“On the contrary: my wife will accompany me.”
“And the children? What fun that will be for the poor creature: changing babies, washing nappies, being harassed by crying, screaming brats because the food or the climate doesn’t agree with them as you all move from place to place.”
“God in Heaven, Ilse, you make it sound as though I am going to have a huge family and we are all going to live in a frenzy of misery, that my wife will be downtrodden. Don’t you like children?”
“Can’t stand ’em,” she said cheerfully. She had really tickled him up, hadn’t she?
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