by David Ward
On the fourth day of my stay at Redcar there was a knock at the front entrance. I could hear Mrs. Baxter exchange pleasantries and then open the door wider. A soldier entered and removed his hat. “Paul,” he said quietly.
I stared hard and then gasped. “Robert!”
I hardly recognized him. His face was gaunt and he looked 10 years older than when I had last seen him. He moved stiffly, like an old man. But more than anything, his eyes looked drained of life. I was shocked to see him in such a state.
Mrs. Baxter came to our rescue. “To the fireside — both of you!” she commanded. “We’ll all catch our death of cold standing here. Leave your bag, lad. I’ll see that it gets to your room. You’ll stay with us.”
Despite Robert’s condition, it was a joyous reunion, and in minutes we were sitting by the fire, sipping tea and downing Mrs. Baxter’s cookies as fast as she brought them. We launched into stories of our farm and I laughed as I had not done in months. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Your buddy Billy sent me a letter. Could have bowled me over, I got it so fast. I was due for leave, decided to chase you down, and here I am.”
“I’ve missed you, Robert,” I said with a sigh. “And there’s times I can hardly wait to see home.”
“Home,” he said, as if tasting the word. He smiled again weakly. Then he stared at the fire and fell silent. I waited. For a moment I thought he had fallen asleep. Finally he said, “It’s bad, Paul. Bad beyond words. I’m going to get it soon enough.”
“Don’t talk like that, Robert,” I said, but he held up his hand to stop me.
“The things I say to you, I cannot tell Mom and Dad or Sarah. You’ve been in battle, so you can understand.” Then he spoke of the giant guns incessantly firing and blowing holes in the ground and in the men all around him. He described charges over ground littered with bodies. He described men acting like animals. And he told me about the trenches — diseases, rats the size of cats biting in the night, the sounds of men dying, the awful stench. He spoke for a long time and then fell silent again to stare at the fire.
“Robert,” I said, “at least you’re still alive.”
He looked at me through tired eyes. “Sometimes I’m not sure. There so much death, I can’t always tell.”
That night Robert screamed as I have never heard a man scream before. I leapt from my bed and ran to his room.
“Robert!” I cried. “What’s wrong?” He mumbled incoherently. After a moment Mrs. Baxter appeared in the doorway carrying a candle. Robert stared up at us with wild, terrified eyes. “I’ll make tea,” Mrs. Baxter said simply, as if she had witnessed this sort of thing before. She handed me another candle. Robert was soaked in sweat and gasping. He gripped my arm with tremendous strength. “It’s all right,” he said, catching his breath. “It will pass. Let’s go sit by the fire.”
We went downstairs and I stirred up the coals in the fireplace. Mrs. Baxter brought us tea and then headed off for bed. I told Robert about the Curtiss Aviation School, about coming to Redcar and meeting Nellie. He listened attentively and calmed himself in the warmth of the fire and the tea.
“I’d like to meet Nellie,” he said. “Thinking of you and a lovely girl sounds so …” He paused and then said, “Hopeful.”
“What happened up there?” I asked, pointing to the bedrooms.
“Horrible dreams,” he murmured. “They come every night that I’m not in the trenches.” He looked up from his tea. “Tell me more about Nellie.”
In the morning I found Robert in the kitchen, helping Mrs. Baxter make breakfast. The wildness was gone from his eyes and he smiled more frequently. When he left the kitchen to put food on the table, Mrs. Baxter whispered, “Anyone who’s been in the trenches screams at night. At least, that’s been our experience. It ain’t natural, what’s happening to the boys over there, God help them.”
When the post arrived I received the best news. “Nellie’s coming tomorrow morning,” I exclaimed. “She’s delivering some socks to the base. We can meet her at the station!”
Robert went with me to the hospital after breakfast and stood by while the doctor rebandaged my wound. “It’s healing well,” he said. “There’s no infection.”
It turned out that Robert was being treated for trench foot, a condition caused by standing for long periods of time in the cold, water-filled and filthy trenches. “She works hard, your Nellie,” Robert said a few minutes later. “And she cares for you. That much is clear.”
We met Nellie at the station the next day. She looked smashing. I hardly recognized the farm girl I’d seen a few days before. She linked arms with Robert and me and our day began. Robert raised his eyebrows at me and winked. His first impression was a good one.
“We shall take a tour of the quaint town of Redcar,” Nellie announced. We stopped at all the shops, looking in the windows or going inside. Nellie’s wit and humour did wonders for Robert. “This —” she pronounced dramatically at one window “— is a bake shop. I am sure you do not have such a fancy thing in Canada, being the colony and all.”
“No, your ladyship,” Robert quipped. “But we’re improving every year.”
“I’m sure you’re trying,” she answered.
While she was busy buying cookies for us, Robert leaned over to me. “She’s wonderful, Paul. She makes me feel as if there isn’t a war.”
I let the two of them do most of the talking. Nellie told Robert about my landing in the Timpson field. Robert told story after story about our farm and family. I got the sense that they were interviewing each other, teasing out information. Their comments, while often funny, were supplying answers to topics that Nellie and I had not had the chance to discuss. I smiled. I could not have asked for two better people to be on my side.
When it was time to take her back to the station, Nellie held on to me for a long time. “Your brother has been hurt,” she whispered in my ear. “In his heart and mind and body. But he seems a good man.”
“Did you have a good time?” I asked her.
“Better than good. I just wish we had longer … and a little time alone.”
At supper that night, Robert suddenly stopped eating and pointed his fork at me. “Marry her, Paul! Marry Nellie.”
I choked on a piece of shepherd’s pie. “I’m nineteen,” I stammered. “And she’s even younger.”
With his fork still pointed at me he answered, “After all we’ve been through, how old do you have to be to get married?”
Chapter 9
January 1917
I returned to France in the new year, only to discover that many of us were being transferred to the more forward position of Vert Galand. Most of the British officers in the huts around us were in 55 Squadron.
Billy and Ashcroft fairly tackled me when I arrived.
“Good old Stitch!” Billy shouted as I jumped down from the transport truck.
I stared at him more closely and noticed even deeper lines in his face than had been there last time I’d seen him. Both he and Ashcroft looked haggard. “Didn’t you get leave?” I asked.
Ashcroft shouldered my bag as we made for our hut. “Sure we did,” he said. “We got four days after you left and then another four at Christmas.” So they had seen a lot of action while I was away. No wonder they looked so haggard. It certainly gave me a sense of what to expect at Vert Galand. As if on cue, I noticed the dull pounding of artillery. It was not far — much closer than at Ochey.
As we walked to the aerodrome I glanced at the airstrip. “Where are the Strutters?” I asked. “And what are these?” Four planes, the likes of which I had never seen, were sitting side by side in the field. They were sleek machines, more so than the Strutters, and the fuselage was pleasantly rounded.
“Sopwith Pup,” said Ashcroft. “They’re faster than the Strutters. Billy’s taken it to a hundred and three miles per hour!”
“And I’ll get it to a hundred and six soon,” Billy boasted.
Ashcroft
jogged over the thin layer of snow to one of the aircraft and patted the cockpit. “This little pup has a ceiling of almost eighteen thousand feet!” I shook my head in wonder. That was considerably higher than the Strutter.
“She handles beautifully,” Ashcroft added, his breath puffing out clouds in the freezing air. “Playful as a sparrow. Fast, and she can hold her altitude.”
I pointed to the four painted marks below the cockpit.
“Ashcroft’s count is four,” Billy said. “Two in one day! We had five Albatros scouts on the run. Ashy here lured them right across our lines, and between us and the anti-aircraft crew, only one Hun went home!” He dramatized firing a machine gun and then his hand became a plane spiralling to the ground. Ashcroft laughed.
Their grisly enthusiasm was startling. I had felt anger in the heat of battle before, even the exhilarating terror of the chase, but there was something chilling about the way Billy and Ashcroft spoke.
It was bitterly cold the next morning too. The clouds were low and by 10:00 a.m. we were given word that there would be no flying. Instead, we were to help sandbag the huts, the anti-aircraft guns and the hangar. Our last home at Ochey had taken terrible hits from German raids in December, losing many of their planes, as well as all the windows in their huts.
The British officers from 55 Squadron were upset about having to do manual labour, especially filling the bags with sand. “They didn’t sign up for this sort of thing, don’t you know, old chap,” quipped Ashcroft as he passed another bag on to me. I grinned and pushed the bag into place against the wall of the hangar. It was as close to farm work as we had experienced so far and I found it refreshing, despite the ache from my wound.
Billy and I decided to finish sandbagging our own hut, even if he was the one who’d be doing most of the lifting. It was merciless work in the afternoon chill, but news of the Ochey bombings was fresh in our minds. Ashcroft joined us for the last half hour and we finished the job. It was none too soon. The Germans attacked Vert Galand the next morning.
Our anti-aircraft guns started firing even before the air-raid sirens went off. The explosions were so loud I thought a bomb had landed in our hut. I was thrown out of my bed and crashed onto the floor. The ground shook violently and it was impossible to stand up. I clung to a bed frame to keep from sprawling on my back. One of the oil lanterns sailed over our heads and across the room. Billy shouted something unintelligible. A window burst. I ducked as glass shot across the floor. Explosion followed explosion as I held on tight to my bed.
There was a brief lull. Then machine guns began strafing the nearby huts.
“Get down, Billy!” I shouted, scrambling under the bed. He landed with his head next to mine. Seconds later, bullets tore through the roof of our hut and shattered our remaining window.
After a minute or so the bombs stopped, but the anti-aircraft guns continued as we pulled on our boots and ran outside. Massive craters dotted our landing field. Two Sopwith Pups burned like torches. The hangar was still intact, thanks to our sandbagging. When I turned around to look at our hut, I gasped. A chunk of metal the size of my fist was embedded in one of the sandbags near the door. I shook my head. Without the protection we’d laid down the day before, the shrapnel would have gone right through the wall.
When all were accounted for, two people were dead — a mechanic and a nurse. The mechanic had been hit by shrapnel. The poor nurse had just come off shift and could not find cover when the planes flew over. She’d been killed by bullets, not a bomb. Someone had shot her down as she ran.
I was so angry my voice shook. “Let’s go,” I said to Ashcroft and Billy. “Let’s go now. We can catch them.”
“Easy, Stitch,” said Billy.
He helped lift the nurse onto a stretcher and then turned to me. Lowering his voice, he said, “We shot up their hospital a few days after Christmas.”
“What?” I asked.
Ashcroft moved closer so as not to be overheard. “There was smoke everywhere, Stitch. I swear to God, we couldn’t see what we were doing. There was no cross on the building — at least, nothing visible to us. When fifty bombs go off and you’re dodging anti-aircraft bullets, you can’t see everything. I shot at every building in sight.”
Billy kicked at the smoking ground. “The commander received a wire from the Hun the next day. We were as shocked as he was.”
I put my face in my hands. No wonder the Germans had attacked like this. Why was it all so complicated? The nurse looked hardly older than Nellie.
Billy put his hand on my shoulder. “Steady now, Stitch, steady. We’ve got some fires to put out. Then we’ll go get them. And we’ll get them back twice over.”
We were told to stand ready for 8:00 a.m. Billy, Ashcroft and I sipped coffee and waited in the dark. I was nervous. It had been some time since I’d last flown, and once again I’d be in a new plane. Even with my friends’ assurances that the Pup was brilliant, I couldn’t be certain until I had taken her up myself.
Ashcroft stamped out a cigarette and looked up at me in the glowing light of our wood stove. “Keep a wary eye out for Jasta 11, Stitch, my boy.”
“Why?”
“They’ve got a pilot — the Red Baron, they call him. Real name is von Richthofen. He flies an Albatros D.II. He’s crazy. Not even the best pilot I’ve seen, but he’s fearless and sly as a fox. Flies with his brother, they say.”
“They all fly with their relatives!” Billy grunted. “They’re royalty, these Huns. Not farm boys like us.”
“And they’ve taken to flying out of the sun. They perch up high on patrol and then fly out into your blind spot, with the sun making them practically invisible,” said Ashcroft.
“The good thing,” Billy said with a wry smile, “is that there’s so much rain pouring down over this godforsaken war that poor old Jasta 11 can’t use the sun very often.”
“And another thing, Stitch,” Ashcroft said, ignoring Billy. “They call themselves the Flying Circus — whole groups of planes attacking at once rather than in twos and threes.”
It was a curious name. I tried to picture what it might look like in the sky.
The patrol was called to take off and I found myself sitting in the cockpit of the beautiful and mysterious Sopwith Pup. Billy and Ashcroft were right. The controls were marvellous. Takeoff was smooth. I’d worried needlessly — all my skills returned in an instant. The one disconcerting thing was that my hand started shaking again. I had forgotten about it in Redcar. And now it was back. I wondered if Robert was screaming again at night.
Dawn broke in the east, showing gathering clouds and the threat of more precipitation. There were five of us in single-seat Sopwith Pups. I grinned under my face covering. What a sight we must have been in these sleek new planes. If only Nellie could have seen us!
We flew in a tight formation and I could tell by each pilot’s focus that flying so close to the Western Front was a serious thing. From the corners of my eyes I watched my friends performing rituals: tightening chinstraps or making the sign of the cross. Billy kept patting the side of his Pup as if he were reassuring a nervous horse. We maintained a low altitude for over a mile and I saw more clearly than ever before what Robert’s world looked like.
The early light revealed a terrible scene. From the sky it looked as if the earth had been emptied of all living things. Pockmarks covered the ground like a thousand mud stains on a white blanket. Trenches zigzagged across the land as far as the eye could see. Ruined guns and armaments lay broken where they had been struck. There were bodies too. Far too many.
I shuddered as I stared at Robert’s world. Little wonder he had nightmares. And little wonder if he questioned his chances for survival. Who could live in such a desolate place? I remembered what Robert had said about pilots and planes, but there was no doubt in my mind that the men on the ground faced a grimmer challenge.
We stayed close to our own lines, travelling the length of the trenches and venturing only a short way into No Man’s Land. T
he trenches were separated by only 300 yards in some places, and there was danger of being shot at from the ground. It was light enough now that I could see our men hunched in their trenches. One man raised his canteen to us in salute.
I played with the wind a little and fluttered from side to side to feel the Pup’s agility in the air. It was a marvellous machine and it felt good to focus on flying rather than the horrors below.
Ashcroft suddenly waved and caught our attention. He pointed ahead and then signalled “five” with his hand. Billy waved back and nodded his acknowledgement. It took a moment for me to find the enemy planes. They were still behind our lines and making for No Man’s Land. If we were lucky, they’d be low on fuel.
Billy banked sharply to intercept. My admiration for our new planes increased as we followed, gaining elevation faster than in our old Strutters.
The Germans spotted us and started climbing. They were no match for the Pups, however, and we remained above them in our race for the height advantage.
We engaged in battle directly above our trenches. What a show it must have been for those on the ground: five against five, our Pups against two Albatros D.IIs and three Halberstadt D.IIs. For a moment I wondered if the Red Baron was among them, but as the first enemy flew by I saw from their markings that they were not from Jasta 11. Regardless of their leader, they were good pilots.
Ashcroft was hit immediately. Smoke billowed from his fuselage and he disengaged from the fight. I was relieved to see him still looking about. At least he was alive! And then I was caught up in fighting for my life and lost sight of him. An Albatros came up from below and I flitted to the side, exactly as I’d been practising en route. I dodged it and then opened fire as it went past me. The bullets traced along the cockpit and the pilot suddenly slumped forward. It happened so quickly I was stunned to see the plane spiral downward, a stream of smoke pouring from the engine. Seconds later there was an explosion and the plane burst into fire in the sky.