Waves of Glory

by Peter Albano

  “Contact—reduisez!” Higgins repeated, turning the ignition switch to “On” and closing the throttle two notches.

  Cochran heaved the propeller again and retreated quickly. The Le Rhone barked and coughed asthmatically, backfired twice, jerking the propeller around stiffly and shaking the airframe, belched blue smoke, and began to fire erratically, finally coming to life with a volley of bangs, hard coughs, and sputters. Suddenly, there was a salvo that sent the blades spinning in a blur and Cochran, who had hastily retreated to a position just off the right wing, smiled proudly, shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms up like a French chef and shouted, “Voilà!” Down the line, three more engines burst into life.

  Randolph thinned the mixture three stops and within a minute all nine cylinders began firing and warming, the engine settling down into the familiar uneven roaring sound of the warming Le Rhone. Randolph smiled as a new thought crossed his mind. Like a woman, when cold, the rotary could be capricious and stubborn. But when hot, with lubricants flowing, the versatile fighter would mold herself to him, purring contentedly and ready to obey his every whim.

  While the Le Rhone spun in its high-speed idle, Randolph checked his fuel and oil gauges and pulled back slightly on the Vickers’s cocking handle, assuring himself of sufficient spring tension. It was very firm and the major nodded at the armorer, who smiled back. Randolph cursed and held his breath as a cloud of castor oil fumes filled the cockpit. It would not do to take a powerful physic before a two-hour patrol. Luckily, a sudden gust of wind cleared the fumes and the major was able to breathe again.

  Finally, after five minutes of waiting and fretting, Randolph saw his oil gauge climb to one hundred sixty degrees. Then, looking over his shoulder, he gave a thumbs-up salute to the patrol. The pilots answered. A final check. Randolph pushed the throttle forward until the rotary whirled at its maximum rpms—1,200 showing on the rev counter. The roar was deep, even, and unfaltering. Satisfied, the major throttled back and gave the thumbs-up signal to the handlers, who were staring at him expectantly. The squadron commander felt the aircraft vibrate as the chocks were pulled, the wingtips released, and the handlers and Cochran stepped warily away.

  The pursuit lurched forward and Randolph taxied out onto the hard earth runway, manipulating the throttle and turning the ignition on and off to fire the rotary in bursts to slow the Nieuport to a crawl. A last glance at the wind vane assured him the breeze, as usual, was southwesterly and he pointed the nose of the Nieuport down the middle of the runway, the three other planes of the patrol close on his tail. Turning the plane into the wind, he took a deep breath and pushed the throttle lever hard open against its stop. The lithe pursuit leapt forward.

  Randolph was pressed back into the wicker as the Nieuport gained speed and raced eagerly down the runway. Within seconds, he had accelerated to a dizzying eighty miles per hour and he moved the stick slightly to the left to counteract the enormous torque of rotary and then forward slightly to lift the tail skid and clear his forward vision, sensing more than feeling the plane lighten and begin to reach for the sky. Pulling back on the stick gently, the little scout fairly leapt into the air with the hunger of a grounded hawk. Smiling, Randolph gained altitude, clearing the row of poplars at the end of the runway by thirty feet. He banked counterclockwise, the roofs and spires of Bailleul visible off his right wingtip, green patchwork farms separated by stone walls and hedgerows filling his view in all of the other quadrants. Steepening his bank, he watched as the other members of the patrol took off, one after the other.

  From the very beginning when he was first learning to fly with Geoffrey DeHavilland and Tommy Sopwith, Randolph had loved the moment when first airborne—that magic instant when the destiny of the plane was passed from the earth to the sky, its natural habitat. True, since then, he had seen death and war in all its horror and although he was not a religious man, at this moment there was still a near spiritual communion—a merging with God, perhaps—if God dwelled on the Western Front. Certainly, it was a transcendental experience where a man bridged reality, emerging into a kind of intimate sense of being where he existed with his personal rulers; where he was master of his body, yet demanded a bare perception of it. Attuned to the machine, and indeed becoming part of it, just the thought of moving the controls commanded ailerons, rudders, and elevators, maneuvered the Nieuport, which not only blended into one’s consciousness, but spiritual self as well. Randolph thought of this moment as a prelude—a tranquil overture to the mortal danger of aerial combat and its frenzied, hysterical excitement.

  Gaining altitude and pointing the cowling of the scout plane at the high cumulus to the north, he smiled at his foolishness and shook the philosophical cobwebs from his mind. War was the ultimate reality. It murdered philosophers.

  Fourteen and a half minutes later, the flight was at twelve thousand feet and, fortunately, the sky was empty. Leading with Jarret Barton off his right elevator followed by Edward Winter and David Reed in echelon a thousand feet higher, Randolph led the flight over the front, paralleling the British trenches on a northwesterly course. Randolph prayed that they would meet no Germans.

  Again, nagging thoughts crept into his mind—the musings that afflict all men at war. Would the youngsters live long enough to become veterans—bemedaled heroes? Who were the heroes? All of those who flew five miles high strapped into wood and fabric crates as volatile as a Chinese firecracker? Perhaps. Randolph shook his head in frustration. Only war brought such extremes of futility and loneliness and constant fear of death. Then a truth struck home with the brilliance of a Very light: the war’s real heroes were the men who screamed into the slipstream to vent terror yet performed at their best; who soiled their flying clothes but never ran; who obeyed orders to the letter while the fingers of fear strangled them like an executioner’s garrote; who fought not knowing why they faced the horror day after day, the only compelling imperative the patrol, the comrades off their elevators.

  Randolph twisted his head, ran his eyes over the other three machines. For these men he fought because they fought for him, would die for him. He knew he could never bear the shame of being less than Reed, Hendon, the new chums, or any of the others. That was it. King, country, grand strategy, victory, defeat had nothing to do with it. He began to shiver and blamed it on the altitude.

  It was cold at twelve thousand feet. He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers, stiffened by the cold despite the heavy gloves. His toes, too, felt the cold and he tried to restore circulation by moving them as much as the heavy boots would permit. And as usual, his back and neck began to ache, the rough wicker pushing through the layered flight clothes. He twisted against the straps in frustration, not allowing his stiff neck to inhibit his constant search.

  Time to clear guns. Turning his head, he waved a fist stiffly from right to left and back. His pilots repeated it. Quickly, he charged the Vickers with two quick pulls on the cocking handle, opened the safety lock, and pressed the red button. The airframe shook like the victim of the flu as the Vickers jerked and blazed, spewing a half dozen brass shell casings against the guards and down the chute and into the slipstream. The other pilots emulated their leader. “At least they can clear their guns without shooting me down,” Randolph said to himself.

  Randolph believed there were four stages in the career of a pursuit pilot: students, beginners, middle-age and old age. Having survived student training, which could be as lethal as combat, Barton and Winter were beginners with still so much to learn they could very easily and fatally be daring at the wrong time and cautious when they should be bold. Combat demanded automatic reactions, but the novice had no reserve of experience upon which to draw. In the stress and terror of combat beginners quite often froze and simply did nothing. They were marvelous targets. This period lasted about three weeks. Most pilots died during this stage. If his new pilots could survive fifteen to twenty aerial encounters, then they would enter the pursuit pilot’s
middle age. This was the safest stage. The Canadian Leefe Hendon was here and possibly McDonald and Cowdry were also enjoying their middle-age. The intense excitement and terror of combat was still at hand, but the senses were not overwhelmed and the middle-aged pilot was capable of thinking, of reasoning, making weighted rational decisions in the panic of combat, and surviving on the basis of skill and intelligence, not just luck. The last stage was old age. He and Reed were in this stage. It was a dangerous time in a pilot’s career. Survival could foster contempt for the odds, bring about overconfidence that gave birth to carelessness. He had seen the veteran aces Alfred Clayson and Roger Venter die this way and most certainly, carelessness killed the redoubtable Freddie Southby. Randolph could never believe that their luck had just run out and that fate had finally turned up their numbers.

  Restlessly, the major glanced downward. Although the British push had bent the line northward forming a new salient a few thousand yards past Thiepval Ridge, High Wood, Delville Wood, and the villages of Ginchy and Morval, the front had not changed much since June—four long, bloody months. Millions of shells had churned topsoil, clay, and rock into a quagmire that made landmarks hard to find. Everything—fields, villages, forests—took on a sameness of blasted, dung brown rains. It was disgusting, as if a blight had erupted on the face of the earth, pockmarking once lush lands with loathsome sores. From the air, it looked as if some great dragon had seared the land with flaming breath and then vomited along the banks of the Somme until the surrounding landscape was drowned in puke. Summer should have brought daisies, buttercups, marguerites, poppies, and laburnum. Flocks of swallows and robins should have been swooping and feeding and new stork nests appearing on the house roofs. But below there was ooze, blood, excrement, and the moldering corpses of hundreds of thousands of men.

  Randolph shook his head and studied the Somme River. It was the one constant thing in this shifting hell and he was able to judge his position by the great bend to the north and spires of the comparatively intact Peronne jutting below his right elevator. Moving his eyes south and west he found a heap of smashed timbers that he judged to be the village of Hamel, the northern limit of his patrol. There was a light mist mixed with smoke over the front and the shell bursts appeared to be winking lights in a brownish white veil. He caught a glimpse of Thiepval Ridge beneath his wing and slowly banked to his left, away from the front. As the cowling swung around through one hundred eighty degrees, he sighted something moving far beneath them and to the southeast. A flight of five aircraft headed south at six thousand feet. He waggled his wings and stabbed a finger downward while checking the river and his compass and straightening on a reciprocal course. The new pilots leaned, banked, stared, and shrugged hopelessly. Randolph cursed and studied the intruders. They were old twin-engined Caudron G-4 bombers; tough old airplanes in brown, yellow, and green camouflage headed home after bombing in the German rear. Probably from Number Twenty Squadron based at Demicourt. Neither Barton nor Winter could see them despite the fact that both he and Reed were pointing.

  Angrily, Randolph pounded the side of the fuselage and then choked his agitations down. Keep them alive. Keep them alive, ran through his mind. A few deep breaths calmed him and he studied a new cloud buildup that thickened suddenly to the south and east in the lee of a cold front, big and billowing, forming with magic swiftness as only clouds can form over northern France in the summer air. Majestic protuberances of towering cumulo-nimbus were battlements and ramparts of castles, spires, and cornices of cathedrals. Windsor, Buckingham, and St. Paul’s were there, burnished by the sun and splashed with golds and silver. In peacetime, he would have been awed by their beauty. But today he cursed the misty hiding places—concealment for possible ambushers.

  But there was no ambush. Nothing but the five Caudrons that passed innocuously beneath them. Finally, after almost two hours, Randolph turned the patrol toward home. Barton and Winter were bitterly disappointed.

  There was no rest. After a quick lunch, Randolph led the patrol into the sky again. But they headed south away from the front over peaceful green farmland that had never seen war and here they played at it, taking turns in elements of two, first attacking and then defending, rolling, diving, looping, closing on optimum killing angles. Barton showed some promise, handling his machine with a surprisingly sure hand, a touch that showed an understanding, an appreciation for his Nieuport’s strengths and limitations. However, Winter was hesitant, reluctant, or unable to push his machine to the limit. His handling was clumsy and several times he almost rushed into a stall that could have led to a wing-shedding spin.

  Gunnery practice was held on two broken wings and a piece of fuselage of a Rumpler and the fuselage of the Albatross Reed had shot down. The wreckage was spread on a field near Douve and the pilots took turns diving and firing. With stationary targets, the critical multidimensional problem of deflection in aerial combat was missing. But any practice was better than no practice at all. Both subalterns were poor shots, but after several days of practice they learned to bore in close and hold their fire until within point-blank range—forty- and fifty-foot ranges where no one could miss.

  For three days the foursome flew the same patrol without encountering a single German machine. An observation balloon was reported over Serre, but a pair of one-and-one-half strutters from Number Twelve Squadron shot it down before Randolph could assign a patrol to it. Sham dogfighting improved the new chums’ flying, but still, Randolph’s stomach turned queasily when he thought of their inevitable baptism of fire. Could he and Reed shepherd them through it? Or would they just be dead meat like so many others?

  On the fourth day while approaching Contalmaison on the southern leg of the patrol, Randolph sighted a flash of color between Trones Wood and Morval where German heavies were pulverizing some newly won British trenches. Glancing around quickly, he found Barton’s Nieuport just off his tailplane, bouncing up and down on summer turbulence, while two thousand feet above Winter was weaving unsteadily while still above him, Reed provided top cover. Reed was waggling his wings and pointing downward.

  Waggling his wings, Randolph pushed his goggles up and leaned over the coaming. A Rumpler. Spotting for the heavies. Barton and Winter stared helplessly, unable to pick out the camouflaged observation plane despite the gestures and pointed fingers of their companions. Frustrated, Randolph scanned the sky with the veteran pilot’s search—a quick, flitting probe that covered the sky above him, sweeping back and forth and down and under. Nothing. Nothing but scattered blobs of morning clouds, dirty gray blue on one side and glaring Alpine white on the side struck by the sun. Abruptly, he felt an atavistic seethe of unease grip him, cold premonition in his guts again, an instinct for impending disaster he had felt since returning from his leave. He swept the sky again and then leaned over the coaming and stared. Could be bait. A classic trap. But the sky was clear and an enemy aircraft was directing fire. Killing Tommies. There was no option. He must attack.

  Turning north, he lost altitude and continued to point. Finally, he saw first Barton and then Winter smile and point, acknowledging the Rumpler. Most squadron commanders would have taken the easy kill themselves. But Randolph knew his fledglings could learn their craft only in the crucible of fire. He waggled his wings, pointed at the Rumpler, stabbed a fist over his head twice and then three more times. The new pilots acknowledged the command for attack by planes two and three.

  With Barton leading, the two Nieuports half rolled sharply and split-essed into near vertical dives. Randolph winced at the reckless maneuver, watching the double wings bend and the fabric of both scout planes wrinkle at the roots. Luckily both machines held together and the Germans were so intent on the barrage below, they remained unaware of the deadly danger above. Barton opened fire at eight hundred yards. Despite a good killing angle and only one-quarter deflection, the novice completely misjudged the Rumpler’s speed. Alerted by the stream of wide tracers, the German pilot quickly banked to
the north while his gunner got off a quick burst at Winter, who bounced in Barton’s prop wash and sprayed a long burst that missed the target by fifty feet. Randolph grimaced in exasperation.

  Barton had learned something during the past four days. He banked to the south away from the Rumpler and beneath it and then jinked sharply back under the lumbering plane’s fuselage. Inadvertently, Winter helped his companion by violating Randolph’s rule and banking with the Boche. He gave the gunner an excellent shot. A dozen rounds punched through the Nieuport’s wing just as Barton pulled up sharply beneath the observation plane and fired a long burst while hanging on his propeller at a range of only fifty feet. Struck in the buttocks, genitals, and groin by the hail of .303 ball, the pilot and observer fairly leapt against their straps, waving their arms and screaming into the slipstream. Immediately, the big plane dropped off on one wing and began its final spin, its crew flopping loosely in their cockpits as if they were made of gelatin.

  Triumphantly, the two subalterns climbed back toward Higgins and Reed. Randolph was pleased. After an initial misjudgment, Barton had shown remarkable recovery and adjustment for a fledgling. He had pressed his second attack coolly and intelligently, precisely as he had been taught, from close range and with the instinct of a killer. He had probably saved Winter’s life. With a little luck, he could become an outstanding pursuit pilot.