Andrew Wareham

by When Empires Collide (Innocents At War Series 1)

  “May I have the privilege of piloting for him, sir? In an Avro, perhaps?”

  “I had thought one of the Bleriots to be more appropriate, Mr Stark.”

  “Most certainly, sir.”

  The Avro could be manoeuvred violently while the Bleriots simply shook and bounced naturally.

  “Very good. I want you to put your gear away in your billet, Mr Stark, and then take the next train to London and then back to Farnborough where you will accompany the four Sopwith Tabloids which have been assigned to us to the docks at Dover. You will probably be two days on the road – they are to be crated and taken by lorry, it having been decided that they are too small to be risked on the Channel crossing.”

  “I flew one on a two-hour hop from the north of Yorkshire to Brooklands in March, sir. One of Mr Sopwith’s own aeroplanes.”

  “No you did not, Mr Stark. It has been officially decided that the single-seater Tabloid must not be risked on the sea crossing, therefore there is no reason to suppose that the powers-that-be are wrong and that the Tabloid is capable of long hops.”

  “My mistake, sir!”

  “Very good, Mr Stark. We shall do very well together, that I can see!”

  “Working uniform, sir?”

  “Good point… Yes, best you should not wear flying dress, though you will want your flying coat with you, to wrap up in overnight on the road if you cannot find a room to stay in.”

  Tommy acknowledged the wisdom of this, turned to go, then had second thoughts.

  “One last thing, sir. I had rather that the long bag be kept safe in the tents here rather than be left in my billet.”

  “What have you got there, Mr Stark?”

  “My father spent some years in the States, sir. I was born there, in fact. He left me some useful keepsakes when he died.”

  “May I see? Good God! Buffalo Bill in person! By all means, we must keep these in a place of safety, Mr Stark. I shall leave them in this tent. Now then, let me find a vehicle to take you to your billet while the adjutant whistles up orders and travel warrants for you. He will bring everything to you and give you a lift to the station.”

  An hour and Tommy was sat in the corner of a first-class carriage, looking idly out at the Kent countryside. Harvest was in full swing in the cereal growing areas while the apple orchards were heavy with fruit, but three or four weeks from picking. They passed the coalfield, the pits seeming wildly out of place in such an agricultural county and working at full, their shunting yards full of loaded wagons. It was a fast express, a boat train, the two other passengers in the compartment young men of some wealth, judging by their dress. One of them plucked up courage to address Tommy – not a thing one normally did on the railway, impinging on the privacy of strangers not regarded as the best of manners.

  “Excuse me, old chap, but I do not recognise the uniform. I presume from the wings that you are Flying Corps?”

  “Lieutenant Stark, RFC, sir.”

  “We were taking a holiday, you know – the Long Vacation – in the South of France, when we were told that there was to be a war and that young men of military age should not be lounging in Nice. Is it true? It must be, I suppose, for you would not otherwise be travelling in uniform!”

  “War was declared upon Germany two days ago, sir. France and Russia declared first, the day before Britain did. It is believed that Germany has broken the Belgian border; certainly they are marching through Luxembourg.”

  “Good God! Oh, I am John Mason and this is Fred Petersham.”

  “Are you Charlie Petersham’s brother, sir?”

  The silent undergraduate smiled, said that he was and that he must be Tommy Stark, the testing pilot, Mr Joseph Stark’s son.

  “Yes, I am he. Your brother should be flying to Dover at this moment. Two Squadron is expected to start arriving this afternoon.”

  “Should we join, sir? Ought we to seek commissions?”

  “The newspapers say that men are flocking to the Colours. I saw a long queue of young men outside a recruiting booth near Dover station, quite literally hundreds, perhaps every young man of the town and no few walked in from the nearby villages; an amazing sight! It must be your choice, but I suspect that you will not forgive yourselves in later life if you do not join. Do you wish to fly? Many young men will have the chance to become pilots, and you might find yourselves completing your first training in two months and then being sent to France to finish off.”

  “That would be rather jolly, sir. We would be there before almost any of the other chaps. Do you think we should, John? My father could make the arrangements, I am quite sure; no sense to having a Major-General as a Pater if he cannot pull a string or two!”

  Tommy left them at Waterloo East station, bundling into a cab to take them to King’s Cross while he walked through to the main station to pick up a train to Farnborough.

  There were provosts at the barrier and he was stopped and asked for his papers, the first real sign of war he had noticed.

  Another hour to Farnborough and the temptation to divert by way of Long Benchley. Better not, duty first! He took the solitary cab out to the airfield, was stopped at the newly created gate, a pole set up on a pair of tripods, all roughly knocked together from unpainted timbers.

  “No cabs inside the gate, sir. Regulations.”

  The duty sergeant was a new man, did not know Tommy.

  “Lieutenant Stark, sergeant. Up from Dover to escort the four crated Sopwith Tabloids.”

  “Private Smith will take you to the office, sir.”

  “I flew out of here this morning, sergeant. I know my way to Major Becke’s office!”

  Tommy walked the two hundred yards, flying coat draped over his shoulder, hoping that the Station Warrant Officer might be in sight.

  “What are you doing here, Tommy?”

  “Ordered up to escort the Tabloids to the docks at Dover, sir. It seems they need an officer to nursemaid the lorries. They are to be sent with all speed.”

  Major Becke showed his surprise – he believed he was quite capable of sending a few lorries to Dover.

  “Mine is not to reason why, Tommy. Four lorries with the fuselages, four more to carry the wings and spares; all laden and ready to pull out in the morning.”

  “Can you find another eight drivers, sir, so that we can leave now and drive through the night in relays? Petrol in cans, sir, so that we do not need to find a place to refuel, and there are truck stops where we can find a bite to eat.”

  “I cannot supply cash for them to buy food on the road, Tommy.”

  “I can, sir. The need seems to be urgent. We might follow the road to Guildford and perhaps then down to the Sussex coast and due east. It cannot be one hundred miles, sir.”

  “Less, I would think. Adjutant have we got an atlas of England? Where is Dover? By road that is? What do you mean, ‘in the same place as it is by air’? That’s not bloody helpful!”

  They decided in the end that Dover was not so very far from Canterbury, so Tommy should take his lorries there first.

  They set out two hours later, two drivers to each of the eight original lorries and a ninth added to the convoy carrying drivers and a pair of mechanics and spare tyres and engine parts and two hundred gallons of petrol. Each man had been given two tins of bully beef and a pound of navy biscuits as iron rations, almost literally so when it came to the biscuits. Tommy sat in the leading lorry, the spare driver banished to the tray where he lay cooking in the evening sun.

  They travelled three hundred yards from the hangar to the gate, which remained firmly closed against them. The Station Warrant Officer stood there.

  “Everybody out and in line! Parade!”

  “Excuse me! This is an urgent convoy taking war materials to Dover. I am under orders to reach the port by dawn. Why are you causing this delay?”

  “Regulations, sir! No other ranks to leave camp without inspection, sir. All to be correctly uniformed and freshly shaved, sir! Must keep to Regulations, sir!”<
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  Tommy turned to his driver.

  “Run to Major Becke’s office, if you please. Inform him that I have ordered the Station Warrant Officer to be placed under arrest as a traitor who is attempting to sabotage the war effort.”

  The driver ran.

  “Sergeant of the Guard!”

  The sergeant, who had been stood at the Warrant Officer’s shoulder, an appreciative grin on his face, looked apprehensive.

  “Place this Warrant Officer under arrest, sergeant. Charge of treason. We can arrange a drumhead court-martial this evening and have him shot at dawn. Have you irons here?”

  The sergeant had a pair of handcuffs available.

  “Put them on him. He is a traitor, probably in the pay of the Germans.”

  The sergeant was unwilling to disobey an order, any order; it was always safer to do as he was told and he had not obtained his stripes by taking risks.

  Tommy held his hand out, took the key.

  Tommy thought there was a good chance that he would be in France with his squadron before any official enquiry was constituted; he might well get away with putting the nasty little man in chains in full view of the camp. There was not the slightest possibility of his ridiculous charges sticking, but it was entertaining while it lasted.

  Major Becke came at the run.

  “Mr Stark! What the… What is happening, Mr Stark?”

  “This urgent convoy of supplies for the war effort, sir, has been maliciously delayed by this man who I believe to be a German spy sent here for purposes of sabotage. I have had him placed under arrest, sir!”

  “Mr Stark! Take your convoy and get off my camp, sir!”

  “Sir!”

  Tommy saluted, waved his puffing driver into his seat and ordered engines to be started. The guard sergeant personally cleared the gateway and they drove off, the key to the handcuffs still in Tommy’s pocket.

  “We ain’t ‘alf goin’ to be in for it when we gets back, sir! That gentleman’s goin’ to ‘ave it in for us, sir.”

  “Sorry about that, driver. I will be surprised if Major Becke does not get rid of him though. Best thing we can do is get to Dover and then use your lorries for a few days to move stores from the camp there. If you don’t get back for a week, or two perhaps, then he should be gone.”

  “Be better if we got all the way to France, sir, and didn’t get back for six months. Safer for us.”

  “Have you got any of your kit with you?”

  “All of us drivers ‘ave, sir. Major told us to, sir, in case we got given emergency orders, sir.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, driver.”

  They peered at their maps as they drove at a steady twenty miles an hour, decided that they had the better part of one hundred and twenty miles to go by road, avoiding the lanes and keeping to what might optimistically be called highways.

  “Guildford, then to Maidstone and then it’s the old pilgrim road to Canterbury and direct to Dover. Not a lot of point to arriving at night, so we should make a stop for a bite to eat at least twice, and the mechanics can refuel us and check tyres and water in the radiators as well. Then we can see what happens next.”

  The driver pointed out that it was some time since payday and most of the men would be stony broke.

  “I can deal with that, driver. Got the cash to buy in a meal or two apiece.”

  Tommy implied it was official money; he had no wish to become known as the sort of officer who bought presents for private soldiers and aircraftmen.

  Three hours brought them to Maidstone and Ma Fletcher’s stop for wagoners, with no fewer than two steam Fodens parked in front; they ate bacon and egg sandwiches, greasily fried in huge doorsteps of good bread.

  “Better than the cook’ouse does, sir!”

  They slurped down pint mugs of tea, thick with sugar, and finished the repast with ‘Ma’s home-made doughnuts’, filled with Ma’s own raspberry jam and weighing in at about half a pound each.

  “Bloody good tack, sir, if you’ll excuse me saying so. Sets a driver up for a cold night, that do.”

  “Perhaps we could take Ma to France with us. I could fly all day on that as a breakfast.”

  The mechanics and drivers set up hurricane lamps and spent an hour on engines, tyres and fuel, declared themselves satisfied, nipped into the bushes behind the truck stop and then set out for Canterbury, chugging down the hills into the town before three o’clock and being waved to a halt by a lonely patrolling policeman.

  “Excuse me, sir! Going to Dover, sir?”

  “Yes, constable. Urgent convoy of aircraft.”

  The constable, recently a soldier, like so many policemen, stood to attention.

  “Very good, sir. Watch out on the road, sir, maybe five miles out by now, sir. Flock of sheep, sir, bought at the market this morning and being walked out a few miles to their winter pastures down close to Lydden, sir. Farmer won’t have got them half way before settling them down for the night, sir.”

  “Thank you, constable. Could have been a nasty accident if you had not told us that. There will be a lot of military traffic on this road over the next weeks and months, it will be far busier, I am sure, and the drivers will need to be informed of such hazards.”

  Tommy turned to his driver and, in the constable’s hearing, ordered him to tell all of the other drivers of the potential danger which they had been so wisely warned about.

  “While we are at it, constable, can you tell us of any wagoners’ stop where we could get a cup of tea?”

  “Mile down the road, sir, outskirts of the city. Open all day and all night. Does a baked potato and a sausage, sir.”

  “Any good?”

  “It’s hot, sir.”

  They pottered slowly downhill into Dover with the dawn. It was raining and they made no attempt to more than crawl down the wet roads; the lorries’ engines were not very powerful and the brakes were rather simple, mechanical devices. They stopped at the dock gates and Tommy found the Marines officer who was in charge of the security detachment.

  “Good morning, sir. I am Lieutenant Stark, RFC, and I have four crated Sopwith Tabloids, to be ferried across the Channel and then assembled at some convenient point in France and flown on to whatever airfield Three Squadron may be using. I have brought them from Farnborough, sir, and my orders instruct me to contact the Officer in Charge of RFC Transport at Dover.”

  Tommy handed over the envelope containing his orders and a manifest detailing the loads aboard the lorries.

  “Interesting, Lieutenant Stark. I have been given no notification of your expected arrival. That of course is hardly surprising, because I have no information on any other cargoes either. I know of no such beast as an Officer in Charge of RFC Transport. What I can do is telephone the office of the Port Captain and, in effect, dump the problem in his lap. I believe he is taking the Wellingtonian approach of tying knots in his piece of string – no doubt he will tie knots in you, sir!”

  The Marines officer thought this to be very witty and left for his telephone, chuckling merrily. He returned five minutes later.

  “You are due in three days’ time, but they have no ship for you then. They can put you aboard an empty string of lighters which is to be towed back to Calais this afternoon, or you can wait in hope for days.”

  “Where are the lighters, sir?”

  “At the coaling berth, I believe. They were originally carrying coal from Portsmouth for the use of naval ships transferred to Dover, there being insufficient fuel here for the extra traffic until the colliers come down from Tyneside. They were ordered to Calais to pick up seventeen-pounder field guns and ammunition that were sent there in mistake for Ostend, but when they got there they were found still to be loaded so they were directed back last night and must return today.”

  “That sounds remarkably like a cock-up, sir.”

  “It does, does it not? I have been here for four days only and can assure you that this is neither the first nor the greatest of such! I can lend y
ou a Royal Marine to lead you to the coaling berth, Lieutenant Stark.”

  “That is very good of you, sir. We should go there immediately, I think.”

  The Marine private led them half a mile along the quays, all of which were busy despite the early hour. They narrowly avoided collision with a string of cavalry horses being led unwillingly aboard a small freighter and were sworn at by their officers, distracted young men who did not believe in motor vehicles and who had not, for some strange reason, expected to have to put their horses aboard ship to get them to France. Tommy had guessed that geography did not feature in the education of cavalry officers but was surprised that they were not aware of the existence of the English Channel.

  The coaling berths were grubby, black and coal-dust stained; they had a string of large barges, in tow of a pair of paddlewheel tugs, moored under the cranes that lined this section of the quay. An assistant harbour-master came running across, waving a clean, presumably fresh piece of paper.

  “Are you the RFC?”

  “Only a part of it, sir. Are you to load us, sir?”

  “Nine lorries, yes?”

  Tommy confirmed that to be his convoy.

  “Will they take slings?”

  Tommy did not understand the question, turned to the senior of his mechanics.

  “Sergeant Arkwright is my senior technical man, sir. Sergeant, can you answer that question?”

  “Yes, sir. Provided they’re strong enough, then they can be put on board ship that way, sir. Twelve tons, laden weight.”

  The assistant harbour-master affirmed that they were in the habit of lifting far greater weights.

  “Very good. Sergeant Arkwright, work with this gentleman to get them aboard, please.”

  “Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but are the lorries to go as well as their loads, sir?”

  “The machines will have to be transported from the docks at Calais to an airfield, Sergeant Arkwright. No choice in the matter.”

  “Yes, sir. Always wanted to see France, sir.”

  “Excellent.”

  “What do we do when we get to Calais, sir?”

  Tommy thought about that; his first intention had been to stand at the quayside waving his goodbyes before finding a lift up to the landing field on the cliffs, but he supposed that was really not the correct course to follow, he could not leave the men stranded in a foreign land.