“Mr Paine, we are at war and this is the RFC. Certain regulations are not applicable to us and particularly not when in a temporary camp.”
“Beg pardon, sir, but it is in unusual circumstances that the Regulations are most important, sir. Hold the men together, sir!”
“Stand down from duty, Mr Paine. You are unsuited to service in the RFC and will be posted out with immediate effect.”
Mr Paine was outraged, knowing of no Regulation that permitted such an action.
“Corps procedure, Mr Paine. Personnel unsuited to our particular service may be transferred out.”
“That, sir, applies only to flying personnel.”
“Oh, does it? Where does it state that, Mr Paine?”
The implication was clear, but the precise words were not written. The Regulations had formed Mr Paine’s sole reading material for many years and he was forced to concede that the Major was correct according to the word of Army Law, and to him, the word was all.
“The adjutant will give you a travel warrant, Mr Paine, as soon as a destination has been determined for you. Until that time, Mr Paine, you will not set foot in this camp.”
Paine’s shoulders slumped and he turned obediently towards the gate; he could neither argue nor appeal – that was not permitted by the Regulations.
“That man was rapidly managing to annoy me, Mr Stark. His replacement will be equally obtuse, I do not doubt, but probably will wish to protect his skin. What do you propose to do about a moustache, sir?”
“I have a moustache, sir, but, being so fair-haired, it is invisible.”
“I believe I may have said this before, Mr Stark. Kindly leave my airfield!”
“Certainly, sir!”
The Tabloid was ready, a mechanic standing by the propeller.
“Beg pardon, sir, but they say that Mr Paine has been thrown off the squadron, sir.”
“Not at all! He has been transferred to a posting where his talents may be better employed.”
“Thank you, sir! Ready, sir?”
Tommy checked his very rudimentary controls, set the petrol-air mixture to his liking and called his readiness. The propeller was given its single, powerful heave and the engine roared into rotary life.
“All clear?”
“Clear, sir!”
A second mechanic held up the ropes to show that the chocks had been pulled away and the machine started to move.
Tommy kept to his usual habit and held the machine down a little longer than it wanted and then entered a leisurely climb away into the wind. It was a turn to port so he began his bank as he passed four hundred feet; he would have delayed two or three minutes more for a starboard course. He bounced across the wind and set a direct track to Calais; the cloud was only a little lower and he could see exactly where he was headed, the sole flier in the air.
He owned the skies, whistling quietly and peering down at the sea and the ships; thirty or more in sight, large and small, fast and slow, all being overhauled by his little machine. He wondered just how easy it might be to drop an explosive bomb onto one of those decks; it was amazing just how small a target they seemed at two thousand feet. He decided that it could be done better from a far lower altitude, coming up from astern with an overtaking speed on a destroyer of perhaps forty miles an hour; he would be a sitting target for the gunners!
He landed rather thoughtfully.
When Empires Collide
Chapter Nine
“What are we to do, sir?”
“Get the machines onto top line, Sergeant Arkwright, work on everything you can think of that will let them fly better. We should have more pilots arriving soon, and more mechanics and riggers. At most, we are to stay here for five days, but we might receive orders from General Henderson at any minute, and we must be ready to get the machines in the air. I must speak to Major Mauret and thank him for all he has done for us.”
“Right, sir. Will we be stationed at Amiens, sir?”
“No. Not stationed, as such, because we have no knowledge of where the war will be fought. We do not even know what country we will end up in!”
“We don’t know much, do we, sir?”
“Remarkably little. It will be our job in the RFC to find out what is happening. Have we got any maps, do you know?”
Sergeant Arkwright did not know, but he was inclined to doubt it.
“No map department, sir, not that I know of. If I want engine parts, I go to the Stores and draw them; if I want a meal I go to the cookhouse; if I need to get a piece of uniform, I go to the Quartermaster; but, if I want a map, sir, who do I go to?”
“Bloody good point, Sergeant Arkwright! If you don’t know, then I don’t. If I want anything, I just ask the nearest sergeant. If you wanted to buy a map, Sergeant Arkwright, how would you go about it?”
“I’d go to a map shop, I suppose, sir.”
“Well thought! Do the French have such things, would you think?”
Sergeant Arkwright had no answer to that; he knew very little of the French, except that their cookhouse was better than the one back at their own base.
“Very difficult, Sergeant Arkwright! If I was back at Farnborough, I could go and ask Monkey – she would know. I don’t know quite what to do here.”
Sergeant Arkwright had heard of the Three Wise Monkeys, but had not known any of them to be female. He made his puzzlement clear.
“Oh! Miss Grace Moncur-Fisher-Hallows, the lady who has consented to become my wife. Known her forever, lovely girl! Always called her Monkey as a boy, the name being a bit on the long side – from Moncur, you see.”
“Of course, sir. I had not known. Very useful, a young lady, sir, who knows things. I expect she reads books as well.”
“Yes, so she does! How did you guess, Sergeant Arkwright?”
“Seemed quite likely, sir.”
“Never had much time for reading, myself, Sergeant Arkwright. Technical specifications, and drawings, most nights, and building little model aeroplanes, but not much reading, not of books, that is.”
Long experience of officers kept the smile off Sergeant Arkwright’s face.
“Yes, sir. Map shops, sir?”
“Best thing to do is to go into Calais, I think. I’ll go to that naval chappie, the Commander. He seems the sort of fellow who knows things. Sailors always have charts as well.”
“Commandant Mauret has offered us use of a car, for if we need to go into town, sir. He told me that all we had to do was ask. Said we was lucky to have a distinguished flying man with us, sir.”
“Oh, that’s good of him! Who was he talking about, do you know?”
“You, sir.”
“Oh! Fancy that! I did not know I was ‘distinguished’. How does that come about, do you know?”
“Your name gets put in the newspapers, sir. When they put the story in about your poor father dying, sir, in the crash last year, they said you was a leading aviator, sir, despite not being very old. We all read about that in the Sergeants’ Mess, sir, being interested in flying in the nature of things. That’s how we knew you wasn’t just any sort of daft young officer like the normal run of lieutenants, sir.”
Tommy was amazed – he had assumed that the respect and courtesy the sergeants had shown him was no more than was usual in the Army.
“Yes, sir. You know how it goes, sir – you normally says ‘yes, sir’, ‘no, sir’, and thinks ‘three bags full, sir’, and goes off and does whatever makes sense when a young officer starts giving orders. Especially about flying, sir, when you got to get it right or the machine crashes and the pilot dies. But, when you gives an order, sir, about flying, that is, it’s bound to be right and we just do it, sir. And if it’s something new, we can ask you about it, sir, not get shouted at.”
It was very flattering; it also, Tommy immediately realised, put a massive burden upon him. He had to be right, could never speak lightly, casually to the men in the hangars, must answer their every question seriously and precisely.
“I must remember that, Sergeant Arkwright. Just don’t ask me questions when I’ve got a hangover!”
Arkwright seemed to regard that as an excellent joke.
“By the way, you called Major Mauret, ‘Commandant’?”
“That’s what his own people call him, sir, so it seemed polite for us to do the same.”
“Well done. I must get that right too.”
Commandant Mauret appreciated the courtesy, the fact that the young lieutenant had made the extra little effort to discover what was exactly correct. He supplied a Peugeot and a driver to take Tommy into the town and to a bookshop where there was an owner who spoke English, used to dealing with the flow of tourists, none of whom ever possessed recognisable French.
“Maps, m’sieu, tend to fall within the province of the military. And, while I am aware from your uniform that you, yourself, are military, you are not of the correct Army. I can, however, offer you the most excellent creations of the Michelin company.”
Road maps, which were less than ideal for the flier, but better than nothing; Tommy bought four copies each of the whole of north-western France and as much of Belgium as he could lay hands on. In a stroke of near-genius, he bought blank drawing pads, sheets of squared paper, sketching boards with clips such as landscape artists might use, and a selection of pencils, some of them coloured. He produced gold sovereigns and asked whether he should get them changed at a bank, was assured that gold was always perfectly acceptable and that sovereigns could be used in almost any large shop in the town.
He returned to Sergeant Arkwright with his booty; by next morning each of the Tabloids had the sketching boards neatly attached to the front of the cockpit, close to the pilot’s right hand, pencils suspended on pieces of string and a little canvas pocket for the maps nearby.
“Beg pardon, sir, but do you want us to set up Mr de Havilland’s mounting for a rifle, sir?”
“No. I want no part in that… No, wait, Sergeant Arkwright. No damned choice, have I? Ask one of your lads to bring the long bag he will find under my bunk over here.”
They were sleeping in quickly partitioned off sections of the hangar, camp beds set up for them behind canvas.
The aircraftman ran with the bag, which had attracted some curiosity when Tommy had fetched it out of the Tabloid on his return from Dover.
Tommy put it up on a workbench, pulled out the contents.
“Only two rounds, sir. You won’t be able to lift that up and break it and reload in the air, sir, not as heavy as it is and needing two hands. Powerful though. Wear the officer’s sidearm at your belt, sir, regulation style. What are these two, sir, the flat ones?”
“Colt automatic pistols, Sergeant Arkwright. Eight round magazine. Not easy to reload, but with two of them, less need to.”
“Yes, sir. Let me think about it a while, sir. We ought to be able to fit a long lanyard so that you can just drop them quickly without losing them. A pair of holsters at the side of the seat and a box to keep the ammunition in.”
“Better just to have the pair of spare clips, Sergeant Arkwright. Might be able to reload and cock the automatic, but I could never refill a clip in the air.”
“Right, sir, leave it to us, sir. Will you want to air-test the other three machines, sir?”
“I must. What’s the route to Amiens? Might as well find out where we are and how we get there.”
There was a convenient railway line which made the navigation simple.
Three pilots arrived in the middle of the night, each with a mechanic and rigger in tow. They had been sent by the ferry and then put into ancient horse-drawn cabs to finish the journey; it was very different from their pre-war experiences of first-class all the way, not that they meant to complain they hastened to assure Tommy. They had been carefully selected, he realised, two second lieutenants and a flying officer, all recently joined and junior to him; Major Salmond had organised it so that he would be in command.
“Grab yourself a bed apiece and we shall get organised in the morning. Breakfast will be supplied to us from the French cookhouse – good coffee. Best thing we can do is simply make local flights to familiarise yourselves with a bit of the country. We are bound to fly to and from England occasionally, so it can’t hurt to know this locality. Have you flown Tabloids before?”
Three headshakes.
“Rotary engines at all?”
All three had experience of the Avro, so were less likely to kill themselves on the turn.
“Right. Sleep first and we shall see what tomorrow brings.”
All three seemed very young to Tommy; He accepted that they were probably two and three years older than him, but they had spent a life wrapped up in cotton-wool; at fourteen he had crashed his first aeroplane, while they had probably been deeply concerned about selection for a junior cricket team.
“Flying a rotary, Michael, demands lighter hands than any in-line or radial engine asks of you. The rotary delivers far more power for its weight for a first thing, and for the second is, of course, spinning about its crankshaft with a strong gyroscopic effect. The engine is permanently trying to throw the machine to the right. You must allow for that from the moment the engine starts – on the ground, taking-off, turning and landing quite equally. Until you have the feeling of the machine you should use the blip switch to control your speed. Later you can achieve finer control in flight by adjusting the petrol-air mix; don’t bother with that until you are fully at home with the machine. Watch your height as you bank, and your machine’s attitude in the air, and take any move to the right very gently indeed. Happy? Good, out you go to number four. Remain within sight of the landing field and try to pick up an idea of the local landmarks. Half an hour in the air is all you need for this flight. If you are happy that you have level flight and ordinary turning under control, then we can spend an hour or two of take-offs and landings until you can get out in a hurry and come down again in your sleep.”
The Flying Officer walked out to his machine, took off very competently, to Tommy’s satisfaction.
“John and George, take your machines up, familiarise yourself with the local area, get used to the Tabloid. I like the machine, it’s lighter and nippier than the Avro, and you can do a lot with it. Spend an hour or two getting the feel of her. Do not venture out over the sea. No violent manoeuvres, yet. Tomorrow we’ll go up the three of us and see what can be done in the way of keeping in sight of each other so that we can do a reconnaissance of a wider area in company.”
They worked the skies for two days and then the three new men played follow my leader, Tommy taking them through tight banks and dives, letting them discover what could be done with the machines. On the fourth day Commandant Mauret joined them in a Nieuport, showing that it was not quite as fast but vastly more robust, able to bank more tightly and pull out of dives the Tabloid could not attempt for fear of ripping the wings off.
They took turns in a Morane-Saulnier, a monoplane as tiny as the Tabloid, faster and capable of greater heights and more rapid climbs, but very delicate in the bank and needing to be dived with a very light hand.
They sat in the French mess, glasses to hand and discussing their findings.
“For carrying a load – explosive bombs for example – the Tabloid is best. For chasing another aeroplane, or running away, the Nieuport handles better. For getting to a place unseen, observing what is there and coming away again, the Morane-Saulnier takes the palm. Different machines, each with its own strength. A squadron could use all three for its different jobs.”
“Or, gentlemen, we could have three separate squadrons – one to carry out bombings, the second to pursue the enemy, the third to make reconnaissance.”
The English pilots agreed that Commandant Mauret’s suggestion made sense, except that the second sort of aeroplane, the pursuit type, could do very little if it caught an enemy, for lack of a gun.
“One day, messieurs. But a machine-gun and its ammunition and a strong mounting to hold it in place mu
st weigh seventy kilograms. It demands more powerful aeroplanes than we have today.”
“It also demands a way of firing to the front.”
“The little old Caudron can do that. It is a pusher. Very fine for observation, there being nothing in the way of sight. The new is less valuable in that respect.”
The problem was that there were so many different aircraft, fifty or more manufacturers, each with their own ideas, none agreeing wholly with each other.
They agreed that what they needed was an engine, twice, thrice even, the horsepower of those currently available.
“Two hundred horsepower, that is what we need, Commandant. And that can be done, if the government will put money into it. Everything is too small at the moment, because the politicians are all little men and fear anything greater than themselves!”
Tommy found himself agreeing, about to call for the politicians to go to the guillotine; he stopped and peered, owlishly, at the glass in his hand, white and smelling somewhat unusual.
“What is this stuff, Commandant?”
“Absinthe, Mr Stark! Very fine for adding clarity to one’s thoughts! Without absinthe the Bastille would never have fallen and Napoleon would not have won at Waterloo!”
“Wellington defeated him at Waterloo.”
“No, sir, it is well known that the Emperor won the battle but was betrayed at the last moment by traitors who had taken English gold.”
“I had not realised that, sir. Still, after ninety-nine years it is not entirely relevant, I believe.”
“Glory, sir, and truth, are always relevant! Vive la France!”
The four Englishmen repeated the toast and emptied their glasses, an unwise move as they were immediately refilled.
“Vive Grande Bretagne!”
They drank to that as well.
Shortly afterwards they were assisted to their beds.
They felt very unwell in the morning, were sat frailly over coffee when General Henderson arrived.
Andrew Wareham Page 22