Andrew Wareham

by When Empires Collide (Innocents At War Series 1)

  Mr Joseph Stark remained in residence; it was said that he had been refused for the RFC as too old to be trained as a pilot, but where that rumour had come from was unknown. Monkey’s father had heard that he had applied for a commission, but had not discovered whether he had been accepted; apparently the age of thirty was also thought to be too great for a second lieutenant. Uncle James was sure he could not become an infantryman, but he might be accepted in one of the lesser Corps – apparently, she was not certain on the point, as some sort of Army Policeman.

  The very last letter contained her response to the news of Charlie’s death; she was much distressed that Tommy should lose a friend and such a pleasant gentleman.

  He sat back to reply, a difficult letter to write, except that he could say that he was now a substantive captain with all that implied.

  Letter-writing was interrupted by a request for him to attend Major Salmond in his office.

  Michael Mulgrew was also present.

  “Orders from General Henderson in person. An enemy warehouse has been built some twenty miles to the north of Ypres, a railway spur leading to it. Information from Intelligence suggests that petroleum and lubricating oils are being stored there, distributed to three airfields located within five miles. A bombardment from the air might well set the place alight; it would also, according to Intelligence, give comfort to their people nearby who have risked their lives to observe the warehouse and report on it.”

  “Sensible, sir. Twenty miles is no great distance to penetrate, sir. What of navigation? How easily will we find the place?”

  Navigation could be a problem for the single-seater.

  “Follow the railway line to Armentieres, then the River Lys to Menin and beyond to, what’s the bloody name, now, here, Thielt, and there is the new line clearly to be seen.”

  Major Salmond had one of the recently distributed small-scale maps of northern France and Belgium on the wall of his office. Tommy peered at it, took a sheet of paper and estimated his times from point to point, assuming eighty miles an hour mean speed.

  “When, sir?”

  “Now. Your machines are ready and you each have a pair of bombs attached, one either side of the cockpit in simple clips. Dive in, bank to port, slowly, and throw the bombs over the side, carefully. Up to you whether you try to get rid of both in one run.”

  A second run would give any machine-gunners on the ground time to wake up; there might, of course, be no defences against aerial attack.

  “You go first, Michael. I will circle and watch your results and drop my bombs where it seems best afterwards. If it’s a big warehouse, then two bombs might not be sufficient to set it all on fire. Take off within a few seconds of each other, go there as a pair.”

  There was no more to be said and they walked across to their machines, taking off barely five minutes later, the BE2s toiling along in their wake.

  The bombs were clipped to the inside of the cockpit and would have to be lifted carefully clear of the coaming and thrown outwards and back to avoid the wings, single-handed. Twenty pounds was not a great weight, but it was sufficient for a pilot who had to keep control of his machine. Contact detonators had to be considered as well; it might be wise not to be careless in one’s handling of the bombs.

  They climbed together, crossing the battlefield at Ypres as they rose to three thousand feet and then following the easily-spotted line of the river. A pair of small guns fired airburst shells in their general direction, did not get within a quarter of a mile of them. It was Tommy’s first experience of shellfire in the air and he thought very little of it; they would have to do better than that.

  They spotted Menin and then Thielt and quickly picked up the raw earth of the new railway line, following it for a minute until they located their target. There was a train at the loading bay, which might be a bonus; there were definitely drums and large cans moving out of the wagons.

  Tommy waved to Michael, and started to circle.

  There was no ground fire and no other aircraft in sight.

  Michael lined up on the warehouse and made a shallow dive, dropping his bomb when he was directly overhead, perhaps at a thousand feet. The bomb arced forward, well over the roof and exploded a good fifty yards distant on waste ground. Michael circled around and dived in again, slightly lower and releasing earlier; he missed by only twenty yards.

  Tommy watched and planned his own course.

  ‘Two hundred feet and throw the bomb out just before I reach the target. Here goes.’

  Tommy thumbed the blip switch, cut his speed to sixty miles an hour and dived down low, tossing the bomb behind him as the front wall loomed just a few feet below his undercarriage. The bomb hit the corrugated iron roof and exploded inside.

  Tommy climbed and circled to the north of the warehouse, preferring to come out of his next dive facing towards home.

  Smoke suddenly belched out of the hole in the roof, followed by a gout of flame.

  “Got the bugger!”

  He did not fancy trying to land with a live bomb aboard and made a dive at the train, even lower and throwing the bomb when he was sure he was too far away, but needing to make height in a hurry to get over the warehouse roof. He heard the explosion but saw nothing. Michael was circling half a mile away and he climbed towards him, took the lead and made straight for the airfield, leaving the pair of observing BE2s behind.

  “Successful, sir. One warehouse on fire. Bombing is difficult, sir! We need to practice with dummies, sandbags maybe.”

  Michael agreed.

  “I missed with both, sir. Tommy put his first into the warehouse and destroyed a train with the second. They would need a good fire brigade to save either, sir!”

  “No ground fire, sir. No aircraft either. Simple.”

  Major Salmond agreed; he had watched, as they knew, and was satisfied with their achievement.

  “So what is the rule for bombing, Tommy?”

  “Go in slow and at fifty feet above the target, sir. If they have guns, forget it!”

  “I will inform General Henderson of your success. I doubt he will be content with just the one raid, however. There is discussion at the moment of expansion of the RFC in France – a possibility that the current five squadrons might be massively increased, if they can find enough aircraft.”

  “What of pilots, sir?”

  “Far more easily obtained, Tommy. Expand the training schools, more new men to each course, which means cutting the number of hours of tuition that any one man can be given, and churn them out by the hundred. So what if half die? The other half will be available still. Make it thousands instead of hundreds and there will be no problem at all!”

  “Is that what the Army calls ‘looking at the larger picture, sir’?”

  “Probably, Tommy. In any event, one successful bombing raid is excellent, but we will need to do it again, I suspect, to prove that another hundred aircraft could have a real effect on the war.”

  The next target came in that evening.

  “The railway junction at Thielt. It is important, it seems, trains from the north and east passing through regularly – every few minutes in fact. There is a marshalling yard in the process of building there and munitions trains sometimes unload already, especially those carrying shells for the very large siege guns. The pair of you, flying abreast and dropping your bombs at the same moment could do a lot of damage, it is thought. Four Squadron has two Bristol Scouts and they are to take off before first light and drop their loads at dawn. You follow in and make your more experienced attack on the best target you can see.”

  “Take off at first light, sir, just as soon as we can see across the field. Fly at one hundred feet, all the way, so as not to be spotted.”

  “Not permissible, Tommy. You are to circle the junction at least once in order to pick out your target. Two thousand feet, I am afraid.”

  “So am I, sir! If it must be done, then we cannot argue – but I like it not at all.”

  “Nor me
. We shall come along and watch again, Tommy.”

  “Have we any of those flare pistols in store, sir? The ones they use for signalling?”

  “Very Pistols, you mean. Yes, I am sure we will have some. Why?”

  “If you were to watch the sky for us, sir, it could be handy. A red flare to beware of an enemy to port, a green for an aeroplane to starboard, perhaps.”

  “Good idea. Adjutant! Could you get hold of the Sergeant Armourer?”

  There were red, green and white flares on the Armourer’s shelves and pistols sufficient for the whole squadron. Major Salmond decided to have them issued, one to each machine. They might be useful.

  “Not just in the air, Tommy. Say you are coming in damaged or having taken a wound. A red flare as you reach the field would warn us to receive you. I shall put that into Standing Orders.”

  The Bristol Scouts were not slowed by the Number One Grenades they used as bombs; five on either side of the cockpit weighed little more than twenty pounds. The Tabloids reached the junction as they were about to attack, watched them follow each other along the railway line.

  The line itself made a useful aid to aiming, Tommy saw.

  The Bristol Scouts tossed their grenades out on either side, one after another, wobbling as they fell, their long handles making them clumsy; all landed in the marshalling yard and buckled a number of tracks; they did no other damage, missing the two stationary, loaded trains by a distance. A pair of machine guns fired at them, belatedly, from an emplacement close to the main line.

  Tommy waved across to Michael, pointed to the north, circling his arm; Michael waved back and closed on his tail, a few feet to his port. Tommy fell into a shallow dive as he followed the line for a mile and then banked sharply to the right and turned through half a circle, as fast as he could persuade the ageing machine, dropping to fifty feet. He eased to starboard to come up on the train there, corrected his line so that he was travelling the length of the loaded wagons and threw his bombs, one as he crossed the first truck, the second nearer to the engine and tender. He started to climb as he came into the sights of the machine-guns, throwing them a little off their aim. He felt the jolt of a burst hitting towards the tail as he saw Michael still flying level, his bombs bursting behind him and a wagon of his train exploding violently; a second blew up as Michael flew directly into a stream of bullets, propeller shattered, then the cockpit. The Tabloid fell out of the air under the pressure of the dead hand on the stick.

  Tommy banked hard to the starboard and then swung back to port, diving and then climbing, trying to escape the machine-guns. He saw a red flare from the BE2s, which had turned for home. He swung to starboard away from the enemy aeroplanes and dropped almost to ground level, clipped by a last burst of machine-gun fire; he felt a burning pain across his left calf, saw blood welling over his shoe.

  A glance and he decided it was not fast enough for an artery. He would risk making for the field rather than crash-landing to be a prisoner. He wanted to go home to marry Monkey, not sit in some German prison for months. There was a village almost directly ahead, with a tall church. He banked to starboard, very carefully, pulling the nose up and swearing as he levelled off, having to use the left leg. Three hundred feet would save him having to move the leg again, but it also left him open to an attacker to come up behind and almost underneath him with a rifle. He dropped back to an estimated fifty feet, easing to his left and closer to the course of the river, following its twists and turns.

  Menin to the right; five minutes and he would be in British territory. He flew over a column of infantry; with a machine-gun he could have wiped out half of a battalion. As it was they scattered, diving into ditches and the shelter of hedgerows. He was over them and gone too fast for them to shoot, the great advantage of being so low. A machine-gun fired as he came close to the battlefield proper, but it did not hit him, again seeing him far too late to take an aim. He crossed the front line and climbed a little, spotting the railway line that would lead him home. He could see no other aircraft, wondered where the BE2s had disappeared. He pulled out the flare pistol, looking like nothing so much as an ancient brass blunderbuss, pushed a red cartridge in and closed the breech.

  The field came in sight and he fired the flare, for all the good it might do. It was useful, in fact, showing him the wind direction. He pressed the blip switch repeatedly, losing speed each time the engine cut out, and lined himself up on the field. He had a headache now, and his vision was fuzzy; he knew he was close to fainting from shock and blood loss. He forced his eyes open – he was damned if he was going to crash in the last hundred yards.

  He hit the grass with a thump and cut the engine, trying to hold the machine straight as the speed fell away. He came to a stop and sat back in his seat, making no attempt to climb out. The Sick Bay attendant came at a run, almost jumping into the cockpit, diving head first to whip a bandage around the leg and haul it tight as a crude, temporary tourniquet.

  “Heave him out! I need to get to his leg!”

  A dozen pairs of hands pulled at him; he heard fabric ripping as clumsy feet trod on the wings and fuselage. He was laid on the grass, breeches cut open, stocking off, the adjutant hovering over the medical attendant.

  “Flesh wound, sir. So long as he ain’t lost too much blood to it, and the shock don’t get him, he should be all right, sir. Better get ‘im to a hospital sir, let a doctor see if the bone’s been hit. Don’t look like it has, but you never know, sir. I don’t anyway.”

  A Crossley Tender was driven onto the field and Tommy was lifted onto a stretcher which was hoisted into the back.

  The BE2s landed and Major Salmond ran across.

  “How is he? Bad?”

  They told him and he relaxed.

  “Mr Mulgrew is gone. They both hit the target, which is more than the Bristol Scouts managed.”

  They took Tommy back to St Omer, to a hospital. It might have been a little quicker to have gone to Hazebrouck where there were Casualty Clearing Stations, but they already had a name for being rough and ready, cutting corners to save time, amputating limbs that might have been saved if they had not had to rush.

  A doctor quickly examined the wound then swabbed it out with carbolic disinfectant; Tommy had been no more than half aware until that point but was brought back to rapid consciousness when the astringent hit the raw flesh.

  “One of these silly wounds, Captain Stark. Not dangerous in itself once the bleeding is stopped, but it has cut a furrow across the muscle, a little too broad to stitch. It will take weeks to close as a result, and will leave a massive great scar, but should do no long-lasting harm. Heavy bandaging and a crutch for two, perhaps three weeks. You will not attempt to fly this side of Christmas, sir – at least eight weeks at a minimum. Pushing down with your foot will cause the wound to gape open, and you must give it every chance to close. I shall send you back to England, Captain Stark, to remove you from temptation; if you stay in France, hanging about your field in idleness, you will certainly find some way of harming your leg by overworking it. You will report to the military hospital in Dover and they will assign you to the care of whichever institution they find appropriate. Where do you live, sir?”

  “In the parish of Long Benchley, south of Farnborough and just in Hampshire.”

  “Probably Winchester Hospital, but you might be looked after from Weybridge, or Reading, or even Aldershot. No way of telling! There will be a hospital train to Boulogne tonight; there is every night. You will be on it, Captain Stark, by order. Until then, you will rest, take a lot of fluids and eat a meal – all of which you need to recover from the blood loss.”

  The Crossley tender left, returning in mid-afternoon with Tommy’s large leather trunk, lovingly packed by Smivvels with a full set of uniforms; the three pistols and their ammunition were also there, in case he should be posted to another squadron when he had recovered.

  The train consisted of cattle trucks for the non-ambulant, their stretchers laid next to each othe
r across the floor, and of ancient Pullman cars, retired from service and pulled out of an obscure siding, for the walking wounded. It was clearly no more than a temporary expedient – there was no separate accommodation for the officers. It took two hours to cover the little more than thirty miles into Boulogne; there were no medical attendants aboard – there had been too few at the base hospital in St Omer and some of the men on stretchers died, alone in the darkness.

  The navy took over at Boulogne, working parties of matelots running the stretchers up the brows and onto the waiting ships, Channel ferries that had brought in reinforcements during the day. The walking wounded were assisted aboard a naval cruiser that happened to be sailing that evening; some of them had baggage sent from their units and that was quickly tossed into a cargo net and swung aboard. Half an hour from the train stopping and the cruiser unmoored and made its way out into the Channel, rapidly working up to thirty knots through the black night.

  A sick-berth attendant and the officers’ stewards brought tea and coffee and sandwiches, quietly separating out the commissioned from the other ranks and seating them in different messes.

  Tommy was one of the more senior, he discovered, which was disconcerting – he was not used to being significant, he was just a pilot.

  The ship’s doctor circulated, enquiring of any in pain, in need of morphine; he carried a massive glass hypodermic, the needle seemingly a quarter of an inch thick, and found no takers.

  “Your wound seems still to be bleeding, Captain.”