by Griff Hosker
When he had left us I said, “It’s like having my mother on the base.”
“You should be grateful he cares so deeply for you.” He examined my goggles which were still on my head. He pointed to the left lens which was badly cracked. “It is a good job you were wearing these or you could have lost your eye.” He took my helmet off and I stared at the goggles. I could not remember the blow as being that hard and yet it had cracked the lens. I had been lucky.
He went to wash up while the orderly cleaned away the blood and then pressed some clean gauze to the wound.
“Right then, Captain Harsker, if you lay down here the doctor will stitch you.”
I started, “Stitch me!”
The orderly laughed, “Well if we don’t you will be bleeding all the way through dinner sir. Now come along and lie down, there’s a good officer. I have to keep pressure on this gauze.”
I saw Doc Brennan tapping a syringe. The orderly wiped some alcohol on my cheek and then the doctor injected me. I had felt little pain before but now I felt nothing. It was strange lying there and watching the doctor stitch me up. It was as though I was detached for he just focussed on his hands and the needle.
He stood back. “There. That is as neat as I can make it. I am afraid you will have a scar. It will be one the Germans seem to like; a sort of duelling scar. The ladies love them apparently. Here.”
He handed me a mirror and I could see that the wound was three inches long. It was no wonder that they had all been shocked. I thought it had been much smaller.
I went to the adjutant’s office. My face still felt numb. The doc had said the anaesthetic would take hours to wear off. Archie had a sombre look on his face. When he saw my wound he shook his head. “The plan worked but at what a cost. You were lucky but we lost Fryer, Watson, Parr and Sutton. I hope that the brass appreciate the sacrifice.”
I too was shocked but I was also a realist. “Sir, when you lose a thousand officers and twenty thousand men in the first day of a battle then eight fliers doesn’t even rate a raised eyebrow.”
Archie slammed his hand into the desk making Flight Sergeant Lowery jump a little. “Well it damn well matters to me!”
He slumped into a chair. Randolph said, “We lost all of them on the way back. The Germans have better anti-aircraft fire now. Lieutenant Sharp has good eyes and he noticed they are using twin machine guns which, of course, have twice the chance of success as a single gun.”
We had mastered the Fokkers but now they had developed another weapon. I left the office in a depressed state. Four pilots gone in a heartbeat and I had nearly lost an eye.
Chapter 15
Our losses were put into perspective when Archie attended the next meeting at Wing. The Australians had suffered more than five thousand casualties in their attack. We had no time to recover either for the Germans were trying to counterattack. Although we had lost four aeroplanes we had destroyed nine of the enemy. Archie was convinced that we would be able to fly with impunity. Ted was back to his morose self at the briefing.
“You can’t keep expecting these young lads to fly over the Germans lines. We have the beating of the aeroplanes but it is the ground fire we have to worry about.”
“Tomorrow we just have to observe. We are directing the artillery fire. Your observers are being issued with mirrors. Our squadron will be spread across the whole of the front and each of us will be directing the fire of a four gun battery. Our job is to knock out the enemy artillery and then the strong points. If the Germans are attacking then direct the fire at them. We stay in the air as long as possible.” He looked at the four of us in turn and punctuated each word as he said it, “We do not engage enemy aeroplanes. We can fire at them but no pursuit. We keep station until this job is done!”
As we taxied I was reminded of the old days of no engagement but Hamilton-Grant had done that for a different reason. I had been in the trenches and I could understand this particular order.
As we climbed to our correct altitude I checked in with Sergeant Hutton, “Are you happy about the signals, Sergeant?”
“Oh yes sir. I learned Morse Code in the Boys Brigade. We just start each signal with C, that is our call sign and let the guns know if they are long, short or on target.”
“What happens when the target is destroyed?”
“Then I flash them hit, hit, hit and give them new coordinates.” He chuckled. “To be honest sir I am quite looking forward to that. It will be like I am an officer giving orders.”
He always saw the positives.
“Here we are sir. This is it. If you would hold her steady I will tell them we are here.”
While he flashed I studied the ground below us. I could see the German gun emplacements. They were camouflaged but I could make them out. They had no anti-aircraft protection which was a good thing. Further west I could see trenches lined with machine guns. Their gunners were ready and braced for an attack. I could see their white faces as they looked up at us. One or two of the infantrymen tried to take pot shots at us. They missed!
“Ready sir.”
I flew in a small loop as we waited for the shells to strike. They fired just four. I noticed that, when the shells screamed over, the machine gunners dived into their trenches. I could see that the shells landed long by about four hundred yards. The Germans returned fire but it had to be blind. Hutton flashed his signal. This time the shells landed just short but they managed to hit some barbed wire.
Hutton flashed again we waited in eager anticipation for the next four shells. Three of them converged on one gun which was destroyed. A fourth shell landed well short.
Hutton said, “One of the gunners is a dozy bugger, sir! Just keep her steady while I pass this on.”
There seemed to be a longer gap. I didn’t know but I imagined that the senior officer would be checking all the guns to ensure they had the same settings. The lull seemed to fool the Germans for some of the gunners came out of their trenches. The next four shells took out a whole gun and damaged a second as well as killing some of the gunners. Hutton flashed his message back and the guns rolled for fifteen minutes until there was no German artillery left intact. Unlike the ones we had bombed these were now just so much scrap metal.
“Right sir, steady again. This will be a longer message.” Once again the lull after the guns stopped fooled the German gunners in the trenches. They began to emerge. They were expecting an attack. They did not know that there were no infantry coming now that the guns had stopped.
“Right sir, this should be interesting.”
Whether the guns had warmed up or the gods of the guns were with us I do not know but the first four shells were bang on target. The machine guns and the bodies of the gunners were flown high into the air like so many rag dolls. This time, when the Germans fled into the trenches, there was no relief. The guns kept pounding and they destroyed the limited protection afforded by the sandbags and corrugated iron. I saw Germans running from the trenches; they looked like rats fleeing a sinking ship. The guns were firing so rapidly now that they were simply disintegrated when the shells exploded amongst them.
Hutton said, “Poor buggers.” Soon there was nothing left to hit and Hutton ordered the cease fire. Any more shooting would have merely wasted ammunition. As we headed home I realised that we had not seen a single German aeroplane during the entire patrol. This was not like the days of 1915 and the Fokker Scourge. Now it was the RFC which ruled the air.
The others had had equal success. The Germans were cowed. They would not be advancing west any time soon and, more importantly, when the brass decided then we could move east to claim a few more bloody miles of France.
For the next four days we continued to spot for the artillery. We liaised with different batteries as the German artillery was gradually silenced. I was still worried that the Germans would return stronger than ever and swat us from the skies but, so far, my fears had been groundless. On the tenth of August we had a day off; it rained and was misty. Ther
e would be no flying that day. The mechanics were delighted for it meant that they could service the aeroplanes which had been suffering wear and tear with the constant hours they spent in the air.
We took the opportunity to have a run out in the squadron car. We took Charlie with us. He had been my gunner and we had been especially close but he and Ted had become firm friends and it would have been rude to leave him alone.
We intended to drive to Abbeville which we had been told was a pretty little town but the rain made driving unpleasant and we opted for Amiens. Amiens was bigger and busier than the small town would have been. It was the hub through which the majority of supplies and men were sent. Consequently it felt like an army camp.
Charlie came into his own when we became depressed at the sea of khaki which greeted us. “Why don’t we just drive down a few side streets until we find a bar or something?”
We left the main road and found ourselves close to the canal with the floating gardens. There was no khaki in sight at all. We parked the car and dodged into a small bar filled with the thick smoke of pungent French cigarettes. There were eight or nine old men either seated around the tables or standing at the bar. There was just one table left and we pounced on it.
The owner trudged over and we ordered four beers. Our French was adequate and no more. I lit my pipe and leaned back on the rickety wooden chair. When the beers came we toasted each other. I looked outside of the window and saw the rain hammering against the glass. The streets were glossy with water and it felt chilly. Yet despite all of that I felt happy. I was with my friends and I was alive. I did not have the smell of gun oil or engine fumes in my nostrils and I was not craning my neck to see the Hun in the sun. The rain had some admirable qualities.
We tried to avoid talking about the war although that was difficult.
“Do you reckon we will get leave soon, sir?”
“Charlie, we are off duty now. It’s Bill.”
“Sorry, I was your gunner for so long it is hard to get used to the pips on my shoulder.”
“Well you are one of us now. To answer your question I would need to get into the mind of the Generals who are making such a mess of this war. If I was a General I would hold what we have. We have shown that, with our air superiority we can rule the skies. I would send bombers over to destroy their supplies getting to the front. We destroyed so many of their guns the other day that they will struggle to replace them. If we could stop them resupplying then we could launch an offensive and drive them back.”
Gordy nodded as he held four fingers up for four more beers, “Aye, it was easy directing the fire of the guns and we could easily bomb and strafe their machine guns after the artillery has stopped.”
“Then why don’t we do that?”
Ted nodded to me, “He’s the one who fought with those kinds of Generals.”
I shrugged, “They are trying to fight battles the way that they used to fight them. The aeroplane is new. We are finding new ways of using them. Look at the advances the Germans have made. They can fire through their propeller. They can fly faster than we can. Someone told me they can fly at more than a hundred miles an hour. They are smaller and nippier than ours. All of this in less than two years.”
“Then how come we are still winning?”
Ted answered, “The Gunbus is huge, we know and it is slow but it can take a lot of damage and with four machine guns it is like a hedgehog. The fox likes a tasty bit of hedgehog but its prickly spines make it hard to get to the soft meat so it scavenges instead. When they find out how to get inside our guns then we will be in trouble.”
We drank and smoked in silence for a while. “I’m getting hungry. Bill, ask him if they do food.”
I asked and he shook his head. “I guess not.”
“Come on, it has eased off, let’s find somewhere to eat.”
We paid the bill and, leaving the car on the street we wandered the old town. There were more wooden buildings than we were used to but it looked to be untouched by war. That in itself was amazing, as we had fought in this town two years ago and the front was less than twenty miles away. Charlie spied the chalked menu outside the restaurant. The rain had made it unreadable but it would serve food and that would do.
We were actually welcomed by the owner. He was a rotund little man who looked like Lumpy Hutton with a moustache. The place was almost empty which explained his welcome. He spoke to us in English which was far better than my abysmal French.
“Welcome gentlemen. I have a lovely table for you.” He guided us to a table which looked out on a small garden at the back. He flourished four menus and then disappeared. He returned with a bottle of red wine. We had not ordered it but none of us complained. He poured us a glass each and then stood with pencil poised over his note pad. The menu, of course, was in French. Ted put the menu down and said, “I tell you what, pal, why don’t you bring us a stew or something like that eh?”
“Stew?”
I searched my memory, “Er fricassee?”
His face split into a grin. He scooped up the menus. “Of course, I have lapin!”
He disappeared. Charlie asked, “Lapin?”
“Rabbit!”
Charlie looked disappointed.
“You didn’t expect roast beef did you?” scoffed Gordy.
“Well I am fed up of bully beef.”
I smiled, “I think you might be pleasantly surprised.”
The owner brought us some bread and it filled a gap until four steaming dishes were brought in. There was a thick sauce on the rabbit. “What is the sauce?”
“Er moutarde, mustard. Enjoy!”
Even Charlie enjoyed it. It was rich, it was unctuous and it didn’t taste as though it had come from a can. We felt like kings and the wine, although rough, went well with the game.”
We raced back to the car through the rain which had reappeared. The beer and the wine had made us quite jolly and we sang all the way back to the airfield. We were ready for the war again. It had just taken a five hour break and a little peace.
Chapter 16
A few days after we returned from our day trip the replacement pilots arrived. They came when the weather broke. The summer weather turned wet, cloudy and, at times, stormy. We ended up with three days without flying. The day after our trip to Amiens we had a storm of Biblical proportions.
When we found a brief window when we could fly we took the boot boys up for a circuit of the field to evaluate them. The four of them were keen and enthusiastic, but hopeless. They had not been trained on a Gunbus and had not even been taught how to fire a Lewis while flying or change a magazine. They tried their best but they were the worst trained fliers we had received from Blighty.
The depression was in my voice as I reported to Archie and Randolph. “They can’t go up sir. They would be a liability to all of us/”
We were in Archie’s office deciding what to do about the new pilots. “You are right but we need to rotate our pilots. I wanted to give one pilot in each flight a day off every week. The difference in morale and efficiency after the rainy days was amazing.”
“You are right sir but why are they coming to us like this?”
“The brass in Blighty is trying to take advantage of our air superiority and they are rushing the pilots through training. The generals in England thinks that so long as they can fly they will be all right.”
We sat in silence trying to come up with a solution. Eventually Archie sighed and said, “I will form E flight. While the rest of you patrol I will take these four up and make them combat pilots. It won’t help us to relieve our other pilots but at least these four will have a better chance of survival.”
In the end it was not until the eighteenth that we were able to fly. We spent the rainy days in the middle of August showing them how to change a magazine and, sitting on the ground, how to find the Hun in the sun. The problem was the aeroplane was on the ground and the Germans were not trying to kill them. We drilled them until they could do it blind
folded. We knew that the problem would come when they tried to handle the huge Gunbus in aerial combat. It was far bigger than the aeroplanes they had trained in. The wingspan was enormous and it was a pusher. They could not believe that we still used what was, to them, an antiquated aeroplane. They did not know that the guns at the front and our gunners were our advantage.
We led our flights on our first patrol for many days on the twenty first of August. The scene below us, as we flew over No-Man’s Land was depressing. The rains and the storm had turned the crater filled pieces of disputed land into a muddy morass of sucking and cloying clay. There were still puddles in the deeper craters. Some looked like small ponds. It would make any meaningful advance by either side almost impossible. We were even more depressed when we ventured over the German lines. They had used the rain as an opportunity to bring up more guns and to make their defences even more formidable. All the work we had done in the first week in August had been wasted. It was as though we had not even shelled their lines. We would have to start all over again. Their artillery was surrounded by machine guns and they had used sandbags to make them into small forts. The only good news was that there appeared to be no German aeroplanes. We still ruled the skies.
Sergeant Hutton hated the thought of a flight over the German lines without expending some ammunition. “Sir, how about strafing those batteries?”
“If you notice, Flight Sergeant Hutton, they are now protected by machine guns. I don’t see the point in risking the few pilots we have left just so that you can fire your gun.”
His silence was eloquent. He was however right. We were wasting fuel by just observing; we were a combat aeroplane. I decided that I would bring more bombs on the next patrol and we would try a higher level bombing run. We would not cause as much damage but we would not risk losing valuable pilots. As we headed home I was acutely aware that the four pilots I had left were worth their weight in gold. They were trained and experienced. You could not buy that!