Biggles of the Camel Squadron

by Captain W E Johns

  "Along in old 'C' Flight hangar," replied Algy.

  "Let's go and have a look at it," suggested Biggles rising.

  The group wended its way towards the last hangar in the line, where the captured red-nosed Albatross plane poked round a fold in the canvas.

  "Where did you hit him, Algy?" asked Biggles, as he examined the machine with interest.

  "I didn't. His engine stopped running on the top of a stall, and just glided down comfortable-like," responded Algy, with a broad grin.

  "Really! Then the machine's O.K.?"

  "Should be."

  "Come on let's start her up, for a joke!" cried Biggles, with a flash of inspiration.

  "I shouldn't, if I were you," broke in Mahoney. "Wing'll probably be fetching her this afternoon."

  "Wing be dashed! Whose aeroplane is it, anyway?" growled Biggles, as he clambered into the wooden fuselage and juggled about with the controls. "Give me a swing, Algy!" he called.

  The engine started with a roar, and Biggles grinned delightedly as the group behind him staggered out of the slipstream. Suddenly the grin grew broader, and he glanced at the wind stocking. It hung motionless.

  "Look out-I'm off!" he yelled, and pulled the throttle open.

  The German Albatross sped across the aerodrome like a bullet, and soared into the air. Something sprang through the fuselage behind him, and the pilot looked down with a start. A squad of British troops, evidently returning from the Line, were passing up the narrow road which skirted the aerodrome, and the stabbing flashes of rifle-fire warned him of his danger. He was in an enemy plane-and naturally the troops were firing at it!

  "My hat!" he muttered, as he pulled the control-stick back and zoomed swiftly. "Let's get out of this!"

  A cloud of white smoke blossomed out in front of him, another, and another, each one closer than the last, and he dodged wildly into the clouds which half-covered the sky to avoid the bursts of anti-aircraft gun-fire.

  "Best shooting I've ever seen 'em make!" he muttered grimly. "They'll probably hit me in a minute. I must have been crazy to take this kite off the floor. How am I going to get back? That's the question!"

  He climbed slowly in ever-widening circles as he pondered the question, anxiously scanning the sky in every direction. He started as his eye fell on a speck in the distance. It was an R.E.8 describing figures-of-eight as it ploughed a lonely course on a "shoot" for the artillery. He was about to turn away when something else caught his eye-a duster of specks moving fast into the sun, in line with the R.E.8.

  "Huns!" he ejaculated. "And that fool observer hasn't spotted them. He must be asleep!"

  Automatically he raced in the direction of the lone British machine. In his excitement, the fact that he was flying a black-crossed machine-marking it as German, of course-completely slipped from his mind, but a flashing streak of tracer bullets across his nose, delivered by the

  gunner in the rear cockpit of the R.E.8, reminded him, and he dodged away quickly. The R.E.8 pilot waited for no more, but dived for home, the observer grinding out the remainder of the drum of ammunition at long range as he went. Biggles watched its departure with a smile, satisfied that his arrival had served its purpose.

  "He's out of harm's way, now, anyway," he muttered. "Hallo…"

  He blinked in startled surprise as a green Albatross swam into view a bare hundred feet away. The pilot was gesticulating wildly. Biggles instinctively groped for his triggers, but, suddenly remembering the circumstances, released them wonderingly.

  "I can't get the hang of this!" he groaned. He glanced to the right, and started again in dismay. German Albatrosses were all around him. "So I'm flying in a blinking Hun formation, eh?" he gasped, trying to grasp the situation. "This is getting me all groggy. What's he waving about, I wonder?" he muttered, staring at the leader of the enemy formation. "Peeved because I scared his bird, I suppose. I'd better see about getting out of this-but it won't do to be in too much of a hurry."

  The Boche machines had once more settled down to steady flight, and he kept his position, glancing furtively from left to right at the strange faces around him. It took him a full five minutes to become accustomed to the position, then a slow grin spread over his face.

  "And I've just been saying that things aren't what they used to be! Why, there never were such times!" he thought.

  A movement on the part of the leader caused him to look down. Another R.E.8 was cruising to and fro as it signalled to the gunners.

  "How any of those kites are left in the sky beats me. They must fly with their eyes shut!" muttered Biggles, as he tore down and sent a warning stream of tracer bullets across the nose of the unsuspecting machine. Pulling up steeply, he narrowly escaped collision with the rest of the enemy formation. The R.E. pilot streaked for home as if he had had a glimpse of the devil.

  Again the leader swung close to Biggles, making violent signals. "If I do that again he'll be shooting me down, and I don't wonder," Biggles reflected, sympathising with the man's just cause for anger. He realised that it must have been annoying in the extreme for the other man to have some fool in the formation who made a premature attack and scared the other machine away before an effective attack could be launched. He realised, also, that he was in a very awkward position. Even if he was able to reach the British Lines safely, it would lead to all sorts of complications if the Germans ever discovered that a British officer had been flying a German machine. Quite apart from the fact that it would bring disgrace on the whole British Service for an officer, other than a Secret Service agent, to fly an enemy machine over hostile country, he would certainly get in hot water himself if the authorities discovered the culprit-as they undoubtedly would. Once such a practice was started there was no telling where it would stop an impossible state of affairs might easily be created. No man would trust another in the air, irrespective of the type of machine or nationality marks, and it might end by friends shooting each other down by accident on mere suspicion. People would shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

  No. It was a bad business, from which he must extricate himself with the least possible delay. How to do it was the question? Obviously he could not just fly back behind the British Lines and land under the very noses of the Germans, who could not fail to see him from the air. They would remember the colour of the machine, possibly the number on it, and inquiries would speedily reveal that it had not returned from its last patrol, and a shrewd suspicion as to the true state of affairs would inevitably result. Even now-there was the possibility of one of the German pilots with whom he was flying recognising the machine as one which had been reported missing. In fact, one of them, in a bright yellow machine, had twice come very close indeed, with his goggles raised as if he was trying to ascertain the identity of the pilot.

  Biggles turned his collar a little higher, and got well down into the cockpit. "I am a poor prune," he muttered, "getting myself into this mess. I shall have to get out of it, that's all."

  Rather than incur suspicion by turning away now, he decided to stay with them until well over the German Lines, and then turn away, as if he was going to another German aerodrome. The thing that worried him most was whether the machine he was flying had belonged to the "circus" he was with if so, the very act of leaving them would in itself be suspicious.

  He breathed a sigh of relief when the leader swung round and headed towards the German support trenches, and he began to drop back at once, with a view to fading quietly away the moment a reasonable opportunity presented itself. It was with no small apprehension that he noticed the pilot in the yellow machine was dropping back also, and, although it might be pure chance, he seemed to be taking care to keep between Biggles and the British Lines-a position which would effectually prevent the British pilot from creeping away unobserved.

  A few minutes passed, and Biggles could stand the suspense no longer. He decided at all costs to find out whether the Boche in the yellow machine was really suspicious, or whether it was his own guilty imag
ination. He was not kept long in doubt, for the moment he turned the yellow machine turned with him, and this move threw Biggles into a worse position than ever. He could not bring himself to commit the unpardonable offence of shooting down a German from a German machine. Yet what was he to do if the Boche suddenly turned on him? One thing was certain. If the Boche got back home, then the cat would be out of the bag with a vengeance. More than ever, he regretted the foolish impulse which had resulted in his present absurd predicament.

  He looked across at the other pilot, who was now flying not more than twenty feet away, and he could almost imagine what the other was thinking. He was suspicious, that was obvious. He might even have been a personal friend of the man who had previously flown the machine which the British pilot was now flying. Yet he could not bring himself to shoot at the machine on suspicion alone.

  Biggles guessed he was waiting to ascertain if the machine was going back, and he knew instinctively that the moment he reached the lines and made the first move to cross over the German would shoot. He wondered vaguely what the troops in the trenches would think when they saw the unbelievable spectacle of two Albatrosses fighting each other.

  It is perhaps curious that the one event which could solve the problem never occurred to him, and he could never afterwards understand why such an obvious possibility did not strike him. As a matter of fact, the next move in the amazing cycle of events came with such a shock that for the moment he simply did not know how to act.

  The first indication he had of it was the vicious stutter of guns close at hand, and he caught his breath as a British S.E.5 tore past, a bare thirty feet away. Both he and the pilot of the yellow German machine had been so interested in each other that they had been caught napping. Biggles glanced upwards. Five or six more S.E.s were dropping like vultures out of the sky.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Biggles groaned as the first S.E. swung round at him, guns streaming tracer bullets.

  "It must be Wilks and his crowd," he thought bitterly.

  Now thoroughly alarmed, he skidded wildly away from the dog-fight and raced nose-down for the Line. But escape was not to be so simple. A sharp staccato rattle of guns and a flack-flack-flack-flack behind him sent him half-rolling frantically away from a blue-nosed S.E. that was spitting a stream of death and destruction at him.

  "Wilks himself!" gasped Biggles. "Wilks!" he roared desperately, but quite aware of the futility of his appeal.

  He looked down quickly and saw they were immediately over no-man's-land. Nearly panicking, for the first time in his life, he threw the machine into a spin, came out, spun again, pulled out again, then zigzagged for the Line. He had a fleeting vision of the yellow German machine roaring down in a sheet of flame, but he had no time to dwell on it. It looked as if he was likely to follow it to a similar fate. The other British S.E.s were hemming him in, and their nearness at least helped him to keep the antiaircraft gunners from getting busy.

  The last thousand feet were a nightmare for Biggles. He stunted as he had never stunted before, and the fact that he was unaccustomed to the controls of the German machine he was flying made the exhibition still more alarming. Falling out of a wild loop, he looked around anxiously. The S.E. was still on his tail, coming in again to deliver the final blow. In the almost hopeless anxiety of the moment Biggles got an inspiration. Thrusting himself as far up in the cockpit as he could he raised both arms about his head as a signal of surrender. As he hoped, Wilks sheered off, pointing downwards.

  Biggles needed no second invitation. A useful-looking field swept into view below, and he side-slipped steeply towards it but as he flattened out he realised that he had come in much too fast. The hedge seemed to rush towards him. There was a crash of breaking wood and rending fabric as he plunged nose first into it.

  For a moment he sat quite still, dazed, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune at being still alive. He could no longer hear the S.E.'s engine.

  "Gone home to tell the boys about it, I expect," he muttered, as he painfully removed a long bramble from his face. A voice near at hand made him jump nervously.

  "Hi, Jerry! Come out of that!" it yelled.

  Before he had time to move, a hand clutched his hair and jerked him bodily from the cockpit. He let out a yell of agony and, turning, looked into the red and panting face of the S.E. flight-commander.

  Wilks stopped panting. He stopped breathing. A look of incredulous amazement crept over his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  "Who do you think you're knocking about?" snarled Biggles. "Can't a fellow have a joy-ride without your crowd butting in and spoiling it?"

  THE BRIDGE PARTY

  The evening patrol had just come home Biggles paused in the act of kicking the ante-room fire into a blaze.

  "There are," he announced to the semicircle of officers seated around the fire, "two sorts of pilots."

  "Now, who told you that?" asked Mahoney in mock astonishment.

  "There are the mugs-and the other sort," concluded Biggles, ignoring the interruption and giving the fire a final kick.

  "What's the difference, Biggles?" asked Algy Montgomery, curiously.

  "Very little, son, very little," replied Biggles, with fatherly condescension. "The mugs go west a little before the others, that's all."

  "What class do I come in?" asked Algy, grinning.

  "Oh, you're one of the mugs," answered Biggles, without the slightest hesitation.

  "Then why am I still here?" inquired Algy, glancing around like a barrister addressing a jury.

  "The Professor"-Biggles' eyes twinkled as they roved around the circle and came to rest on Henry Watkins - "the Professor will tell you that there is an exception to every rule," he observed. "You're it"

  "And what about me?" asked Henry, a trifle anxiously.

  "You!" Biggles grinned. "You're as mad as a hatter. Just listen to this, chaps. Listen while I tell you of something I saw today. I saw a Camel shooting up the bridge on the Lille road. Was this Camel shooting up the bridge in the orthodox manner, as I should, or you, Mac, or you, Mahoney, or any other sane person, which is by flying up and down it? No, sir, he was flying to and fro across it. Great Scott! How many Huns did you reckon to hit that way, Henry? Or were you just counting 'em before you started, so that you could do it by mathematics?" he concluded.

  "Never you mind," replied Henry, flushing. "You haven't done a lot to it yourself, anyway. I know for a fact you've had three goes at that bridge, ever since Wing said they wanted it blown up!"

  A howl of laughter followed this sally, and it was Biggles' turn to flush.

  "You're right, kid," he acknowledged, "but if you look at it closely you'll see that I've put a bit of backward stagger on the guard-house at the end!"

  "That isn't the bridge," protested Henry.

  "Well, it's more than you've done, anyway," parried Biggles.

  "Maybe it is, but I haven't finished yet," said Henry, darkly.

  "Ha! Did you hear that? He hasn't finished. I'll bet he's going to take a slide-rule over to measure it first," grinned Biggles. "Is that what you were doing this morning?"

  "Possibly, possibly," admitted Henry, with a solemn face in spite of the broad grins around him. "But I'll tell you this, Biggles. If you want to get that bridge you'll have to be mighty quick. She won't be there tomorrow!"

  "You mean you won't be here!" jeered Biggles.

  "Well, let's wait and see," said Henry, rising, "I'm off to bed."

  Biggles paused in the work of supervising the adjustment of the Cooper bombs on the racks under his lower planes, and as he did so his eye fell on Henry and a mechanic struggling with a large torpedo-shaped object under the fuselage of Henry's Camel. He took a pace nearer and confirmed his suspicions. The object was a 50-lb high-explosive bomb.

  "What do you think you're going to do with that thing?" he asked anxiously.

  Henry wiped a smear of perspiration from his face with a gauntlet and left a streak of oil in
its place. "I'm going to plant this little squib where it should provide the gentlemen over the way with a pyrotechnic display of unprecedented dimensions," he announced solemnly, resuming his task. "When you've finished playing darts with those boy-sized missiles of yours, Biggles, you can stand back and watch my fireworks!"

  "You be careful what you're doing with that thing," Biggles cautioned him soberly. "If we run into a bunch of Huns, don't you come barging about near me if you've still got that thing on your undercart. And keep your hand off the bomb-toggle until I'm well up out of the way!"

  Five minutes later, the morning patrol, consisting of Biggles, Algy and Henry, was in the air, climbing quickly for height as it headed towards the enemy Lines-and the bridge which headquarters had marked for destruction. Except for some severe archie as they crossed the Line they reached it without incident, and signs of what had been going on were at once visible. For an area of a mile around the structure the earth was pitted with holes of various sizes made by the British air bombs. As they approached, it was evident that the recent aerial activity above the bridge had not been lost on the enemy and that steps had been taken to give future visitors a warm reception.

  Even Biggles hesitated for a moment before the storm of archie and "flaming onions" that tore the sky around them.

  "Well, I'm not taking this load of bombs back home," he told himself harshly, and, thrusting the control-stick forward, tore down at the bridge.

  Something jarred the Camel from end to end and he snatched a fleeting glance at his upper port wing, where a strip of trailing fabric told its own story. At four hundred feet he flattened out, took the bridge at the junction of his lower wing and the fuselage, and pulled the bomb-toggle, one-two-three-four. He jerked the control-stick back into his stomach in an almost vertical zoom, and, glancing down, snorted his disgust. Three swirling rings of foam churned the water and showed where his bombs had fallen into the river which flowed beneath the bridge. The fourth had exploded harmlessly on the bank some distance beyond it.