by W E Johns
Biggles saw the welter of mud leaping up at him as he thrust the control-stick forward, eyes probing the barren earth for the enemy, Guns flashed like twinkling stars in all directions. He saw a Pup, racing low, plunge nose-first into the ground to be swallowed up by an inferno of fire.
Charred skeletons of machines lay everywhere, whether friend or foe it was impossible to tell. Lines of white tracer bullets streamed upwards, seeming to move quite slowly. Something smashed against the engine cowling of the Bristol and Biggles ducked instinctively.
Rat-tat-tat-tat! Mark’s gun began its staccato chatter, but Biggles did not look round to see what he was shooting at; his eyes were on the ground. The sky above would have to take care of itself. The needle of his altimeter was falling steadily; five hundred feet, four hundred, yet he forced it lower, throttle wide open, until the ground flashed past at incredible speed.
He could hear the guns now, a low rumble that reminded him of distant thunder on a summer’s day. He heard bullets ripping through the machine somewhere behind him, and kicked hard on right rudder, swerving farther into enemy country. He could still see Mabs’ machine some distance ahead and to the left of him, nose tilted down to the ground, a stream of tracer bullets pouring from the forward gun.
Something tapped him sharply on the shoulder and he looked round in alarm. Mark was pointing. Following the outstretched finger he picked out a mud-churned road. A long column of troops in field-grey were marching along it, followed by guns or wagons, he could not tell which.
He swung the Bristol round in its own length, noting with a curious sense of detachment that had he continued flying on his original course for another two seconds the machine must have been blown to smithereens for a jagged sheet of flame split the air; it was too large for an ordinary archie and must have been a shell from a field-gun. Even as it was, the Bristol bucked like a wild horse in the blast.
He tilted his nose down towards the German infantry and watched them over the top of his engine cowling. His hand sought the bomb-toggle. There was a rending clatter as a stream of machine-gun bullets made a colander of his right wing; a wire snapped with a sharp twang, but he did not alter his course.
A cloud of smoke, mixed with lumps of earth, shot high into the air not fifty yards away, and again the machine. rocked. He knew that any second might be his last, but the thought did not worry him. Something at the back of his mind seemed to be saying: ‘This is war, war, war!’ and he hated it. This was not his idea of flying; it was just a welter of death and destruction.
The enemy troops were less than five hundred yards away, and he saw the leaders pointing their rifles at him. He drew level with the head of the column, and jerked the bomb-toggle savagely. Then he kicked the rudder-bar hard, and at the same time jerked the control-stick back; even so, he was nearly turned upsidedown by the force of the explosions, and clods of earth and stones dropped past him from above.
He glanced down. The earth was hidden under a great cloud of smoke. Again he swept down, tore straight along the road, and released the remainder of his bombs. Again he zoomed upwards.
The air was filled with strange noises; the crash of bursting shells, the clatter of his broken wire beating against a strut, and the slap-slap-slap of torn fabric on his wings. Mark’s gun was still chattering, which relieved him, for it told him that all was still well with his partner. He half-turned and glanced back at the place where he had dropped his bombs.
There were eight large, smoking holes, around which a number of figures were lying; others were running a away. It struck him that he was some way over the Lines, so he turned again and raced back towards the conspicuous stretch of No Man’s Land, across which figures were now hurrying at a clumsy run. Nearer to him a number of grey-coated troops were clustered around a gun, and he sprayed them with a shower of lead as he passed.
He reached the Line, and raced along it, keeping well over the German side to make sure of not hitting any British troops who might have advanced. Burst after burst he poured into the trenches and at the concrete pill-boxes in which machine-guns nestled.
He passed a Bristol lying upside-down on the ground, and a scout seemingly un-damaged. Mark tapped him on the shoulder, turned his thumbs down and pointed to his gun, and Biggles knew that he meant that his ammunition was finished.
‘I’ll finish mine, too, and get out of this!’ he thought. ‘I’ve had about enough.’ He took sights on a group of men who were struggling to drag a field-gun to the rear, and they flung themselves flat as the withering hail smote them. Biggles held the Bowden leverfn2 of his gun down until the gun ceased firing, then turned and raced towards his own side of the Lines.
Some Tommies waved to him as he skimmed along not fifty feet above their heads. Mark returned the salutation. The Bristol rocked as it crossed the tracks of heavy shells, and Biggles breathed a sigh of relief as they left the war zone behind them.
Five machines, one of which was Mabs’ had already returned when they landed, their crews standing about on the tarmac discussing the ‘show’.
‘Well, what do you think of it?’ asked the flight-commander as Biggles and Mark joined them.
‘Rotten!’ replied Biggles buffing his arms to restore circulation. He felt curiously exhausted, and began to understand the strain that low flying entails.
‘Get filled up, and then rest while you can. We leave the ground again in an hour!’ Mabs told them. ‘The enemy are giving way all along the sector and we’ve got to prevent them bringing up reinforcements.’
‘I see,’ replied Biggles, without enthusiasm. ‘In that case we might as well go down to the mess. Come on, Mark.’
fn1 Offensive Patrol – actively looking for enemy aircraft to attack.
fn2 The ‘trigger’ to fire the machine-guns.
For three days the attack continued. The squadron lost four machines; two others were unserviceable. The remainder were doing four shows a day, and Biggles staggered about almost asleep on his feet. Life had become a nightmare. Even when he flung himself on his bed at night he could not sleep. In his ears rang the incessant roar of his engine, and his bed seemed to stagger in the bumps of bursting shells, just as the Bristol had done during the day. Mabs had gone to hospital with a bullet through the leg, and new pilots were arriving to replace casualties.
On the fourth morning he made his way, weary and unrefreshed, to the sheds; Mark, who was also feeling the strain, had preceded him. They seldom spoke. They no longer smiled. Mark eyed him grimly as he reached the Bristol and prepared to climb into his seat. ‘Why so pale and wan, young airman, prithee why so pale?’ he misquoted mockingly.
Biggles looked at him coldly. ‘I’m sick and I’m tired,’ he said, ‘and I’ve got a nasty feeling that our turn is about due. Just a hunch that something’s going to happen, that’s all,’ he concluded shortly.
‘You’ll make a good undertaker’s clerk when this is over, you cheerful Jonah!’ growled Mark.
‘Well, come on, let’s get on with it. Personally, I’m beyond caring what happens,’ replied Biggles, climbing into his seat.
He was thoroughly sick of the war; the futility of it appalled him. He envied the scouts circling high in the sky as they protected the low-flying trench strafers; they were putting in long hours, he knew, but they did at least escape the everlasting fire from the ground. Above all he sympathized with the swarms of human beings crawling and falling in the sea of mud below.
He took off and proceeded to the sector allotted to the squadron, and where four of its machines now lay in heaps of wreckage. For some minutes he flew up and down the Line, trying to pick out the new British advance posts, for the enemy were still retiring; it would be an easy matter to make a mistake and shoot up the hard-won positions that a few days before had been in German hands.
Archie and field-guns began to cough and bark as he approached the new German front Line, and machine-guns chattered shrilly, but he was past caring about such things. There was no way of avoiding them
; they were just evils that had to be borne. One hoped for the best and carried on.
The battle was still raging. It was difficult to distinguish between the British and German troops, they seemed so hopelessly intermingled, so he turned farther into German territory rather than risk making a mistake.
He found a trench in which a swarm of troops were feverishly repairing the parapet, and forced them to seek cover. Then he turned sharp to the right and broke up another working-party; there were no more long convoys to attack, but he found a German staff car and chased it until the driver, taking a corner too fast in his efforts to escape, overturned it in a ditch.
For some minutes he worried a battery of field-guns that were taking up a new position. Then he turned back towards the Lines – or the stretch of No Man’s Land that had originally marked the trench system.
He was still half a mile away when it happened. Just what it was he could not say, although Mark swore it was one of the new ‘chain’ archies – two phosphorus flares joined together by a length of wire that wrapped itself around whatever it struck, and set it on fire. The Bristol lurched sickeningly, and for a moment went out of control.
White-faced, Biggles fought with the control-stick to get the machine on even keel again, for at his height of a thousand feet there was very little margin of safety. He had just got the machine level when a wild yell and a blow on the back of his head brought him round, staring.
Aft of the gunner’s cockpit the machine was a raging sheet of flame, which Mark was squirting with his Pyrene extinguisher, but without visible effect. As the extinguisher emptied itself of its contents he flung it overboard and set about beating the flames with his gauntlets.
Biggles did the only thing he could do in the circumstances; he jammed the control-stick forward and dived in a frantic effort to ‘blow out’ the flames with his slipstream. Fortunately his nose was still pointing towards the Lines, and the effort brought him fairly close, but the flames were only partly subdued and sprang to life again as he eased the control-stick back to prevent the machine from diving into the ground.
The Bristol answered to the controls so slowly that his wheels actually grazed the turf, and he knew at once what had happened. The flames had burnt through to his tail unit, destroying the fabric on his elevators, rendering the fore and aft controls useless. He knew it was the end, and, abandoning hope of reaching the Lines, he concentrated his efforts on saving their lives. He thought and acted with a coolness that surprised him.
He tilted the machine onto its side, holding up his nose with the throttle, and commenced to slip wing-tip first towards the ground. Whether he was over British or German territory he neither knew nor cared; he had to get on to the ground or be burnt alive.
A quick glance behind revealed Mark still thrashing the flames with his glove, shielding his face with his left arm. Twenty feet from the ground Biggles switched off everything and unfastened his safety belt. The prop stopped. In the moment’s silence he yelled ‘Jump!’
He did not wait to see if Mark had followed his instructions, for there was no time, but climbed quickly out of his cockpit onto the wing just as the tip touched the ground. He had a fleeting vision of what seemed to be a gigantic catherine wheel as the machine cartwheeled over the ground, shedding struts and flaming canvas, and then he lay on his back, staring at the sky, gasping for breath.
For a ghastly moment he thought his back was broken, and he struggled to rise in an agony of suspense. He groaned as he fought for breath, really winded for the first time in his life.
Mark appeared by his side and clutched at his shoulders. ‘What is it – what is it?’ he cried, believing that his partner was mortally hurt.
Biggles could not speak, he could only gasp. Mark caught him by the collar and dragged him into a nearby trench. They fell in a heap at the bottom.
‘Not hurt – winded!’ choked Biggles. ‘Where are we?’
Mark took a quick look over the parapet, and then jumped back, shaking his head. ‘Dunno!’ he said laconically. ‘Can’t see anybody. All in the trenches, I suppose.’
Biggles managed to stagger to his feet. ‘We’d better lie low till we find out where we are!’ he panted. ‘What a mess! Let’s get in here!’ He nodded towards the gaping mouth of a dugout.
Footsteps were squelching through the mud towards them, and they dived into the dugout, Biggles leading. He knew instantly that the place was already occupied, but in the semi-darkness he could not for a moment make out who or what it was. Then he saw, and his eyes went round with astonishment. It was a German, cowering in a corner.
‘Kamerad! Kameradfn1!’ cried the man, with his arms above his head.
‘All right, we shan’t hurt you,’ Biggles assured him, kicking a rifle out of the way. ‘It looks as if we’re all in the same boat, but if you try any funny stuff I’ll knock your block off.’
The German stared at him wide-eyed, but made no reply.
There was a great noise of splashing and shouting in the trench outside; a shell landed somewhere close at hand with a deafening roar, and a trickle of earth fell from the ceiling.
Mark grabbed Biggles’ arm as a line of feet passed the entrance; there was no mistaking the regulation German boots, but if confirmation was needed, the harsh, guttural voices supplied it. They both breathed more freely as the feet disappeared and the noise receded.
‘It looks as if we’ve landed in the middle of the war,’ observed Biggles, with a watchful eye on the Boche, who still crouched in his corner as if dazed – as indeed he was.
‘What are we going to do? We can’t spend the rest of the war in here,’ declared Mark.
‘I wouldn’t if I could,’ replied Biggles. ‘But it’s no use doing anything in a hurry.’
‘Some Boche troops will come barging in here in a minute and hand us a few inches of cold steel; they’re not likely to be particular after that hullaballoo outside.’
Hullaballoo was a good word; it described things exactly. There came a medley of sounds in which shouts, groans, rifle and revolver shots and the reports of bursting hand-grenades could be distinguished.
‘It sounds as if they’re fighting all round us,’ muttered Mark anxiously.
‘As long as they stay round us I don’t mind,’ Biggles told him. ‘It’ll be when they start crowding in here that the fun will begin!’
Heavy footsteps continued to splash up and down the communication trench. Once a German officer stopped outside the dugout and Biggles held his breath. The Boche seemed to be about to enter, but changed his mind and went off at a run.
Then there came the sound of a sharp scuffle in the trench and a German N.C.O. leapt panting into the dugout. He glanced around wildly as the two airmen started up, and broke into a torrent of words. He was splashed with mud from head to foot, and bleeding from a cut in the cheek. He carried a rifle, but made no attempt to use it.
‘Steady!’ cried Biggles, removing the weapon from the man’s unresisting hands. The Boche seemed to be trying to tell them something, pointing and gesticulating as he spoke.
‘I think he means that his pals outside are coming in,’ said Biggles with a flash of inspiration. ‘Well, there’s still plenty of room.’
‘Anybody in there?’ cried a voice from the doorway.
Before Biggles could speak the German had let out a yell.
‘Just share this among you, but don’t quarrel over it!’ went on the same voice.
‘This’ was a Mills bombfn2 that pitched onto the floor between them.
There was a wild stampede for the door; Biggles slipped, and was the last out. He had just flung himself clear as the dugout went up with a roar that seemed to burst his eardrums. He looked up to see the point of a bayonet a few inches from his throat; behind it was the amazed face of a British Tommy.
The soldier let out a whistle of surprise. More troops came bundling round the corner of the trench, an officer among them. ‘Hallo, what’s all this?’ he cried, halting in surprise.
‘Don’t let us get in your way,’ Biggles told him quickly. ‘Go on with the war!’
‘What might you be doing here?’
‘We might be blackberrying, but we’re not. Again, we might be playing croquet, or roller-skating, but we’re not. We’re just waiting.’
‘Waiting! What for?’
‘For you blokes to come along, of course. I’ve got a date with a bath and a bar of soap, so I’ll be getting along.’
‘You’d better get out of this,’ the other told him, grinning, as he prepared to move on.
‘That’s what I thought!’ declared Biggles. ‘Perhaps you’d tell us the easiest and safest way?’
The other laughed. ‘Sure I will,’ he said. ‘Keep straight on down that sapfn3 we’ve just come up and you’ll come to our old Line. It’s all fairly quiet now.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ murmured Biggles. ‘Come on, Mark, let’s get back to where we belong.’
‘What about the Bristol?’ asked Mark. ‘What about it? Are you thinking of carrying it back with you? I didn’t stop to examine it closely, as you may have noticed, but I fancy that kite, or what’s left of it, will take a bit of sticking together again. We needn’t worry about that. The repair section will collect it, if it’s any good. Come on!’
Three hours later, weary and smothered with mud, they arrived back at the aerodrome, having got a lift part of the way on a lorry.
Mabs, on crutches, was standing at the door of the mess. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘Ha! Where haven’t we!’ replied Biggles, without stopping.
‘Where are you off to now in such a hurry?’ called Mabs after him.
‘To bed, laddie,’ Biggles told him enthusiastically. ‘To bed, till you find me another aeroplane.’