The trench was cramped and freezing cold, especially after dark. When it rained, the muddy floor became a quagmire. Henderson cursed himself for forgetting his coat.
Eventually he found an old coat probably left by a wounded soldier. He found an old sack, too, and put that around his shoulders over the coat. They were already sodden but they were better than nothing.
The rain continued. Hour after hour. Henderson’s boots became like big mud pies, and his legs and kilt were caked with the stuff. At night he huddled in a dugout in the wall of the trench. The dugout was so small that his knees stuck out into the rain.
Days and nights were spent like this and Henderson began to think he might have been better off back at the ammo dump in London after all. To try to stave off madness, he would let his imagination paint a new picture of his surroundings. His smelly dugout became an alcove in a nice restaurant, where he was served a fine meal at a grand table with a white tablecloth, glasses and cutlery.
Letters from home – his parents and wee sister Angela – were what really kept him going. Angela sounded very grown up these days and she gave him advice on how to fend off bombs, which made him smile. Henderson was delighted by the drawings that accompanied her letters.
As a result of the shellfire and snipers’ bullets, many of Henderson’s comrades were killed. Those who survived did their best to keep their spirits up. It was not uncommon to hear survivors of a shell attack singing or humming the haunting Scottish lament ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ as they went about their business.
Eventually Henderson’s company was relieved. The men were sent back from the trenches for a few days’ rest at their billet, about a mile or so behind the lines. ‘Thank God,’ muttered Henderson, stamping the caked-on mud from his boots as he marched along the road.
Early one morning, Henderson woke up with a fright. The relative peace of the billet had been shattered by a terrific sound. German artillery shells were exploding everywhere. He rushed outside and took cover, then looked around, trying to work out what was happening.
The billet was a farm building on the edge of an open field. A road passed through the middle of the field leading toward the woods, from which huge columns of black smoke were rising. After a while the smoke became so dense Henderson could hardly see the trees.
Just beyond the woods, and out of sight, Henderson knew there were more front-line trenches containing his fellow soldiers – he presumed they were now the focus of the German shellfire.
Soon rag-tag bunches of wounded men emerged from the woods and began making their way slowly down the road toward the billet, stumbling along and helping each other as best they could. The shells seemed to follow them, blasting craters in the ground with monstrous force. Henderson looked on in horror as two little groups of the retreating men were hit, their bodies torn apart.
A company was ordered to leave the billet and reinforce the trenches. Henderson watched them go, as the shells continued to fall. The men had no choice but to cross the field via the road to reach the cover of the woods. But before they had even gone ten yards they had five casualties – three men blown to bits when a shell slammed into the ground, and two wounded.
When the survivors reached the edge of the woods, they were met by a new wave of terror-stricken men running in the opposite direction, shouting, ‘Gas! Everybody has been killed by gas! The trenches are taken! The Germans are in the woods!’
One of the officers took control of the situation and tried to calm everything down. The retreating men were turned around and all the troops marched towards the trenches together, rifles and bayonets at the ready in case the Germans really had advanced as far as the woods.
Then it was Henderson’s turn to go.
‘I want you to follow them and join the counter-attack,’ ordered a senior officer.
‘Yes, sir!’ replied Henderson.
His company set off and made it through the woods without casualties.
They soon discovered that the Germans had only taken a few trenches, so the counter-attack was called off for the time being. Henderson’s platoon rested for the night in a ditch near a chateau – a large French country house.
They were woken up at two in the morning with orders to make a shelter in the kitchen garden of the chateau.
‘Why couldn’t we have a bit more rest?’ said a young soldier about Henderson’s age.
‘Bosche will start shelling us as soon as he’s had breakfast,’ replied Henderson. ‘If we don’t get this shelter dug out before then, we’ll be done for.’
In response, the soldier began digging frantically in the dark, uprooting the flowers and vegetables.
Just as Henderson had predicted, around nine o’clock in the morning the firing began. A shell came hurtling straight towards the half-finished dugout where he was crouched. It whooshed and rumbled through the air, and when it hit the ground it exploded with a deafening BOOM!
Henderson wiped the spattered mud from his face and tried to clear his stinging eyes of the white smoke that had enveloped him. He turned to his left, and then his right. The three men next to him were dead. Somehow, by the grace of God, he was untouched.
It was obvious the shellfire wasn’t just random luck – the German guns must have located the British troops’ position. If Henderson and his comrades stayed there, they would all end up dead. Hastily they made a plan before breaking cover.
While half the men went to try to re-take some trenches, Henderson took charge of the other half, who would wait in reserve until ordered to attack.
‘We’re going to take cover a few hundred yards up the road that runs past the chateau – follow me!’ Henderson commanded his men.
In double time they trooped up the road and hid behind a hedge.
‘Corporal!’ shouted Henderson.
‘Sir!’ came the reply.
‘Get these men back to the dressing station for first aid.’ He nodded in the direction of two soldiers with shrapnel wounds.
‘Yes, sir!’ With the help of two able-bodied men, the corporal quickly went off with the wounded.
‘Now, listen up, the rest of you,’ continued Henderson. ‘We’re going to …’
He was cut off by a new sound coming from above.
‘Damn it – a Hun aeroplane!’ cursed Henderson. ‘Keep your heads down!’
The observer in the aircraft must have spotted the kilted soldiers below, as Henderson clearly saw him sending a signal back to his artillery. It wouldn’t be long before the German gunners started hammering them again.
‘Let’s keep moving!’ Henderson commanded.
He led his men further down the road to a ditch that gave them a little cover when they lay on their bellies and stretched themselves flat out. As they did so the hedge they’d been sheltering behind was directly hit by four shells and blasted to atoms. Once again, Henderson knew they had to move on.
Next to a stone gateway he found a large shell hole, better shelter for his men than a ditch.
But he soon discovered that the gateway was being used as a target by the German gunners. A light field gun was shooting at it with small shells that made a whizz-bang sound, like fireworks. They flew past Henderson’s head as he clambered down into the hole. He and his men hunkered down and waited for the shelling to stop.
Later, once they were fairly sure the Germans had given up shelling for the time being, they went to re-take a couple of trenches only to find that they had already been taken by the British side during an earlier counter-attack.
After that things went quiet until early the following morning when Henderson and the others watched German soldiers creeping through the woods in ones and twos. Another British regiment – the Glosters – led a counter-attack and the Argylls joined in. The Germans scarpered.
When Henderson got out of the wood again, he looked up. He kept thinking about the German aeroplane that had spotted him and his men. He was fed up of being on the ground at the mercy of aerial attacks, and wished
he could fly up there and knock those planes out of the sky.
Upon his return from the front line, he found a visitor waiting. ‘Dad!’ he shouted and rushed to his father, who gripped him in a bear hug.
Henderson’s father, Sir David Henderson, was a senior figure in the British forces. Like his son, he had served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and was highly decorated for his part in wars fought long ago.
He was now one of the leaders of the Royal Flying Corps – the British air force – and a skilled pilot himself.
‘How are you, laddie?’ asked Sir David in his Glaswegian brogue. Soon the pair were deep in conversation, the younger man retelling the exploits of the last few days like the veteran he already was, while the older man nodded his approval. But in spite of the bravado, it was obvious that Ian was troubled.
‘I’m desperate to get out, Dad,’ admitted Henderson at last.
‘Really? A man could get himself shot for deserter’s talk like that,’ replied his father with mock seriousness.
‘You know what I mean,’ replied Henderson. ‘We were spotted by a flying Hun, who relayed our position to their guns. We were nearly done for. It was beastly.’ He sighed. ‘I want to be up there,’ he continued, nodding at the sky, ‘doing something about it.’
‘I know,’ said his father, his dark eyes glowing as he grinned under his thick moustache. ‘That’s why I’m here. Get your stuff together – you’re about to join the Royal Flying Corps.’
‘But …?’ Henderson couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all been arranged, laddie,’ said his father, holding out his hands in a calming gesture. ‘It’s what you always wanted, is it not?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘No more buts,’ said Sir David. ‘Your company can look after themselves, and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to catch up with them from time to time. The best thing you can do now is get airborne and help them by taking the fight to the Kaiser’s men in the sky.’
For years, Henderson had dreamed of learning to fly like his father, and since the start of the war he had yearned to join the ranks of the RFC. Now that it was actually happening, and after all he had been through in the trenches of the army’s ground war during the past few weeks, it seemed a bit unreal to be suddenly plucked out of the mud and sent into the sky.
He soon forgot his reservations once he put on the RFC uniform and took to the air. Flying was simply wonderful. It was in his blood.
No more muddy trenches, no more shells ringing in his ears or corpses strewn about. The Royal Flying Corps offered freedom from all that. High above the ground, on a clear day, he could see the Earth curving away into the distance.
His career as a pilot began at the Central Flying School near Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. He flew a Henri Farman, almost identical to the Boxkite aircraft his father had learned to fly on.
Indeed the Farman, like the Boxkite, was more like a huge kite than a plane. It had long landing skids sticking out from the front like horns. It was not a great machine, but for Henderson it was a thrill just to be at the controls and learning how to fly up and away.
Learning how to land was even more important. After the Henri Farman, Henderson was given a Royal Aircraft Factory BE2a, which was much better to fly, but he found it a beast to land.
Henderson was taught how to drop bombs with the BE2a. They were mounted on racks under the wings. When a cable was pulled in the cockpit, the bombs were released. It was important to be very sure the whole lot was dropped. Landing a BE2a was bumpy enough without a bomb hanging off the wing.
After several weeks’ training, the instructors decided Henderson was ready and sent him to France. This was it – active service. As he travelled to join his squadron he wondered how long it would be before he faced a Hun – or a Bosche, to give the Germans their other wartime nickname – in air-to-air combat.
Henderson’s squadron was based at Hesdigneul, near the French port town of Calais and the border with Belgium, from where the Germans were attacking.
It was now December 1915 and the weather was hopeless. It rained and rained until the aerodrome was a great mass of mud and water. The aircraft often got bogged down before the pilots could reach take-off speed, especially if there were two men on board. For a good while Henderson didn’t get airborne at all.
At least he had a comfortable billet – a room in a huge chateau eleven miles from the front line. They could hardly hear the guns at all from there. And Henderson found the people around him very pleasant.
He spent his time getting to know the mechanics, who did a difficult and dangerous job at all hours of the day and night, often in foul weather, to keep the aircraft in good working order. These men tended to be the unsung heroes of the flying corps, but Henderson quickly realised that the air crews absolutely depended on them.
The waiting was tedious. One evening, a concert was held and, as his contribution to the programme, Henderson sang the tongue-twister ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers’. It went down a storm with the other men and the concerts became a regular part of camp life. The squadron set up a cinema projector, too, so they could watch ‘movies’.
The new year came in and the weather remained dreadful. But the aircrews couldn’t stay on the ground for ever. Eventually, very early one morning, Henderson managed to take off on a reconnaissance mission.
Accompanied by an observer, Henderson flew over the front lines to see what the Germans were up to and to find out how effective the British manoeuvres had been. Things got even more exciting when the Germans began firing up at his plane. Henderson felt quite proud that the enemy considered him such a threat, going to all that trouble to try to bring him down. But they didn’t get near him.
On long winter flights such as this Henderson thanked God for his mother and all the clothes she’d sent him. There was a scarf, gloves, a leather flying cap and big snow boots – all fur-lined to help stave off the deadly high-altitude cold. Henderson’s mother had also sent him a long thick coat to replace the filthy second-hand one he’d found in the trenches.
Not only did the new coat help save him from freezing to death in the cockpit, it had other protective powers too.
While flying through German shellfire something pinged sharply against Henderson’s arm.
‘Was that you?’ he shouted to his observer.
‘What?’ the observer shouted back.
‘Did you chuck something at me?’
‘No! But don’t tempt me – you need to stop mucking about and get us out of here!’ The observer laughed, and Henderson did too.
It was only when they landed that Henderson realised he had been hit by a piece of shell, about the size of a pea. It had torn a hole in his new coat. Thanks to the thick double-lining, it hadn’t pierced his skin.
Soon they were back in the sky, where Henderson engaged with a German aircraft for the first time. It was a Fokker Eindecker. These machines had single wings, so were not biplanes like the RFC aircraft. When Henderson spotted the Eindecker, he and his observer were so excited they dived at him and gave chase with great speed.
Henderson couldn’t help being impressed by the Eindecker, with its grey fuselage and huge German emblem – the Iron Cross – painted upon its wings and tail. It carried a clever new innovation – a synchronised machine gun up front so its pilot could shoot through his propeller.
The Eindecker was also sprightly. Since Henderson had orders not to follow an enemy aircraft over its lines, he had to let it go. But the thrill of having chased away their first enemy aircraft put the two RFC fliers in high spirits. They began to sing.
Singing soon became part of the routine of flying, and Henderson and his observer liked to sing as often as possible during a flight. Even at the top of their voices it was difficult to hear anything over the din of the plane. But when Henderson performed a controlled shut-down of the engine for a brief time, they would keep singing – ecstatic at the so
und of their harmonies floating over the clouds.
They had an audience, too – Henderson’s Black Cat, his present from Angela. The toy cat was attached above the dashboard at the start of each flight and it appeared to jiggle its arms throughout.
The only time Henderson couldn’t see Black Cat was when he needed to get a map out during a reconnaissance mission. The maps were large and filled the cockpit when he rolled them out to check his route. Once they were neatly stowed, Black Cat would be back in view.
Besides maps, there was sophisticated kit on board the RFC aircraft.
A wireless radio was used to direct gunners on the ground to the right targets. On one occasion Henderson saw a flash coming from a big house. After careful thought and a good look at it, he decided it must be a German gun firing.
He wirelessed the enemy position to his own guns on the ground. To his great satisfaction, after a few shots, the house went up in a cloud of brick dust and smoke. Henderson gleefully signalled ‘Hit!’
Of course Henderson did his own firing, too. One evening he and his observer were coming back from a reconnaissance flight over the German line when their singing was cut short.
‘Three Huns coming our way!’ shouted the observer.
‘Yes, obviously returning from a mission over our lines!’ replied Henderson.
The incoming German aircraft were flying at a higher altitude than Henderson’s plane.
‘I expect they’re going to dive and give it to us hot!’ shouted the observer.
However, the Germans appeared to take no notice of them, so concerned were they with making their escape. Henderson did not like being ignored.
‘I’m going to increase altitude, then we’ll give it to them with both guns!’ shouted Henderson
‘Righto!’ came the reply, and the observer began aiming his machine gun.
Once Henderson got as close as he dared, he lined up his own gun. ‘Fire!’ he shouted.
RAT-TAT-TAT! RAT-TAT-TAT! went the machine guns.
World War I Page 10