Kaczinski and Andretti met on the troopship which brought them from New York to Liverpool. The pupil pilots of the Air Service were accommodated together at the forward end of what was, in normal times, the most expensive deck. Kaczinski and Andretti shared a cabin with only two others. Already the airmen were being treated as an élite.
They had both brought several bottles of whisky aboard. The troopships were dry. On the first evening out the four cabin mates drank a bottle between them and played poker. The other two found the stakes too high and, on the next day, dropped out of the school. Kaczinski had no difficulty in identifying three well-heeled Air Service officers to form a new poker school and for the rest of the trip they were able to play for the kind of stakes that he and Andretti considered worthwhile.
The other two occupants of the cabin had to spent their time, disgruntled, elsewhere while these sessions were going on. Kaczinski and Andretti kept them supplied with liquor in compensation. They had brought an ample stock and so had their three rich new friends.
Rivalry began between them from the first. Each vied with the other to be the bigger gambler and better poker player. They tried to out-drink one another. They boasted about their amorous conquests. They lied fluently when they made their claims of large-scale seduction although each had a genuinely long record. The one sphere in which Andretti knew he could not compete with Kaczinski was sport. He had nothing to set against Kaczinski’s footballing repute. He had played some low-grade basketball at school and done some running: “gone out for track” as it was called. Kaczinski revealed that he had been a great javelin-thrower at university and a prominent baseball-player.
Andretti resolved to outdo him as a pilot. Their rival claims to daring feats soon after their arrival at advanced training school in France were only the first of many such.
Both of them were impatient to visit Paris and this desire was fulfilled after their first month when they were allowed a weekend pass.
They did not neglect to attend Mass at Notre Dame (“Noater Daym” to them) but did not allow that to prevent them from getting in as much fornicating as they could as well.
They had not been many hours in Paris when they had an encounter which was to have a significant effect on the lives of them both. At the time, they thought themselves lucky.
Maxim’s, of course, was their choice for lunch on that first day. To Andretti it was a shrine. To Kaczinski it was merely a fashionable and very expensive restaurant which had been recommended to him by various friends who had visited “Paris, France”.
Replete, and even Kaczinski aware that he had undergone a superlative gastronomic experience, they dawdled over cognac (genoo-ine cahg-nak) and cigars.
“Okay, Frod, where do we go from here? I’m horny.”
“How about the Franco-American Cercle d’Entente?” He pronounced it “Circle dee En-tent”.
“They got broads?”
“Society dames. English-speaking ones. This is their way of doing good works, welcoming us guys.”
“Let’s go.”
They went, in a cab and a high state of expectation, to the club, which was just off the Champs Elysées, near the Rond-Point.
They had lingered late over lunch and a thé-dansant was just starting. The place was discreetly lit and there were many women in evidence: most of them in their twenties and thirties, none over her middle forties.
Two pleasant women welcomed them in the foyer. One of them showed them round. There was a billiards room, a library of English-language books and periodicals, a bar, a restaurant, bathrooms.
They were not interested in any of these facilities. They headed for the large salon where a four-piece orchestra consisting of two women and two men who were over military age played danced music.
There were several couples on the floor already and half a dozen ladies seated around it.
Without hesitation Kaczinski and Andretti invited the two youngest and most attractive to dance. Kaczinski’s looked about thirty: tall, auburn-haired with green eyes and long, slender hands. There was none young enough for Andretti’s real preference (they were all at school) but he made do with a brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty whose age he put in the mid-twenties.
Although the ladies who did their good works at the Cercle were required to have some English, Andretti’s partner spoke very little.
“You mus’ ’elp me to improve my English, Lieutenant.”
Poor deluded young woman.
“You bet, Ma’am. I see you’re married. Where’s your husband?”
Andretti always came straight to the point; and with only from Friday morning until Sunday night in Paris, he dispensed with all possible preliminaries.
“My ’usban’ ’e is capitaine d’artillerie.”
“Yeah, but where is he?”
“’E is at the Front.”
“How often do you see him?”
“Often? No.”
“You don’t see him often?”
“No.”
“When was the last time?”
“Not last time I ’ope! “
“No, I mean how long ago did you last see him?”
“Last? Oh! I understan’. I see him two week.”
“Two weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
Andretti did not feel that his prospects were good.
They danced in silence for a moment.
“I ’ave sister ... young sister ... at the lycée ... sixteen years ... she learn English ... she speak very good ... per’aps you come my family house, have déjeuner ... meet my sister ... she can talk to you better than I can.”
“Why, thank you. You live with your parents?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Let me get this straight: your sister is sixteen years old, is that right?”
“Yes, yes. She English very good.”
“Okay, I’d be glad to.”
When the dance was over, Andretti’s partner refused the offer of refreshment and he looked around for Kaczinski.
Kaczinski was coming towards him with his beautiful auburn-haired companion.
“Say, Frod, I want you should meet the Countess.” She held out her hand.
“How do you do? La Comtesse de Colombeville.”
“Well, now, this is a great pleasure ... and an honour.”
Andretti raised her hand to his lips. He looked up mockingly at Kaczinski and met a black glower.
“I was just taking the Countess for a bottle of champagne.”
“Great idea. My partner prefers to stay here and dance. Me, I could use the champagne.”
Conversation revealed that the Countess had learned English at a Swiss finishing school. Her father and husband both owned race horses which ran at Epsom, Ascot, Goodwood and Cheltenham, all of which she had visited every year before the war since her schooldays. Her husband was a yachstman and she had sailed in many Mediterranean regattas. In the three years immediately preceding the war, air races and displays had become highly chic and she loved to attend them. She had even been up in an aeroplane three times. She implied that she had a special admiration for aviators.
Kaczinski was enraptured. In one alluring package he had found everything that appealed to him. A beautiful, sophisticated married woman who took lovers as a matter of course. An aristocrat. A rich woman in her own right as well as the wife of a rich husband. An admirer of pilots.
“You husband is in the Army, Countess?”
She laughed gaily as though it were the greatest joke in the world.
“Poor Armand! He was on the Reserve. He is now only a colonel, which is a great disappointment to him. He is on General Nivelle’s staff and fighting the war from a beautiful château, very, very far from here. He hates to come to Paris: he feels humiliated that he is not a general himself.”
Plainly, the Count was at least two decades older than she: decrepit, from the point of view of young men of Kaczinski’s age.
After the third glass of champagne, she gave Andretti a frankly calculat
ing look.
“I have a friend who would very much like to meet you. And you would like to meet her, I think. I don’t know if she intends coming here this afternoon. Let me telephone her to make sure.”
When the Comtesse left them to do so, Kaczinski turned a look of displeasure and warning on his friend.
“How did you make out with the dame you were dancing with?”
“Great. She’s crazy about me, but she’s not really my style. She can’t speak much English and ...”
“So she gave you the brush-off.”
Kaczinski looked maliciously pleased.
“She goddam did not give me any goddam brushoff. I’m tellin’ ya, she ain’t my style. She asked me to have lunch with her and her folks tomorrow. Maybe I’ll go along: just to be friendly; but I’m not interested in her.”
Andretti felt he would like to slam his fist into Kaczinski’s sardonically grinning face.
The Comtesse returned, pouting, and said her friend’s official lover had come on leave unexpectedly and she was not available.
Kaczinski pointedly said “Not much point in you hanging around here, Frod.”
Andretti danced again with the dark girl to arrange the details of his visit to her home for lunch, then took himself off.
Paris, he knew, catered for all tastes. He had heard that there was a house on the Ile de la Cité staffed entirely by women over the age of seventy, for men who liked the grandmotherly type. He was sure that there were others which offered entertainment for those who preferred their women pubescent or adolescent.
With the aid of a phrase book and a dictionary he managed to explain to a taxi driver what he was seeking.
Ten minutes later he was being ushered into an establishment in Montmartre where the girls were aged from thirteen to eighteen. He settled down to abandon himself to one or two of his choice for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Perhaps he would return after he had dined well at one of the other famous restaurants on his list.
But after dinner, although he had little energy left after disporting himself for several hours in the Montmartre lupanar, he enjoyed a stroll beside the Seine in the pleasant autumn evening and then, after taking a taxi from Place St. Michel to the Porte Dauphine, another saunter in the Bois de Boulogne. After that he went back to Montmartre, but this time to the Moulin Rouge.
When he fulfilled his luncheon engagement on the next day he was delighted with the just-sixteen-year-old Monique Lenoir. He called again after church on Sunday to leave flowers for his hostess and for the elder daughter who had invited him, and a big box of chocolates for Monique. He suggested to her mother that she should practise her English by corresponding with him; and he promised to return soon to Paris and give her some conversational practice.
Kaczinski accompanied him back to camp in a smug reverie. The Comtesse was wondrously accomplished in the boudoir, scintillating company and above all, titled and rich, rich, rich. Highest of all these attributes he put her title.
*
Rudel came back from a short leave in Berlin looking pleased with life.
“I’ve done it, Weisie. It’s all arranged.”
“What?”
“I’m being promoted Hauptmann. I’m taking command of a Schlasta. A brand new one, which I shall form from scratch. You are to be my second in command and I’m raking in as many old comrades as I can. You remember that enormous fellow, Seeckt and the desiccated schoolmaster chap, Ehrler?”
“Of course.”
“They’ve developed into a pair of damned good observer-gunners. I’ve asked for them. They both have the Iron Cross now.”
“What are we going to fly?”
“Nothing but the best. Hannover C.L. Three A. The pilot and observer are in one big cockpit like the English have in their Bristol Fighters. There’s a Spandau for the pilot and a Parabellum for the observer. I flew one while I was on leave. It’s very handy. I had a look at the Halberstadt C.L. Two also. That has a strip of armour plate along the belly. I don’t see why we should not have some protection too, so our Hannovers are going to be fitted with the same type of steel strip. The extra weight won’t prevent us carrying a useful bombload. My Schlasta is going to operate below three hundred metres, so rate of climb is unimportant. And we need a maximum speed of no more than a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour down at that height, because we’ll be well below the reach of anti-aircraft guns and we’ll be too low and too fast for machine-gunners to get more than a brief snap shot at us as we flash across their arc of fire.”
Weisbach was amused by his friend’s enthusiasm.
“Anything you say, Rudie. And congratulations on your promotion.”
“Hell, I could have had it months ago: but I told my uncle at the War Ministry and my cousin on the General Staff to delay it until I had a respectable number of pilot hours in. I didn’t want a command of my own before I was ready. It’s important for all a C.O’s pilots to respect him.”
“You’re taking a lot for granted.” Weisbach smiled broadly. “I can fly your arse off anytime.”
“Oh, you don’t count, you young devil. You’re just unnatural: I think your mother had an affair with an eagle behind your father’s back, and you’re the result.”
Ten
During the six months between Bloody April and the time when Kaczinski and Andretti paid their first visit to Paris, Major Fotheringay-Brown was promoted lieutenant colonel in command of the wing of three squadrons stationed at St. Sangsue.
The Sopwith Camel, the Bristol Fighter and the other new British fighter, the SE5, with the French Spad XIII, supported by the Sopwith Triplane of the R.N.A.S. had out-fought the Albatros D3. An improved Albatros, the D5, and a copy of the Sopwith Triplane, the Fokker Dreidecker, had not been able to regain superiority.
Codrington, promoted to brevet major, had taken over command of Fotheringay-Brown’s old squadron. Although one-third of the R.F.C’s pilots and observers had been killed or wounded in the heavy air fighting of March to May 1917, this squadron had not suffered in proportion. Codrington’s great experience and wise leadership, his insistence on thorough training and his shrewd battle tactics, together with the excellent qualities of the Brisfit had saved many lives.
The fast, tough, highly manoeuvrable Bristol Fighter deceived many pilots on first acquaintance. Because it was a big machine in comparison with its predecessors, and was a two-seater, they thought it must be a sedate performer. Codrington, from the outset, demonstrated that it had the performance and fire power to match any enemy fighter: to such good effect that he was awarded a bar to his M.C. that summer.
Dupuis, commanding his squadron, equipped with the Spad XIII that had two Vickers guns and a maximum speed of 130 m.p.h., grew increasingly neurotic, ill-tempered and obsessed with the pursuit of personal glory.
His jealousy of the Bristol Fighter equalled his hatred of the Albatros and Dreidecker and his jealousy and dislike of Gabin. He was also growing paranoid about Adèle. He suspected her, wrongly, of taking other lovers in his absence. He took to making surprise visits to Paris to try to catch her out. He would fabricate some excuse to fly to Le Bourget, then race into town by taxi to ring her doorbell, expecting to embarrass her entertaining some other man. She was always delighted to see him, but this scarcely assuaged his crazy suspicions.
He was in a constant state of frenzy about Gabin’s mounting tally of victories; which irritatingly kept ahead of his own.
In consequence of all this self-persecution he grew increasingly gaunt and sallow and the red patchwork of broken blood vessels on his nose and cheeks proliferated and became a darker red. He smoked forty or fifty cigarettes a day and his fingers became bright orange with nicotine, his upper lip and chin also became stained with it and his breath stank at a range of two metres.
Rudel had formed his new Schlachtgeschwader, battle squadron, and trained it assiduously. As an old cavalryman he had a sharp eye for terrain and a high appreciation of tactical warfare. To give his un
it an identity and character of its own, he eschewed the garish livery of the Jastas and had all his aeroplanes painted in green, brown and black camouflage with the undersides of the lower planes in sky blue. Thus they were difficult to discern against both ground and sky.
While Codrington and Stokoe, and Paxton and Baird, were constantly flying together and becoming two formidable teams, Rudel and Ehrler, Weisbach and Seeckt, in their new speciality, were becoming equally skilled.
The Schlastas operated in formations of four or six aircraft, using tactics which were destined to be developed, in the next war, into the Blitzkrieg by the Germans and the rover patrol system by the British. The Schlastas came under the immediate orders of the commander of the ground troops in the sector concerned. They machine-gunned and bombed at low level ahead of the attacking infantry and reported progress by wireless. As each patrol of four or six machines ran out of fuel it was replaced by another immediately.
The American pilots undergoing their advanced training, eager to join the fray, suffered a series of typically French-engendered delays. They were put through one course after another at a succession of flying schools: advanced pilotage, navigation, gunnery, signalling, Army co-operation, combat.
Kaczinski, who did not lack courage, chafed and complained to his Comtesse whenever he could get to Paris. She, happily juggling three lovers simultaneously, did her best to distract him during their brief hours together. She had picked him up because it was chic to have an American in tow and because she had kept her eyes open for a rich one who could, one day, be useful to her husband if France’s economic suffering in this war made it necessary to seek to augment their fortune across the Atlantic.
Andretti, whose enthusiasm for getting into action was entirely simulated, supported these delays with apparent stoicism and secret satisfaction. He also made his way to Paris whenever he could. He had set out to ingratiate himself with the Lenoir family with subtlety. Since setting eyes on the pretty, blonde, elfin Monique Lenoir, he had been haunted by visions of her innocent hyacinth-blue eyes, rich pink lips and burgeoning figure. By treating her with a practised blend of the avuncular and the cousinly, he had contrived to establish a relationship which was at once protective and familiar.
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