Two Americans advanced on him. He looked at them coldly.
“None of your squadrons is even operational yet. I suggest that it is entirely unseemly for oafs like that ...” he pointed at Kaczinski “... to go around boasting about what marvellous pilots they are. He got what he deserved for being bloody rude. Now you’ll carry on as though nothing has happened. Understand?”
An American captain glanced around.
“I guess the Major’s right, guys: Bax was asking for trouble.” He turned to Codrington. “Just the same, we’ll be looking for you. I guess this guy Kaczinski will be looking to level the score.”
“We’ll look forward to it. You’ll find us at St. Sangsue. I have a feeling my observer, Stokoe, would be delighted to see this ... whatever his name is ... again: and do again what he did just now.”
Eleven
January 1918 brought with it a quickening of preparations for a final effort by the Germans to break the Allies’ defences.
Ever since his public humiliation, Kaczinski had seethed with resentment and a determination to tackle Stokoe: but he was completing his advanced training in the south, too far from St. Sangsue to have any chance of going there.
Bad weather at the Front curtailed flying hours and, incidentally, saved lives. Codrington’s squadron had been worked up to a high level of efficiency and was ready for the annual spring offensive.
Dupuis’s squadron had managed to satisfy his exacting standards and was conducting an intense rivalry with the more famous Cigognes and Sportifs: the one comprising most of France’s greatest pilots, the other composed entirely of outstanding sportsmen. Dupuis himself continued to be racked by jealousy of his mistress and of Gabin’s victories, which still exceeded his.
On the German side, the bad weather and low cloud were less of a hindrance to Rudel and his Schlasta, which carried out its operations at low level, than to the Allied squadrons which were not yet specialising in ground attack in the same way and did most of their work at heights of over 10,000 ft.
Weisbach had quickly adapted himself to this new form of warfare and had become the most accurate bomber in the Schlasta. He had also developed a method of attack, switchbacking along enemy trenches, which allowed both him and Seeckt to use their machineguns in turn. In a dive the pilot could strafe, in a climb the observer could do so.
The pair of them had caused a great deal of devastation.
*
On 1st April 1918 the R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. were to be combined to form the Royal Air Force. Some of the effects of the change would not be felt for more than a year. Ranks in the new Service were to be redesignated in 1919, but for the time being the Army ranks used by the R.F.C. were adopted. Officers’ rank insignia were due to change from pips and crowns to rings of gold braid on the cuffs: later to be replaced by sky blue and black braid. Eventually there would be a new grey-blue uniform, but for the duration of the war khaki continued to be worn by those who had been in the R.F.C. and naval uniforms by those who had served in the R.N.A.S. Most R.F.C. officers who had transferred from other arms were still wearing the tunics and caps of their former regiments and corps. They still wore a great diversity of breeches, trousers, riding boots, ankle boots and gaiters, puttees, knee stockings and shoes. The old style ankle-length leather coats were still seen, but an increasing number of pilots and observers had adopted the comparatively new Sidcot suit of canvas with a fleece lining. This gallimaufry of apparel contributed to the R.F.C.’s and new R.A.F.’s reputation for wildness, nonconformity and odd notions of discipline.
It was as a unit of the Royal Air Force that Codrington’s squadron faced the last April of the war.
*
Andretti had stalked pretty little Monique Lenoir with guile and patience. He was at the convenient age of appealing to her as a near-contemporary while being old enough to inspire her with awe and admiration. Being swarthy, with a recently grown hairline moustache, he appeared older than his years and thus instilled confidence in her parents. He treated her with the serious attention of a coeval, but conveyed at the same time an avuncular, teasing, pedagogic interest in her progress in English. Even Monique’s elder sister, and the latter’s husband when he could get away from the Front, felt that she was safe with him. They knew he went to church every Sunday and every feast day.
Andretti, while keeping his satyriasis slaked and indulged by visits to the maison de tolérance in Montmartre which he had found on his first leave in Paris, chafed at the speed with which Monique’s seventeenth year was slipping past. He was determined to have her while she was still sixteen. At seventeen she would be past her best for his taste. At eighteen she would, in his eyes, be a crone.
At last the U.S.A.S. pilots had been allowed by the French to consider themselves fully trained. Their reconnaissance squadrons, flying old Breguets, were starting their first operations. Their fighter pilots, provided with Spad XIIIs, were working up on a quiet, in fact dormant, sector of the Front in the Vosges region to take their places alongside the R.A.F. and Aviation Militaire.
Andretti faced the unnerving fact that combat was imminent and he had not yet devised a plausible means of avoiding it.
*
Rudel had assembled all his pilots and observers. They recognised from the unrestrained glee with which he addressed them that he was about to commit them to the battle which for so long he had hoped would be decisive.
He stood before a large-scale map of their sector of the Front, holding a riding crop which he used as a pointer.
“I am briefing you now, but it may be several days before we can carry out this attack. It depends on the weather. With the coming of spring the enemy expects us to launch a major push. We, in our turn, are prepared for a similar onslaught by the enemy. However, for us in the Schlastas the kind of weather which most favours the ground forces and high-altitude flying is least favourable to our plan.
“The troops need firm, dry ground and fair weather in order to advance. We need low cloud so that we can support them with the minimum harassment from enemy fighters. Now that April has come we can expect to have the kind of weather for which we are waiting. It can fall on any day now. The ground forces are ready for it and we must be well prepared for it also.
“On the first dawn that reveals the right cloud conditions, the attack will go in. The whole Jasta will take part, in two flights of six aircraft: the relieving flight to be airborne while the attacking flight still has ten minutes’ fuel in its tanks.
“Our first task will be a strafe along the whole of the British front line trenches in our sector. After that we shall be given specific targets which the infantry want destroyed.
“With the right conditions of visibility and weather, enemy fighters will have great difficulty in intercepting us and the enemy’s ground defences will have even more than the usual problems in sighting on us.
“We shall be much too low for the anti-aircraft batteries and we shall neutralise the machine-gunners by our heavy strafing and bombing.”
*
Andretti had heard of the timid soldier’s ruse of shooting himself in the foot, but was unwilling to cause himself any pain or disability: yet injury or illness seemed to hold out his only prospect of not being forced to meet the enemy in battle. He was in robust health and injury was unlikely unless he had a crash. Crashes in the earlier stages of training had been frequent. In advanced training they had still occurred frighteningly often. But with over two hundred flying hours behind him and a reliable aeroplane in his hands, an accident was unlikely.
He considered breaking a wrist or ankle by a deliberate fall, but the very thought of the suffering involved made him wince. Besides, there was always the chance that he could do himself too much damage and that the bones would not set properly.
If he claimed a mysterious pain in a limb, the doctors would look for a swelling or inflammation. If he pretended some internal ache, they would carry out an exploratory operation; and he dreaded surgery.
H
is train of thought led on to failing vision: but the medical officers would supply him with glasses through which he would not be able to see properly and which would also, he thought, detract from his good looks.
Then he began to think about simulating food poisoning. But if he were thus afflicted, so surely would others in the officers’ mess be. Thinking about poisons, he reflected that nicotine was one; but he had never heard of anyone smoking himself into an illness. He pondered on this some more and it occurred to him that it must be possible to extract concentrated nicotine from tobacco and absorb it into the system.
He soaked a dozen of his cigars in hot water. The mere sight of the pulpy mess made him retch. He drained off the brown liquid, poured some into a tumbler with a stiff measure of brandy and forced himself to swallow it. Within a few hours he was feeling ill. He drank some more of the brew. When he woke the next morning he was scared to find himself shaking, weak, with double vision and constant vomiting.
The squadron M.O. was baffled. He ordered Andretti to stay in bed. Andretti continued to take small doses of his horrid potion and the medicines the M.O. tried were of no avail. He moved Andretti to sick quarters and then to hospital. Andretti was unable to take his poisonous concoction with him and therefore improved. He pretended to be feeling ill when the doctors could find nothing wrong with him. They gave him a week’s sick leave and he went to Paris.
He devoted his time to the final conquest of Monique Lenoir. She was on her Easter holidays from the lycée and had ample time to spend with him. So much did her family trust him by now that she was allowed out with him unchaperoned.
Andretti was in gay spirits. He had found a way of avoiding action totally. He would be the victim of a recurring ailment, a chronic affliction. He would continue to dose himself with extract of nicotine at intervals and develop all the symptoms of some unidentified form of poisoning: until at last the authorities declared him unfit for combat. Then he would either be sent home, to swagger around boasting about his heroic deeds in France, or posted to instruct at an advanced flying school hundreds of miles from the Front.
Meanwhile he had seven days in which to bring Monique to bed.
He took a room at the Continental and went to call on the Lenoirs.
The parlour maid beamed a welcome. Madame Lenoir bustled into the hall, all smiles. They conversed in what would, four or five decades later, be known as Franglais: an amalgam of their two native tongues. Over the months, Andretti had acquired some French and the Lenoirs a little English.
“My dear Lieutenant, what a pleasant surprise.”
“I have a week’s sick leave.”
“You have been wounded?”
“No, not yet.” He smiled bravely. “Some mysterious germ, it seems.”
“Alas, Monique is out visiting a school friend. She will be overjoyed that you are here. You must come and stay with us, of course. You need looking after.”
“You are very kind, but I have taken a room at the Continental.”
“Then cancel it. I insist. So would my husband if he were here and not in court. Off you go, and fetch your suitcase.”
When Andretti returned, as he had expected to be prevailed upon to do, both Monique and her father were at home.
He trod a careful path. On the first morning he went to the Bois with Monique and while she rode a horse from a livery stable he walked in the spring sunshine.
She met him in a quiet place and he held her horse while she dismounted.
He gave her a soulful Italian look.
“You are so beautiful, Monique. The spirit of spring.”
She smiled and blushed and before she was aware of the fact that his arms were around her they were kissing for the first time.
“Forgive me, Monique. I could not resist you.”
“There is nothing to forgive. I wish you had done that long ago.”
He did not press her. In the afternoon they went to a concert. At least he did not have to feign an interest in music: he genuinely enjoyed it. He did not touch her except to give her his arm. In the evening, among her family, they were both discreet.
On the next day he postponed kissing her until the afternoon, when they were strolling by the river. He was delighted by her ardour.
The day after that he was bolder. Her mother and sister had to go out. He claimed to be feeling a trifle unwell. Monique stayed to keep him company. They spent a happy hour exchanging kisses in the salon. In the afternoon he felt better, he said, and took her to an art exhibition. They spent little time there and a lot of time being driven around in a fiacre, embracing with a fervour which by now she could not restrain.
At midnight the house was still. He crept out of his room and could hear nothing but the ticking of clocks. He went silently to Monique’s door, tried the handle, it gave, and he sidled in. The air was scented and he could hear her breathing. He had told her to expect him and he shone a small flashlight around. She was sitting up in bed smiling nervously.
“My God! Monique, you are so lovely.”
“You really shouldn’t be here ... I shouldn’t have agreed ...”
“We love each other, don’t we?”
“Yes, but ...”
He was sitting on her bed and she was in his arms. He felt her trembling when he kissed her. She gave little yelps of joy and guilty fear. He began to shrug off his dressing gown and ease himself in beside her. He started to peel her nightgown from her shoulders and with sudden savagery he touched her bare flesh with both his hands.
She screamed.
He put his hand across her mouth and she bit it. She screamed again. He jumped from the bed and was putting on his dressing gown when the door opened, the light went on and he saw her father. Her father held a revolver.
“You dirty seducer ... no court will convict me ... crime passionel ... keep out of the way, Monique.”
Monsieur Lenoir fired but Andretti was too fast: he ducked and side-stepped, he grabbed the revolver from the stout, middle-aged man and clubbed him across the head with it.
Monique, her mother and sister were screaming. Lenior fell heavily and lay inert.
Andretti rushed to his room, tugged on his tunic, breeches and boots over his pyjamas, tossed his belongings into his case and was bolting through the front door while Madame Lenoir was telephoning the doctor.
He ran down the street until he found a taxi to take him to the Gare de l’Est. He ascertained the time of the first train in the morning, slept for a couple of hours in a cheap hotel, was called in good time and by noon was back with the squadron.
Kaczinski greeted him with surprise.
“You’ll be glad you came back early, Frod. We’re moving to a combat area tomorrow.”
Andretti almost turned and fled back to Paris. He had three days’ leave left, which he would forfeit by this early return. But he dared not venture to Paris until he knew whether or not he had killed Lenoir. Even a plea of self-defence would not keep him out of gaol. And Monique would surely accuse him of attempted rape.
*
Kaczinski took off to fly to the squadron’s new base the next morning in a savage mood. He could not wait to catch up with Stokoe at last — if the big bastard was still alive and unwounded — and even the score that had been rankling in his mind for so long.
He had heard a rumour that the squadron was bound for the real Front, on the day after Andretti had gone on leave. He might not have the chance to see the Comtesse again. He asked his C.O. if he could have leave from after lunch until an hour after dawn the following morning and if he could fly to Le Bourget.
“Leave, no, Bax. But I have an urgent despatch to send to our liaison office at the War Ministry. You can take that.”
Kaczinski telephoned the Comtesse’s house from Le Bourget but the butler spoke no English and would only repeat that Madame la Comtesse was occupied.
Kaczinski arranged a lift into Paris and was soon at the Comtesse’s door with a knapsack containing his overnight gear: he would b
ook in at the Crillon later.
The butler met him frozen-faced and once again informed him that the countess was otherwise engaged. By pointing at his watch and making signs with his fingers, Kaczinski conveyed that he would be back at six-o’clock.
When, freshly showered, he returned there from his hotel, the countess received him. She was also entertaining a handsome commander of the French Navy: who made it clear that he had by no means just arrived.
The Comtesse was kind and courteous but adamant and more than a little mocking. She treated him as though he were a gauche adolescent.
“Surely, my dear Bax, you were not naif enough to suppose that you are my only ... er ... friend? That you have a unique lien on my favours and my time?”
“A what?”
She ignored the question.
“Jaques so seldom has leave. I’ve promised him the whole day. We are going to the theatre this evening and dining with a party of friends.”
Kaczinski nodded sullenly.
“I get it.”
She smiled wickedly.
“I’m afraid, my poor Bax, that that is precisely the opposite of the case: you do not get it. Not tonight. Not here, anyway.”
He did not have the grace to appreciate her humour.
“You can go to hell. I never want to see you again.”
“That will be perfectly convenient.”
Through him, she had met many more rich and potentially useful Americans.
He stamped out and had a riotous night on the town. It culminated in the same way as it would have if the Comtesse’s naval lover had not shown up, but that was no salve for his self-esteem.
The squadron’s operational base was only eight miles from St. Sangsue. On the evening they arrived there, all the pilots, including their C.O., descended on the local town, which was midway between the two aerodromes.
The small town was lively. There was an atmosphere of anticipation everywhere, of excitement and confidence. It was not only that spring was in the air, but also that everyone believed that the end of the long war was in sight. America’s entry had brought tens of thousands of fresh troops, unwearied and not yet disillusioned; thousands more field guns and rifles, mortars, mines, grenades; hundreds of eager new airmen and hundreds of newly-manufactured French machines for them to fly. There was an aura of irresistible might and of victory.
No Wrath of Men Page 14