by Max Hennessy
* * *
‘Half-past five, sir,’ the batman said as he shook me. ‘Leave the ground at half-past six.’
I sat up and, staggering half-blind with sleep to the corner of the hut, began to splash water on my face.
Munro lifted his head. ‘What are ye washing for?’ he demanded.
‘Because I’m not a scruffy pig like you,’ I said.
He climbed out of his sleeping bag. ‘Ah dunno why ye bother,’ he observed. ‘Camels spray oil like a shower, and if ye fire y’r guns the muck all sticks tae it. Half an hour from now, forbye, ye might be deid. It’s better to tak’ y’r bath when ye land – if ye land.’
The mess was full of bleary-eyed men clutching leather coats, flying suits, scarves, goggles and helmets. The cook had gone mad and there were sausages, bacon and fried eggs that looked like great sad yellow eyes and were as hard to cut as rubber. Munro peered at his as though he were disappointed it didn’t contain a chicken. ‘Ma eigg’s harrd,’ he complained. He looked up at the mess servant. ‘Mon, why are they always harrd. Boiled, fried, baked, roasted, poached or scrambled, they always end up feeling like a brick in y’r stomach when ye get up there.’
We trudged silently across the field, wrapping scarves round our necks and fastening belts and buckles and buttons in the faint steely light that was beginning to show huts and farm buildings. As we climbed into the machines, mechanics began to swing their legs and lean on the blades of the propellers, and engines began to cough into life with bursts of blue castor oil smoke.
Cold air slapped me in the face then the machines began to jolt with rocking wings across the grass behind Bull. As I pulled back on the stick the Camel lifted off the ground like a chained typhoon, and I gave it just a shade of left rudder to counter the engine’s pull to the right. As it went up my heart went with it. The Camel was the sort of aeroplane I’d prayed for all through the war. It was a fighting aeroplane not a cart with wings such as we’d had to fly for so many years. It was unstable, tail-heavy and so light on the controls the slightest jerk could hurl it all over the sky. Difficult to land and fly in formation, it flicked on to its back like a bat, but in a fight its vices became virtues because it was also difficult to hit. It suited me far more even than the docile SE5 that all the big-scoring boys seemed to prefer, and I could only assume it was because its awkwardness went somehow with my temperament.
Below us the ground seemed dead and remote with just an occasional lifting column of smoke to indicate that anyone was alive down there, then the sun began to catch the leading edges of the wings as it peeped over the horizon and touched the tops of trees with gold. Dew-wet roofs flared with light, then, as it flooded across the flat Flanders fields, I could see the roads were full of guns and lorries all moving east.
For the first time the war seemed to be going well for the allies. The German offensive had only lengthened their line instead of shortening it and, as we’d seen, the Americans were arriving now to take a share of the fighting, tall straight men in strange breeches and gaiters, strong young men who were fresh to battle and actually looking forward to it and had none of the war weariness of the other embattled nations.
There had always been Americans around, of course, men who’d joined the French Armée de l’Air or the Flying Corps, and there’d even been a few of them at Berck, noisy light-hearted men always game for tomfoolery, who were awaiting a transfer to their own youthful air force.
‘A fortnight from now,’ one of them had said, ‘we’ll be jangling all over with medals. In our mob they give ’em to you three at a time, just for saying sweet nothings to the guy in command. And why not? It’s good publicity. You guys need to wake up. I bet you printed the news of Waterloo on an inside page.’
It was a pleasant thought to feel there were so many of them coming. There’d been a lot of talk by their politicians about how they intended to darken the skies of France with the machines they were going to build but something had gone wrong there somewhere and the squadrons they were forming were all still being equipped with British and French aeroplanes. All the same, it was nice to think they were on our side instead of the other one and I was more than willing to move over a little to let them get at the Germans.
The sky was busy with aeroplanes and it was a cold morning with a strong wind and ragged clouds. We were soon over Arras which was still recognizable as a town, but only just, and the sun thrust a shaft of light dimly through the huddle of cumulus to the east so that it became possible to see the Bapaume road heading north and south. A few more clouds, the forerunners of an army, were moving up below and it was clear that before the day was out the sky would be completely shut in.
Bull didn’t take any chances. It was his job to lead the squadron to Puy and, although he was supposed to be flying an offensive patrol, taking off from Hizay and landing at Puy, it was more important to get everyone safely to their destination than to be particularly offensive. Sitting well behind him, I was enjoying myself. Someone else was bearing the responsibility for a change and all I had to do was follow. As I stared about me, it struck me as surprising that only a year or two before I’d not considered myself particularly skilful even at maintaining a push bike and here I was, not yet twenty, and I had mastered several aero engines and several guns, photography, the Morse code, aerodynamics, bombs, the structure and rigging of aeroplanes and the interrupter gear that enabled me to fire through the propeller. And on top of this, because I’d always been a good shot, I’d acquired a reputation as a daredevil I didn’t really deserve which came chiefly from the fact that I’d managed to survive and learn the tricks.
A loud double cough made me jump. Anti-aircraft fire always startled me at first, and I decided that if I flew in battle for the rest of my life I’d always jump at the first bang and the first sudden puff of black smoke.
The fifteen drab machines rose and fell about me as we rushed between the increasing murk. More clouds from the north were sweeping down like galleons with grey sails, threatening and filled with purple valleys and icy pinnacles. As they closed in, the glimpses of the hedgerows grew more fragmentary. The trenches lay on my right, a great grim wound stretching to Switzerland from the sea, with all the wreckage of war contained in a long winding strip of churned-up, stale, stinking ground bounded by trenches and barbed wire.
As the clouds grew thicker Bull climbed, picking his way between the misty towers, and suddenly for no special reason I could explain, I began to grow nervous. It was nothing that Bull was doing wrong, just a sort of prickling of the hair on the back of my neck, as some sixth sense that came from three years of flying made me know something was not as it should be. My eyes began to wander about the sky behind us, above and below, looking for the slow-shifting specks that meant death.
Eventually I spotted a group of half a dozen Albatroses just below and as I did so Bull saw them, too, and fired a Very light to draw attention to them. I found that my breathing was coming faster and the old familiar hollowness that always came before a fight appeared in my stomach. I shifted in my seat, settling myself, almost, for the coming battle. I could see the black crosses on the machines below now and Bull was clearly intending to attack. The Albatroses were on his route to Puy and there was no reason in the world why he shouldn’t.
Except—
Just at that moment, as the aeroplanes fell like stones from the sky and the ground raced up towards us, from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of another group of specks against the clouds and I waved my arm wildly and pulled my flight out of the dive towards the right. Almost immediately, a dozen aeroplanes flashed past us, mixed Albatroses and Triplanes, in all the old red paint and gaudy colours that were so familiar.
As they shot down behind Bull and Munro we went after them, my heart thudding in my chest. Bull reached the Albatroses below and they wheeled and scattered like pigeons frightened in a wood by a gunshot, then one of them dropped out of the sky, streaming smoke. Tracers criss-crossed the battle area, then I
saw the brightly-coloured machines crash in behind Munro. A Camel went twisting down before we joined in on their tails, then the size of the battle began to draw in other aeroplanes and I saw a squadron of SEs smash through the middle of the mêlée, and then a new flight of Albatroses and yet another, until the sky seemed to be full of machines. Ruddering wildly, I saw a Camel bearing Munro’s big ‘W’ chased by an Albatros which was chased in its turn by an SE and then a Triplane, and I joined on the end of the ring-a-roses. As I fired, the Triplane fell apart into a floating wreckage of wood and canvas that shot past my wing tips, but as it did so I saw the SE roll over, too, and one of its wings fall off, so that it followed down in a flat spiral behind the stripped fuselage of the Triplane which was going down now like the stick from a spent rocket, its tail wagging slightly from its speed as it fell.
The Albatros behind Munro had sheered off in alarm but there was no time to watch it because I was facing another Albatros now and I could see the winking flashes from its guns and saw fragments leap from the Camel’s centre section. If I turned away I’d present a perfect target so I did the only thing I could and kept on, straight towards a head-on crash, my heart in my mouth and praying the Albatros would turn. It did and as it lifted, it presented its belly to me and I saw the tracers striking it, then it dropped away, its tail almost touching my wing tip, fell into a fluttering spin, turned over on its back and dropped towards the clouds.
The fight was over as suddenly as it had started. The Germans vanished eastwards with the SEs after them, and the rest of us were trying to form up behind Bull again. We landed in ones and twos at Puy to count noses. The squadron lorries had just arrived and the mechanics were there waiting for us to land.
Munro jumped from his machine as soon as it rolled to a stop and lolloped towards me in his flying boots to clutch me in a highly dramatic show of gratitude.
‘Mon, just state y’r terms!’ he said. ‘Ah’ll mak’ over ma whisky ration and gi’e ye all ma estates roond Aberdeen. If it hadnae been f’r you, I’d no’ ha’e been here the noo!’
There were three machines missing but, even as we were making out our reports, news came in that one of them, a youngster called Milne, had forced-landed without damage in a field, while a second, a boy called Walters, although he’d crashed, had walked away with nothing worse than a cut lip.
‘There’s one thing we can be certain aboot,’ Munro said grimly. ‘In spite o’ the death o’ the proprietor, the Richthofen circus hasnae gone oot o’ business.’
Chapter 4
The new airfield was a bleak place without a tree or a bush for miles, and the squadron we’d relieved had removed all the furniture so that we had to settle into comfortless huts and a mess devoid of chairs. It didn’t help that it was still bitterly cold in the evenings, and that mist crept from the river bottoms to fill the huts with its smoky smell and lay in the shallow folds across the field, so that at dawn the aeroplanes seemed to float without wheels on a sea of grey vapour.
The mess fire wouldn’t have warmed a rat and, with a perpetual hunt for fuel going on, to quieten the grumblers someone had the bright idea of organizing a raid on a coal dump nearby which belonged to the Engineers. Though it would hardly have done for a senior captain like Munro to be involved in a subalterns’ prank, he found it impossible to keep out and, as most of the squadron were young enough to be only just out of school, there was no shortage of helpers. He also roped in the flight-sergeant and the sergeant in charge of transport who lent a lorry. ‘Providing, sir,’ the flight-sergeant said firmly, ‘that our names are kept well out of it and that we can have some of the coal.’
Munro grinned. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘This isnae the army or the navy. This is a technical outfit, no’ a lot o’ stuffy old curmudgeons clingin’ tae tradition.’
He had the bright idea of dressing everyone in kilts – ‘Tae hide identities,’ he said – and handed out to the men taking part what looked like skirts made out of blankets.
‘Kilts,’ he said. ‘Hodden grey. London Scottish mebbe.’
There were still not many in the mess who wore even the RFC tunic and cap. Most still wore regimental uniform with wings except for a few like me who hadn’t served as an officer in any other branch of the forces and wore the universal tunic with RFC badges. It made for a queer mixture of dress so that there was really no uniform at all and, since no allowance had been made for the new RAF outfit, which was said to have been designed by an admiral and a ballet dancer and was generally disliked as being too flashy, most of us just continued to wear RFC wings on an oily, stained jacket edged with leather. The ‘kilts’ at least gave us a uniform aspect.
‘Bear in mind I’m not taking my bags off, though,’ Milne pointed out.
‘Ye cannae wear breeks wi’ a kilt, mon,’ Munro said scornfully. ‘Ye’ll look like an auld lady whose combinations ha’e slipped.’
‘All the same—’
‘Och, whisht!’ Munro grinned. ‘You Sassenachs! When the fiery cross went roond, the Highlanders used tae run through the snow wi’ nothin’ on but a plaid an’ a dirk.’
‘I bet it was chilly,’ I said.
‘An’ we’re no’ Heelanders, forbye,’ Milne said, imitating Munro’s accent.
Munro’s lip wrinkled. ‘Ah can see that,’ he said. ‘An’ thank God for it, too.’
In the end he compromised, provided everyone wore football stockings over boots to look like a Highland regiment’s spats, then he jammed everyone’s side caps top-dead-centre down over their heads and stuck tufts of feathers he’d scrounged from a nearby farm behind the badges to represent hackles.
Milne stared at himself in the mirror. ‘I think I resemble either Abdul the Damned or the Monarch of the Glen,’ he grinned. ‘And this hat looks like a coffin for a cat.’
With a few of the brighter sparks pinning handkerchieves in front like sporrans, Munro announced himself satisfied and we set off just after dark. Munro, wearing his own kilt, and I – half-frozen in one belonging to a subaltern called Taylor who’d transferred from the Gordons – got the sentry on the dump talking, while the rest disappeared round the back to hump bags of coal into the flight-sergeant’s lorry. Inevitably, as they finished, someone grew suspicious and the alarm was raised. There were yells of fury as they drove off and Munro and I took the opportunity to vanish into the darkness. They never came to the aerodrome but they clearly had their suspicions about the culprits and, as we gleefully hugged the huge fires we built, we heard there was a blazing row going on between the colonel of the Engineers and the indignant commanding officer of a battalion of Argylls resting in the vicinity.
‘Yon kilted rogues,’ Munro said severely. ‘Ye cannae trust ’em anywhere!’
* * *
For three days, the weather was so bad there was no flying at all, and looking at the map it occurred to me that as the crow flew I was now only a matter of thirty-odd miles from Noyelles where I’d first met Marie-Ange. The last sight I’d had of her as we’d lifted the stolen Albatros from the aerodrome at Phalempon was of a small figure heading south with just the flutter of a white handkerchief to indicate that she knew we’d seen her. With two of us in a cockpit built for one and three German aeroplanes after us, there hadn’t been much we could do about waving back, and that picture of the fluttering handkerchief was all I had. It would never go away as long as I lived, and again and again I found myself wondering what had happened to her. When it came to occupying a country, the Germans didn’t play games and there would inevitably have been an enquiry into where we’d hidden after escaping, so that I just hoped they’d made their enquiries round Phalempon and not at Noyelles where we’d first run into her.
I was still wondering about her when, on the last of the three dud flying days, a letter arrived from Charley.
‘I’m coming to France,’ she said. ‘I’ve been posted to the hospital at St Marion.’
It sounded like a breath of fresh air and I suddenly realized I’d been waiting for
it ever since I’d arrived.
* * *
The front was reasonably quiet now that the German attacks had died down and, with the death of Richthofen, some of the stuffing seemed to have leaked out of the German pilots. It had always been German policy to concentrate their best men into special squadrons, which meant that the others were never very good and, with the Richthofen circus, after that one encounter we’d had, apparently lying low, we all began to feel that life wasn’t as bad as we’d thought it was. It was even said to be improving for the poor devils in the trenches, because the Germans were clearly wearing themselves out with their own offensives, just as we had on the Somme and Passchendaele and the French had on the Chemin-des-Dames.
Across the field was a Bristol squadron. Their two-seaters were strong and fast and they’d added all sorts of adaptions, alterations and refinements to them. They allowed me to fly one with Munro as observer and it was a joy to be in it. With a two hundred-horse Rolls Royce engine it could turn on a sixpence and, remembering those awful BEs I’d flown in 1916 when it was almost impossible to communicate with the observer, I was delighted to find that in the Bristol the two cockpits were close enough to shout into Munro’s ear. The machine had had a bad start because it had been wrongly used at first and Leefe-Robinson, who’d got the VC for destroying the Zeppelin at Cuffley in Middlesex, had been taken prisoner after being shot down in one. The crews had got the hang of them now, though, and used them as fighters, the only difference being that they had a very useful gun firing rearwards to protect their tail and one or two crews were actually getting scores like Camel and SE pilots.
Patrols became humdrum, however, because it was growing difficult to persuade the Germans to accept battle and most of our time was spent manoeuvring into position or chasing them back over their own lines, and the squadron was unable to chalk up any more victories until May. By this time there was talk about a new Fokker coming out and the odd people who claimed to have seen one said they were very good, though I was inclined to suspect that a lot of the talk was just hot air because I didn’t think any of them had reached the front yet.