by Max Hennessy
The new major turned up the following morning. He walked with a stick and had three wound stripes and wasn’t allowed to fly, and I began to wonder if, when the war was over, there’d be anything left but wreckage – wreckage of buildings, wreckage of machinery and wreckage of human beings. He asked me if I felt fit to go up because one of Munro’s pilots had gone sick with flu and there was a spare machine. I didn’t feel a bit like flying but I said I did and as I took off I could feel the bile of sickness in my throat, while my limbs seemed sluggish and heavy as though they didn’t belong to me.
The cloud level was still solid and as we reached the front I saw unfinished German trenches, splintered trees, broken guns, burning stackyards where shells had fallen, and the bodies of horses and men. Shattered buildings with empty windows like sightless eyes lifted stark rafters up like the bones of a dead civilization as we roared over them, and every village seemed to be on fire and burning steadily under a pall of smoke. The pavé was shining with the rain, and the grey sky was reflected in the pools like fragments of silver.
Everywhere there seemed to be men in heavy coal-scuttle helmets trudging eastwards, their figures bent with weariness, and when they didn’t even bother to look up, I couldn’t bring myself to shoot at them. We dropped our bombs on a cluster of lorries by a railway siding and that was easier because the lorries seemed more impersonal than human beings. A few of the machines went round again to fire their guns and I saw vehicles burst into flames, but I couldn’t do it myself and just sat above and waited for them to finish.
As we headed homewards, a few Fokkers came down on us but they seemed half-hearted. Two of them crashed into the ground all the same, and one of the Camels didn’t make it back, but I saw the pilot climb out as it rolled itself into a ball of broken wood and fabric and thought ‘Well, he won’t have long to wait.’ They probably wouldn’t even bother to take him prisoner because, with the war going as it was, there was no longer any point.
When we landed, I sat in the cockpit, feeling the warmth from the engine and listening to the tick and creak of the cooling cylinders. I was so still the flight sergeant stuck his head over the side of the cockpit and asked if I were all right.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m all right,’ and I climbed out at last as if I were a cripple and dragged off my helmet to run a hand through my flattened hair.
I didn’t think I could face another day but I was up twice the next morning. The night before I’d gone through my log book totting up just how many times I’d laid my head on the block, and the hours I’d flown in three years seemed astronomical. But so did the number of machines I’d smashed up crash-landing for one reason or other. However, since the number of German machines I’d destroyed seemed quite substantial, too, I decided that perhaps I’d probably earned my keep; though it was funny to think that if I’d become an architect on leaving school, as I’d intended, I wouldn’t even have terminated my articles yet.
It seemed colder than it ought to have been, in spite of the November greyness, and I decided stupefaction was setting in. By evening, as we took off, the sky was heavy with lowbellied clouds. They were like wet sails, majestic and threatening, set above dark chasms and secret caves, but reaching up towards the light in ivory castles that were splendid in the last light of the day.
My eyes were roving restlessly about the reaches of the sky, because I was heavily conscious of the nearness of the end of the war and worried sick I’d miss those slow-shifting specks against the grey that meant Fokkers. Eventually we spotted a fight going on towards the east between a squadron of SEs and a host of Germans. The Fokkers seemed to have come out en masse for one last gamble before they were grounded for good and they were whirling like flies round a jampot. We smashed into the middle of them and from among the mêlée of coloured German wings and drab British ones, I saw aeroplanes falling limply away. My tiredness seemed to have left me, though, because going into a fight was always a little like plunging into an icy shower, the body cringing for the initiation but once in remarkably at ease.
A Fokker curved away in front of me, flames pouring from it, and I saw the pilot jump and go down in a whirl of arms and legs that made me feel sick as I thought how far he had to fall and what he must be thinking as he went down, then an SE literally staggered sideways in the sky as another Fokker caught it beam-on at point-blank range. Skidding about, I fired at an unexpected Triplane which had turned up from nowhere and swung round to find myself staring at the winking flashes of a Fokker’s guns. For a fraction of a second I saw splinters fly all round me then I felt as though someone had hit me on top of the head with a hammer and everything went black.
When I came round I could feel warm blood running down my face and I couldn’t see because it was filling my goggles. Through a red blur I saw the Camel was falling out of the sky and that if I didn’t do something soon I’d be smashed to pieces like that poor devil I’d seen jump. Then I realized the Fokker that had hit me had followed me down and was still shooting at me and, even as I dragged the Camel’s nose up, a bullet went through my forearm to jerk my hand from the stick and the Camel fell away again. Fortunately, someone spotted I was in trouble and the Fokker sheered off, and I fought through a blur of pain to get control. Changing hands, I pushed my goggles up and headed west. Every now and then I had to grip the joy stick with my knees to brush the blood from my eyes with my good hand and I could feel a warm coma of weariness flooding over me. I didn’t feel in pain particularly, just aware of a numbing throb in my arm and a headache up top as if we’d had a party in the mess.
I decided quite calmly that I’d pushed my luck too far at last and that this time I was really going to die. The only thing I wanted was to do it among friends and I was terrified of becoming unconscious and losing control. But there were two other Camels with me now, one on either side of me, watching me every inch of the way to safety, and I thankfully saw the lines appear and slip behind me. The rubbish of the war passed beneath me and I could see fields now. I could have put the machine down in any of them but somehow I desperately wanted to reach the squadron. There was a doctor at hand there and this time I knew I wasn’t going to be flying again the following morning and was going to need him.
I saw the field at last, an L-shaped piece of ground scored by wheels and tail-skids and lorry tyres. I didn’t even attempt to circle it but went straight in. The wheels skimmed the trees and, fighting to keep my head up when it insisted on drooping to my chest, I put the machine down one-handed. But things were pretty blurred by this time and I misjudged it. I was going in left wing low and, as I tried to correct, I overdid it. The machine bounced, the right wing touched and then the Camel slewed round and went sliding sideways across the ground, crumpling the wings and shedding the undercarriage and tail in flying fragments. Gouging a great wound in the turf – which, oddly, I could see quite plainly, though I could hardly see even the cockpit in front of me – it finally slithered to a stop.
There was always the danger of fire after a crash and I didn’t know whether I’d switched off the petrol. I could smell it everywhere and see smoke but I just didn’t have the strength to do anything about it and simply sat there waiting for it to happen. Just then, though, I heard a car scream to a stop somewhere nearby and saw faces above me. Hands reached in and unfastened the belts, then they were dragging me none too tenderly from the cockpit before the whole thing went up in flames. They had me on my back and staring at the darkening evening sky when I heard a ‘whuff’ and saw the bright glare of fire, but I knew it was all right by this time and didn’t even bother to think about it.
An ambulance appeared and I saw its light were on, then they lifted me on to a stretcher and I saw what was left of the daylight disappear as the stretcher was pushed into the ambulance. Someone gave me an injection and suddenly everything seemed all right. I didn’t have to fly again and I could go to sleep at last.
* * *
When I came round I found myself staring at a nurse’s f
ace and I realized I was in hospital.
‘Sykes! Sykes! He’s awake!’
The voice seemed to come from a cavern just beyond the foot of the bed and I realized it was the nurse calling over her shoulder, then I saw Charley appear, her face drawn and anxious, and I decided that if she was around everything would be all right and simply faded away into sleep again.
When I came round again, my arm was strapped up and my head was bandaged and felt as though someone had been pounding it with a house brick. Charley was by the end of the bed, staring anxiously at the graph of my temperature, and as she saw me open my eyes she came nearer, a doubtful smile on her face.
‘Am I going to live?’ I asked.
‘You’ll be with us for a long time yet,’ she said, and at last the doubt in her face gave way to a real grin. ‘You only need a little tidying up on top.’
I felt very relieved. ‘I think I want to go to sleep again,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Help yourself.’ She came nearer and I decided she was going to kiss me, but then I passed out again so that I never had the pleasure of enjoying it.
When I finally emerged, there was no sign of Charley, only a ward full of nurses bustling up and down. This time I felt much more wide awake, but stiff as hell and with a head that felt as if it were ten other men’s, all with hangovers. My mouth was dry and rasping and when someone came and gave me a drink of tea it tasted like heaven.
After a while I heard them calling for ‘Sykes’ again and eventually Charley appeared. ‘Upsi-daisy,’ she said pushing a pillow behind me. ‘Well enough for some news?’
‘Good or bad?’ I asked.
‘Good. Jock Munro turned up. There was some mix-up and he got lost. We found him at Bethune and Hatherley got him transferred here. He’s in the next ward.’
I decided I must have died and gone to heaven after all, because this was too wonderful to be true. No more flying, not much pain, Charley at the end of the bed and Munro alive and only a few yards away.
‘Good old Jock,’ I murmured.
Charley smiled, her eyes bluer than I’d ever noticed. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ she said. ‘He was in a bit of a mess but they’ve stitched all the pieces together. Hatherley’s satisfied, anyway. They’ve let her off work because all she can do is sit and look at him and weep with relief.’
‘How about you sitting and weeping with relief over me?’
She laughed. ‘Not likely. You’ll always survive. It’s worth a guinea a box just to see you coming up again, dudgeon in every step, ready for the next round.’
‘Not this time,’ I murmured. ‘This time I thought I was dead and buried, with the worms doing eyes-right and fours-about between my ribs.’
She bent and stared at me. ‘They say it’s almost over, Martin,’ she went on. ‘They say it’s going to stop any time now. The Canadians are heading for Mons. It’ll be funny if they reach it, won’t it, just when the Hun throws in the towel? Right back where it all started. Just to show what an unholy waste of money, effort and lives the last four years have been.’
Someone called her away then, but I didn’t mind. It was enough just to have her near. I was glad that Munro had made it. He deserved to survive, though I was sorry that Marie-Ange was going to have to get herself married without me as best man, after all. Judging by the look of things, they’d be sending me home as soon as I was fit to travel.
The following morning they took me into the operating theatre and took out a few bits of bone that were floating around loose under my scalp, and when I came out of the anaesthetic my head hurt like hell and I was low in spirits. For no reason at all I began to think of myself as I’d been when the war had started, just a boy with no greater ambition than to score a few runs in a school cricket match, and then of myself as I was at that moment, miserable, worn out, very nearly devoid of strength, ambition or even the will to live, yet officially still not an adult. By the time the anaesthetic had worn off completely, I was feeling thoroughly wretched and wishing Charley would appear.
Just as she did so, I heard bangs going off outside, and a nurse ran into the ward. ‘Sykes! Sykes! Can you hear the maroons? It’s over – it’s really all over! Are you coming out to see what’s happening?’
Charley shook her head. ‘No, I’ll stay here, I think,’ she said, but the noises outside increased and I could hear shouting and a lot of laughter, and someone playing on a trumpet that seemed to be all out of tune. It was all over at last. It really was.
All the way from Switzerland to the sea it had all come to a stop. All the way from Albert to St Quentin, from Arras to Cambrai and Le Cateau, the land was suddenly still and in the misty autumn day I felt that after the din the silence must be thunderous, like being buried alive. Because, amid all the wreckage of the war, the crosses still lay in the fields and gardens and woods all the way through the fighting zone, as though every misery of the last four years were rising to remind us all of what had happened, as though people we’d known and lost were calling out to us not to forget them.
I thought of my brother and Frank Griffiths and Wickitt, who were all I could remember of my first tour, and then of Catlow and Bull and Major Latta of the second, and Ludo Sykes and Munro who’d overlapped into a third and a fourth with Taffy Jones and Milne and a few others, and then it dawned on me properly that there was to be no more of it. It was ended. It really was, and I could go home and start getting back to what I was going to do with my life – whatever it was.
I felt so relieved for a moment I couldn’t get my breath, and I drew two or three great gulping gasps of air that turned into sobs, and suddenly I realized I was crying. Not loudly. Not even at all really. Just lying there, wet-eyed, feeling desperately sorry for myself and stupidly unable to stop the prickling behind my eyes. Charley saw me and hurried across so that I had to turn my head, trying not to let her see. But she’d always had sharp eyes and there wasn’t much she missed.
She put her hand on mine and stared into my face. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why, Martin? It’s all over.’
That was why, of course. Because it was all over. And because I was tired. And because of Taffy Jones and Bull and the people who hadn’t come through. And because I had.
I managed a smile. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a spot of boozer’s gloom or something. I’ll be all right in a minute.’
She bent closer. ‘Just think, Martin,’ she said. ‘We’ll all be going home.’
‘We’ll tell some whoppers then, Charley. How we won the war. Me with all my brass and you with your putty medal.’
I could see her eyes sparkling as though they were damp. ‘Twenty years from now,’ she said, ‘everybody’ll be so bored with us they’ll dodge when they see us coming.’
‘Can’t say I’ll mind,’ I murmured. ‘So long as I’m still around. I never thought I would be.’
Next in The Martin Falconer Thrillers:
The Interceptors
The First World War is over. But Martin Falconer’s story is only just beginning.
The continuation of the the completely gripping WWI aviation thrillers, for fans of W. E. Johns, Alastair MacLean and Alan Evans.
Find out more
First published in the United Kingdom in 1975 by Hutchinson Junior Books
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo
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Copyright © John Harris, 1975
The moral right of John Harris writing as Max Hennessy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 9781800320802
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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