The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  “Not a thing, sir,” Dicken admitted. “I’ve never seen one. Do we have any?”

  Hatto smiled. “We have now,” he said. “They’ve just arrived. So you’d better find out what you can about ’em. The mechanics are fitting one to my machine.”

  Dicken’s heart leaped. “Does that mean I’m flying with you?”

  “Well, we get along as merrily as a matched pair, don’t we? Mind?”

  “Gosh, no!” Hatto had been flying a long time now and it had long since become clear that the longer a man flew the greater were his chances of surviving.

  “Right,” Hatto was saying. “Go and see what you can do about it. We’re going to practise with ’em over the airdrome. Tomorrow we’re going bombing. Railway station near Bapaume. You know what Sir Andrew Agnew said at Dettingen: “Ye see yon loons on yon brae face. If ye dinnae kill them, they’ll kill you.” It’s the same here. If we don’t drop our bombs on them they’ll doubtless drop theirs on us. Pity we have to do it with BEs. They fly like bedpans with wings.”

  There were to be two squadrons on the operation and the tactics seemed to be fairly straightforward. As the last squadron over the target, all they had to do was drop their bombs where the other squadron dropped theirs. However, it didn’t take long to realise that it was impossible to become proficient with the bomb sight in twenty-four hours because it required two flights over the target, one to get the wind’s speed and direction and make calculations with a stop watch, and the second to drop the bombs. Since arithmetic was not Dicken’s strongpoint, he couldn’t see himself ever becoming very good at it.

  “Don’t matter all that much,” Hatto said. “We can always go down low and slip the bombs into somebody’s pocket. Meet’s at eleven over Béthune. Might not draw a fox, but we might pick up a Fokker or two.”

  “Are we flying in formation?”

  “No, thank God. We have enough perils to face without that.”

  The sky was full of slab-sided cumulus reflecting the light, and, arriving punctually over Béthune, they found the other squadron had arrived early and hadn’t bothered to wait but were already on their way, strung across the sky like hounds after a scent, their airplanes following each other haphazardly at different distances and heights that suited the individual pilots. Even the enemy anti-aircraft guns didn’t seem to know what to do about them. Since they were all at different altitudes and scattered all over the sky, the baffled gunners couldn’t decide which one to fire at and merely filled the sky with black smoke.

  Near the target they became bunched again as they waited their turn to drop their bombs, and the anti-aircraft guns at last found the range and began to put the wind up them all. As far as Dicken could see, the bombs were falling in the fields at the side of the railway track, and Hatto began signalling and pointing downward. As the nose of the machine dropped it was clear he was intending to do just as he’d said and place his bombs in someone’s pocket.

  There seemed to be a lot of uneven rifle fire but the station they were aiming at appeared to be deserted. Then he saw Hatto gesturing and, staring in the direction of the pointing finger, he saw that on a curve a short distance away a train was standing, the engine blowing off steam. Alongside it was a swarm of agitated black dots and he realised it was a troop train and that it was from its occupants that all the rifle fire was coming.

  As they sailed overhead, he watched the bombs fall away. It seemed impossible to miss by so much. One fell in a field and the other behind a house, but then he saw a cloud of smoke rising from where the second bomb had fallen and as they circled to see what damage they’d done he saw lorries burning. Hatto stuck up his thumb and grinned. Almost immediately, snow began to fall.

  They slogged home through the blinding murk, the snow whirling away in front of the machine, huge flakes slapping painfully into Dicken’s face, and as the sky grew darker, he began to wonder if they were lost. After a while, as though looking through a frosty window, he spotted a field, and then a corner of Lille fortifications. He pointed and Hatto nodded, his teeth bared in a fixed grin. As they crossed the lines, Dicken breathed a sigh of relief.

  They were the last to land and everybody was standing by the machines, noisy with excitement as they discussed what had happened. Most of them were loudly claiming direct hits and the CO, trying to find out exactly what had happened, could hardly be heard above the hubbub. Hatto’s opinion didn’t coincide with the rest. He was realistic enough to refuse to believe they had done much damage.

  “To me,” he said disgustedly, “it looked a proper old donnybrook. I reckon we can do better than that.”

  “What’s Corporal Quinney think?”

  Hatto slapped Dicken on the shoulder. “He thinks the world of me. That’s what he thinks. A good officer commands affection while communicating energy, and nobody can do that like your Uncle Willie. Corporal Quinney agrees with me entirely.”

  The news that they had to have another go the following day set them wondering. Was it because they’d been successful or was it because they’d done so badly they had to do it all over again? A major arrived from Wing to give them a pep talk as they were waiting to take off. He wasn’t offering rebukes but he wasn’t offering much in the way of congratulations either.

  “We have to be prepared to make sacrifices,” he said.

  “I dare bet he won’t be making sacrifices,” Hatto said as they waddled in their heavy clothing to their machine. “All this laying down your life’s so much journalistic twaddle. I’ve spent the whole war so far fighting like mad to preserve mine.”

  This time the bombing was more successful. A barge in the canal alongside the station was sunk – though there was nothing to indicate whether it was being used by the Germans or by some unlucky Frenchman – and the station was partly demolished. It also meant the end of things for one unlucky crew, because the pilot was hit over Carvin and the observer was unable to do a thing about it but watch the ground coming up until they struck. Hatto and Dicken had watched them every inch of the way down, and as they walked away from the machine, feeling depressed and emotionally spent, Hatto spoke slowly.

  “No wonder they give us flying pay,” he said. “That sort of thing makes you feel bloody old at times. We all tend to think it’ll never happen to us. Probably they did. But when you see it happen, it leaves you with the unexpected feeling that you’re vulnerable after all.”

  Dicken said nothing and he went on in the same tight voice, his expression bleak. “Has it ever occurred to you, old fruit,” he asked, “that if anything happened to me, there wouldn’t be much you could do to save yourself?”

  “It’s often occurred to me,” Dicken admitted. “I don’t like it much.”

  “Neither do I,” Hatto admitted. “Because if there’s nothing you can do to save yourself if I get wounded, there’s also nothing you can do to save me either. And to me I’m important because I’ve already lost two of my nine lives. Once when you fished me out in front of the wire and once in 1914 when we charged a machine gun position on horses. We ended up with all the nags down and my sergeant’s spur up my nostril. I take rather a shine to the idea of surviving. How about seeing what we can do to remedy the situation?”

  Quite unofficially, the next time they went out, on the way home Dicken climbed on to the wing, and clutching a strut, leaned over Hatto’s office to see what went on. The lower wing was cut away at the root to give a view downwards and most of the time, he was hanging over empty air.

  “You’ve got to keep the nose down,” Hatto explained. “It’s the only way to keep flying speed. If you go for a slow safe glide, at least we ought to hit right side up and under some control.”

  They were still waiting for congratulations from headquarters for the bombing raid. It had been cautiously mentioned in the newspapers but no one else seemed interested except the Germans who became more active as a result. Ev
entually reaction came. Because of their skill, they were informed, they were to start making long reconnaissances behind the German lines to see what the enemy was up to.

  “Douai, Orchies, Denain, Anzin and Valenciennes,” Hatto said. “We circle each place, making notes and count the rolling stock. Then we can come home. If we’re lucky. Because the Germans have scouts at Douai and we’ll be forty miles the wrong side of the lines.”

  It was a bright morning when their turn came and they set off with wisps of cloud and mist along the valleys. The towns over which they passed seemed to have been etched against the land and there was no movement anywhere. It was bitterly cold and Dicken hung over the side of the fuselage, peering down at the network of railway lines, trying to count the wagons and make awkward notes with his gloved hands on crumpled and fluttering sheets of paper. As they turned for home, he was slapping his hands and shuffling his feet on the floor of the cockpit to restore some life to them, but it was a losing battle and Hatto managed to make it clear that the compass had frosted over and they were flying largely by guesswork. Fortunately the sun gave them some direction, though, with a strong westerly wind in their faces, they seemed to be barely moving over the ground and, half-frozen, trying to calculate the drift, Dicken decided they were lost. They had been in the air now for well over three hours and their fuel was getting low. His fingers numb with cold, he peered over the side, looking for something which would give them their course, and eventually he spotted Jigsaw Wood which was only a mile or two from the line.

  Fortunately, Archie was inaccurate and only a few spent fragments tore holes in the wing fabric. Relieved that they now knew where they were, bored with the absence of anything exciting in the whole trip, and to give himself something to think about other than the cold, he began to count the bursts and came to the conclusion that around a hundred and fifty shells had been fired at them without effect. It was one way of winning the war, he decided cheerfully. If you couldn’t beat the Germans in the field, you could always encourage them to bring about their own bankruptcy.

  As they approached the lines, they spotted two German aircraft. Hatto pointed and they climbed toward them. One promptly bolted for home but the other continued to fly backward and forward and they managed to climb beneath it so that Dicken could fire over the propeller. The German turned and dived away but, almost immediately, Hatto started to hammer on the fuselage and point toward the lines. Another big white-winged two-seater Albatros was sitting above them, the light showing through the fabric of the wings, to outline every rib, spar and painted Maltese cross. It looked like a huge gaudy butterfly catching the sun.

  Hatto was gesturing wildly and, as Dicken heaved his gun into position, they clawed their way upward and drew level, then, keeping well to the eastward so he couldn’t escape, they sailed in to engage him.

  Because the sun was behind them now and hiding them from view, the German probably didn’t see them until Hatto turned away. He had just throttled back to glide for home when Dicken pressed the trigger and immediately the Albatros swung abruptly across their bows, blocked from his view by the propeller. For a moment, they were helpless and in a perfect position for the German observer to fire back at them, but there was no reply and as the machines swung apart, wingtips almost touching, Dicken could see the expression on the faces of the two Germans. Instinctively he raised his arm to wave and just as instinctively the Germans waved back. Then, as the German observer started shooting, Dicken knelt on his seat and fired, and the Albatros sank below them in a shallow gliding turn. Watching as the glide grew steeper, it dawned on Dicken that it was becoming a dive and as the German machine turned westward Hatto pushed the BE’s nose down to follow. But the German’s turn seemed unnatural now and Dicken swung round to look at Hatto, who was staring back at him with the same amazed expression on his face. The German was going down out of control. They had shot down an enemy. In a BE, too!

  They were just gleefully slapping the fuselage between them when the sudden crack of bullets made them swing round. As Dicken jumped for the gun again – so violently the machine rocked – another Albatros sailed over their heads, the observer firing away for all he was worth and, as they banked away from the danger, he saw there were two more enemy machines heading toward them.

  The cold had been forgotten as he hoisted the weapon from one mounting to the other. Hatto banked, but even as he did so yet another German machine arrived on the scene. This time it was an Albatros fighter and its first burst lifted fabric from the wings and sent splinters flying from the centre section struts.

  Dicken was busy with the gun when the BE’s nose dipped unexpectedly and he had to clutch for a hold as the machine began to descend in an abrupt turn that jerked him from his feet. Dragging himself upright, he saw that Hatto’s head was down inside the cockpit, and seeing blood on his cheek, he realised he’d been hit.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said.

  Hatto’s teaching hadn’t come a moment too soon. He knew exactly what to do. The question was, could he do it before it was too late? The inherent stability of the BE had brought it into a wide flat turn but he knew that at any moment it could fall into a stall and when it did there would be no chance of escape.

  Scrambling with difficulty to the wing, he pulled himself to Hatto’s cockpit, while the German machines, considering their task done, drew away and sat high in the sky, watching the descent. It was impossible to push Hatto back and he began to yell.

  “Sir!” he screamed. “Wake up! Where are you hit?”

  Below him the earth swung, turning like a flat plate, racing up to them as they fell. Dry-mouthed with fear, as he fought to rouse Hatto his mind was full of that other BE they had seen going down over Carvin after the bombing raid, the observer struggling to stir his pilot and unable to do a thing to save himself. The lower wing and fuselage of the BE were slippery with oil leaked from the engine and, his mouth ballooned by the rushing wind from the whirling propeller, he could feel the slipstream snatching him from his dubious foothold. Reaching for a centre section strut, as he almost disappeared from the wing he felt the hot flush of fear cover his body with sweat.

  “Sir, you silly bugger–” almost in tears, his words torn from him by terror, he was shouting at Hatto, hoping that by the very strength of his voice he could bring him back to life “–for Christ’s sake, wake up before you kill us both!”

  Clinging with clawing fingers to the padded edge of the cockpit, he was almost inclined to climb back to his position and take a chance in the crash but they were still too high and, feeling the machine hovering uncertainly on the edge of a stall, he knew it was a case of doing what he was trying to do or ending up dead.

  Bracing both legs and clinging on with all his strength against the wind that threatened to throw him into the empty air, he scrambled half into Hatto’s cockpit. His feet kicking wildly, he found he couldn’t reach the throttle lever because Hatto was in the way, so he found a tap and hopefully turned it. Nothing happened so he tried another and this time the howl of the engine ceased as the fuel was cut off.

  The blast of the wind decreased as the engine died and he was able to lean further into the cockpit. Hatto was still clutching the joystick and, sobbing with frustration, he knocked his hands aside and, reaching down, yanked the machine out of its turn. In his anxiety, he was too eager and, as the machine straightened abruptly, he almost lost his grip and his feet flailed wildly.

  The machine was flying straight now and, hanging on to Hatto, half-in and half-out of the cockpit, he was trying to hold it in a shallow glide. But Hatto’s bent head was in the way of the air-speed indicator and it was largely guesswork.

  “Wake up, sir, wake up!” The ground was coming up fast and from the corner of his eye he could see the white faces of men on the ground staring up at his kicking figure lying across the fuselage. “Sir! For Christ’s sake!”

  In a fury that came
from panic, he began to shake Hatto and to his joy he finally stirred and opened his eyes. He looked drunk and stupid and stared at Dicken through a veil of blood. Trying to control the machine, he reached for the joystick and pushed on the rudder with his feet so that the glide once more became a flat turn.

  “Right, sir! For the love of Christ, turn right!”

  “I can’t! I can’t see! I’m blind!”

  “No, you’re not,” Dicken snarled. “Do as I tell you, you silly bugger! You’re taking us back where we came from!”

  Mechanically, Hatto obeyed and they swung around once more until they were facing west again.

  “Straighten her out! Straighten her out! Stick central!”

  The flat turn once more became a straight shallow glide and, as the wind pressure lessened further, Dicken was no longer having to cling on with all his strength. In front of them was a plantation of young trees.

  “Up with her, sir! Not too much! Steady! Back a bit more!”

  Hatto’s hands were following the flow of instructions more surely now and the BE cleared all the trees but the last few. As it plowed through them, leaves, twigs and fragments of wood shot in all directions, then the machine flopped to the earth with a crash that sent Dicken flying through the air to land in a hawthorn hedge that bounced him like a spring on to the ground. Aware of scratches on his face and blood running from a cut lip, he scrambled to his feet and rushed back to the airplane to drag Hatto clear.

  Flinging him to the ground at a safe distance from the machine, he waited for the explosion of the petrol. But the long flight had used almost every drop of it and nothing happened. Bending over Hatto, he wrenched his helmet off, expecting to find a hole in his head. What he saw was a groove running along it that had raised two long bruises. He picked up the helmet and, staring at the tear in it, realised the bullet had only grazed Hatto’s scalp.