The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  Crawling slowly out, dazed, shocked, and emotionally spent, Dicken saw Slattery lying in the grass, his face covered with blood.

  “You all right, Paddy?”

  “Just a dose bleed. Bashed it od the bloody gud.”

  Dicken sat up. “I’m going to find that blasted gunner and get an explanation,” he said.

  Slattery’s face darkened. “I’d going to putch hib id the bloody dose so he cad see what it feels like.”

  They actually tried very hard, and in their rage and the excitement of shooting down a German airplane – from a 1½-Strutter too! – they forgot their fright.

  Rivers gave them several days off to recover and, instead of dwelling on their descent, they toured up and down the front on a motor cycle in a black fury to find the culprit. Nobody was admitting anything, however, and either through guilt or sympathy, responded to their inquiries by regaling them with whisky. When Slattery ran the motor cycle into a ditch it no longer seemed to matter and they concentrated instead on finding the German aircraft they’d shot down. It had fallen near Ploegsteert and they drove as near as they were permitted, left the motor cycle with a field gun battery and went forward on foot.

  It was lying on its side, one wing starkly in the air. The Maltese crosses and the machine’s number had already been cut from the fabric for souvenirs and there was little left but the skeleton, a broken mass of splintered spars and struts covered with fabric that was torn into small flags flapping in the cold wind.

  The day was sunless and Dicken looked upward at the ice-white sky. This mass of wreckage had fallen from up there, a victim of Slattery’s gun and his own small skill as a pilot. There had been two men in it and all that remained of them was under the soil nearby, two graves marked only with the broken blades of the propeller. Someone had hung a notice on them. “Unknown German aviator.” That was all.

  Looking around at Slattery, Dicken saw his face was white and bleak and touched with pity. For the first time it had dawned on them what they had so narrowly missed.

  Three

  Summer trudged its way onward in a bloody swathe of dead men and wrecked machines. There was plenty of courage but none of it the sort that produced medals. The 1½-Strutters were long past their prime and every day seemed to bring a disaster of some sort. As men came and went, the character of the squadron changed and, because casualties were heavy, the change came at times with heartbreaking abruptness. Slattery vanished, then the piano-player, then the violinist.

  Finally the trombonist disappeared. That night there was a binge in the mess, chiefly to hide the barely hidden fear that lay behind the façade of noise. Hatto’s piano playing was twice as noisy as usual and the song twice as lively. The trombonist’s observer returned in the middle of it, his arm in a sling, his face pale and strained.

  “Poor bastard looks like a ghost,” Foote commented.

  “We’ve all been ghosts for a long time,” Hatto said quietly.

  They had been shot down in No Man’s Land and the observer had managed, despite a shoulder broken in the crash, to escape.

  “Did you bring the watch back?” Rivers asked and the observer gave him a sullen shrug, incensed that all he could think of was to complain that he hadn’t.

  Rivers could have done a lot to help but he was past his best and the flight commanders were all privately praying they could last long enough to go home, all of them when they thought no one was looking wearing an expression that told of a mixture of strain and outrage that had come from seeing too many of their friends disappear.

  If they had arrived at a bad time, Diplock arrived at a worse one. As he entered the mess, he looked nervous and ill at ease.

  “Your parson friend,” Hatto observed. Then, seeing Diplock’s uncertainty and Rivers’ indifference, he deliberately left the table, rose and approached with his hand out.

  “Hello, old man,” he said warmly. “Nice to see you again. Dick Quinney’s here, too. It’s almost home from home.”

  Diplock began to smile and Hatto took him around the table, introducing him, so that even the major had to acknowledge his arrival. For the first time, Dicken realised how much he liked Hatto, and just how much store he set by duty and decency.

  Shamed by his efforts, Dicken also went out of his way and, calling in Diplock’s room, he made sure he had everything he needed. Diplock was grateful but as he started unpacking he took out a photograph of Annys and placed it on the locker alongside his bed with what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to show off.

  “How is she?” Dicken asked.

  “Oh, fine,” Diplock said. “Fine. Zoë’s working on the airdrome at Shoreham now. There are quite a lot of women mechanics there these days. They got a man who’s been invalided out of the Service Corps for the garage. She was getting bored with it, of course. She’s not got Annys’ staying power, you know. She’s going around with a Canadian at the moment.”

  It fell to Dicken to show him the lines. The experience seemed to depress him.

  “You’d better get in as much practice as you can,” Dicken advised. “They’ll not let you go into action until you do.”

  Diplock seemed in no hurry and, as Hatto had said, though he was a safe pilot he seemed to fly as if he were driving a bus. There was no flair to his handling of a machine; it was almost as if he were remembering the rule book all the time, instead of having an instinct for it. He made no effort to practise and in the end Dicken was told to tell him that he’d better get on with it because he was needed. By this time, Dicken had a suspicion that his lack of haste was because he’d suddenly decided wartime flying wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  A fortnight after his arrival, one of the machines returning from a photographic reconnaissance was seen to be coming in too fast and the old hands appeared in front of the hangar, aware already that something was wrong. As it drew nearer, they saw wires loose and flaps of fabric fluttering in the wing and the rudder at an odd angle.

  It struck the ground in too steep a descent, bounced into the air, came down again, bounced once more, then slewed around in a ground loop that wrenched off the under-carriage. Immediately everybody set off running.

  The pilot had been badly hit and was barely conscious, and Almonde, the observer, stumbled from the wreckage, white-faced and shaking. As the ambulance came tearing up, the pilot was lifted from the cockpit and placed inside. As it roared away, Almonde dragged his flying cap from his flattened hair and wiped the oil from his face.

  “He was hit over Dickebusch,” he said. “Three Albatroses attacked us. But he flew her all the way back because we’d got our photographs. I don’t suppose anybody’ll thank him.”

  Hatto refused to allow them to sink into gloom and, sitting himself at the piano, began to pound the keys. When they were all feeling better, he nodded toward Diplock sitting in a corner of the mess, brooding and glum.

  “I think our friend Parasol Percy’s having doubts,” he murmured. “Think he’s suddenly not all that keen on flying.”

  It was not entirely unexpected that the following day Diplock reported sick with pains in his head.

  “Crack on the skull I got with the Service Corps at Ypres,” he explained.

  He managed to get away with another fortnight on the ground while the doctor from Wing examined him, then he was reported fit again and almost at once, as though he were determined not to let him escape again, Dunne put his name down for a photographic line patrol with him.

  Half an hour after they had taken off, Diplock was back complaining about loss of pressure.

  “Couldn’t get her up,” he complained.

  That night, as he prepared his machine for the next day, Dicken found Handiside alongside him.

  “There wasn’t anything wrong, you know, sir,” he murmured. “The fitter told me so. He worked like mad on it and he couldn’t f
ind anything at all.”

  Two days later, Diplock flew a line patrol with Dicken, both machines taking photographs.

  “Watch him,” Foote murmured as Dicken dragged on his flying cap.

  Climbing into the cockpit, Dicken wriggled himself into his seat, checked the controls and looked at his instruments. The waiting air mechanic called out.

  “Switch off. Petrol on. Suck in.”

  The propeller was turned to dribble away excess petrol, then the mechanic wiped his hands, scraped his boots on the ground to make sure of his foothold and, leaning forward, his hands resting on the propeller, tried his balance.

  “Contact!”

  The magneto switches clicked.

  “Contact.”

  The engine coughed to life, seemed in some doubt, then caught and began to roar. Inside the cockpit, his head down to listen for vibration, Dicken watched the revolution indicator and the fuel-tank air pressure dial. He glanced at Diplock then, with a wave, the chocks were dragged away. Taxiing across the field, blipping the engine, everything on the machine rattling, he turned into wind. As he began to gather speed, he pushed the stick forward to bring the tail up to a flying attitude, lifted her into the air, keeping close to the earth until the speed built up, then began to soar upward, climbing quickly.

  The sky was clear and immensely blue, a long cloudscape away in the west like the edge of a polar ice barrier, white, blue, purple, pink, yellow and green. To the north it was possible to see England, the comforting ditch of green sea separating it from France. The white cliffs were easily visible and it was clear enough to see the Isle of Wight. In the Channel a convoy of tiny ships moved.

  The ground was ashen-looking, the lines to the south-east like the trail of a giant slug in an erratic course across France, the smoke of an artillery barrage hanging in the air, dirty-brown as if it were diseased. As it disappeared behind them, the German anti-aircraft fire started. The shells were wide of the mark, but glancing sideways, Dicken saw that Diplock had swerved wildly in a wide half-circle.

  As he regained his position, more shells arrived, and Dicken smelled the smoke as he passed through it. Diplock had again swung in a wide circle.

  “Come back, you ass!” Dicken yelled furiously. “They’re nowhere near you!”

  As it happened, the anti-aircraft guns were particularly good that day and the next crack forced the tail up, sent the nose down and caused the Strutter to swerve and sideslip. When Dicken looked up, Diplock was again moving away in a wide circle. In a fury, Dicken climbed up to him and, gesturing angrily, signalled him to stay close.

  Reaching the lines, they separated and as Dicken began to circle to the north, Almonde, his observer, bent over the camera, Diplock began to circle to the south, so that the strips of photographs would overlap. As they turned, Dicken kept his eyes moving about the sky. Photo-reconnaissances brought most of their casualties because the Strutters had been designed as two-seater fighters, and it was considered unnecessary to give them an escort.

  The sky seemed empty, however. Below, the country was clear in the sunshine, roads, canals, lakes and woods standing out distinctly against the patchwork. It was almost too quiet to be true and, with the experience of weeks at the work, Dicken was nervous.

  “How about the photos?” he yelled to Almonde.

  “Two to go!”

  Turning the machine in a quiet circle, Dicken noticed that Diplock was already haring for home, his nose down, then he realised that the sporadic anti-aircraft fire had stopped and he studied the sky warily, guessing that something was wrong.

  “Finished! Home sweet home!”

  As Almonde’s voice came, he banked and immediately saw why the firing had stopped. An Albatros was climbing up under their tail and, intent on the photography, neither Dicken nor Almonde had seen him. Sticking the nose down, he turned, diving fast, and opened fire with the forward gun. The German banked away steeply, but as he did so, he swung into Almonde’s line of fire and the roar of the Lewis rose above the thunder of the engine. As the Albatros swung away, it passed within yards of them, the pilot looking up, a stare of amazement on his face, then he slowly sagged forward in the cockpit and the machine rolled over and began to fall, nose down, like a spent rocket. A wing folded back with a bang they could hear above the engine, fragments of wood and canvas breaking off and floating away. It checked the machine’s descent and it began to fall more slowly, spinning around and around the broken wing like a leaf in autumn.

  Almonde was hammering on the fuselage and pointing. Turning, Dicken saw two more Germans climbing to intercept him, and, pushing the nose down again, headed for home in a dive. The trenches came up under the nose and he realised he was doing almost a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Though they were in danger of tearing the wings off, at least Archie couldn’t catch them and they far outdistanced the German fighters.

  Diplock was outside the flight office with his observer when Dicken landed.

  “Why did you shove off like that?” Dicken demanded. “We’re supposed to give each other support. I nearly got jumped.”

  Diplock was suitably contrite and Dicken even began to wonder if he’d been unnecessarily harsh, but the following day he learned from Almonde that Diplock’s observer had complained that he hadn’t been given the time to do the job properly.

  “You know,” Hatto said slowly, “it’s my view that the old Parasol’s a teeny bit saffron-coloured.”

  The summer was at its height now and there were rumours of another big push.

  “I’m sick of big pushes,” Hatto said. “They’re always having big pushes. When they don’t know what to do next they have a big push. All they do is cause casualties, get the general a new medal for his best suit and cause verbal diarrhoea among the war correspondents.”

  The signs of a push increased until finally nine machines from two flights were allocated to photograph the railway station at Valenciennes.

  They all knew what Valenciennes meant. It lay well beyond the German airdromes and they were going to have to fight, if not all the way there, then certainly all the way back because the new Albatros DV was beginning to appear in numbers opposite them, easily recognisable because of a distinctive rake to the tips of the upper wing and a Mercedes engine that gave an extra ten miles an hour and a better rate of climb.

  The night was warm and full of stars but Dicken found he was unable to sleep. As he lay awake he could hear the minute sounds from the hangars where the mechanics were still working to make sure there were no engine failures.

  “You awake?” he whispered to Hatto.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That here goes the last of the Hattos.”

  “I’m trying not to think about that.”

  “Me, too.” There was a long silence. “Didn’t tell you, did I? My older brother disappeared at Jutland.”

  Dicken didn’t know what to say.

  “In Invincible. Staff of Admiral Hood. The Hoods were friends of ours, and the Old Man fixed it for him. Doesn’t seem to have done him a lot of good. Just hope he doesn’t have to mourn another tomorrow.”

  The morning was tremendously hot with the mechanics stretched out under the wings of the machines to keep cool.

  Standing by the door of the hut, holding his flying clothing, Hatto stared at the blue sky. “Rather be in a deck chair at Slapton,” he observed.

  The airplanes stood in line, their beauty belying their lack of power. In the east a line of captive balloons seemed to dance in a heat of haze. Mail had just arrived and they stood in a group, reading their letters. There was one for Dicken from Zoë, telling him of her work at Shoreham. She seemed delighted with her luck but her letter was totally clinical. There was also a letter from the Hon. Maud, that seemed remarkably affectionate. Why she’d written out of the blue Di
cken couldn’t imagine and he began to wonder if he’d been missing something.

  Foote was scowling at his letter. “My kid brother’s joined the Flying Corps,” he said. “He says he’s asked to be posted here. He must be crazy.”

  As Rivers appeared, they gathered around him in a circle.

  “You know what to do,” he said. “Dunne and Snell will take the pictures and the rest are escort. It’s your job to make sure the photographs get home. The staff think the Germans are moving up reserves and we’ve got to find out. I’m sorry we couldn’t get an escort. I’ll see the drinks are waiting.”

  Nobody smiled. They pulled on their flying caps and coats and walked awkwardly to their machines. Nine crews. Nine pilots – Dunne, Foote, Hatto, Dicken, Diplock, Scarati, Roode, Johnson, Snell. Each with his observer.

  “Notice the old Parasol’s slap in the middle,” Foote murmured as they adjusted buckles and scarves and gloves. “Dunne’s on to that guy.”

  One after the other the engines roared into life, the machines quivering and throbbing as they thrust against the chocks. As Rivers raised his hand, they moved forward one behind the other, the engines burping.

  Fifty-two minutes later they had reached their height and were crossing the lines in formation, nine drab, blunt-nosed machines rising and falling alongside each other as if suspended on wires, Dicken nervously watching Roode, his next-door neighbour, who wasn’t very good at formation flying and looked likely to slither into his wingtip. The sky was a vast blue bowl above their heads, cloudless and bare, but he wasn’t deluded by the emptiness and his eyes roved into every corner, watching for movement. For a while, he thought they were going to get away with it, then below him he saw something move against the patterned carpet of the earth. At first it was almost indiscernible and he had to look again to make sure. This time he caught the flash of sun on varnish and knew he’d made no mistake. A small cluster of tiny specks was moving like a formation of ants and he knew it was a group of German fighters climbing to intercept them.