The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  Trenarworth began to drop down. Dicken followed more warily, and as they entered the mist he lost sight of his companion. Very lights were going up all over the place now, so he flew towards them, able now to see houses below, then a small hill loomed up, on its summit a tree, winter-bare of foliage, and he scraped past with inches to spare. Ahead of him he could see the source of the lights and he glided over the fence and side-slipped in. As he switched off his engine, he realised he could still hear Trenarworth droning about somewhere, trying to get down.

  “For God’s sake, keep those flares going,” he yelled as Foote appeared, but even as he spoke they heard a crunching sound and the high scream of the engine which stopped almost immediately. In the silence, they peered through the mist at a red glow near the end of the airfield.

  “I think,” Foote said heavily as they started to run, “that somebody’s wound the war up out here.”

  With Trenarworth gone, there was no one else of sufficient experience to lead C Flight but Dicken. But even as he put up his third pip, Morton was killed. As squadron commander, he was not supposed to engage in combat, so, instead of leading patrols, he flew on the pretext of making sure they did their job properly and simply shot at anything that came his way.

  A DFW was reported heading south and he shot it down near San Luca. Then, when nothing further was heard of him, it was assumed he’d landed elsewhere; but that afternoon the artillery reported that a machine carrying British markings had fallen out of the clouds, and crashed near Limbragga. Nobody knew what to make of it because Limbragga was well inside the British lines but, late in the evening, information arrived that Morton had been shot down by mistake by an Italian pilot.

  “The oily beggars,” Foote raged, his face bleak and angry. “I suppose the bastard’s claimed it as a victory.”

  It came as a hard blow to Dicken because Morton had been his commanding officer in his first nervous days as an observer and it had been Morton who had given him his first chance. He had been fighting ever since 1914 and had never taken advantage of the fact that commanding officers were not supposed to fly in action, and it became just one more little jarring reminder that he wasn’t invulnerable. If it could happen to Morton it could happen to him.

  The mess was seething because Morton had been a popular commanding officer but the following morning as they were waiting for orders, Hallowes, the Recording Officer, an ex-infantryman with a stiff leg, informed Howarth, the commander of A Flight, who was running the squadron until a new CO arrived, that every man was to be on parade, properly dressed, at midday because the Commander-in-Chief, the Earl of Cavan, was to inspect them.

  They stared at each other, wondering what it was all about. It soon became clear.

  “I have here,” Cavan said, flourishing a piece of paper, “the Italian report, signed by the colonel commanding XVI Group. He expresses his deepest regret and hopes the incident will not disturb the loyal collaboration between the two air forces.” The C-in-C stared about him. “There will be no reprisals. Major Morton was the last man in the world to expect his death to start a vendetta. It was an incident without malevolence. A tragic mishap in the course of a war. Let it remain so.”

  Two days later the whole squadron of eighteen machines were ordered to take on 20-lb Cooper bombs to raid the hydroelectric power station at Lugagnano as a diversion while RE8s bombed bridges to the west. It seemed a dubious way to draw the Austrians’ attention because they kept their hydroelectric power stations well guarded. No precise instructions were given as to how to make the attack, and Howarth decided they would approach from the west, going in as flights.

  “It lies in a deep valley near the river,” he said. “So we’ll dive low and go in close to the ground.”

  It was a brilliant day with a sky of burnished gold so that Dicken was caught by the infinity of uncluttered emptiness. He was lucky, he decided, because he did his fighting where the debris of battle disappeared at once and the winds blew the air clear of fumes and the smell of death. They formed up over San Luca in three groups of six machines but as soon as they reached Lugagnano it was obvious Howarth’s plan wasn’t going to work. Behind the power station was a sheer wall of mountain over which it would be impossible to climb if they went in low, and because of the narrowness of the valley there simply wasn’t room to go in any other way but singly, one machine behind the other.

  Without any means of communicating with each other, it was impossible to change the plan and, leading the third flight, Dicken watched the machines ahead trying to change position to a line-astern formation. It took time because nobody had been expecting it and he began to wave his own men out of their V-formation while they still had room to manoeuvre. By the time they had regained some order, the machines in front were swooping into the valley one after the other and heading for the power station. It’s like flying into a sock, he thought grimly. We shall never get out of this one.

  Anti-aircraft and machine guns started to fire and he saw tracer bullets and shells arc into the sky. Howarth’s machine wriggled away and started to climb up the face of the mountain behind the power station, but he obviously decided he wasn’t going to make it and, under tremendous fire from positions on the mountainside, he turned around at the end of the valley, his wingtips almost scraping the slopes and flew out the way he’d entered.

  The second machine was still approaching the target when it burst into flames and Dicken saw it spin down in a column of black smoke to crash into a rocky pinnacle, roll itself into a smoking ball and slither in a mass of wreckage down the face of the mountain. The third and fourth machines, which dropped their bombs short, turned the opposite way from Howarth so that the pilots flying in behind them found themselves facing their own machines flying out. There were several near-collisions and in no time the following flight was entirely without cohesion.

  The last to go in, Dicken wondered if he could do the job differently but, no matter which way he considered it, there was always that great wall of rock behind the power station and in the end he had to do the same as everybody else. Though there were no enemy aircraft, the valley seemed to be full of flying bullets, bursting shells and puffs of drifting yellow-brown smoke, with British machines wheeling in all directions.

  C Flight all escaped but one, who continued in a shallow dive until he hit a house on the side of a hill. He seemed to go straight in one side and out of the other, the building dissolving in a shower of flying bricks and debris. Following the machine down to see if the pilot were still alive, Dicken recrossed the river close to the ground and was just approaching the Piave when he became aware of a long looping curve of wire almost invisible in front of him and realised it was one of the cables the Austrians strung up to lift ammunition up to their guns.

  It sliced off his upper wing as cleanly as a razor stroke and, as the debris fell across the cockpit to trap him in his seat, he decided that his last moment had come. As the machine fell into the river, however, the water absorbed some of its momentum and neatly removed the debris of the wing. Scrambling free, startled to find himself still alive, he managed to get a foot on the bank and tried to cling to the wreckage of the fuselage. But the current was strong enough to sweep the smashed machine downstream and he lost his grip as it swung away from him.

  Almost sinking under the weight of his sodden flying clothing, he was swept after it. As he struggled to keep his head above water he saw a group of Italian soldiers running down the snow-covered bank toward him. Two of them leaped in but the current was strong and the water bitterly cold and they, too, were swept away. As he was swirled about, sinking as the last of the air trapped in his flying suit escaped, to leave him with the buoyancy of a house-brick, he saw them washed up on an island nearby and drag themselves to safety.

  He had just decided his time had come – and what a way to go, he thought: drowned while flying – when another man jumped into the river and began
to swim toward him. As he was whirled around, half-drowned, he felt a hand on his collar dragging him to safety.

  They flopped against the bank, the Italian without the strength to push him out, Dicken burdened with the saturated flying suit and unable to help himself. But more soldiers were running down the hill now and, grabbing them, they dragged them from the water and began to run them, shivering, up the hill to a group of abandoned houses where they lived.

  Arriving back at Issora, Dicken was still white and unable to control the shuddering that convulsed his body from time to time. It didn’t worry him too much because he knew it was only shock and he felt he had enough experience and inner strength to deal with it as he’d dealt with it before, but the battle over the power station at Lugagnano had left the younger pilots of the squadron depressed. Most of them were new to war and a group of them were muttering in the mess, shaken by the casualties. Among them was Foote’s brother, his face wearing a look that came from the unexpected discovery that he was mortal after all.

  As Dicken threw down his still sodden flying suit, Foote himself appeared, carrying a folding cot and a suitcase.

  “I thought you were dead, man. What happened?”

  “I nearly got drowned.”

  “Flying a Camel?”

  Dicken explained what had happened and Foote’s face grew grim.

  “Five down,” he said. “One from A Flight, one from yours – two including you – two from mine, including the flight commander. They gave me his job.” He paused and, indicating the folding cot with his foot, managed a twisted smile. “That makes three of us, because from now on, kid, we’ve got company.”

  As he spoke, the door burst open and a figure appeared in the opening, holding a kitbag. The sun was behind it, dazzling on the snow outside. Squinting against it, Dicken frowned, then he leaped to his feet.

  “Willie! What are you doing here?”

  Hatto threw the kitbag at him. “Been sent out to give you a hand, old fruit,” he said. “A flight of Bristol Fighters. X Flight. Unknown quantity, I suppose. Six pilots. Six observers. Me leading. We’re attached to you lot for orders. Probably because we weren’t very good and could easily be spared.”

  “Now we’ve all got flights,” Dicken said soberly. “In spite of Diplock’s machinations.”

  “C’est la guerre. But–” Hatto’s face changed “–hold your water, lad. That’s what might be called the good news. Stand by for the bad. You’ve got a new CO. Speaks good Italian. He’s on his way from Verona. It’s Cecil Arthur Diplock. Parasol Percy himself.”

  Part Three

  One

  There he was, with his bulging forehead and protruding ears and the smooth, self-confident look of the well-patronised. He’d grown a small moustache that looked as if a mouse had died on his upper lip, and his uniform was immaculate, his breast decorated with the ribbon of the DSO he had gained from staying close to the Wing colonel.

  “Confounds the theory that it means Duke’s Son Only,” Foote observed. “Here we have somebody who’s a bastard and he’s got one.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Dicken asked. “His string-pulling must have gone wrong. He’d never choose an operational squadron.”

  “That’s just what he would choose,” Hatto said. “Because he won’t be expected to fly and it pushes him smartly up another notch to major. I told you he was crafty and ambitious.”

  There was a feeling already that the top officers in Italy lacked the magic touch of Trenchard in France, who despite his insistence on an aggressive policy, had the gift of compassion for his pilots. Magnetism was missing and everybody felt they were risking their lives merely to make up charts of statistics – patrols flown, bombs dropped, enemy machines destroyed. The arrival of Diplock added to the feeling.

  His first action was to get them all in the mess and give them a pep talk.

  “There’s a rumour that the Germans are going to start a push in France,” he said. “We’ve got to give it all we can here so they can’t draw reserves from this front.”

  “Will you be flying, sir?” Hatto asked innocently.

  A small frown crossed Diplock’s face. “Commanding officers aren’t expected to engage in combat.”

  “Morton did,” Foote growled.

  Diplock frowned again. “Have no fear,” he said. “I shall be going up.”

  As they were dismissed, he called the flight commanders back – Howarth of A Flight, Dicken, Foote and Hatto of the attached Bristol Flight. He spoke to Howarth about trivial things, then dismissed him and turned to the others.

  “We all know each other,” he said slowly. “We’ve met before. Well, let it be understood that, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t remember things that happened in England and in France, and I expect you to forget them, too. However, I have a long memory and I ought to make it clear that I shall brook no attempt to drag up old quarrels.”

  “I’m not sure,” Hatto said as they grouped together outside the mess, “whether that was a friendly chat, an effort to let bygones be bygones, or just a veiled threat.”

  As they turned away, Hallowes, the Recording Officer, put his head out of the door. “Dick!”

  Diplock was still standing near his desk. “I brought a message from home for you,” he said stiffly. “It’s from my sister-in-law. She’s still being seen about with that Canadian of hers. They appear to be constant companions.” There was an element of satisfaction in the way he spoke, and Dicken wondered if there really had been a message or whether he was merely seeking to be malicious.

  “She sent her regards,” Diplock went on. “All her time nowadays is spent at Shoreham airdrome. My wife doesn’t approve at all and neither do I. Before I left England, we tried talking to her.”

  And I hope, Dicken thought, that she told you to mind your own bloody business.

  The new régime started with a flurry of orders. More attention was to be paid to dress and smartness, and saluting was to be less perfunctory. Nobody had bothered a great deal with it before because respect was mutual between the men who flew the planes and the men who cared for them, but Diplock had spent most of his career at headquarters where things were different. With the weather growing warmer, he also tried to institute physical training but the flight sergeants quickly got their heads together and managed to prove that airplanes, being the tricky, uncertain, inflammable things they were, there was always something to be done on them, and the unhappy corporal Diplock appointed to conduct the physical training sessions could never find a quorum.

  “No matter how much the powers that be think up ways and means to harass the lower orders,” Hatto smiled, “the lower orders always find a way of dodging them. Except, of course, when the authorities fall back on the charge of ‘dumb insolence’, which can’t really be defined and should be classed as cheating.”

  It was noted that though, true to his word, Diplock flew, he was careful not to go over the lines. His excuse was that, like Morton, he was watching his patrols but it was noticeable that he never went far enough forward for it to be of much value, and returning from one of them, his engine cut and he had to put his machine down inside the local sewage works.

  “That’s the second time,” Hatto pointed out gleefully. “And God knows, there aren’t all that many sewage works in this part of Italy.”

  The following week, Dicken shot down a buff-coloured Aviatik. No two patrols were ever alike and the sky was empty except for a patch of cirrus high above, blank and blue. He was enjoying himself, catching the warm smell of the engine, his lungs rasped by the cold purity of the thin air, when he saw it below, almost invisible against the pattern of the earth. Diving out of the sun, he saw his bullets entering the fuselage and watched as it began to descend in a slow gliding turn toward the Italian lines. About 2000 feet above the ground there was a flash and an explosion and the machine s
imply vanished, with the two dark shapes of the crew hurtling earthward, followed by the wings curving down for all the world like falling leaves.

  That same evening, they were attacked by a flight of Albatros DVs which overshot without hitting anyone so that the Camels found themselves above. Dropping down in their turn, for ten minutes they manoeuvred and circled and Dicken found himself following a green-nosed machine with a checkered tail surface. As he fired it erupted into flames. A second DV was shot down by a newcomer called Bolitho who was immediately pounced on by another DV as he was watching his victim. In its turn, the second DV was caught by Dicken and followed the first one down, trailing a stream of black smoke. They crashed within half a mile of each other just behind the Austrian lines, and had already been confirmed by the artillery observers on the Montello when they returned.

  “Three!” Hatto said, staring at Dicken. “What a bad-tempered little man you are! How do you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Dicken admitted. “I just suddenly seem to have the knack.”

  It seemed to please Diplock. “A good pilot can run up a big score these days,” he said. “We must make greater efforts. I think the Hun air force is beginning to run out of steam.”

  “Rats, how the hell does he know?” Foote demanded furiously. “He’s one of those bastards who think that flying a fighter’s like being in a goddam competition with a box of chocolates for the winner.”

  The following day, Dicken shot down another two-seater. Two of them crossed the lines at 17,000 feet and, spotting them against a herring-boning of cloud, he stalked them from below, positioning himself so that their wings hid him from view. As he fired, the nearer of them started circling, while the second went into shallow dive for home. The first machine was still circling as Dicken swung around again and, watching it, he was wondering what in God’s name the pilot thought he was doing when he saw that the observer was leaning over the front cockpit and realised he’d hit the pilot who was either dead or wounded and the controls were jammed. Remembering his own horrifying experience with Hatto, he pulled away even as he was about to fire, and watched. The observer saw him but he waved to indicate that the observer should look after himself and the Austrian waved back. For a while, he struggled to climb into the forward cockpit but his changed position altered the trim of the machine and as Dicken watched, the two-seater’s bank became steeper and steeper until it had turned over on to its back. The observer fell clear and the machine followed him in a dive which grew steeper until the centre section collapsed. The wings folded back and it dropped like a stone, the fuselage wagging from side to side with the speed of its fall. For a long time, Dicken watched it, tears in his eyes, until it disappeared into a patch of woodland in a flower of flame.