The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller

by Carol Baxter

  As the evening progressed, Chubbie noticed that the Italian commander, a bachelor, was becoming increasingly flirtatious and affectionate. He handed her a memento, an aerial photograph of the base. She glanced at it then did a double take. It wasn’t a scenic shot. It was a military view, depicting underground storage areas around the base’s perimeter, areas that housed parked planes and oil and petrol dumps.

  Later that evening, as she tucked the photograph into her luggage, her realisation that she possessed a valuable piece of military information made her feel a part of world events in a way she never had before. Married life in Melbourne had been like a cocoon. She had cooked and cleaned and lunched with friends. She hadn’t had to worry about anything happening elsewhere in the world, particularly events on the other side of the globe. And when she had started the flight, the plane had seemed like another cocoon, a propeller-driven wall between herself and the political events in the countries she passed through. That feeling had been reinforced by the friendliness of men like Mussolini and Balbo. Even knowledge of the guerrilla warfare being waged on the terrain below hadn’t generated any sense of a personal connection with the region’s political turmoil, merely annoyance that it might threaten their trip’s success and their own safety.

  But holding that photograph was like an epiphany, a recognition that, like it or not, she was as much a part of world events as anyone else. And, with that picture she had a chance to make a difference. She wouldn’t keep it as a memento. When they reached Benghazi, she would pass it to the British authorities for military use.

  Around 4 am, three of the commander’s men knocked on her door. With tears in their eyes, they asked if she would return the photograph. They said that if anyone discovered he had given it to her, he would be shot.

  As she collected the photograph, she tried to imprint its image in her memory. When she later passed her information to the British authorities at Benghazi on 26 October, no one seemed interested. They couldn’t foresee that there would be two battles waged at Sirte fourteen years later, when the British would pit their might against their Italian enemies.

  The leg from Benghazi would take them away from the dangers of Libya and into Egypt, the oldest nation state in the world. Egypt had recently gained independence after half a century of British rule, although Britain still maintained a haughty presence, much to the frustration of the nationalists. They were angry that government officials, military officers and business leaders were mainly foreigners, with locals serving as underlings. The nationalists had dramatically expressed their frustration three years earlier by assassinating the army’s commander-in-chief, Sir Lee Stack, in Cairo’s streets. British rule, however, had largely been untroubled so Chubbie and Bill weren’t worried about the political tensions. They were more relieved to be landing in a partly English-speaking country again.

  After fighting strong winds for most of their journey, they reached Sollum (El Salloum) on the coastal border between Libya and Egypt. The ash-coloured terrain looked as if a huge hand had scooped earth from the barren, flat-topped cliffs that ringed the town, leaving level ground hugging the sickle-shaped bay. They flew over the town—as grey and barren as the cliffs—looking for the airfield or anywhere else to land.

  When Bill failed to find a suitable landing place, he remembered that the Italians had given him some smoke bombs for just such a contingency. Candle-shaped objects, they exploded when lit and emitted billowing smoke. He could use them to gain the locals’ attention and obtain directions to the airfield. With the delight of a schoolboy playing with firecrackers, he lit one and tossed it over the side.

  Never had a landscape changed so quickly. One moment there was no sign of life in Sollum. The next, people were running in all directions, like ants scurrying away from a disturbed sandhill. They looked up in horror as if the Red Rose had dropped a real bomb on them.

  Bill headed down and circled the town, signalling that he needed somewhere to land. He was directed to the official landing field, which proved to be so poorly constructed that rocks—invisible from the air—had been left embedded in the ground. As he touched down and bumped along the rough field, the rocks broke the tailskid, the support for the aircraft’s tail when it was on the ground. The Red Rose had suffered its first injury.

  They jumped out and inspected the damage, seeing with relief that the fuselage was intact. The purpose of the trip, from Bill’s perspective at least, was to prove that a light plane was a safe vehicle for long-distance travel, so it was frustrating that an airfield in what was recently a British dominion should be the first to let them down.

  A wave of Egyptians surrounded them. A smartly uniformed officer asked in perfect English who they were. Bill apologised for the smoke bomb and then, a little wistfully, mentioned that they were starving, having eaten nothing since the previous evening. They were in luck. Instead of being offered a simple meal, they were invited to a banquet to honour Major-General Sir Charlton Spinks, who was in Sollum to conduct the annual troop inspection.

  General Spinks gave up his own bed for Chubbie while Bill was accommodated in one of the officers’ houses. After washing and changing, they were driven to a large marquee redolent with the mouth-watering aromas of roast meat and spices. When Chubbie stepped inside, she again sent her silent thanks to Sir Sefton Brancker for recommending that she pack an evening frock.

  The next day they followed Egypt’s coastline to Aboukir (Abu Qir), which sat on a peninsula fourteen miles north-east of Alexander the Great’s eponymous city. Shortly after they landed, a fleet of four RAF flying boats roared across Aboukir’s skies and alighted on its protected seaplane port. These ‘air battleships’ had boat-like fuselages that served as self-contained homes for their four-man crews. They were on a mission to show the flag in the farthest parts of the British Empire and were planning to circumnavigate Australia before basing themselves in Singapore.

  Chubbie and Bill spent the evening with the flying boat crews, delighted that they were among their own again. They compared schedules and expressed the hope they would cross paths on their journeys to Australia. The Red Rose was heading to Cairo the next day but would have many more stops before it reached its destination.

  The press were also monitoring the flying boats’ progress, often referring to the two Australia-bound expeditions in the same column. With the Red Rose and the flying boats heading east and Charles Kingsford Smith planning to fly west, the Australian newspapers speculated that their country would experience a marked change in its attitude towards aviation along with a much-needed stimulus to its aviation industry.

  Back in England, British newspapers reported that Bert Hinkler appeared to have abandoned his own proposed flight to Australia. Bert’s friends laughed at the news. The man was Australian. Flying to Australia wasn’t just about taking out the record. It was about his sense of who he was, his sense of what he had achieved with his life. It would be foolish to think he had forsaken his dream simply because he wasn’t talking about it. Importantly, he hated fanfare, so the public might not learn of his intentions until he took off on his adventure.

  Another threat loomed from a different direction. Dennis Rooke, the plucky airman who had crashed in India on his first attempt at the Australian light plane record, told the press that he was considering another Australian flight. If he did make a second attempt, he would probably follow a different route.

  Chubbie and Bill’s international well-wishers knew that the Red Rose had been maintaining a good pace. Nevertheless, it was critical that they keep it up if they were to take out the light plane record. With other pilots contemplating much speedier journeys to the antipodes, any delay might prove disastrous.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Bad idea,’ said the commanding officer at Cairo’s Heliopolis aerodrome after Chubbie and Bill mentioned their planned departure the following day with their usual food and water supplies: none. ‘It’s a terrible bit of desert there by the Dead Sea.’ He ordered them to wait
until Monday so they could accompany a Baghdad-bound plane.

  Early on Monday, 31 October, they followed a RAF Vickers Vernon, which carried five officers and two RAF policemen, on the longest leg of their journey so far, 800 miles to Baghdad. Bill wasn’t concerned about undertaking such an extended flight. They had already flown more than 3000 miles in seventeen days with the tailskid breakage their only problem. Protected by their escort, they could afford to put the Avro Avian through its paces.

  As they flew east in the wake of the Vernon, Chubbie peered down at the terrain. Seeing the sun’s gentle morning rays burnishing the sand with a gilded beauty, she felt for the first time the desert’s mystery and fascination. But this feeling didn’t last long. Soon the sun was scorching them again, inescapable and unforgiving.

  Ahead, they could see a desolate lake, the aptly named Dead Sea, which was so toxically saline that it killed everything in its vicinity. The lake was only nine miles at its widest point, a ten-minute crossing at their cruising speed. But they were battling a forty-mile-an-hour headwind that slowed their forward velocity until they barely made any headway at all.

  As they crept across the lake, mile by struggling mile, the Red Rose hit an air-pocket and dropped like a stone. Chubbie’s stomach churned with the sickening weightlessness of a freefall descent. The air-pocket seemed endless as they fell through 300 feet, 400 feet, 500 feet. The Dead Sea, which had seemed so small beneath them, loomed ominously close. Then, as suddenly as it began, the plane stopped falling. Bill was in control again, although still fighting the headwind. It took thirty minutes to complete the crossing.

  The eastern bank was surrounded by equally desolate-looking hills rising sharply from the lake. In the lee of the hills, the thermals tossed them around like a cork on waves. Bill pulled the joystick back and tried to climb high enough to clear the hills. Weighed down by their fuel load, the plane struggled. They willed it upwards, glad that this time they had a rescue escort.

  After slipping over the hilltop, they flew for another half hour until the Vernon signalled they were to land at Ziza (Zizya/Al Jiza), twenty miles south of Amman, Jordan. Both planes needed to refuel after the strong headwind. And since the wind wasn’t easing, the officers decided to remain there overnight.

  Ziza was a dismal place, nothing more than a rest house and a fuel pump, the last place Chubbie would choose to spend the night. With only a small amount of water between them, she and Bill had to freshen up using the same minuscule dishful. At least they had something else to drink. After depositing their passengers, the RAF pilots had flown on to Amman and brought back beer supplies.

  Chubbie and Bill shared the officers’ rations, a delicious stew of bully beef and onions served on rusty tin lids, with an old tin mug as the community cup. One of the officers dug out his ukulele and strummed cheerfully for the rest of the evening.

  The contrast to the pomp and ceremony of the Sollum dinner only four days earlier left Chubbie shaking her head in bemusement. The formal dinner had been more pretentious than pleasurable, the type of social gathering where one lived in fear of choosing the wrong knives or forks from the vast array lined up around their plates. In this tiny desert hut, as she and the men shared simple cutlery and makeshift crockery, she felt a sense of contentment and camaraderie, as if this new world of adventurous spontaneity was where she truly belonged.

  With 500 miles still to travel, they set off early the next morning. Again they slammed into a merciless headwind. This time it picked up loose sand from the Syrian Desert and swirled it around them.

  It was almost impossible for them to talk while airborne because of the deafening engine drone so they mostly communicated by passing notes between the two cockpits through an open hatchway under Chubbie’s seat. As the plane lumbered through the sandstorm, Bill knocked on his windscreen, which lay between the two cockpits, to indicate he was passing her a note.

  ‘What are you doing with your feet?’ he had written. ‘Are you thumping them on the floor?’

  ‘No,’ was her response.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he messaged back.

  Then she smelt smoke.

  Their light plane—like most others—was made of wood, and of linen covered with dope-glue, and had as much fire-resistance as a piece of deadwood in an incinerator. A fire could cause catastrophic damage to the plane or life-threatening problems for the crew before they had time to find a safe landing spot. A fire in a waterless plane flying over a waterless desert inhabited by potentially hostile Arabs had to be one of the greatest dangers of all.

  Bill flew on, indicating that he hoped to nurse the plane as far as the RAF desert post at Rutbah Wells (Ar Rutba). There they would have a better chance of fixing the problem and continuing their journey. The post had a wireless station in addition to a fuel dump, which would be helpful if they needed to alert others to their predicament.

  The smoke continued to drift out rather than billow and they reached Rutbah Wells without seeing any flames. When Bill examined the engine, he discovered that the driving sprocket of the impulse starter magneto had sheared and was smouldering. He doused it and left the engine to cool down before trying to fix the problem.

  The RAF officers shared their lunch of bully beef and biscuits and then everyone trudged back to the Red Rose, fighting the gale-force winds that were trying to blow them and the plane away. Bill attempted to start the engine. It wouldn’t kick over. Rain-bursts soon soaked them but he kept trying. Still nothing. The RAF crew offered to wait with them; however, they were already overdue so Bill thanked them and sent them on their way.

  The local Imperial Airways mechanic offered to help. As the three of them worked on the engine, four armoured cars swept in from the desert. They bore RAF patrol officers who planned to stay overnight in Rutbah’s solid stone fort. The men asked Chubbie and Bill to join them there. Rutbah Wells lay on the main road between Damascus and Baghdad and was a regular stopping point for travellers, including the nomadic tribes who bedded down in the rickety black goatskin tents that dotted the landscape.

  The wind and rain had cleared by dinnertime so they all perched on kerosene tins beside a campfire and ate stewed gazelle off a single shared plate. Wild animals howled in the darkness beyond the campfire’s glow. Chubbie was grateful for the campfire’s protection as well as its warmth; the temperature had dropped as rapidly as Melbourne’s when chilly southerlies swept through the city late on a scorching summer day. It was the only similarity to the world of her past.

  When she went to bed, the Red Rose was on the landing ground outside Rutbah Wells in the care of an Arab guard. During the night, another gale blew up. Fearing that the plane might fly off on its own, she went out to check on it. As she stumbled through the darkness, a voice called out to her. Unable to understand the language, she kept moving towards the plane. Then out of the darkness, the muzzle of a rifle appeared, pointing directly at her face.

  Shocked, she stood there gawping. Then she realised that the guard must have been demanding that she halt and identify herself. With shaking hands, she attempted to light a match in the strong wind. After flickering for a moment, it offered enough light for him to recognise her as one of the fliers. He apologised—well, she assumed it was an apology—and escorted her to the plane. As he helped her secure it, rain started to bucket down and the wind intensified. Increasingly concerned about damage to the plane, Chubbie decided to move it into the fort for protection. The guard helped her fold back the wings and wheel it into the fort. It passed through the entrance with only three inches to spare.

  All the next day, she and Bill worked on the engine. Only once did they hear its welcome growl before it spluttered into silence again.

  Chubbie was awed by Bill’s patience. She had already seen his courage and fearlessness in the face of danger and his skill as a pilot. Now, as they tried the same thing over and over again, and as they failed over and over again, she saw no tantrums, no floods of swearwords, no kicking or shouting or stom
ping. Just the quiet confidence of a man who knew what needed to be done and who had the patience to keep doing it, knowing that at some point or other things would go his way.

  It didn’t happen that day. At 5 pm, as the light waned, they packed up their tools for the night.

  The following morning, after much difficulty and with the assistance of a hand-cranked starting magneto, the engine roared to life around 11 am. Worried about further engine trouble but accepting that they couldn’t fix the problem until they reached a RAF depot, they thanked their helper and set off to fly the remaining 165 miles to Baghdad.

  The engine cut out five times during their flight. The fifth time, when it refused to start again, Bill glided towards the desert floor. Just before the wheels touched down, the engine kicked into life again so he kept it running while he inspected the machine. When he set off, the engine continued running erratically, forcing them down again at Ramadi. At last, after four hours of sporadic flying, they landed in the pouring rain at Hinaidi aerodrome, the British RAF station near Baghdad.

  As Bill and the RAF mechanics worked on the engine, rain pummelled the hangar roof. Outside the hangar door, the water rose. By the time the engine fired and ran smoothly, the aerodrome was flooded.

  It took five days for the water to dissipate.

  Each day, Chubbie and Bill hopefully inspected the runway, then gave up and went sightseeing. While the golden minarets glowing in the setting sun were stunning, Chubbie was otherwise unimpressed with Iraq’s fabled city. She remarked in her journal that a few centuries before—and under sunnier skies—the city might have been a place of wonderment. But now it seemed like a faded tapestry with only specks remaining of its original vibrant colour. The Tigris, which elsewhere looked like an angry snake squirming across the countryside, was here just a muddy, sluggish stream. Even the palm trees seemed to have wilted. To realise that the Arabian Nights’ magnificence was now little more than trampled drabness made her feel as if her joy in the fairy tale had been destroyed.