The Flyer

by Stuart Harrison

  He spent the time instead in the hangars, where there were several French Spads waiting to go out to Squadrons in the north. Some of the men were talking about a new squadron that had been formed and equipped with a new fighter called the SE5. There was talk that this squadron would form the vanguard of many more that would break the dominance of the German jastas. It was even said they’d been given the task of killing the German ace, Richthofen, as a way of proving their capability and lifting morale. Perhaps the brass really had finally realised the futility of clinging to the old notion of planes designed purely for reconnaissance, William mused.

  In the afternoon he met up with Wright again, who hadn’t been able to see his friend as he was flying a patrol. They went to the clerk’s office and were told there had been a delay and now their Nieuports wouldn’t be ready until the morning. Wright telephoned the squadron to let them know what was going on and the adjutant told him they may as well stay the night.

  The clerk gave them the name of a hotel where they could probably get rooms, and that evening they ate dinner together in the hotel’s restaurant, which was full of army officers on leave from the front.

  ‘I’m due for a spot of leave myself,’ Wright commented as he looked around. ‘It would be nice to go home for a few days, but I don’t suppose that’s very likely at the moment.’

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ William agreed.

  ‘I’m from Norwich, you know,’ he added and took a picture from his wallet which he showed to William. ‘That’s my wife, Marjorie. We weren’t planning on getting married yet, but last time I was home we decided we ought to. Well, Marjorie did, actually. I wasn’t sure it was fair on her really, but she insisted we had to think positively about the future. She’s a wonderful girl.’

  The picture showed a rather plain looking young woman with a round face wearing a shy smile, but William found he could imagine her and Wright together. He made some polite comment and gave it back.

  ‘Are you married, Reynolds?’

  ‘No.’ A memory insinuated itself, an image of Elizabeth. For a long time he hadn’t been able to get her out of his thoughts. He’d been plagued with feelings that alternated between a sort of profound loss, and anger that arose from what had happened to Sophie. Then for perhaps a year he had barely thought of her at all, and he’d begun to think he’d put all that behind him. Now he remembered her at odd moments, sparked by a question or something that he associated with that time in his life. He was surprised at the intensity of his feelings after all this time.

  After dinner, William felt like going for a walk. The night sky was lit with the flashes of the barrage at the front. He thought it couldn’t be long now before the offensive began, and he remembered the soldiers he’d helped get back to their own trenches the day before. Saving them had probably cost Pervis and Thorne their lives. He wondered if that made their deaths worthwhile, especially when the soldiers would probably be killed in the offensive, but he knew there was no point in trying to balance the scales like that. None of it made any sense.

  As he walked through the streets a young woman approached him and asked in faltering English if he wanted to go with her to her room. He was about to refuse, but then he changed his mind. She was attractive, with long fair hair and her eyes were green.

  ‘Is it far?’ he asked.

  ‘Non, it is only a small distance, monsieur.’

  She gestured along a narrow street. He wondered why she wasn’t working in one of the regular places if she was a prostitute, but looking at her more closely he decided this was something new to her. She was older than him, perhaps thirty. Her expression was set in determined lines, and she didn’t look at him until they reached her door. For a moment he had the impression that she would change her mind, but then she opened the door and led him inside.

  A dark, narrow staircase led to her room. He paid her, and as she undressed with her back to him he unbuttoned his tunic and shirt. The room looked very ordinary, and was devoid of personal effects like photographs. He imagined she preferred it that way. He noticed a mark on her finger where she must have worn a ring.

  ‘Are you married?’ he asked her.

  She looked over her bare shoulder, surprised by his question. ‘My husband is killed,’ she said.

  She continued undressing, but William suddenly wondered what he was doing there. ‘Do you mind if we don’t? You can keep the money.’ She looked over her shoulder, and seemed puzzled. He supposed it was strange to ask if she minded. Why would she mind so long as he was paying her? He gestured to a chair by the window. ‘Can we just sit?’

  ‘Sit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alright. If it is what you wish.’

  ‘I do.’ He sat down, and she came to sit in his lap thinking it was what he wanted, but he didn’t and he asked her to sit on the bed. She did as he asked, her hands folded on her lap, still wearing her slip. She seemed confused, as if she was waiting for him to tell her what to do.

  ‘I just want to be quiet like this,’ he said and they sat in the darkness. He watched her, and at first she was uncomfortable under his gaze, but after a little while she relaxed.

  ‘Do you have a sweetheart?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. He reached over and touched her hair. He started to tell her that she reminded him of somebody, but changed his mind. After that they didn’t speak, but let the quiet of the room envelop them. After an hour had passed he gave her some more money and left.

  In the morning, William and Wright returned to the aerodrome to find their Nieuports waiting. William was disappointed to see that they were old models, with a single Lewis gun fixed on the top wing and eighty horsepower engines. They were no match for an Albatross, and they had only two of them to protect an entire squadron.

  CHAPTER 21

  The rain drummed on the canvas roof of no. 2 hangar, so loud that it drowned out the constant thunder of the guns at the front. In the dim glow cast by a hurricane lamp a group of men were sitting around a stove playing cards, glad that they were not in the trenches. One of them made a brew.

  ‘D’you call this tea, Smithy?’ a rigger protested when he took a sip from his mug. ‘Tastes like you boiled your socks in it.’

  ‘Gives it flavour,’ was the laconic response.

  The others laughed. Sergeant Bell lost a shilling with two pairs and decided he wasn’t feeling lucky. ‘Count me out, lads,’ he said.

  He leaned back against a packing crate that contained a new engine for one of the two-seaters and rolled a cigarette. He thought this wasn’t so bad really. He liked being with the other men, listening to them laugh while he smoked and drank his tea in the warm. He missed his wife at night though. You got used to lying in bed with someone warm beside you. It wasn’t the other so much. Not like the younger men. You didn’t worry about that sort of thing when you got to his age.

  ‘What do you think then?’ said Smithy.

  Bell looked at him blankly. ‘About what?’

  ‘Should I take ‘im a brew?’

  Smithy nodded towards the front of the hangar where Lieutenant Reynolds was working on one of the new Nieuports. He was a funny one, was Reynolds, thought Bell. Wouldn’t let anyone work on any plane he flew. Did everything himself. Kept to himself too. Didn’t have much to do with the other officers from what you could see. Shields reckoned they talked about him in the mess when he wasn’t there. Said he was a cold fish and thought he was better than everyone else. Well, Shields must know, being a mess steward. It were true that Reynolds were cold, Bell supposed, but he didn’t think Reynolds was stuck-up. Lieutenant Pervis, the poor bastard, he were more that sort. Treated the men like his bleedin’ servants. Still, it were wrong to think badly of the dead. ‘Specially when they went the way Pervis did. What was he? Twenty? Twenty one? Fucking hell. They were kids, most of ‘em. Just kids.

  ‘Fuck ‘im. Let ‘im get his own brew,’ another man said.

  Bell shook his head and wearily got to his
feet. Some of the men didn’t like it that Reynolds did his own work. They took it as an insult. ‘Give us another mug,’ he said to Smithy. ‘I’ll see if he wants it.’

  *****

  William was standing on the pilot’s seat taking, off the Lewis gun fixed above the upper wing, when Bell approached.

  ‘Thought you might like a cuppa, sir.’

  William was surprised. Some of the men by the stove were watching to see what he would do, and the refusal that sprang to his lips died. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ He took the gun off its mounting. ‘Take this would you, and I’ll come down.’

  The tea was hot and sweet with an odd aftertaste. William took out his cigarettes and offered one to Bell.

  ‘Thanks very much, sir.’

  The Nieuport had a Rhone engine, a nine cylinder eighty horsepower rotary. It was very small compared to the two-seaters, ten feet shorter, and the span slightly more than that. The top wing was much wider than the bottom, which added to the impression of its small size, but also gave it a raked back, fast appearance.

  ‘What do you think of it, sir?’ Bell asked.

  ‘It’s built for speed,’ William said. ‘And manoeuvrability so that it can turn and climb quickly in a fight. It’s just a pity we’ve only been given two of them.’

  ‘Who will fly that one, sir?’ Bell wondered, indicating the other Nieuport.

  ‘Captain Wright I expect.’ William finished his tea and, thanking Bell again, gave him back the mug. ‘I’d better get on. I want to strip the Lewis gun. That drum is going to be difficult to change mounted on the top like that. I want to make sure it won’t jam.’

  He looked up at the mount thoughtfully. The latest Nieuports had a bigger engine fitted with the new interrupter gear that allowed a Vickers to be mounted on the cowling in front of the pilot and fired through the propeller arc. Still, a Lewis gun was better than no gun at all.

  ‘Are you flying in the morning, sir?’ Bell asked.

  ‘Yes, there’s a long patrol to St Quentin to photograph the rail yards. The Nieuports are going as escorts.’

  ‘Haven’t the Huns got an aerodrome near there?’

  ‘At Douai, yes.’

  As William began to strip the Lewis, Bell looked at the other Nieuport, then he went back to the men playing cards.

  ‘Right, you lot, I want the Lewis on that other Nieuport stripped and checked. And then run the engine up too. Check every bloody thing.’

  *****

  Before dawn the planes were pushed out of the hangers onto the grass. The aerodrome was white with a heavy frost. By the time Wright arrived, William had finished his final check and he watched Wright walk around his own machine checking the wires.

  As the two-seater crews began to arrive, pulling on their helmets and goggles, William went to speak to Wright.

  ‘When we get up I think we ought to stay above the two-seaters. That way we can keep a lookout for enemy scouts.’

  ‘The CO wants us to stay with the group.’

  ‘Thompson hasn’t flown anything other than a desk for two years,’ William reasoned. ‘If we meet up with Albatrosses they’re going to be up high. I doubt that the Nieuports can match them, but at least we’ll have a chance to intercept them if the others are attacked.’

  Wright hesitated, his face pale. He had the hollow eyed look they all developed after a while.

  ‘They’ll know we’re coming,’ William said, gesturing to the clear sky. ‘When we cross the lines the Germans will telephone Douai to let them know. If the Albatrosses are there they’ll come after us.’

  Wright nodded. ‘Alright.’

  A few minutes later, the Nieuports’ engines were started, and while they warmed up the two-seaters took off in pairs. When the other planes were safely away, the Nieuports followed. They gained height quickly and were soon above the two seaters and heading for the lines.

  The journey to St Quentin was uneventful. The ruined swathe of land that marked the trenches of the opposing armies, and no-mans land between them, fell behind and the countryside was again green and strangely unblemished. Puffs of smoke from anti-aircraft fire dogged the two-seaters for part of the way, but at ten thousand feet they were untroubled. There were six of them flying in formation, with William and Wright five thousand feet above them. Though William constantly scanned the skies in every direction, there was very little cloud and nowhere for enemy scouts to hide, so he knew that he would see them in plenty of time. At the same time he was acutely aware that their progress couldn’t fail to be seen from the ground, and somewhere to the north he imagined a telephone ringing at a German aerodrome. He could only hope that the jastas were busy elsewhere that day.

  He thought briefly of the year before the war, when he had flown over the valleys and woods of Northamptonshire. It seemed like a lifetime ago, almost as if it had happened to somebody else. He saw himself as a boy at Oundle, learning his Latin grammar while shafts of sunlight poured through the tall windows and chalk dust swirled in the air. How many of the boys who had sat in that room were dead now, he wondered?

  When the patrol reached their target, the two seaters went down to photograph the railyards. William felt for them as he and Wright circled like hawks far above. The sky was pockmarked with dissolving smoke from the torrent of anti-aircraft shells thrown at them. The Germans were used to British patrols pushing into their territory and places like St Quentin were well defended. The two-seaters ranged back and forth in a slow, steady pattern as they did their work. It was an agony to watch. William kept an eye out for the enemy and willed the patrol to hurry up. With every second that passed he felt a premonition of disaster.

  Finally the patrol finished their work and turned away for home. One of the planes lagged behind, and though his engine was trailing a bit of oily smoke he appeared to be alright. William decided that if the plane fell any further behind he would go back and keep watch over him. He began to think that they might be lucky. Another ten minutes would see them over their own lines.

  He saw the scouts a few minutes later. They came from the north east at about seventeen thousand feet. He counted ten of them flying in an elongated V, and he saw the flash of red paint on their wings. They had already spotted the two-seaters and were picking up speed as they dived to intercept them, though it appeared they were unaware of the Nieuports. Wright spotted them too, and together he and William changed their course.

  At first the patrol flew on, oblivious to the danger that was rapidly closing on them. It was the straggler who saw the Albatrosses first and immediately put his nose down and dived for speed. At the same time two of the German planes broke off from the others and straight away it was clear they would catch him. There was nothing William or Wright could do for him.

  The growl of the engines became a high pitched roar. The freezing wind tore at William’s face, numbing his skin and singing in the wires like a banshee. He reached up to cock his gun. At the last moment the two-seaters saw the danger and began to dive and break formation. Further back, the straggler was attacked, and immediately smoke poured from the front and it went into a spin and plummeted earthwards.

  Still the Nieuports hadn’t been seen, and William dared to hope that with the advantage of surprise they might somehow pull off a miracle and drive the enemy planes off. Then the German leader opened fire. Tracer spat towards one the two-seaters and William saw the observer collapse. A second later the plane turned over onto its back, and with its nose pointed down, began to spin. Another German plane delivered the coup de grace and the hapless two-seater burst into flames. At the same time William fired off a burst from the Lewis gun. He heard Wright’s gun too, and then the Germans realised they were being attacked and broke formation, zooming up as they searched for the threat.

  After that there was only confusion. William banked hard and dived, turning as tightly as he could to try and get his gun onto one of the enemy. They seemed to be everywhere at once, and no matter where he looked there was an Albatross anglin
g to get behind him. He twisted in his seat trying to keep track of them. He glimpsed Wright diving to avoid an Albatross that had latched onto his tail. The heavy thud of Spandaus drowned out the bark of the Lewis guns. Engines screamed and smoke trailed from damaged machines. Lines of tracer stitched the sky. A two-seater went down and broke up two thousand feet over the earth.

  Suddenly an Albatross flashed in front of him and William let off a burst from the Lewis. Almost immediately he threw his machine in the other direction and zoomed up, reaching to change the empty drum. Tracer zipped past his wings, bullets whizzing through the air. He felt his machine take repeated hits, and then a horrible metallic clunk came from the engine and it coughed black smoke. He banked and dived, and far below, the ruined scar of no-man’s land rushed to meet him. He was losing power. The Spandaus barked again. Smoke poured from his engine. He twisted all the way down, smoke filling his cockpit, choking him. Looking back he saw an Albatross on his tail and applied hard rudder as the Spandaus opened up again. He felt his plane shake and vibrate as the bullets struck home. Below, he could see trees and fields and the contours of the land. His engine stuttered and something screamed, a grinding metallic protest as oil leaked back covering his goggles, making everything suddenly black. For an instant he was blind and gripped with panic. Frantically he wiped them clean, leaving an oily smear. The ground was close now, too close. He saw trees and pulled back hard on the stick, but he knew he was too late. He felt heat from the fire and thought briefly of Pervis. Fear took hold of him and he scrabbled for his revolver. He didn’t want to burn. Then a blur of green obscured everything. He heard guns and the splintering of wood and canvas, the roar of the Albatross overhead. Fleetingly, William wondered if he would feel the impact.

  CHAPTER 22

  Elizabeth paused before she entered the officer’s ward. The hospital at Amiens was where the seriously wounded were eventually brought. Many of those who survived were eventually returned to England to convalesce, but Doctor Ramsay had already warned her that it was unlikely that the burned pilot would live.