Air Men o' War
by Boyd Cable · English · Gutenberg #48422 · 370,050 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Air Men o' War
Author: Boyd Cable
Release date: March 6, 2015 [eBook #48422]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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AIR MEN O' WAR
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| _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ |
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| BETWEEN THE LINES |
| _$1.50 net_ |
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| ACTION FRONT |
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| DOING THEIR BIT |
| _$1.25 net_ |
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| GRAPES OF WRATH |
| _$1.50 net_ |
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| FRONT LINES |
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| E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY |
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AIR MEN O' WAR
BY
BOYD CABLE
AUTHOR OF "BETWEEN THE LINES," "ACTION FRONT,"
"GRAPES OF WRATH," "FRONT LINES," ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright 1919
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
TO ALL
AIR MEN O' WAR
AND ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN ON THE WESTERN FRONT,
WHOSE HOSPITALITY AND FRIENDSHIP I HAVE ENJOYED, AND TO WHOSE HELP
AND INTEREST THESE TALES ARE LARGELY DUE, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED AS A
TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND A TOKEN OF CHERISHED FRIENDSHIP BY
The Author.
In the Field,
_September 5th_, 1918.
FOREWORD
It has been my endeavour throughout these tales not only to chronicle
some of the wonderful work done in the air, but also to show the
connection between it and that of the Armies on the ground, the
assistance rendered in so many ways by the air arm, and its value in
a battle and in a campaign. I hope that my stories may show something
of the skill and daring of the air men and--what is less well known to
the public--how much they are doing to save the lives and cut down the
casualties of the men on the ground, and to help our arms to victory.
Already I have been rebuked for exaggerating and making my characters
perform impossible feats, so I may forewarn the reader that I have
written nothing here for which I cannot find an actual parallel--and
in some cases even more wonderful--fact. Practically every incident I
have pieced into my tales has, to my own knowledge, occurred, and I
have left untold many which for sheer sensationalism would beat these
hollow. There are many in the Air Force who will recognise incidents
and feats, but will not recognise the characters I have attached to
them, because--mainly at the urgent wish of the men themselves--I have
used entirely fictitious characters and names throughout. Because most
of the writing was done while the R.N.A.S. and R.F.C. were still in
existence I have left this as written.
I ask the indulgence of critical readers amongst the air men to any
technical errors they may discover (knowing how keenly they will look
for them). I make no pretence to being a flying man myself, but because
I have done flying enough--or rather have been flown, since I am not
a pilot--to know and appreciate some of the dangers and risks and
sensations of the work, and have lived for over a year in the Squadrons
at the Front, I cherish the hope that I have absorbed enough of the
nature and atmosphere of the work to present a true picture of the
life. I shall be very well content if I have been able to do this, and,
in any slightest degree, make plain how vital to success a strong Air
Force is. I have had experience enough of the line, and have gained
enough knowledge of the air, to be tremendously impressed with the
belief, which I have tried in this book to pass on and spread, that
every squadron added, every man trained, every single machine put in
the air, helps in its own measure to bring us to final victory, more
quickly, and at a less cost in the long and heavy "butcher's bill" of
the war.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Silver Wings 1
II. Bring Home the 'Bus 14
III. A Tender Subject 32
IV. A Good Day 46
V. A Rotten Formation 57
VI. Quick Work 68
VII. The Air Masters 80
VIII. "The Attack was Broken" 94
IX. If They Knew---- 107
X. The Fo-fum's Reputation 120
XI. Like Gentlemen 131
XII. "Air Activity" 146
XIII. The Little Butcher 164
XIV. A Cushy Job 178
XV. No Thoroughfare 185
XVI. Thrills 196
XVII. The Sequel 212
XVIII. The Raid Killers 232
I
SILVER WINGS
An old man working in one of the aircraft factories once complained
that he was not very satisfied with his job. "I've got three boys
out Front, all in the infantry; and I keep thinkin' to myself, Why
shouldn't I be doin' some sort of munition work that 'ud help my own
three boys? I don't know a livin' soul in the Flyin' Corpse; why should
I be workin' for them, an' not makin' shells or bombs or suthin' that
'ud be helpin' my own three boys?"
And then somebody told him how he _was_ helping his boys, what the
work of the air services really meant, how the artillery observation,
and photographing, and bombing, and directing the guns on to hostile
batteries and machine-gun emplacements, and so on, all worked up to the
one great end, to making the task easier for the infantry, to saving
the lives of the men on the ground; and told a few stories of some of
the ninety and nine ways this help works out.
The old man was fully satisfied and grateful for all that was told
him, and declared he'd go back to his job with twice the heart--"just
knowin' I'm doin' mebbe the best work I could, and that I'm givin' real
help to my own three boys."
Amongst the tales told him the one of "Silver Wings" perhaps impressed
him most, and that, probably because it bore more plainly its own
meaning of help to the infantry, was more easy to make clear than the
technicalities of artillery observation and the rest.
And just because it is such a good instance of how, after all, the
chief or only end and aim of the air services is the helping to victory
of the men on the ground this story of "Silver Wings" may be worth the
telling here.
Hard fighting had been in progress for some days, and the flying
men had been kept desperately busy from dawn to dark on the various
branches of their several works, when a "dud day"--a day of rain and
squalls and hurricane winds--gave them a chance to rest.
Toward afternoon the weather showed signs of abating a little, and
word came through to the Squadron to which "Silver Wings" belonged
asking if they could get a machine in the air and make a short patrol
over the line on a special reconnaissance. A heavy and unpleasantly
gusty wind was still blowing, but a pilot and machine were picked for
the job and presently made the attempt. An anxious Squadron Commander
and a good many of the pilots watched the trial and saw the quick
result. The machine was brought out with mechanics hanging to the
wing-tips to steady her against the gusts, the engine started and given
a trial run up; then the pilot eased her off, looked round, felt his
controls, ran the engine up again until his machine was throbbing and
quivering to the pull of the whirling propeller, and waved the signal
to haul away the chocks that blocked his wheels. His machine began at
once to taxi up into the wind, still swaying and swinging dangerously,
and then, in answer to the pilot's touch, lifted clear of the ground,
ducked a second, rose again and swooped upward. The watching crowd let
go a breath of relief as she rose clear, but before the breath was out
it changed to a gasp of horror as the machine, caught by some current
or eddy of wind, swerved, heeled, righted under the desperate effort
of the pilot, slipped sideways, and with a sudden swoop plunged and
crashed on the ground. The machine was hopelessly smashed and the pilot
was dead when they ran and came to him and picked him up.
The Squadron Commander would have abandoned or postponed the attempt
to get a machine up, but the pilot of "Silver Wings" spoke to him
and urged that he be allowed to have a try. "I'm sure I can get her
off," he said. "I'll take her right over to the far side of the ground
clear of the currents round the sheds. I know what she can do, and I'm
certain I can make it."
So the Major gave a reluctant consent, and they all watched
breathlessly again while "Silver Wings" fought her way along the ground
against the wind, lifted suddenly, drove level for a hundred feet,
swooped sickeningly again until her wheels were a bare six feet off
the ground, hoicked up and away. Everyone could see by her dips and
dives and sudden heelings and quick righting how bumpy and gusty the
air was, and it was not until she was up several hundred feet, and came
curving round with the wet light shining on her silvery planes that the
watchers on the ground heaved a sigh of relief, watched her streak off
down wind, and swing in a climbing turn that lifted her farther and
farther into the safety of height.
"He's all right now," said one. "Only, the Lord help him when he comes
to land again." The hum of the engine droned down to them, and the
shining wings wheeled again close up against the dark background of the
low clouds and shot swiftly down wind towards the lines.
Over the lines she turned again and began to fight her way across
wind and moving slowly north. The wind constantly forced her drifting
over Hunland, and in accordance with his orders to hold close along
the front, the pilot had to keep making turns that brought him facing
back to the west and fighting slowly up wind, edging off a little and
slanting north and watching the landscape slide off sideways under
him. And so, tacking and manœuvring buffeted and wind-blown, he edged
his way along the front, his eyes alternately on the instrument-board
and on the ground and puffing shell smoke beneath, his ears filled
with the roar of his engine and the shriek and boom of the wind
beating about him, his hands and feet in constant motion, juggling
with controls, feeling, balancing, handling the throbbing horse-power
and the wind-tossed fabric under him. And so at last, at the end of a
hard-fought hour, he came to the spot he sought, circled and "sat over
it" for five minutes, and watched and tried to pick up the details of
the struggle that spluttered and spat in smoke-puffs and flashing jets
of fire and leaping spouts of earth and smoke beneath him. He began
to piece together the meaning of what he could see, and of what he
had been told before he set out. A body of our infantry in the attack
had gone too far, or their supports had not come far enough, with the
result that they had been cut off and surrounded and were fighting
desperately to hold off the infantry attacks that pressed in on them
under a heavy supporting artillery fire. The cut-off party were hidden
from the view of our front line by a slight ridge and a wrecked and
splintered wood, and their desperate straits, the actual fact of their
still being in existence, much less their exact location, was unknown
to our side. This much the pilot knew or was able to figure out; what
he could not know was the surge of hope, the throb of thankfulness that
came to the hard-pressed handful below him as they saw the glancing
light flash from his hovering "Silver Wings." They made signals to him,
waving a dirty flag and straining their eyes up for any sign that he
saw and understood. And with something very near to despair in their
hearts they saw the shining wings slant and drive slowly up into the
wind and draw away from over their heads.
"No good, Jones," said a smoke and dirt-grimed young officer to the man
still waving the flag. "He doesn't see us, I'm afraid. Better put that
down and go back and help hold off those bombers."
"Surely he'd hear all this firing, sir," said the man, reluctantly
ceasing to wave.
"I think his engine and the wind drowns any noise down here," said the
officer. "And if he hears anything, there's plenty of heavy gunfire all
along the front going up to him."
"But wouldn't he see the shells falling amongst us, sir, and the bombs
bursting, and so on?" said the man.
"Yes; but he is seeing thousands of shells and bombs along the line
from up there," said the officer; "and I suppose he wouldn't know this
wasn't just a bit of the ordinary front."
Another man crawled over the broken débris of the trench to where they
stood. "Mister Waller has been hit, sir," he said; "an' he said to tell
you it looks like they was musterin' for another rush over where he is."
"Badly hit?" said the officer anxiously. "All right, I'll come along."
"He sees us, sir," said the man with the flag, in sudden excitement.
"Look, he's fired a light."
"Pity we haven't one to fire," said the officer. "But that might be a
signal to anyone rather than to us."
He turned to crawl after the man who had brought the message, and at
the same moment a rising rattle of rifle-fire and the quick following
detonations of bursting bombs gave notice of a fresh attack being
begun. Still worse, he heard the unmistakable tat-tat-tat of renewed
machine-gun fire, and a stream of bullets began to pour in on them from
a group of shell-holes to their right flank, less than a hundred yards
from the broken trench they held. Under cover of this pelting fire,
that forced the defenders to keep their heads down and cost them half
a dozen quick casualties amongst those who tried to answer it, the
German bombers crept closer in from shell-hole to shell-hole, and their
grenades came over in faster and thicker showers. The little circle of
ground held by the group belched spurts of smoke, hummed to the passage
of bullets, crackled and snapped under their impact, quivered every now
and then to the crash and burst of shells. They had been fighting since
the night before; they were already running short of ammunition, would
have been completely short of bombs but for the fact of the ground they
had taken having held a concreted dug-out with plentiful stores of
German bombs and grenades which they used to help out their own supply.
The attack pressed savagely; it began to look as if it would be merely
a matter of minutes before the Germans rushed the broken trenches they
held, and then, as they knew, they must be overwhelmed by sheer weight
of numbers. Waller, the wounded officer, had refused to be moved. "I'll
stay here and see it out," he said; "I don't suppose that will be long
now;" and the other, the young lieutenant who was the only officer
left on his feet by this time, could say no more than a hopeful "Maybe
we'll stand 'em off a bit yet," and leave him there to push along the
trench to where the fire and bombing were heaviest and where the rush
threatened to break in.
The din was deafening, a confused uproar of rifles and machine-guns
cracking and rattling out in front and banging noisily in their own
trench, of bombs and grenades crashing sharply on the open or booming
heavily in the trench bottom, of shells whooping and shrieking overhead
or _crumping_ savagely on the ground, and, as a background of noise to
all the other noises, the long rolling, unbroken thunder of the guns on
both sides far up and down the lines.
But above all the other din the lieutenant caught a new sound, a
singing, whirring _boo-oo-oom_ that rose to a deep-throated roar with
a sharp staccato _rap-tap-tap-tap_ running through it. He looked up
towards the sound and saw, so close that he half ducked his head, a
plunging shape, a flashing streak of silver light that swept over his
head and dived straight at the ground beyond his trench, with stabbing
jets of orange flame spitting out ahead of it. A bare fifty feet off
the ground where the Germans crouched in their shell-holes "Silver
Wings" swooped up sharply, curved over, dived again with the flashes
of her gun flickering and streaming, and the bullets hailing down on
the heads of the attackers. It was more than the Germans, lying open
and exposed to the overhead attack, could bear. They scrambled from
their holes, floundered and ran crouching back for the shelter of
deeper trenches, while the lieutenant, seeing his chance, yelled and
yelled again at his men to fire, and seized a rifle himself to help
cut down the demoralised attack. He could see now how close a thing
it had been for them, the weight of the attack that presently would
have swarmed over them. The ground was alive with running, scrambling
grey figures, until the bullets pelting amongst them cut them down or
drove them headlong to cover again. Then his men stopped firing and
watched with hoarse cheering and shouts the dives and upward leaps of
the silvery shape, her skimmings along the ground, her upward wheeling
climbs followed by the plunging dives with fire spitting and sparkling
from her bows. The Germans were firing at her now with rifles and
machine-guns until she turned on the spot where these last were nested,
drove straight at them and poured long clattering bursts of fire upon
them until they were silenced.
Then she turned and flew over the broken British trenches so close
that the men in them could see the leather-clad head and arm of the
pilot leaning over the side, could see his wave to them, the flung
packet that dropped with fluttering streamers down amongst them. The
packet carried a note jerkingly scribbled in pencil: "Hang on. I'm
taking word of where you are, so that they can send help to you. Good
luck."
The lieutenant, when he had read, handed the message to a sergeant
and told him to pass it along round the men. And they read and shouted
cheers they knew he could not hear to the pilot lifting the "Silver
Wings" steadily into the sky and back towards the lines. He was high
enough now for the "Archies" to bear on him again, and from their
trenches the men watched with anxious hearts and throbs of fear and
hope the black puffs of smoke that broke rapidly above, below, and
about the glinting silver. He made desperately slow speed against the
heavy wind, but fortunately had not far to go before he was far enough
back to be over the lines and out of reach of the Archies. Then just
when it seemed that he was safe, when the Archie shells had ceased
suddenly to puff about him, the watchers saw another machine drop from
the cover of a cloud, dive straight down on the little silver shape,
saw the silver wings widen as they turned sharply upward to face the
enemy, wheel and shoot sideways to avoid the dive. With beating hearts
and straining eyes they watched the two dipping and curving, lifting
and diving, wheeling and circling about each other. The battle noises
drowned all sound of their guns, but they knew well the rapid rattle of
fire that was going on up there, the exchange of shots, the streaming
bullets that poured about both, thought at last they could catch the
sound of the firing clearly, could see the black cross and circled red,
white, blue, that marked enemy and friend as the two machines drifted
back in their fighting down wind until they were almost overhead.
Once the watchers gasped as the enemy dived on "Silver Wings" and she
slipped sideways and came down a thousand feet nose first and spinning
in dizzy circles. The gasp changed to a cry of relief as the "Silver
Wings" righted, zoomed sharply up, whirled round, and in turn dived
on the enemy machine, that had overshot his pursuing dive and come
below her. And the cry changed again to a yell of applause, a burst
of cheers, as the enemy swerved suddenly, slid drunkenly sideways
and down, rolled over, and fell away in a spinning dive, swoop after
sickening swoop, that ended crashing in a clump of wood half a mile
away. A wind-blown torrent of streaming black smoke marked the place of
the fall and the fate of the enemy. "Silver Wings" turned again, and
fought her way back towards the lines, with the Archie shells puffing
and splashing about her.
Down in their trenches the isolated cluster of men set about
strengthening their defences with new heart, made with a new hope
preparations to withstand the next attacks. It was not long before they
had help--a help that the guns, knowing now exactly where they were
although they could not see, could send in advance of the rescuing
attack. A barrage of shells began to pound down beyond them, out to
their right and left, and even behind them. "Silver Wings" had dropped
her message, and the shells brought the answer plain to the cut-off
party. They knew that they were located, that the guns would help out
their defence, that rescue would come to them as speedily as might be.
The actual rescue came presently in the shape of an attack over the
ground they had covered the day before. Before it came they had to
beat off one or two more enemy rushes, but this time the help of those
barraging shells stood them in good stead, the sweeping shrapnel
prevented the enemy creeping in to occupy in comparative safety the
shell-holes round the position, the steady fall of high explosives
broke down the enemy trenches and checked free movement in them. The
Germans were badly pounded on that portion of front, so that when the
rescuing attack was made, it fought its way rapidly forward, and the
isolated party were able to do something to help it merely by hanging
to their position, by rear and flanking fire on the Germans who held
the ground between them and the attacking line. The attack resulted in
the whole line being pushed forward to the ridge behind the separated
party, holding it, and thrusting forward a little salient which took in
the ground the party had hung to so stoutly, consolidated, and held it
firm.
The rescued men were passed back to their lines, and--most of them--to
the casualty clearing stations. And when the lieutenant brought the
remnant of his company back to the battalion, he told the Battalion
Commander his end of the story, and heard in return how the message of
their whereabouts had been brought back and how it had directed the
movement that had got them out. The lieutenant wanted to send a word
of thanks to "Silver Wings" and her pilot, but this the C.O. told him
he could not do. "The pilot was lifted out of his machine and taken
straight to the C.C.S.,[1]" he said. "He was wounded by rifle-fire from
the ground when he first dived to help you beat off that attack. No,
not seriously, I'm glad to say, but he'd lost a lot of blood, and he
got rather knocked about landing and broke his machine a bit I believe."
[1] Casualty Clearing Station.
"Wounded," said the lieutenant slowly, "and at that time. So he kept on
diving his machine about and fighting after he was wounded; and went
through that air fight with his wound, and shot the Hun down, and then
came on back and gave his message----" "Dropped a note straight into
the signallers at Brigade Headquarters," said the C.O.
The lieutenant drew a deep breath. "We knew we were owing him a lot,"
he said. "But it seems we were owing even more than we thought."
"And I'm beginning to think," said the C.O., "that all of us here on
the ground are owing more than we've known to those fellows in the air."
II
BRING HOME THE 'BUS
For ten minutes past the observer had been alternately studying his map
and the ground 20,000 feet below, and now he leaned forward out of his
cockpit, touched the pilot on the shoulder, and made a slight signal
with his hand. Immediately the machine began to swing in a wide curve,
while the observer busied himself with his camera and exposed plate
after plate.
He looked up and out a moment as there came to his ear, dully but
unmistakably above the roar of the engine, the hoarse "_woof_" of a
bursting anti-aircraft shell. The black smoke of the burst showed a
good hundred yards out to their left and some hundreds of feet above
them, and the observer returned to his photographing.
"_Woof_" came another shell, and then in quick succession another and
another, the last one dead ahead and with such correct elevation that,
a second later, the machine flashed through the streaming black smoke
of the burst. The pilot looked back inquiringly, and the observer made
a sign which meant "Do what you please," and sat back to wait until the
pilot took such steps as he thought fit to disarrange the aim of the
gunners below.
The harsh rending cough of another shell came so close beneath the
machine that both men felt her distinctly jolt upward, twisting from
the wind shock. The pilot waited no more. He jammed the controls hard
over and flung the machine out in a vicious side-slip, caught her at
the end of it, tipped her nose over and plunged straight down with the
engine full on for a thousand feet, banked sharply, pivoting fairly on
his wing-tip, and shot off at right angles to his former course for a
quarter of a mile; then, climbing slightly as he went, swung hard round
again, dipped a little to gather speed, hoicked hard up, and in a few
seconds was back somewhere about the position at which he had first
departed from the course.
Back about the point where they had last turned a string of black
smoke-puffs flashed out rapidly. The pilot shut his engine off for an
instant. "Fooled 'em that time," he yelled back, and grinned gleefully
at his observer. The observer peered out carefully and exposed another
plate, turned and passed another signal to the pilot. Instantly the
engine roared out, and the machine tipped her bows down and went
plunging earthward. The observer watched the needle of his height
indicator drop back and back through 20,000, 19, 18, 17, 16, hang there
an instant, leap up again to 16 and 17. There it stayed quivering for
ten seconds, while the machine hurtled forward at a hundred miles an
hour on a level keel. There the pilot dropped her nose a little again
and went slanting down with the engine full on, and the needle of the
speed indicator climbing up and up until the speed touched 140 miles an
hour and the height indicator dropped to a 14,000-foot level.
The Archie shells were spouting and splashing round them in all
directions, but their erratic course had sufficiently upset the gunners
to bring the bursts well out and clear, and the pilot made the last
steep dizzying plunge that brought him to the 10,000-foot height his
observer had asked for. But at this height they were well within the
range of smaller Archie batteries, and the observer jerked the handle
of his camera to and fro at intervals, with the racking cough of the
shells sounding perilously close, and the reek of their burst at times
swirling past as the machine tore through their smoke. Three times
heavy splinters _whurred_ viciously past them, and once a sharp crack
and rip left a gaping black rent in the cloth of the body close astern
of the observer.
For a good ten minutes the machine circled and swung and darted to and
fro, while the observer hung on and snapped his plates at such objects
as he wanted on the ground below; and for all that ten minutes the
Archies continued to pitch a stream of shells up round and over and
under them.
Then the observer signalled "finished," and the machine jerked round
and streaked off at top speed in a series of curves and zigzags that
carried her westward and homeward as straight as the pilot dared drive
in avoiding the shells that continued to follow them. The pilot kept
her nose down a little as he went, so as to obtain the maximum speed,
but when he began to run out of range of the Archies and leave their
smoke bursts well astern, he tilted up and pushed straight west at top
speed, but on a long climb that brought him up a thousand feet a mile.
Presently he felt the signal cord looped about his arm jerk and jerk
again, and, tilting the machine's nose slightly downward, he shut off
his engine and let her glide and twisted round to the observer.
"Huns," yelled the observer. "Six of 'em, and coming like stink," and
he pointed up and astern to half a dozen dots in the sky.
"Would you like a scrap, Spotty?" shouted the pilot. "Shall we take 'em
on?"
"Don't ask me," shouted Spotty. "Ask the Hun. He'll scrap if he wants
to, and you and your old 'bus can't help it, Barry."
"Thought you knew the old 'Marah' better," retorted Barry. "You watch";
and he twisted in his seat and opened his engine out.
Now the "Marah" was the pride of her Squadron, and, most inordinately,
of her pilot. Built line by line to the blue-print of her class,
fraction by fraction of an inch in curve, straight, and stream-line, to
the design of her sisters in the Squadron, differing no hair's-breadth
from them in shape, size, engine, or propeller, she yet by some
inscrutable decree was the best of them all in every quality that
counts for best in a machine. There are theories to account for these
not uncommon differences, the most popular and plausible being that
the better machine is so merely because of some extra skill and minute
care in her and her engine's building, last touches of exactness and
perfection in the finish of their parts and their assembling.
The "Marah" could outclimb anything in the Squadron with the most
ridiculous ease, outclimb them in feet per minute, and in final height;
she could outfly them on any level from 100 to 20,000 feet, could
"out-stunt" them--although here perhaps the pilot had as much to say
as the machine--in any and every stunt they cared to challenge her
on. Barry, her young pilot, literally loved her. He lost no chance of
trying her out against other types of machines, and there were few
of the fastest and best types even amongst the single-seater scout
machines that could beat her on a level fly, or that she could not
leave with her nose held slightly down. No two-seater Barry had ever
met could come anywhere near the "Marah" in stunting, in the ease and
speed at which he could put her through all sorts of fancy spins,
loops, side-slips, and all the rest of the bag of air tricks. How much
of her superiority was due to her own qualities and how much to her
pilot it is hard to say, because certain it is that Barry could climb
her nearly a thousand feet higher, and drive her several knots faster,
than any other pilot who had flown her.
It is because of all these things that Barry had preferred to make this
particular photographing trip a lone-hand one. It was a long-distance
journey far back behind the German lines, to a spot known to be
well protected by long-range Archies, and of such importance that
it was certain to order out fast fighting machines to cut off any
flight taking back reports or photographs. Barry's arguments for his
single-handed trip were simple, and, as the Squadron Commander had
to admit, sound. "One machine stands much more chance of sneaking
over high up without being spotted than a whole flight," said Barry.
"When we're there I can chuck the 'bus about any old how to dodge the
Archies, while Spotty snaps his pictures; and if we're tackled by any
E.A.,[2] the old 'Marah' could probably outfly them by herself. And
since you're so beastly positive that this isn't a scrapping stunt, I'd
sooner be on my own and free to dodge and run and use clouds and so on
without having to think of keeping formation. Don't you worry. We'll
come through all right."
[2] E.A. Enemy Aircraft.
The Squadron Commander gave in. "Right oh," he said reluctantly.
"And do keep your eyes skinned for Huns and run from 'em if you've a
chance. This information is wanted badly, remember, and you mustn't
risk getting scuppered with it. And, besides we can't afford to lose
the 'Marah' out of the Squadron. You don't count of course, but the old
'bus is too good to lose."
He hid a good deal of anxiety under his chaffing, and Barry, reading
that and the friendship that bred it, laughed and took the same
light-hearted tone. "You won't lose her," he said. "If a Hun punctures
me and Spotty we'll just jump overboard and tell the old girl to push
along home on her own. She's jolly near got sense enough to do it too,
I believe."
Now all this was in Barry's mind when Spotty told him of the pursuing
enemy, and so he set himself to take every ounce of advantage he could.
The machines behind were travelling faster, because they had sighted
him from a much higher level, and had all the additional speed that a
downward slant gave them, while the "Marah," still held on a slightly
upward incline, lost something of her top speed thereby.
Barry knew there were Archie batteries to be passed over on the way
back, and if he meant to keep a straight course it was necessary that
he should be as far above them as possible. He leaned out and peered
down at the landscape wheeling and unrolling under them, picked out
the spot he was watching for--a village where he knew Archie batteries
were located--and altered course slightly to give it a wider berth. In
another minute the Archie shells began to bark about them. At the first
one that came dangerously close the "Marah" hoicked abruptly upward
500 feet, wheeled sharp south for half a mile, swung again and drove
straight west. Twice she had to swerve and dodge in similar fashion
before she cleared the zone of the Archies' range, and these swerves
and their faster downward passage allowed the enemy craft to overhaul
her considerably. Spotty swung his machine-gun round in readiness and
trained it aft and up on the hostiles.
Two single-seaters were half a mile ahead of the other four and looming
larger every minute. They were within long range now, and, presently,
one of them loosed off a dozen rounds or so at the "Marah." Spotty
jerked a signal that he was going to fire, and taking careful sight
rapped off about twenty rounds. The range was too great yet for him,
and the Huns made no sign of a swerve from their direct path, so Spotty
ceased firing and waited, glancing over his sights at one machine that
had forged slightly ahead of the other. Barry looked back over his
shoulder and up at the two machines. They were still a good thousand
feet above the "Marah," but Barry was satisfied enough with the way the
game was running, because while they had dropped from perhaps 20,000
feet to 15,000, the "Marah" had gained 3,000 to 4,000 as she flew.
The advantage of height was half the battle, and Barry wanted to
snatch every inch of it he could gain. For that reason he passed a
signal back to Spotty to open fire again, and Spotty obediently began
to rip out a series of short bursts. The two men had flown so long
together that each knew the other's dodges and ideas to an extent
precious beyond words, and had a code of brief signals in head-noddings
and jerkings and hand motions that saved much waste of time and breath
in shutting off engine to shout messages or yelling through the
communicating 'phone. Spotty figured now just the plan Barry had in
mind, a plan to hustle the enemy into making his attempt before he was
at the closest effective range for a diving attack. The plan succeeded
too. His bullets must have been going somewhere close, for Spotty
saw the nearest machine swerve ever so slightly, as if her pilot had
flinched or ducked instinctively. Then Spotty saw her nose dip slightly
until it was pointed straight at the "Marah," the machine-gun firing
through her propeller broke out in a long rapid burst of fire, and the
"tracer" bullets[3] came flashing and streaming past in thin pencils of
flame and smoke. What followed takes a good deal longer in the telling
than it did in the happening. All three machines were travelling,
remember, at a speed of anything round a hundred knots, a speed that
rose at times as they dipped and dived to nearer perhaps a hundred and
thirty and forty. While they were flying on the same course with little
difference in speed each airman could see the other closely and in
detail, could watch each little movement, look over at leisure small
items about each other's machines. Mere groundlings cannot get nearer
to the sensation than to imagine or remember sitting at the window of
a carriage on the slow lumbering sixty-mile-an-hour express, watching
the almost equally slow mail rushing over the rails at sixty-five miles
on a parallel line, and seeing the passengers at her windows scanning
deliberately the shape of your hat or colour of your hair.
[3] Tracer bullets emit smoke and flame to allow the shooter to follow
their flight.
In just such fashion Spotty saw the pilot of the leading machine rise
slightly and glance astern at his companion, saw him settle himself
in his seat, saw him raise a hand and motion downward. Instantly he
jerked the cord fast to Barry's shoulder, signalling "look out," and
with swift clockwork motions snatched the almost empty drum of his
machine-gun, and replaced it with the full one he held ready clutched
between his knees.
Vaguely in the swift ensuing seconds he felt the machine under
him sway and leap and reel; but his whole mind was for that time
concentrated on his gun sights, on keeping them full on the bulk
of the machine astern of him, in pressing the trigger at the exact
critical second. He saw the round bow of his nearest pursuer lift and
for one long breath saw the narrow tapering length of her underbody
behind it. That was a chance, and he filled it full and brimming with
a fifty-round burst of which he saw the bullets flash and disappear in
the fuselage above him. Then in a flash the underbody disappeared, and
the rounded bow of the hostile came plunging down on him, growing and
widening as it came full power and speed of engine and gravity pull.
He was dimly conscious of her firing as she came, and he kept his own
gun going, pumping bullets in a constant stream, his eye glued to the
sights, his finger clenched about the trigger. Somehow he knew--just
knew, without reasoning or thinking it out--that his bullets were going
to their mark, and it gave him no slightest touch of astonishment when
he saw his enemy stagger, leap upward, lurch and roll until she stood
straight up on her wing-tip, and so, banking and deflecting from the
"Marah's" course, flash in a split fraction of a second out of the
fight.
He had no more than a glimpse of a gust of fire and gush of black
smoke from somewhere about her before she vanished from his sight,
and he was training his sights on a second shape that came swooping
and plunging down upon him. This second enemy made better play with
her gun. With deadly slowness and persistence, as it seemed, she
closed, yard by yard. Spotty trained his gun full in the centre of the
quivering light rays that marked the circle of her whirling propeller,
and poured burst after burst straight at the jerking flashes of the
machine-gun that blazed through her propeller. He felt an agonising jar
on his ankle ... but the drum of his machine-gun snapped out its last
cartridge, and Spotty smoothly and methodically whipped off the empty
drum, stooped and lifted a full one, fitted it in place, and looking
over his sights rapped his gun into action again; while all the time
the bullets of his adversary hailed and ripped and tore about and upon
the "Marah," riddling the rudder, slashing along the stern, cracking
in the whip-like reports of explosive bullets about the observer's
cockpit, lifting forward and rap-rap-rapping about the bows and the
pilot's stooped head. The "Marah" leaped out suddenly and at full
stride in a hundred-foot side-slip, checked, and hurtled upward; and in
that breath of time the pursuer flicked past and down and out of the
vision of Spotty's sights.
It was all over so quickly that Spotty, looking overside, could still
see the first enemy spinning down jerkily with black smoke whirling up
from her fuselage, spinning helplessly down, as he knew, to hit the
earth 15,000 feet below. Spotty felt suddenly and surprisingly sick and
faint. His particular story blurs somewhat from here on, because he
himself was never able to supply it in detail. He was able to answer
Barry--Barry turning to shout his question while the "Marah" tore
along at her full 110 knots--that he'd been hit somewhere about the
foot or leg, and didn't feel much, except sick. This Barry was able
to gather with some difficulty, after juggling with the wheel beside
him that shifted angles of incidence, and more or less stabilised the
"Marah's" flight, abandoning his controlling "joy-stick," clambering
up on his seat, and hanging back and over to bring his head into the
observer's cockpit and his ear within reach of Spotty's feeble attempts
at a shout. He himself was rather unfit for these acrobatics, owing
to certain unpleasant and punishing wounds just received. While he
attempted to carry on his laboured inquiries, the "Marah," her engine
throttled down and her controls left to look after themselves, swooped
gently and leisurely, slid downwards on a gliding slant for a thousand
feet, pancaked into an air-pocket, and fell off into a spinning dive.
While she plunged earthward at a rate of some hundred feet per second
Barry finished his inquiries, dragged or pushed back into his seat--it
was really down into his seat, since the "Marah" at the moment was
standing on her head and his seat was between the observer's and the
bows, but the wind pressure at that speed made it hard work to slide
down--took hold of his controls, waited the exact and correct moment,
flattened the "Marah" out of her spin, opened the throttle and went
booming off again to westward a bare 5,000 feet above ground level.
He had, it is true, a moment's parley and a swift summing up of
the situation before he turned the "Marah's" bows definitely for
home. And the situation was ugly enough to be worth considering.
Spotty (Barry thought of him first) was in a bad way--leg smashed
to flinders--explosive evidently--bleeding like a stuck pig (wonder
would the plates be spoiled, or was the camera built water-tight, or
blood-tight?)--very doubtful if he'd last out the journey home. Then
Barry himself had wounds--the calf of his left leg blown to shreds, and
the toes of his left foot gone, and, most upsettingly painful of all, a
gaping hole where his left eye should be, a blood-streaming agony that
set his senses reeling and wavering and clearing slowly and painfully.
This last wound, as it proved, was the result of a ricochetting bullet
which, flicking forward as Barry had turned his head, cut his left eye
clean from its socket.
The summing up was very clear and simple. They were a good thirty
miles from the lines; Spotty might easily bleed to death in less
than that; he, Barry, might do the same, or might faint from pain
and exhaustion. In that case done-finish himself, and Spotty, and
the "Marah," in a drop of 5,000 feet and a full hundred-mile-an-hour
crash below. On the other hand, he had only to move his hand, push the
joy-stick out and sweep the "Marah" down, flatten her out and pick a
decent field, land, and he and Spotty would be in the doctor's hands
in a matter of minutes, both of them safe and certain of their lives
at least. In seconds they could be "on the floor" and in safety--and
in German hands ... the two of them and ... and ... the "Marah." It
was probably the thought of the "Marah" that turned the scale, if ever
the scale really hung in doubt. "We can't afford ..."--what was it the
Squadron Commander had said?--"can't afford to lose the old 'Marah'
from the Squadron." No (Barry's vision cleared mentally and physically
at the thought),--no, and, by the Lord, the Squadron wasn't going to
lose the "Marah," not if it was in him to bring the old 'bus home.
He knew it was going to be a close thing, for himself and for the
"Marah"; and carefully he set himself to take the last and least ounce
of the chances in favour of his getting the "Marah" across the line.
It would be safer to climb high and cross the fire of the Archies
that waited him on the line; safer so far as dodging the shells went,
but cutting down the limit set to his strength and endurance by the
passing minutes. On the level, or with her nose a little down, the
"Marah" would make the most of the time left her, or rather left him.
His senses blurred and swam again; he felt himself lurching forward
in his seat, knew that this was pushing the joy-stick forward and the
"Marah's" nose to earth, shoved himself back in his seat and clutched
the stick desperately to him ... and woke slowly a minute after to find
the "Marah's" bows pointed almost straight up, her engine struggling
to lift her, his machine on the very verge of stalling and falling
back into the gulf. He flung her nose down and forward hastily, and
the "Marah" ducked gracefully over like a hunter taking an easy fence,
steadied and lunged forward in arrow-straight flight.
After this Barry concentrated on the faces of the clock, the height
and the speed indicators. Once or twice he tried to look overside to
locate his position, but the tearing hurricane wind of the "Marah's"
passage so savaged his torn face and eye that he was forced back into
the cover of his windscreen. Five minutes went. Over, well over a
hundred the speed indicator said the "Marah" was doing. Nearly 5,000 up
the height indicator said (must have climbed a lump in that minute's
haziness, concluded Barry), and, reckoning to cross the line somewhere
inside the 500 up--which after all would risk machine-gun and rifle
fire, but spare them the Archies--would allow him to slant the "Marah"
down a trifle and get a little more speed out of her. He tilted her
carefully and watched the speed indicator climb slowly and hang steady.
And so another five minutes went. Two thousand up said the indicator;
and "_woof, woof, woof_" grunted a string of Archie shells. "Getting
near the line," said Barry, and pushed the joy-stick steadily forward.
The "Marah" hurtled downward on a forty-five degree slant, her engine
full out, the wind screaming and shrieking about her. Fifteen hundred,
a thousand, five hundred pointed the needle of the height indicator,
and slowly and carefully Barry pulled the "Marah's" head up and held
her racing at her top speed on the level.
Fifteen minutes gone. They must be near the lines now. He could catch,
faint and far off through the booming roar of his engine, the rattle of
rifle fire, and a faint surprise took him at the sound of two strange
raps, and the sight of two neat little round holes in the instrument
board and map in front of him. He looked out, carefully holding the
joy-stick steady in one hand and covering his torn eye with the other,
and saw the wriggling white lines of trenches flashing past close
below. Then from the cockpit behind him broke out a steady clatter and
jar of the observer's machine-gun. Barry looked round to see Spotty,
chalk-faced and tight-lipped, leaning over the side with arms thrust
out and pointing his gun straight to earth with a stream of flashes
pouring from the muzzle. "Good man," murmured Barry, "oh, good man,"
and made the "Marah" wriggle in her flight as a signal.
Spotty looked round, loosened his lips in a ghastly grin, and waved an
arm signalling to turn at right angles. "Nothin' doin', my son," said
Barry grinning back. "It's 'Home, John' for us this time. But fancy the
priceless old fellow wanting to go touring their front line spraying
lead on 'em. Good lad, Spotty."
A minute later he felt his senses reel, and his sight blacken again,
but he gripped his teeth on his lip and steered for the clump of wood
that hid his own Squadron's landing ground.
He made his landing there too; made it a trifle badly, because when he
came to put rudder on he found that his left leg refused its proper
work. And so he crashed at the last, crashed very mildly it is true,
but enough to skew the wheels and twist the frame of the under-carriage
a little.
And as Spotty's first words when he was lifted from his cockpit were
of the crash-- "Barry, you blighter, if you've crashed those plates of
mine I'll never forgive you.... You'll find all the plates exposed,
Major, and notes of the bearing and observations in my pocket-book"--so
also were Barry's last of the same thing. He didn't speak till near
the end. Then he opened his one eye to the Squadron Commander waiting
at his bedside and made an apology ... ("An apology ... Good Lord!..."
as the Major said after). "Did I crash her badly, Major?" And when
the Major assured him No, nothing that wouldn't repair in a day, and
that the "Marah" would be ready for him when he came back to them, he
shook his head faintly. "But it doesn't matter," he said. "Anyhow, I
got her home.... And if I'm 'going West,' the old 'Marah' will go East
again ... and get some more Huns for you." He ceased, and was silent a
minute. Then "I'm sorry I crashed her, Major ... but y'see, ... my leg
... was a bit numb."
He closed his eye; and died.
* * * * *
A pilot lost doesn't very much count.
(But don't tell his girl or his mater this!)
There's always another to take his mount,
And push the old 'bus where the Archies miss.
But a 'bus that's lost you can't renew,
For where one works there's the want of two
And all they can make are still too few,
So we must bring home the 'bus.
III
A TENDER SUBJECT
The telling of this tale in the Squadron Mess came about through (1) a
mishap, (2) a joke, and (3) an argument. The mishap was to a fighting
two-seater, which landed on the Squadron's 'drome with a dud engine.
The pilot and observer made their way to the Squadron office and, after
a brief 'phone talk to their own C.O., borrowed a tender and pushed
off for their own 'drome. The leader of "A" Flight walked down to
the tender, chatting to them, and four of the Squadron's pilots took
advantage of the chance of a lift in to a town the tender had to pass
on the journey. All of them heard and all were a little surprised, at
"A" Commander's parting word to the two visitors. "I've told the driver
to go slow and careful," he said. "You fellows just watch he does it,
will you?"
The joke began to dawn on the four just after the tender had carefully
cleared the first bend of the road from the 'drome and the driver began
to open her up and let her rip. The joke grew with the journey, and
the four on their return to the Squadron that afternoon burst into the
full ante-room and, announcing it "Such a joke, oh, _such_ a joke!"
went on to tell it in competing quartette to a thoroughly appreciative
audience. It appeared that one passenger--"the pale-faced nervy-looking
little 'un with pink eye-rims"--had showed distinct uneasiness when the
tender rushed a dip-and-rise at top speed, and his observer--"a reg'lar
Pickwick Fat Boy, quakin' like a jelly"--complained openly and bitterly
when the tender took a corner on the two outside wheels and missed a
country cart with six inches and a following gust of French oaths to
spare.
When, by the grace o' God, and by a bare hand's-breadth, they shaved
past a lumbering M.T. lorry, "Pink Eye" and "Fat Boy" clung dumb
to each other and plainly devoted themselves to silent prayer. The
dumbness deserted them and they made up all arrears of speech, and to
spare, when the tender took four heaps of road-metal by the wayside in
a series of switch-backing hand-springs. "'Course we twigged your joke
by then," said the four to "A" leader. "I suppose you delivered the
driver his go-slow order with a large-sized wink and he savvied what
you meant." It appeared that Pink Eye had asked the four to make the
driver slow down, or to kill him or something. They pretended innocence
and said he was a most careful man, and so on. Fat Boy nearly wept when
they met a Staff car travelling fast and, never slacking an ounce,
whooped past with a roar; and after a hairpin bend, which the tender
took like a fancy skater doing the figure-of-eight, Pink Eye completely
broke up and swore that he was going to get off and walk. "He'd have
done it too," said the four delightedly, "if we hadn't eased her up.
But you never saw such a state of funk as those two were in. Kept
moppin' their brows, and apologisin' for their nerves, and fidgetin'
and shiverin' like wet kittens every time we took a corner or met a
cart. It was too funny--really funny."
This led to the argument--whether men with nerves of that sort could
be any good in air work. "I know I'd hate to be a pilot with an
observer of that kind watching my tail, almost as much as I'd hate
to be an observer with Pink Eye for a pilot," said one, and most
there agreed. A few argued that it was possible for men to be brave
enough in one kind of show and the very opposite in another--that
one fellow could do the V.C. act seven days a week under fire and
take every sort of risk in action without turning a hair, and yet go
goosey-fleshed on a Channel crossing in a choppy sea, while another man
might enjoy sailing a boat single-handed in a boiling white sea, and
yet be genuinely nervous about dodging across the full traffic-tide
of a London thoroughfare. Most of those present declined to believe
these theories, maintaining stoutly that a good plucked 'un was always
such, and that an obvious funk couldn't be anything else--except in
novelettes and melodrama. Then came the story.
"Did y'ever hear of 'Charger' Wicks?" said the Captain of "A." "No?
Well, you're rather recently out, so you mightn't, but--well, he's
fairly well known out here. He's rather a case in point----"
Being told by an expert to an audience of experts, his tale was put
more briefly, technically, and air-slangily than I may hope to do, but
here is the sense of it.
"Charger" Wicks was a pilot in a well-known fighting squadron, and
was so called from a favourite tactic of his in air fighting and his
insistent advice to the rest of the Flight he came to command to follow
his plan of attack. "Always charge straight at your Hun if you get a
chance," he would say. "Drive straight and hard nose-on at him, keeping
your gun going hot. If you keep straight, he'll flinch--every time; and
as he turns up, down, or out, you get a full-length target underneath,
topside, or broadside. If you keep on and shoot straight, you're bound
to get a hatful of bullets into him somewhere."
The plan certainly seemed to work, and Charger notched up a good tally
of crashed Huns, but others in the Squadron warned him he'd try it once
too often. "Charge straight at him, and he'll dodge," said Charger.
"Wait," said the others. "Some day you'll meet a Hun who works on the
same rule; _then_ where'll you be?" "Yes," said Billy Bones, Charger's
observer, "and where'll I be?" But although he pretended to grumble,
Billy Bones was, as a matter of fact, quite in agreement on the nose-on
charging stunt and believed in it as firmly as Charger himself. It took
nerve, he admitted, but if you had that--and Charger certainly had--it
worked all right. As it happened, the nerves of both were to be "put
through it" rather severely.
They were up with the Flight one day, Charger with Billy Bones leading
in their pet 'bus Y221. They ran into a scrap with odds of about two
to one against them, and in the course of it Charger got a chance to
put his old tactic to the proof. The moment he swung Y221 and headed
her straight at a Hun scout, Billy knew what was coming, and heaved
his gun round ready for any shot that offered as the Hun flinched
past. But this time it looked as if the Squadron's old warning was
going to be fulfilled and that Charger had met the Hun with the same
rule as himself. Charger's gun began to rattle at about one hundred
yards' range, and the Hun opened at the same moment. Billy, crouching
with his gun at the ready and his eyes glued on a scarlet boss in the
centre of the Hun's propeller, saw and heard the bullets stream smoking
and cracking past and on their machine. It does not take long for two
machines travelling about a hundred miles per hour to cover a hundred
yards, but to Billy, staring tense at that growing scarlet blot, each
split fraction of a second was an age, and as the shape of the Hun
grew but showed no sign of a changing outline, Billy's thoughts raced.
Charger, he knew, wouldn't budge an inch from his line; if the Hun also
held straight ... he still held straight ... the slightest deviation
up or down would show instantly in the wings, seen edgeways in thin
lines, thickening and widening. The bullets were coming deadly close
... and the red boss grew and grew. If the Hun didn't give now--this
instant--it would be too late ... they must collide. The approaching
wing-edges still showed their thin straight line, and Billy, with a
mental "Too late now!" gasped and gripped his gun and waited the crash.
Then, at the last possible instant, the Hun's nerve gave--or, rather,
it gave just an instant too late. Billy had a momentary vision of the
thin wing-edges flashing wide, of the black crosses on the under side,
of a long narrow strip of underbody and tail suddenly appearing below
the line of the planes; and then, before he could move or think, he
felt the Y221 jar violently, heard horrible sounds of splintering,
cracking, tearing, had a terrifying vision of a great green mass with
splashed ugly yellow spots rearing up over the top plane before his
startled eyes, plunging past over his ducking head with splintering
wreckage and flapping streamers of fabric whizzing and rushing about
his ears. Y221--whirling, jolting, twisting all ways and every way
at once apparently--fell away in a series of sickening jerks that
threatened to wrench her joint from joint. Billy's thoughts raced
down ahead of them to where they would hit the ground 15,000 feet
below ... how long would it take ... would they hit nose-first or how
... was there anything he could do?--and before his mind shaped the
question he had answered it--No, nothing! Dully he noticed that their
engine had stopped, that Charger apparently was busy at the controls;
then--with a gleam of wondering hope, dismissed at first, but returning
and growing--that the lurching and rolling was steadying, that they
were coming back on an even keel, were ... yes, actually, were gliding
smoothly down.
Charger twisted and looked down overside, then back at Billy and
yelled, "D'ye see him?" Billy looked over, and next instant saw a
vanishing shape with one wing folded back, saw another wing that had
torn clear floating and "leafing" away on its own. The shape plunged
plummet-wise until it was lost in the haze below. Billy turned inboard.
"Broken in air," he shouted, and Charger nodded and turned again to
his controls. Billy saw that their propeller was gone, only one jagged
splinter of a blade remaining.
They made a long glide back and a good landing well behind the lines on
a grass field. "What happened?" said Billy the moment they had come to
rest. "He flinched, of course," said Charger. "Ran it a bit fine, and
our prop caught his tail and tore it up some. I dunno that we're much
hurt, except for the prop and that broken strut."
And, amazingly enough, they were not. The leading edge of a top plane
was broken and cracked along its length, one strut was snapped, the
propeller gone, a few jagged holes from bullets and Hun splinters
ripped in their fabric. "God bless the people who built her!" said
Charger piously. "Good stuff and good work in that old 'bus, Billy.
That's all that brought us through."
Billy mopped his brow. "Hope we don't meet any more of that breed of
Hun," he said. "I find I don't like collisions--not one little bit."
"He flinched at the finish, though," said Charger simply. "They all do."
When they got Y221 back to the 'drome and overhauled her they found her
wrenched a bit, but in a couple of days she was tautened up into trim
and in the air again.
And the very next morning, as if this weren't enough, Charger and
Billy had another nerve-testing. They were up about 12,000 and well
over Hunland when they ran into a patch of Archies, and Charger
turned and led the formation straight towards a bank of white cloud
that loomed up, solid looking as a huge bolster, before them. The sun
was dead behind them, so Billy at first sat looking over the tail on
the watch for any Huns who might try to attack "out of the sun" and
its blinding glare. But as it was dead astern over the tail Billy
could see clearly above and behind him, so that there was no chance
of a Hun diving unseen from a height, and they were moving too fast
to be overtaken on the level "out of the sun." Billy turned round
and watched the cloud they were driving at. The sun was full on it,
and it rose white and glistening like a chalk cliff--no, more like
a--like a---- Billy was idly searching his mind for a fitting simile,
when his thoughts broke and he yelled fiercely and instinctively in
warning to Charger. But Charger had seen too, as Billy knew from
his quick movement and sudden alert sit-up. The cloud was anything
round a hundred yards from them, and they could just see the slow
curling twisting movement of its face. And--what had suddenly startled
them--they could see another machine, still buried back in the cloud,
and looming large and distorted by the mist, but plainly flying out of
it and straight at them.
What followed was over and done in the space of seconds, although
it may seem long in the telling, as it certainly was age-long in the
suspense of the happening and waiting for the worst of it. Billy
perhaps, powerless to act, able only to sit tense and staring, felt the
strain the worst, although it must have been bad enough for Charger,
knowing that their slender hope of escape hung on his quick thinking
and action. This was no clear case of following his simple plan of
charging and waiting for the Hun to flinch. The whole success of the
plan depended on the Hun seeing and knowing the charge was coming--on
his nerve failing to meet it. Charger didn't even know this was a Hun.
He might be one of ours. He might have seen them, and at that very
second be swerving to miss them. He might be blinded in the cloud and
know nothing of them driving full-on into him. All this went through
Charger's mind in a flash, and almost in that same flash he had decided
on his action and taken it. He thrust the nose of Y221 steeply down.
Even in the fraction of time it took for him to decide and his hand to
move the control lever he could see the difference in the misty shape
before him, could judge by the darkening, hardening and solidifying
outline the speed of their approach. And then, exactly as his bows
plunged down, he saw and knew that what he feared had happened--the
other pilot had seen him, had thought and acted exactly as he had.
Charger saw the thin line of the edge-on wings broaden, the shadowy
shape of the tail appear above them, just as he had seen it so often
when the Hun he charged had flinched and ducked. But then the flinching
had meant safety to him driving straight ahead--now it meant disaster,
dipping as he was fairly to meet the other.
Again for the fraction of a second he hesitated--should he push on
down, or turn up? Which would the other do? And again before the
thought was well framed it was decided and acted on. He pulled the
stick hard in, zoomed up, and held his breath, waiting. The shape was
clearer and harder, must be almost out of the cloud--doubtful even now
if Y221 had time and room to rise clear--all right if the other held on
down, but----
The nose of his machine swooped up, and as it did, and before it shut
out his view ahead, Charger, with a cold sinking inside him, saw the
outline ahead flash through changing shapes again, the wings narrow
and close to edge-on view, open and widen again with the tail dropping
below. Again the other man's thought and action had exactly followed
his own. No time to do more; by the solid appearance he knew the other
machine must be just on the edge of the cloud, and they were almost
into it, its face already stirring and twisting to the propeller rush.
Charger's one thought at the moment was to see his opponent's nose
thrust out--to know was it a Hun or one of ours.
Billy Bones, sitting tight with fingers locked on the cockpit edge, had
seen, followed and understood every movement they had made, the full
meaning of that changing outline before them, the final nearness shown
by the solidity of the approaching grey shape; and the one thought in
his mind was a memory of two men meeting face to face on a pavement,
both stepping sideways in the same direction, stepping back, hesitating
and stepping aside again, halting, still face to face, and glaring or
grinning at each other. Here they were doing just the same, only up and
down instead of sideways--and here there was no stopping.
He too saw the spread of wings loom up and out of either side of them,
rushing up to meet them. The spread almost matched and measured their
own--which meant a nose-to-nose crash. The cloud face was stirring,
swirling, tearing open from the rush of their opposing windage. Had
Charger time to--no, no time. They must be just ... it would be on the
very cloud edge they would meet--were meeting (why didn't Charger turn,
push her down, do something--anything) ... meeting ... (no escape after
this collision--end on!) ... _now!_
Next instant they were in darkness--thick, wet, clammy darkness. No
shock and crash of collision yet ... or yet. Billy didn't understand.
Was he dead? Could you be killed so instantaneously you didn't feel
it? It wasn't quite dark--and he could feel the cockpit rim under his
hands--and----
They burst clear of the cloud, with trailing wisps sucking astern
after them. He was bewildered. Then, even as Charger turned and shouted
the explanation, he guessed at it. "Shadow--our own shadow," yelled
Charger, and Billy, nodding in answer, could only curse himself for a
fool not to have noticed (as he had noticed really without reasoning
why) that the blurred, misty shape had grown smaller as well as sharper
as they approached. "I didn't think of it either," Charger confessed
after they were back on the 'drome, "and it scared me stiff. Looked
just like a machine in thick cloud--blurred, sort of, and getting
clearer as it came out to the edge."
"It was as bad as that beastly Hun," said Billy, "or worse"; and
Charger agreed.
Now two experiences of that sort might easily break any man's nerve,
and most men would need a spell off after an episode like the collision
one. But Charger's nerve was none the worse, and although Billy swore
his never really recovered, the two of them soon after put through
another nose-on charge at a Hun, in which Charger went straight as
ever, and when the Hun zoomed up and over, Billy had kept his nerve
enough to have his gun ready and to put a burst of bullets up and into
him from stem to stern and send him down in flames.
Everyone in the Mess agreed here that the two were good stout men and
had nothing wrong with their nerves.
"Not much," said the narrator, "and they're still goin' strong. But you
remember what started me to tell you about them?"
"Let's see--yes," said one or two. "We were talking about the joke of
that couple to-day being so scared by a bit of fast driving on a clear
road."
"Right," said the other, and laughed. "Heaps of people out here know
those two, and it's a standing joke that you can't hire them to sit on
the front seat of a car or a tender or travel anything over fifteen
miles an hour in anything on wheels."
He waited a moment for some jests and chuckles to subside, and
finished, grinning openly. "They are the two I told you about--Charger
Wicks and Billy Bones!"
There was dead silence for a minute. Then, "Good Lord!" said one of the
quartette faintly, and "Wh--which was Charger?" faltered another. "In
their flying kit we couldn't----"
"The smallest--the one you called the pale-faced, nervy-looking little
'un," said "A" Flight Commander.
"Help!" said the other weakly. "And I--I recommended him 'Sulphurine
Pills for Shaken Nerves.' Oh, help!"
"Yes," said the last of the demoralised quartette miserably, "and he
thanked us, and said he'd write it down the minute he got back."
There was another pause. Then, "Such a joke!" said someone, quoting
from the opening chapter of the quartette's story--"_such_ a joke!" And
the Mess broke in a yell of uproarious laughter.
The quartette did not laugh.
IV
A GOOD DAY
Half an hour before there was a hint of dawn in the sky the Flight was
out with the machines lined up on the grass, the mechanics busy about
them, the pilots giving preliminary tests and runs to their engines.
There had been showers of rain during the night, welcome rain which had
laid the dust on the roads and washed it off the hedges and trees--rain
just sufficient to slake the thirst of the parched ground and grass,
without bringing all the discomfort of mud and mire which as a rule
comes instantly to mind when one speaks of "rain" at the Front.
It was a summer dawn, fresh, and cool, and clean, with the raindrops
still gemming the grass and leaves, a delicious scent of moist earth in
the balmy air, a happy chorus of chirping, twittering birds everywhere,
a "great," a "gorgeous," a "perfect" morning, as the pilots told each
other.
A beautiful Sabbath stillness, a gentle calm hung over the aerodrome
until the machines were run out and the engines began to tune up. But
even in their humming, thrumming, booming notes there was nothing harsh
or discordant or greatly out of keeping with the air of peace and
happiness. And neither, if one had not known what it was, would the
long heavy rumble that beat down wind have wakened any but peaceful
thoughts. It might have been the long lazy boom of the surf beating in
on a sandy beach, the song of leaping waterfalls, the distant rumble of
summer thunder ... except perhaps for the quicker drum-like roll that
rose swelling every now and then through it, the sharper, yet dull and
flat, thudding bumps and thumps that to any understanding ear marked
the sound for what it was--the roar of the guns.
Already the guns were hard at it; had been for days and nights past, in
fact; would be harder at it than ever as the light grew on this summer
morning, for this was the day set for the great battle, was within an
hour or two of the moment marked for the attack to begin.
The Squadron Commander was out long before the time detailed for
the Flight to start. He spoke to some of the pilots, looked round,
evidently missed someone, and was just beginning "Where is----" when he
caught sight of a figure in flying clothes hurrying out from the huts.
The figure halted to speak to a pilot and the Major called impatiently,
"Come along, boy. Waiting for you." "Right, sir," called the other, and
then laughingly to his companion, "Worst of having a brother for C.O.
Always privileged to chase you."
"Flight Leader ought to be first, Sonny, not last," said the Major as
the boy came up. "Sorry, Jim," said the boy, "I'm all ready," and ran
on to his waiting machine.
One by one the pilots clambered aboard and settled themselves in their
seats, and one after another the engines were started, sputtering and
banging and misbehaving noisily at first in some cases, but quickly
steadying, and, after a few grunts and throaty _whurrumphs_, picking up
their beat, droning out the deep note that rises tone by tone to the
full long roaring song of perfect power.
The Major walked along the line, halted at each machine, and spoke a
word or two to each pilot. He stood a little longer at the end machine
until the pilot eased his engine down and its roar dropped droning to a
quiet "ticking over."
"All right and all ready, Sonny?" said the Major.
"All correct, sir," said Sonny laughingly, and with a half-joking
salute. "Feel fine, Jim, and the old bus is in perfect trim."
"Think the rain has gone," said the Major. "It's going to be a fine
day, I fancy."
"It's just topping," cried Sonny, wrinkling his nose and sniffing
luxuriously. "Air's as full of sweet scent as a hay meadow at home."
"Flight, got your orders all clear to start?"
Sonny nodded. "Yes, we'll show you the usual star turn take-off all
right. You watch us."
The Major glanced at his wrist-watch and at the paling sky. "Almost
time. Well, take care of yourself, Sonny." He put his hand up on
the edge of the cockpit, and Sonny slid his glove off, and gave an
affectionate little squeeze to the fingers that came over the edge.
"I'll be all right, Jim, boy. We're going to have a good day. Wish you
were coming with us."
"Wish I were," said the Major. "Good luck," and he stepped and walked
out in front of the line of machines, halted, and glanced at his watch
and up at the sky again.
The half-dozen machines, too, stood waiting and motionless, except for
the answering quiver that ran through them to their engines' beat.
Down from the line the throbbing roll of the gunfire rose louder and
heavier, with a new, an ugly and sinister snarling note running through
it. The flat thudding reports of the nearer Heavies came at quicker and
closer intervals, the rumble of the further and smaller pieces ran up
to the steady unbroken roar of drum-fire.
The wind was coming from the line and the machines were lined up
facing into it, so that the pilots had before them the jumping,
flickering lights which flamed up across the sky from the guns'
discharge. Earlier, these flashes had blazed up in broad sheets of
yellow-and orange-tinted light from the horizon to half way up the
height of the sky, leaped and sank, leaped again and beat throbbing and
pulsing wave on wave, or flickering and quivering jerkily for seconds
on end, dying down, and immediately flaring up in wide sheet-lightning
glows. Now, in the growing light the gun-flashes showed more and more
faintly, in sickly pallid flashes. There was no halt or pause between
the jumping lights now; they trembled and flickered unceasingly, with
every now and then a broader, brighter glare wiping out the lesser
lights.
The pilots sat watching the battle lights, listening to the shaking
battle thunder, and waiting the Squadron Commander's signal to go. The
birds were chattering happily and noisily, and a lark climbed, pouring
out long shrill bursts of joyful song; somewhere over in the farmyard
beside the 'drome a cock crowed shrilly, and from one of the workshops
came the cheerful clink-link, clink-link of hammers on an anvil.
It was all very happy and peaceful--except for the jumping gun-flashes
and rolling gunfire; life was very sweet and pleasant--unless one
thought of life over there in the trenches, and what the next hour or
two would bring. Everyone knew there was "dirty work" ahead. It was
the first really big "show" the Squadron had been in; they had been
in plenty of the ordinary O.P.'s (Offensive Patrols) and air-scraps,
but this was the real big thing, a great battle on the ground, and a
planned attack on the grand scale in the air, which was to sweep the
sky of Huns ... and the gunfire was still growing ... and the lark up
there was bursting his throat to tell them what a pleasant place the
world was on this summer morning, with the raindrops fresh on the grass
and the breeze cool in the trees.
Nearly time! The Flight Leader ran his engine up again, its humming
drone rising to a full deep-chested roar. The other pilots followed
suit, engine after engine picking up the chorus and filling the air
with deafening and yet harmonious sound. A man stood just clear of
the wing-tips to either side of each machine holding a cord fast to
the wood blocks chocked under the wheels; another man or two clung to
each tail, holding it down against the pull of the propeller, their
sleeves, jacket tails, and trouser legs fluttering wildly in the gales
which poured aft from the whirling screws and sent twigs and leaves
and dust flying and dancing back in a rushing stream. So the pilots
sat for a minute, their faces intent and earnest, listening to the hum
and beat of their engines and note of their propellers' roar, watching
the Flight Leader's movements out of the tail of their eyes. He eased
his engine down; and promptly every other engine eased. He waved his
hand to right and left, and the waiting men jerked the chocks clear
of his wheels; and five other hands waved and five other pairs of
chocks jerked clear. He moved forward, swung to the right with a man
to each wing tip to help swing him, and rolled steadily out into the
pen; and five other machines moved forward, swung right, and followed
in line astern of him. He wheeled to the left, moved more quickly,
opened his engine up, ran forward at gathering speed. Moving slowly his
machine had looked like a lumbering big fat beetle; skimming rapidly
across the grass, with its nose down and its tail up, it changed to an
excited hen racing with outstretched head and spread wings; then--a
lift--an upward swoop and rush--and she was ... a swallow, an eagle,
a soaring gull--any of these you like as symbols of speed and power
and grace, but best symbol of all perhaps, just herself, for what
she was--a clean-built, stream-lined, hundred-and-umpty horse, fast,
fighting-scout aeroplane.
The Squadron Commander stood watching the take-off of the Flight with
a thrill of pride, and truly it was a sight to gladden the heart of
any enthusiast. As the Flight Leader's machine tucked up her tail and
raced to pick up speed, the second machine had followed her round her
curve, steadied, and began to move forward, gathering way in her very
wheel-tracks. As the Leader hoicked up and away, the second machine
was picking up her skirts and making her starting rush; and the third
machine was steadying round the turn to follow. As the second left the
ground, the third began to make her run, and the fourth was round the
turn and ready to follow. So they followed, machine by machine, evenly
spaced in distance apart, running each other's tracks down, leaping
off within yards of the same point, each following the other into the
air as if they were tied on lengths of a string. It was a perfect
exhibition of Flight Leadership--and following. One turn round the
'drome they made, and the Flight was in perfect formation and sailing
off to the east, climbing as it went. The Commander stood and watched
them gain their height in one more wide sweeping turn and head due
east, then moved towards the huts.
The hammers were still beating out their cheery clink-link, the birds
chirping and twittering; the lark, silenced or driven from the sky by
these strange monster invaders, took up his song again and shrilled
out to all the world that it was a joy to live--to live--to live--this
perfect summer morning.
And the guns replied in sullen rolling thunder.
* * * * *
The last red glow of sunset was fading out of the square of sky seen
through the open Squadron-office window. The Major sat in his own place
at the centre of the table, and his Colonel, with the dust of motor
travel still thick on his cap and coat, sat by the empty fireplace
listening and saying nothing. A young lad, with leather coat thrown
open and leather helmet pushed back on his head, stood by the table and
spoke rapidly and eagerly. He was one of the Patrol that had left at
dawn, had made a forced landing, had only just reached the 'drome, and
had come straight to the office to report and tell his tale.
"I have the Combat Report, of course," said the Major; "you might read
it first--and I've some other details; but I'd like to know anything
further you can tell."
The lad read the Report, a bare dozen lines, of which two and a half
told the full tale of a brave man's death--"_as he went down out of
control he signalled to break off the fight and return, and then for
the Deputy to take command. He was seen to crash_."
"That's true, sir," said the lad, "but d'you know--d'you see what
it--all it meant? We'd been scrappin' half an hour. We were on our last
rounds and our last pints of petrol ... against seventeen Huns, and
we'd crashed four and put three down out of control ... they were beat,
and we knew it, and meant to chase 'em off."
He had been speaking rapidly, almost incoherently, but now he steadied
himself and spoke carefully.
"Then _he_ saw their reinforcements comin' up, one lot from north,
t'other from south. They'd have cut us off. We were too busy scrappin'
to watch. They had us cold, with us on our last rounds and nearly out
of petrol. But _he_ saw them. He was shot down then--I dunno whether it
was before or after it that he saw them; but he was goin' down right
out of control--dead-leafing, then a spin, then leafing again. And he
signalled----" The boy gulped, caught and steadied his voice again,
and went on quietly. "You know; there's half a dozen coloured lights
stuck in the dash-board in front of him--and his Verey pistol in the
rack beside him. He picked out the proper coloured light--goin' down
helplessly out of control--and took his pistol out of the rack ... and
loaded it ... and put it over the side and fired his signal, 'Get back
to the 'drome--return home,' whatever it is exactly--we all knew it
meant to break off the scrap and clear out, anyway. But he wasn't done
yet. He picked another light--the proper coloured light again ... and
still knowin' he'd crash in the next few seconds ... and loaded and
fired, 'I am out of action. Deputy Flight Leader carry on.' ... Then
... he crashed...."
The boy gulped again and stopped, and for a space there was dead
silence.
"Thank you," said the Squadron Commander at last, very quietly, "I
won't ask you for more now."
The boy saluted and turned, but the Major spoke again. "There's a
message here I've just had. You might like to read it."
The pilot took it and read a message of congratulations and thanks
from Headquarters on the work of the Air Services that day, saying how
the Huns had been driven out of the air, how so many of them had been
crashed, so many driven down out of control, with slight losses of so
many machines to us. "On all the fronts engaged," the message finished,
"the Squadrons have done well, and the Corps has had a good day."
"A good day," said the boy bitterly, and spat a gust of oaths.
"I--pardon, sir," he said, catching the Major's eye and the Colonel's
quick glance. "But--Sonny was my pal; I was his chum, the best chum he
had----" He checked himself again, and after a pause, "No, sir," he
said humbly, "I beg your pardon. _You_ were always that to Sonny." He
saluted again, very gravely and exactly, turned, and went.
The Colonel rose. "It's true, too," said the Major, "I was; and he was
the dearest chum to me. I fathered him since he was ten, when our Pater
died. I taught him to fly--took him up dual myself, and I remember he
was quick as a monkey in learning. I watched his first solo, with my
heart in my mouth; and I had ten times the pride he had himself when he
put his first wings up. And now ... he's gone."
"He saved his Flight," said the Colonel softly. "You heard. It's him
and his like that make the Corps what it is. They show the way, and the
others carry on. They go down, but"--he tapped his finger slowly on the
message lying on the table, "but ... the Corps 'has had A Good Day.'"
(_To the tune of "John Brown's Body."_)
Half the Flight may crash to-day and t'other half to-night,
_But_ the Flight does dawn patrol, before to-morrow's light,
And if we live or if we die, the Corps still wins the fight,
And the war goes rolling on.
V
A ROTTEN FORMATION
The Major lifted his head from the pile of papers he was reading and
signing, and listened to the hum of an engine passing over the office
and circling down to the 'drome. "One of ours," he said. "Flight coming
down, I suppose. They're rather late."
An officer lounging on a blanket-covered truckle bed murmured something
in reply and returned to the sixpenny magazine he was devouring. The
noise of the engine droned down to the ground level, ceased, stuttered,
and rose, sank again, and finally stopped. The C.O. hurried on with his
papers, knowing the pilots of the Flight would be in presently to make
their reports.
In three minutes the door banged open noisily, and the Flight Leader
clumped heavily in. Such of his features as could be seen for a leather
helmet coming low on his forehead and close round his cheeks, and a
deep collar turned up about his chin, disclosed an expression of bad
temper and dissatisfaction.
"Hullo, Blanky," said the Major cheerfully. "Made rather a long job of
it, didn't you? Any Huns about?"
Now Blanky had an established and well-deserved reputation for bad
language, and although usually a pilot is expected more or less to
modify any pronounced features in language in addressing his C.O.,
there are times when he fails to do so, and times when the C.O. wisely
ignores the failure. This apparently was one of the times, and the
Major listened without remark to a stream of angry and sulphurous
revilings of the luck, the Huns, the fight the Flight had just
come through, and finally--or one might say firstly, at intervals
throughout, and finally--the Flight itself.
"Three blessed quarters of a bloomin' hour we were scrappin'," said
Blanky savagely, "and I suppose half the blistering machines in the
blinking Flight are shot up to everlastin' glory. I know half the
flamin' controls and flyin' wires are blanky well cut on my goldarn
bus. And two confounded Huns' brimstone near got me, because the
cock-eyed idiot who should have been watching my plurry tail went
hare-in' off to heaven and the Hot Place. But no-dash-body watched
any-darn-body's tail. Went split-armin' around the ruddy sky like a
lot of runaway racin' million-horse-power comets. Flight! Dot, dash,
asterisk! Formation! Stars, stripes, and spangles----"
He broke off with a gesture of despair and disgust. None of this
harangue was very informing, except it made clear that the Flight had
been in a fight, and that Blanky was not pleased with the result or the
Flight. The Major questioned gently for further details, but hearing
the note of another descending engine Blanky went off at a tangent
again. Here one of them came ... about half an hour after him ... wait
till he saw them ... he'd tell them all about it ... and so on.
"Did you down any Huns?" asked the Major, and Blanky told him No, not
one single, solitary, stream-line Hun crashed, and couldn't even swear
to any out of control. Before the Major could say more, the office door
opened to admit a leather-clad pilot grinning cheerfully all over his
face. Blanky whirled and burst out on him, calling him this, that, and
the other, demanding to know what the, where the, why the, advising
him to go'n learn to drive a beastly wheel-barrow, and buy a toy gun
with a cork on a string to shoot with. The bewildered pilot strove to
make some explanation, to get a word in edgeways, but he hadn't a hope
until Blanky paused for breath. "I didn't break formation for more'n
a minute----" he began, when Blanky interrupted explosively, "Break
formation--no, 'cos there wasn't a frescoed formation left to break. It
had gone to gilt-edged glory, and never came back. But I was there, and
your purple place was behind me. Why the which did you leave there?"
"Because I'd winged the Hun that was sitting on your tail," said the
other indignantly. "I had to go after him to get him."
"Get him," said Blanky contemptuously. "Well, why didn't you?"
"I did," said the pilot complacently. At that Blanky broke loose and
cried aloud for the wrath to descend and annihilate any man who could
stand there and deliberately murder the truth. "But I _did_ get him. I
watched him crash right enough," retorted the maligned one. Blanky was
still yelling at him, when in came another couple talking eagerly and
also with faces wreathed in smiles, and evidently well pleased with the
world. "Hullo, Blanky," said the first. "Pretty good show, eh?"
Blanky wheeled and stared at him as if in dumb amazement. "Blanky
doesn't think so," said the Major softly. "He's complaining a good deal
that your formation wasn't very good."
"Good, Major," exploded Blanky again. "It was worse than very beastly
bad. I never adverbed saw such an adjectived rank bad formation. It was
a rotten formation. And then Billie tells me--has the crimson cheek to
say he crashed a constellation Hun."
"Ask Tom there," said Billie. "Tom, didn't you see me put one down?"
Tom couldn't be sure. He'd been too busy with a Hun himself. He and the
Diver had one fellow between them, and both shootin' like stink at him,
and were watching after to see if he crashed----
"Crashed," burst in Blanky. "My sainted sacred aunt. Another fellow
walking in his sleep and killing criss-cross Huns in his dithering
dreams. Any imagining more of you get a fabulous freak Hun?"
The Diver said mildly, "Yes," he'd got one--not counting the one
between him and Tom, which might have been either's. Blanky was
beginning again, when the Major stopped him. "This is getting too
complicated," he said. "Let's get the lot together--observers and
all--and see if we can make anything of this business."
A babble of voices was heard outside, the door banged open, and in
jostled another batch of pilots and observers talking at the pitch of
their voices, laughing, shouting questioning, answering, trampling
their heavy flying boots noisily on the bare wood floor, turning the
little office hut into a regular bear-garden. Their leather coats
were unbuttoned and flapping, their long boots hung wrinkled about
their knees or were pulled thigh-high, scarves swathed their throats
or dangled down their chests, enormous furry gauntletted gloves hid
their hands. Some still wore their leather helmets with goggles pushed
up over their foreheads; others had taken them off, and looked like
some strange pantomime monsters with funnily disproportionate faces
and heads emerging from the huge leather collars. For minutes the
room was a hopeless bedlam of noise. Everyone talked at once: all,
slightly deaf perhaps from the long-endured roar of the engines, and
rush of the wind, talked their loudest. They compared notes of flashing
incidents seen for a fraction of a second in the fighting, tried to
piece together each others' seeings and doings, told what had happened
to them and their engines and machines, asked questions, and, without
waiting for an answer, asked another, or answered somebody else's.
The voice of Blanky haranguing some of the last-comers, calling down
curses on their misdeeds, rose through any break in the hubbub. The
Major sat for some minutes listening to the uproar, catching beginnings
and middles and loose ends of sentences here and there from one or
another: "Gave him a good half drum." ... "Shot away my left aileron
control." ... "Went hare-ing off over Hunland at his hardest." ...
"Pulled everything in sight and pushed the others, but couldn't get
her straightened." ... "A two-inch tear in my radiator, an' spoutin'
steam like an old steam laundry." ... And then the voice of Blanky
spitting oaths and "It was the rottenest formation I ever saw,
abso-blanky-lutely _rotten_." His sentence was swamped again in the
flood of talk and fragments of sentences. "Then it jammed--number three
stoppage and" ... "yellin' myself black in the face, but couldn't make
him hear." ... "I hate those filthy explosive bullets of theirs." ...
"Chucked her into a spin." ... "Missing every other stroke, fizzing and
spitting like a crazy Tom cat." ... "I ask you now, I _ask_ you what
could I do?" ... "Down flamin' like a disembowelled volcano."
The Major called, called again, raised his voice and shouted, and
gradually the noise died down.
"Now, let's get to business," he said. "I want to know what happened.
Blanky, let's hear you first."
Blanky told his story briefly. The formation of six machines had run
into twenty-two Huns--four two-seaters, the rest fighting scouts--and
had promptly closed with and engaged them. Blanky here threw in a few
brief but pungent criticisms on the Flight's behaviour and "rotten
formation" during the fight, mentioned baldly that they had scrapped
for about three-quarters of an hour, and although there were certainly
fewer Huns in at the finish than had begun, none, so far as he knew,
had been crashed. All the Flight had returned, mostly with a good few
minor damages to machines, but no casualties to men.
"Now," said the Major, "some of you claim Huns crashed, don't you? Let
'em alone, Blanky, to tell their own yarns."
The first pilot told of running fights, said he had sent at least one
down out of control, and saw one crash. His observer corroborated the
account; Blanky pooh-poohed it scornfully. He contradicted flatly and
hotly another pilot who said he had crashed his Hun, and in the middle
of the argument the last pilot came in.
"Here's Dicky. Ask him. He was close up, and saw me get 'im," said the
denied victor.
"Dicky," cried Blanky, "I've been waiting for--here, you cock-eyed
quirk, what in the Hot Place did you mean by bargin' across the nose of
my bus when I'd just got a sanguinary Hun in my ensanguined sights. You
blind, blithering no-good...."
"What's that, Blanky? What d'you say?" remarked Dicky cheerfully.
"Wait a bit. My ears...." He gripped his nose and violently "blew
through his ears" to remove the deafness that comes to a man who has
descended too quickly from a height. "Didn't you see me get that Hun,
Dicky?" demanded the Diver. "Why didn't you keep formation? Served you
something well otherthing right if I'd shot you, blinding across under
my gory prop...."
Dicky gripped his nose and blew again. "Wait a minute--can't hear
right...."
The talk was boiling up all round them again, in claims of a kill,
counter-claims, corroborations, and denials, and the Major sat
back and let it run for a bit. Blanky, the Diver, and Dicky held a
three-cornered duel, Blanky strafing wildly, the Diver demanding
evidence of his kill and Dicky holding his nose and blowing, and
returning utterly misfitting answers to both. He caught a word of
Blanky's tirade at last, something about "silly yahoo bashing around,"
misinterpreted it evidently, and, still holding his nose, grinned
cheerfully and nodded. "Did I crash a Hun?" he said. "Sure thing I did.
Put 'im down in flames."
The Diver leaned close and yelled in Dicky's ear: "Didn't I
crash--one--too?" Dicky blew again. "No, I didn't crash two," he said.
"Only one, I saw, though there was another blighter----"
Blanky turned disgustedly to the Major. "They're crazy," he said. "I
know I didn't see one single unholy Hun crashed in the whole sinful
show."
"Between them they claim five," said the Major, "and you say none. What
about yourself? Didn't you get any?"
"No," said Blanky shortly. "One or two down out of control, but I
didn't watch 'em, and they probably straightened out lower down."
(Blanky, it may be mentioned, has a record of never having claimed a
single Hun crashed, but is credited, nevertheless, with a round dozen
from entirely outside evidence.)
The Major spent another noisy three minutes trying to sift the tangled
evidence and claims of crashes, then gave it up. "Write your reports,"
he said, "and we'll have to wait and see if any confirmation comes in
of any crashes. You were near enough to the line for crashes to be
seen, weren't you?"
"Near enough?" said Blanky. "Too disgustingly near. I suppose anyone
that knows a bus from a banana would recognise the make of ours, and
I'm rank ashamed to imagine what the whole blinking line must have
thought of the Squadron and the paralysed performance."
The bir-r-r of the telephone bell cut sharply through the noisy talk,
and the Major shouted for silence. He got it at last, and the room
listened to the one-sided conversation that followed. Some of the
men continued their talk in whispers, Blanky fumbled out and lit a
cigarette, Dicky dropped on the bed beside the man with the book, who,
through all the uproar, had kept his eyes glued to the magazine pages.
"What you got there?" asked Dicky conversationally. "Any good?"
"Good enough for me to want to read," snapped the other. "But a man
couldn't read in this row if he was stone deaf."
"Well, y'see, they're all a bit bucked with the scrap," said Dicky
apologetically.
"Oh, bust the scrap," said the reader. "I'm sick of scraps and Huns.
Do dry up and let me read," and he buried himself again in the fiction
that to him at least was stranger than the naked truth that rioted
about his unheeding ears.
The Major's end of the talk consisted at first of "Yes ... yes ... yes
... oh, yes," and then, more intelligibly, "Yes, pretty good scrap
evidently.... No, they're all back, thanks.... Thanks, I'm glad you
think--what?... Are you sure?... Quite sure? Good. There's been rather
an argument.... Six? Quite certain?... Thanks very much.... I suppose
you'll send a report confirming.... Right. Thanks.... Good-bye."
He put the receiver down on the stand and turned to Blanky with a
smile twitching his lips. "Our Archies," he explained, "rang up to tell
me they'd watched the whole show----" "Pretty sight, too," growled
Blanky. The Major went on: "and to congratulate the Squadron on a
first-class fight. And they positively confirm six crashes, Blanky;
saw them hit the ground and smash. Some others seen low down out of
control, and could hardly recover, but weren't seen actually to crash.
So we only get six--and as the others only claim five, you must have
got yours after all."
"Course he got it," struck in Blanky's observer; "only I knew he'd
argue me down if I----"
"Oh, shut up," said Blanky. "How could you see? You were looking over
the tail, anyway."
"Well, I knew I got mine," said Dicky.
"Me, too" ... "And I was sure----" ... "And I saw mine."
"For the love of Christmas, dry up," stormed Blanky. "If you could only
fly as well as you can talk, you might make a half-baked blistering
Flight. As it is you're more like a fat-headed flock o' incarnadined
crows split-armin' over a furrow in a ploughed field. Of all the
dazzling dud formations I ever saw----"
"Never mind, Blanky," said the Major. "You got six confirmed crashes
amongst you, so it wasn't too dud a show."
"I don't care," said Blanky, tramping to the door and jerking it open.
"I don't care a tuppenny tinker's dash what Huns we got." He swung
through, and, turning in the doorway with his hand on the knob, shouted
back with all the emphasis of last-word finality: "I tell you it was a
ROTTEN formation, anyway."
Behind him the door _slammed_ tremendously.
VI
QUICK WORK
It is difficult, if not indeed impossible, to convey in words what
is perhaps the most breath-catching wonder of air-fighting work, the
furious speed, the whirling rush, the sheer rapidity of movement of the
fighting machines, and the incredible quickness of a pilot's brain,
hand, and eye to handle and manœuvre a machine, and aim and shoot a gun
under these speed conditions. I can only ask you to try to remember
that a modern fast scout is capable of flying at well over a hundred
miles an hour on the level, and at double that (one may not be too
exact) in certain circumstances, and that in such a fight as I am going
to try to describe here the machines were moving at anything between
these speeds. If you can bear this in mind, or even realise it--I
am speaking to the non-flying reader--you will begin to understand
what air men-o'-war work is, to believe what a pilot once said of air
fighting: "You don't get time to think. If you stop to think, you're
dead."
When the Flight of half a dozen scout machines was getting ready to
start on the usual "offensive patrol" over Hunland, one of the pilots,
"Ricky-Ticky" by popular name, had some slight trouble with his engine.
It was nothing much, a mere reluctance to start up easily, and since he
did get her going before the Flight was ready to take off he naturally
went up with it. He had a little more trouble in the upward climb to
gain a height sufficient for the patrol when it crossed the line to
stand the usual respectable chance of successfully dodging the usual
Archie shells. Ricky, however, managed to nurse her up well enough
to keep his place in the formation, and was still in place when they
started across the lines. Before they were far over Hunland he knew
that his engine was missing again occasionally and was not pulling as
she ought to, and from a glance at his indicators and a figuring of
speed, height, and engine revolutions was fairly certain that he was
going almost full out to keep up with the other machines, which were
flying easily and well within their speed.
This was where he would perhaps have been wise to have thrown up and
returned to his 'drome. He hung on in the hope that the engine would
pick up again--as engines have an unaccountable way of doing--and even
when he found himself dropping back out of place in the formation he
still stuck to it and followed on. He knew the risk of this, knew that
the straggler, the lame duck, the unsupported machine, is just exactly
what the Hun flyer is always on the look out for; knew, too, that his
Flight Commander before they had started had warned him (seeing the
trouble he was having to start up) that if he had any bother in the
air or could not keep place in the formation to pull out and return.
Altogether, then, the trouble that swooped down on him was his own
fault, and you can blame him for it if you like. But if you do you'll
have to blame a good many other pilots who carry on, and, in spite of
the risk, do their best to put through the job they are on. He finally
decided--he looked at the clock fixed in front of him to set a time and
found it showed just over one minute to twelve--in one minute at noon
exactly, if his engine had not steadied down to work, he would turn
back for home.
At that precise moment--and this was the first warning he had that
there were Huns about--he heard a ferocious rattle of machine-gun fire,
and got a glimpse of streaking flame and smoke from the tracer bullets
whipping past him. The Huns, three of them and all fast fighting
scouts, had seen him coming, had probably watched him drop back out of
place in the Flight, had kept carefully between him and the sun so that
his glances round and back had failed to spot them in the glare, and
had then dived headlong on him, firing as they came. They were coming
down on him from astern and on his right side, or, as the Navals would
put it, on his starboard quarter, and they were perhaps a hundred to a
hundred and fifty yards off when Ricky first looked round and saw them.
His first and most natural impulse was to get clear of the bullets
that were spitting round and over him, and in two swift motions he had
opened his engine full out and thrust his nose a little down and was
off full pelt. Promptly the three astern swung a little, opened out as
they wheeled, dropped their noses, and came after Ricky, still a little
above him, and so fairly astern that only the centre one could keep a
sustained accurate fire on him. (A scout's gun being fixed and shooting
between the blades of the propeller--gun and engine being synchronised
so as to allow the bullet to pass out as the blade is clear of the
muzzle--means that the machine itself must be aimed at the target for
the bullets to hit, and the two outer machines of the three could only
so aim their machines by pointing their noses to converge on the centre
one--a risky manœuvre with machines travelling at somewhere about a
hundred miles an hour.)
But the fire of that centre one was too horribly close for endurance,
and Ricky knew that although his being end-on made him the smaller
target, it also made his machine the more vulnerable to a raking shot
which, piercing him fore and aft, could not well fail to hit petrol
tank, or engine, or some other vital spot. He could do nothing in the
way of shooting back, because, being a single-seater scout himself,
his two guns were trained one to shoot straight forward through the
propeller, the other, mounted on the top plane on a curved mount which
allowed the gun to be grasped by the handle above his head and pulled
back and down, to shoot from direct ahead to straight up. Neither could
shoot backward.
Ricky, the first shock of his surprise over, had gauged the situation,
and this, it must be admitted, was dangerous, if not desperate. He had
dropped back and back from the Flight, until now they were something
like a mile ahead of him. A mile, it is true, does not take a modern
machine long to cover, but then, on the other hand, neither does an air
battle take long to fight, especially with odds of three to one. With
those bullets sheeting past him and already beginning to rip and crack
through his wings, any second might see the end of Ricky. It was no use
thinking longer of running away, and even a straight-down nose-dive
offered no chance of escape, both because the Huns could nose-dive
after him and continue to keep him under fire, and because he was well
over Hunland, and the nearer he went to the ground the better target he
would make for the anti-aircraft gunners below. He must act, and act
quickly.
A thousand feet down and a quarter of a mile away was a little
patch of cloud. Ricky swerved, dipped, and drove "all out" for it.
He was into it--400 yards remember--in about the time it takes you
to draw three level quiet breaths, and had flashed through it--five
or six hundred feet across it might have been--in a couple of quick
heart-beats. The Huns followed close, and in that half-dozen seconds
Ricky had something between fifty and a hundred bullets whizzing and
ripping past and through his wings. As he leaped clear of the streaming
wisps of the cloud's edge he threw one look behind him and pulled the
joy-stick hard in to his stomach. Instantly his machine reared and
swooped up in the loop he had decided on, up and over and round. At the
first upward zoom Ricky had pulled down the handle of his top gun and
brought it into instant action. The result was that as he shot up and
over in a perfect loop the centre machine, which had been astern of
him, flashed under and straight through the stream of his bullets.
Ricky whirled down in the curve of his loop with his gun still
shooting, but, now he had finished his loop and flattened out,
shooting up into the empty air while his enemy hurtled straight on and
slightly downward ahead of him. Instantly Ricky threw his top gun out
of action, and, having now reversed positions, and having his enemy
ahead, steadied his machine to bring his bow gun sights to bear on
her. But before he could fire he saw the hostile's right upper plane
twist upward, saw the machine spin side on, the top plane rip and flare
fiercely back and upward, the lower plane buckle and break, and the
machine, turning over and over, plunge down and out of his sight. One
of his bullets evidently had cut some bracing wires or stays, and the
wing had given to the strain upon it.
So much Ricky just had time to think, but immediately found himself
in a fresh danger. The two remaining hostiles had flashed past him
at the same time as the centre one, while he threw his loop over it,
but, realising apparently on the instant what his manœuvre was, they
both swung out and round while he passed in his loop over the centre
machine. It was smart work on the part of the two flanking hostiles.
They must have instantly divined Ricky's dodge to get astern of them
all, and their immediate circle out and round counteracted it, and as
he came out of his loop brought them circling in again on him. For an
instant Ricky was so concentrated on the centre machine that he forgot
the two others; but, the centre one down and out, he was suddenly
roused to the fresh danger by two following short bursts of fire which
flashed and flamed athwart him, and caught a glimpse of the other two
closing in again astern of him and "sitting on his tail."
Both were firing as they came, and again Ricky felt the sharp rip and
crack of explosive bullets striking somewhere on his machine, and an
instant later knew the two were following him and hailing lead upon
him. He cursed savagely. He had downed one enemy, but here apparently
he was little if any better off with two intact enemies in the worst
possible position for him, "on his tail," and both shooting their
hardest.
A quick glance ahead showed him the white glint of light on the
wheeling wings of his Flight, attracted by the sight of his battle,
circling and racing to join the fight. But, fast and all as they came,
the fight was likely to be over before they could arrive, and with the
crack and snap of bullets about him and his own two guns powerless
to bear on the enemy, it looked uncomfortably like odds on the fight
ending against him. Another loop they would expect and follow over--and
the bullets were crippling him every instant.
Savagely he threw his controls over, and his machine slashed out
and down to the right in a slicing two-hundred-foot side-slip. The
right-hand machine whirled past him so close that he saw every detail
of the pilot's dress--the fur-fringed helmet, dark goggles, black
sweater. He caught his machine out of her downward slide, drove her
ahead, steadied her, and brought his sights to bear on the enemy a
scant twenty yards ahead, and poured a long burst of fire into her.
He saw the streaking flashes of his bullets pouring about and over
her top planes, dipped his muzzle a shade, and saw the bullets break
and play on and about the pilot and fuselage. Then came a leaping
flame and a spurt of black smoke whirling out from her; Ricky had a
momentary glimpse of the pilot's agonised expression as he lifted and
glanced wildly round, and next instant had only in his sight a trailing
black plume of smoke and the gleam of a white underbody as the enemy
nose-dived down in a last desperate attempt to make a landing before
his machine dissolved in flames about him.
With a sudden burst of exultation Ricky realised his changed position.
A minute before he was in the last and utmost desperate straits, three
fast and well-armed adversaries against his single hand. Now, with two
down, it was man to man--no, if he wished, it was all over, because the
third hostile had swung left, had her nose down, and was "hare-ing" for
home and down towards the covering fire of the German anti-aircraft
batteries. Already she was two to three hundred yards away, and the
first German Archie soared up and burst with a rending "Ar-r-rgh" well
astern of him.
But Ricky's blood was up and singing songs of triumph in his ears.
Two out of three downed; better make a clean job of it and bag the
lot. His nose dipped and his tail flicked up, and he went roaring
down, full out, after his last Hun. A rapid crackle of one machine-gun
after another struck his ear before ever he had the last hostile fully
centred in his sights. Ricky knew that at last the Flight had arrived
and were joining in the fight. But he paid no heed to them; his enemy
was in the ring of his sight now, so with his machine hurling down at
the limit of speed of a falling body plus all the pull of a hundred
and odd horse-power, the whole fabric quivering and vibrating under
him, the wind roaring past and in his ears, Ricky snuggled closer
in his seat, waited till his target was fully and exactly centred
in his sights, and poured in a long, clattering burst of fire. The
hostile's slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled
side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a
straight-downward rush and a crash end-on into the ground.
Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the Flight that got
this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially
reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his.
On the other hand, the rest of the Flight, after and always, with
enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky's very own, that he
had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat with
them--one down and t'other come on. If Ricky himself could not fairly
and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the Flight did for him.
"_Three!_" they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook
no modest doubts from him. And to silence all doubts the Squadron
poet composed a song which was sung by the mess with a fervour and
a generous slurring over of faulty metre (a word the poet didn't
even know the meaning of) that might have stirred the blood of a
conscientious objector. It was entitled, "Three Huns Sat on his Tail,"
and was sung to the tune of "There were Three Crows Sat on a Tree," or,
as the uninitiated may prefer, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and
it detailed the destruction of the Huns one by one, verse by verse.
When I tell you it was sung chanty fashion, with the first, second,
and last lines chorused by the mess, I can leave you to imagine the
loud-pedal, full, fortissimo effect of the "Hurrahs," and (helped out
with feet, with fists, spoons, and anything else handy to resound upon
the table) of the final rolling "Cr-r-r-ash."
There were three Huns sat on his tail,
_Hurrah, hurrah_!
But he looped over one and gave him "Hail
_Colum-bi-a_!"
He shot up the Hun so full of lead
That before he knew he was hit he was dead,
And our Archie look-out reporting said:
One!--CR-R-R-ASH!
But all this was later, and is going a little ahead of the story. As
the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language of
the combat reports, "rejoined formation and continued the patrol."
He pulled the stick towards him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he
was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at
that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly
had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine
appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during
the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept
smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly
to his tender questioning touch. He had won out. He was safe, barring
accident, to land back in his own 'drome; and there were two if not
three Huns down on his brazen own within the last--how long?
At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he
glanced at his clock, could hardly believe what it told him, was only
convinced when he recalled that promise to himself to turn back at the
end of that minute, and had his belief confirmed by the Flight's count
of the time between their first turning back and their covering the
distance to join him. His clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight,
from the firing of the first shot to the falling away of the last Hun,
had taken bare seconds over the one minute.
That pilot was right; in air fighting "you don't get time to think."
* * * * *
Quick is the word and quick is the deed
If you would live in the air-fight game;
Speed, give 'em speed, and a-top of it--speed!
(Man or machine exactly the same).
Think and stunt, move, shoot, quickly; or die,
Fight quick or die quick; when all is said,
There are two kinds of fighters who fly,
Only two kinds--the quick, and the dead.
VII
THE AIR MASTERS
It is hardly known to the general public--which seems a pity--that the
Navy has, working on the Western Front, some Air Squadrons who fly only
over the land and have not so much as seen the sea, except by chance or
from a long distance, from year's end to year's end. They have carried
into their shore-going lives a number of Navy ways, like the curt
"Thank God" grace at the end of a meal, or the mustering of all hands
for "Divisions" (Navalese for "Parade") in the morning, marking off the
time by so many "bells," hoisting and lowering at sunrise and sunset
the white ensign flown on a flagstaff on the 'drome; they stick to
their Navy ratings of petty officers and sub-lieutenants and so on, and
interlard their speech more or less with Navy lingo--a very useful and
expressive one, by the way, in describing air manœuvres--but otherwise
carry out their patrols and air work with, and on about the same lines
as, the R.F.C.
Naval Number Something is a "fighting scout" Squadron, which means
that its sole occupation in life is to hunt for trouble, to find and
fight, "sink, burn or destroy" Huns. At first thought it may seem
to the Army which fights "on the floor" that this job of a fighting
machine is one which need interest no one outside the Air Service, that
it is airman fighting against airman, and that, except from a point
of mere sporting interest, the results of these fights don't concern
or affect the rest of the Army, that the war would roll on just the
same for them whichever side had the upper hand in the air fighting.
Those who think so are very far wrong, because it is on the fighters
pure and simple that the air mastery depends. Air work is a business,
a highly complicated, completely organised and efficient business, and
one bit of it has to dovetail into another just as the Army's does.
The machines which spot for our guns, and direct the shooting of our
batteries to destroy enemy batteries which would otherwise destroy our
trenches and our men in them; the reconnaissance machines which fly
up and down Hunland all day and bring back reports of the movements
of troops and trains and the concentration or removal of forces, and
generally do work of which full and true value is known only to those
Heads running the war; the photographing machines which bring back
thousands of pictures of all sorts--the line knows a few, a very few,
of these, and their officers study very attentively the trench photos
before they go over the top in a raid or an attack, and so learn
exactly how, why, and where they are to go; the bombing machines which
blow up dumps of ammunition destined for the destruction of trenches
and men, derail trains bringing up reinforcements or ammunition to
the Hun firing line, knock about the 'dromes and the machines which
otherwise would be gun-spotting, reconnoitring, and bombing over our
lines--and perhaps some day one may tell just how many Gotha raids
have been upset, and cancelled by our bomb-raids on a Hun 'drome--all
these various working machines depend entirely for their existence
and freedom to do their work on the success of the fighting machines.
The working machines carry guns, and fight when they have to, but the
single-seater fighting machines are out for fight all the time, out
to destroy enemy fighters, or to put out of action any enemy working
machine they can come across.
The struggle for the air mastery never ceases, and although it may
never be absolute and complete, because the air is a big place to sweep
quite clear and clean, the fact that scores of our machines spend
all their flying hours anywhere over Hunland from the front lines to
fifty miles and more behind them for every one Hun who flies over ours
and, after a cruise of some minutes, races back again, is fairly good
evidence of who holds the whip hand in the air.
All this introduction is necessary to explain properly the importance
of the fighting squadrons' job, and why the winning of their fights
is of such concern to every man in the Army, and to every man, woman,
and child interested in any man in the Army. It also serves to explain
why it was that three machines of Naval Number Something "leapt into
the air" in a most tremendous hurry-skurry, the pilots finishing the
buckling of their coats (one going without a coat indeed) and putting
on goggles after they had risen, when the look-out at the Squadron
telescope reported that there were four Hun two-seater machines
circling round at about 10,000 or 12,000 feet and just far enough over
our front lines to look suspiciously like being on a gun-spotting or
"Art.-Ob." bit of business.
That such a performance should be taking place almost within sight of
their own 'drome doorstep naturally annoyed the Navals, and led to the
immediate and hurried steps which took the three machines and pilots
who were first ready into the air in "two shakes of the jib-sheet."
The three men were all veteran fighters, and their machines three of
the Squadron's best, and if the four Huns had known their reputations
and calibre it is doubtful if they would have dared to hang about and
carry on with their work as they did. There was "Mel" Byrne, a big
man with a D.S.C. and a Croix de Guerre ribbon on his breast, and a
score of crashed Huns notched to his credit, flying his "Kangaroo";
"Rip" Winkle, who had once met and attacked, single-handed, seven
Huns, shot down and crashed three hand-running and chased the others
headlong as far over Hunland as his petrol would take him: he was in
his "Minnenwerfer"; and the "next astern" was the "'Un-settler" flown
by "Ten-franc" or "Frankie" Jones, a youngster of--well, officially,
twenty, so called, not because he was in his baptism named Frank,
but because of a bet he had made with another Naval Squadron as to
which Squadron would "crash" the most Huns by a stated date. He was
desperately keen to win his often-referred-to wager--so much so in fact
that the other pilots chaffed him constantly on it and swore he would
risk more to win his bet than he would to win a V.C.
The three wasted no time in the usual circling climb over the 'drome,
but drove up full tilt and straight for the four dots in the sky. They
climbed as they went, and since the Trichord type is rather famous
for its climbing powers they made pretty good height as they went.
"Mel," in the lead, was in a desperate hurry to interrupt the enemy's
artillery-spotting work, so gave away the advantage of height and
sacrificed the greater climb they could attain with a lesser speed to
the urgent haste and need of getting in touch with the enemy. They were
still a good couple of thousand feet below when they came to within
half a mile of the Huns, and the "Kangaroo," with the others following
close, tilted steeply up and began to show what a Trichord really
could do if it were asked of her. They were gaining height so rapidly
that the Huns evidently did not like it, and two of them turned out
and drove over to a position above the Trichords. The three paid no
attention to them, but climbed steeply, swinging in towards the other
two machines which, since they still continued their circling, were
probably continuing their "shoot" and signalling back to their guns.
But the Trichords were too threatening to be left longer alone. The two
turned and flew east, with the Trichords in hot pursuit, slanted round,
and presently were joined by their friends. Then the four plunged on
the three in an almost vertical dive. Because the fighting scout only
shoots straight forward out of a fixed gun, its bows must be pointing
straight at a target before it can fire, and the Huns' straight-down
dive was meant to catch the Trichords at a disadvantage, since it was
hardly to be expected they could stand on their tails to shoot straight
up in the air. But this is almost what they did. All three, going "full
out," turned their noses abruptly up and opened fire. The Huns turned
their dive off into an upward "zoom" and a circling bank which allowed
their observers to point their guns over and down at the Trichords, and
fire a number of rounds.
But because it was now perfectly obvious that the Trichords had
attained their first and most urgent object, the breaking-off of the
Huns' "shoot" and spotting for their guns, they could now proceed to
the next desirable part of the programme--the destruction of the four
Huns by methods which would level up the fighting chances a little. The
"Kangaroo" shot out eastward and began to climb steeply, Mel expecting
that the other two would follow his tactics, get between the enemy and
their lines, and climb to or above their height. But the "'Un-settler"
was in trouble of some sort, and after firing a coloured light as a
signal to the leader meaning "Out of action; am returning home," slid
off west in a long glide with her engine shut off. Rip Winkle, on the
"Minnenwerfer," followed the "Kangaroo" east a few hundred yards and
began to climb. The four Huns at first tried to keep above the level of
the two, but it was quickly evident that the Trichords were outclimbing
them hand over fist, were going up in a most amazing lift, in "a
spiral about as steep as a Tube stair." The Huns didn't like the look
of things and suddenly turned for their lines, dropped their noses,
and went off at full speed. The two Trichords cut slanting across to
connect with them, and in half a minute were close enough to open fire.
Two against four, they fought a fierce running fight for a minute or
two. Then the "Kangaroo" swept in astern of a Hun, dived and zoomed
up under him and poured in a point-blank burst of fire. Mel saw his
bullets hailing into and splintering the woodwork of the underbody, was
just in time to throttle down and check the "Kangaroo" as the Hun's
tail flicked up and he went sweeping down in a spinning nose dive. But
a hard-pressed pilot will sometimes adopt that manœuvre deliberately to
throw a pursuer out of position, and, knowing this, Mel followed him
down to make sure he was finished, followed him watching the spin grow
wilder and wilder, and finish in a splintering crash on the ground. Mel
lifted the "Kangaroo" and drove off full pelt after the others. Two of
the Huns had dived and were skimming the ground--they were well over
Hunland by now--and the other one and the "Minnenwerfer" were wheeling
and circling and darting in and out about each other exactly like two
boxers sparring for an opening, their machine-guns rattling rapidly as
either pilot or gunner got his sights on the target. Then when he was
almost close enough to join in, Mel saw a spurt of flame and a gust
of smoke lick out from the fuselage of the Hun. The machine lurched,
recovered, and dipped over to dive down; the "Minnenwerfer" leaped in
to give her the death-blow, and under the fresh hail of bullets the Hun
plunged steeply, with smoke and flame pouring up from the machine's
body. The wind drove the flames aft, and in two seconds she was
enveloped in them, became a roaring bonfire, a live torch hurtling to
the ground. The Trichords saw her observer scramble from his cockpit,
balance an instant on the flaming body, throw his hands up and leap out
into the empty air, and go twisting and whirling down to earth.
A Hun Archie shell screamed up past the hovering Trichords and burst
over their heads, and others followed in quick succession as the two
turned and began to climb in twisting and erratic curves designed to
upset the gunners' aim. They worked east as they rose and were almost
over the lines when Mel, in one of his circlings, caught sight of
a big formation flying towards them from the west. He steadied his
machine and took another long look, and in a moment saw they were Huns,
counted them and found fourteen, most of them scouts, some of them
two-seaters of a type that Mel knew as one commonly used by the Huns on
the infrequent occasions they get a chance to do artillery-observing
work on our lines. Both Mel and Rip worked out the situation on much
the same lines, that the Huns had some important "shoot" on, were
specially keen to do some observing for their guns, had sent the four
two-seaters first and were following them up with other two-seater
observing-machines protected by a strong escort of fighters. Mel looked
round for any sight of a formation of ours that might be ready to
interrupt the game, saw none, and selecting the correct coloured light,
fired a signal to Rip saying, "I am going to attack." Rip, as a matter
of fact, was so certain he would do so that he had already commenced
to climb his machine to gain a favourable position. The fourteen were
at some 17,000 feet, several thousand above the Trichords, but here
the great climbing power of the Trichords stood to them, and they went
up and up, in swift turn on turn that brought them almost to a level
with the enemy before the Huns were within shooting distance. They
came on with the scouts flying in a wedge-shaped formation, and the
observing-machines protected and covered inside the wedge.
The odds were so hugely in their favour that it was clear they never
dreamed the two would attack their fourteen, and they drove straight
forward to cross above the lines. But the Trichords wakened them
quickly and rudely. Each wheeled out wide and clear of the formation,
closed in astern of it to either side, lifted sharply to pick up an
extra bit of useful height, dived, and came hurtling, engines going
full out and guns shooting their hardest, arrow-straight at the
two-seaters in the centre of the formation below them. Owing to the
direction of their attack, only the observers' guns on the two-seaters
had any chance to bring an effective fire to bear. It is true that the
few scouts in the rear of the wedge did fire a few scattering shots.
But scouts, you will remember, having only fixed guns shooting forward,
can only fire dead ahead in the direction the machine is travelling,
must aim the machine to hit with the gun. This means that the target
presented to them of the Trichords flashing down across their bows made
it almost impossible for them to keep a Trichord in their sights for
more than an instant, if indeed they were quick enough to get an aim at
all. Their fire went wide and harmless. The two-seaters did better, and
both Trichords had jets of flaming and smoking tracer bullets spitting
past them as they came, had several hits through their wings. But they,
because they held their machines steady and plunged down straight
as bullets themselves on to their marks, were able to keep longer,
steadier and better aim. Mel, as he drove down close to his target, saw
the gaping rents his bullets were slashing in the fuselage near the
observer, saw in the flashing instant as he turned and hoicked up and
away, the observer collapse and fall forward with his hands hanging
over the edge of his cockpit. Rip saw no visible signs of his bullets,
but saw the visible result a moment after he also had swirled up,
made a long fast climbing turn, and steadied his machine for another
dive. His Hun dropped out of the formation and down in long twisting
curves, apparently out of control. He had no time to watch her down,
because half a dozen of the Hun scouts, deciding evidently that this
couple of enemies deserved serious consideration, swung out and began
to climb after the Trichords. Mel promptly dived down past them, under
the two-seaters and up again under one. The instant he had her in the
gun-sights he let drive and saw his bullets breaking and tearing into
her. She side-slipped wildly, rolled over, and Mel watched for no more,
but turned his attention and his gun to another target.
By now the half-dozen Hun scouts had obtained height enough to allow
them to copy the Trichords' dive-and-shoot tactics, and down they came
to the long clattering fire of their machine-guns. Both Trichords had
a score of rents in wings and fuselage and tail planes, but by a mercy
no shot touched a vital part. But they could hardly afford to risk such
chances often, so went back to their plan of outclimbing and diving on
their enemies. Over and over again they did this, and because of their
far superior climb were able to keep on doing it despite every effort
of the Huns. Machine after machine they sent driving down, some being
uncertain "crashes" or "out-of-controls," but most of them being at
least definitely "driven down" since they did not rejoin the fight, and
were forced to drop to such landing-places as they could find. There
were some definite "crashes," one which fell wrapped in roaring flame
from stem to stern; another on which Rip saw his bullets slashing in
long tears across the starboard wing, the splinters fly from a couple
of the wing struts as the bullets sheared them through in splitting
ragged fragments. In an instant the whole upper wing flared upward
and back and tore off, the lower folded back to the body, flapped and
wrenched fiercely as the machine rolled over and fell, gave and ripped
loose; the port wings followed, breaking short off and away, leaving
the machine to drop like a plummet to the ground. The third certain
crash was in the later stages of the fight. The constant dive-and-zoom
of the Trichords had the desired effect of driving the Huns lower and
lower each time in their endeavour to gain speed and avoid the fierce
rushes from above. Strive as they would, they could not gain an upper
position. Some of them tried to fly wide and climb while the Trichords
were busy with the remainder; but one or other of the two leaped out
after them, hoicked up above them, drove them lower, or shot them down,
in repeated dives.
The fight that had started a good 17,000 feet up and close over the
trenches, finished at about 1,000 feet and six to seven miles behind
the German lines. At that height, the pilot of one Hun driven into a
side-slip was not able to recover in time and smashed at full speed
into the ground; another was forced so low that he tried to land, hit
a hedge and turned over; a third landed twisting sideways and at least
tore a wing away.
Then the two Trichords, splintered and rent and gaping with
explosive-bullet wounds, with their ammunition completely expended,
their oil and petrol tanks running dry, turned for home, leaving
their fourteen enemies scattered wide and low in the air, or piled
in splintered smoking wreckage along the ground below the line of
their flight. The fight with the fourteen had run without a break for
three-quarters of an hour.
They never knew exactly how many victims they had "sunk, burned or
destroyed." As they stated apologetically in the official "Combat
Report" that night: "Owing to the close presence of other active
E.A.[4] driven-down machines could not be watched to the ground."
[4] E.A.=enemy aircraft.
"Frankie" was almost more annoyed over this than he was over having
had to pull out of the action with a dud machine. "If we could have
confirmed all your crashes," he remarked regretfully, "it would have
been such a jolly boost-up to the Squadron's tally--to say nothing of
my wager."
VIII
"THE ATTACK WAS BROKEN"
The infantry who watched from their trenches one afternoon a Flight
of our machines droning over high above their heads had no inkling of
the effect that Flight was going to have on their, the infantry's,
well-being. If they had known that the work of this Flight, the
successful carrying out of its mission, was going to make all the
difference of life and death to them they might have been more
interested in it. But they did not know then, and do not know now,
and what is perhaps more surprising, the Flight itself never fully
learned the result of their patrol, because air work, so divided up and
apparently disconnected, is really a systematic whole, and only those
whose work it is to collect the threads and twist them together know
properly how much one means to the other.
This Flight was out on a photographic patrol. They had been ordered to
proceed to a certain spot over Hunland and take a series of pictures
there, and they did so and returned in due course with nothing more
unusual about the performance than rather a high average of attentions
paid to them by the Hun Archies. The photos were developed and printed
as usual within a few minutes of the machines touching the ground, and
were rushed off to their normal destinations. The photographers went to
their afternoon tea and forgot the matter.
But in a Nissen hut some miles from the photographers' 'drome afternoon
tea was held up, while several people pored over the photos with
magnifying glasses, consulted the many maps which hung round the
walls and covered the tables, spoke earnestly into telephones, and
dictated urgent notes. One result of all this activity was that Captain
Washburn, or "Washie," and his Observer Lieutenant "Pip" Smith, to
their no slight annoyance, were dragged from their tea and pushed off
on an urgent reconnaissance, and two Flights of two fighting scout
Squadrons received orders to make their patrol half an hour before the
time ordered. Washie and his Observer were both rather specialists
in reconnaissance work, and they received sufficient of a hint from
their Squadron Commander of the urgency of their job to wipe out their
regrets of a lost tea and set them bustling aboard their 'bus "Pan" and
up into the air.
It may be mentioned briefly here that three other machines went out
on the same reconnaissance. One was shot down before she was well over
the lines; another struggled home with serious engine trouble; the
third was so harried and harassed by enemy scouts that she was lucky
to be able to fight them off and get home, with many bullet holes--and
no information. Washie and Pip did better, although they too had a
lively trip. To make sure of their information they had to fly rather
low, and as soon as they began to near the ground which they wanted
to examine the Hun Archies became most unpleasantly active. A shell
fragment came up through the fuselage with an ugly _rip_, and another
smacked bursting through both right planes. Later, in a swift dive
down to about a thousand feet, "Pan" collected another assortment of
souvenirs from machine-guns and rifles, but Washie climbed her steeply
out of range, while Pip busied himself jotting down some notes of the
exceedingly useful information the low dive had brought them.
Then six Hun fighting scouts arrived at speed, and set about the
"Pan" in an earnest endeavour to crash her and her information
together. Pilot and Observer had a moment's doubt whether to fight or
run. They had already seen enough to make it urgent that they should
get their information back, and yet they were both sure there was more
to see and that they ought to see it. Their doubts were settled by the
Huns diving on them one after another, with machine-guns going their
hardest. The first went down past them spattering a few bullets through
"Pan's" tail planes as he passed. The second Pip caught fairly with a
short burst as he came past, and the Hun continued his dive, fell off
in a spin, and ended in a violent crash below. The third and fourth
dived on "Pan" from the right side and the fifth and sixth on her left.
Pip managed to wing one on the right, and sent him fluttering down
out of the fight more or less under control, and Washie stalled the
"Pan" violently, wrenched her round in an Immelman turn, and plunged
straight at another Hun, pumping a stream of bullets into him from his
bow gun. The Hun went down with a torrent of black smoke gushing from
his fuselage. Washie brought "Pan" hard round on her heel again, opened
his engine full out and ran for it, with the scattered Huns circling
and following in hard pursuit. Now "Pan" could travel to some tune when
she was really asked--and Washie was asking her now. She was a good
machine with a good engine; her pilot knew every stitch and stay, every
rod, bolt, and bearing in her (and his rigger and fitter knew that he
knew and treated him and her accordingly), every little whim in her
that it paid him to humour, every little trick that would get an extra
inch of speed out of her. A first-class pilot on a first-class scout
ought to overhaul a first-class pilot and two-seater; but either the
"Pan" or her pilot was a shade more first-class than the pursuers, and
Washie managed to keep far enough ahead to be out of accurate shooting
range and allow Pip to scrutinise the ground carefully as they flew.
For Washie was running it is true, but was running east and further out
over Hunland and the area he wanted to reconnoitre, and Pip was still
picking up the very information they had been sent to find.
When they swung north the three pursuing scouts by cutting the corner
came up on them again, and Pip left his notes to stand by his gun.
There was some brisk shooting in the next minute, but "Pan" broke clear
with another series of holes spattered through her planes and fuselage,
and Pip with the calf of his leg badly holed by an explosive bullet,
but with his gun still rapping out short bursts over the tail. They
were heading for home now, and Washie signalled Pip to speak to him.
The "Pan" is one of those comfortably designed machines with pilot's
and observer's cockpits so close together that the two men can shout
in each other's ear. Pip leaned over and Washie yelled at him. "Seen
enough? Got all you want?" "Yes." Pip nodded and tapped his note-block.
"All I want," he yelled, "and then some----" and he wiped his hand
across his wound, showed Washie the red blood, and shouted "Leg hit."
That settled it. Washie lifted the "Pan" and drove her, all out, for
home, taking the risk of some bullet-holed portion of her frame failing
to stand the strain of excessive speed rather than the risk of going
easy and letting the pursuers close for another fight with a wounded
observer to protect his tail.
"They've dropped off," shouted Pip a few minutes later. Washie swung
and began to lift the "Pan" in climbing turn on turn. "Look out," he
shouted back, "look out," and stabbed a finger out to point a group of
Huns ahead of them and cutting them off from the lines. Next minute
Pip in his turn pointed to another group coming up from the south well
above them and heading to cut them off. Washie swept round, dipped
his nose slightly, and drove at the first group. The next few minutes
were unpleasantly hot. The Huns strove to turn them, to hold them from
breaking through or past, or drive them lower and lower, while Washie
twisted and dived and zoomed and tried to dodge through or under them,
with his gun spitting short bursts every time he caught a target in
his sights; and Pip, weakening and faint from pain and loss of blood,
seconded him as best he could with rather erratic shooting.
Affairs were looking bad for them, even when "Pan" ran out and west
with no enemy ahead but with four of them clinging to her flanks and
tail and pumping quick bursts at her; but just here came in those two
Flights of our fighting scout Squadrons--quite accidentally so far as
they knew, actually of set design and as part of the ordered scheme.
Six streaking shapes came flashing down into the fight with their
machine-guns pouring long bursts of fire ahead of them, and the four
close-pursuing Huns left the "Pan" and turned to join up with their
scattered companions. Washie left them to fight it out, and turned
directly, and very thankfully, for his 'drome.
This ends the tale of "Pan," but not by any means of the result of her
work. That work, in the shape of jerky but significant reports, was
being dissected in the map-hung Nissen hut even before Pip had reached
the Casualty Clearing Station; and "Pan's" work (confirming those
suspicious photographs) again bred other work, more urgent telephone
talks, and Immediate orders. The stir spread, circle by circle, during
the night, and before daybreak the orders had borne their fruit, and
Flights--Artillery-Observing, reconnoitring and fighting-scout--were
lined up on their grounds waiting the moment to go; the Night Bombers
were circling in from their second and third trips of destruction on
lines of communication, railways and roads, junctions and bridges,
enemy troops and transport in rest or on the march, ammunition dumps
and stores; in the front lines the infantry were "standing to" with
everything ready and prepared to meet an attack; the support lines were
filling with reinforcements, which again were being strengthened by
battalions tramping up the roads from the rear; in the gun lines the
lean hungry muzzles of the long-range guns were poking and peering up
and out from pit and emplacement, and the squat howitzers were lifting
or lowering to carefully worked out angles.
Before daybreak was more than a mere doubtful smudge of lighter colour
in the east, the waiting Flights were up and away to their appointed
beats, and the first guns began to drop their shells, shooting "by the
map" (maps made or corrected from air photographs), or on previously
"registered" lines.
The infantry up in front heard the machines hum and drone overhead,
heard the rush and howl of the passing shells, the thud of the guns'
reports, the thump of the high-explosive's burst. That, for a time,
was all. For a good half-hour there was nothing more, no sign of the
heavy attack they had been warned was coming. Then the gunfire began to
grow heavier, and as the light strengthened, little dots could be seen
circling and wheeling against the sky and now and again a faint and
far-off _tat-tat-tat-tat_ came from the upper air. For if it was quiet
and inactive on the ground, it was very much the other way in the air.
Our reconnoitring and gun-spotting machines were quartering the ground
in search of targets, the scout machines sweeping to and fro above them
ready to drop on any hostiles which tried to interrupt them in their
work. The hostiles tried quickly enough. They were out in strength, and
they did their best to drive off or sink our machines, prevent them
spying out the land, or directing our guns on the massing battalions.
But they were given little chance to interrupt. Let any of their
formations dive on our gun-spotters, and before they had well come
into action down plunged our scouts after them, engaged them fiercely,
drove them off, or drew them away in desperate defensive fighting.
Gradually the light grew until the reconnoitring machines could see and
mark the points of concentration, the masses moving into position, the
filled and filling trenches; until the gun-spotters could mark down
the same targets and the observers place their positions on the map.
Then their wireless began to whisper back their messages from the air
to the little huts and shanties back at Headquarters and the battery
positions; and then....
It was the turn of the guns to speak. Up in the trenches the infantry
heard the separate thuds and thumps quicken and close and run into one
long tremendous roar, heard the shells whistle and shriek and howl
and moan over their heads, saw the ground far out in front of them
veil in twisting smoke wreaths, spout and leap in volcanoes of smoke,
earth, and fire. Battery by battery, gun by gun, the artillery picked
up and swelled the chorus. The enemy machines did little gun-spotting
over our positions. If one or two sneaked over high above the line, it
needed no more than the first few puffs about them from our watching
Archies to bring some of our scouts plunging on them, turning them and
driving after them in headlong pursuit. On the ground men knew little
or nothing of all this, of the moves and counter-moves, the dodging
and fighting high over their heads. Their attention was taken up by
the ferocious fire of our artillery, and in waiting, waiting, for the
attack which never came.
Small wonder it never came. The guns caught it fairly, as it was
developing and shaping and settling into position for the assault. The
attack was a little late, as we heard after from prisoners--perhaps
the Night Bombers, and their upsetting of road and rail transport
timetables with high-explosive bombs and showering machine-guns, had
some word in that lateness--and our fire caught it in the act of
deploying. And when such a weight of guns as was massed on that front
catches solid battalions on the roads, or troops close-packed in
trenches, the Lord ha' mercy on the men they catch. The shells rained,
deluged down on every trench, every road and communication way within
range, searched every thicket and patch of cover, blasted the dead
woods to splintered wreckage, smashed in dug-out and emplacement, broke
down the trenches to tumbled smoking gutters, gashed and seamed and
pitted the bare earth into a honeycombed belt of death and destruction.
The high-explosive broke in, tore open, wrenched apart and destroyed
the covering trenches and dug-outs; the shrapnel raked and rent the
tattered fragments of battalions that scattered and sought shelter in
the shell-holes and craters. The masses that were moving up to push
home the intended attack escaped if they were checked and stayed in
time; those that had arrived and passed into the furnace were simply
and utterly destroyed.
For a good three hours the roaring whirlwind of gunfire never ceased,
or even slacked; for three hours the ground for a full mile back from
the Hun front line rolled billowing clouds of smoke, quivered and shook
to the crash of the explosions, spurted and boiled and eddied under the
shells "like a bubbling porridge pot," as one gun-spotter put it, was
scorched with fire, flayed with lead and steel, drenched and drowned
with gas from the poison shells.
For three hours the circling planes above watched for sign of movement
below, and seeing any such sign talked back by wireless to the guns,
waited and watched the wrath descend and blot out the movement in fresh
whirlwinds of concentrated fire; while further back a full five to ten
miles other spotters quartered to and fro working steadily, sending
back call after call to our Heavies, and silencing, one by one, battery
after battery which was pounding our trenches with long-range fire. And
for three hours the infantry crouched half deafened in their trenches,
listening to the bellowing uproar, watching the writhing smoke-fog
which veiled but could not conceal the tearing destruction that raged
up and down, to and fro, across and across the swept ground.
Three hours, three long hours--and one can only guess how long they
were to the maimed and wounded, cowering and squeezing flat to earth
in the reeking shell-holes, gasping for choked breath through their
gas-masks, quivering under the fear of further wounds or sudden and
violent death; how bitterly long they were to the German commanders and
generals watching their plans destroyed, their attack wiped out, their
regiments and battalions burnt away in our consuming fire.
Our despatches, after their common use and wont, put the matter
coldly, dispassionately, and with under-rather than over-statement of
facts--"The attack was broken by our artillery fire."
Broken! Smashed rather; attack and attackers blotted out, annihilated,
utterly and entirely.
"By our artillery fire." The truth no doubt, but hardly the complete
truth, since it said no word of the part the Air Service had played.
So few knew what had been brought about by the work of a photographic
patrol, the following reconnaissance, the resulting air work.
The infantry never knew how it was that the attack never reached them,
why they did not have to beat it off with bullet and bayonet--or be
beaten in by it--except that the guns perhaps had stopped it. The
public did not know because the press did not say--perhaps because the
press itself didn't know. And what the Air Service knew, as usual it
didn't tell.
But Somebody evidently knew, because Washie and Pip found themselves
shortly afterwards in Orders for a Decoration; and apparently the
Squadron knew, because next morning when he went out to his 'bus Washie
found that "Pan" had a neat little splash of paint on what you might
call her left breast, an oblong little patch showing the colours of the
ribbon of the Military Cross.
_All that we are and all we own,_
_All that we have and hold or take,_
_All that we tackle or do or try_
_Is not for our, or the Corps' own sake._
Through our open eyes the Armies see,
We look and we learn that they may know.
Collect from the clouds the news they need,
And carry it back to them below.
We harry the guns that do us no harm,
We picture the paths we shall never take;
There's naught to help or to hinder us
On the road we bomb or the bridge we break.
Only to work where our footmen wish,
Only to guard them from prying eyes,
To find and to fetch the word they want,
We war unceasing and hold the skies.
_All that we are and all we own,_
_All that we have or hope or know,_
_Our work and our wits, our deaths, our lives,_
_We stake above, that they win below._
IX
IF THEY KNEW--
A group of infantry in our front line trench watching the boiling
eddying smoke and spurting fires of our artillery barrage on the enemy
lines saw a couple of planes whirl suddenly up into sight above and
beyond the barrage smoke. They were diving and twisting about each
other like a couple of tumbler pigeons in flight, or rather, since one
was obviously pursuing the other closely, like a pigeon hard pressed by
a hawk. The excitement of the infantry turned to disgust as they caught
plain sight of the markings on the machines, saw that the pursued
was a British machine, the pursuer a black-crossed German. And when
the British machine came rocketting and whirling through the barrage
smother in plain flight from the German, who dared not follow through
the wall of falling and bursting shells, the disgust of the men on the
ground was openly and angrily expressed.
"Mastery o' the air," shouted one. "Fat lot he'll master." And from
the others came similar jeers--"Hurry up, son, or he'll catch you
yet--Why couldn't he have put up a fight?--Do they ever court-martial
them blokes for runnin' away?--Fritz fliers top dog again."
And yet, if those men had known, they would have cheered the man
passing over them, cheered him for as plucky a man as ever flew--and
that is saying something. If they knew, so often if they knew--but at
least I can let them know something of this particular story.
The Flight went out as usual on "o.p." (offensive patrol), which,
again as usual, had taken them well over Hunland. For the first
half-hour they had a dull time, seeing no Huns about and having no more
than the normal amount of Archie fire to dodge. Then the Flight Leader
spotted a string of dots to eastward, and on counting them and finding
they numbered something round a dozen to fifteen, concluded they
were Huns. He ensured the Flight's attention to the matter, and then
pointing his machine straight at the enemy, and after glancing round
to make sure the Flight were in correct formation, began to climb them
steadily up and towards the oncoming hostiles. He kept a close watch
on the enemy, because he knew that the Squadron to which he belonged
and the type of machine they flew had a name apparently discouraging
to the Huns' fighting inclinations, and he was afraid that, even with
more than two to one in their favour, they might on recognising the
Flight avoid action and clear off. The Flight had already burnt a good
hour's petrol and had some miles to go back home, and this did not
leave a very great margin for a long pursuit and perhaps a prolonged
fight. But this time the Huns showed no sign of shirking the fight, and
came driving straight west on a course which must very soon bring them
into contact with the Flight. As they swept closer it was seen that
the hostile fleet was made up of three two-seater machines and a dozen
single-seater fighting scouts, and just before they came close enough
for action "Ailie" Arrowman, the Flight Leader, noticed something
else that made him decide very quickly to concentrate the Flight's
frightfulness on the two-seaters. The three were bombers, and from
their slow and heavy flight obviously fully loaded with bombs, and from
the direction they were taking were clearly out on a bombing raid over
the British lines.
Now these Hun raids and bomb-droppings had been becoming unpleasantly
frequent for a little time before this, and all our patrols had
special orders to keep a sharp look-out for bombers and make things as
hot for them as possible. The Hun was coming to specialise on rapid
dashes over our lines, the hurried dropping of their eggs, and a hasty
bee-line flight for home. Our infantry and our batteries were a good
deal annoyed by these attentions, and naturally and very simply wanted
to know why our flying men didn't "stop these blighters coming and
going as they liked." This, of course, is a delusion of the men on the
ground. The Huns were very far from doing as they liked, but since
the air (for flying purposes) is twenty odd thousand feet high, and
as long as the line, it takes a lot of policing against tip-and-run
raids, especially when you remember that machines can pass within quite
a few hundred yards of each other and never know the other is there.
The groundlings don't recognise these facts, much less the incidental
possibilities of Huns sneaking over under cover of clouds and so on,
and it must be confessed the airmen, as a rule, don't take many pains
to enlighten them, even when they do get talking together. On the
ground, again, they know nothing of the Hun bombers chased back and
brought down well behind their own lines, and nothing of the raids
which are caught and interrupted, as the one I'm telling of was about
to be.
All this is by the way, but it explains why Ailie was specially keen
to out the bombing machines first of all, and also why the bombers at
the first sign of attack on them dropped their noses and went off at a
rush, and the Hun fighters hurriedly dived in to divert the Flight and
force a fight with them. We need not at the moment follow the details
of the whole fight, but see rather how the one man Ailie fared in it.
But, incidentally, it may be mentioned that the rest of the Flight sank
one bomber and chased the other down to the ground, fought the escort
and sank three of them at a cost of no more than one pilot wounded, a
great many bullet holes in the machines, and one badly crippled and
just able to reach and land on our side of the lines.
Ailie went down in a hurricane dive on the first bomber, and since
he was much faster than the big machine, especially with it carrying
a full load, he caught it up rapidly, and bringing his bow gun into
action commenced to hail a stream of lead on it. The gunner of the
two-seater began to fire back at Ailie, but as his pilot at the same
time was swerving and swinging his machine to dodge the streaking
bullets, he spoiled the gunner's aim and few of the bullets came
dangerously close to Ailie. But two of the enemy scouts had seen
Ailie's charge, had promptly swung and dived after him, and, following
hard astern, opened fire in their turn. Ailie caught up the two-seater,
swooped down under her, throttled back to keep her pace, pulled down
the gun fixed on his top plane, and started to pelt bullets up into
the underbody hurtling along above him. The two Hun scouts dropped to
his level and followed, shooting close and hard, and Ailie, finding
their bullets snapping and smacking on his planes, was forced to
swerve and duck and at last to turn sharp on them. Either he was the
better pilot or his was the handier machine, because in a few seconds
he had out-manœuvred them and driven them diving down ahead of him.
He ripped a short burst into one, wheeled, looked round for sight of
his two-seater and, sighting it tearing off at top speed, swung and,
opening his engine full out, went racing after it. The two-seater flung
himself into a spin and went twisting and spiralling wildly down, Ailie
following close and shooting whenever he could bring his sights to
bear. But again the renewed rattle of close machine-gun fire began, and
he glanced round to find the scouts hot in pursuit again. This time
they were not to be pursuers only, for another of the Flight leaped
suddenly into the fight, rattled off a quick burst of fire, and in an
instant had one of the enemy scouts plunging down helplessly out of
control, whirled round and without a second's hesitation attacked the
second. The Hun bomber, down to about 1,000 feet, flattened out and
drove off east with Ailie still hard after him. He was getting angry
now. Burst after burst of fire he had poured, as far as he could see,
straight into the big machine, and yet it kept on apparently unharmed.
But suddenly its tail flicked up, a wing buckled and tore loose, and it
went down rolling and pitching, to crash on the ground.
Ailie swept over, leaning out and peering down on the heaped wreckage;
but whatever triumph he might have felt was short-lived, for at that
moment _tat-tat-tat-tat_ went a gun close behind him and then the
quicker closer rattle of double or triple guns. Ailie hoicked hard
up in a swift climbing turn, whirled round, and just catching one of
the enemy scouts in his sights, gripped the trigger of the firing
mechanism. His gun fired--once--and stopped, although he still held the
trigger hard gripped and it should have continued to fire. The target
swept clear, and Ailie, after gripping and releasing quickly several
times, knew his gun had jammed. The two hostiles reopened fire on him,
and he swerved, straightened out and went off in a bee-line at top
speed. He was not unduly alarmed, although his position, a bare 1,000
feet off the ground and therefore well within ground shooting range
of rifles and machine-guns, with a jammed gun, and with two scouts
hard after him, was uncomfortably risky. He was on a fast machine,
so fast that he did not believe the Hun flew that could catch him;
and he reckoned that in a straightaway flight he could drop the two
sufficiently to be out of urgent danger from them. As he flew he leaned
forward, wrenched back the cover over the breech of his gun and jerked
the loading lever rapidly to and fro. But the jammed cartridge stayed
jammed and Ailie felt a first qualm of fear, as he heard the guns
behind him reopen fire and recognised that he was not gaining on his
enemies. Another gun broke into the chorus, and Ailie glanced round to
see another of his Flight diving in and engaging one of the enemy. The
second one, a bright scarlet painted scout, kept on after him, caught
him up and dived firing on him.
Then began a game that Ailie might remember in his nightmares for long
enough. His machine was not doing her best, and the hostile fairly had
the wings of him. Time after time the Hun swooped up over him and dived
down, firing as he came. Ailie could only duck and swerve and dodge,
some of his dives bringing him perilously close to the ground; and as
he flew he wrenched and jerked at his gun's firing mechanism, snatched
the Verey pistol from its rack, and with the butt tapped and hammered
at the gun, hoping the jar might loosen the cartridge. He escaped
touching the ground and crashing over and over again by bare feet; more
than once he had to zoom sharply and just cleared low trees or even
bushes that appeared suddenly before him; once his wheels brushed and
ripped across the top of a hedge, and once again in a banking turn his
heart stood still for a second that seemed an eternity, as he banked
steeply and the machine side-slipped until his wing-tip, as it appeared
to him, was touching the grass. And all the time, in dive after dive,
his enemy came whirling down on him, the fire of his machine-gun
clattering off burst after burst, and the bullets hissing past in flame
and smoke or smacking venomously on the wings and body of Ailie's
machine.
And through it all, flinging his machine about, twirling and twisting
like a champion skater cutting fancy and fantastic figures, doing
star-performance low flying that might have kept every nerve and sense
of any stunt-artist flier occupied to the full, Ailie still made shift
to spare a hand and enough eye and mind for the job of fiddling and
hammering and working to clear his jammed gun--a gun that was not even
in a convenient position to handle because, set above the left upper
edge of his cockpit, it was very little below the level of his face and
awkwardly high for his hand to reach. He gave up trying to clear it at
last and turned all his attention to out-manœuvring his opponent. The
Hun was above him, and every time he tried to lift his machine the Hun
dived, firing on him, and drove him down again. He was too low to pick
up or follow landmarks, so kept the westering sun in his eyes, knowing
this was edging him west towards our lines. The Hun after each dive did
a climbing turn to a position to dive anew, and each time he climbed
Ailie made another dash towards the west. The Hun saw the move, and, to
beat it, dropped his climbing-turn tactics and instead dived and zoomed
straight up, dived and zoomed again and again. Ailie saw his chance and
took it. He throttled hard back next time the Hun dived, and as the Hun
overshot him and zoomed straight up, Ailie in two swift motions pulled
the stick in, lifting sharp up after and under him, pulled down the
top gun and fired point blank into him. The Hun whirled over, dived
vertically, and in an instant crashed heavily nose first into the
ground. And Ailie's top gun had jammed after about its tenth shot.
He flew on west, hardly for the moment daring to believe he had
escaped, opening the throttle and starting to lift from his dangerous
proximity to the ground mechanically, and with his mind hardly yet
working properly. If he had not caught the Hun with that last handful
of shots before his second gun jammed....
And then, almost before he had collected his wits enough to realise
properly how close his escape had been, that same horrible clatter of
machine-gun fire from the air above and behind him broke out, the same
hiss and snap of bullets came streaming about him. For a moment he had
a wild idea that his Hun had not actually crashed, but a glance round
showed that it was no longer the brilliant red machine, but another,
and again a fighting scout.
Exactly the old performance started all over again, but this time
without even that slender chance he had used so well before of catching
his enemy with the fire of his top gun. Again he went through the
twisting and dodging and turning to avoid his relentless enemy and the
fire that crackled about him. Again he dived into fields, skimmed the
ground, hurdled over low bushes and hedges, used every flying trick
and artifice he knew, but had never before dared try at less than
thousands of feet height, to shake off his pursuer; and again as he
flew he wriggled and worked at the jammed gun in front of him. For
breathless minutes he worked, casting quick glances from the ground
rushing under him to the gun mechanism, jockeying his machine with
steady pressures or sharp kicks on the rudder-bar and one hand on the
joy-stick, while the other fumbled and worked at the gun, and the
bullets sang and cracked about him. By all the laws of chance, by all
the rules of hazard, he should have been killed, shot down or driven
down into a crash, a dozen times over in those few minutes; just as by
all the limits of possibility he could never hope to clear a jammed gun
while doing fancy flying at such a height. But against all chance and
hazard and possibility--as pilots do oftener than most people outside
themselves know--he flew on untouched, and ... cleared his jamb. By
now he was worked up to such a pitch of fear, frenzy, desperation,
anger--it may have been any of them, it may have been something of
all--that he took no further thought of manœuvring or tactics, whirled
blindly and drove straight at his enemy, firing as he went, feeling
a savage joy in the jar and bang of his spurting gun. To avoid that
desperate rush and the streaming bullets, the Hun swerved wide and
swooped out in a banking turn, a turn so hurriedly and blindly taken
that, before he could properly see, he found himself whirling into
the edge of a forest the chase had unwittingly skirted. Ailie saw him
distinctly try to wrench round to clear the trees--but he was too near;
to hoick up and over them--but he was too low. He crashed sideways on a
tree-trunk, down headlong into the ground.
Again Ailie swung and flew straight towards the sun, switching on to
the emergency tank, because by now his main petrol tank was almost
empty. He continued to fly low and no more than 100 or 200 feet off
the ground. At his speed it would take a good shot to hit him from the
ground; higher up he would run more risk of Archie fire and of meeting
Huns, and--this perhaps was the main determining factor, because by
now he was almost exhausted with the fatigue of severe and prolonged
strain--flying low would bring him quicker to the lines and safety.
One might have supposed that by now the grim gods of War had had sport
enough of him. But he was not yet free of them. Within a mile he was
attacked again, and this time by three hostile scout fighters. He made
no attempt to dodge or out-manœuvre them. His cartridges were almost
finished, his machine was badly shot about, his petrol was running out.
He opened his engine out to its fullest and drove hard and headlong
for the lines and the drifting smoke and winking fires that told of an
artillery barrage. Close to the barrage he had to swerve and dodge a
moment, because one of the Huns was fairly on top of him and hailing
lead on him, but next instant he plunged at, into and through the
barrage, his machine rocking and pitching and rolling in the turmoil
of shell-torn air, his eyes blinded by the drifting smoke, his ears
stunned by the rending crashes and cracks of the drum-fare explosions.
He won through safely and alone, for his three enemies balked at facing
that puffing, spurting, fire-winking inferno, turned back and left him.
Ailie, hardly daring to believe that he was actually clear and safe
and free, steered for home. He skimmed his bullet-torn machine over
the trenches, a machine holed and ripped and torn and cut with
armour-piercing and explosive bullets, his guns jammed, his ammunition
expended, his petrol at its last pints, he himself at almost the last
point of exhaustion, dizzy from excitement, weak and faint from sheer
strain.
Yet this was the man and the moment that those infantry in the trenches
jeered, looking up as he passed over, his ripped fabric fluttering, his
shot-through wires whipping and trailing, blessing the wildest luck
that had left him alive, heart-thankful for the sight of khaki in the
trenches below him.
It seems a pity those disgusted infantry could not have known the
truth, of all he had come through, of those long danger-packed minutes,
of those three crashed Huns scattered along his track--and of those
bombs which would _not_ drop on our lines, batteries, or billets that
day.
X
THE FO-FUM'S REPUTATION
I am naturally anxious to avoid angering the Censor by naming any
particular type or make of machine, but fear it is inevitable that
anyone who knows anything of aeroplanes must recognise in reading this
story the type concerned, although that may hardly matter, since the
Hun knows the type well (and to his sorrow), and the tale more fully in
the exact detail of his casualties than we do. And because this type,
which we may call the "Fo-Fum 2," has for a full year previous to the
date of this story's happenings been openly scoffed at and condemned
in speech and print by the "experts" as slow, clumsy, obsolete, and
generally useless, I also fear I may be accused of "leg-pulling" and
impossibly romancing in crediting the Fo-Fums with such a startling
fight performance. I may warn such critics in advance, however, that
I can produce official records to prove a dozen shows almost or quite
equally good to the credit of the Fo-Fums.
A Flight of six Fo-Fums went up and over Hunland one morning when a
westerly wind and a strong hint of dirty weather in the air made it an
abnormally risky patrol for anything but the best of pilots and the
most reliable of machines and engines. But the Fo-Fums, whatever their
other faults, have at least the admitted merit of reliability, and the
quality of the pilots on this patrol is fairly shown by this story.
They were well over the lines and about 10,000 feet up when a circus of
about twenty Huns hove in sight well above them. The Flight Leader saw
them and, climbing a little as they went, he led the formation towards
the hostiles, or, as he put it, "beetled off to have a look at 'em."
The Huns evidently saw the Fo-Fums at the same time, and with natural
willingness to indulge in a scrap with odds of more than three to one
in their favour swooped up, "coming like stink," to quote the Flight
Leader again, to the attack.
The Fo-Fums knew how the ball would almost certainly open under the
circumstances--twenty Hun scouts with the advantage of superior speed,
height and weather gauge, against six Fo-Fums--and quietly slid into a
formation they had more than once proved useful in similar conditions.
The Huns, seeing no other enemies near enough to interfere, circled
above, collected their formation into shape, and made their leisurely
dispositions for the attack, while the Fo-Fums no less leisurely
straightened out their wedge-shaped formation, swung the head of
the line in a circle, which brought the leader round until he was
following the last machine of the Flight, and so commenced a steady
circling or--one can hardly refrain from quoting that expressive
Flight Leader--"chasing each other's tails in a blessed ring-o'-roses
giddy-go-round." The Huns drove up into a position which brought them
between the Fo-Fums and the sun, thereby, of course, gaining the
additional advantage of being able to aim and shoot with the sun in
their backs while the Fo-Fums had the light in their eyes.
The Fo-Fum men were not greatly disturbed by this, for several reasons,
because they were used to conceding the advantage in beginning a fight,
because knowing the Huns had the wings of them it was no use trying
to avoid it, and because they were contentedly sure that there were
so many beastly Huns there they couldn't all keep "in the sun" and
that each man would easily find a target sufficiently out of it. They
continued their "giddy-go-round," and a dozen of the Huns at top speed,
with engines full out and machine-guns rattling and ripping out a storm
of tracer bullets in streaking pencil-lines of flame and blue smoke,
came hurtling down like live thunderbolts. The sight alone might well
have been a terrifying one to the Fo-Fum men, and the sharp, whip-like
smacks and cracks about them of the explosive bullets which began to
find their mark on fabric or frame would also have been upsetting to
any but the steadiest nerves.
But the Fo-Fums showed not the slightest sign of panicky nerves.
They held their fire until the diving Huns were within reasonable
shoot-to-hit range, and met them with a sharp burst of fire from
observers' or pilots' guns as the position of each machine in the
circle gave a field of fire ahead or anywhere in a full half-circle
round to port, stern, or starboard.
It may help matters to explain here--and again it tells nothing to
the Hun that he doesn't already know well and to his sorrow--that
the fighting Fo-Fum mounts three machine-guns--one, which the pilot
handles, shooting ahead; another which the observer, sitting in front
of the pilot and to the side of the pilot's gun, shoots anywhere
outward in a half-circle round the bow and in any forward direction
down or up; and a third placed on the top plane, which the observer
also shoots by jumping up from his bow gun, standing almost man-high
clear of the "gun'l" of the machine's body, and aiming up or level
outward to either side and astern.
In meeting the attacking dive the observers stood up to their top
guns, and if their position in the Flight's circle allowed them to
bring their gun to bear on an enemy, they opened fire. If the machine
was full bow on to the rush the pilot fired; or if she was in such a
position that he could not see a target sufficiently ahead, or the
observer see sufficiently to the side, he dodged the machine in or out
of the circle enough to bring one of the guns to bear, and then wheeled
her back into position.
These tactics may sound complicated, but really are--so the Fo-Fums
say--beautifully simple when you know them and are used to them. What
they amount to is merely the fact that all six machines were able to
open fire within a second or two of one another, and that in some cases
the pilot was able to get in a second burst from his bow gun by dipping
his nose down after a hostile as she plunged past.
That they were effective tactics was promptly demonstrated to the Huns
by one of their machines bursting into flames, another rolling over
sideways and "dead-leafing" down in a series of side-to-side slips
which ended in a crash on the ground below, and by another continuing
his dive well down, changing it into a long glide to the eastward
and out of the fight, evidently with machine or pilot out of action.
Several of the Fo-Fums had bullet-holes in their machines, but nothing
vital was touched, and they had just time to connect up nicely into
their compact circle when the remainder of the Huns came tearing down
on them in similar terrifying fashion.
But the Fo-Fums met them in their similar fashion, and when the Huns,
instead of diving past and down as the first lot had done, curved up
in an abrupt zoom, the observers swung their gun-muzzles up after them
and pelted them out of range. One Hun lost control just on the point
of his upward zoom, flung headlong out until he stalled and fell out
of the fight for good. From the fact that his gun continued to fire at
nothing until he was lost to notice it was evident either that his gear
was damaged or the pilot hit and unconsciously gripping or hanging to
the trigger or firing mechanism. A fourth Hun at the top of his zoom up
lurched suddenly, fell away in a spinning nose dive, and also vanished
from the proceedings--whether "crashed" or merely "out of control" was
never known.
In a fight against this sort of odds, which our pilots so often have,
the need of keeping an eye on active enemies rather than on the
subsequent interesting fashion of an out-of-control's finish certainly
reduces our air men's score a good deal, since it is the rule only to
claim and record officially as a "crash" a machine which is actually
seen (and confirmed) to have smashed on the ground, to have broken
in air, or otherwise have made a sure and positive finish. Five Huns
down and definitely out of action was a good beginning to the fight,
especially as no Fo-Fum was damaged, and the odds were now reduced
to fifteen against six--quite, according to the Fo-Fums, usual and
reasonably sporting odds.
But the odds were to lengthen to such an extent that even the seasoned
and daring fighters of No. Umpty Squadron began to look grave and feel
concerned. Two Flights came looming up rapidly from eastward, and,
occupied as the Fo-Fums were with the first brush, the new enemies were
upon them almost the instant the second rush on them finished--before,
in fact, the first Huns shot down and hit the ground. The newcomers
converged on the fight and dashed straight at the Fo-Fum circle without
a pause. There were twelve of them in one lot and eight in the other,
and that, added to the twenty the Fo-Fums had counted at the beginning
of the fight, made a total of forty machines against their six.
After this the tale of the fight can no longer be told as a whole. It
developed into a series of rushes and dives on the part of the enemy in
large or small numbers, swift leaps and turns and twists, and plunges
and checks, repeated hot attacks and attempts by the Huns to break the
Fo-Fums' steady circle, determined and fairly successful efforts of the
Fo-Fums to foil the attempts. For long minute after minute the fight
swayed and scattered, flung apart, out and down and up, climbed and
fell and closed in again to point-blank quarters. It ran raging on and
on in a constant fierce rattle and roll of machine-gun fire, a falling
out, one fashion or another, of Hun after Hun, in occasional desperate
fights of single Fo-Fums forced out of the circle and battling to
return to it.
Some of these single-handed combats against odds are worthy subjects
for an air saga, each to its individual self. There was, for instance,
the Fo-Fum which was forced out of the circle, cut off, and fought a
lone-hand battle against eleven enemies. The observer stood and shot
over his top plane at one Hun who tried to cover himself behind the
tail of the Fo-Fum. The pilot at the same instant was lifting the
nose a little to bring his gun to bear on another Hun diving on him
from ahead, and this sinking of the Fo-Fum's stern gave the observer
a chance. He filled it with a quick burst from his machine-gun, and
filled the Hun so effectively full of bullets that his nose dropped and
he swooped under the Fo-Fum. The observer jumped down to his bow gun,
swung the muzzle down, and caught the Hun passing under with a burst
which finished him and sent him whirling down out of control.
The pilot's shooting at the same time was equally effective. The Hun
who had dived on his right front was met by a quick turn which brought
the bow gun to bear and a short burst of fire. The Hun continued to
dive past and under, and both pilot and observer caught a flashing but
clear-imprinted picture of the Hun pilot collapsed in a heap on his
seat before he also fell helplessly rolling and spinning down out of
the fight.
The observer, dropping his forward gun as he saw his shooting
effective, scrambled quickly up to his top gun and was just in time to
open on another Hun not more than twenty feet away and with his gun
going "nineteen to the dozen, and rapping bullets all over the old
bus till she's as full of holes as a Gruyère cheese," as the observer
said. He only fired about a dozen rounds--the fight by now had been
running long enough and hot enough to make economy of ammunition a
consideration--but some of the dozen got home and sent another Hun
plunging down and out.
The observer just lifted his eyes from watching the "late lamented"
and trying to decide whether he was "outed" or "playing dead," in time
to catch a glimpse of a black cross streaking past astern of him. He
glued his eyes to the sights, jerked his muzzle round after the fresh
enemy, and just as he swung in a steep bank "slapped a hatful of lead
into him" and saw a strip of the hostile's cowling rip and lift and
beat flailing back against the struts until the enemy shut off engine
and glided out.
The pilot's gun was clattering again, and the observer, seeing all
clear behind him, turned and half jumped, half fell, down into his
cockpit as the Fo-Fum lay over on her beam-ends in a bank that brought
her almost sheer on her wing-tip. He was just in time to see the
pilot's fresh victim fall out of control, and dropping the bow gun he
had grabbed he hoisted himself to his top gun again.
It sounds a little thing when one speaks of all this jumping down and
scrambling up from one gun to another, but it is worth pausing to
consider just what it means. The place the observer had to jump from
at his top gun was about as scanty and precarious as a canary bird's
perch; the space he had to jump or fall down into was little bigger
than a respectable hip-bath; the floor and footholds on which he did
these gymnastics were heaving, pitching, and tossing, tilting to and
fro at anything between level, a slope as steep as a sharp-angled roof,
and steeper still to near the perpendicular.
And all the time the machine which carried out the acrobatic
performance was travelling at the speed of a record-breaking express
train, and if the performer mis-jumped or over-reached the enclosing
sides of his cockpit, sides little more than knee-high as he stood on
the floor, not ankle-high as he stood at the top gun, he had a clear
eight to ten thousand feet, a good mile and quarter, to fall before
he hit the ground. And this particular Fo-Fum stood on her head or
her tail, on one wing-tip or the other, dived and dodged, twisted and
turned and wriggled and fought her way through, over, under, and about
her eleven opponents, putting four well down and a fifth damaged in the
process, and picked up her place in the shifting, breaking, and ragged,
but always reforming, circle.
The fight flared on for full forty minutes, and still at the end of
that time the Fo-Fums were all afloat and able to make home and a good
landing, although some were so shot about and damaged that it was
only by a marvel of piloting skill they were kept going--and, let it
be added, as their crews never failed to add, because they were stout
buses well and honestly built of good material by skilled and careful
hands, driven by engines that were a credit to the shops they came from
and would "keep running as strong as a railway locomotive, into Hell
and out the other side, s'long's you fed oil and petrol to 'em."
One machine had the oil tank shot through, and yet the engine ran
long enough without "seizing up" (melting the dry metal by friction to
sticking point) to get home. There were other mechanical miracles--too
technical for explanation here--that the pilots tell of with wonder
and admiration, although they say little, or at most or no more than a
mild "good man" or "sporting effort" of the equal or greater miracle
of men enduring and keeping their wits and stout hearts, and carrying
on, whole or wounded as some were--one observer to his death soon after
landing--for that forty minutes' savage fight against odds. Full forty
minutes, and at the end of that time there were only some score Huns
left in the fight: and in the finish it was they who broke off the
action, and slid out and away down wind.
"Y'see," as the Flight Leader said after when he was asked why he
didn't pull out or battle his way out and home, "Y'see, the old Fo-Fums
are pretty well known on this slice of front, and they've got a
reputation for never chucking a scrap. I'd have hated to come plungin'
home with a crowd of Huns hare-in' after us. The line 'ud think we'd
been runnin' away from a scrap; and I wouldn't like my Flight to be
letting down the old Fo-Fums' reputation like that."
Most people will admit that the Flight didn't let it down. There are
even a good many who think it added a good-sized gilt-edged leaf to the
Fo-Fums' and the Umpty Squadron's plentiful laurels.
XI
LIKE GENTLEMEN
When Lieutenant Jack Smith, new come from a year of life in the
trenches and reserve billets, landed for a day or two's stay with his
brother in one of the squadrons of the R.F.C., he began to think he had
strayed into an earthly Paradise, was amazed that such an excellent
substitute for well-found civilised life could exist in the Field.
He got the first shock when he arrived at the 'drome about 8.30 a.m.
and found his brother still comfortably asleep. While his brother got
up and dressed he explained that, the Division being out on rest near
by, he had taken a chance of the long-standing invitation to come and
spend a day or two with the Squadron; and while he talked his eyes kept
wandering round the comfortable hut--the bookcase, the framed pictures
on the walls, the table and easy-chair, the rugs on the floor, all the
little touches of comfort--luxury, he called them to himself--about the
place.
"You're pretty snugly fixed up here, aren't you, Tom?" he burst out at
last.
"So, so!" said Tom, pouring a big jug of hot water into the
wash-basin--hot water, thought Jack Smith, not only for shaving, but to
wash in. "Being Flight Commander, I have a shack to myself, y'see. Most
of the pilots share huts. We'll fix a bed here for you to sleep. Hullo,
quarter-past nine! I must hurry--won't be any breakfast left. You had
brek?"
"Two hours ago," said his brother. "_We_ don't lie in bed till
afternoon, like you chaps."
Tom laughed. "Not my turn for dawn patrol," he said; "I'll be on
to-morrow. My Flight's due to go up at noon to-day." And he went on
outlining the methods of their work.
In the Mess they found half a dozen other pilots finishing breakfast.
"My brother Jack--going to spend a day or two with us"--was introduced,
and in ten minutes found himself pleasantly at home amongst the others.
He began to forget he was at the Front at all, and the attentive waiter
at his elbow helped heighten the illusion. "Tea or coffee sir?...
Porridge, sir?"
Jack had porridge, and fresh milk with it and his tea. Fresh milk--and
he'd nearly forgotten milk came from anything but a tin! Then he had
a kipper--not out of a tin, either--and bacon and eggs and toast and
marmalade. It was his second breakfast, but he did it full justice.
After breakfast he went out with Tom to the hangars, and had a look
over the machines and pottered round generally until after eleven. Then
Tom went off to get ready for patrol, and handed him over to "Jerry,"
one of the pilots. Jack spent a fascinating hour watching the patrol
start, and then being taken round by Jerry, who was bubbling over with
eagerness to show and explain and tell him everything.
Then they had lunch, and again Jack was led to forgetfulness that he
was at the Front. Sitting there with a dozen happy, laughing, chatting
companions at a table spread with a spotless cloth, with a variety of
food and drinks to choose from, with no sound of guns or any other echo
of war in his ears except the occasional hum of a plane overhead--and
that was pleasant and musical rather than warlike--he felt and said he
might as well be in a long-established Mess in barracks at home.
After lunch he sat in the ante-room with the others round the big, open
fireplace and smoked a cigarette and skimmed the plentiful weeklies
until Tom's Flight was about due in. Jerry picked him up again and took
him out and showed him the Flight when they were pin-points in the sky,
and explained the process of landing as they came in.
Jack found his brother's machine had brought home several bullet-holes,
and he was oddly thrilled at sight of them--oddly, because he thought
he was completely _blasé_ about bullet-holes and similar signs of
battle.
Tom made very little of it, merely saying Yes, they'd had a scrap, had
crashed one Hun and put another couple down out of control; and who was
on for an hour on the canal?
Jack went to the canal with them, and found they had there a wonderful
boat built by the pilots out of planks they had "found." The boat
held two comfortably, four uncomfortably, and on this occasion
carried seven. They fooled away a couple of hours very happily and
school-boyishly, landed, and went back at a jog-trot to the 'drome. The
wind had changed and they could hear the guns now, heavily engaged, by
the sound of them.
They were back just in time to see a patrol go up, and Tom hurried
Jack out to watch. "We've got another Squadron's Major here, staying
to dinner to-night, and the patrol is taking off in a fancy formation
that's our own special patent. It's worth watching. Come along."
It was worth watching, although Jack, perhaps, was not sufficiently
educated in air work to appreciate it properly. The Flight was drawn up
in line facing into the wind, and, after a preliminary run up of their
engines, a signal was given, six pairs of chocks jerked simultaneously
clear of the wheels, and the six machines began to taxi forward over
the ground, still keeping in line.
Their speed increased until they were racing with tails up, and then,
suddenly, the whole six lifted together and took the air, keeping their
straight line and climbing steadily. The right-hand machine swept round
to the right, and one after another the rest followed him, each banking
steeply and, as it seemed from the ground, heeling over until their
wings stood straight up and down. As they straightened they opened out
and dropped into their places, and the Flight swept circling round
above the 'drome in correct and exactly-spaced formation.
"Pretty good show," said Tom critically.
"You wouldn't understand rightly, Jack, but it's a fancy stunt we've
never heard of another squadron being able to do. Sheer swank, of
course, I'll admit, but rather sport."
Later, Jack was able to appreciate better what the "stunt" was worth
from the admiring and amazed comments of the much-impressed visiting
Major.
Tea followed, and after it the pilots drifted off to such occupations
or amusements as they desired. Some lounged in the ante-room, with the
gramophone singing, whistling, and band playing; others went off to the
hangars to see to something being done to their machines, engines, or
guns; others vanished into their huts, and, reappearing stripped, began
strenuous work on a punching-ball or disappeared over the surrounding
fields on a cross-country run. The brothers wandered round, and
finished an idle hour with a brisk turn at the punching-ball.
"Gets a good sweat up," explained Tom, "and helps keep you in
condition. That's the curse of this job--not getting any exercise
unless you do something of this sort."
"Curse of it!" said Jack enviously. "Blest if I see much of a curse of
any sort about it. It's amazing to think anybody can be in the middle
of a big push in this war and be able to have such a ripping fine time
of it."
Tom laughed. "Our C.O. always swears this is the only end of the old
war where a man is able to live like a gentleman and fight like a
gentleman," he said. "And I don't know he isn't right."
"It's the only side I've seen where you can," agreed Jack. "You
certainly live like gentlemen, anyhow."
"Oh, it's gentlemanly enough fighting, too," said Tom. "Anyhow, you
do go out to scrap with your face washed and a clean shirt to your
back, and come straight home to a hot bath inside half an hour after,
if you like. And in the actual fighting it's clean scrapping--putting
your skill against the other fellow's, and the best man winning, as a
rule. None of your blind floundering through mud and shell-fire for me,
thank'ee, and getting scuppered without a notion who did it or how you
got it."
That evening they changed for dinner, Tom lending a pair of slacks to
his brother. "Might as well," said Tom. "Not that it matters about
you, because I could tell the C.O. you didn't bring kit. But he likes
everyone to dress properly for Mess, and so do we all. Dunno he isn't
right, too. Now, will you bath first, or shall I?"
The bath arrangements were explained to him--the bath being a
curtained-off corner of the hut with hot water in a canvas bath on the
floor and a shower operated by pulling a string to a tank on the roof.
"We're having the band for dinner to-night," said Tom, as they
dressed. "We rather pride ourselves on our band, y'know; eleven
instruments, and all real good performers picked up all over the shop,
and in the Squadron as batmen or mechanics or something. Lots of 'em
were part or whole professionals in civvy life."
"I feel as if I were going to a ball or a banquet or a box at the opera
or something," said Jack, as they walked down to the Mess--"I feel so
amazing clean and groomed and sleek. And you lucky beggars have this
any old night, and right in the middle of the war, too!"
The evening "put the tin hat on it" as he said. There was a champagne
cocktail before dinner, and then the Major led the way into a Mess that
made Jack blink his eyes. The table down the centre was big enough to
take the whole score of diners and of generous enough width to allow of
stretched legs without kicking opposite shins and toes. It was covered
with a spotless cloth, glittering cutlery, and shining glass, and down
the centre were shaded electrics and vases made from polished brass
shell-cartridges filled with flowers. The C.O. sat at the head of the
table with the Major-guest on the one side and Jack on the other with
his brother beside him. There was a full-course dinner most excellently
cooked and served, and there was almost any drink available you liked
to call for, although Jack noticed that his brother and most of the
others drank fresh-made lemonade or something of the sort.
"It's one thing you have to cut out pretty well," explained Tom. "This
game doesn't leave room for men with anything but steady nerves, and
most of us find little or no liquor and not too much smoking gives you
the longest life and gets the most Huns. We're all out for the most
Huns, y'see, and pushing up the Squadron's record. Over the hundred
crashed in under six months now and we want to pile it up. There's
hardly a man here hasn't got anything from two to a dozen a-piece."
"Doesn't seem to sit on their consciences," said Jack, looking round
the table of happy faces and listening to the chatter and laughter that
ran steadily through the dinner. Out in the ante-room the band played
light and cheerful music.
"Some band," said Jack admiringly in answer to a remark from the C.O.
"Good as a West End Theatre; makes me want to get up and dance,"
tapping his foot in time to the alluring rag that the music had just
slid off into.
"You people evidently believe in the 'eat, drink and be merry, for
to-morrow, etcetera' theory," said the visiting Major.
"Why not?" said the C.O. quickly. "Let's live decently while we can,
I say. We're all proud of the Squadron, and all keen to do the best
we can to make it the best in the Field, in living, and feeding, and
comfort--and fighting. And the theory seems to work all right."
"Looking at your record," said the other Major, "it does."
They were at the second course, when half a dozen pilots came in in
ones and twos, went to the head of the table and made their formal
apologies for being late, and went to their seats. They were the
evening patrol, and the Leader took his place near the Major's end of
the table.
"Anything doing to-night?" asked the Major when the Ca
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