by Peter Rimmer
Colonel Braithwaite was engaged to Miss Sara Wentworth, a brave nurse who gave her own life saving British lives in the same German advance that has since been checked and reversed.
There is talk Colonel Braithwaite may be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award of valour the King can bestow. Colonel Braithwaite had just turned thirty-three. He was the commanding officer of 33 Squadron. This newspaper salutes a brave man.
A month later, Harry Brigandshaw returned to France as commanding officer of 33 Squadron. He phoned Lucinda the day he left England to say goodbye. What he did not know was his feelings for Lucinda. What he did know was 33 Squadron would never be told by him what really happened to their first commanding officer.
Shortly afterwards the Royal Flying Corps became officially the Royal Air Force, with Trenchard its first air marshal.
2
October 1917 to January 1919
The lion was old, mangy, and the black tuft at the end of its tail dragged in the dust. There had been no rain since the end of April and the lion had not eaten for a week. With difficulty, the cat walked down to the Mazoe River and drank. The river was still flowing but only just. Every joint in the lion’s legs hurt from the shoulders down to the toes. The old gash that had almost taken his right eye throbbed, the fight over the lioness long forgotten. The eyes were big and sad and did not see very well. The lion had been on his own for a long time. Still hungry with little prospect, the black-maned lion pulled itself up from the bottom of the riverbank, climbed slowly to the top and lay down under an acacia tree that had been growing in the same place for centuries, reseeding itself. Soon the old lion was asleep and dreaming of better days. Above, and near the top of the acacia, a giant eagle owl was also asleep. The air was hot and dry, filled with the scent of wild sage. Across the river, a fish eagle was watching the water, hoping for something to catch. The bird had been motionless all morning on the same stump of dead tree… Even the crickets had fallen silent in the African heat.
Sir Henry Manderville had ridden out with the dogs at dawn when it was cool. In the hot, humid month of October, which the old Rhodesian hands called suicide month with an air of propriety, the butterflies were easier to catch and chloroform in a similar jar to the one he had used as a boy at Hastings Court in England. Then it was mostly cabbage whites, not the magnificent butterflies in rich blues and reds with long tails like Chinese kites. The best specimens were pinned into glass-topped trays, packed carefully and sent to a collector in Kent. They had been corresponding for seventeen years.
Sir Henry, now sixty-five years old, was very pleased with himself. The man in Salisbury who added up the figures had said the tobacco crop made two thousand pounds sterling the previous year. Imperial Tobacco in London had asked him to double the size of the crop as they slowly introduced the new tobacco to their blends. For the first time in his life, he had actually made some money. He had promised himself a ride to New Kleinfontein to tell Alison Oosthuizen once he had bagged ten good butterflies. If he could only remove the twenty-five-year age gap from his mind he would propose to the girl.
His daughter Emily had been blunt.
“Father, she may be young but she’s lonely. You may be old but you’re on your own. You like each other. You chatter away all day long to each other given a chance. I don’t know what’s happening to Madge and Barend. They married, so that’s that. Nothing I can do. Nothing Alison can do. Parents have to stand back from their children and let them make their own mistakes. You know that… You could have a lot of fun, you two. There’s money now from the tobacco. Marry her and take her on a trip.”
“You can’t be serious. I’m old enough to be her father.”
“So what? Have some fun. You never know what’s going to happen in Africa. And I’m so sick of worrying about Harry in France and I am permanently tired. Happiness doesn’t come too often in life. So what if it only lasts five years? Anyway, you’ll probably outlive her. I’ve never ever seen you sick once in your life.”
The owl heard the ridgeback dogs first and woke with big eyes. The fish eagle on the other riverbank took no notice. Sir Henry had not seen a worthwhile butterfly all morning and was about to give up, ride over to New Kleinfontein and ask Alison for lunch. The dogs were ranging, sniffing the air. The lion woke, smelt the dogs first and then heard one of them bark. The dogs could not get the scent of the lion as the wind was in the wrong direction. The horse was trailing Sir Henry at the end of the long lead; walking slowly forward, the net poised, Sir Henry was about to bag a butterfly he had never seen before, his mind fully concentrated as he walked towards the dappled shade of the old acacia tree, the dry grass bent and brown at his waist.
With difficulty, the old lion pulled itself up on its haunches to find out what was making the new noise. He kept his ears flat and his head down below the top of the old grass. Near the top of the tree, the owl’s eyes were as big as they could be as the bird watched the crouching man walk straight towards the crouching lion. The lion’s tail was now twitching as best it could, as the old lion wound itself up to spring. A curl of wind brushed around and down off the tree. Fletcher, the largest male in the pack of dogs caught the scent and turned, growling in his throat, making Sir Henry straighten up from his approach with the big butterfly net. He now looked straight into the old, sad eyes of the lion twenty feet in front of him.
Fletcher took off for the lion as the cat sprang, going straight for the throat. The lion chopped him away with his right paw, breaking the dog’s neck. Sir Henry turned the net and held the pole rigidly, pointed at the open mouth of the lion as the pack of Rhodesian ridgebacks hurled themselves forward. The old lion sank under their weight. The owl flew off away from all the noise. Sir Henry pulled his service revolver from its leather holster and, aiming carefully so as not to hurt the dogs, shot the lion through its mouth. Then he went across and bent down next to Fletcher, stroking the dog’s head on the other side to where the lion’s claws had torn out the flesh.
He had dropped the horse’s lead but when he called, the horse came up from the river. Sir Henry put Fletcher over the front of the saddle and rode back to Elephant Walk, the three dogs following. Behind them, next to the dead lion, lay the broken butterfly net.
Before the sun went down the vultures were circling the carcass. The hyenas and jackals were still frightened by the smell of the lion.
Sir Henry buried Fletcher next to the family plot. Standing with his daughter Emily and Tembo, he had never felt so lonely in his life. All afternoon the two remaining dogs and the bitch had looked for Fletcher. Even the wild geese were quiet. Both of them were thinking of Harry in France.
“You’re right,” he said, “I’m going to ask her to marry me. Life is too short. Too short.”
They were both crying for Fletcher, now buried deep in the red earth of Elephant Walk.
They were alone in the family compound and alone in their own houses. Before the sun came up, Emily could hear her father getting ready to go out into the lands. By the time the light was good enough to see what they were doing, the metal plough disc was hit with a metal rod. The insistent clanging brought the labourers out of their own compound of thatched huts a mile downstream. Tembo brought the saddled horse from the stables and her father went off to work wearing a wide-brimmed brown hat against the power of the African sun. He wore a khaki shirt with long sleeves and long khaki trousers to keep the sun from eating his skin. Everyone had a two-hour break in the middle of the day when the heat was intense. They worked all day, six days a week, planting, weeding, suckering, reaping and grading the tobacco. For five months at the end of the season, everyone on Elephant Walk worked only in the mornings. The season began with planting the seedbeds and keeping them moist with watering cans. A cut grass mulch was laid on the seedbeds to protect the green seedlings, the only green to be found on the farm in October other than the family vegetable garden. Only when the rains came would the seedlings be planted out in rows in the newly
prepared lands.
Most days Emily saw her father come home in the dark and go straight to bed. The routine of sundowners on her screened veranda had been long broken by Madge’s marriage to Barend and the boys going off to war. She even missed old Peregrine the Ninth. Even with Alison and the grandchildren on the farm New Kleinfontein, that had once been half of Elephant Walk, the families never visited each other without good reason. Barend, the boy she had loved, had become Barend the son-in-law that made her want to weep for her daughter. Madge had given birth to a girl in February 1916, a boy in February 1917, and was pregnant for the third time. Madge looked thirty, not twenty-five, and the light of happiness had long gone from her eyes.
Barend ran his farm from his veranda, shouting orders to his black foreman, who did more than shout at the labourers to make them work. The crops, when they came, were sparse and barely fed the men and women who lived on New Kleinfontein. The meagre wages, paid in kind (maize meal, salt, sometimes dried beans), were doled out through the foreman, who never left his hut without a rawhide whip in his big fat hand. Whatever was meant to go into the soil (seed and fertiliser), or into the mouths of the labourers, was first taxed by the foreman. Barend and his foreman were the only two fat men on the farm. To Emily, who now ran the maize and cattle sections on Elephant Walk, it was a recipe for disaster, a catastrophe waiting to happen. Alison, the one-time nurse for Harry as a baby, brought to Africa by Emily when she fled England with Sebastian Brigandshaw, was treated by her son as a servant.
She had thought about Alison marrying her father, long before she had suggested it to him. The looks between them had been going on for a long time. And when Harry came back from the war she would have him talk to Barend. Madge said nothing to her, loyal to her husband and the rapidly growing brood of children. Emily thanked God every night on her bended knees that Sebastian had been a good man in every sense of the word. What made a man grow to hate and bully she never understood. What made a man make everyone around them miserable she never understood. Maybe when the children were old enough they would protect each other and their mother. She wondered if Katinka, who had stayed in the Cape, had seen her brother for what he was and kept away. All the man did was sit and drink and shout and bully. Emily was quite sure Barend knew what his foreman was up to. They were made by God from the same rotten material. They were the devil on earth and she prayed for them every night before she went to bed. For what good it did.
Henry Manderville had rarely been lonely in his life, except at boarding school in England surrounded by other boys torn from their families. It was Emily who was lonely and there was nothing he could do. All her children had gone. Little James dead as a child. George dead on a battlefield. Madge to her husband. Harry to a war he would likely not come back from, despite the Americans joining the Allies at last. His daughter was forty and everything good in her life was in the past. Just an old, tired father to talk to of an evening. A woman needed a family to run, not a cattle and maize farm. And if he really thought about it, marrying Alison would probably do the poor girl more harm than good. A marriage should mean children, a family, cats and dogs, and above all, youth. Should they have a child, he was far too old to bring it up. It would not be right. Like Emily, Alison had had her children. Like Emily, one, Christo, had died as a child. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ he told himself. ‘Fooling oneself is one of the more stupid accomplishments in a man’s life.’ He was an old man with his books, who collected butterflies and grew tobacco. He should be satisfied with what he had. His wife, like Emily’s husband, had died. And that was all there was to it. Life was a mosaic. Bits fitted together to make up a life. Some bits blissfully happy. Some bits content. The rest was life itself. He was sometimes content. He had had a good life. Much to be thankful for. He would just have to let his daughter’s generation sort out their own problems and not become a meddling old fool. The strangest part of it all, he was not sure if he even wanted to start life all over again. There were too few moments of happiness. Too little content. Too much war and too many arguments.
Harry Brigandshaw looked down on the manufacturing might and manpower of America. He was patrolling behind the Allied lines. The Royal Flying Corps had complete command of the sky. He saw trucks loaded and grinding forward, some towing guns. Teams of horses towing guns. Men marching. Roads clogged with the means of war all pushing to the front. From the French ports to the front lines were American men and munitions. It was inevitable. If Fritz could see what he could see they would give up the war. Down below, the slowly flowing tide was too powerful for anyone to stop.
The light was fading though sunlight still caught the propellers of the biplanes. Their fourth sortie, and they had not seen a German aircraft all day. One German observer had tried to put up a balloon during the dawn patrol, cranking it up as fast as possible, the observer in the small basket below. A Flight had incinerated the balloon when it was halfway up in its bid to see what was happening with the Americans. The observer had jumped but he was too close to the ground for his parachute to open.
Harry lifted his right gloved hand and signalled 33 Squadron back to base. Harry was still looking for danger up till the moment he cut the Sopwith Camel’s engine at the end of their old airfield. They were once again back where they started from. The Germans were now sending boys to fight at the front to fill their manpower gap. The old French farmhouse was still there. All that was missing were Fishy Braithwaite and many of the pilots who had come and died. Harry was thirty-two years old with a dead German pilot to his name for every one of the years he had lived. He felt neither brave nor victorious. Just a survivor.
The mess steward brought him the message at the bar. Harry opened the official envelope. He was posted. To Military Headquarters. To liaise with the flying wing of the American army. To teach them what he had learnt… And then it dawned on him. His war was over. He had survived. All the conversations with his father to watch his back, to watch the clouds, watch what was coming out of the sun. His father had saved him day after day, talking in his head, keeping him alert. His nightmare of killing and surviving was over. He stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his uniform and turned to the barman, the same barman, back with the rank of corporal.
“Give everyone who comes into the mess tonight a drink on my card. They’ve posted me, Corporal. I won’t be flying anymore.”
Harry put his glass out for a refill. His whole body was numb. It was over. He was going to see Elephant Walk again after all. The corporal was smiling and they caught each other’s eye. The corporal had understood the meaning of the posting.
“Have one yourself, Corporal. Now, with me. Let’s break another rule.”
Both men laughed to break the tension.
A month later Harry met Jack Merryweather. Three days later Merlin St Clair walked into the officers’ mess at Military Headquarters. It was not such a big war after all. They had given Harry the Distinguished Flying Cross, made him a lieutenant colonel, and for some reason left him in the army uniform with red taps on his lapels, and a red band around his hat. It was something to do with the Americans not having their own separate air force. To make them feel at home. He still wore the wings on his right breast pocket with the DFC ribbon, the MC ribbon with the two studs on it depicting the two bars. So there it was and every American had to be told what the ribbons meant. Three Military Crosses and one Distinguished Flying Cross. Most of the Americans had enough feelings not to ask him to his face the number of kills, but they all knew.
And there they were, the survivors with their red taps, their new ranks, and an influx of American bourbon to drink to a now certain victory. Jack’s arm had healed and left no outward scars. It was only when the Americans looked into their eyes they saw the distant stares. And then they looked away again. The Americans had yet to fight the war.
The strangest thing had happened to Jack Merryweather. The moment they had taken him out of the trenches and the danger was gone, he was bored again. T
he job had been done and now he was back to waffling, being social, telling the Americans it wasn’t that bad after all. Telling them what they wanted to hear. He had gone from reality to the old ways of an educated man. Saying the right thing. Playing down any idea of hardship. Never mentioning the real friends he had made and lost. What people thought was the real world, Jack now knew to be one long pretence. All the years of polite talk lay ahead of him and it made him want to scream.
Merlin St Clair had sold every one of his Vickers-Armstrong shares a week before the Americans came into the war. He had managed the impossible. Buying at the bottom and selling at the top of the market. The machine gun he had orchestrated so effectively to kill Germans had made him rich. One hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling. Enough to never work again in his life. Lloyd’s of London could kiss his arse. Cornell, Brooke and Bradley could kiss his jolly old derrière. Someone had to be a winner in a war. He would buy his father the best herd of cows money could buy. He would set the builders onto repairing Purbeck Manor. Then he would sail around the world as slowly as possible and thank God every day that he was still alive. Then, and only then would he think what to do with the rest of his life. He was rich. For the first time in more than a century, a St Clair was stinking rich.
Glen Hamilton could not see one good reason why his fellow Americans had come into the war. If the Europeans wanted to bury themselves in mass graves it had nothing to do with America. He had no idea why they all went to war in the first place, and he doubted if any of the troops, dead or alive, had any idea either. His editor in Denver had said something about the balance of power. Germany building a navy to challenge the British. Treaties of alliance: an attack on one country would be considered an attack on all the Allies. So the whole of Europe had fallen into the same pit in a matter of days. Which was fine for the Europeans if that was what they wanted but it still had nothing to do with his America.
