A Wretched Victory (Innocents At War Series, Book 6)

by Andrew Wareham

  George shrugged, said nothing more.

  Colonel Sarratt drove in, took in the silence, the hostility of the stares in his direction.

  “Did you get up, Tommy?”

  “Two Flights, sir, as ordered. I came back again. The Germans are at least two miles through the lines, sir, and not stopping. We can’t get the planes out until the fog lifts, but I shall order Knell to load his machinery onto the trailers this afternoon. We require five pilots, one of them a captain, and seven Camels, sir, as a matter of some immediacy. There are two requests for commissions, sir.”

  “Give me the paperwork, Tommy. We had to know.”

  “So you did, sir. If you can make two of the pilots experienced men, it will be useful, sir. Better than having three green hands in a Flight.”

  “No promises, Tommy. I will do what I can. There will be men coming out from England, I don’t doubt. There have been a lot of pilots trained in Canada in the past year, many of them arrived recently; I expect they will be sent out immediately. Far more hours in training, the Canadians. Some of them have topped a hundred hours, a lot of that in rotaries.”

  “I hope they have experience of flying with their eyes closed, sir. Flying blind seems to be the new fashion in the RFC.”

  “There was no choice. We had to know,” Colonel Sarratt repeated.

  Nancy appeared, said they had heard nothing, suggested a cup of tea, they had pastries freshly made, he was sure they would benefit from a snack; he was rarely ruffled, talking for the sake of making a noise, of preventing the two from resorting to a fist fight in the Mess.

  “Don’t worry, Nancy. I’m not going to hit him. You’re right though. I’m hungry now.”

  “Tea or coffee, Tommy?”

  “Tea, please. Coffee would not do the gut any favours.”

  Tommy turned, waved George across to him; he had been hanging back, out of hearing so that he could not testify at a court-martial.

  “Instruct Knell to strip his machine shop, George. Get as much as possible on the road this afternoon. There will be no stopping Jerry today, or tomorrow if the weather stays the same. All gunners to the alert as soon as the fog starts to clear.”

  “Standing patrol, Tommy?”

  “No. The fog will close back in again as the sun sets, before maybe. Too big a risk. We have lost too many men already today.”

  Colonel Sarratt stood abruptly, walked out of the Mess.

  “It’s not his fault, Tommy.”

  “I didn’t see him flying today. If it was that important, he could have gone as observer in a two-seater and seen for himself. He’s made a career of keeping away from the firing line and showed no different this morning.”

  Nancy gave up – there was no gain to arguing, not while the wounds were still raw.

  The fog thickened through the afternoon, making further flying impossible.

  “All pilots for first light, George. If the fog is thick again, I will send one Flight back to bed. Ask Hell-For and Jack to see me.”

  “If it’s clear enough to fly, first thing, then we can expect company. I’ll take the two new men, the ex-sergeants, up as early as possible to provide cover for the field. You two to take your Flights out on ground attack as soon as you can reasonably take off. The little I saw suggests that Jerry is coming in skirmish order, not in lines at shoulder to shoulder. Try for the soldiers on the ground, if possible; it might not be, you might not be able to find them if they take cover. I expect you will find a whole bloody circus waiting for you at high, protecting their own ground-attack planes and trying to kill you as well. Keep as low as you can – we all know how hard it is to attack a plane that’s hedge-hopping. Jerry has been shepherding his pilots over winter, wrapping them in lamb’s-wool to have them available for today; that means they are low on experience – or so we can hope. Don’t go high; don’t go hunting the tripehound; watch out for anything new. There’s word of a new Fokker biplane – don’t know anything about it for sure, but it may be fast and very strong. There’s rumour of half a dozen other new beasts – so keep your eyes open.”

  “They’ll be looking for a standing patrol if they attack the field, Tommy.”

  “They will, Jack. I hope to pick up the remnants left by the guns round the field. If possible, I shall lead them into temptation, back into the range of the pom-poms. It might work.”

  Colonel Sarratt returned to the field in early evening, dropped off the documents confirming the commissions to the two sergeants, left after a brief word with George; he avoided Tommy.

  George pulled the pair from the Sergeants Mess and escorted them to their new billets in the Officers’ Quarters; he found them uniforms, made up from the effects of the men lost on the day and then brought them through to Tommy.

  “Second Lieutenants John Bennett and Archibald O’Hara, sir.”

  Tommy stood, found his hat and exchanged formal salutes.

  “That, gentlemen, is the first and may well be the last time for that rigmarole. Welcome to the flying part of the squadron. You know what you’ve let yourselves in for. I need you. We are flying first thing in the morning, the three of us to run airfield protection. We will try to stick together, close to the field. Keep left and right of me. I shall want to be low, picking the daisies low, trying to take a poke at the ground-attack planes as they come out of their dives. The airfield Archie will try to get them coming in and we will mop up after them. Any Jerry you see coming out damaged – finish him. Don’t worry about those who are untouched – because they’ll have pulled out early, won’t have done much in the way of harm. They’re welcome to go home and bomb up again; we’ll try to kill the good ones who pushed to close quarters.”

  The two grinned – that seemed far the best plan.

  “Kill the best and leave the yellow buggers to provide an example to their mates, sir. Good idea!”

  “Not ‘sir’ now, Johnny – or you, Archie – don’t know if we can have that name in the Mess, you know, have to do something about that.”

  “Never liked it anyway, Tommy. Always thought me mum could have done better than Archibald. She said she was up west when she felt her pains for me, in sight of Marble Arch, you see. Got back home to Poplar just in time.”

  “Should have been Marble – far more distinguished.”

  George laughed and nodded – it would be now.

  The fog was thinner on the second day, and the upper sky was full of Fokkers, the lower two hundred feet apparently swarming with the new ground-attack planes.

  Tommy took off immediately before first light, risking that the fog would not set in thick again after dawn. He climbed to two thousand feet and led the two new pilots in a circle to the west of the field, watching the sun rise slowly as Drongo’s squadron and Jack and Hell-For flew out to the east, very low to the ground.

  He fired a flare as he saw a mob of ground-attack aircraft two miles out and forming into three or four lines abreast.

  ‘Poor! Should have risked their own bomb blasts – they only use little ones. Wasted two minutes forming up, time for the gunners to get a sight on them. Lost surprise – not that they had a lot of that. They had to attack us this morning.’

  He took Johnny and Marble low, three hundred feet and just to the south of the field, expecting the attackers to turn off towards him. According to Nancy there was a manual at the training fields which instructed German pilots to bank to port when rising from the attack; it prevented collisions, no doubt, but was a little too rigid in Tommy’s opinion – they might have problems attacking on a hillside.

  They were obedient gentlemen, Tommy saw.

  The first line came in low, aiming at the hangars, and ran into the concentrated fire of pom-poms and machine-guns, firing at point blank at planes committed to the last, straight line of the bombing run. It was like shooting flighting pigeons as they came into roost, Tommy thought, vermin killing rather than sport, and just as clinically successful. The first line disintegrated, just three survivors from a doz
en, and they turned to port as they climbed, labouring, carrying damage to their wings and engines.

  Three short bursts, one apiece, the new men breaking their ducks on their first patrol. Tommy hoped they might get a second chance.

  He led the pair away, dropping to bare feet above the fields and then climbing to starboard, as hard as they could to five hundred feet and back in. He had missed the second line but arrived in time for the third, a far more confused group, their formation lost as they tried to avoid the anti-aircraft fire. Again, they turned to port as they came out of their bombing run, the habit ingrained. Tommy picked out an all-metal Junkers, showing damage to the fuselage but flying fast, control apparently unimpaired; he dived into the plane from the front, aiming for the cockpit, inevitably open to fire from above. It crashed over the boundary fence and rolled down to the stream in the little ravine, burning petrol flaring. He felt a burst hitting in behind him, dived, losing one hundred and eighty of his two hundred feet and turning back over the field. He saw a biplane turning away from the tracer reaching out from the guns; it was new to him, a single-seater and powerful, climbing faster than his Camel could have managed. He presumed it was the new Fokker.

  The air was suddenly clear, in the way of dog-fighting, everything disappearing in a second. He dropped his nose and landed, picking his way through burning heaps of metal, the remains of many of the attackers. He taxyed towards the hangars, saw that the attack had had some success; number four was burning, the roof of three sagging. He stopped at a safe distance out on the grass.

  Knell came running across.

  “Orders to pull out, Tommy. Go back to the reserve field. We’re loading up the mechanics now. Only hand tools left; everything else went out in the night. No losses. All our lads were down in their bunkers. Don’t know about the gunners.”

  George followed Knell.

  “Don’t get out of the plane, Tommy. I’m dealing with the men on the ground. Start up and get out.”

  Johnny and Marble had survived, were taxying in. Tommy waved to them, pointed up, circling with his arm. They took off, hopefully to wait for him to get started again. He wondered just how much damage he had taken – but he would take far more if he was still there when the next bombing raid came in…

  He led the pair the extra twenty-five miles southwest, landed cautiously and found Nancy waiting, ready to take their reports.

  “The guns are playing hell with the ground-attack planes, Nancy. They might be back, but I suspect they will concentrate on their proper work – breaking up the retreat like the old hussars used to do. Worth noting for higher up – a concentration of light anti-aircraft guns will protect a target from low-level bombing. We finished four between us, two for me, but the guns must have knocked down a dozen around the field. Mind you, I’ll bet the sole response will be to question how it comes about that we had more guns than are officially allowed, and of the wrong sort.”

  “Was the field damaged, Tommy?”

  “Two hangars lost. If we had still been there, then the squadrons would both have been put out of action for lack of ground facilities. Good thing we moved the bulk of the mechanics and their machinery out overnight.”

  “It was your orders to move, Tommy, and will be reported as such. HQ may even notice that you got it right. A pat on the head and a meaty bone for a good boy, if you are lucky, Tommy.”

  “I would wag my tail, if it wasn’t for this bloody fog. It’s thickening again, Nancy. I thought it was supposed to burn off during the day.”

  “Cloud cover edging in, Tommy. The sun’s not strong enough as a result. It should come to an end soon, the weather boys say. The cloud cover should stop the fog forming, or somesuch. Too much science in it for me.”

  “It needs to clear if we are to survive this. But Jerry will be able to fly more with his armoured planes as soon as the fog lifts, and we can hardly touch them from the air – you can’t dogfight at one hundred feet. Too few guns on the ground to stop them, unless the Army builds strongpoints for the men at the Front to fall back on, and it’s too late for that if they haven’t got them already. We’ve probably lost the pom-poms at St Rigobert – I doubt we will be able to pull them out. I need to talk to George and to Wing for guns for this field.”

  Nancy nodded; the new field was forty-five miles behind the old lines, but he as well suspected that there would be Germans knocking on the door within a very few days.

  “Is Drongo sharing this field with us, Nancy? Smaller than St Rigobert. What are the facilities like?”

  “Tight! But Drongo has to come in here, because of the mechanics. Trouble with using one set of workshops for two squadrons. It’s efficient, enables them to specialise – one or two of the mechanics do nothing other than set up the fuel systems on the engines, which is why they run so well, they tell me. You can do that when you’re working with the larger number of planes; it wouldn’t be possible on a single squadron field. But it does mean that the two squadrons have to stay together. The messing will be a bit of a problem, particularly for the Other Ranks, but, hopefully, it will only be for a short time. George has got hold of tents already for sleeping – there ain’t rooms for all of you.”

  “Wonderful! Any other pieces of good news?”

  “A consignment of rifles came in just now. One apiece in case we lose the planes. No retreat from here, Tommy. Fight to the last man to defend Calais. Horatio is busy pulling strings, trying to get hold of some of the Navy’s toys to put in dugouts around the fence.”

  Tommy said nothing, went into the offices to find George.

  “Anything regarding replacements, George?”

  “Telephone message a few minutes ago. Camels will fly in direct from England. Five of the pilots will remain here; ferry pilots to be returned to Calais with minimum delay. One Flight Commander, a captain, and one lieutenant and three second lieutenants to us. Request that we return to England for emergency training any suitable candidates. Extra mechanics are on their way – which says that they have noticed our habit of training up some of our sergeants and are prepared to approve, in the current circumstances.”

  “How many pilots did we lose yesterday, if they are panicking already?”

  “Salmond’s people were talking to Nancy an hour ago. You weren’t the only one to lose seven out of eight yesterday. Casualties were horrendous. Good thing that most of the squadrons found they could not fly.”

  George’s voice was flat, wholly without emphasis.

  “How pleasing that we, evidently, had better conditions than most, so that we could get into the air, George.”

  “Nothing to say to that, Tommy. Is that the rest of the squadron coming in?”

  They listened to the engines, relaxed as they decided they were Camels, probably. They walked almost reluctantly to the door of the offices to watch them in, to count them down.

  “That’s Jack – shot up towards the tail, not too bad. Two following him. Two more coming in, neither of them is Hell-For.”

  They waited as the five taxyed in and made their first reports to Nancy. Ten minutes and Drongo’s squadron flew in, all four Flights, eleven planes in total.

  “Eight lost on the morning, George. I wonder how Fred’s done.”

  “Good chance of some of the pilots making it back, Tommy. They won’t have ventured the other side of the old Trenches. They might be able to walk it out.”

  “Could be. Some may have force-landed short of here. They could even fly in, one or two, if we are lucky. I’ll go across to the hangars, see what we will be able to fly and when.”

  “I can give you six planes for two o’clock, sir. We haven’t got all of our spares here, sir. Need to send a lorry back to St Rigobert to pick up some of the parts which we couldn’t get aboard for lack of space in the night.”

  “Speak to the Adjutant, Flight. Where’s Mr Morton?”

  “Finishing packing up at St Rigobert, sir. He was going to give a hand with the guns then, sir. The steam Fodens are still ther
e, sir, with the heavy trailers, and they were going to lift the guns out of their pits. Using the derricks we wheel around the hangars, sir, to pull engines out of the Camels when we need to get them into a jig on the bench to work on them. The weight is more, but he thinks he can strengthen the derricks, sir. It ought to work. We brought all the rounds in the magazine, sir, put them on a lorry last night. That’s why we couldn’t bring all the spares, sir. Had to make a choice.”

  “I’m not arguing, Flight. Tool up the six for two o’clock, bombs and hybrids for the guns. Small bombs and the new phosphorus incendiaries, half and half.”

  Tommy walked back to the mess, stood for silence.

  “We have six planes for two o’clock. I shall take them in a single Flight. Jack, stay home and take a breather. We are expecting more planes this afternoon, and five pilots. Talk with George and reorganise the Flights. Johnny and Marble, with me, and I want three others, Jack, toss a coin for them.”

  The fog continued to thin, was down to tree height almost everywhere. Tommy led his patrol at thirty feet, following the contours, working his way along the little valleys that marked this countryside. Ten miles from the old Trenches and he came across parties of soldiers in full retreat, legging it back and with no obvious intention of making a stand; they would take days to round up and settle back to work. Another three miles and he came to the fighting zone where far more men were standing together in companies and battalions and falling back more slowly, fighting for the ground they gave up.

  He crossed over the German advance, saw that it was still small parties of men, heavily armed, and working in isolation, rather than advancing shoulder to shoulder in the British fashion. He came to a redoubt, a full battalion of khaki holding in a circle, firing all about them, and forcing the attackers to come together in a worthwhile target. He raised a hand and dropped almost to ground level, firing his guns, releasing his bombs at the same moment, cutting a swathe through the field-grey. He turned back immediately – there was no point to attempting further reconnaissance – there was no line to draw on a map.