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

by Andrew Wareham

  “Two sergeants – it looks much more impressive. Be very sure that his holster is empty.”

  “Yes, sir. My thanks for your understanding. I’ll get George to indent for a replacement captain in the normal way.”

  Sergeant James was sat at his desk, had heard everything and would say nothing, which was an important part of his job.

  “I’ll get his servant to pack his bags, sir. Driver will be to hand within ten minutes, sir. Pair of flight-sergeants as escort, sir. I’ll inform the gate.”

  Tommy nodded, strode out of the door, hoping that Jimmy would be in the Mess, in a public place where he would not make a scene.

  Jimmy was at the bar, which was convenient.

  “I say, Tommy, old chap, I do hope you were not offended, old fellow. I had no intention of being insulting, you know.”

  Tommy summoned his best smile.

  “I am sure you had not, Jimmy. I am grounding you, however, and sending you back to Blighty. You would never have said something like that ordinarily, and I don’t think you intended to say it then. Too much strain, Jimmy. I think there is a risk that you will break in flight, Jimmy. You may not like it, but you are not flying for the next six months at least. Your servant is packing your bags now, and the car will be at the door in five minutes.”

  Tommy turned away, found George waiting at his side.

  “Travel warrants and authorisation to return to England, please, George.”

  “Give me five minutes, Tommy.”

  Tommy spotted men sidling away from the bar, walked back to see Jimmy hunched over, quietly weeping, tears running down his cheeks, dripping onto the counter.

  He stood at Jimmy’s side, saying nothing, waiting for him to regain control, watching against the need to grab him. There were glasses in reach that could be broken and used to slash his wrists. Three or four minutes and Jimmy stood upright.

  “Sorry, Tommy. I’ve let you down. Ought to put a bullet in my skull! Bloody performance in public!”

  “No, Jimmy. I let you down. They should never have sent you up from the Air Park and I should have seen immediately that the strain was getting to you. I was wrong to let you make that last patrol. I’ll make your goodbyes, you need not see any of the lads again. Come on out to the car.”

  George appeared with the pieces of paper; the pair of sergeants crushed next to each other on the front bench seat; the car pulled away.

  Tommy waved once then turned away, all business.

  “Right, George. Put the paperwork into Wing. We need a new captain, but, thinking on it, not with too much urgency. They must be scraping the barrel for captains – he must have been sent to the Air Park for being on the edge of breaking, and they must have known it but still sent him to us. We don’t need a fourth captain that badly. What’s for dinner?”

  “Horatio, how’s the stocks in your department?”

  “Too many of those bloody three-hundredweight lumps, Tommy. Could do with getting rid of some – they take up a disproportionate amount of space.”

  “Put them up in the morning, Horatio. One apiece and make up the bays with twenty pounders. Nancy, what’s the nearest railway yard to the new front they’re building?”

  “Big? To the south of Ostend, and very heavily defended. Local sets of sidings rather than proper yards? Half a dozen of them, and empty except when there is a train actually unloading. You would do better to hit the barge docks along the canal. There are small narrowboats there almost all of the time. There is a set of locks and wharves just twenty-eight miles north of St Rigobert. I would bet that’s in use.”

  “Right. Cancel routine. Squadron raid first thing in the morning, take off before dawn by ten minutes. Get some oil drum fires set up, George. Horatio, big bombs for all. Will they explode in water?”

  “Probably not, Tommy – the mud will be soft, probably too much so to ignite the percussion primer. Nothing I can do for you as far as that is concerned – I can’t set up time fuses, haven’t got the materials.”

  “What about the incendiaries?”

  “No. They still need something hard to hit the fuse. But, I wouldn’t worry too much, Tommy. The water will be shallow, and if they can see the end of a bloody great big bomb sticking up, they won’t be running barges just there.”

  Tommy could see that to be true – it might in fact shut the wharf down for hours while their engineers tried to defuse and shift the bomb.

  “Nancy, give me a route that avoids any known concentrations of troops, if that is possible. Barbry, Blue and David to me, please.”

  There were D7s in the air above them, and a greater number of Bristol Fighters and SE5as keeping them busy. Watching from low down, it was clear that the D7 was the better plane, shown by four of the RAF fighters falling as they flew to their target. Tommy saw two D7s retiring hurt, even when damaged able to outpace a Bristol in pursuit, but there were too few of them to drop low and attack the bombers.

  It was clear that the British could not build planes to match the Germans – no engineers, too few skilled craftsmen in the factories, a lower general level of education in England, in fact, that was crippling the war effort. It probably explained why the German navy had lost far fewer warships as well – they made better machinery in every way.

  It was humiliating, Tommy thought, and wondered whether the big nobs in the government were aware of the problem, and if they would actually do something about it. He answered his own question – they would not – far better to keep the plebs in a state of ignorance and submission than to make the country great.

  He concentrated on his course – one could hardly call it navigation, which was a fortunate thing, as he did not know how to navigate.

  From St Rigobert, north and a fraction east to the river, then follow its course to the barge docks, which would be easily spotted by their warehouses and a network of roads leading down towards the old front, and then much further to the new fighting area. Because they were so low, it was inevitable that they would overshoot the target and be forced to turn back on themselves – but that would put them on the right course for home.

  He supposed that Jimmy would be home by now – poor fellow. He would be an embarrassment, would be dumped into the hands of the doctors, shunted from one hospital to another for assessment and eventually prescribed either treatment or prolonged rest. He had medals, which would help – he was unlikely to be treated as a shirker. At luckiest, a month’s leave at home and then a ground posting to a training field as adjutant or classroom lecturer; at worst, hospitalised and then thrown into a stores depot as a glorified clerk. Better than breaking on a raid and killing himself, and possibly all of those following him; better for the squadron, at least.

  The river valley was opening a fraction, could probably be used by boats now, the dock should be close… There! Hillsides rising to one hundred feet or more, follow them up to the northeast, almost grazing the crest, then swinging round almost flat to port, a wide circle, across the river and up on the other side – some of the boys would be having trouble, this was not easy flying, skidding out of the turn, but difficult for Archie, not that he could see any… Back on line, no more than half a mile out, his Flight to the right in line abreast. David and Blue and Barbry stepped back, echeloned – all in place.

  Hand raised… Drop!

  Away, still low, throttling up, Ormerod shooting at something. He had seen no target, but Ormerod had more time to look about him. He was a bright bloke as well, able to evaluate anything he saw. He would make a good observer, but he was not sentencing him to death in a spotter plane.

  He settled on the homeward course, wondering if Brigade was right in its insistence that the squadron must have four captains; they were intending to reduce the majors’ flying time again. They had tried that before, more or less seriously, depending on the cooperation of the Wing colonels. He almost hoped that they might again – he was tenuously aware that he was fatigued, not sleepy tired, but weary – he wondered if being old f
elt like this, too many years behind one.

  He lined up for the field, saw staff cars outside the offices. Bloody nuisance, he would have to be polite, especially after the previous day’s performance; he owed Colonel Sarratt a lot of courtesy.

  Colonel Sarratt introduced Brigadier Mackeson-Hamworthy, a man well into his fifties at a glance, chest displaying a collection of ribbons, most of which Tommy did not recognise, probably therefore relating to specific campaigns from the Victorian Empire. He had wings, which showed some initiative as he must have learned well into middle-age – less likely to be a starched shirt with no brain at all.

  “Here for two reasons, Stark. First to congratulate your adjutant – he has a Cross, for his work pulling the wounded out.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, sir. He crashed in a Tabloid in ’14, sir, would otherwise be a known figure, I do not doubt, and much senior in rank. An exceptional man, sir.”

  “Well said, Stark. I spoke to him while you were up. Struck me as a damned fine sort of chap. The other bit of business, though, ain’t so pretty. Reports of a hospital being bombed by your people – twice! Headlines in newspapers in Switzerland, which we could do without!”

  “My gunners told me they spotted an ambulance under cover – they saw it from the side, sir, coming away from the raid. The second raid had gone out before the report came across my desk. Not a single red cross to be seen, sir. It was a tented encampment, typical of the sort used for stores and cookhouses, sir. I suspect that the medical people had set up a dressing station without reference to anyone else. There were machine-guns in place around the perimeter, firing at us in and out. I would not have bombed a hospital by intent, but I had no reason to suppose that was what it was, sir.”

  “If that is so, then you have nothing to answer for, Major Stark. I must see your reports, of course.”

  Tommy stuck his head out into the corridor.

  “Nancy! Can you bring the originals for the hospital encampment? George, copies of the final report, please.”

  “Nancy?”

  “Intelligence Officer, sir – very fine man, but turns himself out very smart, almost prettily. The people in London who gave him that nickname had not seen his wife, sir!”

  The Brigadier nodded his understanding, sat down at Tommy’s desk to peruse the reports. He spent just ten minutes on his reading, rather to Tommy’s surprise – he would have needed half an hour, at least.

  “Entirely clear, Major Stark. No blame accrues to you or your people, sir. Which, I might add, does not surprise me at all. What have you planned for your squadron for today?”

  “I would like to work to more of a pre-arranged schedule of raids, sir, but at the moment we are simply going out, hunting for Jerry and dropping bombs on the first we see. It is not the best way of doing things, sir. We probably hit the insignificant more than we get the important, sir. I know that every dead German soldier is a gain to the Army, but we should be better organised than this.”

  “Agreed, but easier said than done. What do you need?”

  Tommy scratched his head, tried to put his thoughts into coherent sentences.

  “Seems to me, sir, that we have a choice of two ways of organising ourselves. We could simply ask the Army to send us a list of targets – with the certainty that most of them will be out of date by the time they get to squadron; I saw that when I was at HQ for a few days, wounded, a couple of years back. Better would be to send out DH4s as scouts. No bombs, although they might perhaps carry smoke flares, but each to have a wireless, with a receiver here at squadron, sir. The scouts to search, each in a particular area, and to send in the message – ‘infantry or artillery or tanks at position such and such, marker smoke dropped; use incendiaries, small, medium, large bombs; one Flight, two Flights or whole squadron’. Best thing would be a fifth Flight, under a very senior captain with the most experienced pilots, or even a separate squadron to spot for the whole Wing, sir.”

  “Sounds sensible to me. It would have to go to the very top, as you are asking for a new sort of squadron to be formed… it’s a good idea. Colonel Sarratt, I would like you to send me a paper, detailing what you would need for such a spotter squadron – full analysis, if you would be so good. I will make sure it reaches the General’s desk. Your name and Stark’s to be on the proposal.”

  Colonel Sarratt said, at some length, that he would do so as a matter of urgency.

  George interrupted the meeting.

  “David is about to go out, Tommy. Mixture of one hundred and twenty pounders. Working north along the western edge of the advance.”

  “Good. I want Blue and Barbry to take the big bombs and follow in his tracks when it’s time for them to go out. David might have stirred something up and in any case, the big bombs can be effective where the trenches are no more than shallow scrapes.”

  George left to inform Horatio of the decision.

  “You are making it up as you go, Major Stark. Necessary, as you say, but also not the best way of doing things. It will take a year to obtain agreement on your spotters, you know – so you must continue as you are for the while. Colonel Sarratt tells me that you believe the attack to the west had ended, that Jerry is no longer aiming for the Channel Coast?”

  “He could perhaps be consolidating, sir, making a line from which he can jump off again – but it don’t feel like it. He’s digging in, sir. To me, sir, it looks like there has been a change of aims. The first plan was to cut through to the coast, but that has failed – perhaps their casualties have been too high among these ‘stormtroopers’ of theirs. The general who made that plan has probably been sacked and replaced by a ‘safe’ old chap, who has returned to the plans of the past three years – aim for Paris, by way of Ypres.”

  “I think that to be so, as well. One rumour – and not the only one by a long way – suggests that the Kaiser has insisted on a push to Paris. According to some neutral sources, he wants to bring the war in the west to a negotiated end, but with a victory under his belt. If he can’t defeat Britain, then he can flatten the French instead. That done, he can negotiate with Britain from strength.”

  Nancy had said the same thing, more than once.

  “Trouble is, Stark, that the Kaiser has made no allowance for the Americans. They won’t allow France to be crushed, so we can’t either. The Americans are pushing their people forward faster than planned, and they will make the difference. Funny, ain’t it? For three years we have wanted nothing so much as for the Yanks to come; now that they’re here, they are slightly inconvenient, because they won’t let us betray the French!”

  Funny it might have been – but it required a sense of humour Tommy no longer possessed.

  “So, sir… What does that mean for the squadron?”

  “Keep on as you are, but try to pick up information too. The Belgians report an easing of pressure on them, and they believe that the Germans have sent planes away from their front and across to the east, to the French. If you see the same, take advantage of it. This attack you have just made on the canal wharf, for example – damned good thing! If you can do more of that sort of thing, I shall be much in favour. I shall try to discover what railways they are using, and send details to Colonel Sarratt. Can you make night attacks with DH4s?”

  “If they are to be close to dawn, yes, sir. Take off an hour before first light, drop while it’s still dark, land in daylight – we can do that. But not a lot more, sir, except by replacing the gunner with a navigator. The O400 can do true night raids, because it has a crew of four or five, so they can carry a navigator. We can’t, which means we’ll have hell’s own job finding a target.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that. Thing is, we want to flatten airfields, which means night raids. I shall think again.”

  Tommy hoped he would take a long time thinking. He did not enjoy night flying.

  “Will you be sending a fourth captain to us, sir?”

  “Eventually, certainly. I want my majors to spend less time in the air. You ha
ve just shown me that we need to put time into thinking about what we’re doing. You could spend half of your day most profitably reading the reports and working with your maps to determine what your targets should be. For the time being, I am short of bodies, so you won’t get one this month, or next, probably. What are these Canadians like, Stark?”

  “Good. Far better trained and still keen. They are like the boys who came out in ’15 and ’16, sir. Better than them for being trained and picked for ability to fly, of course. The best British pilots now are very much those who come up from the ranks, sir. They want to fly and are willing to risk their necks for the sake of getting a commission, with all that will mean to them after the war.”

  “Don’t like it Stark – the honour of fighting for one’s King should be sufficient.”

  “Honour, sir? There is precious little honour left in this war. How honourable would it be to dump the French and join hand-in-hand with the Germans? For that matter, how honourable is it to stay at home and make a profit out of munitions? We no longer fight for honour and glory, sir – and I am not sure that is a bad thing. The men who fight for their own personal advancement are often better at the job, sir – they intend to win, and to make a name for themselves in the process. None of this nonsense of chivalry in those lads, sir. They are brave, they will risk all for their fellow pilots, and they will take only those chances that make sense otherwise. Good pilots!”

  “I am glad that I know that you are one of the best, Stark. I have no doubts about you, but I would have if an unknown said those words to me. I fought for Queen and Country, and now I fight for King and Country – it comes hard to be told that the best of my officers fight for themselves alone!”

  “Reality changes, sir. This is not the war it was in ’14. I fact, it is not the war it was on the day before the Somme, sir. It is hard for young men to love a country that slow marches them into machine-guns, sir.”