“Rain before morning, they say, Tommy.”
“Good, I need a day off. Anything from Fred?”
“He’s here, in the Mess, Tommy. Do you hear?”
There was a vague sound of a piano being played well – not the normal amateur thumping.
“Fred was serious about his music, I remember, Nancy.”
“He wasn’t too serious about his brother, Tommy. He sat down and played the ‘Death March from Saul’, in rag time! Since then he’s been playing this Black American stuff – you know, Tommy, Jazz?”
“Never heard of it, Nancy.”
“It’s the latest big thing in the clubs. The night clubs, that is, Tommy.”
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of them.”
“We progress, Tommy. One day, after the war, I shall take you inside one.”
“A generous offer, Nancy. I must see Fred.”
Fred rose from the piano, bringing protests from the half of the squadron who had been listening and cries of thanks from those who had no ear for music.
“I received a letter last week saying that Jimmy had transferred from the KOYLI, Tommy. They were posted to the China Station, it seems, and he wanted to go to war. My father had pulled the strings for him – better than spending the rest of his life listening to Jimmy accusing him of betrayal. He wanted to get to my squadron, but I am very pleased he did not – he would have been an embarrassment, at minimum. I thought he was a complete bloody fool, you know, Tommy. Absolutely full of the most atrocious tosh – he had some bee in his bonnet about ‘facial symmetry’, the last time I spoke to him. Some idiot at Eton who had read a book by some Frenchman who claimed that a man’s character could be determined by the proportions of his face – the ratio between its width and its length from chin to crown. You could tell by the age of sixteen whether a man would become a criminal, and by eighteen you would know just what sort of crime he was most likely to commit. Jimmy was of the opinion that all of those shown to be criminal should be ‘removed from the breeding pool’. One of the best things about his demise is that he will never have the opportunity to enter it!”
“You did not especially like your brother, it would seem, Fred.”
“Horrible boy who would have become an awful man, Tommy. George tells me he was here to pick up a medal or two for the sake of his future career.”
“I gather so, Fred. All he picked up was machine-gun fire and he went down in flames – bounced into a mass of trees brought down by shell fire. Quite a cloud of smoke he left behind him.”
“I’ll write home to mother, Tommy. ‘He died bravely’, on his first flight; not quite true but she will be comforted, a little. Three out of five, Tommy.”
“Your eldest brother is still in the line, is he not, Fred?”
“No. He was pulled out three months ago, his battalion was rested and he went back to England as major in one of the new battalions in training. He might have come out with the extra bodies in the last few weeks, but he shouldn’t be back in the Trenches for some months, luckily for him.”
“Good. What about you, Fred? What’s this Dolphin like?”
“The lower wing is forward of the upper – it’s looks wrong but flies right. The upper wing is set very low – much better visibility than the Camel, but there is a chance of really thumping the back of one’s head in a crash landing. Better performance than a Camel, especially at height. Might match a D7 at fifteen thousand or more. Bit of a bugger having to fly so high two and three times a day, though. A better plane, that’s for sure.”
“You’re welcome to it, Fred. I don’t get on with high flying – leaves my head muzzy.”
“They say that there’s some sort of oxygen bottle coming, Tommy. That will help. If it ever turns up!”
“Are you going back to the piano, Fred? Poacher’s just come in, and he can sing.”
The rain started and the beer flowed; it was a good evening.
The German advance came to an end, was followed by a few days of quiet, then recommenced towards the Somme with a massive attack on a Portuguese division, which rapidly crumbled, exactly as the British had in March.
“Just what you’d expect from Dagoes, Tommy! No business fighting in a white man’s war!”
“I’m sure you’re right, Nancy. Are we to get involved?”
“Indirectly only, Tommy. We are to hit the rear, if possible, intercepting their supply lines, bashing their bridges, breaking their railway lines – all the normal pie in the sky stuff.”
“Bridges are impossible targets, Nancy. Railway lines are unlikely, except from low attacks. Better would be to go even further back and attempt the big railway stations.”
“The night bombers are going for them, Tommy.”
“So be it. Where first?”
“Wing have specified a target. A full forty miles beyond the new line to our front, Tommy. This side of Bruges, rail and road bridges crossing a river, side by side. According to the local people, there are no guns protecting them, but there is an airfield very close. What I would suggest is to drop in four Flights – two to the airfield, one to the road bridge, one to the rail. High-level attack. Hundred-pounders to the field, bigger for the bridges.”
“Only thirteen of us, unfortunately, Nancy. Not such a punch.”
They had lost another two pilots in the previous weeks of low-level work.
“Up to strength, Tommy. George has got three in his office now.”
“Then they can join us – a simple first raid to break them in gently.”
George brought the new men through.
“Two Canadians and one Englishman, Tommy.”
“Beg pardon, sir, Manxman, that’s me.”
Tommy recognised the word – he had almost flown across to the Isle of Man in 1913 to watch the motor racing there. He had been grounded by bad weather, he recalled.
“From the Isle of Man? First chap I’ve ever come across from there. Welcome to the squadron, anyway. How many hours?”
“Sixteen, sir, since solo. But eight of them were on DH9 trainers, sir, so I know a little about bombing planes.”
“Could be useful, Lieutenant…”
“Maxwell, sir.”
“Good. You will be in my Flight. Get into flying gear and present yourself at the hangars in thirty minutes, Mr Maxwell.”
Tommy turned to the pair of Canadians.
“You are needed by Blue and David.” He pointed randomly, one apiece. “Report to them now. What are your names?”
“Campbell, sir.”
“Chilcot, sir. next to each other on the list, sir.”
“Very logical. You will be flying this morning. George will have informed the hangars that your planes are to be made ready. Your Flight Captains will tell you what to do. There has been a big new Push down towards the Somme and every plane must be in the air – no time to introduce you to the work. Come with me – I must give the Flight Captains a briefing. You can listen.”
They flew at eight thousand feet, with Ormerod swinging his guns nervously, scanning the air to the front and high, hoping that the other three observers were on top of their sectors. Tommy watched to the front, hoping to identify the target from a distance to make a single run and then head out to sea in a wide circle, then home. If he spotted the railway lines and river too late then he would have to return, by which time the airfield might be busy. It depended, he thought – if they had fighters, the squadron was in trouble; if it was a bombing or ground-attack field, then all would be well irrespective.
Four miles distant, a little to the left – the wind stronger than he had allowed for.
“Ormerod! The sight.”
Tommy’s Flight was to attempt to hit the road bridge; Blue, immediately to the rear, would try for the railway while Barbry and David aimed for the hangars. Tommy had a slight hope that the squadron might damage the airfield.
“Coming onto target, sir… three… two… Drop!”
Tommy thumbed the toggle switch, felt the weight
fall away, held his straight line for a few more seconds as he watched the two bombs drop cleanly, nose first. He banked to port, snatching quick glances at the bridges, hoping to see some result. He saw a cloud of mud rising high from the river bank, probably a hundred yards distant from the bridge, an undershoot. The others would have dropped as soon as they saw his bombs go; there was a chance they might be closer. Six more explosions, the noise rising in a distant rumble. None of them were on the road.
There was no activity on the airfield – it might be one that had sent its Jastas across to the French sector. He turned towards the sea, making a long circle, slowly so that the other Flights could close up on him. They reached home after more than an hour, landed, reported to Nancy.
“Saw seven explosions, Nancy. No hits. Could be one bomb fell in the river, or in thick mud.”
Blue followed.
“Eight explosions, one of them hit the railway tracks, maybe fifty yards away from the bridge. Some damage.”
David reported placing two of their bombs into the hangars, the others mostly into the grass but one hitting sheds of some sort close behind the working area.
Barbry claimed five into the barracks rooms and the others close by; he thought the field was deserted, however.
“No men rushing about, no fire engines, no great fires for that matter.”
Nancy wrote it all down, retired to his office to make his reports.
George appeared with a message from Wing.
“Jerry is digging in before Ypres, Tommy. Photographs suggest that there is a gun line in the making, all the signs of a potential push there. We are to do all we can to slow their preparations. The word is that Ludendorff has demanded a success – there must be a clear and final victory this summer. There will therefore be more attacks. Colonel Sarratt says that we will hold and cause the Germans massive losses that will break their will to fight. The Americans are being sent forward – they still have the fighting spirit that our men are losing.”
“We fought to the last Australian at the Dardanelles, George. No reason why we shouldn’t fight to the last American at Ypres.”
“Perhaps we’ve already fought to the last Englishman, Tommy. There ain’t a lot left to commit to this war.”
“You might be right, George. Now, how do we go about it? High with big bombs, and miss, or low with small bombs that hit but don’t do much harm?”
They decided on low-level attacks, on the grounds that they were safer from the fighters there.
Nancy was much in favour of hedge-hopping.
“There’s a new Fokker coming, a monoplane. Fast and strong, so they say, better than the D7, mostly metal construction. The factory is short of materials, and they may have problems in fabricating some of the parts, so that it might not be successful in the immediate term. There is a new Albatros that has been withdrawn for collapsing in flight – lower wing dropping off when dogfighting. There is certainly a petrol shortage, to the extent that the Jastas are down to one patrol a day. They have the advantage, of course, that they are defending. HQ has refused to accept the reports from Intelligence that we are losing ten to Jerry’s one – but I believe the figures are correct. Ground fire the biggest single problem, of course. Very important to burn your plane if you crash land in their territory – multiple reports of German soldiers using Lewis Guns and needing our three-o-three ammunition.”
“We know they captured tanks and used them, Nancy.”
“Some of the field guns you are to destroy were ours as well, Tommy. Still, it shows just how short they are of their own stuff. They know that Krupps is better than anything we have – so they will use our stuff because the German factories cannot meet their needs now.”
Tommy was heartened, to an extent, by the information.
“They must throw their hand in soon, surely, Nancy. If the blockade is that effective, they won’t be able to continue.”
“Probably, Tommy. Depends on Russia – if they can get hold of Russian wheat and coal and iron ore, and oil reserves, then anything is possible.”
“Please God they can’t, Nancy.”
Tommy found Maxwell, his new pilot.
“Flying low this afternoon, Max. Twenty-pound bombs, release when I do, use your Vickers as we come on line. As soon as I fire, you do, even if you can see nothing. Your observer will beat up anything he can see. Watch the ground. We shall be working towards Ypres and there are hills and ridges there. Fifty feet can become no feet at all in the space of two seconds – keep alert.”
They ate early and then flew three patrols through the afternoon. To Tommy’s surprise, Maxwell was still with him when he landed for the third time.
“Blue, you’ve lost two?”
“The new lad, Tommy, flew down a machine-gun which hit his bomb load. He blew up twenty feet away from Mike. On the bright side, though, they dropped into what must have been the ready-use ammunition for a whole battery. Blew a bloody great chunk out of the rear area.”
“Which one was it, Campbell or Chilcot?”
David called across that it didn’t matter which was which; his new fellow had attacked a field gun from the front as it was firing.
“I reckon it was a forty-pound shell, or close to, Tommy. Straight down the throat. Hit the gun, of course, as he went in. Again, it wasn’t all loss.”
“George! Scratch two Canadians! Order up spare planes and bodies to fly ‘em.”
“Bloody hell, Tommy! I’ve just this minute finished writing up the pay forms for them, and the deductions for mess fees. Getting as bad as the early days when we let the paperwork wait for a week in the expectation that we wouldn’t need to waste our time on it. I thought these Canadians were supposed to be better trained than ours? They’ve got a higher death rate!”
“Poor buggers are keen, George. Come out here to win the war on their own. Mike’s off the ration list as well.”
“Four months in – I thought he was going to last a year or two.”
“So did he, I expect.”
“Picked up a bit of information from London, Tommy. Influenza – ‘flu’’ – spreading like the Black Death through the Near East. Apparently, it’s hit hard in Austria-Hungary already. The word is that their navy in the Adriatic has been unable to leave harbour this last week or two for lack of fit crews to take their ships out. Might be an excuse to cover up for mutiny, of course, they have problems with the various nationalities wanting freedom – or that’s what they call it, independence, anyway.”
“Flu’, Nancy? I thought that was just a bad cold? Like the one we had a month back?”
“So did I, Tommy, until London told me that this is a sort of variation on the flu’ theme. Happened before, occasionally, apparently, it turns into a killer for a few months – no idea why. Probably, it ain’t ‘flu’ at all, another, similar disease that shares some of the same symptoms, more likely. Whatever – this one hits the young and strong, not the old and weak, or children, like the ordinary sort. It kills frequently as well – fills the lungs, ‘wet chest’, they call it, and off goes a previously fit young man or woman. Quite a high death rate as well. Not as bad as the old Plague, but hitting hard nonetheless.”
“Is it spreading our way, Nancy?”
“No idea, old chap. It might have come out of Russia, or from the Ottoman Empire, and we have not the foggiest about what’s happening there – they don’t know themselves, so there’s no way we can find out anything. I shall enquire, of course, but it’s none of my business, officially, so it will have to be among friends and that will take time. Probably nothing to concern us, and certainly nothing we can do about it if it arrives. More important matters to worry about, in any case – Lloyd George has given in to French demands, deliberately, of course, to rein Haig in.”
Tommy did not quite understand the politics of the business, but he had vaguely heard that something was going on again.
“What’s happening with the French, Nancy?”
“Word is that they want H
aig to come under their command, a single Commander-in-Chief for the whole of the Western Front, who is to be their man; Foch or Petain, the probability. Both are competent, though as a good Englishman, I must not say so. The big new push is being held, running out of steam. Jerry is taking too many casualties for the ground being gained, and they’ve made a big mistake with these new stormtroopers of theirs.”
Tommy was surprised to hear that; he had thought the idea to be good. The fact that they had been able to break through the Trenches was a good argument for them.
“True, Tommy, but they winnowed through all of the battalions in the line, made them nominate their best soldiers to be trained up as stormtroopers. They led the attack and took the bulk of the casualties – and they’re getting pretty thin on the ground now. The second line troops are very much second-rate as well, for having their best taken away from them, officers as well as men. When their push finally runs out of steam and they face a counter-attack, then Jerry is going to face problems, Tommy. Quite funny, really – by almost winning the war, they have probably lost it.”
“Is that what they call ‘poetic’, sometimes, Nancy?”
“Well… that perhaps depends on one’s taste in poetry, old chap. Dear old Tennyson might not have thought so – though, of course, his ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ did show a little of perception, probably by mistake.”
Nancy saw that he had outstripped Tommy’s erudition, again.
“Not to worry. Yes, one might say that it is – Shakespearian, rather. Hoist by his own petard, and all that stuff.”
“I’ve always thought that might be painful, Nancy.”
“So it would, Tommy. I sometimes wonder if you say things like that deliberately, you know – but not to worry, all will be well, no doubt!”
“Possibly so, Nancy. What’s the word on a fourth captain? Have they dropped the idea?”
Nancy shook his head.
“The idea remains, but the bodies don’t, Tommy. Production of new planes is rising and they are trying to form new squadrons, and that means the promotion of captains to major and sending them back to England. Blue is almost certain to be posted away within a few weeks, and you will probably have to promote his successor from our ranks. Have we got a captain in the making?”
A Wretched Victory (Innocents At War Series, Book 6) Page 18
