Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  As the hour for the expiration of the ultimatum – 11.00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time – approached, the people filled the streets of Britain’s cities. In London, dense crowds waited outside Buckingham Palace. King George, Queen Mary, the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary appeared on the balcony. The crowd was silent, expectant. It was sixty years since Britain had taken part in a European war – the Crimean War against Russia.

  At eleven o’clock the crowds everywhere released their held-back emotions in a long hour of frenzied cheering and shouting. Patriotic songs welled the summer night. Outside the Palace they sang God Save the King, and Rule, Britannia. Nearly everyone was filled, drunk, with heady enthusiasm. Now God be thanked, for the stale, flat years of peace were washed into history, and forgotten. The Great War had begun.

  In the Foreign Office, Sir Edward Grey, the bird watcher of Fallodon, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, stood looking out of his window at the lights in St James’s Park, a private secretary at his side.

  The private secretary said, ‘Some of the lamps are going out, sir. Is it in case the Germans send over Zeppelins to drop bombs?’

  Grey, worn and weary, said slowly, ‘Henry, the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’

  Guy flung his bicycle down at the edge of the airfield and ran forward. The sun was not yet risen, its presence a bright glow below the eastern horizon. It was a hot, still morning. The BE 2(c) sat at the edge of the field, its engine turning, the four-bladed propeller whirling slowly. The pilot was sitting in the rear cockpit, and Guy’s friend, Ginger Keble Palmer, standing beside him, his flying helmet on, his goggles lifted to his forehead. The two were talking, their heads close.

  Ginger noticed Guy first and waved a gloved hand. As Guy came up he shouted, ‘We have to cancel the show, Guy … flying back to Farnborough at once … war …’

  Guy tried to control himself. He had been looking forward to this day, and the first flight he had been promised, ever since the airshow had been planned two months ago. But the newspaper headlines had been so threatening that he could not sleep last night, for a premonition of what might happen, and had got up long before dawn to come to the airfield.

  The thin-faced pilot looked at him a long time through his goggles and Guy turned away, for a tear was forming in his eye and he did not want the others to see it. He heard Ginger shouting, ‘This is Guy Rowland, Geoffrey. The one who is going to be a test pilot for us.’

  Then he heard the pilot – ‘Ten minutes won’t lose us the war … Hey, I’m Geoffrey de Havilland.’ Guy turned. The other’s gloved hand was out, stretched over the side of the cockpit. ‘Jump in.’

  Guy gasped, ‘Honestly, sir?’ Then, unable to speak another word, he found the slots in the plane’s fabric side and clambered into the front cockpit. The engine roared into louder life, and Ginger backed away. De Havilland shouted, ‘You’ll get a little windblown … Fasten that strap round your waist … You really want to be a test pilot?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Guy shouted, ‘if I don’t find myself in the RFC.’

  The nose swung and the machine gathered speed. The engine roar increased still more and Guy settled back. He was going to fly, for the first time in his life, with England’s greatest young aircraft designer, in the Royal Flying Corps’ newest aircraft, de Havilland’s BE 2(c). He knew its characteristics by heart – 8 cylinders in V, air cooled, 90 horsepower, 2150 lbs at take-off, maximum speed of just over 72 miles an hour at 6000 feet … could carry a machine-gun and 225 lbs of bombs – though this particular machine, equipped with dual controls for tests and training, carried neither, nor yet even the roundels of the RFC. The engine was encased in a riveted shell of some shiny metal, steel or aluminium; the lower wing was well staggered back from the upper; two struts on each side gave structural strength to both wings; and two vertical metal pipes, one from each bank of cylinders, carried the exhaust gases straight up and over the middle of the upper wing.

  August 5, 1914 … the date would live in his mind till the day he died … the date and all that happened on it. The windsock at the hangar drooped in the still air, the sun was just rising above the long, level line of the North Downs. The tail lifted, the ground rushed by faster and faster … it had gone, it was no longer touching, holding the aeroplane down, it was sliding past, mysteriously slower and slower. The laws of gravitation and inertia were suspended, the aircraft and its passengers sliding into a new dimension. The BE 2(c) arrowed into the yellow ball of the sun.

  Guy closed his eyes for a moment of pure ectasy. One day he had done the hat trick against the numbers 2, 3 and 4 of the Winchester batting order. Another, he had taken 7 for 38 against an I Zingari side containing four county and two England players … but never had he felt anything like this before. The wind rushed against his closed eyelids, slowly growing colder. His hair tugged at his scalp, and his skin was fretted by the air’s rough embrace. The eight cylinders purred in harmony close ahead, and a smell of petrol and engine oil mixed subtly with the summer air.

  He opened his eyes. The machine tilted to the right, a steady slow wheel across the sky … steadied … tilted to the left … steadied … climbed again, the sun now behind.

  ‘Like it?’ The firm pitch of de Havilland’s voice cut through the rushing roar of wind and engine.

  ‘It’s … the top!’ Guy flung back.

  ‘See that stick between your knees? Take it, and put your feet on the pedals, gently. Now feel what they do.’

  Guy felt the stick move a little to the right. One pedal depressed and the other rose against his foot. The plane’s right wing dipped and it began to turn. As it settled into the turn the stick moved to its central position, then a little back, then left past central. The wings levelled. The stick centred.

  ‘Now you try it.’

  Guy took the stick more firmly and gently pressed one pedal down, just as he had felt. The voice behind was encouraging – ‘Good … now the other way … stick a little back, or you’ll lose altitude …’

  ‘We’re steady on 2100 feet,’ Guy said.

  ‘We were at 2300 when you took over … Complete the circle without losing height … Good … Now line up at the airfield … there it is … stick forward gently … use the pedals to keep her on line … throttle back a bit, towards you, easy … altitude should be dropping … good … good …’

  The sun was a golden ball in the morning haze, the BE 2(c) flying into the heart of it. Guy half closed his eyes against the glow … de Havilland was drunk, or mad … he was letting him land the plane, his first time in the air … No, it was natural. The air was his element. The ground was a place where he had to eat and sleep and go to the bathroom. His life, his heart, his brains, were here.

  He eased the stick forward … right rudder … left … nose down a bit more … air speed ought to be close to forty when he landed … but there was no dial to show him … no wind … he could guess. The grass rushed up to meet him, and silently, without a bump or a graze, he flew the craft on to the grass, tail high.

  He felt the stick move back, and the throttle close. The tail sank. The plane stopped, the dust whirling around them as the propeller circled, the engine sputtering.

  De Havilland’s voice sounded a hundred miles away. ‘Not exactly a three-point landing … but very smooth. I had my hands on the controls all the time but never had to override you. Sure you’ve never flown before?’

  ‘In dreams, sir. Many times.’

  At the head of the table Lieutenant Colonel Pitchford said, ‘There are three changes in the mobilization details for today. A Company will hand in bayonets for sharpening and sandblasting at 10.23 a.m., not 10.50 as in the order. No difficulties there, Major Rowland?’

  Quentin Rowland said, ‘No, sir.’

  The Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, the Weald Light Infantry continued, ‘C Company will draw war scales of ball ammunition at 4.58 p.m. instead of 11.02 a.m. as at pr
esent ordered. Major Wylie?’

  ‘We’re down to be issuing first field dressings at that time, sir.’

  ‘Talk to the quartermaster about fitting that in somewhere else … A Company’s rehearsal of train loading will take place at 3 p.m. at the station, today, instead of tomorrow. Major Rowland?’

  ‘It will be a bit of a rush, but we can get it done, sir.’

  ‘Now, any questions about personnel? Do any of you foresee any problems with the people you now have? Are they all fit for war, in one rank higher than they now hold? Officers first.’

  Quentin thought of his officers – Irwin, his second in command: Hedges, Eden, Tate and McDonald the subalterns. McDonald was over thirty-six and in many regiments would have had his captaincy long ago; but promotion had always been very slow in the Wealds, as secondment and applications for the Staff College were severely discouraged. Perhaps he should recommend that McDonald be left behind in the depot at Hedlington to train the recruits who would presumably be flooding in. But where was his replacement to come from? And what about himself? He knew he was a competent officer, and had proved it in South Africa and on the Indian frontier … but this was going to be a bigger war. And the colonel had said, ‘one rank higher’. Could he command the battalion? He didn’t know, and couldn’t know, until he had tried; and by then it would be too late; and the men would suffer from his incompetence. But surely the colonel would not expect him to judge of his own fitness? He said nothing. Nor did anyone else.

  ‘Warrant officers? … NCOs? … I won’t ask about the men. If you haven’t trained your private soldiers, you’re not fit to command companies – and it will soon show … That’s all, gentlemen. Next mobilization meeting tomorrow, here, same time.’

  The company commanders saluted and filed out. Major Bergeron, the battalion second-in-command, Lieutenants Burke-Grebe and Corbett, the adjutant and quartermaster respectively, stayed behind with Colonel Pitchford. Quentin headed slowly across the barrack square towards A Company office, his head bent, thinking – war at last. France, Russia and now England against Germany and Austro-Hungary. Everyone knew the Austrians were no good. It would be over in a few weeks, then they could all go back to normal peacetime life. Meaning life with Fiona, as it had been these past nine or ten years? That wasn’t normal. Perhaps he should wish for the war to go on a long, long time. Perhaps he could at last find a way to show Fiona that he loved her, and always would, even if she no longer loved him. If only she needed him, as the men did, he could show her. But she didn’t.

  ‘War!’ Harry Rowland muttered, looking out of the window into the garden. The high wall that shut in Laburnum Lodge kept out most sounds of the town. He wondered whether the people were gathering outside the Town Hall this morning. Perhaps he should be there, instead of at home, guarding a cold he’d picked up a day or two earlier. Summer colds were always the most annoying. He blew his nose again, gently, for the septum and nostrils were sore, and turned back into the room.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he asked his wife. Rose was sitting in her accustomed high-backed chair, a piece of sewing in her lap.

  ‘Do about what, my dear?’ she said, keeping her head bent as she adjusted the spectacles on her nose. She always wore spectacles for sewing now.

  ‘About the war. I was supposed to retire at the end of this month, and we were to go round the world. That’s out of the question now.’

  ‘Going round the world is, I agree.’

  ‘What about retiring, then?’

  ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t retire, Harry. Richard is ready to take your place, and eager to do so. He has waited a long time. He is full of ideas and enthusiasm.’

  Harry began to pace the Wilton carpet. ‘But … the war alters everything. There’ll be all sorts of changes at the factory. We’ll get military orders and have to re-design or at least modify the Sapphire to suit. We may have to increase production greatly. Or we may be ordered to make munitions – guns – anything. For Richard to take over now would be like changing horses in midstream.’

  She put down her sewing with a sigh, took off her glasses and put them on the sewing-table beside her. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘you never wanted to retire and now you’re using the war as an excuse to go back on your promise to Richard. Without that promise he would have left Rowland’s years ago. By now he’d probably be head of Daimler’s, or Mr Ford’s British factory, or even have a firm of his own, like Mr Austin.’

  Harry scowled at the floor. What she said was literally true, but the war changed all the previous conditions. It wiped the slate clean. Promises given in peace, for peacetime, did not hold.

  His wife continued, ‘If it’s keeping yourself occupied that’s worrying you, we should start an organization here in Hedlington to look after the people who stay … the women whose men are volunteering even now … the wounded, when they come back … the widows. There’ll be widows, you know.’

  ‘It won’t last a month!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘So much the better,’ she said, ‘but if it does, there will be great suffering here. We can do something to alleviate it. Or you could go into politics.’

  ‘I’m no politician.’

  ‘You could be, now that you’ll have the time.’

  He stopped his pacing, and said, ‘Rose, I am going to stay on running Rowland’s, my own firm, for the duration of the war … and that’s that.’

  ‘Very well, Harry. You’re making a mistake, a cruel mistake.’

  Bob Stratton, standing in a partitioned-off, comparatively quiet corner of the machine shop devoted to assembling rims, hubs, and graduated lengths of thick wire into wire wheels for the Rowland Sapphire, listened intently as Collis, the head tuner, set to work on another wheel. In front of Collis on the bench was a row of half a dozen pitch pipes; a hollow steel tube was clamped at one end to one of the wires, at the hub, the other end of the pipe resting in Collis’s right ear. As Collis plucked that wire with a fingernail of his right hand he blew into one of the pitch pipes, which he was holding in his left hand. Head cocked at the same angle as Collis’s, Bob Stratton listened, bowler hat pushed to the back of his head.

  After half a dozen wire spokes had been tested, he thought that his suspicion was justified; after another two complete wheels had been done, he knew. He moved round close behind Collis and, as he was setting up a third wheel, said in a normal speaking voice, ‘How old are you, Collis?’

  The man did not answer. Bob raised his voice and repeated the question. Still no answer. Bob went out into the clamour of the chassis erection shop, bowler hat now set squarely on his head, and watched two men setting up the chassis side members of a Sapphire, the Order Book number of that particular car already wired to the right side member. Bob watched, knowing that his eyes would see anything sloppily or improperly done, while he allowed his mind to wander … Collis had worked at Rowland’s for thirty years, the last sixteen, ever since Rowland started using wire wheels, in his present job. It was skilled work, and he was one of the highest paid men in the factory. Now … he shook his head involuntarily, and one of the two men setting the second side member down on the wooden trestle where it would be built up, said in alarm, ‘Have we done summat wrong, Mr Stratton?’

  ‘No,’ he growled. ‘Just handle the cross members a bit more easy when you get to them.’

  He walked on. Mr Harry had been in a rare state yesterday when war only seemed certain. A real bad temper, he’d been in, which was unusual for him. And now that war had actually come, what would he be like?

  ‘Morning, Dad.’ He looked up and met his eldest son’s eye. Frank was dressed in blue overalls, and wearing a greasy cloth cap, like most of the men. He said to his father, ‘You’d best take a look at the generator, Dad. Tanner says he’s going to have to shut it down for twenty-four hours to change the main shaft bearings.’

  ‘He can do it Sunday,’ Bob snapped. A memory of the Reverend Mr Hunnicutt’s favourite sermon tweaked at his conscience; but this was for th
e Rowland Motor Car Company, and to enable the four hundred men to work when they should be working. The Good Lord would understand.

  Frank said, ‘He says they may not last till then.’

  ‘Tell him they must … and, Frank, I’m moving Collis to the paint shop.’

  ‘Collis? But he’s …’

  ‘Deaf. Gone deaf.’

  ‘Well, we should retire him. He’s not worth his money in the paint shop.’

  ‘I can’t. I only found out because some work he did for me on the wheels for Victoria weren’t right. T’wouldn’t be fair to sack a man on account of something I’d never ’a found out about otherwise.’

  Frank said, ‘He must be tuning-them by instinct, or something. The testers haven’t found anything wrong with the wheels, have they?’

  ‘Just one per cent, the normal… I’ll move him, and explain to Mr Harry. You tell Mr Richard if he tries to move him back.’

  He started to walk away, nodding briefly at his son, when he saw Harry Rowland’s young houseman hurrying down the cluttered floor, past the row of chassis, under the gantry arm, an envelope in his hand. He said, ‘What is it, Brace?’