The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Are you going ashore?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ Dicken snapped.

  The adjutant smiled. ‘The CO thought you were. He saw you from his window.’

  ‘He must have nothing better to do.’

  The adjutant’s smile faded and he frowned. ‘He instructed me to point out to you that the liberty boat doesn’t leave until five o’clock.’

  Dicken gave him a look of contempt. ‘Tell him I don’t need a boat,’ he said. ‘I’m swimming.’

  Turning up in the office of Lieutenant-Colonel Joshua Rivers, who had been his CO while flying 1½-Strutters in France and was now in charge of Personnel and Postings, he was welcomed and provided with coffee. Rivers was a moody man. He had crashed badly early in the war and now had a metal plate in his skull which, in France, had always been rumoured to be affected by rust or the heat of the sun and accounted for his changeable moods. This was one of his good days.

  ‘That was a splendid show you put up against Udet’s lot,’ he said. ‘What’s going to happen to you now? Are they going to ground you as they have me?’

  ‘No, sir. They’ve passed me fit for flying.’

  ‘Have they, by God? And now, I suppose, you’ve arrived here expecting me to do something for you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where are you wanting to go?’

  ‘Russia, sir. They say there are lots of opportunities in Russia.’

  Rivers looked amused. ‘There are supposed to be lots of countesses going spare out there, too,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s what Willie Hatto said, sir.’

  ‘Is he going?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘God help the Russians! What about that mad American you two were always with – Foote?’

  ‘He’s safely in America, sir. Going in for law, I heard.’

  ‘Well, America’s big enough for him not to be able to do much harm. All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

  Dicken was so pleased at Rivers’ reaction that when he bumped into his old enemy, Diplock, in the corridor, he didn’t turn a hair.

  Diplock hesitated as he saw him emerge from Rivers’ office and seemed doubtful about his reaction.

  ‘Quinney,’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘Diplock,’ Dicken replied.

  ‘You working here?’ Diplock seemed worried in case he was.

  ‘No, thank God,’ Dicken said. ‘I hear you are.’

  ‘For some time now. It’s the sort of work that suits me.’

  ‘It would be,’ Dicken commented, but without enmity. His suspicions about Diplock had never been confirmed and never would be now so there was no point in harbouring a grudge. All the same, the observation was true enough. Diplock was never one to risk his neck when someone else could do it for him. ‘How’s Annys?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well. She does a lot of work for charity. Airmen’s families. That sort of thing.’

  She would, Dicken thought. She went with Diplock. She’d make a good chairman of a branch of the Red Cross or something of that sort. He was glad she hadn’t wanted to marry him.

  They stared at each other for a moment longer, both of them uncertain how to conclude the conversation. Diplock, Dicken noticed, was fatter than he had been and his face was beginning to develop a jowly look.

  ‘Well, I’d better be off,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Diplock agreed. ‘Where are you these days?’

  Dicken told him and for the first time Diplock managed a trace of a smile.

  ‘I know the CO there. Ex-Navy type.’

  ‘That’s right. He’d have us all in bell-bottoms and seaboots and sleeping in hammocks if he could.’

  Diplock frowned. ‘He’s a friend of mine,’ he said stiffly.

  He would be, Dicken decided. ‘He disapproves of me wanting to go to Russia,’ he said.

  ‘Russia? Are you going there?’ Diplock shuddered. ‘That’s a dreary place to go to. They say nobody knows whose side he’s on. I should hate to go to Russia.’

  Three days later, much to his ex-naval CO’s disgust, Dicken was ordered to be prepared for a posting to Russia and to go on immediate leave. The CO, who had been trying to arrange for him to be put under arrest, gave him an angry look.

  ‘It’s an offence to go over a senior officer’s head,’ he snapped.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Dicken picked up his cap. ‘But sometimes it pays dividends.’

  Dicken’s mother found it as difficult as Diplock and his CO to understand his anxiety to get involved in someone else’s war.

  ‘Why Russia?’ she asked. ‘That’s a funny place to want to go. It gets cold in Russia.’

  ‘Not in the south, Mother.’

  She shook her head. ‘It might have been better,’ she decided, ‘if you’d gone to sea.’

  Considering that, when he’d qualified as a marine radio operator in 1914 while still under age, it had been his mother who had refused to sign his papers so that he had joined the RFC instead, it seemed a bit unfair.

  ‘Why are you going?’ she asked. ‘Because they shot the Tsar?’

  ‘The Tsar doesn’t mean much to me, Mother.’

  ‘Because you don’t like Bolsheviks then?’

  ‘I’ve never met one.’

  ‘There must be a reason.’

  But there wasn’t. The struggle going on in Russia meant little to Dicken beyond that he’d be able to go on flying when the Armistice in France had almost ended flying everywhere else.

  Near the end of his leave a letter arrived from the Air Ministry telling him to hold himself in readiness. There was little else to do because Zoë Toshack was still in Canada, and a few days later a telegram arrived instructing him to report at once to the SS Horatia, due to sail that same midnight from Hull.

  ‘They don’t grow more efficient with the years,’ Dicken snarled as he flung his belongings into a valise. ‘I’ll have to catch the afternoon train to London and the first one from there to Hull.’

  Promising to write, he headed for the station and scrambled aboard the train. Passing through London, he snatched some food on the way north, and arrived in Hull late at night. Finding a taxi, he hurried to the docks and, with two hours to spare, scrambled aboard the SS Horatia, a high-decked steamer with a smoke stack like a cigarette. Shown to a cabin, he immediately fell asleep and woke up the following morning to find the ship moving down the river.

  There were a few soldiers – mostly NCOs going as instructors – in the ship. The captain in charge, a man by the name of Baird, had wound stripes all the way up his arm, seemed a little mad and appeared to spend most of his time holding up the bar. As the ship finally left the river and turned north, Dicken frowned. With the sun behind them, it seemed a strange direction to be taking.

  ‘Are we picking up more people?’ he asked the first mate. ‘At Tyneside or somewhere like that.’

  The mate looked puzzled. ‘I’ve heard nothing of it,’ he admitted.

  Dicken stared up at the sun. ‘Then aren’t we going the wrong way?’

  The mate grinned. ‘Well, I’ve always prided myself on my navigation,’ he said, ‘and it seems all right to me. Which way were you expecting to go?’

  ‘South. Through the Mediterranean. Where are you going?’

  ‘Riga.’

  Dicken’s jaw dropped. ‘Where in God’s name is Riga?’

  ‘Latvia.’ The mate grinned. ‘Any good to you?’

  ‘Aren’t the Germans there?’

  ‘Well, sort of. And sort of not. It was Russian before the war but it was invaded by the Germans and under the Treaty of Brest Litovsk the Russians renounced all claim to it. Actually, you’re lucky you’re not going to Murmansk, which is where I went last trip. That’s bloody awful. Riga’s much bett
er.’

  ‘What’s happening there?’

  The sailor smiled. ‘Well, it’s a bit confusing,’ he admitted. ‘During the war the Letts fought for the Russians but, when the Russians threw in the sponge after the Revolution, they fought for us. Then a group of Germans, who call themselves the Baltic Barons and want Esthonia and Latvia to be part of Prussia, liberated Riga from the Bolsheviks. Now, the Bolsheviks are back and the Letts, with allied blessing, have declared themselves a republic. Not that it does them a fat lot of good, because the Russian Imperial Army, the German Army, the Bolshevik army and finally the guerilla army have all fought across the bloody place and laid it waste. Our troops there are largely German Territorials run by a chap called von der Goltz, but the Latvian Government wants to be independent and doesn’t want ’em, while the Bolsheviks hate the Poles and the Poles are opposed to both.’

  ‘So who’s fighting who?’

  The sailor grinned. ‘As far as I can make out,’ he said, ‘everybody’s fighting everybody.’

  Two

  The North Sea was grey and ugly-looking but they managed to get ashore at Oslo and Copenhagen, where Captain Baird, in command of the soldiery, was carried back on board drunk and speechless. Because Riga was at the moment occupied by the Bolsheviks they landed at the minor part of Libau, which was supposed to be the seat of the provisional government of Latvia. To Dicken’s surprise, the man standing by the Crossley tender on the quayside as they came alongside was Flight-Sergeant Handiside, who had introduced Dicken to the RFC in 1915. He was wearing only three stripes on his arm.

  ‘Handiside!’ Dicken said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Same as you, I imagine, sir. Wondering what the hell’s going on. I volunteered for South Russia and this is what I got. Minus my crown, of course, because I dropped a step in rank, like a lot of us. You were a major when I last saw you. You’ll be pleased to know Mr Hatto’s here as well.’

  ‘He is?’ This was unexpected to say the least, because Hatto was supposed to be in Yalta.

  ‘He’s in Riga with the Navy at the moment, but he’ll be back soon.’

  ‘There are Germans here, too,’ Handiside went on. ‘They’re flying Siemens-Schuckerts, which is against the armistice rules because they’re not supposed to have anything at all, and the Allied Control Commission’s constantly after them.’ In Handiside’s grin was all the sympathy and understanding of one flying type for another. ‘They operate from a field near the frontier and, when the Commission arrives, they fly over the border where they can’t be caught and the mechanics remove the spark plugs of the Commission’s cars and let the tyres down while they’re arguing in the office with the CO. There are some White Russians, too – anti-Bolsheviks – pilots, but they’ve got no aeroplanes so they just hang around looking sad and hoping someone will take them up for a flip.’

  As they drove from the docks they passed Russian infantry officers swaggering along the streets, a grotesque sight, their chests ablaze with meaningless decorations they’d resurrected for the benefit of the local girls. According to Handiside, they were as unamenable to discipline as their troops and were frightened of being shot in the back if they ever left the protection of the British and the Germans. With them were their priests, dressed in red or blue gowns, with greasy curls, shaggy hair and whiskers. The airmen alone were different because most of them had flown in action and their commanding officer, a major called Samonov, wore the British Military Cross.

  Though the war had been over for months now, it had left a hundred and one controversial areas of territory. The one thing that was needed was food but nobody had any to give, and the idealistic foundations of the new post-war world were already being built on dubious, much disputed foundations. The area where they were operating had been fought over half a dozen times and the houses, built of wood and more Russian than German, had a battered look, while the fields had all been denuded of their animals and crops.

  ‘The poor sods are practically starving,’ Handiside explained. ‘They’ve been living on dried fish and bread made of rye-straw for nearly two years.’

  The squadron was flying from a field near the port but there were no hangars and no perimeter fence. It looked like a pocket handkerchief and the machines were DH4s which required not less than 550 square yards to get down if every landing was not to be a squeezing sideslip, while, because of the surrounding pines, taking off meant yanking the machine into a climbing turn immediately the wheels left the ground. The mess was in an old house which had once belonged to a Baltic manufacturer and Dicken was given a vast room with a floor of polished wooden tiles so warped by damp that, as he stepped inside, a ripple ran along them right to the window while the cupboard door swung slowly and dolefully open. As he unpacked, he heard the sound of an aeroplane engine and soon afterwards a DH4 appeared over the trees. It was sending out puffs of black smoke and its engine sounded like a can full of stones.

  ‘Mr Hatto’s,’ Handiside said as he went outside. ‘It’s got a Liberty engine. They say it was designed in a New York hotel in three and a half hours. This one sounds like it.’

  Hatto climbed from the cockpit as the propeller jerked to a stop. ‘I’m thinking of donating it to a museum,’ he informed Handiside. Then he saw Dicken and yelled with delight.

  ‘A gloat dance is called for, I think,’ he said. ‘We should celebrate.’

  ‘Should we?’ Dicken asked as they caught their breath. ‘I thought we were going to South Russia. Vines. Sunshine. Palaces full of grand duchesses and princesses. This is some bloody place neither of us had ever heard of before.’

  Hatto grinned. ‘I nearly did go to South Russia,’ he explained. ‘There were two ships in Southampton Water and they took me off the one I was on and put me aboard the other. And that one brought me here.’

  ‘I think somebody’s got it in for us, Willie.’

  ‘I think somebody has. And I think I know who.’

  ‘Not Diplock?’

  Hatto was studying him with a rueful grin. ‘I got in touch with Tom Howarth who made a few enquiries. We were due to go to 47 Squadron in South Russia but the appointments were changed at the last minute.’

  ‘What’s it like here, Willie?’

  ‘Chap called Cuthbert Orr’s in command. Flew SEs in France. He’s as mad at Diplock and the Air Ministry as the rest of us. The aircraft are old – procedure for take-off is start up, cross all disengaged fingers and let her rip – but there aren’t many, anyway, so we have to take it in turns to fly ’em. And that’s when the weather permits because the climate’s horrible.’

  ‘What about the fighting?’

  ‘Still trying to work it out.’

  When Orr appeared, he turned out to be a pale-faced man with a large black moustache and icy eyes. He couldn’t speak German and was largely dependent for his information on Hatto who could. Most of his days were spent trying to work out what to do with the admiral in command, a fierce little man whose chief wish seemed to be to get to grips with anybody who wanted a fight, no matter whose side they were on, and with the army, which was being raised to deal with the Bolsheviks under an urbane Irish Guardsman called Harold Alexander.

  Dicken’s arrival brought the number of pilots up to twelve, but the need for observers seemed to have been overlooked and the pilots had to double up with each other in that capacity. Most of the flying seemed to consist of reconnaissances to find out where the Bolshevik forces were so that the mixed force of German Landeswehr, Letts, Poles and White Russians that formed the anti-Bolshevik army could operate against them. Occasionally, because the Navy were operating light craft along the River Dvina, it consisted also of shooting up or bombing their opposite numbers in the Bolshevik naval forces further inland along the river. As they worked, the White Russian flying officers under Samanov, sad-eyed and despondent, their shoulders wearing great epaulettes li
ke boards, watched them gloomily, and when the army finally captured several truckloads of equipment and found aeroplanes among them, in spite of their age and shocking lack of care, Samonov fell on them with delight and began to assemble them at full speed. They had originally been captured by the Bolsheviks after the French had evacuated Odessa in the Ukraine, transported north across Russia, and recaptured by the British near Archangel, to be finally brought south to the Baltic. There was a German Rumpler, a British DH4, two German Fokker DVIIs and a French Nieuport.

  ‘The Bolos have exactly the same aircraft,’ Hatto pointed out. ‘So it’ll be a good idea to move warily when you’re up.’

  The Latvian government was run by a man called Ulmanis who, because he had been chased out of Riga and didn’t trust the Germans under von der Goltz in Libau, was at that moment in Windau. His government didn’t seem to do much more than issue proclamations and publish pamphlets and there was remarkably little sign of order because the streets of Windau were muddy, shabby and full of the refuse of the four armies which had passed through it.

  Near the aerodrome was a meadow full of wild pansies, voilets, cornflowers, clover and buttercups, with, on the far side, a lake where they could bathe, though as the weather grew warmer the midges were so voracious that the only way they could do it was to drive to the water’s edge in a tender, fling off their wraps, plunge in and remain up to their necks until on a signal, they all rushed out, grabbed their wraps and drove away as fast as possible. One day as they were swimming, a small and ancient Caudron looking like a box kite dropped into the field. The pilot was a Bolshevik who had had enough of fighting and, still dressed in bathing suits and fighting off the midges, they took him prisoner with his own pistol. He had news that the Bolsheviks were trying to advance near the village of Miloradnyi and the order to bomb them was given by Orr.

  The attempt to get everybody off the ground was farcical. The mechanics had stripped down three of the troublesome DH4s and only two managed to get away, one of them turning back within ten minutes. Excited at the chance of action, the Russians rushed to their battered machines but they had not yet been properly serviced and two of them conked before they had even left the ground and in the end, flying as Hatto’s observer, Dicken found he was in the only machine in the air.