The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  As the tender slewed to a stop, Dicken dropped from the running board and fell on his knees alongside Samonov. The Russian’s skull seemed concave, one eye was missing, his nose was punched in and his lips were pulped, while his legs lay at impossible angles, as though the bones had been reduced to fragments. He died in Dicken’s arms even as the others panted up.

  The funeral was held the following day, green-robed, boarded and ringleted priests circling the coffin, holding lighted candles and chanting in deep sonorous voices. Sprinkling holy water over the dead man, they bent to kiss his shattered forehead. His medals, which included his British MC, lay on a cushion at the foot of the coffin. It added to the feeling of waste.

  The following day several DFCs were handed out as well as several Russian decorations.

  ‘You can get a gong out here,’ Hatto said dryly, ‘for things which were considered all in a day’s work in France. As for the Russian gongs, you can buy ’em in the shops without any trouble at all. Shows what a ragtime affair it is.’

  As the Russian pilots vanished towards Finland, they heard that several battalions of White Russian troops had deserted, and immediately, as though they had prior knowledge of it, the Bolsheviks to the east began to become aggressive and the army sent up a wail of protest and demanded news of their whereabouts.

  Flying with Hatto as his observer, Dicken forged eastwards over countryside that was flat and uninteresting with patches of forest and lakes and rivers steely in the harsh light. They found the Bolsheviks just north of a village called Mizchaikya. They were cavalry, fur-capped men on small shaggy ponies, their bodies festooned with ammunition belts. They seemed not to know how to behave against an aeroplane and remained in a solid phalanx, swarming along a dusty track that did duty as a road. Hatto fired at them with the machine gun from the rear cockpit, so that they scattered across the plain, but after only a few shots the gun jammed. Swinging away, they headed north until they found several Bolshevik batteries whose position Hatto marked on the map. On their return, with the gun working again, they bumped into the same group of cavalry crossing a wooden bridge. They were in a long file, hurrying now, and they caught them in the middle where they couldn’t escape. As the gun roared, men and horses crashed into the water and Dicken could see the splashes of bullets pursuing them along the surface of the river. An animal slipped and fell and, as the other horsemen began to bunch he saw the frail structure collapse, throwing them into the water. The rest of the cavalrymen tried to turn round but the other end had been blocked by fallen horses and stalled carts and in the end most of them spurred their mounts into the river and tried to escape by swimming.

  They had no wireless and as they landed, the Crossley was sent off with a hurried message to the Navy, who were in touch with the army, to inform them of the position of the Bolshevik forces. It was a ridiculous situation and, in an attempt to improve communications, they were moved to a field alongside a river nearer the port, everybody living on barges moored to the bank.

  It was a squalid area of mean, evil-smelling streets filled with refuse, the inhabitants not yet recovered from the deprivations of the war years, and Orr shot off in a fury to see the senior RAF officer, leaving Hatto in command. He had no sooner vanished than a crowd of civilians appeared on the bank, begging for food, the women half-clothed and sick, the children ragged little scarecrows with pale faces and hollow eyes lifting their bony arms to ask for bread. The cooks promptly organised a soup kitchen and started handing out army rations and soap.

  ‘I reckon,’ Handiside growled, ‘that when the Almighty was doing His stuff at the Creation, He realised He was going to be in a bit of a hurry to get it all finished, so He saved all the boners, blunders and blobs and shoved them down in one place for quickness – here! They do everything backwards and, as far as the Russians are concerned, titles are far more important than guts, and my strongest impression of the place got into my head through my nose.’

  The following day the children were back again, this time with bowls, pleading for food, and in no time the cooks were handing out thick slices of bread and jam. One small boy, on a raft made of wood and old oil cans, appeared downriver and moored alongside. For his daring, Handiside lifted him aboard and saw him stuffed full of rice pudding.

  Late in the afternoon a truculent young German officer appeared on the bank demanding to see the commanding officer. The sentry shouted to the sentry on board the officers’ barge. ‘There’s a bloke here wants to see the Old Man!’

  The German scowled and, as he came on board, he complained in English of the rudeness of the sentry.

  ‘You’re bloody lucky you didn’t get a boot up the backside,’ Dicken pointed out. ‘That chap was fighting your lot for four years and he doesn’t like you very much.’

  The situation ashore was still delicate, the Germans and the Letts still at each others’ throats with the British in between trying to persuade them to kill Bolsheviks instead of each other, and the German had arrived to register a protest that, under the terms of the agreement between the Allies and the Germans, civilians should not be permitted close to military establishments. Hatto told him what he thought of the complaint and within an hour a line of German sentries appeared to restrain the crowd from approaching. The adults did as they were told but the children were indifferent to the threats and when a small girl, clutching a slice of bread and jam, was knocked flying by a box on the ear, there was a roar of anger.

  Dicken reached the deck just as the airmen were about to swarm over the rails ready to heave the German into the river.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ he roared. ‘Give the kid another slice of bread and jam and escort her to safety. And next time keep your heads. An incident could provoke fighting and that’s the last thing we want.’

  The Germans watched sullenly as the child was escorted through their ranks but the following morning Dicken was wakened by the sound of hammering and sawing. Scrambling to the deck, he found Hatto placidly watching a large force of carpenters erecting a high wooden barricade on the bank by the barges.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Handiside shrugged. ‘I think we’re just about to find out.’

  A German officer appeared, and, stopping in front of them gravely explained that General von der Goltz had heard the RAF were being troubled by the populace and that the fence was being built to ensure their privacy.

  ‘There will be a door in the fence, of course,’ he explained. ‘With a sentry.’

  Hatto listened politely and watched throughout the day as the fence was erected.

  ‘Blighters don’t like us fraternising,’ he murmured. ‘That’s the trouble.’

  Two days later, he strolled from the barge to the officer in charge of the building.

  ‘Finished?’ he asked.

  The German beamed and saluted. ‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann!’

  Hatto smiled, returned the salute and climbed back on board. ‘Handiside,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’ve decided our berths here are becoming too fouled with tins and empty bottles. I think we’d better find new ones further along.’

  Watched by the furious Germans, the mooring ropes were unfastened and the barges dragged along the river, where the children began to appear again at once, grinning and holding out their hands for bread and jam.

  Libau was not a place where there was a lot of life but it seemed it was the only area where the Allied attempts to bring order along the border of Russia and prevent the spread of Bolshevism was having any success. The army was steadily pushing the Bolshevik forces back and Riga fell to the Germans but, even as it did so, the Allied intervention was collapsing about their ears. In the south the White forces were in retreat and they were also withdrawing from Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Baku and Archangel, and an ambitious project for the formation of a Slavo-British legion in the north ended abruptly when two of its companies mutinied and murdered
five British and four Russian officers in their beds. There didn’t seem a great deal of future in the plans for intervention.

  With the summer hot and the midges almost unbearable, once more the feeling of being cut off prevailed. With the better weather, football matches were played between the men and the officers, and the officers and the NCOs, but it was unwise to go into the town where the Germans were in large numbers, arrogant and domineering and spoiling for a fight. Mail was slow arriving and out-of-date newspapers turned up only when a ship appeared. When they did, the news for the airmen was electrifying.

  Hatto whirled round, his eyes alight. ‘Great Ned,’ he yelled ‘They made it!’

  ‘Who made what?’

  ‘The Atlantic! It’s been flown!’

  ‘It has? Who by? Hawker?’

  ‘No, he came down fifteen hundred miles out. The Americans. A whole squadron of flying boats going by the Azores. They shed aircraft with every step but they made it! One of them landed at Lisbon.’

  ‘That’s one in the eye for the people who said it couldn’t be done.’

  Hatto’s eyes were still glued to the newsprint. ‘There are others preparing in Newfoundland, too. A whole crowd of them. Somebody’s bound to do it non-stop now the Americans have shown the way.’

  The news made them feel more than ever isolated. The flying was monotonous and they rarely saw enemy troops and never another aircraft, though they heard from agents that now that the White Russian campaigns in the south had collapsed, the Bolsheviks had brought north machines which had been flying on that front.

  When Orr returned he brought news received by wireless from the Navy.

  ‘They’ve done it,’ he announced. ‘Non-stop Newfoundland to a bog in Ireland. Jack Alcock and a chap called Brown. With a Vimy. It could carry six tons for almost twelve hours and they’d fitted extra tanks to give them a range of 2440 miles.’

  The mess was noisy with the celebrations but behind the merriment they were also all aware that flying, even the world, had changed abruptly. With the Atlantic crossed in one hop, they knew that from now on flying must be regarded as having a future. If it had come to adulthood in the forcing house of the war in France, it had come of age with this new feat. Aircraft were no longer the toys of airminded sportsmen. They had joined ships and trains as a reliable form of transport.

  They had finally decided that the personal request for Diplock was either going to bring no response or that Diplock had managed to fight it off when bombs arrived – not very many and not very big ones – and with them orders to use them on Bolshevik gunboats patrolling the Dvina.

  In poor flying weather with a lot of low stratus they found the Bolshevik gunboats – sleek black vessels more like motor boats than anything – heading down the Dvina in the direction of Riga and, circling in worsening weather, they dropped their bombs. One of the boats ran aground and ended up partially capsized, while the other, sprayed by machine gun fire, turned and bolted for home. The return fire from the banks was heavy however, and to add to their misery as they swung round to head back for Libau it began to rain.

  As they landed with the rain coming down in squally flurries out of a leaden sky, Orr appeared.

  ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said. ‘You’ve arrived just in time to pack your bags.’

  The capering stopped at once. ‘Where are we going, sir?’ Hatto asked. ‘South?’

  ‘Yes,’ Orr said. ‘The Empire’s falling apart elsewhere and we’re needed. It seems the Government’s having second thoughts about this part of the world. Especially now the White Armies are on the run. A destroyer’s taking us home.’

  Hatto grinned. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘Duty free gin.’

  Because the Letts had no pilots and because under the Armistice agreements of 1918, the Germans weren’t allowed to have any aeroplanes, they solemnly pushed the DHs together and set fire to them. Nobody was very sorry and they stood watching as the column of black smoke coiled into the sky. On Orr’s barge, they lined up for a Latvian minister they’d never seen before to hand out medals and make a speech none of them understood, then, without speaking, they tossed the last of their baggage on to the lorries and began to scramble aboard themselves.

  When they took their last look back as the lorries turned on to the road, they saw an ancient cab appearing down the road from the city. As it came alongside, a head appeared.

  ‘Hey!’ A man in RAF uniform thrust his head out and started yelling. ‘What’s going on? I’ve been ordered to report to a Major Cuthbert Orr. Is he here?’

  Hatto grinned at Dicken. ‘It’s Parasol Percy.’

  Thrusting his head out, Dicken recognised at once the plump pale face and protruding ears of their old enemy, Diplock.

  ‘Just down there,’ Hatto yelled, pointing. ‘Just packing up the office!’

  Diplock had recognised them immediately and was frowning. ‘I’ve just been ordered out here,’ he snapped, his expression suspicious as if he already suspected who was behind his unexpected posting. ‘What’s going on? Where’s everybody going?’

  Hatto beamed. ‘Well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I don’t know where you’re going, but we’re going home.’

  Four

  ‘Berlin’s no place to visit,’ Dicken’s mother insisted. ‘It’s full of Germans and full of wickedness.’

  To Dicken, Berlin seemed more like the edge of a volcano. Nobody there seemed to be aware of the fact, however, and if they were it seemed doubtful that they would shed any tears, or even that their tears would extinguish the flames. Truncated, impoverished and with an economic crisis that had sat on their shoulders like a vulture ever since the Armistice, after the war the Germans wanted only to enjoy themselves and Berlin seemed like a city gone mad.

  Dicken’s mother was right, of course. Berlin was wicked and it was full of Germans. But there were others there, too. Because it had become what it had, it was also full of Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, anybody who had money to spend and needed something to spend it on. The fact that the Germans had been their enemies mattered not a jot. The men who had fought in the late war were always more in sympathy with their enemies, the German soldiers, sailors and airmen, than they ever had been with their own politicians who seemed nothing but sanctimonious spouters backed by financiers and businessmen who all seemed to have done remarkably well out of the fighting.

  In Germany, it had left a legacy of bitterness. The returning soldiers had inherited a sick economy, and Europe was shaken and weak and lacked stability. Three empires had collapsed, imposing burdens on other countries which were bearing them to the ground, and the cry of ‘Back to normal’, by which was implied that serene world of pre-1914, meant as little to the demobilised soldiers as Lloyd George’s promise of ‘a land fit for heroes to live in’.

  With high prices and the sudden drying up of jobs as the industrial backlog left by the short-lived post-war boom began to fade, unemployment increased and, with unscrupulous war profiteers unloading their new factories as fast as they could before they lost money, Europe was operating at a disadvantage and a depression was quite clearly just over the horizon.

  Suddenly the only thing that seemed to have a future was the brand new industry of civil aviation. The boost given to it by the war and the crossing of the Atlantic had proved beyond all doubt that there was a future in flying. From being regarded as something like high-wire walkers operating without a net, airmen were now being seen as men of the future. But there were ugly rumours about the RAF moving around London, because between them, the army, the navy and the Treasury seemed determined to destroy it, and its officers were wondering what was to happen to them. Even at this late date, no plan had yet appeared for the establishment of regular officers and Dicken wasn’t even sure he would enjoy wearing a uniform in peacetime.

  Life was uninspiring and his thoughts were unconstru
ctive. The idea of settling down to an earthbound life seemed impossible, yet as he tried to make up his mind what to do, he realised his only qualifications were that he could fly and was still keen to do so. Since service life in peacetime had ceased to appeal, why not become a civil pilot? Merely flying from one place to another also seemed dull, however, and he wondered instead if he might become a test pilot and wrote to several firms with that end in view. But there were thousands of unsettled young men like himself who felt they had a future in aviation, and the ones who had not been involved in the war against the Bolsheviks had got in first.

  The unrest he felt was an uneasiness of spirit that many men were feeling. It defied analysis and he even felt he was run down to a state where he was approaching a standstill. Like many others, he was unnerved and humiliated by his lack of success and for a time even thought of emigrating to the United States. Foote, who had flown with him in Italy, had offered him a job until he could fix himself up with what he really wanted to do, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to emigrate and Foote’s letter contained a warning that even in the United States the economic world was unstable and could collapse at any time.

  ‘Things’ll change,’ Hatto advised. ‘And you’re far too good to disappear from the RAF.’

  ‘It’s different for you, Willie,’ Dicken protested. ‘You’re a regular officer. You can wait with patience for confirmation of your appointment.’

  Hatto let his monocle fall from his eye. ‘Let it be recorded,’ he said slowly, ‘that, even so, that patience is wearing very thin. All the same, I’ve heard that Trenchard’s to be appointed Chief of Air Staff and he’s got Churchill behind him. They really are going to organise a permanent Royal Air Force.’