The driver thought he could risk a little of flippancy in the company of pilots, majors or not; he would not have said a word out of place to the staff officers, whatever their rank.
“Take us away, driver. We shall sacrifice our dignity as far as a pedestrian staff-car fit for the lower ranks!”
Appreciative of their witty comments, the driver took them to Waterloo Mainline and led them through the platforms to the ticket office and then onto their train.
“Restaurant car on this service, sirs. I’ll have a word with the guard and get a table for you. Can’t always get one for a major – full of brass this train, always – but there’ll be a place for Major Arkwright VC, sir!”
Noah did not know that he really liked everything that went with his medal, but he did fancy a bite to eat, having had very little while they were travelling from France.
“Swings and roundabouts, Tommy. If you’re good, I’ll let you sit at my table.”
“Ooh, please, sir! Can I have a sticky bun too?”
“Only if you wipe your fingers afterwards. Oh, Christ, look what’s heading this way!”
A major-general accompanied by a lieutenant-colonel and two captains with staff tabs were striding towards their compartment, which had six seats.
“I’ll give him a window seat, Noah. Can’t be bothered to argue. The colonel can get stuffed, though.”
It was not normal to stand and salute in a railway carriage, convention accepting that one could fall over too easily on a moving train. The general evidently thought that exception must be made for a VC; they performed the ceremony.
“Just back from France, gentlemen? You have that look about your eyes. Tired!”
“Yes, sir. It has been a busy few months.”
“What’s the truth about the Somme? Is it the bloody disaster that’s being whispered?”
“Yes. The bulk of the gains have been made by the French, and they ain’t many miles. Nowhere more than six miles, I am told, sir, and commonly far less. You will know of the sixty thousand of the first morning; there have been a good two hundred thousand more since, I am told. Marching men slowly into machine-guns ain’t a good way of winning a battle. The New Army is gone, sir.”
The general had heard the whispers, as well as reading the official communiques
“What’s to be done, Major? You are Arkwright of course, so the papers say you will be Major Stark. The two of you always to be found together – which strikes me as so much bullshit!”
“The RFC is a small corps, sir. We happened to be flying our squadrons from the same field again. What’s to be done? That’s simple, sir. Nothing!”
Tommy agreed and explained.
“The blockade is already hitting Germany hard, sir. Two or three years and they will be starved into submission. We need to defend our lines and nothing more. No more attacks, sir, until the Germans start to crumble for lack of food and munitions of war; then it will be possible to roll them up with almost no losses.”
“Sounds as if you don’t fancy fighting any more, Major!”
The colonel was overtly contemptuous, made his sneer very plain.
“The bulk of the defence will fall to the RFC, Colonel. The reconnaissance work will be ours, and so will the defence of our air. While the soldiers crouch down in the trenches, we will be protecting them from on high. The majority of the successes on the Somme were made possible by our attacks on the German trenches – but, I presume you were not there to see that!”
The colonel wore a plain uniform, not a decoration on it.
The guard knocked on the door and put his head in.
“Luncheon service, table reserved for Major Arkwright and Major Stark. No other spaces spare, gents, unless a second service can be arranged on the other side of Salisbury.”
The pair left and followed the guard, glad to be out of what would have become a very unpleasant encounter.
The waiter apologised for the food – the Railway had been unable to keep up its standards, he said – there were only two courses for lunch and almost no choice on the menu. They ate lamb cutlets and cabbage and potatoes and followed with an anonymous suety pudding in custard, cooked at least to ordinary mess quality. It did not seem a poor meal after the food commonly available in France, but there were complaints from the tables around them, all occupied by red-tabbed officers of the staff, most of them colonels and upwards.
They took their time eating and finished just before reaching Salisbury, seeing no need to return to their compartment and the company there. They had brought their greatcoats with them, put them on before descending to the platform in the hope of being less conspicuous.
The local train across the Plain was far busier than in peacetime, serving so many more of the new temporary camps where the conscripts called to duty under the new Act were brought to unwilling discipline and introduced to the skills of the infantry. They watched as a new detachment was marched onto the platform, amazed at the poor quality of the men. Flat feet, pot bellies and slumped shoulders seemed the rule. Tommy caught the eye of the sergeant who was acting as escort, or guard perhaps.
“Are that lot typical of the new men, sergeant?”
“Sir! Yes, sir. Not one of this bunch would have passed medically fit in ’14, sir. RFC, sir?”
The cut of the greatcoat was different to that of the Army.
“Major Arkwright and Major Stark, sergeant. Returning to duty in England over winter.”
“Sir! Not a lot of use, these conscripts, sir. Some of them in their forties, sir. Married men as well. Not got their heart in it, sir. Most of them won’t see the Front, sir. Guard duty on the prisoner-of-war camps or on the ammunition dumps, that sort of thing, sir. Freeing up useful men for duty, sir. Necessary, I suppose, sir – but you won’t want to put them where they’re important, sir. Might be they would go as gunners, sir, on air raid defence.”
Tommy could not approve of that.
“Sat on the guns around the airfields, sergeant? Dangerous place to be and needs men with their wits about them and able to shoot straight and quick. Half that bloody lot look cross-eyed to me, and as for fast! They couldn’t raise a gallop between them.”
“They are all that’s available, sir. Got to make the best of them. There’s far better men in reserved occupations, in the factories mostly – but they can’t be touched, sir. Earning ten times as much as a soldier as well, and going back home to their warm beds every night.”
“Difficult that, sergeant. Without the factories, we won’t have planes to fly… I don’t know what to say about that. Perhaps every man should be in the Army and then be sent to where they can be most useful – the Front or the factory. All at the same pay rate, for sure!”
It occurred to Tommy that he was rich and cared nothing at all about his pay – perhaps he should not begrudge their improved pay to the few who were earning it.
“Damned if I know, sergeant. Good luck to you in making soldiers out of that lot – I don’t envy you that task!”
“Can’t be done, sir. All I can manage with that lot will be to make them less of a useless shower - and that will take all of my time in itself, sir.”
Fifteen minutes on the slow train took them into Wilton, away from the concerns of the war for a while, they thought. They walked from the station, and every woman, and the few men, was dressed in mourning, unrelieved black.
“That bloody shell factory, Noah!”
“Complete bloody disaster, Tommy. See you tomorrow, old chap!”
Tommy turned into River Cottage while Noah carried on down the road, greeted by the thin wail of a very young baby as he entered the door.
“A little girl, sir, yesterday! All well, sir. You come home good and fast, sir!”
“I am in England for a few months now. I don’t know you, I am afraid.”
“May, sir. Missus put me on for downstairs and to give a ‘and in the kitchen and laundering, like, being as ‘ow the little one’s come, sir.”
“
Good, I am glad you are here, May.”
Noah did not know whether May was the girl’s Christian name or surname – he would ask Lucy.
“Can I go upstairs?”
“I’ll just see whether the missus is ready for you, sir.”
Noah hung his coat over the back of the nearest chair and stretched luxuriously – he was home.
Tommy was greeted by a monstrously large wife who had to turn sideways to clasp him to her.
“Leave or posting, Tommy?”
“England till at least the spring, love. When’s the baby due?”
“Yesterday, by the best calculation! You tell me – I’m getting tired of this business, Tommy!”
He tried not to laugh.
A fortnight later, father of a son as well as his daughter, pleased that Monkey was happy for a boy, he received orders for his first factory visit. He conferred with Noah, it having been decided by the fountainheads of wisdom at HQ that they should go as a pair.
“Birmingham, to land in a stretch of land some two hundred yards in length at the rear of the Small Arms factory. How wide? What direction? Cross-wind or sufficient space to land into whatever the wind is? What are we to fly? Drive across to Netheravon and pick up our plane there – without knowing what it is to be, how fast it travels or what the weather will be tomorrow. These buggers are more determined to kill us than Jerry ever was!”
“Should be little more than an hour’s flying time, Tommy. If it’s raining at this end, we don’t fly. If we meet up with rain, turn back. What do they expect in bloody December? A week short of Christmas and they send us flying cross-country with no information – bloody mad!”
“That, or getting their own back for daring to open our mouths in front of Henderson.”
They were given a BE2c with the heartening news that it was to be their very own for the duration of the posting. No Lewis Gun meant that they had spare weight and could put in an overnight bag each against the occasions in the winter when the weather would leave them unable to fly home again for a day or two.
The day was bright, and cold, adequate flying weather. Tommy asked the Adjutant whether they had knowledge of the weather in Birmingham.
They had not, but the gentleman promised to make a telephone call to their future destinations, each morning before they set off.
“Thanks. Do we know anything about the plans for the day?”
“Nothing, sir. I must imagine that they will release you by two-thirty to give you a reasonable chance of getting back in daylight.”
“We won’t take off after three, that’s for certain, with sunset soon after four. What’s this about Daylight Saving Time, by the way?”
“Don’t affect us in winter, sir. In summer it makes use of the early morning daylight, stops it being wasted in sleep, so they say. Politicians, sir – forever having bright ideas! It means that six o’clock in the morning can be called seven, so that people won’t complain they’re being kicked out of bed early.”
Tommy thought for a few seconds.
“That’s bloody stupid!”
“It was an idea thought up by the politicians, sir. I am told that Mr Asquith thinks it’s a jolly good wheeze!”
They shook their heads in unison and went out to peer at their machine.
There was a mechanic waiting to start them.
“Spare plane, Flight? When was she last worked on?”
“I stripped her down yesterday, sir. I was told that she is mine, sir, personal, to look after for you.”
“Good! I feel happier now. I’ll take her out, Noah. You can bring her back. Share the pain equally.”
The Adjutant was surprised at their attitude of disgust.
“Very good plane in many ways, the old BE, Major Stark.”
“Good for killing the poor bastards who have to fly them, sir. Valueless for any other purpose. They should dump every one of them on a pyre and burn them, or simply put their pilots and observers up against a wall and shoot them, save them wasting their time taking the cows into the air first!”
“But, they are perfectly stable observation platforms, sir!”
“Slow. Incapable of evasive action. Almost unarmed – the observer’s Lewis has so limited a traverse as to be useless. Sitting ducks – good for giving German novices practice in making kills – no other function in the skies over the Trenches. And this new RE8 that’s come out to replace them is no better. They should scour the gaols and bring out every condemned murderer to fly them – then they might do something useful for half an hour before Jerry shot them for us. In you get, Noah, let us be about our daily round!”
Tommy flogged the machine into the air and set course almost due north for Birmingham, Noah peering at the map they had been given and showing their setting down point. It was not an easy task, Birmingham being the second largest city in England and absolutely full of factories and foundries, most of them very similar from the air. Fortunately, the Birmingham Small Arms factories had their names painted white on their roofs in large letters, visible from a distance. It seemed a strange thing to do, but very useful to passing aviators.
The biggest factory had a yard behind it, presumably a large loading bay; there was a roadway leading in and drays and motor lorries parked against open doors. It was about a furlong between the gate and the rear fence, and thirty to forty yards wide, to make a turning place for the vehicles, they presumed. The fences were lined with tall trees, poplars, Tommy suspected. It was long and clear, and the wind was blowing across at about forty-five degrees.
“Touch down as close to the gate as possible, Tommy. Near to the fence and trying to angle towards the factory wall. Should do it. Glad it’s you flying, my closest friend!”
“Balls!”
“Picnics and parties, too! A jolly social life we shall have! Down we go!”
The closely planted trees provided a reasonable windbreak when they dropped to twenty feet and the landing was easier than Tommy had feared. He taxyed to the end of the yard and turned the plane, waited for the reception committee that was running across, all in mechanic’s dungarees.
They introduced themselves as the firm’s vehicle mechanics, in charge of their lorries and steam trucks.
“Have you got petrol here?”
“Yes, sir. Aeroplane quality, sir, what we checked last week and got in special, sir. And engine oil, sir.”
“Well done, man! Can always rely on a mechanic for good sense, that’s for sure. If you ever fancy joining up, the RFC can use your sort – just give my name as a reference and you could find yourself on an airfield in France and doing a job to be proud of. Not that your bosses will be pleased with me for trying to poach you, that’s for sure!”
“Got a missus and three kids, gov’nor – can’t keep them on the money your lot pays! I’d be over there if I didn’t have the responsibility ‘ere, gov.”
Impossible to argue with, Tommy accepted.
“Where do we go?”
“Over at the loading bay, sir. The foreman is coming across now to escort you. He wanted us to talk to you first, in case there was anything we needed to look at in the engine. Petrol up and dip the oil, gov?”
“Please.”
The foreman was wearing his bowler hat, as was right and proper for his rank, and took them to the managers who were waiting inside. He was cringingly obsequious, Tommy thought, crawling to his lords and masters; no doubt he knew what was necessary to keep his position.
A rake-thin sixty year old greeted them.
“An honour to meet you, gentlemen! Will you join us for a cup of tea, in the Boardroom, before touring the factory?”
The promised officer from HQ was stood with them, nodded that they should.
“We have it in mind, Major Arkwright, Major Stark, that you will wish to inspect the machine-gun lines first – as being directly of interest to you. Then you will be taken more quickly through the other lines before coming back to the main canteen; there you will make your address and speak
to some of the men before meeting the press, then taking a luncheon in the Board Room. This should allow you to take off with at least two hours of daylight in hand.
Noah answered, having been named first, said that it sounded good to him – particularly that they should have a safety margin before nightfall.
“It might be raining down in Wiltshire, sir, and then we would have to turn off track and find a place to put down – and that is best not done on unknown ground at dusk.”
“Exactly so, Major Arkwright. I have never flown, of course, but I can imagine that your task would be difficult at night. Shall we proceed, gentlemen?”
They were taken to the enormous shop where machine-guns were assembled, a pair of men at each bench building the individual guns from scratch, all of the parts brought to them by hand-pulled trolleys. The company had its own foundries and forged or stamped all of its own components, buying in only the wooden stocks.
“Do you only make the Army’s water-cooled Vickers Guns, sir?”
“We prefer to call them Maxims, Major Arkwright. Yes. The air-cooled version for the RFC is made elsewhere.”
“What of ammunition, sir?”
“One of our other factories fabricates brass cartridge cases and a third makes ball rounds. Explosive and incendiary rounds are made quite separately by Brock, Pomeroy and Buckingham. Propellant explosives are manufactured in another factory again – somewhat distant from the urban areas, I would add, and the cartridges are filled and assembled in their own little places, mostly in rural locations again.”
It seemed that the ammunition might be shunted around one half of England in the manufacturing process; small wonder that cartridges became dented or otherwise misshapen.
“Only men working here, sir?”
Tommy wondered why, it seemed that there must be unskilled or part-skilled jobs that could have been given to women.
“The Trades Unions will not permit what they refer to as ‘dilution’, Major Stark. Only men are permitted in the factory. It keeps wages up, which is part of the reason, of course.”
Tommy did not follow the logic- what did he mean by ‘part’?
Bursting Balloons (Innocents At War Series, Book 5) Page 2
