Bursting Balloons (Innocents At War Series, Book 5)

by Andrew Wareham

  Abbott opened his mouth, perhaps to protest. George intervened, in a full sergeant-major’s shout.

  “Attention! About face! By the left, quick march!”

  Abbott, three weeks out of training, responded instinctively, stamped stiff-backed out of the door.

  George poked his head back inside.

  “He’ll be gone in five minutes, Tommy. I sent word to his servant to throw his gear into his trunk before I brought him in.”

  “Thanks. I could become rather annoyed with that young man. ‘Possible to fight’ – it’s always bloody possible to fight!”

  “I’ll put in for a replacement, Tommy.”

  George left and Tommy, thoroughly irritated, made a start on the paperwork on his desk. He was in a bad mood already, so the prospect of reading idiocy from HQ could not make things worse, or so he thought.

  He picked up the first document.

  ‘Avoidable Disease; Incidence and Prevention Thereof.’

  He suspected that squadron commanders were now to be instructed to become pox-doctors.

  “Bloody Hell – if they want me to hold short-arm parades, they’ve got another think coming!”

  He read the document, struggling with the officialese, was finally entertained by its orders. He took it across to Noah’s office.

  “Oi, Noah, have you seen this one? We have to speak gently but firmly to our young pilots and explain to them the unwisdom of frequenting ‘dancing-clubs and other places of ill-repute’. It seems that ‘several’ – I wonder how many that is? Several pilots have been rendered unfit for duty by avoidable illnesses and infections and infestations contracted in such places.”

  “Clap hands, here comes Charlie! I shall enjoy giving that little lecture to my young men – half of them won’t have any idea what I’m talking about; the other half will nip off to their rooms with a magnifying glass for a quick inspection!”

  The bulk of the pilots had come from school to training field to squadron, a series of sheltered institutions that had given very little opportunity for contact with females, and in which discussion of sexual matters was either frowned upon or conducted in whispers and giggles. They were a remarkably innocent group, which possibly explained their predilection for excessive alcohol and manly games.

  “We need to borrow a doctor, Noah, who might well have some idea what he was talking about. Any use asking Quack, do you think?”

  Their Medical Orderly had some slight medical qualification, they thought, though he was certainly well short of being a doctor. They called him in.

  “Third Year student at Guys, sir. Pox comes in the fourth year, before First MB, sir.”

  They had no idea what he was referring to, but picked up that he was no expert in the field.

  “Have you got a manual to refer to?”

  “Not really, sir. Just a set of instructions for what to do in cases of illness and infection, which is send them off to the Base Hospital, where they should have some idea of what’s what.”

  “Do we get many cases, Quack?”

  “Not among the pilots, sir. Though I suspect they might not want to tell me if they had suspicions. Probably they would wait till next leave and see a private doctor in London – making everything far worse for the delay. They wouldn’t risk it becoming known, though.”

  “Stupid, but understandable. There wouldn’t be any great tolerance among their fellow officers if it became known.”

  Quack agreed, turned to leave, delayed, then spoke again.

  “I was told by the doctor at HQ, when he came round last year to show how to fit a temporary splint on fractures before they were sent in, that he knew of one pilot who was diagnosed and that afternoon dived headlong into a formation of a dozen Huns. Saved himself any scandal that way.”

  “Poor bugger!”

  “Kept it quiet though, Tommy.”

  “So it did, Noah. Thank you, Quack.”

  “What do we do about this order, Tommy?”

  “Pin it to the Station Noticeboard, of course. We thus bring it to the attention of all of those pilots who can read, so that they can tell the other ninety per cent!”

  They followed that course, were entertained by the expressions of the virtuous few who always, and correctly, read anything new on the board.

  Bursting Balloons

  Chapter Seven

  “Change of tactics, I think, Tommy.”

  “How so, Noah? Boom wants the opposition driven out of the air – I suppose there’s another Big Push that’s certain to win the war in the offing.”

  “Goes without saying, dear boy! We have won the war six times in the past two years, so we’re bound to do so again. Why give up on a good thing? They still haven’t started conscripting sixteen year olds yet – plenty of bodies left in Old England!”

  “But why change what we’re doing?”

  “Mostly to keep the lads on their toes. We’ve seen nothing in the air in four days of patrolling. The Jastas are keeping well clear of our sector, for the while. They’ll be furiously designing and testing something better than a Camel, but they won’t do that overnight, so we can assume that we shall be top dog for a few weeks. Two months of dead patrols will take the edge off our pilots. We’ll be losing them in accidents within the week as they get slapdash.”

  Tommy had to agree – pilots were not workhorses, could not be kept to a tedious routine without losing their edge.

  “What do we do?”

  “Hunt for two-seaters first. They must still be sending out photographic buses – they need the information for their artillery, and they can’t get it all from their balloons. First thing in the morning – literally at dawn – that will have to be. Flight patrols, not squadron, sneaking out at low level. Run them for a few days, then change tactics. The high-level bombers are still going out – the big Gothas are busy behind the lines. Take two Flights out for them, climbing to sixteen thousand – take it slowly, three quarters of an hour to get there, twenty minutes maximum at height and slowly come back down. That’s what the doctors recommend, anyway.”

  “Do we know where they can be found? Where are their bases?”

  Noah had been reading the Intelligence Reports sent from HQ. Much of their information was irrelevant and it was necessary to search tediously through them to find the useful bits. Tommy couldn’t be bothered to read for half an hour to find the three or four lines of value, including the information about the medical effects of high-flying, and how to lessen them.

  “The Gothas are based nearly an hour’s flying time behind the lines – they need the distance to climb to their working height. They are normally far to the east, in the French sector, but even when they come this far we couldn’t reach their fields in Camels. DH4s could, but not us. Their targets are mainly big railway yards and the warehouses around them. Easily spotted from high up and spread-out targets. No pattern. They raid three and four times a week – probably need a day between raids for the mechanics, they’re big planes. Sometimes hit the same place three times running, sometimes fifty or sixty miles distant from their last target – random selection, maybe. We never know for sure when they are going to raid us.”

  Tommy agreed that they must be seen to do something – it would be good for them.

  “Eight Flights, one to each of the nearest railway junctions after a blank day. There can’t be many of the Gothas, so knocking down even one or two will make a difference. Worth a try, Noah.”

  Noah agreed, but said that they needed information.

  “Your Intelligence Officer, Bowdler, is the man for that, Tommy. He’s a captain, which helps. Send him off to HQ to talk to his people there. They might get the word of targets in advance – they know all sorts of things, sometimes.”

  That was true, Tommy admitted. The Intelligence people were in contact with agents in occupied Belgium and received surprising amounts of information.

  Tommy returned to the immediate business.

  “These two-seaters will be wo
rking at dawn, you said. I remember being told that photographs show more when the sun is low – the shadows show up. Alternate, do you reckon? I put up four Flights for dawn tomorrow, then squadron patrols later next day. You take the odd days, except when it’s raining, of course.”

  Dawn came early in the middle of June, to the annoyance of the pilots. They grouched into the Mess before four o’clock and turned their noses up at breakfast, a few managing tea and toast, most simply not bothering. Tommy ate bacon and eggs, to show virtuous.

  The Flights each had a sector to patrol and went hunting at three thousand feet, just sufficient to avoid bad-tempered machine-gunners who also hated duty at dawn.

  Tommy took Peterson and Colne and Abbott’s replacement, a Lieutenant Perkins, returned after wounds taken over the Somme, a year before. Perkins carried a burn scar, scarlet, shiny tissue, stretching from under his collar to touch his chin and right cheek. Perkins had had a fiancée; now he was bitter and wanted revenge on ‘the Hun who had disfigured him’. Tommy had no expectation of Perkins surviving the month.

  The sky was empty of cloud, the sun rising on a bright summer’s day – far too bright, they had to squint into the east.

  Peterson waved, spotting movement across no-man’s-land; Tommy followed his pointing arm, spotted a two-seater seconds later. He did not recognise the type, something new; the observer had a gun and the pilot, synchronised and fixed, as he had expected. The German planes were far less stable than the British REs and BEs, but could defend themselves well; Tommy did not know if their instability meant they took worse pictures!

  Tommy raised his left arm and pumped it up and down. Right arm meant all together, line abreast; left signalled two pairs, attacking from either side. Peterson dropped onto Colne’s tail and they headed to the right, to attack from the two-seater’s stern. Perkins fell in line with Tommy, matched his dive as they came in from the port quarter.

  The two-seater’s pilot spotted Tommy and banked towards him, opening fire at long range, a good four hundred yards, to put him off his line. Tommy steepened his dive in response, expecting to be faster and climb better. Colne came in and the two-seater changed bank to give his observer a clear field of fire. Tommy took advantage to point in and fire a burst and then climb hard away, leaving a free run to Perkins.

  Perkins closed to fifty feet, ignoring the two-seater’s pilot who had come round to bring his gun on line and was scoring hits on his wings. He fired three short bursts, engine, front cockpit and rear and then hauled up into a steep climb, just avoiding the falling machine. Tommy estimated that he had killed the observer at no more than ten feet; he modified his first estimate of Perkins’ life expectancy to days, and few of them.

  They patrolled for another hour, saw no more two-seaters but plotted the location of three different balloons. It seemed that the Germans now put them up singly rather than in groups of three or four.

  “They use bottles of hydrogen rather than generating plants,” Bowdler explained. “Makes them far more mobile. They can move to another location in a couple of hours, where it used to take them a day at least to set up. If they see reconnaissance locating them for an attack, they can simply shift away.”

  “Crafty sods! So our maps will be out of date by tomorrow, perhaps. Better do something about that today.”

  He called the squadron together.

  “Balloon-busting is a skill in itself, gentlemen. It requires only one plane to set a balloon alight – hydrogen flames easily. Unfortunately, the balloons tend to be surrounded by guns, and they will quite often kill the one plane in retaliation; not uncommonly, they kill it in advance, and the balloon does not go down. So, we need to work as a Flight. Attack, line abreast. One to go for the balloon, three to beat up the guns. We saw three balloons this morning, so three Flights go for them after lunch, when the mechanics give our planes back to us. One Flight to serve as cover at five or six thousand feet.”

  Hell-For interrupted Tommy with enthusiastic applause.

  “Good thing too, Tommy! Time we put them down and looked after the poor lads on the ground. I’ll go for one of them!”

  Henry and Ikey stood simultaneously and bagged the other pair for their Flights.

  “Looks like you’re top cover, Tommy!”

  He could have argued, even ordered them to let him have one of the balloons. He had the wisdom to realise that they suspected he might be hogging the action, ‘gong-hunting’.

  “I’ve got enough medals for this year. You are welcome to the balloons. For the top cover, better to take off five minutes before you, climb to ten thousand and then slowly drop down, so as not to alarm the balloonatics? We don’t want them winding their people down.”

  All three balloons were still up, Tommy saw, and there was no sign of anything else in the air. He kept his Flight at eight thousand, to use Peterson’s eyes over a greater distance, but saw nothing.

  He watched as the distant specks attacked the Drachen balloons, each about two miles apart. The air clouded with shell bursts from light quick-firing guns, and he spotted the bright scarlet of the flaming onions, still argued by some to be rockets; the machine-gun fire was invisible.

  Two balloons burst into flames; he saw parachutes beneath one. The third seemed untouched. The distant Camels turned away – too far from him to count accurately, but he saw smoke and flames on the ground under one balloon, assumed they had lost one plane.

  Two balloons for one Camel – it was a good rate of exchange, or so they would say at HQ.

  He was tempted to bring his Flight down on the surviving balloon – but it was not what had been agreed, would possibly offend some of the squadron, and he had evidently already risked that. He waved the home signal to the Flight, led them sedately away.

  “What’s the score?”

  The Intelligence Officer shook his head gravely, showed a severe face.

  “I rather fear you may have to call for a court-martial, sir. Not at all what we wanted to see. Captain Leather’s Flight sent their balloon down in flames, destroyed at least one gun crew and put several machine-guns out of action. Captain Frederick’s destroyed their balloon, but lost one pilot, Second Lieutenant Moran, to the guns. They also, sir, shot and killed the observers as they attempted to parachute to safety! Captain Goldmark stated that his Camel was hit at an early stage and he was unable to climb up to the balloon, but that he spotted the observers in their parachutes at about one thousand feet and shot at them, destroying both umbrellas!”

  “Two balloons and four, at least, of skilled artillery observers killed. Balloons are easily replaceable, observers require months of training. Perfectly correct behaviour on the part of the Flight Commanders. What is this court-martial offence, Captain Bowdler?”

  “They shot helpless men, fleeing the scene. They had in effect surrendered, sir.”

  “Balls, Bowdler!”

  “But…”

  “If you did not understand, Captain Bowdler – balls, bollocks or testicles if you insist! Captain Goldmark especially did his very best; in a damaged aircraft he nonetheless managed to inflict substantial harm upon the enemy. My report to HQ will commend him highly. You will submit your own account of the action, as always, but I must inform you that you are likely to receive a very frosty response to a demand for a court upon brave and effective officers.”

  “I shall do my duty, sir, as an officer and a gentleman!”

  “So, Captain Bowdler, shall I.”

  Tommy made his way inside the hangars, saw mechanics swarming over four of the Camels.

  “How many, Sooty?”

  “One lost; one to cannibalise, impossible to repair, structure fatally weakened; three will be ready for you at dawn. Eleven requiring patches to wings and fuselage, the odd bit of work besides, take three or four hours. How Ikey brought his plane back, I don’t know; I would have described it as unflyable.”

  Tommy retired to his office and put together his report, called to the Admin Sergeant to type it up for him.


  “Everything normal, Sergeant James. Correct all spellings; replace my grammar with yours; improve the vocabulary at your discretion, but don’t make it too good in case I get promoted one day and have to sit in an office writing my own papers.”

  Sergeant James had been an Elementary School teacher, had volunteered in ’14 in the first flush of enthusiasm and knew that whatever else happened, he would never return to the classroom. He had a fiancée, back in the home village, but had been unable to return on leave for two years – though he had spent two separate weeks in London - and much hoped she would send him a regretful letter any day; he would not return in any case, but would feel less guilty if she dropped him. The war had been a blessing in many ways, he reflected, enabling him to escape from the stultifying existence of village respectability; he might become many things, but he would never volunteer for rural tedium again. For the while, he would rewrite the report, as instructed, quietly laughing the while; he kept all of the originals, thought that he might perhaps make a book of them one day – there was always a market for comedy.

  Orders arrived for Captain Bowdler next morning; he was posted to East Africa, to report on the long-running and futile campaign there. He was to take the trains to Marseille, arriving next day, then a trooper to Egypt and the Suez Canal and down the Red Sea and the coast as far as Kenya. Movement orders would be discovered onshore, when he arrived. He had no time to equip himself with tropical gear, must in fact take a vehicle out almost immediately.

  Tommy had not spoken to HQ – they had reacted to the pair of reports on the balloon-busting action and suppressed all possibility of scandal. There must have been telephone calls to London and instant response. He made his farewells, shaking his head regretfully.