Bursting Balloons (Innocents At War Series, Book 5)

by Andrew Wareham

  Tommy shook his head doubtfully – Nancy was demanding more than the Camel could offer.

  “Two and a quarter hours is the realistic range with the fuel tank full to the brim, Nancy. Sopwith claims another fifteen minutes; nice chap, but he ain’t the bloke who might be trying to glide home. Climbing uses more fuel than level flight, but there’s no simple measure of how much more, or not that I know; coming back down again uses less, of course, but I don’t think they cancel each other out. So, to be safe, more or less, say ten minutes less than two hours all told.”

  Nancy could see the wisdom in that, began to calculate, having been told that Tommy’s grasp of arithmetic was less than perfect.

  “Thirty minutes to get up there. At least thirty-five to come down again, and forty wouldn’t hurt. That leaves you forty minutes to find the Gotha and bash it. Can do?”

  “Probably. Are you sure of an operating height of sixteen thousand feet for the Gotha? Would we do better adding another five hundred feet?”

  “HQ says that the Gotha III is getting old, has lost the edge of its performance. The G IV will be a far superior machine, is flying already in fact and may have been the plane that raided into Kent recently. You won’t see much of it here. It is to raid London, to force the RFC to keep squadrons on Home Defence and waste resources on guns to protect London.”

  “Do you think it might be possible to paint a bright red target on the Houses of Parliament and organise a couple of arrows on the coast to point them in the right direction?”

  “Tut! How disloyal, Tommy!”

  “Practical, though. Take off at ten minutes after dawn. It shall be done, and we shall follow your orders – it makes a change to have orders to follow, rather than make it up as we go along.”

  “So, gentlemen, wrap yourselves up warm – frostbite is a real possibility at the heights we shall be working at today. Check your guns for ice. I have instructed the armourers to oil the breeches thoroughly – not that they needed to be told! If you are separated, remember to come down slowly. Watch for sleepiness – I am told that one of the signs of altitude sickness is drowsiness. If you find yourselves unable to stay awake, lose height immediately, go down to ten thousand and hang about there for a few minutes, then return to the field. Height affects people differently, so Nancy has told me – so don’t worry if you can’t handle it. I know you three by now and will have no doubts at all if you choose to turn back.”

  Tommy knew he was wasting his time. None of the three would ever pull out of a possible fight, however close to coma they might be; better far to black out and die than to raise the possibility that they had shown yellow. He laughed, strictly internally, realising that he would do the same.

  “If we meet a Gotha – and the chances are no more than fifty-fifty, I would say – then we split into the two pairs, abreast, and go in at the same time. Perkins and me will go bows and stern; you two make a run for the wings and engines and those bloody great petrol tanks above them. If she starts to flame – pull away, job done. Don’t go in to finish her off. No need.”

  They nodded and made obedient mutters. In the excitement of fighting, they would hammer in repeatedly until the Gotha was nose-down and out of control, no matter what he said. He led them out to the concrete apron and the waiting ground parties.

  “Loaded Brock?”

  “No, sir. Had a new sort delivered instead, sir. Better stuff at first sight, sir. Almost no misshapes, sir. Supposed to be more reliable as well – a bit hotter, more of an incendiary than an explosive round. Hybrid, they call it, sir. No choice but use it, it’s all they sent, sir.”

  “I shall want Brock if we have to go into ground attack at the end of July. Keep back any we have for that. I’ll have a word with the QM people.”

  George, the adjutant was present, said he would speak to them himself, that morning.

  Tommy led the Flight up, obeying the instructions from Nancy, climbing into the clear air of early morning. The artillery had not been too active – some mornings they would welcome the dawn with a brisk bombardment - and there was less than the normal amount of smoke in the air and he could see for miles; he wondered just how far the horizon was. He would ask Nancy, if he remembered.

  They crossed Hazebrouck at eight thousand, reversed their course as they climbed slowly to sixteen and cruised to the east for a few miles, came back to cover the big railway junction. Tommy glanced down, saw that the network had grown with the addition of extra light railways and tramways, narrow gauge and winding through the low valleys towards the Trenches; it was an even more important target than he remembered.

  It was bitterly cold, his breath condensing, ice particles gleaming, the wind harsh against his eyes. If they were to do much of this then he would have to get goggles – not the issue things that invariably steamed up – but ones that worked. He would be writing home that evening, finishing off the weekly letter; he would ask Monkey to buy for him… His mind was wandering, he realised, he had lost concentration. That was a result of the altitude, he suspected, forced himself back to full attention. The Gotha was due to come out of the north-east. Where the hell was that? He painstakingly placed the position of the sun, having to force himself to think, to focus on what he was doing. He spotted movement out of the corner of his eye, saw Peterson waving and pointing.

  A mile distant, lower by a few hundred feet, massively lumbering along, a twin-engine plane three times at least the size of a Camel.

  The Gotha was thirty miles an hour slower than a Camel. It was theirs to deal with, could not get away.

  Tommy waved his arm, all of the fuzzy tiredness gone, waited a couple of seconds for Perkins to come alongside him, gestured forwards.

  He realised as they made their first approach that he had neglected to specify which of them would go for the tail, which the bows. They were both aiming into the front of the machine. Nothing to be done now; he angled a little to the left, gave Perkins manoeuvring room.

  As always, he was amazed at just how quickly the planes came together, the Gotha looming, vast, a hundred yards distant, closer, a gunner concentrating on him, a stream of fire battering the Camel. A twitch of his feet and he threw the gunner off for a couple of seconds, long enough to survive. He heard Perkins open fire, a long, sustained burst into the gunner’s position and then along the length of the fuselage, head to head, suicidally close. He pressed the triggers himself, chewing up the fabric of a wing and hitting the engine before heaving back on the stick, as they were suddenly now calling the control lever. He pulled up into a half loop and rolled out, diving back onto the huge bomber. Colne and Peterson crossed him, barely fifty feet distant, no doubt upset to discover him in their way. He must set out instructions for who was to dive, who to climb in such a situation, he thought. Stick to the right, turning hard and bringing the cockpit beneath his guns. He fired, very close, killed the pilot, blew him to bits in fact, feeling the Camel jerking as the tail gunner tried to return the compliment.

  “Bugger the rules! Slow loss of height is not on here!”

  He stood the Camel on its wingtips and dived as hard as he could, putting a rapid thousand feet between him and the conscientious gunner. Then he pulled out, very gently, easing the stick incrementally and wondering just how much damage the wings had picked up. Nothing fell off and he had achieved level flight, and he was heading west. All satisfactory for the moment.

  He looked about him, spotted the Gotha by the great trail of smoke it was leaving as it fell. He saw the tail gunner jump out of his cockpit, presumed the fire had spread towards him and he had preferred not to burn to death, gawped in amazement as a parachute spread above him and he began to fall gently to earth. He could see nothing else, was alone in the sky it seemed. He looked below him, spotted a smaller plume of smoke going down. He wondered who.

  He picked up his landmarks and followed the railway tracks to St Rigobert, nursing the Camel, the plane feeling hesitant, unsure of the wisdom of flying. He did not know just how
much damage he had taken. He came in sight of the orange flag and began his turn into the wind, took up the Very pistol and fired a red just in case.

  A slow descent, very precise, holding the Camel rigorously to the line, touching down just where he wished, pleased with himself, and then swearing as the undercarriage collapsed. He saw a wheel skipping along in front of him. He switched off and waited. Something dug into the grass and started the plane turning, making a line for the apron and the parked line of Camels. Thirty yards short and there was a loud grinding and the nose dug into the turf, the tail slowly starting to rise as if to flip over. He sat rigidly still – there was nothing he could do. The tail flopped down again and the plane stopped. He grabbed at his belt as the hands heaved him out and pulled him along, running at top pelt before the petrol tank decided to blow.

  He sat down on the concrete, waiting for the medical party. He did not know if he was injured; he did not know very much, in fact.

  Colonel Ponsonby puffed up to him.

  “Haw-haw! Made it then, Stark! Did you get the Gotha?”

  “Yes, sir. A certain kill. Went down in flames.”

  “Good man, haw-haw! Peterson is back. Worth it to get one of those big buggers!”

  “It may well be, sir. Too soon to say. One of the missing pair was a flamer, but I don’t know which.”

  Nancy nodded Colonel Ponsonby to leave, to make space for the medical orderly.

  “Successful patrol, Tommy. Peterson has already reported to me. Says that he and Colne set an engine afire and that you and Perkins shot the pilot to bits. Colne was hit by the tail gunner and went down under control, may have been able to land. Perkins collided with the Gotha and fell in flames.”

  “Inevitable, Nancy. He wanted to kill much more than he wanted to live.”

  He felt the medical orderly bandaging his arm, which hurt, he now realised.

  “What’s the score, Quack?”

  “Flesh wound to the left arm, Tommy. I’ll put a couple of stitches in when we get you into the bay. Cuts and bruises to the leg, some wood splinters there to be pulled out. Pretty light, all things considered. Good thing you had used up most of your petrol.”

  Another one to put down to luck – but he had been born under a lucky star, so Monkey said, and she was never wrong.

  “Colonel! Will you put in for replacement pilots and machines, please?”

  “Haw-haw! On me way to do that now, Major Stark – gives a good excuse to get on the old telephone to HQ, you know, crafty old bugger, that’s me! I’ll tell them that we need three Camels and two pilots to replace the ones we lost when downing the Gotha this morning! Haw-haw – make sure they know just who has done what!”

  “Well done, sir. I would never have thought of that…”

  There was a fading haw-haw as Colonel Ponsonby disappeared on his errand.

  “Nancy, will you get your report into Maurice in a hurry? Make sure that the correct information reaches HQ and ask if Colne managed to find a field to land in.”

  Quack took Tommy away and spent half an hour with tweezers, pulling splinters from his leg, some of them from the site of his first wound from ’14.

  “Won’t heal so fast, Tommy, not in scar tissue. Sod all to do about it, though. Arm next. Got some of this new local cocaine, the stuff the Germans invented and which our people are finally making. Use about a half as much as the old stuff and numbs the site rather than deadening the whole bloody arm. Two years we’ve been waiting for it, while they decided whether they could infringe the German patent!”

  “They’ve probably arranged to pay royalties into a Swiss bank, Quack. Money is more important than wounded soldiers, after all.”

  “Right, here we go – I hate injections, Tommy. You’d do much better if we had a nurse here; the medical schools never teach would-be doctors how to give an injection – unskilled work for the menials, one presumes. The cut is a little deeper than I thought – I’ll put three stitches in.”

  There was silence for five minutes.

  “I really don’t like stitching, Tommy. I shall be a physician, not a surgeon, when I finally qualify. Not to worry! We must all bear the loads that are set upon us.”

  Tommy didn’t like his stitching either, but did not say so.

  “No flying until the sutures are out, Tommy. I shall check them daily for infection. Say six to eight days grounded. I shall inform Colonel Haw-Haw of my edict, by the way.”

  “Swine!”

  “Oink, oink! You still ain’t flying until that arm is ready, Tommy.”

  Tommy made the necessary protests, but had no real objection to a few days off. Henry was senior in the rank, must act as second-in-command for the week.

  “George!”

  The Adjutant was waiting outside, as Tommy had expected.

  “Tell Henry he has the squadron while I’m grounded. Advise him on how to go on with Wing.”

  Tommy could not officially give Henry orders – he was not the CO while he was on the sick list.

  He limped along the corridor to the Mess, sat to breakfast, discovering it was still well short of nine o’clock.

  “Bloody dawn patrols!”

  Noah came in, followed by the whole of his squadron, laughing and chattering and making ‘atta-atta’ machine-gun noises at each other.

  “Good patrol, Noah?”

  “Like Samson, Tommy, we smote the unbelievers with the arse-bone of a giraffe!”

  “Are you sure about that, Noah?”

  “It might have been the jaw-bone of an ass, thinking on it, but the principle holds good. Halberstadts and things from ’16, Tommy. They are still putting them up over Belgian territory, and we can amuse ourselves putting them down again. It might be a crafty ploy to tire us, you know, exhaust our trigger-fingers before their new stuff gets here.”

  “Some general fifty miles behind the Hindenburg line, Noah, telling them they must try harder. It’s not the jolly planes’ fault – can’t be, they defeated the English with them only last year! Must be pilot error. Get up in the air and do better, lazy schweinhund!”

  “You might be right. Could be why Jerry hasn’t won the war already – their generals are as bloody stupid as ours! Are those bandages I see before my eyes?”

  “Nicked in the arm, splinters in the leg. Grounded for the week. Got the Gotha, lost Perkins, waiting to hear about Colne.”

  “Was the Gotha difficult?”

  “Well-placed guns – no blind spots that I could find. Very slow. The pilot made almost no attempt to throw her about, so I expect he couldn’t. Tail gunner had a parachute, by the way.”

  “So… kill the gunners, first?”

  “Best bet, I think. After that it’s simple to splat the pilot. Damned plane’s so big it eats up punishment – much better to go for the cockpit.”

  “Noted, dear boy. Breakfast and then we shall go hunting again. Where are your people going?”

  “Ask Henry, I’ve given command to him for the week.”

  There was a cry of haw-haw in the corridor. Tommy called for more toast to fortify himself for the coming few minutes.

  “Major Stark! Compliments of General Trenchard. A good job done, it would seem, sir! The smoke and flames from the Gotha was seen for miles as it came down – really bucked up the troops.”

  “Was that a ‘b’, sir? Makes a change from their normal state.”

  The response went over Colonel Ponsonby’s head; it was far too subtle.

  Nancy had followed him into the breakfast room, was holding onto the door frame, laughing at the wasted wit.

  “Beg pardon for interrupting, Colonel Ponsonby. I thought you would wish to know that Second-Lieutenant Colne came down on our side of the lines and is unharmed. He will be returned here as soon as transport is organised. HQ is aware and will modify the request for replacements, sir. He has been made up to full lieutenant, sir, along with Mr Peterson. Normal RFC practice, sir, to make them after any particular success.”

  “Haw-haw! No
t what we did in the Regiment, you know! Two years a cornet of cavalry served before we even thought of making him lieutenant! Any money you like, he don’t know all his commands for a review yet!”

  “We don’t hold reviews in the RFC, sir.”

  “Not the point! He might be transferred to a real regiment one day – then where would he be?”

  “A remarkably good question, sir, and one I had not considered, I must confess.”

  “Haw-haw. Well said.”

  Tommy buttered his toast, eyes firmly on his plate.

  “A message from Maurice, Tommy,” Nancy continued. “Very pleased to be able to report the successes of the squadrons. The newspapers will make much of them, particularly of your downing a ‘baby-killing Gotha’. It seems that a bomb recently fell on a family home – deliberately aimed, no doubt, that being the sole purpose of flying all the way to England. All Gothas are now ‘baby-killers’, officially by edict of Fleet Street.”

  “God help us all!”

  “Haw-haw! What I don’t understand is how they knew there was a baby in the house, you know.”

  “A very good question, sir. One I fear I cannot answer.”

  Tommy admired the smoothness of Nancy’s address; he had, himself, been lost for words.

  “Ha! You Intelligence chappies don’t know everything, then!”

  Colonel Ponsonby meandered away, haw-hawing merrily, quite convinced that his devastating repartee had won the day for the old school.

  Tommy did not enjoy being grounded. The fact that he could not fly did not mean that he could not read and write and he was forced, morally obliged, to spend his days in his office. Even worse, once there, he had to make a start on his paperwork.

  Most of the documents were no more than pieces of paper formally recording the expenditure of stores and pointing out shortages of necessary equipment. They could be ignored, counter-signed and sent to be filed away by Sergeant James, because they were simply for his information – all necessary action would have been taken behind the scenes. Any good Engineering Officer had his contacts at Stores, and they worked closely and quietly together, fiddling away merrily. Tommy was certain that at least one of the DH4s he had flown had been written off and officially replaced, while the machine itself had actually flown again; that meant that the better part of three thousand pounds had been officially expended on the new aircraft from the factory, the money no doubt appearing in the books and disappearing into private accounts somehow. It was all most reprehensible, but his squadron had waited hours for spares; others found planes grounded for weeks for lack of those same parts. He had no doubt that Sooty was achieving the same excellent results – and nothing else counted.