Dusk Patrol

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Chandler’s grin widened. “I was coming to that. I really ought to give you a couple of extra turns at orderly dog; but it did me good to see you toss that grenade. Remember to look out behind next time.” He moved away and said, over his shoulder: “Good show, pressing your attack so low, Boyd. I’ll overlook the bullet holes in the aeroplane as well. I distinctly saw three Huns in their support trench wing you.”

  “How low did you follow the sausage, for Godsake?” asked Holt.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Holt imitated his flight commander’s smile. “I couldn’t watch my altimeter and my target.”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to say things like that: it qualifies as what the fellows call a line-shoot.”

  “D’you think so?” Boyd contrived to sound innocent. “Well, I know I can rely on you not to let it go any further.”

  “That’s right. Provided you buy a bottle of champagne tonight.”

  They had formed the habit of visiting an estaminet which still had a well-stocked cellar, two or three times a week. Boyd said “Oh, are we going to Tante Yvonne’s tonight?”

  “Either that or I put your line on record.” It was Holt’s turn to mock. “It’s like we call trick-or-treat.”

  “All right, I’ll treat you. But it’s blackmail.”

  *

  Boyd had picked up his mail from the Orderly Room. There was only one letter, for he had heard from his parents the day before. With it was a cabinet-sized photograph of a pretty, fair-haired girl with humorous dimples and a sweetly smiling mouth.

  “Dear Nick, Thank you for your letter ... cannot imagine why you want a photograph of me ... had this specially done ... hope you will like it ... I think of you often ... every day, in fact ... remember the fun we had last time you were on leave ... haven’t felt like going out much, since ... can’t think why ... have been wondering whether I ought to join something ... if I became a VAD perhaps I’d be able to volunteer for a hospital in France ... and see you sometimes ... take care ... write when you can ... and please send me your photograph in return ... Yours sincerely ...”

  He sat for a long time, contemplating the nineteen-year-old face that smiled at him and asking himself what Marjorie really meant to him.

  Six

  Of all the three Services involved in the air battles, the Royal Flying Corps, the Aviation Militaire and the Imperial German Military Aviation Service, the German was by far the biggest and the British the smallest.

  The enemy had 246 aeroplanes and seven Zeppelin airships. The French had 160 aeroplanes and fifteen airships of various makes. The RFC had 133 aeroplanes, of which sixty-three went to France at the start of hostilities, and six airships.

  By early 1916 the size of all these air forces had increased, but pilots still greatly outnumbered aircraft and there were no official specialist pilots: the concept of fighter and reconnaissance squadrons had not been evolved.

  One morning in late March, Chandler asked Boyd, “How is your Morse?”

  “Rusty. And it never was very fast.”

  On came Chandler’s ironical, unkind smile. “You may need it. I’m sending you up with Sergeant Henshaw as observer, to spot for B Battery of the 99th Field Regiment.”

  “Won’t he be signalling with the Aldis lamp, sir?”

  “Of course. But if he gets pinked by the Boche Archie, you’ll have to do it. Take an Aldis in your cockpit.”

  Blunt truth was the flight commander’s doctrine.

  Sergeant Henshaw was of Boyd’s own age, a Yorkshireman with a passion for keeping his hair so close-cropped that his friends in the sergeants’ mess called him ‘Stretch’ in subtle allusion to a prison sentence. He wore a knitted skull-cap under his flying helmet, to keep his scalp warm. He was distinguished not only by this tonsorial oddity but also by his calmness under fire or in the hands of inexperienced pilots, and his exceptional eyesight which enabled him to do his job with notable accuracy. He was a useful man to have aboard, too, when a pilot was uncertain of his position in bad weather or after emerging from cloud: Sergeant ‘Stretch’ Henshaw could identify some landmark instantly. He seemed to carry a pictorial map of the whole front line and the country deep on both sides of it in his mind.

  Boyd greeted him outside the flight commander’s office with an uneasy awareness of his own lack of experience in their morning’s task. “’Fraid I haven’t done this before, Sergeant.”

  “I know you haven’t, sir. Don’t worry: we’ll be all right. The 99th are very good to work with.”

  “I hear you’re a good shot.”

  “Brought up on a farm, sir: I was six years old when me dad gave me my first airgun and I started helping to keep the rabbits down; and twelve when I was allowed to use a shotgun on pigeons, rooks and ducks, on the wing.”

  “I’ve never had the chance to use a shotgun. Your judgment of deflection must be pretty good.”

  “Aye, aiming off is what counts, sir. But on spotting it’s not so much Hun aeroplanes we have to bother about as their Archie.”

  “I won’t forget to weave,” said Boyd with a smile.

  The earliest BE2s had carried no machine-gun. The 2c had a Lewis gun in the observer’s cockpit, but its use was very restricted. A pin projected from its underside and could be located in several holes around the cockpit coaming. From a position directly behind the engine it could be fired above the propeller disc. There was a narrow arc on each side of the four-bladed propeller and the wing struts, through which the observer could shoot. To fire rearwards, he had to heave the gun on to a swinging arm attached to the aft rim of his cockpit, then kneel on his seat. But taking care not to shoot the tail, the wing struts; or his pilot!

  Holt was standing near the B Flight hangar when Boyd and Sergeant Henshaw walked by. He said “We’re escorting a recon. to photograph troop movements deep behind the Boche lines. You’ll probably be back before we are, Nick.” He wore an anxious look. Boyd, who had learned the extent of his friend’s kindness, knew what was in his mind: he would have preferred being sent on a freelance patrol so that he could keep an eye on the BE2.

  “Archie is going to be our problem, old boy. The Boche will have to keep out of the way in case he gets shot down by accident.”

  “Well, as soon as you’ve knocked out your target you can come home.”

  “Shouldn’t take long. Sergeant Henshaw says the 99th are good shots.”

  “You can tell me about it. It’ll be my turn next, I guess.”

  Boyd thought so too, for they all had to take a turn at flying the flight’s last remaining BE2c. He had not been looking forward to this sortie: offensive patrols and escorts suited his temperament much better than a task on which he could take no direct part in the destruction of the enemy. He was to be merely a kind of human observation balloon, he told himself; he might as well be dangling in a basket as pottering about at 3,000 or 4,000 feet while Sergeant Henshaw signalled to the artillery to tell them where their shells were falling. He enjoyed flying for its own sake, and now that he had well over a hundred hours in his logbook he felt that he was fully qualified. But he still had only one victory against an enemy aircraft to his credit; and one balloon, which he did not really believe ought to count. Neither Holt nor Hannington had increased his score of two and one aircraft respectively, but each had also bagged a balloon. All three of them had been in several engagements and come home with their aeroplanes well peppered with holes; but although the rugged DH2s had survived, they had not, in return, had great success for they were so much less manoeuvrable than the Fokkers. The latter had not been coming into the RFC’s territory so often during the past two weeks: they were needed in the French sector, where the fighting at Verdun was already a carnage rather than a military operation. “A lengthy period of general insanity,” was what General Edmund Allenby called it. “Generals’ insanity” would have been more accurate.

  So Boyd took off with Sergeant Henshaw in the front cockpit, expecting to be up for an hour or so, resigned to t
he prospect of close attention from anti-aircraft fire but fairly confident that he would not be molested by enemy airmen.

  Although the calendar showed that winter was over, the human eye could detect no sign of spring on the Western Front. Shattered orchards, scorched and leafless, would not put forth fresh sprouts this year: any faint dappling of green was instantly swept away by some new barrage. Yellow mustard flowers and the ubiquitous white scabious might peer from an occasional pile of rubble or cratered meadow, but flames and high-explosive chemicals soon scorched and blighted them. There would be no poppies or cornflowers, no wheat or barley, no pastures. Looking down from 3,000 feet, Boyd supposed that the moon must look like this. But there was no human life on the moon, and here there was abundant evidence of it; crushed. He saw battered, flattened hamlets and villages, scattered farms: all tumbled and burned, their bricks and timbers flung to the four winds. The villages looked mean and humble and ugly at the best of times, grey buildings along narrow roads, made more hideous by the red brick of some public building.

  At 3,000 feet the air was bumpy this morning, the cumbersome BE2c with its top speed of seventy-two miles an hour no joy to handle. Boyd recalled that Holt and Hannington had both, bold with their respective 100 and 200 pilot hours, declared their intention, back at training school, of one day looping these things. He had a vague general idea of how to perform this acrobatic, but no particular ambition to give it a try. Although he understood about centrifugal force, he could not easily convince himself that once upside down he would not fall out. There were no straps to hold a pilot or observer in his seat in any type of aircraft. He had no difficulty at all in imagining himself losing speed at the top of a loop and finding himself clinging to his control column for dear life while his legs dangled in space. He certainly did not think that Sergeant Henshaw would be grateful to him for introducing him to the experience. The observer had even less to cling on to than he had. It was a pity, he felt, that there was no one to teach them these things when they were learning to fly. But then, no one had thought of teaching him the effect of rudder in a steep bank, until Elliot Holt had been concerned enough about him to explain it.

  Over the B Battery position he rocked his wings, and Sergeant Henshaw signalled with the Aldis lamp to say that they were on their way. The target was a German field-gun battery that had been giving the trenches and the artillery sites a bad time. Now that he was committed to the job, Boyd began to take an interest in seeing how quickly the battery could find the range. But first he had to identify the target; or, rather, Sergeant Henshaw had to.

  Here came the first air bursts, polluting the sky and rocking his aircraft with their blast. He would have taken much closer interest in directing fire on to anti-aircraft sites.

  Glancing repeatedly at the map on his knee, he identified an oval wood in a hollow, then a slope of down where chalk showed through grass stubble. He recognised a ruined farm, another wood, a stream.

  Sergeant Henshaw twisted round to look at him and raised a thumb, then pointed down to the right. Looking down, Boyd saw a fold in the ground where the enemy guns were hidden from direct observation. They were not in action: they had seen him coming.

  Boyd circled and headed back a short way to bring the Aldis in range of B Battery. Sergeant Henshaw flashed a signal. They held their orbit and soon they saw the first shellburst. It was well short.

  Sergeant Henshaw signalled while Boyd held the aircraft straight and in a shallow climb. The Aldis had a sight on top of it and at this extreme distance it was essential to aim it directly at the receiver, so he could not circle; but he could change his altitude as an optimistic means of puzzling the Archie gunners.

  The second round was still short. Boyd wriggled unhappily as he dived gently through the shellbursts while Sergeant Henshaw used the lamp.

  The third round was over, and Boyd muttered with relief. Now that they had bracketed the target they should be on it next time. Peering down, he wondered what were the feelings of the enemy gunners, knowing that the range had probably been found and most of them could expect to die within the next few minutes. Were there deep shelters in which they could hide? It made no difference to anyone but themselves, for there were plenty more guns and gunners to replace these. He knew what it was like to be under bombardment and at first he felt sorry for those midget figures he could see moving down there: but there were very few of them, so no doubt they were on their way to concrete bunkers where the rest had already gone.

  The fourth shot fell where it should, Sergeant Henshaw signalled, anti-aircraft fire followed the BE2, Boyd wished that B Battery would get this over with before he was hit.

  The battery fired a salvo and for a few seconds Boyd enjoyed the spectacle of the tall eruptions of earth, foliage, sandbags and timber; the brilliant flashes of exploding ammunition around the German guns.

  Those few seconds ended in a rattle of machine-gun fire at close range as Sergeant Henshaw signalled and he flew parallel with the lines and climbing.

  The aeroplane shook as bullets struck it. Boyd had been searching the sky all the time: where had the enemy come from? How many were there? He saw the lamp fall from Sergeant Henshaw’s hand. He twisted in his seat, scanning the sky: he could see nothing. He looked down. Another long burst of fire, more bullets thudding into the BE, and he saw tracer beneath him. He banked hard to the right.

  Another burst, even longer, and holes in the wings and his own cockpit.

  Sergeant Henshaw was looking at him, his lips parted in a grimace, his right hand clutching his left arm. Then he slowly reached for his Lewis gun, as more bullets riddled his cockpit.

  Boyd came off his bank, put the stick forward and throttled back. A Fokker EIII came suddenly into view below them and Boyd made a hard aileron turn to the left to allow Sergeant Henshaw to swing his gun to the right and take aim. He heard the loud clatter of the Lewis and saw tracer leaping from its muzzle. The German pilot arched his back and half stood; the rush of air thrust him backward so that his head was almost touching the fuselage behind him. The Fokker tilted to the left and began to sideslip.

  Boyd turned after it. Sergeant Henshaw was sitting huddled forward, looking as though his forehead rested on his gun. Boyd wondered how badly he was hurt, whether he could still fire. He turned away to open the angle and, sluggishly, Sergeant Henshaw swung his gun to the left and sent a short burst into the enemy. It started burning briskly.

  They had lost 500 feet and Boyd had momentarily forgotten about their reason for being here. He turned back towards the enemy artillery positions, fixing his own position by quick reference to the landmarks; looking constantly towards Sergeant Henshaw’s lolling head and his shoulders that shifted slackly with each change in the BE’s attitude.

  The smoke of the last salvo had cleared and he could see that half the site was intact.

  He ought to get Sergeant Henshaw back as quickly as he could. The Fokker pilot had put three good bursts into them, choosing the observer as his first target to stop him signalling. He was rolling and swaying helplessly in the front cockpit, his head loosely nodding and rocking. Boyd knew that even if he could attract his observer’s attention it would be pointless: if he could communicate, he would have turned and made some sign. The poor devil must be unconscious.

  But the target was not demolished yet. Boyd picked up his Aldis, rested it on the cockpit coaming, and one-handedly fumbled until he had focused it. He began laboriously to flash out dots and dashes. Back came an acknowledgment, followed immediately by two salvoes in quick succession.

  Boyd went up in a steep spiral to get away from the bursting anti-aircraft shells that had torn several holes in the BE. The haze over the target drifted and he peered at the gun emplacement: B Battery had reduced it to a smoking ruin.

  He put the nose of the BE down in a straight line for base and dived as steeply as he dared.

  When he was within a few hundred yards of the aerodrome he rocked his wings violently, Sergeant Henshaw
flopping about limply and making him feel that he was violating decency; but this was his way of trying to save the man’s life. He fired a Verey cartridge and saw the squadron’s improvised and only ambulance dart away from its place by the hangars, and men running.

  He set the aircraft down and it toppled to the left with a grinding, crunching, tearing noise of broken wood and canvas. His head reeled as the aircraft decelerated suddenly and gyrated madly on its port wingtips. Dust, stones and clods of earth showered up, dust covering him, settling on his goggles, making him choke and cough. His head hit the edge of the cockpit and he lost consciousness.

  He regained his senses to find two men dragging him clear. He pushed them aside and thrust his way past the men clustered around the front cockpit. They were hauling Sergeant Henshaw out, and his body came free suddenly, two men staggering back as they dragged at him. Boyd could see into the cockpit: its interior was red with Sergeant Henshaw’s blood, the floor awash with it. One of the sergeant’s legs, from the knee down, was still in the cockpit; the other hung from his trunk by a few strands of flesh, sinew and leather trouser.

  Boyd had seen sights as bad and worse but none that filled him with a sense of personal responsibility, as this did; or with such remorse and self-accusation.

  He leaned dazedly against the wreckage of the BE2. Obviously, the undercarriage had been damaged by bullets or a shell splinter and given way on landing. The impact had crushed in part of the nacelle, trapping Sergeant Henshaw. Would he have lived if rescuers had been able to extricate him at once? He knew there was only a one-in-three chance of recovery from a grave wound, and even less from the kind of injuries his observer had suffered. He would have felt less wretched if he had been hit himself, but he had suffered nothing worse than bruises and a cut on the cheek. His head ached and there was a swelling on his forehead. The medical officer muttered something about concussion, but Boyd vented his pent-up anger on him: “I’ve had concussion before ... at rugger ... and I don’t feel at all concussed, dammit ... I’m perfectly all right ... and if you say I can’t have a drink you can go to hell ...”