Dusk Patrol

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The doctor knew better than to tell him that this uncharacteristic rudeness confirmed his warning. “I’ll pour you a stiff brandy myself,” he said. He was wise enough to know when it was better to contravene medical practice than to follow it.

  *

  Boyd woke with an aching head and a throbbing in his cheek. He lay with his eyes shut for a moment and put a hand to his face. He touched lint and sticking plaster, and recalled that the MO had put several stitches in the gash that ran from beneath the place on his cheekbone where his goggles rested, to his jaw. His jaw was tender, so he must have struck it against the cockpit rim: he couldn’t remember clearly just what had happened when he landed. Hit the ground would be a better way of putting it. Any landing you walked away from was a good one, they said; but he hadn’t walked away from it, he had been hauled clear of the wreckage and the threat of fire. How the mess of wood and canvas and wire had stunk of petrol: it was amazing that the hot engine had not set the fumes ablaze before the troops had been able to turn fire extinguishers on it.

  What a shambles; literally, just about. People used the word when they meant chaos, ignorant that its true meaning had nothing to do with disorder. A shambles was a slaughterhouse, and that was what his observer’s cockpit had looked like. The recollection made him feel sick ... must be something the MO had made him swallow, for he had a strong stomach ... one soon developed a resistance to the sight of blood and dismemberment, in places like Ypres and Loos.

  He opened his eyes fully and Elliot Holt said “How d’you feel, Nick?”

  Boyd raised himself on an elbow. He was in his own tent, with Holt sitting in his canvas chair and leaning over the camp bed with anxiety he could not disguise.

  “I feel a bit muzzy, as a matter of fact. What time is it?”

  “Lunchtime. How’s your appetite?”

  Boyd sat up and swung his legs off the bed. Wryly, he replied, “It would be better if I didn’t have to face Chandler’s wrath for wrecking his one remaining BE.”

  “He’s more likely to put you up for a medal: you know how he hates the things; now he’ll be able to ask for a DH to replace it.”

  “He can’t replace Sergeant Henshaw,” said Boyd morosely.

  “Don’t let that eat you, Nick. The doctor says he was dead from loss of blood long before you brought him back.”

  “That’s no consolation. We were taken by surprise. I didn’t expect an attack from below at that height. Same old trick: the Hun fired at us from below and behind. Just like Albert Ball’s favourite approach.”

  “No one can blame you.”

  “Henshaw got his revenge, though. Amazing shot. He brought the Hun down in flames. Must have been dying even as he was shooting. Tremendous chap. He couldn’t shift the gun from one slot to another, you know ... he was hit in the left arm in the first attack ... he had to manage one-handed.” Boyd’s staccato speech matched his troubled look.

  “Come and have something to eat; it’ll make you feel better.”

  Boyd stood up. “How did you get on?”

  “We ran into trouble, too. We got the photos, but the BE was badly shot up: it had to forced-land right behind our support trenches; it barely made it that far. And we lost Johnson and Willis. Chandler says we’ll have to change our formation.”

  In the six weeks they had been on the squadron, that made four observers and six pilots killed. Something needed to be changed, Boyd agreed. But he doubted whether a new escort formation or more DH2s was going to make much difference. What the RFC needed was air-minded Generals and staff officers who would support Trenchard instead of thwarting him. Then perhaps they would get aeroplanes which were as good as the enemy’s.

  Seven

  Elliot Holt often wondered, after two months in France, whether he had made the wrong decision in taking a ship to Southampton instead of disembarking at Cherbourg or Le Havre. From the far side of the USA, both England and France had seemed so remote that he knew he was going to be homesick; so maybe he would be less miserable if he at least went to a country where he understood the language. It would have been different if he had any family ties with England, if it was the place to which his parents and grandparents referred as ‘The Old Country’: but the Holts’ old country, from which his great-grandfather had emigrated, was quite another place. And, although they had kept the language alive and in use in the family and among close friends, it was the last place to which he wanted to go now.

  He could not properly answer the question he had put to himself for the first time in the middle of 1915: “Why do I want to go over there? Why do I want to involve myself in a war that is no affair of mine?”

  It was the sinking of the Lusitania that first made him aware that there was a right and wrong about this war; a good side and a bad side: the sheriffs and cowhands in their white stetsons, the rustlers and gunmen in their black ones. Then there was the propaganda, which he hadn’t much credited before but which the Lusitania brutality made at once convincing. Now German atrocities appeared, even 5,000 miles away, convincingly as gross as the press said they were.

  And then he began to think that it was unlikely the Allies would be able to win this war on their own. That was after he had attended a reunion at Cornell University and heard views of a kind he did not hear expressed at the ranch or among his relations and local friends. America, it seemed, would have to join the Allies eventually. Public opinion was pretty much that way, for one thing; and, for another, the world was in reality a much smaller place than most Americans had realised.

  As a patriot, he put Cody, the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss ahead of anyone in the world of aviation. As an aviation enthusiast, he had to concede a fair admiration for Blériot, the Voisins, Breguet and Farman; for A.V. Roe and the three brothers Short, for Moore-Brabazon and Charles Rolls. It seemed to him that there was a certain zaniness about French aviation and a stability or sobriety about the British.

  Knowing the language was one thing and understanding the people who spoke it was quite another. He had known one or two British contemporaries who had found their way, mysteriously, to Cornell; but that tenuous contact had not prepared him for life in a British officers’ mess, for an entirely new set of customs and conventions and prejudices; for a vocabulary and syntax that were often so different from his own that he felt he might just as well have gone to France. How he had kept his hands in his pockets instead of planting his fists on several supercilious noses, he would never know. But the provocations had been few compared with the pleasures and satisfactions and the admiration that had grown, since he came to France, as rapidly as his frustrations.

  But if British aviation was sober and steady compared with the French, it was nowhere near as far-sighted, as enterprising, or as encouraging of brilliance. It was this that made him regret daily that he had not thrown in his lot with the other Americans who had formed the Escadrille Americaine of the Aviation Militaire.

  Holt was a little unfair in his comparison of British and French attitudes to the new art or science of flying. It was because the British had such an abundance of inventors, designers, engineers and pilots that they kept falling over one another, as it were; getting in one another’s way: confusing the Government and the Services with a plethora of choice among aeroplanes. Whereas the French had fewer, more erratic, crazier exponents, capable of the greater flashes of brilliance and better appreciated by their military commanders.

  What was really the defect in Britain was the low intelligence of its senior Army officers (the Navy, with its Royal Naval Air Service, was much superior in its exploitation of aircraft) and general prejudice in the Service, with a good measure of jealousy of the new arm.

  Holt had been discouraged at the outset by the crude instructional technique at British flying schools. The teachers knew very little and had no means of speaking to their pupils above the noise of the engines. In a dual-control machine the pupil sat with his hands and feet on the controls and passively followed the movements made
by his instructor. The latter was more concerned with avoiding a fatal stall or spin caused by the learner exerting unauthorised control than in ensuring he actually learned how to do what he had to in order to fly safely. It was as though instructors’ major interest was to get their pupils off their hands as quickly as possible. Send them solo and let them teach themselves. If they are going to do something lethal, make sure we are not there when they do it. Kill yourself by all means, my friend, but it won’t be my responsibility.

  With his respectable number of pilot hours, Holt felt sorry for Nick Boyd. He made a point of being there when an instructor at Shoreham at last took him up for his first half-hour of dual. He kept an eye on his progress, more concerned about the instructor’s ability than Nick’s.

  The instinctive liking he had felt for him at first meeting had grown. Lonely and far from home, he had been quick to make a friend. Although less than three years the elder, he felt in some ways protective: he told himself it was ridiculous to think that a man who had spent fourteen months in the thick of the fiercest fighting in the world’s history had anything to learn from him about life. Or one who was familiar with the sophistications of daily life in London while he had been growing up on a campus or the prairie.

  Above all, he respected Boyd for what he must have endured and accomplished to win his decoration. During the two months they had shared in England, the quiet, reserved but friendly young man had changed. There had always been a discernible toughness beneath his diffidence, a self-assurance underlying his modesty. Those facets of his character had become more evident as he tackled the difficulties of learning to fly, but it was in his physical aspect that the changes had been most marked. He had come back from the trenches with a winter pallor, the thin face of many months’ poor nourishment, shadows of fatigue under his eyes, lines of weariness, responsibility and strain where his skin should have been smooth with youth and good health; his eyes fevered with the stress of having others’ lives in his hands, of constantly fearing for his own. By the time he returned to France, Boyd had become almost sleek. Extra pounds of flesh filled out his face and body; his eyes were bright with the joy of living instead of anxiety; hours of easy sleep had banished the lines and shadows; enthusiasm for his new craft enlivened him; his complexion was freshened by the wind and sun. Some pupils showed understandable fear, particularly after someone had had a bad accident: but Boyd never did, and no doubt there was nothing left to add to the fear he must have experienced in the front line.

  Holt was happy that they were posted to the same squadron, glad that he had a friend who could be his mentor in the ways of life on active service, who could help him to understand and respond to the aberrations of such as Major Dunnett and Captain Chandler, for whom even the acquaintanceship of Anthony Hannington had not prepared him.

  Holt was proud of the squadron and fond of Boyd, he respected his flight commander; but he felt bitterness and contempt already for the ineptitude, callousness and stupidity of the British General Staff. At so crass a figure as the squadron commander one could only weep or laugh. Perhaps Major Dunnett would kill himself soon and they would be rid of him. But then no doubt the fathomless incompetence of the Generals and their sycophants would foist on them someone else exactly like him.

  Towards the enemy he had undergone various changes of attitude. He had entered the war in a spirit of adventure tempered with righteousness, disliking imperial Germany only for the arrogance and desire to dominate for which it stood. That had been tempered by compassion when he had encountered Germans at close quarters, discerned their individual features as clearly as though they were guests at the same dinner-table, and seen them sent to their deaths or himself dispatched them. In turn this had been replaced by anger and a resurgence of animosity when he had had to fight them at a disadvantage in numbers, in quality of machines and in effectiveness of armament. And then his bitterness had turned against the men who controlled the lifespan of his comrades and himself, not those who tried to shorten it with bullets in fair fight: why the hell should they be exposed day after day to the risks of opposing their slow and clumsy machines to the Germans’ fast, nimble Fokkers?

  It made matters no easier for him that when he came back from his last sortie of the day on which Boyd had crashed and Sergeant Henshaw was killed, there was a letter awaiting him from his father.

  “I want you should know,” it said, “that Emil Holz, who once came to visit with us when he was doing an exchange year at Yale, is in the German Air Force. And Bruno, in that strange way that has always made him do unaccountable and rash things, has gone off to join him. This is a terrible thing and your mother and I pray daily that your paths will never cross. Bruno has been increasingly angry and restless since your departure, always saying America has no business to be neutral and when we do go in we’ll go in on the wrong side. What he thinks is the wrong side. So now he has gone, to the shame of us all. I suspect it was Emil who had a bad influence on him when he was over here. May God protect you, my son. Your mother and I are deeply proud of what you are doing. Although America is technically neutral, all right-thinking people believe in the Allied cause. Bruno has no business turning on the land that has given him so much, that has done so much for four generations of Holts who emigrated to this great country as Holz. He must be crazy as well as a traitor. He has brought great shame on his father ...”

  Bruno Holt’s father was Elliot’s father’s younger brother. They were a close-knit family; but Bruno had always been erratic and headstrong. Elliot tore the letter up sadly, and burned it. He was indifferent to the privacy of his possessions but this was one item of private property that he didn’t want his batman’s eyes to light upon.

  He felt the heavy hand of fate touch him on the shoulder and recalled the spuriously smiling face of his more distant cousin Emil Holz who had come to America for a year to pursue his doctoral thesis, from Tübingen University.

  He had thought from the first that Emil resembled a rat; and, come to think of it, there was something distinctly ratty about Bruno too.

  He went to Boyd’s tent and slapped the canvas with the flat of his large hand. “Hey, Nick: are you there?”

  A drowsy voice answered: “Come in, Elliot: I’ve been dozing again.”

  Holt entered the tent and stood looking down at his friend. “How d’you feel now?”

  “Better than Sergeant Henshaw, I dare say.”

  “Hey, don’t be morbid. You know better than that. What d’you say we go down to Tante Yvonne’s and get good and drunk? Think your sore head can stand it?”

  “It’s just what my head needs, old boy. But what’s up with you?”

  “I just feel like getting drunk, is all. Does there have to be a reason for it?”

  “I dunno: ask the major ... he’s the expert on that subject around here.”

  Holt began laughing and presently Boyd joined in. It was not a very good joke. In fact it was a tragic one; but it was good to have something to laugh about at the end of that cruel day.

  Eight

  Boyd had always found some comfort in routine. By nature he was orderly, as befitted a future lawyer, but more than inherent tidiness of mind and behaviour led him to fall readily into habits: routine was an anodyne.

  He had always written weekly to his parents and lately had taken to writing every week to Marjorie. He looked forward to her letters, which she also sent regularly, rather more keenly than to those from his family. There was the piquancy of uncertainty in his correspondence with her, whereas he knew that his mother would write without fail. He had no proprietorial rights over Marjorie, could take nothing for granted. Although her letters had turned up when expected for several weeks, he would not be surprised if they stopped at any time. There must be other admirers. Girls did not care to be seen out with civilians, but there were plenty of men in uniform to squire her around; and not all Front-dodgers either: there were many who were convalescing from wounds or illness, attending courses, training othe
rs by passing on their own battle experiences. There were naval officers at British ports from which they sailed to escort convoys, hunt U-boats, do battle with German torpedo-boats: on active service just as much as anyone fighting in France; but with much easier access to London.

  After all, although he had known her since her family moved to Wimbledon soon after he left school, he had shown no interest in her until he went home to do his flying course. They had been out together eight times: he could remember every detail of each occasion. She had kissed him when they said goodbye after their last outing on the evening before his return to France. But it was his parents who had seen him off at Victoria.

  There had been a girl at the station to speed Elliot on his way, though. A long-stemmed, dark-eyed beauty quite a few years older than Marjorie. The four of them had made up a dinner and theatre party now and then. Marjorie was non-committal about the darkly beautiful Diana, who gave various signs of opulence, not least an address in Belgravia, and did sundry good works in military hospitals which entitled her to wear a becoming enough uniform when she chose. There had been a surprising ardour in her farewell embrace with Elliot; and Boyd’s mother, who had moved several paces down the platform with him, had commented that the “gairl” seemed rather “fast”. But despite Elliot’s familiar manner towards Diana, he doubted if she wrote to him. Not that he would have known; and he never mentioned Marjorie to his American friend.

  Boyd found it much easier to write to his mother than to his girlfriend.

  “Everything is much easier and more comfortable than in the trenches ... met my first Hun in the air yesterday ... all over very quickly ... gives one great confidence in one’s machine ... nothing for you or Father to worry about ... we live well ... good food ... dry quarters ... the only discomfort is the bitter cold, and there is nothing anyone can do about that ... a limit to the amount of clothing can wear ... another layer and I wouldn’t fit in the cockpit! ... Flying has become routine and often quite boring ... days go by with no sign of the enemy ... bad weather keeps us on the ground on many days ... really a very snug job compared with being in the line ...”