Dusk Patrol

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  “Good. I’m glad you share my view of them. Sergeant Isted is keen: too keen, in a way; you’ll have to keep an eye on him or he’ll do something silly. We’re already one under strength. Now that I’ve moved out, you’ll have two vacancies to fill. I intend to establish 59 firmly as an élite squadron: I don’t intend to accept whatever haphazard replacements HQ sends us. So, for a start, while I’m visiting the Frogs tomorrow, you cut along to HQ and pull a few strings. Arrange for us to vet replacements before we take them.” There were many advantages to a baronetcy and Chandler did not doubt that Hannington must have powerful connections at Headquarters. He had shown no surprise at either of their promotions.

  “I’ll telephone a chap I know and warn him not to send us anyone until I’ve had a word with him.”

  “You’d better have Eastman as your official deputy, as he’s been longest with us.”

  “Only fair, I suppose. I’d prefer someone livelier, like Holt or Nick Boyd.”

  “It’s a bit early to put responsibility on either of them: they’ve got a lot to learn yet about air fighting.”

  It was Hannington’s turn to look wry. “So have I.”

  “I’m glad you admit it. But we regulars have to carry the major responsibilities anyway. You’ll just have to learn two jobs at the same time, as you go along: but with your experience of both flying and command, it won’t take long.”

  “Flying and fighting aren’t synonymous!”

  “The Fighting 59th is going to be known for both, from one end of the Western Front to the other.”

  “D’you know, I think we should go across to the mess and drink a toast to that ... Major Henry.”

  “And there’s going to be a damn sight less lunchtime drinking from now on. But I’ll make an exception today, as its rather an auspicious occasion, what?”

  *

  The Storks, les Cigognes, were the first specialist fighter squadron ever to be formed and so designated. They derived their unofficial title from the white stork in flight painted on the fuselages of their Nieuports.

  French squadron numbers were prefixed with a letter according to the make of aircraft they flew. Number Three Squadron was therefore N.3. It was equipped with the Nieuport XI, known as the Bébé on account of its small size.

  The Bébé was a development of the Nieuport X in which Boyd had seen the great Albert Ball distinguish himself. It also had a Lewis gun mounted on the upper wing. One of its advantages was that it was a sesquiplane: its lower wing was much smaller than the upper, in this instance half the size; which gave the pilot an excellent downward view.

  The Storks began to earn great fame with their exploits in the Battle of Verdun.

  It was a 190-mile flight to their base at Nancy, and took Chandler three hours, counting a refuelling stop. He took no risk of a forced landing; and, anyway, wanted to have ample fuel in hand in case he had the good luck to run into the enemy en route, even though he flew well behind the Allied lines.

  He was looking forward to spending two or three hours with the Aviation Militaire. Like many well-off families, his had employed a French governess for the benefit of his three sisters, his brother and himself. As the children’s ages were well spaced out, she had still been there when he left school, so he had had the benefit of French conversation during all his holidays and was fluent. There had also been summer holidays at Dieppe as a change from Frinton, which had given him some understanding of the people as well.

  He wished he were flying something more modern than a box-kite with a pusher airscrew. His shame of his old-fashioned scout was aggravated by the smirks of the Escadrille’s mechanics. In a fit of anger he brusquely gestured away the two who came towards him as he was about to switch off his engine and, instead, taxied round in a half-circle and took off again. In five minutes he was a couple of thousand feet above the aerodrome and, confident that all eyes were on him, threw the DH2 into a series of left and right spins, pulled out almost scraping the ground and then climbed again to a few hundred feet to show off a loop.

  When he landed there were no more smirks. A Nieuport XI had landed just before him, the pilot skilfully side-slipping underneath the DH2. Still smiling at this effrontery, Chandler followed the Bébé as it jolted over the grass and parked beside it. Painted on its fuselage were a coffin, two lighted candles, and a black heart surmounted by a skull and crossbones. Introduction enough to the renowned ‘ace’ who looked mockingly at him across the intervening few feet.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant Nungesser,” called Chandler.

  The scarred, handsome face betrayed surprise by the lifting of the eyebrows. “Good morning, Monsieur.” Nungesser pulled his helmet off and smoothed his fair hair, brushed straight back from a widow’s peak and parted slightly left of centre.

  Chandler knew the history of those scars, had read about this wild man’s many brushes with death; and the latest of them, as recently as January. Then, he had broken both legs; and the control stick had gone through his mouth, peforating his palate and dislocating his jaw. In March he was back in action, hobbling to and from the cockpit on crutches. He was still having to go back to hospital for treatment. And, a few days earlier, had dislocated a knee crashing in no-man’s-land. And that was not all: a forced landing left him with a broken jaw and an explosive bullet gave him a wound on the lip.

  He stood beside his Bébé, leaning on his crutches, a bandage plastered to one side of his face. Stocky and hard-muscled, a boxer and swimming champion, he was, when erect, about Chandler’s own height and weight. They sized each other up warily.

  Chandler introduced himself.

  “We have been looking forward to your visit, mon Commandant. I hope I may be permitted to make a point with you?”

  “Please do.”

  “You may have noticed I have a V-shaped tricolour painted on my upper wing.”

  “I did happen to remark it when you slid under me!”

  “Some of your pilots do not seem able to recognise French markings: one of them attacked me one day.”

  “You should have shot him down, mon Lieutenant. But I assure you none of my pilots would make such an imbecilic error. And if he did, I would expect you to shoot him down.”

  “You are an understanding man, Major.”

  “We are both hussars, Lieutenant.”

  Nungesser looked surprised and reddened. “Those pesky newspapers. They allow a man no privacy.”

  Nungesser’s first claim to notoriety was the single-handed capture of an enemy car, as a hussar in 1914, and the shooting of its occupants, behind the German lines; and the driving of the car back to the French side, under fire. He was said to be more pleased by being presented with the car, by the Army, than the Médaille Militaire he also earned. As a racing motorist, he considered it incumbent on him to drive large, powerful vehicles at breakneck speeds on all possible occasions.

  Chandler had felt all along that here was the very man to come and talk to the squadron, and was delighted that they had met as soon as his wheels had touched the Storks’ airfield.

  In the sunshine of a fine May morning, Chandler walked beside the battered Frenchman: who, being the man he was, propelled himself with competitive briskness on his crutches, so that anyone accompanying him had almost to trot in order to keep up.

  A short, aggressively moustached, very erect, barrel-shaped man in military breeches, puttees and polo-necked grey sweater, a kepi on his head, emerged from the door of a nearby hut.

  “Our Commanding Officer, Captain Brocard,” said Nungesser with a jerk of the much-outraged jaw. He raised his voice: “Alors, Félix, did you see that neat little performance by our friend?”

  Brocard said nothing until they were standing face to face. He took Chandler’s hand in his own that was as rough as rock and as big as a spade, and in his deep, gravelly voice, said, “I do not intend to let you go, mon Commandant, until you have taught us exactly what you did up there.”

  “It will be a pleasure, mon Capitaine
.”

  “And, in return, perhaps we can demonstrate a little trick to you which we have perforce had to learn. It has been thrust upon us, one might say.”

  “Learning the hard way,” Nungesser interjected.

  Chandler said “That sounds interesting.”

  “Come along and have a café-cognac.” Félix Brocard turned from the visitor to Nungesser. “And you can sit on the deck Charles, and criticise my Immelmann turn.”

  “He insists on treating me as though I were an invalid,” Nungesser complained.

  “Immelmann turn?” Asked Chandler.

  “We call it after that damned Boche because he invented it. He sprung it on us last week for the first time. And he has repeated it somewhere along our front, every day since. You had better be prepared for him to try it on you next. And for the rest of the Boche single-seater pilots to learn the trick too.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s better that you see it.”

  “It would be a more effective demonstration if two of us went up and had a mock fight,” Nungesser suggested. “Good idea, Charles. I’ll take Georges up in another Bébé, if he’s back in time.”

  “Guynemer?” Chandler asked.

  “Yes; you will meet him at lunch anyway.”

  Chandler was more than ever glad that he had come. Nungesser and Guynemer together! The musical equivalent would have been to sit at the same table with Chopin and Beethoven. To a bookman it would have been like meeting Dickens and Chekhov at the same time. In terms which Chandler understood best, it was like being with Wellington and Marlborough; or Fred Archer and Tod Sloan. Brocard himself was no minor ace; and if Roland Garros had not been shot down and taken prisoner a year ago, he would have been a member of this select company, and what stories he could have told.

  Over coffee, Brocard said “I do not understand why the RFC has no specifically designated esquadrilles de chasse – fighter squadrons.”

  “We have a few squadrons which are equipped with one type of aircraft now, such as Major Lanoe Hawker’s 24, which flys only DH2s. We call them scouts but they are really what you call fighters.”

  “I have it on the best authority that some of your squadrons will start getting Bébés this month.”

  “Really? That’s the best news I’ve heard for a long time. But no doubt they will be allocated two or three at a time to mixed squadrons, not used to re-equip entire fighter squadrons.”

  “You had better have a flip in one of ours while you are here, so you’ll be ready when your squadron gets its own Bébés.”

  “Nothing would please me more.”

  “It is a good little machine,” said Nungesser, “but it needs a bigger rudder: it ground loops like a bitch if you are not careful, and in the air it is prone to a nasty flick of the tail.”

  Brocard rose. “If you are ready, mon Commandant, let’s go and put the Bébé through its paces. I’m afraid Guynemer isn’t back yet, but if you’ll explain to me how you recover from a stall or spin, I’ll show you the Immelmann turn.”

  They went out to their aircraft, talking animatedly, Brocard putting rapid questions, Nungesser aglow with impatience to go up and start spinning immediately. But he dutifully stood beside the visitor while his CO climbed the sky and then, at the top of a loop, when his Nieuport XI was inverted, half-rolled it so that he was the right way up again and flying straight and level in the opposite direction to the one in which he had started his loop.

  “Well, I’m blowed,” Chandler exclaimed. “Neat ... very neat. So that is how the great Immelman catches his victims unawares these days, is it?”

  Nungesser said “It’s a nasty shock when you first have it done to you. I had a scrap with the blighter three days ago and he pulled that one. His gun jammed ... so did mine ... we had to break it off ... he gave me an insulting wave ...” He laughed.

  The Bébé was climbing again and a few minutes later they watched Brocard first stall and then spin it with easy mastery.

  Then it was Chandler’s turn to take the Bébé up and he revelled for thirty minutes in its speed and agility, its rapid rate of climb. He spun it and looped it and did a few Immelmanns and resolved to start intriguing immediately to get one for the squadron. Meanwhile, Brocard was playing about with his DH2.

  A tallish, sharp-featured lieutenant with deep-set, large, dark and glowing eyes was talking to Nungesser when Chandler landed. He stood with his thin gaitered legs apart and his hands busily depicting various aerial manoeuvres, smiling frequently.

  The legendary Georges Guynemer, describing his latest fight.

  Chandler flew back to base with the promise that Nungesser would fly over next day.

  The devil that perched on Chandler’s shoulder, perhaps abetted by the excellent Mouton Cadet and Armagnac that had accompanied lunch, breathed in his ear that it would be as easy to take a route along the Verdun front as behind it.

  Wondering how the sluggish DH2 felt in a roll off the top of a loop, he tried one and found it responded about as readily as a vicar’s daughter to an indecent suggestion: but if it was sedate and reluctant, at least it did not lose any altitude.

  The artillery barrage on both sides of the line flashed and thundered ceaselessly. The acrid smoke it created hung in a stinking pall for thousands of feet above the battlefield. Over half a million Frenchmen and Germans had already been killed here since February, and the battle was not finished yet. The ground beneath was as bleak and barren as though no life had ever flourished there, nothing had ever grown nor man nor beast lived.

  But Chandler knew better than to look too long at what was under his wings. His head turned ceaselessly, searching the sky above and behind.

  When a Fokker came out of the murk a few hundred yards to starboard and well below, he did not instantly go after it, but turned right round to peer into the sun.

  A second Fokker was diving at him full pelt. Chandler was too wise to fall for a decoy.

  The Fokker beneath him did not worry him: he could deal with it later. The one above was a different kettle of fish. He turned towards it and when it was within 200 yards, instead of opening fire it steepened its dive to pass under him.

  Friend Immelmann himself, thought Chandler. Thinks he’ll roll out at the top and get on my tail. Watch this, my dear old Boche. He put the DH’s nose down enough to gather speed, then drew the stick back and sent it curving upwards in a lovely parabola. At the summit, he aileroned out and enjoyed the thought of the astonishment he must have caused the German. The Fokker was coming at him head on again, and above. It had to dive steeply, its Spandau firing.

  Chandler nosed up steeply, chopping back his throttle. As he felt the stall he put on right rudder and the DH fell round in a stall turn that put him behind and above the Fokker. He fired at it and saw his tracer hitting its tail planes and fin.

  The enemy pilot – Immelmann? Or had others started to copy him? – turned his head and stared back; then zoomed up in another loop.

  The first Fokker was climbing hard towards them.

  Chandler put the DH into a spin to port, watching the latter as best he could. The baffled pilot held his climb. He held it too long, for the last thing he was to know in this world was that the Englishman had miraculously come out of his spin and was fifty yards on his beam, shooting. The German died. His aeroplane slopped over to starboard and his corpse was catapulted out of the cockpit.

  Now for the other brute. Chandler looked up and over his shoulder. It was diving again and its Spandau was spitting sharp little gobbets of flame and smoke.

  Again Chandler spun the DH and once more the enemy whipped right past at the moment that Chandler came straight and level. The two pilots stared at each other for a brief moment at a distance of fifty yards.

  Chandler would know that cleft chin and thin dark moustache anywhere. So, it was Immelman himself. He tilted sideways and downwards in pursuit. His gun would not fire. He slapped the magazine with the flat of his hand and tried again. Nothing. G
ripping the stick with his knees, he wrenched at the ammunition drum. It came away and he slamed another in its place.

  When he looked again, Immelmann was climbing. He followed. He was still within range and pulled the trigger once more. Nothing happened. He could see Immelmann looking at him. This was a hell of a fix. He tried again to free the gun mechanism but it was jambed tight.

  Angrily he turned and dived.

  Immelman followed, inexorably overtaking.

  Chandler involuntarily hunched his shoulders and slid lower in his seat, making the smallest possible target. Immelmann drew nearer ... and nearer. Fifty feet. Go on, you Schweinehund, get it over, damn you. Try one last spin? What’s the use, the brute has the speed to catch me eventually. Chandler waited to die.

  Immelmann pulled alongside, turned, grinned at him and shook a mocking fist, before banking gracefully (and, Chandler told himself with a deep breath, graciously) away and disappeared from sight in a fast climb to the north-east.

  Eleven

  Hannington spoke French at least as well as Chandler, and for the same reason. Indeed his education at the hands of the family’s pretty French governess had embraced (sic) more than dry grammar and vocabulary. At the age of sixteen, when emerging from her room in the small hours, he had been apprehended by his father, innocently passing by.

  “My boy,” said his parent, “haven’t I always been a good father to you? Generous, kind and affectionate?”

  The young Anthony had hung his head. “Yes, Father.”

  “And this is how you repay me!”

  “I’m sorry, Father.”

  “I should bally well think so: a nice willing little bit of fluff under my own roof, and you keep the fact all to yourself; downright selfish and ungrateful, I call that.”

  It was Hannington who mildly goaded Nungesser over their aperitifs before lunch on the day he visited the squadron.

  “I understand the Aviation Militaire has an official grading of ‘ace’ now, for your most successful scout pilots?”

  “Fighter pilots. Yes.” Nungesser looked discouraging.