The Professionals

by Max Hennessy

  * * *

  The orders for the next day always came through in the evening. Wing had long since had second thoughts about squadron-sized patrols and had gone back to the normal three patrols a day and, as B Flight was on the afternoon patrol, I decided I’d be able to lead it and do the office work in the morning. I swopped with Bull and gave him A Flight.

  ‘I’ll do ’em both if you like,’ he offered.

  I shook my head. ‘No. It’s best I do the afternoon one,’ I said. ‘Work’s the best thing.’

  I was wondering what Jane had felt when she’d got my letter. I could still remember the stricken look in her sister’s eyes when I’d told her about my brother and the little whimpering sounds she’d made as she’d wept.

  The early patrol came back without even seeing any Germans and I reflected what an odd war it was. Sometimes you didn’t see a thing, as though the whole of the enemy territory were deserted, with no one alive in it, and another time the sky was full of machines. Bull brought back the morning patrol intact, too. They’d seen a few Germans but they’d all sheered off and Bull had very wisely decided not to chase them. We all knew now that Pups were finished. They were obsolete and out of date and no match for what the Germans were bringing out, and we’d all privately decided to play safe until we got Camels.

  I’d made a bad mistake swopping duties, I found, because instructions came through after lunch that the late patrol was to tackle a balloon hanging in the sky near Acheville. I knew exactly where it was and I didn’t fancy the job. One or two people had had a go at it in the past but it was too well guarded by anti-aircraft guns and there were usually a few Albatroses hanging about in the vicinity, too, in case anyone was stupid enough to try again.

  We left the ground about four o’clock and flew east. There was a lot of cloud about over the German side of the line but to the west and north the sky was a steely blue colour and I could even see the Channel glittering like a belt of gold with the sun on it. Beyond it, like a faint line in the sky at what seemed to be my own level, I could just make out the grey line of England, and it was even possible to pick out the Isle of Wight. I was feeling disembodied and remote from the war, reflecting how incredible it was that I was able to sail along nearly three miles up in the air in a flimsy construction of wood and rippling fabric.

  It was cold, though, the draught getting down my neck even past the scarf I wore, and the engine was running in a bad-tempered way. It had never seemed to be right since the fight when Sykes had gone and I’d stood on my nose. Testing it the day before, I’d landed with two cylinders missing but I’d thought it had been put right since. Apparently it hadn’t and I was just debating whether to hand over the flight and turn home when it picked up again and, as it now seemed to be running well, I decided to chance it. It was too old, of course, worn out with the screaming strain of running too long at full throttle, as exhausted and out of date as the machine itself.

  Eventually we saw the balloon, and I noted exactly where it was and flew directly at it from Acheville to get a compass bearing on it because there was a thick layer of clouds at 4,000 feet and I thought I might be able to use them. Then I turned the patrol and headed back to Acheville and climbed through the clouds and flew on the compass bearing for six minutes, deciding that it would bring me right over the balloon.

  After six minutes I rocked the wings and we went down through the clouds. The balloon came up just ahead, in perfect position and directly in line. As the anti-aircraft guns opened up on us, I saw they were hauling in the balloon fast but we hurtled down on it at full speed, all of us firing at once. It looked like some hideous intestine from some prehistoric monster and I saw a lick of flame along the top of it, then it began to shrivel, wrinkling quickly as the flames ate at the fabric. A parachute opened beneath it as the observer jumped, then the crew of the lorry which contained the winch began to run for their lives as the blazing bag came down right on top of it.

  We seemed to have emerged without any damage at all so we headed east again as instructed. Down below us there were a couple of aeroplanes spotting for the artillery, slow old things that seemed to be motionless in the sky. They seemed a perfect target for any marauding Jagdstaffeln looking for victims and I knew that normally, had they been wearing crosses instead of roundels, I would have looked them over myself. But carefully in case they were decoys.

  But not today. Not tomorrow or the day afterwards. I was anxious to stay alive until the Camels arrived and I was hoping I’d see nothing.

  It wasn’t my lucky day. Over Villy I spotted an RE8 limping home, badgered by a group of Albatroses. It was having a bad time as far as I could see and, much as I was anxious to stay alive, I rocked my wings and pointed downwards and saw arms raised in acknowledgement.

  We were going down now in a steep dive and I could see the tracers of the Germans all round the gallant old RE8, making geometric designs in the sky as they criss-crossed each other. The Germans must have been rotten shots because the old RE was still staggering along, the observer full of fight. When we arrived, they broke off at once, and the sky was filled with aeroplanes going round in circles. If it hadn’t been for the RE I might have gone straight through the Germans and headed for home, but I could hardly leave him behind to hold them off alone. Despite the low height, there was nothing for it but to stay and fight it out.

  It was the usual mad scramble, with aeroplanes flashing past right and left and the snaking trails of tracer across the sky. I’d picked on a red-and-green Albatros and had no difficulty in getting on his tail and I immediately felt better, certain we were going to come out of it safely to fight another day. Though I knew I couldn’t hit him, I fired and, as I expected, he panicked and tried to straighten out and go the other way. I gave him another burst and the bullets seemed to go right into the cockpit where the pilot was sitting. I felt sure I must have hit something but I couldn’t watch what happened because suddenly I heard the clatter of tracers flashing past my wingtips and realized I’d got one of his friends on my own tail.

  I half-rolled confidently on to my back and he missed wildly and shot beneath me, a red machine with a white V on the top wing, and I was just coming out of the roll to dive after him when there was a sickening cough and splutter from the engine, and it conked clean out. It was a horrible feeling, a hideous cessation of sound, a sudden cutting of the engine’s howl that seemed to hit me like a punch in the face and I immediately wondered wildly if somehow Gumbell had got at it. I knew he couldn’t have but I was terrified and in the silence that was broken only by the whine of wires, I realized I could hear the scream of the other pilots’ engines all round me, and the sharp crackling of their guns.

  I was still hanging in my seat belts, upside down in the middle of the fight, wondering what to do, still startled, still shocked by the suddenness of it, then I dived out of the fight vertically, hoping against hope no one would follow me down and almost crying with fright and self-pity as I cursed out-of-date Pups and worn-out engines with every foul word I could find. Fortunately no one followed me and I was able to drop to safety, but we were miles behind the German lines and I knew it would require a miracle to get me home.

  It never crossed my mind to think of the consequences if I didn’t but I was busy, levelling out, working at the pump and the throttle, and trying to start the engine again. The propeller continued to circle slowly, but without a sign of life from the engine, and I looked down anxiously. There were columns of men moving forward but they were heading west not east and were wearing field grey not khaki, and it suddenly dawned on me what it meant.

  Up ahead I could see trenches and barbed wire and drifting smoke but I knew very well I could never make it. I saw flat fields and woods and decided that if I could put the machine down there, there was a chance I wouldn’t break my neck and might be able to hide among the trees and cross the lines after dark. It was a mad idea, but it seemed better than struggling on at stalling speed and dropping right into the German res
erve trenches. I’d been flying long enough now to know how far I could manage to go without an engine and I knew it wasn’t much further.

  There was a strong smell of petrol that I didn’t like at all and I decided it wasn’t the worn-out engine that had conked after all but a feed pipe that had come adrift somehow. I knew I hadn’t been hit. I’d only been in the fight for a matter of a few seconds and none of the bullets that the following German had fired at me had come anywhere near me.

  My flying boot was wet with petrol now and I could even feel it chilly through the sheepskin, and I prayed I could get down without bursting into flames. I found a big field near a wood and, as I turned over the end of it, I found myself wondering what Jane would feel, because she could hardly yet have got over the news about Sykes.

  By this time I was almost stalling and I dropped the nose then pulled back the stick and, as I felt the rumble of the wheels on the ground, I let the machine roll on until it was almost alongside the wood. I still had ideas of bolting into the trees but, even as the machine stopped and I jumped to the ground, I realized that I wasn’t going to be that lucky. I could see a German on a horse galloping across the field towards me, followed by several men on foot carrying rifles. I had no idea where they’d come from and could only imagine they were part of one of the regiments moving to the front and they’d seen me come down.

  I didn’t have to worry about turning on any taps to let the petrol flow. All I had to do was grab the Very pistol and aim it into the cockpit. The machine went up with a ‘woof’ that blew me back off the wing and singed my eyebrows, and I landed flat on my back with all the breath knocked out of my body. When I recovered my wits, I was looking up at the man on the horse who was pointing a revolver at me.

  ‘You are my prisoner,’ he said in English.

  Chapter 8

  As I climbed slowly to my feet, numbed and sick at heart at the idea of captivity, a big Mercedes tender came hurtling through the open gate of the field and bounced across the grass towards us. As it skidded to a stop that sent the back end round in a half circle, another officer jumped out and advanced towards me.

  ‘You are my prisoner,’ he said, also in English.

  I indicated the man on the horse. ‘He says,’ I pointed out, ‘that I’m his.’

  He turned and stared at the man on the horse, then he launched into a tirade of German that I didn’t understand. A noisy argument developed while the men with rifles stood looking on, gaping, and the driver of the Mercedes watched with a grin on his face. Finally, with a final bark of annoyance, the man on the horse put his revolver away and snatched at his horse’s head. The man who’d been arguing with him turned to me and smiled. ‘We have settled that,’ he said. ‘You are my prisoner.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve sorted it out,’ I said. ‘You speak very good English.’

  ‘May I present myself? Leutnant Krefft. Hermann Krefft. I went to school in England. My father married an English woman. She died and we returned to Germany. If my father had died, I would probably have been fighting with you instead of against you.’

  The man on the horse had his men in formation now and was marching them away, his face showing his disgust. Krefft smiled.

  ‘We cannot let fliers go into some wretched infantry prison,’ he said. ‘Not after we take the trouble to shoot them down.’

  For the first time I felt I was one up on him. ‘You didn’t shoot me down,’ I said.

  ‘Not I myself,’ he said. ‘My squadron. I was watching.’

  ‘Not even your squadron,’ I said. ‘It was just an old worn-out engine. It conked. It was getting no petrol.’

  ‘Ach, so!’ He smiled again and glanced at the burning machine. Like all petrol blazes, it was dying quickly but there wasn’t much left of the Pup. The fuselage had sagged and the engine had dropped out of the housing and there was now little more than a sooty smell in the air and a drifting cloud of oily smoke. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘We will still do you the honour of entertaining you. Have you many victories?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘Our leader has many. Sixty-one, in fact. You will perhaps have heard of him. Baron von Richthofen.’

  I’d heard of him all right. I’d had bad dreams about him often.

  Krefft was holding the door of the Mercedes open. ‘Tomorrow, unhappily, you will have to go to prison just the same,’ he said. ‘But for tonight we shall be able to make the thought of it more acceptable.’

  It was an odd feeling to be driven along a row of mixed Albatroses and triplanes in front of canvas hangars that billowed and fell in the gusty wind that was getting up. It seemed strange to see them so near with empty cockpits, and faintly unnerving to think I’d sometimes had to sit in front of them while they fired at me. Most of them were red with ailerons or tail surfaces painted in other colours and as we passed in front of an all-red triplane, Krefft gestured.

  ‘Richthofen’s,’ he pointed out. ‘Doubtless you’ve seen him in the air.’

  ‘Not in that,’ I said.

  ‘Then he would be flying an Albatros. He prefers the Albatros.’

  I was eyeing the aeroplanes with interest, noticing just where they stood in relation to the rest of the airfield. Krefft smiled. ‘I expect you are wondering whether you could steal one,’ he said. ‘I assure you, you could not.’

  It was strange to be ushered into a mess where the trophies on the walls were red, white and blue roundels instead of black crosses and I recognized at least one number as one of ours. There was that strange stale smell that came from the cigars the Germans always smoked, and I noticed that over the bar there were photographs of smiling young men in uniform who Krefft said were former members of the squadron who’d been killed. It seemed a funny way to decorate a bar.

  There were three officers standing nearby, two of them still wearing leather coats, and they clicked their heels as Krefft introduced us.

  ‘Hauptmann Falconer,’ he said. ‘Leutnants Von der Osten, Pastor and Gontermann. The Rittmeister will be back shortly, when he has chased your friends from the sky. What a pity you weren’t here yesterday. Then you might have met Leutnant Voss. You have heard of Werner Voss.’

  I hadn’t and he told me his score was almost as high as Richthofen’s.

  Someone put a glass of cold wine into my hand and someone else helped me off with my leather coat, and a third offered me a cigar, which I allowed them to light for show and then allowed to go out because it was far too strong for me. After a while I heard the motors of returning aeroplanes and heard them dropping overhead to land.

  After a while a car drew up outside with a squeak of brakes and the door opened. Immediately everyone clicked to attention. The man who came in was small and blond and wore a cross at his throat. Krefft saw me looking at it. ‘The Pour le Mérite,’ he said. ‘It is the highest award we can give a soldier. It is equivalent to your Victoria Cross. We call it the Blue Max because of its ribbon.’

  I was watching Richthofen with interest. He seemed older than I’d expected and looked tired and lacking in enthusiasm.

  ‘How old is he?’ I whispered to Krefft.

  ‘Twenty-six,’ he said.

  ‘He looks older.’

  He glanced at me. ‘How old are you, Herr Hauptmann?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen.’

  He gave me a grave smile. ‘You look twenty-six,’ he said. ‘It is the war.’

  As Richthofen approached us, Krefft came to attention. ‘Herr Rittmeister,’ he said. ‘May I present Hauptmann Falconer?’

  Richthofen lifted his eyes to mine. He seemed a rather reserved grave young man who had grown old too quickly. He touched my medal ribbons and said something to Krefft who translated for me.

  ‘The Rittmeister says he is pleased to see you are an honourable flier,’ he explained, ‘and he hopes you will be able to eat with us before the provost people come to remove you to prison.’

  * * *

  I woke up the following morning with an awful
hangover. I had indeed eaten with them, and I’d drunk with them, too. It seemed to be their pleasure to get me drunk – not, I felt sure, to make me feel stupid, but just to make the thought of prison a little easier.

  Krefft was standing over me, smoking. ‘I regret to say,’ he said, ‘that there is a car waiting outside. It will take you to town until the authorities can move you further into Germany.’

  I couldn’t feel anything for him but friendship, because he and his comrades had not only spared my life but they had spared my pride, too. They had made no gestures of anger or reproach and had only shown a ready sympathy with my plight, linked with me in what we felt was a fraternity of the air. After the first stiffness and formality I had even managed to enjoy myself, though it didn’t alter the fact that someone – and I’m sure it wasn’t one of the pilots – had been through the pockets of my coat while I was eating and removed my money.

  He paused while I washed. ‘We have had bad news today,’ he said.

  I looked round. ‘Oh? What’s happened? Have we won the war?’

  He managed a stiff smile. ‘No. We have heard that Voss has been killed. He was caught last night by several of your new fighters and was shot down near Poelcapelle.’

  I remembered how he had spoken of Voss the previous day and I said I was sorry.

  He shrugged and offered me a couple of battered books. To my surprise they were Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

  ‘Old student books of mine,’ he explained. ‘I used them to keep my English sound. Perhaps they will help the – the’ – he hesitated – ‘die furchtbare Langeweile – the frightful boredom of captivity.’

  The words were as bad as a blow in the face. Up to that point, with the entertainment they’d offered me, I had hardly thought much about captivity but now it was brought home very forcibly.