by Peter Albano
III
Flying in tandem—one behind and slightly higher than the other—the two Nieuport 17 scouts circled high over the Somme Valley like lazy gulls taking the wind on stiff wings. Looking down from four thousand feet, Major Randolph Higgins, commanding officer of Number Five Squadron, stared down, eyeing a tortured terrain that had been fought over for almost two years. A natural military barrier, the Somme River was the key to the defenses of Paris. To the north, Randolph could see the great bend of the river at Peronne eight miles behind the German lines, then the flow to the southwest to Amiens, and finally, like most rivers in this part of France, it curved northwesterly and flowed to the sea.
Millions of shells had churned the valley into a moonscape, obliterating villages, forests, and all signs of human existence. In fact, in one barrage, the British had fired one-half ton of ammunition a day for ten days for every yard of German trenches until 1,850,000 shells had been expended, and then using tactics inherited from the American Civil War attacked, losing sixty thousand men in eight hours. Here and there were the pulverized ruins of smashed buildings and villages—heaps of blasted bricks and broken timbers with a few stone chimneypieces sticking up like grave markers. In all directions barbed wire entanglements crosshatched the landscape taking on the clear, sharp lines of fishnets. Entire forests had been reduced to blackened stands of lonely poles, stripped of foliage and pointing at the Nieuports with the charred fingers of cremated sentries. Occasional meandering whitish traces indicated the remnants of roads, blasted from existence years ago; or, perhaps, a footpath braced by duckboards and used only at night by infantry scurrying in terror of the surprise barrage like frightened rats in a sewer. And, indeed, it was a sewer. Randolph knew it, had smelled it when stationed close to the front and downwind. The only thing he could see that appeared untouched, unspoiled by the havoc, was the glimmering ribbon of the river that wandered unconcerned through the carnage.
Despite a recent lull in the attacks and counterattacks, the hungry guns wanted more victims, searched with long, probing fingers that burst singly and in clusters as artillery on both sides of the front registered, ranged, and battery fired. Watching the tortured terrain erupt and heave, Randolph felt a mixture of relief and guilt—happy to be free of the horror below like a bird fleeing a forest fire, but feeling guilt over the clean air in his lungs, the hot food and Scotch he knew waited for him back at the aerodrome, and, of course, the clean sheets.
A glance at his fuel gauge told him his tank was half-empty with still an hour left in his patrol. After signaling his cover—the reliable veteran Lieutenant David A. Reed—with a palm-down wave, he carefully eased the throttle back while giving the 110 horsepower Le Rhone all the manifold pressure it could take, thinning the fuel mixture and forcing more air into the 9-cylinder heads. Just as the rev counter dropped to 850 rpms, the engine backfired its objections and Randolph knew the rotary would take no more. Another glance over his shoulder told him Reed had alertly eased his throttle and was maintaining his station as before.
Despite an embarrassing tendency to shed its wing fabric—and sometimes its entire lower wing, which was supported only by a single spar—Randolph liked the little Nieuport pursuit plane. Compared with his first scout, the Vickers Fighting Biplane, or F.B. 2, which he flew for almost a year and found as ungainly as a frightened quail, the Nieuport was a hawk. A two-seater pusher with a 100-horsepower Gnome engine, the F.B. took a full nine minutes to climb to five thousand feet where it was capable of only ninety-three miles per hour. And his gunners had been terrible—frightened young men too incompetent to be pilots, who sprayed the sky with the Lewis gun at ranges that sometimes reached an impossible one thousand yards. His only victory had been over a Rumpler Taube whose terrified pilot had jerked the control stick so violently he shed his right wing, spinning into no-man’s land in a heap of splintered struts, spars, twisted wire braces, and torn fabric.
But in the Nieuport he was his own master; would live or die by his own hand. After his modifications, which added delicate throttle and moisture controls, the acrobatic little aeroplane had a top speed of 112 miles per hour and could climb to five thousand feet in less than six minutes. In a dogfight it could turn, skid, and snap roll inside of any of its opponents; even the new Albatross D. 1 pursuit, which was appearing in ever-increasing numbers, replacing the Fokker Eindekker, which was fodder for the Nieuport. In less than a month, Randolph had counted four kills: two Rumplers, a Fokker Eindekker, and an Albatross D. 1.
Sighing, the major looked around. Nothing. The sky was empty. There had been rumors that the great German ace Oswald Boelcke and his squadron had been ordered to the Somme sector. But not one of the garishly painted Albatrosses of his famed Jagdstaffel Two had been sighted. Rumors. War was full of rumors. The lull in the slaughter below had brought a respite to the killing in the skies. In fact, Randolph had not seen a German plane for three days. Yet, that morning, Division had called with reports of a Rumpler artillery spotter that had been operating every morning for four straight days over the ridge at Thiepval, held by the Tenth Worcesters.
Moving the control stick to the right and pressuring the rudder bar slightly, Randolph banked slowly to the right. Pushing his goggles up—they obscured his peripheral vision—he leaned over the padded coaming of the cockpit and stared down over the lower wingtip. There, framed by the V strut, he could see Thiepval Ridge jutting into the German lines like a thumb. Artillery was working, the yellow brown haze from bursting seventy-sevens hanging in a poisonous lanket below the ridge. Centering his controls, he raised his eyes, cursed, and punched the instrument panel so hard the needles on his altimeter and oil gauge quivered. Clouds. Clouds that would have been beautiful at any other time; but not today—not when men hunted, sought to kill other men in the sky—had moved down rapidly from the north and had begun filling the sky. Between St. Quentin and Arras was the lowest level of filmy stratus at no higher than a thousand feet. Above this deck swirled another layer of cumulus, heavy with moisture and rising in towers and crenulated battlements to at least eighteen thousand feet. Cover; excellent cover for a snooping Rumpler. He saw nothing. No shadow. No glimmer of an airfoil. No movement. He dropped the nose of the scout and with his wires humming swooped low over the ridge: a dung brown quagmire of torn and savaged earth that seemed deserted but was peopled by legions of the living and dead rotting together in their waterlogged holes. At least the Worcesters would know the RFC was here, he thought.
Everything was brown, soaked by yesterday’s rain and churned to a consistency of Yorkshire pudding. At five hundred feet strands and concertinas of barbed wire could be plainly seen and individual shell holes stood out, lip to lip and filled with stagnant water, blinking up at him like eyes of the blind. Trenches were visible; shallow depressions hastily dug between shell holes and connected by support trenches that zigzagged haphazardly up, down, and across the ridge. The men? Where were the Tommies? Then he saw them. First just white specks in the brown quagmire. But then the specks became faces and waving hands. Exhilarated at finding life in a hell of death, he banked and leaned over the coaming, waving and shouting greetings no one could hear. Then he was wiping his nose and brushing moisture from his cheeks. “They’re alive. Someone’s alive,” he said to himself over and over again, incredulously.
Roaring over no-man’s-land, he saw at least a half dozen corpses suspended on the wire and then heaps of bodies. All were clad in gray-green, all wore jackboots, and all wore coal-scuttle helmets. Germans. Dead Germans squandered in yesterday’s counterattack.
Tracers arced toward him from a trench dead ahead. Maxim. Instantly, the major pulled back hard on the stick and pushed the throttle ahead. Roaring and with the rev counter needle moving toward the red, the Le Rhone rocketed the graceful pursuit upward, the horizon dropping below the cowl and the pilot’s vision filling with blobs of billowing clouds interspersed with patches of aching blue sky. The tracers dropped off far be
low.
Bursting from behind a cloud, the sun hurled a brilliant lance of fire that forced Randolph to reset his goggles, look away, vision starred by the memory of its brilliance. “Only a fool looks at the sun,” he said to himself testily. Distracted by his boredom, he was making the mistakes of a novice. Don’t fix! A glance at his altimeter told him he was at nine thousand feet. After leveling off and easing the throttle, he resumed the veteran pilot’s scan, the quick, flitting search that covered the sky about him, sweeping back and forth, down and over in jerky movements like an old man with palsy. A quick side glance could detect a cluster of fly specks while simply staring at the same space might reveal nothing at all. Still, the only other plane in the sky was Reed’s, above and behind.
“Watch out for the Hun in the sun,” his instructor had warned so long ago. And he, too, had mouthed the same warning to new chaps, too, so many, many times—too often uselessly.
“Bloody clouds! Bloody clouds,” he shouted into the slipstream, suddenly blinded by a great milky dumpling that shrouded the Nieuport with the heavy moisture of yesterday’s rain. Hunching over the controls, the major steered by his magnetic compass, maintaining his easterly heading. Because he had plunged into the foothills of range after range of soaring cumulo-nimbus, he banked sharply to the right, heading south and away from the clouds that moistened his windshield and goggles with an opaque coating and clung to the trailing edges of his wings with long banners of dirty white vapor.
With a suddenness that struck with physical shock, he was bathed by brilliant sun again. And Reed was off his right elevator, waving a palm up apathetically. Looking around, Randolph answered the signal, shrugging. Nothing. Nothing at all. No Rumpler. No Boelcke. The sky was still theirs. Instead of dropping back immediately, Reed clung to the leading edge of the flight leader’s elevator. Again, Randolph Higgins was struck by the beauty of the deadly little Nieuport scout. Painted a glaring white, the lithe aircraft was proof that the constructors’ saying, “Airplanes that look right, fly right,” was a valid dictum. With a short cowl covering the Le Rhone, the plane had a stubby appearance, slab-sided fuselage emblazoned with the RFC red, white, and blue roundel tapering gently back from the cockpit to the tail. Between the cabane struts, the .303 Vickers machine gun gave the pursuit its deadly sting, firing through the wooden propeller, synchronized with a cam and push rod Vickers-Challenger interrupter gear. He could even see the stagger wires stretched and crossing from the V struts to the cabane struts and two others supporting the landing gear, which was set well forward to prevent ground looping.
Banking gently, Higgins turned to the west, staring down at the valley. His brother Lloyd and the Coldstreams were down there in that inferno, somewhere. Maybe he was dead already, rotting with tens of thousands of others in those foul shell holes. He fingered the turtleneck of the Royal Navy cable-stitched wool sweater that he wore over his fur-lined combinaison and under his tunic and long tan leather coat. Geoffry had given him the sweater, saying with a twinkle in his eye, “If it can keep me warm in the North Sea, it’ll bloody well keep you warm ten thousand feet over Berlin.” At least Geoffry was warm, well fed, and clean in battle cruiser Lion. But there were rumors of a great engagement in the North Sea. He shuddered.
And then, despite pangs of guilt, his mind warmed with thoughts of his sister-in-law, Brenda. Without a doubt, she was one of the most stunning and enigmatic women he had ever met. Unreadable, she had been beautiful again and a mystery forever. Although she appeared soft and delicate as bridal lace, there was steel in her, a command of herself that told one he was in the presence of unflinching, relentless strength. And, obviously, she had never loved Geoffry. Anyone could see that except, possibly, his poor brother. Had she taken lovers? Probably several. Especially her French hairdresser, Andre. Those long trips to London. There weren’t nearly as many after Andre’s regiment was called up.
He had had many women; some single, others married. There had been that maid, Nicole—a firebrand, a wild, thrashing, clawing animal in bed. One afternoon after a frenzied tryst with Nicole, he had met Brenda in the servants’ stairwell. With the maid’s body heat still lingering on his flesh, he felt arousal again as he stared down at Brenda, standing face-to-face on the landing. “You’re happy here?” he had asked hoarsely, hand on her elbow.
“Of course,” she answered, not pulling away.
He pressed on, unable to tear his eyes from the fathomless blue depths. “Going to London tomorrow. Pick up something for you? Going right by Lucile’s.” The reference to London’s most fashionable French dressmaker brought a smile to her face. He knew she was a Francophile with a taste for Parisian couturiers. “You would like something?”
“Perhaps,” she answered hastily. “But I was planning to have Caldwell motor me in.”
“I could take you.”
She hesitated, grappled for words. “No. I can ride with Caldwell,” she insisted, looking up steadily.
Her nearness, her warmth, the womanly smell of L’Heure Bleu urged him on boldly. “You know Trafalgar Square? Lord Nelson’s statue?” he asked thickly, breath short as her eyes burned all the way to his soul. Again, the enigmatic smile. He misread it. “My place is nearby. . .”
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away. “Not this trip.” She turned and holding her skirts high, mounted the stairs. As his eyes followed her, he dampened his suddenly parched lips with the tip of his tongue.
A sudden motion caught his eye. Reed was waggling his wings and stabbing a single gloved finger down and to the southwest. Cursing his inattention, Randolph repeated the signal, following the gesture with his eyes. There it was. Far below. A shadow flitting from cloud to cloud. The Rumpler. It must be the Rumpler. A quick pull on the crank handle of the Vickers and he felt the spring drive home the first round, gib of the extractor engaging the first cartridge. A second jerk sent the feed block clattering as the first round was driven smoothly into the breech. The weapon was armed and cocked. Then a finger stabbed at Reed followed by a clenched fist over his head and he knew the lieutenant would circle protectively. Pushing the throttle hard open against its stop, he pulled back on the stick, kicking left rudder and split-essing into a near vertical dive. With full throttle, the gyroscopic effect of the whirling Le Rhone torqued hard to the right, forcing Higgins to counteract by moving the stick to the left along with stiff left rudder.
Engine roaring, wires screeching like banshees, the Nieuport plunged through a layer of clouds and then Randolph could clearly see the Rumpler through a veneer of stratus, burned by the sun to a thin film. Arrogantly, the Germans had penetrated deep behind the British lines, circling not more than two thousand feet over the third line of trenches. He felt hate surge with thoughts of these German workmen hanging in the sky with eyes like vultures, calling down death with cold dispassion on the Tommies groveling in the mud, perhaps on Lloyd.
Veering but continuing the dive, the major pointed the nose of the scout at a cloud bank hanging like a giant cream Napoleon a mile behind the German plane. He preferred an attack from below—the blind spot beneath the tail was free of fire from the observer’s 7.92-millimeter Parabellum machine gun. Diving into the cloud, he felt a fluttering. Horrified, he saw the right lower wing vibrate, fabric wrinkling at the root. Pulling back on the throttle, his breath exploded in a sigh as the vibrations eased and the wrinkling vanished. Although he was blinded by the cloud, he was certain he was undetected by the Rumpler; the observer had been too busy glassing the British emplacement.
Watching the white needle of his altimeter spin backward reeling off hundred-foot marks like the second hand of a watch with a broken mainspring, Randolph grew uneasy. In addition to a highly inaccurate altimeter that could be hurtling the pursuit into the ground, a prolonged dive often forced oil into the combustion chambers, drowning the engine. When the Le Rhone backfired and the black needle passed 1,500, he could wait no longer, pulling back on the stick,
one eye on the lower wing, the other focused on the two rings of his gun sight.
Bursting into sunlight, he felt himself pushed down hard in his wicker seat by a force of gravity multiplied by at least a factor of three. The wings fluttered, vibrating the airframe and twanging the wires. Praying and shaking giddiness from his head, he bottomed out and pulled the nose of the Nieuport up into a shallow climb. Prayers answered, the wings held. But high spirits turned to anger and frustration when he found the Boche still below the Nieuport and in a curving dive toward the British third line of trenches, archie erupting around it like cotton pods spilling fluffy white cotton balls of smoke.
The major cursed and struck the breechblock of the Vickers. But he was still unseen. Either the crew of the enemy aircraft were novices or fools. The observer still hung over the side, staring through his binoculars. Striking the throttle with the palm of his hand, Higgins pushed the Le Rhone to full military power, bringing the tail and left side of the German into the first ring of his gun sight. Too far. But with the range closing, every detail of the camouflaged observation plane became clear: the pilot hunched over his controls under the high top wing; observer still staring over the side and tapping commands on the pilot’s back; long, slender fuselage tapering to the tail fin like a flattened ellipse; the liquid-cooled Mercedes engine, cylinder heads jutting clumsily up from its upswept blunt nose and exhaust pipe sticking straight up and over the wing like a broken mast; the huge black Maltese cross painted against a white background on wings, fuselage, tail fin, and rudder. Then Randolph felt a familiar feeling course from his groin and spread with visceral heat; the way a man feels when he stands over a beautiful, naked woman, savoring the coming moment. With trembling fingers, he opened the safety lock and fingered the red trigger button.
Suddenly, the observer turned, looked up, pounded the pilot’s shoulder frantically and then swung the Parabellum around, pointing it at the death hurtling down like a lightning bolt from the storm clouds. Baring his teeth in a thin white line, Randolph felt both anger and anticipation and Brenda was very close. With the chance for a surprise attack lost, he kicked left rudder, following the Rumpler as it bounced out of his ring sight, banking into a sharp turn to the north and the German lines.
