A Deadly Caper (Innocents At War Series, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  “I shall bank to port, sergeant, until I am at a thousand feet.”

  The mechanic nodded and said nothing; he watched as Tommy settled himself and then stepped forward to the propeller in place of the junior man whose job it normally was.

  “Right, sergeant!”

  The rotary caught immediately, settled into a good, even sound. Tommy waved to the chocks and allowed the Scout to taxy out onto the grass and into the wind. Thirty seconds more and he was airborne, climbing slowly, making no attempt to force the full five hundred feet a minute the machine was capable of. Better far to make a cautious start to any flight.

  He levelled off after ten minutes, at about three thousand feet, making his course for Dover. There was no direct railway line to follow, but the Thames Estuary was just in sight to his left and that gave him an easy guide and he had landed at Swingate Down more than once in the past.

  He circled the airfield at five hundred feet, peering at the streamer that showed the wind and watching for a red flare to warn him off. Two minutes and he was obviously not unwelcome; he tucked the nose down, lost speed gently and made a tight landing close to the new wooden huts that graced the turf.

  There were two BE2cs parked by the huts and he taxyed into line with them. A mechanic walked across to him and stood to a rather casual attention; either so good as a mechanic that he was safe in his job, or simply slack and idle. It was none of Tommy’s business which he was – it was not his airfield.

  “Posted to 3 Squadron, taking off as soon as possible. Refuel and take a quick look at the engine, please. She’s new and I noticed nothing wrong on the flight from Croydon.”

  “Normally reliable, fresh from the factory, sir. Was the oil topped up this morning, sir?”

  “To full.”

  “Makes it easier if we know that, sir. If she has used too much then I will want to check her thoroughly, sir.”

  “Your decision. I shall not query you. I like living too much to tell a mechanic that he’s wrong!”

  “Yes, sir. I wish…”

  Tommy grinned – there was no need to finish that sentence.

  “What are these two BE2cs?”

  “In transit, sir. I do not know to which squadron, sir. The young gentlemen do not talk to mere mechanics.”

  There was no need to say more on that topic.

  “Where will I find the adjutant?”

  “Second hut, sir.”

  The adjutant was an ancient lieutenant, Boer War ribbons on his chest; probably he had taken his pension and then had returned in a lower rank to be useful.

  “Captain Stark, taking a Bristol Scout to 3 Squadron on posting.”

  Tommy undid his flying coat; there was a coal fire and the hut was stifling hot after the open cockpit.

  The lieutenant noticed the medal ribbon and placed the name. The RFC did not generally seek publicity for its pilots and very few ever appeared in the daily press; as a result, those few were remembered.

  “Refuelling, sir?”

  “The mechanic is giving the oil a check as well – it’s a new machine and it makes sense to check everything has been screwed together correctly.”

  “It does, sir. Are those the new roundels I see, sir?”

  The roundel had been made official in early December and most new machines going out to France carried them, but there was little urgency to paint up the existing aeroplanes.

  “Yes, rather gaudy, I think, but we must live with them. Apparently, the Union Jack can be mistaken for the Maltese Cross, seen against the sun when the colours are etched out. Can’t mistake a roundel for a cross though.”

  “It hardly matters in the air, sir. So few machines, you will rarely come across each other.”

  “It’s not the air that’s the worry; soldiers fire at every machine on principle, it seems. This is done in the hope that the BEF will not try to kill us!”

  The adjutant thought it was funny.

  Tommy looked out of the door, glancing out over the Channel.

  “Low cloud?”

  “Been worsening all morning. Nothing to worry about if you’re gone by eleven or thereabouts, sir. Be thick by two o’clock.”

  “When do the BEs intend to fly?”

  “I do not know, sir. They dropped in thirty minutes before you and decided to go into town to have a meal and do a little shopping before they continued their journey, sir. I suggested that they might be unwise but they seemed quite convinced that they knew what they were doing. Four pilots, newly made, going out to the Central Aircraft Park for their postings. They showed me their wings and kindly explained that I could not know better than them, being just a soldier.”

  “Had they been here, I would have ordered them up. I am not going into Dover in search of them, however.”

  “No, sir. I did not expect you to. They are not worth the effort!”

  They shared a cup of tea and waited for the mechanic to tap on the door.

  “All ready for you, sir. Oil was high, sir, and I topped up the normal usage. Your petrol tank is at full, sir. I will start you as soon as you are ready, sir.”

  “A pee and I am with you, sergeant, I see.”

  The mechanic had been wearing an anonymous rain-proof jacket, was now showing his stripes.

  “Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but is there any chance of getting to France, sir? Six months here is getting on my tits, sir, if you will pardon the language.”

  “Write your name and number and officer down for me. I can’t make any promises, but if we are short I will ask for you. We prefer volunteers!”

  The wind was picking up, gusting up to a good twenty miles an hour from the south-west. Tommy knew the country reasonably well and expected to be able to find his way towards Ypres even though he was being pushed well off the direct track. He wondered how the boys in their BE2s would fare later on; he hoped they would have taken a dry meal – even a couple of glasses might be sufficient to kill them in these conditions.

  He preferred to cross the Channel with height in hand, at least three thousand feet, but it was likely that conditions would be worse higher up, turbulence sufficient to overset a small plane, and the cloud base was definitely falling. One thousand would have to do.

  It was a fast machine; the sea-crossing took less than twenty minutes with the help of the wind as well. Tommy breathed more easily once over land again; a crash would be just as likely to kill him, but he had never fancied drowning. He bounced his way over the low hills, picked up the canal, looked to the north-east and saw the line of the trenches – greater and more permanent seeming than when last he had been here. They had been little more than ditches then; they had grown now into double, sometimes triple lines, with a grey mass in front of them that he presumed was the barbed wire.

  “Bloody nasty”, he muttered to himself.

  He dropped back into the old routine, head sweeping left to right and regularly to the rear, never flying in an exact straight line or at constant height, varying his speed at random with flicks of the blip switch. He spotted the airfield, almost empty of machines, as it should be, the men out on patrol and reconnaissance. A long searching look for the squadron returning and then he fired a green flare to announce his presence – no sense asking for a burst of machine-gun fire – and made his approach.

  As always, he made a neat, precise landing, rolling a few yards and turning into the hangars so that the mechanics needed push the machine only the shortest distance.

  He glanced at the faces but recognised none of the ground crew; nearly three months away was a long time.

  “Captain Stark; returned from wound leave.”

  They had heard the name and showed signs of welcome; he was not just a passing stranger. He pulled his bag out of the cockpit and walked off towards the offices, noticing that the mechanics had seen nothing untoward in him carrying it himself. Times had changed.

  There was a new adjutant.

  A Deadly Caper

  Chapter Five

  “Cap
tain Stark? Major Salmond is in his office and will wish to see you now, sir. You are expected, and I have been instructed to make Smivvels available to you as your servant; damned nuisance, having to change men about, but it can be done if you find it necessary.”

  Tommy inspected the adjutant, more than a little surprised by his ungracious attitude. No wings; army uniform, he did not recognise the regiment – but that was no great surprise, he had never taken an interest in such things. A captain, but long in the rank and senior to him; seconded to the RFC and not very pleased by the posting, it would seem.

  “I would prefer to have Smivvels back with me, Adj. He knows my ways.”

  “He will be transferred within the hour. My name is Captain Philbert, by the way, not ‘Adj’ or ‘Uncle’ or ‘Gilbert’.”

  “As you wish. Been here long?”

  “Two weeks, Captain Stark. Long enough to commence the introduction of proper ways of running the squadron.”

  Tommy made a mental bet that Philbert would not last another fortnight; Major Salmond was not one to suffer fools gladly.

  “I brought in a Bristol Scout ‘C’, the new biplane type; there will be more, I believe and the ‘D’ is coming into production. The intention is to use the Bristol for bombardment and to experiment with a Lewis Gun. I would expect there to be a supply of twenty-pound aerial bombs very soon, and possibly smaller, two or four pounders as well; there are one-hundred pounders in the making, I believe. Standard practice in England is to keep the bombs in their own store, well separate from the fuel and the barracks huts, Captain Philbert.”

  “I think you can rely on me to deal with such matters, Captain Stark. There will be a set of instructions in the Manual.”

  “As you wish. Is Major Salmond still in the same office?”

  “He is. I shall lead you through.”

  Tommy shrugged, unbuttoning his flying coat and unwinding his scarf.

  “The scarf, Captain Stark, is not uniform dress, and should not be displayed where the Other Ranks can see it.”

  “Thank you for reminding me of that, Captain Philbert. If you ever learn to fly, you may understand why scarves are worn, but I cannot imagine you will ever become a real, and useful, member of the RFC. I believe you are about to perform the functions of a butler. Do not allow me to delay you in doing something at which I am sure you are a master.”

  Tommy stood to attention as the adjutant introduced him to Major Salmond and then left.

  “It is the rule that any officer joining a unit must be formally presented to his commanding officer, Tommy. Mr Philbert knows the rules. He is unhappy that he has been sent here and is quite determined to make us unhappy in return.”

  Major Salmond had heard raised voices in the adjacent office.

  “Why is he here, sir?”

  “Our man suffered a stroke, Tommy, three weeks ago. Died before we could get him to a hospital. He had been injured, as you know, and it seems likely that this was a delayed result of his crash. Our medical orderly did what he could, but he don’t know much other than how to dress a wound – he’s good at that, as you know. Gilbert the Filbert was posted out of his battalion up on the line; got the twitch, I think. Any man can be excused for breaking in those bloody trenches, Tommy! But he won’t settle in with us; refuses to. Probably because he’s got the twitch, poor man! His replacement is on his way from England by the end of the week at latest; one of ours.”

  “Where will he go then? Back to his own people?”

  “No. They won’t have him. He’ll be pushed well to the rear, counting socks in a supply dump, I expect.”

  “Pity. But he can’t complain if he’s such a miserable sod that he won’t fit in! It’s not as if he has to fly, or ever so much as see the Hun again! Has much happened this three months, sir?”

  Neither man could bring himself to care about the tribulations of mere groundlings.

  “Lost two pilots, new men both of them; ground fire for one, bad flying the other. Had a new plane sent for evaluation – an SE2 – Scout Experimental, it’s called. You will see it tucked away in the back of the hangars; not as capable of carrying a load as a Parasol or as strong as the Bristol and too stable to throw about. We’ll keep it for a few weeks then write it off – set fire to it accidentally, I expect, having sent back a dubious assessment the while. They keep dumping new ideas on us, but you don’t need to worry about them! Alastair was promoted out to Six Squadron last week, and you will have his Flight. Six of you, three with the new Bristols, the others in Morane-Saulniers. According to the orders from above, you are to be our Zeppelin bashers. You know the drill, the brass have got Zeppelins on the brain, nothing new! If an airship is seen, then you are to bomb up and fly high and attempt to drop a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary bombs upon the gasbag; from all I hear, any of the German dirigibles can fly higher than us so you must work out a way of dropping bombs upward! No airship has yet been seen over the BEF, but we shall be ready when one eventually arrives. In between such adventures you will be used for bombardment purposes.”

  “Trenches or further to the rear, sir?”

  “To the rear, Tommy. The word I was given, very recently, was that trenches should not be attacked except in ‘the hour of greatest need’, whatever that may mean.”

  Tommy breathed again.

  “Have we Lewis Guns in store, sir?”

  “A dozen or more. You want to put them up on wing-mountings?”

  “Worth trying, I think. Flying in threes a gun would make sense. Should be able to harass enemy scouts, sir, drive them away and stop them taking photographs.”

  “One can only make the attempt, Tommy. Let’s have a look at this modified Bristol of yours. I have been sat in the office all day this last week, glad to have reason to get out. The brass have ordered squadron commanders not to fly ‘except where there is need’. Do they think we would be here if there was no need? Was there anyone else at Dover when you came through?”

  “Not that I saw, sir. There was a pair of BE2cs sat on the ground, their pilots and passengers gone into town for their luncheon. Weather was too bad to hang around, in my opinion. I refuelled and came away.”

  “We’re due two replacements, pilots that is… If that was them then I shall not be pleased! What do I need to know about the Bristol?”

  “Not much, sir. You’ve flown an Avro 504 – this is much the same, just a little faster and carrying an easy eighty pounds of bombs under the wings, triggers in the cockpit, left and right; can take a Lewis as well. I’ve only flown factory-new machines – I don’t know how one would handle with a hundred hours up.”

  “Wires slack, you think?”

  “Could be, sir. I would be inclined to gee-up the riggers to check them from nose to tail every time the engine had its thorough strip-down. It’s a rotary, of course, and that needs more frequent servicing. The word at the factory was that they intend to use more powerful engines as they become available. The ‘D’ will be based on at least a 90 hp Clerget or Le Rhone, and they hope to work up to the bigger engines that are expected to be available by the end of the year. Besides that, Sopwith has it in mind to produce a pursuit machine, but he needs a new designer, sir – gone stale!”

  “They tell me that de Havilland has a powerful pusher in mind, Tommy.”

  “Provided he can get the engine – and that will delay everything for the whole of this year, from the looks of it. His DH2 will probably be useful, when it finally gets to us. The same for the FEs, massive great big beasts, but sound machines. When they get the engines then they will be very useful workhorses, though I don’t see them as a lot more than that – pushers are a stopgap, no more.”

  Major Salmond was not especially pleased by Tommy’s summation.

  “A year in which we can do nothing in the way of the offensive, Tommy?”

  “Bombardment on a larger scale, possibly, sir. Twenty miles behind the trenches, forcing the Huns to waste resources by defending their railway stations and jun
ctions for miles back and slowing them by making them do most of their transport at night. As well, we can keep their scouts out of our front, sir, while we can send machines to direct our artillery. Has there been progress with wireless, sir?”

  “Some, but not by us. It will come soon, or so they tell us at headquarters.” Salmond looked at his watch for the fourth time. “Twenty minutes before the patrols are due back. We have an intelligence officer now who takes the reports as the machines land. No more patrols today, so you will be able to meet your pilots. You know three of them; one is new in since you were wounded, and the last is one of those due today; I believe they are to be sent up from Amiens by tender as we are not expecting another BE2c.”

  The first flight, four BE2cs and a pair of REs, landed, all whole, entirely free of damage. They came to ground in close order, casually holding formation less than fifty feet apart.

  “New come-out, sir. Not so many months since we thought we were daring to fly in two lines at a hundred yards distance.”

  “Times change, Tommy. No actual plan or orders – it just makes sense to do things this way. Six planes – that’s the word now, ‘machines’ are terribly out of date! Three pairs keeping an eye on each other and looking after everyone’s tails. We still get the odd Hun popping off with a rifle, but they are generally less keen to come close, especially the poor chaps still flying those Taubes. At least we have no Shorthorns – the Frogs fly them and some of our squadrons have got them still, equipped with a Lewis and with a speed of sixty-two miles an hour with a following wind! Useless! We’ve introduced a bit of discipline, as well – the pilots and observers all give their reports before they leave the hangars and go to their separate messes. Not much changed besides that.”

  The six pilots came walking across in a group, four peering curiously at the new figure in a flying coat, two shouting greetings.

  “Back at last, Tommy! Thought you were going to put down roots in England!”

  “Quiet, peasant! Bow down to a decorated officer and a married man – immeasurably your superior!”