Tommy said nothing of his father-in-law’s activities; they might not have been understood.
Breakfast was traditional, bacon and eggs with side-dishes of kidneys and sausages for those who liked meat of a morning. There was kedgeree as well, to meet the taste of officers who had served in India. The coffee was good, and plentiful, the mess sergeant better with breakfasts than with dinner.
Tommy sat to table with Noah, unofficially to be his second in the flight.
“I’ll push Major Salmond into getting you made full lieutenant, Noah. Best you should be given proper Army rank rather than be a Flying Officer. Useful after the war, as well.”
“Too far ahead for me, Tommy. I’ll be content to work my way through the next year or two without worrying about the distant future.”
“You think so, Noah?”
“Those trenches are going nowhere, Tommy. They say stalemate to me. Useful in its way, of course; I can sit in my billet of an afternoon or wet morning and read books. I never had the chance to do that before – now I can learn a few things and enjoy myself the rest of the time. I never tried just reading, you know, Tommy. I learned a bit from books at school and in the mechanic’s courses in the RFC, but I’ve got the chance to enjoy them now. I think I’ll have another couple of years to carry on with that, too. After the war, well, I expect I’ll have to make a living somehow – but I’ll worry about that when it comes. I shan’t be going back to the factories, that’s for sure, but what I’ll do I don’t know; a garage maybe. I suppose having a regular commission will be worth something – I’ll take one, if it’s going. What about you, Tommy?”
“My wife’s father is looking after the little bit I inherited from the Old Chap. He says there will be sufficient for me to do what I want. To a great extent, it will be what she wants, Noah. I suppose most people would say I was too young to be married, but I’m so pleased that I am, old boy – you can’t imagine what a delight she is to me!”
“Not easy to leave her, I would think, Tommy.”
“Anything but, Noah. Hard on her as well; worse for her, not knowing what’s happening out here. I expect we will have leave during the year – not so far from France to England, after all.”
Noah agreed, not saying that he had no home to go to in England; he more than half suspected that he would try to discover whether Paris was as wicked as it was said to be, if he should be given leave.
“Copper-Bum not in to breakfast yet, Noah?”
“Poor lad’s probably got a headache, Tommy. He drank three pints last night, and that may well have been his first ever alcohol.”
“He’ll learn. I must speak with Colin and Hell-For – good name that! The boy’s got no idea of how to fly a rotary and they will have to tell him what to do and try to put him right afterwards. As long as they don’t have to try to put him together again!”
“Seven hours, did you say, Tommy? No better than murder!”
“Sending him out untrained? Agreed. It will be a bloody miracle if he makes it through today. God help him if the new planes come in today and he has to fly for real tomorrow.”
Tommy sat in the Parasol later that morning; it reminded him uncomfortably of his father’s last brainchild, the machine he had died in. There was a mounting for a rifle just above his head, under the wing and angled out to his left to avoid the propeller. A mechanic came across as he did up his lap belt.
“Moment, sir, before you start up.”
A second man held a step-ladder and the mechanic briskly mounted and undid the screw clips on the rifle mounting and fixed the heavy elephant gun in place.
“Kept it safe for you, sir. Stripped and cleaned, sir. Loaded and at half-cock. Pull the cord, sir, one smooth tug and both barrels will fire. Holsters with lanyards, sir, left and right, to take the Colts, sir. Smivvels gave ‘em to us this morning, sir. Loaded and ready, sir.”
Tommy had loaded his revolver himself, had not given thought to the automatics; the men had their expectations of him, it seemed.
Jack waved from his cockpit.
Tommy raised a hand to signify he was ready and the mechanics swung both propellers; they followed each other the length of a cricket-pitch apart, took the air within seconds and climbed hard, Tommy following Jack’s example.
Jack took them to a thousand feet before making a turn to a northerly course, easing his plane onto the bearing. Tommy stuck to his position, to one side and slightly behind, letting the distance apart vary by a few feet. He noticed that Jack was changing height, bearing and speed just a little every few seconds; it would not be easy to drop onto his tail.
The trenches were immediately visible, a triple line on either side of a barren strip of shell-beaten mud. Barbed wire showed grey, difficult to pick out but spreading in thick festoons, no longer the individual wires first set up. There was activity behind the trenches, more being dug to provide protected access routes from half a mile back. It became clear that the nature of the trenches had changed; originally they had been temporary field-works, to offer protection and resting points to moving bodies of men, but now they were fortifications, modern castles. The Army that had invested in these massive structures had no real expectation of leaving them in the early future.
Looking to the east, Tommy could pick out the shapes of tethered balloons, observers for the artillery and able to exercise direct control of gunfire by telephone line from the men up in the air. He wondered why they were permitted to work unhindered by the RFC.
Twenty minutes to the north and then turn around and a quick trip south and then to the east; the return Tommy spent in reminding himself of ground features – canals, railway lines, rivers, the shape of towns and villages, the dozens of landmarks that would lead him back to the airfield in bad visibility.
They landed, still in formation, taxying to the hangars and parking tidily, for the convenience of the mechanics.
They spotted the intelligence officer and told him there was nothing to report,
“A thousand feet before turning to course, Jack?”
“Can’t trust the petrol, Tommy. Rust in the cans, even flecks of dirt. Not always, but the engines can cough at any time. Get a thousand feet under your wings and its safer. Cross the trenches at two thousand, at least and work up to three over Hunland. Never less than three thousand except there is something you really want to look at. More machine-guns every day, it seems, and batteries of high-angle guns now.”
“No enemy scouts today?”
“There will be a few, but they haven’t got many and they are still the same old machines we saw in September. A few of a different sort of monoplane, Fokkers, they say, but they are no faster than us and don’t carry bombs or guns; just a matter of chasing them away when we see them, because there’s more of us than them. I suppose that between all the squadrons we’ve shot down fewer than a dozen, and they’ve put down three or four of us. Ground fire is the killer, and fog, and kiddies who don’t know how to fly.”
“Observation balloons – do we try to do anything with them? They must be able to direct the German guns directly onto any activity in our lines.”
“We don’t go near them, not if we can avoid it, Tommy. Likely to be a dozen machine-guns, maybe more, just waiting for us to come close. Add to that, a rifle can only make pinpricks in a balloon – waste of time.”
Tommy did not like that; they ought to be able to do something useful.
“What about the observers in their basket underneath, Jack?”
“What’s your chance of hitting them, Tommy?”
With a rifle from a fast-moving plane, there was almost no chance at all. Even so, they should not be left untouched, allowed to believe that they were impregnable.
“We’ll have a look over the other side this afternoon, Jack. Just to see what is available for our amusement.”
Jack did not like the sound of that, but had no say in the matter.
“Where are the others, Jack? Can you see them?”
“
The Bristol is up, so they must be familiarising themselves with it. The other Parasol is out as well – in the safe hands of Copper-Bum, I do not doubt.”
“I’ll have a word with the Adjutant; we need extra planes as a matter of urgency.”
“You’re right there - the RFC’s home-grown Alaric of the Vandals is coming in to land now, Tommy.”
Tommy watched as the Parasol lined up, jerkily, with the field and began its approach far too high; at this rate it would not touch down until half the grass was gone and would probably find the hedge at the far end. A red flare arced across in front of the plane and the pilot heaved it up into far too violent a climb and bank, just keeping it under control as it began to stall. He pulled it around into a circuit of the field and lost height, began another approach, more slowly and with a better chance of success. They held their breaths as the wings see-sawed, exhaled in unison as he brought the plane level and hit the ground rather than touched down. Three bounces and he was home, engine cut too early and stationary fifty yards from the hangar.
“Perhaps there is a God in Heaven, Tommy! Some bugger was looking after him!”
Noah came slowly across, Very pistol in one hand, a bag of flares in the other.
“That’s his fourth landing, Tommy. Best yet!”
“You’re joking!”
“Not a word of a bloody lie!”
“Put the Parasol in the hands of the mechanics, Noah. Take our would-be angel to a quiet corner and explain some of the niceties of flying to him; then send him to the vet and have him put down – it will save us the cost of an aeroplane!”
Major Salmond joined them.
“Two Bristols and three Parasols to be delivered from the Park this afternoon, weather permitting, Tommy. Wing wishes to hear your proposals for the first days of flying. A party of engineers will arrive in the morning to construct a ‘bomb dump’, I quote, and your lethal weapons themselves will arrive two days from now.”
“Jolly good, sir! All I need is a pilot ready to replace Copper-Bum, whose chances of outliving the week can best be described as minimal, and a hint of a target or two, and we will be ready. Any progress on the Lewis Gun front, sir?”
“You may take your Flight to the butts at the Machine-Gun Range, which is close to St Omer, there to discover which end of the gun is which. We shall fit brackets on the wings of your Bristols and Parasols both.”
“Then let us be busy. Here comes the RFC’s answer to Lord Cardigan, sir. Let us see how he feels about his service career.”
Copper-Bum was quite chipper.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it, Tommy. That was a better landing, this time. Can I try again this afternoon?”
“Not today, the mechanics must have their time with the planes. Tomorrow, Copper-Bum.”
“Very good, sir. I shall be pulling my weight in no time, sir.”
Major Salmond raised his eyes to heaven.
“No comment, Tommy – and don’t you say it, either!”
Tommy waited until the young man was out of hearing before asking whether he was typical of new pilots coming out.
“Better than many – he knows that he has much to learn, and is making the effort to teach himself. He might even live a week or two, Tommy. After all, at least fifty per cent of new pilots survive their first month, or so General Henderson told me. Not a figure to be published, by the way.”
“What are they doing about it, sir?”
“What do you expect, Tommy? They are doubling the intake of trainees.”
It rained that afternoon and the pilots retreated to the Mess where they played cards, drank too much beer and sang the songs of their schooldays, not so far behind for most of them. Noah, Jack and Tommy sat in his office and tried to make plans.
The detachment of Sappers arrived and constructed a flimsy wooden hut with racks for the bombs, placing it only eighty yards distant from the Mess, to the trepidation of all watchers. They then started digging and built an earth berm around the shack, two feet higher than its roof and fifteen feet thick at its base, slanting at about ten degrees. The single entrance was to the rear, pointing out across the fields. The ancient lieutenant with them was supremely confident.
“Any explosion, gentlemen, channels upwards and back. You need have no fears, other than of deafness, of course!”
The CO was unconvinced; there might be two tons of high explosive in that shed.
“Will it work, or is that the theory, Lieutenant?”
“I have worked in quarries around half of the world, Major. I haven’t been killed yet.”
“There is a first time for everything, they say, but I am happy to take your word for it, sir. Have you an opinion on our fuel store, sir?”
The Sapper accompanied them to the other side of the small airfield and winced.
“Put an indent into our people, sir. Quickly. We can be back in a few days, with luck, and may be able to save your necks. The slightest accident here, and every single drum of fuel will go up. The cans are stored on concrete, sir. You should have a base of sand for them, so that there will be no sparks if they are dragged along or fall over. Anything could kill you all, sir!”
Major Salmond ran to his telephone, was speaking to the Sappers’ commanding officer within ten minutes and had his agreement that the detachment should remain for emergency works within another five.
“I did not know, Lieutenant. They don’t tell us about these things, honestly!”
A convoy arrived that afternoon, two days early, four-horse drays with red flags prominent, six of them, loaded variously with bombs, petrol and three-o-three ammunition. The mechanics and private soldiers unloaded them, very carefully; the pilots watched interestedly while the Adjutant danced around and gave pointless orders, satisfying himself that he was very necessary to the progress of the work in hand. Only Major Salmond saw a Crossley tender pull in and stop by the offices; he walked across, expecting messages of some importance, including perhaps the paperwork for the explosives he had just accepted.
A young and nervous pilot stepped down from the front of the tender and lent a hand to an older, limping and much scarred captain. The driver brought four bags out from the rear and dumped them on the ground outside the Mess; he turned to climb back into his seat, was ordered to wait, to get himself a mug of tea at the cookhouse.
“Captain Alford, reporting, sir. I believe I am to be Adjutant, sir.”
“You are indeed, Captain Alford, and very welcome. Your predecessor’s office is just here, if you would like to make yourself at home. The gentleman is currently getting in the way of the men unloading the drays you may see out by the bomb store. I shall inform him of his replacement and put him aboard the Crossley you came in.”
Captain Alford wore army uniform, wings over the badges of the Kents; he limped and the scars showed themselves to be old burns at close inspection.
“Are you not John Alford, who almost won the London to Birmingham Air Race in 1913?”
The new man grinned and admitted that he was; he was the one who had made a slight mistake in his Breguet, hence his scars.
“Good to have you here, Alford! We are in need of a man who knows what he is doing!”
Major Salmond turned to the silent youth who had accompanied Alford.
“Are you a pilot, young man?”
“Yes, sir. Egmont, sir, reporting, sir.”
“Very good, Mr Egmont. Give your details to Captain Alford and he will assign you a billet and all else you need.”
The sergeant who actually did most of the work showed his face in the Adjutant’s office and said he could deal with the simple matters while the Captain settled himself in. Major Salmond marched off to find Captain Philbert.
“You are to report to Wing, Captain Philbert, with immediate effect. Your servant will pack your traps and follow you later today. You will board the Crossley tender and leave my field now, sir. Your successor is in his office already and will need no handover, being an experienced flie
r who knows how the RFC works. Your service record will show a poor rating for your time here, sir, due to your unwillingness to fit in and assist the squadron to become more efficient. I understand that your own regiment does not want you back, so I have no idea what will happen to you next. I might add, sir, that I do not much care, either! Goodbye!”
Major Salmond found Captain Alford in conversation with Tommy when he returned to his office.
“Met before, have you, gentlemen?”
“Brooklands days, sir. We were forever bumping into each other, though never quite literally!”
They laughed and Major Salmond took the Adjutant into his office for a briefing.
“What have you been doing lately, John?”
“Polishing a chair in London, sir. Telling Brigadier Sykes what a wonderful chap he is and persuading him that we need to push more money into the hands of the manufacturers. There will be nothing new out here before November, not then if the engine manufacturers are not supported by government. I need some fresh air, sir – there’s none of that in London!”
“As we expected. We are supposed to work miracles for the benefit of the newspapers, I understand from Tommy.”
“He will know, sir. His wife’s father was given a peerage only yesterday; in the papers when I got my train at Charing Cross. Lord Moncur, for services to the Crown, particularly in the way of food supplies. So many farm labourers joined up that we shall be hard put to bring in a harvest this year; wheat coming in across the Atlantic in its place. I suspect we shall hear much more of Lord Moncur this next year or two. Tommy will be a very useful young officer to have aboard, sir.”
“Worth knowing in itself. Is he aware, do you think?”
“Doubt it, sir. Always struck me as a thoroughly decent lad, and not wild, either – which is rare in a youngster of his sort – grown up running around the planes, flying much too young, growing up too soon. Married now, I saw in the papers, and he can’t be twenty yet.”
“In the papers?”
“Sykes made a show of it – awarded his Military Cross at his wedding breakfast!”
A Deadly Caper (Innocents At War Series, Book 2) Page 13
