Andrew Wareham

by When Empires Collide (Innocents At War Series 1)

  “’Pusher’? I am afraid I do not know the term.”

  “Sorry, sir. I have spent too many years in the company of flying enthusiasts, speaking our own jargon. An aeroplane may be a tractor, sir, with the engines pulling the machine along from the front – either a single engine in the nose or two, one in either wing; very rarely, sir, there are three or even four engines. The very large flying boats and seaplanes are commonly multiple engine machines. Otherwise, sir, the machine may be a pusher, the propeller set to the rear and the blades reversed so as to change the thrust. Pushers tend to be less agile, and often slower – for, I am certain, very good reasons known to aeronautical engineers – but obviously have a clear view in front of the pilot, and the opportunity to mount a forward-firing gun.”

  General Petersham gave the impression of a man who had already known all of this, but had wanted to discover just what the young pilot in front of him was aware of and could explain.

  “Good. How long before such a machine exists?”

  “There are designers busy about the task, sir. The biggest companies in the field are displaying an interest… All depends on an engine, sir. Pushers do not tolerate a rotary engine, so a radial or in-line is required. I do not know, sir – the firms are secretive, naturally enough. I suspect sooner rather than later, sir. A problem, of course, is that it costs money to design a new engine, and the prospects of a profit must be uncertain. If the Corps only had one hundred thousand pounds to spare, then all would be very simple, sir. Pass the money to Rolls-Royce and allow them to hire another twenty engineers for two years and there would be a massively powerful and reliable engine to hand.”

  “And if they had forty more, then it would be done in one year, I presume?”

  “Quite possibly, sir – teams of the best men in the field, each looking at a separate part of the engine – fuel supply, cooling, transmission, crankshafts – all the different bits, sir, and the job would be done quickly. As it is, I understand that one overworked gentleman solves his first problem and then moves onto the next – slowly.”

  “Good point, and one I had not considered. Worth knowing, that, Mr Stark.”

  General Petersham had obviously reached the end of some planned task, passed Tommy to his wife for the social amenities.

  “I understand that you have never seen the North before, Mr Stark. Charlie has a number of plans for your days and we shall be busy on some evenings. Mr Edward Petersham is in London at the moment, but Charlie’s sister, Mrs Mattingley, is in residence; she was widowed only a few months ago, poor girl, her husband of six months misjudging a fence in a steeplechase.”

  Tommy showed appropriate sympathies.

  “We have a pair of dinner parties planned, Mr Stark, and must attend the function at Catterick on Friday – one of these regimental affairs that the Army is so dedicated to!”

  “Uniform, ma’am?”

  “I am afraid so, Mr Stark.”

  “Charlie warned me to bring my dress with me. May I beg the services of a maid to hang the garments, ma’am?”

  “Certainly not, Mr Stark. There would be uproar in the Hall! A gentleman’s dress must be the province of a manservant; there will be one of the footmen who has the ambition to become a gentleman’s gentleman and who will be pleased to have the opportunity to turn you out, Mr Stark. The General’s man will supervise, I doubt not.”

  “Outside my experience, ma’am!”

  “Then you must learn, Mr Stark. As you progress up the ranks then these distinctions become increasingly important. Charlie tells me you have a young lady, Mr Stark; you must bring her here after you are wed so that she may discover the military existence as it affects the female!”

  “I shall be happy to do so, ma’am, though not as a lieutenant, of course.”

  “Quite right, sir. Captains may marry; majors should marry; colonels must marry – but lieutenants really should not. In time of war, however, exceptions may be made to any rule.”

  Tommy was nervous of the formality that might be expected of a large country house inhabited by the lesser aristocracy rather than the County. He had discovered that Charlie’s grandfather had been the son of an inheriting only daughter of a northern baron; the great-grandmother had demanded that her husband change his name as a condition of the marriage, so as to maintain the family in residence, although the title had died with her father.

  “Been Petershams here since the Conquest, dear boy – so they say. I do not know that a historian would agree, but what have mere academics to say to anything?”

  “What indeed, Charlie? As a mere Stark, I have no knowledge of such matters. My father said nothing of his heritage to me; I have as a result always assumed that we did not possess one! There was an entail on the land, which means it had been in the family for some years – but probably first bought by some rich merchant who was best forgotten.”

  “Most families are the same if you go back two or three generations, Tommy. Blue-blood in this country is rare stuff. We know that my great-grandmama insisted on remaining a Petersham, but the records are remarkably blank when it comes down to just who her husband had been, although we know that he was very willing to lose his birth name; one wonders exactly why!”

  “Better not to ask, one suspects, Charlie!”

  “Quite so. A bite to eat and then a quick view of the country hereabouts, Tommy. I have replaced the Peugeot – though not with a Lanchester! A little Sunbeam – you told me you enjoyed yours.”

  A glance at the Yorkshire Moors – very different to the South Downs that Tommy knew – higher, more rugged, much poorer as farming land – and a briefing upon the family. There were seven of them, Teddy, the heir, spending much of his time in Town, a lounger, to his father’s distaste.

  “For the others, Jeremy is at sea and young Fred is in his first year at Oxford and seems to be doing rather well, reading all sorts of things – got all the brains of the family, you know; Meg, you will meet at dinner, poor girl; Jennifer is gracing Cheltenham Ladies College and Jimmy is still at Eton, but will look for Sandhurst at earliest. Very military, our Jim!”

  “What regiment has Jim in mind, Charlie?”

  “KOYLI of course, Tommy. None other possible for the family, but he will not be seeking then to join the Corps. He does not approve of aeroplanes – no military function, he tells me. Warfare for him is the Thin Red Line – ‘Streak’ actually, he informs me. Infantry holding against cavalry and prevailing against foreign foot; that is what war is all about.”

  “’Streak’?”

  “The Times reporter first referred to it as a streak, it only became a line later, so he has, at boring length, informed me.”

  “I see. Has he heard of the Vickers Gun, or the Spandau?”

  “Nothing that cannot be overcome by a few resolute men with the bayonet! Properly led, by gentlemen, the English soldier will not be defeated by mere mechanical devices.”

  “He sounds perhaps more enthusiastic than sensible, Charlie.”

  “Does he? I thought he sounded like a complete prick!”

  “Well, yes, that as well, one must agree. We have a war coming and if it lasts any time at all he will become an officer in it. Let us hope that there are few others of his mind.”

  “The whole of damned Eton, Tommy! Did you know that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton?”

  “I have heard the saying.”

  “Well, it’s all balls, you know. Eton had no playing fields until that fellow at Rugby introduced them and they had to copy him – and that’s barely sixty years ago!”

  “Why let facts get in the way of a good story, Charlie? I expect it was written down in the Times, so it must have been true! This is fine country up here, better weather as well than they have down in the lower land over to the east and north.”

  “That ain’t cloud, dear boy. That is the factories and the mills and the shipyards and the coal mines themselves, and the hundreds of railway engines pulling goods trains between them.
That is smoke. They say the Potteries over in the west, north of Birmingham and south of Lancashire, are worse; they call that part the Black Country.”

  “We don’t see that in Hampshire, Charlie, or over in Wiltshire. London has its fogs, of course, but they don’t stretch out as far as us, not by a long way. How in Hell do people live in that?”

  “You have just said it, Tommy. They live in Hell. We’ll take a drive over that way tomorrow. You ought to see it. Every man in this country should see it. You know these damned Socialist Reds we hear about in the papers? They come from that sort of place; I would be one of them if I came from there.”

  Tommy could hardly believe his ears – everyone knew that the Reds were the enemy of all that was decent and noble in humankind!

  “Come a war, Tommy, and most of the men will volunteer – God alone knows why, unless it’s to escape the slums, there is little for them to love in this country – and many will be refused for being too weak and sickly and undernourished. Have you read of the Boer War, Tommy? The recruits came flocking to the Colours then, and nearly half were turned down as unfit. No reason to suppose things have got any better since.”

  “Appalling, Charlie. Good thing we are in the Corps – less use for recruits in our ranks.”

  “Not really, Tommy. We will need the cooks and labourers and mechanics and riggers, and many more of them, and we shall probably get those who are categorised as ‘B’; not fit enough to march for a day with a sixty-pound pack on their backs, but useful still. Older men; married men; undernourished, skinny men – they will come our way, I expect.”

  “As long as they are willing, Charlie, then we will be able to use them. Probably.”

  Dinner was a long meal and rather formal; all were dressed, as was normal in such a house, and they were served by footmen, the butler supervising from his place in the corner of the room.

  Conversation was light, even Mrs Mattingley, still wearing unrelieved black, her mourning less than six months old, playing her part.

  Ireland, and the increasing possibility of a mutiny by officers posted to the Curragh, was much discussed, those at table finally agreeing that the rights and wrongs of the matter were irrelevant – the army must not become involved in politics and every officer who so much as mentioned the topic of mutiny should be cashiered. In the circumstances they talked of aviation, wondering whether the latest speed record could be surpassed, or even equalled by practical machines.

  “Even if it should be, Mr Stark, what will be the benefit to you of an aeroplane that travels at one hundred and twenty miles an hour or more?”

  Tommy did not know, perhaps experience would prove him wrong, but he rather thought that high speed could be useful in a bombardment machine.

  “Dropping the equivalent of a single heavy artillery shell, sir? A sixty pounder?”

  “At a distance of perhaps sixty miles from the army, sir, targeting a railway junction, or a bridge, or perhaps an ammunition ship in harbour; such could be valuable, I suspect. In the final case, high speed would be very useful; if I am to explode a ship or ammunition dump then I wish to travel some considerable distance while the bomb is dropping.”

  “You might well wish to bombard the sheds of these Zeppelin monstrosities, Mr Stark. They say that they will be able to carry as much as one ton of bombs and bring them as far as England!”

  Lady Petersham was outraged at the prospect that war might reach English soil; the British fought their wars in other people’s countries.

  “Hydrogen catches fire too easily, ma’am. I cannot imagine that the Zeppelin will ever be useful in wartime, other than to scout at sea. Equipped with a wireless transmitter an airship could be very useful indeed to a fleet, distant from any guns that might fire at it.”

  That seemed more acceptable; the Navy could look after itself.

  “The newspapers all say that there will be no war, Mr Stark. You seem not to believe them.”

  Tommy smiled across at Meg, so sad a lady and so young, between Charlie’s age and his, he imagined. Pretty, too, fairer than her brother and with an alert face, intelligence showing in her eyes.

  “I have very few views that I can fairly call my own, Mrs Mattingley. I have just left the course at the Central Flying School and the commandant and staff there have no doubt that war is just around the corner – if not this year, then certainly next. They argue, not that war is wanted, but that the Three Emperors lack the capacity to avoid it. Russia and Austria-Hungary are close to collapse and may drift into war in the hope of uniting their disparate peoples, while Imperial Germany suffers from the air-dreaming of the Kaiser, who hopes to be a great man, one day. The Ottomans are failing, leaving their Empire to be divided as spoils, and the British cannot tolerate a powerful fleet sat on the Belgian coast and directly threatening the Thames Estuary. The balance of power has failed and war must result, hopefully as short as that of 1870. Captain Paine certainly expects the business to be over in a very few months.”

  “That sounds as if others do not, Mr Stark.”

  Her father spoke up, grinning.

  “Yes, Mr Stark, I believe that Camel Trenchard was second-in-command. What had he to say?”

  “Very little, sir, and that… slowly. He expects a conflict that will outlast the Napoleonic Wars, sir.”

  They were silent at that prospect, being unable to imagine that there was any modern Wellington to save the day.

  The ladies withdrew and the men settled to their port and to discussion of important matters, too serious for the female ear.

  “Bombardment, Mr Stark. How much can an aeroplane carry?”

  “Today, sir? Was I to fly a rotary without an observer, then probably one hundred and fifty pounds weight. The Avro or the Tabloid would carry that. But, sir, I would have the devil’s own job to find my way over a distance. In practical terms, your sixty-pound shell makes more sense this year. But, sir, the Italians have their Capronis, which can be loaded with three men, two guns and two hundredweights of bombs. Russia, strangely enough, has a giant machine, a Sikorsky, that will travel for five hundred miles, or so we are told, with an equal load. Five years from now, sir? Half a ton at least, and to a greater distance.”

  “Not good, gentlemen! How safe would the harbours at Dover or Chatham or Portsmouth be?”

  “They are no longer safe, sir. If Germany, for example, can take Belgium, then there will be airfields within reach of England. If France should declare herself our enemy, then the English Channel will be closed.”

  Charlie made the obvious rejoinder – there must be fighting aeroplanes to strike down the bombardment machines. His father agreed.

  “A few of us old buffers have been tasked by the War office to consider these problems, Mr Stark. We have no power, no authority, but we can, and I suspect will, push for the development of a gun-carrying aeroplane.”

  “I can accept that it may be necessary, sir. But I do not like it. I really do not, cannot approve of the concept of airmen killing each other, of deliberately destroying each other in the air. It is the opposite of all that I have grown up with.”

  “I do not doubt that it is, Mr Stark – but you have chosen to be a soldier, sir. The soldier carries a gun for his king.”

  Tommy raised a hand in acknowledgement of a hit.

  “You are correct, sir, and I will do as I must.”

  “That one cannot doubt, Mr Stark. Tell me, how easy might it be to destroy an aeroplane?”

  “It could take one bullet, sir, or a hundred might not suffice. Tomorrow, or later in the week, you must inspect the Tabloid I flew up in. For the moment, sir, consider how the aeroplane is made. An engine with a propeller; a petrol tank; wings and some sort of stabilisers and rudder; a fuselage of sorts and an empennage; a pilot in a light wicker seat.”

  General Petersham nodded; that was commonplace knowledge.

  “The engine is fairly much a large block of metal, sir, and one might expect bullets to bounce off rather than destroy it. Wings,
fins, rudder, fuselage – all are wood, normally covered in doped canvas; a bullet there will do nothing other than make a small hole. The petrol tank is vulnerable, but quite small; hit it and the aeroplane is doomed, will probably burn in the air, will certainly be forced down. The pilot is probably four times as big as the petrol tank, and much more visible; hit him and the aeroplane is lost. I suspect, sir, that three-oh-three rounds will do little damage as a general rule, except they are fired from close range and into the pilot. A machine-gun firing forty-five calibre rounds might do more damage, sufficient to break up the structure, but would be heavy and must have a far greater recoil, damaging to its own machine.”

  Charlie and his father were both frowning as the import of Tommy’s words sank home.

  “In answer to your question, sir – to destroy an aeroplane cannot be easy, but to kill the pilot may be all too simple.”

  “Then, Mr Stark, so be it. I cannot like what you say, but I cannot disagree, either. If the aeroplane is to replace the horse as the scout, then we must devise a means of stopping it. If that demands that we kill the pilot, then one regrets the fact, but cannot deny it.”

  Charlie spoke up, almost disgustedly.

  “We know how it must be done, sir. Tommy outlined it for us at the school. Our best pilots must be put into killing, fighter planes. They must fly high and hidden by cloud or against the sun, and then they must swoop down onto the tail of the enemy, fire a short burst and dive out of range. If they kill the pilot, well and good; if they do not, then one may assume that he will flee the scene and his scouting will be ended.”

  “Without the machine, it will not be done, it would seem, Mr Stark. We must, as you said earlier, develop the engine and then the machine to put it in. Thank you. Be sure that your words will be heard in Whitehall – the noted pilot, Lieutenant Stark, son of Mr Joseph Stark, the pioneer of the air, who has been a testing pilot for Mr Sopwith and others – am I correct in those words, sir?”