He led his Flight along the German first trench; not a single British soldier had reached that far in their sector. They dropped their bombs, destroyed a few of the many machine-guns, killed a dozen or two each of German defenders, and returned to the field to rearm.
“Quickly! Get those bombs aboard. They’re butchering them out there!”
Tommy spotted Jim outside his office, watching, hoping to see victory in their faces. He beckoned him across.
“Tea and a sandwich, Jim. Something to put in the boys’ bellies in between raids. No time to waste.”
“What’s happening?”
“Ten thousand dead in the field, Jim? In just the section I saw. Like stalks of wheat before the harvester, Jim. Bombardment hasn’t touched the wire or the guns.”
“I’ll get fresh water, too, Tommy. Some of the lads need to wash their mouths out.”
David had stepped out of his cockpit and comprehensively spewed.
“Get a hose ready, Jim. There’ll be more of that. How many are down?”
Jim had a quick count.
“Four Flights, each of four, Tommy. No losses.”
Twenty minutes and the first Flight taxyed out, levelled off at two hundred feet and took a straight line to the Trenches, wasting as little time as possible. They formed a line, David, Rozzer and a new boy, following Tommy along the trench, releasing their bombs when he did, the Lewises hammering out to the side.
Tommy spotted a machine-gun immediately ahead, on a high-angle mounting and turning back to its duty of killing aircraft. He opened fire with the Vickers, aiming with determination and shredding its crew. He lifted the Strutter’s nose and turned for home, the Lewis still busy behind him. Ten minutes and he had landed.
“Flight-Sergeant Burke! Brock rounds!”
“Four belts and twenty pans loaded is all, sir. Didn’t think you’d be after balloons today, sir.”
“We ain’t. Get every round you can loaded.”
Burke had heard the news and said nothing.
Tommy watched Fred bring his Flight in, saw he was missing Angus.
“What happened, Fred? Fighter?”
“Too low, Tommy. He dropped to ten feet and used his Vickers on the back of one of the little machine-gun boxes, then he tried again and let go his bombs as well, blew his own tail off. Last I saw he had rolled back to his observer’s cockpit and grabbed the gun – the observer was dead - and Angus was hosing Lewis Gun fire down the trench. It stopped when I was a few yards away. Don’t think he could deal with seeing so many dead. He really believed we were going to win, that he would be home within a few weeks.”
“Poor bastard. Nothing between his ears, no way to handle what he was seeing. Grab the spare new boy, put him up as number four, Fred.”
“He’s had almost no training in low flying, Tommy.”
“Tough titty, Fred. He flies. If he gets one bomb in the trenches, then it’s worthwhile. Jim!”
Jim limped across, a hot cup of tea in his hand.
“Drink this, Tommy!”
Tommy obeyed, unthinking – it was easier to drink than to refuse.
“How many of the observers are capable of flying? Frank was going to give you a list.”
“Two, Tommy.”
“Pull them out as they land, Jim, replace them with trained gunners. We’ll need them flying today, almost for sure. Put in for more of Brock ammunition, Jim. If you can’t get it, then Buckingham or Pomeroy will do. Anything to give those poor sods a hand. How’s Noah doing?”
“Two Flights at a time over your head, Tommy. He’s put down three this morning, one of them his own, the others shared.”
“Squadron leader is at the front, always gets first poke at anything going. Cheer him on for me. Tell him to keep an eye out for reserves coming up from Jerry’s second line. Give the word to any of mine who are down.”
Tommy flew and bombed and emptied his Vickers, all into the same half mile of trench. By late afternoon he had seen three breakthroughs, three short sections of trench in the attackers’ hands, held by tiny clumps of khaki.
He landed for the eighth time, hauled himself out of the cockpit and shouted to the armourers to hurry. A hand clasped his shoulder.
“Go across to the Mess, Tommy. Now!”
He recognised Colonel Kettle’s voice, pushed his legs into motion, automatically obedient to command.
“What’s the… picture, Stark?”
The familiar halting, booming voice.
Tommy stood to attention.
“Good afternoon, sir. Disaster, sir. This side of the river, sir, as much as I have seen, almost no progress and massive losses, sir. The bodies are stretched out in their thousands, sir. Tens of thousands. The guns did not cut the wire, sir. They did not touch the machine-guns, sir. The men of the New Army are supposed to be the cream of the generation, sir, and they are dead.”
Noah came in, his tunic showing bloody.
“Two-seater, with a good observer. Nicked me, sir. Nothing worth talking about. He won’t do it again.”
“How many… today, Major?”
“Three, sir. The squadron has fourteen in total. Jerry threw everything in this afternoon, to try to get at Tommy’s squadron. We were knocking them down like skittles at a fairground, sir. It proves that Tommy’s boys were earning their pay, sir.”
“What have you… seen on the… ground, Major?”
“No gains this side of the river, sir. I chased one little chap the better part of ten miles across towards the French sector, sir, and they have penetrated up to five miles in places there, but they are being held still, no final breakthrough. No cavalry moving, sir.”
“Failure.”
“Yes, sir. For us, defeat, sir. No ground taken, massive losses. The only thing to do is to cancel the offensive in this sector, sir, and push the men to the side and build up where they have taken some ground. But I don’t think it will work, even then.”
“I will… pass that… advice, Major. Under… my name. It won’t… be liked… but they can’t… get at… me. Do not fly… more today. Both squadrons… grounded… till dawn. Sleep!”
Trenchard heaved himself to his feet and walked out to his car, slowly, old-seeming, defeated.
Maurice Baring stood back, waited a minute or so before following.
“He won’t thank me for seeing his tears, Tommy. Noah, get yourself to your doctor, you’re still bleeding.”
“Surface scratch across the shoulder, Maurice. Messy but unimportant. I’ll go now. Why would they not listen when we told them the wire had not been cut, Maurice?”
“Why listen to facts, Noah? They know better, back at HQ. It will happen again. Go to the doctor, man, just in case it’s worse than you think. We have lost enough men today.”
Tommy turned to the Mess Sergeant, hovering in case he was needed.
“What’s the time? Has dinner been held back today?”
“It’s four o’clock, sir. Dinner will be served at seven, as usual.”
“Christ! Is that all it is? I thought it was damned near night. Open the bar; the boys will need it. I am going for a bath.” He stopped on his way to the door. “Jim! I never thought… How many lost today?”
“Only Angus, Tommy. None others. Piet came back with a bullet hole in his backside, poor chap. Ground fire, obviously! He’s back at Base Hospital by now, lying on his belly! I replaced him with Sergeant Baker, who has flown two raids this afternoon.”
“Good. Get his paperwork ready – there will be a thousand officers made to replace today’s losses alone. We can push him and Penrose through.”
“Done. Boom was waiting for twenty minutes. Restless, wandering up and down like a spare prick at a wedding. So I pushed the paperwork under Pot’s nose and he passed it on and Boom signed it on the spot. He signed off the Military Medal for Denham as well. We told him of the way he handled the Lewis, tied in with a bit of rope and potting anything and everything he could see. He asked if we intended to commission Denh
am, but I replied that he hadn’t tried flying yet. Baring said that they were giving some thought to commissioned observers – they would get better quality results, perhaps, from officers who had some idea of what they were seeing in terms of warfare. I think they have some vision of officers being fully trained for some months in England. I pointed out that as far as we were concerned, the man in the back seat was a gunner, not an observer as such. Go and get your bath, Tommy. Smivvels will be running it by now.”
Tommy submerged in warm water and relaxed, and realised that the squadron could not take even one more day of flogging themselves as they had that day. Eight raids, even if on the closest of targets, was far too much to demand of his pilots, or of himself. He must discuss the loading with the Flight Commanders – they would be able to clarify his mind at least.
Fred had an immediate answer.
“Four, Tommy, and made by three Flights. One Flight to have the day off – or we shall exhaust them all. We can put sixteen of us on line tomorrow, but we can’t do that every day. Among other considerations, the planes will go down. The mechanics will need time to keep them in the air.”
“I’ll talk to Pot, but I think you’re right. We shall be using explosive rounds only for the rest of this business, by the way. How do you feel about that?”
They regarded it as an obvious necessity. If they were to fire machine-guns at concrete pill boxes, then they needed explosive rounds. If men got in the way – that was bad luck.
“What of the Conventions?”
“Tell the politicians to shove them a long way up, Tommy. They haven’t seen ten thousand bodies lying like a shoal of beached bloody herrings! This war’s got no time for The Hague or Geneva either!”
There was a truce through the evening and night, to allow the wounded to be found and the dead to be carted back to the great pits the Chinese Labour corps was hurriedly digging.
“Five hundred to each, is the word, Tommy, and forty pits filled so far! Twenty thousand killed outright, and twice as many wounded – and some of them will die over the next few days. Sixty thousand men down in the space of a morning – it beggars belief.”
Colonel Kettle was close to despair, could not comprehend such butchery.
“The French are pushing slowly forwards, but they ain’t going very far. They would stop, were it not for Verdun and the need to ease the pressure there. The Army intends to hold the little bit of ground it gained yesterday, but to push all of the Reserves across to the French sector and exploit whatever gains they have made. We are to clear a space in front of our lads while they dig in and turn the German trench about face. The word is that they only managed to get anywhere at all because of the planes pushing Jerry back from his guns.”
“Hit the front lines again today, sir?”
“And a bit further back, Tommy. If you can flatten their field guns, it will be useful. Noah will try to hold the whole of the area clear for you. The other squadron is working the lines along the north of our sector, making sure that they send nothing down to interfere. Doing quite well, at the moment.”
Tommy called the Flight Commanders to him.
“Fred, you are resting today. Frank, your Flight tomorrow. Blue, the day after. You are grounded for the day, as well. No flight testing or training-up new boys. Sleep, eat a decent meal, read a book or play cards – in other words – rest!”
They did not like it. Especially, they wanted to work with their green hands.
“An order, gentlemen – and Pot will be watching you to see that it is obeyed. Now then, today’s orders. All ground work. Noah has the air to himself – and the DH2s are doing a hell of a job – double figures yesterday! I’ll take the front lines and work my way towards the north along them. Frank, front lines and south – watching out for khaki, there’s about three salients being held, possibly expanded today. Watch for the chance to hit strongpoints blocking them. Blue, go a mile or two over and look for gun lines, try to wipe field guns if you can, any reserves and reinforcements coming up as well. Four patrols today, unless there is urgent need. Check any orders that don’t come from me with Colonel Kettle. If some dick from HQ tries to order you up, confirm with Pot first.”
Tommy led his Flight across No Man’s Land, saw that the bulk of the bodies had been removed; he hoped that those that remained were all dead, he was sure he saw rats scurrying between them.
He located the furthest north enclave of khaki, saw that they had blocked the trench off with sandbags, presumably hauled off the parapet. They were exchanging fire with Germans no more than twenty yards distant. He turned, very carefully at a height of fifty feet, made a circle and came back up the trench, over the heads of the ducking soldiers, and opened fire with the Vickers. Quack, back to duty, followed with the Lewis, firing into the open, unprotected trench, slaughtering the German soldiers at their makeshift firing points. A safe fifty yards from the British and Tommy released his bombs, five twenty pounders and fifteen of little incendiaries, not a massive load, but destructive in a six feet deep trench with narrow sides to channel the blast. David and Rozzer and the new boy, whoever he was, followed in line behind him, releasing their bombs a fraction later, each flying into the dust and mud thrown up by the man ahead.
They returned unscathed but very dirty, wiped their faces and took a cup of tea while they waited on the armourers.
“Next time, lads, I want you to fly in line abreast, one hundred yards apart, to my left. Come to the trench, turn left and drop the bombs immediately, then carry on north until the Vickers is empty and return to the field. We’re too close to each other as it stands. All sure what to do? Jolly good show! Just to be entirely certain, raise your left hands? Well done everybody!”
Tommy took them out, made his way to the lines immediately over the salient, and turned to port, opening fire with the Vickers and pulling on the bomb toggles. He saw the flare of David’s bombs ahead of him and, as he had hoped, flew into the recovering soldiers, just beginning to run to put the fires out and to pick up their wounded. The Vickers slashed into them, followed by Quack’s Lewis fire. The belt on the Vickers came to its end and Tommy turned for home, spotting a larger fire down the trench, hoping that one of the others had hit ammunition or other flammable stores, much afraid that it was a plane down.
Three of the Flight landed, David and Rozzer both on his tail.
“Rozzer, he was next to you. Did you see anything?”
“He lost his height, Tommy. The land rose a little bit just to his front and he didn’t see. He dropped his bombs at twenty feet.”
The contact fuses had exploded the bombs far too close to the plane and had brought it down, probably into the fires of his own incendiaries.
“Scratch one green hand, Jim. Send on the next!”
Dark Days Of Summer
Chapter Ten
The days blurred and merged, became weeks, detail lost to their memory, fortunately; there was an unfocussed recollection of planes going down, of bombs dropping in the centre of field-grey platoons and bodies flying; repeatedly, they remembered heaps of khaki in front of gun positions.
Tommy had one vivid memory, of flying along rising ground, seeing a Vickers gun to the front, set up on a mound of bodies for lack of protective sandbags.
The squadron flew four patrols a day except when they were called out for five or six; sometimes it rained, and then they slept. Every fourth day, they rested, which meant sleeping, eating the whole of a meal, drinking too much, pacing irritably, snapping at each other, and counting down the hours until they must fly again.
They showed the strain.
Some vomited uncontrollably immediately before they stepped up into the cockpit; some spewed after they stepped down. A few developed almost uncontrollable diarrhoea; others begged remedies from Quacker for painful constipation. Rozzer lost half of his hair and Fred developed very distinguished white streaks in his. Tommy started to shave higher up his face, his sideburns coming in grey.
Those who did
not twitch developed irritating mannerisms.
All became almost impossibly short-tempered, shouting tantrums the norm.
Pot and Quacker watched and conferred with each other, and could do nothing. The squadron had to fly – control of the air was keeping some soldiers alive, was allowing them to hold the ground they had won at such a cost in lives lost and broken. The generals would not call the battle off while they had obtained none of their objectives and continued to feed new men into the machine-guns, and the lines crept forward, in places by as much as half a mile in a week, covered from the air. According to reports from the front, German soldiers were actually breaking, running when they heard the buzz of engines – not many, but sufficient to be noticed and to make the British thankful for the presence of the RFC.
Tommy held his briefings every dry morning, looking dully at the faces in front of him and recognising most – never all, there was always a new man to ignore for a few days until he became a fixture.
Towards the end of August, he stood up after breakfast, looked out at a bright, sunny morning and swore to himself and snatched the piece of paper containing the day’s business from Pot’s hand. He started to read.
“Squadron will stand down with immediate effect…”
He heard what he was saying, stopped and looked again.
“Christ! They’ve given us a reprieve! Let me see…”
His voice held some life, some expression. The pilots looked up, most of them having turned off, knowing that all they would have to do was to follow the Flight Commanders and drop when they did.
“Right! We are to stand down for three days and then on Friday next the pilots will proceed to the Central Air Park at Amiens where they will pick up replacement aircraft. The Strutters are to be withdrawn from service with the RFC, our squadron being first to get rid of them. The new aircraft will be single-seaters, and the observers will return to England to re-muster. More than that, I don’t know.”
Dark Days Of Summer (Innocents At War Series, Book 4) Page 23
