Colonel Kettle stepped forward, trying to seem unmoved, taking part in a piece of routine.
“The squadron has performed remarkably well in the past two months and the Army is aware of the fact. It is, of course, uncommon for soldiers to be aware of anything. You can be proud of yourselves. This battle has been one of the worst ever in terms of loss of life coupled with lack of achievement; it would have been worse still without your contribution. The battle is not yet ended, but you will play no further part in the ground fighting. The RFC will be back where it belongs, in the skies!”
He hoped that they might cheer at that, but they simply looked at him, silently. He had intended to read out a list of decorations awarded to the squadron, but could see that they did not care, would shrug and turn away.
“Many of you will find that your efforts have been recognised. Tommy will speak to you individually, later. For today – eat, sleep, possibly write a letter home even. You have done very well.”
Tommy followed Colonel Kettle to his office, sat down opposite the desk.
“What are we to do, sir? Do you know what the new plane is? Will we remain here?”
“The plane is a Scout, Tommy – a fighter, though HQ will not use that term. It is said to be good. The RNAS say it is the best yet. Word is that the Germans have begun their reorganisation, that we – sorry, you – will soon meet them in squadron sized formations. Their best men have been pulled back to train the new units and teach them how to fight in the air. Intelligence says their new planes will be good as well, far superior to a DH2, and Noah’s squadron is to re-equip – possibly with the new Nieuport, depending on what is to hand. A new age, Tommy, or so they tell me.”
“We have lived through the last age, we might survive this, sir. What is our score? I could not put a name to more than half of the faces this morning. I don’t think I have even spoken to all of them!”
“Sixteen pilots, including you, Tommy – the squadron is at full strength. You have kept Fred, Blue and Frank – somehow. Useful that, to have your Flight Commanders still. Barbry, David and Rozzer are still here. The rest are new men. Nine of them. Five have only been here for a fortnight or less. Since July the First, the squadron has lost eighteen pilots, including four wounded and hospitalised, and fourteen observers. Two of the new men have lasted longer than a month.”
“Who are the wounded, sir?”
“Piet and Keith, of the older men. Two of the green hands were shot and managed to get back. One of them will probably fly again. Piet won’t fly – it would seem that he took damage to a hip that will stiffen his leg. Keith may well make a complete recovery – a round in the leg and a bullet in the belly that hurt a bit – a lot, I expect – but no major damage.”
Tommy shrugged, incapable of feeling any emotion.
“I must write home, I think. I can’t remember doing so for a while.”
“You haven’t written for a month. Noah has. They know you are alive. The casualty figures are reaching the newspapers and I am told that the people are beginning to realise what is happening here. Haig wants all correspondents banned from France and an end to the printing of lists of casualties in the press. He says that the newspapers are giving the impression that the battle is failing.”
“Wherever do they get that idea from, sir? It’s not that the battle is being lost, it’s merely that half of his army has been killed.”
“Exactly. Most of them are no more than peasants, and there are too many of them anyway! They say that many of the chums and pals battalions took ninety per cent casualties – which probably means one man in three dead. Some of the small industrial towns in the north-country might have lost a third of their young men. Haig cannot appreciate what that means. I doubt he cares what it signifies.”
The figures were too great to comprehend. Tommy had only once seen the industrial towns of the north, but he could imagine those grimy little streets all draped in black.
“God help us all, sir, if the survivors snap. We have had civil wars before in England. Surely Haig risks starting another?”
“He could not even comprehend the possibility, Tommy. He will learn nothing from this battle, except that the bombardment was not big enough. He will demand more guns, more shells, more men, for the next one.”
“Tempting to make one last patrol in the Strutters, sir, and blow his chateau to Hell.”
“But you won’t, Tommy.”
“No. Monkey would lose too much. I can’t.”
They turned back to business, discussing the squadron and its needs.
“A week with the new machines, sir. Most of the green hands will know nothing of flying at height, of proper formation for patrolling. Do we know what Jerry is actually doing now?”
“No. You have all to learn.”
“God help the boys.”
Colonel Kettle nodded – the new men would suffer most.
“Decorations, Tommy. You have another MC, which will make three. Noah has a DSO, by the way, which will please his wife and her father – not an unimportant figure, Lord Holt. Fred, Blue and Frank all have their MC, and two or three Mentions apiece. Barbry, Rozzer and David all have Mentions, as has one of your new boys, Hilary.”
“I thought that was a girl’s name.”
“No. Like Robin, can be either.”
“Live and learn. What did he do?”
“Spotted a deep dug-out being used for small arms ammunition storage; saw them pulling belts of Spandau rounds out and placed the location. Next patrol he kept his bombs until he found it again and managed to drop inside its doors. Blue said he went down to ten feet to drop and pulled up over the side of the trench, used its parapet to shield himself from the blast. In his first week with us.”
“Good work! Bloody good flying. What’s his background? Either he’s a natural or he’s got a lot of hours behind him.”
Colonel Kettle did not know, but he thought Hilary to be Canadian, so they would not have come across him before the war if he had been flying then.
Tommy called Jim into his office, asked him to shut the door.
“I probably need to apologise to you, Jim. You must have been carrying us this last few weeks – I know that I have done nothing in this office.”
“Officer commanding does his work in the air, Tommy. I need your signature on a dozen or so of documents; I forged it on the less important bits of paper. You have written eighteen letters to grieving parents in the past month, by the way. They won’t reply, or, at least, they don’t in my experience. Your recommendation for Flight-Sergeant Bolton to be commissioned has been accepted by General Trenchard; it should come through in the next few days. What else? You need to know the names of the new pilots. When will you see them?”
Tommy yawned; fatigue was catching up with him and he could afford to be tired now.
“Tomorrow. Most of them will be sleeping now. If Fred or Blue or Frank are about, I want to see them, but don’t get them out of bed.”
Fred knocked on the door a few minutes later.
“You have the MC, Fred. You have earned it a dozen times over in these last weeks. I need a bright and educated man to talk to Bridge for me, Fred. I know nothing about these new German planes, other than their names. Can you see if they have any details of them, or about these new hunting units of theirs?”
“Will do, Tommy. Can I put the MC into my next letter?”
“It’s official. Have you heard anything of your father, by the way?”
Fred shook his head. His father was a general, should not have been within reach of the machine-guns.
“Frank and Blue are both asleep. Do you want me to wake them?”
“No. Send in any pilot who’s awake, if there are any. Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Restless, Tommy. Can’t lie down yet. Going to have a cup of tea and a slice of toast in a minute, see if that will settle me.”
“Give it a try, Fred.”
A fist hammered on the door two minutes after Fred left
.
“Come in!”
A short figure entered, stood to attention. Tommy recognised him, vaguely – he was one of the new men.
“Take a seat, Lieutenant…”
“Myles, sir. They call me Inches – I think it’s supposed to be witty, sir, because I am not as tall as most.”
“The RFC is renowned for many things, Inches, but subtlety ain’t one of them. I’m Tommy except when there’s brass about. Normally, I would have had this talk with you on the first day you got here. The battle got in the way. How many hours have you in your logbook?”
“I came with nine, Tommy, three weeks ago. I have one hundred and two now.”
“It’s fair to say, then, that you have learned low flying and bombardment, Inches.”
“More than fair, Tommy.”
“Good. Don’t forget it, but you won’t use it much for a few months. The new planes will demand different skills. We won’t have a lot of time to teach you them. Just be ready to learn. Get as much rest as you can in the next couple of days. Besides that, there is little to say, other than welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, Tommy. I feel part of this squadron. Can I stay here as a permanence? I was sent as a temporary replacement for one of your wounded officers, so they said in London. They planned for the new pilots to go back for more training, so they said.”
“There’s no man in England will know as much as you do about ground attack, Inches. You are staying here, where you belong. I will have a word with Pot and make sure you hear no more of that bloody nonsense!”
None of the other pilots were in the Mess. Tommy left for his own billet, was asleep within five minutes.
He wrote the long overdue and apologetic letter next morning, having reread Monkey’s letters first – he had forgotten all she had said.
He could not remember exactly when she had told him that she was pregnant, but suspected he might not be wise to say that he had forgotten. He had a vague feeling that there had been mention of a Christmas baby – bad luck for a youngster, that, birthday and Christmas presents all in one and then nothing for a year. He would be twenty-one himself in December, and there was a chance now that he would see his majority, although he would never be young again. No man who had seen the Somme would ever be anything other than very old inside his head, nor ever could be.
He wrote a happy, loving letter – then he read it again and tore it up as too obviously false. He tried again, openly honest – the battle had been lost; too many men killed for no good reason; Haig a cynical butcher, either incompetent or wholly uncaring.
Jim was censor for the squadron, would let it go through. He signed it and put it into the envelope.
No matter how hard they tried to suppress them, some letters would get through, the truth would trickle out, might even reach the ears of Number Ten – where it would be ignored. What use had politicians for the truth?
Dinner was thinly attended, many of the pilots sleeping straight through. They came to breakfast hungry, rediscovering their appetites.
Tommy stood after the meal.
“No flying today, or tomorrow. Friday, we take our planes to Amiens and come back by road. The new buses will be brought in by ferry pilots in the afternoon. We get to know them on the ground and then Fred, Blue, Frank and myself will take them up to get the feel of them. After that, you get a briefing and then we let you loose on Saturday. Everything depending on rain, obviously. I expect to have a full week doing nothing but get the feel of the new Scouts. After that – we shall see!”
They grunted and called for more toast.
Tommy stood again.
“I shall be talking to all of you individually over the next day or two. I will tell you now of the list of decorations that has come in – not unimpressive, in fact. Well done all. I think it’s a bloody shame that there is no ribbon or badge or anything with a Mention, and congratulations to Hilary for picking up a Mention in his first week – and my apologies for not knowing which of you is Hilary. Normally, I would meet all my new men immediately, but there has been no time for the decencies of life just lately.”
They grunted again and waved empty teapots at the waiters.
Hilary stood, having been poked by Frank who was sat next to him. He was well into his twenties, middle height and powerfully built. Tommy put him down as a lumberjack until he spoke.
“I’m Hilary, sir,” he said with a New England, Ivy League intonation.
“Ah! One of those Canadians?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Glad to have you with us. How many hours and where?”
“Two hundred or so, sir. Long Island mostly – a lot of flying there, sir. I had my own little Deperdussin, sir.”
A fast plane, for its day, and elegantly unstable, could be thrown about the sky by a skilled hand, would kill a novice.
“Speaks for itself, Hilary. What was your occupation before you joined us?”
“Worked for the family firm, sir.”
Tommy nodded, wondering just what the family firm was and suspecting that it was very, very rich.
By the way, it’s Tommy, when I use your first or nicknames. Not ‘sir’, except we are playing games for the benefit of the brass. While I think of it, gentlemen, there will be large numbers of senior officers with no useful occupation to be found at the Air Park. Take your hats with you and salute all you see, and keep your bloody mouths clamped shut! We have, as a squadron, a rather bad name in Amiens, and you may expect that reputation to be in front of the minds of the village idiots, morons, Mongols and generally retarded of the upper classes who are to be found there in shoals. None of them will have room for more than one thought in their minds and you will, therefore, take enormous pains not to offend them. Jim will have transport waiting for us and you will leap aboard as soon as you land, or before if possible, and we shall leave, probably singing patriotic songs.”
Blue stood in response.
“Excuse me, Tommy. I don’t know any patriotic songs – they don’t teach ‘em to Diggers.”
“You know the words of ‘Lloyd George knows my father’?”
The song had two lines only, the second being, ‘Father knows Lloyd George’, and was sung, interminably, to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, a well-known hymn. It was very popular in the New Army.
“Is that patriotic, Tommy?”
“Of course it is! Lloyd George is the father of the English nation, or of as many of them as he can possibly manage!”
There was a burst of laughter from the waiters at the back of the room, and they were supposed not to be listening. Jim scowled and suggested that Tommy might wish to sit down before he caused any more harm to discipline and good order.
A messenger came across from Pot, requesting Tommy’s presence.
“Bolton’s commission has just come through, Tommy. Boom has done a very thorough job of it, too. He is made permanent Second Lieutenant, breveted Captain with immediate effect – treated as if he was a specialist civilian just joining us. Not unheard of, but uncommon in the extreme. I shall arrange uniforms for him – replacements from the QM as if his kit had been lost due to enemy action and he needed temporary issues while he informed his tailor. No difficulty in that. I have captain’s stars here, to fit onto his working dungarees. Do you want to do the honours?”
“Please, sir. I have known him since I was a boy.”
“You still are a boy, Tommy, but I shall excuse the slip.”
Tommy timed his visit to the hangars for just after ten o’clock, the normal time for tea break. He called Baldy Ross to come out of his office.
“Get the lads together, will you, Baldy? Run a quick parade.”
Baldy wondered why, did as he was told.
Tommy looked at the ranks in front of him, decided to make a brief speech.
“Eight weeks of flying hard, and not one of us let down by a broken plane. I don’t know how many hours of sleep you lost to achieve that, but I can guess. Thank you. Flight-Serge
ant Bolton to step forward, if you please.”
Puzzled, Bolton took two paces and came to attention.
“You are one of the most experienced mechanics in the whole of England, Mr Bolton. For the benefit of those of you who do not know, Mr Bolton was Chief Mechanic to Joseph Stark, my father. He was then a foreman in the Royal Aircraft Factory before joining the RFC. As a result, Mr Bolton, you have been awarded a commission, and promoted captain.”
Tommy produced the stars and handed them across.
“Put up your marks of rank, if you would be so good, Captain Bolton. Major Ross?”
Major Ross had no real idea of what to do and called the parade to attention before exchanging salutes with Mr Bolton.
Tommy grinned and left, hearing a roar of cheering as he came away.
“All well, Tommy?”
“Very, Jim. I think the mechanics took it as intended, as a compliment to them all. They have done a bloody good job.”
“Unseen, unrewarded. Bright men, as well.”
“We need them, Jim. How are we off for slit trenches or bunkers against an air raid? Never occurred to me before, but a dozen bombs in their quarters and the squadron would be buggered!”
“It would, too… good thought. I’ll get on the telephone to Captain Marks, see if he can lend us some of his coolies. I’ve got a little extra tucked away in the stores – they would probably welcome a couple of days digging holes for us in exchange for a warm overcoat for winter.”
“How did you manage that?”
“You remember the kerosene stoves, which we indented for in May?”
Tommy nodded.
“They had none, it transpired, but offered extra blankets instead. I closed on the deal, only for them to discover that all of their blankets had been sent out to Macedonia against an urgent requisition the previous day, so they sent four hundred heavy khaki greatcoats as a replacement, all unofficial, but they had them in store since August ‘14 because they had understood that the RFC was to be stationed in part in the highest hills of the Ardennes. Once it became clear that we would not be sitting on top of mountains anywhere, they had to justify their possession of cold-weather gear, which they could not do, so they had written them off as lost in the retreats of September and October ’14. Since then, they had been sat on the shelves and a nuisance at every stocktake, so they were glad to dump them on us.”
Dark Days Of Summer (Innocents At War Series, Book 4) Page 24
