Andrew Wareham
No Longer A Game
Innocents At
War Series
BOOK THREE
Digital edition published in 2017 by
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No Longer A Game
Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Wareham
All Rights Reserved
Contents:
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
By the Same Author
Introduction
No Longer A Game: The RFC is desperate to train more pilots to replace those killed in action and in training. With a major ground offensive imminent, there is an urgent need to form specialist squadrons to support the troops. However, the German Fokkers are an ever-present threat. Against this back-drop, Tommy is given the almost impossible task of training up fledgling pilots who are hell-bent on treating the Corps as a gentleman’s club. There is no time to spare as he battles to have the pilots ready for the lethal conflicts to come. Best read in series order
Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings, punctuation and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English.
No Longer A Game
Chapter One
The Shorthorn was nose-down, banking increasing sharply to starboard, about to convert stall into a spin at two thousand feet.
Tommy wasted no time swearing; he shouted at the trainee pilot to centralise the control lever. The boy did nothing, rigid in panic. It was one of the early models, observer’s, and instructor’s, cockpit behind the pilot. Harry leaned forward from his seat and swung his right hand in a roundhouse punch that connected with the unfortunate youth’s temple, knocking him luckily to the left; he heaved the clasp of his safety belt undone with one hand, leaned forward and snatched the control lever with the other while hooking at his seat with one foot. He was laid out, almost flat on the coaming between the two cockpits, able just to reach the lever with one hand and nudge at the throttle with his right. He brought the old trainer level and then commenced a slow descent, throttling back to the lowest practical airspeed.
The landing field was visible just ahead, as were two other Shorthorn trainers. He could not reach the Very pistol to fire a red flare; he hoped they were watching the sky around them.
The trainee began to stir, dazed but not wholly knocked out.
“If you move, other than to do as I tell you, I shall throw you over the side, you hopeless little prick!”
“I say, sir! That is uncalled for language!”
“Get your feet on the rudder bar, now! Hold us level. Now bring the ailerons to landing position – slowly, you brain-dead bastard!”
“I must protest, sir!”
“If we ever get to the ground you can protest as much as you like, while I kick your useless backside as far as the gate and out the other side! Now, sit still!”
Noah Arkwright flew a hundred feet higher and across their track, leaning out of the observer’s cockpit, calling instructions to his own trainee pilot while watching all that was happening and firing three red flares to call out the emergency teams on the field and warn off all other planes.
“Thank Christ there is one man awake around here! Leave that bloody control lever alone, boy! I am landing this plane!”
They came down a little faster than Tommy might have chosen and steeper as well, bounced once and came to a halt.
“Switch the engine off, prick!”
The trainee did as he was ordered, pouting mightily.
Tommy slid back into the rear cockpit and then swung a leg over the side and out of the aircraft.
“Lieutenant Travers! Get out of the aeroplane.”
“No! You’re going to hit me again!”
“I’m going to fetch a rifle, Lieutenant Travers. If you are still in that seat, I shall bloody shoot you!”
“I’m coming out!”
The commanding officer hobbled across to them, heard that exchange.
“What has happened, Major Stark? What is this about ‘hitting’ a junior officer, sir?”
“He put the plane into a stall, panicked and froze, Major Richards. I was able to stun him and crawl from my cockpit to take enough control to get us to land, sir.”
Noah landed, his trainee flying sufficiently well to bring him down and taxy across to them. He ran across.
“First time I’ve seen that, Tommy. Almost as good a trick as Strange managed when he fell out changing the pan on his Lewis Gun. Crawling out of the back seat and flying a landing lying on your belly over the front – as Drongo used to say, ‘hot stuff, mate’!”
Others of the instructors who had watched from the ground confirmed it was a very good stunt and asked whether Tommy could teach them how to do it.
Major Richards shook his head, said he had never heard the like. He was a penguin who had crashed in the first week of the war, had never managed to get the Bleriot he was flying as far as Dover, and had been a trainer ever since. Unable to fly, he gave occasional lectures and presided expertly at funerals, having, he believed, attended more interments than any other serving RFC officer.
“Well… I must say that I don’t like the necessity of thumping an officer in the air, Major Stark.”
“I agree, sir, that it is a most undesirable expedient. I request permission to carry my service revolver in future, sir, so that I can shoot the little sods if occasion arises.”
“Much the best course, Major Stark. A bullet through the brain is far more satisfactory for a gentleman, and obviously appropriate in this example!”
Lieutenant Travers remained silent, shaking a little in shock and trying to hide the wet patch in his breeches. Major Richards stared disapprovingly and sent him off to his billet.
“Well, I do not know I have ever seen the like of that, Stark, old chap! Pissed himself!”
“The least of his sins, I think, sir. Noah, how long did that landing take? Felt like I was up there forever!”
“No more than four minutes, Tommy, from the time I saw something was wrong and then spotted you laid out flat on top. I thought you were finally a goner this time, Tommy. I was trying to think of what to say to Monkey, old chap.”
Noah, without family that he recognised in England – why Tommy had never asked, none of his business – had stayed weekends at Wilton and dined with them frequently, had become a friend of both and was to be a godfather to the enormous lump that was soon to become the
ir firstborn.
“I’m glad that was one task I could save you, anyway, Noah.”
They walked slowly back towards the Mess while the mechanics pushed the Shorthorn towards the hangars, wrinkling their noses and sending the most junior Air Mechanic Third Class for a bucket of hot water and a scrubbing brush and carbolic soap.
“What’s to be done with Travers, Major Stark?”
“Dump him, sir. Out, and as fast as possible. He will never make a pilot. Froze at the controls and wet himself as well! I don’t know that we can even recommend him to keep his commission, sir, but he must leave the RFC whatever happens.”
Major Richards shook his head, regretting that it might not be quite as easy as that.
“Boy’s from a good family, you know. His mother was something of a friend of my wife’s before she married, so I know her people. Besides that, his father is a big man in the City – can pull all sorts of strings!”
“My wife’s father is big in the City and a junior minister in the government, sir. I am sure he can counter any backdoor pressure Travers may bring to bear.”
Major Richards was still unhappy; a malign influence in the background could quietly surface in a year or two and arrange a posting to deepest Africa, or, far worse, as liaison with the Admiralty.
“I don’t like it, even so, Tommy! Do you think we might just recommend that he should be trained at one of the other fields, for having fallen out with an instructor?”
“He is a menace, sir. He is also yellow, in my opinion. He should be discharged from the RFC, not merely grounded. Unfit to hold the King’s Commission, sir.”
“Oh! I can’t do that, Tommy – my wife… his mother… There would such a hullabaloo, you know! Let us instead pull a string or two of our own, transfer the boy to a good regiment, let him go out to France to redeem himself there. What do you say, Noah?”
“I asked Tommy to have a look at him, sir. I wanted to scrub him last week, thought I might have been too severe because I don’t like him – real nasty little shit, sir. Asked me which family of Arkwrights I belonged to and what was my school. I told him the truth and he hardly spoke a word to me after that – not fit to breathe the same air as him. So I asked Tommy to take him over, just to be sure I was right. I thought he was twitchy, but I knew I detested him.”
Major Richards accepted that Travers must be found unfit to serve, could not simply be sent to the Army; he could not deny the professional opinions of his two decorated instructors.
“Honest of you, Noah – but I know you would be; I may not be able to fly any more but I can judge a man. You’re right, of course, but they ain’t going to like it in London. So, we shall do the job thoroughly - I shall make a telephone call now and put the papers in this afternoon, and tell Travers tomorrow evening, by which time the wheels will be turning and any number of senior men will have the word of a scandal to be kept quiet. Sack a man as a coward and they will all want to make sure the newspapers don’t hear of it and demand a court-martial and see the poor chap shot. They’ll have him processed and out before the end of the day after tomorrow. His father can shout then, but he’ll be too late, the boy’s papers will be stamped as ‘Unfit for Lack of Moral Fibre’. Impossible to argue with that – it says that a scandal has been averted, that someone has buried a horrible truth very deep and that this body must never be disturbed. He will be finished for any form of government service, for life, and the whisper will spread throughout the City that he is not to be employed, that he’s a wrong’un. If he does not kill himself, he will be forced to go overseas, you know!”
They nodded their reluctant agreement; that was the right way to go on, the sole way of getting the weakling out of their midst, and without the chance of letting a platoon down in France.
Noah was shocked, as well – he did not come from a background that knew these things, that was aware of the network of influence that was so important in the running of the country, and that could be so ruthless in dealing with those of its own who had transgressed.
“Won’t that get you into trouble, sir?”
“How can it, Noah? I’m a cripple. The day this war ends, I shall be surplus to requirements. If I am lucky, they will promote me colonel as soon as the end is certain, so that I can retire to a better pension; they will probably pay me invalidity as well, provided the quacks agree that I will be unable to work in civilian life, and as long as they haven’t simply dumped the payments because there are hundreds of thousands of war-wounded claiming! I cannot lose anything, Noah, for having nothing to lose! I am luckier than most, I would add, for having the right sort of background and a ‘good’ wife. I would not be surprised if I was offered a seat in the House of Commons, to be trotted out as a deserving veteran and put on official committees, all of which will pay heavy expenses, and allow me to fork out the school fees for my boys without having to beg from the family.”
“There will be quite a few thousand of the almost destroyed, sir, thinking on it. Most of them to be hidden away in hospitals, out of sight, poor sods!”
“If you are an Other Ranks or a junior officer without a family, the message is simple, Noah. Get killed, not crippled!”
They walked slowly towards the Mess, deciding it was time for tea. There was a pair of trainees waiting uncertainly by the hangars; Noah shouted across to them to take a break for twenty minutes.
“Shall I send yours away for the morning instead, Tommy?”
“No, the poor little chap must have his turn. Banks, is it? He’s due to solo soon. Today, probably, after a last session with me. Can’t let him down now. Weather prospects ain’t good for tomorrow so it’s only decent not to keep him hanging about.”
The Shorthorn was not ‘ready for service’ when Tommy returned to the hangar.
“Pongs, it does, sir. Needs washing out again; stuff’s got down all the cracks in the floor boards. Use the spare BE2c, sir?”
“Will do, thank you. Who is that over at the back there? New mechanic, is it?”
“New joined, sir. Aircraftman is all. He ain’t trained up yet.”
Tommy stared into the gloom of the hangar – an older man, pushing a broom; familiar, he was certain.
“If that’s the man I think it is, he knows more about planes than any other man here, Sergeant Morgan!”
Morgan, five years in the rank, and an Engineer before transferring to the RFC, bridled at the comment.
“Three years, I have been, sir, working aircraft engines…”
“Mr Bolton started working as a mechanic at Brooklands in ’09, Sergeant Morgan.”
Sergeant Morgan said no more, realising that he had made a fool of himself. The new man’s face would be in the background of any number of photographs taken in the early days, was probably staring at him from the wall of his billet.
“Joined up, Mr Bolton? I would have thought that you would have been better as a foreman in one of the factories.”
“Mr Stark, sir. Good to see you again, sir! I was working for the Royal Aircraft Factory, sir, and fell out with the management for another stupid idea that wouldn’t work. Mr O’Gorman kicked me out, sir, sacked me for telling him he was wrong. Next week he came round to the house to take me back, so the missus told me, but he was too bloody late; I’d had a gutfull of him and his temper! I joined up, sir, in the RFC, and was told that I could be sent as a mechanic on a training field for a month while I got used to the service and then I would go out to France.”
“I’ll talk to the CO, Mr Bolton, see what we can do for you.”
Sergeant Morgan tentatively enquired whether Mr Bolton would be working in the hangar for the while, and at what rank.
“I don’t know, Sergeant Morgan. Have a word with the captain.”
Tommy thought of his father’s other mechanic, an equally skilled and valuable man.
“Was Mr Edwards with you at the Factory, Mr Bolton?”
Bolton shook his head.
“He’s dead, sir, with a widow and three
youngsters. He joined up in August, for thinking that he would have to hurry if he was to see anything of the war. It was to end at Christmas, you will remember, Mr Stark. He joined the Middlesex Regiment and was out at that Ypres place before two months were passed, and he was dead within the week.”
“Madness, Mr Bolton! We have so few trained and experienced technical men! For one to die like that is sheer insanity.”
“Most of the boys at Brooklands went off to the war, sir. Mr O’Gorman was trying to have them sent home again, taken back from the Army, but the soldiers are complaining that they cannot afford to lose men, sir. Mr Edwards was far better than me when it came to rigging an aeroplane, sir – he could feel when everything was true.”
The Engineering Captain joined them, enquired of Tommy exactly what was happening in his hangar.
“I must apologise, Captain Stainer. I met my father’s chief mechanic here, Mr Bolton – the first time I have seen him since my father died. I know that I am trespassing, but I ventured to mention to Sergeant Morgan that Mr Bolton was one of the finest engine mechanics I have ever met. He was a foreman in the Royal Aircraft Factory most recently, he tells me.”
“Was he, by God! And chief mechanic to Stark before that? I had not put two and two together, Major Stark – I had not associated you with your father! Damned foolish of me, sir! What are we to do with, Bolton, is it?”
“He has just joined the RFC – having fallen out with Mr O’Gorman. He should be an officer, with his knowledge. Whatever – it is ludicrous to waste him as the lowest of the low!”
“I need another sergeant; I will speak to the CO and have him made acting. As for a commission – not so easy, these days. Too many of the ‘wrong sort’ were made in the first months of the war and there is a push to ensure that only gentlemen are made officers; given a choice between an incompetent schoolboy from Harrow and a skilled working man, the Harrovian is made up every time now.”
No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3) Page 1
