“Same stretch of trenches or go hunting elsewhere, Tommy?”
“Go back to where we were, Noah; they might have expected us to give up on barren ground.”
Whether they had outthought the enemy, they did not know, but they spotted a single biplane as they crossed the German trenches. It was on Noah’s side and Tommy waved to him to go after it, watching in case it was an ambush, a decoy circling over machine-gun nests. The DH2 outdived the older machine and Noah caught it within two minutes, opening fire a little high and ahead of his target and letting his nose slowly drop as he corrected for line. The stream of bullets hit around the propeller and then marched down the engine and into the cockpit. Five seconds and the biplane was dropping out of control, crashing just behind the trench line. Noah climbed hard and banked right and left, easily evading the shells thrown at him, came back to parallel Tommy at four thousand feet. They exchanged waves, gravely. They saw nothing else, returned for lunch.
“One down, Elbow. A biplane of some sort.”
“One of the newer Aviatiks, Noah. The observers have already telephoned it in to us. You were in sight of one of our balloons.”
No Longer A Game
Chapter Three
A brief luncheon and they managed three more patrols in the afternoon, all blank; they had flown nearly nine hours and were tired, close to exhaustion, almost groaned when they were cheered into the Mess. There would be a squadron bash after dinner, it was inevitable, and they could not cry off without causing offence sufficient to undo their morale-boosting.
Tommy woke with a throbbing head, not particularly helped by Smivvels standing with a cup of tea and the announcement that it was another ‘bright, shining day, just right for flying’.
“It’s still bloody dark, Smivvels!”
“Yes, sir. But I been out and ‘ad a good look at the sky, sir. Just right, sir. Spoke to the cooks, I did, last night, and they got bacon frying just ready for dawn, sir, and eggs; promised they would, sir, so as to give you every chance to get some more of they bloody Huns, sir!”
“Wonderful!”
Tommy washed, dressed and staggered across to the Mess anteroom, stared at the plate of fragrant, savoury bacon and runny eggs, the yolk soft just as he liked it, lovingly and willingly fried by cooks wanting nothing so much as to do their bit for their fliers. He had to eat it; there was no way he could throw their effort back in their faces.
Noah joined him, equally pale.
“Oh, Jesus! Tommy, must I?”
He answered his own question by picking up knife and fork and attacking his plate. Coffee came, strong and brewed to perfection; they drank it, trying to seem delighted, overwhelmed almost.
Tommy caught the eye of the Mess waiter, an elderly, flat-footed private.
“Give the lads my thanks, will you? It really makes the day to start off with a breakfast like this under our belts.”
The answering smile told him he had found the right words.
The DH2s had been wheeled out of the hangars, engines warmed up, having been worked on for most of the night. The guns were loaded with full pans and the spares were in place. Mr May, the Armourer, poked his head out of his workshop and waved; they raised a hand in return, exchanged nods with him.
“What was that about, Tommy?”
“He’s modified the rounds in our pans, Noah. Made them that bit more effective, even if not quite in the spirit of the Hague Convention.”
“Tut! How wicked of him!”
“Exactly so. I shall, of course, refuse to fly with them, demanding that he reload with standard ball. Oh dear! Too late! We must take off in a couple of minutes. Remind me to talk with him later. I have asked Smivvels to lay his hands on a carton if he can.”
“I’ll tell my man to do the same.”
“Eight thousand feet today, Noah?”
“In case they look for us at four thou’ where we were yesterday? Good idea, for they may have digged a pit for us.”
“Do what?”
“Heathen! Psalm 57.6 – ‘they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen’. Half our time in the orphanage classes was spent memorising texts from the Holy Writ.”
“My education was sadly neglected, Noah.”
Tommy noticed, but did not comment on, this first ever revelation of Noah’s upbringing and lack of family.
Twenty minutes took them to eight thousand feet, a respectable rate of climb, but expensive of petrol; they could patrol safely for another hour before needing to head homewards.
A bright morning as they came flying out of the darker west and scanning the ground in front of them. It looked quite pretty from a mile and a half up, a study in mud-brown and autumnal greens and gold. They watched as a pair of old Taubes staggered across the German lines as if to go out on a reconnaissance patrol at two thousand feet, drew together to shake their heads and peer higher for the trap. The duck was just too lame to be believable. Noah pointed to a speck at about five thousand, another monoplane, just the one Fokker.
‘Why?’ Tommy wondered. ‘When they must have seen a pair of pushers with a front-mounted gun yesterday.’
The solution came quickly – the sole witnesses had been on the ground, soldiers who could not tell one machine from another. The report had probably gone back of a pair of Vickers Gunbuses, slow old machines that had been about for almost a year, pushers with a front gun and a top speed of perhaps sixty-five, with a following wind. A single Fokker was less visible than a pair and would expect to polish off any couple of Gunbuses.
The Fokker was on Tommy’s side; he pointed to it, thumb to his own chest, signalled Noah to make hay with the Taubes.
Tommy delayed his own dive by a few seconds, waited until the Fokker had seen Noah and committed himself to a curving dive that would bring him quickly onto Noah’s tail. He banked to starboard and into a steeper dive, on the verge of losing control, the DH2 wanting to snap into a spin, to snatch the controls out of his hand. He was ten miles an hour, more perhaps, the faster; he came onto the Fokker’s tail unseen, a good fifteen seconds before it was in position on Noah. A certain, simple kill – just the right sort.
He had watched Noah’s technique on the previous day, had thought it very nifty indeed, copied it now, saw the pilot jerk upright in horror as bullets buried themselves in front of him, grazed his shoulder and ripped through his petrol tank in a bloom of fire.
Tommy watched almost sympathetically as the pilot tried to lean away from the flames and then snatched at his belt buckle and jumped, preferring the long fall to slow combustion.
The two Taubes went down in seconds, one possibly managing a crash landing, the other falling apart in mid-air.
Tommy and Noah formed up and climbed back to four thousand feet, comfortably out of accurate machine-gun range and paraded along the German trenches for twenty minutes, rubbing salt in the wound, they hoped, and then went home.
As he landed, Tommy realised he no longer had a headache; he had found a hangover cure.
Intelligence officer, Elbow was waiting, almost jumping up and down with delight, Major Lewis at his side.
“The telephone started ringing ten minutes ago, Tommy. Alford is still taking calls. Who did which, this time?”
“Two Taubes to Noah – he set himself up, triggered the trap, for me to come in behind the Fokker as it went for him.”
They nodded their respect to Noah, Major Lewis going so far as to clap him on the shoulder.
“Well done, the pair of you! Brigadier Trenchard will probably pay us a visit in person, Baring has just told me. He wishes to express his admiration. He has, apparently, already informed the Frogs of our successes. They will not be delighted.”
“I thought the French were our allies, sir.”
“Silly man! Whatever gave you that idea? Do you know the buggers are charging us rental for the use of facilities in France? Any rations or other stores sent by rail have to pay freight, and any trains loaded with soldiers have t
o pay for their tickets first, would you believe!”
“Surprising that, sir. Not to worry – they’ve never forgiven us for Waterloo.”
A mechanic, a civilian from Airco, came ambling across, hands in pockets, butted into their conversation.
“I’m grounding you for a couple of hours, guv. Didn’t like the sound of the other bloke’s bloody engine, and I want to put the rigger onto yours – you got a couple of slack bloody wires on the port wings. Comes of pushing the turns to the right too bloody hard. I told the boss he should strengthen them bloody wings; need a pair of solid bloody pylons, but it’s no bloody use talking to de Havilland – always knows better, he does. Anyway, I told that flight-sergeant bloke to push ‘em into the bloody hangar, and he’s doing that now. Fired your bloody guns, didn’t you? Can smell ‘em. Get anything?”
“Major Stark destroyed a Fokker and Captain Arkwright put down two Taubes.” Major Lewis’s tone made it clear that he was not amused; the mechanic did not notice.
“Well done, guv. Makes it worth the bloody effort, you using the machine right, for what it’s been bloody made for. Two hours, and if I don’t come across nothing serious, then she’s yours again.”
The civilian wandered off, hands having never left his pockets; the Station Warrant Officer, who had gravitated towards the senior men quite naturally, stood and fumed, unable to do or say a thing to the horrible object.
“Do we need civilians here, sir?”
“Yes. They will train our mechanics on the new planes. They are two of the most expert men in England.”
The Warrant Officer spotted a private with a button undone a hundred yards away and set off in pursuit of legitimate prey.
“Tea, gentlemen?”
They followed Major Lewis to the Mess.
“I have sent every BE2c out, gentlemen. I hoped that the air would be empty if you had another success. I hope it will stay that way for a few days now. The boys will be outrageous tonight, I must warn you, though I suspect you will know that. To take down four Huns in two days is as nearly incredible as may be. How many does that make you, Tommy?”
“Four for me; three for Noah. I suppose the count is important, sir?”
“The Frogs started it. They call their men ‘aces’ if they take down five. I do not believe that Brigadier Trenchard approves. What do you plan to do next?”
“Practice escort, sir. I am not at all certain that it is possible, cannot imagine a scheme for it, but I suspect it may be necessary. The question is whether we should expect an ordinary pursuit plane to act as escort or whether we need to develop a specific machine for the purpose. If the latter, of course, then what sort of specification do we set out?”
“Good question. I have no suggestions to make. While I sit on the ground I have nothing useful to offer!”
Major Lewis made it clear by his attitude that he was actively seeking an excuse to get back into the air.
They sat over tea for an hour, talking about very little, shying away from the war and anything of importance. Major Lewis was disappointed that they had seen none of the London shows and could not advise him which to see and to miss; he would, he suspected, have to ask his wife, who would not have seen them either.
“Difficult, you know, Tommy, stuck out here so close to home and unable to find a day away from the job. You must recognise that, but at least you will be back in England before the end of the month. Are these DH2s the answer, truly?”
“No. I don’t think any pusher can be the answer, but they may be a useful stopgap. I have never been near the universities, you know, sir, but I met a few professors earlier in the year to discuss bombardments. They knew nothing of the practicalities of dropping a bomb, but had a command of the theory of, what did they call it? ‘Ballistics’, that was the word. There must be others who can’t fly but who could draw up a sensible specification for a plane that the pilots and mechanics could make work. Our designers are good men, generally, but they don’t have the, I don’t know, the mathematics or whatever to create something new.”
Major Lewis scratched his head as he tried to make sense of Tommy’s struggle for abstract thought.
“What you mean, perhaps, Tommy, is that our engineers are good at doing what they know, but they can’t do what they don’t know, so they can’t really invent a new sort of plane?”
Tommy sat back, delighted to have been understood.
“That’s it, sir! We need something new, not a better version of something old!”
Noah sat silent, unwilling to show himself ignorant in the company of men who had not started work at the age of twelve, but had been able to learn things instead. He exempted Tommy from that category, to an extent, but he was certain that Major Lewis would have stayed in a classroom for many more years than he had. He let Major Lewis ask the obvious question.
“What would be your ideal plane, Tommy?”
“Twin engines, and as nippy in the air as a Bristol Scout. At least one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Carrying an armoured petrol tank – that’s for sure! Twin machine-guns, fifties, not three-o-threes. Have to be a biplane so that it could stunt, but the wings made of steel girders and duralumin sheeting – not wood and canvas! Besides that, a hold to carry bombs – at least half a ton – for use when it wasn’t being a pursuiter. Single seater, of course.”
“What size would those engines have to be, Tommy?”
“Damned if I know, sir! Two at two hundred horsepower apiece?”
“Three hundred, Tommy,” Noah interrupted. “Four hundred in total couldn’t be enough. Ten years before we have engines that big!”
“Ah well, it was a thought, Noah.”
“I will send your thought up the line, Tommy – not attributed to you, but as the general feeling of the pilots. The brass might at least listen to us, even if they actually do nothing afterwards.”
They stayed in the Mess, watched as the reconnaissance machines landed, none missing, their pilots making their reports and then drifting across for a bite to eat, most having been unable to take more than tea or coffee before flying.
The senior Flight Commander came across to them.
“Empty sky, sir, but very angry Archie! The German ground gunners threw everything but the kitchen sink at us. That comes tomorrow, I expect.”
“Have you been offending the Hun again, Tommy, while we were about our daily chores?”
“One Fokker and two decoy Taubes, David!” Major Lewis almost shouted the response so that everyone in the Mess could hear.
“Well done, my good and faithful! That will cause them to choke on their sausages! What’s your next trick, Tommy?”
“If the planes are released by the mechanics, I want to go up with you this afternoon and see if it’s possible to act as escort, like the Navy does with merchant ships.”
David considered that possibility, thought it would be very nice, if it could be done.
“Keeping your speed down to ours; flying above, so that you could dive and get your speed up quickly. Watching above, below and to both sides, and in front and behind, is not likely to be easy. To do it, you will need twelve of you, a pair watching in each direction, at first guess. You might end up with three or four times as many escorts as spotting planes or bombardment machines. Try it, by all means, Tommy, and I for one will be very glad to see you up there, but I can’t see how to make it work!”
They had to show confident, certain that they could overcome the minor difficulties outlined, but Tommy agreed; it was not a practical task.
They discovered just how impossible escort duty was that afternoon. Eight BE2cs took off, each with its own set of objectives; they scattered across ten miles of the trench lines and their immediate hinterland: photographing suspected ammunition and stores dumps; spotting for the artillery; seeking out changes in the placement of German guns; examining the reported location of new troops coming as reinforcements. The two DH2s were attempting to protect planes dispersed over sixty square miles; it co
uld not be done, it was a physical impossibility.
They landed and reported total failure in their objective.
“Up for two hours, and it was rare that I even had two of our planes in sight, Elbow! If there had been Fokkers busy, the first I might have known would have been a trail of smoke going down. I might well have got to the scene just in time to watch the bang as our lads hit the ground, but I would never have got within a mile of the Fokker.”
Noah agreed; he would have been able to provide an audience, perhaps, but he could have done nothing.
“As you feared, in fact. Brigadier Trenchard is in Major Lewis’ office at the moment. Go across as soon as you have cleaned up.”
It was general policy not to wear flying coats stinking of castor oil into the working offices.
They washed and changed into mess dress, having no intention of flying again that day; they had to think of something useful to do first.
“I have… spoken to… London, Captain… Arkwright. Bar to… that MC… immediate effect… sir.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Well… done! Nothing for… you, Major Stark. Not yet. Very good… show!”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was impossible, in practical terms, to make any award to Tommy. A bar to the DSO was rare, and demanded the most exceptional circumstances, and the Victoria Cross was reserved for combats in which the recipient’s death was more likely than not and where his actions had saved at least one comrade’s life. He certainly could not be promoted, having been pushed as far was allowable without putting him permanently behind a desk.
“Are these… de Havillands… the answer… to the Fokker?”
“They could be, sir. Forty or fifty of them would be able to drive the Fokkers out of the air. But the Fokker is an old machine, sir. There must be something newer, faster, more manoeuvrable soon to arrive.”
“Next spring… Intelligence… says. Biplane. Tractor. Faster, unstable. Fly rings… round a pusher.”
No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3) Page 6
