“Good comment! I think you’re right there, Noah. Trouble is, we have no organisation for picking out targets. We don’t have staff officers at Wing, or Brigade, who can say which targets are worthwhile and which should never be touched. No list of priorities at all. Look at what we have today. You have been out three times and your pilots must be knackered, but I have the strictest of orders to fly you again. But the aims are: ‘targets of support at the trenches’; ‘artillery suppression’; ‘cutting the railways bringing in shells’. No further detail.”
“Which are we to undertake, sir?”
“The first – because it sounds more enthusiastic. Hundred-pound bombs and to be released out of machine-gun range. What would happen if you were to fly to the limit of our advance and then drop your bombs from four thousand, gentlemen?”
“They would land half a mile or so into Hunland. Randomly.”
“Close enough to scare a good few of the support troops. They have a set of defences back to three miles, I am told, and so will be fairly thick on the ground still at half a mile from the front line. That is what you will do. I want you then to patrol over the Germen lines, together, looking for anything in the air. What would happen if the ten of you put up a barrage of Lewis Gun fire at a Fokker?”
“Don’t know, sir, but it’s worth a try. Better than leaving them unchallenged for another three months.”
They took off and dropped their bombs and pottered about for ninety minutes and saw nothing – the air was empty. Possibly the decision had been taken to fly Fokkers exclusively in pairs so that to damage one was to ground both – they did not know. Another hour and a half of flying time was valuable for the boys; it was not a wasted exercise.
They ate, and then they drank and finished the evening by pouring the boys into their beds.
“They’ll have sore heads in the morning.” Noah commented, “but they will have slept all night.”
“More than I will do,” Major Kite responded. “I have to send them out again in the morning. Incidentally, why do you refer to them as boys? They ain’t much younger than you, Noah, and I’m sure that some are older than Tommy.”
“Not correct, sir! Tommy was born older than Methuselah, and he ain’t got younger since.”
“You may be right – in any case a year of this war ages any man by a decade at least. Anyway – flying at dawn.”
“What to do, sir?”
“Railway yards, some twenty miles behind the lines, at a place called, let me see, Valenciennes. There is said to be a major supply depot there. What is unknown is exactly which supplies. Could be artillery, might be rations. Could be a thousand tons of paper and ink for the record-keepers – the Huns are said to be even more bureaucratic than our people.”
Tommy tried to look blank.
“I expect it’s those sausages they eat, sir.”
“’Bureaucratic’, Tommy, is, I appreciate, a long word, and as such unfamiliar to you. It means ‘beset by offices, clerks and regulations’.”
“Oh! Like us, you mean, sir?”
“Not at all like us, Tommy! We merely have proper channels – the correct ways of doing things, which involves offices, clerks and regulations, but only by coincidence. The Frogs and Huns have a bureaucracy while we have a Civil Service; any similarities are purely superficial.”
“Could we bomb them instead, sir?”
“Turn west instead of east and accidentally bomb Whitehall? The court-martial might not believe that you misread your compass, Tommy. Tempting, in the extreme, but probably a little too much of a good thing… Wait a few more months, then come back with the idea again, Tommy.”
“A few more months, sir? If I come back then it will probably be my ghost making the proposal.”
“Sleep on it, Tommy. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Valenciennes, sir?”
Tommy and Noah were eating their breakfast, setting an example, as they were convinced was only right for Flight Commanders. The bulk of their pilots were toying with cups of coffee and watching them with undisguised horror. Major Kite sat down beside them, a heaped plate of kedgeree rapidly disappearing; he enjoyed a good, solid breakfast, and had a head like rock for alcohol.
“Valenciennes? Where’s that? Seven Squadron have that job; always did have, Wing have just told me. You are going half as far, to Douai, where there is a known and attested-to supply depot, certainly full to the roofs with foodstuffs. You are to go, laden one half of you with Hales bombs, to be dropped from one thousand feet, thus permitting them to arm themselves, and the remainder carrying the two-pound incendiaries, in their nets, with contact detonators. The bombs are to blow the roofs open, of course.”
“They’ll miss at a thousand feet, sir. Not a hope in hell of hitting with as many as one in ten.” Noah reached for the toast rack, made a performance of buttering a slice. “Unscrew the detonators, sir, so that they are free to blow as soon as they leave the racks. Then drop from fifty feet.”
“What happens if you bump, taking off?”
“Boom!”
“You’re bloody mad! Stark, raving insane!”
“That’s Tommy, not me.”
“Oh, Christ! Was that meant to be witty?”
“It’s only six o’clock in the morning! What do you expect at this time of day?”
“I’ll speak to the armourers. I’ve lost my appetite for breakfast.”
Major Kite was waiting as they trooped out to the line of planes waiting at the hangars.
“The armourers refused to unscrew the fuses on the Hales bombs – they said there was too great a risk of the bombs detonating as soon as you started the engines. The vibration might be sufficient. However, they have a few of arming-piercing fuses which can be, and have been, fitted to one hundred-pound bombs; they delay the explosion for a second or so. The bombs will hit the corrugated iron roofs of the warehouses and crash through them and explode underneath them, thus to blow them wide open – so they say. If they are tile roofs, so much the better. There must be a delay of at least three seconds between the tin-openers and the incendiaries; that means a bit less than three hundred yards between the two Flights, assuming you attack at about sixty miles an hour, which is standard for bombardment, according to the Stark rules which have been accepted for low-level attacks.”
“Hoist by your own petard, Tommy!”
“Another Biblical text, Noah?”
“Hamlet, dear boy! We spent such time as we were not memorising Biblical texts on reading Shakespeare; it was supposed to be good for us.”
Major Kite raised an eyebrow, wondering just what school Noah had been to; he decided to ask Tommy, later.
“Who’s carrying what, sir?”
“The armourers fitted the bombs to Noah’s Flight and the incendiaries to yours, without referring to me.”
“You take off first, Noah, and I shall follow after a couple of seconds. Sort ourselves out in the air. Line abreast?”
“Should be more than one warehouse. Certain to have guns. Won’t be possible to circle and spy out the land… Line abreast and a direct attack, Tommy, and hope we are in the right place.”
“If we’re wrong then it will be good experience for the boys. Can’t lose.”
The great advantage of Douai was that it was barely twenty minutes distant; there was no chance of observers spotting the planes and telephoning the rear with the information in time for Fokkers to intercept them. The fact that there were very few Fokkers helped as well.
Noah found Douai with ease – railway lines converged there from three directions – and spotted a marshalling yard with a group of warehouses and sheds. Flying low, he had seconds to identify and choose his target and simply turned onto the largest building he could see; the planes to his left and right veered slightly away to select their own. He was pleased that his boys had grown up, could make their own decisions. He released his bomb and was rocked by its explosion – less than two seconds behind him, he was sure of that. There w
as anti-aircraft fire, just starting, delayed by surprise, he imagined, spotting a pair of larger guns to port and dropping his left wing low, banking into them and leaning across to the Lewis to spray a burst in their general direction. He was amazed to see the gun crews scatter away from his fire, but then supposed that they must be used to shooting, but, far behind the lines, not to being shot at. He turned away and climbed hard; he had done all that he could and there was no point to hanging about in the way of the machine-guns.
Noah reached three thousand feet and began to circle, resignedly fired a green flare from his Very pistol and watched as his lost sheep spotted him and returned to formation. It was not easy to see a single aircraft, or to identify its nature, particularly for the inexperienced. He stared down at the warehouses, was not too displeased.
The largest was in flames; smoke was already billowing from two distinct craters in the corrugated iron. Next to it a smaller building was showing pinpricks of fire on its roof where incendiaries had landed; they might possibly set rafters and joists afire below them. Men were running from a third big shed and there was a wisp of smoke from its end where a bomb had demolished part of the gable wall. Across the marshalling yard itself there were craters and dispersed fires – possibly some of the timber sleepers had caught light. Rail traffic would be disrupted for some hours, certainly. He could see no crashed planes, which was a pleasant surprise. Looking further afield he spotted Tommy’s Flight, counted five planes, four at about his own height and one labouring to climb beneath them; someone had been hit by ground fire.
Noah waved to his own Flight and led them to join Tommy’s; he identified them as he came closer – Blue and Frank, Joe and Micky in two pairs, which left Tommy as the struggling man below.
No Longer A Game
Chapter Five
Tommy swore as he moved his left hand; it hurt; a lot. The little finger was gone and there was damage to the palm and the next finger, the silk of his gloves stained with blood and torn; a couple of splinters had grazed his cheek as well, but that just stung a little – the cold air whipping across the exposed face numbed it. A burst of machine-gun fire had missed his body by inches, he suspected, striking across the cockpit from the right. He was bleeding, but not heavily, more from hand than face, but not seriously, as things went, from either. He took the towel he kept for wiping his goggles and clumsily bound it around the hand, loosely so that he could still reach out to the Lewis if he was forced to; the ends caught on a splinter of broken wood standing out from the cockpit coaming, caused him to wince.
He had spent too much time on himself, he realised; if he was to get home he must discover what was happening around him. He had climbed away from the raid almost without thinking, flying mechanically, out of habit; he vaguely wondered if this was what they called ‘shock’. It was one of the many things he had never bothered to discover – and this was no time to daydream!
He forced himself to concentrate.
He did not like the sound of the engine and he could hear fabric flapping somewhere on the fuselage, or to the rear of an upper wing, perhaps. He looked around, spotted his Flight above him by perhaps five hundred feet, Blue leading them, as ordered, and banking to put them on the course home. He followed suit, not as smoothly as he might have wished. He could see the lines, perhaps six miles distant; his speed was about eighty, at a guess, and he was holding his altitude, a little less than three thousand feet. He would rather like to have more height in hand, he thought and tried a very tentative climb.
The flapping noise of torn canvas increased; the plane slowed and, despite the nose-up attitude, showed no sign of getting higher. He levelled out and felt easier, picking up the few miles an hour he had lost. He tried to work out the arithmetic, muttering aloud.
“Eighty miles an hour is four miles in three minutes – which ain’t bad. Six miles makes four and a half minutes, which says back in home territory in five and to the airfield in another ten. A quarter of an hour, which ain’t very long at all, provided the engine keeps turning, and the canvas don’t tear much more.”
He heard an engine, turned his head to see Noah no more than twenty yards distant. He lifted his left hand, the towel now showing bloody. Noah waved comprehension and drifted a few more yards away, just in case he began to lose control.
Tommy felt better knowing that Noah was there; he could do nothing, but he could give a friendly wave now and then.
They crossed the trenches safely, the pilots staring down at the confused mess beneath them; the infantry had taken a few yards, had broken through the first line of trenches in two separate places, but seemed to have gained on a front of half a mile at most. The offensive had failed in any of its strategic aims; it might have straightened the line a little. Tommy wondered if the French had achieved any more in Artois. This was the third battle of the year on more or less the same ground, and had again produced no great movement. Perhaps a few thousand Huns had been killed; he could see obvious evidence that several thousands of British had died.
The engine coughed and shook the plane; the canvas rattled; his hand throbbed to the vibration. Perhaps he should be content to look for a piece of flat land rather than pushing on to the airfield. Ten minutes seemed a long time now. He eased the control lever forward and entered a very slow descent, looking about for any empty space. The trouble was that the land was rolling, low hills and shallow valleys, not unlike Leicestershire, and wet where it was at all flat; there were trees as well, behind the shell-ploughed acres. Tommy shrugged and held the plane at two thousand feet; the choice was made for him. The engine coughed and rattled threateningly again, then seemed to shake itself and settle down, like a faithful old hound in front of the fire – a lump of dirt, or a fragment of metal, in the fuel line, perhaps.
Eight minutes – he could not remember what the glide of a Bristol Scout was; he had seen the figures somewhere, and had ignored them as being important to an engineer, which he was not. It didn’t matter – he could not persuade the engine to keep going if it chose not to, had no way of controlling how far, if at all, he must travel without power.
Five minutes and his hand hurt, throbbing in time with the engine, it seemed, but that was silly, light-headed nonsense.
Noah buzzed closer, waving his arm up and down and Tommy realised that his right hand was wavering on the control lever. Stupid damned thing to do! He concentrated again.
He could not load and fire a flare without a left hand; Noah would realise that, of course.
The field was in sight and the remainder of his Flight and Noah’s peeled off into a circuit, giving him priority. Tommy grinned – it also gave them a grandstand view. Blue fired off a red flare, immediately before Noah’s. Good man that Digger – not only accepted responsibility, he looked for it. He could be made First Lieutenant and act as his second. Not that that would be the case, as he would not be flying for a week or two with his hand the way it was.
Wind in the south-west, which demanded the slightest of banks to starboard to bring him into it; the engine did not approve and the canvas gave a very distinct ripping noise, which was nervous-making, he thought. Into his landing approach, the coughing of the engine throwing him off a little. Better to glide in, he decided, and switched off. No noise from the engine, which allowed him to imagine that he could hear the canvas of the upper wing tearing free and possibly led to a steeper descent than was wise. He bounced on landing, which was irritating – so much for sang-froid!
He rolled to a stop, in the way of everyone else, which was ill-mannered of him, but he could not have faced attempting to taxy in, even if he had had an engine. He heaved himself out of his seat and made to step out of the cockpit, was grabbed by helpful hands and lowered to the ground.
“Bad one, sir?”
“Lost a finger, maybe two – painful but not too harmful. Left hand; will be able to fly tomorrow.”
The mechanic gave way to the medical man.
“Face is cut a bit. You’ll need that
stitching, perhaps; not in an easy location. Let me look at that hand, Tommy.”
The medical attendant unwrapped the towel, shook his head and quickly replaced the makeshift bandage with a sterile dressing.
“Two joints of the little finger gone – they will probably take the other as well, for tidiness’ sake. Chewed up the third finger, but I don’t think there’s bone damage at a first glance. No more than a scratch across the palm. As you say – not too harmful, but you will have the hand out of use for at least two weeks. Base hospital, for you, Tommy. It needs the services of a qualified man. How did the raid go?”
“Some success, Quack – got at least one of the warehouses.”
“Worth the effort then.”
It was starting to hurt unpleasantly, but even so Tommy noticed that the detachment of the medical student had been replaced by the commitment of a member of the squadron – losses were a part of winning, a finger or two nothing in the greater scheme of things. He vaguely thought that might be a pity for the man’s patients when he eventually qualified as a fully-fledged doctor. For the moment, Tommy was experiencing pain, and could not say so, not in front of the admiring throng – their particular hero had brought it off again: wounded and with a damaged aircraft, he had still come home.
The tender pulled up beside him and a pair of hands eased him up and into the rear seats; the CO’s face appeared.
“Sending you to Brigade, Tommy. We have an RFC doctor there – generally signing off LMF cases, but he will see to you. Been on the telephone to him this last two minutes. Base Hospital is swamped, no room for anything so minor as a finger or two – too many of the poor sods from the infantry who’ve been blown to bits – or choked by our own gas! You’ll be the better part of an hour on the road, but it makes a lot more sense. I’ll pull a man over to your Flight – but who, I don’t know. Got nobody who’s experienced on single-seaters.”
No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3) Page 11
