Returning to his office, Tommy was intercepted by the adjutant.
“New pilot, sir. Lieutenant Allen, who is known to you, I believe.”
“Ah, Barbry! You are very welcome. Have you eaten?”
“I took a bite in Salisbury on my way through, sir. I had to wait for the tender to come and pick me up at the station.”
“Good. Settle yourself in and then come on down to the hangars. We are getting used to handling the RE7 with a load of practice bombs aboard. By the way, are you busy at Christmas? We have a small party for Christmas Eve.”
Tommy and Noah remained on the field that night, saw the rigid split in the Mess between new hands and old. It was a pity, but could not be healed except over time. Hopefully, the strains of flying in France would bring them together.
News of the court-martial of Lord Cecil arrived before lunch next morning, provoked a combination of outrage and amazement. They had fully expected to see him walk through the door, vindicated and bearing with him the news of Tommy’s supersession, probably by him.
“Cashiered, but not dismissed from the service! That means he is now a private soldier!”
“I understand, gentlemen, that he is to be transferred out of the RFC. He has lost his wings, of course. I do not know where he has been sent to. I must imagine that his connections will seek a medical discharge from service for him.”
“It is an awful disgrace for the family, sir. I am amazed they tolerated it.”
“They were informed, one understands, that he might otherwise be sentenced to death for wilfully rendering himself unfit for service. The government believes that making oneself unfit by the abuse of alcohol - or opium or cocaine, for example – is no different to shooting oneself in the foot. A Self-Inflicted Wound, in fact. The details of the court-martial are to be disseminated throughout the Army.”
“It is no way to treat a gentleman, sir.”
“It was no way for a gentleman to behave.”
They did not think that he had the right to criticise one so far above him in his station in life.
“There is a way to behave to the blue-blooded, sir.”
“I wholly agree, gentlemen. Charles the First and Louis XVI were treated in that fashion, in my opinion. In this squadron, my squadron, every pilot is subject to the same rules, and granted the same privileges. We fight a very hard war, different to any that has ever gone before. We will fly for at most six hours in a day, and spend the remainder at ease. In exchange, those six hours are utterly demanding. What you do after the patrol is your business, but you will be wholly fit and committed when you are in the air. To be otherwise is to betray the men in the trenches.”
They thought he was a prig; he did not understand the most simple realities of existence.
Captain Ross’ little machine worked quite well, within its limitations, the most important being that it took at least three minutes to get a result from it. It told the pilot what his actual groundspeed was at some five miles distant from the target and gave an indicator of when to release the bombs. Provided the wind was constant, and the bombs dropped cleanly, and the altimeter was registering correctly, then it improved aiming by a significant factor. They found themselves consistently able to drop bombs within one hundred yards of their target.
“The bomb has an effective radius of about eighty yards, Major Stark. Provided you achieve a predictable scatter, some of them will be useful.”
Captain Ross regretted that he could do no better.
“If you release at the very edge of the target area, sir, then the remaining aircraft, who follow your lead, should land closer to its centre.”
They followed Captain Ross’ advice and by the time they went on leave for Christmas they were commonly landing two bombs out of fifteen in a place to do damage to the actual target.
Tommy was called to London, to General Henderson, on Boxing Day, rather to his annoyance; he had wanted the whole of Christmas at home.
Henderson was surrounded by his staff and a number of men in civilian dress.
“If you were ordered to subject a large target to bombardment, Major Stark, could you hit it?”
“How large, sir, and from what height?”
“Submarines in a naval repair yard. There is a photograph here. It is a recent creation, one which is intended to allow the major yards to concentrate on building new.”
The yard was at least a half mile wide, with submarines and other small ships drawn up out of the water on concrete slips. Tommy counted the number of repair bays.
“Ten of them, sir. It is a large target, and I would expect more than half of our bombs to land in it from five thousand feet. All of them from one thousand. But, I would be pleasantly surprised if any of them actually hit a submarine. There would be damage done, and fragments of the bomb casings might well cause casualties among the workers there, but the chance of a bomb being so fortunate as to actually impact on top of a submarine is very slight.”
“What if you made one of your low-level attacks, Major Stark?”
His low-level attacks; what it was to have a reputation!
“With the RE7, sir? It is a clumsy, lumbering cow of a machine. I could lose one half of the squadron to accident, and to ground fire. Given a ten-second fuse to the bombs, so that escape was possible, I would make the attack, sir. But if there were anti-aircraft guns, then I suspect it would be the squadron’s last action. I think we would certainly hit two or three of the vessels in the yard.”
A civilian, apparently, a man in his thirties with the look of a university academic about him – a baggy tweed jacket with leather elbow patches; a country check shirt and green tie, somewhat askew; corduroy trousers; brown brogues on his feet – asked what was needed by way of an aircraft that could bomb accurately.
“Several possibilities, sir. A twin-engine machine capable of at least one hundred and twenty miles an hour, with a ceiling of ten thousand feet and the capacity to carry at least a half of a ton and two gunners with machine-guns fore and aft. That would be one ideal, provided one could produce an accurate bomb sight. Alternatively, and more to my taste, a very fast machine, with armour plate around the engine, petrol tank and cockpit, with fixed machine-guns to each wing, fired by switches in the cockpit, and carrying again half a ton of bombs which would be delivered at fifty feet, thus needing no bomb sight. The machine-guns, of course, to attack the anti-aircraft guns as one made the approach. I would like, sir, very much, to examine the Russian Ilya Mouromets, which is big and carries a heavy load; it might be a model for a distant bombardment machine.”
“Which is best, Major Stark, high or low level bombardment?”
“Low level, sir, if one wishes to destroy a military target. High level is adequate, if one’s sole aim is to burn towns and butcher civilians in order to sap the nation’s will to fight.”
Judging by the indrawn breaths, Tommy had caused offence to a number of strategists; he was not intending to fashion a career in the military, so did not care.
“Could you select your best pilots to attempt low-level attacks, Major Stark?”
“Certainly, sir. While you accept that to do so will be to kill the bulk of them, sir, I can obey such an order.”
“The submarine is an increasing menace, Major Stark. It might be worthwhile losing your whole squadron to destroy even two or three of them.”
General Henderson made the statement very quietly, meeting Tommy’s eye.
“Then, sir, I suggest that we follow the example used in Belgium earlier this year. Leaving the observer at home, add another one hundred and forty pounds to the bomb load – say a load of one large bomb and seven twenty-pounders. Lead the low-level machines to the target and send them in when the enemy has been distracted by bombing from a height. Two Flights to bomb from on high, doing their best to be accurate of course, and one minute later seven more of us at very low level, line abreast so that we do not get caught in our own bomb bursts. If we delay just a little, the rescuers should
be swarming out of cover and will be exposed to us.”
“What are the chances of it working, Major Stark?”
“High, sir. If the submarines are there, then it is very probable that we would hit some. The pictures show cranes in the shipyard. How tall are they? I would wish to bomb from their height plus twenty feet.”
“What would your losses be, Major Stark?”
“If they have machine-guns, possibly all seven, sir. If they have Fokkers on patrol overhead, possibly the two Flights flying at high. If they have neither, then we might well be fortunate and come away unscathed, except for accident, which is never impossible. I would wish to make the attack on the return, sir. Fly out, go past the target, reverse course. The quicker we get back, the less the chance of pursuit.”
“The target is on the Belgian coast, Major Stark. I shall send you to the Belgian field nearest to it. The weather is unacceptable at the moment, but there is a chance of some clear days in the near future. Be ready to fly out within forty-eight hours, Major Stark.”
“I will recall all pilots tomorrow, sir.”
The civilian spoke again, enquiring why the weather was so important.
“It helps if we can see where we are going, sir, and discover exactly how high we may be. Our instruments are uniformly unreliable – we must have visibility. Additionally, the flying surfaces are constructed of wood and tight-stretched canvas, sir. Rain can slacken them and reduce lift, to an unpredictable degree. I have no wish to fly blind at fifty feet with an aeroplane whose performance is showing random variations.”
“How do you fly at night, Major Stark?”
“Nervously, sir!”
General Henderson intervened reprovingly.
“Major Stark was most recently decorated for flying into a makeshift landing-ground behind the lines in Belgium, at night, in sleet, and picking up an important Belgian civilian who has been of great service to his country’s war effort since.”
“Just how great a risk was that, Major Stark?”
“I wrote a farewell letter to my wife before I left, sir.”
“I see. I have never flown, Major Stark, and did not realise the realities of wartime aviation.”
“I had still rather be in the air than in the trenches, sir. The option of remaining as a civilian was not open to me.”
General Henderson called to meeting to a close, shaking his head very gently at Tommy.
“If you would just remain a few minutes, Major Stark, while I make the arrangements.”
“The Marquess of Timberfells is an unhappy man, Major Stark. He buttonholed me in my club last week. I told him to go to Hell when he demanded your head. He has a number of estates throughout the Midlands and the North of England and I have arranged for two of them to be compulsorily taken into RFC hands to be made into training fields. I have sent the message that I will repeat the procedure if irritated sufficiently. I have blocked the medical discharge of Lord Cecil, for the time being; he has been transferred to a penal battalion where he will be engaged in digging holes for the creation of sewers on new army camps. He will be out of that within the week, I must imagine – I have not the rank and clout to prevent that – but he will have a few very bad days. Add to that, he has been deprived of all alcohol for some five weeks now and will be experiencing some very interesting symptoms. The family will be our enemies hereafter I am afraid, Major Stark. There is just a possibility, of course, that one of the effects of this war will be to reduce the power and influence of such people; the agricultural interest is discovering that wartime taxes are a crippling burden – which I suspect is deliberate policy on the part of Mr Lloyd George, who is making the best of a bad situation, one might say. They are, of course, being replaced in power by a new generation of wartime profiteers who will be no more desirable as masters of the country!”
“Everything changes but nothing is different, sir. Thank you for your support.”
“It is the least I can do, Major Stark. Your Lieutenant Barker has been posted overseas, by the way, to Egypt, to an infantry battalion guarding the Suez Canal. Sand flies and sun and no prospect of relief for the duration.”
“I shall let the word reach the squadron, sir. He was a member of the Wine Committee, and was distinguished for his nose, it would seem.”
“Well, he won’t be sniffing a lot more than camel piss for the next few years. What are the real chances for this raid on the shipyard, Major Stark?”
“Provided every man who was present in your office today can keep his mouth shut for the next few days, sir – not too bad. If the word gets out and the Germans emplace machine-guns – that will be a different matter. These small ships on the slips in the yard, sir. They will be armed, I presume, but will they have their crews aboard?”
“Damned if I know, Major Stark. I would ask the opinion of the Admiralty, but they would want to know why I was poking my nose into naval affairs and would make a loud noise about it, too.”
“Then let us hope not, sir. May I use the telephone for a few minutes, sir? I should tell my adjutant to send out the telegrams.”
The pilots and observers were not very pleased, but they obeyed the order, returning to the field with all speed.
Tommy called them together for a brief meeting before dinner, ignoring the mutters of some of the officers that they should have been spoken to separately.
“We are to go out to Belgium as soon as the weather breaks – possibly tomorrow. We shall then mount a single bombing raid onto a particularly important target that we alone can attack. We shall be pulled back to reserve thereafter for a few weeks, though whether in France or in England has not yet been decided. We shall be flying from a field in the Belgian sector. I know nothing of its facilities. You should each have a single bag packed with basic necessities for perhaps three days; they will be carried with you in the bomb clips. I shall give you a more detailed briefing when I know more. Arrangements are being made for the mechanics, of course; they will be sent by rail to Portsmouth, with their tools and spares, and will then be placed aboard a naval vessel for quick transit to the port nearest to the field. The bombardment is regarded as a matter of urgency and importance, as you will appreciate, and will give the squadron its first opportunity to shine. The Adjutant has been instructed not to permit telephone calls to be made until we fly, and letters are not to be posted; we must maintain secrecy, gentlemen.”
“But I have been invited to the New Year’s Eve function at the Swiss Embassy, Major Stark! I can hardly not turn up without a word said.”
“You must make your apologies afterwards, Captain Ferrier. The needs of the war come first in this instance.”
“Outrageous, Major Stark! I shall, of course, obey your utterly unreasonable order – I have no wish to go the way of poor Johnny Barker!”
“He has gone all the way to the Suez Canal, Captain Ferrier. Lieutenant in a local battalion serving as guards in the desert there. He has at least kept his commission, although he must expect little by way of promotion.”
“You could have given him the chance to redeem his mistake, sir. I consider that you were unnecessarily severe, sir!”
“Your opinions are noted, Captain Ferrier. I do not believe you have seen active service yet, sir. When you have, you may change your mind. I suggest that you all make the ordinary arrangements, by the way; you may wish to leave letters with the Adjutant to be posted in the event of an unfortunate outcome to the raid.”
The new pilots smiled condescendingly – those who had families in England had made their farewells before returning in response to the telegram.
“Can you give us any indication of what this raid might be, sir?”
“Only the barest of outlines – I am still waiting to be given the exact time and place myself. I do not know how far behind the trenches the target is to be found. It is a shipyard – a repair yard of new construction – containing several submarines and other craft. The submarines are our specific target. We shall make two raids sim
ultaneously, or that is the current plan. Two Flights will release heavy bombs from three or four thousand feet, to offer a distraction, and the remaining seven pilots, led by myself and Captain Arkwright, will attack in line abreast at very low level. The second attack will be made without observers, in order to increase the bomb load by another six or seven of Hales or Cooper bombs. Obviously, we shall follow behind the high level flights, who will navigate for us; as senior Flight Commander, Captain Ferrier, that will be one of your responsibilities.”
“How high is ‘low level’, sir?”
“The height of the tallest crane plus twenty feet, is the current expectation. Fifty feet is ideal, of course, but that may not be practical. You will, by the way, appreciate that we must attack in line abreast or be caught in the explosions of our own ordnance. It will therefore not be possible for all of us to make a low level attack, and so I am restricting participation to those who have previous experience of such work. I appreciate that this is not wholly fair – all of you should have the same opportunity – and I will take the greatest of care to ensure that every man has his proper chance in future.”
“Are you certain that we will get our turn, sir? If this is to be the sole chance, then I think some of us should be included in the glory.”
There was a mutter of agreement from the other old hands of the squadron.
“I will make a personal promise that you will all be treated fairly. We have not had the time to practice low level work yet, and it is a skill that must be learned. You are quite right to point out that we must all work together, and all pilots must and will be treated equally. I know that there is a feeling in the RFC that pilots who have been posted to Home Service squadrons are not getting a fair chance of a crack at the Hun; some of us have been lucky, I know, in seeing service in France that others have been denied. I will make sure that you have your chance.”
Noah joined Tommy in his office, a little upset.
“I was sat with a cup of coffee just now, sir, and Ferrier joined me. That was a first, I might add. He implied that he suspected that you did not trust the old hands of the squadron to act reliably in battle. He was definitely perturbed, sir, believes in fact that you suspect him of potential cowardice. It seems to me, sir, that it might be wise to offer him the chance to fly second to you at low level while I, as second in command, took charge upstairs. If they get attacked by a Fokker, they will have no idea what to do. I can at least lead them into a circle so that some of the observers could get a shot in.”
No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3) Page 25
