No Wrath of Men

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  There was small comfort in living conditions on the aerodrome. The squadron occupied a farm, whose pastures and beet fields made an adequate landing ground. The offices and the Commanding Officer’s and Adjutant’s quarters were in the farmhouse. The stables were converted to workshops. The troops slept and ate in the barn and tents. The officers messed in a canal barge a hundred yards from the farm buildings and slept in two others moored alongside. One canvas Bessoneaux hangar had been erected and some cinders had been laid to make a camp road. The whole was enclosed by a barbed wire fence.

  At night the thunder of the guns made the ground shake and lit the darkness with a flickering and lurid light: mauve and pale yellow flames from the muzzles of the guns on the Allied side, red and orange from the more distant enemy artillery.

  The enemy deployed more batteries week by week. Anti-aircraft fire increased. It was dubbed “Archie” after a popular music hall song in which the repetitive line “Archie, certainly not!” had a humorous connotation. The R.F.C. was already displaying a peculiar sense of humour which would soon be recognised as the airmen’s hallmark.

  Major Fotheringay-Brown, who had conspicuously little sense of fun, took umbrage at Codrington’s tardy arrival and his cheerful lack of penitence. He indicated to Codrington’s flight commander that, to make up for the inactive first month occasioned by his injuries, Crasher Codrington should be given ample opportunity to aviate as soon as he was fit. The flight commander took the hint. A squadron comprised three flights, each established for six pilots and four aeroplanes; and there were usually four or five observers. Thus the work load on each man was heavy, for patrols were flown throughout the hours of daylight.

  Codrington did not mind doing more than his share. He enjoyed flying and he also accepted the argument that it was only fair for him to compensate for what he had missed. The greatest dangers he faced were of an engine failure behind enemy lines, leading to a forced landing and capture; being hit by an anti-aircraft shell; or, when flying at three thousand feet or below, being shot down by machine-gun fire. Of these he naturally enough, after his August experiences, rated engine failure highest.

  When he landed after his last flight of the day, at dusk on 5th October, the squadron was buzzing with resentful excitement.

  “What’s up?” he asked his flight commander.

  “A report has come in that the French have shot down an Aviatik with a Hotchkiss fired by the observer.”

  “What was the French machine?”

  “A Voisin.”

  By dusk the next day everyone knew the names of the successful crew: Pilot, Lieutenant Joseph Frantz, observer, a mechanic called Louis Quénault.

  The notion of carrying a machine-gun aboard was totally new to the R.F.C.

  “We can’t let the Frogs get away with it,” Major Fotheringay-Brown declared. His eyes lit on Codrington.

  “You’re a bit of a pithtol thot, Crather, and I’ve theen Corporal Grathier hit a running rabbit at a hundred yardth with a rifle. What are you waiting for?”

  “An aeroplane in which the observer isn’t caged in by struts, wings and bracing wires, Major, and can swing a machine-gun around.”

  “Don’t make excutheth.” The C.O. was impatient of any criticism of his squadron’s aircraft.

  Two weeks later, with Lille in German hands and the enemy forging westward towards Ostend, Codrington and Corporal Grazier were cruising at five thousand feet near Ypres, where the Germans were being held, when Codrington spotted an Aviatik circling some two thousand feet below him and half a mile away. He tapped his observer on the shoulder, pointed at the enemy machine and turned towards it. The Germans were obviously taking photographs. If they had seen the BE2, they ignored it. Codrington prepared himself to score his first kill. He intended to make a steep dive when he had halved the distance between them. Then he would ease into a shallow dive and allow Corporal Grazier ample time to fire a whole clip from his rifle; if his first shot did not kill the pilot. Since the observer could not shoot dead ahead, because the propeller was in the way, the dive would have to be made offset from a direct line to the target.

  Pilots were less worried about being hit by shots from other aircraft than of stalling or spinning. Recovery from either was unknown and not even test pilots had yet worked out a method. It was Codrington’s main concern to avoid losing flying speed and he did not even consider taking evasive action.

  When the BE2 was within two hundred yards of it, the Aviatik turned eastward and, flying straight and in a gentle dive, began to accelerate. This played into its pursuer’s hands. Codrington steepened his dive. The wind whistled in the struts and wires, the machine vibrated and so, with excitement, did Codrington. The gap closed to a hundred and fifty yards. The Aviatik was on the starboard side, at an angle of forty-five degrees. Corporal Grazier held his rifle firm against the cockpit rim, sighted and fired twice in rapid succession.

  The Aviatik’s pilot slumped to the right, its starboard wing dipped and Codrington and Corporal Grazier, attention fixed on it, did not notice the first three bullets that whanged into their own aircraft’s upper plane, a strut and a bracing wire.

  They were aware of the next three, which hit, successively, the port side of the fuselage, between the two cockpits; the corporal’s left shoulder; and Codrington’s left thigh.

  Codrington turned steeply to starboard and peered around.

  A second Aviatik was above him and turning with him.

  He felt supremely uncomfortable and foolish.

  Blood was running from a hole in Corporal Grazier’s leather coat and his own thigh was smarting. He found that the movement of his left leg, when he tried to change the direction of his turn, was restricted.

  He held the tightest turn he could, fearful of a spin. The less nimble Aviatik could not stay with him. Codrington suddenly broke out of his turn and bank, flattened into a dive and left the enemy behind.

  By the time he reached his base, Corporal Grazier had fainted from loss of blood and his own head was reeling.

  He bounced five times on landing and finished up with the BE2 on its nose; and his unwounded leg, and one of Corporal Grazier’s, broken.

  It was January 1915 before either of them was fit to fly again.

  *

  When Stokoe, aged nineteen, heard the news that Great Britain had declared war on Germany, he left his parents’ sheep farm in Queensland to return to Brisbane and the infantry regiment in which he had not long since completed his military service; which had been compulsory since 1907.

  On 26th April 1915 he landed at Gallipoli with the Australian and New Zealand forces sent to fight alongside the British against the Turks.

  Four months later he won a Military Medal. Two months after that he was commissioned in the field. Shortly before Christmas he was at death’s door with continued bouts of dysentery and was evacuated to hospital in Cairo.

  In January 1916 the Anzacs were withdrawn, with the British, from Gallipoli and a month later Stokoe found himself back with his regiment, in Egypt.

  In Turkey he had seen aeroplanes for the first time in his life and there was a quality of independence, self-reliance and boldness about them which attracted him strongly. In hospital and in various bars around the town he made the acquaintance of several R.F.C. officers. Their unconventional attitude, wild ways and strong freemasonry appealed greatly to him.

  One evening in the red light quarter of Alexandria he walked around a corner into a fight between two pilots, a captain and a major, and a dozen Egyptians who were intent on stealing their watches and money. The Gyppos, by force of numbers, were getting the better of it.

  Stokoe waded in, flattened four Egyptians before anyone was aware of his presence, knocked out two more as they tried to run away, and caught another after a brisk sprint.

  The pilots were on leave from Mesopotamia and expected soon to return to England and the Western Front: which, they said, had a great deal more fun to offer than Gallipoli or Mespot. Stoko
e, already determined on a transfer to the R.F.C., decided to bide his time. There was a flying school at Abu Sueir, but the regiment was bound for England shortly and it was on the Western Front that he wished to fight.

  In mid-1916 Stokoe’s regiment was on Salisbury Plain and Stokoe was in close arrest for having inflicted crippling injuries on four drunken Glaswegian officers of a Highland battalion; two of whom had drawn razors on him and the other two used knuckle-dusters, in a Salisbury pub where Stokoe had been making himself agreeable to one of the barmaids who had a reputation which Kafoozalum the Harlot of Jerusalem might have envied.

  To frustrate court martial proceedings, his colonel released him from arrest and arranged an immediate posting to France on indefinite attachment to a British battalion “for experience”.

  It was his hosts who derived most experience from Stokoe’s presence. In the space of four months he had captured some fifty prisoners in the course of daring raids across no man’s land, smashed up two bars in small towns in the rest area, made three nursing sisters and the wives of two absent French officers pregnant, and won a Military Cross.

  Stokoe was enchanted by the aeroplanes which he saw overhead day after day and soon became an expert in recognising British, French and German types.

  On a two-day leave in Paris he encountered the major whom he had rescued from robbery and a bad beating in Alexandria. The major was now a lieutenant colonel in command of an aerodrome where three squadrons were based. One of these flew RE8s, which were two-seaters.

  “I can get you attached to me for air experience,” the young lieutenant colonel offered. “You can see how you like flying, and when you go before a selection board some flying hours will be in your favour.”

  Stokoe spent a fortnight on the RE8 squadron. This aeroplane was highly unstable and nearly as dangerous to its crew as the enemy. The observer, seated behind the pilot, had a Lewis gun and a clear field of fire astern. Stokoe shot down two enemy aircraft.

  The autumn of 1916 saw him back on Salisbury Plain, learning to fly. Unfortunately, although he was a big, strong fellow, he was not an athlete. Although he was a formidable brawler, he had no more idea of boxing than of ballet dancing: any good boxer of much lesser size would have dealt severely with him in a fight. He was un-coordinated. The result was that he showed no aptitude as a pilot. He smashed three training aircraft and, finally, both his legs. For this reason he became an observer and found himself, in the spring of 1917, on Bristol Fighters on the Western Front.

  *

  Paxton was in his last year at McGill University, reading mining engineering, when war broke out.

  All his relations and close friends who were of military age volunteered without hesitation. His mother had suffered a series of illnesses and operations during the past two years. He was an only child. There had been two others, both stillborn. His mother was a frail woman, not at all the hardy, pioneering, Empire-building sort.

  Paxton had a word with his father.

  “Dad, all the guys have gone to the recruiting office already. I don’t want to upset Mum: but ... well ...”

  “Son, there’s something I was not going to tell you: but I guess this war changes a lot of things. The doctors say that your mother hasn’t got but six months to live. Now, I don’t want to influence you one way or the other, but just think about it, will you?”

  Paxton thought about it and was driven, in the loneliness of his room in the dark hours, to tears. He wept for his mother, to whom he was devoted, and for his own self-respect. He avoided meeting any of his cousins, aunts and uncles; he avoided his old friends and their parents. He could not explain why he had not rushed to join the Army or the Navy like all the rest of them. Even his placid nature and innate sense of humour were not equal to this shame.

  He went back to university for his final year and when, a few months later, his mother died, he stayed on to finish it: not for the practical reason of taking his degree, but out of affection and duty. He did not want to leave his father alone after their bereavement.

  The day after Paxton, newly commissioned in the Engineers, sailed for Liverpool, his father married the young mistress he had kept a successful secret for the past five years in a small Montreal apartment.

  It was January 1916 when Paxton set out across the North Atlantic. Half-way across, his troopship was torpedoed and he was in the water for a while before being picked up by a lifeboat. The ship had sunk soon after sunset and he was all night in the open boat. By the time the second ship which took that boatload aboard at dawn landed him in England, he had pneumonia. In those days pneumonia was usually fatal and Paxton did nearly die.

  He was discharged from hospital in the early spring. All through his illness he had been brooding with increasing hatred on what the Germans had done to him. When he read his father’s letter announcing his marriage, he had something more about which to brood.

  It seemed to him that the small segment of the world in which he had grown up had taught him nothing about the real world, about people, about the realities of life. He felt bitter and disillusioned.

  It no longer mattered to him whether or not he survived the war. He had lost much of his respect and affection for his father and he had acquired hatred for the Germans.

  He did not want to be a uniformed engineer, building bridges for fighting troops to cross or roads along which they would be taken to the Front. He did not want to build concrete blockhouses for other men to hold against enemy onslaughts.

  He wanted to kill Germans: as many of them as possible; and to compensate himself for having lost a year of the war.

  As an engineer he had always been interested in aeroplanes. The obvious choice was therefore the Royal Flying Corps.

  If he had been able to join when he wanted to, in August 1914, he would almost certainly have been killed or wounded by now: like nearly all his own circle who had volunteered in those first few days. In convalescence, he wondered whether there could be any significance in his survival until now: he had nearly croaked in the sea, then from exposure in the lifeboat and finally when pneumonia struck him. Was Fate saving his for something momentous? He hoped so. He felt that somehow it had so far made rather a sucker of him.

  The selection boards had long ago abandoned their insistence on horsemanship as a necessary preliminary to airmanship. When he was asked what games he played, he stuck out his jaw and said “Ice hockey, putting the shot and water polo.” Perhaps the solitary ex-cavalry member told himself that any sort of polo probably taught a fella hands. Anyway, Paxton passed and was sent to Shoreham to make the acquaintance of the Farman Shorthorn. Six weeks later, with 30 hours in his logbook, he was awarded his wings.

  The summer of 1916 was a tough time for a new pilot to join a squadron in France. The winter of 1915-16 had been the period of what had been described, in Parliament, as “the Fokker Scourge”. The R.F.C., still flying its original and inadequate BE2, Martynside, Sopwith Tabloid and Bristol Scout, the French with their early Blériot, Voisin, Morane and Farman, had been confronted by the Fokker equipped with a Parabellum machine-gun synchronised with the propeller so that the pilot could fire his heavy bullets straight ahead without hitting the airscrew blades.

  The British and French had lost a great number of their best and most experienced — which are not necessarily synonymous — pilots. There were not enough survivors to lead and advise all the newcomers. Casualties among the novice pilots therefore were high.

  To counter the Fokker, the R.F.C. had recently introduced a new scout, the FE2, a sturdy machine with a pusher airscrew. The observer manned a Lewis gun in the nose.

  It was to an FE2 squadron that Paxton was posted. His engineer’s eye was not gratified by the machine. It had an enclosed nacelle with lines that were not displeasing: but behind this was a primitive arrangement of booms and cross-members like a rustic bridge or arbour.

  Nor were his fellow pilots encouraging.

  “If you rev up too much, the engine bursts
and chunks fly all over the place, to the detriment of the jolly old airframe. If you commit crashery, that damn great engine will probably be chucked forward and crush you flat as a pancake, old son.”

  It hardly seemed worth coming all the way from Quebec and surviving shipwreck and near-fatal illness for this, but Paxton retained his good humour.

  *

  The declaration of war found Baird a sixteen-year-old at boarding school in Port Elizabeth. His father grew sugar in Natal, not far from Durban, and, as soon as he had arranged his affairs, joined the Active Citizen Force. The Germans had colonised Tanganyika and South-West Africa. The war was on South Africa’s doorstep. Young Baird’s father was sent to the former and his eldest brother to the latter. The war in distant France and Belgium seemed unreal to him.

  By the time he reached military age the war had been in stalemate for nearly two years. Everyone knew, by report, the miseries of life in the trenches. Baird decided literally to rise above them. He volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps. The Navy was, anyway, not for him: he had once made a steamer trip to Lourenco Marques and he had tried small boat sailing; he suffered badly from seasickness. He also had a horror of being sucked down by a sinking vessel, although he was not an imaginative lad.

  The voyage to England was the most horrible experience of his life and there were times when he hoped a U-boat would sink the troopship. Drowning could not be as bad as day after day of acute nausea and dry vomiting.

  Proud of his toughness, he felt ashamed of what he considered a weakness. His comrades mocked him: he would, they said, suffer even more dreadfully from air sickness. Baird had never heard of this affliction. He resigned himself to the trenches. But, in the event, he found that he never felt a twinge of nausea in the air. He had hoped to be a pilot, but there was a lack of observers at that time and he in due course was trained as one.