No Wrath of Men

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The Nieuport had a Lewis gun mounted on the upper plane, which was fixed to fire straight ahead and outside the propeller disc. Aiming was haphazard, reloading was difficult. Dupuis mistrusted the Lewis gun, for it was an American invention. Nonetheless, he was in no doubt that his own skill would more than compensate for its deficiencies.

  Approaching the front line, Dupuis saw, in the distance, a D.F.W. flying towards the four French machines, escorted by two Fokkers.

  What a nerve! The D.F.W. was obviously coming to photograph the French positions and those arrogant Boches thought that a mere two Fokkers were adequate to defend it.

  Rudel and Weisbach, in the D.F.W., felt quite secure. But then, they knew rather more than Dupuis did.

  The four French machines, with typical Gallic dash and bravado, headed for the enemy formation. They would shoot down the D.F.W. before getting on with their own task.

  The Germans appeared to ignore them, flying stolidly on with what Dupuis told himself was typical Boche stupidity.

  The two formations met over the French front line.

  Dupuis dived on one of the Fokkers, determined to outstrip his companions, who could sort out between themselves which one they went for.

  He was about to open fire when his intended victim whipped round in a tight climbing turn and came towards him head-on. To his total astonishment and confusion, he saw a torrent of tracer racing across the space between them. A moment later, sparks were flying off his engine as bullets struck it. His propeller shattered. The engine, running away, screamed, then seized solid. The nose of the Nieuport dipped sharply. Dupuis kicked on hard left rudder to turn it around for the aerodrome he knew he would never reach.

  Looking up, he saw a third Fokker diving from well above the others, its gun shooting at the Voisin. Gazing around he saw one of his companion scouts going down in flames and the others also going down vertically, out of control.

  The Voisin had turned as well and was diving towards the protection of the machine-guns in the French trenches.

  Dupuis pulled out of his dive and scraped his wheels along the treetops of a wood. With a loud noise of rending canvas and breaking timber the Voisin settled down among the leafy branches.

  Dupuis was in such a seething rage that he did not feel the scrapes, cuts and bruises inflicted all over his body. As the Nieuport came to an abrupt stop he was flung forward and knocked unconscious.

  *

  Gabin joined the same squadron as Depuis shortly before Christmas 1915.

  By then he had been commissioned as a sous-lieutenant and, with a large allowance from his silk-manufacturer father in Lyons, a flashy Delage car painted sky blue and a habit of chain-smoking cigars instead of cigarettes, was regarded by Depuis and some others as a vulgarian and an upstart. He enjoyed outraging the stuffier and more snobbish officers and soon proved that he was as accomplished a pilot as he was a racing driver.

  The winter of 1915-16 saw the arrival of an improved Fokker Eindecker, the E3, which attained 87 m.p.h. and was often fitted with two machine-guns, instead of one, synchronised with the propeller.

  All the Allied scouts were now completely outclassed in combat. Maximum speed was not the main factor, but the Fokker was in fact faster than all the British scouts and all the French except, marginally, the Nieuport X. It was manoeuvrability, rate of climb, stability and firepower which were decisive; and in one or other of these respects the Fokker was also superior to each of its adversaries.

  Dupuis had not yet managed to shoot one down, although he had scored victories over the Taube, L.V.G. and Aviatik, all of which were much more vulnerable.

  He did not care for Gabin’s manner. Gabin behaved with a modesty and a deference for the greater experience of the other pilots which Dupuis knew were assumed. Gabin was always laughing and joking and Dupuis was aware that his respectful manner was entirely tongue-in-cheek.

  For the first two or three weeks that Gabin was on the squadron Dupuis did not deign to speak to him except for the obligatory bidding of good morning and the equally obligatory handshake. In the mess one evening, after a day of vile weather had kept them all grounded and they had begun serious drinking as soon as darkness fell, Dupuis condescended to take notice of the ex-corporal.

  “So, Gabin, you spent a few months on Voisins, I believe?”

  “Oui, Mon Lieutenant.”

  “You spent all your time dodging the Boche scouts, I suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly put it quite like that.”

  “How would you put it, then?”

  “Well, as I believe you are rather fond of engaging enemy reconnaissance machines,” (Dupuis turned red and scowled) “you will probably have noticed that trying to dodge a scout is like a rabbit trying to run from a ferret.”

  “Never mind about rabbits and ferrets. I do not care for your analogy anyway. Are you telling us that you Voisin types challenged the Fokkers?”

  “The first one I ever saw with a synchronised gun shot us down! Before that, when the Fokker had its gun mounted on the upper wing, we didn’t find them too bad.”

  “Don’t tell me you ever shot one down.”

  “All right, then, I won’t tell you I ever shot one down.”

  Gabin’s impudent manner brought a laugh at Dupuis’s expense.

  “I am glad you are so truthful.”

  “Truth, mon cher lieutenant, compels me to tell you that I shot down three.”

  This caused louder amusement.

  “They must have been rotten pilots, then.”

  “One of them wasn’t too bad. He was the one who shot us down. Killed my pilot. But I got him as I was going down, before I grabbed the controls. As for the other two: I wouldn’t say they were exactly rotten. At least as good as you are, from what I’ve seen of the way you fly.”

  “Don’t dare speak to me like that.”

  “Give me one good reason why not.”

  “Because I am senior to you.”

  “Oh, that?” Gabin shrugged.

  Someone else asked “How many others did you knock down, Gabin?”

  “Two L.V.Gs, three Aviatiks and one Albatros reconnaissance machine.”

  “Then he has a bigger total than you, Dupuis, with your three L.V.Gs and two Aviatiks.”

  “So he says.”

  Gabin grinned broadly but his eyes held a cold expression.

  “The entries are in my logbook, confirmed by my pilots. Of course I know that not all pilots are unfailingly truthful.”

  He continued grinning while Dupuis glowered at him.

  The weather improved on the next day and Gabin was detailed to fly a patrol in the vicinity of Verdun, where the great battle that was to cost 377,231 Frenchmen and 337,000 Germans had just begun.

  The Germans had, as they repeatedly did throughout the war, introduced an innovation to aerial warfare. This time it took the form of standing patrols around Verdun to deny access to French reconnaissance machines.

  The strength of the French single-seat squadrons had been increased and Gabin was in a formation of six machines.

  The siege of Verdun opened on a scale never known before. The Germans brought up 1,220 big guns and 140,000 infantrymen for an assault on an eight-mile front. Villages to the east and north of the fortress town had been evacuated to house the enemy.

  The sinuous valley of the Meuse, through wooded hills rising as high as a thousand feet on either hand, in many places almost vertically from the river, with its ridges and plateaux commanding the countryside for many miles around, was a natural defence line. Three concentric rings of fortifications, mainly underground and extending four miles beyond the town, built of steel and concrete, were deemed impregnable. That is to say that the French thought they were. The Germans had another opinion. Beyond the outmost fortifications was an encircling trench.

  With the return to fair weather, the Germans opened their bombardment on 21st February 1916 and Gabin was there to see it. So was Dupuis. It began at dawn and when Gabin
’s squadron reached the area, it had been going on for three hours and would continue for six more. Twenty minutes before the Nieuports arrived they could see the sheets of brilliant flame from the muzzles of the huge guns. A few minutes later they could see the great fog of smoke from gunfire and burning woodland, burning buildings and burning fields. Soon the noise of the guns drowned the sound of their engines.

  Their task was to divert the patrolling enemy scouts, to tempt them away or destroy them so that the sky was left clear long enough for a few reconnaissance aircraft to dart in and out in safety.

  Other French scouts were around them on the same mission.

  Gabin kept watch on a group of nine Fokkers which experience told him would probably head his way. They were higher than the Nieuports and to the east, so as to derive what benefit they could from the sun, which was constantly hidden by high cloud.

  He was right. The Fokkers he had been watching for some minutes were patrolling up and down a line to the south-west of Verdun. They gave no sign of changing this pattern but he judged that, little by little, they were edging further westward: keeping parallel to their original patrol line but moving closer towards the Nieuports.

  The Fokkers wheeled and dived, breaking formation. Two had apparently selected him as target. He let them come. They separated so as to attack him simultaneously from opposite sides. He still took no evasive action.

  When he judged them to be within five seconds of the range at which the Germans usually opened fire, he banked steeply and began a tight turn, descending slightly at the same time. Turning to his left, he was able to watch the enemy over his right shoulder.

  As he had expected, both Fokkers increased their angle of dive and opened fire. He saw the flashes at their gun-muzzles and the sparkle of tracer going wide past him. He came out of the turn into straight and level flight towards Verdun and watched the enemy pass overhead. He began a sharp turn while they pulled out of their dive. They were very close together. For a moment he had almost a vertical plan view of them both as they pulled up. He fired at the right-hand one and saw his bullets hit the head and shoulders of its pilot. The other one had flattened out and begun turning back to face him. This allowed him a beam shot during the fleeting moments that it was broadside on. He fired a long burst and flames from its punctured petrol tank enveloped it.

  When he landed back at base he sauntered across to Dupuis, who was sitting in his cockpit and wiping sweat and oil from his face.

  “How did you get on, Mon Lieutenant?”

  “One.”

  “Bravo.”

  Stung by his ironical tone, Dupuis asked “How about you?”

  “Only two this trip, I’m afraid.”

  Walking away from him, Gabin reflected that Dupuis seemed to dislike him more than he hated the Germans.

  It suited him. He was an intensely competitive man and he needed the stimulus of an immediate and bitter rival.

  Five

  The winter of 1915-16 with its Fokker Scourge, which gave rise to the description “Fokker Fodder”, coined by an M.P. for the British airmen and their machines among whom the enemy did such devastation, was a grim one for Codrington.

  The squadron lost one third of its pilots and observers between November and February. Codrington’s flight lost half its crews, with higher casualties than the other two flights. He repeatedly brought back a badly damaged machine, often with a dead or wounded observer. He himself had more wounds and injuries. In one forced landing he dislocated a shoulder, which necessitated a sling for his arm for two weeks and resultant grounding. In a landing on his own aerodrome when he did not know that his wheels had been damaged by anti-aircraft fire, his machine collapsed onto its belly, skidded along the grass and broke his ankle: which meant another spell on the ground. In one battle he was grazed on the scalp by a Parabellum bullet and had to have nine stitches. In another he was hit on the head by a chunk of wood from a disintegrating Fokker, which knocked him out. He lost seven thousand feet before he came round. He found that he was seeing double and nearly crashed on landing. Concussion kept him off flying for a week. Another day, he took a bullet in the left deltoid muscle which a surgeon had to find and remove. This put him out of action for a month.

  He came back to the squadron shortly after the Battle of Verdun began.

  *

  Stokoe, at that time, was rampaging around Cairo and Alexandria; making friends with all sorts of people, officers and other ranks indiscriminately, a Greek here and there, an Egyptian or two. He pursued sundry military nurses, two or three grass widows and a belly dancer.

  “I don’t believe it,” he insisted. “I’ve got to see this sheila from close up, or I’ll never believe she doesn’t hypnotise the audience into thinking she’s whirling her tummy round like a Catherine wheel.” It was as good an excuse as any for a private and intimate view of the pretty Egyptian’s abdominal gyrations. Stokoe performed a few of his own in concert with her and announced himself thoroughly convinced.

  *

  Paxton read about the Battle of Verdun in the daily papers with impatience and frustration. He felt he was missing so many historic events by his tardy entry into the war that he would feel ashamed when peace was declared and his friends reminisced. Then he reminded himself that most of his friends and acquaintances who had rushed to volunteer in the first few days of war were already dead or had been wounded and perhaps he would survive longer than any of them: for everyone was reconciled to a long war.

  As a free-and-easy colonial from a virtually classless society in which social levels were determined by money and possessions and not by accent and education, he found the atmosphere at his training stations, Shoreham and Gosport, objectionable.

  The British officers behaved, he thought, like overgrown schoolboys. Even in Canada there was a school hierarchy based on age and academic and athletic distinction, but nobody cared about such divisions in adult life.

  The pupils on the various courses did not acknowledge or speak to those on courses junior to theirs. Most of the instructors were curt. At Gosport, where a squadron was being formed, its pilots seemed to go out of their way to be offensive to those who were still pupils.

  There was another Canadian on his course, as well as a New Zealander and an Australian. They formed a bemused clique and were grateful for one another’s company and point of view.

  At first the differences in dress between officers of the same Service were puzzling. Few wore the Royal Flying Corps’s high-necked double-breasted tunic. Virtually all those who did had come straight into the corps without having first served in some other arm.

  When Paxton learned the reasons for these disparities he did not know whether to be amused or irritated. Those who eschewed the R.F.C.’s standard uniform did so first of all because it was, by many centuries, the newest Service; and, therefore, junior and lacking in social prestige. In the other branches of the Army, officers wore their rank insignia on their cuffs. The R.F.C. wore them on epaulettes. This was considered bad form.

  Officers clung to the uniforms of their old regiments, or the Royal Engineers and the Royal Artillery, from loyalty to, and affection for, them.

  But there was a less admirable reason. Those who had served in the Guards or Cavalry or in one of the fashionable infantry regiments wore their wings on the tunics of their former units from snobbery as well as pride. In any group of R.F.C. pilots and observers there would be at least one in the tartan trews of a Scottish regiment; and, when not flying, there were many who wore the kilt.

  The standard nether garment of the R.F.C. was a pair of breeches worn with boots and puttees. Many officers wore riding breeches with field boots or long woollen stockings; or slacks and shoes. Even the shade of regimental tunics and of breeches varied. So did that of the shirts and ties. To the colonials this meant nothing, but to the British they were the symbols of a complex system of social discrimination. At school they had known their place, and everyone else’s, by the tie, cap or blazer
a boy wore; and whether he was permitted to walk around with no hands in his pockets, one hand or both hands; whether he could cross this or that quadrangle or walk around it, this or that patch of grass, go through a certain gateway or up and down a given staircase. It came naturally to them to perpetuate these observances in later life.

  When Paxton had finally come to recognise and understand all these mysterious British shibboleths he told his friends “I suppose we’re lucky that the instructors don’t tell us to bend over and give us six of the best when we do a bad landing.”

  It did not make him look forward to joining a squadron. But he was eager to do so before he missed any more great offensives and battles.

  He need not have worried, for there were plenty more to come and another period of carnage for the R.F.C. which was to be as devastating as the Fokker Scourge of the winter that was just closing.

  *

  Baird, at the time that the Battle of Verdun began, was in the last few months of his school career; a hard, muscular, well-disciplined athlete. The South African boarding schools were run like British public schools and he would have less difficulty than Paxton and his colonial friends in fitting in with the system when he joined the R.F.C. He was used to receiving and inflicting corporal punishment, to compulsory daily sport, to an enclosed society in which tasselled caps, varicoloured ties, scarves and blazers, and different sorts of hatbands on white straw boaters conferred prestige and authority. That he did not appreciate the subtle differences between being commissioned in the Seventeenth Lancers and the East Surreys, the Sixtieth Rifles and the K.O.Y.L.I., would cause him future bafflement. But for the time being he was looking forward to entering the R.F.C. with a boyish eagerness engendered by admiration for South Africa’s leading pilot; Captain Beauchamp-Proctor, who survived to score sixty victories and win the V.C., D.S.O., M.C. and bar, and D.F.C.

  To Baird’s simple way of thinking, this was like a chap getting his First Colours for every sport the school played.