by John Wilson
Also by John Wilson
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Bones
Graves of Ice
Lost Cause
Stolen
Shot at Dawn
Written in Blood
Ghost Moon
Victorio’s War
Death on the River
Red Goodwin
Adrift in Time
Ghosts of James Bay
Across Frozen Seas
YOUNG ADULT NON-FICTION
Desperate Glory: The Story of WWI
Failed Hope: The Story of the Lost Peace
Bitter Ashes: The Story of WWII
Righting Wrongs: The Story of Norman Bethune
Discovering the Arctic: The Story of John Rae
Norman Bethune: A Life of Passionate Conviction
John Franklin: Traveller on Undiscovered Seas
AVAILABLE ONLY AS EBOOKS
The Alchemist’s Dream
The Final Alchemy
The Heretic’s Secret
Where Soldiers Lie
Germania
Flames of the Tiger
Four Steps to Death
And in the Morning
Lost in Spain
The Weet Trilogy
Flags of War
Battle Scars
North with Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames
Ghost Mountains and Vanished Oceans:
North America from Birth to Middle-Age.
Copyright © 2014 John Wilson
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law. Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wilson, John (John Alexander), 1951-, author
Wings of war / John Wilson.
ISBN 978-0-385-67830-8
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-67831-5
(epub)
I. Title.
PS8595.I5834W56 2014 jC813′.54 C2013-906366-8
C2013-906367-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover image: Heritage Image Partnership/Alamy
Cover design: Rachel Cooper
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
Dedicated to the memory of Lanoe Hawker, VC, DSO, the first British flying ace and, on 23 November 1916, the Red Baron’s eleventh victim.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Dreams of Freedom—July 1914
Chapter 2: Shadows of War—August 1914
Chapter 3: Escaping Gravity—June 1915
Chapter 4: A Decision and a Gift—June 1915
Chapter 5: Back to School—July 1915
Chapter 6: Friends at Sea—September 1915
Chapter 7: Going to the Right School—September 1915
Chapter 8: The First Tragedy—January 1916
Chapter 9: A Pair of Letters—February 1916
Chapter 10: The Canadian Kid—February 1916
Chapter 11: The Immelmann Turn—March 1916
Chapter 12: An Ace at Last—April 1916
Chapter 13: A Visitor—May 1916
Chapter 14: Shot Down—June 1916
Chapter 15: Preparing—June 1916
Chapter 16: The Attack—July 1, 1916
Chapter 17: Tragedy—July 1, 1916
Author’s Note
Glossary
CHAPTER 1
Dreams of Freedom—July 1914
The snap of the high-tension wire giving way echoes like a gunshot over the flat prairie field. Abby, the chestnut mare I’ve ridden over from my folks’ place, twitches her ears and looks up. Above her an extraordinary contraption of wood, fabric and wire wobbles dangerously. I see where the wire’s gone—it’s about halfway along the right wings. Both twist oddly, and my uncle Horst, crouching on the old tractor seat in the middle of the plane, wrestles with the controls, fighting to find a balance between too much speed, which will rip the weakened wings off, and too little, which will stall the flight. Either way the plane will plummet to the ground—certain death for my uncle from over seventy feet up.
I hold my breath and clench my fists as I watch. The rough coughing sound of the engine comes and goes as the machine bucks and turns. The plane clears the trees around the farmhouse and sinks slowly toward the stubble field beside the barn. Horst is winning his battle for control! I let my breath out as the large baby-carriage wheels touch down. Almost immediately, the contraption lurches to the right, the lower wing tip touches the ground and, with a loud snapping sound, the wings fold up like crumpled paper. The engine races wildly and the propeller shatters, sending knifelike pieces of wood slashing through the air.
I vault the fence and run to the wreck. By the time I arrive, my uncle is hauling himself out of the mass of broken wood, torn fabric and twisted wires. His jacket has a long rip in the sleeve, and there’s already a swelling bruise on his forehead. He says something in German, and from his tone of voice, I’m glad I can’t understand him.
“Uncle Horst!” I shout. “Are you okay?”
“Ya, ya, Edward,” my uncle says, brushing himself down and gazing mournfully at the ruins of his prized flying machine. “But Bertha, she is kaput.”
My uncle calls every flying machine he builds Bertha. As close as I can figure, the pile of wreckage in front of me is Bertha 6.
“She was a beauty,” Horst says, bending to lift the tip of one of his hand-carved wooden propeller blades from where it has embedded itself in the ground. “But too heavy. The two wings, they do not give enough lift.”
“Why not add a third wing?” I suggest. “I read in the newspapers that they have those over in Europe. Triplanes, I think they’re called.”
“Ya, ya. Another wing. Another wing. Another wing. Biplanes. Triplanes. With each wing I get more lift, but more weight also. And I have only twenty-five horses.” Horst aims a kick at the bulky engine that lies beside Bertha, crackling as it cools.
“Can’t you get a bigger engine?”
“Oh, ya. I will get one hundred horses and build a machine that will fly to Moose Jaw. But I buy this magnificent engine with what? You might as well say, ‘Uncle Horst, buy an aeroplane.’ I would work this farm for twenty years to save enough dollars to buy one of the Wright boys’ Flyers or a Blériot.”
“Blériot?” I ask. “Wasn’t he the famous pilot who was the first to fly across the English Channel?”
“Ya. Five years past. But, Edward, this is 1914. The world has moved on and still he sells the same plane. What use will old planes be in the war that is coming?”
“War? What war?”
“Do you not read the newspapers?”
“Of course I read the newspapers,” I say indignantly. “The only war they talk about is the trouble in Ireland. What does that have to do with Blériot’s flying machines?”
“You read the papers of the English. They are blind. They look only in their own backyard and their empire. They do not look at Europe. You should read
the German newspapers.”
“I don’t read German. You know that.”
My uncle ignores my protests. “That man who was shot last month with his wife—”
“Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” I interrupt, eager to show Horst that I do know something about Europe. “He was assassinated in some place I’ve never heard of.”
“Sarajevo,” Horst says. “It is in the Balkans.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but the Balkans are a long way off, and besides, they’re always having wars down there. The assassination was almost a month ago, and nothing’s happened since then.”
“Much has happened, which you would know if you read the correct newspapers.” Horst waves the fragment of propeller to silence me. “And do not dismiss a place simply because you have never heard of it. Anyway, it is not this place that is important—it is the person. The man who shot the archduke is a Serbian, and Austria would very much like to make Serbia part of her empire. There has already been some shooting along the border.”
“But there was a war in the Balkans last year. It didn’t affect us.”
Horst stares at the ground and sighs. “This time it may be different.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Russian bear is watching. She will help Serbia, and Kaiser Wilhelm will go to war to help Austria. Even France will be drawn into the insanity. Germany will be fighting two wars, front and back, east and west. All of Europe will be in flames.”
I stare at Horst, shocked by what he is suggesting. There has been no European war since Napoleon was defeated almost a hundred years ago. “It won’t happen,” I say. “And even if you’re right, this war won’t affect England and Canada.”
“Ya. Of course you are right, Edward.” Horst takes a deep breath and smiles. “It won’t affect us all the way out here in Saskatchewan. It is just one more squabble between those crazy Europeans.”
“Would flying machines be used in a war?” I ask, unable to shake the thought of marching armies.
“Flying machines should make us poor earth-bound humans free—like the birds. They should not be used for war and killing.” Horst looks at me, his pale blue eyes intense. “But ya, I think flying machines will be used. From up there”—he thrusts his arm straight up toward the sky—“one man will be able to see what an entire army is doing. There will be no secrets anymore. And some men—your English writer H.G. Wells for one—think that one day there will be great battles among the clouds, as well as flying machines that can carry bombs big enough to destroy whole cities.” Horst lowers his arm and turns his head to survey his farm. “But we are safe here. Who would wish to waste bombs on my poor fields?
THE INSPIRATION FOR BERTHA.
“You would like to fly?” he asks, surprising me with his abrupt change of topic.
“I’d love to,” I say eagerly.
“Then I shall put two seats in my next Bertha. I will take you up. We will soar like the birds and laugh at the poor people on the ground below.”
“Will you?” My heart races at the mere thought of being up there with the birds, looking down.
“I promise,” Horst says with a smile. “But first I must rebuild.” My uncle stares down at Bertha 6’s remains. “Perhaps two wings is my mistake,” he muses quietly. “Maybe one wing—a monoplane—would be enough if it is designed correctly.” He fumbles in his overall pockets for a greasy notebook and the stub of a pencil. “And I know a man in Moose Jaw who says he might be able to get me a bigger engine, maybe fifty horses. It will need work, but …” Horst finds an empty page in his notebook and begins scribbling figures across it. His mumbled conversation with himself reverts to German.
I’ve seen this happen before. He’ll be lost to the world until he’s worked out whatever’s on his mind. If he doesn’t get the answer he seeks, he’ll still be standing in the middle of his field when it is too dark to see the page in his hand.
“I have to get back,” I say. “I have chores to do. The chickens need feeding, and Dad wants me to clean out the stalls in the barn. He says now that I’m not going to school, I should be doing more work around the farm.”
Horst grunts at me and waves his hand vaguely. Staring at the sky, I walk over to Abby. Will my uncle build a flying machine that can take me up as well? What’ll it be like up there, diving and swooping hundreds of feet above the ground? What will the world look like? Will I be free?
I ride Abby the four miles home at a walk, wondering, dreaming and questioning. The late afternoon sky is clear, with only a few puffy white clouds hugging the horizon. It’s endless and so much more interesting than the flat land that stretches away from me on all sides. I focus on a red-tailed hawk far above, his broad wings motionless as he soars effortlessly in lazy circles. How far can he see? He owns the world. Of course, he doesn’t need a heavy, smelly engine thumping and roaring away to keep him up there, but that’s a price I would gladly pay to fly. “I hope Horst can build an aeroplane that can take me up there,” I say to Abby, who waggles her ears in response.
Uncle Horst came over to Canada as a child, more than forty years ago. His father was a button-maker in Berlin, Ontario. I guess making buttons didn’t seem that exciting to Horst, so he drifted out west, bought a quarter-section farm, married my dad’s sister, Martha, and settled down. Well, his body settled down, but his mind never did. He loves machinery and is always the first in the county to buy the latest farming gadget—Mr. Ford’s gasoline-powered tractor, a new automatic milking machine or a reaper with a knotting binder.
My dad often tells Horst that he is the worst farmer west of Winnipeg, spending all his time tinkering with some new idea for a flying machine instead of filling his barn with bales of hay. Uncle Horst just laughs and says, “Ya, but I build the best flying machines!” Dad says Uncle Horst would have starved to death if he hadn’t married Aunt Martha to run the farm for him.
The first Bertha I met was number 3. That was in the summer of 1910, when I was twelve years old and nagging Dad to let me leave school to work on the farm. Bertha 3 was a strange complex of wings, struts, wires and an odd box-like tail. She flew quite well, but not well enough for Horst. Bertha 3 didn’t survive the winter; she was dismantled and rebuilt as Bertha 4. Unfortunately, something in number 4’s wings didn’t work, and she had a short and unhappy life. Bertha 5 worked better and flew around the farm scaring the animals throughout 1912.
It took Horst most of 1913 to develop and build Bertha 6, which is why the crash I just witnessed is such a blow. Still, I have left my uncle with pencil and notebook in hand, and I am certain that Bertha 7 is already growing in his mind, rising like a phoenix from the wreckage of her predecessor. I sat in Bertha 6 and even drove her around the field, but I have never left the ground. That is my dream.
In my daydream I’m up there with the hawk. I can see the railway line stretching off to the east and west, the grain elevators of Mortlach and Parkbeg rising up to break the monotony. The wheat fields are a patchwork quilt below me, and the occasional cows mere toys. There’s Old Man Dudek driving his buggy into town to sell eggs and pierogies. I feel as if I could reach down and pick him up. That would surprise him! I could even drop a bag of flour on him for a joke. Or a bomb.
My daydream becomes darker and I imagine armies marching back and forth across the fields—long, curving lines of men in red and blue uniforms snaking toward one another. Cavalry troops, their helmets and breastplates gleaming in the sun, sweep out in front, probing for the enemy. Cannons are unlimbered, and puffs of dark smoke rise from their muzzles. Shells explode bloodily among the soldiers. I can almost hear the thunder of the explosions, the crack of the rifles and the screams of the wounded. Is this what it would be like? Is this what aeroplanes are going to be used for?
My daydream is horrifying, but it’s exciting as well. After all, I’m not down there with the soldiers or the cavalry, marching, fighting, dying. I’m far up above in the clean air, free, safe, detached. “If Canada ever goes to war,” I say
to Abby, “I’m going to become a pilot. No marching and fighting for me!” Ignoring me, Abby continues her steady plodding pace toward home, a brush-down and a tub of oats.
CHAPTER 2
Shadows of War—August 1914
WAR IS DECLARED.
“Well, Horst, your predictions of war were correct,” my dad says. It’s August 6, 1914, and Canada declared war on Germany yesterday. Horst and Martha have come over for dinner. Mom and Martha are gossiping in the kitchen, while Dad, Horst and I sit on the porch watching the sky turn blood red as the sun touches the far horizon. Dad and Horst nurse glasses of brandy. I have a glass as well, but even though my sixteenth birthday is mere weeks away, my brandy is heavily watered down. If I’m honest, I’m glad of the dilution. The harsh taste stings my throat, and I only demanded some so I wouldn’t feel left out.
“Ya,” Horst agrees, “but I was wrong about England. I thought she would sit to one side and watch. And now Canada is at war as well.” My uncle stares glumly into his glass.
“We couldn’t just let the German army march through Belgium,” Dad says. “Someone has to protect the small countries.”
Horst regards his drink for a moment longer. “I do not think it is just about Belgium,” he says eventually. “The German papers say that England is jealous of Germany’s navy and does not want competition for her empire.”
“Is that what you think, Horst?” Dad asks.
Horst smiles. “I have not talked with Kaiser Wilhelm recently. All I know for sure is that the world is much more complicated than the newspapers—English or German—tell us.”
“Indeed,” Dad agrees. “I’m grateful for a simple life on the farm. Speaking of which, it will be a good harvest this fall if the weather holds.”
“And if enough young men stay behind to bring the crop in,” Horst adds.
Dad nods. “The French say they will be in Berlin by Christmas.”
“And the Germans say they will be in Paris by the same time,” Horst counters. “I think they are both wrong.” My dad opens his mouth to say something, but Horst stands and raises a hand to stop him. “Enough talk of war,” he says. “I must return to my simple farm. Thank you for a most pleasant evening, and let us hope the next time it will be in happier circumstances. Edward, would you be kind enough to inform Martha that I am readying the wagon?”
