by John Wilson
Sooner or later, something will have to be done about the observation balloons. We all know that there is to be a big attack this summer, to help out the French, who are being hard pressed to the south at Verdun. I’m sure the Germans have worked out that there is an attack coming. What they don’t yet know is where and when. If we can destroy the observation balloons, we will blind the enemy.
I become aware of Bowie waving to the east. Nervously, I scan the sky. There’s the 2c of line B, photographing the reserve trenches, and there’s the protection above, but there’s only one Parasol. I scan and eventually see the second, far ahead and diving. I look ahead of the dive and see another dark shape in the skies. It’s a German two-seater. Mick must have seen it and decided to go for his fifth kill. Wally won’t be happy that he has been disobeyed.
I watch as the gap closes. It all happens in silence, like a moving picture show. The German eventually sees Mick and begins twisting and turning, but Mick stays with him. Eventually the two-seater goes into a shallow dive over the lines. It looks as if Mick finally has his kill.
I scan east. Three black shapes are dancing wildly where I last saw Jock. Another is closing in on the 2c. I watch, horrified, as Jock fights for his life. From this distance, I can’t tell who is who. Eventually, one shape spirals down. For a moment I hope that Jock has got one of his attackers, but then the other two black shapes dive toward the observation plane, which is already twisting away from the third Fokker on his tail. The 2c dives hard for our lines, zigzagging from side to side. If he can keep ahead of his attackers, he has a chance. The 2c has a gun that can fire backward, discouraging straight attacks from above and behind.
Between scans of the otherwise empty sky, I watch the race for safety with fascination. It’s hard not to go down and help, but I’ll obey my orders. To my great relief, the enemy pilots break off the attack as our plane crosses the lines. Unfortunately, this leaves them free to go after our 2c.
I watch as the three Fokkers climb to get into position to attack. Then Bowie waves his arm and launches his Parasol into a steep dive. I follow. We have the advantage of height and hit the Fokkers while they are still climbing. Bowie goes in first, guns hammering, and the lead enemy plane bursts into flames and falls. Then it’s an insanity of twirling, weaving, looping machines. I fire as shapes flash in front of me and pull away violently as I almost take the tail off one. I get behind one and empty my magazine to no visible effect.
The fight feels as if it lasts for hours, but it can be only a few minutes at most before the two remaining Fokkers break away and dive for home. I want to follow, but there’s little I can do until I’ve changed magazines on my Lewis gun, and in any case, Bowie waves me back into position above the 2c, who has calmly continued his work as the fight raged around him.
I reload my Lewis gun. This is not easy. It involves standing up on the cockpit, holding the stick between my knees, leaning forward and replacing the round magazine on top of the gun. Not something I would enjoy doing in the middle of a dogfight! There are no further incidents as our two-seater finishes its run, and with relief, we turn for home. We escort our 2c back over the lines and wave at him as he turns for his landing strip to the south.
OPERATING THE LEWIS GUN FROM THE COCKPIT.
I have mixed feelings about our work. Two enemy planes have been destroyed, but we lost Jock and the B line was incomplete. I wonder what has happened to Wally’s group, where Mick is and if the other 2c made it home.
My last question is answered as soon as we land. The 2c pilot headed for our airstrip, which is closer than his own, and now the plane sits at the end of our runway with a collapsed undercarriage. Fortunately, the pilot and observer are all right, with only a few scratches. Their plane has taken a lot of punishment, however, and there are several long tears in the fabric. Mick’s plane is sitting outside the barn, but there is no sign of the pilot.
“Where’s Mick?” I ask one of the fitters after I’ve removed the Pour le Mérite and climbed out.
“’E landed ’bout ’alf an ’our ago,” the man says in a heavy Cockney accent. “Without so much as a by-your-leave, ’e jumps in the lorry and ’eads off down the road.”
Bowie and I are busy cleaning the foul-smelling castor oil off our faces when we hear the sound of aeroplane engines. We rush outside, and I’m relieved to see two Parasols approach above the trees and land without incident. They were attacked by a single Fokker, Wally explains, but drove him off without too much trouble. Bowie and I describe to Wally what happened with us. He congratulates us on a job well done, then leads those around us in applause for Bowie’s third kill. But he stresses that our greater achievement was allowing the observer in the 2c to do his job.
When we tell him about Mick his face clouds in anger, and when the pilot of the wrecked 2c says he completed only about half his run, Wally swears viciously under his breath.
“We’re going to have to go out this afternoon and complete that run,” he says. His voice is calm, but I can see from the set of his jaw and the cold look in his eyes how angry he is. “And that 2c is a write-off.” He turns to me. “Did you see Jock go down? Did he manage to regain control?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “He was still spinning when I lost sight of him.”
“Let’s hope he landed safely and is a prisoner. Where’s Mick?”
As if in answer, the noise of a lorry fills the air. We watch as it turns in from the road and bumps to a halt in front of us. Mick jumps down, runs around to the other side and hauls a scared-looking German pilot out the passenger door. The German is pale and there’s a large bloodstain on his right shoulder. He’s holding his arm gingerly across his chest.
Mick pushes his prisoner forward, as if presenting a trophy. “He came down in a field five or six miles behind our front lines,” he explains. “The machine’s a write-off and the observer’s had it, but I brought this fellow along for entertainment. Thought he should be with us when we celebrate tonight.”
There’s a strange, wild look in Mick’s eyes. His enthusiasm is met with a stony silence.
Wally steps forward. “Do you have the slightest idea what you have done?” he asks, his voice dangerously quiet.
“I made my fifth kill,” Mick answers, elation quickly turning to puzzlement.
“You disobeyed a direct order to stay with your 2c. As a result, the observation could not be completed, and someone is going to have to go out this afternoon and finish it. Jock, who obeyed orders and stayed at his post, was attacked by two Fokkers, and you were not there to help him. He went down behind the enemy lines and we can only pray that he survived to be taken prisoner.
“This squadron is a unit. We will only defeat the likes of Immelmann if we work together. I proved that when we were attacked, and so did Bowie and the Kid. Your lax discipline proved the opposite. I could have you court-martialed.”
“Court-martialed?!” Mick steps forward and thrusts out his chin. “You wanted an ace for this squadron as much as I did. Now you’ve got one. What are we here for if not to kill the enemy? And I’m the best you’ve got at doing that. Every Fritz I shoot down is one less who can attack your precious 2cs. If you want babysitters, use these boys.” Mick waves his arm to encompass everyone else. “I’m a hunter and I work alone.” He pushes past Wally and the rest of us and stalks off.
We stand, silent and uncomfortable, as Wally stares after Mick. Then he turns back to the rest of us. “Put this man under guard and tend to his wounds,” he orders, indicating the captured German pilot. “The rest of you clean up and fill out your flight reports.” He looks at the fitters and riggers, who’ve been watching all this from a distance. “And I want all the planes serviced and refueled, and full damage reports on those that are in no condition to fly.”
Wally heads off toward the radio tent, presumably to arrange a rendezvous with a 2c to complete the morning’s work and to find someone to pick up the crew of the wrecked plane.
“Who’s right?�
� I ask Bowie.
He shrugs. “Don’t know, Kid. Maybe they both are. We certainly need to protect the reconnaissance boys, and one way to do that is to fly cover over them. Trouble is, we put two planes over each two-seater, Fritz attacks with three. We put three up, and he attacks with four. He has the advantage of fighting over his own territory, and until we have either overwhelming numbers or superior machines, it’s going to be tough.
“The other approach is to send single machines out to hunt, the way Mick does, and hope they can intercept Fritz before he hits the two-seaters. Whichever approach is best, I sure hope they give us more planes and more pilots before this big attack that’s coming.”
Bowie wanders off deep in thought, leaving me thoroughly confused. Jock’s missing and Mick is a coldblooded killer who doesn’t seem to care. This is nothing like the war I expected.
CHAPTER 13
A Visitor—May 1916
It’s mid-afternoon in late May, and my fitter and I have been checking over my Parasol after the flight south to our new aerodrome near the town of Albert on the River Somme. It’s a beautiful spring day and the birds are singing in the surrounding trees. Only the distant rumble of the guns reminds me how close we are to the fighting.
Just as I finish rubbing oil off my hands, I’m stunned to hear a familiar voice over my shoulder. “Here you are, Eddie Boy! I’ve caught up with you at last.”
I spin round to see Alec smiling at me. He looks older than I remember, broader across the chest and suntanned, but the smile is the same. My first thought is that he got his transfer to the RFC, but then I notice that he’s wearing a soldier’s khaki uniform. “What are you doing here?”
“Now that’s a nice welcome, I must say. I come all the way from Egypt to say hello and I don’t even get a handshake.”
“You surprised me, that’s all,” I say, grinning as we shake hands. “How did you find me?”
“No trouble,” Alec says. “I just asked the first military policeman I met to point me toward the best Canadian pilot around. He said that there weren’t any good Canadian pilots, but he’d heard there was a prairie kid who could jump really high.” We laugh.
“And this is from someone who, by the looks of it”—I stare pointedly at Alec’s uniform—“didn’t even get into the RFC.”
“True enough, Eddie,” Alec acknowledges good-naturedly. “Turns out flying’s not for me. Rather keep my feet on the ground—or under the ground, I should say.”
“Underground?”
“Apparently someone looked at my application for a transfer and saw that I was a hard-rock miner. I’m called for an interview for what I think’s the RFC, only to be met by an officer from the Royal Engineers. He sees how short I am and I’m down a damp tunnel under no-man’s-land faster than you can say Jack Robinson.” Alec laughs. “It’s not too bad, though. The Newfoundland boys’re just up the road, so I still get to see my mates.” Alec looks over at the chateau where the pilots are billeted. It was clearly a magnificent house in its day, but now all the windows are blown out and there are patched shell holes in the walls from the fighting in 1914.
“You going to invite me into your fancy new lodgings? Or are they too good for your old friends?” Alec asks.
“They are too good for you, but I’m an influential person round here. I’ll get you in.” We walk across the grass toward the chateau. Seeing Alec again is like a breath of fresh air. His joking banter harks back to happier days. Unfortunately, it also reminds me of Cecil. “We just flew in here this morning,” I say, pushing my memories to the back of my mind.
“That’s what I heard. I’m back to the line tonight, so I thought I’d better drop over to see you this afternoon. Mind you”—Alec scans the runway, the camouflaged hangar for the planes and the wooden sheds where the mechanics work—“looks as if the place was ready for you.”
“We pilots are too important to have to work,” I say with a smile.
Just then, a particularly loud rumble breaks the silence.
“That’s one of those big howitzers,” Alec observes. “Fires a shell the size of a small cow almost straight up in the air. Comes down on Fritz out of nowhere. Makes a hole you could build a house in. Wouldn’t like to be under one. Still, I’ll be safe enough deep underground.”
“You reckon this is where the big attack’s going to happen?”
“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Alec says. “You haven’t been here for a night yet. You won’t get a minute’s sleep. The roads are crazy from dusk to dawn—lorries, tractors, marching feet—and they’ve built miles of railway lines as well. You won’t believe the stuff that’s being brought up: guns, ammo, duckboards, sandbags. And it’s all got to be hidden somewhere. I reckon your job, Eddie Boy, will be to stop Fritz flying over to take too close a look.”
A HOWITZER CANNON.
“And what’s your job, Alec?”
“Same as always—digging holes.” A serious look forms on Alec’s face. “I’ll tell you, though. Come the battle, there’s going to be large bits of the Hun trenches that won’t exist anymore.”
That’s all I can get out of him. We go into the chateau and find ourselves a couple of chairs in what used to be a magnificent parlor. The floor-to-ceiling fireplace is still there, and a vast, dusty crystal chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling. Alec tells me a few stories about his time in Egypt, but he seems more interested in what I’ve been up to.
I find that talking is a relief. I can say things to Alec that I can’t say in my letters home, even if the censors would allow it. I give him more details about Cecil’s death, about Wally and Bowie, and about what happened that day with Mick and Jock.
“Mick went off on leave and Wally didn’t court-martial him,” I relate. “We didn’t know what had happened to Jock for two weeks, but we all hoped he was a prisoner. One morning, just as the sun was thinking about coming up, we heard a strange plane overhead. It was a German two-seater and we all thought it was a bombing attack. The pilot swooped low over the airstrip and we all dove for shelter, but the only thing he dropped was a canvas bag on the end of a crude parachute. When we opened it, we found Jock’s personal effects and his bagpipes, along with a note.”
I rummage in my pocket. No one seemed to know what to do with the note, so I kept it. I read it to Alec.
English Flyers,
We are returning the effects of the brave pilot who fell behind our lines on April 1. Although outnumbered, he fought well and did not run. We found him dead in his crashed machine and buried him with full military honors.
We are sorry for your loss.
Your comrades in the sky
“It was just as well that Mick was away on leave,” I add.
“Chivalry among the knights of the air,” Alec says. I detect a bitter tone to his voice. “You ever been in the trenches?” he asks.
“No,” I admit. “I’ve only seen them from a couple of thousand feet up.”
“I reckon the smell doesn’t get that high. Not much time for chivalry down there. Best those poor blighters can hope for is a few hours of sleep in a hole in the ground and a warm meal once in a while. Even a burrowing mole like me has a better life than they do, even on a quiet section of the line. But listen to me moaning on! You obviously survived. You an ace yet?”
I laugh. “Five doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s hard to get. The weeks before we moved here were quiet. Most of the German planes are down fighting the French at Verdun, so the patrols weren’t dangerous. Wally got his fourth at the end of April, so he’s our closest to an ace until Mick returns. I got number two, a two-seater reconnaissance craft that spun and then dove away, but I won’t be credited with it. No one saw it crash so there’s no official confirmation and I still sit on one.”
“You’ve just got to work harder, Eddie Boy,” Alec says with a smile.
“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “But if you get too focused on getting kills, it distorts your thinking. You end up like Mick. We have to rem
ember that the only reason we’re up there is to protect the work the observers do.” I look at my friend, serious now. “They say the two most dangerous times for a pilot are the first few weeks and after he’s been flying for months. We lost a couple of new pilots who hadn’t been with the squadron long. I can’t even remember what they looked like. It’s best not to make friends with the new pilots too quickly.” I laugh bitterly. “I guess I’m getting to be a heartless old veteran.” Talking about all this to Alec is bringing out feelings I’ve kept buried for weeks. I don’t like them.
“Do you still feel the same way about flying that you did on the boat over here? You really got me fired up about it back then.”
“I don’t know,” I say after some thought. “Sometimes, at dawn or sunset, when the clouds look like a wonderful painting in some great art gallery, I can recapture the feelings I had flying across the prairies with Uncle Horst or Ted. But mostly I’m over the lines and scanning everywhere for a dark shape swooping at me out of the sun or the black puffs of Archie edging closer.”
“You’ve got a future as a poet,” Alec says.
I laugh. “I don’t think so. At the end of a day of patrols, even if there’s been no fighting, I crawl into my bunk, so exhausted that I sleep like the dead. Funny thing is, I wake just as tired as I was when I went to bed.”
“Yeah,” Alec agrees. “I feel exactly the same after a day of digging in a tunnel. It’s the not knowing. Is there a Hun camouflet—that’s one of their counter tunnels—ready to blow a few feet away? It must be much the same knowing there’s a Hun plane you can’t see ready to jump you.”
“I guess that’s it. The worst thing, though, is when you see an enemy pilot’s face. Most of the time you can pretend it’s a game and convince yourself that the plane you’re hunting is just an inanimate object. Then you get close and see the look of terror on a man’s face, and you realize that you’re busily trying to kill someone.”
