by Max Hennessy
‘Where’ll you go?’
‘There’s a big hospital at Etaples and plenty of others nearer the fightin’. Where the nurses comfort the brave heroes as they’re brought back bandaged and bloody.’
I knew she was getting in another of her sly digs at me, because she’d never been taken in by all the tales of gallantry and glory put across in the newspapers.
‘Will they let you?’ I asked.
‘If I decide to go,’ she said, ‘just let ’em try to stop me.’
‘I’ll arrange to meet you,’ I suggested. ‘And dine you out in Amiens. Egg and chips. It’s the permanent standby of the British army in France. It makes you wonder where the French got their reputation as cooks.’
‘It’s an idea,’ she agreed. ‘And you certainly need someone to keep an eye on you. I’ve never heard of anything so silly in my life! Fancy itching to get back into the fray while you’re still in hospital.’
‘I’m all right,’ I insisted. ‘Feel my pulse.’
‘Not likely. I’m fed up with feeling your pulse. I think you’re barmy.’
There was no one in the corridor so, grabbing her hand, I pulled her towards me and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
‘You must be feeling better,’ she said dryly as she freed herself. ‘You’ve never handed those around much before. Besides—’ her face changed and she paused, fiddling with the thermometer and its case ‘—Ludo said there was another girl.’
The grin faded from my face. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There was.’
‘Do I know her?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Marie-Ange.’
‘Marie- what?’
‘Marie-Ange de Camaerts. She’s a Belgian. She helped us escape.’
‘Oh! That one!’ Charley looked deflated and I knew what she was thinking. Marie-Ange was part of that life in France of which she knew nothing. She was the girl who’d risked everything – even her life – to help us get away and I’d promised I’d go back when the war was over and seek her out. I’d been a little in love with her, in fact, I think, chiefly because she was pretty and had a funny accent when she spoke English, but after several months I found now that I could barely remember what she looked like and, though I tried hard, it was growing more difficult every day to hold to my promise.
‘What was she like, Martin?’
‘About your age,’ I said, ‘perhaps a bit older. The family had lived behind the German lines ever since 1914. She brought food to me and Ludo and found us clothes and then she led us all the way from Noyelles near Tournai to Phalempon. She was going to take us to the coast. Walking all the way. All the way, Charley! But then we got this aeroplane, and we had to go. It was our chance and we had to take it. We never even managed to say goodbye to her. But if it hadn’t been for her I’d still be a prisoner of war and so would Ludo. Ludo went back later and tried to drop a message at the farm where we hid but there was no one there. Perhaps the Germans came and took her away. Probably even shot her like they did Nurse Cavell.’
There was no smile on Charley’s face. ‘And this is why you have to go back?’
‘Well, the war’s bound to end eventually—’
‘I’ve seen no sign of it.’
‘Well, when it does I want to find her and thank her properly. I promised I would.’
She smiled and put the thermometer away at last. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said. ‘I thought it was something I’d done.’
‘Oh, no,’ I said earnestly. ‘Nothing you’ve ever done, Charley. I just must know. That’s all.’
She studied me. ‘You know, Martin,’ she said briskly. ‘If it hadn’t been Ludo that Jane married, I’d have said she wasn’t right in the head to throw you over.’
Then she swept out of the ward before I could ask her what she meant.
* * *
Despite her good intentions, she didn’t keep me in hospital and that week-end, as ordered, I flew to France, leaving from Dover and lining up on the two white markers they’d erected to give navigators a route across the narrowest part of the Channel. I landed at Clairmarais soon afterwards.
I got the shock of my life. I thought they’d be pleased to see me, that they might even know of me. But since I’d last been out, efficiency had taken over the army in France and things were different. Perhaps the failure of Passchendaele and Cambrai had set the government thinking that something was wrong with the direction of the war, because they’d given the command of all the allied troops on the continent to a Frenchman and put a businessman in charge of military transport. Everyone had suddenly become efficiency-conscious, so that the organization that had sprung up for the disposal of pilots along the front had become too intricate and vast to be true.
I’d expected to avoid all the nonsense of reporting to the pilots’ pool at Berck for a posting. I’d felt sure that somebody would have heard that Captain Martin Falconer, DFC, MC (and one or two other insignificant French and Belgian decorations), was back, and since, young as he was, he was itching for action, would promptly take him on one side with an arm over his shoulder.
‘What squadron do you fancy, old boy? Fifty-six is a good one. Sixty’s not bad. Or how about Twenty-four?’
It wasn’t a bit like that. The new system had got a stranglehold on France and they took the aeroplane from me without a word of thanks and sent me to Berck in the next tender as if it were my first time out. And Berck turned out to be a sort of livestock depot where bodies were shunted up to the front or back to England according to need. There was no comfort and the camp staff were kept quite separate from the people who were going to do the fighting – in case they caught some disease from them, I supposed – while the pilots were treated like dirt. It was like being in an initial training camp again. The food was awful, and people of staff rank were bowed in and out of cars as though they were visiting royalty. Everybody seemed to drop on one knee to them and service at the front didn’t seem to count at all.
As far as I could see, the people who were running the place were just organizing things for their own comfort, and mere captains like me were given only the slightest indication of respect, while lieutenants and second lieutenants were regarded as if they were something the cat had dragged in. It was an efficient barracks of a place with all the rigmarole like flagstaffs to hoist the ensign up and down in the morning and evening, and ‘No Admittance’ and ‘Keep Out’ and ‘Staff Only’ notices plastered everywhere. There were guards on every corner and miles of barbed wire, and dozens of other pilots besides me. The place was jammed with them, in fact, and after a quiet winter with few casualties the squadrons were making no demands. Most of the older men were content to wait their turn, happily aware that they might live longer that way, and some of them had been waiting for a matter of weeks, while it was quite obvious that all the time more were arriving than were ever leaving.
I’d been there three days, wondering what had happened to the war, with all the staff officers about the place making the most of their cushy posting and running the show as though it were a private dust-up of their own, indifferent to the men who were expected to do the dying. Then I had a passage of arms with a young staff captain, all red tabs and armband, who wore a pair of breeches that looked as though he’d been poured into them and field boots which had never been nearer a field than the path to that smart little office of his smelling of wax floor-polish.
There was a little triangular-shaped piece of wood on his desk with his name and rank on it. His rank was only the same as mine but his name was one I knew well because I’d read it in the society magazines like The Tatler and The Sphere and Country Life that found their way into the messes I’d used. He came out of the top drawer like Ludo Sykes and Charley but he was as different from them as chalk was from cheese. Their family had always considered that the privileges they enjoyed because of their wealth and rank made special calls on them and demanded special sacrifices. This l
ittle worm, who’d obviously got his job through influence, clearly felt that his caste gave him only privileges.
‘I came out here to join a squadron,’ I told him sharply when he argued.
‘So have a lot of other chaps,’ he said coldly.
‘I’ve been waiting for six blasted months in England,’ I went on. ‘I’m sick of waiting.’
‘Hard luck!’ He stuck his nose in the air. ‘You decorated boy wonders have to remember that people like me have other things to do besides just sort you out.’
I was so angry I jumped to my feet, and I think he thought I was going to hit him because he hurriedly pressed the button of a bell on his desk and a sergeant appeared while I was still glaring at him. He was as pale-faced and well-ironed as his captain but I suspected he’d seen this sort of thing before, because he opened the door wide for me.
‘This way, sir,’ he said quickly.
Outside, he gave me a look of sympathy but I was too angry by then to notice and literally smashed my way through the double doors at the end of the corridor. As they swung open, I felt them collide with someone who’d just been on the point of entering and heard a clatter, then a furious voice outside rose to a pitch of indignation as high as the top note of a set of bagpipes.
‘F’r heaven’s sake, ye bluidy fuil, watch whit ye’re up tae!’
The man outside, a little knob of a human being no more than about five feet two with a face like a potato behind a bony beak of a nose and sandy hair that stood up on his head like a worn doormat, was literally dancing with rage. He was wearing a kilt and a bonnet and was holding his nose; two walking sticks were lying on the path by his feet.
‘Ye’ve bust ma bluidy nose,’ he was yelling. ‘A mon would think this damned place was put up just tae gi’e wee whipper-snappers like you something tae do instead o’ getting fellers tae the front—’
I was grinning all over my face, and as he finally turned, his hands lowered, to study me for the first time, the purple fury in his cheeks died and a grin as wide as my own spread across his features.
‘Jock Munro,’ I said.
‘Brat Falconer!’ His voice rose to a screech like a banshee’s. ‘The wee laddie himself!’ And he leapt at me – or rather staggered, because he’d walked with sticks ever since he’d been wounded as an infantryman in 1915 – and clutched me in a bearlike hug.
His appearance had lifted my spirits at once. He’d been almost the first person I’d met when I’d reported to France in Bloody April of 1917 and it seemed like a good omen that he should be almost the first person I should meet in 1918. He seemed as pleased as I was.
‘Mon, mon,’ he was crooning in an accent that was thick enough to cut with a knife. ‘It’s gey guid tae see a familiar face again! Did they let you oot o’ prison, then, tae win the war for ’em?’
‘Well, they told me an old lag by the name of Munro was on his way over,’ I retorted, ‘and that he needed an assistant.’
‘Mon, mon!’ He seemed bereft of speech for a while, then a whole flood of reminiscences came tumbling out. ‘Ye remember Rochy-le-Moutrou, an’ the days when we were tryin’ tae drive off the DVs with yon old Pups? An’ the Bloody Red Baron an’ the day they gave ye a bouquet for knocking doon a Hun because naebody had knocked one doon before?’
As he shouted the words we were doing a lumbering, tottering jig, watched by a startled staff major who was trying to get past, dancing first on one foot and then on the other in an attempt to slip through the door.
As we stopped, he stared at us. He was obviously expecting a salute, but instead we stared defiantly back at him and for a moment I thought he might put us on a charge for not acknowledging him. But then I saw his eye run along the ribbons under my wings and, as he decided that perhaps we were a pair of mad types who might well attack him if he said anything, he merely raised his stick to answer a salute he hadn’t had and disappeared. Munro glared after him.
‘This damned place’s full o’ yon types,’ he snorted.
‘I’ve met one or two,’ I grinned.
‘All hoity-toity. All Eton and Oxford. All wi’ plums in their mooths so ye cannae understand whit they’re sayin’.’
‘I expect they had a bit of difficulty, too,’ I said. ‘I notice you still talk that barbaric language they speak north of the Forth.’
He sniffed. ‘Finest Eenglish in the worrld spoken in Aberdeen.’
‘It’s a wonder they don’t shove you in clink as a German spy. How long have you been here?’
He grinned at me. ‘Five days, mon. The longest five days o’ ma life.’
‘I’ve been three. Why haven’t I spotted you before?’
He chuckled. ‘Because Ah’ve found a way oot through the wire, mon. An’ there’s a bonny little estaminet just doon the road. Eigg an’ chips an’ red wine. Awfu’ cheap, too!’
It sounded dreadful but it was better than the camp.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
* * *
An hour later, full of egg, French fried, and vin ordinaire rouge so tart it tasted of iron filings, we began again to swop reminiscences.
‘How’s Sykes?’ Munro asked.
‘In Scotland,’ I said. ‘And married. Lieutenant-colonel now.’
‘Mon, yon’s travellin’. An’ y’r leg?’
‘All right. I limp a bit.’
‘It shouldnae do ye much harm. Ah limp a lot. Ah haird that Latta was a lieutenant-colonel, too, now.’
Latta had been commanding officer of the first squadron we’d belonged to, a bull-headed pompous man whose idea of fighting a war was to send everyone on cross-country runs when the flying corps had been literally clawing itself into the air in inferior machines against Richthofen and his new Albatroses.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘At Hounslow.’
‘Remember those two-seaters we brought down near Givenchy?’ Munro said. ‘And the Albatros? And yon time I flew a Fee intae the midden?’
‘And that Gotha we got from Sutton’s Farm?’
‘We got the Camels we were praying for after ye went home,’ Munro said. He wagged his head in admiration. ‘Mon, yon’s a pretty wee aeroplane.’
We continued to exchange memories for a while before coming back to Berck.
‘Twenty fellers came in yesterday,’ Munro pointed out. ‘Six went oot. And, mon, the list’s in a gey awfu’ muddle. They’re sendin’ single-seater fellers tae heavy bombers an’ heavy bomber pilots tae Camel squadrons.’
‘There’s no flying either,’ I said.
‘That’s right. We’ve got tae get oot.’
‘Where to?’
Munro grinned. ‘Remember Bull?’ he asked.
I nodded. Bull was another of the old squadron, a broad-shouldered, heavy-headed man of slow movement and smouldering temper.
‘He’s oot again. Near Bertangles. On SEs. Place called Pouleville. Ever flown SEs?’
‘Not half. I’ve been flying ’em all round Yorkshire.’
‘Same here round Scotland.’ He beamed. ‘Bullo’s leading a flight. He suggested Ah join him. They’re needin’ a replacement.’
‘Just one?’
‘Och—’ he gestured ‘—it willnae be long before they need another.’
‘We’d never do it,’ I said. ‘You’ve no choice at this place.’
‘No?’ He leaned closer. ‘There’s one way, mon.’
That night, he commandeered the piano in the bar. It was out of tune and Munro couldn’t really play, but he could bang out melodies for a sing-song and he got the whole miserable bored lot roaring.
‘It’s the only only way
It’s the only trick to play!’
For the first time in months I felt I was home.
* * *
The next morning we went to the office to see if there were any news of postings. There were a lot of pilots hanging about – some young and brand new, others with the old wild look that Munro wore, who’d been out before, and a few old sweats who didn’t c
are what happened – all giving particulars about themselves to be added to the sheets of names compiled by an overworked corporal clerk. As we strolled into the orderly room, Munro indicated the long lists of men requiring units, and the shorter ones of units requiring men, lying alongside a typewriter. The corporal clerk who had just made them out had his head in the cupboard looking for fresh papers and was in too big a hurry to attend to us. Munro had his pipe in his mouth and he tapped the list with his matches. His name was near the bottom. Mine was two above it. ‘Enough names there, mon, tae staff a whole new flyin’ corps,’ he muttered. He looked indignantly up at the clerk. ‘Ma name’s a long way doon, corporal!’
The corporal turned and shrugged apologetically. ‘Some of ’em have been waiting a month, sir.’
‘Is that a fact?’
As the corporal turned away again, Munro looked at me and struck a match to light his pipe. But, instead of applying it to the tobacco, he calmly touched it to the corner of the sheets of names instead.
I was ready and waiting. We’d worked out the moves carefully the night before in the bar. Giving Munro a violent shove that sent him cannoning against a desk to upset a whole pile of files on to the floor, I swung round as the paper he’d set alight flared into a flame and began to shout in a great show of panic.
‘Och, ma God!’ Munro yelled in horror, managing as he recovered to send another pile of papers flying.
‘Look out, you fool,’ I yelled. ‘You’ll set the whole place alight!’
In a moment the office was bedlam. As Munro backed away, his eyes wide with alarm, his mouth open yelling ‘Fire!’ the men waiting in the corridor, bored with hanging about, pushed their heads round the door and began to cheer and yell ‘Encore!’ and ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Give the man a medal!’ With great presence of mind, I snatched the sheet from the desk and threw it to the floor to stamp on it as hard as I could until the flames had gone. It was soon over except for the smell and the smoke and the ash on the floor, and the pilots disappeared again, one after the other, bored once more after the little interlude. But the corporal clerk was staring at the wreckage of his office and the crumpled list with horror.
