The Victors

by Max Hennessy

  Bull seemed to know all about them, though. ‘They say it’ll run rings round us when it arrives,’ he insisted. ‘And the only thing you can do is dive and zoom because they can out-waltz and out-fly us any time. They’re supposed to be so good every Albatros works in Germany’s making ’em.’

  ‘Pairsonal information, Ah suppose?’ Munro grinned. ‘From the Kaiser himself?’

  ‘It gets around,’ Bull explained. ‘Mercedes engines. One hundred and sixty-horse. Top speed about one hundred and twenty. Made of welded steel tubing covered with fabric. Light, nippy and fast.’

  ‘You seen one?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet. But they say they’re all going to the best squadrons and they sit up high waiting to pounce on us.’

  ‘Mebbe we’ll be lucky,’ Munro said. ‘Mebbe they won’t get a chance because we’ve left all the fighting away down in the south.’

  Bull managed a twisted grin. ‘For the time being,’ he said. ‘But the story’s going round that we’re only waiting for Jerry’s offensive to die down and then we’re going to hit him with everything we’ve got – everywhere.’

  ‘Ah expect ye’re right,’ Munro agreed gloomily. ‘It’s usually ma luck tae arrive just in time for the offensive.’

  * * *

  For a while, however, it certainly seemed as if we’d left the fighting behind us. We saw none of the new Fokkers and, with most of the planes we met still Albatroses and Triplanes, there were no casualties. Life became quite humdrum, in fact, with regular high patrols, all of them producing nothing, not even a brush with the Germans, because they invariably disappeared as soon as they saw us. A few of the new pilots who were itching to show what they could do began to grow bored and eager for action, but the older hands like myself and Munro and Bull – even Milne and Walters, who had viewed the Germans’ guns from the wrong end and had had to walk home for their trouble – preferred things as they were. We were none of us glory-seekers and we enjoyed being alive, and I for one always hated the business of the empty chair at dinner in the mess after we’d run into trouble. It was always studiously ignored, with the conversation louder and more inconsequential than normal in an effort to pretend it didn’t exist, but I’d never once really acquired the knack of rubbing people from my memory as quickly as all that, and I never failed to see the late occupant sitting there as I’d seen him the night before or even at lunch that day.

  Then, with the end of the month, the Germans seemed to wake up. Suddenly they began to appear in bunches, but the ones opposite us weren’t very good or were badly led and made nothing more than darting attacks at us before bolting for home. Before May was more than a few hours old, however, I managed to surprise a group of them over Armentières and the would-be warriors among us had more than their fill of fighting.

  The Tripes were always queer-looking machines and it was said that even Richthofen, who’d flown one regularly, had been none too keen on them and had continued to fly his Albatros when he could. But they were certainly nippy, could turn on a thumbnail and went up like lifts. On the whole, the Germans were still avoiding battle but this time they couldn’t get away and I got one in my Aldis and gave it a long burst. It immediately reared up in front of me in an upward roll but, being heavy-tailed, the Camel was good at climbing too, and I went up after it and got in another burst as it levelled off. I didn’t think at first I’d hit it but it suddenly flopped over into a spin and, deciding I’d put the wind up the pilot, I dived after him. Because we were equal in numbers and the other Triplanes were busy, it seemed safe to follow him down.

  The Triplane was spinning like fury by this time, as though the engine was full on, and I had to drop like a stone to keep anywhere near it. I chased it down to 3000 feet when it spun into a cloud and I couldn’t tell whether it crashed or whether the pilot had merely crept home with his heart in his mouth as I’d done myself more than once in the past.

  As I climbed back again, the sky seemed to have emptied of all but three aeroplanes, a Triplane and two Camels. The Triplane seemed almost to be having the best of the exchanges, turning in a very small circle and firing every time its nose was pointing anywhere near one of the Camels. But the pilot was afraid to come out of his turn and the fight was drifting towards the lines, so I held the Camel’s nose high and at eighty miles an hour it was vibrating wickedly as I forced it upwards.

  As I came within range, I tried a burst. The pilot of the Triplane seemed startled at the advent of a new opponent and dropped in a twisting dive, pulled up in a tremendous zoom then fell over on one wing in a tight curving dive. He had managed to throw the other two Camels off-balance by the manoeuvre and they were caught wrong-footed, heading in the wrong direction, but, perhaps because he hadn’t seen where the bullets had come from, his dive brought him close to me and I got in a full deflection shot as he whirled past. I saw the pilot’s head turn in my direction then the Triplane dropped in another spin and I was able to follow it down, taking snap-shots at it as it went. It looked like being just like the last one but suddenly it crumpled with a sudden flop, the wings tearing away and fluttering in the air while the body fell sheer, dropping at a speed that took my breath away. There would be no need to dig a grave for the pilot and it left me feeling a little sick.

  As though to try to get some of their own back, the German Archie started blackening the sky with malicious puffs of smoke as we turned for home. For once the shooting was good and I felt the Camel lift beneath me but, without attempting to regain formation, we twisted and turned for the lines, heading for the drifting puffs on the understanding that no two shells ever burst in the same place.

  As we crossed the lines, I was pleased to see that the other four machines were all behind me, picking up formation, and when we landed, everybody was all smiles, so that I knew the victory had done them good. Milne, who’d crash-landed after the last big fight, had crept about for days as though he were ashamed of what he’d done, but now he was jumping and dancing about with Taylor, grinning all over his face and slapping backs as though he’d defeated the whole German Air Force on his own. We all decided that Triplanes were revolting machines to look at and probably worse to fly, and that it was a startling sight to see all three storeys stand up and whirl away.

  ‘But they break up,’ Milne said solemnly, clicking his fingers. ‘Just like that! One minute it was there and the next it was just a fluttering jumble of canvas and sticks like a broken kite. And, my word, the way that fuselage went down! Those pilots couldn’t have been very good.’

  When we exchanged news it turned out that, in addition to the one I’d broken up, Milne and Taylor had driven another one down, and soon afterwards the artillery rang up to say that a third had dived into the ground with full engine on just in front of them at the exact spot where I’d sent the first one down.

  ‘Two in one fight, laddie,’ Munro said enviously. ‘What it is tae fly like a sparrow after a midge.’

  The weather began to improve and with the numbers of British aeroplanes over the lines increasing all the time, it was pleasant for a change to feel fairly safe. At long last we seemed to have the measure of the Germans and, unless their new Fokker proved as wonderful as it was said to be, I felt life was going to be considerably rosier for us all, because their industry was said to be suffering from a shortage of materials by this time and they were all supposed to be drinking coffee made of ground hazelnuts.

  Suddenly for the first time I really began to think the war was going to end. When it had started in 1914, I’d been terrified it would all be over before I got to the fighting, but then as 1914 and 1915 had given way to 1916 and 1917 I’d begun to feel it would never end. Men had come and gone so that I found now I couldn’t even remember their names and they went past in the memory like ghosts. Ghosts remembered not for their skill as pilots but because they’d eaten a lot or drunk a lot or been good at playing chess. But now the vast dark tunnel we’d all been going through for so long suddenly seemed to have a spot of light
at the end of it. Only a spot still because the tunnel was a long one, but at last there seemed hope that eventually we’d reach the end of it.

  And not before time either, because they were scraping the bottom of the barrel at home by now and had pushed up the military age to fifty-one – though all it seemed to do was reduce industrial efficiency rather than increase military power – and, of course, Russia was out of the war. But it was being said now that the revolution there was beginning to have its effect in Germany too, and that the people in Berlin were talking of strikes – a very different thing from when they’d marched into Belgium at the beginning of the war, so certain of victory they’d worked until they dropped to bring it about.

  There was talk of another German push and we all did what was called ‘taking a grip on ourselves,’ which meant simply being ready for anything and biting our nails as we wondered where it would come.

  When it came however, the offensive was well to the south on the Chemin-des-Dames. It started on May 7th and in no time at all the French had lost everything they’d gained since October, 1914. Since we’d lost in April all the ground we’d gained after the slaughter on the Somme and a lot of the ground we’d gained from Passchendaele, spirits slumped again and it began to seem that the war wasn’t so near ending as we’d thought. Down there the British were forced to retire to the Aisne and the French nearly to the Vesle, then suddenly the war woke up in our sector as well, as all hell broke loose to relieve the strain in the south.

  The weather was poor, however, with cloud low and solid, and we’d all decided there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of flying a patrol when Wing rang up to find out what we were up to. Milne was orderly officer and was sitting by the telephone in the office reading a book, and he replied quite truthfully that we weren’t doing anything very much.

  ‘Just sitting around,’ he said, and the man at Wing promptly insisted on speaking to the adjutant. When the adjutant arrived, he demanded to know why the squadron wasn’t flying when all along the front men were dying.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ the adjutant said truthfully. ‘We wouldn’t be able to see a thing. The clouds are down to less than 1000 feet.’

  ‘Aeroplanes can fly at 500 feet,’ the man at Wing snapped, and insisted that a patrol should be flown at once – with bombs. ‘It’s the policy to harry the Germans,’ he said.

  It was Munro’s turn for duty and he was furious because he’d already decided it was safe to go back to sleep, and he took off with his flight in a fury. The rest of us were at breakfast when they returned – soon afterwards because Munro had decided it was hopeless to try to fly a patrol.

  ‘Damned armchair warriors,’ he growled. ‘It must be marrvellous tae sit back at base an’ win medals an’ high pay just by tellin’ other bodies tae gae oot an’ die.’ He lit his pipe and tossed the match away. ‘The war doesnae change much,’ he added bitterly. ‘We lost Walters.’

  Walters was the youngster who’d walked away from his crash-landing after the scuffle with the Richthofen crowd, and he’d always had the look of a born victim. He was pale and good-looking with manners that had seemed too good for the rough and tumble of the war – not the gracious good manners of Ludo Sykes and his family, but the sort that sprang from being the only child of a doting mother, which in fact was what he was.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘All we could do was drop the bangers and come back,’ Munro growled. ‘Ah just happened tae be lookin’ round an’ saw the kid do a sort o’ roll an’ spin intae the ground near the German line. Ground fire, Ah suppose.’

  ‘No hope of him escaping?’

  ‘No’ a chance. I wouldnae ha’e crossed the blasted lines at all if I hadnae had the bombs.’ Munro shuddered. ‘Ah reckon Ah’ll never get used tae death,’ he ended.

  At dinner that night we all politely disregarded the empty chair. No one mentioned Walters, and the conversation carefully avoided the war. But I knew just what Munro was feeling and just what Bull had meant when he’d quoted Donne. A man’s death always diminished us, and though I always tried to pretend that by this time I’d grown calloused I knew I hadn’t and it worried me.

  * * *

  I was in the lowest of spirits when a message arrived for me from the hospital at St Marion. It was from Charley to say she’d arrived and was there any hope of meeting? It seemed to me there might well be, and when it rained the next evening I drove over in the Major’s car which he’d lent me for the occasion. Since we had a man there with a bullet through his calf it was a good excuse.

  After I’d paid my respects to the wounded man and eaten more than I should have of a large fruit cake he’d had sent out from home, I made enquiries about Charley. The nurse was helpful and I was told to wait by the reception desk in the corridor outside the ward. She turned up within five minutes and I kissed her automatically.

  She looked startled. ‘What’s that for?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I always kiss you when I see you, don’t I? It isn’t the first time and I don’t suppose I’m the only one.’

  She gave me a long cool stare. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘you are.’

  The words made me feel silly and a little like an overgrown schoolboy. I pretended to be unconcerned. ‘Get your cape,’ I said, ‘and we’ll go and have a meal.’

  ‘You can only be joking.’ She laughed but she sounded edgy. ‘They only let us out in twos and then only in daylight. Nice young nurses aren’t supposed to have boy friends, and as for having a date with one—’

  ‘But we’ve known each other for ages,’ I said.

  ‘Makes no difference. If they found us going out with a male there’d be an uproar like the storming of the Bastille.’

  ‘Your family never objected to me.’

  ‘My family are in England.’

  I was angry. Most of our time together had been spent in leg-pulling or acting the fool, but I’d been surprised to find just how delighted I was to see her because she’d seemed to bring a little colour and sanity into what was clearly becoming an extraordinarily stupid war run by people with ideas from the last century.

  ‘If I can’t take you out for a meal,’ I snorted, ‘I can’t see much point in coming to see you.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for you,’ she said coolly. Then she went on in a quieter voice. ‘Of course, you could go in for a bit of morale-boosting. When I arrived here I felt so damn’ miserable I thought I could weep. It’s all so cheerless and depressing and the wounded are so fresh from the battle. It makes it different.’

  She looked at me with large eyes not far from tears and I realized how selfish I’d been. ‘Gosh, Charley, I ought to have realized—!’

  She managed a jagged laugh. ‘You have your blind spots,’ she agreed and I quietened down.

  ‘What’s it like?’ I asked. ‘From your end.’

  She managed a rueful smile. ‘Bit grim. Better than in England though, in spite. Everybody there seemed to be out of the top drawer or pretending to be, and determined to stay where it’s safe. “Narse! Have you a minute to spah!” That sort of thing. Out here, at least everybody’s trying. Acute surgical’s the heaviest but acute medical’s more wearing.’ She frowned and it was almost like a wince. ‘I wish some of those horrid old people back home who talk so glibly about honour and this being a holy war could just see the mustard gas cases.’

  She made a brave effort to grin at me, but it didn’t somehow work, and she stopped pretending. ‘Everything seems to stink of iodoform and even after all this time I still don’t enjoy seeing a man bleed to death before my eyes.’ She blinked quickly as though tears were near the surface. ‘I always open the windows when they’ve gone, Martin. To let their souls out. It’s superstitious but I can’t help it.’

  She frowned again then smiled at me as though fighting to thrust it all behind her. She’d never claimed any intellectual pretensions but she was endowed with a great deal of humorous good sense and I knew exa
ctly how she was thinking. In 1914 all our generation, both male and female, all of us disastrously innocent and pure of heart, had dedicated ourselves to the war because it had seemed a fine and lofty ideal to do so. But there had been over 600,000 casualties on the Somme and 500,000 at Passchendaele, and God alone knew how many others from Mons in 1914 to St Quentin in 1918, and thousands – millions more – in Italy, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, Salonika, Italy and in Russia and at sea. There had never been much future for us and we were as different as chalk from cheese from those people who were too old to fight and belonged to another era, and centuries older than those who were going to be too young to know the war. The patriotism that they talked so easily about at home was wearing a little thin with us by now, and while we had at first constantly made a conscious effort to rededicate ourselves after each awful disaster, now a lot of us didn’t bother any more.

  I looked up at Charley. She was staring at me unhappily. ‘When’s it all going to end, Martin? I never knew it was so big when I was in England. And I begin to get scared.’

  ‘That they’ll never let you out?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said a little sharply. ‘Our family’s been fairly well walloped by this war, as you know. I doubt if we’ll ever recover.’

  ‘I know Ludo’s mother had a whole mantelshelf full of photographs of people who’d been killed. His cousins and things.’

  ‘Lulu’s cousins,’ she said tartly, ‘were my brothers. Two of them. I adored them both. You’ve lost your brother.’

  ‘And a few more,’ I admitted.

  ‘Suppose it happened to you?’