by Max Hennessy
I grinned. ‘You know what you always said: “The cavalry only exists to give a little tone to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.” It’s the same with the Sykeses. Like Charley, you brighten the day.’
He laughed again and touched the medal ribbons on my chest. ‘You’ll come out of this affair trailing clouds of glory,’ he said. ‘You’re tougher morally and physically than all the rest of us put together, old son. And you were born for swirling capes and plumes and rattling scabbards and the clattering of hooves in the dark.’
‘Good Lord,’ I said, startled. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. You. So don’t give it all up and go in for something as mundane as commerce. The air force’s going to need a few tough-minded people like you around, old fruit, because when this lot’s over all those stodgy old generals and admirals in the army and the navy are going to try to grab back everything they’ve lost to us and there’s going to be a hell of a fight on when peace comes to keep the air force alive.’
‘There is?’
‘There is that!’ He gave me one of his brilliant warming smiles. ‘But, by the grace of God, in Trenchard the air force’s got just the man to stop ’em.’
‘Think he’ll manage it?’ I asked.
‘I’ll bet my boots on it. It’ll be a hell of a fight, though. They don’t like an up-and-coming young mob like ours telling ’em what they can do with their traditions, and they’ll do all they can to tear everything down again, because there’s a lot of political support in the House among the entrenched old guard.’ Sykes grinned. ‘Fortunately, Trenchard’ll not let ’em get away with it, and a few people like you and me around to back him up wouldn’t be a bad thing.’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘That’s one thing that’s for sure. He won’t want me.’
Sykes grinned. ‘I heard about that.’
‘Who from?’
‘The man himself. He laughed like a drain when he thought about it later. You made your mark there, old son.’
I began to see myself as a general already.
* * *
It was impossible to wait for my father to recover and equally impossible to wait for him to die. The doctor made it very clear to me that there wasn’t much hope, but I had to go back. My father held my hand for a while without speaking, his eyes on my face as though trying to imprint it on his memory, and I sat like that until he fell asleep, then I tiptoed downstairs, picked up my bag, kissed my mother and left.
In London everybody seemed to know what was happening in France. ‘There’ll be another push,’ a man told me in the buffet at Victoria station. ‘And this time it’ll take us to Berlin. You see. There’ll be casualties, of course – a lot of ’em – but you’ve got to disregard those, like that damned crowd in parliament who’re always shouting for a negotiated peace.’
‘What are you shouting for?’ I asked.
‘Unconditional surrender,’ he said firmly. ‘Put the Kaiser in the Tower. We mustn’t give up until then, no matter what it costs.’
‘Are you likely to be called into the army?’ I asked.
‘Not me. I’m reserved.’
‘I thought you might be,’ I said.
With all the other old sweats humping their kit in stained ill-fitting uniforms, I went to join the leave train. I felt vaguely like a ghost, the ghost of Martin Falconer who’d joined up in 1915, still too young to vote but not too young to be killed, and I was only too glad to be away from all the background of hysterical flag-wagging and Keep The Home Fires Burning that was stirred up by people who were never in any danger of having to do anything else.
The war was making cynics of us all.
* * *
I arrived back in France at a bad time. The weather was growing warm and the days were bright with sunshine.
‘And there are eighteen hours a day when ye can fly, mon,’ Munro said. ‘An’ that means eighteen hours a day when we do fly. And just tae cheer y’up, laddie, the new Fokkers are beginning tae arrive.’
‘What are they like?’ I asked.
‘No’ a bit like they said.’
‘They’re not?’
‘No. They’re ten times worse. They’re good, mon, and more than make up for the rotten pilots they’ve got these days. Ah reckon they’re snatching back air superiority and there’s no nonsense aboot mixin’ it wi’ ’em. You just get up as high as ye can, then dive intae ’em an’ zoom away before they get ye. Mon, it’s a gey fine feat if ye just stay alive. How was England?’
‘Full of war workers all screaming for blood.’
‘Oors or the Germans’?’
‘I don’t think they’re fussy.’
‘It sounds familiar.’ He gestured. ‘We’ve got a new chap in Bullo’s place. Welshman. Know what he’s called?’
‘Jones?’
‘How did ye guess? He’s hot stuff. He’s even smaller than me – about five foot nothin’ in his stockinged feet – and has tae sit on a cushion.’ He grinned. ‘Ye’ll have haird yon story aboot the chap who crashed a BE at Netheravon and when he had to write a report, put down that he got in the slipstream of a sparrow?’
I grinned, too. ‘Yes.’
‘This is him. David Lloyd Jones. They were so startled, he got away with it.’
Jones proved a lively little cricket of a man with black crinkly hair and bright opal eyes, and a scar down the right side of his face where it had been cut by flying glass when he’d flown through a Sussex greenhouse the previous year. ‘There I was, boy,’ he explained in his high lilting voice. ‘With the cockpit full of broken chrysanthemums, fertilizer and glass. And the owner saying I had to pay for the blooms.’
He’d been a sergeant in 1916 when the Somme had decided him that he’d had enough, but he’d been in the army since 1913 and had joined the engineers as a drummer boy.
‘Recruiting sergeant picked me up in the valleys, man,’ he said. ‘Weighed about twenty-two stone and wore a red sash and red, white and blue ribbons on his hat so that he looked like a prize-winning shire stallion at a county show. I thought, “There’s feeding for you, Dai boy. If they build you up like that, it’s time you joined.” With me, though, it never took. I stayed small.’
Munro grinned. ‘Ah think we can leave safely the squadron tae him the night,’ he said. ‘Ah’m away tae see Barbara. Fancy comin’?’
I’d just decided I might when I was handed a telegram. It was signed by an aunt of mine and it said ‘Father died 10 am’. I knew my mother would be sad that I hadn’t been there but, after seeing so many men die in the last three years, I couldn’t think that it mattered much. My father surely wouldn’t have missed me. He’d been slipping into a coma when I’d left and almost the last thing he could have seen was his surviving son. Being there at the end wouldn’t have made him any happier.
I arranged to send a telegram back, but I didn’t feel like going out under the circumstances and in the end Munro went alone.
The next morning I got my fill of the new Fokkers.
* * *
Somebody had found a German headquarters at a farm called L’Enfer, near Wasquehal, and all three flights were to go across the lines and bomb it.
‘It’s well-named,’ Milne said. ‘Hell! It’ll be hell all right when we arrive.’
It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, though. The place was marked and named on our maps because it wasn’t in a village and, because Wing didn’t want anyone to get wind of what was coming, we were to go over and back at a murderously low altitude.
‘What about top cover?’ I demanded, not liking the sound of it at all.
‘There’ll be two squadrons of SEs sitting above you,’ the major said. ‘Wing say they’ve fixed it. They’ll be watching, and as soon as you go in they’ll come down to cover you.’
I still didn’t like the sound of it. L’Enfer farm was too deep behind the German lines for my taste.
‘One dive,’ I instructed. ‘Then pull out and go for the lines like blazes. Rendezvous over St Rô.’
The bombs were put in the racks, held so that the vanes couldn’t rotate. When they were released the vanes were whirled by the wind to detonate them. They weren’t very big, though, and we stood watching the armourers, wondering if it would be worth it: me, my heart fluttering already, Munro, leaning on his sticks, his face as Scottish as a haggis with its plain features and gingery hair, Milne, pink and white and schoolboyish like Taylor, and Jones, small, round and eager as a terrier, the scar on his cheek livid with excitement.
‘Let’s make ’em jump,’ I said impulsively. ‘When I go down, keep with me and all release your bombs as close together as possible. Make a nice big bang.’
Jones’ pale face, as Welsh as Munro’s was Scottish, cracked in a grin. ‘There’s vicious for you,’ he said. ‘Think of the headache you’ll give ’em, bach.’
‘And no fooling about,’ I said. ‘Straight in and out. I don’t hold with this Balaclava stuff Wing seems to fancy.’
We went across at a thousand feet, straight for St Rô, and I spotted the farm straight away. Glancing round I could see everyone in position except for one man who’d had to turn back with a faltering engine. I looked up but I couldn’t see any sign of the SEs that had been promised and for a moment I was inclined to call the whole thing off. But if the SEs were there I knew what Wing would say if I did, and I decided in the end that there was no point in hanging about because someone would soon catch on to what we were contemplating and the telephones would start ringing on one or two neighbouring airfields. So I waggled my wings, waved and pointed downwards, and we went right down to five hundred feet and for the last mile followed the contours of the ground. I was holding my breath all the way but my bombs seemed to go straight down the chimney, and as I pulled away I saw others knocking the tiles flying as they went through the roof. Then the smoke and debris and dust burst through the windows as they went off one after another, and men began to run for the yard in terror, their arms round their heads, and a couple of horses stampeded down a lane.
As we lifted away, I glanced back. The place looked a mess with the roof off and the windows out, but what Wing hadn’t told us was that they’d got anti-aircraft batteries all round the place and machine guns in every hedge-bottom and, although we’d surprised them out of their lives, they soon recovered and things started exploding everywhere. Something went off under my tail and I thought I was going in, but I managed to drag the machine upwards with strips of canvas flapping, and spotting a hole in the clouds, went through it like a ferret into a rabbit hole. Munro knew me well enough to stay with me and Jones wasn’t slow either. He was a little behind but he stuck close, and, as I turned and counted noses, I saw to my amazement that we’d all got clear away.
I was just congratulating myself when the man on my right came up alongside and waggled his wings and pointed, and I felt my heart go cold because just up above I could see a good dozen and a half German aeroplanes coming down on us. They had aileron extensions which made them Fokkers, an extra lifting space between the wheels, and long centre section struts like Vs that went to the base of the fuselage. They were the new DVIIs and as my eyes flickered round, looking for that top cover Wing were supposed to have laid on, I realized that some dim-brained idiot had once more made a hash of it and forgotten.
As they smashed into us, the whole lot of us split up and I could hear the appalling pop-pop-pop of machine guns as I zigzagged away. My Aldis was shattered and there were gaping holes in my left hand bottom plane, but I seemed to have come out of it alive. Then I heard another crack-crack-crack behind me in a higher note, as though it came from a different position, and splinters from a centre section strut flew into my face. A landing wire broke and the ends clattered and something tore the sleeve of my coat.
By this time I couldn’t tell whether the bullets were coming down from the Fokkers or up from the ground. Then the engine spluttered and I switched to gravity, functioning automatically but still with a feeling that I was going to be dead very shortly. There were bullet holes everywhere now – one group close to the wing root – and a strong smell of petrol, but then the engine picked up again and I decided that perhaps I was safe after all. I could still hear the cracking noise behind, though, and looked round in a panic to see who was shooting at me. But I could see no one and was wondering if the machine was falling apart, and had just throttled back for safety when I realized it was a strip of torn fabric flapping on the fuselage just behind my head. The wing seemed to be coming loose by this time and I was just preparing to crash-land when, instead, I decided to chance it and opened the throttle to climb away. There was still a smell of petrol, however, so as we drew clear I cut the power again and crept along cautiously, and gradually even the racket behind me subsided.
Milne appeared alongside, then another man. I waved and another man appeared and yet another and I realized I’d still got everybody with me. I looked around. Just above, to the right another complete flight was forming up, and on my left, well behind but unmolested, there was yet another – less the one man who’d had to turn back at the beginning. We seemed to have escaped without casualties.
I was glad to reach Puy, terrified all the way the wing might collapse. In fact, as I touched down, it dropped and I thought it had fallen off at last, but instead it was the whole aeroplane that had tilted. As I switched off, the machine swung round in a ground loop and came to a standstill, and as I jumped out I saw it was because one of the tyres had been punctured, too.
The other machines were coming in past me now, rocking their wings as they taxied to the hangar. They all seemed to be safely back and, after a while, a Crossley tender began to bounce across the grass. Munro and Milne climbed out of it.
‘Y’all right, mon?’ Munro asked.
‘I think so,’ I said, still quivering like a jelly.
‘Landin’ like that’s getting tae be a habit forbye. Ah hope ye say y’r prayers at night.’
‘Not half.’ I managed a shaky grin. ‘God’s a good friend of mine. He lets me down now and again but I suppose even He’s not infallible. How about everybody else?’
‘All down,’ Milne said. ‘All safe! But there’s going to be a lot of hard work in the hangars tonight and tomorrow. The major’s playing hell on the telephone to Wing about that top cover that didn’t turn up and he’s taken us off the roster for tomorrow to repair the damage.’
‘An’ me,’ Munro said firmly, ‘Ah’m gaein’ intae St Marion tae see Barbara.’
I looked round. I was still shaking and had to fight to control it so that they wouldn’t see it. There was a scorched tear down the sleeve of my coat, a piece out of the centre section strut inches from my face, several cut bracing wires, the group of holes near the wing root, the petrol tank holed near the top, two holes in the floor of the cockpit and about forty-odd others distributed about the aeroplane.
‘What’s yours like?’ I said.
‘Aboot the same. So’s everybody else’s.’
I drew a deep breath and began to laugh – a little too loudly to be natural. ‘I think we must be the luckiest beggars in France to get away with that lot,’ I said. ‘I see what you mean about the Fokkers.’ Clutching Munro, I did a wild dance of relief. ‘And just hang on, old son, because I’m coming with you!’
* * *
Even as the German offensives waned and they were stopped dead by the Americans on the Chemin-des-Dames at Château Thierry, the war in the air seemed to step up. The weather grew warmer and the birds sang as the poppies flared among the clover and, with the Germans throwing all their resources into producing the deadly new Fokkers, an unexpected viciousness began to enter the fighting as the German pilots lashed out with an air of desperation.
Suddenly there was a gleeful note in the newspapers as they described how the blockade was growing tighter and the Germans were being forced to spread candle grease on their bread instead of butter. But with Russia out of the war, there were also vast numbers of troops who’d been freed from the east to ho
ld us back in the west and it was obvious there was still a lot of suffering ahead – which was something the newspapermen never thought fit to mention.
There seemed to be little peace anywhere these days, in fact, because over the ominous tap of machine guns, the roaring of the guns to the east went on all the time, the sound filling the sky, the glare of their flashes tinting the clouds at night, so that the heavens seemed permanently red with flames. The bombers were overhead every night, too, either British heading for Germany or German trying to find the ammunition dumps. One night they found one at Vaervicq and we were all outside the mess watching the fireworks when the major called me to his office.
‘You’ve done some night-flying, haven’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. Over London with BE12s. When the Zeppelin scare was on.’
‘Well, they’ve organized a specialist squadron near Abbeville and they’ve asked for you.’
My jaw dropped. ‘But I’ve only just got back here!’
He shrugged. ‘Special request. Nothing I can do. I gather it’s only temporary. They want a few experts until they can train the newcomers. You’re to report at once.’
Munro was furiously indignant. ‘That’s the damn’ service all over!’ he stormed. ‘Just when I was beginnin’ tae feel ye were a sort of good luck charrm, too!’ Wondering what was ahead, I packed my kit and the tender dropped me at the new field late the following day. The major was a man called Brand but there was a lieutenant-colonel organizing things in the background, it seemed, and I was told to report to him. A strong suspicion was already forming in my mind and it was no surprise when I saw who it was.
‘Lulu!’
Sykes grinned. ‘Asked for you particularly, old boy,’ he said. ‘Germans have become quite bad-tempered with their heavy bombers just lately and I’ve been sent out to organize the opposition. Thought you might help. I’ve organized a night fighter unit—’
