The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  “You rotten sod, sir!” he yelled, almost in tears as the realisation of what had happened swept over him and left him shivering with shock. “You’re not properly wounded!”

  Eight

  Hatto’s wound was enough to take him to hospital and Dicken found himself flying with yet another new pilot.

  He felt neglected and unwanted. Because they knew each other’s methods, he and Hatto had felt safe together. But Hatto was gone now and the BE was not growing less obsolete. Staring at himself in the mirror, he saw he had grown old in the last two years as he had seen most of his companions disappear. His face had changed. It was no longer the round-cheeked image of a boy, and lurking behind it somewhere there were nerves stretched to bowstrings that showed in dark circles under his eyes and a half-hidden suggestion that he still hadn’t got used to the death or mutilation of his friends. It looked like the death mask of a whole generation.

  By this time, he was coming more and more to the conclusion that if he were going to fly he might as well fly himself. He loved flying, he loved the freedom and the sense of power it gave him, but it seemed that if he were going to put his life in someone’s hands, they might as well be his own and he began to wonder what his chances would be if he put in for a pilot’s course.

  As it happened, the opportunity didn’t arise because a new push started in the north and as he flew with different pilots, he decided that the strain was beginning to tell on him. Again and again he woke up in the night dry-mouthed and reliving his last flight with Hatto.

  For some time, he was far too busy to do more than flop into bed at the end of the day, his store of courage drained, and pray that the next day it would be raining, and he hadn’t the energy to think of anything but flying. Inevitably, the new push achieved nothing but casualties because, as usual, it was allowed to go on far too long and the Germans brought up reserves so that the line that ran all the way from Switzerland to the coast simply grew thicker and stronger. A French push followed but the Frenchmen managed only six hundred yards instead of the six miles which had been promised, and the casualties were so terrible rumours began to drift northward that the French troops were mutinying. Thousands were deserting and others marched to the front bleating like sheep. Handiside, who had been sent to a French squadron with a blacksmith’s forge, returned with a shocked look. “The bloody war’s over,” he said. “And we’ve lost it!”

  It certainly began to look like it because it was no secret that ships were being sunk in dozens by submarines, and the Russians had risen in revolution and kicked out the Tsar. Whichever way you regarded it, the future didn’t look very promising.

  Dicken’s flights these days were with a young South African by the name of Friedmann. Quiet and gently-spoken, he looked like a choirboy but he was very nearly as aggressive as MacTavish, and only a little more skilful. Like many of the young men arriving in France, his training had been quite inadequate and he was having to learn as he went along. But airplanes had a habit of arriving out of an empty sky with surprising speed and he still hadn’t overcome the newcomer’s fatal inability to see them in time so that several times it was only Dicken’s experienced eyes that saved them.

  A period of bad weather kept them grounded but, as it began to clear, flying started again and, heading across the lines, Dicken was leaning over the side reporting the fall of shot for a battery near Pilchem when he spotted white anti-aircraft smoke below them. Since it was British, he could only assume the battery below was warning them and, leaning further out of the machine, he saw three Albatros fighters climbing up under their tail, swarming in like sharks around an injured swimmer.

  “Ess,” he yelled at once. “Ess!”

  Unable to fire downward, he had to wait for Friedmann to take evading action but, though he was better than MacTavish, Friedmann was still not very good and a cluster of bullet holes appeared in the wing.

  “Keep on essing,” Dicken yelled. “Don’t fly straight!”

  But the BE was no match for the Albatroses and no matter how much Friedmann hurled it about he was unable to throw them off. At one moment, squinting over the top of the machine gun, Dicken found himself staring one of the German pilots straight in the face. As his machine swung away in a tight bank, he seemed only yards away and Dicken felt that he could have tossed a drum of ammunition into his cockpit.

  By this time the machine seemed to be hanging together only by its wires and was barely flopping about in the air.

  “Do something!” he yelled at Friedmann, but the pilot could only give him a sickly grin because, with the controls gone, there wasn’t much he could do.

  There was a terrific jolt as they hit the ground and a tremendous crash as if the sky had fallen in. For a moment, Dicken’s ears were filled with ripping, rending noises, then everything was silent.

  “You all right?” Friedmann’s voice, faintly dazed, came from under the wreckage.

  As they scrambled clear, they heard machine guns start and, giving Friedmann a shove, Dicken began to run.

  Stumbling across the shell-torn ground, feeling like frightened rabbits surrounded by beaters, they flung themselves over the British parapet to be picked up by kilted soldiers. Cigarettes were stuck in their mouths and an officer gave them both a large mug of rum. Dicken downed his without thinking and, red-eyed and speechless, he sat down abruptly on the firestep.

  They were given a guide through the reserve trenches and a squadron tender met them on the road to Béthune. As he made himself comfortable in the back, Dicken studied Friedmann with a frown. With the best will in the world, he decided, he wasn’t ever going to survive flying with someone else, and when they reached the squadron he put in his application immediately.

  “No reason why not,” the major said. “I’m surprised you haven’t applied before.”

  To Dicken’s surprise, he was accepted with remarkable speed and he could only put it down to the fact that the RFC had been losing pilots at such a rate they needed to replace a few quickly. He was glad to be going. The airdrome contained too many ghosts and they had begun to chill him with a nagging fear that he would be joining them before too long.

  “Tender will pick you up tomorrow morning, kid,” Handiside said. “Make sure you’re ready.”

  That afternoon, Dicken flew for the last time as an observer. Wing had ordered a bombing attack on a gun park near Courtrai and every machine that could fly was to go, with a newly-arrived FE squadron acting as escort. Dicken walked to the airplane faintly resentful at having to fly. It would be just his luck, he thought bitterly, to be caught by Richthofen’s lot on his last trip. They had been reported in the area again and everyone was having nightmares about them.

  Nine BEs set off, lumbering down the field like ungainly birds to struggle into the sky and climb slowly eastward. The countryside seemed empty, with just an occasional drifting spiral of smoke but, as they lifted upward, the afternoon sun was tinting the blue earth below to bronze and picking out roofs and walls and streams in gold.

  Dicken was flying with a pilot called Lewis who knew how to get the utmost from his machine and slowly they forced their way upward until they reached their ceiling, though they were still terrifyingly vulnerable to attack. The FEs were waiting for them over Armentières and as they arrived the whole group began to head along the railway line for Courtrai.

  The FEs, which were flying just above them, didn’t seem terribly skilful and kept wandering off to the south. Finding the target, the BEs circled to the east to approach into wind and, as the gun park drew closer, they began to go down one after the other to drop their bombs. Dicken saw flashes and smoke but not a great deal of damage. A motor lorry was burning fiercely and men were running, then a horse galloped madly away, its saddle empty, a toy animal below the wing.

  Though the sky seemed to be full of smoke, the anti-aircraft fire didn’t seem to be doing much harm
and he was just wondering why the Germans bothered with it when there was the crack and flash of a shell and one of the FEs just above seemed to collapse in mid-air. The nacelle and engine hovered like a wounded bird then lunged forward, the wooden booms that held the tail flapping about like useless sticks. One of the crew fell out, his legs and arms going as if he were running, his leather coat catching the sunlight until his falling body fouled the wing of the machine beneath, which swung sideways under the wreckage of the broken machine, so that it flopped on top of it and lay heaped up on the upper wing.

  Lewis yanked the BE clear of the fluttering tangle of wood, metal and fabric and, stiff with horror as they slipped past, Dicken saw one of the broken tail booms slide back into the propeller which immediately flew to pieces to shatter its own tail. For a second the whole clutter seemed to hang in the sky, engineless, then the observer of the lower machine began to climb on to the top wing as if to shove away the wreckage. But as he did so the whole mess collapsed and, his eyes glistening with tears, Dicken saw his despairing expression as the wreckage thundered past, only yards away, the landing wheels seeming to slam past within inches of his face, to leave a trail of yellow struts, smoke, and strips of fabric.

  As they turned for home, they were dispersed all over the sky, and over Comines they saw a flash in the distance and a rapidly descending column of smoke that told them the German fighters were among the scattered machines.

  As they touched down and taxied toward the hangars, another BE glided in behind them, the pilot wounded, the observer shuddering with shock. As they waited, another machine landed, and then another – and then no more.

  There was an air of gloom about the squadron that night and Dicken found he wasn’t sorry to be leaving.

  The following morning he was waiting with his kit as the tender arrived. It stopped near one of the empty hangars where Corporal Handiside was waiting with a group of mechanics. As Dicken began to walk towards it, he saw them lifting out two bodies. They were burned beyond recognition, the blackened remains of what had recently been two high-spirited young men.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  Handiside directed a glare at him. “How the hell do I know?” he snapped. “Could you tell by looking at ’em?”

  Dicken backed away, aware that the normally unmoved Handiside was suffering the same sort of shaken misery he was feeling himself.

  “Well, go on–” Handiside turned from where he was helping to cover the two bodies with a tarpaulin and gave him a shove “–get in and go! You’re away from it for a bit. For Christ’s sake, make the most of it!”

  Part Two

  One

  “They’re very pretty,” Zoë said, fingering the wings on Dicken’s tunic. “And I see you’ve got another medal, too. What’s that for?”

  “Saving Willie Hatto’s life.”

  She touched the ribbons. “I thought that was for saving Willie Hatto’s life.”

  “This one’s for saving it again.”

  “It sounds like a put-up job to me. What does he do? Go around getting himself into trouble so that you can drag him out? Were you very brave?”

  Dicken shrugged. He was young and resilient and, away from the fighting and the constant narrow escapes that like small deadly cuts had drained away his courage like blood, was recovered enough to be blasé.

  “You don’t go out winning medals because you think they’ll look nice on your coat,” he said. “It’s usually a case of do something or end up dead.”

  She said nothing for a moment, only barely aware of the fading tensions inside him. “It’ll make Annys jealous as hell. Parasol Percy hasn’t got any medals at all. Did you know he’d joined the Flying Corps? He didn’t like the mud.”

  “He’s not the only one. Neither did I.”

  “They took him out of his office. I think he thought a pilot’s course would take a nice long time and would be safer than the job he’d been given. What’s it like, learning to fly?”

  Dicken grinned. “Chiefly, they seemed to want to know if I knew anything about internal-combustion engines. I said I had a four-horse Bradbury single-geared, single-cylinder motor bike.”

  “But you haven’t.”

  “No. But I knew they wouldn’t go out and check.”

  She backed away to get a better look. “Vickery’s in the RFC, too, now,” she said. “Did you know?”

  “I hope they’ve found him a job where he doesn’t have to turn corners. It’s a useful asset when a German’s coming.”

  She giggled. “Actually, he’s testing. They decided he was too old and too short-sighted to fight.”

  “Who blows the whistle?”

  “Nobody. They allow him to wear glasses.”

  “What about Annys?”

  “Thinking of wedding bells.”

  “With Parasol Percy?”

  “Who else? After all, he’s got himself up to captain. I think he joined the RFC because he didn’t like being shot at.”

  “What makes him think you don’t get shot at in the RFC? What about you?”

  “Running Pa’s business. Pa was asked to organise a remount depot near Winchester, so Mother and an old man run the stables and Annys and I run the garage. Annys does the books and looks beautiful for customers. I do all the work. She thought you were mad to go flying but when Parasol Percy went in for it, she changed her tune. You’re heroes of the air nowadays. What’s your next move?”

  “Fighter training. We have to learn to throw aircraft about the sky.”

  “And then you go to France and come home with medals jangling all over you and get your picture in the newspapers?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “I hope you manage it, Dicky boy.”

  As it happened, so did Dicken, because he wasn’t half so confident as he pretended. He’d been surprised how difficult it was to fly an airplane and had clutched the controls in a deathlike grip until the instructor had screeched at him to let go and hold them gently; then he’d held them as if they were made of eggshells and been told to get a grip on the bloody thing before he lost it.

  His first solo had come as a surprise because he’d not thought himself at all ready for it, but he’d got the Rumpety off the ground and enjoyed the climb until at 1000 feet it had suddenly dawned on him that he was lost. Flying around in circles, staring in every direction and asking himself where on earth the airdrome had gone to, it suddenly occurred to him it might be directly beneath him and, peering anxiously over the side, he found that it was.

  His first landing had been eighty feet in the air, so he had put the nose down and finally managed it after two more tries, one at forty feet and the third at eight feet. The crash as the wheels finally slammed down had almost jarred his spine loose. The instructor had appeared alongside him, smiling but shaken. “I think, son,” he said, “that you ought to have a few more lessons before you go solo again.”

  The following week, with five hours’ solo behind him on the Farman Shorthorn, he was posted to Brooklands for training on service type machines. Almost the first person he saw was Diplock. He still wore his captain’s pips and was entitled to a salute but he hadn’t changed much, his pale face a little plumper, his ears more protruding than ever. He was full of jealousy for the medal ribbons Dicken wore and Dicken was careful not to tell him their history.

  Other officers were entering the mess now and among them Dicken recognised Hatto.

  “The one with the monocle’s Lord Hooe’s son,” Diplock said smugly. “No side at all. Often speaks to me.”

  As Hatto bore down on them, he drew himself up, the smile fixed on his face, but Hatto merely nodded and threw an arm around Dicken’s shoulder.

  “Delighted to see you, old fruit,” he said.

  “How’s the head?”

  “The quacks boarded it
up safely and pronounced me fit.” Hatto tapped Dicken’s chest. “Glad to see you got something for it. They grow on you like wassail balls on a Christmas tree. You’ll have so much metal on your chest soon you’ll walk lopsided. Let’s wet its head.” He turned to the startled Diplock. “Have to excuse us, old fruit. Just for a minute. Things to talk about. Old friend of mine. Saved my life. Twice. Get remarkably attached to people who save your life.” He jabbed a finger at the ribbons on Dicken’s chest. “He wants to be the most decorated man in the Flying Corps and I keep trying to oblige.”

  Aware of Diplock’s flushed angry face, Dicken pushed to the bar.

  “Who’s that gadget?” Hatto asked quietly. “He’s always trying to get me into conversation. Calls me ‘sir’. Bags of unction and dropping on one knee sort of thing.”

  Dicken grinned. “Instinct. Father’s a parson.”

  Hatto smiled. “Flies a bit like a parson,” he said. “Crash-landed in the sewage works. Nobody would speak to him for a fortnight. You’ll like it here. CO’s Morton.”

  “What buses are you hoping for?”

  “SEs or Camels. Brand new types. Good as anything the Germans have got.”

  Dicken eyed him curiously. “I’d have thought that a chap with your connections would prefer a job on the staff. After all, the staff’s full of people like you.”

  Hatto’s face was suddenly solemn, all his humour gone. “Not Hattos, old son,” he said. “None of ’em are Hattos. We were blessed with privileges to start with and we always considered that was a good reason for not asking for any more.”