The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  They were still short of their objective and he found himself glancing ahead and then below, trying to judge whether they could do it or whether the Germans would arrive first. Dunne had clearly made up his mind, and when the anti-aircraft fire began he ignored it and drove on in a dead straight course. There was no other way and the machines clustered more closely together, because only the concentrated fire of the observers’ guns could hope to hold the Germans off.

  They were approaching the railway station at twelve thousand feet in tight formation when the first German reached their level three miles away, a heavy-shouldered DV screwing its way in a curve up into the sky ahead of them. It was still some distance away when a movement in the formation made Dicken’s head flick to the right. One of the Strutters had fallen out of formation, leaving a gap, and he saw puffs of smoke from its exhausts as it fell below them and swung west in a long swift curve. He recognised it instantly as Diplock’s.

  The two photographic observers were exposing their plates now, trying to do the job quickly but carefully, bending over their cameras, the pilots flying in a dead straight line and counting the seconds so that there would be a lap-over for each exposure. By the time they’d finished the sky seemed full of Germans and, as they fell on the Strutters, the firing started.

  Grim-faced, his eyes all over the sky, Dicken tried to hold his position, relying on Almonde to protect his rear. Almost immediately, Snell’s machine began to drop below the formation as the engine was hit and at once two Albatroses fastened on its tail. Two seconds later it was spiralling downward in tight curves until it began to break up in the air under the hammering it was receiving. Still trying to hold his place, Dicken saw the wings fold back and the fuselage begin to drop straight down, looking like a coffin, the tail slowly coming over beyond the vertical. The observer fell clear and began to follow it down, a sprawl of arms and legs, his coat open as though he were trying to use it as a brake to slow his descent, surrounded by all the photographic plates he had so laboriously exposed.

  There were too many Germans for the observers’ fire to be effective. One of them went down, turning and twisting like a falling leaf, but three more took its place. His nose down, Dunne was bolting for home, with all the rest protecting his tail so that the photographs would arrive safely. Three DVs swept down on him and failed to head him off, but two Strutters were already falling out of control, one of them pouring smoke. A moment later the smoke became a flame and the machine curved down, a blazing crucifix that seemed a blasphemy, trailing a black coil behind it. The second simply disappeared. Dicken was watching as one of the DVs swooped on it, then there was a flash and a puff of smoke and the machine vanished in a growing black cloud, while glittering fragments of blazing wing fluttered down, and two black objects fell like stones after the bulky shape of the engine that trailed a length of fuselage, fabric and spars behind it like streamers.

  It was impossible to tell who had gone because the machines were scattered all over the sky now in a running fight as they struggled for home. An Albatros headed for Dicken, trying to cut him off but, leaving his observer to protect his tail, he put his nose down and charged. As the Strutter came thundering down on him, the German pilot wrenched in alarm at the stick and his machine jerked sideways just as a second Albatros came tearing in from above. For a second all three machines were close enough for the crews to see each other’s expressions.

  As Dicken slipped clear, the two Germans – one swerving to avoid the diving Strutter, the other swerving in the opposite direction to avoid the observer’s fire – swung together. One moment they were attractive, brightly-coloured machines moving gracefully in tight curves, the next second they were hanging in the air, their wings crumpled as if they were locked in each other’s arms. The crash could be heard over the roar of the Strutter’s motor and, glancing upward, Dicken saw the two airplanes clutch each other for a second before sweeping earthwards in slow spins, a tangle of wreckage trailing a thin stream of dark smoke.

  A new group of Albatroses came swarming in, swinging sideways to avoid the debris and, as he watched, he saw one of them fly into the fire of the machine in front of him and writhe away, streaming petrol. As it burst into flames, the pilot climbed out of the cockpit to try to wrestle it into a sideslip that would carry the blaze away from him but, seconds later, Dicken saw it again, one wing almost burned away, as it stalled just ahead of him, clawing at nothing, with the pilot no longer clinging to the wing root.

  As he watched, it exploded and the Strutter hit a fluttering red rudder with one of its struts. The impact sounded like the explosion of a shell and for a moment he thought his machine had broken up under the hammering it had been receiving. He managed to wriggle clear as the twisted fuselage hurtled past his tail, but they were taking a terrible beating and German aircraft were charging in from all angles, their tracers drawing a patchwork pattern against a sky which seemed to be littered with broken wings and struts that flashed and glinted as they twisted and fell, and with bundles of wreckage that scrawled crayon marks of smoke down the azure backcloth.

  Tired and angry, he swung away and drove headlong at a new group of attackers, his front gun going. The Germans turned away, too, and he followed them for a while, trying long range shots at them. When he recovered from his fury, the sky was empty except for a solitary Strutter dropping slowly towards the west, trailing wires and flags of fabric.

  Trembling with reaction, he realised that the characteristic buzz of the Clerget engine had become like the clattering of a can full of stones, while the smell of castor oil had changed to one of hot metal. He knew it couldn’t last, and finally, as they approached the field, with a tremendous crash something tore through the starboard cowling into space and there was a terrific gout of blue flame from the air intakes. The aircraft shuddered violently and he thought the engine would tear itself from its bearings, then the propeller jerked to an upright halt and they were surrounded by silence except for the wailing of the flying wires.

  An inlet valve had broken and smashed the piston and the damage had affected the stability so that he was unable to fly the machine properly. It seemed to drift sideways in to land and there was a crash as the wings clipped the trees at the end of the field. A wingtip touched the ground as the machine levelled off and it banged down and began to slide sideways across the grass, shedding undercarriage, wings and tail in flying fragments. Gouging a great wound in the turf, it finally slithered to a stop, the fuselage practically denuded, and decanted Dicken and Almonde on to the grass.

  As he stumbled dizzily out of the wreckage, a car drew up and a tall man with a shaggy moustache asked him in a voice like a foghorn if he’d hurt his leg.

  Still dazed and limping, his eyes wild, Dicken glared at him.

  “No, I always go around like this,” he snarled. “I’ve got one leg shorter than the other.”

  It was a grim day for the squadron. Dunne’s machine was canted over at an angle, one wing crumpled, and they were still trying to lift his observer out. Roode arrived shortly afterwards, his machine full of holes, the engine poppling and burping as he blipped the cut-out button.

  “Where are all the rest?” he asked.

  “There aren’t any more,” Dicken growled.

  “I had to turn back.” As he turned away, he heard Diplock apologising. “An inlet valve broke.”

  Dunne stared at him but said nothing. “The bloody staff must be mad,” he growled. “Sending Strutters on a job like that without an escort. Well, they’ve got their bloody pictures. I hope the bastards enjoy them.”

  As Dicken turned away, Diplock began to explain again to Roode, but Roode wasn’t listening and was lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

  Stalking back to the hut, Dicken flung down his flying clothing and sat on his mattress, scowling at the two empty beds at the other side of the hut. They looked like tombs already. No messages had come
in from anybody and all they knew was that out of the nine machines that had taken off, Diplock’s had returned early, and five others were missing, two of which had been seen to burn. Roode thought the machine which had exploded was Hatto’s but as Dicken sat on the bed, smoking, Almonde put his head around the door. Scarati and his observer had been found, he said, but no airplane, and it had been concluded that theirs had been the machine which had exploded.

  The tall man who had asked Dicken if he were hurt turned out to be General Trenchard, the Chief of Air Staff, the man who ran the Flying Corps, and he had come to give them a pep talk. He said he was offering no easy way out and, despite the losses, they had to continue. “Reconnaissance is of no use whatsoever on our own side of the lines,” he said. “And it’s reconnaissance that will win the war, not duelling one aircraft against another to run up a score.”

  The mess was silent that night, nobody speaking, Diplock sitting on his own at the end of the table. He had tried once or twice to make noisy explanations but nobody was interested and he had lapsed into silence. Later in the evening, the telephone went to inform them that Foote had landed unhurt at Izel, but that his observer, a man called Burgin, had died of wounds. For Dicken it was hard to decide whether it was good or bad news, and soon afterward the telephone went again to inform them that two more bodies, too badly burned to be identified, had been discovered alongside the burned-out wreckage of another Strutter. Certain it was Hatto, he drank more than was good for him.

  By eleven o’clock, with Foote, tense and white-faced, back in the mess, they decided they had the full butcher’s bill. Six machines had been destroyed, and it seemed that four pilots, Snell, Scarati, Johnson and Hatto, had been killed with their observers. Two other observers had been mortally wounded.

  At midnight, Dicken was in the middle of a nightmare in which he was surrounded by flame when the crash of the door opening brought him bolt upright in his bed. Framed in the opening was Hatto, his monocle screwed into his eye, holding a bottle half-filled with rum. He was singing at the top of his voice.

  “Oh, Willie, you’ve come home, lad,

  Drunk, drunk again!”

  “Willie!”

  “Hello, darlings! The last of the Hattos is back.”

  Jumping from bed, Dicken and Foote grabbed him and they all started to waltz around the room together, Dicken and Foote trying to yell above Hatto’s discordant singing. Clutching each other, they lost their balance and, as they fell across Hatto’s bed, one of the legs collapsed and they all rolled to the floor. Almost weeping with laughter and relief, Dicken pawed drunkenly at Hatto’s face to make sure he really was alive.

  “What happened? What happened?”

  “Miracle, old boy. Pipped us in the clockwork. Sort of slithered down and splashed into a shellhole full of water just behind the front line. Carthew was hit. Bunch of infantrymen dragged him out and carried him away. Thought I was dead but I was only unconscious. Arrived a few minutes later, mad as hell at them for leaving me. Apologised suitably.” He held up the bottle. “Have a go?”

  Dicken shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “We thought you were dead and we’ve had too much already.”

  “Because you thought I was dead? Dear old fruits, what a jolly decent thing to do. I’ll do the same for you if the occasion arises.”

  “How about Carthew?”

  “A few splinters in the bum which left it looking like a cross between a night watchman’s fire bucket and my aunt’s string bag. But he’s not complaining. When they shoved him face-down in the ambulance he was laughing his socks off because he’d got the best kind of Blighty – the sort you recover from.”

  Hatto suddenly calmed down, his face grim. “What happened to the Parasol?” he demanded.

  “Full of apologies,” Foote said. “Claimed an inlet valve went.”

  “It’s probably thanks to that gadget that they got Scarati, Johnson and Snell. He broke the formation. I saw them both go down.”

  “And Burgin,” Foote pointed out. “He didn’t make it either.”

  “Three pilots, five observers, and six machines either destroyed or crashed.” Hatto laid his bottle down and lit a cigarette slowly. “I just hope the old Parasol manages to live with it.”

  Four

  By the following morning, Diplock had disappeared. Dunne had refused to have him in his flight and they assumed he’d been sent home, but a fortnight later they heard he’d turned up at Wing headquarters as the personal pilot of the Wing colonel.

  “I guess he knew somebody who could pull strings,” Foote said.

  “The major,” Dicken growled, “should have given him a good kick up the ass.”

  “Listen to Old Testament Quinney talking,” Hatto said. “I suppose everybody gets the breeze up from time to time and there’s nobody more sympathetic than another chap who’s been through it. Unfortunately, the way he bolts means the death of someone and it was very nearly me.” He sat at the piano and tinkled a few bars of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”. “The story’s different, actually, and I have it from Sergeant Cecil, the managing director of the orderly room. The Wing colonel was originally an Engineer and, when the RFC was formed, in the clever way they have on the staff he was given command of one of the very first squadrons. Now that he was considered to be an aviator, it was thought he should learn to aviate, and he was given a quick pilot’s course. Unfortunately he wasn’t very good at it and I don’t think he’s ever flown since, and now that the fronts are bigger he needs someone to tote him around so he can do his thinking on the way. Needs looking after, y’see.”

  “Well, Percy’s the right guy for that job,” Foote growled. “He’ll never take risks.”

  “If you’re like Little Dave and try to be brave,” Hatto said, “all you get for your trouble is a bullet in the gizzard, a grave on the lone prairie and no thanks from anyone. If you’re like little Seth and get frightened to death, you get a nice cushy job at headquarters, flying the Wing colonel about. And, as everybody knows, Wing colonels never take risks, only think up risks for other people to take. Parasol Percy’ll end up with a putty medal and his name in the VC column of the Daily Mail. I’ll bet he never comes back here.”

  He turned out to be dead right. The next they heard of Diplock was that his RASC rank of captain had been confirmed.

  Because of the casualties they had suffered, the squadron was given no work to do until they could recover a little. They were half-hoping they might be given RE8s, newer reconnaissance machines which were stronger, faster and safer and a great deal better than Strutters, but instead the replacements were more Strutters, dangerously uncertain after standing all summer in the aircraft park and even more vulnerable than the ones they’d lost.

  “The goddamn things are born victims,” Foote growled.

  Soon afterward another battle started near Ypres and developed into a series of engagements which proved to be the Somme all over again, with the same lack of success and thousands of lives sacrificed for a few miles of blood-soaked ground. As usual, the press made it sound like a walk-over.

  “I suppose it depends how you look at it,” Hatto observed. “When we got licked at Colenso in the Boer War, my old man said, they claimed it wasn’t a defeat – we just failed to take the place, that’s all.”

  Despite the disasters on the ground, the new British fighters – the SE5, the Camel and the Bristol – had wrenched the command of the air from the Germans once more, pushing them far back behind their trench lines again, reaping the glory while the 1½-Strutters continued to trudge over the German lines in the menial task of taking photographs.

  By this time, with casualties and home postings, Foote, Dicken and Hatto were senior pilots. It was noticeable that the casualties, at least, seemed to avoid the experienced men and simply took away the newcomers. If you survived the first month, the chances w
ere that, barring accidents and ill luck, you had a good chance of eventually going to Home Establishment. Then, as they struggled with the hated Strutters, Hatto suddenly started shooting down German machines. He seemed startled by his success, but by the end of the month he had accounted for nine, including two in one day, and was awarded the Military Cross.

  “Very gallant,” he said. “But I don’t think they could have been very good. Probably articled apprentices to Richthofen’s mob.”

  The following week, attacked by a whole sky-full of Albatroses, his observer’s Lewis jammed and his engine stopped by the very first burst of fire, he was shot at all the way down to the ground, but one of the Germans, who was stupid enough to get in front of the drifting Strutter, was hit by Hatto with the front gun which also shot off his own windmilling propeller. His tank holed and soaked with petrol, expecting every minute either to blow up or catch fire, as they struggled across the trenches a bullet from the ground smashed his rudder bar and entered his foot, and the Sopwith subsided gracefully on top of the second line trench and fell apart. Hatto and his observer dropped neatly into the trench.

  When the tender arrived from the hospital, Hatto was sitting in the back with his plastered foot resting on a sandbag. Dicken pushed his kit in alongside him, almost in tears.

  “You stupid bugger,” he said. “Getting shot about like that, just when we were getting used to your snoring.”

  “Sorry, old fruit,” Hatto smiled. “Don’t want to leave you but I know I have to go. Hold your end up. I’ll be back when they’ve cobbled me up. I’ll give your love to the Hon. Maud – if she hasn’t married a general in the meantime.”

  He was still smiling as the tender drew away and, feeling he would never see him again, aware of an unbelievable longing to be going with him, back to the peace of England, Dicken was still staring after it as the tender disappeared from sight.