by Max Hennessy
Dicken was just coming to the conclusion that he was going to enjoy Italy when the sound of aircraft over the house grew louder, and he turned to the window with a frown. Outside, people were pointing and beginning to run, and he wondered if some idiot was in trouble. Then he heard the rattle of machine guns and, jamming his face against the glass, saw airplanes wheeling in the sky above the airfield outside the town. They were circling at a height of no more than two hundred feet, and he was just peering upward trying to identify them when he heard the crash of a bomb and felt the glass quiver against his cheek. Almost immediately, Nicola burst into the room again with the coffee, a look of alarm on her face. He pushed her against the wall at once.
“The glass might fall in,” he said. “Some fathead’s fooling about with bombs.”
Crossing to the window again, he saw now that there were at least a dozen machines over the airfield and, as he stared, one of them lifted away through a long column of brown smoke, and he saw Maltese crosses in the centre of yellow-painted wings decorated with red and white stripes.
“They’re Austrians!” he yelled. “It’s a raid on the airdrome!”
Running into the street, he stared toward the north and this time he identified the machines as Aviatiks, German bombers powered with Mercedes engines. Escorting them were a whole host of Albatros DIIIs, with one or two square-bodied small-tailed machines with a curious lattice-work strut formation that he recognised from the photographs and drawings they’d been studying on the way south as Hansa-Brandenburgs.
Aviatiks normally operated at a height of over 5000 feet but these were floating about close to the ground, milling around in every direction as though trying to commit suicide. As the air shuddered to another crash, the windows rattled and Dicken saw debris fly and a cloud of smoke lift up beyond the houses. Outside, the cries of surprise had changed to cries of alarm, and the people in the streets began to run for shelter. A car driven by an Italian soldier hurtled around a corner opposite to run into the rear end of a cart drawn by a panic-stricken mule lashed on by its peasant driver. The cart vanished to matchwood and the mule went galloping on, dragging the front pair of wheels, while the driver clung to the reins and was towed on his face through the mud behind.
The bombs were exploding one after the other now but the ground defences were beginning to answer with machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, which were filling the sky with puff-balls of smoke, white from the British, red from the Italian. From the town he could hear the wails of women, and from the back of the house Mrs Aubrey screaming at the children to go to the cellar. Nicola was watching from the steps.
He jerked a hand toward the north where snow-capped mountains showed above the orchards outside the town. “I’d better get out there,” he shouted above the din.
“God go with you!”
“He can go in my place if He likes,” Dicken said with a grin, then wished he hadn’t because she looked so startled he realised he had probably offended her.
Grabbing his coat, he ran from the house. There was no other means of getting to the field except by tram, but one was just rounding the corner, its sign reading Campo d’Aviazione. Just as he jumped on it, it clattered to a stop.
“Get it going!” he shrieked at the driver, but the Italian shrugged and pointed to the trolley bar.
“Elettricitá,” he shrieked back. “E chiusa la corrente. The electricity’s cut off!”
The tram was emptying rapidly and Dicken was just wondering what to do when an Italian Air Force tender filled with officers shot past. Among them was Foote and as he saw Dicken he pounded on the driver’s shoulder and the vehicle slid to a stop with locked wheels.
By the time they reached the field, one of the hangars was on fire together with two of the machines inside. Ammunition was exploding and bullets were spitting in all directions, but the Italians were manhandling the rest of the machines out, and more were being started up by mechanics ducking at the fusillades of exploding cartridges.
Every one of the British RE8s had been hit by splinters but the Austrian machines were lifting away now and bolting for the north, while Italian Hanriots, French-built single-seaters like Camels, were beginning to streak off the ground in all directions. Dicken’s Camel had been refuelled and, climbing into the cockpit, dressed just as he was, he gestured wildly at the Italian mechanics.
The engine started with a crackling roar, filling the air with blue smoke and the smell of castor oil, and as the chocks were dragged away he shot off, his tail up immediately. Lifting in a climbing turn, he was horrified to realise that every gun on the ground was shooting at him. In the excitement, no one was bothering to check the nationality of their target and as machine guns, rifles and even field guns joined in, he saw little flags of canvas start to flutter above the centre-section. Then, in the distance above him, he saw a patrol of Camels, their wings translucent against the sun, which he recognised as from 28 Squadron. They were heading south after a patrol, and as they spotted the Austrian machines, they dropped out of the sky one after the other.
Almost at once several of the two-seaters began to fall to earth. The DIIIs and the Brandenburgs seemed powerless to help and merely milled about the sky in a hamhanded fashion as if they didn’t know what to do. As Dicken bore down on the machine at the rear of the formation like an enraged farmer after an apple-stealer, he saw the Austrian observer trying to warn the pilot. As his guns rattled and jumped, a cloud of smoke burst from the Aviatik’s exhaust as the pilot opened the throttle, but he saw the wings had started to move as the outer struts broke loose and a cloud of steam had escaped from the engine. Then the port wing drifted free and the machine began to spin around what was left in a slow descent like a falling leaf. It hit the earth in a lopsided glide and, as its wheels touched, the tail lifted and the machine cartwheeled across the field, scattering wreckage until it came to rest in a clump of trees.
Circling over it, Dicken was startled at the speed and suddenness of the victory, then, since he was safely behind the Italian lines, he decided to go down and land alongside. To his surprise, the two Austrians were staggering about the field, one of them with a broken arm, the other with a badly cut face. At first he thought they were dazed and shocked, then it dawned on him they were befuddled with drink.
“Wein,” one of them said cheerfully. “Wein und Schnapps. Das Fest. Weinachten. Das Christfest. Nur zu vertraut. Too much. Too good.”
Gradually he made out that their squadron had been having a Christmas celebration when they had been un-expectedly ordered to avenge the shooting up of Motta airfield the previous day by 28 Squadron, and they hadn’t had time to sober up.
“Nun sehr nüchtern,” the Austrian said. “Vollkommen nüchtern. Very sober. Like a judge.”
The Italian pilots were excited by their success and invited Dicken and Foote to their mess to celebrate. They were a high-spirited lot, proud of the fact that it had been an Italian, Giulio Douhet, who had prophesied before the war that the air was about to become a battlefield. Their country had entered hostilities with only seventy-two pilots but, with a boundless enthusiasm and a hard conviction about the potentiality of the air, had poured money into aircraft production.
They had covered a long table with bottles and swept the RFC men inside with a yell of welcome. The two Austrians arrived soon afterward, bandaged and pale, for a few drinks before disappearing to a prisoner of war camp, and the Italians taught them all to sing “La Campana di San Giusta”, the song of the Italian Irredentists, and in return were taught the song of the dying airman by Foote.
“Take the cylinders out of my kidneys,
The connecting rod out of my brain. From the small of my back take the camshaft, And assemble the engine again.”
They were still singing when the shell case hanging outside as an air raid warning started to clatter. As they ran to the door, they saw another wave of mach
ines approaching from the north, four large bombers escorted by five fighters.
“Gothas, by God,” Foote said in amazement. “The bastards sure are determined!”
Once again the Austrians were unlucky. An Italian patrol was just returning and the Austrian fighters bolted. As the Hanriots fell on the Gothas, one of them burst into flames and began to spiral downward.
“You know,” Foote said. “One way or another it looks like being quite a Christmas.”
Eight
When Dicken reached his billet that night he found the whole Aubrey family bustling around laying the dining table.
“What’s this?” he asked. “A celebration?”
Mrs Aubrey’s hands flew. “Have we not a hero in our midst?”
“Who?”
Mrs Aubrey looked at him, startled. “But you, Monsieur! Did you not destroy the enemies of France this morning? My daughter tells me how you leap into a car and drive at full speed to the airfield where you destroy the Austrian formation single-handed.”
As she clapped her hands, the children began to take their places at the table. There was a lot of whispering and scuffling alongside Dicken between the two boys and Nicola before Nicola emerged triumphant to take the next-door chair. Grace was said, then chicken appeared, cooked with tomato and pepperoni, and the wine began to move around the table.
“This is good wine, my boy,” Aubrey said. “Orvieto. Golden-yellow and very dry.”
“Not as good as a French wine, of course,” Mrs Aubrey explained. “But good. Afterward we have Barbaresco, an aristocrat among wines.” She kissed her fingertips. “It will remind you of violets.”
When the meal was finished, the kitchen staff appeared in their best clothes, the cook and maids in green skirts with white blouses. An elderly footman, in green trousers and a red waistcoat, sang folk songs with them and played an accordion for dancing. Aubrey danced with his second eldest daughter, the eldest boy with his mother, and the rest of the children paired off, leaving Nicola very noticeably free to dance with Dicken. It was an Italian dance Dicken didn’t know but, with everybody pushing him, he found himself circling with Nicola, their hands on their hips.
“I am very happy, Mr Quinney,” she said.
“Dick. Please call me Dick. You’re very pretty, Nicola. Do you know?”
She blushed.
“Nicola’s a pretty name, too.”
She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his for the first time. “Do you know many girls?” she asked.
The question startled him. “Everybody knows one or two.”
“Particularly soldiers. I know England very well,” she went on. “One day I hope we shall go back there. I’d like to live in London and be English like my father. Are you married, Dick?”
He hastened to reassure her.
“You are engaged?”
He wondered about that. He’d been to bed with Zoë Toshack and had even suggested marriage, but he had a feeling she’d been much more interested in the car engine she was looking at. He played for safety.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not engaged.”
The rest of the squadron arrived four days later, flying in, in ones and twos. Huts had been erected by this time and Dicken was well aware that his stay with the Aubreys was already short. Occillotti, the Italian interpreter, said that, because of the retreat, riots had been taking place in Treviso as they had left, but that there would be no more fighting now that the winter was on them.
Since the enemy line ran roughly along the northern bank of the Piave, their patrols would carry them up and down the river, where the Austrian observation machines would range to spot for the artillery shelling the southern slopes of the Montello, a hogsback that ran along the front near Montebelluno. To the north the mountains rose like the backcloth for a stage setting and at night they could see pinpricks of light which were shells bursting on the slopes where the Italian trenches ran.
Near the airdrome was a river, the water as clear as gin, the pebbles and the boulders that lined the banks white as old bones in the sun. All around the airdrome the plain was full of troops. The backward movement had finally stopped and reserves were moving north again, and all the tree-trunks were plastered on one side by the mud flung up by wheels. The traffic seemed to go on constantly, even through the night, big guns pulled by tractors, their long barrels camouflaged with branches, mules carrying ammunition, grey trucks filled with men.
The country was dark with the winter rains and the valleys held mists, while on several days there was a wreath of cloud around the mountains. The troops, splashing past, their dark Italian eyes haggard in the grey light, seemed to be wet through to a man and mud-splattered by the lorries and the grey staff cars that roared indifferently past.
The countryside they were to fly over was very different from the squalid wasteland of Flanders. It was thickly populated and the steep round-topped hill of the Montello was clearly going to be a problem in low cloud.
The Austrians were known as the Kameraden Schnürschuh – the laced boot comrades – which was what the Germans called them because of their distinctive laced boots that were said to allow them to run away faster. Despite their recent victory at Caporetto, nobody seemed frightened of them. “Everybody beats the Austrians,” Foote said. “Even the Italians.”
C Flight were first to be ready and, flying a practice formation over the Montello, found themselves looking down on the Piave, a river of many streams, some mere rivulets, others broad and thrusting, running through ribbon-like channels of shingle and between stony banks and innumerable pebbled islands. As they turned north-west with the shining river the stones seemed to move in the sunshine, and looking down, Dicken frowned. The damn things were moving! He looked again, and it dawned on him that what he was looking at was an Aviatik painted in a checkerboard of black and white, which was flying along the river bed so that it was almost indistinguishable from its background.
Moving alongside Trenarworth, he waved and pointed downward. Trenarworth stared in the direction of the pointing finger but obviously saw nothing and lifted his head to stare inquisitively at Dicken. Gesturing wildly, Dicken pointed again, but Trenarworth still didn’t seem to see and, when, a minute or two later he gave the washout signal for the return, Dicken turned away and dived toward the river bed.
He had lost the black and white machine by now, however, and for a moment he wondered if he’d been mistaken. Then he saw it again, flying up and down, keeping carefully to the pebbled banks of the river. Artillery fire was bursting along the Italian lines.
Howling down out of the sky, he came up behind the Aviatik but the Austrian pilot was experienced and swung back underneath him and flew at speed in a south-westerly direction, so that by the time Dicken had turned to follow him, he had begun to head north and was bolting at full speed for the shelter of the Austrian anti-aircraft guns.
With his petrol low, Dicken turned for home, to find a mist settling over the airfield. He put the machine down quickly but by the time it had been wheeled to the hangar, the mist had become a fog that blanketed the field and made further flying impossible. Trenarworth demanded to know why he had left the flight and as Dicken explained what had happened the telephone went.
Trenarworth answered it. When he put it down, he looked curiously at Dicken.
“Artillery, me dear,” he explained. “Said it’s about time somebody chased that black and white bugger away. He’s been troubling them for weeks.”
It didn’t take them long to discover that flying on the Italian Front wasn’t as easy as they’d expected and that the Austrian Air Force wasn’t as inadequate as their showing at Christmas had indicated. Instead of “jagdstaffeln”, they called their squadrons “fliegerkompanien”, shortened to “Flik”, and until recently had all been flying Hansa-Brandenburgs, designed by a man called Heinkel, strange high
-nosed machines with tall fuselages, which were called Spiders because of their strange strut formation. Now, however, they had gone over to Bergs, Albatroses and Phönixes, small machines with round-ended wings, large scalloped tails and inward-sloping struts, that could out-climb a Camel, and they had been taking a steady toll of the Italian airmen.
There were other difficulties which highlighted the difference from France. Because of the rapid retreat, there were few military telephone lines and the normal telephone system had to be used. But this was very indifferent and, as there was no priority for military signals, when they wished to contact the artillery or the forward positions, they had to take their turn with commercial and private callers.
The mists and fogs that appeared on the Venetian Plain were a further hazard. Occillotti said they were caused by the warm air from the Adriatic striking the bitter winds off the mountains, and the weather changes were sudden. At bewildering speed, sunshine gave way to fog which could rise to five hundred feet. To overcome the difficulty, they set up a forward signal station to indicate by ground markers to returning aircraft which airfields were fogbound and which were clear, but they soon found it didn’t work because the signal station was invariably fogbound, too.
With the weather clamped down and the local people insisting it would stay clamped down for several days, the Italians were quick to arrange a public ceremony to announce the arrival of their allies. They didn’t think much of the British Government because they felt they should have sent troops to the Italian front months before, but now that they’d arrived they were determined not to miss the opportunity for an occasion. The whole Aubrey family was excited at the prospect of a march past and Nicola was allowed a new coat and hat, which she shyly brought to show Dicken.
