The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  By the time Dicken returned to Sottanunga he had been away nearly a week. He knew that had not been Diplock’s intention, but it had calmed him and he felt the sharp edges of his nerves had been soothed. Hallowes told him he’d been awarded the Italian Medaglia ad Valore Argenta, which was a high award for bravery, but he wasn’t interested, wishing only that the Aubreys were not in Naples so that he could visit them.

  When he reached his room, he found Hatto there, smoking a cigarette.

  “Made it, I see.” He fished in his pocket and brought out a letter. It carried a Rome postmark and was addressed to them both. It was from Foote who had joined his own air force.

  “I’ve got over it now,” he wrote. “Thanks for everything. I’ll always remember you two – the Glass-Eyed Bastard and the Kid Who Could Shoot.”

  Dicken refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “I’m glad he made it,” he said.

  Hatto seemed in a strange mood and Dicken studied him with a frown. Then he realised he was wearing his best uniform, and raised his eyebrows.

  “What’s on? Are we celebrating something?”

  “I think we might be. I’ve been given a squadron of Bristols in France.”

  “Bit sudden, isn’t it?”

  Hatto smiled. “Uncle Willie’s been a naughty boy,” he said. “Parasol Percy was told he had to supply someone and wanted to send Fosdyck who’s senior to me. When I got back he was having lunch in Capadolio with the mayor. The Wing colonel’s gone home so he’s got nobody else to crawl to. I went into Hallowes’ office and demanded to see the signal about him going to the Snipe squadron. Hallowes didn’t want to show me but I said I’d already seen it once on his desk and it was no bloody use trying to hide it from me.”

  “Hide what from you?”

  “All that about Diplock being ordered to France is a load of cock, old fruit. The signal had your name on it. I made him fish it out of the safe. The name had been altered and the alteration was in Diplock’s writing. A new gong and a squadron of Snipes would be useful when the war ends, wouldn’t it?”

  “And Diplock?”

  “When he returned from his lunch I was sitting in his chair. I told him he was a slimy bastard. He went red and blustered a bit, but I said I’d seen the signal before he’d altered it, so then he said it had been a mistake and that the promotion and the gong were yours. The wretched little tyke was trying to cover up, and the next thing I knew, a message came to the mess for me to say I was going to France. That makes me a major, also, y’see. What’s more it makes you one, too.”

  “Since when?”

  “Immediate. Both of us.”

  “Then we can go together.”

  Hatto smiled. “And Parasol Percy will once more have got rid of everybody who’s aware of his dirty tricks department. First Foote, then me, now you.”

  Dicken was silent for a moment. “He’d never have got away with it, Willie,” he said slowly.

  “No. And it might have been nice to see him led away in chains. But, y’know, Italy is different, the colonel’s gone home, and documents have a habit of going astray. Possession’s nine points of the law, and he might just have wangled it. In fact, I dare bet he would. He’s a staff type by instinct and would know how to do it.” Hatto smiled. “What he probably hasn’t noticed, though, is that we’re now the same rank as he is and can tell him what we think of him. I suggest we have a go.”

  Diplock was keeping out of their way and their railway warrants were made out by Hallowes. Dicken managed to telephone the Aubreys’ house in Capadolio but the maid said the family was still in Naples, so he spent the afternoon writing a long letter explaining what had happened, and that evening he and Hatto headed for the town in a tender to celebrate.

  “We’ll work our way through the alphabet,” Hatto suggested. “Starting with absinthe. For A.”

  “And then?”

  “Benedictine. Or beer. Or brandy.”

  “Christ! And for C?”

  “Chianti, of course. All the way to vermouth and whisky.”

  “X, Y and Z’ll make you think a bit.”

  They were unable to pass H and their journey home was uncertain. Rounding a corner outside the town, Hatto put the front wheel of the tender in a ditch and they decided it was safer to walk. The transport sergeant grinned and offered to have the tender pulled out and brought back, and they gave him a bottle of Strega for his trouble.

  “We’ll pack first,” Dicken said. “Get everything in the tender ready for off. That way we’ll have left before he has time to think what to do in reply.”

  The plan didn’t work out as expected because they fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the following morning. As the tender appeared, they threw everything aboard, feeling as if the sides of their heads were about to drop off.

  Hatto managed a wan smile. “It’ll put us in a nice bad temper,” he said. “And if you’ve got something unpleasant to say, I always think you should say it as unpleasantly and as loudly as possible. People understand better then.”

  Hallowes seemed to guess why they’d come when they asked to see Diplock and a nervous look crossed his face. He gestured at the door and, as they pushed it open, Diplock was reading a sheaf of reports.

  “Came to say goodbye,” Hatto said.

  Diplock’s expression was uncertain but he managed a nervous smile.

  “Also came to say what we think of you,” Dicken added, and the smile vanished at once. “It isn’t much, of course,” he added. “But I suppose you guessed that long since.”

  “In fact,” Hatto went on, “we think you’re a low-life bastard.”

  Diplock’s face went red. “How dare you?”

  Hatto tapped the new crown on his shoulder. “Oh, we dare,” he said. “Discussion’s permitted between officers of equal rank. Not that there’s anything to discuss, really. Nothing would change what we think. We consider you a bit of a shit.”

  “Mean little gadget,” Dicken added.

  “Dirty tricks expert.”

  “Hope you choke.”

  “Hope your right leg drops off.”

  “Or that you break out all over in warts.”

  While Diplock was still struggling to find words, they clicked to attention, saluted and turned away. Outside, they climbed into the tender and gestured to the driver to start up. As it lurched away from the office, Hatto beamed.

  “Feel much better now,” he said.

  Dicken grinned. “I think he’ll have got the message,” he said.

  “Not that it matters,” Hatto smiled. “Because he’s got another shock coming to him shortly. While I was looking at that signal of yours, Hallowes was called away and I got my hands on the personal files. I put a little insert into Diplock’s and signed it ‘William Wymarck Wombwell Hatto, Major.’ Looked rather good, I thought.” He shrugged. “’Course, he’ll take it out but, you never know, somebody might get a look at it first.”

  “What is in it? What did you put?”

  “Nothing much, old fruit.” Hatto smiled a ruminative smile. “Just ‘I would not breed from this officer.’”

  Seven

  France was very different from the previous year. The Germans were being steadily pushed back and there was a feeling in the air that victory wasn’t far in the future.

  Appearing before a full colonel at St Omer, Dicken and Hatto were informed of what was expected of them.

  “It’s no good you going home to form your squadrons without some knowledge of what it’s become like out here,” he explained. “Get some flying in and find out how things are done these days.”

  They tried to appear enthusiastic while looking forward to a long spell in England and, because, after Cambrai, they didn’t believe anything anybody told them, they were careful to obtain the view from lower
down the scale. Almonde, who’d been flying with them as an observer in Strutters and was now at St Omer, clarified things.

  “We’re not human beings any more,” he said. “Just units in a bloody great machine they’ve built for killing Germans.”

  All the big names – McCudden, Mannock, Ball – were all dead, but there were a whole lot of new men coming along. A lanky New Zealander called Keith Park had run up a score with a Bristol squadron, and a South African called Beauchamp-Proctor, who stood about four-foot-nothing in his socks and had to sit on a cushion to see out of the cockpit, but had extraordinary eyesight, was knocking the German planes down in droves. There were also a few obvious leaders like Collishaw, Douglas, Tedder and one or two more, and the German Air Force was being outfought and outflown.

  “They’ve got a new high-winged monoplane,” Almonde said. “And the new Fokker DVII’s a tremendous machine, but there’s a feeling it’s not as dangerous as it ought to be because some of the stuffing’s leaked out of the German pilots and you spend half your time trying to tempt them to have a go.”

  The Richthofen Circus was now being led by a Bavarian called Goering but, though he personally was said to be good, it was no longer the dread name it used to be.

  “All the same,” Almonde ended, “there are still a few to watch out for. Löwenhardt’s gone but Udet’s still around. He flies a red Fokker with white stripes like a setting sun on the upper wing. It has ‘LO’ on the fuselage – the name of his girl friend, they say – and if you should get behind him, which I doubt, because he’s a hot stuff pilot, you’ll know who he is straight away because he also has ‘Du doch nicht!’ on the upper surface of his tailplanes. Means ‘Balls to you’ or something.”

  There seemed to be enormous numbers of Americans about, all of them tall and strong and fit. Their enthusiasm was infectious and their air force was doing splendid work round St Mihiel. They met a Princeton man called John Winant, who looked like Abraham Lincoln, tall, black-haired, earnest and handsome, and a former racing motorist with a name that sounded like Richthofen who was said to have started as the general’s chauffeur but was now making a tremendous name as an air fighter. They were flying French Spads because, as Foote had warned, the idea of a sky black with American machines had never materialised.

  The squadron to which they were attached consisted of a number of new types – improved Bristol fighters, Snipes, Dolphins, Martynsides, De Havillands – and men were constantly arriving for conversion courses. It was run by a major called Norman with, holding a watching brief over his head, Rivers, who had commanded the 1½-Strutters at Ste Marie. He was now a lieutenant-colonel, and recovered from his gloom at the thought of an end to the killing.

  After the backwater of Italy, it was exciting to be back in France, and the feel of being part of a new service was tremendous. The RAF was a broad-minded organisation and thoroughly cosmopolitan because it had often taken the best men from the other services and from the colonies, and like all air forces, because it was new and young, it was free of snobbery and self-importance and was never parochial in outlook, despite the occasional misfit like Diplock. Even the American Air Force, young as it was, was vigorous and unpredictable.

  The whole service had élan, style, dash, cheek if you liked, and a lack of formality that was detested by the army and the navy. It hadn’t a hint of stodginess, and for the most part everybody in it was full of the excitement of youth, believing in the future of flying with an unbelievable intensity. There were no old men in the RAF and, though they sometimes died young – heartbreakingly young at times – they also sometimes reached command while young.

  Dicken felt he should have been entirely happy because the sense that the war was approaching its end was even more marked in France than in Italy, but it was clear that, though the squadrons were hard and tough, they were also like ancient garments which had been darned and darned again. The shape remained the same but little of the original was left.

  Then Foote appeared. He was wearing American uniform with a high stiff collar and the wings of his own air force.

  Dicken touched the insignia on his shoulders. “What do they mean?” he asked. “Did they make you a major?”

  Foote laughed. “Did they hell! There are so many goddam desk fliers, you can’t get near the higher ranks.”

  They had a wild night out on the town and parted full of nostalgia, all a little maudlin and swearing they’d never lose touch with each other. Dicken wondered if they would.

  Handiside was at St Omer, too, wearing the crown of a flight sergeant now.

  “Makes you wonder what it was all for, sir, don’t it?” he said. “This is roughly where I started in 1914.”

  Finally, like a bolt from the blue, came the news that Diplock had also arrived in France. Hatto arrived in the mess, a shocked look on his face. “I’ve just seen him,” he said.

  It didn’t take long to find out that, sensing that with the war ending his place was in France, he had wangled his way north despite his original setback and was once more under the old Wing colonel’s protection and expecting promotion. Though they saw him from time to time, it was obvious he was carefully avoiding them. He had clearly expected them to be in England and the fact that three men who knew of his trickery were in St Omer had unnerved him.

  “What a bloody life,” Dicken growled. “Spending all his time dodging around corners.”

  Diplock, in fact, seemed to be a symbol of the future. Idealism had died long since in France but as the war approached its end, in England the enthusiasm seemed to be increasing. The newspaper barons were demanding that the Germans should pay for what they’d done and the generals, pushing hard as they scented victory, were killing men, it seemed, merely to get their names in the honours lists when hostilities ceased.

  Not only the generals. Everybody seemed to be wondering what they were going to do when peace came. Those who hoped to return to civilian life were concentrating on staying alive so they could go home and carve a career out of what was left after the best jobs had been taken by those who’d dodged military service. Those who hoped to stay in uniform were busy feathering their nests, manoeuvring themselves into good jobs they hoped to hang on to, so that, just when there was a need for increased comradeship, there was less than there had ever been. Everybody was wondering what lay ahead and it started once more Dicken’s worry of what he was going to do after it was all over.

  “Why not stay in the RAF?” Hatto suggested. “Parasol Percy’s staying in. That’s why he’s out for all the promotion he can get before it ends. Why do you think he’s so maty with the Wing colonel? Why do you think he got himself that DSO? The fact that he got it pushing a pen won’t make a scrap of difference in five years’ time.”

  Dicken pondered the idea. “Think they’d have him?” he asked.

  “Dear old lad–” Hatto looked at him pityingly “–before the war there wasn’t an air force. Now we’ve got one, the people who’re running it won’t part with it in a hurry, and Trenchard will be girding up his loins already to make sure the army and the navy don’t arrange for it to die a pauper’s death. If there’s no air force, y’see, there’ll be more money in the old coffers for them and more money means more generals and admirals.” He smiled. “We’ll survive, of course, but it’s going to need a few chaps with intelligence to run the show.”

  “Surely there’s somebody better than Parasol Percy?”

  “Think so? When peace comes, all the Hostilities Only people will rush back to their nine-to-fives, and the ones who stay in will get what promotion’s going, because there won’t be anyone else. And think what that means. They’ll be the ones who’ll be running the show in the next war. A château to live in, champagne to drink, French chefs, women of heartbreaking loveliness. It sounds all right to me.”

  As he thought about it, Dicken realised that the idea of turning his back on the
sky appalled him. Never again to see the blue haze that covered the earth, never to see the sun disappearing when the land was already in darkness, never to see the fabric of the wings rippling, or smell petrol, hot oil and dope – it seemed impossible.

  “There’s another way of looking at it, too.” Hatto sounded uncharacteristically sombre. “As a civilian, you’ll be as out of place as a pterodactyl in a parrot house. Your glory’s already departing, old lad. That idealism that made us join up in 1914’s long since vanished and it’s no good trying in a disintegrating world to hold on to it. We’ve been living sixty seconds to the minute for the last four years and you’ll never see eye-to-eye with those chaps who’re too young to have put on uniform, and you’re separated by a lifetime from those who were too old. All the bright ideas we had for when it ended seem to have got lost somewhere, because the standards we’ve been living by don’t exist any more. Some-times it seems very lonely.”

  Dicken smiled affectionately. “Sometimes, Willie,” he said, “I realise you’re not as stupid as you look. I think perhaps I will stay in. Flying seems to be the only thing I can do well. What about you? Are you going back to being a lord? Horse shows, race meetings, society balls, patting the heads of the deserving poor?”

  Hatto grinned. “You’ve got a bloody funny idea of what the landed gentry do with their time, old fruit,” he said. “My lot spend most of it with bits of paper on the dining room table wondering if they’ve got enough in the bank to repair the roof or stop the stables falling down. These days, old lad, it’s the profiteers who’ve got the money. Lloyd George’s friends. They’ll be in the honours lists when the war’s over and, because they’ve got the money, within ten years half the country houses in England will be owned by brand-new barons and the old lot will be living in the lodges on a pension to give a little tone to the parties they throw. I’m staying in, too.”