To Slip the Surly Bonds

by Chris Kennedy

  “But Mr. Belmont, your ship does seem quite ready to depart,” I reminded him.

  I could see the fine passenger liner was ready to pull away from the pier with tug boats and line handlers all standing about waiting on a last few elite or perhaps even a single final important passenger to get onboard so they could go before the tide turned, and they’d have to waste coal powering out against the currents instead of with them. Commander Edmunds favored me with a grateful smile and gestured Mr. Belmont again to the ship as if another hand wave would be enough to shift him.

  “It’ll wait,” Mr. Belmont said with complete confidence. “I could hardly go without stopping to congratulate the very fine sergeant here.”

  “Chief.” Commander Edmunds corrected while I tried to keep up.

  “Congratulate, sir?” I was baffled. Certainly my lieutenant had survived his Africa assignment, but I’d been honest in my report back to higher authority about what exactly we’d done during the defense of Port Doula.

  “Yes, of course congratulate!” Mr. Belmont patted my shoulder. “The whole Marshall family is delighted with you! Well, our esteemed vice president didn’t say as much directly, of course. You know how he is, always hoping for Mr. Wilson’s recovery. As we all do, naturally.

  “But a young war hero relative will be ever so useful for the next presidential campaign. I do hope you enjoy going to all the fine Berlin parties. The Kaiser, bless him, doesn’t throw many these days, but the younger set can have quite a good time.”

  “Uh, thank you sir.” I didn’t expect the lieutenant would attend all that many parties. The orders had said, ‘Make a close study of German military aviation.’

  Over Mr. Belmont’s shoulder, the bar’s door opened, and Lieutenant Junior Grade Roberts popped his ruddy blonde head out long enough to call out something that drew the other two lieutenants in after him.

  If Marshall, Thompson, and the rest were settled in at the bar for a while, I would’ve liked to head on down past the commercial shipping docks to see if I could get a good look at the other piers which might hold some of the German naval fleet.

  The ambassador looked at me expectantly.

  “I, um, don’t expect to attend parties,” I said.

  Mr. Belmont laughed. “You sound just like those admirals!”

  Commander Edmunds gave his charge a concerned glance which only amused the ambassador more.

  “Sir?”

  “My understanding is the young lieutenant requested sea duty following your tour in Africa and certain esteemed persons felt he was too important to risk on assignment onboard a naval escort,” Commander Edmunds explained.

  “It would’ve been an absolute waste.” Mr. Belmont shook his head. “I heard those Navy boys were almost going to give him that assignment, too. Ridiculous the level of pressure required to make them see sense. And after that masterful piece of work in Africa, too!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.” I remembered quite clearly that Lieutenant Marshall had telegrammed asking for a follow-on assignment instead of resigning his commission. Yes, there had been a mention of sea duty, but he’d been more than a little intrigued with aviation, and I was almost certain he’d mentioned that as well in the message.

  “You didn’t tell me he was so modest Edmunds.” Mr. Belmont continued to beam at me.

  “I’m sure Chief Hays does all he can to help his officers, sir,” Commander Edmunds said.

  “Help? This far beyond that.” He turned to me. “You are a master!” He clapped me on the back. “I heard it directly from Lois Marshall, herself, who had it from the young lieutenant’s own mother. Excellent job keeping the Marshall boy close enough to get a bit of the glory from that nasty business in the African colonies. Be a different story if he’d been in that mad cap boat loaded up with explosives, of course!” He chortled at his own joke, and I firmly kept my face as blank as I could manage.

  Commander Edmunds’ face matched mine.

  The boat in question had in fact included both myself and Lieutenant Marshall in the crew.

  “I can’t imagine the guts of those natives getting on the thing. But I suppose their lives are wretched enough that it doesn’t take so much bravery to risk them.”

  I supposed quite the opposite, but it wasn’t my place to say. I made a polite listening noise and said, “Sir, what was it you needed? Your ship needs to depart soon, I believe?”

  Commander Edmunds gave a small shrug to indicate that it didn’t much matter how long it took to shift the senior man.

  The ambassador in turn looked at the ship with a sense of glum, and I guessed from his gulp that I was facing a man prone to seasickness who’d like to delay his departure as much as he could.

  Mr. Belmont finally squared his shoulders looking resolutely at his luxurious passenger liner.

  “Well, I must be off.” He patted my shoulder one more time. “You keep it up. You get the slightest hint that there’s a change on the front, and any vessel flying American colors will load you both up for the next trip to the States.”

  “And the others?” I inquired. I’d been led to believe they were all fairly well-connected young men.

  “Ah, if you can.” Mr. Belmont shrugged. “Some boys’ll run wild on any continent they find themselves on. Others matter quite a bit more. The president’s own nephew.” He smiled. “Gotta keep that boy of ours safe. Bright futures ahead for that one!”

  “Vice president’s nephew.” I corrected automatically.

  “Maybe, maybe. There’s an election coming you know. Reason I’ve got to endure the sea voyage after all. People to speak with. Caucusing to do.” He waggled a hand to indicate a great deal of other items too long to bother with listing.

  “Then let us not miss the tide sir,” Commander Edmunds said. “It would prolong the trip,” he added, which had the desired effect of causing Mr. Belmont to pale, gulp, and turn resolutely towards the vessel.

  The ambassador waved over his shoulder a farewell to me, and off he went.

  “Just what assignment did the Navy give our Lieutenant Marshall?” Commander Edmunds asked.

  “Flight duty,” I said.

  “Ah.” The commander murmured, “In dirigibles?”

  “Aeroplanes,” I corrected. “Experimental aeroplanes.”

  “Hmm. Very safe.”

  “Sir.” It was as noncommittal an agreement as I dared make. “I believe someone told his family that only the zeppelins held bombs and someone might have thought that meant an aeroplane was safe. And possibly there’d been some concern regarding mines and submarine attacks if he’d taken the positions being bandied about.”

  “Good luck with that.” The commander gave me a nod and hurried after his ambassador. His chuckles did not fill me with a great deal of confidence.

  At least the naval service had not, this time, sent me with any instructions implying that they thought aviation was safe and easy. Perhaps it was less important to them than shipbuilding or the training exercises the fleets of the Atlantic and Pacific were engaged in. They had to prepare in the event we one day were sent to join in the great war and support our allies. But with our German allies fighting our French and British allies, it was anyone’s guess who the United States ought to be fighting anyway. My best guess remained that our nation would stay out a while longer at least. Though it was clear my little group thought it inevitable that we’d come in on the German side soon.

  The mess in the African colonies certainly implied a level of duplicitousness on the part of the French and British colonial administrators, but our politicians back home had accepted the apologetic responses to that. And at least for now, Germany still held her territories on the southern continent. But those distant wrongdoings had little immediate impact on the war on the European continent. They did, of course, impact what the locals of that continent thought of the colonizer governments and a certain former colony over in the Americas had begun to notice as well.

  Lieutenant Thom
pson waved me down from the bar’s open window.

  “Hays! I say, Chief Hays! Come have a tankard of beer with us.” A brimming second mug appeared in his hand before he finished calling out.

  I entered the bar, and Lieutenant Marshall lifted up his own mug in a cheerful toast to our safe voyage.

  “Roberts can go get us the train tickets,” Marshall was saying. “There’s a three-week flight observer course we all probably ought to enroll in which’ll let us get up in the sky before the war is all over. The pilot course is three months, so.” He waggled a hand indicating it might extend beyond the timeframe of the conflict.

  “Some ought to take the pilot training,” Thompson said. “We should learn what they do differently. I’ll do it if no one else wants to.”

  “Oh I want to, too. We both should.” Marshall said, “Not much value in learning how to take notes in German about whatever the infantry is doing when we could be flying an Albatros instead.”

  “Or one of those scout monoplanes.” Thompson clinked his mug against Marshall’s in agreement.

  Roberts looked back and forth between the two lieutenants. He was most junior and least confident. His blinking blue eyes reminded me of a pet bunny trying very hard to become a hound.

  “I’ll do the observer training,” Roberts volunteered. “Somebody else can do the flying; really, I don’t mind.” He patted his pockets to locate the group’s travel funds. “I’ll be right back with our train tickets.”

  I could be Lieutenant Marshall’s observer, I supposed. I couldn’t lose track of him if I were in the same aircraft all the time.

  “Do you suppose he knows that the monoplanes, Eindeckers I think I heard them called, don’t have an observer seat at all?” Thompson said.

  “He can join in with the ground crews and stay with Chief Hays,” Marshall said. “Tell me again what you’ve heard about the new Eindeckers. One set of wings instead of two, of course I know. But also a bit faster and more maneuverable than even an Albatros?”

  Lieutenant Thompson, who couldn’t have actually seen either German aircraft type himself yet, drew in a breath to share his rumors.

  But what had Marshall just suggested? No way would be I staying behind.

  “I’ll be entering pilot training too,” I said.

  * * *

  “The man’s a commissioned officer for God’s sake, did you expect the Navy to give him orders to sit at home and knit? Most of the boys begged off and took orders home after seeing a few Germans crash. How was I to know he wouldn’t be one of the quitters?

  “And if you do ‘take a ship over to speak to the boy yourself,’ you might indicate to him that we’d appreciate a bit more specificity in the technical details of his reports. ‘Dashingly beautiful machines’ is all well and good but helps develop our own aviation industry not at all.”

  -Excerpt of a letter from the desk of Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, Aide for Operations to the Secretary of the Navy

  * * *

  April 1915, The Skies Above Germany to the East of France

  Despite my misgivings, I had to concede that flying these crates around had grown on me…a bit. That said, I didn’t have any illusions about my longevity in the flying business.

  The warmth of Spring at ground level chilled to a fine frost at altitude and my wool gloves could stand to have a few holes darned shut. The Albatros’s engine growled in a constant thrum my ears had grown near deaf to over the last three months. The wind tore at my face, and I pulled my hat down more firmly and tucked in an edge of scarf threatening to pull free.

  Poor Roberts seated behind me didn’t need the shock of my scarf striking him in the face while he was trying to see to make notes and practice his navigation.

  The shimmer of little streams embroidering the patchwork farm country below rolled on in a comfortably familiar landscape we’d flown over countless times now. But Roberts had a devil of a time recognizing any of it.

  It probably didn’t help that we were flying with a loaded rifle strapped in next to him. I had no gun as pilot, so it’d be up to him to shoot anything that needed shooting.

  And good luck to him, because he’d need it.

  Marksmanship in the sky might quite reasonably include prayer as much as practice. Our speed gave him eighty knots of wind to struggle against while attempting to hold a rifle steady. An enemy would not be flying alongside like a kite being towed for target practice but instead would be maneuvering or possibly even diving towards us and shooting back. Roberts might get a few seconds in which a target was close enough for him to reasonably hit anything, and he’d need nerves of steel, too, and buckets full of luck to actually hit something.

  I put higher chances on the German observers, Shultz and Hoffmann, riding with Lieutenant Marshall and Lieutenant Thompson just ahead. But they’d probably miss anything, too. The German Leutnant Boelcke leading our little air convoy had more experience in the air than anyone else we’d met and much of it was much, much closer to the front than we were now. The French had taken to arming their observers with pistols and Boelcke had been having his own observer fire back with a rifle. But today he was flying an Eindecker, which of course had no observer to use a handgun or anything else.

  Our Albatros aeroplanes soared over the countryside quite as powerfully as the good luck bird they took their name from. Canvas stretched tight across a set of wings below my cockpit and another above. The engine rumbled below my feet, drowning any noise the propeller whirring in front made. Lieutenant Junior Grade Roberts huddled in the seat just behind me. The edges of his maps sometimes tickled the back of my neck as the wind tore at them. The implied warning that shooting at an Albatros would rain misery down on the enemy struck me as quite appropriate.

  Ahead, Lieutenant Marshall drove his plane up to spear through a wisp of cloud off to my left. Shultz gesticulated from the back seat and wiped one handed with dramatic motions at his goggles.

  Leutnant Boelcke flew in the Eindecker at the very front of our group. He shot bolt straight towards Douai with none of the darting here and there of my American lieutenants. The greater power of his engine opened the space between him and us, but he’d glanced back from time to time and would angle up and down to slow enough for our slower aircraft to catch up whenever he judged the distance too great.

  Lieutenant Thompson, in the fourth aircraft with another steady German, Leutnant Hoffmann, angled his plane off to my right as if he was going to go through a much larger cloud bank well out of our way. Hoffmann reached forward and thumped Thompson on the head. The aeroplane returned to its proper course.

  Marshall threw back his head in laughter inaudible over the sounds of our engines and the roar of the wind.

  We’d seen aeroplanes crash during pilot training. An important strut could break. An engine could quit. The propeller could sheer off—especially on those aeroplanes with a pilot-operated machine gun. None of our current aircraft (thank heaven!) had one of those.

  We already learned a few useful things to take back home with us. If only I could convince Lieutenant Marshall to go before our luck ran out, I wished.

  On second thought though, perhaps I shouldn’t hope just for luck. The flight instructors had frequently drummed on the tables and declared: ‘The cemetery is filled with lucky pilots. Don’t be lucky, be good.’

  Tattered map edges slapped against my head. I twisted to look behind in case my observer needed to signal something and got my goggles knocked crooked by the wind for my trouble. I straightened them.

  Roberts’ hands shook more than could be explained away by the chill of altitude, and I could see his lips moving in a half chant. He wasn’t paying me any attention and from his stricken expression, I knew what he was saying to himself. It was the flying instructions being repeated over and over.

  One. You must focus your attention, all of it.

  Two. You must always have a landing spot in mind that you can glide to if your engine quits.

  Three. You must
keep track of the time so you don’t run out of fuel.

  And finally, most of all you must know where you are so you don’t accidentally come down on the wrong side of the lines.

  The chief instructor did tend to go on like that, but who am I to argue with someone with nearly 60 hours flying these machines?

  I suppressed a quiet laugh at what that handful of hours experience meant when spent in the sky. There were ten-year-olds a plenty who had sixty hours at sea and it meant nothing. But flights came in short bursts with days or weeks of preparation before and after in an attempt to make the lightweight craft less dangerous to fly, but still there were crashes. So much so that perhaps the man who hadn’t broken himself and hadn’t broken his plane was more than lucky. Perhaps he was good.

  The wind filled my lungs with a crisp air somehow more exhilarating than breathing was on the ground. We flew northwest, the sun flashing off the clouds but not blinding us too much. We were to deliver our aeroplanes to an aerodrome near the town of Douai. Boelcke had arranged an early takeoff exactly so we’d not be flying blind into a setting sun, a fact for which I was grateful. Our four machines, an unusually large group of aeroplanes, were haphazardly strewn about the sky in a rough diamond with Boelcke in front, Thompson to the right, Marshall to the left, and me in the rear.

  I flew a bit higher than the rest while the cloud cover remained sparse enough for me to see everyone. I liked the idea of more time to set up for a glide if some part of my aeroplane failed me.

  Thompson pulled his cap off and waved it in the air only to get thumped again by his observer. The energetic young man and his serious back seater made me laugh. They’d be buying each other rounds at the little tavern closest to the Douai airfield after we landed and joking about whatever this newest in-flight argument was about.