To Slip the Surly Bonds

by Chris Kennedy

  The other aeroplanes had shrunk with distance. I’d been gradually climbing without noticing it. I pressed the stick forward gently to level out.

  Reminded to focus on my own flying, I checked the gauges. Rotations per minute for the engine hovered about where they should be. Nice oil pressure. The time on my watch told me we were about half way to Douai. I double checked the fuel level: eh, it matched well enough. I tapped the glass and the needle wiggled up to where it ought to be. We should make it but there wouldn’t be a whole lot extra.

  Boelcke dropped altitude to clear a few clouds and banked to the left and then to the right, examining the countryside for landmarks. He adjusted our course a few points to port, or rather to the left.

  Fencing and scattered tree lines broke up much of the deceptively friendly countryside into plots too small to land on. The furrows and ditches between the new plantings would challenge the Albatros’s wheels and struts. I kept track of the larger fields and pastures spreading out here and there beneath us. A nice fallow one would pass beneath us in another minute and would slip away out of gliding range not too long after. I scanned for another.

  A glint in the distance flashed. I wiped at my goggles with the end of my scarf. The sun did tricky things with church steeples and farmhouse roofs, but I peered hard. The flash shone above the horizon in a patch of sky clear of all clouds.

  I waved my left hand without turning and pointed at the spot where I’d seen it. My observer neither tapped my shoulder in acknowledgement nor thumped my head. I batted awkwardly at the edge of the maps and still got none of the responses I needed.

  Thompson and Hoffmann’s aeroplane flew almost directly in line with the odd flash. Neither showed signs of having seen anything. Maybe there was nothing to see?

  I turned in my seat and Roberts finally looked up. He glanced at tiny scattered farmhouses far beneath us, turned gray, and tried to bury his head in the maps again.

  “That way,” I yelled, gesturing back towards the flash.

  Roberts, wide-eyed, gave me a thumbs up and pointed not beyond Thompson’s aeroplane but beyond Boelcke’s towards Douai. Then he looked at the ground again, his clenched hands shaking hard.

  I faced forward and pulled hard on the stick to climb. Sunlight on the wings could make such a flash. I cursed. I’d looked away. Now I had no idea where to find that aircraft again. Marshall, Thompson, and Boelcke all flew straight, seeing nothing.

  Maybe there was nothing to see?

  A tiny black speck appeared just above the horizon in front and slightly right of our formation. A little bug framed by the wide blue sky. The front was that way. But so was the airfield at our destination.

  Except there’d be no reason for a friendly pilot to be streaking directly at us. The dark thing—a flying aircraft, I was almost certain—didn’t seem to be maneuvering and was moving roughly in the opposite direction of us. The dot hung in the sky, growing larger and rising higher above the horizon now; I assumed that meant an aeroplane at a higher altitude, though I couldn’t tell by how much.

  I pointed and yelled. I couldn’t go any faster. The Albatros engine went the speed it went or it was off. I could make slow left and right turns to reduce my forward movement, but that’d be pure cowardice. It would leave the three other aircraft flying on ahead, still unaware of the coming interceptor.

  I couldn’t help myself, I looked back again and waved to Roberts to point out the intruding aircraft. He attempted a smile and waved back as if I were trying to have a pleasant chat midflight. I turned again to Boelcke, Marshall, and even Thompson: none of them saw it.

  No one pointed. Not one of the observers attempted to signal anything. No one made any attempt to communicate the presence of another aeroplane, and not a one of them was looking back at me. I had no wireless to signal them with and shouting into an 80-knot wind over the drone of the engine was futile. I couldn’t hear Roberts from own my back seat, let alone someone in another aeroplane a hundred yards or more in the distance.

  I looked back to the right to find the black dot but saw only a vast empty sky.

  I suppressed a surge of panic.

  I shouldn’t’ve looked away, except of course it would’ve been very nice if someone else in our little formation could’ve looked around and paid attention to my waving arms to all be alert to the danger.

  Scanning the horizon, I saw nothing above or below. It shouldn’t have been possible to disappear. Then I realized it: my own wings could blind me!

  I pushed the stick to the left which raised my right wing slightly to reveal the sky behind it. There it was! I felt momentary relief, but I would not look away again. I would not make the same mistake three times in a row. Though even while I promised myself that, I realized it no longer mattered.

  The spot had grown into a French single-winged Morane too large at its closing range to be lost even in the wide expanse of the sky.

  Its engines must’ve been shrieking down on us, but it dove utterly silent under the sound of our own racket.

  It grew giant. Propellers and nose angled straight on. All the whole sky and did he mean to ram me?

  But no, I could see a bit of the Morane’s tail. The Frenchman had a different target. It fell on the closest Albatros from above, with Thompson blinded by his own upper right wing.

  Hoffman threw his hands up seeing it at last. A split second later, the German was reaching for his rifle.

  The front of the Morane flashed with bright sparking.

  If it were burning, shouldn’t there be smoke? And the propeller would be visible instead of that blur if the engine had given out…

  God help us, that was machine gun fire! And on a single-seater aeroplane! How the devil had the French done it?

  Then everything happened at once, and I didn’t even have time to swear.

  The Morane’s dive dropped it underneath Thompson streaking by far too close for either aeroplane’s safety.

  Hoffmann fired his rifle, tracking the French plane as it fought to pull up.

  Thompson jerked my way and slumped over the stick pitching the Albatros down as it began the slowly increasing left turn of a propeller-driven aeroplane with no living hand on the controls.

  Hoffmann sighted his rifle and returned fire as the passing French plane buzzed under their aircraft.

  The Albatros turned and turned. In the moment when it faced back to Douai again, I thought maybe Thompson might yet manage to land it, but the downward spiral continued and the pilot didn’t move.

  The French plane shot up away from Thompson’s erratic circling. The floundering Albatros threw the German observer this way and that and still he tried to find the French aircraft for another shot.

  And I saw what Hoffmann could not see: the aircraft dropped.

  Dodging Lieutenant Thompson’s plane seemed to have the spoiled the Frenchman’s interest in taking a shot at the rest of us. The Morane hung in the air for a moment as it banked towards a heading to France.

  Marshall’s Albatros streaked across the sky with Shultz twisting to fire at the fleeing Frenchman.

  In the silent skies, I could only imagine Shultz’s rifle fire.

  Crack! Crack!

  I jerked in my own seat to see that Roberts, face white with fear, had his gun up and was shooting as best he could even with the poor angle I’d given him on the target.

  Crack-crack-crack! I dove forward. I had more altitude that either Marshall or the Frenchman. I could close and give my terrified gunner a chance to hit something too.

  Roberts swung the barrel of his rifle over my head and down following the Morane, now passing under our plane. It banked into a left turn and fled to the southwest.

  The Frenchman lifted his face to stare directly into my eyes in the split second our planes passed each other. He gave the smallest shrug as though acknowledging the insanity of war as my observer shot at him. The distance opened, and Roberts would need a miracle to hit the now zig-zagging Frenchman.

  Lieut
enant Marshall’s aeroplane roared beneath us. I threw my body against the stick to roll right, straining against the guide wires. He buzzed past, wing tips mere feet away. Oblivious to the near collision, he leaned forward against the biting cold wind, focused entirely on catching the Morane.

  Shultz gave an exaggerated shrug at the foolishness of pilots and touched his temple in an ironic salute.

  Marshall’s Albatros and the Morane shrunk into toy planes in the distant sky.

  Boelcke’s Eindecker circled well clear, and I could imagine his exasperation at being the only unarmed aeroplane in the fight. I half expected him to produce a brace of pistols from under his jacket and bring down the Morane all on his own. But instead, his aeroplane tracked over the spot where Thompson’s Albatros met the earth.

  The Frenchman realized too late that his zigzags had let Lieutenant Marshall close to nearly on top of him. And worse for the Morane, we had the advantage of altitude.

  At the last moment, Marshall pulled out from his dive and slalomed over the Frenchman, letting Shultz rain bullets down on the enemy aeroplane while its own machine gun pointed uselessly at open sky. The Morane’s nose began to lift and turn that deadly barrel.

  Roberts and I were closing, but still too far to be of any help.

  The French plane slowed.

  It hung in midair for a fraction of a second and began to drop.

  We closed fast, but it was over. The Frenchman hadn’t begun an engine powered dive to regain speed and circle around to strafe us. This was a mere glide. A motionless propeller betrayed his complete loss of engine power. The Morane drifted with gentle corrections down towards a long fallow strip of farmland.

  One lucky shot in that hailstorm of bullets had actually struck the Frenchman’s engine!

  Lieutenant Marshall followed alongside and above the stricken enemy plane, and I trailed him. Boelcke settled in behind us. My nerves kept me scanning the sky, but no other aircraft appeared.

  Shultz secured his rifle. Marshall kept his Albatros over the Morane and pointed with increasing agitation at it.

  The wounded French plane maneuvered with lethargic slowness, angling only towards the open farmland with no power left for skilled evasion. It glided heavy and slow, now an easy target for Marshall’s observer. Shultz shook his head and finished doing up the straps to secure the rifle for landing.

  Boelcke behind us might not be able to read those jerky movements well enough to know Marshall was furious, but I knew my lieutenant.

  The French plane maneuvered gently to angle towards the flattest-looking field. A railroad cut a neat line through the friendly German countryside, and the growing toy-sized buildings nestled beside the tracks suggested a train station.

  People spilled out of the buildings ogling up at us.

  The Morane touched down with expert lightness, bumped along the rutted earth, and rolled to a stop.

  Lieutenant Marshall and then I made safe, if less skilled, landings. I coasted to a stop and unstrapped from the airplane. Boelcke followed, shutting off the Eindecker’s engine and climbing out.

  Soldiers from the train station ran toward the French plane, while curious onlookers gathered around all of us.

  Boelcke stripped off his scarf and gloves while assuring them all that we were German allies and only the Morane’s pilot was a Frenchman. I pulled off my own helmet and let the warm air restore feeling to my frozen skin.

  The French pilot, first to land, stayed in his aeroplane fussing with the controls. My eyebrows went up. His wood and canvas contraption might have broken speed records before the war, but he was grounded now and stopped. What did he hope to do? I wondered.

  Oh. The man hefted a wooden strut broken from his own aircraft and battered at the cockpit gauges with it.

  Boelcke yelled a command to the soldiers in the crowd, and the man was wrestled from his airplane before he could do more than crack the glass on his oil pressure gauge.

  I climbed from my plane, setting my boots down on soft warm earth.

  Lieutenant Marshall pressed through the crowd, and I hurried to follow.

  Two soldiers held the Frenchman and the rest kept back the curious farmer’s family and examined the Morane with Leutnant Boelcke.

  Marshall strode forward, sweeping off his helmet and goggles to hang by their straps, and unbuttoned his coat to reach his revolver.

  “Sir! Lieutenant Marshall!” I shouted into the commotion, but if he heard me, he didn’t look up.

  The German soldiers holding the still struggling Frenchman saw but looked back and forth to Boelcke and their own senior officer, uncertain whether to restrain their captive for Marshall or to defend the man against an obviously enraged American pilot.

  “Achtung Leutnant!” Boelcke yelled. “Leutnant Marshall!” The crowd hushed, and the senior German pilot’s ringing command voice broke through.

  Marshall’s rising hand froze, and Boelcke waded briskly through the crowd and soldiers. In mixed German and English he said, “Das pistole: Put. It. Away!”

  Lieutenant Marshall looked at Boelcke, then me, and then at the revolver in his hand as if he’d just woken up. He holstered the weapon and stood perfectly still in a pose I’d seen on more than one naval officer expecting to be publicly harangued by a superior for an infraction he hadn’t been entirely convinced was wrong.

  But Boelcke brushed straight past.

  “Mr. Hays,” he called over his shoulder to me. I could never convince these Germans to call me ‘Chief’ or just ‘Hays’ as a mere enlisted man. “The propeller.” He pointed. “Most interesting. It is, how do you say?”

  “Armored,” I said.

  I marveled at the construction. Creases on the metal plates lining the backs of the prop blades left shiny divots where bullets had struck. I spun it by hand. The sluggish movement would reduce the aeroplane speed but also, oh, the pings had deformed one of the blades. “He was lucky to be able to land.”

  “Maybe. Maybe,” Boelcke acknowledged.

  And the machine gun, I examined it, and did my best not to let color flood my cheeks. The French Morane mounted a 7.9mm Hotchkiss. The American gunsmith lived in France and had set up his factory outside Paris decades ago, but that hardly made it less embarrassing since it had been built for supplying the frogs during the Franco-Prussian war.

  “Normal gun,” Boelcke said.

  “Nothing special,” I agreed.

  “Suffisamment speciale,” the French pilot said, and clapped his mouth shut tight again when not just Marshall, but Shultz too glared at him with red-rimmed eyes.

  A German officer consulted with Boelcke and took control of the situation, detailing a few men to guard the French plane, others to take the French pilot away toward the station and to disperse the crowd. The Morane was to be studied with detailed reports to be sent to several of our own German gunsmiths trying out machinegun-mounting techniques. The pilot would go stay with some landed gentry relatives if he would give his parole.

  I walked to Lieutenant Marshall, who sagged in his overly thick flying gear. I shrugged off my own heavy jacket and encouraged him to do the same.

  “My American friends,” Leutnant Shultz said. “If you please, keep watch on our aeroplanes.” The German’s English had started quite fine and only improved on being paired with Marshall as his observer.

  Shultz made a slight nod in the direction of the farmhouse barn’s hayloft where two boys stared in open fascination at our aircraft, and one seemed to be measuring the distance to jump on the upper wing of my Albatros. The soldiers assigned to the Morane were little better, turning the propeller this way and that as they’d seen me do.

  Shultz gave a small shrug as though apologizing for his countrymen’s fascination.

  “Mr. Boelcke and I must go to the telegraph office in the train station to send in reports and make arrangements for all the aeroplanes to be collected.”

  “Of course sir,” I said, locking eyes with the boy in the hayloft who abruptly found
a need to retreat into the shadows of the barn.

  We obeyed Leutnant Shultz’s request.

  Or I did. Marshall turned his back to stare at the point on the horizon where Lieutenant Thompson and Leutnant Hoffmann had gone down.

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Roberts followed Marshall’s gaze and gulped.

  “Chief, I, uh, I should make a report too,” he said and hurried after Shultz towards the train station. I was pretty sure Roberts would be on a nice safe boat to America as soon as his family could get his telegram and answer it, and I was glad to see the brave little rabbit go.

  Walking ahead with the soldiers and Leutnant Boelcke, the downed enemy pilot was waving his hands energetically trying to explain something. His German was even worse than mine, but I gathered that the Frenchman was as shocked as the rest of us that rifle fire had succeeded in bringing an aeroplane down.

  Roberts’s quick strides had him at the back of the crowd, and he blended in out of sight in moments.

  “You saw this coming,” Marshall said to me.

  I hurried to salute having forgotten my manners, and my officer batted my hand down.

  “Never mind all that. Tell me about the beginning of the engagement. When did you spot him? And how the Devil did he manage to shoot down Thompson and Hoffmann without destroying his propeller? Could he have done it again? Or could anyone, do you think?”

  The French pilot was being peppered with much the same questions in German. I replied with much less hesitancy than they did.

  I hadn’t seen this coming, not really, but I wondered if maybe an admiral had at least suspected it could happen.

  * * *

  “Absolutely! We must have a full series on America’s First Flying Ace in the papers immediately. If the other side can claim the munitions ship Lusitania is an innocent commercial liner because some fools took passage on it, we can call our favorite war hero an ace.

  “Oh, and see if Rear Admiral Fiske will make some sort of arrangement with the Germans about a medal. It’s the least he can do after causing Lois Irene such distress.”