by John Masters
More specks appearing in the north … more Trip lanes. But he wasn’t going to let those AEGs get away. He looked round at D Flight leader, and pointed ahead at the AEGs, the hand stabbing. D Flight continued on course to attack the lumbering bombers, as Guy led A and C up to join B against the Triplanes.
As the Camels climbed, engines roaring, Guy’s peripheral vision caught smoke … tracer fire … an aeroplane falling. One of the AEGs was down … another … Now for the Tripes … five of them … where was Werner? Must be sick, he’d never allow his planes to wander round the sky in penny packets like this … or on leave, getting married, as he’d said in his latest letter … the last AEG was down in flames, and D Flight hurrying back up to join him … Above, B Flight waited, circling wide round the Germans … he was up level with the Fokkers now, and half a mile to the west of them. D was 3000 feet down still, a sitting target if the Fokkers dived now … of course they’d pay the price, for Guy would then dive behind them with his other three flights. Suddenly the Germans turned and headed east, in long shallow divès. Guy looked at his watch … 8.31.
He wheeled the Three Threes back into formation, flying north, 12,000 feet. 8.34. He waved his hand slowly round his head in a wide circle, and swung on course for home. Down there were the front lines … two bumbling Harry Tates spotting for the artillery … four, five, six observation balloons … the spire of Amiens cathedral …. Mirvaux … stick forward, blip, on, blip, ease back, blip, on, … bump, bump, roll … switch off.
The adjutant of the squadron was waiting as he taxied into place. Sergeant Frank Stratton, his fitter, ran forward to help him down. The adjutant came forward, his wooden leg creaking in the immaculate King’s Dragoon Guards’ field boots. Guy took off his flying helmet and swung it free. Now that he wasn’t personally killing so many Germans, it was a relief not to have to face the vomiting of the old days, which from the beginning had invariably stricken him when he landed after a kill. ‘What is it, Dandy?’ he asked. ‘We got three AEGs – G.IVs I think. We’ll have to confirm it.’
‘The Wing Commander will be pleased, sir,’ the adjutant said. ‘He’s here. In your office. With a Member of Parliament.’
‘An MP,’ Guy groaned. ‘More ruddy stupid questions, explanations they don’t understand.’
He saw that the adjutant was smiling, and stopped. ‘Oh. It’s Grandfather – the Governor, my father calls him.’
‘Yes, sir. Visiting the front. He says he’s only got a few hours, then this afternoon he’s due in Amiens to visit the GOC, L of C, and see some rear installations … He said he has a granddaughter somewhere round here with the FANYs.’
Guy nodded – ‘My cousin Naomi. She’s at Ailly … I drove down there last week, after the big Boche air raid. She was fine. Has a Sapper pursuiter after her, apparently.’
He opened the door of the hut and stopped, seeing his grandfather in one of the hard chairs against the wall, the Wing Commander standing by the window. Guy saluted, and his grandfather rose unsteadily to his feet, holding out his arms. ‘Is it all right to hug a major?’ he asked as he embraced his grandson. Guy saw tears in the old man’s eyes; his hair was very white and he had shrunk inside his clothes, the heavy overcoat hanging loosely on him.
The Wing Commander said, ‘I’m off, Rowland … Call me as soon as you’ve spoken to your pilots.’
‘I’m pretty sure we got three AEGs, sir.’
‘You personally?’
‘None, sir.’
The lieutenant-colonel nodded and said, ‘Talk freely to your grandfather, Rowland.’
‘I’m not a front bencher,’ Harry Rowland said. ‘But some of the important ones seem to listen to me. Churchill does. Even the PM always has time for me.’
‘Because you’re an honest man, sir,’ the colonel said. ‘A good politician has to know one when he sees one, however rare they are.’ He in his turn saluted, and went out.
The adjutant said, ‘Do you want me, sir?’
‘No, Dandy. See that the IO gets on with the pilots’ reports before they forget the details … You’ll have lunch with us here, Grandfather?’
‘Certainly, my boy.’
Guy pulled out the swivel chair, with padded arms, that was his own and said, ‘Sit here, Grandfather … I’ll take you round the squadron later – you must meet the riggers and fitters as well as the pilots – we would all be dead ducks without them, but they don’t get any glory.’
‘They have votes,’ Harry said. He sat down. Guy offered him a cigarette and the old man waved it away with a grimace, ‘Never touch those things. I’d love a cigar but the doctor’s said no … Well, tell me, Guy … we in Parliament only want one thing, to win the war, as quickly as possible, and at the least possible cost. What can we do, as far as the RFC is concerned, to achieve it?’
Guy walked slowly back and forth across the front of the table while his grandfather leaned back in the swivel chair, listening, sometimes making a careful note in the small leatherbound book he had produced from an inner pocket – ‘I fly Scouts, and they’re the most glamorous – we have dogfights with von Rackow and Richthofen and the rest of them. We get the publicity, but really a Scout is a defensive machine … our job is to protect our air space from intrusion. Often we enforce this by going into German air space and attacking their machines there, in the air or on the ground, but it is all for the same purpose – to protect our air space. What the air force needs to do now is attack, occupy the German air space … not to protect ours, but to further our war aims. We should bomb German submarine bases … arms factories … railway junctions … important road and rail bridges … The force that does these things must not think of itself as a sort of army or navy in a different uniform – it must be an air force, thinking and fighting in terms of the air, which covers the trenches, the factories, the fleets, the submarines, the railway junctions – everything. We hear that a new combined air service is going to be formed – that’s what General Trenchard’s supposed to be working on … and we younger men think nothing must be allowed to stop it, not jealousy or narrow-mindedness on the part of the navy, or the army, not shortage of money – nothing. We must use the air, everywhere, for our war purposes, and so we must be fully airmen, solely airmen, as much as the navy were sailors in Nelson’s time …’
Harry said, ‘I know that something of that kind is under study now. I believe that the chief opposition comes from the navy.’
‘They mustn’t be allowed to scuttle the idea,’ Guy said energetically. ‘They hate aircraft the way they hate submarines, because they make their expensive battleships vulnerable … but there must be a Royal Air Force, and when it is really working, the navy will be as eager to have it used to help them as anyone … That’s the main point, the creation of a separate, independent air arm. We can talk about other things while we’re going round. Ready?’
Harry Rowland struggled to his feet, putting away the notebook. ‘I’m ready, Major Rowland,’ he said. He patted his grandson on the shoulder. ‘Major Rowland,’ he repeated. ‘Who’d ever have believed it, four years ago? But I’d still rather it was Guy Rowland, Esquire, Kent and England, 6 for 33 against the Australians at Lord’s. Will that day ever come?’
‘Heaven knows,’ Guy said, holding the door open for his grandfather to precede him out into the wintry air.
Second Lieutenant John Merritt, US Field Artillery, stood behind the row of four 75-mm guns, his binoculars to his eyes, observing the fall of the shot on the practice target, a hedge line on the snow-covered hillside three miles ahead. The shells were not falling evenly along the line, but bunching, mostly towards the right end of the 200-yard-long target. He raised his right arm over his head, shouting ‘Cease firing!’
The sergeants in charge of each half-section bellowed ‘Cease firing!’, slapping the gunner of each gun on the shoulder as they did so. The guns fell silent.
At John’s side the battery commander, Captain Hodder, said, ‘Now, what is the problem with the she
af? You have a minute to find out.’
John bellowed, ‘Repeat range! Battery left at five-second intervals!’
The left-hand gun fired at once, and five seconds later No.2 fired … John watched, absorbed, through his binoculars … No. 1 was too far right … No. 2, the same … No. 3, on target … No. 4, on target … The first section was off. He shouted, ‘No. 1, No. 2, left 4 mils … No. 1, repeat range!’ No. 1 gun fired … on target … No. 2, on target. John had begun to order ‘fire for effect’ when the captain said, ‘End of mission, Mr Merritt … Mr Anspach, your mission … We are required to lay a smoke screen fifty yards in front of the previous target. You have three minutes to work out the necessary orders … Mr Merritt, fall out.’
John saluted and left his post. An automobile was coming up the rutted farm road behind the battery positions, flying a two-starred flag from its right fender staff. The captain had seen, and was walking towards the car, which had stopped. The driver sprang down and held the rear door open. Major-General Gary F. Castine, USA, commanding general of the division, climbed down, acknowledging Hodder’s salute. He was followed by a white-haired old man in a heavy civilian overcoat and a black bowler hat. John started and cried out, ‘Mr Rowland!’ He bit his lip. He was at attention, saluting the general, and he’d been in the army long enough to know to keep his mouth shut. But Harry Rowland had seen him and was coming forward, hand outstretched. ‘Johnny! What a pleasant surprise!… This is my grandson-in-law, general.’
‘John Merritt,’ the general said. ‘I know him. Colonel Powell tells me he’s a very capable young officer. Eh, Hodder?’
‘Very, sir.’
‘This is Mr Rowland, captain. A Member of the British Parliament. He’s been visiting the British front and asked to see ours, too. I know your battery’s only just come forward from Camp Coetquidan, but I want you to show Mr Rowland what we can do. I want the British to know we’re here, and we’re ready.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Keep him through lunch and then bring him back to my headquarters … Sure you’ll be warm enough, Mr Rowland?’
‘Quite. Thank you very much.’
The general saluted his guest and returned to his car. As the artillery officers waited, hands to the rims of their steel helmets, the car drove away. Captain Hodder said, ‘We’ll continue the practice. Mr Merritt, you are excused the rest of the exercise to act as guide to your grandfather … Sergeant Tanner!’
‘Sir?’
‘Give Mr Rowland some waste for his ears … Mr Anspach, are you ready with the problem I gave you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Carry on then.’
Anspach began to bark fire orders giving the range, elevation, and deflection for the new task. To one flank, fifty yards away from the nearest gun, John explained what was going to happen, and gave his binoculars to the older man. The guns bounded on their wheels, the barrels recoiled, slid forward. First Sergeant Montoya bellowed, ‘Ride that gun, soldier!’ Smoke began to rise from half a dozen sources on the distant hillside, and John said, ‘The wind’s not good for the task. It’s blowing straight away from us, so to mask that line of hedge the shells have to fall closer together than we have guns for. If the wind was from the flank, the battery could do it well. As it is, there are gaps in the smoke, see?’
‘I see,’ Harry Rowland said. ‘The guns fire very fast, don’t they?’
‘That’s the best thing about the 75,’ John said. ‘It’s a wonderful gun for speed and reliability … the weight of shell’s not really enough for trench warfare, though. When our infantry attack, the French artillery have to provide the heavy support for them. We don’t like it, but we can’t help it …’
‘No more news of Stella, I’m afraid, Johnny.’
‘She could be anywhere,’ John said. It was hard to wrench your mind from the reality of the battery, the guns, the exploding shells, the soldiers, to this personal tragedy, so unimportant, and yet so central to his life. Once the wrench had been made, it was hard to believe that anything else but that personal tragedy mattered.
Harry said, ‘I spoke to the Commissioner again the day before we left for France. He says he has not given up hope.’
‘Nor have I,’ John said. ‘I can’t.’ His mouth shut in a grim line. He said, ‘The captain is making each gunner explain how he works out the corrections for angle of site … that is, the correction needed to be put on the sights if the piece is above or below the target. If the piece is above the target it’s called a negative site, if it’s below it’s called a positive site. The firing tables give the elements of the trajectory corresponding to the actual range, but …’
Harry Rowland sat in the spacious lounge of the Hotel de France in Amiens, facing his granddaughter Naomi Rowland, Lance-Corporal of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. They were drinking coffee and eating little pastry bonbons that the hotel staff somehow managed to serve up at the British teatime for the officers who, on short leave or passing through Amiens on duty from the Somme front, dropped in at the hotel for some civilisation.
Naomi was looking well, he thought – rather stern in that uniform, but then she’d always seemed rather stern, even as a child, and as she had grown to her full considerable height the sternness had settled, giving her young face – she was twenty-two – a mature handsomeness instead of prettiness. She was saying, ‘We need more women out here, Grandfather … many more. There are still far too many able-bodied men doing work that women could do – and would do better … clerks, drivers, cooks, typists, telephone operators. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t work closer to the front, as far forward as Corps headquarters certainly.’
‘I’m afraid Parliament would never agree to that,’ Harry murmured.
‘Because you’re all men,’ Naomi said impatiently. ‘In the dark ages … in China, Japan, India … in prehistoric times, do you think that women were put aside and told to twiddle their thumbs while the men fought? No! The women fought too! They had to! We can fire machine-guns just as well as men can. Look at the Bolshevik women!’
Harry changed the subject: what Naomi was saying was in many ways quite true, but it wasn’t a political or practical possibility, yet. If England were actually invaded, then it would be different … He said, ‘There’s a lot of talk that the Germans are going to make a big assault on this front soon.’
‘We hear it,’ Naomi said. ‘We’re ready.’ She too changed the subject – ‘Is there any news of Stella, Grandfather?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not … I’ve learned a lot on this trip and have a great deal to tell the Prime Minister. But it’s been tiring. I don’t know whether I’ll be strong enough to come out again. To tell you the truth …’
From the corner of her eye Naomi saw what she had been looking for and made a small beckoning gesture, then waited. The tall officer with the flaming grenade badges of the Royal Engineers on his lapels came forward, cap in hand. Harry looked round as the young man stopped by his chair.
Naomi looked up – ‘Why, it’s Lieutenant Gregory. This is my grandfather, Mr Harry Rowland. He’s an MP.’
‘Please don’t get up, sir,’ the officer said.
Harry said, ‘Sit down, young man. Join us for tea. These little cakes are excellent.’ He looked at his granddaughter, ‘I imagine this is not a total surprise to you?’
Naomi found herself blushing. She said, in a small voice, ‘No, Grandfather. I told Ron – Mr Gregory – that I would be having tea with you here. We met …’
Ron Gregory said, ‘Miss Rowland drove me on an important job in the big air raids, sir. She was … marvellous. She ought to have got an MC at least.’
‘Nonsense,’ Naomi said. ‘It was just a job. I’m a FANY.’
The young man looked about thirty, Harry thought. He was gazing at Naomi with adoring eyes; but not possessive. He was the one who was possessed, and would be, if the affair passed on to love or marriage.
He said, ‘Well, Mr Gregory, whil
e we’re enjoying our tea tell me what you do … and tell me what we in Parliament can do to help you do better …’
Guy Rowland stood to one side of the engine nacelle of his Camel, watching Sergeant Stratton working on the sparking plugs, removing them one by one, testing the gap, cleaning them, replacing. The sergeant talked as he worked, ‘She’s ready to do over a hundred now, sir, easy … if I could just find a good enough stretch of road …’ ‘She’ in this case, Guy knew, was Victoria, the motor bicycle which Frank’s father Bob Stratton had built to break the 1000 cc and all comers world speed record; and which had been flown to France for Frank to continue the work after Bob was killed in a factory explosion.
Guy said, ‘You could take a few days’ leave and use that track near Paris.’
‘Thanks, sir, but I have to have observers, official timers, all kinds of stuff to prove the record’s pukka. Besides …’ his voice trailed away.
‘What’s the matter, Frank?’ Guy said gently. ‘You’ve been looking sort of sick, as though your chest hurt … for a long time now.’
Frank turned back to the Camel. Speaking into the engine block he said, his voice muffled and choked, ‘Anne’s having a baby.’
‘Why …’ Guy began. He stopped, waiting.
‘It ain’t mine,’ Frank said. ‘Can’t be.’
After a time Guy said, ‘Do you think this is what your mother meant, when she wrote that you had to come home?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Go home now. See her. She may be as miserable as you are.’
‘I’m not going to see her or have anything to do with her,’ Frank said. ‘I’m cutting off my allotment. She’s made her bed. Let her lie on it.’
