Chapter Four
Seventeenth Mission
Sitting in the cockpit, the clock said 4:55 a.m. I was wearing an unbelievable amount of clothing, standard issue by this point. Fur-lined boots, flying suit, gauntlets, goggles, silk underwear, wool underwear, vest, inner shirt, Army shirt, two sweaters. The flying suit was lined with lamb’s wool, and the gloves with muskrat. You had to have proper gloves, although some guys tried five pairs of various sizes and thickness.
What was truly unbelievable the first few times up, was that the layers of clothing were shockingly inadequate.
Some guys didn’t use the face mask.
They said it was too restrictive. Like seatbelts.
“Ready?” The anonymous figure of a burly mechanic bellowed through the gloom.
“Ready.” I answered firmly.
The same calls could be heard all up and down our flight dispersal area. My voice sounded muffled and funny. My breath smelled all too close.
“Is the switch off, sir?” He asked more clearly and less loudly now.
“The switch is off.”
There was already an itch close in beside my nose.
“Suck in, sir?” He asked.
“Suck in.” I agreed.
My heart began to pick up a beat or two. It was already pretty fast. This is it.
He firmly and confidently rotated the propeller around to the accompaniment of a clonkety-clonk, suckity-fuck, from the engine bay.
An engine with the air intake closed and the petrol supply turned on sucks in a rich mixture. A good mechanic should be able to tell by sound and feel. He nodded to the other fellow, who was standing by for safety. The second mechanic keeps a hand over the intake while the prop is rotated a couple of times.
“Contact.” He barked.
“Contact.” I responded, clicking the switch into place.
Strong hands gripped the prop.
One stout flip against the compression and the engine fired up with a clatter and a roar. Check the revs. Slightly reassured to see the gauges appeared to be operating.
We had to wait for the oil and cylinder head temperatures. This engine sounded tired, but maybe some of the ticking would go away when she warmed up. Up went a green flare from about fifty yards away. Bizarre shadows slithered through the apple trees, as the first of our flight taxied up to the end of the row and out onto the end of the field.
There wasn’t much wind. I was at the back of the line, which was good. My engine still seemed cold. I reviewed the little we knew about weather for today. The usual headwinds on our return flight.
How strong, no one can safely predict...
My own gut instinct, was that they would be strong.
A droning came from the first couple of planes circling overhead, when I made it to the end of the grassy area, which could be used for takeoff in any direction. Watkins took off ahead of me. His plane turned instantly grey-black as soon as it got about forty yards down the field.
My plane was a piece of crap. It pulled hard, up and to the right on takeoff, and the throttle friction wasn’t set. I had to literally hold it in position. Finally, flying with my knees, I tightened up the nut with as much finger-pressure as I could muster. It took both hands, as I wanted full throttle for climbing. There I was, looking all around. Minor turbulence rocked the wings gently, left and right, and the nose bobbed slightly.
To the west, it was still a deep violet blue. There were stars and planets over there. To the east, a couple of purple clouds hung in the greenish yellow haze over the blank landscape. I couldn’t see a darned thing. Where was everybody? It was a good thing the simple tools I kept buttoned-down in a side pocket included some pliers. But it mucked up my concentration for a moment. Little emergencies are bad in combat. Where were my squadron mates? They could only be above, that much I knew.
I clawed for a little more sky.
I saw another flare down below, and an aerial one from the south-south-east.
That’s where Dinwiddie was. He was flying lower down, checking signal panels laid out on the grass beside the command hut. Some other idiot had hit the panic button and fired off a flare when they couldn’t find Dinwiddie.
“Shit.”
Sure enough, a balloon has been tacked on to our shopping list. We all know whose turn it is, as I pulled in beside Watkins. He lifted his goggles and grimaced in sympathy.
No one wants to fly with a real fuckin’ dummy. It’s hazardous to your health.
The general rule of thumb, was that we would circle near the aerodrome and gain as much altitude as possible before the assigned start time of our patrol. Hopefully, one or two reconnaissance planes would show up at the rendezvous, but if not we would go on.
Dinwiddie had left us in no doubt about that.
“We’ll make visual observations.” That’s what he told us. “If nothing else, and show the flag over Kaiser Willy’s distressed urban proletariat.”
“What the fuck have you been reading, Mick?” I asked at the time.
He always had a heavy book somewhere about. Das Kapital, or something. Our Flight Commander was a bit of a Bolshie, but no one cared about his politics or his religion up here.
Achieving 8,000 feet, twenty minutes to six, my engine was still sounding tickey-tickey, and I didn’t much like that. But the revs and power seemed normal. We kept up with the other planes no problem. About 8,500 feet, twelve minutes to six. Where were the two-seaters?
A few minutes after six, we were just reaching the 10,000-foot mark, when we saw the two aircraft we were to escort. They were right on time, which is good.
Our flight slid over them and dove in beside, and Mick made a signal similar to a cyclist putting on the brakes. We throttled back.
The problem with escort duties, was that the fastest reconnaissance machines barely flew ninety miles per hour, flat out, empty. When you read in a book, ‘Top speed, ninety-eight miles per hour,’ that was at sea level.
The engine was all tuned up, the manufacturer had government officials standing by. One very small pilot. The fuel was top grade, and who knows, maybe something with a little extra kick tossed in, when no one was looking. On a mission like this, the photo boys had guns, ammunition, likely two cameras, extra film magazines, maybe even some water in a jug.
Wish I had thought of that myself. They had bombs aboard, and two men. Our old B.E.2c’s wouldn’t even stagger off the ground, if you loaded them up to what the book said. Sometimes the book is wrong, but men die before anyone notices.
Anyone with enough power to do anything about it.
The R.E. 8’s were barely making seventy-five. We had to weave up-sun, slide back in, weave up-sun yet again. They flew straight and level, right through intermittent Archie.
Stacking split us up as a target, at various altitude levels.
A tougher problem for the gunners, who were very well practiced.
We tried to make life hard for them.
With our duration of about two and a half hours, it was better to start on time. The formation turned east at exactly 6:08 a.m. These aircraft, while a great improvement over the old B.E.2c’s, could barely manage 7,500 feet with their full war-load. We were stacked up several hundred yards off from them. Hopefully, they would climb a little more as we burned off fuel and the land heated the air with the morning sun. As usual, we’re heading downwind, which meant that the ground under us goes by quickly. Short notes on the clipboard, pencil in its place. Stuff flopping around in the cockpit is bad.
The plane itself doesn’t understand about wind currents, but into an east wind we could have gotten higher sooner. I flew eighty-four missions in the B.E.2c. Fifty-one as an observer, the rest as pilot. A lot of cavalry officers went in for it. They had the training in reconnaissance.
The powers that be had drafted in a batch of machine gunners at the height of the Fokker Scourge, in 1915. It was an awful fuck-up. A panic reaction, but then no one knew anything about aerial combat back then. Their pilots couldn’t hit anything, yet the Army gunners were wiping men out a hundred at a time.
Perhaps it was because we could shoot? Maybe it was because someone had trained us how to shoot?
Maybe that was the difference?
Maybe they were just desperate.
Months after Second Ypres, when they went to give me a medal, they found out I was grossly underage. Red faces all around. Solution? Send the boy for air training. Can’t have the lad getting killed too soon. Christmas in the trenches, New Year’s in London.
Quite a shock to the old psyche. I got into more trouble in London, than I ever did in a trench. But they were dumb enough to grab kids as young as fourteen and a half. They had this thing called apparent age, and the recruiting officer was in charge of the determination. At my height, they didn’t even read my age on the form. The seventeen-hair moustache and those big shoulders might have helped.
Officials officially believed that people were showing up at recruiting offices and had somehow forgotten their birth certificates.
I learned to fly because I hated being an observer. I had to get control of my fate. I know that sounds odd. But I figured I could do it better, and that sounds pretty self-assured. But I was right, after all. They had some real fucking dummies for pilots back then. They were selected for rank, or the social position of their fathers, or some such nonsense.
A gentleman can do anything.
That was the attitude.
Jesus, it was cold up there. As the sun broke the horizon, it became almost impossible to see. Watkins was a vague shape composed of blackness and glaring highlights. There were only the shiniest details to break the outline. The rest of the formation, I took it on faith, was on his left. Think while you fly. Don’t daydream. Where will the lonely hunter be this fine morning?
Probably not in the sun – it’s too low. Probably not behind us – he hasn’t the range.
An observer in a balloon or on the front line would have spotted him.
If I was the lonely wolf, where would I be? We should have heard him, at least before we got going ourselves. An aerodrome is a quiet place before anyone gets fired up. I scanned the sky like a hungry rabbit, all too aware of the eagle.
At times like this, you learn to love and value the people around you in a way no person who hasn’t been there can ever imagine. You will throw your life in front of the enemy’s guns without a second thought.
If you don’t believe that, you don’t belong up here.
Go home.
Looking down, this was no place for the confused or the uncommitted.
The front line lay below, a ten to twenty mile wide swath of brown, shit-like earth, pockmarked like the craters of the moon. It had an evil smell even at 10,000 feet. The land boils like lava from the heat of shells exploding within it. Pin-pricks of light caught my attention like flash photos. They’re not taking wedding photos down there. Two German aircraft well below us, but they were going west. As I did another quick scan of the sky above, and below, all around, presumably they have an escort.
Don’t they?
It’s not unusual to have a sky full of enemy aircraft and not be able to see even one of them. I wouldn’t say I was scared. I didn’t want to be made a fool of. That sounds unprofessional. I will not let my buddies down. And I prayed they don’t let me down.
You could say that I didn’t want to die up there.
We were at 13,000 feet when the lighter patch of a built-up area loomed ahead. While this was a bit low for the strategic type of photography, the shadows of the early morning sun perfectly highlighted the contours of the valleys and hills below.
Vertical photography wasn’t feasible much below 2,000 feet.
When the front was covered by cloud, we did oblique photography, which practically goes down to zero feet. We had to fly the shot. We never had much choice about the avenue of approach or escape. The enemy gunners liked that.
Shrouded in morning mist, the river showed up as a silver ribbon, carelessly tossed on a green rug. A hooked rug, one made out of scraps. A fairy-tale castle looked small and faint on a hilltop behind the town. Its roof shone golden in the sunlight. The enemy knows we’re here. We flew straight and level up the valley. There was some kind of military-industrial complex ahead.
Mick was edging our way. We obligingly opened out and pulled about ten degrees to the right. Obviously, we had missed our mark by a small margin of five or ten miles.
Make a mental note of the cross winds. We must be drifting at several miles an hour.
Five to ten miles an hour. Just a light breeze. The time was 6:46 a.m. A work day.
There they are. I waggled my wings and Watkins, after a half a moment, waggled in acknowledgement. The Huns were cleverly coming in from the southeast, at about our own altitude. He and I pulled even harder to the right and I lined up my gun-sight on one of the frontal silhouettes. It was a very small target. I held my fire. Tom popped off a couple of rounds, and they rolled and dove away, but another two were coming at us.
Tom pointed to the right and I pulled a ways off. Divide the opposition and cut off the angles, just like a goalie. The observation planes have machine guns, and can defend themselves, but their mission is to get pictures.
Here comes the next pair. Where are the first two? And I could see a half-dozen more just kind of circling off the starboard bow. Sharks smelling blood in the water.
Every once in a while the flash of sunlight off of a wing caught my eye.
The next attack was poorly timed, and Tom and I both got off shots.
We immediately returned to the formation. I didn’t see any effect from my shooting. The enemy planes broke off at about three hundred yards range. I watched our tail as we nipped back into position. The enemy was climbing, and I didn’t want to lose track of them while maneuvering. Still, I had to make sure not to run into Tom.
In between attacks, you just kind of sit, naked and exposed, with your heart beating its way up higher and higher in your chest. Sometimes you want to puke, but you swallow hard or even suck it back down out of your mouth and nose. You just don’t have time to take off the mask.
When it’s in your nose you just have to suck it back down and swallow it.
Of course I was scared. Anybody that says otherwise is full of shit.
They came in from left and above next time. I saw them coming and Dinwiddie also anticipated this move. He dropped back a few hundred yards. When two enemy aircraft attempted to dive on him, Singh started turning at exactly the same time and got off a good full-deflection shot on one. It’s hard to describe. But Mick came back up to the rear of the formation. Maybe he got tired of using himself as bait.
No damage to the enemy, but they know we’re not dummies.
I guessed there was no Archie today because the German authorities knew they have fighters up here. And just then all hell broke loose as far as anti-aircraft artillery went.
As we clawed for altitude, the German fighters were pulling well off to the south. My hands, especially all my finger-tips, were an agony of tingling pins and needles. My feet were stiff but fine. I was moving my toes and feet constantly.
Someday I will invent a heater for an aeroplane.
I have promised myself that much.
Nothing more.
Let life take care of itself, if I get that far.
Archie was behind and below as quickly as it started. Where are the enemy fighters?
Hope them pictures turn out.
We were well east of the target now, and it was turning into a milky, hazy day. There was danger in the deceptive emptiness. The R.E.’s turned homewards and began losing altitude at a gentle rate. They were going for all the speed their 140-horsepower engines could muster. Over the railway marshaling yards, they spiraled down to about 3,000 feet and then dropped their two 112-lb bombs. The bombs, just little black dots, almost instantly disappeared into the background.
That should gain the formation about ten miles per hour…fuck.
What a joke.
Smoke and dust erupted from the center of the yard, but there wasn’t much down there to hit in the broad light of day. It seemed unlikely that our little attack would disrupt the slow, yet inexorable flow of men and guns to the front. The R.E.’s stayed down there.
They felt safer down low for some reason. We drove on to the west, as Mick took us down to 8,000 feet, always scanning the sky for other planes. They have to be out there somewhere.
The flight leader was now leading from the front of our five-plane formation, and the R.E.’s were about 5,000 feet below, a half a mile ahead on our right, down sun from us. The enemy had to go through us to get them, or give up the advantage of height, or sun, or both.
I could see them now, despite the ring of ice around the edges of my vision. My gut felt very hollow, but that’s good. It’s better than excruciating pain from gas in the bowels.
It was adrenalin, a heady wine. We went even lower, closer to our pair of sheep.
“Come on down, you lousy bastards.” I bellowed upwards.
What do we have here?
Halberstadt and Albatros fighters, a good baker’s dozen. Maybe more, milling around, waiting to pounce. That one looks like a Pfalz D-II.
From my hips down to my toes was one big pain. There was no way to stretch or to relieve the constant strain. Literally frozen in alertness. The only thing that moves is the head, swiveling on the neck. To take one hand off the stick and wiggle the fingers was about all you could do. Now the other hand. For some reason I was really pissed off at life, right then.
Tickey-tickey-tickey, sounded the engine.
Did that noise suddenly get louder or was it just my imagination?
There were planes to the north, planes to the south, planes undoubtedly behind us.
Two Halberstadts flashed past our noses, from high up on the left. They went for the two R.E.’s. Mick made a signal, and Singh followed them down. A few seconds later his wingman Chris dove as well. Three up high, two down low.
Puffs of smoke indicated that the R.E.’s were defending themselves.
They had saved the attack for this point. We felt like quarry, now that we were finished with the photo-shoot. We were just praying to go home.
Mick had a crack at another Boche as he flashed past our noses, but we stayed up there. God, I’d love to watch what was going on down there, but my eyes were glued to the great blue bowl of the sky, where there were just far too many black dots for my own personal comfort.
Singh and Chris rejoined the flight. Keep together.
Singh shrugged his shoulders. Apparently he had missed. Live to fight another day, I guess. About this time we spotted the front lines in the murk under a rain cloud, which appeared with the ever-increasing headwind.
We were hit by yet another attack.
Once again the enemy, flying D-III’s or D-V’s, (Albatros,) concentrated upon the poor R.E. 8’s. The hindmost began to emit a thin vapour trail, but soldiered on without losing speed or altitude. This time Tom and I zoomed down to unload a few bursts, short ones, as the enemy sped past, in a beam attack from about the same altitude and from the right.
It was getting really dark over there.
We missed, and the front lines were taking on a new aspect in the gusty air and bursts of intermittent, spotty rain. The clouds were down lower upon us. What had started off as a bright day, was now showing a moderately heavy north-western squall line.
What’s our drift now?
Arguably, to the left.
Follow the leader.
Back in formation.
Suddenly Tom was beckoning for attention, even as I wracked my neck through another sweep of the sky. They were mostly behind us now, as the rain opened up into tunnels and halls through the cloudscape.
A fucking balloon.
I switched magazines in what must have been record time.
Altimeter, 5,500, airspeed, about ninety-five, boost the throttle. Check the compass, check the sky, check the formation. The balloon was already being pulled down. It lay about three miles off, to the right of the nose. Archie’s here. Black puffs began to appear around our flight. That balloon was about 3,000 feet up.
Crack. That one was close. It sounds like someone making popcorn. God, I hate the sound of popcorn.
They knew we were coming and they knew why.
I waved to let Tom know I was on the ball, and that I had the situation well in hand. Just a quick salute. I quickly ran out of dramatic last gestures, and then plummeted vertically.
Throttle in hand, down on top of the balloon.
The German handlers had it down to about 800 feet, as a sudden hole in the clouds allowed a brazen shaft of sunlight to penetrate the scene.
I double-checked to see if my little swatch of tape was on the magazine. Yes, that’s the correct magazine. The safety-catch is off.
Throttle way back and push the nose down, way under the victim. I loosened the straps as we approached the front. This not only allowed me to stretch and turn a little in my stiffened-up ordeal, but you have to be ready.
Peering above the upper main-planes of the aircraft, the earth below filled all of my vision. The engine was ticking away on idle and the wind was very loud.
Left eye rammed to the tubular and very cold gun-sight, I brought up the nose, holding it with my left hand, as I let a few rounds off with the Vickers. My right hand found the trigger of the Lewis. The plane was perfectly lined up. I pulled the trigger while riding the elevator. As the plane picks up speed in what is a kind of free fall, the lift increases and she tends to balloon a little.
Nothing much happened. I poured the incendiary ammo into it, and finally released the trigger. It took both hands to pull out. Guys warned me about the pullout.
Ram the throttle. The engine was pulling hard, that’s good…
I was afraid to grey out or even black out, but managed to grunt and groan my way through a very low-level, left-hand turn as fast as the old S.E. would do it.
It’s like trying to throw a shit and hold it in at the same time, but it keeps the blood in your head. You want the power and speed to avoid a high-speed stall.
At this point I wasn’t paying much attention to the motor, but for some reason the odd little shudder in the left wing was a big factor in making a quick second pass and getting out of there. Full throttle, ram it to her. There’s no sense in any fancy tactics, no sense in switching turns. A full three-sixty has to do.
As I lined up and finished off the Lewis drum, that funny little shudder came again, and this time I distinctly noted that the left wingtips were quivering.
Right about then my engine missed fire once – just once.
“That’s good enough for me,” I shouted in my cockpit. “I can take a fucking hint.”
I’d say every machine gun and rifle within a radius of about a mile was firing at me.
Probably doing as much damage to themselves as I was. I sure hope so.
Climbing up in sweeping S-turns, the anti-aircraft artillery became a concern again, having opened up not just at me, but the whole formation when we came into sight.
The R.E.s and my comrades were circling and ranging around to draw fire. I heard later Tom dove in and took on the machine gunners.
That was jolly nice of him.
Crack.
My ears stung with the concussion as a wave of hot air washed over me.
The cockpit was filled with the tang of explosive.
There wasn’t a scratch on me, but the wings had a lot of little holes in them. There was a stinging sensation in my legs. There were holes in the legs of my flying suit.
Some of the fabric of the wing beside me was gone.
Dark stains on my legs.
No time for that now. It was like a bad dream, but it was real.
“FOCUS LADDIE.”
Tom was pointing at me. Are we going around again? Jesus.
The engine pings, listen to the engine. What was he pointing at? The balloon has disappeared from sight. Tom stared blankly at me. What the hell was he trying to say?
I was deep in shock, the pain, unreal.
The stick went around in little circles, as if it had a mind of its own.
Fly it, fly it. Don’t give in, boy.
Finally we were over no-man’s land. Scan the sky. My plane was sick. I had to lose altitude to keep up the speed. All of a sudden I forgot the sky and began scanning the ground.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
My legs hurt. The engine was pulling hard one second, then floundering the next….
At last the land turned green again and we were on our own side, not that danger doesn’t lurk there, but it is a nicer place to crash. My bladder was full. Someone once told me, don’t crash on a full bladder.
“Deliver us from evil…”
What are you, nuts? Like I got a choice. Because that’s about the point where my engine practically fell right off. Two thousand feet up and a mile from our aerodrome.
“…power and the glory…forever and ever…Amen.”
I can’t begin to describe the thoughts that went immediately through my mind.
What a waste, or whatever.
One or two resentful thoughts about my ground crew.
The nose batted up and smashed me in the chin. Then she flicked over and upside-down in a split second and rolled out of it. It was quiet, just a lot of wind noise, like a winter gale pulling and tugging at the shingles on the roof.
But I was lucky enough to have pretty good control with full down elevator, at least I didn’t snap into a spin. I initiated a spin myself, by putting full left rudder into it. She went nose-high a couple of times and I almost lost her. The engine was bucking along beside the left front fuselage, still attached by wires and cables…incomprehensible.
Someone shot off half my prop? Is that what did it?
Suddenly we were there. The elevator had no effect.
An airplane hitting the ground makes a very distinctive sound.
That’s the last thing I remember.
A big, loud, Smuck.
I had a moment of surreal, complete awareness.
The last thing I saw, was from the inside of a big splash. Chunks of wet sod flew away in all directions. There was a spattering sound. There was one unbelievable, mind-bending spike of pain. Such pain as cannot be described. I guess that was my back breaking.
I watched in disembodied disbelief as the mud and the muck and the turf subsided.
My legs, my thighs felt warm. Am I bleeding? Am I going to die?
I felt a sense of relief, and detachment. I felt objective about things.
It didn’t hurt so much now. It’s like I just stung all over. I was perfectly lucid.
“Thank you, Jesus,” I said.
Then I blacked out.
END
Images.
Louis does things with images, for example, borrowed from Wiki.
Louis has books and stories available from Scribd. See his art on Fine Art America.
Thank you for reading.
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