Chapter Thirty-One
Keep the Noise Down
The third raid was being armed and bombed-up as I told my three veteran pilots to take a load off. Four new pilots would handle the dawn raid.
“I think that went rather well.” Powell.
We would hear a nearby enemy plane in the night. The men were under instructions to keep the noise down.
“There’s no telling.” I began mildly. “It’s possible they got a plane airborne within three or four minutes after our departure. They may have caught a glimpse of our landing lights if they climbed up high enough.”
“That doesn’t seem very likely.” Noted Powell, and I had to agree.
I had another thought.
“We’re not sure if the enemy flies observation balloons at night.” I pointed out.
We hadn’t noticed any, in the flares and well-lit scene of the bombardment.
“Why would they do that?” Asked Howard-Smythe, who along with the corporal, participated in all of our briefings and de-briefings.
Dawley was there, Bernie was there, the whole pack.
“It’s just a crazy theory, but spies on our side of the lines could communicate with them by means of lights and code.”
His eyebrows rose. But a dim light pointed upwards would be almost undetectable.
“Okay, maybe I’m just a little tired.” The admission came easy enough.
But it was possible. The thing was, without a good moon, and pretty much everything blacked out, night observation by balloon might be difficult in the extreme. It was just one of those questions—
“What about enemy bombers, flying back from wherever?” Asked Powell. “They could have seen our lights, and eventually they must report it to some higher authority.”
“That’s a good point.” Said Howard-Smythe, making sure the corporal wrote it down.
“Essentially we wait and see, and kind of make it up as we go along.” I reckoned, but we were ready to respond to an enemy raid.
It was an enemy reconnaissance that I didn’t quite know how to deal with.
“Why don’t we put up a fighter half an hour before dawn, tell him to gain altitude and wait?” Suggested the corporal.
The enemy could be predicted, within certain limits. Even the corporal was doing it now.
“Two fighters.” Suggested Snotty, and I gravely nodded back.
They could circle, and watch against the faint promise of dawn in the eastern sky. Especially if the snow held off for a while.
“Rather than go to the east, and try to block observation aircraft, better to circle north-west, and try to shoot them down from ambush.” I muttered, adding the cryptic comment: “Sunrise, southeast.”
“Two fighters? I’ll just go check on the progress.” Said Corporal Whittington as I closed my eyes in exhaustion.
Man, that stove felt good. Burn you on one side and freeze you on the other, but the canvas-walled room warmed up pretty well. The stove was in there all day, after all.
We launched nine on the dawn raid, with two fighters standing by to take off after the last bomber. The timing was tight, with everyone working very hard, but in between snatches of orders, and instructions to others, we continued our debriefing. We all had innumerable cups of tea, coffee or cocoa inside our guts by now.
My body was warming up well, and with my brain going full blast, it was unlikely that sleep would happen anytime soon. Too wired up. There were times when it was very hard to come down from it all. Just buzzing with adrenalin.
“I figure we hit ‘em pretty hard.” Said Dempsey.
“It’s awfully hard to tell.” Retorted Powell. “But they’ll be flaming peed-off.”
“Depending on timing, the dawn raid may be able to see a lot more.” I hoped.
“Have a drink, lads.” Said Howard-Smythe.
Have a drink, lads.
The corporal brought out glasses.
That hit the spot. You could see the effect on the crews. The gunners were talking out all they saw, and even heard on their missions. We put it down in as much detail as we could. A report always had to be filed. We liked to nip questions in the bud.
Nothing worse than people pestering you with questions, once it’s ancient history.
If I was the enemy commander, I would be wondering what hit me. And why me? And who’s doing it? My eyes kept closing, but the talk went on.
“So. How many planes did you see?” Asked Dawley.
Dempsey said. “Maybe thirty.”
Someone slurped their drink, then rose to get another. Murmuring in the background.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
“Thirty enemy planes, all lined up in rows, with tarpaulins on the bonnets.” Dempsey said. “We might have hit one or two.”
“What about the house?” Asked Dawley.
“Hosed her down real good.” The gunner told him.
“There were dark marks, hard to see, but the house was absolutely hit earlier.” The gunner went on.
I drifted in and out of sleep for a while.
Awakening to the sound of engines, the tent was empty. Light was streaming in through the slightly-parted canvas doors.
“We got them all back.” Howard-Smythe called from the doorway.
Bernie brushed in and sat down with a whump, for all our chairs were hardwood.
Not too many cushioned chairs around here. Sitting up, my backside ached.
“Oh, my. Things are going well, Tookair.” Bernie gloated enthusiastically. “I have to admire your psychologically-adept methods.”
“Well, I suppose it’s simply a matter of using the little grey cells.” I muttered.
His eyebrows rose at that one. The boys trooped in one by one, having cleaned up and removed their flying suits. The gunners were looking pleased, as they always did. They always seemed so grateful to be alive.
I guess they didn’t trust their young pilots too much.
Most of the gunners were older, more responsible individuals.
If you want a good gunner, you choose a completely different type of personality.
When confronted by an enemy fighter on their tail, they can’t curl up in a ball and hide in the fuselage. They have to stand up and shoot back. A kind of bull-dog courage and tenacity. I wouldn’t call it bravery. Perhaps stubbornness or even a quick, hot temper.
You need someone who will shout curses, and shoot straight.
By this time, our equipment was already being loaded on the train, but it took time for everyone to de-brief, and then there was breakfast. We had to send them off to sleep, at least some of them. The enemy’s retaliatory raid would be sooner rather than later.
Honestly, we invented formal debriefings, and now everyone does it.
Aircraft still came off the assembly line under the trees. We had fourteen planes lined up under canvas and tenting, some under camouflage netting, stashed here and there.
Dawley was typing up his assessment. Bernie was at the machine, supervising his man Hastings, as they put in some kind of coded message on the wire for his government. Whittington, handed over some sheets. Then he went to get me a coffee.
“So many bombs, so many rockets, so many rounds of ammunition.” It was that kind of report. “So much petrol, so many gallons of oil, so many bullet-holes patched, so many man-hours expended.”
The new Air Ministry wanted all this crap for study. No one would learn a thing from it, that’s my guess.
“I must congratulate you.” Began Bernie. “Six or seven enemy machines confirmed destroyed. You did it in twelve hours.”
“Sounds like it.” I nodded. “But I take that kind of thing with a grain of salt.”
There were wrecks in some of our pictures, but they could have been there from days before, or maybe they were damaged on landing by the enemy. I pointed all this out, but to no avail.
“Two of them confirmed, by six witnesses.” He reasoned. “You got them without even trying. You are a thoroughly dangerous man.”
“It was an accident, I swear.” I replied in unconscious irony, but he seemed intent on some point.
“A man like you comes along about once in a lifetime.”
“Don’t go falling in love with our Colonel, Bernie.” Scoffed Chandra from his desk, in a colossal display of nerve.
“Well, let’s hope the boys are learning.” I told Bernie. “It’s also dangerous to keep using the same tactics. Sooner or later, we all have a bad day.”
The boys were pretty surprised when Howard-Smythe finally broke it to them just exactly whose jagdstaffel we were attacking. They were impressed with themselves. The word went through camp like wildfire. People were abuzz with it.
Today we rest in the sun, clean up a little around the site, and hope the enemy comes a-calling. We had a hot reception waiting. It was a cloudy, gusty, rainy day. But we had high hopes for better weather later in the afternoon, when it was expected that the sun would come out and the clouds dissipate. Then we would see.
In the meantime, it was enough to bask in the sun, or rather the hot light of our trusty pole lamps. Feet up on the desk, I surveyed the big boards. The map, sectional, painted on the boards, was all laid out before my eyes.
Perhaps I should go to bed.
I usually think more clearly after a good day’s sleep.
***
Sleep did indeed help.
All told, I probably got in about five or six hours of sack-time, then a bunch of us took off around four-thirty p.m. Fifteen Biffs, and six of us had the new engines. All broken-in and properly tested. We climbed to the west for a few minutes, and then to the south-east for another eight or ten minutes, and then we could see the battlefront.
There were low, broken clouds, heavy and dark looking, but actually in thin layers.
Technically, spring was still a long ways away, but it was deeply anticipated. God, I longed for the warmth of spring.
Through small holes in the layers of cloud below, we could see the fresh-fallen snow that lay upon the land. We were above the Western Front. On the right, was my wingman for the trip, Nelson. Beyond him, Black and a section of six planes. The rest were behind us somewhere. Watching the chronometer, watching the altimeter, the fuel gauge out of habit. The revs, the temperature, everything.
Watch the compass. Watch the sky. We could see everything in every direction.
We were at 18,000 feet, heading east. Three-quarters of a tank or maybe a little less in terms of fuel. The engine seemed good. My men were alert. Down below and to the right, puffs of smoke indicated some kind of fight, but it was too far away. A few planes down there. No way of telling who they belonged to, us or them.
In our present, ‘bumblebee formation,’ we looked like a bunch of rank amateurs, and it was excruciatingly important to scan the sky for the Hun in the Sun.
***
At first I didn’t believe it. It was almost too easy, (and I was right.)
At first it seemed so unreal. At first I just didn’t get it.
It was him. It was him, all right. Fuck. The Red Baron. Ghostly in the haze, a dark, dull silhouette in the back-lighting of the wan and pale sun. A little red tri-plane, washed- out and made into water-colors. His plane was all pastel greys and pinks, made so by distance and perspective.
Up in the sky above us. Up and to the right, and a little off the starboard bow, it was him, God damn it. Fuck, I can see it now, in my head. It’s as clear as day. That little red tri-plane, he must have been 3,000 or 4,000 feet above us. And then his nose came down and he was falling from the ghostly semi-haze onto us. Son of a bitch. For some reason I was almost caught unawares, suddenly wishing that I had the formation on my left.
But there was nothing for it but to break into Nelson, who was a damned good pilot. He was watching me and watching his position. He was back and above in exactly the right place. I had full throttle and so we climbed to meet the enemy.
Hopefully, all the boys saw what was coming.
Down, the little red tri-plane was falling, still too tiny to be a threat, but this man had shot down something like fifty or sixty of our boys. I lined up the nose on him, timing it as best as I could. With the safety turned to ‘off,’ a quick glance confirmed it, I still had a little more time…yes. Fire off a few rounds as he goes past. Pop-op-opo-opapopp.
Always turn into the threat.
My gunner blasted away at him, and I quickly searched the sky and recovered from a deep stall as best as I could. I think I timed it right. Not a hope in hell of hitting him, but then neither did he? And that’s good sometimes, and now as we came about and plummeted earthwards in pursuit, the formation was all skimming about in parabolic curves at they tried to re-form. The bloody Red Baron, he was 5,000 below and heading for home, or the clouds, or somewhere to hide.
Two of my guys were in pursuit. Good luck, boys, but you’re too damned slow.
Who’s that? And I wracked my head and neck around some more to see Nelson forming up. He waved, inscrutable in the face-mask and goggles.
He had smoke stains on the fuselage. The adrenalin rush slowly subsided. A quick count. We all seemed to be here and undamaged. The Baron must have a squadron around here somewhere, wouldn’t you think?
We couldn’t find them. We cruised all up and down the battlefront for about an hour.
Every time we saw enemy aircraft, they were too far away, too far above, or too far below, and all we could do was just keep the formation together. Finally we sped through a few isolated Archie bursts and dropped our token bombs on the enemy trenches.
Then we turned for home. Flying about three hundred feet below the clouds, my men were stacked up to the right. We picked our way home, always watching the edges of clouds as we darted across open sky areas. We landed with a good quarter-tank of fuel in the planes. No losses, no damage, and no other actions to report.
The men were in a fine fettle, after seeing Manfred up close and personal. One or two even fired at him as he went by.
I must say, I was pleased.
Nobody killed so far.
And that’s always good.
During the post-mission debriefing, I listened intently to the talk as the men went through a question-and-answer session from the Adj. When he was done, then I went to work on the finer details of pure flying.
“Why did you guys go after him?” I asked Nicholson.
“We have the new engines. We wanted to see if we could catch him.” Said Nicholson.
“I go where he goes.” Stated Leonard.
“Well, that is the rule. Good for you.” I told Leonard approvingly. “Fine, how did you fare?”
“He had really good speed on as he came down.” Nicholson replied. “When I pushed over, my engine coughed, but we eventually stabilized and we were at least holding our own.”
“Why did you break off pursuit?” I asked.
“At some point, I realized we would become separated from the formation, and under the clouds.” Said Nicholson. “To follow him further was asking for trouble.”
It took several minutes for them to rendezvous. I was forced to ‘S’ turn the formation right and left to make it happen. While we were doing that, all of our attention was distracted.
“The Baron must have had some of his boys somewhere out there.” Said Leonard.
“I’m inclined to agree.” I said tartly. “Why do you think he chose just that moment to attack?”
They sat there thinking, looking at me.
“The Baron wouldn’t engage unless he was totally committed. For him to take a quick swipe and then break for the clouds below is an indication that he knew exactly where his jasta was. Or, he was out of fuel and going home for the day.” And either way it was food for thought.
“Did you shoot at him?” I asked, and they both shook their heads in the negative.
“Well, at five hundred yards, there wasn’t much chance of hitting him anyway.” I advised.
Some of the other boys took shots, or at least thought they had. Maybe they pulled the trigger and some bullets came out. Shooting from two thousand yards isn’t going to do any good. Technically, two hundred yards is feasible…barely.
They hadn’t hit anything of importance.
“Next time you push down hard on the plane, throttle back to idle.” I suggested.
“Try and see if the engine keeps running. You’re starving the carb due to negative gravity.” I explained patiently.
They looked at each other.
“Your engines accelerate rather well, at least when they keep running. At idle, there’s plenty of air-fuel mixture in the intakes to keep it running, at least.”
They looked at each other again.
“It’s better than half-stalling your motor, bogging out, and then sitting there stupidly, wondering if it will recover.” I told them. “Also a good snappy split-S sometimes works. When done right, it’s a beautiful thing to see. It keeps the motor running, anyway.”
I sighed and shuffled papers. They saluted, which I waved away, not being big on formality.
“Thanks, gentlemen.” I told them by way of dismissal.
The next couple of guys didn’t have much to say. Times like that I wondered if they were paying attention out there. But some guys just can’t express what they saw and did. Maybe they were so busy trying to get out of the Baron’s way they didn’t have time to see what else was going on.
That’s all right. They had survived, and we were still rotating men through the first few missions. Not all of my men had even flown in battle yet, while I also had a half dozen with two or three missions each. Early days yet, early days.
But it was a start, and a pretty good one.
And we were still hoping for a night-time bed check by the Huns. We were preparing a hot reception. A bit of a party.
***
We figured the Huns would come calling.
“Corporal. What’s the sunset time for today?”
March 9, 1918. My desk calendar confirmed it. Hopefully the corporal had flipped the leaves this morning.
The Germans were smart enough to time their attacks to the minute. To take full advantage of sunset, dusk, darkness, and moon periods. We kept an almanac around. It’s not easy to predict the weather, but with the thin daily weather reports, plus our own instincts…and we asked a local farmer once in a while.
Sometimes we were surprisingly accurate.
“Sun-times, six-fifty-two a.m. and six-twenty-seven p.m.” He reported from the book.
The Boche might try to hit us at sunset. My hunch was that the Huns would want to strike back, and then they would probably get pulled out of the line and sent elsewhere.
According to military intelligence, the unit had been in the line-up for about three weeks. It wouldn’t be too much of a blow to the Baron’s ego or the morale of his men, who were taking a mauling, to be rested at the routine interval. I thought of the hard training my men and I went through. The long hard days were a blessing in disguise. Units have been decimated within hours of arriving at the front, but we were doing very, very well.
“Howard-Smythe.” I called, and he came over from the other side of the tent.
“I want that train out of here by four-thirty at the latest.” I reminded him.
“You have my personal guarantee.” He quipped. “Especially as I plan to be seated comfortably on board.”
I grinned in appreciation.
“Somebody wants to paint something on the side of his plane.” He began innocently enough.
“Oh, I don’t know, man.” I said in dismay. “We’re opening up a whole new can of worms here.”
In the infantry, a can of worms is grounds for mutiny. Honestly, the bully beef is much better.
First it was the train, and now this.
Sighing deeply, for these were schoolboys for the most part, I just had to ask.
“Who is it and what does he want?”
The Adj shoved a sketch onto my desk.
Dropping my feet to the floor with a thump, pulling myself upright and adjusting the green-shaded lamp, I took a look.
‘The Damned,’ it said, and whoever drew it had flames coming off some of the letters.
“Sounds like Andrew?”
The Adj nodded affirmative.
“Hey, that’s not bad.” I murmured. “Sounds like a book title.”
What else can I tell him?
“At least it’s fricking literate.” I ventured.
“I thought it was quite clever, actually.” Said the Adj. “Perhaps a tad morbid.”
Me, I don’t know the difference between morbid and maudlin, but I didn’t tell him that. Too macabre. Too ‘makabree.’ That’s often the problem with being self-educated, purely out of books. You may have never heard someone smart actually pronounce a word.
“Anybody else?” I inquired.
“Oh, a few.” He admitted.
“Like what?” I asked, sheer curiosity getting the better of me.
A commander really has more important things to think about. Or does he? The Adj remained silent.
“Don’t let them put it on too big.” I told Howard-Smythe obliquely.
It seemed the decision was made.
But a commander should command, even when he is doing nothing.
“Pardon me?” He spluttered.
“Don’t let them put it on too big.” I gestured, with outspread hands at about thirty inches or maybe three feet.
“Paint out the white letters on the fuselage. And the wings, top and bottom. Make the numbers half-size in yellow or grey. Not white. Make the roundels red and blue. Get rid of the white, and let me think…”
Rather ambivalent about the whole idea of colorful squadron markings or insignias, I prefer to blend in to the mob. But if I made it a condition, that they had to do all the work, to do the painting for the other, modified paint scheme I had in mind, then it wasn’t a total waste of time. It kept them off of the streets for a while.
“Anything but pornography.” I added. “No crucifix-up-Kaiser-Willy’s-butt sort of thing, either.”
Howard-Smythe kind of swallowed and paled when he heard that.
“Yes, sir.” He took off with his sketches and notes.
That ought to keep them happy, or at least busy for a while.
It was the least I could do.
As for the Fritzies, we had a half-dozen borrowed French 75-millimetre guns, chocked up to point exactly where we wished, in the vicinity of our satellite field. We had a number of shells with fuses set for a certain time-delay, and the men to fire them. Jaeckl and Carson had a bet on. A handful of weekend passes were the booty. Our machine guns were manned, and all the staff were briefed on what to expect, where our boys were located, when to shoot and when not to shoot. Most especially, where not to shoot, for our bullets must inevitably return to earth. The men on this field could not shoot south, the men at the southern, ‘field,’ could not shoot north.
‘What goes up must come down,’ was the watchword of the day.
Telephone lines, signal flares, who was supposed to be doing what, and when, and with which, and to whom. All we had to do was to wait and see if the enemy turned up.
Which the buggers did, although not exactly on schedule. We were ready for them.
They kept us up half the night waiting, though.
One became aware of a distant buzzing, like flies on shit from twenty feet away.
“Howard-Smythe.” I called.
Just then the field telephone rang, somewhat superfluously.
“Here they come, sir.” He acknowledged as he grabbed his tin hat from the table by the door, and snatched up the phone.
Men scampered past the tent, running for the trenches. The door was fully closed, and Carson went to check on the blackout. They were heading west, but it sounded like they were some small distance to the south.
“I wonder how they found us?” Mused Corporal Whittington.
“They must have some idea. It’s pretty black out.” Said Bernie.
I have no idea why, but he was wearing some weird kind of Belgian cavalry officer’s hat. Oh, well. It never costs anything to put on a show, and I winked at Howard-Smythe.
He winked back.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. The sounds of explosions came over the hills. The enemy saw something, that’s for sure. Suddenly the crack of our 75’s rattled the eardrums.
A staccato barking came from the direction of the machine gunners. A roaring noise passed overhead as one enemy machine, low to the ground, zoomed by. If the enemy didn’t attack our fake field, the man in charge was supposed to fire a flare and open up with tracer from the machine guns. Apparently our little plan was working. Guns going like the blazes. All Hell was breaking loose. They were having fun over there.
Thunk. Thunk. More thunks. The enemy was hammering at an empty field, and we all just sat there grinning. We could hear ragged cheers off in the distance from some of our mechanics and ground staff, the ones not noisily engaged in firing at the enemy. The men on our real aerodrome were permitted to shoot their rifles, within reason.
Another roaring overhead, as I paced back and forth in sheer excitement.
Barely perceptible over all the other noise, came the nearby ‘pop,’ as a sergeant or corporal or somebody fired off a hand-gun. Now all the machine guns and the rifles outside opened up with a vengeance. Then came a funny ‘blurp.’ to the engine noise, a pause, and one hell of a crash.
It sounded like somebody stomping on a tin.
More cheers. Bernie leapt up and went to the door. With one outstretched arm, he reached through and then carefully slithered through the widely-overlapping canvas sheets which kept the light inside where it belonged.
“I have to see this.” He told us, voice slightly muffled.
His head popped back in for a moment.
“I will get you a souvenir.” He promised.
To the south, we could still hear pops, thuds, whunks and whacks. Machine guns.
Bombs. Something that sounded like a big bonfire.
Looking at my watch, I noted. “This can’t go on all night.”
The corporal stood beside me. The telephone was busy again, as I set most of my attention to listening to the sounds of the fight.
Corporal Whittington poured me a stiff shot of rum. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a set of keys.
“Might as well make the rounds.”
A lot of the boys could use a drink, after that little episode. The sound of several enemy machines faded into the distance. There was a strong desire to sit down. The phone rang, and someone picked it up.
“One aircraft on fire, heading due east, four to five miles from our position.”
The clatter of the phone piece being hung up. A figure appeared at my elbow. His feather tickled my nose. I was very tired, as were all the men by this point.
“That was brilliant.” Bernie, shaking my hand.
He threw a smelly, charred piece of colored linen on the corner of the desk.
“A C-seven.” He told us proudly.
A Rumpler product. Nice machines, if I remember the description from M.I.
“I can only give the recipe.” I joked. “You would have to salt it to your individual taste.”
Finally all was quiet, as the men filed in and out, making their individual reports.
Well, quieter, anyway.
***
Considering that I was living on small naps, time seemed to stretch and contract sometimes. All one could do was to focus on the moment.
Another little trick I had learned, was to stand out behind the tent and urinate. This opened up all sorts of little opportunities. It gave the chance to listen, whether it be night or day. To expand one’s consciousness. To hear men working and to know if they were happy, angry, working hard, or not working at all. In a sense, it was like standing in the air, a hundred feet above the ground and surveying all that was mine, through the medium of sound. The sandbags absorbed the noise of the golden waterfall. They were stacked up in a ring about five feet tall to protect from bomb-bursts. I was the quietest thing out there.
The ring of an axe on wood. The gramophone grinding away at the same damned tune the third time in a row. Someone snoring in a tent nearby.
The sound of water draining out of a shower-barrel up on stilts, or a squelchy-farty sound as a man on the latrine worked things out.
Peeing is sheer luxury to a pilot.
You might as well appreciate the little things in life.
A curse, a chuckle, a noise as some unseen something crept through the bushes.
Some little animal, looking for roots or shoots to eat. I stood there a while, and relieved myself. Inside the tent, there were voices as well. I could hear Bernie, Dawley, Andrew, and some of the other men.
“He’s just fucking with their heads.” Andrew said to the others.
“He knows what he’s doing.” This was an unfamiliar voice.
Who’s that? Brubaker? Kowalski?
“You boys have knocked out one-third to one-half of an enemy squadron.” Pointed out Black’s deep and singular baritone, like a man talking through a tube. “And without really meeting them in any major air combat.”
“Yes, the enemy must be convinced we’re a bomber formation.” Added Dawley.
As I zipped up, one last comment.
“He’s fucking with our heads, too.” Said a voice. “Waiting until later to tell us we’re lambasting von Richtofen’s Circus.”
“Well, would it have helped you to know?” Asked Bernie dryly, in his fruity accent.
“Wouldn’t make much difference.” Retorted the other. “It’s not like we have a frigging choice.”
A smile in the pale dawn light.
“You let the boss worry about things like that.” Dawley said. “You guys pasted the Red Baron’s aerodrome. No one can deny that. Not even you.”
I made my way to the hangar tents all strung out in a staggered row just inside the tree line. We put them where the rays of the sun barely penetrated under the masses of barren branches above. Time for a quick check around the aerodrome, nodding to one or two men at each position.
You guys are pasting the Red Baron's 'drome.
Flying over the area personally to check, it looked pretty good, i.e. the camouflage tenting, the olive drab and khaki tarps, netting over the 75’s. It was quite hard to detect if you didn’t already know where it was. With the train gone, everything was simplified. I had all that infantry experience to draw on, something a lot of RAF officers might have lacked.
Reduce everything to its essentials. We were a lean, mean, killing machine.
Arriving back at the briefing tent, I looked around the room, and it quieted down.
“Are you guys all ready to go?”
They all nodded, and mumbled and murmured back. It wouldn’t hurt to run through it again, and along with that thought, came Black’s voice.
“Let’s go through this again, boys.” He said. “One more time.”
They murmured some more, but they could see the sense in talking it out fully and thoroughly beforehand, before launch. There was no way to talk once airborne.
“So the SE’s are about four-thousand-five-hundred, one minute behind you.” I gently prompted. “Andrew?”
He picked it up from there.
“The Camel Jockeys attack the specified enemy targets.” He outlined, and pointed down at a segment of the enemy trench lines on our table map. “We go in at fifty feet, straight in, and then we all turn into one another…ones go left, twos go right…ones go high, twos go low.”
That way, they could strafe coming and going.
There was a little trust involved, but then it was also one good reason to train all the men together, at once, as a team.
“The Biffs head east immediately above the Camel Jocks, at three-thousand-five-hundred feet, and proceed to the primary target.” Chimed in Powell.
He considered.
“If we’re intercepted before we get to our target, we simply abort. We break, split-S and attack the enemy lines from the rear…here, a half-mile north of the Camel Jockeys.”
Their job was to silence an enemy battery of howitzers. Very well dug in, as they appeared in the photos. A precision target.
Black’s turn.
“We penetrate hard and fast and do a visual reconnaissance, and if they’re at home and receiving visitors, strafe the living hell out of them.”
On that thought, he nodded in satisfaction. He looked up from the map with a gleam in his eye. Three squadrons, three separate but related targets, mutual support.
Divide and conquer.
“Okay boys, launch in fifteen minutes.” I confirmed.
I planned to be around in my little Avro.
My job was to bomb a short section of the line and just go around causing trouble in general. Blake’s boys flew the 200-hp version of the SE, and Jackson’s squadron flew the Camel. Ah, but our Camel’s were equipped with special experimental versions of 165-hp each, while the SE’s had absolutely gorgeous little 260-hp engines, and they were fast.
The enemy would confuse us with the other, ‘normal’ squadrons.
Our Biffs were approaching three hundred horsepower. While the top speed hadn’t increased that much, it made them much handier in air-to-air combat. It improved acceleration, which meant you could turn the plane a lot tighter without losing a lot of speed or even stalling into a spin. You could just keep pulling. It was like gangbusters, turning in that plane.
As for the Avro, we used an old interrupter, and a new motor, and my plane was all new. Hopefully, we would have an edge on the enemy aircraft. While their pilots were usually pretty well-trained, any technical surprises would be in our favor.
I took off first, and sped west at very low altitude. I wanted to get four or five miles further back from the Front before my climb. The boys would wait until the appointed take off time, then their mission was unstoppable. Or un-recallable. I was a noise decoy.
Ignorance is bliss. What you can’t see or don’t know will kill you. It’s always wise to keep that in mind, even in peacetime. I figured out that you can be the best driver in the world, and some other guy asleep behind the wheel will come across the centre line and kill you deader than dead in a heartbeat.
Stay alert and pay attention.
After twenty-five minutes or so, I hit an altitude of about 9,500 feet.
Then I cautiously approached the battle lines alone. Ever wary, scanning the sky, especially above and into the sun. I never flew straight and level for more than fifteen or twenty seconds, and always kept aware of the spot under my tail. Down somewhere below, the attack must be commencing. My knee ached, my back was stiff but, oh, well.
What the hell.
At 11,000 feet, I found the base of the billowing cumulus clouds. It was a balmy day, with the chance of a March thundershower. Its promise hovered in the air with a humid, musky smell even at this altitude. There was no way in hell that I could see my boys from this vantage point. Clouds hung in the way and the gaps were too narrow. It was too difficult to scan several at once. I had to watch my own ass. My boys were down there somewhere.
***
This time there were two of them, and I knew it was him. Again, that misty, smoky look of a plane several thousand feet away, in the glistering, sparkling sky. Ice fog. The air was suddenly a lot chillier than it was. The motor sang sweetly, and there was life in her yet. I climbed ever higher, perfectly aware that the Red Baron and his friend have been waiting for a chance like this.
He must recognize me. No, that’s wrong. Different plane.
He was heading west, and now turning, always watching. He slithers back to the east, his faithful companion dogging his tail about five hundred feet back. The pair of them hung in the halo around the sun for a while. Little black crosses, as they hung there like vultures in the early spring sky, ever-hungry and ever cautious.
I could almost see his nostrils flaring, scenting the breeze like an animal.
Imagine the thoughts going through his head. He’s trying to find the trap, obviously. When he’s ready, he’ll come down. Start jigging the bait. My guts were churning.
Just then it happened that a pair of enemy two-seaters came along, heading west at about 12,000 feet, coming towards me on the left side. The best-laid plans of mice and men oft gang agley, as the people say. I turned north above them, hoping that Manfred and his buddy would think I was preparing to attack, with all of my attention totally focused on the pair beneath. Von Richtofen must be trying to identify my aircraft type.
He saw me go after them…conventional attack. I must not see him…
My attention was at a hundred percent. It was merely divided. The targets were the least of my worries.
My eyes were intently focused on a little hand-held vanity mirror. Careful to keep it from flashing in the sun, yet watching, waiting, timing…swing it to the left a little. He’s coming down after the slightest hesitation, almost like he’s marshalling the other pilot.
And I watched, and I waited, scanning the sky all around, while I still could. At the exact psychological moment, I began to come up under the enemy two-seaters. It looked like a standard dive-down-and-come-up-from-underneath attack. Manfred faced a tough choice. He could either set up a rookie for his first kill, and risk losing a valuable reconnaissance machine, or do the job himself.
I hope, I pray, that I have played this right.
The stakes were very high.
Vital milliseconds were lost to the pair of enemy fighters. I even blipped off a few rounds at the hindmost two-seater as I pulled into a hard loop.
By tilting my head straight up, I could see the two enemy planes coming down, or ‘up’ at me. The sky was beneath my feet, the reconnaissance machines below my ass, and the two enemy fighters streaking inevitably towards my gun-sight. Richtofen, suddenly sensing the trap, sprung away in a flicking motion and the flashing from his guns was wasted.
His neophyte wingman was totally unprepared, and he made the mistake of trying to pull up and over. I was already pulling out around the bottom of the loop by this time, and when I saw him from behind and below, at about fifty yards, I just naturally pulled the trigger and shot him down. It seems he was pulling up and therefore slowing down at the same time when my machine was gaining speed.
It’s just too easy sometimes. Poor little fucker.
‘Should have stayed home,’ as my dear old grandmother used to say when someone got struck by a trolley.
Von Richtofen was nowhere to be seen. I chased the two-seaters, then broke off and went back to the battle lines. I dropped my bombs from about 4,000 feet. I went home well satisfied. The boys did well too, with not a plane lost.
It must have been cold up there. I had a good case of the shakes for about a half an hour or so. They looked perky though, and appeared to have enjoyed their little outing.
Although some got hit.
A few hours of patching, an engine change or some other niggling problem. Yeah, I was on some strange kind of high that day. But there was nothing that we couldn’t fix, what with all the tools and spare parts we had.
“So tell me something, Tookair.” Bernie spoke. “How must the Ritter be feeling right now, eh?”
“The Baron? Oh, I don’t know.”
I felt better for having a cup of tea or two. We stood by the humongous cast-iron stove.
“He must be feeling, how you say, psychologically discombobulated, no?”
“I suppose so, yes.” I agreed.
We stood there, chatting in the command tent. He had a drink in his hand. It looked like champagne. These Belgians really know how to go to war.
“How would you feel?” He asked quietly, once again studying my responses.
“I really don’t know, Bernie.” I said, somewhat exasperated by all the incessant talk.
We were planning a little afternoon party, and I just needed to put my feet up and have a drink. Really. Hell, even tea is good sometimes.
“Perhaps he might feel responsible, that his charge, whom you feel to have been a ‘rookie’ pilot.” He continued. “Was shot down.”
Of course he feels responsible.
“Like watching a good friend die?” I shot back. “Like watching kittens being drowned?”
“How do you feel, Tookair?” He murmured. “Or do you prefer to stand muet, or silent?”
The phone rang and he picked it up. He listened for some time.
“Preservatif? As in sheath or condom? No? Why not just say parachute, then?”
Finally he hung up. He sat at the desk and wrote things in the book.
“One captured enemy pilot.” He noted. “So, you didn’t kill him after all. An interesting study in pathological psychology.”
I think he meant the Baron. But he might have meant me.
Back to our conversation.
“It was probably dumb to fly alone and to use myself as bait.” I allowed.
That sort of thing has to stop. It’s immature. Still, the sight of a couple of bombs under my wings must have appeared pretty darned convincing. Little dinky bombs, and he bought into it. Proves he doesn’t know everything.
Bernie stood muet, or silent in admiration.
But seriously, what the fuck does he know?
***
They tiptoe around doctors.
The Doctor sat across the desk, and the others rather diplomatically left us alone. Why people tiptoe around doctors like they’re some kind of moral arbiters, confounds the hell out of me.
“I want you to muck about and come up with some kind of diet and nutrition plan.” I began. “These men are flying to high altitudes.”
Bad attitude and resentment were written all over him. I never did anything to the guy.
“Steak, lots of proper foods. Nothing fancy.” I suggested. “Write this all up in high-falutin’ language, if you don’t mind. I’m going to send it to the Ministry.”
“Yes, sir.”
“These newfangled vitamins, trace elements, a balanced, high-protein diet. Cut down on the cakes and pies. I know the boys love ‘em.”
We could cut down on the fatty, bready type foods, I told him.
“Essentially, you’re the expert.” I said.
I suggested baby beef liver, certain greens, vegetables like peppers, but also pointed out the undesirability of items which produced large amounts of gas.
“Carrots, lots of carrots,” I was making it up as I went along.
It was his fucking job, after all.
“You need to invent some kind of twenty-minute daily exercises.” I went on.
“That seems easy enough.” He acknowledged. “Getting them to do it, now…?”
“You leave that up to me.” I smiled. “I just need it in writing. Something on paper to wave around. You’d be surprised how much credence people put in stuff that’s in writing. Let’s make it useful stuff for a change. It’s obvious that the men need iron in the blood, they need red blood cells to carry the oxygen. You might want to give them an anti-smoking talk.” Momentarily consulting my notes. “They may have to go up to twenty-four or twenty-five thousand feet, on a regular basis.”
“How quickly do they achieve that altitude?” He asked, curious in spite of himself.
“Anything from twenty-five minutes to an hour, maybe a little more. It depends if we’re saving fuel or going like gangbusters.”
He knew little enough about flying.
Someone should take him up sometime, so he could see what we were talking about.
He could monitor his own bodily functions.
“Do you ever suffer the bends?” He asked.
No one knows everything.
“I don’t fuckin’ know.” I answered. “But, we do all suffer earaches, swimmer’s ear, hemorrhoids, eye problems, diarrhea. That’s from the castor oil in the fuel. We end up swallowing a lot of it, because it runs down the mask, and it just soaks in. When you breathe hard in combat, you end up swallowing some of it.”
They could get colds, influenza, pneumonia. They could get just about any disease in the book. That’s why I had to get him involved in some way. You can’t just flog a doctor, they have very high social status.
It really sucked when you got a good gutful of castor oil and un-burnt fuel.
“Literally puke your guts out.” I assured him. “It’s a sickly, burning taste, too.”
Plus, castor oil wasn’t too good on its own. My dear old mom used to make us take a spoonful of cod liver oil when we were kids. It was chock full of something, and it made you regular. No argument about that. As far as ‘caisson disease,’ or decompression sickness, it might explain some of the little aches and pains. I never considered it. We all seemed to have our little problems.
“Have you given them a talk on mental hygiene?” I asked. “What about prophylactic devices?”
This was actually better than giving the doctor shit for something. He’s a soft-spoken character and a born con-man. How exactly do I handle this guy? Load him up with work? He’s not too smart in other ways. He thinks, ‘Fu-cking’ is a town in China, for example. I mean, he never swears or cusses. He can give sex education talks. That ought to keep his mind busy. Most of our men were under twenty.
“Give the men a talk on cussing and morals.”
Put plenty on this man’s plate.
“We need an inventory of all the dope supplies, or stuff will start to go missing.”
He needs a doper orderly to assist him. They can keep an eye on each other and won’t allow the other to steal too much, thereby killing the golden goose.
Learning all the time, learning all the time.
“Do eye checks on the men. Talk to the Adj about our little gravity suit experiment…”
He could give all the men periodic medical check-ups.
“And watch for signs of stress or mental breakdown.” I said firmly.
“Now, this fella I’m giving you as an orderly, he’s not too swift. He’s not the brightest star in the heavens. He thinks if a label is marked, all you have to do is take what you want, then bring it up to the level with water. If there’s a bunch of marks, he’ll just add another. You’d better watch him.” I suggested.
The doctor digested all this silently.
“Now, if you’re caught on the stuff, we’re going to put you up a against a wall and shoot you.” I added. “So do your job, and when the war’s over, you can do anything you want to yourself.”
The bugger had something to look forward to. Always leave something on the table for the other man. That’s the key to successful negotiation.
He sat there very quietly.
“Yes, sir.” Said the doctor.
“That’s the right attitude, and get to work on the diet and stuff. We really do need a good doctor, you know.”
That seemed to help, in some small way.
I patted him on the back as I shoved him out, and there was plenty more to do.
It took a lot of time, reading the stuff Dawley and Bernie were beginning to pull in from their nefarious webs, their networks of good old boys. It didn’t pay to think too much about how they got some of their intelligence. Like Aristides, the renegade Greek. Caught in bed with his mother. Some kind of ‘Oedipus complex,’ and you have to be careful how it’s pronounced. If you say it, ‘eat-a-puss,’ all the people around you laugh and it erodes respect for the Commanding Officer.
Run out of town, apparently. The Greeks were an orthodox people, and jokes about Greek features and stuff don’t mean a thing.
Oh, God. Some idiot had a fiddle going, and we could use some peace and quiet.
A wild and ragged reel screamed out in the afternoon stillness. This was bad for the nerves and the digestion.
“Have you ever been to an Irishman’s shanty,
“Not much water but plenty of brandy…
“A three-legged stool and a table to match,
“And a dog and a cat sits licking it’s snatch…”
I barked out through the thin walls of the tent, “Snotty. Take that dog and pony show somewhere else.”
Finally he got the message and moseyed off to bother some other poor souls.
Some guy in a Royal Army uniform entered the tent, strangely silent and empty, without Howard-Smythe and Whittington. Bernie and Dawley were probably napping. We were on call twenty-four hours a day, lately.
“Your plane is back from test, sir.” He reported.
“Awesome.” I told him, and he left.
The boys were sitting around the briefing room, most of them, when I entered. It was still early yet.
“Are you all eager for this one, son?” I asked Saul.
“Sure thing.” Saul replied, in a dry tone which drew a small chuckle.
Saul wasn’t exactly an enthusiast.
A few more pilots and gunners trickled in as we studied the map.
That makes pretty much everyone, and now Dawley arrived. He wanted to ride as a gunner. Some kind of complex there, I suspected. The men liked it, though. He’s fit in well.
“Okay, gentlemen, this is our first big party as a team, and I want you to listen very, very closely…”
It was pretty informal. I thought for a moment.
“The most aggressive pilot has the best chance of survival. Always stick with your buddy. Watch your fuel gauge…”
I had to stop there.
You really can’t load them up with too much good advice. Our mission was a fairly simple contact patrol. The only major complication, was that I was using all three squadrons. There was enough that could go wrong, even though showing up in numbers always impressed the ground troops, who would be watching. Of that we had no doubt.
They are entitled to an opinion. Much of what we do is never seen by the general public. The men seemed confident enough. They know their jobs, which is always a comfort. The fog of war is legendary, but it can be dealt with by proper training.
It was Freud who believed that all human motivation is put down to sexual tensions, while Kant…or Jung… or somebody, put it down to feelings of inferiority. I leave it to the reader to judge. Some other crackpot theorist put it down to, ‘the creative urge.’
“I like these calm little moments before the storm.” I said boldly. “It reminds me of Mozart.”
One more point. A four-step program. About the most the human brain can hold at one time.
“Squeeze out as much piss as you can.” I concluded. “We’ll be airborne for up to two hours, maybe more.”
We were ready to mount up.
END
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