Chapter Thirty-Nine
Taking it to the Foe
Over the course of the night we took some damage from ‘Archie.’ We had one engine which took a couple of 12.7 millimetre bullets through the crank-case, but it had also brought the plane home.
Each of our fields put up one or two bomb-laden aircraft every half hour.
This would really annoy the Fritzies. It only took six or seven pilots at each field, and that meant the night shift could go off and rest, and the day shift could take over for more normal daylight operations. Then it would be the turn of the afternoon shift.
Experienced pilots were dispatched alone. The less experienced followed a more senior man. The gunner in the number one aircraft had a tiny flashlight, all taped-up with hockey tape to allow a gleam of light. He flicked it out the rear every minute for the trip to the enemy aerodrome.
The second plane just had to follow the blips of light. Then, make a simple bomb or rocket attack. If the pilot was feeling confident, they could try a strafing run, but it wasn’t a requirement. Just optional. While we did do some damage to the enemy, the real key was to keep him awake.
The fledglings would follow their senior home.
It seemed to be going remarkably well, and we had all the other navigation aids set up.
Not that it could have been easy. I know better than that.
A journalist is someone who has to attribute his statements to someone else. But the truth was that I wasn’t there. I had to ask. The general feeling among the men was that the ground fire was manageable, if you stayed above three thousand. The Boche might sooner or later get some cannon in there.
They didn’t seem to have a problem with their missions. Losses were nowhere near what could have been expected. Going through the ‘Archie’ belt was as safe as anyone could make it, bearing in mind the random nature of shooting up at night, at something you couldn’t see. I think the big difference was that my men were properly trained for aerial warfare, and they followed instructions. It was as simple as that.
All we could do was to sit it out, and let the men do the job they were trained for.
***
“I wish I had your confidence.” I remarked to Dawley.
“As compared to what?” He countered, hunched up close to the stove.
“Well, I just don’t buy it.” I said. “It’s hard to believe they can’t reinforce.”
“I’m giving you my word.” He stated firmly. “Even if they could build the planes fast enough, they simply can’t train a good pilot fast enough.”
“After all this time?”
I was learning a lot of skepticism.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He vowed with confidence. “The Fritzies are in exactly the same position as we were a year, or a year and a half ago.”
“You’re telling me that they’ve improved their training program?” I said in disbelief.
“Yes. And they’re also drafting replacements, and instructors, out of the schools as quickly as they can.” He went on.
I chewed on that, and a mouthful of tea and cigarette.
“How many kills did you have in thirty missions?” He asked. “I know you’re not one to carve notches in your gun barrel.”
He went on.
“Thirteen and eleven-sixteenths. Plus a few more, that you didn’t get proper credit for. Am I correct?”
“Sure. I suppose so.”
“And how many in the dozen daylight sweeps since forming, ‘The Damned?’”
His eyebrows rose.
“Eleven and three-eighths when we get the papers back.” He pointed out.
“You’ve become a truly competent pilot. You understand air combat. Your men are the best-trained group on the Front at this point in time. The Air Ministry, whether it be psychologists, or the actuaries, are not the only ones capable of making a study.” He revealed.
It was obvious, when you thought of it. We wanted intelligence. Military Intelligence wanted to know how we were doing.
“I figured that out a long time ago.” I murmured.
Keep listening. It’s a valuable skill.
“Why are they having so much trouble finding suitable candidates?” I questioned him.
“What if I told you they’re drafting instructors out of the system?” Dawley responded absently, adding cream to his coffee.
“That’s just crazy. The Germans can’t be that stupid.”
“But we can draw on the Americans, we can get Canadians, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders. We’ve got all kinds of allies overseas, where they can’t get at them.” He insisted. “They’re just plain running out of properly-trained men.”
The truth according to Dawley, was that they needed their infantry in the trenches.
There was no, ‘shortage of suitable candidates.’ The whole German Army had a manpower shortage right now. While virtually anyone in the German trenches would have been glad to go for pilot-training at this point in the war, men were still needed in those trenches in vast numbers. One last, big offensive, in the quest for ‘quick victory.’
“What are you thinking?” He asked.
“They can put all the men they want in the trenches.” I said. “The question then becomes, can they feed them? Interesting…interesting. And the same goes for pilots and planes.”
“By extrapolation, there must be an awful shortage of farm labor in Germany right about now.” Said Dave with a grin.
His explanation seemed logical enough, but I sensed a trap. We’d set enough of our own. My mouth was thick with recent sleep. I drained my tea while it was still nice and hot, then poured myself another.
“By golly, this is like a vacation.” I said.
In the past day and a half I took no less than four naps. In addition to a normal shift of sleep last night. It seemed every four or five hours, I needed a nap.
“Nothing beats a good sardine.” Noted Dawley, as he made up a couple of plates of quick food.
I didn’t try to correct him—but there is such a thing as fresh pickerel.
“Some people call ‘em pilchards.” He ventured.
“It’s even better when you throw them in with the stew.” I suggested.
“Really? We’ll have to try that next time.” He said with a quick look.
Very diplomatic, old Dawley.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Major.” I scoffed. “Have you tried the stew?”
He nodded glumly, idly stirring beans in a mess tin on our stove.
“Once you taste the sardine, you will imagine just what a dramatic improvement it would make.” I postulated.
“Huh.” Then he tasted the sardine.
“That’s not bad.” He said in pleasure. “Throw a little mustard on there and you have something.”
“Got something.” I corrected. “Throw a little mustard on there and you got something.”
“Okay.” He conceded.
We were taking turns teaching each other our little cultural peccadilloes.
“There’s no making up for lost time.” I noted.
Dawley and I took turns playing Devil’s Advocate, which is kind of like Lucifer’s Lawyer. It was his turn.
“The Ritter is losing time, and sleep.” He pointed out. “While he’s cleaning up the aerodrome, checking out equipment, and trying to find replacement pilots, he’s not working on more important things.”
‘Like killing us.’ I didn’t say it.
The Baron wouldn’t be given time to think, whereas we were a little top-heavy with officers. In the background we could hear men in the next room. They were still trying to get our wireless going. We had set it up on the train, received exactly one test message and then the infernal thing packed it in. Getting spares was a big problem. We ended up with about eight broken radios, most of them with the same fault as our own, a broken tube or, ‘valve,’ as the English like to say. That’s all they could give us, broken radios discarded by frustrated operators.
“When you said the radio had a broken valve, I thought you were nuts.” I chuckled. “I kept thinking, what does that thing run on?”
He laughed, wiping some guck away from the corner of his mouth.
“Squadron sweeps ten or twelve times a day.” He murmured. “I really can’t quite get over it.”
Smaller squadrons, but used more effectively. It’s only three or four missions each.
“Word is, the Flying Circus went about ten miles south this morning.” Dawley continued our informal briefing.
I didn’t want to get out of touch, although things were going automatically.
“They had combat with Dickenson and Wilson’s boys, trying to penetrate on a major bomb party at that big battery near Eparnay. A few miles north, I think.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“They got shot up pretty bad, but they managed to get about ten bombs on the target. Two planes shot down. They think they got one German plane.”
He sat there thinking.
“It seems Manfred went down there, either to get some rest, or some satisfaction.” He concluded. “He impresses me as the sort of person who isn’t too used to having his nose rubbed in it.”
“I’m real proud of Ilderim.” I told Dawley. “Manfred went down there to confirm that there is indeed, something just a little bit different about us.”
Dave’s jaw dropped a little at that one.
He saw the combat report, a compilation of witnesses and Ilderim’s own words in the hospital. We sent him back to England to get some treatment for his burns. Ilderim was at about twelve thousand feet, and holed by enemy fire in the fuel tank. A routine patrol, against a new Fritzie outfit five miles north of the Circus, who were at Cappy now.
According to him, it flared up and back, rapidly burning the fabric away by his left foot and ankle. Instinctively, he immediately rolled right and banked at ninety degrees, and then pulled the throttle back to idle. He began blipping the ignition, relieved to see the flames begin to die down rapidly. He ‘mostly’ shut off the fuel cock, and remembered that he had only a quarter tank of fuel. In amazement, he watched as ‘some tiny little flames,’ licked at his plane. The hole was just big enough, the rest of the doped fabric was just out of reach…
Ilderim had side-slipped it down, and at the time, he was about three miles behind the enemy lines. Finding west, he put the nose down with right rudder when necessary, and tried to bring it up when necessary, but found mere rudder couldn’t do it. He had to roll out level, which sloshed new fuel on the fire, bring up the nose, and roll into the sideslip again. He kept the motor running and everything. He must have been pretty busy in that cockpit.
His gunner was right with him, patting him hard on the shoulder and shouting, “Attaboy. You can do it. Keep flying the plane.”
Ilderim said it helped. Not that he needed any prodding, but it’s better than some voice shrieking in mindless, hysterical fear through the tube.
He brought the plane down just a hundred yards from enemy lines. They scuttled into a shell hole, and then scooted to one farther away. They holed up there until it got dark, playing hide and seek with enemy patrols. Intermittent shellfire, the usual machine guns, probing rifle fire, trying to spook them out and encourage them to surrender.
Ilderim was badly burned, the entire left calf, his foot, all the left side of the leg. I was proud of them both, and sad to see them go. But it also felt good when he took a special moment to write me a note from the hospital.
“Thanks for training us in the sideslip.”
He was a man of few words at that point.
It was some consolation. The gunner had taken a bullet through the shoulder. He had a broken collarbone, but the round hit nothing vital. Lucky man, and I was God-damned proud of them.
Outside the tent, there were voices, and then more engine noises sprang up.
I checked my watch.
“About time to go see the Doc.”
***
It was as cold as a witch’s tit. I was quickly shivering. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, as my dear old dad used to say. The Doc’s tent wasn’t too far away, but after being cooped up all day, the air was envigorating.
“Hey, buddy.” I called when I walked in.
He didn’t hear me. Planes were flying overhead. I repeated it firmly in a quiet second, and he came out of the inner sanctum sanctorum.
That means, ‘holy place.’
“Hey, Will. C’mon in.” Proffering his hand for a quick shake.
Obviously, we’re on his turf now.
“Your back is feeling better.”
“How can you tell?”
“You can stand up straight, for one thing.” He said. “Yesterday you looked like a dog trying to hump a football.”
That was the difference between the doctor and the shrink. Shamans, witch doctors, head shrinkers, have no sense of humor.
“Still a lot of pain, though.” I grimaced, easing down into a chair.
Sitting was still bad.
A shot of pain right in the lower guts. The hips and pelvis just ached when sitting.
“Yes. Now that the major muscle spasms are gone, that should dissipate quickly.” He promised. “The bullet wound, let’s see if it’s dry.”
I had to take down my pants for him, but it was a cursory examination.
“Let me know if it swells up, or if a lot of stinking pus comes out.” He advised.
“Oh, I give it a squeeze from time to time.” I mentioned casually. “Nothing much happening.”
“You can decide for yourself whether to fly or not.” He concluded. “Other than that, how do you feel?”
“The sleep was good.” I acknowledged. “I think I’m going to have to look after myself better.”
“Tell me about this girlfriend of yours.” He asked, but for some reason I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Not right now. Maybe next time, Doc.”
I got up and left without further ado. I’m not a big fan of doctor’s offices.
Another cup of tea would be nice. After the last ten days or so, I didn’t have a care in the world.
***
“Any of the beans left?”
Dawley was never a pig, but someone else might have turned up. He handed me a mess tin, a flattened, rectangular pan of aluminum.
“Tell me about the trap-line theory.” He prompted, re-opening a conversation that had been interrupted earlier.
I gobbled a couple of spoonfuls, and then set it down for a moment.
“I’m not sure if that’s the correct term.” I began. “But it’ll do for a start. In the boreal forest, a trap line might go on for a hundred miles. The trapper is self-contained. His home is his sled, essentially.”
Dave pretended not to be listening too intently.
“Back home, I could just go out and set a few traps in my own bush.”
“So you have your own forest?” He asked. “How big?”
“Not too big, maybe fifty acres,” I explained. “And along the creek, that’s Bear Creek, you could follow it for miles, and put in traps anywhere someone else doesn’t have one.”
Dawley digested that for a moment.
In England, a man who owns land is a gentleman.
“Now, old Richtofen, he’s a hunter. We’re using his own tactics against him. He might catch on sooner rather than later. But once he knows we’re actively hunting him…”
An additional factor, the psychological one.
“Men have imaginations, animals don’t.” I told Dawley.
Animals have a pecking order, but only a basic, instinctive ego.
“So we use traps, and yet each and every one of our little airfield complexes really represents something completely different.”
“What’s that?” Dawley asked.
I slurped up some hot beans and swallowed them.
Then a breath. On I went.
“It represents a hide, like a shooter’s hide. We could drive that fucker all up and down the line, if we had to. He just never knows where we’ll turn up.” I figured. “All we have to do is to run the bugger in shifts, and sooner or later he will get tired.”
We had evolved the equipment, the training, the organization, the logistics and the administration of it all. And with official approval, we had the right to do it.
Sooner or later the Red Baron would get tired. A simple little plan.
The funny thing was, it appeared to be working. The Red Baron, and the Flying Circus had seemed distinctly shy lately.
The radio squawked to life in the outer room, and we heard a muttered oath.
Someone must have had the headphones on when it worked.
I grinned at Dawley.
“It’s a fucking omen.” I whispered, and he laughed. “As I recall, we planned on relentless communications discipline.”
He choked briefly on a mouthful of beans.
“Nice.” Was all he said. “Are there bears where you live?”
“Nope. Not around my place. My old man says it’s been twenty or thirty years.” I told him. “There’s some mighty big catfish in the creek, though.”
He nodded, but he didn’t laugh this time. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
“Do they bite?” He asked innocently enough.
“No, but they could give you an awful nasty suck.” And he choked up again.
“That’s it.” He grinned. “But it’s good to see you’re feeling better.”
He rose to go, taking the dirty dishes with him. He could drop them off at the cookhouse, barely fifty yards away.
Years later you have the opportunity to look back and reflect on the battle, and in my opinion, this was the real turning point. I was well rested and refreshed. My mind was clear and focused. I was ready to get out there and fly again.
I was just sitting there when I heard it, a loud and distinctive, ‘pop.’
Off in the distance, maybe a quarter mile.
“What the fuck?” I said in dismay.
Jumping to my feet, I grabbed a coat and rushed out the door. Someone was just firing up one of our motor bikes, so I grabbed it and zoomed off up to the west end of the field. I could see a cloud of bluish-white smoke, quickly diminishing on the breeze of early evening. It was my own bike, actually, and I hadn’t seen much of it lately. A bit of a shock, but that was nothing compared to the sight that awaited.
A small crowd of men and boys were all standing there, looking stunned. I slid to a stop, the rear brake locking up as I stood on it. I lowered the bike, my heart hammering.
Damn.
“What’s going on here, Carson?” I barked.
The scene told its own story.
The gun emplacement, with the crazy tilt of the Vickers on its swiveling mount. The two dead bodies, half torn-apart. Limp, bloody, rag-like structures.
Like wet dish rags.
“It must have been a grenade, sir.” He said helplessly.
“Shit.” Was all I could say. “Shit.”
“Yes, sir…” The poor man was stuck for words, even thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Carson.” I told him. “Get some stretchers and get the bodies over to the Doc.”
“Yes, sir.”
The poor man was standing ramrod straight, chin quivering and trying not to cry.
I beckoned to Hastings, who was just arriving.
He looked at the scene, jaw open, then raised an eyebrow to me.
“Take the Corporal for a walk, please.” I suggested.
Then I turned to the assembled men, a rapidly growing, but silent crowd.
“You, you, you and you. Go to the medical tent and get some stretchers, and then bring the bodies there.” I ordered.
This was a time for firm action.
“Bring a couple of engine covers.” I called to their backs.
Waterproofed with paraffin wax, they were always the best thing for bodies, leaking blood all over the place.
“You, you and you, clean up this mess. Clean up this equipment.”
Take charge.
“And those of you who witnessed this in any way, write it down and report it to Captain Howard-Smythe.” I told them.
“Wash everything down, and clean up those guns.” I ordered two nearby men. “Bury or burn the rags.”
Fuck. Two more men dead, and probably a silly accident. We were all in shock.
None more than Carson, though. Some of the lads began to shuffle off to their jobs.
“Shit happens.” Said a voice at my elbow.
It was Bernie.
“I’ll go to my grave feeling a lot better, knowing that.” I told him a little unkindly.
A deep sigh, and I suddenly regretted saying that. I shouldn’t have said it.
“Sorry, Bernie.”
He nodded gravely in understanding.
“It’s all right.” He assured.
I waved at Hastings to take the bike back. We could use the walk.
“Jesus Murphy.”
That’s about all I could say.
It really shook us up, all of us. My little vacation was over.
***
We had the one radio on the train, and when it was working, that meant we had two.
One set on the train, and one where the main administrative staff, would hang out and hopefully co-ordinate activities. Two, or even three more radios would have been helpful. We had a few ideas on that score. Artillery spotting was not my highest priority, though.
You were very vulnerable, no matter how well protected. You were stuck for a certain time period. Literally hours at a time, in a fixed location. Bad news.
Our round-the-clock bombing campaign would peter out at midnight. Then a good night’s sleep. Not just for me, but for all the men and especially all the pilots.
Richtofen and his circus clowns could think upon it, and let that feeling of foreboding develop. Let their thoughts work on them from the inside. They’d still be cleaning up and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It would take them days to recover, merely from the logistical point of view.
We would be back in a day or so.
We would try something different again. Just keep on wiggling the bait.
Sooner or later that big old catfish would come to us.
***
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. The sunlight burst forth in a glorious fan of rays, like brazen swords thrusting up from the horizon. Every little breeze, seemed to whisper ‘Jennifer.’ Her name tootled around and around in my head.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
We had an unofficial padre, a real sky pilot and he had been ordained in a previous life. He said Mass in Latin, casting his magic spell. He stood in the wavery dawn light and sprinkled Holy Water on a pair of SE’s. A strangely moving experience. For a moment the hair stood up on my neck. A prickly feeling. Shivery.
Those who took Communion seemed thoughtful. Here and there others played rugby, or fooled around with someone’s pet goat. It’s been hanging around.
Snotty stood beside me. The Monsignor reverently put away the Holy Water.
“How do they make that stuff, anyway?” Snotty asked in a quiet aside.
“Boil the hell out of it.” I explained.
Snickers came from those around us. I got that joke from Peterson.
My boys are human beings. They feel fear. But they’re under control, and it’s with a little thrill that the sudden realization comes. We have grown up together.
“Pabsco Biscum,” intoned the Monsignor, and a funny little grin stole over my cheeks.
‘Go in Peace.’
Poor fella just don’t get it.
We prepared to mount up.
Like rutters of old, like condottieri, the White Company, or Robin Hood and his merrye men, like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in some hopeless, forlorn and idealistic and naïve and pathetic and ridiculous quest for a Holy Pail.
We are off.
I nod and the propeller is flipped over. She sputters to life, a life of her own.
The blue sky seems unusually clear. The temperature is about seventeen degrees Celsius. A simple mental computation, around sixty, sixty-two degrees. My altimeter needs a slight adjustment.
Looking over and around, it appears we are ready to go. I get waves and nods from those nearest.
Look at the gauges, check my wristwatch, then the one on the dash, then carefully roll my sleeve down to cover the wrist. Don’t want any flashes there. It is really something to feel totally comfortable in the cockpit. How far we have come.
Then I gave the signal, and a flag was waved. This new innovation keeps enemy observation planes from seeing flares. The first throttle movement begins the rollout.
No flares in the day to give us away. Ones and twos, where’s my shoes…?
Threes and fours, got my drawers.
A nice, simple daylight takeoff. First day back at work. Rolling out of my little bay in the trees.
Hook in right rudder, and taxi my way down the line. The warrior chieftain, taking inspection from all other eyes. Generally I look out the left side more, but you have to equalize between left turns and right turns, due to the difficulty of seeing over the nose.
It’s just that my right eye isn’t too good.
***
At the east end of the field, I checked up for a moment, taking a glance at the windsock, which was a drab khaki color. A long line-up of planes sat there, along the side of the field, waiting to follow me into the air.
“Waiting to see if I make it.” Is what I used to think.
Now I was flushed with boldness.
A bit of a revelation.
No signs or signals. Every engine started, no problems. That’s good to know. It’s good to have a firm count when I launch with a big crew. The enemy thought we needed a huge, vast, wide-open area to operate from. We were taking off from a postage stamp, a long skinny one. The wind blows straight down the runway most of the time around here.
The Baron was still playing by his old rules.
Cappy was a bleak, dismal, and ugly place in the spring rainy season. Located in the Somme Valley. Von Richtofen would take advantage of whatever lulls in the weather came along. He needed to spark his men’s morale.
The winds would come up later, or clouds could lower down and obscure everything.
But psychologically, the moment was rife with possibilities.
The sunrise, now blocked by a band of charcoal clouds, was on my left hand side.
We flew south at three-quarter throttle, climbing steadily. A group of S.E.’s were right with me. The other squadrons too. All new numbers again, I might add. They all seemed to be catching up and climbing steadily with us. The battle was eight or nine miles to our left. Smoke streamers gathered into towering columns. It was possible to confirm the usual north-west prevailing wind at about ten knots, judging from the bend and angle of the columns of smoke. Another busy day. Thank God it wasn’t me down there, knee deep in mud and decomposing human flesh.
Death is cleaner, more noble up here.
Shag that thought.
Like any good deer-stalker, the last of the Mohicans, we must be aware that while we can sneak up behind the smoke, we cannot see through it. Height is an advantage, and we climbed up as high as we could get before turning east.
Patience is a virtue.
The deer can smell the wind, but the enemy cannot.
The streamers of smoke from the ground are like tree trunks in the forest.
Like foliage made of smoke, dust and just plain bad air. With the heat of morning, the humidity became a factor, and the visibility was less than it was at the crack of dawn. On the best days you could see maybe twenty miles. Today, maybe seven. Maybe only five. Much less, in places. A variable day. Always the smell, even though you tend to get used to it. There’s always something there to remind you.
Seven miles is three minutes.
On our morning patrol, we shot down two planes, damaged another. Home for lunch.
Afternoon bombing mission, and a major sweep, minimal results. Although Green got his first kill. A smaller mission, a separate mission, one plane a write-off upon landing.
The pilot walked away, and I gave him the rest of the day off.
This was my third mission today. There was a rumbling in my belly. I was just too busy to eat or even have my tea.
***
We’re at 21,500. Four squadrons, counting the Ghosts, who are only six. But that’s enough for our role. We’re the bait. It’s nice to have three squadrons for backup.
We’re the meat in the sandwich. I was suffering from a slight headache, which had been with me ever since I woke up at five a.m.
It was still a decent day when we stumbled through the clods of greasy, stinking black smoke, and came upon a happening. Our neighbors were having a scrap with the Germans. At the sight of one of their number blowing up real good, a dozen enemy Pfalz and Fokker D-VII fighters plummeted downwards and evaded us in the smoke-washed scene below. My men re-formed. The Ghosts and the Black Angels didn’t even bother to join in, and the Biffs were too far down below to join in either.
The Camel Jocks handily disposed of that threat. We watched our neighbors.
Some of Dickenson’s crew. They broke off pursuit and turned for home.
And again, this time the Biffs peeled off, a pair of them, and smoke puffs indicated pursuit. A pair of enemy two-seat observation jobbies. I was just thinking about artillery spotters, and there they were, poor buggers.
Crikey.
One of them falls in flames, the other disappears into the smoke. The fucking haze was everywhere. God-damn it. A day of indecisive little scuffles so far. Not that shooting down enemy aircraft is wrong, exactly.
Where the heck was Von R? Note the time, write it down, note the enemy machines ‘whacked,’ as it were.
Like cordwood.
‘Whack ‘em and stack ‘em.’
We cruised north, three to four, or five, or six miles behind enemy lines, just under the hulking, mushroom-headed smoke columns, where they hit a layer of colder air and hang heavy, like a cow’s udder. At some point the smoke starts to fall again. A brief rain shower up ahead. Good cover, good place to be ambushed. Those draperies, veils of mist that fall out of the bottom of clouds.
We hung there at 20,000 or so, watching, waiting and all the while we’re burning off precious fuel.
There. That’s a big fuck-up. I saw it in the distance up ahead, at about a mile, or a mile and a half. Diving in, seek a target, who needs help? But then it was all over again.
Lots of action, not much joy.
Dexter blew away a green Albatros.
Wrote it on my kneepad.
We fought a number of encounters, but our quarry still eluded us. As we turned for home, we had shot down at least seven enemy machines.
One of those fell to my own fire, but that sort of thing was expected of a CO.
At this point, the real satisfaction was survival. The real satisfaction was to see my boys do well. The real satisfaction was to leave a bunch of enemy planes on the ground to lend their substance to the gathering palls of smoke.
To lead my men home, three formations of Biffs, Camels and SE’s. To return home from the fray, escorting our, ‘wounded.’
At least two of my guys, one Biff and one Camel, showed signs of being damaged.
Finally we all got down, scattered over two fields at the south end of our patrol lines. It would take a moment or two to find out about the injuries and damage. Pulling the helmet off, someone brought me my motorbike. It was running, and the temperature gauge showed it to be warmed up. Lots of fuel.
The damaged planes landed at our main field.
There were better medical facilities, better emergency facilities. Better repair facilities.
They had followed routine. That spoke well for their chances, I thought, cruising through the hole in the hedges and turning her out onto the road under the trees.
A German offensive was pushing into the lines to the southwest. From Arras or thereabouts, it ran to Amiens or thereabouts. I wanted to go to my office and check the big board, but first to the medical centre. The first thing I saw was Nelson, face down. He was on a stretcher, up on the sawhorses.
He had his butt up in the air, and he was grimacing with pain. That familiar rictus, so similar to laughter. It took me aback, but having seen it before, I quickly realized he wasn’t smiling a friendly greeting.
“Doc?” I inquired politely.
Doc had his back turned as he unrolled some gauze bandages.
“Shot in the ass.” Barked Nelson.
His truculent attitude rolled off me like water off of a duck’s back. He was entitled to it, and I had heard men in pain before. They can cuss and swear something awful, let me tell you.
“Bullet through the buttocks.” Noted the Doctor. “Clean wound. Quite painful. He’ll live.”
He stuck a needle in right promptly after that, and Nelson didn’t even seem to notice.
“You’ll feel better in a few moments.” He told Jim. “Worst is over for now.”
“Fuck, I hope so.” Gritted out Nelson. “That burns, man.”
A lot of guys say that. It’s like being stung by red-hot bees. Only worse. Now that he was in the Doc’s tender loving care, he would be doped-up pretty good for a few days.
“You did well to bring your plane back.” I gushed.
“Not really.” He said with a deep sigh of relief. “The flying was easy enough.”
The morphine seemed to work very quickly. Thank God for that. A lot of blood around, but his life wasn’t in danger. He would make out just fine.
I was pretty relieved, and his feelings in the matter of personal ‘embarrassment,’ were of little concern. He’ll get over it.
“She’s not too badly damaged, but flying home with this…” He went on.
Jim must have been worried about bleeding to death. We all do. The idea that we’ll faint from loss of blood, and fall from the sky when we might have lived. But in my own recent experience with a bullet through the leg, adrenalin and shock make you very, very calm.
I would ask Jim about that later. I mean, I’m sure it must have hurt, and everything.
But the imagination is what gets going in a situation like that.
“That’s okay, Jimmy. That’s okay. We’ll have the Adj come in and take your report. Oh. And take a couple of days off. You’ve earned it.”
Jim actually grinned at that one. That morphine works real fast.
“Any other casualties, Doc?” I asked.
“Not that I’m aware of.” He answered.
Better go check and see what happened to them other guys. I patted Jim on the shoulder when I left.
“Thanks, Boss.” He said dreamily.
After checking the other plane’s damage, which had a coolant line shot up, thereby causing the vapor trail, it was time to clean up and peel off. It was only then that I sensed something was wrong. Because, when I entered the command and control tent, there was a small group of men standing by the tele-printer. They were fascinated by its bzz-bzz-bzz performance as it clicked and clattered out a seemingly endless message from some HQ up the line, judging by the prefix.
“Who’s that?” I asked and they all jumped, because they hadn’t heard me come in.
END
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