Saturday, May 8, 2021

Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Twenty-One. Louis Shalako.


 

 Chapter Twenty-One

 

Yet Another Hotel Room

 

I won’t say it didn’t hurt like hell, and I won’t bore you with the details. It’s enough to say that I found a hotel, and another place for the motorbike, and laid about on the couch like a miserable piece of shit for a couple of days. I drank heavily. I got sick.

I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. I prayed for God to kill me. I cried a lot, and I had no one there this time.

It was all very sad.

I couldn’t just drink it away. I had to get back to the job. No matter how much it hurt. People were depending on me. Not so much the students, but my buddy Bob, and others. Even some people, completely unknown to me. The students could have been sent to a squadron, or they could have been absorbed back into the system, if worst came to worst.

I flew back to Norfolk in a bloody snowstorm. Talk about dedication. But those students were all I had to hold onto at the time. That and my so-called dignity.

The bike was in storage, my heart was on ice. My mind was focused, laddie.

Fuck the world. And for the first time in a few months at least, I wondered what it would be like to go home. What would it be like to sit on the porch and look out over the fields and watch my corn growing? To listen to my cows lowing?

Heaven was too far away.

It was just a hazy dream.

 

***

 

I threw myself into the work. With a couple of days in hand before the class returned from Christmas, I put some ideas on little cards, and re-wrote them endlessly. I worked on a handbook to be bound and issued to pilots. The book was tentatively entitled, ‘Hints and Kinks of Aerial Fighting.’

By the time fighting instruction resumed, I was ready for them and all set to go. They looked fit and refreshed, eager to get on with their learning.

“All righty then, are we all here?”

They responded, ‘Two here, Three here, Four here,’ et cetera.

“Today we’ll be flying in spite of the weather. We don’t have much daylight this time of year, so I’ll get right to the point. Number Five, what if you were eastbound, five miles behind the lines, just you and your wingman?”

I started off by drawing on the blackboard. I quickly sketched in the Western Front, a broad squiggle which occasionally moved back and forth, often quoted at about two hundred and fifty miles. But there were so many twists and turns, salients and pockets, from the North Sea and Belgium, to Switzerland. Who really cared about the exact length? This part of the drawing was permanently painted by my pet mechanic, on one large panel in particular. The map was painted. The front line was chalked, but it didn’t move much.

I drew a simplified drawing on another panel.

“Okay, here’s the front, here are you two, and you’re confronted by three enemy machines. You have half a tank of fuel, and are also aware of an enemy formation (dot-dot-dot) two miles behind to the west.”

The Western Front.

“What’s our altitude?” Asked Number Five, Powell.

He leads the second flight of this class.

“Sixteen thousand.” I told him.

“And what about the enemy?”

“They’re at about fifteen thousand, climbing, half a mile away, a little to the right.”

They’re coming towards you, Powell…think man, think.

“What time is it?” He asked.

I looked at my watch and the class broke up in laughs, which is good, for it proves they’re watching. I watched Powell. Quickly catching on, he looked up at the big pole-light, grabs his model. His wingman moved out with him onto the tarpaulin floor.

“Yeah, yeah. I would engage,” he said after a minute.

Two mechanics, then a third, were holding their models and they want to shoot down the flyboys. Their big, happy grins left no doubt about that. Which is exactly the attitude they should have. I’d focus that in on the enemy flyboys later, when we get some tools and spare parts for our thirty-one aircraft of various types and conditions. We also have a few wrecks which we hope to rebuild as circumstances and time permit. My boys were thinking.

“Why?” I queried.

“This is the perfect chance to try out the high-low split.” Powell told his wingman, almost ignoring my presence. “You stay low, I zoom-climb up to about another thousand real quick, and they can’t match my climb rate because they’re heavy, we’re light and already above them.”

Powell was thinking it out. Slowly, but he’s thinking.

“Show him the hand signal,” I instructed.

Powell put his hand straight out, in a widely stretched V-sign, palm perpendicular to the mat.

“They’ll go after you. Thinking we’ve panicked.” Powell would dive onto an enemy machine’s tail.

Blast it out of the sky.

After a head-on pass at the enemy formation, his wingman would turn into the sun and climb, spiraling back sunwards, pulling hard to re-form with Powell…Powell looked confused.

“What happens next?” He asked.

“You have a moral edge,” I said, then hesitated.

This was hard to put into the proper words.

“Confidence, and aggression, is what wins in the air, and I suppose in real life, too.”

How could he disagree?

“If you have a kill, go for the others because they likely won’t engage if you’ve already shot one of them down and have speed on. You want them to run. Then you’re behind the sons of bitches and you control the situation.”

His wingman got it better than Powell did, but that was fine with me. It was Powell. I was trying to teach him to lead, because I thought he should have, I don’t know, the drive, the ambition.

He just seemed slow. Don’t look around for a nod of approval in combat. Just do it.

“By the time they break, scatter, and re-form, you can climb up and do it again.”

Come on, Powell.

“This is slow work sometimes, men. I’m pleased with your progress. You were right to engage, but there is no telling what the enemy would have done after your attack.”

“Yes, sir.” They both smiled, and went back to their places.

If nothing else, I could work on their confidence. That alone might save their lives.

“Never hesitate. Just take the shot and worry about the CO’s approval later.” I told the assembled crew.

Hopefully they appreciated what I was trying to say.

Progress was being made. Would it ever be enough? I would have liked to have seen more initiative on their part. They should think things out and try them. But then, these men lacked that hatred, that fucking defiance that sets the survivors apart from the mere mortals.

“O.K. Where’s Jimmy?”

Jim was a new guy. Having checked him out, I knew he could fly, and he had in fact been wounded in combat on his third mission flying Camels.

He was a ‘Camel Merchant,’ not a very imaginative label, but that happens in war.

“Okay. Bring your plane, I’ll show you a special trick, Jim.” He came out to engage the little green tri-plane which I used sometimes.

I always played the bad guy, and I knew all the tricks.

“Jim, let’s say you’re coming up fast from behind and I don’t see you, and then I start to turn away by coincidence. You’re going real fast. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t really know.” Jim said. “Follow you, I guess?”

“You can’t turn that tight, Jim.”

He stands there thinking…too long. In action, there’s no telling what he might have come up with. But he needs to be able to see it in his head.

“If you blow past me, and I see you off to one side, I will simply reverse my turn and get on your tail. Then I’m going to shoot you down.” I waited.

“I’ll show you. Lets say I turn left, give me your plane,” and he handed it to me.

Imperial War Museum.

“What you’re going to do is a barrel roll attack. You have to climb, rolling almost inverted to watch him go away. In other words, he’s turned left and you’ve pulled up. This bleeds off enough speed, and altitude means that you can dive down onto his tail again. It wastes a couple of seconds, and you’re in a good place. Where he still can’t see you…”

“So, I do a kind of fucked-up rudder turn, and then I dive onto his tail?”

“No, do a climbing, rolling, barrel-roll kind of a turn. A rudder turn is too slow.” I said. “You’ll bleed off all your energy. Keep your speed up and watch out for a trap. Then you do your dive, up under his tail, and ka-boom. Down he goes. And you don’t have to take your eyes off him for a second.”

“How do I know he doesn’t see me?” Jim asked.

“Good man, excellent question.”

I waited, then went on.

“Well, you don’t. Look for a trap. But if he saw you coming up from behind real quick, wouldn’t he break more suddenly? To throw off your aim?” I asked. “He can out-climb you. He should have pulled up, if he knew you were there.”

“Yes, sir. Why do I have to go upside down?”

“So you can see him, Jim.”

A little light went off in his head.

“Ah.” He murmured.

“And anyhow, maybe it’s not exactly a hundred and eighty degrees of roll, maybe more like a hundred-twenty? Maybe a little more?”

“O.K.” He nodded, with a quick grin. “Now I get it.”

I had high hopes for Jim.

I thought of another angle, since he seemed brighter than some, and had experience.

Why not keep going? Going over to the side table, selecting a Biff model and a yellow Pfalz to represent the enemy, I tried Jim on another problem.

“Let’s say you’re flying along in your Biff, heading east at five thousand feet. You look over to the right, and there is this fellow, going west at the same altitude. He’s about three hundred yards away. You both see each other at the same time. Neither has the element of surprise. What do you do?” I queried.

“Well, I can’t turn with him and catch him. He’ll come up from behind and get me. The normal thing to do is turn in the opposite direction and dive to outrun him.”

“But we’re not going to do the normal thing, are we, Jim?”

“No-o-oh?”

“What if you keep going straight? What if you pull back on the stick, and do a stall turn? By turning into the threat, you spoil his turn, and what if you meet him head on?” I asked Jim. “And as you go by your observer gets a crack at him with the rear gun.”

“Well, he should have been firing at him all along.”

“That’s very true, Jim. You have guns front and rear. He only has guns in front.”

He listened in focused attention.

“You and your plane are more than a match for any piss-ant Pfalz, if properly flown. What do you think? Did you know that your plane has more power and speed than a Pfalz fighter? Their engines are all obsolete.”

“I suppose you’re right, sir,” he agreed.

Well, good. But does he understand? I hope so.

“Imagine if you had a wingman, backing you up. He could circle in the opposite direction, or even just stick right with you. Right, Jim?”

He nodded, and shuffled back into the group.

Who do I get to shoot down next? I could go on all day like this. How much can they pick up in one little lesson? They needed to practice flying. They needed to be fed in little bits. Sometimes the instructor wonders if he is just babbling to hear himself talk. Maybe he needs a rest.

The SE-5a fighter aircraft.

“Come on skipper, give us one more.” Someone called.

I like your line of thinking, whoever the hell that was.

“All right, Snotty, get out here.”

He and his wingman Geoff came out.

Geoff didn’t have to ask, ‘Duh. Do you want me to go with him?’

Geoff knew his job by now, and it helped my peace of mind to match up men very carefully. Geoff would look after Snotty. I had no doubts. That’s what friends are for.

“You men are flying at medium altitude, with two other planes,” and I waved out two mechanics.

Sometimes I did this to illustrate that you might have to fly with new people or even strangers. And if the mechanics can get it, so can the flyboys, was the unspoken message.

A lot of mechanics go on to fly, it’s in the blood.

More mechanics simulate enemy machines, six in number. The paths converged on the hangar floor. The men shuffled around as I explained the bracket.

“Left element of blue section breaks left, right element separates right. The enemy formation holds tightly together for mutual protection.”

All eyes followed as we went along.

“The entire bad-guy formation makes a head-on attack on the right-hand element of blue section. The left-hand element of blue section makes a blind side attack, and shoots down two enemy machines. The commander of the enemy formation didn’t know what to do, or how to direct his aircraft. He should have had several sections, to say the least. If nothing else, he should have been able to break into two groups.”

I stood there a moment, hands on hips, exuding confidence.

“It’s simple, gentlemen, utterly simple. There is no mystery to fighting in the air.” I concluded.

“One more thing. This may sound like bragging, but it is no more than the simple truth. But I am always the first one into a fight, and I’m always the last one to leave. This isn’t motivated by bravery, I can assure you, gentlemen. It is not motivated by a desire to kill, or hatred. I don’t give a shit about decorations and awards. I am motivated by a strong desire to live. I’m here today to tell you that my methods work very well indeed.”

There was a long silence after that one.

“Out to the flight-line in fifteen minutes.” I added, almost as an afterthought.

The next fifteen minutes would be hell, because now I had time to think of her.

Which I did a lot of, when I had the time. An officer by day, narcissistic youth by night.

By now we were up to twenty-three pilots, and were starting to get a flow of other personnel. Howard-Smythe, he became our adjutant, so deaf he couldn’t hear a briefing, but that allowed him to concentrate on the paperwork. We had the sergeant pretend to be him and make all the phone calls. The sergeant had a wicked cockney accent, and calling himself ‘oward-Smoife on the phone, it just broke the place up every time.

I guess you had to be there. Anyway, Captain Howard-Smythe was deaf, so he didn’t mind. He saw us all happy, he was happy too. We had a dead-beat corporal, we had some good people.

We had one half-decent mechanic and a boy for each aircraft, but only one rigger for every two airplanes. That’s not good. It takes a lot of time to rig a plane after uncrating.

Some of our planes, like my own hack Avro 504-C, were flown into our site, but we got three brand spanking new Camels one day. They had to be unloaded from the nearest rail siding, at a mill in the nearby village. Then each one was brought over on a hay wain. We had our little canvas-topped lorries and a couple of antiquated fuel trucks. Our farmer friend let me drive the team.

I enjoyed that day more than I should have, but we were all excited by the new machines. It was good to work with horses again. When I saw the stables, and the neat condition they were in, it was obvious he was a respectable man.

Each plane was uncrated, assembled, the motor put on, all the controls, the fuel system all hooked up. Everything was checked over, signed off on the ground, and then the fully-completed aircraft had to be flown on air-test.

Putting on the wings, hooking up the flying, landing and control wires, making sure the wings and tail were straight and true, set at the proper angle of incidence, it all took up too much time. Landing wires support the wings on landing, so they don’t snap at the fuselage and fall off. Flying wires help to support the weight of the craft in flight. It can be confusing, and of course it takes knowledge and experience. One time a mechanic hooked up the ailerons wrong when connecting the control cables to the joystick.

Simple mistake, but it could have killed someone. Lucky we caught it—this is why we have a pre-flight check after all.

It took a lot of time. We had nine Bristol fighters, F2 B’s, three badly-worn old Camels, three new ones, a half a dozen Avros, and six crated SE-5a’s which I was saving.

The rest were all old SE’s that needed a lot of work, even complete overhauls.

Not enough other parts for any serious maintenance or repairs. Three squadrons could be up to sixty pilots and six hundred other personnel. To keep it small had its advantages.

That’s why we flew Brisfits and Avros a lot at first.

There were small blessings, like when Smith-Barry ‘discovered’ some new engines in the back of a storage shed, for what he called the ‘obsolescent’ 504-C’s. When they arrived, they turned out to be miss-labeled. Brand new Clerget 130-hp engines, which could theoretically fit on the Avro, with some minor but time-consuming adaptations.

Actually, they were much better suited to the Camels. Robert was a nice guy.

I never asked where he had stolen them.

We had three squadrons, but only on paper. Maybe we would get more men, maybe we wouldn’t. However, it justified throwing my weight around to get the materiel needed to build up our strength, in terms of ground personnel, tools, transport, machinery, and my latest obsession, some spare motors. A few Rolls-Royce Falcon engines for the Bristols would have been nice. If I could ever get some. Certain things, I felt justified in saying, or even doing. I was prepared to steal those engines. If I could locate some, I intended to do just that. It could be frustrating, at times.

And I could be a cold bastard, when necessary.


END

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

A Nieuport 11 Bebe in Italian markings.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

 

Images. That Louis guy, with a bit of help from the internet.

 

Louis has books and stories on Kobo. See his art on ArtPal.

 

Check out the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

Friday, May 7, 2021

Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Twenty. Louis Shalako.

 

                                                                                           Note: The Stearman was a '30s aircraft, but it gives some flavor of aerobatics in a biplane.

 

 Chapter Twenty

 

Hints and Kinks

 

In addition to writing up the course notes at night, always staying a step or two ahead of the class, now I had to find time to shop for Christmas. I had a certain very special gift in mind, one that would likely require much shopping. My skin crawled.

There are lots of things I don’t do well, in spite of statements that may lead the reader to think otherwise. Shopping is one of them. The idea of shopping for any kind of gift for a girl like Betty, or any woman for that matter, was frightening.

It evoked a sense of dread.

My mom once remarked, ‘Poor Will. He’s all hard edges and sharp corners.’

Often wondered what she meant by that. I’m not insensitive. I just can’t shop.

Betty deserved something really special.

Resolving to go out early Saturday morning, I concentrated on my notes. Early on, once I had a little manpower, I had our special mechanic make a series of models. Some of the models were enemy aircraft, reconstructed from photographs and drawings of captured enemy machines. Some of them were simple models of our own machines.

Those were all colored blue, or red, or green, with a number on the side in white.

That mechanic couldn’t be trusted with real aircraft. But he made very good models.

I put him to work on special projects where no one would get killed.

Everyone appreciated this move.

This is the one our 'special' mechanic made for me.

We also had smaller models that clamped together in groups of flight size, and the bases clipped together, which made it possible to maneuver the squadron on a table, or to hold it in the hand, and ‘fly’ it around a room full of students.

When it rained, or if it was too windy for flying, snowing, whatever, we wouldn’t fly.

One big hangar tent had been reserved for this purpose. We threw straw on the floor and covered it with tarps. We had a floodlight set up on a long pole. It had a heavy base with an extension cord. A man could go up a short stepladder and slide the light up and down the pole, then clamp it tight. This simulated different times of day. It was warm enough in there, as well.

Gill pissed me off one day. I had him stand on the ladder holding a little red tri-plane, all fucking day, and I mean it. He did fine, too. He didn’t fall off the ladder, and all day long he held that plane out on the end of a stick.

The other men took it kind of strange. Imagine four grown men holding their little models, walking along with them held up in front, about four feet above the ground. Gill up on the ladder, holding the Hun in the Sun. Me and a couple of others walking up with our models, and then patiently talking them through every type of engagement that I could think of. And all the time poor Gill was holding the Freiherr, Manfred von Richtofen, over their heads.

They got the message, and Gill didn’t lip off again.

Theory is a good thing. Having them act it out was a new approach. If I could get them to imagine the engagement inside their own heads, thinking in three dimensions, and then back it up with the kind of flying that builds confidence, I would have made a pretty good start with these men. I heard of a guy who ‘envisaged,’ a successful javelin toss, and that helped him to make ‘the perfect throw.’

He practiced it in his head. I heard of another guy, who spent a few years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement. He played three games of golf inside of his head, every day. He was a pretty good golfer when he got out. I kid you not. I wrung my head inside out for every idea I ever had regarding aerial combat. And I think it helped, in that I had gentled a few horses over the years.

(My horses didn’t do ‘tricks.’ They did their jobs, and I had to train them. But then, horses are smart, aren’t they?)

One of the most satisfying things was when one of the boys made a suggestion, and we adopted it straight away. And I remember teaching them the weave one day. That’s where two fighters flying about a hundred to two hundred yards apart break into one another, and shoot the bad guys off of each other’s tail. Then they reverse turns and take on two more planes.

To see the recognition dawn on their faces.

“Yes, that’s you and your wingman I’m talking about.” I instructed. “The same tactic will protect you from the enemy wingers, and you could probably shoot them down as well.”

“Simply reverse your turn, and try not to shoot each other down.” I added with a smile. “Remember who’s who, and you can deal with six or seven on your tails.”

That was satisfying. Also good for my peace of mind was to take them up, with Blue Section trying to shoot down Red Section, and to see that the boys in Blue Section did exactly what I told them to do. They had no trouble at all. Once back on the ground, the boys in Red Section were all clamoring for their turn.

It was good to see them laugh, and slap each other on the backs and say things like, “I got you, Snotty. Hah. Hah.”

It was still just a game to these fellows.

But they were learning.

A photo from another guy's book. My name is Will, not Bill, incidentally. The three guys behind are standing on a box. I was what, sixteen and a half or something...

 

***

 

It takes more than we have some days just to get the job done. We had a lot of trouble early in the war. We had more men than the enemy. They had more soldiers. This is an important distinction.

Flying hurts. You dive ten thousand feet in five or ten seconds, see how your ears feel. Eat the wrong little thing. Get up before dawn. Fly up to 18,000 feet. See how your guts feel. It’s not just the expanding gas in your bowels, ingested at 14.7 pounds per square inch. It’s the tension. (God, I used to love bangers and mash, but the sausages are full of bread and air, and the spuds whipped up to a froth. Tastes good, but it hurts like hell at high altitude.)

Until you let a ripping fart go in your cockpit, and wonder briefly as you search the sky, was it wet? Was it dry? Hope I didn’t shit myself. God, that feels good. And then the smell comes out around your neck when you land and open up the flight suit.

“Oh, yeah. I remember that one.” Said Snotty once.

“I won’t forget it in a hurry either, Snotty.” I griped. “Open a window in this place.”

At the time, many aspects of aviation were still a mystery, and many students found it difficult to understand control movements. I know it sounds too simple, right foot, right rudder, right turn, but it is the truth. Men were not birds, born to fly, but had to be trained, by someone who knew what they were doing. Smith-Barry was producing results, and my students were from that training system. They probably were vastly improved, even above and beyond where I was at that stage. But I was supplied with mostly rejects.

Think of Black, an older, intelligent man. He had no aggression, and no curiosity. Yet when I told him to do something, he tried this best to do it, and eventually he got better. Or Snotty, a scruffy little lad who always looked dirty, unshaven. Hair always uncombed, his feet always stank.

“Snotty.” I might ask. “How do you turn when you’re upside down?”

“Very carefully?” He would say.

“Look both ways?” And on, and on.

Was Snotty playing some kind of a game? I never did figure it out.

Maybe that’s why he got shoved onto me.

“Use the rudder, Snotty, use the rudder.”

It wasn’t a trick question.

And what about Andrew? Did he have an attitude problem, not the first one I ever ran across? The little bugger could fly like he was hatched from an egg, yet at times his smirk made me want to hit him. Sonny boy, there is nothing that you know that I don’t know.

Powell was fine. With him I couldn’t figure out why he was shoved off onto me.

Wrong religion, maybe. At that time, and for many years after, a Catholic could never go higher than sergeant in the Royal Army, no matter how competent, dedicated, even decorated.

Maybe somebody saw something that they didn’t care to put on his record. That does happen, oddly enough. He was a likeable guy, and he tried hard. But none of these men were what I would have chosen to work with. And maybe that was the point. Maybe that was the point. In any case, my job was to get them interested in their own training. To be their bloody father if necessary.

Not exactly hero material, most of us.

Smith-Barry’s school was the elite. Bob’s standards were very high. He expected the rest of us to live up to them. People who didn’t measure up were posted away. Maybe that was what had happened to me. Not the smartest career choice, but to make the best of it was the only option. It was sink or swim time.

The pressure built up as we went along. I had other problems as well, including maintenance of our aircraft, a shortage of fitters, riggers, metal-smiths, senior NCO’s, we had no non-flying officer to help with the paperwork. It all took too much time to organize. In the meantime, we concentrated on individual flying skills. We practiced spot landings.

Over and over, we practiced landings.

We practiced formation flying. We practiced with pairs of aircraft in combat with a single, ‘enemy,’ aircraft, (me,) and the truth was, the Germans were going to fly circles around some of these lads. I had no illusions about that, and I told them so. We began to fly at dusk and dawn, working towards night flying. We began with simple aerobatics, then strung them together in a little routine, like a dance. I set up a grading system and instituted Friday afternoon aerobatics competitions.

I brought in VIP’s, including our local Member of Parliament, the Vicar of the nearby village, a couple of lady singers from London night clubs, anything I could think of to motivate them. I seriously considered having a review put on for their parents, but these weren’t supposed to be schoolboys.

Here’s an example of rules for aerobatics:

‘A loop must have a constant radius. It must be flown in the vertical plane throughout. It starts and ends with a well-defined line. For a complete loop, this line is considered to be horizontal.’

A pilot isn’t proficient if he can’t read.

A Sopwith Pup, relegated to training duties.

I divided up our little aerodrome into areas, with, ‘no-fly zones,’ and a ‘flight-line,’ which was parallel to and above the main runway. Before you can toss your plane all over the sky like a mad demon, you have to learn to control it with ease and precision. When you make it look easy, then your instructor may begin to think you might, just possibly, become competent someday.

When they came close to achieving my standards, I raised the bar just a little higher. I was the best-son-of-a-bitching instructor anyone ever had in that war.

The boys worked it all out in their heads. They had to take their little models and work it out in front of each other and with each other’s help. No one taught me how to teach.

Simple act: when you do a loop in a cross wind, in order to stay over the flight line, use the rudder to correct for the crosswind. It sounds easy. People ‘agree’ with what you say. But do they do it? A man isn’t competent, until he can follow a simple instruction like that. My fliers were sloppy in some areas. It takes time. Under pressure, it couldn’t be a review of memory. It must become second nature. To always be aware of what you were doing. To instinctively know what the plane was doing at all times, and why, and to know what it was going to do next.

I honestly don’t give a shit if the student agrees or not. Does he understand? Does he really get it? Can he, or will he, follow a simple instruction? Does he listen, or is he a dangerous fool?

Another rule: ‘The entire flight must be flown within the aerobatic zone to avoid being penalized.’

You might be surprised by just how often people get lost doing aerobatics.

They get all intent upon their routine and then they just sort of drift off over the horizon. Imagine how an instructor feels when that happens.

‘Argh,’ doesn’t quite express it properly.

The rules were nice and easy to apply for our impromptu judges. The fact that we were so open about what we were doing, helped with security concerns. Any leaks would not come from here. I was the only one who knew our true mission, and it was a tenuous one at best. We had nothing in writing about being ‘out to get von Richtofen.’

That way the historians of the future cannot sit in judgment upon us.

If I fire a fourteen-inch shell and kill fifty men ten miles away, that’s a nice, anonymous little massacre, and the fact that so many die, regardless of skill or merit, that is horror.

If I ‘joust’ with a man like Lowenhardt, or Goering, or Voss, like some, ‘knights of the air,’ and if we see each other at the same time, and choose to engage, that’s a fair fight? Right? It’s, ‘gallant,’ and, ‘courageous.’

But if we send out three squadrons to shoot down the Red Baron, people will be shocked. Because it’s ‘un-fucking-sportsmanlike.’

Such is the insanity of war. Was it fair when von Richtofen shot down my friends?

Billy, with eleven hours on Pups? Jerry, with his observer, falling in flames over Bapaume? That was their first mission. Was that fair? I say kill the fucking bastard and have done with it.

Don’t have the stomach? Let me help. I’ll kill him. Let me do it. I don’t care if I rot in hell. He deserves it. I deserve it. We both deserve it.

Richtofen, von Krumholtz, a couple of others taught me the meaning of fear. And hatred. Too many good men were killed by their guns, for me to have any mercy on their souls.

I was prepared to play God. Especially with the Germans. As for my own boys, that was the price of leadership. Nothing can prepare you for that.

Manfred.

 

***

 

Our days were full.

After a long and exhausting search, with much burning of the candle at both ends and in the middle, I finally found what I was looking for. Zavitz, my good friend, tipped me off when I stopped into the old shop in London.

He was looking better, actually. Maybe our short little talks were a kind of catharsis.

Somewhere in the world was a person who understood him. Maybe he just functioned better as a drunk, or maybe just as a man with a couple of drinks in him...

After a brief visit, I walked out with a few names, one of which was a Captain Wheatley of the Military Aeronautics Directorate. This was an independent branch of the War Department. Another guy over at the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, but I’ve forgotten his name now. One of the contacts was of a more personal nature.

It was two days or so until Christmas. I sent all the team home, leaving our little aerodrome under the watchful eye of the twenty-odd soldiers provided for the purpose.

I wouldn’t be gone for long. The other men only had a few days off, just long enough for the train ride home. They got two days at home, then back again. Half of their leave was spent on a train.

All I wanted for Christmas was someone to do the paperwork. On the way to London, the cold just seemed to soak into my bones. I was on my motorbike. A stupid move. Be that as it may, my mind was racing all the time. You have to get away from people sometimes. Just to think, to work things out without distractions. The boys were nothing if not a distraction. After all those missions, freezing my ass off as an observer, then as a scout pilot, maybe I just thought better when I was half-frozen.

I was going to ask Betty to marry me. That was one hell of a step, for one such as I.

There are times when I must be the stupidest man in the world. I didn’t have a clue. I never saw it coming. It was like a machine gun bullet to the head. When I got home, she was in the parlor. He who hesitates is lost, and I didn’t hesitate. After taking off my coat, we kissed, and as she sat down, maybe something was different in retrospect, but I didn’t notice it at the time.

“How was your day, Will?” She asked.

There was hot food in the kitchen. It smelled good, but then so did she.

“Fine. Listen, there’s something I want to ask you…” I began. “Um, how was your day? (See. I’m not insensitive.) Honey, I was wondering, um…”

“I had a bad day, Will.” She murmured with downcast eyes.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing is wrong, Will.” She sighed.

Everything was wrong, I could tell that much.

“What the hell is wrong?” I asked.

She sighed, very deeply, but did not speak. She was avoiding my eyes.

Pulling the little blue velvet box out of my pocket, going down on one knee, the whole rigmarole. And I meant it, too. Maybe this would cheer her up.

“Betty, will you marry me?” I asked, which only proves just how slow I can be on the uptake sometimes.

I opened the box and took out the ring.

She said, “Oh, Will,” again.

It was not a good one, not a good, “Oh, Will…” as tears flowed.

Right about then her mom walked in from another room.

And another one bites the dust. 

...and another one bites the dust.


END

 

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

 

Images. That Louis guy, with a bit of help from the internet.

Author's Note. In the past, I might have used one GIF and maybe one video clip, in total. Clearly that's not good enough. We are with Captain Tucker after all. With this serialization, I made a conscious decision to more fully exploit all of the wonderful resources available, free to all, that are currently available. This includes Wikipedia, Youtube, personal or business websites when I link to an artist or other publisher. I would prefer not to have everything in grainy black and white, hence the colorful Stearman video. With pictures and sound, some solid story-telling, we are halfway to making our own movie. #Louis


Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his art on ArtPal.

Check out the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.