Chapter Forty-Three
Sakahaji
Sakahaji was flying number three with the Biffs. His winger, a good solid man. A good gunner, Johnny Strepp, volunteered as I knew he would when asked. Put him down in the report. Good man. Most of us prefer to stick with a pilot we know. In fact, I sort of wondered about his former pilot…?
Sakahaji, Andrew, Powell, Black and other pilots stood around the big briefing table, lit from above in the harsh glare. The tent smelled of a faint, musty odour. Wet canvas, they always smell like that when the sun hits them.
“Alrighty, then. The Biffs will approach the target in a wing formation, i.e. four groups of two airplanes strung out horizontally, like this.” I dotted in a quick sketch.
“This is Tucker’s Notation,” said Dawley, prodding Sakahaji gently with an elbow.
Familiarity breeds contempt, but the Prince was taking a real shine to Dawley. This was no big surprise. With Dawley being Intelligence Officer, and the Prince being the putative next of kin of a head of state, I guess you could say that old Sakahaji asked a lot of questions. Dawley could be relied on.
Earlier, I took Dawley aside and gently warned him not to go too far, without giving offense, or causing the Prince to ‘lose face.’
Refer the Prince to me, a nice safe policy for junior officers.
“Now, when attacked by enemy aircraft from behind, you immediately go to this position.” I told Sakahaji, as pretty much everyone else knew their job.
He watched my hands. Two fingers on the left hand climb, two on the right hand, dive.
“Since you’re the pair on the left, you climb, the two on your right will dive a little, and the two outer planes squeeze in a little.” I went on. “It’s a diamond pattern when viewed by the enemy.”
Dot-dot-dot-dot on the blackboard.
Simple gestures. He comprehends.
“Ah, so. The aircraft guns are well-placed for mutual support.” He acknowledged. “The man on top has his belly covered by friends. The men on the sides cover each other, and the men above and below, who also can see under the flanking planes.”
He nodded in approval.
“Now the beauty of this is when the enemy tries a kind of two-pronged attack. If you are attacked from the side, while being pursued from behind, simply turn into the threat and use the front guns while your observer continues to defend…”
“And it’s still a diamond formation.” He marveled.
“And, we always fly in pairs, staggered slightly back,” I added. “It’s like attacking a wall, with clear fields of fire for the four observer’s guns…kind of.”
“The elegance of simplicity.” He nodded wisely. “I am very impressed.”
“Now, I want you to imagine two pairs of aircraft, flying in line abreast, with each pair in our proper position. If someone attacks the right-hand pair, all they have to do is to turn towards their buddies, and then dive beneath them.” I went on. “Or climb above, but it takes longer. Your buddies turn towards them, or you, and initiate a head-on attack.”
The Prince drank it all in eagerly. If he remembered half of it, he was doing well.
“Two pairs of aircraft can take on a larger group, if properly handled, and the two-seaters are learning to roll inverted, so the gunner can engage targets under the tail.”
A quick half-roll and a dive, with your winger right there with you—it worked often enough. The Prince was impressed. We hadn’t shot anyone down yet using this method, but the enemy hated it. They could see the potential. As long as the gunners knew what to expect, they could anticipate the maneuver, and bring the gun to bear at the proper time.
“This is why you designed the stirrups in the back seat position?” He asked.
“Yes. That way the back-seater can stabilize the gun. After a plane takes a few hits to the fuselage, it’s all too easy to kick a foot out the side or the bottom.” I noted for his edification, “That’s a bad scene, man. I’ve done it myself.”
He nodded in all seriousness.
“Right now, we have the lowest casualty figures in the whole theatre.” Mentioned Howard-Smythe diffidently.
He was totally overwhelmed by the nobility, yet a sensible-enough man most of the time. He was hemming and hawing, clearing his throat, and very deferential.
“I’ve got a million of them.” I told the regal gentleman. “Today’s operation is pretty simple, but I’m honored to give you some idea of what we have learned.”
“I appreciate that.” He said with a smile.
My diplomatic skills were improving somewhat, under the pressure of having royalty knocking about the ‘drome.
Both Howard-Smythe and Bernie chided me on the subject once or twice, but oddly enough it was good old Sergeant Jaeckl who gave the best advice.
“Try shaking hands and grinning at them a little more. They’re people too, you know.”
Yes. And very, very dangerous.
Be that as it may, the whole wing was in the air within a half of an hour.
I liked Sakahaji. I just wanted to show him a good time, show him what we could do, hopefully without getting the man killed.
Ultimately a man’s fate rests in his own hands. And we make the best we can out of what we’ve got.
***
And another one bites the dust.
Our mission was pretty simple. Drop some bombs, take a few pictures, sweep the sky of enemy fighters on the way home. It was just pure blind luck that the Boche drafted in some new squadrons to oppose us.
I surveyed the panorama laid out for our breakfast table. The Western Front. I felt like a very rich eagle choosing from the menu. And who should I see, but that nasty little prick Aristides, the Renegade Greek, the Oedipus Complex mother-fucker.
Even better, he was alone, below me, focused on the fray below. He didn’t look up.
He probably thought it was the usual thing—one squadron on ground attack, one squadron for top cover. But we had four layers.
Aristides—he’s the one who liked strafing hospitals, even civilian hospitals, the one who bombed that sick children’s home, the home for terminally-ill kids.
The sick bastard. I had no pity as I rolled over, and totally forgot our mission.
His blue-fuselage and white winged-aircraft filled my gun-sights, but I wanted to get closer. Everything else in the world ceased to matter, as I peppered him with about forty rounds through the center section of the fuselage.
The plane started to burn, and as I pulled up and under and behind him, I could see the little fucking goof struggling in his cockpit.
“Don’t jump. Ride her down, you motherfucker.” I screamed into my facemask. “You fucking bastard.”
Aristides was the source, and the cause, of all of life’s woes. Put it all on him.
I wanted him to suffer. I didn’t want it to be too quick for the man. If you call that a man. More rounds, this time into the pale, white underbelly of his aircraft. I honestly couldn’t tell you what he was flying that day.
It might have been a Siemens-Schuckert D-1, a superior copy of the Nieuport 17.
Black, choking smoke whipped out and back from his plane as the fuel tank was fanned by the breeze of its passage. The vertical empennage is a little different, but that’s a minor detail.
He looked over the rim of the cockpit, and he made a little waving motion. Face and eyes inscrutable, unknowable behind his goggles and mask.
“Get back? You want me to get back?” I cried, then he jumped out and I saw the white blossom of his parachute.
As he hung there, watching me circle, I never even thought about it. I blew his head off from about eighty yards. The raising of his hands in prayer, asking for mercy? Was he asking for forgiveness? Don’t mean nothing to me, man.
I have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.
“Talk to God, pally.” I gently and slowly squeezed the trigger.
What was left of Aristides hung limp in the straps of his chute.
On the way down, his blazing aircraft narrowly missed Sakahaji and his Biff by about five feet. I never thought of that. Cause and effect, cause and effect.
What could I have done differently? That plane had to go somewhere. Just the risk that came with the job.
Still, it wouldn’t have done to lose the Prince too quickly, before he had time to earn a little glory. If there is such a thing.
I don’t feel like a hero, and I don’t feel like a monster.
It’s just my job. It’s nothing personal—just business. I don’t get paid much and I’ve never asked for a raise.
Should I have let him go home, and come back to work the next day, and shoot down some more of our boys? I expected no mercy from them little creeps when they were on my tail. And I gave no mercy.
It’s a shitty little world, sometimes. And down below, tens of thousands of men fought, and died, and were buried in the muck and filth.
Search the sky for more targets.
Lord, give us more targets.
This is what God created me for.
No one was more sure of that than I.
I was the right man, in the right place, and at the right time.
An abomination, just like all the rest.
I knew it, I accepted it, and my hands didn’t even shake anymore when I killed.
Just another busy day.
And then on the target, we patrolled overhead, with me and a few of the boys just sitting it out. The Camel Jocks shot down four enemy planes that interfered with our operations. They damaged several others, and the Biffs got involved on the fringes. We stayed where we were. My boys had good discipline. Exactly what I wanted to see. They do what I tell them—no more and no less.
We’re the best.
Many of our bombs went on the target, and the rest fell into empty fields.
I changed in those years, and everyone said I was a hero. They said it was a good thing, to be brave, and merciless. Why should I let him live? We had no parachutes.
When my guys caught fire, they would die, in agony, screaming for their mothers.
Did Aristides scream? I hope so. Scum like that don’t deserve to live. And they don’t deserve a nice, ‘comfortable’ death, either.
The French have a different attitude. But for an entire generation of Englishmen, ‘The War,’ was the greatest adventure of a lifetime. The Germans didn’t fight on their own soil, and as a Canadian, there were times when I wondered what God-damned difference did it make?
The French suffered, and they couldn’t even provide for their own refugees.
They were an unwanted burden, washed up on a thousand street-corners in every part of France. That’s the fucking truth—their own people could not, or would not help them.
Everything went into the quest for ‘Victory.’
What a shameful word.
The winners get to write the history books. Fifty years hence, if a German Imperial flag flew over the schoolhouse, or the courthouse, who among us could tell the difference?
The only thing we would know is what we were taught.
It might go something like this: ‘The nasty, evil British were attempting to dominate the world in some kind of hegemony. But the good, God-fearing, Germanic peoples stood up for freedom and right.’
And they saved the world.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Of course, we know the truth about what happened. Don’t we? Don’t ever question it.
You might lose your faith, and that is a troubling thing.
A person can lose faith in God, and live with it. To lose faith in your own kind, that is a kind of living hell. Take my word for it—I’ve been there.
***
The Prince had a few questions.
“If you captured him, would you have killed him in cold blood?” Sakahaji asked.
Actually, I’ve shot a prisoner in the middle of no-man’s land. At the time, I thought it was more merciful than dragging him home, having him interrogated, using none-too-gentle methods, then be left in the rain to die in shame and misery outside some field hospital.
We couldn’t save everyone, or take everyone prisoner. We couldn’t carry them all.
“Of course not.” I retorted. “But then he wouldn’t be coming back, either.”
No, he would get to sit out the war in a nice, safe prison camp. Maybe I would have shot him…I just don’t know.
“Anyway, it’s all just rumors, that military intelligence.” I pointed out.
“A man like that, I would have beheaded him in a heartbeat. And I would have had absolutely no regrets.” The Prince informed me.
That’s not much comfort. We all have to live with ourselves, after all.
And the culture he came from, with their Bushido, their Samurai tradition. They don’t surrender and dishonor themselves. Chopping an enemy soldier’s head off is just a normal part of doing business.
“Good work.” Sakahaji said as he patted me on the shoulder.
“If you hadn’t gotten him, perhaps he would have taken one of your men.” He added.
Yeah, I guess that is a possibility. I didn’t even hesitate—I just killed him. Without thought, or compunction, and with surprisingly little regret.
It was my own soul that I regretted. I was such a nice kid, before all this.
Yet it wasn’t revenge, even though his squadron had shot down a number of men I knew, and liked, and worked with.
It was a kind of prevention. Like bug spray. Kill ‘em before they breed.
That’s the only way. It’s the only way, sometimes.
Maybe I should have let Aristides live. Let him live with himself. The memories, the thoughts, the images. Every so often I have a dream—a dream about a headless man, with a parachute, landing on my farm.
I guess I earned that.
To live with myself, inside of my own head, with the memories, the thoughts, the images. Truly a fate worse than death.
It is something that each and every one of us, those who survived, have to live with.
And we can never talk about it.
People just don’t understand. They want heroes. They want glory. They wanted headlines. They wanted, ‘Victory.’
They’re content with their second-hand, unearned, vicarious honor.
May it bring you much joy.
END
Author Louis Shalako.
Images. Louis finds stuff on the internet.
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Thank you for reading.
