"Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,
Where, underneath, the restless waters flow,
Silver and cold and slow...."
--_The Dawn Patrol._
Somebody shakes me by my shoulder, and I wake to the consciousness of a
dark room and a determined steward.
"Four o'clock, sir!"
I get out of my warm bed, very unwillingly, and dress lightly in a white
cricket shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a blue pea-jacket and a
muffler, and go out of the hut to the garage. Dawn is just breaking. The
sky is still bright with stars, and a moon is drowsily hanging like a
golden gong in the south-west. The air is extraordinarily fresh and
cold, and soon I am tearing joyfully through it on a clamorous
motor-bicycle. Down the road through the marshes I rush on my mile-long
ride to the sheds.
Outside the office I dismount and go inside the bare room, with its
charts and its long table, and meet the sleepy-eyed duty-officer, who is
wearing "gum-boots" and an overcoat over his pyjamas, and is obviously
looking forward to settling down once more to sleep. The duty-pilot
comes in after him, with a flying-cap on his head, and a muffler round
his neck, and a pair of gloves in his hand. A welcome cup of tea is
brought in by a massive bluejacket, and then I snatch up a life-belt, a
pair of binoculars, the Thermos flask and Malted Milk tablets, my
charts, and a few odd necessaries, and, accompanied by the pilot, I go
over to the slipway, at the end of which floats the seaplane, with its
wide white wings reflecting the pale light of dawn. A group of men in
great rubber boots stand in the water holding the wings.
When I get to the edge of the water I climb on to the back of one, and
he wades out into the water until I can stand on the float and climb up
into a seat in front of the pilot.
It is an ample seat--wide enough for three people--and I sit on a soft
cushion over a petrol-tank. The wireless sets, in varnished wooden
boxes, are fixed in position in front of me. My machine-gun is ready to
be fixed at a moment's notice, and I settle myself into the seat and put
down my various impedimenta and wait for the start.
The pilot in the back seat examines his instruments, and soon there is a
hissing noise as he turns on the compressed air. The propeller in front
of me moves round slowly. The engine fires and begins to start with a
roaring noise.
The propeller vanishes as it gathers speed, and I can see straight ahead
with an uninterrupted view.
The engine is tested with men hanging on to the wings. The pilot waves
his hand, the men leave go, and we begin to move out across the wide
harbour with its grey battleships and lean destroyers, and merchant
ships painted in strange patches.
The moon is growing paler now, and nearly all the stars have vanished
before the silver of the dawn. On our right is the outline of a
red-roofed harbour town, quiet and asleep. On the left are the great
sheds of the station, and the low green hills beyond. We face the wind.
The engine recommences its roar, and the seaplane begins to move quickly
across the water with a steady noise. Faster and faster it rushes on,
then begins to leap from wave-top to wave-top until we rise into the
air, and move at a rushing pace just over the pale oily water.
The roar of the motor is soon registered no more by my ear, lulled by
its perpetuity. I find it glorious to be winging my way into the heart
of the dawn over the silver water. Above a long floating boom we pass,
and turn east towards the wide misty level of the sea. Ahead of me in
the haze burns a red-eyed sun, looking hot and only half awake.
Far to my left and far to my right is a faint grey coast-line as we move
up the widening estuary. I bring out a little blue-covered note-book,
and sharpen a pencil and prepare to record the name, nationality, and
type of every ship, with a brief note of its cargo, course, and
characteristics.
Through the haze suddenly appears a little group of ships anchored round
a stout red lightship, with its great lantern at the top of the mast and
the cheery white-painted name on its side.
My pencil is very busy as we sweep round in circles, while I make notes
of the different types of ships. Neutral ships being luridly decorated
with painted colours and their names in enormous white letters, are
easily recorded. It is somehow very dramatic to see a great steamer loom
through the mist, and to read _Jan Petersen-Norge_ or _Hector-Sverige_
on its black sides as it sweeps majestically under the seaplane, its
churning propeller leaving a wide lane of white bubbling foam.
It gives such a splendid idea of far-flung commerce--of nation linked up
with nation by these loaded ships. You realise how the forests of
Scandinavia have been despoiled to fill these decks with the towering
piles of clean fair wood. There is something in the passing of the great
ship proclaiming its nationality and origin in such bold characters that
seems like the triumphant note of an organ.
Yet these signs are the heartfelt appeal of an apprehensive and
vulnerable vessel, hoping against hope that the vivid stripes of colour
and the proclamation of nationality will protect it from the cruel,
greedy submarine.
Then we leave the little crowd of anchored ships below and sail on into
the mist to the lonelier levels of the sea. Now and then we overtake
some heavily-laden freighter, low in the water, pounding outwards on its
hazardous journey, its plain unlettered sides showing that it is a
vessel of the Allies.
In front of me I wind a little handle. This causes the wireless set to
connect with the engine, and the little motor revolves rapidly. I press
the brass key, and a blue spark spits and splutters inside one of the
boxes. Then I call up the seaplane station far behind me in the mist and
record my position. Putting the telephone-receiver over my ears, I hear
above the roar of our engines the sharp staccato signals of some warship
below us on the grey sea. As I move a lever round a series of studs I
hear it more clearly or more faintly as I get more or less in "tune"
with it. Then I remove the receiver, having tested the wireless
instruments and found them correct, and once more look over the side to
the chilly sea.
We fly over three or four little trawlers steaming slowly along,
dredging the waterway for mines. Then over two leaning masts of some
wreck, which pierce the water like thin lances. Next we pass above a
Belgian relief ship, advertising its nature by means of innumerable
placards and flags and colours, which are yet not sufficient to keep it
immune from the Germans and their unreliable promises. Now it is a
familiar line of mud-hoppers carrying a load of dredged mud to some deep
dumping-ground. Now over a couple of lean grey torpedo-boats, nosing
everywhere, carefully and suspiciously, protecting the Channels.
So at times over ever-varying craft, and at times over grey wet
loneliness, we travel on in our long patrol, until at last the squat red
shape of a lightship appears through the haze, and we know that we have
reached the limit of our outward journey. We sweep low over the isolated
vessel, wave our hands to the men on board, and start to return home by
a different route, and roar on over mile after mile of water glittering
in the sun, which is slowly dissipating the mist of early morning.
Soon a group of ships are met steaming along towards us, and I recognise
the vessels which I had seen anchored together waiting for the dawn.
They are left behind us, and we regain the land from which we started.
Over the sleeping seaport town we pass, and can see its red and brown
roofs lit by the sun, and its empty streets. Then we sweep over the
harbour, the pilot turns the machine round to face the wind, and the
roar of the engine stops. We begin to glide down slowly, drawing nearer
and nearer to the water. Just above the surface of the glittering waves
we rush, touch it with a long splash, and slowly pull up and stop,
floating once more in the harbour. The engines roar out again, and we
"taxi" quickly over the little waves in long even jolts towards the
slipway, where the men are waiting to help us ashore. When we are
alongside they walk out to us in their waterproof thigh-boots and carry
me on to the slipway.
I walk quickly through the hangars across the grass-covered lawn to the
office, and sitting down at a typewriter begin to transcribe at once the
notes I have written in my little blue book.
6.40. British cargo steamer, 5000 tons, steering S.W. Two
patrol boats steering E.
6.45. Norwegian wood steamer _Christiania_, 3000 tons,
steering W. in East Deep--
I write, and one after another I visualise the vessels as I record their
positions for the benefit of the authorities.
As soon as the report is finished I give it to a messenger, who takes it
down to the motor-boat which is waiting to carry it to a warship. Then I
rush across the marsh on my motor-bicycle to the mess, and to a late but
welcome breakfast.
The small amount of impression left by any particular flight is
remarkable. If in the middle of the breakfast some one had said, "You
have been fifty miles out to sea, charging through the air at sixty
miles an hour, this morning!" I should almost have been surprised, and
might have denied it. After your return you quickly forget the voyage
you have made. I found the same in night-bombing. You are called away at
dinner after beginning your soup. You go to Ostend, drop bombs, and
return and carry on with the fish. By the time your are helping yourself
to the vegetables you have a vague remembrance of a disturbed dinner,
but little more.
You have a distant memory of innumerable searchlights waving like long
weeds in an evil pool, and of the dim sweep of the Belgian coast, with
the star-shells of Nieuport; but it is like the faint remembrance of a
weird dream, and little more.
This brief description of a seaplane patrol is an introduction to the
portrayal of a night-flier's existence, because these flights over the
sea were the prelude to my flying among the stars, and I found in them
the strange allurement that I found later, in an even greater degree, in
my night journeys.
It is a glorious sensation to roar on, a few hundred feet above the sea,
with a white clinging mist all around in a vapoury circle, knowing by
instinct where you are, and looking ahead for the little chequered buoy
or red lightship to appear at its due moment; to hear the pilot's
shouted inquiry, and to write "The Cat" or "Deep Sands" or "King's
Channel" or "Long Deep," or one of those splendid-sounding sailor's
names, on a piece of paper for him; to fly low over the lonely
lightship, and wave a dawn greeting to the watchmen on the deck; to see
a long British submarine rise dripping, to welcome the morning, from its
all-night sleep far below the restless waters; to fly like a gull,
flashing white wings towards the flaming East.
I found the same delight in poring over my charts and drawing a line
right out to sea and back again, as later I found in checking on the map
the villages and bridges over which I passed on my way to Bruges and
Ghent.
Once or twice I had a forced landing at sea. One incident is peculiarly
vivid in my memory. Lightly clad, I flew on the seaplane about fifteen
miles from land. There was a flaming sunset, and it was growing dark. We
were about to turn when the engine began to splutter and pop. The pilot
tried to cure its disease, but it was in vain. He throttled the engine
back and slowly glided down. The few scattered ships and the dim line of
coast slowly disappeared as we drew nearer to the surface of the water,
and when we finally landed we were out of sight of any ship at all.
The pilot climbed on to the floats and tried to start the engine again
by swinging the propeller, but with no success. Meanwhile it was growing
darker. The red and orange splendours of the West were rapidly dying
away before the creeping shadows of the East. The calm oily water
reflected strangely the afterglow. As I sat on the float, the water
lapped melodiously against it, and the shoals of jellyfish which passed
by seemed to be jeering at me.
There were no ships in sight, and a cold night wind began to come across
the quivering, shining surface of the sea, and the horizon vanished in a
faint haze.
The pilot loaded his Very pistol with a cartridge and fired it. A great
ball of white fire sailed through the air and dropped hissing in the
water.
Meanwhile, in our scant clothes we were getting cold. Soon it would be
quite dark, and we had only half a dozen signal lights left, while we
were slowly drifting, we knew not whither, with the tide.
Every quarter of an hour the pilot fired a white Very's light. I found
it very lonely sitting in the drifting seaplane, surrounded by a misty
circle of water, with darkness creeping over the sea.
After some time we saw, far away, a red moving light. At once the pilot
fired another signal. The red light moved on and drew nearer to us. Soon
we could see the shape of the boat on which it was, and to our joy
realised that it was a British destroyer. After a good deal of
manoeuvring it drew alongside us. We hailed it and shouted our
explanations. A boat was lowered from the destroyer, and rowed over to
us carrying a hawser. When we had fastened this to the seaplane we got
into the boat, and were rowed to the waiting vessel.
The commander explained that we had landed in the midst of sandbanks,
and that it had been a difficult matter to draw near to us.
Soon we were dining in the little mess, and we were very glad to get
under cover again, and to have something to eat. The "skipper" was most
hospitable, and afterwards, I am ashamed to say, we played "Slippery
Ann," and won some money off him.
At last we arrived once more in the harbour. A motor-boat left the
slipway, and we were towed ingloriously ashore at about 11 o'clock.
There is an element of uncertainty in seaplaning, as in every branch of
flying. There is the case of a seaplane which landed at sea with engine
trouble. A German submarine came alongside and took the two unfortunate
airmen aboard, and sank the seaplane, so that shortly afterwards the two
officers who had been flying through the air were under the surface of
the sea.
I remember another incident that happened during the attack on Verdun,
which will demonstrate how an extraordinary chain of adventures may come
swiftly and unexpectedly to an airman engaged on the most normal routine
work.
One day five machines were to fly from one aerodrome in France to
another one about fifty miles away. Both the aerodromes were well behind
the lines. The leading machine was piloted by a man who knew the
country "inside out," and so the last man of the formation knew that if
he were to follow his lead he would be all right. It was an extremely
cloudy day, and when they had drawn near to the new aerodrome, the last
pilot lost sight of the other four machines in the clouds. He flew on
for a little while, and climbed up through the barrier of vapour until
he was above it. Then, to his joy, he saw ahead of him the four
machines, which were flying several miles away, resembling little black
dots.
After a time he drew close to them, and, to his great astonishment, they
dived down on him, firing their machine-guns. Suddenly he saw that they
were marked with the German mark--the black cross. Realising that he was
hopelessly outnumbered, as he was on a comparatively slow machine, he
put his nose down and tried to get away. He was flying east towards the
German lines, but he could not turn, for every time he looked back he
saw these four machines just behind his tail, firing frantically at him.
At last he outdistanced them, and they turned away. He flew on under the
deep blue of the sky, and over the sunlit white fields of cloudland,
which lay like a tumbled carpet of cotton-wool beneath him, as far as he
could see.
He looked at his watch, and saw that he had been flying east for twenty
minutes, so he turned and flew due west, towards the French lines. He
flew for another ten minutes to make sure of regaining his own lines,
and then, throttling his engine, he glided down towards the barrier of
cloud. He reached it, and flew for several minutes through damp grey
vapour, and at last burst through, and saw the sunless world below.
He looked round for an aerodrome in which to land, and in a few minutes
saw a line of hangars some miles distant. At once he turned towards
them, and when he was a mile away, he throttled his engine and began to
glide down in order to land. He sailed just over the roofs of the
hangars, floated a few feet over the grass, and was just about to land
when he saw that the machines lined up by the sheds were marked with the
black cross. It was a German aerodrome.
Even as he started up his engine and rushed across the grass, the German
mechanics climbed into the back seats of the aeroplanes and began to
fire at him, while other men started up the engines. Very soon several
machines were pursuing him. He dare not climb, for he would lose speed,
and would not be able to escape. He flew on, due west, twenty feet or so
from the ground, dodging round farms and trees, and now and then jumping
over houses, while a mile behind him the German scouts followed him in
this strange steeplechase.
He realised now that the wind high up had been blowing strongly due
east. It had taken him a long way over the lines, and so he had not
allowed himself enough time to get back before he had dived through the
cloud-bank.
Again he managed to escape in the chase, and left the pursuing
aeroplanes far behind. Ahead of him he could see a line of curling smoke
and vapour, with here and there little white puffs of smoke in the air.
He was drawing near the lines, and evidently there was an action of some
kind in progress. Soon he reached the belt of desolation, of broken
houses, shell-torn trees, and devastated fields. Machine-guns on the
ground began to fire at him. He could hear their staccato hammering, and
could see the flaming streak of the bullets passing by him.
Now he could hear, too, above the roar of the engines, the thud and
crash of the shells and of the guns. Everywhere below were great spouts
of smoke and earth leaping up as shell after shell burst on the ground.
The air was full of the shrapnel barrage against the infantry. Once he
had a sudden inspiration to pull back his control-stick. The machine
shot up into the air, and he saw just beneath the smoke-burst of a
shrapnel shell. If he had continued on a straight course he would have
been hit by it, and probably brought down.
Below him he saw something extremely interesting. In the sunken roads
and shattered fortifications near Douaumont were masses of grey-green
soldiers. The Germans apparently were gathered for an attack. He noted
where these men were, and flew on across the shell-torn area behind the
French lines, and landed as soon as he could. The machine ran into a
shell-hole and crashed. He crawled out of the wreckage and stumbled
across the churned-up ground to the nearest headquarters and reported
what he had seen. Immediately action was taken by the French, the
counterattack was forestalled, and the whole course of the battle was
changed.
Soon afterwards the airman reached the aerodrome without his machine,
and found he had been reported as missing.
That such an extraordinary chain of adventures can come to a man
unexpectedly shows vividly the uncertainty and the romance of flying.
The night-bomber, as he leaves his aerodrome, never knows whether, when
dawn comes, he will be in his bed at the camp, or in a Dutch guard-room,
or hiding in a German wood.
For several months I led an agreeable placid life at the seaplane
station. At dawn or at dusk I flew over the sea on my long solitary
flights. During the day I wandered round the station, learning about the
machines and the engines, and spending many hours in the wireless hut,
with the vulcanite receivers over my ears, hearing ship after ship
sending its messages in a variety of notes--some high-pitched whines;
some urgent, impetuous; some tremendously loud--great cruisers
thundering their unquestionable commands; some faint and remote from
lonely vessels far away on distant seas.
Wireless telegraphy is a romantic thing. I remember one night walking
down a path at a Naval Air Service Station in England and passing a
lighted window in a little hut. Some one handed to me through the window
a pair of telephone receivers attached to a twisted cord. I put the
receiver over my ears and heard the regular scratch, scratch, scratch of
the Morse Code.
The operator inside told me that it was a German merchant sending
messages from a wireless station outside Berlin to a friend in Madrid,
and in that quiet dim path in England I was overhearing their
conversation.
One day I was unexpectedly summoned to the Commanding Officer of the
Squadron. He handed to me a printed sheet of paper. To my surprise it
ordered me to report to No. X Wing (Handley-Page Squadron).
I could hardly realise it at first. I thought that many months of this
quiet dreamy life lay before me. I expected no transfer, and at any rate
not to this most strange of all squadrons. In those days a Handley-Page
was a freak machine that was a topic of conversation in flying circles
everywhere.
A Handley-Page then seemed a grotesque giant. There had been no
intermediate steps between small machines and this Colossus, which
rumour had it could carry twenty-two men. It was as though a
fifty-storey sky-scraper, as large as the Woolworth Building in New
York, had suddenly been erected in London.
I had seen, at my training aerodrome, the first of these great machines
looming in its hangar. I had clambered over it with astonishment. I had
been one of a large crowd which had stood on the aerodrome, and had
wondered, as the great structure moved clumsily across the grass, if it
really would mount in the air. I had seen it rise and roar round the
aerodrome with its deep, double throbbing note, and had gone away full
of excitement, proud to have been there.
Little did I imagine that I was to be on the very first which flew to
France, and that I was to be on the pioneer squadron of the gigantic
night-bombers.
So when I received my orders, I packed my bags a little bemusedly, and
with a sad heart left the little harbour, the rows of seaplane sheds,
the mess, and my friends--taking away many a memory of quiet days in the
marshes, and of almost ecstatic dawn patrols over the grey and silver
levels of the North Sea.
I was going on to unknown destinies and unknown destinations. I knew the
familiar sensation every man in the service going to a new place must
feel so often--of leaving a certain existence and going on towards an
uncertain one.
Although I did not know it, I was going to a year and a half of
adventure, of travel, of war and excitement--I was going to a romantic
and strangely appealing life, full of successes and disappointments,
full of dreams and realities. The gods had smiled on me, and were
leading me to the fantastic and fascinating work which I would have
chosen above all others in the world--Night Bombing.