"Is that you, Dowsing?" I ask, recognising my servant.
"Yes, sir!"
"I'm just off on a raid. Fill my hot-water bottle about quarter-past
nine, and put it right at the bottom of the bed. If you think the fire
too hot move my pyjamas back a little."
"Good luck, sir!"
I pass on to the aerodrome. To the right is the mess, near which is the
control platform where the raid officer stands all night despatching
machines and "receiving" them as they return. A crowd of officers and
men, wrapped in heavy overcoats, stand in groups watching the departure
of the machines. In the middle of the aerodrome shine the lights of the
landing T of electric-light bulbs laid across the grass. To the left are
the vast hulks of the hangars, in front of which are lined up the
machines yet to go.
Passing by two machines whose engines are running, I come to my own.
Under its nose stand half a dozen mechanics. One hands me a piece of
paper.
"Wind report, sir!"
Flashing my torch on it I see it is a report of the speed and direction
of the wind at different heights up to 10,000 feet, information which
has been obtained by a small meteorological balloon whose drift has
been watched through an instrument on the ground.
Among the mechanics stands another figure as heavily muffled as myself.
"Are you my rear gunlayer?" I ask him.
"Yes, sir! Mr Jones told me to...."
The engine just above our heads is started up with a sudden deafening
thunder. I take the gunlayer by the sleeve towards the tail to hear his
message.
"Oh! Yes! You have never been on a raid. I'll tell you what to do. I
warn you Bruges is pretty hot, but, touch wood" (the tail-plane is
near), "if we are lucky we will come through. Mr Jones is a very good
pilot, and _I_ don't like taking any risks. Don't you get worried. It
will be all right. You know all about the Lewis guns, don't you? Good!
Well, if a German searchlight holds us, open fire on it at once. Only if
it _holds_ us, mind, not if it merely tries to find us, or the tracer
bullets will give us away. If a German scout attacks us, open fire on
him at once with your machine-gun. When I have dropped my bombs--you
will be able to see me in the front cockpit--shine your torch on the
back to see whether any have hung up. If one has stuck in the back
racks near you, get him through somehow,--stand on him if necessary. If
you want to say anything to me flash your torch over the top of the
fuselage--you know Morse code, don't you?--and I will answer you back in
Morse code. You'd better get in the back now. Don't worry! If you feel
frightened, remember I am just as frightened as you--if not more!"
He walks up towards the nose of the machine, stoops under the tail to
the rear of the main planes, and climbs up into his little platform in
the back. I walk round the wings to the front of the machine and, facing
the two propellers, walk slowly and carefully between their two whirring
discs until I come to the little step-ladder under the triangular door
on the floor. I walk up it, and with a certain amount of difficulty work
my unwieldy body and my various impedimenta through it, assisted by the
two engineers who have been starting up the engines from inside.
I suddenly remember the wind report, so I climb into the front cockpit,
and, shining my torch on the bomb-sight fixed in front of the extreme
nose, adjust it in accordance with the report, for I know from which
height I intend to drop my bombs--that height being the greatest
possible, as we are going to Bruges.
As I am turning the little milled adjusting wheels, the machine on our
right moves off with a sudden roar of power. I hurry back and sit beside
the pilot.
"Are you all right now, Paul?" he asks. "We are next off."
A wave of noise sweeps over to us from the middle of the aerodrome as
the next ahead, gathering speed, rushes across the aerodrome. We both
watch it with slowly turning heads.
Gradually the machine rises, and with a change of note roars up into the
sky above the farm buildings to the left.
A series of flashes from a signalling-lamp on the control platform. It
is the _next-machine-away_ signal. The pilot at once opens up the
engines. We move slowly across the grass, bumping and swaying as we pass
over the uneven ground. When we come to the end of the landing T, the
starboard engine is put on, and we swing round to the left till the line
of electric lights stretches ahead of us. The noise of the engine dies
away. The pilot takes his goggles out of a wooden box, which he hands
to me, and snaps them over his eyes. He straps himself in his seat with
a safety-belt, and pulls on a pair of fur-covered gloves.
"You quite ready, old man?" he asks.
"Yes!"
"We'll start off now! I think it will be all right; don't you?"
"Yes!"
Soon we are off the ground. Below the wings streak the little lights of
the cross-bar of the landing T. I can see the illuminated blades of
grass round the bulbs. We climb up and up, and clear with ease the roofs
of the farm buildings. Over the tall trees lining each side of a wide
canal we pass, and beneath us lie the coruscating scarlet and white
lights of a railway junction. I can see the fiery red smoke of a
locomotive moving down one line of tracks.
"What a target!" says the pilot. "Have a look at the engines!"
I switch on my torch and shine it on to the two engines, to see whether
the sinister white scarves of steam and water are sweeping back from the
top of the radiators. Fortunately, to-night the engines are working
splendidly. If either engine were to be boiling, after one or two
efforts to prevent it, the pilot would land the machine at once. If not,
disaster would probably follow, as it did during my last terrible raid.
For a while, as ever, I am a little nervous of looking below. I prefer
to hunch myself inside the big collar of my overall suit, and to make
continual adjustments of the petrol pressure, which is recorded on two
little dials whose pointers move slowly forwards or backwards in
accordance with my opening of the release or the pressure tap.
A thin pencil of light flashes upwards from the coast-line east of
Dunkerque. Four times it flashes--long, long, short, long. It goes out,
and one is conscious of the town wrinkling its forehead, listening
intently, uneasy, wondering. Again the searchlight stabs the sky four
times and goes out.
"Challenging some one at Dunkerque!" I remark to the pilot.
"Expect it is a Hun. We had better keep well clear of it!"
A third time the searchlight throws upwards its anxious inquiry, and
this time, still receiving no answer, it is not extinguished but moves
across the sky hesitatingly, nervously.
Flashes leap up from the ground at several places round the town. In a
few seconds the red sharp spurts of the bursting shells appear suddenly
in half a dozen places across the sky.
"Barrage!" mutters the pilot. "We'd better get clear away or we'll get
bothered. Here we are! They're shelling us! Fire! _Fire!_ We're only two
thousand up!"
I hurriedly push a green cartridge into the Very's light pistol and pull
the trigger. The explosion barks out, and a green globe of light drifts
below us. The shells, which had been bursting unpleasantly near us, now,
to our great relief, cease.
"Surely they can see our navigation lights! It's no good! We will have
to get height somewhere else!" grumbles the pilot, turning the machine
away.
We fly over to a "blind spot," and, climbing in great circles, see our
height indicator record in turn, three, four, and then five thousand
feet.
"Let's push off now!" says the pilot. "We're high enough!"
"Make it five thousand five hundred, old man! The wind is with us the
whole way! We want to be at six before we cross the lines if we are to
get up to nine by Bruges."
The patient pilot makes one more wide turn and then faces east, and
flies ahead on a direct course.
On the left the line of the sand-dunes edges the misty sweep of the sea.
In the north a strange sign is in the skies. Great streaks of white
vapour, resembling moonlit clouds, stream from the horizon towards the
zenith, spreading like the ribs of a fan. This beautiful vision of vast
scarves of light, motionless and majestic, hangs over the sea with a
splendid nobility, and, as we discover later, it is the sublime Aurora
Borealis.
Following up the stretch of sand-dunes I see near the lines the
twinkling lights in the hutments near Coxyde, and at the Nieuport piers
the occasional flash of a gun and the red burst of a shell. Here and
there along the floods rise and fall the tremulous star-shells. To the
right Ypres flickers and flashes, stabbing the horizon with incessant
daggers of flame.
When we are about seven miles from the trenches I crawl into the back
and press hard forward the fusing lever, which draws the safety-pins
from the bombs hanging in rows behind us. I tie up the lever with string
to make sure that it will not slip, and resume my seat beside the pilot.
We approach Furnes, and, as we expect, we see a pale white beam of light
leaping upwards in front of us, and vanish, and leap up again and
again--as it flashes the challenging letter of the night.
"All right! I'll give them a green!" I say to the pilot as I load the
Very's light pistol and fire it over the side. A green light drops, and
dies. Again the thin beam of light flashes its anxious challenge towards
us.
"Curse! I'm not going to fire another! Surely they can see us!" I say
irritably, having been rather worried by these searchlights before.
"Go on, Bewsh! You'd better fire another--they'll start shelling us!"
comments the pilot.
Meanwhile the searchlight, having received no satisfactory answer to its
inquiry, apparently, remains in the sky, where it is joined by its two
watery brothers who move querulously to and fro within half a mile of
us.
"Go on! Fire a light!" says the pilot.
"Oh, I'm fed up with these fools! It will only give warning to the
Germans. They won't find us! It's a waste of lights!"
"Fire a light--and don't talk!" orders the pilot.