"Did you hear that? Any one awake?" I call out softly.
"That you, Paul--what can it be?" answers a voice in the darkness from
some near-by cabin.
"I'll go and see."
I step out of bed and walk to the door at the end of the hut. In bare
feet and thin pyjamas I look straight out to the east, but faintly
lighter than the dark skies above in which the stars still shine
undimmed. The night is very cold and silent. On the left of Dunkerque a
few pale searchlights move slowly across the sky. I see a few flashes
and then hear the sharp reports of the guns. It must be an air-raid.
I hurry into bed again and call out: "Can't see much! must be a raid!"
and then begin to drop off to sleep, when again I hear the wail of the
hooter, followed by the dull reverberating crash.
Sleep comes with difficulty. Again and again I become conscious of
tumult in the real world beyond my dreams. Again and again I hear the
distant thunders. When I next wake it is getting light, so I walk to the
door of the hut. Outside I now can see the flat countryside, desolate in
the greyness of early morning. To the left are the towers and chimneys
of Dunkerque, and on the little road running past the aerodrome are a
few rough carts, piled high with bundles and shawled women, leaving the
town.
_Zoop-zoop_ wails the syren. Out leaps the sudden roar of an explosion,
and suddenly I see towering high above the roofs a tall column of dust
and smoke, from which little black fragments are dropping back in a
shower.
"Bob! Bob!" I call out.
A sleepy "Hullo!" answers me behind my back.
"They're shelling Dunkerque! It must be a fifteen-inch gun!"
The pitiful column of refugees, of women taking their children and a few
precious bundles of clothes, or articles of furniture, away to some
place of safety, rapidly increases.
As far as you can see the road is dotted with the little groups. Some of
the poor people are riding; some follow a cart; some push perambulators.
Again the syren wails; again the tall plume of black smoke shoots up
near the town; again the shower of wreckage drops from it.
Sleep is impossible. I get up and dress, and go to the mess for
breakfast. We now know that the shells are bursting every seven minutes,
and when six minutes have passed we talk less, and listen, and wait.
There is the sudden crash, and through the window can be seen the earth
shooting up in a field a little to our side of the town. The next shell
is only a few fields away. I hurriedly finish the meal, and walk out of
the mess to go to a hangar at the other end of the aerodrome, whose
erection I am supervising.
I have just left the camp behind me, and am beginning to walk across the
great field, when, in the very middle of it, some two hundred and fifty
feet away, appears a solid black fountain of smoke and earth, quite
seventy feet high. I stand transfixed with amazement and excitement as
the roar of sound sweeps by me, and a few seconds later I hear the
remote boom of the gun, twenty-eight miles away, near Ostend. The earth
drops down again, the smoke clears, and I run panting across the ground
to the low heap of earth which I can see in the distance, above the
grass.
When I get there I find there is a huge crater some thirty-five feet
across and twelve or fifteen feet deep. At the edge are two pilots, who
shout breathlessly--
"We've got the base-plug! Look here! Don't touch it--it is almost red
hot!"
There in the yellow loam lies the drum of clean white steel marked with
the symbols M 38 and a crown. I touch it with a wettened finger and hear
a quick hiss. The metal is unbearably hot still, and it is small wonder
when it is realised that it has travelled twenty-eight miles, and risen
and dropped thirty-three thousand feet in a little over a minute. Though
it is only the base-plug, it is some twelve inches across, and later,
when cold, requires removal in a wheelbarrow into which two men can
scarcely lift it.
Meanwhile I search eagerly for fragments. I find half-hidden a twisted
piece of metal, and am just about to lift it when the syren in the docks
gives warning of the approach of the next shell. Taking advice from the
axiom that a shell never falls twice in the same place, we slide down
into the crater and wait, a little nervously. We hear the dull boom of
the explosion, and scrambling to the top, see to the south of the
hangars a cloud of smoke rapidly disappearing. The wind is evidently
causing the shells to deviate, as they are falling farther and farther
away from the town. The German spotting machines have been driven away
by the British scouts, and so the gunlayers at Leugenboom (descriptive
name!) are trusting to luck, as their early shells were so successful.
One of the first, indeed, struck the Casino at Malo clean in the middle,
and cut a slice out of it as with a knife. Only the previous night a
divisional headquarters staff had moved into it, and thought it a rare
billet after weary days behind the lines in the French sectors further
south. Dawn brought to many of them a swift and unexpected death.
Carrying my hot lump of steel in my handkerchief I hurry over to the
skeleton of the semi-erected hangar. The men, only naturally, seem
little inclined to work. For five minutes they stand to their duty, and
then, as the hooter blows, I give the order to take cover, and they go
down the sides of the canal until the crash of the explosion shows that
the menace has passed.
The French have very quickly organised the hooter system. Some one says
that a look-out at the lines, on seeing the flash of the gun, presses a
button which rings a bell in Dunkerque. The signal is sent on to the
man in the light-ship at the docks, and he pulls the string of his
syren. The complete operation only takes some ten or twelve seconds, and
as the shell is travelling for well over a minute it gave ample warning.
As a matter of fact, such a system, if it does exist, is not necessary,
as the shells are falling at an exact interval of just over seven
minutes.
The order is now given by the C.O. for work to be abandoned, and for the
men to take cover. With one of the pilots I make a tour of the
neighbourhood, examining the shell-holes in the surrounding fields. The
columns of earth and smoke shoot up at regular intervals some half a
mile away, and we do not trouble much about them.
I return to the aerodrome and, meeting another friend, walk back across
the field. A whistle is blown.
"That's old Charlie!" he says. "He's sitting in the canal with a
stop-watch and a whistle. The C.O. put him on to it. Let's sit down till
it has gone off!"
I suggest going on, as we are just as safe anywhere. He sits down on the
edge of a small patch of growing corn; I sit beside him. Suddenly, while
we are arguing whether we should go on or not, I seem to see something
through the back of my head. I look quickly round, and there, towering
some eighty or ninety feet high, only a few yards from us, is a tall
fountain of black earth and uprising smoke, like the great genie which
whirled upwards from the bottle in the fairy story.
"A shell--lie down!" I yell, and throw myself face forwards on the
ground with my hands over the back of my head. In the moments of waiting
before anything happens, I realise that I cannot be killed by the actual
explosion of this shell although it is so near, as I have lived to see
it, and then ... thump, thump, on my arms, my back, and my legs the
pieces of earth begin to beat. They are heavy and, since they are
dropping from some fifty feet or more, are very painful. The dust and
stones rain down all over me and all round. I can hear the returning
earth thundering on the ground. Faster and faster come the blows upon
me; it is very much like being caned, and I know that at any moment a
heavy piece of metal may drop and crush my skull. I cannot get up and
run; I am in some way hypnotised. Beside me I am conscious of my friend
cowering close against the ground as well. For seeming hours the hail of
missiles continues, and I receive some very severe blows. At last it
ceases. We scramble to our feet and begin to run away through the smoke,
and then the eternal instinct grips us. We turn, and run back to get
souvenirs from the crater. The size of it staggers us. It is almost big
enough to put a motor omnibus in ... and the place where we were sitting
is only a few feet away from the edge of the hole.
"By Jove, Milly! We are lucky! It's a good thing it's a fifteen-inch
shell. If it had been a small bomb the splinters would have killed us!"
We slither and slide to the bottom of the pit and gather fragments of
steel. The shell seems a very personal one to my mind, as it has fallen
within five feet of me when it was fired twenty-eight miles away. As I
turn over a piece of hot metal with my foot it is difficult to believe
that that piece of metal ten minutes ago was near Ostend, and now it is
here at Dunkerque. I seem to see the portly German sergeant-major in his
grey-green uniform pressing the lever on the great gun to cause the
mighty explosion which hurled that shell, which is as tall as me and
weighed a ton, nearly thirty miles. Even now the coatless gunners sweat
at the loading of the next shell into the grooved and shining breech.
We have decided that the canal bank is safer, and we hurry in that
direction. It is lined with mechanics and officers, sitting low down
near the edge of the water. My pilot greets me with mingled reproof and
joy. He had seen me stagger out of the smoke of the shell rubbing the
more bruised portions of my body, and thinking I was wounded he had sent
off for the ambulance.
It is rather amusing in the canal. At the end of five minutes some of us
become restive, and climb up to the top and walk about. "Charlie,"
dapper as usual, with his monocle screwed in his eye, sits looking at
his watch.
"Six minutes!" He says, "Now then, some of you blighters, do you want to
get killed?" He lifts the whistle and blows. Leisurely, but not too
slowly, we walk down the side of the bank and make ourselves
comfortable. We look at our watches. Six minutes and a half have passed
since the last explosion. Now comes the uneasy time. We know the
gigantic shell will explode somewhere near us in thirty seconds. There
will be no warning whistle or sound of any kind. We will simply have to
wait. Such precautions and nervousness in regard to shell-fire on active
service may sound strange, but it must be remembered that we are
twenty-two miles behind the lines, and so have been far, far beyond the
range of shell-fire. We have had no previous experience, and there are
no dug-outs of any real use for our protection.
The seconds slowly pass. People cease talking. Then, somewhere--its
position cannot be located by the ear--there is a dull thud. That is the
shell actually striking the ground. It has a delay fuse of a fraction of
a second. Then the roar leaps out and dies. We rush up to the top of the
bank and see the column of smoke just on the other side of the mess. A
few seconds later the stones and earth come rattling down on to the
roofs of the hangars and huts.
So passes the morning. As soon as a shell bursts the C.O. despatches an
officer on a motor-bicycle to its position, if it is near any farm
buildings, to see if he can render any assistance. This is a very good
scheme, for on the left we can see thin red flames, flickering palely
in the sunlight, rising from a farmhouse. Another big barn on our right
later receives a direct hit, and when we visit it we find the labourers
frantically throwing aside great bales of hay, under which is buried an
unhurt cow.
At last the shelling stops, and in a little while work is resumed. In
half an hour or so the syren wails out again, and it is thought that
Leugenboom has once more fired. This is not the case, however, for
against the pale blue of the sky we see the tiny white puffs of shrapnel
smoke. The noise of the anti-aircraft batteries grows louder and nearer.
More and more white puffs appear in the sky, but we cannot see the
machine. At last some one shouts, "There it is!" A little, almost
transparent, white shape crawls infinitely high over our heads. The
shells are nowhere near it, and it is hard to keep it in sight. It is
some four miles high, and is a photographic machine which has been sent
over to make records of the damage done by the shelling.
As with craned necks we watch this little bird-shape, so far from its
own friends, it is strange to think of the two little muffled figures
high up there, probably very frightened, but going on to do their work.
I, at any rate, have a secret hope they will get back. On and on the
aeroplane moves away from its lines. The guns around us crash and bark,
the seconds pass, and one, two, three, the white shrapnel puffs leap
into existence and rapidly enlarge into thin vapoury clouds. There is a
continuous roar of the engines of the scout machines which, with their
tails well down, are climbing upwards as fast as they can, to attack the
machine above.
The pallid bird turns slightly and passes over our heads, photographing
the vicinity of our aerodrome. The shrapnel comes tinkling on to the
roofs of the camp, and now and then, with a long, rapidly growing
whistle, a "dud" shell or large fragment of steel drops near us.
After a leisurely quarter of an hour the German machine turns to the
east and rapidly increases its speed noticeably, with its nose down and
the wind driving it homewards. Soon we can see nothing but the distant
shrapnel puffs. The machine has gone, with the precious plates in its
camera, to a remote aerodrome near Ostend.
"Bob" comes to me and says he is going to test his machine, and offers
to let me take control. Soon we are three thousand feet over Dunkerque,
and I can see dotted around the fields the great craters of the
shell-holes and smoke rising here and there from fires in the town
itself. After a while he says--
"Like to fly her now? I'll get right into the wind. Slip into my seat
quickly when I get out!"
He carefully turns the machine till it is facing the wind, takes his
hand off the wheel to test the stability, alters direction slightly, and
feeling satisfied pulls back the throttle. The noise of the engines dies
away as the machine begins to glide downward. He stands up on the rudder
and I crawl in behind him and sit on his seat. He moves his body to the
left so that I can grasp the wheel, and as soon as he takes his feet
from the rudder I place mine firmly on the foot-rests of ribbed rubber.
With my hands and feet on the controls, I sit in the huge machine as we
glide downwards singing. The speed indicator creeps back to thirty-eight
miles an hour.
"Shove her nose down--keep it at fifty, you fool!" the pilot yells.
Forward goes the wheel, and the fingers of the height indicator creep up
to fifty-five. I find I can easily steer the machine, and it is no more
difficult than the little Curtiss's of old days at Luxeuil.
"Shove on the engines now,--slowly!" orders the pilot.
I catch hold of the aluminium throttle and push it slowly forward. The
engine wakes to energetic life. I am conscious of the new forward
impulse given to the machine, and the rudder begins to vibrate
frantically beneath my feet. The country in front of my eyes begins to
sway to the right. I am slipping. I try to remember which to turn to the
right in order to convert it--the wheel or the rudder. I move the wrong
one, and the country sways to the right still more and more. I get
excited and push the nose down and turn the wheel over, and at last,
amidst the curses of the pilot, regain a more or less even balance.
I then try to make a turn. I push the rudder to the right, and it goes
hard over. As a result the machine slips violently, and the little
bubble in the "slip tube" rushes from the centre and tries to creep out
of one end. I fling over the wheel to reduce the slip, and the machine
banks terrifically, but a little more accurately, for the reluctant
bubble returns towards the middle of the tube. The pilot curses more and
more luridly, but I have learnt the lesson that the rudder has to be
allowed to go over a little way, instead of being pushed over, as it has
a natural tendency to go hard forward on one side or the other. For a
while I fly the machine fairly decently, to my great joy, and then I
change places with the pilot, who, to instruct me, does some steep
banks, but so accurately that not only does the bubble remain motionless
in the middle of its tube, but a little wooden rabbit-mascot, which I
stand on a shelf inside the machine, does not fall over, though we are
at an angle of some sixty-five or seventy degrees to the ground.
We glide gloriously down through the sunlight and land on the aerodrome,
avoiding carefully the three deep craters.
There is an interesting interlude before lunch which gives a momentary
agony to many of us. An American flies over to the aerodrome and begins
to carry out the wildest acrobatics with his fast "Spad" machine. He
dives downwards till he is moving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour,
flies at that speed a few feet over the ground between two lines of
hangars, and shoots vertically upwards and rolls the machine over and
over in every possible way. For five minutes or more he does this,
growing ever and ever more reckless and daring. Then he climbs up, up,
and up, and over the middle of the aerodrome stops still and dives
downwards in a steep spiral. Faster and faster drops the machine till it
is spinning like a leaf. Lower and lower it drops in a terrible mad
whirl ... and vanishes behind the hangar without changing its direction
or coming under apparent control. There is a groan from those who have
seen the tragedy. Every face grows white--every heart grows heavy. We
have been behind the hangars and luckily have not seen the end.
"I'm not going to see. It's no good. It will only turn me up!" I say,
and walk to the edge of the hangars. There in the middle of the
aerodrome is a scarcely discernible pile of broken wreckage--just a
crumpled heap a few feet higher than the ground. Towards it from all
points of the compass are streaming crowds of mechanics. I stand
watching. I will not go over. I can do no good, and the sight will
unnerve me for days. It is a fatal mistake for those who fly to see
those who have died while flying.
Then I see standing by the machine a little figure. I wonder who it can
be so quickly on the scene. The little figure seems to take something of
its head, and to unwind a muffler from its neck. I begin to run over
toward the wreckage, a wild hope surging through me. It is--it is the
airman. He is alive and seemingly not hurt. His face is yellow with
bruises and is red with blood. It is a terrible sight, but he is
laughing gaily, perhaps a little hysterically.
"Oh! I am all right! I'm all right! I got into a spin and couldn't get
out in time!"
An ambulance comes up, and he gets into the back and drives off, waving
his hand cheerfully. Amazing fellow! It appears that just before he
struck the ground he pulled the machine out of the spin into a steep
bank and struck the ground with one wing when he must have been flying
at nearly two hundred miles an hour.
I may say that never once during the war did I see a crash happen in
which a man got killed--nor did I ever see a dead man; and I may also
say that the first fatal accident which happened to anybody in any of
the squadrons to which I was attached, from October 1915 to April 1918,
occurred in my last flight when my pilot was drowned and, owing to my
injuries, I left the squadron. Night flying in those days was, so it
appeared to me, a safe though exciting occupation. At any rate (and I
touch wood as I say it!) not only did I lead a charmed life, but
wherever I went trouble seemed to fly away. There were no accidents of
any serious nature, or any damage caused by enemy attacks at any place
to which I was attached. Two months after my crash eight hundred bombs
were dropped in two nights on Condekerque aerodrome, and it was so badly
damaged that it was abandoned. There were also many casualties. This is,
however, by the way.
When we have examined the wreckage curiously, and all the inevitable
photographs have been taken, we proceed to the mess for lunch, and
during coffee I suggest to a friend of mine, an eighteen-year-old baby
with fair hair, that we have a look at the war and visit the lines in a
car.
"All right," he says, "if you tackle Charlie!"
Charlie is the transport officer. He is not far from sixty, but by
shaving twice daily and wearing waisted coats he preserves an air of
perennial youth. He has been, and done, everything in his life--from
ringmaster to pageant manager, from running flying meetings to the
caring for Kings at royal performances. He is one of those wonderful
young "old stagers" in the war who really were fearless. He would go
over the lines every night if he could, and indeed had been low over the
German trenches in the daytime--"shooting up the blighters" for fun. He
was the raid officer, and, as such, stood to his post on the
"band-stand" all night, despatching machines and seeing them back. In
his hands were the responsibility of our life or death. He loved us all,
and would do anything for us. When the man beside him was killed in the
big raid, he carried on his work, smoking his cigarette, with his
eyeglass in his eye. His favourite expression, if we did not raid owing
to weather, was--
"Gor perishin' blimy with pink spots! If you put wings on my old
band-stand I'd fly her through Hell backwards! Why don't you go on a
raid to-night--you blighters never do any work?"
So having given him a whisky-and-soda, I take him into a corner and
unveil the plot.
"All right! Tell Dimmock to give you a tender. Mind you draw that
cartoon of me or you'll never leave the perishing aerodrome again!" he
says.
In a few minutes we are on the Nieuport road, and for half an hour we
rush in the tender beside a canal, past various kinds of French and
British transport waggons. No one challenges us, and even as we pass the
frontier the French and Belgian guards look at us with scant curiosity.
"_Aviation Navale Anglaise!_" we chant as we pass. Well they know the
Royal Naval Air Service whose cars have haunted the roads now for many
years. Well they know whose are the fighting scouts that rise up towards
the skies above Dunkerque.
Through La Panne we clatter, and then the feeling in the air begins
somehow to change. We sense now that the lines are nearer, and indeed
they are only eight miles away. We pass through an area full of hutments
and dumps and depots of various descriptions. The increasing number of
notices and signs give unmistakable evidence of our proximity to the
zone of action. The roads are now packed with lorries and cars through
which we can hardly pass. On the left all the time is the unbroken line
of the grass-covered sand-dunes hiding the not-far-distant sea from our
eyes. Then suddenly the traffic thins and vanishes. We turn a corner and
face a stretch of empty road, and know that now we are really near the
front. Half-way down the road we pass a look-out tower built up among
the trees, and near by is a warning notice.
The road is absolutely empty, and we begin to feel a little nervous. We
come to another corner by which is a wrecked house, in a corner of
which, however, the inhabitants are still dwelling. All round are shell
craters filled with suspiciously fresh yellow clay. Here and there
broken trees lean sadly against their neighbours. I see an officer in
khaki near by and I hail him.
"Is it far to the lines?"
"Straight up the road--I wouldn't take your car any farther than the end
of the trees, though, and if I were you I should leave this corner. The
Huns are rather fond of it, as we have got a battery here. They fired a
hundred and fifty shells, mostly six-inch, after tea yesterday!"
"Push on, driver!"
Down the road we move swiftly between the splintered trees of a little
wood. On the left are tattered canvas screens on frames. In some places
great holes have been torn in them by shell-fire and the ragged fabric
trails downward towards the ground. A whistling sound steals faintly on
to our ears; it grows louder and deeper, with a sense of progression,
and it ends in a heavy crash somewhere to our left. Again and again we
hear the shrill whine deepen to a roar, and end in a burst--as large
shells sail over to some hidden mark near the coast.
We are beginning to feel a little nervous, but are very keen to go on.
It is a weird drive in this still deserted road, with its
roughly-filled shell-holes and its broken leaning trees on either side.
The wood ends on the outskirts of the town, which lies in front of us, a
queer panorama of wrecked buildings of pink brick whose bared and
half-broken roof rafters lie against the sky like some dismal and
gigantic snake, while the whole has the unreal aspect of stage scenery.
Here we leave the car, and tell the driver to drive away from trouble
should the German shells begin to fall near him. We walk into the
shattered town with its tawdry shabby appearance of the back of an
exhibition. Along the road the canvas screens flap slightly in the wind,
above them appear the crumbled tops of ruined buildings, while every now
and then we hear a bang, bang, bang, from the direction of the German
trenches, and this noise has all the hollow artificiality of imitated
gun-fire at a show or a circus. A few seconds pass, and crash! crash!
crash! sound three slightly better imitations of shells bursting. The
whole thing seems unreal: the buildings are so pink and villaesque:
chocolate and motor tyre advertisements are painted on them: their
doorways and walls are decorated with ugly porcelain ware and coloured
tiles. It is as though a great battle was waging through the prim little
lanes of the most innocent-looking villa town on the English coast,--it
indeed is what is happening on the Belgian coast, except that here the
buildings are still even more ugly and modern. There is no feeling of
real danger--in spite of the deserted streets, and the occasional sound
of a door being loudly shut, which is some not far distant shell
exploding behind the strange screens.
We turn to the left and enter the town. Here is evident a little more
animation. Soldiers saunter up and down, as though on the promenade
listening to the band, the straw hat of English summer being substituted
by the yellow-painted shrapnel helmet. Shells are now whistling in the
town, and give a slightly more credible impression of artillery fire as
the hollow bang of the explosion is followed in each case, a few seconds
later, by the clatter and tinkle of the roofs and walls of Nieuport
returning in pieces to ground level.
We ask the officer the way to the front lines, as if asking the way to
the pier at Margate.
"First to the left--across a canal--turn right--and across the Yser!" he
says obligingly; and adds, "You better get gas-masks and shrapnel
helmets at the Salvage Dump over there!" ("Towels and bathing costumes
at the little hut on the left," he might be saying!)
We enter the salvage dump--an empty front room littered with all kinds
of implements, and ask for the apparently necessary gas-mask and helmet,
which are carefully dusted by a whistling sergeant. Carrying these
helmets in one hand and the masks slung over our necks, we proceed
towards the front. Now here for one moment we realise that we really are
near a real war, for round the corner walk a couple of nonchalant
Tommies carrying a stretcher, covered with a blanket, from beneath which
protrude two heavy boots, toes towards the ground.
We hurry on and turn to the left and come out into the open, across
which we move erratically, for, at the whistle of each shell, we sit in
a crater until the noise of its explosion encourages us to proceed.
"I feel sure we should not be out here!" says my friend. I feel inclined
to agree with him.
We reach a bank in which soldiers are hiding like rabbits in a warren.
In little square holes the stolid, cheerful-looking men sit; here one
smokes, there one cooks bacon, in another place one reads. Outside some
of the cave doors a pair of socks or a shirt hangs out to dry. The
existence seems to them the normal one, and returning to the life of the
remote past they seem to have found a rough contentment.
At last we enter a trench and wander along it for five or six minutes,
till through a turning on the left we see a narrow ditch leading to a
wide muddy canal. We turn down this side trench and walk to the side of
the water, over which is slung a narrow suspension-bridge about four
feet wide, made of boards laid side by side.
We walk across this, and half-way over to the other side we meet an
officer, and ask where the front is.
He laughs, and inquires who we are, and offers to take us to the mess,
and suggests that we should wear the shrapnel helmet instead of our soft
naval caps. We cross the bridge and walk down another trench to a
farmhouse, covered with little white boards with D.A.Q.M.G.'s and
D.A.D.O.'s, and other incomprehensible mysteries of staff hieroglyphics.
I do not know quite what I have expected a staff mess to be like, but I
know when I descend a damp ladder to a dim cellar lit by candles, and
see a cheerful crowd of officers eating bread and butter and tea at a
broken-down table, I am very surprised. I realise rapidly that a
sub-lieutenant in the Air Service has a better time of it, as far as
mere material comfort goes, than a colonel on his Majesty's staff.
"Found these two lads crossing the bridge with their shrapnel helmets
swinging from their hands; may I introduce you to Major Smith and
Captain So-and-so...." We are introduced all round and are given tea. No
one questions our right to be there at all. Our story of being curious
airmen from Dunkerque is believed. They are amused to hear of our big
shell experiences. They have heard the shells passing overhead like
express trains, although we had no indication of their approach at all.
After we have received some friendly blame for keeping them awake at
night with our engines when we pass over the Nieuport floods, the
colonel who met us details an officer to take us to an observation post.
We move down more trenches--Nose Alley, Nasal Avenue, Nostril Road, and
others--till we reach a little broken-down building, inside which we
penetrate through a small door. A pair of rickety staircases lead us up
to a loft where an officer and a sergeant gaze through a narrow slit
towards the east. On the ledge before them lies a map. They are keeping
a particular sector of German trench under constant observation for the
benefit of their own particular battalion.
Taking a pair of binoculars, I look and see the three British barricades
of sandbags, for the ground here is too wet to permit of the digging of
trenches. Men are seen sitting down or walking up and down behind these
breastworks, and beyond can be seen the spiky curls and haphazard pegs
of the barbed-wire entanglements. In the centre, a grey huddle of stone
indicates the site of Lombartsyde Church. Now and again a cloud of smoke
from a shell rises up behind the German trench. On the left are the
sand-dunes on which the tall, red, broken houses of Westende stand
desolate and fantastically suburban against the sky. I can see through
the glasses the great painted advertisements on them, and notice here
and there the missing roof, the shattered wall; but on the whole, save
for the blank square of the glassless windows, they look untouched
enough. It seems strange to think that the bare lifeless buildings of
that watering town are full of an unseen life, that up in those roofs
Germans are watching us only a few hundred yards away, as we are
watching them. It is strange and uncanny. This, then, is the
line--bleak, dead, full of a sense of ever-menacing danger, haunted by
the hovering phantom of Death. We take a last look and start back to the
car. The farther we go, the easier grows my heart. When at last we turn
the corner of the town and see the old grey tender with its driver
smoking beside it, I want to hail it as a welcome friend. Gladly we hear
its engine throb--gladly we feel the thrill of movement--gladly we move
down the eerie desolate road, by the canvas screens, the broken trees,
where sounds the wail and bang of the shells, like doors in a great
frightening empty house being shut and shut by some unseen and
terrifying phantom hand.
Swiftly we leave the desolate loneliness of war behind, and welcome is
the thought of the trim camp at the aerodrome with its flower-decked
mess and fire-lit cabins. When at last we sweep across the little white
bridge over the canal and stop beside the lawns of the quarter-deck,
over which flaps the White Ensign, I realise keenly the comfort and the
tranquillity of my life.
Now it is the twilight of dusk. Though day still reigns supreme in
untarnished brightness, there is a feeling in the air that the end is
coming, and night surely must vanquish soon. Out from the aerodrome are
being wheeled the Handley-Page machines, and I hurry through my task of
synchronising the watches. To-night I raid not, and from the beginning
my feelings are mixed. I am glad I am not going, and I am bitterly sorry
too, because I know when, in the late hours of starlight, one by one the
huge machines glide whistling to earth, and into the mess the furred and
helmeted airmen tramp on great fleece-lined boots, I will envy the
glorious sense of achievement, of well-earned rest, which will then be
theirs.
Now I am told to take over the task of the duty officer who is going on
a raid. At once I proceed to the monotonous job of censoring letters,
because it has to be done, and it had better be finished early. How
weary a job it is, and how full of temptation! When you sit alone in a
little room with the pile of two or three hundred letters in front of
you, how easy it is to read but one in ten. It is then that a conscience
is a really great disadvantage. The letters are all the same, and as
they are read through it is very apparent what a race of bad
letter-writers we are. Seventy-five per cent read like this:--
DEAR MUM,--Tell Alf that Sid has got my blue sweater; if he gives
it to Joe he will bring it over to his squadron and Stan can bring
it here. Give Em and Gert my love; I met Bob yesterday, he says Tom
and Jack are fine....
The one splendid line in all is the splendid prayer written beneath the
signature:--
_Roll on, Blighty_, or _Roll on, three months_, with all the passion of
loneliness and nostalgia throbbing in it.
It must be confessed that the description of a typical sailor's letter
is not far from the truth.
_Dear Mother, How are you? So am I. Fags. George._
Letter after letter is read through and initialled, and I get no nearer
to the soul of such of the writers as I know personally. Then I hear a
bugle blow the Rum call, and I proceed to the Ship's Steward's office to
superintend the issue of Rum. When the representative of each mess has
been served, it is the duty of the officer of the Watch to witness the
pouring out of the rum upon the ground, a proceeding watched with grief
by any casual spectators.
The preservation of the naval traditions in the Royal Naval Air Service
was of real value, and welded the service into a very loyal and proud
body. To some it may seem ridiculous that, even at air stations in the
heart of France, hundreds of miles from the sea, the "liberty men
paraded on the quarter-deck to go ashore in the liberty boat," when they
proceeded to Nancy by lorry. No one concerned, however, treated it as
anything but a matter of course, which is one of the greatest assets of
any tradition. The "ship's company" would be summoned from the "mess
decks" to hear the "orders of the day" read by the "First Lieutenant,"
and "the starboard watch had a make and mend." The whole service was
"navy" and felt "navy." Naturally the sea-going navy looked on it with a
little contempt and a great deal of scorn, but I doubt if it realised
with what pride and admiration we of the new service looked up to our
big brothers on the high seas. We watched them as a new boy at school
watches the _blase_ young gentleman of two years' scholastic experience,
and furtively draws his hands out of his pockets if he finds that such
an attitude is not considered correct.
With the formation of the Royal Air Force, the naval branch of the air
service, at any rate, lost a possession so cherished and so sacred that
it scarcely dared talk about it. It was like being made to change a
religion and to throw up in a moment the faith and the ceremonial habits
of a lifetime. Underneath the khaki and the pale blue, to an officer and
a man, we wore, and still wear, the dark blue and gold buttons of those
splendid days.
Meanwhile the rum has been doled out in the mess with care and
argument, and I return to my letters. From the east now marches night
with swift advance, while the west shines scarlet and orange over the
chimneys of the huts of Dunkerque. The first primrose star of the
evening burns with a lucent glory in the forehead of the sunset, and the
whole evening is pregnant with coming events. Too beautiful is the hour
for work, and as I walk alone over the rose-tinted aerodrome I can hear
in the tranquil night the muffled beating of innumerable engines, and I
can see the lustrous flares dropping from the skies as on the ground a
thousand signals glow, a thousand lights are born and die. To the
darkening east I look, and I can picture thirty, forty, fifty miles away
the anti-aircraft guns, whose tarpaulin sheets are even now being
removed. I can picture the lean-nosed shells in their numbered
racks--the great glass lenses of the searchlights, the "green-ball"
machines loaded with long belts of cartridges. I look to my right at the
waiting machines, and it seems strange to think that those heavy
structures of steel and wood are destined in scarcely two hours to set
in furious action those silent lifeless weapons so far away across the
shadowy fields. The noise of an engine under trial sweeps over the
ground in surging waves of sound and dies away. The giants are
awakening, are stretching themselves, and are eagerly meditating the
time to come.
Soon I am dining in the lamp-lit mess, where at flower-decked tables the
laughing pilots sit, and I feel sorry I am not going onward with them to
the hidden dangers and exhilarations of flight in the darkness beyond
the lines; yet I feel glad also that my to-morrow is certain, but feel a
hanger-on among heroes, a useless camp-follower of legioned gods.
One after one the cheerful youths glance casually at their watches and
leave the mess for their cabins in order to prepare for the cold heights
to which they will soon climb. Heavily muffled and coated I go out on to
the dark aerodrome. Out roar the engines of the first machine as it
sweeps across the grass, and I have one momentary glance of the
resolute, preoccupied faces of the pilot and observer who are going to
ride through the flaming avenues of Bruges and Ostend on their swift
lean charger of steel and wood.
Machine after machine leaves, and, as ground officer, I shout
instructions upwards to the pilots through the clamour of the engines,
and as the pilot waves his hand as a sign of his imminent departure, I
cry--
"Cheero, Jack! Good luck!"
"Cheero, Paul!" comes the answer, and the engine leaps out into
deafening thunder, and with a beating throb the machine slips by, going
ever faster into the night.
Soon the last machine has left, and for a time we see the red and green
lights moving above us through the stars, and we hear the murmur of the
engines, and then at length silence reigns in the quiet uneasy night!
To the side of the canal I walk and peer out across the silent plain to
the dim east. A pallid star-shell gleams, and quivers, and sinks: a gun
flashes to the south near Ypres: then remote, remote, yet glittering
clearly, rises a tiny chain of green balls which climbs up, up, up into
the night. Near it can just be seen the pale arms of moving
searchlights, seeming scarce lighter than the darkness. Already the
great night-birds have pierced the frontiers of the enemy: already has
the battle of the night skies begun.
Then with an unexpected suddenness wails the panic-stricken appealing
cry of "Mournful Mary" at Dunkerque docks. Again and again it wails, and
its dying echo is taken up by a chorus of shrill and undignified hooters
and syrens in the district. What a sense of utter terror there is in the
sound! The town seems to have a corporate existence, and seems to be
screaming piteously, like some animal faced with a terrible and
unavoidable death. Again moans the chilling sound of the great voice of
Dunkerque, and down the coast the blue-white beams of the French
searchlights begin to wave nervously in an uncertain sweep. Three or
four anti-aircraft guns sound dully in the distance, and a few red and
futile shells burst high up in the star-strewn sky.
More and more searchlights come into action; nearer and louder guns bark
out their stupid blind anger. There is little movement in the crowd of
watchers on the aerodrome. Every one listens. Faintly yet surely can be
heard now the menacing chant of the enemy--bavoom, bavoom,
bavoom--steady, unaltering, ever progressing forwards.
"Huh! That's old Oberleutnant Finkelbaum from Ghistelles. He's always
first!" says a wit. "Come on, Finky ... you won't be found. That's
right--keep up the coast. You're after the docks, I suppose. Look out;
throttle, man--throttle, or you will get caught!"
_Bavoom--bavoom_, throb the two engines of the bold attacker, and our
sympathies and interest somehow seem to be with him.
"Turn in now, old man, turn in! Stop your engine--that's good--glide and
keep throttled--you'll be all right!"
Suddenly the droning above ceases, and the silence is more threatening
and sinister than the clamour. We do not feel quite so assured about the
unseen enemy, since we can no longer locate his position by sound.
However, we know that he is almost certain to be attacking the docks,
which lie some two miles away, so we do not altogether lose the sense of
being spectators.
A long minute passes slowly, then a wide fan-shaped flash of red light
appears beyond the town, whose roofs are for a moment silhouetted black
against its glare. It dies slowly, and another leaps up near it.