mishap, (2) a joke, and (3) an argument. The mishap was to a fighting
two-seater, which landed on the Squadron's 'drome with a dud engine.
The pilot and observer made their way to the Squadron office and, after
a brief 'phone talk to their own C.O., borrowed a tender and pushed
off for their own 'drome. The leader of "A" Flight walked down to
the tender, chatting to them, and four of the Squadron's pilots took
advantage of the chance of a lift in to a town the tender had to pass
on the journey. All of them heard and all were a little surprised, at
"A" Commander's parting word to the two visitors. "I've told the driver
to go slow and careful," he said. "You fellows just watch he does it,
will you?"
The joke began to dawn on the four just after the tender had carefully
cleared the first bend of the road from the 'drome and the driver began
to open her up and let her rip. The joke grew with the journey, and
the four on their return to the Squadron that afternoon burst into the
full ante-room and, announcing it "Such a joke, oh, _such_ a joke!"
went on to tell it in competing quartette to a thoroughly appreciative
audience. It appeared that one passenger--"the pale-faced nervy-looking
little 'un with pink eye-rims"--had showed distinct uneasiness when the
tender rushed a dip-and-rise at top speed, and his observer--"a reg'lar
Pickwick Fat Boy, quakin' like a jelly"--complained openly and bitterly
when the tender took a corner on the two outside wheels and missed a
country cart with six inches and a following gust of French oaths to
spare.
When, by the grace o' God, and by a bare hand's-breadth, they shaved
past a lumbering M.T. lorry, "Pink Eye" and "Fat Boy" clung dumb
to each other and plainly devoted themselves to silent prayer. The
dumbness deserted them and they made up all arrears of speech, and to
spare, when the tender took four heaps of road-metal by the wayside in
a series of switch-backing hand-springs. "'Course we twigged your joke
by then," said the four to "A" leader. "I suppose you delivered the
driver his go-slow order with a large-sized wink and he savvied what
you meant." It appeared that Pink Eye had asked the four to make the
driver slow down, or to kill him or something. They pretended innocence
and said he was a most careful man, and so on. Fat Boy nearly wept when
they met a Staff car travelling fast and, never slacking an ounce,
whooped past with a roar; and after a hairpin bend, which the tender
took like a fancy skater doing the figure-of-eight, Pink Eye completely
broke up and swore that he was going to get off and walk. "He'd have
done it too," said the four delightedly, "if we hadn't eased her up.
But you never saw such a state of funk as those two were in. Kept
moppin' their brows, and apologisin' for their nerves, and fidgetin'
and shiverin' like wet kittens every time we took a corner or met a
cart. It was too funny--really funny."
This led to the argument--whether men with nerves of that sort could
be any good in air work. "I know I'd hate to be a pilot with an
observer of that kind watching my tail, almost as much as I'd hate
to be an observer with Pink Eye for a pilot," said one, and most
there agreed. A few argued that it was possible for men to be brave
enough in one kind of show and the very opposite in another--that
one fellow could do the V.C. act seven days a week under fire and
take every sort of risk in action without turning a hair, and yet go
goosey-fleshed on a Channel crossing in a choppy sea, while another man
might enjoy sailing a boat single-handed in a boiling white sea, and
yet be genuinely nervous about dodging across the full traffic-tide
of a London thoroughfare. Most of those present declined to believe
these theories, maintaining stoutly that a good plucked 'un was always
such, and that an obvious funk couldn't be anything else--except in
novelettes and melodrama. Then came the story.
"Did y'ever hear of 'Charger' Wicks?" said the Captain of "A." "No?
Well, you're rather recently out, so you mightn't, but--well, he's
fairly well known out here. He's rather a case in point----"
Being told by an expert to an audience of experts, his tale was put
more briefly, technically, and air-slangily than I may hope to do, but
here is the sense of it.
"Charger" Wicks was a pilot in a well-known fighting squadron, and
was so called from a favourite tactic of his in air fighting and his
insistent advice to the rest of the Flight he came to command to follow
his plan of attack. "Always charge straight at your Hun if you get a
chance," he would say. "Drive straight and hard nose-on at him, keeping
your gun going hot. If you keep straight, he'll flinch--every time; and
as he turns up, down, or out, you get a full-length target underneath,
topside, or broadside. If you keep on and shoot straight, you're bound
to get a hatful of bullets into him somewhere."
The plan certainly seemed to work, and Charger notched up a good tally
of crashed Huns, but others in the Squadron warned him he'd try it once
too often. "Charge straight at him, and he'll dodge," said Charger.
"Wait," said the others. "Some day you'll meet a Hun who works on the
same rule; _then_ where'll you be?" "Yes," said Billy Bones, Charger's
observer, "and where'll I be?" But although he pretended to grumble,
Billy Bones was, as a matter of fact, quite in agreement on the nose-on
charging stunt and believed in it as firmly as Charger himself. It took
nerve, he admitted, but if you had that--and Charger certainly had--it
worked all right. As it happened, the nerves of both were to be "put
through it" rather severely.
They were up with the Flight one day, Charger with Billy Bones leading
in their pet 'bus Y221. They ran into a scrap with odds of about two
to one against them, and in the course of it Charger got a chance to
put his old tactic to the proof. The moment he swung Y221 and headed
her straight at a Hun scout, Billy knew what was coming, and heaved
his gun round ready for any shot that offered as the Hun flinched
past. But this time it looked as if the Squadron's old warning was
going to be fulfilled and that Charger had met the Hun with the same
rule as himself. Charger's gun began to rattle at about one hundred
yards' range, and the Hun opened at the same moment. Billy, crouching
with his gun at the ready and his eyes glued on a scarlet boss in the
centre of the Hun's propeller, saw and heard the bullets stream smoking
and cracking past and on their machine. It does not take long for two
machines travelling about a hundred miles per hour to cover a hundred
yards, but to Billy, staring tense at that growing scarlet blot, each
split fraction of a second was an age, and as the shape of the Hun
grew but showed no sign of a changing outline, Billy's thoughts raced.
Charger, he knew, wouldn't budge an inch from his line; if the Hun also
held straight ... he still held straight ... the slightest deviation
up or down would show instantly in the wings, seen edgeways in thin
lines, thickening and widening. The bullets were coming deadly close
... and the red boss grew and grew. If the Hun didn't give now--this
instant--it would be too late ... they must collide. The approaching
wing-edges still showed their thin straight line, and Billy, with a
mental "Too late now!" gasped and gripped his gun and waited the crash.
Then, at the last possible instant, the Hun's nerve gave--or, rather,
it gave just an instant too late. Billy had a momentary vision of the
thin wing-edges flashing wide, of the black crosses on the under side,
of a long narrow strip of underbody and tail suddenly appearing below
the line of the planes; and then, before he could move or think, he
felt the Y221 jar violently, heard horrible sounds of splintering,
cracking, tearing, had a terrifying vision of a great green mass with
splashed ugly yellow spots rearing up over the top plane before his
startled eyes, plunging past over his ducking head with splintering
wreckage and flapping streamers of fabric whizzing and rushing about
his ears. Y221--whirling, jolting, twisting all ways and every way
at once apparently--fell away in a series of sickening jerks that
threatened to wrench her joint from joint. Billy's thoughts raced
down ahead of them to where they would hit the ground 15,000 feet
below ... how long would it take ... would they hit nose-first or how
... was there anything he could do?--and before his mind shaped the
question he had answered it--No, nothing! Dully he noticed that their
engine had stopped, that Charger apparently was busy at the controls;
then--with a gleam of wondering hope, dismissed at first, but returning
and growing--that the lurching and rolling was steadying, that they
were coming back on an even keel, were ... yes, actually, were gliding
smoothly down.
Charger twisted and looked down overside, then back at Billy and
yelled, "D'ye see him?" Billy looked over, and next instant saw a
vanishing shape with one wing folded back, saw another wing that had
torn clear floating and "leafing" away on its own. The shape plunged
plummet-wise until it was lost in the haze below. Billy turned inboard.
"Broken in air," he shouted, and Charger nodded and turned again to
his controls. Billy saw that their propeller was gone, only one jagged
splinter of a blade remaining.
They made a long glide back and a good landing well behind the lines on
a grass field. "What happened?" said Billy the moment they had come to
rest. "He flinched, of course," said Charger. "Ran it a bit fine, and
our prop caught his tail and tore it up some. I dunno that we're much
hurt, except for the prop and that broken strut."
And, amazingly enough, they were not. The leading edge of a top plane
was broken and cracked along its length, one strut was snapped, the
propeller gone, a few jagged holes from bullets and Hun splinters
ripped in their fabric. "God bless the people who built her!" said
Charger piously. "Good stuff and good work in that old 'bus, Billy.
That's all that brought us through."
Billy mopped his brow. "Hope we don't meet any more of that breed of
Hun," he said. "I find I don't like collisions--not one little bit."
"He flinched at the finish, though," said Charger simply. "They all do."
When they got Y221 back to the 'drome and overhauled her they found her
wrenched a bit, but in a couple of days she was tautened up into trim
and in the air again.
And the very next morning, as if this weren't enough, Charger and
Billy had another nerve-testing. They were up about 12,000 and well
over Hunland when they ran into a patch of Archies, and Charger
turned and led the formation straight towards a bank of white cloud
that loomed up, solid looking as a huge bolster, before them. The sun
was dead behind them, so Billy at first sat looking over the tail on
the watch for any Huns who might try to attack "out of the sun" and
its blinding glare. But as it was dead astern over the tail Billy
could see clearly above and behind him, so that there was no chance
of a Hun diving unseen from a height, and they were moving too fast
to be overtaken on the level "out of the sun." Billy turned round
and watched the cloud they were driving at. The sun was full on it,
and it rose white and glistening like a chalk cliff--no, more like
a--like a---- Billy was idly searching his mind for a fitting simile,
when his thoughts broke and he yelled fiercely and instinctively in
warning to Charger. But Charger had seen too, as Billy knew from
his quick movement and sudden alert sit-up. The cloud was anything
round a hundred yards from them, and they could just see the slow
curling twisting movement of its face. And--what had suddenly startled
them--they could see another machine, still buried back in the cloud,
and looming large and distorted by the mist, but plainly flying out of
it and straight at them.
What followed was over and done in the space of seconds, although
it may seem long in the telling, as it certainly was age-long in the
suspense of the happening and waiting for the worst of it. Billy
perhaps, powerless to act, able only to sit tense and staring, felt the
strain the worst, although it must have been bad enough for Charger,
knowing that their slender hope of escape hung on his quick thinking
and action. This was no clear case of following his simple plan of
charging and waiting for the Hun to flinch. The whole success of the
plan depended on the Hun seeing and knowing the charge was coming--on
his nerve failing to meet it. Charger didn't even know this was a Hun.
He might be one of ours. He might have seen them, and at that very
second be swerving to miss them. He might be blinded in the cloud and
know nothing of them driving full-on into him. All this went through
Charger's mind in a flash, and almost in that same flash he had decided
on his action and taken it. He thrust the nose of Y221 steeply down.
Even in the fraction of time it took for him to decide and his hand to
move the control lever he could see the difference in the misty shape
before him, could judge by the darkening, hardening and solidifying
outline the speed of their approach. And then, exactly as his bows
plunged down, he saw and knew that what he feared had happened--the
other pilot had seen him, had thought and acted exactly as he had.
Charger saw the thin line of the edge-on wings broaden, the shadowy
shape of the tail appear above them, just as he had seen it so often
when the Hun he charged had flinched and ducked. But then the flinching
had meant safety to him driving straight ahead--now it meant disaster,
dipping as he was fairly to meet the other.
Again for the fraction of a second he hesitated--should he push on
down, or turn up? Which would the other do? And again before the
thought was well framed it was decided and acted on. He pulled the
stick hard in, zoomed up, and held his breath, waiting. The shape was
clearer and harder, must be almost out of the cloud--doubtful even now
if Y221 had time and room to rise clear--all right if the other held on
down, but----
The nose of his machine swooped up, and as it did, and before it shut
out his view ahead, Charger, with a cold sinking inside him, saw the
outline ahead flash through changing shapes again, the wings narrow
and close to edge-on view, open and widen again with the tail dropping
below. Again the other man's thought and action had exactly followed
his own. No time to do more; by the solid appearance he knew the other
machine must be just on the edge of the cloud, and they were almost
into it, its face already stirring and twisting to the propeller rush.
Charger's one thought at the moment was to see his opponent's nose
thrust out--to know was it a Hun or one of ours.
Billy Bones, sitting tight with fingers locked on the cockpit edge, had
seen, followed and understood every movement they had made, the full
meaning of that changing outline before them, the final nearness shown
by the solidity of the approaching grey shape; and the one thought in
his mind was a memory of two men meeting face to face on a pavement,
both stepping sideways in the same direction, stepping back, hesitating
and stepping aside again, halting, still face to face, and glaring or
grinning at each other. Here they were doing just the same, only up and
down instead of sideways--and here there was no stopping.
He too saw the spread of wings loom up and out of either side of them,
rushing up to meet them. The spread almost matched and measured their
own--which meant a nose-to-nose crash. The cloud face was stirring,
swirling, tearing open from the rush of their opposing windage. Had
Charger time to--no, no time. They must be just ... it would be on the
very cloud edge they would meet--were meeting (why didn't Charger turn,
push her down, do something--anything) ... meeting ... (no escape after
this collision--end on!) ... _now!_
Next instant they were in darkness--thick, wet, clammy darkness. No
shock and crash of collision yet ... or yet. Billy didn't understand.
Was he dead? Could you be killed so instantaneously you didn't feel
it? It wasn't quite dark--and he could feel the cockpit rim under his
hands--and----
They burst clear of the cloud, with trailing wisps sucking astern
after them. He was bewildered. Then, even as Charger turned and shouted
the explanation, he guessed at it. "Shadow--our own shadow," yelled
Charger, and Billy, nodding in answer, could only curse himself for a
fool not to have noticed (as he had noticed really without reasoning
why) that the blurred, misty shape had grown smaller as well as sharper
as they approached. "I didn't think of it either," Charger confessed
after they were back on the 'drome, "and it scared me stiff. Looked
just like a machine in thick cloud--blurred, sort of, and getting
clearer as it came out to the edge."
"It was as bad as that beastly Hun," said Billy, "or worse"; and
Charger agreed.
Now two experiences of that sort might easily break any man's nerve,
and most men would need a spell off after an episode like the collision
one. But Charger's nerve was none the worse, and although Billy swore
his never really recovered, the two of them soon after put through
another nose-on charge at a Hun, in which Charger went straight as
ever, and when the Hun zoomed up and over, Billy had kept his nerve
enough to have his gun ready and to put a burst of bullets up and into
him from stem to stern and send him down in flames.
Everyone in the Mess agreed here that the two were good stout men and
had nothing wrong with their nerves.
"Not much," said the narrator, "and they're still goin' strong. But you
remember what started me to tell you about them?"
"Let's see--yes," said one or two. "We were talking about the joke of
that couple to-day being so scared by a bit of fast driving on a clear
road."
"Right," said the other, and laughed. "Heaps of people out here know
those two, and it's a standing joke that you can't hire them to sit on
the front seat of a car or a tender or travel anything over fifteen
miles an hour in anything on wheels."
He waited a moment for some jests and chuckles to subside, and
finished, grinning openly. "They are the two I told you about--Charger
Wicks and Billy Bones!"
There was dead silence for a minute. Then, "Good Lord!" said one of the
quartette faintly, and "Wh--which was Charger?" faltered another. "In
their flying kit we couldn't----"
"The smallest--the one you called the pale-faced, nervy-looking little
'un," said "A" Flight Commander.
"Help!" said the other weakly. "And I--I recommended him 'Sulphurine
Pills for Shaken Nerves.' Oh, help!"
"Yes," said the last of the demoralised quartette miserably, "and he
thanked us, and said he'd write it down the minute he got back."
There was another pause. Then, "Such a joke!" said someone, quoting
from the opening chapter of the quartette's story--"_such_ a joke!" And
the Mess broke in a yell of uproarious laughter.
The quartette did not laugh.
IV
A GOOD DAY
Half an hour before there was a hint of dawn in the sky the Flight was
out with the machines lined up on the grass, the mechanics busy about
them, the pilots giving preliminary tests and runs to their engines.
There had been showers of rain during the night, welcome rain which had
laid the dust on the roads and washed it off the hedges and trees--rain
just sufficient to slake the thirst of the parched ground and grass,
without bringing all the discomfort of mud and mire which as a rule
comes instantly to mind when one speaks of "rain" at the Front.
It was a summer dawn, fresh, and cool, and clean, with the raindrops
still gemming the grass and leaves, a delicious scent of moist earth in
the balmy air, a happy chorus of chirping, twittering birds everywhere,
a "great," a "gorgeous," a "perfect" morning, as the pilots told each
other.
A beautiful Sabbath stillness, a gentle calm hung over the aerodrome
until the machines were run out and the engines began to tune up. But
even in their humming, thrumming, booming notes there was nothing harsh
or discordant or greatly out of keeping with the air of peace and
happiness. And neither, if one had not known what it was, would the
long heavy rumble that beat down wind have wakened any but peaceful
thoughts. It might have been the long lazy boom of the surf beating in
on a sandy beach, the song of leaping waterfalls, the distant rumble of
summer thunder ... except perhaps for the quicker drum-like roll that
rose swelling every now and then through it, the sharper, yet dull and
flat, thudding bumps and thumps that to any understanding ear marked
the sound for what it was--the roar of the guns.
Already the guns were hard at it; had been for days and nights past, in
fact; would be harder at it than ever as the light grew on this summer
morning, for this was the day set for the great battle, was within an
hour or two of the moment marked for the attack to begin.
The Squadron Commander was out long before the time detailed for
the Flight to start. He spoke to some of the pilots, looked round,
evidently missed someone, and was just beginning "Where is----" when he
caught sight of a figure in flying clothes hurrying out from the huts.
The figure halted to speak to a pilot and the Major called impatiently,
"Come along, boy. Waiting for you." "Right, sir," called the other, and
then laughingly to his companion, "Worst of having a brother for C.O.
Always privileged to chase you."
"Flight Leader ought to be first, Sonny, not last," said the Major as
the boy came up. "Sorry, Jim," said the boy, "I'm all ready," and ran
on to his waiting machine.
One by one the pilots clambered aboard and settled themselves in their
seats, and one after another the engines were started, sputtering and
banging and misbehaving noisily at first in some cases, but quickly
steadying, and, after a few grunts and throaty _whurrumphs_, picking up
their beat, droning out the deep note that rises tone by tone to the
full long roaring song of perfect power.
The Major walked along the line, halted at each machine, and spoke a
word or two to each pilot. He stood a little longer at the end machine
until the pilot eased his engine down and its roar dropped droning to a
quiet "ticking over."
"All right and all ready, Sonny?" said the Major.
"All correct, sir," said Sonny laughingly, and with a half-joking
salute. "Feel fine, Jim, and the old bus is in perfect trim."
"Think the rain has gone," said the Major. "It's going to be a fine
day, I fancy."
"It's just topping," cried Sonny, wrinkling his nose and sniffing
luxuriously. "Air's as full of sweet scent as a hay meadow at home."
"Flight, got your orders all clear to start?"
Sonny nodded. "Yes, we'll show you the usual star turn take-off all
right. You watch us."
The Major glanced at his wrist-watch and at the paling sky. "Almost
time. Well, take care of yourself, Sonny." He put his hand up on
the edge of the cockpit, and Sonny slid his glove off, and gave an
affectionate little squeeze to the fingers that came over the edge.
"I'll be all right, Jim, boy. We're going to have a good day. Wish you
were coming with us."
"Wish I were," said the Major. "Good luck," and he stepped and walked
out in front of the line of machines, halted, and glanced at his watch
and up at the sky again.
The half-dozen machines, too, stood waiting and motionless, except for
the answering quiver that ran through them to their engines' beat.
Down from the line the throbbing roll of the gunfire rose louder and
heavier, with a new, an ugly and sinister snarling note running through
it. The flat thudding reports of the nearer Heavies came at quicker and
closer intervals, the rumble of the further and smaller pieces ran up
to the steady unbroken roar of drum-fire.