facing into it, so that the pilots had before them the jumping,
flickering lights which flamed up across the sky from the guns'
discharge. Earlier, these flashes had blazed up in broad sheets of
yellow-and orange-tinted light from the horizon to half way up the
height of the sky, leaped and sank, leaped again and beat throbbing and
pulsing wave on wave, or flickering and quivering jerkily for seconds
on end, dying down, and immediately flaring up in wide sheet-lightning
glows. Now, in the growing light the gun-flashes showed more and more
faintly, in sickly pallid flashes. There was no halt or pause between
the jumping lights now; they trembled and flickered unceasingly, with
every now and then a broader, brighter glare wiping out the lesser
lights.
The pilots sat watching the battle lights, listening to the shaking
battle thunder, and waiting the Squadron Commander's signal to go. The
birds were chattering happily and noisily, and a lark climbed, pouring
out long shrill bursts of joyful song; somewhere over in the farmyard
beside the 'drome a cock crowed shrilly, and from one of the workshops
came the cheerful clink-link, clink-link of hammers on an anvil.
It was all very happy and peaceful--except for the jumping gun-flashes
and rolling gunfire; life was very sweet and pleasant--unless one
thought of life over there in the trenches, and what the next hour or
two would bring. Everyone knew there was "dirty work" ahead. It was
the first really big "show" the Squadron had been in; they had been
in plenty of the ordinary O.P.'s (Offensive Patrols) and air-scraps,
but this was the real big thing, a great battle on the ground, and a
planned attack on the grand scale in the air, which was to sweep the
sky of Huns ... and the gunfire was still growing ... and the lark up
there was bursting his throat to tell them what a pleasant place the
world was on this summer morning, with the raindrops fresh on the grass
and the breeze cool in the trees.
Nearly time! The Flight Leader ran his engine up again, its humming
drone rising to a full deep-chested roar. The other pilots followed
suit, engine after engine picking up the chorus and filling the air
with deafening and yet harmonious sound. A man stood just clear of
the wing-tips to either side of each machine holding a cord fast to
the wood blocks chocked under the wheels; another man or two clung to
each tail, holding it down against the pull of the propeller, their
sleeves, jacket tails, and trouser legs fluttering wildly in the gales
which poured aft from the whirling screws and sent twigs and leaves
and dust flying and dancing back in a rushing stream. So the pilots
sat for a minute, their faces intent and earnest, listening to the hum
and beat of their engines and note of their propellers' roar, watching
the Flight Leader's movements out of the tail of their eyes. He eased
his engine down; and promptly every other engine eased. He waved his
hand to right and left, and the waiting men jerked the chocks clear
of his wheels; and five other hands waved and five other pairs of
chocks jerked clear. He moved forward, swung to the right with a man
to each wing tip to help swing him, and rolled steadily out into the
pen; and five other machines moved forward, swung right, and followed
in line astern of him. He wheeled to the left, moved more quickly,
opened his engine up, ran forward at gathering speed. Moving slowly his
machine had looked like a lumbering big fat beetle; skimming rapidly
across the grass, with its nose down and its tail up, it changed to an
excited hen racing with outstretched head and spread wings; then--a
lift--an upward swoop and rush--and she was ... a swallow, an eagle,
a soaring gull--any of these you like as symbols of speed and power
and grace, but best symbol of all perhaps, just herself, for what
she was--a clean-built, stream-lined, hundred-and-umpty horse, fast,
fighting-scout aeroplane.
The Squadron Commander stood watching the take-off of the Flight with
a thrill of pride, and truly it was a sight to gladden the heart of
any enthusiast. As the Flight Leader's machine tucked up her tail and
raced to pick up speed, the second machine had followed her round her
curve, steadied, and began to move forward, gathering way in her very
wheel-tracks. As the Leader hoicked up and away, the second machine
was picking up her skirts and making her starting rush; and the third
machine was steadying round the turn to follow. As the second left the
ground, the third began to make her run, and the fourth was round the
turn and ready to follow. So they followed, machine by machine, evenly
spaced in distance apart, running each other's tracks down, leaping
off within yards of the same point, each following the other into the
air as if they were tied on lengths of a string. It was a perfect
exhibition of Flight Leadership--and following. One turn round the
'drome they made, and the Flight was in perfect formation and sailing
off to the east, climbing as it went. The Commander stood and watched
them gain their height in one more wide sweeping turn and head due
east, then moved towards the huts.
The hammers were still beating out their cheery clink-link, the birds
chirping and twittering; the lark, silenced or driven from the sky by
these strange monster invaders, took up his song again and shrilled
out to all the world that it was a joy to live--to live--to live--this
perfect summer morning.
And the guns replied in sullen rolling thunder.
* * * * *
The last red glow of sunset was fading out of the square of sky seen
through the open Squadron-office window. The Major sat in his own place
at the centre of the table, and his Colonel, with the dust of motor
travel still thick on his cap and coat, sat by the empty fireplace
listening and saying nothing. A young lad, with leather coat thrown
open and leather helmet pushed back on his head, stood by the table and
spoke rapidly and eagerly. He was one of the Patrol that had left at
dawn, had made a forced landing, had only just reached the 'drome, and
had come straight to the office to report and tell his tale.
"I have the Combat Report, of course," said the Major; "you might read
it first--and I've some other details; but I'd like to know anything
further you can tell."
The lad read the Report, a bare dozen lines, of which two and a half
told the full tale of a brave man's death--"_as he went down out of
control he signalled to break off the fight and return, and then for
the Deputy to take command. He was seen to crash_."
"That's true, sir," said the lad, "but d'you know--d'you see what
it--all it meant? We'd been scrappin' half an hour. We were on our last
rounds and our last pints of petrol ... against seventeen Huns, and
we'd crashed four and put three down out of control ... they were beat,
and we knew it, and meant to chase 'em off."
He had been speaking rapidly, almost incoherently, but now he steadied
himself and spoke carefully.
"Then _he_ saw their reinforcements comin' up, one lot from north,
t'other from south. They'd have cut us off. We were too busy scrappin'
to watch. They had us cold, with us on our last rounds and nearly out
of petrol. But _he_ saw them. He was shot down then--I dunno whether it
was before or after it that he saw them; but he was goin' down right
out of control--dead-leafing, then a spin, then leafing again. And he
signalled----" The boy gulped, caught and steadied his voice again,
and went on quietly. "You know; there's half a dozen coloured lights
stuck in the dash-board in front of him--and his Verey pistol in the
rack beside him. He picked out the proper coloured light--goin' down
helplessly out of control--and took his pistol out of the rack ... and
loaded it ... and put it over the side and fired his signal, 'Get back
to the 'drome--return home,' whatever it is exactly--we all knew it
meant to break off the scrap and clear out, anyway. But he wasn't done
yet. He picked another light--the proper coloured light again ... and
still knowin' he'd crash in the next few seconds ... and loaded and
fired, 'I am out of action. Deputy Flight Leader carry on.' ... Then
... he crashed...."
The boy gulped again and stopped, and for a space there was dead
silence.
"Thank you," said the Squadron Commander at last, very quietly, "I
won't ask you for more now."
The boy saluted and turned, but the Major spoke again. "There's a
message here I've just had. You might like to read it."
The pilot took it and read a message of congratulations and thanks
from Headquarters on the work of the Air Services that day, saying how
the Huns had been driven out of the air, how so many of them had been
crashed, so many driven down out of control, with slight losses of so
many machines to us. "On all the fronts engaged," the message finished,
"the Squadrons have done well, and the Corps has had a good day."
"A good day," said the boy bitterly, and spat a gust of oaths.
"I--pardon, sir," he said, catching the Major's eye and the Colonel's
quick glance. "But--Sonny was my pal; I was his chum, the best chum he
had----" He checked himself again, and after a pause, "No, sir," he
said humbly, "I beg your pardon. _You_ were always that to Sonny." He
saluted again, very gravely and exactly, turned, and went.
The Colonel rose. "It's true, too," said the Major, "I was; and he was
the dearest chum to me. I fathered him since he was ten, when our Pater
died. I taught him to fly--took him up dual myself, and I remember he
was quick as a monkey in learning. I watched his first solo, with my
heart in my mouth; and I had ten times the pride he had himself when he
put his first wings up. And now ... he's gone."
"He saved his Flight," said the Colonel softly. "You heard. It's him
and his like that make the Corps what it is. They show the way, and the
others carry on. They go down, but"--he tapped his finger slowly on the
message lying on the table, "but ... the Corps 'has had A Good Day.'"
(_To the tune of "John Brown's Body."_)
Half the Flight may crash to-day and t'other half to-night,
_But_ the Flight does dawn patrol, before to-morrow's light,
And if we live or if we die, the Corps still wins the fight,
And the war goes rolling on.
V
A ROTTEN FORMATION
The Major lifted his head from the pile of papers he was reading and
signing, and listened to the hum of an engine passing over the office
and circling down to the 'drome. "One of ours," he said. "Flight coming
down, I suppose. They're rather late."
An officer lounging on a blanket-covered truckle bed murmured something
in reply and returned to the sixpenny magazine he was devouring. The
noise of the engine droned down to the ground level, ceased, stuttered,
and rose, sank again, and finally stopped. The C.O. hurried on with his
papers, knowing the pilots of the Flight would be in presently to make
their reports.
In three minutes the door banged open noisily, and the Flight Leader
clumped heavily in. Such of his features as could be seen for a leather
helmet coming low on his forehead and close round his cheeks, and a
deep collar turned up about his chin, disclosed an expression of bad
temper and dissatisfaction.
"Hullo, Blanky," said the Major cheerfully. "Made rather a long job of
it, didn't you? Any Huns about?"
Now Blanky had an established and well-deserved reputation for bad
language, and although usually a pilot is expected more or less to
modify any pronounced features in language in addressing his C.O.,
there are times when he fails to do so, and times when the C.O. wisely
ignores the failure. This apparently was one of the times, and the
Major listened without remark to a stream of angry and sulphurous
revilings of the luck, the Huns, the fight the Flight had just
come through, and finally--or one might say firstly, at intervals
throughout, and finally--the Flight itself.
"Three blessed quarters of a bloomin' hour we were scrappin'," said
Blanky savagely, "and I suppose half the blistering machines in the
blinking Flight are shot up to everlastin' glory. I know half the
flamin' controls and flyin' wires are blanky well cut on my goldarn
bus. And two confounded Huns' brimstone near got me, because the
cock-eyed idiot who should have been watching my plurry tail went
hare-in' off to heaven and the Hot Place. But no-dash-body watched
any-darn-body's tail. Went split-armin' around the ruddy sky like a
lot of runaway racin' million-horse-power comets. Flight! Dot, dash,
asterisk! Formation! Stars, stripes, and spangles----"
He broke off with a gesture of despair and disgust. None of this
harangue was very informing, except it made clear that the Flight had
been in a fight, and that Blanky was not pleased with the result or the
Flight. The Major questioned gently for further details, but hearing
the note of another descending engine Blanky went off at a tangent
again. Here one of them came ... about half an hour after him ... wait
till he saw them ... he'd tell them all about it ... and so on.
"Did you down any Huns?" asked the Major, and Blanky told him No, not
one single, solitary, stream-line Hun crashed, and couldn't even swear
to any out of control. Before the Major could say more, the office door
opened to admit a leather-clad pilot grinning cheerfully all over his
face. Blanky whirled and burst out on him, calling him this, that, and
the other, demanding to know what the, where the, why the, advising
him to go'n learn to drive a beastly wheel-barrow, and buy a toy gun
with a cork on a string to shoot with. The bewildered pilot strove to
make some explanation, to get a word in edgeways, but he hadn't a hope
until Blanky paused for breath. "I didn't break formation for more'n
a minute----" he began, when Blanky interrupted explosively, "Break
formation--no, 'cos there wasn't a frescoed formation left to break. It
had gone to gilt-edged glory, and never came back. But I was there, and
your purple place was behind me. Why the which did you leave there?"
"Because I'd winged the Hun that was sitting on your tail," said the
other indignantly. "I had to go after him to get him."
"Get him," said Blanky contemptuously. "Well, why didn't you?"
"I did," said the pilot complacently. At that Blanky broke loose and
cried aloud for the wrath to descend and annihilate any man who could
stand there and deliberately murder the truth. "But I _did_ get him. I
watched him crash right enough," retorted the maligned one. Blanky was
still yelling at him, when in came another couple talking eagerly and
also with faces wreathed in smiles, and evidently well pleased with the
world. "Hullo, Blanky," said the first. "Pretty good show, eh?"
Blanky wheeled and stared at him as if in dumb amazement. "Blanky
doesn't think so," said the Major softly. "He's complaining a good deal
that your formation wasn't very good."
"Good, Major," exploded Blanky again. "It was worse than very beastly
bad. I never adverbed saw such an adjectived rank bad formation. It was
a rotten formation. And then Billie tells me--has the crimson cheek to
say he crashed a constellation Hun."
"Ask Tom there," said Billie. "Tom, didn't you see me put one down?"
Tom couldn't be sure. He'd been too busy with a Hun himself. He and the
Diver had one fellow between them, and both shootin' like stink at him,
and were watching after to see if he crashed----
"Crashed," burst in Blanky. "My sainted sacred aunt. Another fellow
walking in his sleep and killing criss-cross Huns in his dithering
dreams. Any imagining more of you get a fabulous freak Hun?"
The Diver said mildly, "Yes," he'd got one--not counting the one
between him and Tom, which might have been either's. Blanky was
beginning again, when the Major stopped him. "This is getting too
complicated," he said. "Let's get the lot together--observers and
all--and see if we can make anything of this business."
A babble of voices was heard outside, the door banged open, and in
jostled another batch of pilots and observers talking at the pitch of
their voices, laughing, shouting questioning, answering, trampling
their heavy flying boots noisily on the bare wood floor, turning the
little office hut into a regular bear-garden. Their leather coats
were unbuttoned and flapping, their long boots hung wrinkled about
their knees or were pulled thigh-high, scarves swathed their throats
or dangled down their chests, enormous furry gauntletted gloves hid
their hands. Some still wore their leather helmets with goggles pushed
up over their foreheads; others had taken them off, and looked like
some strange pantomime monsters with funnily disproportionate faces
and heads emerging from the huge leather collars. For minutes the
room was a hopeless bedlam of noise. Everyone talked at once: all,
slightly deaf perhaps from the long-endured roar of the engines, and
rush of the wind, talked their loudest. They compared notes of flashing
incidents seen for a fraction of a second in the fighting, tried to
piece together each others' seeings and doings, told what had happened
to them and their engines and machines, asked questions, and, without
waiting for an answer, asked another, or answered somebody else's.
The voice of Blanky haranguing some of the last-comers, calling down
curses on their misdeeds, rose through any break in the hubbub. The
Major sat for some minutes listening to the uproar, catching beginnings
and middles and loose ends of sentences here and there from one or
another: "Gave him a good half drum." ... "Shot away my left aileron
control." ... "Went hare-ing off over Hunland at his hardest." ...
"Pulled everything in sight and pushed the others, but couldn't get
her straightened." ... "A two-inch tear in my radiator, an' spoutin'
steam like an old steam laundry." ... And then the voice of Blanky
spitting oaths and "It was the rottenest formation I ever saw,
abso-blanky-lutely _rotten_." His sentence was swamped again in the
flood of talk and fragments of sentences. "Then it jammed--number three
stoppage and" ... "yellin' myself black in the face, but couldn't make
him hear." ... "I hate those filthy explosive bullets of theirs." ...
"Chucked her into a spin." ... "Missing every other stroke, fizzing and
spitting like a crazy Tom cat." ... "I ask you now, I _ask_ you what
could I do?" ... "Down flamin' like a disembowelled volcano."
The Major called, called again, raised his voice and shouted, and
gradually the noise died down.
"Now, let's get to business," he said. "I want to know what happened.
Blanky, let's hear you first."
Blanky told his story briefly. The formation of six machines had run
into twenty-two Huns--four two-seaters, the rest fighting scouts--and
had promptly closed with and engaged them. Blanky here threw in a few
brief but pungent criticisms on the Flight's behaviour and "rotten
formation" during the fight, mentioned baldly that they had scrapped
for about three-quarters of an hour, and although there were certainly
fewer Huns in at the finish than had begun, none, so far as he knew,
had been crashed. All the Flight had returned, mostly with a good few
minor damages to machines, but no casualties to men.
"Now," said the Major, "some of you claim Huns crashed, don't you? Let
'em alone, Blanky, to tell their own yarns."
The first pilot told of running fights, said he had sent at least one
down out of control, and saw one crash. His observer corroborated the
account; Blanky pooh-poohed it scornfully. He contradicted flatly and
hotly another pilot who said he had crashed his Hun, and in the middle
of the argument the last pilot came in.
"Here's Dicky. Ask him. He was close up, and saw me get 'im," said the
denied victor.
"Dicky," cried Blanky, "I've been waiting for--here, you cock-eyed
quirk, what in the Hot Place did you mean by bargin' across the nose of
my bus when I'd just got a sanguinary Hun in my ensanguined sights. You
blind, blithering no-good...."
"What's that, Blanky? What d'you say?" remarked Dicky cheerfully.
"Wait a bit. My ears...." He gripped his nose and violently "blew
through his ears" to remove the deafness that comes to a man who has
descended too quickly from a height. "Didn't you see me get that Hun,
Dicky?" demanded the Diver. "Why didn't you keep formation? Served you
something well otherthing right if I'd shot you, blinding across under
my gory prop...."
Dicky gripped his nose and blew again. "Wait a minute--can't hear
right...."
The talk was boiling up all round them again, in claims of a kill,
counter-claims, corroborations, and denials, and the Major sat
back and let it run for a bit. Blanky, the Diver, and Dicky held a
three-cornered duel, Blanky strafing wildly, the Diver demanding
evidence of his kill and Dicky holding his nose and blowing, and
returning utterly misfitting answers to both. He caught a word of
Blanky's tirade at last, something about "silly yahoo bashing around,"
misinterpreted it evidently, and, still holding his nose, grinned
cheerfully and nodded. "Did I crash a Hun?" he said. "Sure thing I did.
Put 'im down in flames."
The Diver leaned close and yelled in Dicky's ear: "Didn't I
crash--one--too?" Dicky blew again. "No, I didn't crash two," he said.
"Only one, I saw, though there was another blighter----"
Blanky turned disgustedly to the Major. "They're crazy," he said. "I
know I didn't see one single unholy Hun crashed in the whole sinful
show."
"Between them they claim five," said the Major, "and you say none. What
about yourself? Didn't you get any?"
"No," said Blanky shortly. "One or two down out of control, but I
didn't watch 'em, and they probably straightened out lower down."
(Blanky, it may be mentioned, has a record of never having claimed a
single Hun crashed, but is credited, nevertheless, with a round dozen
from entirely outside evidence.)
The Major spent another noisy three minutes trying to sift the tangled
evidence and claims of crashes, then gave it up. "Write your reports,"
he said, "and we'll have to wait and see if any confirmation comes in
of any crashes. You were near enough to the line for crashes to be
seen, weren't you?"
"Near enough?" said Blanky. "Too disgustingly near. I suppose anyone
that knows a bus from a banana would recognise the make of ours, and
I'm rank ashamed to imagine what the whole blinking line must have
thought of the Squadron and the paralysed performance."
The bir-r-r of the telephone bell cut sharply through the noisy talk,
and the Major shouted for silence. He got it at last, and the room
listened to the one-sided conversation that followed. Some of the
men continued their talk in whispers, Blanky fumbled out and lit a
cigarette, Dicky dropped on the bed beside the man with the book, who,
through all the uproar, had kept his eyes glued to the magazine pages.
"What you got there?" asked Dicky conversationally. "Any good?"
"Good enough for me to want to read," snapped the other. "But a man
couldn't read in this row if he was stone deaf."
"Well, y'see, they're all a bit bucked with the scrap," said Dicky
apologetically.
"Oh, bust the scrap," said the reader. "I'm sick of scraps and Huns.
Do dry up and let me read," and he buried himself again in the fiction
that to him at least was stranger than the naked truth that rioted
about his unheeding ears.
The Major's end of the talk consisted at first of "Yes ... yes ... yes
... oh, yes," and then, more intelligibly, "Yes, pretty good scrap
evidently.... No, they're all back, thanks.... Thanks, I'm glad you
think--what?... Are you sure?... Quite sure? Good. There's been rather
an argument.... Six? Quite certain?... Thanks very much.... I suppose
you'll send a report confirming.... Right. Thanks.... Good-bye."
He put the receiver down on the stand and turned to Blanky with a
smile twitching his lips. "Our Archies," he explained, "rang up to tell
me they'd watched the whole show----" "Pretty sight, too," growled
Blanky. The Major went on: "and to congratulate the Squadron on a
first-class fight. And they positively confirm six crashes, Blanky;
saw them hit the ground and smash. Some others seen low down out of
control, and could hardly recover, but weren't seen actually to crash.
So we only get six--and as the others only claim five, you must have
got yours after all."
"Course he got it," struck in Blanky's observer; "only I knew he'd
argue me down if I----"
"Oh, shut up," said Blanky. "How could you see? You were looking over
the tail, anyway."
"Well, I knew I got mine," said Dicky.
"Me, too" ... "And I was sure----" ... "And I saw mine."
"For the love of Christmas, dry up," stormed Blanky. "If you could only
fly as well as you can talk, you might make a half-baked blistering
Flight. As it is you're more like a fat-headed flock o' incarnadined
crows split-armin' over a furrow in a ploughed field. Of all the
dazzling dud formations I ever saw----"