developing and shaping and settling into position for the assault. The
attack was a little late, as we heard after from prisoners--perhaps
the Night Bombers, and their upsetting of road and rail transport
timetables with high-explosive bombs and showering machine-guns, had
some word in that lateness--and our fire caught it in the act of
deploying. And when such a weight of guns as was massed on that front
catches solid battalions on the roads, or troops close-packed in
trenches, the Lord ha' mercy on the men they catch. The shells rained,
deluged down on every trench, every road and communication way within
range, searched every thicket and patch of cover, blasted the dead
woods to splintered wreckage, smashed in dug-out and emplacement, broke
down the trenches to tumbled smoking gutters, gashed and seamed and
pitted the bare earth into a honeycombed belt of death and destruction.
The high-explosive broke in, tore open, wrenched apart and destroyed
the covering trenches and dug-outs; the shrapnel raked and rent the
tattered fragments of battalions that scattered and sought shelter in
the shell-holes and craters. The masses that were moving up to push
home the intended attack escaped if they were checked and stayed in
time; those that had arrived and passed into the furnace were simply
and utterly destroyed.
For a good three hours the roaring whirlwind of gunfire never ceased,
or even slacked; for three hours the ground for a full mile back from
the Hun front line rolled billowing clouds of smoke, quivered and shook
to the crash of the explosions, spurted and boiled and eddied under the
shells "like a bubbling porridge pot," as one gun-spotter put it, was
scorched with fire, flayed with lead and steel, drenched and drowned
with gas from the poison shells.
For three hours the circling planes above watched for sign of movement
below, and seeing any such sign talked back by wireless to the guns,
waited and watched the wrath descend and blot out the movement in fresh
whirlwinds of concentrated fire; while further back a full five to ten
miles other spotters quartered to and fro working steadily, sending
back call after call to our Heavies, and silencing, one by one, battery
after battery which was pounding our trenches with long-range fire. And
for three hours the infantry crouched half deafened in their trenches,
listening to the bellowing uproar, watching the writhing smoke-fog
which veiled but could not conceal the tearing destruction that raged
up and down, to and fro, across and across the swept ground.
Three hours, three long hours--and one can only guess how long they
were to the maimed and wounded, cowering and squeezing flat to earth
in the reeking shell-holes, gasping for choked breath through their
gas-masks, quivering under the fear of further wounds or sudden and
violent death; how bitterly long they were to the German commanders and
generals watching their plans destroyed, their attack wiped out, their
regiments and battalions burnt away in our consuming fire.
Our despatches, after their common use and wont, put the matter
coldly, dispassionately, and with under-rather than over-statement of
facts--"The attack was broken by our artillery fire."
Broken! Smashed rather; attack and attackers blotted out, annihilated,
utterly and entirely.
"By our artillery fire." The truth no doubt, but hardly the complete
truth, since it said no word of the part the Air Service had played.
So few knew what had been brought about by the work of a photographic
patrol, the following reconnaissance, the resulting air work.
The infantry never knew how it was that the attack never reached them,
why they did not have to beat it off with bullet and bayonet--or be
beaten in by it--except that the guns perhaps had stopped it. The
public did not know because the press did not say--perhaps because the
press itself didn't know. And what the Air Service knew, as usual it
didn't tell.
But Somebody evidently knew, because Washie and Pip found themselves
shortly afterwards in Orders for a Decoration; and apparently the
Squadron knew, because next morning when he went out to his 'bus Washie
found that "Pan" had a neat little splash of paint on what you might
call her left breast, an oblong little patch showing the colours of the
ribbon of the Military Cross.
_All that we are and all we own,_
_All that we have and hold or take,_
_All that we tackle or do or try_
_Is not for our, or the Corps' own sake._
Through our open eyes the Armies see,
We look and we learn that they may know.
Collect from the clouds the news they need,
And carry it back to them below.
We harry the guns that do us no harm,
We picture the paths we shall never take;
There's naught to help or to hinder us
On the road we bomb or the bridge we break.
Only to work where our footmen wish,
Only to guard them from prying eyes,
To find and to fetch the word they want,
We war unceasing and hold the skies.
_All that we are and all we own,_
_All that we have or hope or know,_
_Our work and our wits, our deaths, our lives,_
_We stake above, that they win below._
IX
IF THEY KNEW--
A group of infantry in our front line trench watching the boiling
eddying smoke and spurting fires of our artillery barrage on the enemy
lines saw a couple of planes whirl suddenly up into sight above and
beyond the barrage smoke. They were diving and twisting about each
other like a couple of tumbler pigeons in flight, or rather, since one
was obviously pursuing the other closely, like a pigeon hard pressed by
a hawk. The excitement of the infantry turned to disgust as they caught
plain sight of the markings on the machines, saw that the pursued
was a British machine, the pursuer a black-crossed German. And when
the British machine came rocketting and whirling through the barrage
smother in plain flight from the German, who dared not follow through
the wall of falling and bursting shells, the disgust of the men on the
ground was openly and angrily expressed.
"Mastery o' the air," shouted one. "Fat lot he'll master." And from
the others came similar jeers--"Hurry up, son, or he'll catch you
yet--Why couldn't he have put up a fight?--Do they ever court-martial
them blokes for runnin' away?--Fritz fliers top dog again."
And yet, if those men had known, they would have cheered the man
passing over them, cheered him for as plucky a man as ever flew--and
that is saying something. If they knew, so often if they knew--but at
least I can let them know something of this particular story.
The Flight went out as usual on "o.p." (offensive patrol), which,
again as usual, had taken them well over Hunland. For the first
half-hour they had a dull time, seeing no Huns about and having no more
than the normal amount of Archie fire to dodge. Then the Flight Leader
spotted a string of dots to eastward, and on counting them and finding
they numbered something round a dozen to fifteen, concluded they
were Huns. He ensured the Flight's attention to the matter, and then
pointing his machine straight at the enemy, and after glancing round
to make sure the Flight were in correct formation, began to climb them
steadily up and towards the oncoming hostiles. He kept a close watch
on the enemy, because he knew that the Squadron to which he belonged
and the type of machine they flew had a name apparently discouraging
to the Huns' fighting inclinations, and he was afraid that, even with
more than two to one in their favour, they might on recognising the
Flight avoid action and clear off. The Flight had already burnt a good
hour's petrol and had some miles to go back home, and this did not
leave a very great margin for a long pursuit and perhaps a prolonged
fight. But this time the Huns showed no sign of shirking the fight, and
came driving straight west on a course which must very soon bring them
into contact with the Flight. As they swept closer it was seen that
the hostile fleet was made up of three two-seater machines and a dozen
single-seater fighting scouts, and just before they came close enough
for action "Ailie" Arrowman, the Flight Leader, noticed something
else that made him decide very quickly to concentrate the Flight's
frightfulness on the two-seaters. The three were bombers, and from
their slow and heavy flight obviously fully loaded with bombs, and from
the direction they were taking were clearly out on a bombing raid over
the British lines.
Now these Hun raids and bomb-droppings had been becoming unpleasantly
frequent for a little time before this, and all our patrols had
special orders to keep a sharp look-out for bombers and make things as
hot for them as possible. The Hun was coming to specialise on rapid
dashes over our lines, the hurried dropping of their eggs, and a hasty
bee-line flight for home. Our infantry and our batteries were a good
deal annoyed by these attentions, and naturally and very simply wanted
to know why our flying men didn't "stop these blighters coming and
going as they liked." This, of course, is a delusion of the men on the
ground. The Huns were very far from doing as they liked, but since
the air (for flying purposes) is twenty odd thousand feet high, and
as long as the line, it takes a lot of policing against tip-and-run
raids, especially when you remember that machines can pass within quite
a few hundred yards of each other and never know the other is there.
The groundlings don't recognise these facts, much less the incidental
possibilities of Huns sneaking over under cover of clouds and so on,
and it must be confessed the airmen, as a rule, don't take many pains
to enlighten them, even when they do get talking together. On the
ground, again, they know nothing of the Hun bombers chased back and
brought down well behind their own lines, and nothing of the raids
which are caught and interrupted, as the one I'm telling of was about
to be.
All this is by the way, but it explains why Ailie was specially keen
to out the bombing machines first of all, and also why the bombers at
the first sign of attack on them dropped their noses and went off at a
rush, and the Hun fighters hurriedly dived in to divert the Flight and
force a fight with them. We need not at the moment follow the details
of the whole fight, but see rather how the one man Ailie fared in it.
But, incidentally, it may be mentioned that the rest of the Flight sank
one bomber and chased the other down to the ground, fought the escort
and sank three of them at a cost of no more than one pilot wounded, a
great many bullet holes in the machines, and one badly crippled and
just able to reach and land on our side of the lines.
Ailie went down in a hurricane dive on the first bomber, and since
he was much faster than the big machine, especially with it carrying
a full load, he caught it up rapidly, and bringing his bow gun into
action commenced to hail a stream of lead on it. The gunner of the
two-seater began to fire back at Ailie, but as his pilot at the same
time was swerving and swinging his machine to dodge the streaking
bullets, he spoiled the gunner's aim and few of the bullets came
dangerously close to Ailie. But two of the enemy scouts had seen
Ailie's charge, had promptly swung and dived after him, and, following
hard astern, opened fire in their turn. Ailie caught up the two-seater,
swooped down under her, throttled back to keep her pace, pulled down
the gun fixed on his top plane, and started to pelt bullets up into
the underbody hurtling along above him. The two Hun scouts dropped to
his level and followed, shooting close and hard, and Ailie, finding
their bullets snapping and smacking on his planes, was forced to
swerve and duck and at last to turn sharp on them. Either he was the
better pilot or his was the handier machine, because in a few seconds
he had out-manœuvred them and driven them diving down ahead of him.
He ripped a short burst into one, wheeled, looked round for sight of
his two-seater and, sighting it tearing off at top speed, swung and,
opening his engine full out, went racing after it. The two-seater flung
himself into a spin and went twisting and spiralling wildly down, Ailie
following close and shooting whenever he could bring his sights to
bear. But again the renewed rattle of close machine-gun fire began, and
he glanced round to find the scouts hot in pursuit again. This time
they were not to be pursuers only, for another of the Flight leaped
suddenly into the fight, rattled off a quick burst of fire, and in an
instant had one of the enemy scouts plunging down helplessly out of
control, whirled round and without a second's hesitation attacked the
second. The Hun bomber, down to about 1,000 feet, flattened out and
drove off east with Ailie still hard after him. He was getting angry
now. Burst after burst of fire he had poured, as far as he could see,
straight into the big machine, and yet it kept on apparently unharmed.
But suddenly its tail flicked up, a wing buckled and tore loose, and it
went down rolling and pitching, to crash on the ground.
Ailie swept over, leaning out and peering down on the heaped wreckage;
but whatever triumph he might have felt was short-lived, for at that
moment _tat-tat-tat-tat_ went a gun close behind him and then the
quicker closer rattle of double or triple guns. Ailie hoicked hard
up in a swift climbing turn, whirled round, and just catching one of
the enemy scouts in his sights, gripped the trigger of the firing
mechanism. His gun fired--once--and stopped, although he still held the
trigger hard gripped and it should have continued to fire. The target
swept clear, and Ailie, after gripping and releasing quickly several
times, knew his gun had jammed. The two hostiles reopened fire on him,
and he swerved, straightened out and went off in a bee-line at top
speed. He was not unduly alarmed, although his position, a bare 1,000
feet off the ground and therefore well within ground shooting range
of rifles and machine-guns, with a jammed gun, and with two scouts
hard after him, was uncomfortably risky. He was on a fast machine,
so fast that he did not believe the Hun flew that could catch him;
and he reckoned that in a straightaway flight he could drop the two
sufficiently to be out of urgent danger from them. As he flew he leaned
forward, wrenched back the cover over the breech of his gun and jerked
the loading lever rapidly to and fro. But the jammed cartridge stayed
jammed and Ailie felt a first qualm of fear, as he heard the guns
behind him reopen fire and recognised that he was not gaining on his
enemies. Another gun broke into the chorus, and Ailie glanced round to
see another of his Flight diving in and engaging one of the enemy. The
second one, a bright scarlet painted scout, kept on after him, caught
him up and dived firing on him.
Then began a game that Ailie might remember in his nightmares for long
enough. His machine was not doing her best, and the hostile fairly had
the wings of him. Time after time the Hun swooped up over him and dived
down, firing as he came. Ailie could only duck and swerve and dodge,
some of his dives bringing him perilously close to the ground; and as
he flew he wrenched and jerked at his gun's firing mechanism, snatched
the Verey pistol from its rack, and with the butt tapped and hammered
at the gun, hoping the jar might loosen the cartridge. He escaped
touching the ground and crashing over and over again by bare feet; more
than once he had to zoom sharply and just cleared low trees or even
bushes that appeared suddenly before him; once his wheels brushed and
ripped across the top of a hedge, and once again in a banking turn his
heart stood still for a second that seemed an eternity, as he banked
steeply and the machine side-slipped until his wing-tip, as it appeared
to him, was touching the grass. And all the time, in dive after dive,
his enemy came whirling down on him, the fire of his machine-gun
clattering off burst after burst, and the bullets hissing past in flame
and smoke or smacking venomously on the wings and body of Ailie's
machine.
And through it all, flinging his machine about, twirling and twisting
like a champion skater cutting fancy and fantastic figures, doing
star-performance low flying that might have kept every nerve and sense
of any stunt-artist flier occupied to the full, Ailie still made shift
to spare a hand and enough eye and mind for the job of fiddling and
hammering and working to clear his jammed gun--a gun that was not even
in a convenient position to handle because, set above the left upper
edge of his cockpit, it was very little below the level of his face and
awkwardly high for his hand to reach. He gave up trying to clear it at
last and turned all his attention to out-manœuvring his opponent. The
Hun was above him, and every time he tried to lift his machine the Hun
dived, firing on him, and drove him down again. He was too low to pick
up or follow landmarks, so kept the westering sun in his eyes, knowing
this was edging him west towards our lines. The Hun after each dive did
a climbing turn to a position to dive anew, and each time he climbed
Ailie made another dash towards the west. The Hun saw the move, and, to
beat it, dropped his climbing-turn tactics and instead dived and zoomed
straight up, dived and zoomed again and again. Ailie saw his chance and
took it. He throttled hard back next time the Hun dived, and as the Hun
overshot him and zoomed straight up, Ailie in two swift motions pulled
the stick in, lifting sharp up after and under him, pulled down the
top gun and fired point blank into him. The Hun whirled over, dived
vertically, and in an instant crashed heavily nose first into the
ground. And Ailie's top gun had jammed after about its tenth shot.
He flew on west, hardly for the moment daring to believe he had
escaped, opening the throttle and starting to lift from his dangerous
proximity to the ground mechanically, and with his mind hardly yet
working properly. If he had not caught the Hun with that last handful
of shots before his second gun jammed....
And then, almost before he had collected his wits enough to realise
properly how close his escape had been, that same horrible clatter of
machine-gun fire from the air above and behind him broke out, the same
hiss and snap of bullets came streaming about him. For a moment he had
a wild idea that his Hun had not actually crashed, but a glance round
showed that it was no longer the brilliant red machine, but another,
and again a fighting scout.
Exactly the old performance started all over again, but this time
without even that slender chance he had used so well before of catching
his enemy with the fire of his top gun. Again he went through the
twisting and dodging and turning to avoid his relentless enemy and the
fire that crackled about him. Again he dived into fields, skimmed the
ground, hurdled over low bushes and hedges, used every flying trick
and artifice he knew, but had never before dared try at less than
thousands of feet height, to shake off his pursuer; and again as he
flew he wriggled and worked at the jammed gun in front of him. For
breathless minutes he worked, casting quick glances from the ground
rushing under him to the gun mechanism, jockeying his machine with
steady pressures or sharp kicks on the rudder-bar and one hand on the
joy-stick, while the other fumbled and worked at the gun, and the
bullets sang and cracked about him. By all the laws of chance, by all
the rules of hazard, he should have been killed, shot down or driven
down into a crash, a dozen times over in those few minutes; just as by
all the limits of possibility he could never hope to clear a jammed gun
while doing fancy flying at such a height. But against all chance and
hazard and possibility--as pilots do oftener than most people outside
themselves know--he flew on untouched, and ... cleared his jamb. By
now he was worked up to such a pitch of fear, frenzy, desperation,
anger--it may have been any of them, it may have been something of
all--that he took no further thought of manœuvring or tactics, whirled
blindly and drove straight at his enemy, firing as he went, feeling
a savage joy in the jar and bang of his spurting gun. To avoid that
desperate rush and the streaming bullets, the Hun swerved wide and
swooped out in a banking turn, a turn so hurriedly and blindly taken
that, before he could properly see, he found himself whirling into
the edge of a forest the chase had unwittingly skirted. Ailie saw him
distinctly try to wrench round to clear the trees--but he was too near;
to hoick up and over them--but he was too low. He crashed sideways on a
tree-trunk, down headlong into the ground.
Again Ailie swung and flew straight towards the sun, switching on to
the emergency tank, because by now his main petrol tank was almost
empty. He continued to fly low and no more than 100 or 200 feet off
the ground. At his speed it would take a good shot to hit him from the
ground; higher up he would run more risk of Archie fire and of meeting
Huns, and--this perhaps was the main determining factor, because by
now he was almost exhausted with the fatigue of severe and prolonged
strain--flying low would bring him quicker to the lines and safety.
One might have supposed that by now the grim gods of War had had sport
enough of him. But he was not yet free of them. Within a mile he was
attacked again, and this time by three hostile scout fighters. He made
no attempt to dodge or out-manœuvre them. His cartridges were almost
finished, his machine was badly shot about, his petrol was running out.
He opened his engine out to its fullest and drove hard and headlong
for the lines and the drifting smoke and winking fires that told of an
artillery barrage. Close to the barrage he had to swerve and dodge a
moment, because one of the Huns was fairly on top of him and hailing
lead on him, but next instant he plunged at, into and through the
barrage, his machine rocking and pitching and rolling in the turmoil
of shell-torn air, his eyes blinded by the drifting smoke, his ears
stunned by the rending crashes and cracks of the drum-fare explosions.
He won through safely and alone, for his three enemies balked at facing
that puffing, spurting, fire-winking inferno, turned back and left him.
Ailie, hardly daring to believe that he was actually clear and safe
and free, steered for home. He skimmed his bullet-torn machine over
the trenches, a machine holed and ripped and torn and cut with
armour-piercing and explosive bullets, his guns jammed, his ammunition
expended, his petrol at its last pints, he himself at almost the last
point of exhaustion, dizzy from excitement, weak and faint from sheer
strain.
Yet this was the man and the moment that those infantry in the trenches
jeered, looking up as he passed over, his ripped fabric fluttering, his
shot-through wires whipping and trailing, blessing the wildest luck
that had left him alive, heart-thankful for the sight of khaki in the
trenches below him.
It seems a pity those disgusted infantry could not have known the
truth, of all he had come through, of those long danger-packed minutes,
of those three crashed Huns scattered along his track--and of those
bombs which would _not_ drop on our lines, batteries, or billets that
day.
X
THE FO-FUM'S REPUTATION
I am naturally anxious to avoid angering the Censor by naming any
particular type or make of machine, but fear it is inevitable that
anyone who knows anything of aeroplanes must recognise in reading this
story the type concerned, although that may hardly matter, since the
Hun knows the type well (and to his sorrow), and the tale more fully in
the exact detail of his casualties than we do. And because this type,
which we may call the "Fo-Fum 2," has for a full year previous to the
date of this story's happenings been openly scoffed at and condemned
in speech and print by the "experts" as slow, clumsy, obsolete, and
generally useless, I also fear I may be accused of "leg-pulling" and
impossibly romancing in crediting the Fo-Fums with such a startling
fight performance. I may warn such critics in advance, however, that
I can produce official records to prove a dozen shows almost or quite
equally good to the credit of the Fo-Fums.