game doesn't leave room for men with anything but steady nerves, and
most of us find little or no liquor and not too much smoking gives you
the longest life and gets the most Huns. We're all out for the most
Huns, y'see, and pushing up the Squadron's record. Over the hundred
crashed in under six months now and we want to pile it up. There's
hardly a man here hasn't got anything from two to a dozen a-piece."
"Doesn't seem to sit on their consciences," said Jack, looking round
the table of happy faces and listening to the chatter and laughter that
ran steadily through the dinner. Out in the ante-room the band played
light and cheerful music.
"Some band," said Jack admiringly in answer to a remark from the C.O.
"Good as a West End Theatre; makes me want to get up and dance,"
tapping his foot in time to the alluring rag that the music had just
slid off into.
"You people evidently believe in the 'eat, drink and be merry, for
to-morrow, etcetera' theory," said the visiting Major.
"Why not?" said the C.O. quickly. "Let's live decently while we can,
I say. We're all proud of the Squadron, and all keen to do the best
we can to make it the best in the Field, in living, and feeding, and
comfort--and fighting. And the theory seems to work all right."
"Looking at your record," said the other Major, "it does."
They were at the second course, when half a dozen pilots came in in
ones and twos, went to the head of the table and made their formal
apologies for being late, and went to their seats. They were the
evening patrol, and the Leader took his place near the Major's end of
the table.
"Anything doing to-night?" asked the Major when the Captain had been
served and commenced his soup.
"Quite a brisk scrap," said the Captain proceeding industriously with
his soup. "That's what made us so late. Chased a bunch of fourteen
Albatrii and had twenty minutes' scrapping with them."
"Get any?" asked the Major.
"Two crashes and three down out of control. Jerry got one crash and I
got the other. Makes the Squadron tally a hundred and seven, doesn't
it?"
"Yes, good work," said the C.O., and called down the table "I hear you
bagged another to-night, Jerry. How many does that make?"
"Hundred and seven to the Squadron, sir," said Jerry, "and eight to me."
The Flight Leader, hurrying his dinner to catch up to the others,
went on to tell some bald details of the fight. Jack sat drinking it
in, although it was rather a technical and air-slangy account for him
to understand properly, and all the time he could not get it out of
his mind how extraordinary it was that this man and the others who
half an hour ago had been fighting for their lives, shooting men down,
hearing (and seeing as he gathered from the story) bullets crack past,
tearing home at a hundred and odd miles an hour with the reek and roar
of a big battle beneath them, with shells puffing and coughing about
them as they flew, should now be sitting, washed, bathed, cleanly and
comfortably dressed, at a full-course dinner, with flowers on the
table and a good band playing outside. He had seen plenty of fighting
himself, but with such a difference, with such a prolonged misery of
short sleep, scratch meals, hard physical work, living in mud and filth
and dirt and stench, under constant fear of death or mutilation, that
this air-fighting appeared by contrast--well, the C.O. had it right,
"living and fighting like gentlemen."
The port went round, followed by the coffee, cigarettes, and liqueurs,
the niceties of Mess etiquette, Jack noticed, being very punctiliously
observed, and no man touching his port or lighting his cigarette before
the Major touched and lit his, none moving from the table until after
the port had been round, and so on. The evening finished with a couple
of very jolly hours in the ante-room where the gramophone took the
place of the band in alternate turns with musical pilots at the piano.
A group hung round the open fireplace chatting and joking, another
round the piano where one pilot played musical pranks, sang topical
air songs, and played seductive melodies that set half a dozen couples
"ragging" round the room, and two or three tables collected for Bridge
and Poker.
Jack, revelling in the comfort and pleasantness of the whole thing,
was haled at last by Jerry into a set for Bridge, and played for an
hour just the sort of game he liked--good enough to be interesting,
free and easy and talkative enough not to be stiff and boringly
business-like.
He was very thoughtful as he undressed for bed--a comfortable camp bed,
with a soft pillow, and pyjamas--and Tom looked at him with a glimmer
of a smile.
"Wondering if you'll put in for a transfer to Flying Corps?" he asked.
Jack was a little startled.
"Well, something like that--yes," he admitted. "You do seem to have
such a ripping good time of it, and right bang in the war, too. It's
amazing."
"'Tisn't all pie, all the time, y'know," said his brother seriously.
"Pretty strenuous at times."
Jack grunted scornfully, with his mind on what strenuous times in the
line meant.
"We'll talk it over to-morrow," said Tom. "Must get a sleep now. I'm on
dawn patrol."
Next day was very much like the first, and Jack felt the inclination
grow to consider a transfer to this life of luxury and ease.
But the afternoon brought a new side of air work to him. The remains
of a patrol--three machines out of six--straggled home with riddled
machines and the tale of a hot fight. Jack gathered and sorted out
and had interpretations of the involved and technical details, and
they made his blood run hot and cold in turn. The six had fought a big
formation of fifteen to twenty Huns, fought them fast and fiercely for
a good fifteen minutes, had crashed five certainly and put others down
without having time to watch their end, had routed and driven east the
remainder of the formation. But they had lost two men crashed. One had
his top petrol tank holed and the top plane set on fire. He was low
down and fighting two Huns, and he might with luck have dived down and
made a landing in Hunland. He preferred instead to take one more Hun
down with him and lessen the odds against his fellows, had deliberately
flung his machine on the nearest enemy, crashed into him, and went
hurtling down, the two locked together and wrapped in roaring flames.
Another had his engine hit, but with water spraying out from his
radiator fought on and finished his individual combat, and put his Hun
down before he attempted to turn out and make for the lines. He had
flown long enough after receiving the damage to make it a matter of
speculation whether his engine could get him home or not, but he flung
away this last chance by turning aside from his homeward flight and
throwing away a couple of thousand feet of height to dive in to the
assistance of another of our machines hard beset by four enemies. One
of these he crippled and drove down, and another his divers on gave a
quick chance to the hard-pressed pilot to shoot down and crash. But the
damaged engine by now was done, and the pilot could only turn his nose
for the lines and try to glide back.
One of the hostiles saw his chance, drove after him, dropped on his
tail, pouring in burst after burst of fire, hung to him and followed
him down in the spin which was evidently the last desperate attempt to
win clear, finally shot him down and crashed him as he flattened out.
A third pilot had been badly wounded by a burst of bullets which
had riddled and smashed one arm. He, too, might have pulled out and
escaped; and he, too, hung on fighting to the end; flew his machine
lurching and swerving home, landed, fainted, and died from loss of
blood before the tourniquet was well on his arm.
A fourth, with a bullet-shattered foot, stayed in the fight and took
another wound in the shoulder, and still fought on, saw it out, and
came home--and went off to the Casualty Clearing Station with a laugh
and a jest on his lips and the certainty in his heart that he was going
to lose his foot or carry it mutilated and useless for life. But he
refused to go until notes had been compared and he could be told their
bag of Huns and the total it brought the Squadron up to.
What hit Jack hardest was that his new but firm friend Jerry was one
of those crashed. And only an hour or two before he had been talking
with Jerry and planning and taking his advice about joining up with the
R.F.C., how to apply and how to get quickly through his training, and
ways of wangling it to get to this Squadron--and--jumping far into the
future--how he, Jerry, would put him up to any amount of fighting tips,
and how to get your Hun and keep a whole skin and pile the Squadron's
record up.
It had all sounded so good to Jack, and now--Jerry was gone, had fought
his last fight, had died the death within an hour of his last laughing
word to Jack on the 'drome, had flung himself flaming into a collision
with his enemy and paid out his life for one more crashed Hun to the
Squadron's tally. And the other one lost, the boy who had thrown away
his chance by diving with a "conking" engine to help a friend, was
the same boy who had fooled at the piano, had kept them all giggling
and chuckling at his jokes and chaff at lunch that day; and then had
gone out and played a man's grim part and sacrificed himself to give a
friend a fighting chance.
That night Jack talked to his brother and told him he'd made up his
mind to put in for an exchange. "Yes, Jerry told me all that--poor old
Jerry," he said, when Tom warned him he'd been seeing the best side of
the life in that particular Squadron, that they were rather a--well,
swanky lot if you liked, but believed in doing themselves well; that
any other Squadron he might go to might be much less particular about
how they lived and might rough it a lot more. (Which, by the way, is
very true; and there are many men who have lived in Squadrons at the
Front for many months may scoff at this description of Squadron life as
rank exaggeration. It is not, as others can testify.)
Jack heard it all out, but did not alter his determination.
"Whatever Squadron it is you admit they live better than we do in the
line," he said, "and anyhow that's not my point now. I'd like to get
even a bit with some of that crowd who downed poor Jerry."
"It is better than the line," admitted his brother, "and whatever the
Squadron, at least we live decently and fight fairly and squarely."
"Yes," said Jack, "your C.O.'s right--live and fight--and, by
the Lord," he added warmly, his mind on that day's fight, his two
friends and the manner of their end, "he might have added 'die'--like
gentlemen."
XII
"AIR ACTIVITY"
That "air activity," so frequently reported and so casually read in
the despatches, means a good deal more than "fleets of aeroplanes
darkening the sky," machines dashing and flashing around anywhere up
to their "ceiling" of twenty odd thousand feet, shooting holes in and
crashing each other, bombing and photographing and contact-patrolling
and ground-strafing, and all the rest of it.
There is just as much "air" activity, or if you measure by hours, from
two to ten times as much, amongst those men whose sole occupation in
life is pushing other people into the air and keeping them there until
they wish to come down, and who never have their own two feet off the
firm earth. The outsider hardly thinks of this, and there are even a
few pilots--a very few, as one is glad to know--who are apt to forget
it, while the great majority of the others don't or can't very well
make much show of their appreciation of or gratitude for the sheer hard
labour of the groundwork in a Squadron that keeps them afloat. I know
that most pilots will be glad to have even this one little bit of the
limelight turned on a class of men who deserve a good deal more than
they get.
No. 00 Squadron broke into the Air Activity period a full week before
the Push began on the ground, but a certain amount of "dud weather"
gave the pilots some intervening spells of rest and gave the Squadron
mechanics a chance to catch up and keep level with their work. But in
the last few days before the Push was dated to begin, the air work
became more strenuous, because the Huns, evidently suspecting that
something was coming off, set their air service to work trying to push
over and see what was going on behind our lines, and to prevent our air
men picking up information behind theirs. No. 00 was a single-seater
fighting Squadron, and so was one of the ots whose mission in life was
to down any Huns who came over to reconnoitre or spot for their guns,
and, conversely, to patrol over Hunland and put out of action as many
as possible of the Hun fighters who were up to sink our machines doing
artillery observing or photographing. The more machines one side can
put and keep in the air the better chance that side has of doing its
work and preventing the opposition doing theirs--it is a pity many
aircraft workers even now don't seem to understand the value of this
sheer weight of numbers--and since both sides by this time were using
their full air strength it meant that No. 00, like all the rest, was
kept flying the maximum number of hours machines and pilots could stand.
As the work speeded up the strain grew on pilots and machines,
which also means on the mechanics. Some of the planes came home with
bullet-holed fabrics, shot-through frames, and damaged engines. All
the holes had to be patched, all the frames had to be mended, all
the engines had to be repaired. The strain and pressure on a flimsy
structure being hurtled through the air at speeds running from 100 to
200 miles per hour is bound to result in a certain amount of working
loose of parts, stretching of stays, slackening of fabrics, give and
take in nuts and bolts, yielding and easing of screws; and since the
pilot's and the machine's life and the Squadron's efficiency alike
depend on every one of the hundreds of parts in a machine's anatomy
being taut and true, or free and easy-running, as the case may be,
the mechanics began to find a full normal day's work merely in the
overhauling and setting up of the machines, apart altogether from
fight-damage repairs.
Two days before the Push began the mechanics put in a hard working day
of fifteen hours out of the twenty-four; the day before the Push they
started at 6 a.m. and finished at 1 a.m. next morning--and with the
first patrols due to start out at dawn. But they finished with every
machine trued to a hair-line, braced and strung to a perfection of
rigidity, with engines running as sweet as oil, and giving their limit
of revolutions without a hint of trouble, with every single item about
them overhauled, examined, adjusted and tested as exhaustively and
completely as if a life hung on the holding of every bolt, brace, and
screw, the smooth, clean working of every plug, piston, and tappet--as,
indeed, a life would hang that day.
The weather report of the day was not good, but a good half hour before
dawn the mechanics had the machines out in line and the pilots were
straggling out swaddled in huge leather coats, sheepskin-lined thigh
boots, furred helmets and goggled masks. But before they arrived the
mechanics had been out a full hour, putting the final touches to the
machines, warming up the engines--for it was near enough to winter
for the cold-weather nights to make an engine sulky and tricky to
start--giving a last look round to everything.
The first two Flights went off before dawn, and the third an hour after
them. The mechanics walked back into the empty hangars which, after the
bustle of the last few days seemed curiously dead and desolate, and
then to their waiting breakfasts.
For some of them the respite was short. Ten minutes after the last lot
of machines had gone there was a shout for "A" Flight men. They hurried
out to find the C.O. and the Flight Sergeant standing together watching
a machine drive slowly up against the wind towards the 'drome. Plainly
something was wrong with her; she had an air of struggling, of fighting
for her life, of being faint and weary and almost beaten. It was hard
to say what gave her this curious look of a ship with decks awash and
on the point of foundering, of a boxer staggering about the ring and
trying to keep his feet. It may have been the propeller running so
slowly that it could be clearly seen, or the fact that she was losing
height almost as fast as she was making way; but whatever it was, it
was unmistakable.
As she drew near to the edge of the landing ground it was evident that
it would be a toss-up whether she made it or touched ground in a patch
of rough, uncleared field. The mechanics set off, running at top speed
to where she was going to touch; the C.O. and the Flight Sergeant
followed close behind them. They saw the pilot make one last effort
to lift her and clear a sunk road and bank that ran along the edge of
the landing ground. He lifted her nose, ... and she almost stalled and
fell; he thrust her nose down again, ... and she hung, ... lurched, ...
slid forward and in to the bank. Would she clear ... would she....
Then, in an instant, it was over. The wheels just caught the edge of
the bank, her tail jerked up and her nose down, ... and the runners
heard the splintering crash of her breaking under-carriage, of her
"prop" hitting and shivering to matchwood, her fabrics ripping and
tearing. She stood straight up on her nose, heeled over, and fell on
her side with fresh noises of crackling, tearing, and splintering from
her wrecked wings. Up to now the runners had thought of the machine,
but in the instant of her hitting, their thoughts jumped to the pilot
and--would he smash with her, or would the wreck catch fire? But before
they reached the piled tangle of wood and fabric they saw a figure
crawl out from under it, stand upright, and mechanically brush the dirt
from his knees. They found he was untouched.
"Got a bullet in her engine somewhere, sir," he told the Major. "I
caught a fair old dose from the machine-guns, and had the planes
riddled; then this one got her, and I couldn't get my revs., and
thought I'd better push her home. Poor old 'bus."
"Another one coming, sir," said the Flight Sergeant suddenly, and
pointed to a machine whirling towards them at a thousand feet up. There
was nothing wrong with this one, anyhow. She roared in over their
heads, banked and swung, slid down smoothly and gracefully, touched
and ran and slowed, and came to rest with the engine just running. It
whirred up into speed again and brought her taxi-ing in towards the
sheds and the mechanics running to meet her. The Major and the pilot,
walking back towards the sheds, were talking of the show: "Something
terriff., sir--never saw such a blaze of a barrage--and the place fair
stiff with machine-guns. Yes, crowds of Huns--and ours--hardly pick
a way without bumping--I put a good burst into one Albatross--didn't
see----"
The Major interrupted: "Can you make out the letter--ah, there, 'K,'"
as the machine, taxi-ing into the sheds, slewed, and they saw the big
"K" on her side.
"'The Kiddie,'" said the pilot. "Morton's 'bus. Seemed to be running
strong enough."
They quickened their pace, the Major with a growing fear that turned
to certainty, as they saw men come from the sheds, clamber up on the
machine, stoop over the pilot, and begin to lift him.
They found Morton hit in the foot and badly. But before he was well
clear of the machine he was laughing and asking for a cigarette. "Yes,
I stopped one, Major; but it doesn't feel too bad. Hullo, Solly, what's
yours?"
"Engine hit, conked out, crashed her edge of the 'drome here," said
Solly hurriedly. "I say, Major, can I take 'The Kiddie' and go back?
I'm all right, and so is she--isn't she, Morton?"
"Better take a rest," said the Major. "After a crash like that----"
But Solly argued, protested so eagerly, that the Major gave in. The
mechanics bustled and swarmed about "The Kiddie," filling the oil and
petrol tanks, securing her light bombs on the racks fitted under her,
replacing the expended rounds of machine-gun ammunition. And before
Morton had finished his smoke or had the boot and sock cut from his
foot, Solly was off. One might have imagined "The Kiddie" as eager
as himself, her engine starting up at the first swing of the prop,
roaring out in the deep, full-noted song that tells of perfect firing
and smooth running. Solly ran her up, eased off, waved his hand to the
two men standing holding the long cords of the chocks at her wheels.
The chocks were jerked clear, "The Kiddie" roared up into her top
notes again, gathered way, and moved out in a sweeping circle that
brought her into the wind, steadied down, gathered speed again across
the grass, lifted her tail, and raced another hundred yards, rose and
hoicked straight up as if she were climbing a ladder. At a couple of
hundred feet up she straightened out and shot away flat, and was off
down wind like a bullet.
Then the "air activity" hit the Squadron on the ground. A tender and
accompanying gang sped out to the crashed machine and set about the
business of picking it up and bringing it home; telephone messages
buzzed in and out of the Squadron office; another tender rolled out
of the 'drome and started racing "all out" with a pilot bound for the
Park, where a new machine would be handed over to replace the crash.
Before the crashed machine was in, the first lot out began to home to
the 'drome. One by one they swept in, curved, slid down, and slanted
smoothly on to the ground, and rolled over to the hangars. There was
hardly one without a bullet-hole somewhere in her; there were some with
scores. Planes were riddled, bracing and control wires cut, fuselage
fabric and frames ripped and holed and cracked, propellers cleanly
shot through. This was at 8 o'clock--and half of them were due to be
up again at 1, and the others at 2. Every possible arrangement had
been made for quick repairs and replacements, tools laid ready, spares
brought out and placed to hand. The mechanics fell on the damaged
machines like wolves on a sheepfold. Fuselages were ripped open,
broken wires and controls torn out, badly damaged planes unshipped and
slung aside, snapped and dangling bracing wires hurriedly unscrewed,
suspected longerons and ribs stripped and bared for examination, holed
or cracked propellers removed. In an hour anyone walking into the
hangars might have thought he was in an airship-breaker's yard, and
was looking at a collection almost fit for the scrap-heap. But at the
appointed time the machines of the first Flight were ready, although it
would take a decent-sized booklet to detail the nature and method of
the repairs and replacements.
But every hole in a fabric had been patched, spare wing and tail planes
had been shipped, new wires rove, damaged propellers replaced by new
ones, fuselage covers laced up, guns examined and cleaned. At a quarter
to one the pilots came from an early lunch and found their machines
ready, fabrics whole and taut, wires and stays tight-strung and braced,
engines tuned up and ready, everything examined and tried and tested,
and pronounced safe and fit. And "The Kiddie," that had come in a full
hour after the others, and had several bracing and control wires cut,
and twenty-seven bullet marks to show for her two trips, was amongst
the first to take off with the others.
As, one by one, the first Flight went up, the men were hard at work
on the machines of the second, hoisting up tins of petrol and oil, and
pouring them into the tanks, reloading the bomb-racks, packing away
fresh stores of ammunition, trying and running up the engines.
At sharp two the second Flight took off, and at three the third (which
had also brought home a miscellaneous assortment of injuries) followed
them to the tick of time. But although all three Flights were out,
the mechanics, with no faintest hope of a rest, set hastily about the
business of mending and repairing those planes and parts which had been
removed, and were now, or would be when they were done with, complete
and ready spares.
They kept hard as they could go at it for a couple of hours, and then
the first Flight began to drop in on them. One was missing--"crashed
in No Man's Land"--another pilot reported, "Seemed to go down under
control all right," and another was lost in Hunland.