TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS
Later: Roland Garros, the French aviator, has just driven off a German
_Taube_. They both circled low over the town for some time. Then the
German machine started east with Garros in pursuit. They have gone out
of sight.
* * * * *
War is not all grey and grim and hideous. It has its lighter moments.
The more terrible a situation the more keen is human nature to forget
it for a time. Men play between shells in the trenches. London,
suffering keenly, flocks to a comedy or a farce as a relief from
strain. Wounded men, past their first agony, chaff each other in the
hospitals. There are long hours behind the lines when people have tea
and try to forget for a little while what is happening just ahead.
Some seven miles behind the trenches, in that vague "Somewhere in
France," the British Army had established a naval air-station, where
one of its dirigible airships was kept. In good weather the airship
went out on reconnoissance. It was not a large airship, as such things
go, and was formerly a training ship. Now it was housed in an
extemporised hangar that was once a carwheel works, and made its
ascent from a plain surrounded by barbed wire.
The airship men were extremely hospitable, and I made several visits
to the station. On the day of which I am about to write I was taken
for an exhaustive tour of the premises, beginning with the hangar and
ending with tea. Not that it really ended with tea. Tea was rather a
beginning, leading to all sorts of unexpected and surprising things.
The airship was out when I arrived, and a group of young officers was
watching it, a dot on the horizon near the front. They gave me the
glasses, and I saw it plainly--a long, yellowish, slowly moving object
that turned as I looked and headed back for the station.
The group watched the sky carefully. A German aëroplane could wreck
the airship easily. But although there were planes in sight none was
of the familiar German lines.
It came on. Now one could see the car below. A little closer and three
dots were the men in it. On the sandy plain which is the landing field
were waiting the men whose work it is to warp the great balloon into
its hangar. The wind had come up and made landing difficult. It was
necessary to make two complete revolutions over the field before
coming down. Then the blunt yellow nose dipped abruptly. The men below
caught the ropes, the engine was cut off, and His Majesty's airship,
in shape and colour not unlike a great pig, was safely at home again
and being led to the stable.
"Do you want to know the bravest man in all the world?" one of the
young officers said. "Because here he is. The funny thing about it is
he doesn't know he is brave."
That is how I met Colonel M----, who is England's greatest airship man
and who is in charge of the naval air station.
"If you had come a little sooner," he said, "you could have gone out
with us."
I was grateful but unenthusiastic. I had seen the officers watching
the sky for German planes. I had a keen idea that a German aviator
overhead, armed with a Belgian block or a bomb or a dart, could have
ripped that yellow envelope open from stem to stern, and robbed
American literature of one of its shining lights. Besides, even in
times of peace I am afraid to look out of a third-story window.
We made a tour of the station, which had been a great factory before
the war began, beginning with the hangar in which the balloon was now
safely housed.
Entrance to the station is by means of a bridge over a canal. The
bridge is guarded by sentries and the password of the day is necessary
to gain admission. East and west along the canal are canal boats that
have been painted grey and have guns mounted on them. Side by side
with these gunboats are the ordinary canal boats of the region,
serving as homes for that part of the populace which remains, with
women knitting on the decks or hanging out lines of washing overhead.
The endless traffic of a main highroad behind the lines passes the
station day and night. Chauffeurs drop in to borrow petrol or to
repair their cars; visiting officers from other stations come to watch
the airship perform. For England has been slow to believe in the
airships, pinning her aëronautical faith to heavier-than-air machines.
She has considered the great expense for building and upkeep of each
of these dirigible balloons--as much as that of fifty aëroplanes--the
necessity of providing hangars for them, and their vulnerability to
attack, as overbalancing the advantages of long range, silence as they
drift with the wind with engines cut off, and ability to hover over a
given spot and thus launch aërial bombs more carefully.
There is a friendly rivalry between the two branches of the air
service, and so far in this war the credit apparently goes to the
aëroplanes. However, until the war is over, and Germany definitely
states what part her Zeppelins have had in both sea and land attacks,
it will be impossible to make any fair comparison.
The officers at the naval air station had their headquarters in the
administration building of the factory, a long brick building facing
the road. Here in a long room with western windows they rested and
relaxed, lined and talked between their adventurous excursions to the
lines.
Day by day these men went out, some in the airship for a
reconnoissance, others to man observation balloons. Day by day it was
uncertain who would come back.
But they were very cheerful. Officers with an hour to spare came up
from the gunboats in the canal to smoke a pipe by the fire. Once in so
often a woman came, stopping halfway her frozen journey to a soup
kitchen or a railroad station, where she looked after wounded
soldiers, to sit in the long room and thaw out; visiting officers from
other parts of the front dropped in for a meal, sure of a welcome and
a warm fire. As compared with the trenches, or even with the gunboats
on the canal, the station represented cheer, warmth; even, after the
working daylight hours, society.
There were several buildings. Outside near the bridge was the wireless
building, where an operator sat all the time with his receivers over
his ears. Not far from the main group was the great hangar of the
airship, and to that we went first. The hangar had been a machine shop
with a travelling crane. It had been partially cleared but the crane
still towered at one end. High above it, reached by a ladder, was a
door.
The young captain of the airship pointed up to it.
"My apartments!" he said.
"Do you mean to say that you sleep here?" I asked. For the building
was bitterly cold; one end had been knocked out to admit the airship,
and the wall had been replaced by great curtains of sailcloth to keep
out the wind.
"Of course," he replied. "I am always within call. There are sentries
also to guard the ship. It would be very easy to put it out of
commission."
The construction of the great balloon was explained to me carefully.
It was made of layer after layer of gold-beater's skin and contained
two ballonets--a small ship compared to the Zeppelins, and non-rigid
in type.
Underneath the great cigar-shaped bag hangs an aluminum car which
carries a crew of three men. The pilot sits in front at a wheel that
resembles the driving wheel of an automobile. Just behind him is the
observer, who also controls the wireless. The engineer is the third
man.
The wireless puzzled me. "Do you mean that when you go out on scouting
expeditions you can communicate with the station here?" I asked.
"It is quite possible. But when the airship goes out a wireless van
accompanies it, following along the roads. Messages are picked up by
the van and by a telephone connection sent to the various batteries."
It may be well to mention again the airship chart system by which the
entire region is numbered and lettered in small squares. Black lines
drawn across the detail map of the neighbourhood divide it into
lettered squares, A, B, C, and so forth, and these lettered squares
are again subdivided into four small squares, 1, 2, 3, 4. Thus the
direction B 4, or N 2, is a very specific one in directing the fire of
a battery.
"Did you accomplish much to-day?" I inquired.
"Not as much as usual. There is a ground haze," replied Colonel M----,
who had been the observer in that day's flight. "Down here it is not
so noticeable, but from above it obscures everything."
He explained the difficulties of the airship builder, the expense and
tendency to "pinholes" of gold-beaters' skin, the curious fact that
chemists had so far failed to discover a gasproof varnish.
"But of course," he said, "those things will come. The airship is the
machine of the future. Its stability, its power to carry great
weights, point to that. The difference between an airship and an
aëroplane is the difference between a battleship and a submarine. Each
has its own field of usefulness."
All round lay great cylinders of pure hydrogen, used for inflating the
balloon. Smoking in the hangar was forbidden. The incessant wind
rattled the great canvas curtains and whistled round the rusting
crane. From the shop next door came the hammering of machines, for the
French Government has put the mill to work again.
We left the hangar and walked past the machine shop. Halfway along one
of its sides a tall lieutenant pointed to a small hole in the land,
leading under the building.
"The French government has sent here," he said, "the men who are unfit
for service in the army. Day by day, as German aëroplanes are seen
overhead, the alarm is raised in the shop. The men are panic-stricken.
If there are a dozen alarms they do the same thing. They rush out like
frightened rabbits, throw themselves flat on the sand, and wriggle
through that hole into a cave that they have dug underneath. It is
hysterically funny; they all try to get in at the same time."
I had hoped to see the thing happen myself. But when, late that
afternoon, a German aëroplane actually flew over the station, the
works had closed down for the day and the men were gone. It was
disappointing.
Between the machine shop and the administration building is a tall
water tower. On top of this are two observers who watch the sky day
and night. An anti-aircraft gun is mounted there and may be swung to
command any portion of the sky. This precaution is necessary, for the
station has been the object of frequent attacks. The airship itself
has furnished a tempting mark to numerous German airmen. Its best
speed is forty miles an hour, so they are able to circle about it and
attack it from various directions. As it has only two ballonets, a
single shot, properly placed, could do it great damage. The Zeppelin,
with its eighteen great gasbags, can suffer almost any amount of
attack and still remain in the air.
"Would you like to see the trenches?" said one of the officers,
smiling.
"Trenches? Seven miles behind the line?"
"Trenches certainly. If the German drive breaks through it will come
along this road."
"But I thought you lived in the administration building?"
"Some of us must hold the trenches," he said solemnly. "What are six
or seven miles to the German Army? You should see the letters of
sympathy we get from home!"
So he showed me the trenches. They were extremely nice trenches, dug
out of the sand, it is true, but almost luxurious for all that, more
like rooms than ditches, with board shelves and dishes on the shelves,
egg cups and rows of shining glasses, silver spoons, neat little
folded napkins, and, though the beds were on the floor, extremely tidy
beds of mattresses and warm blankets. The floor was boarded over.
There was a chair or two, and though I will not swear to pictures on
the walls there were certainly periodicals and books. Outside the door
was a sort of vestibule of boards which had been built to keep the
wind out.
"You see!" said the young officer with twinkling eyes. "But of course
this is war. One must put up with things!"
Nevertheless it was a real trench, egg cups and rows of shining
glasses and electric light and all. It was there for a purpose. In
front of it was a great barbed-wire barricade. Strategically it
commanded the main road over which the German Army must pass to reach
the point it has been striving for. Only seven miles away along that
road it was straining even then for the onward spring movement. Any
day now, and that luxurious trench may be the scene of grim and
terrible fighting.
And, more than that, these men at the station were not waiting for
danger to come to them. Day after day they were engaged in the most
perilous business of the war.
At this station some of the queer anomalies of a volunteer army were
to be found. So strongly ingrained in the heart of the British youth
of good family is the love of country, that when he is unable to get
his commission he goes in any capacity. I heard of a little chap, too
small for the regular service, who has gone to the front as a cook!
His uncle sits in the House of Lords. And here, at this naval air
station, there were young noncommissioned officers who were
Honourables, and who were trying their best to live it down. One such
youth was in charge of the great van that is the repair shop for the
airship. Others were in charge of the wireless station. One met them
everywhere, clear-eyed young Englishmen ready and willing to do
anything, no matter what, and proving every moment of their busy day
the essential democracy of the English people.
As we went into the administration building that afternoon two things
happened: The observers in the water tower reported a German aëroplane
coming toward the station, and a young lieutenant, who had gone to the
front in a borrowed machine, reported that he had broken the wind
shield of the machine. There are plenty of German aëroplanes at that
British airship station, but few wind shields. The aëroplane was
ignored, but the wind shield was loudly and acrimoniously discussed.
The day was cold and had turned grey and lowering. It was pleasant
after our tour of the station to go into the long living room and sit
by the fire. But the fire smoked. One after another those dauntless
British officers attacked it, charged with poker, almost with bayonet,
and retired defeated. So they closed it up finally with a curious
curved fire screen and let it alone. It was ten minutes after I began
looking at the fire screen before I recognised it for what it was--the
hood from an automobile!
Along one side of the wall was a piano. It had been brought back from
a ruined house at the front. It was rather a poor piano and no one had
any music, but some of the officers played a little by ear. The top of
the piano was held up by a bandage! It was a piano of German make, and
the nameplate had been wrenched off!
A long table filled the centre of the room. One end formed the press
censorship bureau, for it was part of the province of the station to
censor and stamp letters going out. The other end was the dining
table. Over the fireplace on the mantel was a baby's shoe, a little
brown shoe picked up on the street of a town that was being destroyed.
Beside it lay an odd little parachute of canvas with a weighted
letter-carrier beneath. One of the officers saw me examining it and
presented it to me, as it was worn and past service.
"Now and then," he explained, "it is impossible to use the wireless,
for one reason or another. In that case a message can be dropped by
means of the parachute."
I brought the message-carrier home with me. On its weighted canvas bag
is written in ink: "Urgent! You are requested to forward this at once
to the inclosed address. From His Majesty's airship ----."
The sight of the press-censor stamp reminded an English officer, who
had lived in Belgium, of the way letters to and from interned Belgians
have been taken over the frontier into Holland and there dispatched.
Men who are willing to risk their lives for money collect these
letters. At one time the price was as high as two hundred francs for
each one. When enough have been gathered together to make the risk
worth while the bearer starts on his journey. He must slip through the
sentry lines disguised as a workman, or perhaps by crawling through
the barbed wire at the barrier. For fear of capture some of these
bearers, working their way through the line at night, have dragged
their letters behind them, so that in case of capture they could drop
the cord and be found without incriminating evidence on them. For
taking letters into Belgium the process is naturally reversed. But
letters are sent, not to names, but to numbers. The bearer has a list
of numbers which correspond to certain addresses. Thus, even if he is
taken and the letters are found on him, their intended recipients will
not be implicated. I saw a letter which had been received in this way
by a Belgian woman. It was addressed simply to Number Twenty-eight.
The fire was burning better behind its automobile hood. An orderly had
brought in tea, white bread, butter, a pitcher of condensed cream, and
an English teacake. We gathered round the tea table. War seemed a
hundred miles away. Except for the blue uniforms and brass buttons of
the officers who belonged to the naval air service, the orderly's
khaki and the bayonet from a gun used casually at the other end of the
table as a paperweight, it was an ordinary English tea.