The Beauty and the Sorrow (77 page)

Elfriede received a letter from their mother today, addressed to her and her brother:

Children, this autumn is making me depressed. It’s raining, it’s pouring down and it’s cold. And can you believe it—I’ve lost my ration card for coal. The first thing I have to do tomorrow is to contact the coal merchant. Fortunately, he likes me and won’t leave me in the lurch. The soul-destroying work at the office is starting to wear me down and I’m longing for freedom and music. But who’s interested in studying music in the current situation? If it wasn’t for faithful Fräulein Lap coming for her evening lessons the piano would be utterly silent. I shudder at the sight of the empty music rooms. Everyone in Berlin is calling for peace, but what kind of peace is it going to be? Is it something we can honestly look forward to? We will lose everything if we are defeated. Our brave soldiers! Dear Gil, dear Piete,
^u
keep your fingers crossed for poor Germany! All this blood must not be allowed to have been shed in vain!

MONDAY
, 14
OCTOBER
1918
Willy Coppens is wounded over Thourout

If Coppens had known that he was going to take part in a dawn patrol he would have gone to bed earlier. The lights were out and everything
was quiet when he arrived back on his motorcycle at about midnight and read the orders for the coming day by the light of a match. He realised he would have to get up much too early.

Now it is five o’clock and he has had no more than four hours’ sleep. Coppens knows why they have to rise so early: the Belgian army is going on the offensive this morning in order to increase the pressure on the already hard-pressed Germans. The decisive moment cannot be far away.

The problem is that the weather is misty, overcast and grey. The aircraft have been rolled out of their green tarpaulin hangars but you can hardly see them in the darkness. It is not light enough to fly; not yet, anyway. So they wait.

At 5:30 the artillery away to the east of them opens fire and the flashes of the guns melt into the thin red haze of the rising sun. Coppens has never heard artillery fire of such intensity on this sector of the front. He turns to the man alongside him and says, “Could this be the end of the war?”

One of the staff officers comes up to them at 5:35 with an emergency call from the front lines—they are to destroy the observation balloon at Thourout. The Belgian artillery is being subjected to a very accurate counter-barrage and the German observer directing the fire is almost certainly in the
saucisse
hovering in the air a little behind the enemy lines. Balloons of this kind, anchored by steel cables and equipped with a basket from which one or two observers telephone their observations down to the ground, are used by all the armies. They are a favoured aid for the artillery, but infantrymen hate the sight of them and they provide a welcome if dangerous target for airmen. The “sausages” are protected by clusters of anti-aircraft batteries and it is actually more difficult than people think to set fire to the hydrogen-filled bags. It takes courage and it takes special projectiles, in the form of either incendiary ammunition or rockets.
^v
A successful outcome is by no means guaranteed.

At 5:40 Coppens takes off in his patched light-blue Hanriot. He has a new pilot, Etienne Hage, as his wingman. The cloud cover at an
altitude of 900 metres is unbroken and both Coppens and Hage fly 100 metres below it. The sun has risen but is only just beginning to penetrate the grey October haze as the two airmen fly towards the front in semi-darkness.

As they approach the lines of trenches Coppens sees that they will have to deal with not one balloon but two. One of them is hanging at about 500 metres over Thourout as expected, but a second is going up over Praet-Bosch—it has already reached an altitude of 600 metres and is still rising.
^w
Coppens knows from experience that in a situation like this the lower balloon should always be taken out first because the men on the ground start winching a sausage down as soon as it comes under attack, and now that the Germans are using motorised winches the procedure can be a fairly rapid one. There is also the point that once an observation balloon is at a low altitude it becomes easy for the anti-aircraft batteries to hit an incoming aircraft—in which situation it becomes suicidal to continue with the attack. (British fighter pilots, for instance, will generally never attack a sausage at 300 metres or lower.)

Hage, however, is inexperienced and eager. Coppens is steering towards the Thourout balloon but Hage gets his aircraft in front and thus forces him to attack the higher balloon over Praet-Bosch first. Hage follows suit, leaving the Thourout balloon unmolested for the time being.

At six o’clock Coppens fires his first short burst. He sees the skin of the balloon catch fire and so starts to turn towards balloon number two. Fire spreads slowly in this raw, damp atmosphere, however, and Hage fails to see that the balloon is burning and turns back to attack it again. Coppens is uncertain what to do. He sees that they are already winching down the Thourout balloon and from the corner of his eye he catches sight of some aircraft he is unable to identify. They could be enemy planes. He cannot leave Hage on his own so he goes back and is just in time to see the Praet-Bosch balloon flare up and crumple in flames before spinning down to earth.

Now, at last, both pilots steer towards the Thourout balloon.

The balloon is descending rapidly and by the time they arrive it is already below 300 metres.

Nevertheless, Coppens flies through a storm of exploding anti-aircraft shells and swaying streams of tracer. He is so low that he can
hear the “evil barking” of the machine guns, a sound usually drowned out by the noise of the aircraft engine.

Seconds later, at 6:05, he is close enough to open fire. A moment later he feels a violent thump on his left leg and a white wave of pain washes through his body. The shock is so powerful that his right leg shoots out involuntarily, pressing the right rudder pedal to the floor and throwing his aircraft into a downward spiral. Heaven and earth change places again and again. At the same time a spasm of cramp locks his hand on the control stick’s trigger and bullets spurt from the spinning, twisting aircraft.

The pain in his leg eases a little and with a great effort Coppens succeeds in pulling out of the spin. His left leg is no longer obeying him—it is hanging lifeless and he can feel the blood pumping out of it. (He learns later that a tracer bullet had penetrated the cockpit floor and struck the lower part of his leg, ripping open the muscles and severing the shinbone and the artery.) He can, however, still use his right foot to control the rudder, since the pedals are linked.

Coppens now has only two thoughts in mind. Firstly, he must reach his own lines—he does
not
want to be taken prisoner; secondly, he must not lose consciousness because if he does he will crash.

Although dizzy with pain and blood loss he rips off his goggles and his leather helmet and stuffs them inside his jacket. He then unwinds the silk scarf that acts as a muffler around his face to protect him from the cold. Cold is what he needs just now. Cold to keep him awake.

And it works.

After crossing back over the Belgian lines he crash lands in a small field by a road. Soldiers rush up to help him and in their eagerness to get him out of the bloodstained cockpit they literally tear the plane to pieces.

Along with two wounded soldiers, Coppens is taken by ambulance to the hospital in De Panne. Weak from blood loss and lashed by pain, he feels as if the bumpy journey in the ambulance is never going to end. He knows the road since he and his friends have travelled it countless times on their way to or from the pleasures of De Panne. As he lies in the windowless ambulance he tries to work out where they are and how much longer the journey is going to take.

At 10:15 the ambulance brakes to a halt outside the Hôpital de l’Océan and he hears the driver shouting that the famous pilot Willy Coppens is dying. He is carried in on a stretcher and while waiting for the doctor he
sits up and manages to wriggle out of his leather jacket. That is the last clear memory he has.

After that unconsciousness, fever, ether and chloroform combine to leave only images of a floating, dreamlike kind: operating theatres and white-clad doctors; a tall, slim figure bending over him and pinning a medal on his chest; a man greeting him with a drawn sword and reading aloud from a communiqué. And the thirst, the constant thirst that always accompanies blood loss.

Afterwards he remembers “these dreadful days and never-ending nights” with horror. Even a week later it is still uncertain whether he will survive. His left leg is ruined and has to be amputated.

My general condition deteriorated and my courage was failing. I no longer had the strength to resist. Being anaesthetised on the operating table every day gradually wore my system down and I became—in spite of all the care I was being given—a nervous wreck.

He sometimes suffers from a depression that is “far too terrifying to be put into words.” The nights are the worst.

TUESDAY
, 15
OCTOBER
1918
Alfred Pollard collapses outside Péronne

It has been a very unpleasant train journey and he feels cold all the time, even with a blanket to keep him warm. On top of it all, he has a splitting headache and when he does manage to grab a few short and restless snatches of sleep his mind is full of “strange nightmares.”

Pollard is on his way to the front. He wants “to feel once more the thrill of ‘going over the top.’ ” That is what he is telling himself. The German army has begun a general retreat and the end seems to be near. But it is not just the excitement of battle that is pulling him, he feels it is a matter of self-respect for him to be there at the deciding moment.

His year has been filled with a variety of tasks behind the front
line, most recently selecting active soldiers from the many uniformed non-combatants cluttering the baggage train and the rearward areas. For every man in the trenches there are fifteen or so more involved in various supporting roles, not least in the business of keeping those at the front supplied with rations and ammunition. But the losses the British army has suffered are so great that the shortage of men in the front line has become acute. (France is also having to deal with the same problem and, out of necessity, the French army is now beginning to call up ever younger conscripts—they are filling the ranks with seventeen-year-olds.) The men who have been selected and whom Pollard has to train are anything but willing: they range from people with mild physical handicaps through to convicts who have been freed in order to fight—there are no fewer than eleven convicted murderers among his men. Pollard imposes strict discipline and is a hard taskmaster. The uniform he wears is tailor made.

The news that his unit is on its way to the front again has led Pollard to request leave from his duties in the training camp and he is now on the train to Péronne, where he hopes to be met by someone from the battalion. He is so cold that he is shaking and he is still being plagued by unpleasant fever dreams.

He gets off the train in Péronne a few hours after midnight. It is a cold and starry night. There is no one to meet him at the station so he leaves his batman to guard the luggage. The town is empty, silent, blacked-out and feels almost deserted. It is little more than a month since Australian troops recaptured it. Pollard makes his way out of the town and heads east, steering by the stars. He is bound to reach the front sooner or later and then he will find someone who can tell him where his battalion is positioned.

Pollard’s steps become more and more unsteady. He falls over and has trouble getting up. He is ill. He has caught the influenza that is affecting so many people all over Europe, indeed, over the whole world. The disease originated in South Africa but has been called “the Spanish flu” or just “the Spanish.”
^x
The road through the night gets narrower and narrower, or is it that his legs are no longer obeying him properly? He is waging what is to be his last battle, a battle between a body that is growing weaker and a spirit that will not accept the fact—the same spirit that has led him to risk his life time after time, in spite of the enormous risks and the unfavourable prospects. Pollard’s feverish brain fills with “strange fancies.”

He falls down again and when he tries to rise he steps instead “into an abyss.” His last memory is of falling and of the fall having no end.

SATURDAY
, 26
OCTOBER
1918
Edward Mousley witnesses a bombing raid on Constantinople

Mousley hears the sound of the explosions at about two o’clock in the afternoon. Bombers. He and the others in the large hospital run outside to get a better view. The sky is blue. Seven fast-moving aircraft fly in over Constantinople, followed by a tail of clouds from exploding anti-aircraft fire. The planes drop bombs here and there. Clouds of white smoke rise above the muddle of roofs, pinnacles and towers. Mousley notes with pleasure that the war ministry seems to have been hit.

The aircraft turn in perfect formation (they remind him of a flight of game birds), sweep over the Golden Horn away towards Beyoğlu, drop some bombs on the Galata Bridge and a few at the German embassy. Then they turn again and swoop down towards the main railway station, which lies right by the hospital. A machine gun set up in a neighbouring garden opens fire and its sharp chattering joins in with the distant thump of the anti-aircraft guns. A few more bombs sail down. One of them hits a barracks.

The puffs of smoke from the anti-aircraft guns continue to follow
the planes as they move around but none of them is hit. Finally, the guns stop their barking and the smoke clouds are dissipated by the wind. An Ottoman plane takes off to attack the raiders. Several Turks standing alongside Mousley point with obvious pride to the solitary plane. Two of the seven raiders break out of the formation and head for the Turkish fighter. Machine guns rattle high in the blue sky and a few seconds later it spins down to earth. The seven raiders then disappear westwards.