The Flyer (23 page)

‘I hope you’re not intending to antagonise him this evening, Reynolds.’ Wright was very tall and thin, and had extraordinarily long fingers. His hands were almost feminine. He was known to be a very good classical pianist. ‘Try to keep in mind that we’ve lost two good men today.’

‘Perhaps you ought to remind Thompson of that,’ William replied acidly. ‘He seems to be more concerned about me being late for dinner.’

Wright stiffened. ‘You shouldn’t speak about him like that. He’s your commanding officer.’

‘He’s a fool.’

Wright glared at him and turned away. At dinner they sat opposite one another and to either side of Thompson at the head of the table. As the officers took their places, the two chairs which only the evening before had been occupied by Pervis and Thorne, were conspicuously empty. Thompson waited for the men’s attention and the talk and laughter, fuelled by several hours drinking, died away to an uneasy quiet.

‘Gentlemen, as you are all aware the squadron has suffered the loss of two very brave men today. Of course it is always difficult to accept that men we have all lived and fought with are no longer with us, however we must remember that it is the willing sacrifice made by chaps like Pervis and Thorne that will inevitably ensure our victory against the Hun.’

Thompson raised his glass and the officers all stood. ‘Gentlemen, I give you Lieutenants Pervis and Thorne. May God rest their souls.’

The officers solemnly echoed the names of the dead men, and as they took their places again the stewards brought out the first course.

Thompson unfolded his napkin. ‘Ah, here’s the soup. Jolly good. What is it Dawkins?’ He lowered his nose to appreciate the aroma coming from his plate.

‘Cream of chicken, sir.’

He frowned and examined the label on the wine. ‘I’m not sure a Cote de Rhone is appropriate with chicken soup. See if there’s a Bergundy or something will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

William looked at the faces of the men around the table. He didn’t know any of them well. Many had only been at the squadron a short time, having arrived as replacements for men who’d been lost over the winter. Pervis and Thorne, like himself and Wright, had been old timers. Not that he could claim to have known them well either, or Wright for that matter. The squadron had flown BE2’s before the new RE8’s arrived, which had proved so disappointing. They had all hoped for a machine capable of taking on the Albatross, but the cumbersome RE8 proved that the brass’s thinking was still a long way behind the Germans’. Now two more men were dead.

‘What is it, Reynolds? Don’t you like chicken soup?’

Thompson’s question jolted William from his reverie. ‘For some reason I haven’t much appetite this evening,’ he said. ‘I can still smell roasting flesh, though I suppose I ought to be used to it by now.’

Thompson and the other officers who were close enough to overhear, stopped eating and stared in shocked silence.

‘Good God man!’ Thompson said in disgust. ‘Is that some sort of depraved attempt at humour?’

‘I can assure you, sir, I don’t find anything amusing about watching men burn to death. Especially when it is unnecessary.’

‘Death is an unfortunate but inevitable fact of war,’ Thompson said with patronising banality.

William caught the warning look that Wright flashed him, but he ignored it. ‘It is when the brass who sit safely behind their desks refuse to acknowledge what even a fool can see.’

‘If that comment is directed towards me personally, Reynolds, you would do well to remember your place,’ Thompson warned icily.

‘I’m referring to the idiots at HQ who insist on sending us out in outdated machines,’ William said, though he thought Thompson was no better than they were. ‘They give us planes designed for reconnaissance when the Germans are equipping entire squadrons with fighters whose only purpose is to shoot us from the air.’

‘Lieutenant Reynolds!’ Thompson banged the table with his fist, his face almost purple with rage. For a few moments the room was utterly silent, and then Thompson turned to the stewards lingering uncertainly near the door. ‘Get out!’ he barked. When they were gone he turned to William again. ‘You will not criticise the decisions made by senior officers, do you hear me? It is your duty and your place to follow your orders, and that is what you will do, or by God I will have you on a charge. You are an officer, man! How the hell do you expect to maintain discipline among the men if they hear an officer speaking as you did?’ He glared furiously. ‘Is that understood?’

Across the table, Wright flashed William another look that was both disapproving, and a silent plea to back down and William knew that it was futile to argue.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s understood.’

‘Very well.’ Thompson picked up his spoon again to resume eating his soup, but then put it down and pushed his plate away. ‘Somebody tell the stewards to take this bloody soup away,’ he said.

A new subaltern called Stringer got up and went to the door, and a few moments later the stewards returned to clear their plates.

‘Since you’re so concerned about the damned Albatross jastas, Reynolds,’ Thompson said. ‘I expect you’ll be pleased to hear that I want you and Wright to go to St Omer in the morning. You can pick up a pair of scouts we’ve been given to act as escorts for our patrols.’

‘I say, that’s good news, sir,’ Wright said. ‘May I ask what type they are?’

‘Nieuports I believe.’ Thompson smiled thinly towards William. ‘You see, Reynolds, it appears that HQ concur with you on this occasion. I’m sure everybody will be greatly relieved to know that in future they’ll have you to protect them from the Germans.’

He looked around at the other men, who all obediently smiled at his gossamer veiled sarcasm.

When dinner was over, William left the mess and went outside. Somebody put on the gramophone again and the hum of voices resumed. As he lit a cigarette the door opened behind him and Wright came out.

‘That was bloody stupid of you,’ Wright said. ‘It doesn’t accomplish anything you know.’

‘You know that what I said is true. Even Thompson knows it.’

‘That isn’t the point.’

‘No of course,’ William murmured. ‘One mustn’t rock the boat must one.’

Wright looked at him with a puzzled air. ‘Do you know, I really don’t understand you, Reynolds. You behave as if you detest us all.’ William didn’t answer and Wright took his silence as encouragement. ‘You can’t live your life completely alone, you know. None of us can. Especially here.’

The sound of drinking and singing came from the mess. It was the same in all the squadrons; the pilots drank to forget that the fates of men like Pervis, could easily be their own. Most had a terror of burning. William wondered if it was better to be like the others and drown his fears in whisky? He threw his cigarette into the darkness where it landed in a shower of sparks.

‘I think I’ll turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight,’ Wright said stiffly, offended at the rebuff.

Alone on his bed William tried to read, but even Homer couldn’t hold his attention. He could still hear the faint sound of music from the mess. The table would be littered with empty bottles. By the time some of the officers finally get to bed they would have had no more than a few hours sleep before they had to get up for the early patrol.

Much later, as he lay awake in the dark, he heard somebody moan in his sleep. They were all afraid, though none of them would admit it. They drank so that they could sleep, and in the morning put a brave face on it, their reactions blurred by hangovers. Wright was wrong. In the end, William thought, every man was alone.

*****

When they arrived at St Omer in the morning a clerk told them that the Nieuports they’d been sent to collect wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon, and faced with the prospect of spending half the day together Wright decided to drive to a nearby squadron to see somebody he knew.

‘You’re welcome to come with me if you like,’ he offered, but William declined, which he thought Wright was pleased about anyway.

He spent the time instead in the hangars, where there were several French Spads waiting to go out to Squadrons in the north. Some of the men were talking about a new squadron that had been formed and equipped with a new fighter called the SE5. There was talk that this squadron would form the vanguard of many more that would break the dominance of the German jastas. It was even said they’d been given the task of killing the German ace, Richthofen, as a way of proving their capability and lifting morale. Perhaps the brass really had finally realised the futility of clinging to the old notion of planes designed purely for reconnaissance, William mused.

In the afternoon he met up with Wright again, who hadn’t been able to see his friend as he was flying a patrol. They went to the clerk’s office and were told there had been a delay and now their Nieuports wouldn’t be ready until the morning. Wright telephoned the squadron to let them know what was going on and the adjutant told him they may as well stay the night.

The clerk gave them the name of a hotel where they could probably get rooms, and that evening they ate dinner together in the hotel’s restaurant, which was full of army officers on leave from the front.

‘I’m due for a spot of leave myself,’ Wright commented as he looked around. ‘It would be nice to go home for a few days, but I don’t suppose that’s very likely at the moment.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ William agreed.

‘I’m from Norwich, you know,’ he added and took a picture from his wallet which he showed to William. ‘That’s my wife, Marjorie. We weren’t planning on getting married yet, but last time I was home we decided we ought to. Well, Marjorie did, actually. I wasn’t sure it was fair on her really, but she insisted we had to think positively about the future. She’s a wonderful girl.’

The picture showed a rather plain looking young woman with a round face wearing a shy smile, but William found he could imagine her and Wright together. He made some polite comment and gave it back.

‘Are you married, Reynolds?’

‘No.’ A memory insinuated itself, an image of Elizabeth. For a long time he hadn’t been able to get her out of his thoughts. He’d been plagued with feelings that alternated between a sort of profound loss, and anger that arose from what had happened to Sophie. Then for perhaps a year he had barely thought of her at all, and he’d begun to think he’d put all that behind him. Now he remembered her at odd moments, sparked by a question or something that he associated with that time in his life. He was surprised at the intensity of his feelings after all this time.

After dinner, William felt like going for a walk. The night sky was lit with the flashes of the barrage at the front. He thought it couldn’t be long now before the offensive began, and he remembered the soldiers he’d helped get back to their own trenches the day before. Saving them had probably cost Pervis and Thorne their lives. He wondered if that made their deaths worthwhile, especially when the soldiers would probably be killed in the offensive, but he knew there was no point in trying to balance the scales like that. None of it made any sense.

As he walked through the streets a young woman approached him and asked in faltering English if he wanted to go with her to her room. He was about to refuse, but then he changed his mind. She was attractive, with long fair hair and her eyes were green.

‘Is it far?’ he asked.

‘Non, it is only a small distance, monsieur.’

She gestured along a narrow street. He wondered why she wasn’t working in one of the regular places if she was a prostitute, but looking at her more closely he decided this was something new to her. She was older than him, perhaps thirty. Her expression was set in determined lines, and she didn’t look at him until they reached her door. For a moment he had the impression that she would change her mind, but then she opened the door and led him inside.

A dark, narrow staircase led to her room. He paid her, and as she undressed with her back to him he unbuttoned his tunic and shirt. The room looked very ordinary, and was devoid of personal effects like photographs. He imagined she preferred it that way. He noticed a mark on her finger where she must have worn a ring.

‘Are you married?’ he asked her.

She looked over her bare shoulder, surprised by his question. ‘My husband is killed,’ she said.

She continued undressing, but William suddenly wondered what he was doing there. ‘Do you mind if we don’t? You can keep the money.’ She looked over her shoulder, and seemed puzzled. He supposed it was strange to ask if she minded. Why would she mind so long as he was paying her? He gestured to a chair by the window. ‘Can we just sit?’

‘Sit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alright. If it is what you wish.’

‘I do.’ He sat down, and she came to sit in his lap thinking it was what he wanted, but he didn’t and he asked her to sit on the bed. She did as he asked, her hands folded on her lap, still wearing her slip. She seemed confused, as if she was waiting for him to tell her what to do.

‘I just want to be quiet like this,’ he said and they sat in the darkness. He watched her, and at first she was uncomfortable under his gaze, but after a little while she relaxed.

‘Do you have a sweetheart?’ she asked him.

‘No,’ he said. He reached over and touched her hair. He started to tell her that she reminded him of somebody, but changed his mind. After that they didn’t speak, but let the quiet of the room envelop them. After an hour had passed he gave her some more money and left.

In the morning, William and Wright returned to the aerodrome to find their Nieuports waiting. William was disappointed to see that they were old models, with a single Lewis gun fixed on the top wing and eighty horsepower engines. They were no match for an Albatross, and they had only two of them to protect an entire squadron.

CHAPTER 21

The rain drummed on the canvas roof of no. 2 hangar, so loud that it drowned out the constant thunder of the guns at the front. In the dim glow cast by a hurricane lamp a group of men were sitting around a stove playing cards, glad that they were not in the trenches. One of them made a brew.

‘D’you call this tea, Smithy?’ a rigger protested when he took a sip from his mug. ‘Tastes like you boiled your socks in it.’

‘Gives it flavour,’ was the laconic response.

The others laughed. Sergeant Bell lost a shilling with two pairs and decided he wasn’t feeling lucky. ‘Count me out, lads,’ he said.

He leaned back against a packing crate that contained a new engine for one of the two-seaters and rolled a cigarette. He thought this wasn’t so bad really. He liked being with the other men, listening to them laugh while he smoked and drank his tea in the warm. He missed his wife at night though. You got used to lying in bed with someone warm beside you. It wasn’t the other so much. Not like the younger men. You didn’t worry about that sort of thing when you got to his age.

‘What do you think then?’ said Smithy.

Bell looked at him blankly. ‘About what?’

‘Should I take ‘im a brew?’

Smithy nodded towards the front of the hangar where Lieutenant Reynolds was working on one of the new Nieuports. He was a funny one, was Reynolds, thought Bell. Wouldn’t let anyone work on any plane he flew. Did everything himself. Kept to himself too. Didn’t have much to do with the other officers from what you could see. Shields reckoned they talked about him in the mess when he wasn’t there. Said he was a cold fish and thought he was better than everyone else. Well, Shields must know, being a mess steward. It were true that Reynolds were cold, Bell supposed, but he didn’t think Reynolds was stuck-up. Lieutenant Pervis, the poor bastard, he were more that sort. Treated the men like his bleedin’ servants. Still, it were wrong to think badly of the dead. ‘Specially when they went the way Pervis did. What was he? Twenty? Twenty one? Fucking hell. They were kids, most of ‘em. Just kids.

‘Fuck ‘im. Let ‘im get his own brew,’ another man said.

Bell shook his head and wearily got to his feet. Some of the men didn’t like it that Reynolds did his own work. They took it as an insult. ‘Give us another mug,’ he said to Smithy. ‘I’ll see if he wants it.’

*****

William was standing on the pilot’s seat taking, off the Lewis gun fixed above the upper wing, when Bell approached.

‘Thought you might like a cuppa, sir.’

William was surprised. Some of the men by the stove were watching to see what he would do, and the refusal that sprang to his lips died. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ He took the gun off its mounting. ‘Take this would you, and I’ll come down.’

The tea was hot and sweet with an odd aftertaste. William took out his cigarettes and offered one to Bell.

‘Thanks very much, sir.’

The Nieuport had a Rhone engine, a nine cylinder eighty horsepower rotary. It was very small compared to the two-seaters, ten feet shorter, and the span slightly more than that. The top wing was much wider than the bottom, which added to the impression of its small size, but also gave it a raked back, fast appearance.

‘What do you think of it, sir?’ Bell asked.

‘It’s built for speed,’ William said. ‘And manoeuvrability so that it can turn and climb quickly in a fight. It’s just a pity we’ve only been given two of them.’

‘Who will fly that one, sir?’ Bell wondered, indicating the other Nieuport.

‘Captain Wright I expect.’ William finished his tea and, thanking Bell again, gave him back the mug. ‘I’d better get on. I want to strip the Lewis gun. That drum is going to be difficult to change mounted on the top like that. I want to make sure it won’t jam.’

He looked up at the mount thoughtfully. The latest Nieuports had a bigger engine fitted with the new interrupter gear that allowed a Vickers to be mounted on the cowling in front of the pilot and fired through the propeller arc. Still, a Lewis gun was better than no gun at all.  

‘Are you flying in the morning, sir?’ Bell asked.

‘Yes, there’s a long patrol to St Quentin to photograph the rail yards. The Nieuports are going as escorts.’

‘Haven’t the Huns got an aerodrome near there?’

‘At Douai, yes.’

As William began to strip the Lewis, Bell looked at the other Nieuport, then he went back to the men playing cards.

‘Right, you lot, I want the Lewis on that other Nieuport stripped and checked. And then run the engine up too. Check every bloody thing.’

*****

Before dawn the planes were pushed out of the hangers onto the grass. The aerodrome was white with a heavy frost. By the time Wright arrived, William had finished his final check and he watched Wright walk around his own machine checking the wires.

As the two-seater crews began to arrive, pulling on their helmets and goggles, William went to speak to Wright.

‘When we get up I think we ought to stay above the two-seaters. That way we can keep a lookout for enemy scouts.’

‘The CO wants us to stay with the group.’

‘Thompson hasn’t flown anything other than a desk for two years,’ William reasoned. ‘If we meet up with Albatrosses they’re going to be up high. I doubt that the Nieuports can match them, but at least we’ll have a chance to intercept them if the others are attacked.’

Wright hesitated, his face pale. He had the hollow eyed look they all developed after a while.

‘They’ll know we’re coming,’ William said, gesturing to the clear sky. ‘When we cross the lines the Germans will telephone Douai to let them know. If the Albatrosses are there they’ll come after us.’

Wright nodded. ‘Alright.’

A few minutes later, the Nieuports’ engines were started, and while they warmed up the two-seaters took off in pairs. When the other planes were safely away, the Nieuports followed. They gained height quickly and were soon above the two seaters and heading for the lines.

The journey to St Quentin was uneventful. The ruined swathe of land that marked the trenches of the opposing armies, and no-mans land between them, fell behind and the countryside was again green and strangely unblemished. Puffs of smoke from anti-aircraft fire dogged the two-seaters for part of the way, but at ten thousand feet they were untroubled. There were six of them flying in formation, with William and Wright five thousand feet above them. Though William constantly scanned the skies in every direction, there was very little cloud and nowhere for enemy scouts to hide, so he knew that he would see them in plenty of time. At the same time he was acutely aware that their progress couldn’t fail to be seen from the ground, and somewhere to the north he imagined a telephone ringing at a German aerodrome. He could only hope that the jastas were busy elsewhere that day.

He thought briefly of the year before the war, when he had flown over the valleys and woods of Northamptonshire. It seemed like a lifetime ago, almost as if it had happened to somebody else. He saw himself as a boy at Oundle, learning his Latin grammar while shafts of sunlight poured through the tall windows and chalk dust swirled in the air. How many of the boys who had sat in that room were dead now, he wondered?

When the patrol reached their target, the two seaters went down to photograph the railyards. William felt for them as he and Wright circled like hawks far above. The sky was pockmarked with dissolving smoke from the torrent of anti-aircraft shells thrown at them. The Germans were used to British patrols pushing into their territory and places like St Quentin were well defended. The two-seaters ranged back and forth in a slow, steady pattern as they did their work. It was an agony to watch. William kept an eye out for the enemy and willed the patrol to hurry up. With every second that passed he felt a premonition of disaster.   

Finally the patrol finished their work and turned away for home. One of the planes lagged behind, and though his engine was trailing a bit of oily smoke he appeared to be alright. William decided that if the plane fell any further behind he would go back and keep watch over him. He began to think that they might be lucky. Another ten minutes would see them over their own lines.

He saw the scouts a few minutes later. They came from the north east at about seventeen thousand feet. He counted ten of them flying in an elongated V, and he saw the flash of red paint on their wings. They had already spotted the two-seaters and were picking up speed as they dived to intercept them, though it appeared they were unaware of the Nieuports. Wright spotted them too, and together he and William changed their course.

At first the patrol flew on, oblivious to the danger that was rapidly closing on them. It was the straggler who saw the Albatrosses first and immediately put his nose down and dived for speed. At the same time two of the German planes broke off from the others and straight away it was clear they would catch him. There was nothing William or Wright could do for him.

The growl of the engines became a high pitched roar. The freezing wind tore at William’s face, numbing his skin and singing in the wires like a banshee. He reached up to cock his gun. At the last moment the two-seaters saw the danger and began to dive and break formation. Further back, the straggler was attacked, and immediately smoke poured from the front and it went into a spin and plummeted earthwards.

Still the Nieuports hadn’t been seen, and William dared to hope that with the advantage of surprise they might somehow pull off a miracle and drive the enemy planes off. Then the German leader opened fire. Tracer spat towards one the two-seaters and William saw the observer collapse. A second later the plane turned over onto its back, and with its nose pointed down, began to spin. Another German plane delivered the coup de grace and the hapless two-seater burst into flames. At the same time William fired off a burst from the Lewis gun. He heard Wright’s gun too, and then the Germans realised they were being attacked and broke formation, zooming up as they searched for the threat.

After that there was only confusion. William banked hard and dived, turning as tightly as he could to try and get his gun onto one of the enemy. They seemed to be everywhere at once, and no matter where he looked there was an Albatross angling to get behind him. He twisted in his seat trying to keep track of them. He glimpsed Wright diving to avoid an Albatross that had latched onto his tail. The heavy thud of Spandaus drowned out the bark of the Lewis guns. Engines screamed and smoke trailed from damaged machines. Lines of tracer stitched the sky. A two-seater went down and broke up two thousand feet over the earth.

Suddenly an Albatross flashed in front of him and William let off a burst from the Lewis. Almost immediately he threw his machine in the other direction and zoomed up, reaching to change the empty drum. Tracer zipped past his wings, bullets whizzing through the air. He felt his machine take repeated hits, and then a horrible metallic clunk came from the engine and it coughed black smoke. He banked and dived, and far below, the ruined scar of no-man’s land rushed to meet him. He was losing power. The Spandaus barked again. Smoke poured from his engine. He twisted all the way down, smoke filling his cockpit, choking him. Looking back he saw an Albatross on his tail and applied hard rudder as the Spandaus opened up again. He felt his plane shake and vibrate as the bullets struck home. Below, he could see trees and fields and the contours of the land. His engine stuttered and something screamed, a grinding metallic protest as oil leaked back covering his goggles, making everything suddenly black. For an instant he was blind and gripped with panic. Frantically he wiped them clean, leaving an oily smear. The ground was close now, too close. He saw trees and pulled back hard on the stick, but he knew he was too late. He felt heat from the fire and thought briefly of Pervis. Fear took hold of him and he scrabbled for his revolver. He didn’t want to burn. Then a blur of green obscured everything. He heard guns and the splintering of wood and canvas, the roar of the Albatross overhead. Fleetingly, William wondered if he would feel the impact.