Winged Warfare (6 page)

Along with the new ambition, there was born in me as well a distinct dislike for all two-seated German flying machines! They always seemed so placid and sort of contented with themselves. I picked a fight with the two-seaters wherever I could find one, and I searched for them high and low. Many people think of the two-seater as a superior fighting machine because of its greater gun power. But to me they always seemed fair prey and an easy target. One afternoon, soon after this new Hun hatred had become a part of my soul, I met a two-seater about three miles over the German lines and dived at him from a very low height. As bad luck would have it, my gun had a stoppage, and while I turned away to right it, the enemy escaped. Much disgusted, I headed away homeward, when into my delighted vision there came the familiar outlines of another Hun with two men aboard. I flew at this new enemy with great determination, but after a short battle he dived away from me, and although I did my best to catch him up, I could not. He landed in a field underneath me. To see him calmly alight there under perfect control filled me with a towering rage. I saw red things before my eyes. I vowed an eternal vendetta against all the Hun two-seaters in the world, and, the impulse suddenly seizing me, I dived right down to within a few feet of the ground, firing a stream of bullets into the machine where it was sitting. I had the satisfaction of knowing that the pilot and observer must have been hit, or nearly scared to death, for although I hovered about for quite a long time, neither of them stepped from the silent machine.

Half an hour after this occurrence, I saw one of our machines in difficulties with three of the enemy. The Huns were so engrossed with the thought that they had a single British machine at their mercy, I felt there was a good chance that I might slip up and surprise them. My scheme worked beautifully. I came up to within fifteen yards of one of the Huns and aiming my machine at him with dead accuracy, shot him down with my first ten bullets. He probably never knew where the bullets came from, not having the slightest idea another British machine was anywhere in that part of the sky. I turned now to assist with the other two Huns, but by this time my brother pilot had sent one of them spinning out of control, while the last remaining enemy was making good his escape as fast as his Mercedes engine could pull him through the air. It is surprising sometimes how much dead resistance there is in the air when you are in a hurry. Having nothing better to do under the circumstances I dived down after my own victim to get a view of the crash. I was just in time. He struck the ground at the corner of a field, and what was one instant a falling machine was next a twisted bit of wreckage.

It was apparent to us by this time that the Germans were bringing their best pilots opposite the British front to meet the determined offensive we had been carrying on since the first of April. Most of the machines we met were handled in a manner far above the German average. Each night our pilots brought in exciting stories of the chase. Although they were a higher class of fighting men than we had hitherto flown against, the Germans still showed a reluctance to attack unless they outnumbered us by at least three to one. One lone German was induced to take a fatal chance against a British scout formation. By clever manoeuvring, at which the hostile airman was also quite adept, we managed to entice him to attack one of our machines from behind. As he did so, a second British machine dived at him, and down he went, one of his wings breaking off as he fell.

I can best illustrate the German tactics of the time by telling the experience of one of our faithful old photographic machines, which, by the way, are not without their desperate moments and their deeds of heroism. All of which goes to show that the fighting scouts should not get all the credit for the wonders of modern warfare in the air. The old “photographer” in question was returning over the lines one day when it was set upon by no less than eleven hostile scouts. Nearly all the controls of the British machine were shot away and the observer, seriously wounded, fell half way out of the nacelle. Although still manoeuvring his machine so as to escape the direct fire of the enemies on his tail, the British pilot grasped the wounded observer, held him safely in the machine, and made a safe landing in our lines. A moment later the riddled aeroplane burst into flames. Under heavy shellfire the pilot carried the wounded observer to safety.

One of the distinguished German flying squadrons opposite us was under command of the famous Captain Baron von Richtofen. One day I had the distinction of engaging in three fights in half an hour with pilots from this squadron. Their machines were painted a brilliant scarlet from nose to tail—immense red birds, they were, with the graceful wings of their type—Albatross scouts. They were all single-seaters and were flown by pilots of undeniable skill. There was quite a little spirit of sportsmanship in this squadron, too. The red German machines had two machine guns in fixed positions firing straight ahead, both being operated from the same control.

The first of my three fights with these newcomers in our midst occurred when I suddenly found myself mixed up with two of them. Evidently they were not very anxious for a fight at the moment, for after a few minutes of manoeuvring, both broke it off and dived away. Ten minutes later I encountered one of the red machines flying alone. I challenged him but he wouldn't stay at all. On the contrary, he made off as fast as he could go. On my return from chasing him I met a second pair of red Huns. I had picked up company with another British machine, and the two Huns, seeing us, dived into a cloud to escape. I went in after them, and on coming out again found one directly beneath me. Onto him I dived, not pulling the trigger until I was fifteen yards away. Once, twice, three time I pressed the lever, but not a shot from my gun! I slipped away into another cloud and examined the faithless weapon only to find that I had run completely out of ammunition. I returned home quite the most disgusted person in the entire British army.

During the changeable days of the Arras offensive we had many exciting adventures with the weather. On one occasion I had gone back to the aircraft depot to bring to the front a new machine. Sunshine and snow squalls were chasing each other in a seemingly endless procession. On the ground the wind was howling along at about fifty miles an hour. I arrived at the depot at nine o'clock in the morning but waited about until four in the afternoon before the weather appeared to be settling down to something like a safe and sane basis. The sunshine intervals were growing longer and the snow periods shorter, so I climbed into my machine and started off. It was only a fifteen minutes' fly to the aerodrome, but in that time a huge black cloud loomed up and came racing toward me. I was headed straight into the gale and the way was so rough from the rush of the wind and the heavy clouds floating by, that the little machine was tossed about like a piece of paper. Several times I thought I was going to be blown completely over. Occasionally, without any warning, I would be lifted a sheer hundred feet in the air. Then later I would be dropped that distance, and often more. I was perspiring freely, although it was a very cold day. It was a race against the weather to reach my destination in time.

One cannot see in a snowstorm, and I felt that if the fleecy squall struck me before I sighted the aerodrome I would have to land in a ploughed field, and to do this in such a gale would be a very ticklish proposition. Added to all this, I was flying a machine of a type I had never handled before, and naturally it was a bit strange to me. Nearer and nearer the big cloud came. But I was racing for home at top speed. About half a mile from the haven I sought, the storm struck me. The moment before the snow deluge came, however. I had recognised the road that led to the aerodrome and coming down to fifty feet, where I could just make it out, I flew wildly on, praying all the time that the snow striking my engine would not cause it to stop. Then the awful thought came to me that perhaps I was on the wrong road. Then, even more suddenly than it had come, the snow stopped—the storm had swept right over me. There, just ahead of me, I saw the tents and hangars and the flying pennant of the aerodrome—home. This was my first experience in flying through snow and I did not care for another.

A few days after my unsuccessful experience with the red Richtofen scouts, I got my just revenge and a little more back from the Huns. My Major had been told to have some photographs taken of a certain point behind the German lines, and by special permission, he was given the privilege of taking them himself. The point to be photographed was about seven miles in German territory and in order to make a success of the snap-shotting it would be necessary to have a strong escort. The Major offered to go out and do the photographs on his own, without an escort, but the Colonel would not hear of it, and so it was arranged that an offensive patrol would go out at nine o'clock in the morning, meet the Major at a given point, and escort him over the ground he wished to cover.

My patrol was the one working at the time and I was the leader. At 9:30 we were to meet, just east of Arras, at 6,000 feet. The rendezvous came off like clockwork. I brought the patrol to the spot at 9:28 and two minutes later we spied a single Nieuport coming toward us. I fired a red signal light and the Nieuport answered. It was the Major. I then climbed slightly and led the patrol along about a thousand feet above the Nieuport in order to protect the Major and at the same time keep high enough to avoid too much danger from antiaircraft fire. We got to the area to be photographed without any other excitement than a very heavy greeting from the “Archies.” There were a number of big white clouds floating around about 6,000 feet, and these made it difficult for the guns to shoot at us. But they also made it difficult for the Major to get his photographs. We went around and around in circles for what seemed an eternity. During one of these sweeping turns I suddenly saw four enemy scouts climbing between two clouds and some distance off. I knew they would see us soon, so it occurred to me it would be a brilliant idea to let the enemy think there was only one British machine on the job. Under these circumstances I knew they would be sure to attack, and then the rest of us could swoop down and surprise them. I had no intention of letting the Major in for any unnecessary risks, but it seemed such a rare chance I could not resist it.

I led the patrol about two thousand feet higher up and there we waited. The enemy scouts did not see us at all, but they did see the Major. And they made for him. The first the Major knew of their approach, however, was when they were about 200 yards away, and one of them, somewhat prematurely, opened fire. His thoughts—he told me afterward immediately—flew to the patrol, and he glanced over his shoulder to see where we were. But we had vanished. He then wondered how much money he had in his pockets, as he did not doubt that the four Huns, surprising him as they had, would surely get him. Despite these gloomy and somewhat mercenary thoughts, the Major was fighting for his life. First he turned the nose of his machine directly toward the enemy, poured a burst of bullets toward a German at his right, then turned to the left as the second machine approached in that direction and let him have a taste of British gunfire as well. This frightened the first two Huns off for a moment and, in that time, I arrived on the scene with the rest of the patrol.

One of the Huns was firing at the Major's machine as I flashed by him, and I fired at a bare ten yards range. Then I passed on to the second enemy machine, firing all the while and eventually passing within five feet of one of his wingtips. Turning my machine as quickly as I could I was yet too late to catch the other two of the formation of four. They had both dived away and escaped. I had hit the two that first attacked the Major, however, and they were at the moment falling completely out of control a thousand or more feet below me, and finally went through the clouds, floundering helplessly in the air.

This little interruption ended, we all reassembled in our former positions and went on with the photographing. This was finished in about fifteen minutes, and, under a very heavy anti-aircraft fire, we returned home. The episode of the four Huns was perhaps the most successful bit of trapping I have ever seen, but it was many weeks before the squadron got through teasing me for using our commander as a decoy. I apologised to the Major, who agreed with me that the chance was too good a one to miss.

“Don't mind me,” he said; “carry on.”

Just to show there was no hard feeling, the Major that afternoon proposed some excitement of an entirely different sort. There was no patrol marked down for us, so the Major took another pilot and myself out on a sort of Cook's tour. We called it “seeing the war.” We all piled into an automobile, drove through poor old shell-torn Arras, which was fairly stiff with troops moving up toward the front, and with relieved divisions that were coming out of the line for hard-earned rest. Occasionally there was the screech of a “Whistling Percy” overhead—a shell from a long-range 16-inch naval gun some miles beyond the German lines. It was vastly different from flying, this motoring through Arras, threading your way tediously in and out of the marching troops and the interminable traffic of offensive warfare.

Finally we passed the railway station, which had long been a favourite target for the German gunners, but still showed some semblance of its former utility; turned “dead man's corner” into the road for Cambrai, proceeded over what had once been our front line, then over the old No Man's Land and finally came to a halt some miles beyond the city. There we left the car behind the crest of a hill, and out of direct observation from the enemy trenches which were not very far away. We were very bold, we three musketeers of the upper air, as we set out afoot, without a guide, to make our way toward a German machine that had been brought down a few days before just inside our lines.

On the way we had to pass about thirty batteries of artillery and as no one said anything to us we presumed we were all right in strolling along in front of them. The guns seemed harmless enough, sitting there so cold and silent. However, before we had gone so very far, a man crawled out of a hole in the ground and told us that if we were going anywhere in particular we had better hurry, as a battle was due to start in just five minutes. We questioned him about the “show,” and then decided to walk on as fast as we could and reach the village of Monchy, which sat a mass of ruins on a little hill, and was just two hundred yards within our lines.

Monchy-le-Preux, to give the little town the full dignity of its Artois name, is about five miles east of Arras and was the final fixed objective of the Easter drive. It is the highest bit of ground between Arras and the German border. Around it swirled some of the most desperate fighting of the entire war. It had been a pretty little place up to a few days before, but the moment the Germans had been driven from their defensive works about the village, many of them at the point of the bayonet, the German artillery was turned on Monchy in a perfect torrent of explosive shells. What had once been houses quickly disappeared, or were dissolved into jagged ruins. Our infantry had found three bedridden French civilians still living in Monchy when we took it, but fortunately for them they had been passed back to one of our hospitals before the Boches started their destructive bombardments.

It was just three o'clock when all the guns behind us opened fire over our heads. I must admit that I was at least “nervous” for the next half hour. Shells were going over us by the thousand, and pretty soon the Germans started their retaliatory fire. Many of the Boche shells landed quite near to us. We could see them explode and throw up from the ground great fountains of earth and debris, but we could not hear them on account of the roar of our own artillery.

There we were, the three of us, in the midst of a battle that we didn't know a thing on earth about. My nervousness grew perceptibly as I looked around and realised that in the whole of the country there was not another soul walking about. Everyone was under cover, or dug in somewhere, except us three. However, we decided there was no going back; so we went on.

Our taking refuge in Monchy was surely a case of ignorance being bliss. We crawled into the wrecked village, having passed without knowing it, another “Dead Man's Corner” far deadlier than the one in Arras itself. This Monchy corner had a specialty of its own—machine-gun fire. The Germans used to rake it many times a day. Evidently they were engaged in some other nefarious occupation as we walked blithely by the place. We walked gaily on into the village, then down the main street, picking our way carefully in a zigzag course among the debris. About this time another good Samaritan hailed us. He came dashing out of a house and told us to run for cover. Not knowing any cover of our own, we followed him to his. He led us into a deep dugout the Germans had built during their occupancy of the town. We told our guide and friend that we wanted to move on very shortly, but he laughed and said we would have no choice in the matter for the next few hours. He knew the habits of the Huns in that particular locality. Promptly at four o'clock the Germans began their daily bombardment. Our friend and guide, now turned philosopher, told us the Germans had the dugout “registered” very accurately and it would be unsafe to move from it until the firing was over for the day. We were shut up in this hole for an hour or more, when we decided to take our chances and go home.

We were very much worried in the meantime, that our car, resting on the high road, might have been hit. Everything pointed to the fact that it was time for us to go. So, in a temporary lull, we crawled out and made a dash through the village. We did not leave by the same way we had come. We knew too much by this time of “Dead Man's Corner.” Once clear of Monchy we noticed that a large number of shells were dropping in a sort of barrier about 400 yards in front of us. We pressed on, nevertheless, in the hope that there would be a sufficient lull in the firing to let us slip through the shell line. No lull appeared imminent, however, so we turned away to the right to avoid the particular spots that apparently had aroused the Germans' ire. We had not gone far when a huge shell dropped about thirty yards from us. It knocked two of us clean off our feet, and on our backs in the mud. It was rude, we thought, to treat three unoffending airmen out for a holiday, like this, so we were more than ever anxious to get out of it all. At last we arrived at some derelict tanks, left over from last week's battles, and there we found an ammunition column passing back from the guns. We climbed aboard one of the empty limbers, glad of the lift and gladder still of the company of these imperturbable khaki soldiers who were taking the events of the afternoon with that strange spirit of boredom one so often finds up near the firing lines.

We told the drivers we had left our car over the hill near a stranded tank, and they assured us they were going in that very direction. So we sat peacefully on the rattling limber for a mile or more. Then being quite certain we were going the wrong way, we inquired of the ammunition column men how far it was to their tank. They said it was just ahead of us. We looked. There was a tank, quite all right, but it was not our tank. A little more explaining to the soldiers that were now quite plentiful about us, and we were informed that our tank was at least a mile and a half away. We had made a stupid mistake, but we paid up for it in the muddy walk we had back.

The car was perfectly safe when we got to it, and sometime later we returned to the aerodrome right as rain. We had picked up a lot of souvenirs during our walk into Monchy and out again, and felt like Cook's tourists indeed when Tommies on the way would look at us with a tolerant smile.

These were wonderfully interesting days to me. Late the next afternoon I had the good fortune to be a spectator of the greatest fight in the air I have ever seen. Thrilling fights are often witnessed from the ground, but more of them take place at heights so misty that ground observers know nothing of them, unless one or more of the combatants should come tumbling down in a crash. More than often fights in the air would go unobserved if it were not for the “Archie” shells breaking in the sky. These shells play about friend and foe alike, but when you are really intent upon an air duel the “Archies” make no impression upon you whatever.

It was my privilege this day to see the spectacular fight from my machine. I had been idling along in the afternoon breeze, flying all alone, when I saw in the distance a great number of machines, whirling, spinning and rolling in a great aerial mêlée. I made toward them as fast as I could go, and as I approached watched the fight carefully. It was very hard to tell for a time which machines were ours and which were the Huns. Coming nearer it was easier, for then the Huns could be distinguished by the brilliant colouring of many of their machines. Hunting the Huns had taken on a new interest at this time because suddenly their machines had appeared painted in the most grotesque fashion. It was as if they had suddenly got an idea from the old Chinese custom of painting and adorning warriors so as to frighten the enemy. We learned afterward that it was just a case of the spring fancies of the German airmen running riot with vivid colour effects. We wanted to paint our machines, too, but our budding notions were frowned upon by the higher officers of the Corps. But every day our pilots were bringing home fresh stories of the fantastic German creations they had encountered in the skies. Some of them were real harlequins of the air, outrivaling the gayest feathered birds that had winged their way north with the spring. The scarlet machines of Baron von Bichtofen's crack squadron, sometimes called the “circus,” heralded the new order of things. Then it was noticed that some of the enemy craft were painted with great rings about their bodies. Later nothing was too gaudy for the Huns. There were machines with green planes and yellow noses; silver planes with gold noses; khaki coloured bodies with greenish grey planes; red bodies with green wings; light blue bodies and red wings; every combination the Teutonic brain could conjure up. One of the most fantastic we had met had a scarlet body, a brown tail, reddish brown planes, the enemy markings being white crosses on a bright green background. Some people thought the Germans had taken on these strange hues as a bit of spring camouflage, but they were just as visible or even more so in the startling colours they wore, and we put it down simply to the individual fancies of the enemy pilots.

The battle seemed to be at about evens when suddenly I saw a German machine, brightly coloured, fall out of the mêlée, turning over and over like a dead leaf falling from a tree late in autumn. I watched it closely for what seemed an awful length of time, but finally it crashed, a complete wreck. Turning my eyes to the fight again, I saw one of our own machines fall out of control. Half way between the scrimmage and the ground I thought it was coming into control again, but it turned into another dive and crashed near the fallen Hun. A moment later a second German machine came tumbling out of the fight. Eaten up with anxiety to get into the fight myself, I could not help having a feeling akin to awe as I watched the thrilling struggle. A mass of about twelve machines was moving around and around in a perfect whirlwind, and as I approached I could see our smoking bullets and the flaming missiles of the Huns darting in all directions.

Just as I reached the scene, the fight, unfortunately for me, broke up, and my participation in it was limited to a short chase and a few shots after the fleeing Germans.

Balloon attacks now came into fashion again, and for a short time we were told to attack them every day. In my case most of these attacks were unsuccessful. One day I crossed after a balloon only 2,000 feet up. Although I flew as fast as I could to reach the “sausage” it had been hauled down before I got to it. Despite this, I flew low and attacked the gas bag, but with no apparent results. The balloon still sat there peacefully on the ground. Some enemy machines were in the distance attacking one of the men of my squadron who was after another “sausage,” and I flew to his assistance and managed to frighten them off. I then returned to the balloon, had another go at it—but again no result. It was discouraging work.

That day, out of three of us who crossed to attack the balloons one man was lost. His experience was rather a bitter one, but he fought death under such a heavy handicap and with such bravery that his story is worthy of relation as one of the traditions of the Royal flying service. It was his first attack on the balloons and he crossed the lines with me. We separated when about half a mile over. When he dived after his balloons, two Hun machines got on his tail, and with their first burst of fire managed to hit both of his legs, breaking one. A second afterward a shot went through his petrol tank and the inflammable liquid poured over his helpless legs. But wounded as he was he fought back at the Germans and managed to get back over our lines. The two Germans, realising he was badly hit, kept after him, and with another burst of fire shot away all his controls and at the same time set fire to the machine. It dived to the earth a flaming torch, and crashed. Some brave Tommies who were near rushed frantically into the blazing wreckage and pulled the unfortunate pilot out. He was taken to a hospital where we found him, badly burned, one leg and one arm broken, and several bullet wounds in his body.

For two weeks he improved steadily, and we all had high hopes of his recovery. Then the doctors found it necessary to amputate his broken leg, and two days later the poor lad died. He had been in France but a few weeks.

“I came half way ‘round the world from Australia to fight the Hun,” he told one of our men in hospital. “I served through the campaign at Gallipoli as a Tommy, and at last I got where I longed to be in the flying corps. It seems hard to have it end like this so soon.”

There was joy in flying these later days in April when a tardy spring at last was beginning to assert itself. The hardness of the winter was passing and the earth at times was glorious to see. I remember one afternoon in particular when the whole world seemed beautiful. We were doing a patrol at two miles up about six o'clock. Underneath us a great battle was raging and we could see it all in crisp clearness, several lines of white smoke telling just where our barrage shells were bursting. The ground all about the trenches and the battle area was dark brown where it had been churned up by the never ceasing fire of the opposing artillery. On either side of the battle zone could be seen the fields, the setting sun shining on them with the softest of tinted lights. Still farther back—on both sides—was the cultivated land. The little farms stood out in varying geometric designs, with different colours of soil and shades of green, according to what had been sown in them and the state of the coming crops. There was no mist at all, and one could see for miles and miles.