Hornet’s Sting (33 page)

The C.O. showed him the signal.

“Douai,” Gerrish said, more thoughtfully. “Well, sir, they won't have far to come and look for us, will they?” Douai had a large German aerodrome.

“That's not what matters. Believe me, we're not out to make a big score. Not yet. I just want you to give the Boche something to worry about. Knock down one, two if you like, and we'll all be very happy. Then you can go and do it again tomorrow. But today ... no heroics, Plug. Let some Huns get home to tell the tale and put the breeze up their pals.”

“What you want,” Ogilvy said, “is restrained carnage.”

Gerrish smiled at that. Ogilvy didn't.

“Just a bloody nose will do,” Cleve-Cutler said.

The Biffs took off at eleven. They circled and formed up in line abreast and swept across the airfield in a shallow dive. Cleve-Cutler saluted, and lost his cap to the sudden tearing wash of the propellers.
He let it go while he watched the fighters climb. They banked left, re-formed into pairs astern, kept climbing. A cumulus cloud of dazzling white reared magnificently behind them. Cleve-Cutler felt a tear of pride trickle down his face and he did not wipe it away.

The flight crossed the Lines at thirteen thousand feet, and was only spottily Archied. Two and a half miles below, smoke from the artillery bombardment drifted like dirty ground-mist, speckled with soft, small flashes. None of the crews paid it much attention. Most had seen it all before. It was a remote event, rather like a disaster in a coal mine, and nothing to do with the war in the air. They concentrated on searching the sky.

The sky consisted of great white galleons of cloud; a scrubbed blue backdrop; and sparkling sunlight everywhere. Good day for a scrap.

Gerrish checked the map strapped to his left thigh, and looked below. The little river Scarpe glistened, a wet thread that dribbled towards Douai. He looked between the wings, past the shining arc of the prop, and there it was, a pretty little town, terribly old no doubt, stuffed with glorious architecture, maybe a soaring cathedral, probably an ancient university. If it didn't get out of the way soon and the British attack succeeded, then Douai might be a smoking ruin in a week or so.

Douai's Archie shelled the Biffs. No luck: maybe the clouds got in the way, or shrapnel fell on the heads of the gunners and their friends; anyway, they quit. Gerrish turned the flight southeast, towards Cambrai. There was activity in the air but it was far off and not worth chasing. Five Albatros D-IIIs slid around the edge of a towering hulk of cloud. They were single-seaters, glossy red against snowy white. Gerrish fired a Very light.

After that, there was little for him to do but wait. The rest of the flight closed up and swung onto an interception course. They had done it a hundred times. It was automatic. Still, Gerrish looked around and checked that everyone was there. He turned so far that he could see his observer, Munday. “Ready?” he shouted. Munday waved.

The Albatroses made a broad arrowhead. Gerrish was always intrigued by the apparent silence of enemy formations. They weren't silent, of course; it was just that his ears were swamped by the six-cylinder Rolls-Royce roaring in front of him. But in flight the Albatros formation seemed so silent, so effortless. Red should burn very nicely, he
thought. Now both flights were closing fast, as eager as lovers with gifts. I've got this for you, he thought, and signalled a turn.

The six Biffs banked and levelled out. Their gunners had a clear shot from a steady platform. The Lewis guns crackled. Yellow tracer leaped out and tried to touch the enemy. The five Albatroses split up as if stung.

The outer two soared away in a steep, flaring turn. The inner three fell, each diving in a different direction. Gerrish looked over the side and watched them pull out and use their speed to climb. The slipstream rattled his head. Freezing air tugged at his helmet and goggles. He loaded the Very pistol and fired, rammed the pistol into its holster and gently eased the Biff into the beginning of a roll and held it there so that Munday could fire downwards.

All the Biffs were canted over, and all their gunners were firing long bursts at the rising Albatroses. The tactic worked. The enemy got driven off and fell away. The Biffs levelled out, a little ragged. At once everyone searched for the other red scouts, the pair that had not dived. Munday poked Gerrish in the shoulder and he pointed dead ahead. Gerrish's eyes were still watering. He could see one blurred red silhouette, too low for Munday to fire at without hitting his pilot or his prop or both. Gerrish's thumb pressed the gun-button, and the Vickers sent bright pulses of fire leaping ahead. As the Albatros swerved, his hands and feet automatically moved to chase it. The Biff dipped and heeled, and he realised he was falling out of formation, so he abandoned the target, steered hard back towards the flight and over-steered.

From nowhere, Snow's machine rushed at him. Snow was looking high up, his gunner was firing vertically, the two Biffs were seconds away from collision. Gerrish cursed and dragged the stick across as he kicked the rudder and opened the throttle. The Biff did as it was told, did much more than Gerrish meant: it skidded into a clumsy roll and threw Munday out.

Some gunners strapped themselves in. Not Munday. Munday liked the freedom to swing his Lewis all around the cockpit. He trusted Gerrish to remember this. Gerrish glimpsed Munday's right leg and he actually tried to turn and grab it, and of course he failed and had to watch the man falling head-over-heels until he was a blob and the blob got swallowed by a cloud. The Biff slowly righted itself. For a
few seconds Gerrish was too shocked to know or care where he was: more than long enough for an Albatros to make a beam attack. The shots wandered around the cockpit. Three bullets punched a hole as big as his fist in Gerrish's ribcage. The impact flung him sideways. His fist carried the joystick with it. The Biff tried to perform circus acts as it wandered back through the formation, and that was the end of the formation.

Crabtree flew a circle, trying to marshal the others. While he was concentrating on firing off Very signals he couldn't watch the enemy closely enough. Heeley was his gunner, and Heeley did a very competent job of swinging his Lewis from left to right, firing short bursts to scare off prowling Albatroses. Even short bursts emptied the drum. Heeley was so excited that he tried to fit the new drum upside-down. While he was hammering at it with his fist an Albatros came up behind and blew his hand off. The same burst went through the fuselage and severed so many control cables that the Biff put its tail up and fell. A final burst hit its tank, and now it was burning too brightly to be worth chasing.

Snow found himself alongside Simms and together they turned for home. Their gunners, Charles Dash and Duke Nikolai, were unhurt; the tactics drummed into them might yet succeed. For three minutes – say five miles – they fought off attacks. One Albatros fell out of the fight and began gliding home, trailing a rich train of smoke. Then others made simultaneous thrusts from each side and above, and that left the Biffs' gunners out of ammunition. Soon Snow's engine was streaming smoke, and the smoke became flame, and the flame exploded. Simms saw this and dived away as steeply as possible. His airspeed overran his engine speed: the aeroplane was trying to outfly its propeller. Something had to go, and it was the prop that snapped. He was lucky to crash-land in a German wood. Nikolai, not strapped in, was found many yards away, neck and back broken; but that was hours later.

Ogilvy was intelligent enough to abandon the fight and hide in a cloud. He sneaked home, dodging from cover to cover, and landed safely. His gunner, Maddegan, had a small hole in his backside: nothing serious; the bullet passed straight through. At first Maddegan was severely shocked, too shocked to be able to speak; but that had nothing to do with the wound.

McWatters and Andrei escaped too, although their Biff fell apart
when McWatters tried to put it down in a potato field behind the British trenches. Some nearby troops came running over to help. They pulled the crew out of the wreckage and gave them cigarettes. Somebody dropped a careless match and the Biff went up, just like that. Andrei was lightly singed.

Cleve-Cutler waited until two o'clock before he telephoned Wing H.Q. Even then he didn't fully believe what he was telling them. Neither did they, until it was jubilantly reported in the German press next day. Bloody April had begun.

Chimneys and monuments fall. Cracks in wet ground
.

Next morning, eight second-lieutenants walked into the mess. They wore the new R.F.C. uniform, called the maternity jacket because of its deep, double-breasted tunic. It looked dull and shapeless against the stylish regimental outfits of old sweats like Dingbat Maddegan. His uniform was already patched at the elbow and the seat, and faded in streaks where his servant had taken out oil-stains with petrol. The newcomers seemed to be on parade, whilst Maddegan was obviously at war.

He sat lopsided, with one foot on a chair. He was eating breakfast. Nobody else was there. “Which one is Snow White?” he asked.

They glanced uncertainly at each other. The tallest man said, “The adjutant told us we might find Captain Ogilvy here.”

Maddegan munched some bacon and thought about that. “I'd steer clear of him if I was you. He's been acting a bit funny lately.” Their shoulders slumped a little, and those carrying valises put them down. “Go to your rooms,” Maddegan advised. “Have a nice lie-down.”

“The adjutant said our rooms aren't ready yet.”

Maddegan nodded as he poked a bit of toast into the yoke of his egg, and he went on nodding as he ate it. A bright yellow drip trickled down his chin and ran out of strength before it reached the point. The replacements watched with interest; they hoped to be offered breakfast. “When you get shot,” he said helpfully, “and they ask you
where
you got shot, always say ‘Five miles north of Cambrai'. That's what I did. It makes them laugh like a dingo. I've never heard a dingo laugh, but then neither have you, so we're quits.”

“Did you get the Hun that shot you?” one of them asked.

Maddegan felt egg on his chin and tried to reach it with his tongue. “Wrong question,” he said. His tongue wasn't long enough. He scraped at the drip with a crust of toast. Servants came in with
pots of coffee and bowls of porridge, and the replacements thankfully sat down.

One catastrophe was no reason to ground the whole squadron. Orders arrived from Wing to put every available Pup into the air. The British artillery bombardment was being threatened by a ferocious counter-battery operation. Enemy guns were hunting for British guns, guided by observers in balloons or aeroplanes who plotted the flash of British shellfire and told the German gunners where to aim. Fighters patrolled above. Archie erupted in a dirty rash, and the tunnelling of big shells through the sky created small storms that bounced the aeroplanes like unseen humped-back bridges. Very rarely, the paths of a shell and an aeroplane met exactly, and the gunners picked off the machine as cleanly as a poacher with a rook-rifle. The shell was not fused to explode at height. It merely wrecked the aircraft and sped on its way. Long before the bits reached the ground, the shell had gone on to hit its target. Or not.

All day, Cleve-Cutler sent Pups in sections of threes to patrol the front. After such heavy losses, experience was at a premium, so Woolley and Paxton flew. Ogilvy flew. McWatters turned up with a bruise as blue as a pound of plums across his forehead. He flew; so did Andrei, his aching ribs generously plastered. Maddegan flew until his leg got so stiff that he couldn't feel the rudder-bar. The C.O. flew. By nightfall, everyone had done at least two patrols; most had done three. It had been an exhausting day of chasing Huns and being chased by Huns, and often feeling bloody lucky to get home, unlike some. A new boy called Tucker muddled his throttle and strayed away from his formation and got shot down in flames by an opportunistic Halberstadt who sensibly saw no reason to stay and fight the two remaining Pups. Another new boy called Drinkwater shot his own propeller off and forced-landed in a field and might be intact.

Cleve-Cutler called for a squadron party, but even as he was mixing the Hornet's Sting, a despatch rider came from Wing. First patrol at dawn. Short party. Early bed.

Fitters and riggers and armourers worked through the night, but only six Pups were fit for action by dawn.

The sky was as red as the glare from a forest fire.

“Will you look at that preposterousness?” Dando said to the padre. They were on the airfield, waiting for the flight to take off.

“What's wrong with it?”

“It's profligate. Can't your God curb himself? Bad enough we're to have a bloody battle without Himself turning it into Italian opera.”

“I find it rather jolly.”

“Jolly? There's more blood up there than you'd find in Cork slaughterhouse.”

“Yes? It's not a city I'm familiar with. I once had an organist who moved to Tralee, but of course he had no knowledge of slaughterhouses. Very few organists do, I imagine . . . Ah, good morning, sir. Although the good doctor here takes exception to the dawn. Too red for his taste.”

“Mine too. Nasty piece of weather on the way. My knee's giving me gyp. Never been the same since I hit it with a barn.”

“How did you sleep, sir?” Dando said.

“Like the dead.”

It wasn't the happiest answer, but nobody blinked. In the R.F.C., when men died they were not spoken of again; not in general conversation, that is. The convention was to behave as if nothing had happened. Death was just a different posting. Of course the tradition sometimes defeated itself. When five out of six brand-new fighters got hacked down and eight men failed to return, that was a body-blow to the squadron spirit. Ignoring it just created a very loud silence.

The C.O. didn't look as if he had slept well. He certainly hadn't shaved well. He kept squinting, although the light was still soft. “What?” he said sharply.