Wings of War (5 page)

“You sure?” I ask, daunted by the prospect of having to watch all the dials.

“Sure,” Ted says cheerily. “I’ve got controls up front to get us out of trouble if you mess up. And I think you’ll find the 504 a bit more forgiving than Horst’s contraptions. What height have you flown at?”

“Five hundred feet, tops,” I reply.

“There’s another thing,” Ted says. “We’ll head up to three thousand or so. A bit cold, but much safer up there. If anything goes wrong, there’s time to fix it. And if you can’t, you’re just as dead from five hundred as you are from three thousand. Don’t forget to strap yourself in!”

Ted fires up the engine and climbs in the front cockpit. With his instructions coming through the improvised speaking tube, I take off, nervous but thankful that I remembered to stuff Horst’s Pour le Mérite into my pocket.

Ted’s right—the Avro flies like a charm. The controls are much heavier than the ones in Bertha, but she feels solid and reliable. We climb steadily until the world looks very far away. I know I’m much safer up here, but it’s scary nonetheless.

Following Ted’s instructions, I twist and turn, climb and dive, and only occasionally feel his pressure on the
stick, correcting me slightly. The windshield and my position in the rear cockpit stop most of the castor oil from reaching me, but an occasional spray of hot droplets stings my cheeks. I keep my mouth firmly shut. I’m freezing and my teeth are chattering, and I now envy Ted’s heavy jacket. But despite the discomfort, I’m having a wonderful time. This is freedom.

“You’re doing great,” Ted’s voice comes through the tube. He sounds very far away and has to shout against the noise of the engine and the wind. “Let’s do a loop.”

“What?” I yell back, thinking I must have misheard him.

“Let’s loop-the-loop,” Ted repeats.

“I can’t,” I say, terrified of the idea of being upside down.

“You’ll have to do one sooner or later, and there’s no time like the present. I’ll take over if you get into difficulty. What does your altimeter say?”

“Three thousand five hundred,” I say.

“Good enough. When I give the word, dive. Keep going till the speed builds up to one hundred, then pull back on the stick to climb. Not too fast or you’ll stall us. It’s a bit unnerving losing sight of the ground and the first time, you’ll want to pull out of the loop too soon. Don’t, ’cause you’ll spin. Keep the stick pulled back
until you can see the horizon again, then cut the engine way back with the airflow lever. Keep the stick a bit to the left. The rotary engine spins to the right, so it wants to pull you that way. Easy does it and you’ll come round nice as anything. Don’t panic, and remember, I’ve got controls here. I’ll keep you right.”

“All right,” I say, although I feel far from all right. What am I getting myself into doing crazy stunts thousands of feet in the air with an insane American?

I fly along, trying to pluck up my courage.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Ted shouts.

I check that my harness is securely fastened, take a deep breath and push the stick forward. The needle on the airspeed dial jumps off the sedate fifty it’s been sitting on and begins to climb.

Sixty—I push the stick forward more.

Seventy—What if the wings fold? I’ll have a long time knowing I’m going to die before we hit the ground.

Eighty—Why don’t I simply ease up, fly home and forget this madness? Because I’d be letting Ted and Horst down, and if I’m honest, beneath the fear there’s excitement.

Eighty-five—The wind is violent and icy cold.

Ninety—The Avro’s shuddering horribly. She’s about to break apart.

Ninety-five—Ted has the other stick. He’s got hold
of it. He’s doing all this, and I’m simply following his movements.

One hundred—I pull back on the stick. The shuddering stops and the earth whips out of my view. There’s nothing but sky around me. I’ve flown off the earth. I pull back on the stick more and climb and climb and climb. We must be over by now, but I still see nothing but sky. Maybe we’ve gone into a spin. Maybe I’ll suddenly see the earth rushing up to meet us. What made me think flying was safe? And I haven’t even got to the war yet! Don’t be silly. Ted’s got the stick. He’s had it all along. He’s in control, and I’m not in any danger.

As if by magic, the horizon appears in front of and above me. Keeping the stick back, I reach forward and reduce the airflow. The engine note drops, making the wind sound much louder. We come all the way round and level out at a sane speed.

“Woo-hooooooo,” I scream into the wind. That was the most incredible thing I have ever done. “That was great,” I shout into the tube. “Thank you, Ted!”

“Hey, don’t thank me, kid. You did it, and real well too.”

“What do you mean? You had the stick.”

“Nope.” Even distorted by the tube and the wind, the laughter in Ted’s voice is unmistakable. “Never touched it. You did that all on your own.”

“Really! I looped all on my own?”

“Sure did.”

“Yippee!” I yell.

“Don’t get too cocky,” Ted says. “You’ve still got to get us down. And we’ll never manage that if you don’t remember to up the airflow again.”

We fly around in a huge circle and come in to land. Following Ted’s instructions, I flip the blip switch and we come into the field over the trees. It’s a hard landing, and we very nearly crash on my third heavy bounce across the ground.

“Well, there’s still work to be done,” Ted says after we have parked the Avro, “especially on landings, but you did well. A couple of hours tomorrow and I don’t see why I can’t give you your license. Congratulations.” He shakes my hand. “You’re a natural. Them Germans better watch out when you get over there.”

I head for the bunkhouse where my bedding is set up. I’m tired, both emotionally and physically. The raw excitement of looping the loop has gone, but I’m deliriously, stupidly happy. In only a few weeks, I’ve achieved a major part of my dream. I’m a pilot.

CHAPTER 6

“W
hat is that idiot doing?” Cecil asks in his high-class English accent. I’m standing with my new friends, Cecil and Alec, at the rail of the SS
Akrotiri
as we steam past the south coast of Ireland. These are dangerous waters; the RMS
Lusitania
was torpedoed and sunk not far from here back in May, so we’re traveling as fast as we can. But the battered old freighter we’re staring at is almost stationary in the water.

“Hun submarine’ll get her for sure,” Alec comments in his strong Newfoundland accent. Cecil
and Alec are as different as chalk and cheese, but the three of us have become close friends on the journey from Canada.

After I returned home from Glasgow, proudly clutching my pilot’s license, I faced the daunting task of persuading my parents to let me go to war. Horst had been working on Dad while I was away, so he was not a problem. Mom, on the other hand, was less keen on my adventure. “Next year, when you’re eighteen, is early enough,” she said.

I wasn’t making much progress with her until Ted arrived to visit Horst. He roared in with the Avro one sultry afternoon and bounced to a halt in our back field. My uncle was already over, and the two of them set to work on Mom. Horst explained that being a pilot was by far the safest occupation in the war, and Ted explained the rudiments of flying and built me up as the best student he had ever seen. Then he took Mom up for a spin. She returned to earth breathless and almost as much in love with flying as I was, and that evening I was allowed to draft a letter to the War Office in London, offering my services. Plans were made for my transatlantic voyage and for my time in London, where I would lodge with a cousin of Dad’s. I left from Moose Jaw station, amid cheers and tears, only ten days later.

I met Cecil, a skinny man more than six feet tall and several years older than me, on the station platform as I changed trains in Toronto. He was struggling with a huge steamer trunk and I gave him a hand. “Thanks, awfully, old chap,” he said, sounding as if his cheeks were full of plums. He sat next to me on the long train journey to Halifax. At first, his accent made me think he was just an upper-class English snob, but I was wrong. Cecil was certainly upper class, he came from a very old, well-connected family, but as the third son, he had been sent out to Canada to make his own way in life. He had been everywhere, working with fur trappers way up north, helping surveyors in the Rocky Mountains and seal hunting in Newfoundland. He had not settled at anything, however, and somewhere along the way he’d learned to fly, so the war was a perfect opportunity for him to return to Europe and find some excitement. He’s as determined to be a pilot as I am, and we spent many happy hours on the train talking about our shared love of flying, the unfettered joy we both felt being at three thousand feet and our plans to contribute to the war effort.

I met Alec on board the
Akrotiri
. He’s Cecil’s opposite, a rough and ready miner who’s barely five foot four and powerfully built. He’s on his way to join the Newfoundland Regiment in Egypt.

“That old rust bucket,” Cecil says as we continue to stare at the freighter. “He cannot be doing more than a couple of knots. The poor chap’s a sitting duck if there are any U-boats around.”

As if in response, a sleek shape breaks the calm surface beside the laboring freighter. “My heavens!” Cecil exclaims. “Look at that chap. On the surface in broad daylight as bold as brass.”

Soldiers and sailors are shouting all around us, and dozens of men are rushing to the rail to watch the unfolding drama. Our ship’s whistle is sounding harshly. “Why’d he not just torpedo him?” Alec asks. “I thought that’s what submarines did.”

“Indeed they do,” Cecil says as we watch hatches open on the U-boat’s deck and tiny black figures rush to man the forward gun. “But this way he saves a torpedo. The freighter’s not a threat and we’re unarmed, so he can attack us at his leisure.”

Suddenly what I am watching becomes less of an interesting show and more of a threat.

“Will he attack us?” I ask nervously.

“If he can dispose of that chap quickly enough,” Cecil says. He seems remarkably calm amid all the shouting and running about. “Our best chance is to get far away while he’s busy. I doubt if he’s fast enough to catch us.”

I look up at our three funnels, each one belching black smoke, and imagine the stokers in the bowels of the ship shoveling coal into the boilers for all they’re worth.

“What’s he doing now?” Alec’s question draws me back to the drama in front of us. Instead of trying to run, the freighter has turned its side to the submarine. With a loud clang that we can hear quite clearly over the water, a massive panel on the freighter’s side drops down to reveal a gun much larger than the one on the U-boat.

The U-boat fires first, but its shell explodes harmlessly in a column of water some distance away. The freighter replies, and a much larger fountain erupts very close to the U-boat’s side. A ragged cheer bursts from the sailors watching around us.

“They’re giving up!” Alec shouts excitedly as men scurry across the submarine’s deck back toward the hatches.

Just then, a second shell explodes beside the submarine, throwing several men into the water. The rest are below now, and the hatches close. The submarine’s bow dips beneath the waves. “She’s getting away!” someone yells. A third shell catches the U-boat about two-thirds of the way along its length. The rear section, which is still sticking out of the water,
buckles awkwardly and the submerged bow rises up again.

“That one’s broken her back,” Cecil says quietly.

Silence spreads through the men as we watch the U-boat die. They’re the enemy and they attacked us without warning, but men like us are dying a horrible death over there. The freighter continues firing, and the two sections of the submarine soon slide beneath the waves. Debris bobs in a slowly expanding oil slick. There are men there as well, dark with the heavy oil, waving weakly. Soon the waving stops.

Soldiers and sailors drift away from the rail, talking in low voices. “She’s a Q-ship,” Cecil says. “A decoy. Chap I know at the War Office told me about them. A Q-ship is an old freighter that looks like a soft target but has powerful guns hidden behind screens. You saw what happens when a U-boat surfaces.”

We’re each alone with our thoughts as we head around the deck. None of us feels like going below, knowing what might be lurking under the water.

“Those poor men,” I say, unable to shake the image of the helplessly waving arms in the water.

“There’s our first taste of war,” Cecil says. “Horrible way to die. Proves we made the right choice chasing our dreams in the sky with the birds, eh, Edward?”

I nod agreement and silently hope that Cecil and
I are sent to the same squadron. Our shared passion for flying makes me regard him as almost family.

“They brought it on themselves, Eddie Boy,” Alec says. “And personally, I’m glad that Q-ship was there to do the job, or else it might have been us floating around in the ocean.”

“A good point, my Newfoundland friend,” Cecil says.

“War’ll be over soon, anyway,” Alec says cheerfully, trying to lighten the mood. “Soon as the Newfoundlanders get into it. Everyone knows Newfoundlanders are the best fighters in the world.”