Wings of War (11 page)

“We pilots are too important to have to work,” I say with a smile.

Just then, a particularly loud rumble breaks the silence.

“That’s one of those big howitzers,” Alec observes. “Fires a shell the size of a small cow almost straight up in the air. Comes down on Fritz out of nowhere. Makes a hole you could build a house in. Wouldn’t like to be under one. Still, I’ll be safe enough deep underground.”

“You reckon this is where the big attack’s going to happen?”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Alec says. “You haven’t been here for a night yet. You won’t get a minute’s sleep. The roads are crazy from dusk to dawn—lorries, tractors, marching feet—and they’ve built miles of railway lines as well. You won’t believe the stuff that’s being brought up: guns, ammo, duckboards, sandbags. And it’s all got to be hidden somewhere. I reckon your job, Eddie Boy, will be to stop Fritz flying over to take too close a look.”

A
HOWITZER CANNON
.

“And what’s your job, Alec?”

“Same as always—digging holes.” A serious look forms on Alec’s face. “I’ll tell you, though. Come the battle, there’s going to be large bits of the Hun trenches that won’t exist anymore.”

That’s all I can get out of him. We go into the chateau and find ourselves a couple of chairs in what used to be a magnificent parlor. The floor-to-ceiling fireplace is still there, and a vast, dusty crystal chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling. Alec tells me a few stories about his time in Egypt, but he seems more interested in what I’ve been up to.

I find that talking is a relief. I can say things to Alec that I can’t say in my letters home, even if the censors would allow it. I give him more details about Cecil’s death, about Wally and Bowie, and about what happened that day with Mick and Jock.

“Mick went off on leave and Wally didn’t court-martial him,” I relate. “We didn’t know what had happened to Jock for two weeks, but we all hoped he was a prisoner. One morning, just as the sun was thinking
about coming up, we heard a strange plane overhead. It was a German two-seater and we all thought it was a bombing attack. The pilot swooped low over the airstrip and we all dove for shelter, but the only thing he dropped was a canvas bag on the end of a crude parachute. When we opened it, we found Jock’s personal effects and his bagpipes, along with a note.”

I rummage in my pocket. No one seemed to know what to do with the note, so I kept it. I read it to Alec.

“It was just as well that Mick was away on leave,” I add.

“Chivalry among the knights of the air,” Alec says. I detect a bitter tone to his voice. “You ever been in the trenches?” he asks.

“No,” I admit. “I’ve only seen them from a couple of thousand feet up.”

“I reckon the smell doesn’t get that high. Not much time for chivalry down there. Best those poor blighters can hope for is a few hours of sleep in a hole in the ground and a warm meal once in a while. Even a burrowing mole like me has a better life than they do, even on a quiet section of the line. But listen to me moaning on! You obviously survived. You an ace yet?”

I laugh. “Five doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s hard to get. The weeks before we moved here were quiet. Most of the German planes are down fighting the French at Verdun, so the patrols weren’t dangerous. Wally got his fourth at the end of April, so he’s our closest to an ace until Mick returns. I got number two, a two-seater reconnaissance craft that spun and then dove away, but I won’t be credited with it. No one saw it crash so there’s no official confirmation and I still sit on one.”

“You’ve just got to work harder, Eddie Boy,” Alec says with a smile.

“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “But if you get too focused on getting kills, it distorts your thinking. You end up like Mick. We have to remember that the only reason we’re up there is to protect the work the observers do.” I look at my friend, serious now. “They say the two most dangerous times for a pilot are the first few weeks
and after he’s been flying for months. We lost a couple of new pilots who hadn’t been with the squadron long. I can’t even remember what they looked like. It’s best not to make friends with the new pilots too quickly.” I laugh bitterly. “I guess I’m getting to be a heartless old veteran.” Talking about all this to Alec is bringing out feelings I’ve kept buried for weeks. I don’t like them.

“Do you still feel the same way about flying that you did on the boat over here? You really got
me
fired up about it back then.”

“I don’t know,” I say after some thought. “Sometimes, at dawn or sunset, when the clouds look like a wonderful painting in some great art gallery, I can recapture the feelings I had flying across the prairies with Uncle Horst or Ted. But mostly I’m over the lines and scanning everywhere for a dark shape swooping at me out of the sun or the black puffs of Archie edging closer.”

“You’ve got a future as a poet,” Alec says.

I laugh. “I don’t think so. At the end of a day of patrols, even if there’s been no fighting, I crawl into my bunk, so exhausted that I sleep like the dead. Funny thing is, I wake just as tired as I was when I went to bed.”

“Yeah,” Alec agrees. “I feel exactly the same after a day of digging in a tunnel. It’s the not knowing. Is there a Hun camouflet—that’s one of their counter tunnels—ready to blow a few feet away? It must be much the
same knowing there’s a Hun plane you can’t see ready to jump you.”

“I guess that’s it. The worst thing, though, is when you see an enemy pilot’s face. Most of the time you can pretend it’s a game and convince yourself that the plane you’re hunting is just an inanimate object. Then you get close and see the look of terror on a man’s face, and you realize that you’re busily trying to kill someone.”

“How’re things at home?” Alec asks, changing the subject.

“Fine,” I say. “Mom writes most weeks. It’s good to hear that everyone’s all right, but it’s hard to care about the mundane things she talks about.”

“Yeah,” Alec concurs. “I almost dread those letters from home. No one there understands what our world’s like.”

“I know what you mean,” I say. “My uncle Horst sent me a letter all about building his new flying machine in his barn. Once upon a time, Horst’s planes were the most important things in my life. Now they’re machines I use to try to kill people.”

“It’s a funny old war right enough.” Alec stands up and stretches. “Well, I’d better be off if I don’t want to be left behind. I’d invite you to visit, Eddie, but there’s not much room in the tunnels. I’ll try to drop by again next time I’m out of the line.”

“It was good to see you,” I say, accompanying Alec outside. “Look after yourself.”

“You too.”

We shake hands and I watch Alec head out to the road. Odd how we have ended up, me high in the sky and him deep underground—the top and bottom of the war. I head back into the chateau. Tomorrow we go on our first reconnaissance flight to familiarize ourselves with the new sector of the front, and I have maps to examine before that. I suspect this new airfield is going to be much busier than I’m used to.

CHAPTER 14

I
am right about things being busy on this sector of the front. It seems that every day there’s a dogfight. The troubling thing is that as the days pass, the German presence increases. Day by day there are more patrols looking for us and more planes in each patrol. For a while we’re lucky—a few wounded pilots and several planes limping home with damage, but no one’s lost and we’re commended on our work protecting the observers. Then we’re given a special mission.

“I’ve got something different for you this morning,” says Wally, having gathered us round the big table
under the chandelier in the chateau’s parlor. The table is covered with maps, and Wally is explaining the morning’s patrols. He has already assigned tasks to most of the pilots, but Bowie and I are wondering what he has in store for us.

“As you know,” Wally says, “Fritz has fortified the villages behind his front line. We know about Beaumont-Hamel—we’ve photographed every square inch of it a hundred times.”

There’s a grumble of agreement from the pilots, and my stomach knots. I’ve been over Beaumont-Hamel. It’s low-level work and dangerous. There’s not only the regular Archie, but the Germans also have modified machine guns that are a problem when flying close to the ground. No one wants to go back there.

“And we’ve done the same to the Hawthorn Redoubt in front of it,” Wally continues. “What we don’t yet know is what the infantry’s going to be facing after the Hun front lines are broken. Have they fortified the villages behind the front? And if so, how well? You three”—he gestures to me, Bowie and a new pilot called Gordon—“have the job of escorting a two-seater to photograph the village behind Beaumont-Hamel.” Wally runs his finger over the map. “Beaucourt-sur-l’Ancre. Should be a piece of cake. Just follow the railway running beside the river and there you are. You don’t even have to fly over Beaumont-Hamel.”

I feel a sense of relief, but it doesn’t last long. “Thing is, HQ wants the pictures taken from a thousand feet.”

“A thousand feet!” both Bowie and I exclaim at the same time. “They could hit us with rocks at that height.”

Wally shrugs. There’s nothing he can do. Orders are orders. “With luck, coming along the river, Fritz won’t be expecting you, so you’ll get in and out before he can react.”

“That’s a lot of luck,” Bowie cries. “Still, you can’t live forever, eh, Kid? Come on Gordo,” he says, giving the new pilot an instant nickname. “Let’s go and make sure everything’s working on the old Parasols.”

I touch the Pour le Mérite in my pocket. I have a feeling I’ll need it.

Bowie and I help Gordo run over the checklist before takeoff and stress the factors he needs to remember in flying the touchy Parasol. He’s a nice kid and the best of the new additions, with almost twenty hours’ experience, some of it on Parasols, but I’m short with him. I don’t want him to be my friend because his chances of being alive in a few weeks are not good.

“Why did Wally give us him?” I ask Bowie as we head toward our machines, annoyed that we don’t have a more experienced companion.

“Who else’s he going to send?” Bowie replies. “There aren’t enough pilots with enough training, and there aren’t enough good machines. Maybe if Fritz goes for him, it’ll give us a better chance.”

What Bowie says is cynical, but if I’m honest, that thought has occurred to me too. I shake my head. “Is this what we’ve come to—hoping that the inexperienced boy we’re being sent up with will be killed because it’ll give us a better chance to live?”

“Hey,” Bowie says, grabbing my arm, “don’t start thinking about him. He’ll take his chances like the rest of us did when we first arrived. You start babysitting him and you’ll be distracted. That means you’ll be the one to go down. Keep focused on the work.”

I nod, pull on my helmet and goggles, clamber into the cockpit and wrap Horst’s medal around a spar. I stare at it for a long moment. Max Immelmann was awarded one of these back in January when he shot down his eighth Allied aircraft. How can something that is given as an honor to my enemies be my lucky charm? I shake my head to dispel these negative thoughts. My medal was a gift from Horst, and that’s what makes it lucky. I have to believe that.

We take off without incident, rendezvous with the B.E.2c we are to protect and cross the front lines. They’re on us almost instantly—four Fokkers, two
coming in from each side. We’re flying in a V above the 2c, but they ignore us and dive straight for the two-seater. Bowie veers off at the two attackers on the right, signaling for Gordo and me to go for the other two. I wave for Gordo to follow me and push the stick forward.

Almost immediately, I’m in the middle of the swirling, chaotic mess of a dogfight. I get off a few shots at one Fokker, but the pilot’s good and flashes out of my line of sight. I turn toward the other and fire, but this time I’m too far away. I scan the sky quickly and climb to gain height for another attack.