Cavalry of the Clouds Part 13

VI.

BATTLES AND BULLETS.

... I am not sure which is the more disquieting, to be under fire in the air or on the ground.

Although the airman is less likely to be hit than the infantryman, he has to deal with complications that could not arise on solid earth. Like the infantryman, a pilot may be killed outright by a questing bullet, and there's an end of it. But in the case of a wound he has a far worse time. If an infantryman be plugged he knows he has probably received "a Blighty one," and as he is taken to the dressing-station he dreams of spending next week-end in England. A wounded pilot dare think of nothing but to get back to safety with his machine, and possibly an observer.

He may lose blood and be attacked by a paralysing faintness. He must then make his unwilling body continue to carry out the commands of his unwilling brain, for if he gives way to unconsciousness the machine, freed from reasoned control, will perform circus tricks and twist itself into a spinning nose-dive. Even when he has brought the bus to friendly country he must keep clear-headed; otherwise he will be unable to exercise the judgment necessary for landing.

Another unpleasant thought is that though he himself escape unhurt, an incendiary bullet may set his petrol tank ablaze, or some stray shots may cut his most vital control wires. And a headlong dive under these conditions is rather too exciting, even for the most confirmed seeker after sensation.

Yet with all these extra possibilities of what a bullet may mean, the chances of being plugged in the air are decidedly less than on the ground. While travelling at anything from 70 to 140 miles an hour it is decidedly more difficult to hit another object tearing along at a like speed and swerving in all directions, than from a machine-gun emplacement to rake a line of men advancing "over the top." Another point favourable to the airman is that he scarcely realises the presence of bullets around him, for the roar of his engine drowns that sinister hiss which makes a man automatically close his eyes and duck.

Given a certain temperament and a certain, mood, an air fight is the greatest form of sport on earth. Every atom of personality, mental and physical, is conscripted into the task. The brain must be instinctive with insight into the enemy's moves, and with plans to check and outwit him. The eye must cover every direction and co-operate with the brain in perfect judgments of time and distance. Hands, fingers, and feet must be instantaneous in seizing an opportunity to swoop and fire, swerve and avoid, retire and return.

In an isolated fight between two single machines the primary aim of each pilot is to attack by surprise at close quarters. If this be impossible, he plays for position and tries to get above his opponent. He opens fire first if he can, as this may disconcert the enemy, but he must be careful not to waste ammunition at long range. A machine with little ammunition is at a tremendous disadvantage against a machine with plenty.

If an isolated British aeroplane sees a formation of Germans crossing to our side it has no hesitation in sweeping forward to break up the party.

You will remember our old friend Marmaduke, dear lady? Only last week he attacked ten German machines, chased them back to their own place in the air, and drove two down.

Even from the purely selfish point of view much depends on the area.

When an airman destroys a Boche over German country he may have no witnesses, in which case his report is attended by an elusive shadow of polite doubt. But if the deed be done near the trenches, his success is seen by plenty of people only too willing to support his claim.

Sometimes a pilot may even force a damaged Boche machine to land among the British. He then follows his captive down, receives the surrender, and wonders if he deserves the Military Cross or merely congratulations.

The tactics of an air battle on a larger scale are much more complicated than those for single combats. A pilot must be prepared at every instant to change from the offensive to the defensive and back again, to take lightning decisions, and to extricate himself from one part of the fight and sweep away to another, if by so doing he can save a friend or destroy an enemy.

To help you realise some of the experiences of an air battle, my very dear madam, let us suppose you have changed your s.e.x and surroundings, and are one of us, flying in a bunch over the back of the German front, seeking whom we may devour.

A moment ago the sky was clear of everything but those dainty cloud-banks to the east. Very suddenly a party of enemies appear out of nowhere, and we rush to meet them. Like the rest of us, you concentrate your whole being on the part you must play, and tune yourself up to the strain attendant on the first shock of encounter. What happens in the first few seconds often decides the fight.

The opposing forces close up and perfect their order of battle. The usual German method, during the past few weeks, has been to fly very high and range the machines one above the other. If the higher craft are in trouble they dive and join the others. If one of the lower ones be surrounded those above can swoop down to its help. Our own tactics vary according to circ.u.mstances.

At the start it is a case of follow-my-leader. The flight-commander selects a Boche and dives straight at him. You follow until you are within range, then swerve away and around, so as to attack from the side. Then, with a clear field, you pour in a raking fire by short bursts--_ta-ta-ta-ta_, _ta-ta-ta-ta-ta_, _ta-ta-ta-ta_, aiming to hit the Boche pilot and allowing for deflection. From all directions you hear the rattle of other guns, m.u.f.fled by the louder noise of the engine.

A third British machine is under the Boche's tail, and the observer in it is firing upwards. The three of you draw nearer and nearer to your prey. The Hun puts his nose down to sweep away; but it is too late. His petrol tank bursts into flames, and the machine dives steeply, a streamer of flame running away behind it. The fire spreads to the fuselage and planes. After rus.h.i.+ng earthwards for two or three thousand feet, the whole aeroplane crumbles up and you see the main portion falling like a stone. And you (who have shed the skin of sentiment and calm restraint and become for the duration of the fight a bold bad pilot with the l.u.s.t of battle in your blood) are filled with joy.

Meanwhile, your observer's gun has been grinding away behind you, showing that you in your turn are attacked. You twist the machine round.

Almost instinctively your feet push the rudder-control just sufficiently to let you aim dead at the nearest enemy. You press the trigger. Two shots are fired, and--your gun jambs.

You bank and turn sideways, so as to let your observer get in some shooting while you examine your gun. From the position of the check-lever you realise that there has been a misfire. Quickly but calmly--feverish haste might make a temporary stoppage chronic--you lean over and remedy the fault. Again you press the trigger, and never was sound more welcome than the _ta-ta-ta-ta-ta_ which shows you are ready for all comers.

Once more you turn to meet the attacking Germans. As you do so your observer points to a black-crossed bird which is gliding down after he has crippled it. But three more are closing round you. Something sings loudly a yard away. You turn your head and see that a landing wire has been shot through; and you thank the G.o.ds that it was not a flying wire.

The flight-commander and another companion have just arrived to help you. They dash at a Boche, and evidently some of their shots reach him, for he also separates himself and glides down. The two other Huns, finding themselves outnumbered, retire.

All this while the two rear machines have been having a bad time. They were surrounded by five enemies at the very beginning of the fight. One of the Boches has since disappeared, but the other four are very much there.

You sweep round and go to the rescue, accompanied by the flight-commander and the remaining British machine. Just as you arrive old X's bus drops forward and down, spinning as it goes. It falls slowly at first, but seems to gather momentum; the spin becomes wilder and wilder, the drop faster and faster.

"Poor old X," you think, "how d.a.m.nable to lose him. Now the poor beggar won't get the leave he has been talking about for the last two months."

Then your thoughts turn to Y, the observer in the lost machine. You know his fiancee, you remember he owes you 30 francs from last night's game of bridge.

You burn to avenge poor X and Y, but all the Huns have dived and are now too low for pursuit. You recover your place in the formation and the fight ends as suddenly as it began. One German machine has been destroyed and two driven down, but--"one of ours has failed to return."

When you return and land, you are not so contented as usual to be back.

There will be two vacant places at dinner, and there is a nasty job to be done. You will have to write rather a painful letter to Y's fiancee.

Madam, you are now at liberty to give up the temporary role of a bold, bad pilot and become once more your charming self.

FRANCE, _November_, 1916

VII.

BACK IN BLIGHTY.

... You last heard of my continued existence, I believe, from a field post-card with but one of the printed lines uncrossed: "I have been admitted to hospital." When this was sent I had no more expectation of a return to Blighty than has a rich Bishop of not entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Nevertheless, here we are again, after a three days' tour along the Red Cross lines of communication.

Again I have been admitted to hospital. This one is more sumptuous but less satisfying than the casualty clearing station at Gezaincourt, whence the card was posted. There, in a small chateau converted into an R.A.M.C. half-way house, one was not over-anxious to be up and about, for that would have meant a further dose of war at close quarters. Here, in a huge military hospital at Westminster, one is very anxious to be up and about, for that would mean a long-delayed taste of the joys of London. At Gezaincourt rumbling gunfire punctuated the countryside stillness; aeroplanes hummed past on their way to the lines, and engendered grat.i.tude for a respite from encounters with Archie; from the ward window I could see the star-sh.e.l.ls as they streaked up through the dim night. At Westminster rumbling buses punctuate the back-street stillness; taxis hum past on their way to the West End, and engender a longing for renewed acquaintance with the normal world and the normal devil; from the ward window I can see the towers of Parliament as they stretch up through the London greyness. For an Englishman just returned from a foreign battlefield to his own capital it should be an inspiring view, that of the Home of Government, wherein the Snowdens, Outhwaites, Ponsonbys, and Sir Vested Interests, talk their hardest for the winning of the war by one side or the other, I am not sure which. But somehow it isn't.

I have mentioned the hospital's position, because it will help you on the day after to-morrow, if the herewith forecast is correct.

You will read this letter, hang me for my customary disturbing suddenness, and search a time-table. This will tell you that a train from your part of the country arrives in town at 11.45 A.M.

(_e_), which bracketed letter means Sat.u.r.days excepted. By it you will travel on Tuesday morning. Then, in the afternoon, you will seek a taxi, but either the drivers will have as fares middle-aged contractors, good for a fat tip, or they will claim a lack of petrol, lady. You will therefore fight for place in a bus, which must be left at the corner of Whitehall and Queen Victoria Street. Next you will walk towards the river, past Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Talk, and so to Chelsea Embankment. Turn off by the Tate Gallery, enter the large building on your right, and you will have arrived. Visiting hours are from two to four, but as the Sister is one of the best and my very kind friend, you will not be turned out until five.

But I can hear you ask leading questions. No, I am not badly wounded nor seriously ill. Neither am I suffering from sh.e.l.l-shock, nor even from cold feet. A Blighty injury of the cus.h.i.+est is the spring actuating this Jack-in-the-Box appearance. Have patience. To-day's inactivity has bred a pleasant boredom, which I shall work off by writing you a history of the reasons why I am back from the big war. They include a Hun aeroplane, a crash, a lobster, and two doctors.

You will remember how, months ago, our machine landed on an abandoned trench, after being damaged in a sc.r.a.p? A bullet through the petrol-pipe having put the carburettor out of action, the engine ceased its revs., so that we glided several miles, crossed the then lines at a low height, and touched earth among the network of last June's lines. We pancaked on to the far edge of a trench, and the wheels slid backward into the cavity, causing the lower wings and fuselage to be crumpled and broken.

My left knee, which has always been weak since a far-back accident, was jerked by contact with the parapet. Next day it seemed none the worse, so I did not take the accident seriously. During the weeks and months that followed the knee was painless, but it grew larger and larger for no noticeable reason, like Alice in Wonderland and the daily cost of the war.

Then an aggressive lobster, eaten in Amiens one fine evening, revenged itself by making necessary a visit to the casualty clearing station for attention to a mildly poisoned tummy. The doctor who examined me noticed the swollen knee, and looked grave. He pinched, punched, and pressed it, and finally said: "My dear boy, why the devil didn't you report this?

It's aggravated synovitis, and, if you don't want permanent water-on-the-knee, you'll have to lie up for at least three weeks. I'll have you sent to the Base to-morrow."

My ambition did not yet soar beyond a short rest at the Base. Meanwhile it was pleasant to lie between real sheets and to watch real English girls making beds, taking temperatures, and looking after the newly wounded with a blend of tenderness and masterful competence. Their worst job appeared to be fighting the Somme mud. The casualties from the trench region were invariably caked with dirt until the nurses had bathed and cleaned them with comic tact and great success.

It being the day of an advance, scores of cases were sent to Gezaincourt from the field dressing stations. Each time an ambulance car, loaded with broken and nerve-shattered men, stopped by the hospital entrance, a young donkey brayed joyously from a field facing the doorway, as if to shout "Never say die!" Most of the casualties echoed the sentiment, for they seemed full of beans and congratulated themselves and each other on their luck in getting Blighty ones.

But it was otherwise with the cases of sh.e.l.l-shock. I can imagine no more wretched state of mind than that of a man whose nerves have just been unbalanced by close shaves from gun fire. There was in the same lysol-scented ward as myself a New Zealander in this condition. While he talked with a friend a sh.e.l.l had burst within a few yards of the pair, wounding him in the thigh and sweeping off the friend's head. He lost much blood and became a mental wreck. All day and all night he tossed about in his bed, miserably sleepless and acutely on edge, or lay in a vacant and despondent quiet. Nothing interested him, nothing comforted him--not even a promise from the doctor of a long rest in England.

There were also many victims of the prevailing epidemics of trench-fever and rabid influenza. The clearing station was thus hard put to it to make room for all newcomers by means of evacuation. For our batch this happened next evening. A long train drew up on the single-line railway near the hospital, the stretcher cases were borne to special Pullman cars, and the walking cases followed, each docketed in his b.u.t.ton-hole by a card descriptive of wound or ailment.

You can have no idea of the comfort of a modern R.A.M.C. train as used at the Front. During the first few months of war, when the small amount of available rolling stock was worth its weight in man-power, the general travel accommodation for the wounded was the French railway truck, with straw strewn over the floor. In these the suffering sick were jolted, jerked, and halted for hours at a time, while the scorching sun danced through the van's open sides and the mosquito-flies bit their d.a.m.nedest. But nowadays one travels in luxury and sleeping-berths, with ever-ready nurses eager to wait upon every whim.