1916 Angels over the Somme (British Ace Book 3) (22 page)

We took the opportunity to have a run out in the squadron car.  We took Charlie with us.  He had been my gunner and we had been especially close but he and Ted had become firm friends and it would have been rude to leave him alone.

We intended to drive to Abbeville which we had been told was a pretty little town but the rain made driving unpleasant and we opted for Amiens.  Amiens was bigger and busier than the small town would have been.  It was the hub through which the majority of supplies and men were sent. Consequently it felt like an army camp.

Charlie came into his own when we became depressed at the sea of khaki which greeted us. “Why don’t we just drive down a few side streets until we find a bar or something?”

We left the main road and found ourselves close to the canal with the floating gardens.  There was no khaki in sight at all. We parked the car and dodged into a small bar filled with the thick smoke of pungent French cigarettes.  There were eight or nine old men either seated around the tables or standing at the bar. There was just one table left and we pounced on it.

The owner trudged over and we ordered four beers.  Our French was adequate and no more. I lit my pipe and leaned back on the rickety wooden chair. When the beers came we toasted each other.  I looked outside of the window and saw the rain hammering against the glass.  The streets were glossy with water and it felt chilly.  Yet despite all of that I felt happy. I was with my friends and I was alive.  I did not have the smell of gun oil or engine fumes in my nostrils and I was not craning my neck to see the Hun in the sun. The rain had some admirable qualities.

We tried to avoid talking about the war although that was difficult.

“Do you reckon we will get leave soon, sir?”

“Charlie, we are off duty now.  It’s Bill.”

“Sorry, I was your gunner for so long it is hard to get used to the pips on my shoulder.”

“Well you are one of us now. To answer your question I would need to get into the mind of the Generals who are making such a mess of this war.  If I was a General I would hold what we have.  We have shown that, with our air superiority we can rule the skies.  I would send bombers over to destroy their supplies getting to the front.  We destroyed so many of their guns the other day that they will struggle to replace them.  If we could stop them resupplying then we could launch an offensive and drive them back.”

Gordy nodded as he held four fingers up for four more beers, “Aye, it was easy directing the fire of the guns and we could easily bomb and strafe their machine guns after the artillery has stopped.”

“Then why don’t we do that?”

Ted nodded to me, “He’s the one who fought with those kinds of Generals.”

I shrugged, “They are trying to fight battles the way that they used to fight them.  The aeroplane is new.  We are finding new ways of using them.  Look at the advances the Germans have made.  They can fire through their propeller.  They can fly faster than we can. Someone told me they can fly at more than a hundred miles an hour.  They are smaller and nippier than ours.  All of this in less than two years.”

“Then how come we are still winning?”

Ted answered, “The Gunbus is huge, we know and it is slow but it can take a lot of damage and with four machine guns it is like a hedgehog.  The fox likes a tasty bit of hedgehog but its prickly spines make it hard to get to the soft meat so it scavenges instead. When they find out how to get inside our guns then we will be in trouble.”

We drank and smoked in silence for a while. “I’m getting hungry. Bill, ask him if they do food.”

I asked and he shook his head. “I guess not.”

“Come on, it has eased off, let’s find somewhere to eat.”

We paid the bill and, leaving the car on the street we wandered the old town. There were more wooden buildings than we were used to but it looked to be untouched by war.  That in itself was amazing, as we had fought in this town two years ago and the front was less than twenty miles away. Charlie spied the chalked menu outside the restaurant. The rain had made it unreadable but it would serve food and that would do.

We were actually welcomed by the owner.  He was a rotund little man who looked like Lumpy Hutton with a moustache. The place was almost empty which explained his welcome.  He spoke to us in English which was far better than my abysmal French.

“Welcome gentlemen. I have a lovely table for you.” He guided us to a table which looked out on a small garden at the back. He flourished four menus and then disappeared.  He returned with a bottle of red wine.  We had not ordered it but none of us complained. He poured us a glass each and then stood with pencil poised over his note pad. The menu, of course, was in French. Ted put the menu down and said, “I tell you what, pal, why don’t you bring us a stew or something like that eh?”

“Stew?”

I searched my memory, “Er fricassee?”

His face split into a grin. He scooped up the menus.  “Of course, I have lapin!”

He disappeared. Charlie asked, “Lapin?”

“Rabbit!”

Charlie looked disappointed. 

“You didn’t expect roast beef did you?” scoffed Gordy.

“Well I am fed up of bully beef.”

I smiled, “I think you might be pleasantly surprised.”

The owner brought us some bread and it filled a gap until four steaming dishes were brought in.  There was a thick sauce on the rabbit. “What is the sauce?”

“Er moutarde, mustard.  Enjoy!”

Even Charlie enjoyed it.  It was rich, it was unctuous and it didn’t taste as though it had come from a can.  We felt like kings and the wine, although rough, went well with the game.”

We raced back to the car through the rain which had reappeared. The beer and the wine had made us quite jolly and we sang all the way back to the airfield. We were ready for the war again.  It had just taken a five hour break and a little peace.

A few days after we returned from our day trip the replacement pilots arrived. They came when the weather broke.  The summer weather turned wet, cloudy and, at times, stormy. We ended up with three days without flying.  The day after our trip to Amiens we had a storm of Biblical proportions.

When we found a brief window when we could fly we took the boot boys up for a circuit of the field to evaluate them. The four of them were keen and enthusiastic, but hopeless. They had not been trained on a Gunbus and had not even been taught how to fire a Lewis while flying or change a magazine. They tried their best but they were the worst trained fliers we had received from Blighty.

The depression was in my voice as I reported to Archie and Randolph. “They can’t go up sir.  They would be a liability to all of us/”

We were in Archie’s office deciding what to do about the new pilots. “You are right but we need to rotate our pilots.  I wanted to give one pilot in each flight a day off every week.  The difference in morale and efficiency after the rainy days was amazing.”

“You are right sir but why are they coming to us like this?”

“The brass in Blighty is trying to take advantage of our air superiority and they are rushing the pilots through training.  The generals in England thinks that so long as they can fly they will be all right.”

We sat in silence trying to come up with a solution. Eventually Archie sighed and said, “I will form E flight.  While the rest of you patrol I will take these four up and make them combat pilots. It won’t help us to relieve our other pilots but at least these four will have a better chance of survival.”

In the end it was not until the eighteenth that we were able to fly.  We spent the rainy days in the middle of August showing them how to change a magazine and, sitting on the ground, how to find the Hun in the sun.  The problem was the aeroplane was on the ground and the Germans were not trying to kill them. We drilled them until they could do it blindfolded. We knew that the problem would come when they tried to handle the huge Gunbus in aerial combat.  It was far bigger than the aeroplanes they had trained in.  The wingspan was enormous and it was a pusher. They could not believe that we still used what was, to them, an antiquated aeroplane. They did not know that the guns at the front and our gunners were our advantage.

We led our flights on our first patrol for many days on the twenty first of August.  The scene below us, as we flew over No-Man’s Land was depressing.  The rains and the storm had turned the crater filled pieces of disputed land into a muddy morass of sucking and cloying clay. There were still puddles in the deeper craters. Some looked like small ponds. It would make any meaningful advance by either side almost impossible. We were even more depressed when we ventured over the German lines.  They had used the rain as an opportunity to bring up more guns and to make their defences even more formidable.  All the work we had done in the first week in August had been wasted. It was as though we had not even shelled their lines.  We would have to start all over again. Their artillery was surrounded by machine guns and they had used sandbags to make them into small forts. The only good news was that there appeared to be no German aeroplanes.  We still ruled the skies.

Sergeant Hutton hated the thought of a flight over the German lines without expending some ammunition. “Sir, how about strafing those batteries?”

“If you notice, Flight Sergeant Hutton, they are now protected by machine guns.  I don’t see the point in risking the few pilots we have left just so that you can fire your gun.”

His silence was eloquent. He was however right.  We were wasting fuel by just observing; we were a combat aeroplane. I decided that I would bring more bombs on the next patrol and we would try a higher level bombing run. We would not cause as much damage but we would not risk losing valuable pilots. As we headed home I was acutely aware that the four pilots I had left were worth their weight in gold. They were trained and experienced.  You could not buy that!

The others were equally despondent when they landed. Archie, on the other hand, was quite cheerful having managed to teach the four young pilots how to fire in the air and change a magazine.  “It can’t be that bad, surely?”

I shook my head, “It’s as though we didn’t damage their artillery at all and they have reinforced their batteries with machine guns and anti-aircraft pits. We will have to try high level bombing.  If we try a low level run, it will be suicide.”

Captain Marshall said, “We are still trying to secure Delville Wood.  I envisage another attack in the next few days, sir.  It might be better to try and disrupt the guns.  I will send a report to Wing about this.”

Archie nodded, “Very well then.  We will try high level bombing runs tomorrow.  Was there any sign of the Fokkers?”

Gordy shook his head, “Nary a one. I don’t know why though.  If we had those Fokkers and Halberstadts we would have a field day! They are fast, small and can turn better than our lumbering beasts.”

“You want a new aeroplane for Christmas, Gordy?”

“I just want to have a chance to survive this war. We are such a big target I am amazed that they miss us.  Our only saving grace is our gunners.  If the Hun ever realises that all they have to do is kill the gunner then we will really be in trouble.”

Gordy was turning into Ted but he was right.  Our weakness was the front of the aeroplane. The German engine protected the pilot.  It gave him the chance to land and walk away from his aeroplane.  We were operating over German lines. Even if we managed to land we would be behind enemy lines and that meant a prisoner of war camp.  The front went from Switzerland to the sea near Ostend.

I gathered my pilots and gunners around me as we prepared to launch our attack. “Today we try high level bombing.  This will be harder.” I turned to the sergeants, “You gunners, I want you to throw one bomb at a time and watch its flight. We will fly in a circle until all the bombs have been dropped. Pilots, watch for the Hun in the sun. They can fly higher than we can and this time we will be over the target for a longer period.” I looked at their young faces.  They were like family to me now.  “Any questions?”

As they clambered aboard Hutton sounded the bugle and they all gave a cheer.  It was a silly and frivolous gesture but it worked. I know the other flights were jealous but I knew that it made my flight a closer band of brothers.  That had helped me when I had been in the cavalry and I was sure it would help us here.

When we reached the batteries, some two miles or so from Delville Woods, we began to circle. Each gunner would drop his bombs when he was ready. I scanned the skies and flew over the target.  Sergeant Hutton was in charge of this part of the flight.

Hutton shouted, “Bomb gone!” I glanced over the side and watched it plummet to the earth.  It exploded between a machine gun pit and a large artillery piece. “Bugger! I’ll try again the next time around.”

As we flew in a circle I saw that some of the other bombs, dropped by the others in the flight, had been more successful.  One machine gun was destroyed and one artillery piece was lying on its side.

“Steady sir. Bomb gone!”

I glanced over and saw that Hutton had corrected his aim.  This time he hit the gun he had aimed at on the side and I watched in fascination as the huge piece rose into the air and then fell back to earth, shattered. 

“That’s better!”

He carried on with his other runs successfully hitting one machine gun and damaging another large gun. I looked up and saw black dots in the eastern sky. “Germans! Get on your gun!”