Air Men o' War
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He climbed a couple of thousand into the sunlight again, and looked round for a bearing, thought he could make out the ground in one direction, and, opening his engine full out, pushed off for the spot. But either his eyes had deceived him, or the mist had beat him to it. He flew on, with nothing but crawling, drifting mist visible below him, dropped down again and peered over the side, down and down again until his altimeter showed him to be a bare couple of hundred feet up. There was still no sight of ground, and since he was now in thick mist himself he could see nothing but dim greyness below, all round, and above him. He climbed through thinning layers of mist into daylight, and headed straight south by compass, figuring that the best plan was to try to outfly the mist area, and, when he could see the ground anywhere, pick up a bearing and a 'drome, any 'drome, and get down on it.
But after half an hour's flight he was still above crawling banks of mist, and by now had not the faintest idea of where he was. He had made several dips down to look for the ground, but each time had caught not the faintest indication of it, although he had dropped dangerously low according to the altimeter. He began to wonder if the altimeter was registering correctly, but came to the highly unpleasant conclusion that, if he could not trust it, he certainly dare not distrust it to the extent of believing he was higher than it showed, dropping down and perhaps barging into a clump of trees, or telegraph wires, or any other obstruction.
He admits that he began to get a bit rattled here. He became oppressed with a desolating sense of his utter aloneness, especially when he was low down and whirling blindly through the mist. He was completely cut off from the world. Firm ground was there beneath him somewhere, cheery companions, homely things like cosy rooms and fires and hot coffee; but while the mist lasted he could no more touch any of them than he could touch the moon.
To make it worse, he was completely lost and had not the faintest idea where he was. He was steering by compass only, and if he was drifting to the east he might be approaching the lines and Hunland, and if to the west might even now be over the sea. For an hour and a half he flew, trying to keep a straight course south, and seeing nothing but that dim grey around him when he came low, the sun and sky above, and the wide floor of mist beneath, when he climbed high. Flying high he had the same sense of aloneness, of being the only living thing in an empty world of his own, of cut-offness from the earth, that he had when he was in the blanketting mist.
It was a different kind of aloneness, but even more desperate from the feeling of helplessness that went with it. Here he was, a fit, strong man, with every limb, organ, and sense perfect, with a good, sound, first-class machine under him, with a bright sun and a clear sky above, able to control his every movement, to fly to any point of the compass, to go up, or down, or round, at any angle or speed he liked – except a speed low enough to allow him to drop to the ground without smashing himself and his machine to pulp and splinters. All his power was reduced to nought by a mere bank of mist, a thin impalpable vapour, a certain amount of moisture in the atmosphere. His very power and speed were his undoing. Speed that in free air was safety, was death on touching the ground except at a proper angle and with a clear run to slow in – an angle he could not gauge, a clear run he could not find for this deadly mist. It was maddening … and terrifying.
He decided to make one more try for the ground, a last attempt to see if he could get below the mist blanket without hitting the earth. He thrust his nose down and plunged, flattening out a little as he came into the mist, shut off his engine, and went on down in a long glide with his eyes on the altimeter, lifting and staring down overside, turning back quickly to read his height. At three hundred he could see nothing, at two hundred nothing, at a hundred still nothing but swirling greyness. He flew on, still edging down, opening up his engine every now and then to maintain flying speed, shutting it off and gliding, his eyes straining for sight of anything solid, his ears for sound of anything but the whistle and whine of the wind on his wings and wires. Down, still down, his heart in his mouth, his hand ready on the throttle – down … down…
Everything depended on what sort of surface he was flying above. If there were flat open fields he must catch sight, however shadowy it might be, of them before touching anything. If there were trees or buildings below, the first sight he got might be something looming up before him a fraction of a second before he hit. Down, steadily and gradually, but still down – down … then, UP – suddenly and steeply, his hand jerking the throttle wide open, the engine roaring out in deafening notes that for all their strength could not drown the thumping of his heart and the blood drumming in his ears. A hundred feet he climbed steeply; but even then, with the panic of immediate peril gone, he kept on climbing in narrow turns up into the sunlight again.
He had had a deadly narrow escape, had been so intent on staring down for the ground that almost before he knew what was happening he had flashed close past something solid, something that his wing-tips catching would have meant death – a straight upright pillar, then another, with faint pencilled lines running between them – a ship's masts and rigging. And as he shot up, almost straight up, he had a quick glimpse of another three shadowy masts jerking downwards into obscurity before and then beneath him. He must be over a harbour, or dock, or perhaps some sort of canal basin. He kept his upward course until he was in sunlight again, carefully examined his oil and petrol gauges and his compass, and set a northerly course. The mist might be over all France; he would make a try back for England.
He held on until he had run his main petrol tank out, switched on to the gravity "emergency tank" set on the top plane, and kept steadily on his course. He had an hour's petrol there, and that ought, he figured, to take him well over England and inland.
He decided to keep going until he could see signs of the mist thinning, or until his petrol ran almost out; but when it was about half empty, and he thought he must be back over the Channel and a good many miles inland, he slid down through the mist on the chance of being able to see the ground below it. He went down to a hundred feet, lower, could see nothing, opened his engine out again and began to climb.
Then he had another hair-raising deadly scare. He saw the mist in front of him suddenly begin to darken, to solidify, to take shape, to become a solid bulk stretching out and thinning away to grey mist to either side, above him, and below him.
For one flashing instant he was puzzled, for another he was panic-stricken, knew with a cold clutch of terror at his heart that he was charging at a hundred miles an hour full into the face of a sheer-walled cliff. Actually his speed was his saving – his speed and the instinct that did the one possible thing to bring him clear. He had gathered way on his upward slant, his engine running full out. He hauled the control lever hard in, and his machine, answering instantly, reared and swooped and shot straight up parallel with the cliff face, over in the first half of a loop, and straight away from the cliff, upside down, until he was far enough out safely to roll over to an even keel. It was so close a thing that for an instant he saw distinctly the cracks and crevices in the cliff face, held his breath, dreading to feel the jar of wheels or tail on the rock, and the plunge and crash that would follow.
A long way out he slanted up, with his heart still thumping unpleasantly, climbed until he was in the sunlight again, and turned north.
He found the mist thinning ten minutes later, cleared it in another five, glided down, and picked a good field, and landed – with about ten minutes' petrol in his tank.
And that same afternoon, when the mist went, he refilled his tanks and took his machine over to France, and delivered it to the Depot there.
But a Ferry Pilot, you'll remember, has a "cushy job."
XV
NO THOROUGHFARE
For a week the line had been staggering back, fighting savagely to hold their ground, being driven in, time and again, by the sheer weight of fresh German divisions brought up and hurled without a pause against them, giving way and retiring sullenly and stubbornly to fresh positions, having to endure renewed ferocious onslaughts there, and give to them again. Fighting, marching, digging in; fighting again and repeating the performance over and over for days and nights, our men were worn down dangerously near to the point of exhaustion and collapse, the point over which the Germans strove to thrust them, the point where human endurance could no longer stand the strain, and the breaking, crumbling line would give the opening for which the Germans fought so hard, the opening through which they would pour their masses and cut the Allied armies in two.
Now at the end of a week it looked as if their aim was dangerously near attainment. On one portion of the line especially the strain had been tremendous, and the men, hard driven and harassed for two days and nights almost without a break, were staggering on their feet, stupid with fatigue, dazed for want of sleep. Of all their privations this want of sleep was the hardest and cruellest. The men longed for nothing more than a chance to throw themselves on the ground, to fling down on the roadside, in the ditches, anywhere, anyhow, and close their aching eyes and sink in deep, deep sleep. But there was no faintest hope of sleep for them. They had been warned that all the signs were of a fresh great attack being launched on them about dusk, by more of those apparently inexhaustible fresh enemy divisions. The divisions they had fought all day were being held stubbornly by rear-guard actions until the new positions were established; and plain word had been brought in by reconnoitring air men of the new masses pressing up by road and rail to converge with all their weight on the weakened line and the worn-out men who made ready to hold it. Everyone knew what was coming. Company and battalion officers scanned the ground and picked positions for trenches and machine-guns to sweep the attack; Generals Commanding pored over maps and contours and sought points where concentrated shell-fire might best check the masses. And all who knew anything knew that it was no more than a forlorn hope that if once those fresh divisions came to close quarters they could be beaten back. Our men would be outnumbered, would be unrested and worn with fighting and digging and marching continuously, – that was the rub; if our men could have a rest, a few hours' sleep, a chance to recuperate, they could make some sort of a show, put up a decent fight again, hold on long enough to give the promised reinforcements time to come up, the guns to take up new positions. But "a renewed attack in force must be expected by dusk" said the word that came to them, and every precious minute until then must be filled with moving the tired men into position, doing their utmost to dig in and make some kind of defensive line. It looked bad.
But there were other plans in the making, plans figured out on wider reaching lines, offering the one chance of success in attacking the fresh enemy masses at their most vulnerable points, fifteen, twenty miles away from our weary line. The plans were completed and worked out in detail and passed down the chain to the air Squadrons; and Flight by Flight the pilots and observers loaded up to the full capacity of their machines with bombs and machine-gun ammunition and went droning out over the heads of the working troops digging the fresh line, over the scattered outpost and rear-guard lines where the Germans pressed tentatively and waited for the new reinforcements that were to recommence the fierce "hammer-blow" attacks, on over the dribbling streams of transport and men moving by many paths into the battle line, on to where the main streams ran full flood on road and rail – and where the streams could best be dammed and diverted.
The air Squadrons went in force to their work, bent all their energies for the moment to the one great task of breaking up the masses before they could bring their weight into the line, of upsetting the careful time-table which the enemy must lay down and follow if they were to handle with any success the huge bulk of traffic they were putting on road and rail. Each Flight and Squadron had its own appointed work and place, its carefully detailed orders of how and where to go about their business. In one Squadron, where the C.O. held council with his Flight Leaders and explained the position and pointed out the plans, one of his Captains summed up the instructions in a sentence. "That bit of road," he said with his finger on the map, "you want us to see it's 'No Thoroughfare' for the Hun up to dark?"
"That's it," said the C.O. "And if you get a chance at a train or two about here – well, don't let it slip."
"Right-oh," "That's simple," "No Thoroughfare," said the Captains, and proceeded about their business. The Flights went off at short intervals, intervals calculated to "keep the pot a-boiling," as closely as possible, to allow no minutes when some of the Squadron would not be on or about the spot to enforce the "No Thoroughfare" rule. For the rest of the afternoon they came and went, and came and went, in a steady string, circling in and dropping to the 'drome to refill hurriedly with fresh stocks of bombs and ammunition, taking off and driving out to the east as soon as they had the tanks and drums filled and the bombs hitched on. They were on scout machines carrying four light bombs and many hundred rounds of ammunition a-piece, and Dennis, the leader of the first Flight, made an enthusiastic report of success on the first return. "Found the spot all right, Major," he said cheerfully. "The crater reported is there all right, and it has wrecked half the road. There was a working party on it going like steam to fill in the hole, we disturbed the party a whole lot."
They had disturbed them. The road was one of those long miles-straight main routes that run between the towns in that part of France. They were well filled with troops and transport over the first miles, but the Flight Leader followed instructions and let these go, knowing other Squadrons would be dealing with them in their own good time and way. "Although I wish they'd get busy and do it," as he told the C.O. "Having nothing to worry them, those Huns just naturally filled the air with lead as he went over 'em. Look at my poor old 'Little Indian' there; her planes are as full of holes as a sieve."
But he had pushed his "Little Indian" straight on without attempting to return the fire from below, and presently he came to the spot where the Squadron was to tackle its job – a spot where an attempt had been made by our Engineers to blow up the road as we retired, and where a yawning hole took up half the road, leaving one good lorry-width for the transport to crawl round. An infantry battalion was tramping past the crater when the Flight arrived above it, and since the "Little Indian" flew straight on without loosing off a bomb or a shot, the rest of the Flight followed obediently, although in some wonder as to whether the target was not being passed by mistake. There was no mistake. They followed the leader round in a wide sweep over the open fields with stray bunches of infantry firing wildly up at them, round to the crater, and past it again, and out and round still wider. The road by the crater was empty as they passed, but a long string of lorries and horse transport that had been waiting half a mile back began to move and crawl along towards the crater. The "Little Indian" kept on her wide circle until half the lorries were past the crater. Then she came round in a steep bank and shot straight as an arrow back to the road, swept round sharply again and went streaking along above it. Two hundred yards from the crater she lifted, curved over and came diving down, spitting fire and lead as she came, pelting a stream of bullets on the lorries abreast of the mine hole and diving straight at them. Thirty feet away from the hole, one, two, three, four black objects dropped away from under the machine, and four spurts of flame and smoke leaped and flashed amongst the lorries and about the hole, as the "Little Indian" zoomed up, ducked over and came diving down again with her machine-guns hailing bullets along the lorries and the horse transport. And close astern of her came the rest of the Flight, splashing their bombs down the length of the convoy, each saving one or two for the spot by the crater, continuing along the road and emptying their guns on the transport. Half a mile along the road they swung round and turned back and repeated the gunning performance on men struggling to hold and steady crazed and bolting horses, on wagons in the ditches, on one lorry with her nose well down in the half-filled crater and another one comfortably crashed against her tail that stuck out into the half-width bit of road.
"A beautiful block," the Flight told the Major on their return. "Couldn't have placed 'em better if we'd driven the lorries ourselves. And there's horse wagons enough scattered along the ditches of the next half mile to keep the Hun busy for hours."
The second Flight, arriving about ten minutes after the first had departed homeward bound, found the Huns exceedingly busy struggling to remove the wrecked transport which so effectually blocked the way. There were men enough crowded round the crater especially to make a very fine target, and the first machine or two got their bombs well home on these, and scattered the rest impartially along the road on any "suitable targets" of men or transport. They established another couple of very useful blocks along the mile of road behind the crater, and completely cleared the road of marching men for a good three miles. The third Flight found no targets beyond the working party at the crater until they had gone back a few miles to a cross road, where they distributed some bombs on a field battery, bolted the teams, and left the gunners well down in the ditches beside their overturned guns and limbers.
They had barely finished their performance when the first Flight was back again, but by this time the enemy had taken steps to upset the arrangements, and with a couple of machine-guns posted by the crater did their best to keep the traffic blockers out of reach of their targets. But the Flight would not be denied, and drove in through the storm of bullets, planted their bombs and gave the ground gunners a good peppering, and got away with no further damage than a lot of bullet holes in wings and fuselages. For the next hour the Germans fought to strengthen their anti-aircraft defences, bringing up more machine-guns and lining the ditches with riflemen, and the attackers got a reception that grew hotter and hotter with each attempt. But they held the road blocked, and effectually prevented any successful attempt to clear and use it, and in addition extended their attacks to further back and to other near-by roads, and to the railway. Crossing this line on one outward trip Dennis, still flying his bullet-riddled "Little Indian," saw a long and heavily-laden train toiling slowly towards the front. It was too good a chance to miss, so he swung and made for it, swooped down to within a hundred feet and dropped his bombs. Only one hit fairly, and although that blew one truck to pieces, it left it on the rails and the trains still crawling along. But the Flight followed his lead, and one of their bombs hit and so damaged the engine that a cloud of steam came pouring up from it and the train stopped. Another long train was panting up from the German rear, so the Flight swept along it and sprayed it liberally with machine-gun bullets, scaring the driver and fireman into leaping overboard, and bringing that train also to a standstill. Dennis headed back home to bring up a fresh stock of bombs, and, if he could, damage the train beyond possibility of moving, although he feared it was rather a large contract for a scout's light bombs. But on the way back he met a formation of big two-seater bombers carrying heavy bombs, and by firing a few rounds, diving athwart their course, and frantic wavings and pointings managed to induce them to follow him. Two of them did, and he led them straight back to the two trains. The driver and fireman of the second had resumed their duties and were trying to push the first train along when the bombers arrived, and planting one bomb fairly on the train, started a fire going, and with another which fell between two trucks blew them off the metals. The burning trucks were just beginning to blow up nicely as our machines raced for home and more ammunition.
The next hour was mainly occupied with a fast fight against about twenty Hun machines evidently brought up to break up the road-blockers' game. The fight ended with three of the Huns being left crashed on the ground, one of ours going down in flames, and two struggling back across the lines with damaged machine and engine. Dennis was forced to leave his machine for one trip and borrow another while his damaged wings were replaced with new ones.
This time two Flights went out together, and while one engaged the Hun machines which still strove to drive them back, the other dived back on the road and again scattered the working party which struggled to clear the road. They had a hot passage, whirling down through a perfect tempest of machine-gun fire, and another machine was lost to it. Dennis struggled back across the lines with a shot-through radiator and an engine seizing up, was forced to land as best he could, wrecked his machine in the landing, crawled out of the wreckage, got back to the 'drome, and taking over his repaired machine went out again.
"That road's blocked," he said firmly, "and she's goin' to stay blocked." And he got his men to rig a sort of banner of fabric attached to a long iron picket-pin harpoon arrangement, painted a sentence in German on it, and took it up with him. They found the road still blocked, but columns of troops tramping in streams over the fields to either side. They spent a full hour scattering these and chasing them all over the landscape, had to break off the game to take on another fight with a crowd of Hun scouts, were joined by a stray Flight or two who saw the fight and barged into it, and after a mixed fast and furious "dog-fight" at heights running from anything under 300 feet to about as many inches, chased the Hun machines off. They came back in triumph down the deserted road and the empty fields, spattering the last of their rounds into the wrecked lorries and wagons still lying there, and then, as they passed over the piled wreckage at the crater, Dennis leaned out and dropped his streamered harpoon overboard. It plunged straight, hit, and stuck neatly upright displaying its legend clearly to anyone on the ground.
"What was on it?" said Dennis in answer to the questions of the Flight later on. "It was a notice in German. Maybe it was bad German, but it was a dash good notice. It said 'No Thoroughfare,' and I fancy we've taught the Huns what it means anyhow."
They, and a good many of their fellow squadrons, had, on this and on other road and rail Lines of Communication. They lost men and they lost machines; but the expected fresh attack on the line did not develop at dusk as foretold.
And that night the weary troops slept a solid life-renewing six hours.
XVI
THRILLS
It was a bad day for kite-balloon work; first, because the air was not clear and the visibility was bad, and second, because there was an uncomfortable wind blowing, and the balloon was jerking and swaying and lurching at the end of its long tether, making it hard for the observers to keep a steady eye on such targets as they could pick up, and still harder to plot out angles and ranges on the map spread on the table sticking out from the side of the basket.
But hard fighting was going on, and the line was getting badly hammered, so that every balloon which could get up was in the air, and every observer was hunting for hostile battery positions, directing the fire of our guns on to them, and doing all they could to lessen the shell-fire that was pouring down on our infantry in their scanty trenches. At times a swirl of mist or cloud came down and shut off the view altogether from the balloons; but they hung on, and stayed aloft waiting for a clear and the chance to observe a few more rounds the moment they got it.