A pilot lost doesn't very much count.(But don't tell his girl or his mater this!)There's always another to take his mount,And push the old 'bus where the Archies miss.But a 'bus that's lost you can't renew,For where one works there's the want of twoAnd all they can make are still too few,So we must bring home the 'bus.
A pilot lost doesn't very much count.(But don't tell his girl or his mater this!)There's always another to take his mount,And push the old 'bus where the Archies miss.But a 'bus that's lost you can't renew,For where one works there's the want of twoAnd all they can make are still too few,So we must bring home the 'bus.
FOOTNOTES:[2]E.A. Enemy Aircraft.[3]Tracer bullets emit smoke and flame to allow the shooter to follow their flight.
[2]E.A. Enemy Aircraft.
[2]E.A. Enemy Aircraft.
[3]Tracer bullets emit smoke and flame to allow the shooter to follow their flight.
[3]Tracer bullets emit smoke and flame to allow the shooter to follow their flight.
The telling of this tale in the Squadron Mess came about through (1) a mishap, (2) a joke, and (3) an argument. The mishap was to a fighting two-seater, which landed on the Squadron's 'drome with a dud engine. The pilot and observer made their way to the Squadron office and, after a brief 'phone talk to their own C.O., borrowed a tender and pushed off for their own 'drome. The leader of "A" Flight walked down to the tender, chatting to them, and four of the Squadron's pilots took advantage of the chance of a lift in to a town the tender had to pass on the journey. All of them heard and all were a little surprised, at "A" Commander's parting word to the two visitors. "I've told the driver to go slow and careful," he said. "You fellows just watch he does it, will you?"
The joke began to dawn on the four just after the tender had carefully cleared the first bend of the road from the 'drome and the driver began to open her up and let her rip. The joke grew with the journey, and the four on their return to the Squadron that afternoonburst into the full ante-room and, announcing it "Such a joke, oh,sucha joke!" went on to tell it in competing quartette to a thoroughly appreciative audience. It appeared that one passenger—"the pale-faced nervy-looking little 'un with pink eye-rims"—had showed distinct uneasiness when the tender rushed a dip-and-rise at top speed, and his observer—"a reg'lar Pickwick Fat Boy, quakin' like a jelly"—complained openly and bitterly when the tender took a corner on the two outside wheels and missed a country cart with six inches and a following gust of French oaths to spare.
When, by the grace o' God, and by a bare hand's-breadth, they shaved past a lumbering M.T. lorry, "Pink Eye" and "Fat Boy" clung dumb to each other and plainly devoted themselves to silent prayer. The dumbness deserted them and they made up all arrears of speech, and to spare, when the tender took four heaps of road-metal by the wayside in a series of switch-backing hand-springs. "'Course we twigged your joke by then," said the four to "A" leader. "I suppose you delivered the driver his go-slow order with a large-sized wink and he savvied what you meant." It appeared that Pink Eye had asked the four to make the driver slow down, or to kill him or something. They pretended innocence and said he was a most careful man, and so on. Fat Boy nearly wept when they met a Staff car travelling fast and, never slacking an ounce, whooped past with a roar; and after a hairpinbend, which the tender took like a fancy skater doing the figure-of-eight, Pink Eye completely broke up and swore that he was going to get off and walk. "He'd have done it too," said the four delightedly, "if we hadn't eased her up. But you never saw such a state of funk as those two were in. Kept moppin' their brows, and apologisin' for their nerves, and fidgetin' and shiverin' like wet kittens every time we took a corner or met a cart. It was too funny—really funny."
This led to the argument—whether men with nerves of that sort could be any good in air work. "I know I'd hate to be a pilot with an observer of that kind watching my tail, almost as much as I'd hate to be an observer with Pink Eye for a pilot," said one, and most there agreed. A few argued that it was possible for men to be brave enough in one kind of show and the very opposite in another—that one fellow could do the V.C. act seven days a week under fire and take every sort of risk in action without turning a hair, and yet go goosey-fleshed on a Channel crossing in a choppy sea, while another man might enjoy sailing a boat single-handed in a boiling white sea, and yet be genuinely nervous about dodging across the full traffic-tide of a London thoroughfare. Most of those present declined to believe these theories, maintaining stoutly that a good plucked 'un was always such, and that an obvious funk couldn't be anything else—except in novelettes and melodrama. Then came the story.
"Did y'ever hear of 'Charger' Wicks?" said the Captain of "A." "No? Well, you're rather recently out, so you mightn't, but—well, he's fairly well known out here. He's rather a case in point——"
Being told by an expert to an audience of experts, his tale was put more briefly, technically, and air-slangily than I may hope to do, but here is the sense of it.
"Charger" Wicks was a pilot in a well-known fighting squadron, and was so called from a favourite tactic of his in air fighting and his insistent advice to the rest of the Flight he came to command to follow his plan of attack. "Always charge straight at your Hun if you get a chance," he would say. "Drive straight and hard nose-on at him, keeping your gun going hot. If you keep straight, he'll flinch—every time; and as he turns up, down, or out, you get a full-length target underneath, topside, or broadside. If you keep on and shoot straight, you're bound to get a hatful of bullets into him somewhere."
The plan certainly seemed to work, and Charger notched up a good tally of crashed Huns, but others in the Squadron warned him he'd try it once too often. "Charge straight at him, and he'll dodge," said Charger. "Wait," said the others. "Some day you'll meet a Hun who works on the same rule;thenwhere'll you be?" "Yes," said Billy Bones, Charger's observer, "and where'll I be?" But although he pretended to grumble, BillyBones was, as a matter of fact, quite in agreement on the nose-on charging stunt and believed in it as firmly as Charger himself. It took nerve, he admitted, but if you had that—and Charger certainly had—it worked all right. As it happened, the nerves of both were to be "put through it" rather severely.
They were up with the Flight one day, Charger with Billy Bones leading in their pet 'bus Y221. They ran into a scrap with odds of about two to one against them, and in the course of it Charger got a chance to put his old tactic to the proof. The moment he swung Y221 and headed her straight at a Hun scout, Billy knew what was coming, and heaved his gun round ready for any shot that offered as the Hun flinched past. But this time it looked as if the Squadron's old warning was going to be fulfilled and that Charger had met the Hun with the same rule as himself. Charger's gun began to rattle at about one hundred yards' range, and the Hun opened at the same moment. Billy, crouching with his gun at the ready and his eyes glued on a scarlet boss in the centre of the Hun's propeller, saw and heard the bullets stream smoking and cracking past and on their machine. It does not take long for two machines travelling about a hundred miles per hour to cover a hundred yards, but to Billy, staring tense at that growing scarlet blot, each split fraction of a second was an age, and as the shape of the Hun grew but showed no sign of a changing outline,Billy's thoughts raced. Charger, he knew, wouldn't budge an inch from his line; if the Hun also held straight ... he still held straight ... the slightest deviation up or down would show instantly in the wings, seen edgeways in thin lines, thickening and widening. The bullets were coming deadly close ... and the red boss grew and grew. If the Hun didn't give now—this instant—it would be too late ... they must collide. The approaching wing-edges still showed their thin straight line, and Billy, with a mental "Too late now!" gasped and gripped his gun and waited the crash.
Then, at the last possible instant, the Hun's nerve gave—or, rather, it gave just an instant too late. Billy had a momentary vision of the thin wing-edges flashing wide, of the black crosses on the under side, of a long narrow strip of underbody and tail suddenly appearing below the line of the planes; and then, before he could move or think, he felt the Y221 jar violently, heard horrible sounds of splintering, cracking, tearing, had a terrifying vision of a great green mass with splashed ugly yellow spots rearing up over the top plane before his startled eyes, plunging past over his ducking head with splintering wreckage and flapping streamers of fabric whizzing and rushing about his ears. Y221—whirling, jolting, twisting all ways and every way at once apparently—fell away in a series of sickening jerks that threatened to wrench her joint from joint. Billy's thoughts raced down ahead of them to where they wouldhit the ground 15,000 feet below ... how long would it take ... would they hit nose-first or how ... was there anything he could do?—and before his mind shaped the question he had answered it—No, nothing! Dully he noticed that their engine had stopped, that Charger apparently was busy at the controls; then—with a gleam of wondering hope, dismissed at first, but returning and growing—that the lurching and rolling was steadying, that they were coming back on an even keel, were ... yes, actually, were gliding smoothly down.
Charger twisted and looked down overside, then back at Billy and yelled, "D'ye see him?" Billy looked over, and next instant saw a vanishing shape with one wing folded back, saw another wing that had torn clear floating and "leafing" away on its own. The shape plunged plummet-wise until it was lost in the haze below. Billy turned inboard. "Broken in air," he shouted, and Charger nodded and turned again to his controls. Billy saw that their propeller was gone, only one jagged splinter of a blade remaining.
They made a long glide back and a good landing well behind the lines on a grass field. "What happened?" said Billy the moment they had come to rest. "He flinched, of course," said Charger. "Ran it a bit fine, and our prop caught his tail and tore it up some. I dunno that we're much hurt, except for the prop and that broken strut."
And, amazingly enough, they were not. Theleading edge of a top plane was broken and cracked along its length, one strut was snapped, the propeller gone, a few jagged holes from bullets and Hun splinters ripped in their fabric. "God bless the people who built her!" said Charger piously. "Good stuff and good work in that old 'bus, Billy. That's all that brought us through."
Billy mopped his brow. "Hope we don't meet any more of that breed of Hun," he said. "I find I don't like collisions—not one little bit."
"He flinched at the finish, though," said Charger simply. "They all do."
When they got Y221 back to the 'drome and overhauled her they found her wrenched a bit, but in a couple of days she was tautened up into trim and in the air again.
And the very next morning, as if this weren't enough, Charger and Billy had another nerve-testing. They were up about 12,000 and well over Hunland when they ran into a patch of Archies, and Charger turned and led the formation straight towards a bank of white cloud that loomed up, solid looking as a huge bolster, before them. The sun was dead behind them, so Billy at first sat looking over the tail on the watch for any Huns who might try to attack "out of the sun" and its blinding glare. But as it was dead astern over the tail Billy could see clearly above and behind him, so that there was no chance of a Hun diving unseen from a height, and they were movingtoo fast to be overtaken on the level "out of the sun." Billy turned round and watched the cloud they were driving at. The sun was full on it, and it rose white and glistening like a chalk cliff—no, more like a—like a—— Billy was idly searching his mind for a fitting simile, when his thoughts broke and he yelled fiercely and instinctively in warning to Charger. But Charger had seen too, as Billy knew from his quick movement and sudden alert sit-up. The cloud was anything round a hundred yards from them, and they could just see the slow curling twisting movement of its face. And—what had suddenly startled them—they could see another machine, still buried back in the cloud, and looming large and distorted by the mist, but plainly flying out of it and straight at them.
What followed was over and done in the space of seconds, although it may seem long in the telling, as it certainly was age-long in the suspense of the happening and waiting for the worst of it. Billy perhaps, powerless to act, able only to sit tense and staring, felt the strain the worst, although it must have been bad enough for Charger, knowing that their slender hope of escape hung on his quick thinking and action. This was no clear case of following his simple plan of charging and waiting for the Hun to flinch. The whole success of the plan depended on the Hun seeing and knowing the charge was coming—on his nerve failing to meet it. Charger didn't even knowthis was a Hun. He might be one of ours. He might have seen them, and at that very second be swerving to miss them. He might be blinded in the cloud and know nothing of them driving full-on into him. All this went through Charger's mind in a flash, and almost in that same flash he had decided on his action and taken it. He thrust the nose of Y221 steeply down. Even in the fraction of time it took for him to decide and his hand to move the control lever he could see the difference in the misty shape before him, could judge by the darkening, hardening and solidifying outline the speed of their approach. And then, exactly as his bows plunged down, he saw and knew that what he feared had happened—the other pilot had seen him, had thought and acted exactly as he had. Charger saw the thin line of the edge-on wings broaden, the shadowy shape of the tail appear above them, just as he had seen it so often when the Hun he charged had flinched and ducked. But then the flinching had meant safety to him driving straight ahead—now it meant disaster, dipping as he was fairly to meet the other.
Again for the fraction of a second he hesitated—should he push on down, or turn up? Which would the other do? And again before the thought was well framed it was decided and acted on. He pulled the stick hard in, zoomed up, and held his breath, waiting. The shape was clearer and harder, must be almost out of the cloud—doubtful even now if Y221 had time and roomto rise clear—all right if the other held on down, but——
The nose of his machine swooped up, and as it did, and before it shut out his view ahead, Charger, with a cold sinking inside him, saw the outline ahead flash through changing shapes again, the wings narrow and close to edge-on view, open and widen again with the tail dropping below. Again the other man's thought and action had exactly followed his own. No time to do more; by the solid appearance he knew the other machine must be just on the edge of the cloud, and they were almost into it, its face already stirring and twisting to the propeller rush. Charger's one thought at the moment was to see his opponent's nose thrust out—to know was it a Hun or one of ours.
Billy Bones, sitting tight with fingers locked on the cockpit edge, had seen, followed and understood every movement they had made, the full meaning of that changing outline before them, the final nearness shown by the solidity of the approaching grey shape; and the one thought in his mind was a memory of two men meeting face to face on a pavement, both stepping sideways in the same direction, stepping back, hesitating and stepping aside again, halting, still face to face, and glaring or grinning at each other. Here they were doing just the same, only up and down instead of sideways—and here there was no stopping.
He too saw the spread of wings loom up andout of either side of them, rushing up to meet them. The spread almost matched and measured their own—which meant a nose-to-nose crash. The cloud face was stirring, swirling, tearing open from the rush of their opposing windage. Had Charger time to—no, no time. They must be just ... it would be on the very cloud edge they would meet—were meeting (why didn't Charger turn, push her down, do something—anything) ... meeting ... (no escape after this collision—end on!) ...now!
Next instant they were in darkness—thick, wet, clammy darkness. No shock and crash of collision yet ... or yet. Billy didn't understand. Was he dead? Could you be killed so instantaneously you didn't feel it? It wasn't quite dark—and he could feel the cockpit rim under his hands—and——
They burst clear of the cloud, with trailing wisps sucking astern after them. He was bewildered. Then, even as Charger turned and shouted the explanation, he guessed at it. "Shadow—our own shadow," yelled Charger, and Billy, nodding in answer, could only curse himself for a fool not to have noticed (as he had noticed really without reasoning why) that the blurred, misty shape had grown smaller as well as sharper as they approached. "I didn't think of it either," Charger confessed after they were back on the 'drome, "and it scared me stiff. Looked just like a machine in thick cloud—blurred, sort of, and getting clearer as it came out to the edge."
"It was as bad as that beastly Hun," said Billy, "or worse"; and Charger agreed.
Now two experiences of that sort might easily break any man's nerve, and most men would need a spell off after an episode like the collision one. But Charger's nerve was none the worse, and although Billy swore his never really recovered, the two of them soon after put through another nose-on charge at a Hun, in which Charger went straight as ever, and when the Hun zoomed up and over, Billy had kept his nerve enough to have his gun ready and to put a burst of bullets up and into him from stem to stern and send him down in flames.
Everyone in the Mess agreed here that the two were good stout men and had nothing wrong with their nerves.
"Not much," said the narrator, "and they're still goin' strong. But you remember what started me to tell you about them?"
"Let's see—yes," said one or two. "We were talking about the joke of that couple to-day being so scared by a bit of fast driving on a clear road."
"Right," said the other, and laughed. "Heaps of people out here know those two, and it's a standing joke that you can't hire them to sit on the front seat of a car or a tender or travel anything over fifteen miles an hour in anything on wheels."
He waited a moment for some jests and chuckles to subside, and finished, grinningopenly. "They are the two I told you about—Charger Wicks and Billy Bones!"
There was dead silence for a minute. Then, "Good Lord!" said one of the quartette faintly, and "Wh—which was Charger?" faltered another. "In their flying kit we couldn't——"
"The smallest—the one you called the pale-faced, nervy-looking little 'un," said "A" Flight Commander.
"Help!" said the other weakly. "And I—I recommended him 'Sulphurine Pills for Shaken Nerves.' Oh, help!"
"Yes," said the last of the demoralised quartette miserably, "and he thanked us, and said he'd write it down the minute he got back."
There was another pause. Then, "Such a joke!" said someone, quoting from the opening chapter of the quartette's story—"sucha joke!" And the Mess broke in a yell of uproarious laughter.
The quartette did not laugh.
Half an hour before there was a hint of dawn in the sky the Flight was out with the machines lined up on the grass, the mechanics busy about them, the pilots giving preliminary tests and runs to their engines. There had been showers of rain during the night, welcome rain which had laid the dust on the roads and washed it off the hedges and trees—rain just sufficient to slake the thirst of the parched ground and grass, without bringing all the discomfort of mud and mire which as a rule comes instantly to mind when one speaks of "rain" at the Front.
It was a summer dawn, fresh, and cool, and clean, with the raindrops still gemming the grass and leaves, a delicious scent of moist earth in the balmy air, a happy chorus of chirping, twittering birds everywhere, a "great," a "gorgeous," a "perfect" morning, as the pilots told each other.
A beautiful Sabbath stillness, a gentle calm hung over the aerodrome until the machines were run out and the engines began to tune up. But even in their humming, thrumming, booming notes there was nothing harsh or discordant or greatly out of keeping with the air of peace and happiness. And neither, if one had not known what it was, would the long heavy rumble that beat down wind have wakened any but peaceful thoughts. It might have been the long lazy boom of the surf beating in on a sandy beach, the song of leaping waterfalls, the distant rumble of summer thunder ... except perhaps for the quicker drum-like roll that rose swelling every now and then through it, the sharper, yet dull and flat, thudding bumps and thumps that to any understanding ear marked the sound for what it was—the roar of the guns.
Already the guns were hard at it; had been for days and nights past, in fact; would be harder at it than ever as the light grew on this summer morning, for this was the day set for the great battle, was within an hour or two of the moment marked for the attack to begin.
The Squadron Commander was out long before the time detailed for the Flight to start. He spoke to some of the pilots, looked round, evidently missed someone, and was just beginning "Where is——" when he caught sight of a figure in flying clothes hurrying out from the huts. The figure halted to speak to a pilot and the Major called impatiently, "Come along, boy. Waiting for you." "Right, sir," called the other, and then laughingly to his companion, "Worst of having a brother for C.O. Always privileged to chase you."
"Flight Leader ought to be first, Sonny, not last," said the Major as the boy came up. "Sorry, Jim," said the boy, "I'm all ready," and ran on to his waiting machine.
One by one the pilots clambered aboard and settled themselves in their seats, and one after another the engines were started, sputtering and banging and misbehaving noisily at first in some cases, but quickly steadying, and, after a few grunts and throatywhurrumphs, picking up their beat, droning out the deep note that rises tone by tone to the full long roaring song of perfect power.
The Major walked along the line, halted at each machine, and spoke a word or two to each pilot. He stood a little longer at the end machine until the pilot eased his engine down and its roar dropped droning to a quiet "ticking over."
"All right and all ready, Sonny?" said the Major.
"All correct, sir," said Sonny laughingly, and with a half-joking salute. "Feel fine, Jim, and the old bus is in perfect trim."
"Think the rain has gone," said the Major. "It's going to be a fine day, I fancy."
"It's just topping," cried Sonny, wrinkling his nose and sniffing luxuriously. "Air's as full of sweet scent as a hay meadow at home."
"Flight, got your orders all clear to start?"
Sonny nodded. "Yes, we'll show you the usual star turn take-off all right. You watch us."
The Major glanced at his wrist-watch and at the paling sky. "Almost time. Well, take care of yourself, Sonny." He put his hand up on the edge of the cockpit, and Sonny slid his glove off, and gave an affectionate little squeeze to the fingers that came over the edge.
"I'll be all right, Jim, boy. We're going to have a good day. Wish you were coming with us."
"Wish I were," said the Major. "Good luck," and he stepped and walked out in front of the line of machines, halted, and glanced at his watch and up at the sky again.
The half-dozen machines, too, stood waiting and motionless, except for the answering quiver that ran through them to their engines' beat. Down from the line the throbbing roll of the gunfire rose louder and heavier, with a new, an ugly and sinister snarling note running through it. The flat thudding reports of the nearer Heavies came at quicker and closer intervals, the rumble of the further and smaller pieces ran up to the steady unbroken roar of drum-fire.
The wind was coming from the line and the machines were lined up facing into it, so that the pilots had before them the jumping, flickering lights which flamed up across the sky from the guns' discharge. Earlier, these flashes had blazed up in broad sheets of yellow-and orange-tinted light from the horizon to half way up the height of the sky, leaped and sank, leaped again and beat throbbing and pulsing wave on wave, orflickering and quivering jerkily for seconds on end, dying down, and immediately flaring up in wide sheet-lightning glows. Now, in the growing light the gun-flashes showed more and more faintly, in sickly pallid flashes. There was no halt or pause between the jumping lights now; they trembled and flickered unceasingly, with every now and then a broader, brighter glare wiping out the lesser lights.
The pilots sat watching the battle lights, listening to the shaking battle thunder, and waiting the Squadron Commander's signal to go. The birds were chattering happily and noisily, and a lark climbed, pouring out long shrill bursts of joyful song; somewhere over in the farmyard beside the 'drome a cock crowed shrilly, and from one of the workshops came the cheerful clink-link, clink-link of hammers on an anvil.
It was all very happy and peaceful—except for the jumping gun-flashes and rolling gunfire; life was very sweet and pleasant—unless one thought of life over there in the trenches, and what the next hour or two would bring. Everyone knew there was "dirty work" ahead. It was the first really big "show" the Squadron had been in; they had been in plenty of the ordinary O.P.'s (Offensive Patrols) and air-scraps, but this was the real big thing, a great battle on the ground, and a planned attack on the grand scale in the air, which was to sweep the sky of Huns ... and the gunfire was still growing ... and the lark up there was bursting his throat to tell them what a pleasant place the world was on this summer morning, with the raindrops fresh on the grass and the breeze cool in the trees.
Nearly time! The Flight Leader ran his engine up again, its humming drone rising to a full deep-chested roar. The other pilots followed suit, engine after engine picking up the chorus and filling the air with deafening and yet harmonious sound. A man stood just clear of the wing-tips to either side of each machine holding a cord fast to the wood blocks chocked under the wheels; another man or two clung to each tail, holding it down against the pull of the propeller, their sleeves, jacket tails, and trouser legs fluttering wildly in the gales which poured aft from the whirling screws and sent twigs and leaves and dust flying and dancing back in a rushing stream. So the pilots sat for a minute, their faces intent and earnest, listening to the hum and beat of their engines and note of their propellers' roar, watching the Flight Leader's movements out of the tail of their eyes. He eased his engine down; and promptly every other engine eased. He waved his hand to right and left, and the waiting men jerked the chocks clear of his wheels; and five other hands waved and five other pairs of chocks jerked clear. He moved forward, swung to the right with a man to each wing tip to help swing him, and rolled steadily out into the pen; and five other machines moved forward, swung right, and followed in line astern of him.He wheeled to the left, moved more quickly, opened his engine up, ran forward at gathering speed. Moving slowly his machine had looked like a lumbering big fat beetle; skimming rapidly across the grass, with its nose down and its tail up, it changed to an excited hen racing with outstretched head and spread wings; then—a lift—an upward swoop and rush—and she was ... a swallow, an eagle, a soaring gull—any of these you like as symbols of speed and power and grace, but best symbol of all perhaps, just herself, for what she was—a clean-built, stream-lined, hundred-and-umpty horse, fast, fighting-scout aeroplane.
The Squadron Commander stood watching the take-off of the Flight with a thrill of pride, and truly it was a sight to gladden the heart of any enthusiast. As the Flight Leader's machine tucked up her tail and raced to pick up speed, the second machine had followed her round her curve, steadied, and began to move forward, gathering way in her very wheel-tracks. As the Leader hoicked up and away, the second machine was picking up her skirts and making her starting rush; and the third machine was steadying round the turn to follow. As the second left the ground, the third began to make her run, and the fourth was round the turn and ready to follow. So they followed, machine by machine, evenly spaced in distance apart, running each other's tracks down, leaping off within yards of the same point, each following the other into the air asif they were tied on lengths of a string. It was a perfect exhibition of Flight Leadership—and following. One turn round the 'drome they made, and the Flight was in perfect formation and sailing off to the east, climbing as it went. The Commander stood and watched them gain their height in one more wide sweeping turn and head due east, then moved towards the huts.
The hammers were still beating out their cheery clink-link, the birds chirping and twittering; the lark, silenced or driven from the sky by these strange monster invaders, took up his song again and shrilled out to all the world that it was a joy to live—to live—to live—this perfect summer morning.
And the guns replied in sullen rolling thunder.
The last red glow of sunset was fading out of the square of sky seen through the open Squadron-office window. The Major sat in his own place at the centre of the table, and his Colonel, with the dust of motor travel still thick on his cap and coat, sat by the empty fireplace listening and saying nothing. A young lad, with leather coat thrown open and leather helmet pushed back on his head, stood by the table and spoke rapidly and eagerly. He was one of the Patrol that had left at dawn, had made a forced landing, had only just reached the 'drome, and had come straight to the office to report and tell his tale.
"I have the Combat Report, of course," saidthe Major; "you might read it first—and I've some other details; but I'd like to know anything further you can tell."
The lad read the Report, a bare dozen lines, of which two and a half told the full tale of a brave man's death—"as he went down out of control he signalled to break off the fight and return, and then for the Deputy to take command. He was seen to crash."
"That's true, sir," said the lad, "but d'you know—d'you see what it—all it meant? We'd been scrappin' half an hour. We were on our last rounds and our last pints of petrol ... against seventeen Huns, and we'd crashed four and put three down out of control ... they were beat, and we knew it, and meant to chase 'em off."
He had been speaking rapidly, almost incoherently, but now he steadied himself and spoke carefully.
"Thenhesaw their reinforcements comin' up, one lot from north, t'other from south. They'd have cut us off. We were too busy scrappin' to watch. They had us cold, with us on our last rounds and nearly out of petrol. Buthesaw them. He was shot down then—I dunno whether it was before or after it that he saw them; but he was goin' down right out of control—dead-leafing, then a spin, then leafing again. And he signalled——" The boy gulped, caught and steadied his voice again, and went on quietly. "You know; there's half a dozen coloured lights stuck in the dash-board in frontof him—and his Verey pistol in the rack beside him. He picked out the proper coloured light—goin' down helplessly out of control—and took his pistol out of the rack ... and loaded it ... and put it over the side and fired his signal, 'Get back to the 'drome—return home,' whatever it is exactly—we all knew it meant to break off the scrap and clear out, anyway. But he wasn't done yet. He picked another light—the proper coloured light again ... and still knowin' he'd crash in the next few seconds ... and loaded and fired, 'I am out of action. Deputy Flight Leader carry on.' ... Then ... he crashed...."
The boy gulped again and stopped, and for a space there was dead silence.
"Thank you," said the Squadron Commander at last, very quietly, "I won't ask you for more now."
The boy saluted and turned, but the Major spoke again. "There's a message here I've just had. You might like to read it."
The pilot took it and read a message of congratulations and thanks from Headquarters on the work of the Air Services that day, saying how the Huns had been driven out of the air, how so many of them had been crashed, so many driven down out of control, with slight losses of so many machines to us. "On all the fronts engaged," the message finished, "the Squadrons have done well, and the Corps has had a good day."
"A good day," said the boy bitterly, andspat a gust of oaths. "I—pardon, sir," he said, catching the Major's eye and the Colonel's quick glance. "But—Sonny was my pal; I was his chum, the best chum he had——" He checked himself again, and after a pause, "No, sir," he said humbly, "I beg your pardon.Youwere always that to Sonny." He saluted again, very gravely and exactly, turned, and went.
The Colonel rose. "It's true, too," said the Major, "I was; and he was the dearest chum to me. I fathered him since he was ten, when our Pater died. I taught him to fly—took him up dual myself, and I remember he was quick as a monkey in learning. I watched his first solo, with my heart in my mouth; and I had ten times the pride he had himself when he put his first wings up. And now ... he's gone."
"He saved his Flight," said the Colonel softly. "You heard. It's him and his like that make the Corps what it is. They show the way, and the others carry on. They go down, but"—he tapped his finger slowly on the message lying on the table, "but ... the Corps 'has had A Good Day.'"
(To the tune of "John Brown's Body.")
Half the Flight may crash to-day and t'other half to-night,Butthe Flight does dawn patrol, before to-morrow's light,And if we live or if we die, the Corps still wins the fight,And the war goes rolling on.
Half the Flight may crash to-day and t'other half to-night,Butthe Flight does dawn patrol, before to-morrow's light,And if we live or if we die, the Corps still wins the fight,And the war goes rolling on.
The Major lifted his head from the pile of papers he was reading and signing, and listened to the hum of an engine passing over the office and circling down to the 'drome. "One of ours," he said. "Flight coming down, I suppose. They're rather late."
An officer lounging on a blanket-covered truckle bed murmured something in reply and returned to the sixpenny magazine he was devouring. The noise of the engine droned down to the ground level, ceased, stuttered, and rose, sank again, and finally stopped. The C.O. hurried on with his papers, knowing the pilots of the Flight would be in presently to make their reports.
In three minutes the door banged open noisily, and the Flight Leader clumped heavily in. Such of his features as could be seen for a leather helmet coming low on his forehead and close round his cheeks, and a deep collar turned up about his chin, disclosed an expression of bad temper and dissatisfaction.
"Hullo, Blanky," said the Major cheerfully. "Made rather a long job of it, didn't you? Any Huns about?"
Now Blanky had an established and well-deserved reputation for bad language, and although usually a pilot is expected more or less to modify any pronounced features in language in addressing his C.O., there are times when he fails to do so, and times when the C.O. wisely ignores the failure. This apparently was one of the times, and the Major listened without remark to a stream of angry and sulphurous revilings of the luck, the Huns, the fight the Flight had just come through, and finally—or one might say firstly, at intervals throughout, and finally—the Flight itself.
"Three blessed quarters of a bloomin' hour we were scrappin'," said Blanky savagely, "and I suppose half the blistering machines in the blinking Flight are shot up to everlastin' glory. I know half the flamin' controls and flyin' wires are blanky well cut on my goldarn bus. And two confounded Huns' brimstone near got me, because the cock-eyed idiot who should have been watching my plurry tail went hare-in' off to heaven and the Hot Place. But no-dash-body watched any-darn-body's tail. Went split-armin' around the ruddy sky like a lot of runaway racin' million-horse-power comets. Flight! Dot, dash, asterisk! Formation! Stars, stripes, and spangles——"
He broke off with a gesture of despair and disgust. None of this harangue was very informing, except it made clear that the Flight had been in a fight, and that Blanky was not pleased with the result or the Flight. The Majorquestioned gently for further details, but hearing the note of another descending engine Blanky went off at a tangent again. Here one of them came ... about half an hour after him ... wait till he saw them ... he'd tell them all about it ... and so on.
"Did you down any Huns?" asked the Major, and Blanky told him No, not one single, solitary, stream-line Hun crashed, and couldn't even swear to any out of control. Before the Major could say more, the office door opened to admit a leather-clad pilot grinning cheerfully all over his face. Blanky whirled and burst out on him, calling him this, that, and the other, demanding to know what the, where the, why the, advising him to go'n learn to drive a beastly wheel-barrow, and buy a toy gun with a cork on a string to shoot with. The bewildered pilot strove to make some explanation, to get a word in edgeways, but he hadn't a hope until Blanky paused for breath. "I didn't break formation for more'n a minute——" he began, when Blanky interrupted explosively, "Break formation—no, 'cos there wasn't a frescoed formation left to break. It had gone to gilt-edged glory, and never came back. But I was there, and your purple place was behind me. Why the which did you leave there?"
"Because I'd winged the Hun that was sitting on your tail," said the other indignantly. "I had to go after him to get him."
"Get him," said Blanky contemptuously. "Well, why didn't you?"
"I did," said the pilot complacently. At that Blanky broke loose and cried aloud for the wrath to descend and annihilate any man who could stand there and deliberately murder the truth. "But Ididget him. I watched him crash right enough," retorted the maligned one. Blanky was still yelling at him, when in came another couple talking eagerly and also with faces wreathed in smiles, and evidently well pleased with the world. "Hullo, Blanky," said the first. "Pretty good show, eh?"
Blanky wheeled and stared at him as if in dumb amazement. "Blanky doesn't think so," said the Major softly. "He's complaining a good deal that your formation wasn't very good."
"Good, Major," exploded Blanky again. "It was worse than very beastly bad. I never adverbed saw such an adjectived rank bad formation. It was a rotten formation. And then Billie tells me—has the crimson cheek to say he crashed a constellation Hun."
"Ask Tom there," said Billie. "Tom, didn't you see me put one down?"
Tom couldn't be sure. He'd been too busy with a Hun himself. He and the Diver had one fellow between them, and both shootin' like stink at him, and were watching after to see if he crashed——
"Crashed," burst in Blanky. "My sainted sacred aunt. Another fellow walking in his sleep and killing criss-cross Huns in his dithering dreams. Any imagining more of you get a fabulous freak Hun?"
The Diver said mildly, "Yes," he'd got one—not counting the one between him and Tom, which might have been either's. Blanky was beginning again, when the Major stopped him. "This is getting too complicated," he said. "Let's get the lot together—observers and all—and see if we can make anything of this business."
A babble of voices was heard outside, the door banged open, and in jostled another batch of pilots and observers talking at the pitch of their voices, laughing, shouting questioning, answering, trampling their heavy flying boots noisily on the bare wood floor, turning the little office hut into a regular bear-garden. Their leather coats were unbuttoned and flapping, their long boots hung wrinkled about their knees or were pulled thigh-high, scarves swathed their throats or dangled down their chests, enormous furry gauntletted gloves hid their hands. Some still wore their leather helmets with goggles pushed up over their foreheads; others had taken them off, and looked like some strange pantomime monsters with funnily disproportionate faces and heads emerging from the huge leather collars. For minutes the room was a hopeless bedlam of noise. Everyone talked at once: all, slightly deaf perhaps from the long-endured roar of the engines, and rush of the wind, talked their loudest. They compared notes of flashing incidents seen for a fraction of a second in the fighting, tried to piece together each others' seeings and doings, told what had happened to them and theirengines and machines, asked questions, and, without waiting for an answer, asked another, or answered somebody else's.
The voice of Blanky haranguing some of the last-comers, calling down curses on their misdeeds, rose through any break in the hubbub. The Major sat for some minutes listening to the uproar, catching beginnings and middles and loose ends of sentences here and there from one or another: "Gave him a good half drum." ... "Shot away my left aileron control." ... "Went hare-ing off over Hunland at his hardest." ... "Pulled everything in sight and pushed the others, but couldn't get her straightened." ... "A two-inch tear in my radiator, an' spoutin' steam like an old steam laundry." ... And then the voice of Blanky spitting oaths and "It was the rottenest formation I ever saw, abso-blanky-lutelyrotten." His sentence was swamped again in the flood of talk and fragments of sentences. "Then it jammed—number three stoppage and" ... "yellin' myself black in the face, but couldn't make him hear." ... "I hate those filthy explosive bullets of theirs." ... "Chucked her into a spin." ... "Missing every other stroke, fizzing and spitting like a crazy Tom cat." ... "I ask you now, Iaskyou what could I do?" ... "Down flamin' like a disembowelled volcano."
The Major called, called again, raised his voice and shouted, and gradually the noise died down.
"Now, let's get to business," he said. "Iwant to know what happened. Blanky, let's hear you first."
Blanky told his story briefly. The formation of six machines had run into twenty-two Huns—four two-seaters, the rest fighting scouts—and had promptly closed with and engaged them. Blanky here threw in a few brief but pungent criticisms on the Flight's behaviour and "rotten formation" during the fight, mentioned baldly that they had scrapped for about three-quarters of an hour, and although there were certainly fewer Huns in at the finish than had begun, none, so far as he knew, had been crashed. All the Flight had returned, mostly with a good few minor damages to machines, but no casualties to men.
"Now," said the Major, "some of you claim Huns crashed, don't you? Let 'em alone, Blanky, to tell their own yarns."
The first pilot told of running fights, said he had sent at least one down out of control, and saw one crash. His observer corroborated the account; Blanky pooh-poohed it scornfully. He contradicted flatly and hotly another pilot who said he had crashed his Hun, and in the middle of the argument the last pilot came in.
"Here's Dicky. Ask him. He was close up, and saw me get 'im," said the denied victor.
"Dicky," cried Blanky, "I've been waiting for—here, you cock-eyed quirk, what in the Hot Place did you mean by bargin' across the nose of my bus when I'd just got a sanguinaryHun in my ensanguined sights. You blind, blithering no-good...."
"What's that, Blanky? What d'you say?" remarked Dicky cheerfully. "Wait a bit. My ears...." He gripped his nose and violently "blew through his ears" to remove the deafness that comes to a man who has descended too quickly from a height. "Didn't you see me get that Hun, Dicky?" demanded the Diver. "Why didn't you keep formation? Served you something well otherthing right if I'd shot you, blinding across under my gory prop...."
Dicky gripped his nose and blew again. "Wait a minute—can't hear right...."
The talk was boiling up all round them again, in claims of a kill, counter-claims, corroborations, and denials, and the Major sat back and let it run for a bit. Blanky, the Diver, and Dicky held a three-cornered duel, Blanky strafing wildly, the Diver demanding evidence of his kill and Dicky holding his nose and blowing, and returning utterly misfitting answers to both. He caught a word of Blanky's tirade at last, something about "silly yahoo bashing around," misinterpreted it evidently, and, still holding his nose, grinned cheerfully and nodded. "Did I crash a Hun?" he said. "Sure thing I did. Put 'im down in flames."
The Diver leaned close and yelled in Dicky's ear: "Didn't I crash—one—too?" Dicky blew again. "No, I didn't crash two," he said. "Only one, I saw, though there was another blighter——"
Blanky turned disgustedly to the Major. "They're crazy," he said. "I know I didn't see one single unholy Hun crashed in the whole sinful show."
"Between them they claim five," said the Major, "and you say none. What about yourself? Didn't you get any?"
"No," said Blanky shortly. "One or two down out of control, but I didn't watch 'em, and they probably straightened out lower down." (Blanky, it may be mentioned, has a record of never having claimed a single Hun crashed, but is credited, nevertheless, with a round dozen from entirely outside evidence.)
The Major spent another noisy three minutes trying to sift the tangled evidence and claims of crashes, then gave it up. "Write your reports," he said, "and we'll have to wait and see if any confirmation comes in of any crashes. You were near enough to the line for crashes to be seen, weren't you?"
"Near enough?" said Blanky. "Too disgustingly near. I suppose anyone that knows a bus from a banana would recognise the make of ours, and I'm rank ashamed to imagine what the whole blinking line must have thought of the Squadron and the paralysed performance."
The bir-r-r of the telephone bell cut sharply through the noisy talk, and the Major shouted for silence. He got it at last, and the room listened to the one-sided conversation that followed. Some of the men continued their talk in whispers, Blanky fumbled out and lit acigarette, Dicky dropped on the bed beside the man with the book, who, through all the uproar, had kept his eyes glued to the magazine pages. "What you got there?" asked Dicky conversationally. "Any good?"
"Good enough for me to want to read," snapped the other. "But a man couldn't read in this row if he was stone deaf."
"Well, y'see, they're all a bit bucked with the scrap," said Dicky apologetically.
"Oh, bust the scrap," said the reader. "I'm sick of scraps and Huns. Do dry up and let me read," and he buried himself again in the fiction that to him at least was stranger than the naked truth that rioted about his unheeding ears.
The Major's end of the talk consisted at first of "Yes ... yes ... yes ... oh, yes," and then, more intelligibly, "Yes, pretty good scrap evidently.... No, they're all back, thanks.... Thanks, I'm glad you think—what?... Are you sure?... Quite sure? Good. There's been rather an argument.... Six? Quite certain?... Thanks very much.... I suppose you'll send a report confirming.... Right. Thanks.... Good-bye."
He put the receiver down on the stand and turned to Blanky with a smile twitching his lips. "Our Archies," he explained, "rang up to tell me they'd watched the whole show——" "Pretty sight, too," growled Blanky. The Major went on: "and to congratulate the Squadron on a first-class fight. And they positively confirm six crashes, Blanky; saw themhit the ground and smash. Some others seen low down out of control, and could hardly recover, but weren't seen actually to crash. So we only get six—and as the others only claim five, you must have got yours after all."
"Course he got it," struck in Blanky's observer; "only I knew he'd argue me down if I——"
"Oh, shut up," said Blanky. "How could you see? You were looking over the tail, anyway."
"Well, I knew I got mine," said Dicky.
"Me, too" ... "And I was sure——" ... "And I saw mine."
"For the love of Christmas, dry up," stormed Blanky. "If you could only fly as well as you can talk, you might make a half-baked blistering Flight. As it is you're more like a fat-headed flock o' incarnadined crows split-armin' over a furrow in a ploughed field. Of all the dazzling dud formations I ever saw——"
"Never mind, Blanky," said the Major. "You got six confirmed crashes amongst you, so it wasn't too dud a show."
"I don't care," said Blanky, tramping to the door and jerking it open. "I don't care a tuppenny tinker's dash what Huns we got." He swung through, and, turning in the doorway with his hand on the knob, shouted back with all the emphasis of last-word finality: "I tell you it was aROTTENformation, anyway."
Behind him the doorslammedtremendously.
It is difficult, if not indeed impossible, to convey in words what is perhaps the most breath-catching wonder of air-fighting work, the furious speed, the whirling rush, the sheer rapidity of movement of the fighting machines, and the incredible quickness of a pilot's brain, hand, and eye to handle and manœuvre a machine, and aim and shoot a gun under these speed conditions. I can only ask you to try to remember that a modern fast scout is capable of flying at well over a hundred miles an hour on the level, and at double that (one may not be too exact) in certain circumstances, and that in such a fight as I am going to try to describe here the machines were moving at anything between these speeds. If you can bear this in mind, or even realise it—I am speaking to the non-flying reader—you will begin to understand what air men-o'-war work is, to believe what a pilot once said of air fighting: "You don't get time to think. If you stop to think, you're dead."
When the Flight of half a dozen scout machines was getting ready to start on the usual "offensivepatrol" over Hunland, one of the pilots, "Ricky-Ticky" by popular name, had some slight trouble with his engine. It was nothing much, a mere reluctance to start up easily, and since he did get her going before the Flight was ready to take off he naturally went up with it. He had a little more trouble in the upward climb to gain a height sufficient for the patrol when it crossed the line to stand the usual respectable chance of successfully dodging the usual Archie shells. Ricky, however, managed to nurse her up well enough to keep his place in the formation, and was still in place when they started across the lines. Before they were far over Hunland he knew that his engine was missing again occasionally and was not pulling as she ought to, and from a glance at his indicators and a figuring of speed, height, and engine revolutions was fairly certain that he was going almost full out to keep up with the other machines, which were flying easily and well within their speed.
This was where he would perhaps have been wise to have thrown up and returned to his 'drome. He hung on in the hope that the engine would pick up again—as engines have an unaccountable way of doing—and even when he found himself dropping back out of place in the formation he still stuck to it and followed on. He knew the risk of this, knew that the straggler, the lame duck, the unsupported machine, is just exactly what the Hun flyer is always on the look out for; knew, too, that his Flight Commander before they had started had warned him (seeing the trouble he was having to start up) that if he had any bother in the air or could not keep place in the formation to pull out and return. Altogether, then, the trouble that swooped down on him was his own fault, and you can blame him for it if you like. But if you do you'll have to blame a good many other pilots who carry on, and, in spite of the risk, do their best to put through the job they are on. He finally decided—he looked at the clock fixed in front of him to set a time and found it showed just over one minute to twelve—in one minute at noon exactly, if his engine had not steadied down to work, he would turn back for home.
At that precise moment—and this was the first warning he had that there were Huns about—he heard a ferocious rattle of machine-gun fire, and got a glimpse of streaking flame and smoke from the tracer bullets whipping past him. The Huns, three of them and all fast fighting scouts, had seen him coming, had probably watched him drop back out of place in the Flight, had kept carefully between him and the sun so that his glances round and back had failed to spot them in the glare, and had then dived headlong on him, firing as they came. They were coming down on him from astern and on his right side, or, as the Navals would put it, on his starboard quarter, and they were perhaps a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards off when Ricky first looked round and saw them.
His first and most natural impulse was to getclear of the bullets that were spitting round and over him, and in two swift motions he had opened his engine full out and thrust his nose a little down and was off full pelt. Promptly the three astern swung a little, opened out as they wheeled, dropped their noses, and came after Ricky, still a little above him, and so fairly astern that only the centre one could keep a sustained accurate fire on him. (A scout's gun being fixed and shooting between the blades of the propeller—gun and engine being synchronised so as to allow the bullet to pass out as the blade is clear of the muzzle—means that the machine itself must be aimed at the target for the bullets to hit, and the two outer machines of the three could only so aim their machines by pointing their noses to converge on the centre one—a risky manœuvre with machines travelling at somewhere about a hundred miles an hour.)
But the fire of that centre one was too horribly close for endurance, and Ricky knew that although his being end-on made him the smaller target, it also made his machine the more vulnerable to a raking shot which, piercing him fore and aft, could not well fail to hit petrol tank, or engine, or some other vital spot. He could do nothing in the way of shooting back, because, being a single-seater scout himself, his two guns were trained one to shoot straight forward through the propeller, the other, mounted on the top plane on a curved mount which allowed the gun to be grasped by the handle above his head and pulled back and down, toshoot from direct ahead to straight up. Neither could shoot backward.
Ricky, the first shock of his surprise over, had gauged the situation, and this, it must be admitted, was dangerous, if not desperate. He had dropped back and back from the Flight, until now they were something like a mile ahead of him. A mile, it is true, does not take a modern machine long to cover, but then, on the other hand, neither does an air battle take long to fight, especially with odds of three to one. With those bullets sheeting past him and already beginning to rip and crack through his wings, any second might see the end of Ricky. It was no use thinking longer of running away, and even a straight-down nose-dive offered no chance of escape, both because the Huns could nose-dive after him and continue to keep him under fire, and because he was well over Hunland, and the nearer he went to the ground the better target he would make for the anti-aircraft gunners below. He must act, and act quickly.
A thousand feet down and a quarter of a mile away was a little patch of cloud. Ricky swerved, dipped, and drove "all out" for it. He was into it—400 yards remember—in about the time it takes you to draw three level quiet breaths, and had flashed through it—five or six hundred feet across it might have been—in a couple of quick heart-beats. The Huns followed close, and in that half-dozen seconds Ricky had something between fifty and a hundred bullets whizzing and ripping past andthrough his wings. As he leaped clear of the streaming wisps of the cloud's edge he threw one look behind him and pulled the joy-stick hard in to his stomach. Instantly his machine reared and swooped up in the loop he had decided on, up and over and round. At the first upward zoom Ricky had pulled down the handle of his top gun and brought it into instant action. The result was that as he shot up and over in a perfect loop the centre machine, which had been astern of him, flashed under and straight through the stream of his bullets.
Ricky whirled down in the curve of his loop with his gun still shooting, but, now he had finished his loop and flattened out, shooting up into the empty air while his enemy hurtled straight on and slightly downward ahead of him. Instantly Ricky threw his top gun out of action, and, having now reversed positions, and having his enemy ahead, steadied his machine to bring his bow gun sights to bear on her. But before he could fire he saw the hostile's right upper plane twist upward, saw the machine spin side on, the top plane rip and flare fiercely back and upward, the lower plane buckle and break, and the machine, turning over and over, plunge down and out of his sight. One of his bullets evidently had cut some bracing wires or stays, and the wing had given to the strain upon it.
So much Ricky just had time to think, but immediately found himself in a fresh danger. The two remaining hostiles had flashed past him at the same time as the centre one, while hethrew his loop over it, but, realising apparently on the instant what his manœuvre was, they both swung out and round while he passed in his loop over the centre machine. It was smart work on the part of the two flanking hostiles. They must have instantly divined Ricky's dodge to get astern of them all, and their immediate circle out and round counteracted it, and as he came out of his loop brought them circling in again on him. For an instant Ricky was so concentrated on the centre machine that he forgot the two others; but, the centre one down and out, he was suddenly roused to the fresh danger by two following short bursts of fire which flashed and flamed athwart him, and caught a glimpse of the other two closing in again astern of him and "sitting on his tail."
Both were firing as they came, and again Ricky felt the sharp rip and crack of explosive bullets striking somewhere on his machine, and an instant later knew the two were following him and hailing lead upon him. He cursed savagely. He had downed one enemy, but here apparently he was little if any better off with two intact enemies in the worst possible position for him, "on his tail," and both shooting their hardest.
A quick glance ahead showed him the white glint of light on the wheeling wings of his Flight, attracted by the sight of his battle, circling and racing to join the fight. But, fast and all as they came, the fight was likely to be overbefore they could arrive, and with the crack and snap of bullets about him and his own two guns powerless to bear on the enemy, it looked uncomfortably like odds on the fight ending against him. Another loop they would expect and follow over—and the bullets were crippling him every instant.
Savagely he threw his controls over, and his machine slashed out and down to the right in a slicing two-hundred-foot side-slip. The right-hand machine whirled past him so close that he saw every detail of the pilot's dress—the fur-fringed helmet, dark goggles, black sweater. He caught his machine out of her downward slide, drove her ahead, steadied her, and brought his sights to bear on the enemy a scant twenty yards ahead, and poured a long burst of fire into her. He saw the streaking flashes of his bullets pouring about and over her top planes, dipped his muzzle a shade, and saw the bullets break and play on and about the pilot and fuselage. Then came a leaping flame and a spurt of black smoke whirling out from her; Ricky had a momentary glimpse of the pilot's agonised expression as he lifted and glanced wildly round, and next instant had only in his sight a trailing black plume of smoke and the gleam of a white underbody as the enemy nose-dived down in a last desperate attempt to make a landing before his machine dissolved in flames about him.
With a sudden burst of exultation Ricky realised his changed position. A minute beforehe was in the last and utmost desperate straits, three fast and well-armed adversaries against his single hand. Now, with two down, it was man to man—no, if he wished, it was all over, because the third hostile had swung left, had her nose down, and was "hare-ing" for home and down towards the covering fire of the German anti-aircraft batteries. Already she was two to three hundred yards away, and the first German Archie soared up and burst with a rending "Ar-r-rgh" well astern of him.
But Ricky's blood was up and singing songs of triumph in his ears. Two out of three downed; better make a clean job of it and bag the lot. His nose dipped and his tail flicked up, and he went roaring down, full out, after his last Hun. A rapid crackle of one machine-gun after another struck his ear before ever he had the last hostile fully centred in his sights. Ricky knew that at last the Flight had arrived and were joining in the fight. But he paid no heed to them; his enemy was in the ring of his sight now, so with his machine hurling down at the limit of speed of a falling body plus all the pull of a hundred and odd horse-power, the whole fabric quivering and vibrating under him, the wind roaring past and in his ears, Ricky snuggled closer in his seat, waited till his target was fully and exactly centred in his sights, and poured in a long, clattering burst of fire. The hostile's slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a straight-downward rush and a crash end-on into the ground.
Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the Flight that got this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his. On the other hand, the rest of the Flight, after and always, with enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky's very own, that he had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat with them—one down and t'other come on. If Ricky himself could not fairly and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the Flight did for him.
"Three!" they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook no modest doubts from him. And to silence all doubts the Squadron poet composed a song which was sung by the mess with a fervour and a generous slurring over of faulty metre (a word the poet didn't even know the meaning of) that might have stirred the blood of a conscientious objector. It was entitled, "Three Huns Sat on his Tail," and was sung to the tune of "There were Three Crows Sat on a Tree," or, as the uninitiated may prefer, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and it detailed the destruction of the Huns one by one, verse by verse.
When I tell you it was sung chanty fashion, with the first, second, and last lines chorused by the mess, I can leave you to imagine the loud-pedal, full, fortissimo effect of the "Hurrahs," and (helped out with feet, with fists, spoons,and anything else handy to resound upon the table) of the final rolling "Cr-r-r-ash."