CHAPTER XVITHE EYES OF THE ARMY
“Why, all my life I have been trying to guess what lay on the other side of the hill!”—The Duke of Wellington.
“Why, all my life I have been trying to guess what lay on the other side of the hill!”—The Duke of Wellington.
One day, while I was gazing at a German working-party grubbing like ants on a far slope behind the enemy lines, a hawk glided swiftly and strongly into the field of my telescope. It hung almost motionless in the clear summer air, high up above the green valley, its powerful wings outspread, the very incarnation of waking watchfulness. And I found myself wondering of what the hawk reminded me, poised aloft, now swooping a little this way, now that, until a low droning in the azure far above gave me my clue even as an aeroplane glittered into sight.
The aeroplane stood out, almost motionless as it seemed to me, over the German lines, while with a “pom-pom-pom!” the German anti-aircraft guns ringed it round in puffs of white smoke. Like the hawk that continued to hover over the valley, it was watching—watching. Like the hawk’s, its searching glance plunged down into the animate life far below, the life that pursues its normal round unperturbed because it knows it cannot escape from the eyes in the sky.
The aeroplanes are the eyes of the army. They alone have made possible the war of positions. From the Alps to the North Sea the warring nations of Europe are hidden in the ground, but their eyes are far aloft. It is the alliance between the mole and the hawk. While the man in the trench uses the periscope to observe from his safe shelter the enemy trench across the way, the army commanders in the rear peer through the eyes of the aeroplanes into the enemy trenches and into the enemy country far behind the firing-line.
The most important contribution which this war is destined to make to our knowledge of warfare lies in the development of the use of military aircraft. The aeroplane has revolutionized warfare, because it has practically removed from war the element of surprise. The only hope that the modern General has of maintaining the fog of war lies in the weather, which, in more than one instance in this war, has effectually veiled from peering eyes aloft movements which are destined to have a decisive influence on the operations.
The aeroplane has relieved the cavalry of the greater part of its functions. If our cavalry are serving dismounted in the trenches, and their horses growing round of belly, it is the fault of the aeroplane. Sir John French has defined the functions of cavalry as threefold: to reconnoitre, to deceive, to support. The aeroplane has entirely usurped the first of these three roles, and has rendered the second illusory. Only rain and mist can safely hope to obscure the movements of an army from the eyes of the watcher in the skies.
Like cavalry, the military aeroplanes execute both tactical and strategical reconnaissances. Their tactical reconnaissances are carried out on shorter flights, which lead them out over the enemy trench-lines and the region immediately behind. Their object is to note any change in the clear-cut line of the trenches, as seen from above, indicative of the laying out of fresh fortifications or communication trenches; to look out for reliefs coming up; and, generally, to gauge the strength and composition of the enemy forces along a definite section of the front by noting the positions of transport columns and by locating the whereabouts of brigade and divisional headquarters.
Generally the aeroplane has a specific mission, though, of course, roving flights are also made. A flight may be undertaken at the request of a battalion in the front line which has observed suspicious activity on the part of the enemy opposite, or the Intelligence may have got wind of some move which seems to require further elucidation by a peep from above.
Of the same nature as these tactical reconnaissances are the flights undertaken in collaboration with the artillery, either to survey likely objectives for our guns, to locate hostile batteries that have been annoying our lines, or to perform that useful duty known as “spotting for the guns”—i.e., observing the effect of our artillery fire. Naturally, in the course of flights undertaken for purposes unconnected with our artillery, an aeroplane will often make observations of the greatest value to the guns. Insuch cases, of course, a report is immediately made to the artillery headquarters.
As in these tactical reconnaissances the aeroplane is, so to speak, an extended and movable periscope for the men in the front line, so, in its strategical reconnaissance work, it may be said to serve as eyes to the General Staff. Strategical reconnaissance takes the aeroplane on longer flights far into the enemy’s country, where above towns in the war zone, about barracks and railheads and headquarters and fortifications, keen eyes may glean much that is of supreme importance to the General Staff in compiling the information as to the strength and dispositions of the enemy on which all strategy is based.
In addition to the tactical and strategical importance of the aeroplane in war, it is also a weapon not only of offence, but of defence, against aircraft. It can carry out bombing raids on fortified positions, factories of munitions of war, aviation centres, railway-stations, barracks, bivouacs, and batteries. It is the only really effective weapon of defence against aircraft, both aeroplanes and airships. One of the principal duties of our aeroplanes at the front is to go up and chase away German aircraft reconnoitring or bound on bombing exploits. They have also done useful work as sky sentries on the watch for the Zeppelins which from time to time sally forth—with small success, be it said—to spread GermanKulturfrom the clouds over the towns situated in our zone of operations at the front.
The battle of Neuve Chapelle may be cited as a typical instance of the work which the Royal FlyingCorps is doing in this war. It was our airmen who, by continual reconnaissance work in all the variations of weather which are found in the late winter of Flanders, ascertained the dispositions of the Germans about Neuve Chapelle to be such as to justify the hope that we might risk a successful offensive at this point. It was they who, while our troops were massing for the attack, made sure that all was quiet, not only in the German lines, but also in the enemy’s country, far back into Belgium. It was they who, by hovering constantly above our trenches, kept prying German eyes away, and prevented them from discovering the surprise which was preparing for Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and his merry men.
Nor did the usefulness of the Royal Flying Corps cease here. Despite the very hazy weather which prevailed on the morning of the engagement (March 10), “a remarkable number of hours’ flying of a most valuable character were effected, and continuous and close reconnaissance was maintained over the enemy’s front” (Sir John French’s Despatch, dated General Headquarters, April 5, 1915).
During the actual fighting, in addition to their usual work of “spotting for the guns,” our aeroplanes executed several daring raids into Belgium, in order to hamper the enemy’s movements by destroying his points of communication. Bombs were dropped on the railways at Menin, Courtrai, Don, and Douai; a wireless installation near Lille is believed to have been destroyed; while, to quote the official despatch again, “a house in which theenemy had installed one of his headquarters was set on fire.”
This was, I believe, the headquarters of the German Intelligence, for I read in the German newspapers that the rooms in which the German Intelligence at General Headquarters is installed are boarded up along one side as the result of the partial destruction of the house by an English air raid. It was also stated that one of the English bombs which had not exploded is kept on the mantelpiece in the office as a memento.
A Belgian doctor who called upon me in London in April, immediately on his arrival from Belgium, told me of a dramatic account of the British air raid on the railway at Courtrai, given to him by the guard of a train which had been standing in the station at the time. The man had been wounded, and my Belgian friend had been called in to attend him. The guard said that, on the appearance of the British aeroplane over the station, a number of German soldiers rushed out on to the line and started to fire at the raider with their rifles. The British airman suddenly planed down, and the Germans, thinking he had been hit, streamed together with shouts of joy into a dense crowd to await his landing.
But their triumph was short-lived. When he was not more than a hundred feet from the ground the raider dropped four bombs in rapid succession right into the midst of the crowd; then, with a quick jerk of his elevating plane, soared aloft and away. The bombs worked havoc among that dense mass. A score or more of soldiers and railwaymen werekilled, and as many more wounded. The train was wrecked; and as for the guard, who was a German, the doctor said he became positively panic-stricken at the mere thought of what he had seen that day.
The development which the war has produced in what I may call air tactics is positively prodigious. It must be remembered that, at the outset, the aeroplane had practically never been tried on active service, for the experiments made in the Tripoli and Balkan wars, and by the French in Morocco, were more in the nature of sporting flights than serious military tests. Our pilots have had to learn by their own experience in the air—and a gallant and bravely bought experience it has been—the fighting tactics of the aeroplane. They have had to learn to distinguish “by silhouette” the different types of German machine, and to discover the most efficacious way of dealing with each one, according as the position of the propeller and of the driving-seat in relation to the planes restricts the field of fire of the enemy machine-gun. They have had to learn for themselves how to manœuvre for position when tackling an adversary in the air, to find out the vital spots in the different types of enemy machines.
Active service has brought them their first taste of flying under fire. They have learnt to keep a cool head with high-explosive shrapnel from the enemy “Archies” bursting all around them, and bullets from the machine-guns of attacking aeroplanes whistling about their ears or rustling through the canvas stretches of their wings. They have learnt to make those twists and turns, those swoops and dives,which I have so often seen them making high in the air above the lines, to avoid those pretty little puffs which carry instant destruction in their folds of white smoke.
Just as a certain temper of nerve is required of the airman, so must he also possess special faculties of observation to fit him for military work. The air observer must be cool-headed and resolute. Above all things he must possess a certain measure of intuition which will complete, which will fill in the details, as it were, of the picture which his sharp eyes must pick out in relief from the blurred chessboard of fields and roads and trees far beneath him.
Only experience will teach even the keenest eye to observe fruitfully. Only the trained eye, reinforced by a good military brain, will detect in that black thread on a white strip troops marching along a road, or distinguish a moving train in that white smudge gliding over a dark background. Only the trained mind will appreciate the military significance of these observations. Where the intuition comes in is in making the correct deductions from the things observed, and fitting them into their right place in the general scheme of our information of the enemy’s movements. Intelligent map-reading at the height at which aeroplanes in war are compelled to travel is more than an acquired accomplishment; it is a born gift.
Where a pilot and an observer venture forth together in one machine, they must work in closest harmony. Like bowler and wicket-keeper in one of those successful combinations with which we arefamiliar in county cricket, each must divine by intuition the intention of the other. In the roar of the propeller, the rush of the hurricane, communication by word of mouth is hopeless, and even the portable telephone is of small avail.
Now the observer is the captain on the bridge, the pilot the chief engineer in the engine-room. Now the rôles are reversed. Destruction threatens, and the pilot takes command. The observer can lean back and commend his soul to God, while his comrade strains every nerve to avert a swift end by a bullet in the air or a more terrible death on the cruel earth a mile below.
Though only two years old, the Royal Flying Corps has already created its own distinctive atmosphere. I can only describe it as a subtle blend of the free-and-easy good-fellowship of the navy with the kind of hectic dare-devilry which is characteristic of airmen everywhere.
Not that the foolhardiness of a certain type of airman that we all know is tolerated in the Royal Flying Corps. Its spirit demands high courage, cool nerve, and absolute devotion to duty, on the part of every one of its men, but feats of the “looping the loop” order are strictly repressed. It is to keep this spirit out of the Corps that the rule has been made forbidding any “advertising” of individual airmen by name in connection with their flights on military service.
The risks are the same for all airmen at the front. Every airman that fares forth over the German lines takes his life in his hand. The authorities whodecide these things hold—and rightly hold, in my opinion—that the “writing-up” of the feats of individuals on duty might introduce into the Corps a spirit of rivalry which is not consonant with our high military traditions, and would also be unfair to those airmen who weekly fly hundreds of miles in accomplishment of difficult and dangerous missions, but who, by chance or by their own skill and judgment, avoid adventures that savour of the sensational. Therefore, “no names, no courts-martial.”
This rule has often rankled in my journalistic heart, for the Royal Flying Corps accomplishes almost daily feats which appeal to all that is daring and adventurous in Englishmen. Let us hope that after the war the war diary of the Royal Flying Corps will be made public. It should prove as inspiring a record of gallantry as the story of the Scott Expedition.
Let me remind you, as a foretaste of the deeds of epic heroism this diary contains, of the achievements of three young men of the Royal Flying Corps, all of whom have made the sacrifice of their lives—Rhodes-Moorhouse, V.C., Mapplebeck, D.S.O., and Aidan Liddell, V.C.
England was thrilled to the depths when it read the plain, unvarnished tale told by “Eyewitness” of the last flight and death of Rhodes-Moorhouse. You remember how, landing at the flying-ground with a mortal wound, he had but one thought, not of himself, but of his mission—to make his report before they bore him away to die. Those who were present when he returned from his last flight repeatedto me the grim jest he made about the horrifying wound he had received. Though his body was hurt beyond repair, the courage in that brave soul burned so brightly that it gave him strength to fulfil his duty to the last. And so his epitaph ran: “He made his report.”
I have heard nothing more extraordinary or more gallant than the Odyssey of young Lieutenant Mapplebeck, who, after emerging safe and sound from one of the most adventurous episodes of the war, met his death in a banal flying accident in England. Young Mapplebeck’s adventure began when, in the course of a reconnaissance over the enemy lines, he was shot down over a town in German occupation. He managed to land in a field, and, finding to his amazement that his enforced descent had not been observed, promptly concealed himself.
Mapplebeck spoke French, Flemish, and German, with equal fluency, and this gift of tongues, coupled with a nice mixture of resourcefulness and audacity, helped him to a suit of civilian clothes, in which he proceeded to take a look round the town. The walls were covered with placards announcing that his abandoned aeroplane had been found, and threatening dire reprisals against whomsoever should contumaciously venture to harbour him. This did not deter the adventurous young man from mixing freely with the German soldiers. He drank beer with them, and listened—with what silent amusement may be divined—to their bewildered speculations as to the whereabouts of the vanishedEngländer.
He actually managed to change some money, bringing home in proof of his feat German banknotes stamped with that historic phrase, “Gott strafe England!” and probably circulated, in the territories occupied by Germany, with a view to producing a “moral effect” on the unfortunate civilian population.
As the result of an accident the hero of my tale had one foot shorter than the other. But he did not allow this physical deformity to interfere with his subsequent course of action. He concluded his extraordinary adventure by walking right through the German lines, through Belgium into Holland, doing an average of thirty miles on foot a day. To prevent his passage being traced, he took the precaution of changing his nationality, speech, and story, with everybody with whom he came in contact. He, too, “made his report.” Though it was late by several weeks, it was a good deal more ample and informative than had ever been anticipated when he set out. Within a month of his adventure, Mapplebeck was flying at the front again.
Captain Aidan Liddell died in hospital in August, after a magnificent feat of endurance which was described to me by his comrades of the R.F.C. at the time. While he was reconnoitring over the German lines in Belgium one day at the beginning of August, his leg was almost severed by a German shell which burst right above his machine. Liddell, who was driving, immediately lost consciousness, and the machine, with pilot and observer, dived nose foremost towards the earth.
The aeroplane was flying at a very great height when the accident happened. It turned right over on itself as it hurtled down, but, owing to its great altitude from the ground, had time to right itself. On being wounded, Liddell had collapsed over the steering-wheel, with his arms round the pillar. This position kept him in his seat when the machine turned turtle. The observer was jammed hard between the machine-gun and the struts, and was thus likewise prevented from falling out.
As the machine righted itself, the pilot regained consciousness. Now they were dangerously near the earth, but, recognizing that with his wound he could not last very long, Liddell turned the machine for home. He made off in a straight line for the nearest flying-ground, which happened to be Belgian. With fifty wounds, as it subsequently appeared, in his leg, faint from loss of blood, he flew for thirty-five minutes, and finally reached the aerodrome, where he made a perfect landing. To those who ran out to greet him he said very steadily: “You must lift me out. If I move I’m afraid my leg will come off.”
When they told me his story there was every chance that the gallant pilot would save his leg, nor did his life seem seriously endangered. But amputation proved necessary, and Liddell did not survive the operation. The Victoria Cross laid upon his coffin was the worthy recompense of his deathless endurance.
Those are three little stories of the Royal Flying Corps. I can think of no higher praise than to saythat they are typical of the spirit of our airmen at the front.
There is a freemasonry of the air. Some kind of affinity seems to exist between those who have taken to themselves wings to explore the vastnesses of space. It has survived the snapping of all the other ties that once united us with our present foe. German airmen who rejoice in the slaughter of civilians from the skies show themselves of punctilious chivalry towards their foeman in space. If a British aeroplane goes forth and does not return, it often happens that a message is thrown down in our lines by a German aeroplane announcing the fate of the missing. The Royal Flying Corps, on its side, is equally courteous. There is no place left for chivalry between foemen on earth, it seems, so they have banished it to the skies.
I always think there is an heroic atmosphere about the flying-grounds at the front. It is the privilege of these green fields and gorse-grown heaths, with their fringe of sheds, to witness the finish of these epic adventures in the air. Out of the crystal clearness of the summer evening, from the drifting cloud-wrack of a stormy day, the aeroplanes drone home, laden with their cargoes of glorious deeds. I have seen the airmen go out at dawn. I have seen them return in the sunset. Indeed, where the war correspondents have their headquarters the sky throbs all day with the song of the propellers.
There is a great deal of efficiency and bustle about these flying-grounds at the front. Through the doors flung wide of the hangars lining the ground one getsa glimpse of the fighting aeroplanes, strangely big and cumbrous on the ground as contrasted with their power and beauty in the air. Little knots of mechanics in blue overalls, the natty forage-cap of the R.F.C. poised on one side of the head, swarm about the machines, busied with the engine, changing parts, tightening up wires.
All these flying-grounds at the front are self-contained. The motor-lorries of the Wing stationed there line one side of the aerodrome when they are not away at the railheads fetching stores and supplies. The hum of the lathe, the clink of tools, resound from the travelling workshops by the roadside as from the repair shops installed in sheds and barns about the place. There is a constant droning in the air, faint and soothing like the hum of a bee, from somewhere far aloft where an airman is executing graceful curves on a testing flight, loud and deafening about the sheds where the engines are having their trial runs.
Here is an aeroplane starting off on reconnaissance. Pilot and observer are already in their seats in the midst of a neat arrangement of maps on rollers, compass, barograph, speedometer, pressure gauges, clock, camera, and machine-gun. The biplane, big but frail, its planes shining diaphanously, its metal-work sparkling in the sun, quivers and trembles to the stroke of the roaring propeller. An officer wearing the characteristic cross-buttoned tunic of the R.F.C. is making a parting recommendation to the pilot, who, in his fur-lined leather hood and leather coat and fur gloves, looks more like an Arctic explorerthan anything else. The observer, similarly muffled up, is fixing a map in position.
The biplane is standing out in the middle of the field, its nose pointed in the opposite direction from the firing-line, for the airmen will only bring their machine into the wind after they are in the air. The roar of the engine grows suddenly louder as the officer, his injunctions at an end, steps clear, and the biplane slides away over the ground with that curious bobbing motion that one knows. It takes the air easily, steadily, and clambers aloft round and round the aerodrome, then suddenly turns sharply aside and makes off towards the firing-line, twenty miles away.
Not a day passes that one does not see our aeroplanes bound for the front. How often have I stood in the fire-trench and watched one of these aerial reconnaissances—seen our airman, so high that he looked like a tiny moth in a vast domed hall, stealing out over the German lines! Again and again the enemy anti-aircraft guns drive him back, but each time he comes back and each time he sees a little more.
Sometimes, as I have watched, I have seen another aeroplane suddenly materialize out of the blue and circle in sweeps about the invader. The “Archies” cease fire. From somewhere very far away, as it seems, echoes the dull tap-tapping of a machine-gun. Suddenly you realize that it is a fight in the air, that you are watching the fantasy of Wells translated into reality. Honestly, it is not very thrilling. You hear that very faint barking of the guns:all you see is two tiny shining specks manœuvring in the air. The only men who get a good view of the fight are the combatants engaged.
But, as so often happens, imagination breathes life into the dead bones of reality. As you watch those translucent dots curvetting a mile above your head, you find yourself thinking of the greensward of the busy aerodrome awaiting the return of the aerial scout, even now at grips in the air, of his place at the dinner-table, of the pleasant château where the Flying Corps has its mess, of the comrades who even now, maybe, are scanning the sky towards where the battle front is stretched, for a sign of the missing bird. I have seen these anxious little groups at nightfall waiting on the open flying-ground for those who have not come back, and great fires throwing out a ruddy light to guide the wanderer home.
The Germans have the most wholesome respect for the efficiency of the Royal Flying Corps. It has found tangible expression in the efforts they have made to produce a type of machine faster and more powerful than anything our airmen possess. The German battle aeroplane, a most formidable machine with double fuselage, made its appearance this summer, and proved itself to be the fastest aeroplane in the field. Engine-power will almost always get the better of skill and courage. Once again the Germans, by calling in their unrivalled technical knowledge to their aid, diminished the advantage we had gained over them in equal contest. We lost no time in taking up the challenge, and there are signs that the Germans will not be leftlong in enjoyment of their monopoly of speed in aerial reconnaissance.
The Germans have proved themselves to be skilful and adventurous fliers in this war. It is characteristic of the thoroughness of their war training that at the very outset of the war they gave proof of possessing a more or less definite plan of campaign for the war in the air. But—probably on superior orders—they do not show that lust for fighting that distinguishes our airmen. Our fliers are always lamenting the fact that a German airman will never wait to engage an adversary who sallies out to drive him off, but turns tail and runs as soon as the enemy appears.
The time has not yet come to review the work of the Royal Flying Corps at the front. I have made no attempt to do so in this chapter. The aeroplane is such an essential part of the Intelligence in modern war that no detailed survey of the methods by which the Royal Flying Corps fulfils its functions as the eyes of the army can safely be given until the war is over. I have had to content myself, therefore, with seeking to impart to you at home some of the admiration with which the gallantry and endurance of our airmen in the field have inspired me, who have been privileged to see them at their work.
“Ruin-kist but gamesome ever,Proud we meet amid the blue:Who shall speed the world’s endeavour,Splendid foeman, I or you?Here we crash: the great downcastingWaits. May weal us all betide!Buoyant with the EverlastingLords of death we ride—we ride!”
J. Mackereth:Hymn of the Airman.