The Victors Read online

  There was still a lot to learn about 1918 but it was already becoming clear that the days of men like Ball were over. Ball was dead now and so was the Frenchman, Guynemer, and Voss, the German. Richthofen, my old enemy, was still around, with a score these days that was so high it seemed unbelievable; but he was being carefully guarded now by the German high command because his name alone was worth a couple of divisions, and he’d proved to be not immortal when he’d been wounded the previous summer. It had happened just before I’d met him after being taken prisoner, and perhaps he hadn’t properly recovered then, because all I could remember of him was a small, blond man tired beyond his years, who looked as though he were badly in need of a long rest.

  It was all these things that enabled me to accept the decision that I had to stay in England for a while. But the mind plays tricks and as the rest from the war did me good I began to forget what it had been like. Memory was always kind and I couldn’t recall the grief and the sadness and the awful destruction in France, and could remember only the very real comradeship – something the newspaper writers who talked about it so glibly could never even begin to imagine – and the joy of serving with people like Ludo Sykes and Bull and Munro, now also in England like me. Frank Griffiths and Wickitt, who’d disappeared two years before over the Somme, never came back to trouble me these days and I’d even almost forgotten what my brother looked like.

  And as I began to forget, I began to itch to go back. Several times I wrote to ask when I was going to be posted but the letters all went unanswered and in the end I even began to become aggressive and demanding, as though to go back to war was my right and privilege; finally the CO refused to countersign them.

  ‘If I send that,’ he said, throwing my latest angry epistle back across the desk at me, ‘they’ll demote me and probably send you to the Tower.’

  The weather, which in Yorkshire was never of the easiest for flying, began to show some signs of improvement and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the winter quiet ended and the war woke up again. And I wasn’t far wrong because on March 21st, in a dense fog, the German offensive on the Somme broke over the Fifth Army. Men returning from the front brought stories that the high command and the government had been warned a dozen and one times of its approach. But the generals, it seemed, had failed to realize where it was going to fall while the government, after the slaughter of the Somme and Passchendaele, had starved the army of reserves in case the generals took it into their heads to have yet another go.

  England was downcast at the news and, despite the nonsense that was written in the papers about strategic withdrawals, it was obvious a great deal of territory was being given up.

  ‘We’re right back where we were before 1916,’ Charley said one Sunday afternoon as we walked alongside the river. ‘The whole stupid war’s gone into reverse.’

  ‘Not for long,’ I said. ‘They’ll never break through.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  There was an aeroplane in the distance and I caught her eyes on me as I stared at it.

  ‘Camel,’ I said.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Sound of the engine. The way it hangs in the sky. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I can hardly see it.’

  ‘That just goes to show the superiority of men over girls.’

  ‘Smug!’ She frowned. ‘Do you really think they’ll stop the Germans, Martin?’

  ‘Yes. Why? Are you worried?’

  ‘Of course I’m worried! Lor’, it would be so nice to think it’ll all be over so I can go back to bein’ featherbrained and stupid again and think of only clothes and dances and things, because sometimes, the way things are goin’, I see myself runnin’ up and down wards and corridors until I’m forty or fifty, gettin’ a bit slower every year, until I finally grind to a stop. It gives me the jim-jams at times.’

  ‘It’ll not be like that,’ I said. ‘You’ll see.’

  As it happened, I was right. By the end of the month the German attack began to peter out and everyone began to look more cheerful, and the old hands coming back from France said that this time the Germans had over-reached themselves and were in trouble. Despite the gloom in the newspapers, I thought they might be right and began to worry that it would all be over before I got the chance of another go.

  In a fret of anxiety I tried a few more tentative letters that brought no response. Then on April 1st, a rough, rainy day with no flying, the Royal Flying Corps became officially the Royal Air Force.

  ‘Why?’ Charley asked disconcertingly. ‘What was wrong with the Royal Flying Corps?’

  ‘The navy and the army keep on wanting to push us around,’ I explained. ‘Telling us what jobs we ought to do, that sort of thing. And, as anybody knows, generals and admirals don’t know a thing about air power while there are quite a few fliers around now who think we should retain that right for ourselves.’

  ‘My,’ Charley said. ‘Listen to the politics! Anyway, since it’s happened, do you feel any different?’

  ‘Not really. Funny they should pick April Fool’s Day, though. Hope it isn’t an omen.’

  However it set me fretting again about going back to France, and finally, somewhere in the dim recesses of the corridors of authority, someone noticed my letters at last and eventually, just when I’d begun to think I was going to be training hamfisted pilots for ever, the posting came through.

  The CO handed me the signal with a curious look on his face. ‘France,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Berck. Pilots’ pool. You’re to fly a new machine across.’

  ‘What squadron am I going to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He smiled and, standing up, reached for his cap. ‘But, as it so happens, I’m just on my way to see the flight-sergeant about the state of serviceability, which will leave my office empty. I know it’s forbidden to use service communications for private business but if I don’t know about it, I can hardly be difficult, can I?’

  He closed the door behind him and I stared after him, grinning like a clown, before snatching up the telephone. When I finally got in touch with Sykes’ relative, he hooted with laughter.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you to ring all morning,’ he said.

  ‘What squadron am I going to?’ I demanded. ‘What am I flying? Who’s CO? Anybody I know?’

  ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ he said. ‘I don’t know any of those things.’

  ‘Well, who does?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Well, nobody over here. I’ve done what I can and you’d be surprised how many strings I’ve had to pull. Be thankful that you’re going at all.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘End of the week.’

  ‘Is that all you can tell me?’

  ‘That’s all. Just get there. After that it’s up to you. It’s the best I could do but I seem to remember that you were never behind the door when low cunning was handed out.’

  It seemed to me that I was being told to pick my own spot and I felt better at once. Snatching up my leather coat, an ancient one I’d had ever since 1915, which other pilots said they couldn’t get within a yard of for the smell of castor oil, I went out for my last chore. One last trudge around the sky, I thought, and then it was over.

  I got them off the ground in a ragged V and at 10,000 feet I felt I could see the whole of Yorkshire from the Pennines to the sea. Somewhere down below people were walking, talking and going about their dull daytime business while I, surely one of God’s chosen few, was sitting high in the void of the sky, staring down at the blue-tinted plate of the earth aglow with sunshine, aware of the privilege of being different.

  I was flying one of the new SEs with a Viper engine and it was as steady as a rock. What a wonderful firing platform it must be in action, I thought, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think why they hadn’t given it two Vickers guns shooting through the propeller, instead of one, with a Lewis on th
e top wing where you couldn’t get at it.

  This was a triviality, though, in the glow of pleasure I felt. The wing tips, ten feet away, blazed with the touch of the sun on the varnished fabric and I was caught by the amazing adventure of flight as if I were new to it instead of having partaken of it almost every day of my life for the last three years. There was nothing between me and the earth but a light linen-covered wooden structure and a two hundred-horse engine. The fabric of the lower wing was bellying slightly in the suction of the air stream passing across it and I could see the streamlined wires quivering in the vibration. In front of me was an array of instruments which made me shudder to think how few there’d been when I’d first flown, and about me was the faint whiff of petrol, dope, and hot metal and oil. I was hanging on nothing, high above the earth, my eyes full of sun and my heart full of the joy of flying. It was a fleeting glimpse of heaven.

  I turned and saw the other machines just behind, moving up and down one after the other in currents of air like horses on a roundabout or a trot of boats in the lap of the sea, first one above me and then the other, the sun catching their varnished fabric and plywood fuselages and the helmeted heads of their pilots. We had two styles of formation flying: an open, fighting formation in which the machines were well apart with room to manoeuvre, the formation I favoured; and a prettier exhibition formation that the bigwigs who’d never flown in action fancied, in which the closer the machines could fly the better. The only value of this one that I could see was that it was good practice and in it formation turns had to be made carefully in case the machines fouled each other. In the more open formation, we’d worked out an about-turn which reversed the direction quicker than going round in a circle, and, while the leader did a half-roll on to his back, coming out directly below facing the opposite way, the machines on either side turned left and right about, crossing each other to retain their respective positions but going in the opposite direction. It was neat and we thought we were rather good at it.

  In fact, I suppose we were but it demanded a modicum of alertness and the pilot of the machine just behind me on my right that morning, a man called Callender, couldn’t have been paying attention in spite of the number of times I’d drummed it into them all that they must. Perhaps he’d had a heavy night the night before, perhaps his wife was ill, perhaps he’d got into debt, anything, but he certainly wasn’t watching what he was doing. We had opened out and had plenty of room, and I signalled for the turn and gave them plenty of time to absorb it before I gave the signal to break. Then I started a half-roll, expecting them to do their stuff as we’d practised, but instead of making a tight bank, as he should have done, Callender tried to follow me over and the next moment he’d flown into my wing tip.

  The first I knew of what was happening was hearing the crunch as his propeller chewed away at wood and fabric, then I found myself dropping out of the sky in an uneven jerky side-slipping motion with pieces of aeroplane falling off all round me. I was going down with no hope of controlling the fall, and I saw Callender’s machine hurtle past me making a strange whistling noise like wind blowing through a hole. Then I noticed the fabric of my upper wing wrinkling and smoothing out as I slithered from side to side and knew that the whole structure was loose, with the wing tip flopping up and down and the aileron flapping loose. I’d automatically cut the engine and switched off the petrol but then, suddenly, I saw the wing tip simply fall off and, as the motion changed, over the nose I saw the land begin to turn round like a whirling green plate as I began to go down in a wild spinning movement. All round me there were loud flapping noises and the clattering of wires against struts. Somehow, yanking at the stick, I managed to slow the rate of descent but I was so low by now that the whirling trees had changed from blurred green to individual leaves, then I heard the crash of foliage and the cockpit seemed to be full of greenery and twigs and small branches.

  The machine tore itself to pieces and I fell out and found myself dropping through branches towards the ground, hitting every one of them on the way, it seemed. Finally I fell clear and, dazed, stupefied and half-conscious, landed flat on my back on to the top of a well-clipped hawthorn hedge.

  Fortunately there were no stakes to break my spine and it caught me and bounced me off into a field and I was still lying there trying to get my breath back when a car came hurtling across the grass.

  ‘By God,’ an awed voice said. ‘You must be the only man in the world who’s hit the ground from 10,000 feet and come out of it alive.’

  Chapter 2

  It seemed ages before I could stop shaking. They had lifted me on to an examination bench and I could hear it creaking under me as I shuddered.

  ‘Think there’s something wrong with me?’ I asked.

  The shuddering had started in the ambulance they’d put me in and had grown worse all the way to the hospital.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ It was Charley, of all people, who was attending me. ‘It’s a bit of shock, that’s all.’

  ‘What happened to Callender?’ I demanded.

  ‘Who’s Callender?’

  ‘The chap who flew into my wing tip.’

  Charley’s face changed and the smile disappeared at once.

  ‘He was killed,’ she said shortly.

  I was still jerking about as if I were suffering from spasms of some sort. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do to stop this shaking?’ I said.

  ‘It’s probably the plague.’ She was coldly efficient but the smile came back. ‘The usual, I think, is a cup of hot sweet tea, a blanket and a good sleep. You’ll be as right as rain by tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’ve got to be,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m going back to France at the week-end.’

  She swung round, startled. Then her eyes grew hot. ‘You never told me!’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance. I only learned an hour or two ago myself. I’ve got to go to Dover tomorrow.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ she said.

  I sat up but she put a hand on my chest and pushed me down again. Her face had become expressionless and it worried me a little.

  ‘Look, Charley,’ I said. ‘Don’t act the giddy goat! I’ve got orders!’

  ‘They can wait a day or two!’

  ‘No, they can’t!’

  ‘You’re enough to demoralize the whole army nursing organization,’ she said, losing her temper. ‘You came within an inch of being killed this afternoon. Or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Of course I’ve noticed,’ I rapped. ‘I’m the one who’s got the black eye and the thorns sticking into his backside from that damn’ hedge.’

  She jabbed a thermometer at me. ‘People with shock usually stay in bed till they get over it. That’s what you’ll do. The war can wait for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘They’ve never put me to bed for twenty-four hours when I’ve crashed on other occasions,’ I said.

  ‘Then they should have.’

  ‘We’d have lost the war long since if they put everybody to bed for twenty-four hours every time they hit the deck.’

  ‘You’re about as far from the war here as you can get,’ she pointed out tartly. ‘Open your mouth.’

  She pushed the thermometer so far in, in her anger, I thought I’d choke.

  ‘What happened to the bus?’ I managed.

  ‘It’s in little pieces spread over most of Yorkshire as far as I can make out.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘I shan’t want it now, anyway. I’m picking up a new one and flying it across.’

  She stared at me, frowning. ‘You want to go back, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous enough for you here?’

  I grinned. ‘More. It’s much safer with the Germans than with ham-fisted trainees. We call them “Huns”, did you know?’

  She looked down her nose at me. ‘You’re not the only ones with silly habits,’ she said. ‘We call the patients “Huns”. I expect the reas
oning’s much the same. Why is it so important to go back?’

  ‘Because there are people in France still fighting,’ I said.

  She shrugged, determined not to be coaxed down off her high horse. ‘Even pugilists stop between rounds to draw breath,’ she said.

  She had the gift of reducing me occasionally to the point when I couldn’t find an answer. There wasn’t one this time. ‘I’m sorry about Callender,’ I said. ‘He was a married man. With two children.’

  ‘Three,’ Charley said. ‘Another one arrived this morning. They thought he’d survived and sent the telegram here. I saw it.’

  The news shook me. ‘That must have been what he was thinking about,’ I said. ‘He certainly wasn’t thinking about flying.’

  Charley removed the thermometer and looked at it critically. ‘Normal,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately. How do you feel?’

  ‘Fine now you’ve pulled out the thorns.’

  ‘You sure?’

  She looked at me critically and I grinned. ‘Honest,’ I said. But when I thought about it again I wasn’t quite so sure. I’d had every kind of crash possible in my career as a pilot but I couldn’t ever remember it affecting me like this. ‘Except for the shakes,’ I added.

  ‘That could be tiredness,’ Charley said.

  ‘I’ve been in England for six months!’

  ‘Courage’s expendable, you know. Eventually you can use it all up—’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘—and when you get to that stage, something big like this can start it off all over again. Perhaps I ought to keep an eye on you and go to France myself.’

  ‘You?’

  She grinned. ‘Why not? They’re askin’ for volunteers. And it’ll entitle me to wear a putty medal when the war’s over.’