winged victory (extract)
by vm yeats
What was Cross shouting about? Stopped raining? Sun?
Christ, and there was a job. Mac was bustling about. Fifteen
miles to home. Forty minutes before the job, someone was
saying. Had be got to go up blotto as he was? Where was the
tender? Mac seemed to know. Outside. Sun shining. Bloody
marvellous. Could only just walk. Stagger, rather.
Tender. Eyes shut, lean against next fellows. Jolt, jolt, jolt.
Thing was moving. Damnation, what had thrown him out of
his seat? My god, what a blotto patrol it would be. Jolt, jolt,
jolt....
Back already. Didn't feel much better. Ten minutes, ten
minutes, ten minutes. Put head in water. A bit better.
Get sidcot on. Best clothes, damn it.
Climbed in all right, anyway. Felt better in cockpit.
Comfortable. Couldn't fall out. It'd be damn funny doing a blotto
patrol. Wouldn't be any Huns about so soon after rain.
Contact. Giving her revs all right on the ground.
Could see the rev counter. Not so blotto. They were all pretty tight except Cross.
Let go. Could he taxi? Yes, easy. Open fine adjustment.
Throttle. Off we go. Hold her nose down then zoom. Up, up.
Pulling nicely. Roll. Left stick and rudder. Throttle back.
Here's the horizon coming straight. Stick and rudder central.
Throttle open. God, trees. Just over. Near thing. What the hell,
rolling at that height in formation. Bombs on too. Christ, he'd
forgotten. No wonder he'd lost height. Tom, you're blotto. Sit
tight, you loon. You know you're blotto, so don't play the
fool.
It was easy flying. The bus flew itself. He was asleep with his
eyes open. Didn't know what was happening. Bus was flying
without him. Damn these clouds. Spots in the sky. Huns or
just spots? Didn't know, didn't care. He laughed like hell; it
was damn funny flying with the sky all knobbly and floppy and
swimmy not knowing or caring a cuss about anything. The old
bus was going a treat for a change - nothing like alcohol for
making an engine go, but you had to fill up the driver, not the
tank. Get rid of bombs. One, two, three, four. Good-bye bombs,
blow up wicked old Jerry. Glory glory alleluia; glory glory
alleluia; glory glory alleluia; as we go....
Christ, no mistaking that blasted pop-pop-pop-pop of machine guns.
Which way up was he. The bus was splitarsing about
like a loose kite. There was a flaming tripe shooting at someone.
Nasty looking things. Shoot the bastard. Hell, guns
wouldn't work. Loading handles. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. That
was O.K. Now where was the tripe? Where the hell was everyone?
Not an aeroplane anywhere. Damn funny how things
vanished. Where the devil was he? Better beat it westwards.
Oh God, tripes between him and home! What a life! Better
creep off south if he knew which way. Were those really tripes
or was he seeing things? Christ yes, they were tripes and they
were after him. Get the hell out of this. Nose down. Thirteen
hundred revs. Where was he going? God, they'd catch him.
Down, down. Four tripes, getting damn close. Cloud. Into it.
Plop. Like jumping out of a window into a fog.
Couldn't float around in a cloud till the war was over
though. Too bloody thirsty, for one thing. Blast those tripes,
setting on a man who wasn't in condition to look after himself.
And he must make water. Awkward in a cloud; might spin.
But the bus was still flying itself, bless it. And certainly nice
and private. Flick. He'd come out of the cloud without
meaning to. Half-roll back. Best thing would be to float down and
come out low and contour-chase home. Throttle back, gliding
at ninety.
God, it was funny the way those tripes must be dashing
about like wet hens trying to watch all the cloud. Cats with a
million mouse-holes to watch.
There was the ground. Out of the cloud. Below three thousand.
Now, away out of it. Sun would be southerly. Three-
thirty summer time. Could guess about where the sun was
behind the clouds. Where the devil was he? Couldn't recognize
a thing. There was some transport. Must be the hell of a way
over. Get along, Camel. Twelve fifty revs, hundred and ten
miles an hour, a thousand feet. When the devil was he coming
to the lines? Holy God, an aerodrome, buses with crosses.
Must be twenty-five miles over. Take a shot at it while he was
there. Two-seaters. One just going to take off. Down on it. Rat-
tat-tat-tat-tat. It swung round, turned over on its back. That
was a shock for them. What a joke, shot down taking off. Good
old Pommery.
He'd been flying with the sun on his right, bloody fool. All
wrong. Couldn't think, but try the opposite. A car. Strafe it.
God, the real thing. Trees lined the road, damn it. But down
on it. Better than strafing brass-hats. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Three in it. One at the back got up to jump, but collapsed. It
swerved into a tree. He lost it. Sudden burst of grey smoke
ahead. Gun. That would be firing west, anyhow. He was heading right. He'd just shot three men in a car. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
at that gun. Couldn't see any guns, but it looked a bit unnatural where that burst had come from. Camouflage. Let 'em
have it and then swerve away in case another gun fired. Must
he fifteen-inch all that way back. Pretty good to think of swerving.
He'd shot three men in a car; very likely killed them. Queer
thing to do. Quite right, but queer. Damned annoying for
them, probably German brass-hats lording it. They were going
to visit a general and drink brandy and arrange the deaths of a
few hundred or a few thousand more men, and up bobs a
Camel from nowhere and kills them. Damn funny that.
He contour-chased along, looking for targets, but the
exhilaration faded suddenly, quickly. Fear half-blinded him;
miles away over Hunland alone. He came on a handful of grey
soldiers marching. Came on them quite suddenly. God, he
couldn't. It would be crude murder. He pulled his nose up and
flew over them. He saw their faces looking up at him, some
mouths open with astonishment. One of them stopped and the
man behind bumped into him. Some were unslinging rifles.
They did not break ranks. He passed on.
The ground was broken and pitted and ruinous. He climbed,
searching the sky, but could see no aeroplanes. Yes, a two-
seater coming from the lines. He didn't mind that, and kept his
nose up to get out of range of ground machine guns. There
was La Bassee. He followed the canal and then crossed the
lines at Givenchy.
God, he'd been lucky. He got away with a lot. He'd come
perhaps thirty miles all alone across Hunland, and no one
seemed so much as to have fired at him. Pure drunkard's
luck. And, hell, he seemed to remember rolling with bombs on
at a hundred feet or so. He'd never go up tight again. He'd got
away with it this time. He'd take the lesson. But who would
have expected a solid downpour out of an all-grey sky to leave
off suddenly? And what a thirst he had. Well, he was nearly
home.
Then he realized he'd only been out an hour, or rather less.
Hell. He couldn't go back over the lines with that thirst. He
circled over Hinges wondering what to do. There was certainly
nothing to drink three thousand feet up in the air. Was a man
entitled to land for a drink during a patrol? Probably not. He'd
never heard of such a thing. If only his engine would miss, but
it was going well.
He saw something floating down towards him; a Camel. It
circled with him Dubois. Oh damn; that meant he must lead
Dubois to battle. He couldn't see properly. The edges of things
were blurred; there were spots. But Dubois wasn't a fire-eater;
wouldn't mind at all if they didn't go more than five yards
over. So they wandered up and down the lines for half an hour
without seeing anything but clouds, Archie, and an Ak-W; and
then Tom, fed up, turned for home. On the way they picked
up Hole.
After landing, Tom and Hole went to the mess and drank
tea, and then back to the hangars to wait for Mac. Hole
confided that after the scrap with the tripehounds he had lost
everyone and had come back across the lines and stopped
there, feeling too blotto and bleary for anything else. What
ought he to say about it?
`Just keep quiet,' Tom replied. `I've got a sensational yarn
that'll occupy attention.'
Mac and Baker came back twenty minutes later.
'So here you all are,' said Mac. `I thought the whole durn
bunch of you'd gone west. See that tripe I got?'
They shook heads.
`You sure are cock-eyed. Take my tip and go on the wagon
for a while.' He grinned. `You oughta seen it. I shot him up
and a bottom wing came off. He flopped over that side and
then all the other wings just peeled off and floated around
together. He must have felt peculiar sitting up there without
any wings. Where's Cross?'
No one knew.
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