The Song of the Rose

By Colin Brown

The Song of the Rose is a historical novel about the pioneer airmen of the Royal Flying Corps, set on the Western Front during the First World War. It's the story of fictional character Joe Graham, an educated working class lad who, having started his war in the trenches, first becomes an observer and then eventually a Sopwith Camel pilot during the period 1916 - 1918. The story is full of his adventures with real and imagined characters and encompasses the great battles of the Somme and Passchendaele as observed from the air. It also deals with the big questions around the conduct of the war, the unimaginable waste of millions of young lives and the unpredictable hand of Fate that took so many and spared so few.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: May 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783066315

Colin Brown

Colin Brown (1932–2019; DD, University of Nottingham; PhD, University of Bristol) was senior professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He taught and wrote on the historical Jesus, Christology, philosophical theology, New Testament theology, history and criticism, and miracles. He served as editor of?The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology?and was the author of several books, including?Miracles and the Critical Mind, History and Faith,?and?Jesus in European Protestant Thought.

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The Song of the Rose

Colin Brown

Copyright © 2014 Colin Brown

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of

the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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Contents

Cover

About the Author

The Song of the Rose

PART ONE

I

II

III

IV

PART TWO

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

PART THREE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

PART FOUR

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

PART FIVE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Author’s Note – Fact and Fiction

About the Author

Colin Brown

3rd October 1925 – 2nd November 2012

Dad was born on the outskirts of Ryton village in Northumberland, the eldest of three brothers. He lived and worked his whole life in the North East of England, was married for sixty years to our mother, Mary, and died at the age of 87 – as predicted.

He was a musician, a sportsman, a bon viveur and a natural storyteller (some would say exaggerator). He wrote this book entirely for his own enjoyment and therefore wasn’t the least bit shy about writing himself into history alongside some of his greatest real life heroes – many of who were dead before he was born. It’s a work of fiction and fantasy, the remembered dreams of a young man who was already in middle-age when he started writing. If he occasionally gets things wrong or gives offence, please forgive him.

To all his friends and family, I think, in Joe Graham, Dad gave us a version of himself he would like us to remember.

H.S. November 2013

THE SONG OF THE ROSE

Hear me, then, though I am but a flower,

Sang the rose within its scented bower;

Gather me, although my slender stem you sever;

You know I cannot live forever…

PART ONE

I

In the ancient manner of their species, the young English soldier and the old French sparrow sharing a broken limber beside the Doullens-Albert road slept fitfully through the last night of May and into June. The limber lay near the top of a long gradient. Over the brow, the road south-west descended through undulating chalk downland towards the Ancre and Somme rivers and the town of Albert. There were no hedges or ditches along the next four-mile section up to the point where it crossed the Roman-built highway from Amiens to Arras.

The scheduled moment for daybreak came and went without making any significant impression on a heavily overcast sky. Congested two-way traffic dwindled within minutes to desultory north-bound vehicles and soon ceased altogether. Even in broad daylight, German artillerymen could have seen nothing of either traffic or traveller, but the two enemy aviators making ready to ascend in a hydrogen-filled observation balloon north of La Boisselle would shortly have the whole area under surveillance. For all practical clandestine purposes, the night was over.

The soldier awoke some twenty minutes later when the renewed throb of engines drifted up the hill. The sound faded then surged again as drivers found lower gears for the long incline.

He was in a good position to intercept the convoy. The gradient was not steep but the road surface was treacherous in many places, damaged by enemy shelling and a high level of wear and tear. Had he accepted the friendly wagoner’s advice, he would have gone on to the crossroads.

‘They’re still at Doullens, mate,’ the driver had said, ‘and if they don’t get to the crossroads before daylight, those Jerry gunners will ‘ave ‘em for breakfast!’

In which case, he had reasoned, there would be nothing to wait for.

Through the mist halfway down the hill, a motorcycle combination emerged, picking its way between the potholes and the night’s accumulated debris. He saw the machine stop fifty yards away and the driver dismount to remove what looked like a half flattened oil drum from the middle of the road. Snatching up the kitbag he had used as a pillow and a bulging valise, the soldier stumbled stiff-legged down the hill.

The passenger in the sidecar wore a brown leather coat, leather helmet and goggles. The note of exasperation in his voice carried up the hill.

‘Shift that old drum, Albert! And put that old sack in that big hole over there – comprenez vous?’

‘Yes, Flight.’

The soldier got to within a few yards of the motorcycle and set down his bags.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’ the occupant of the sidecar asked, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘If you’re looking for a lift to Albert, I’m afraid we can’t help you.’

‘Royal Flying Corps?’

‘We are.’

‘Er… I’ve forgotten the number… Major Johnson’s squadron?’

‘It is.’

The soldier stepped up to the sidecar and held out his crumpled orders. ‘Second Lieutenant Joe Graham – 12th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers – reporting not quite as ordered,’ he said, smiling.

Pushing back his goggles, the flight sergeant glanced again at the chevroned sleeve and took the document offered. ‘Oh, Lieutenant Graham, is it?’ he said, squinting at the paper in the half-light. ‘You’ll forgive the mistake, Mr. Graham, but the uniform isn’t quite right, is it, sir?’

Blue eyes set in dark, red-rimmed sockets twinkled brightly at the flight sergeant. ‘Sorry about that, friend. Could you recommend a good tailor in these parts?’

The leather-bound face refused to yield its inscrutable expression. ‘Not at this moment, Mr. Graham, but not to worry. If and when we get to Vassy, I’ve no doubt our very capable Quartermaster will find you something more appropriate to your new rank’. He eyed the elegant knee-length cavalry boots Joe was wearing. ‘Meanwhile, at least we appear to be have the footwear correct, except they’re German, aren’t they?’

‘I took them off a German,’ Joe said, ‘but they were made in Austria.’

The flight sergeant pushed the orders under the flap of a map case on his lap and held out his hand. ‘Flight Sergeant Mowbray Swift, in charge of squadron administration,’ he said, smiling for the first time. ‘This is Corporal Ross – we call him Albert. Sorry you missed us at Izel le Hameau. I telephoned the hospital at Bertangles last night but you had already left. We had to get off the road at Doullens to let a New Army convoy through. You must have passed us in the dark.’

‘Yes, apparently,’ Joe said. ‘I got a lift on a wagon out of Doullens late last night but then the driver told me you were still somewhere behind. I have no idea where Vassy is, so I decided to wait here.’

Swift looked back down the hill. A Crossley light tender with steam gushing from its radiator led the column out of the mist. ‘Better get aboard, sir,’ he said.

Joe added his baggage to the collection in the rear compartment of the side-car and climbed onto the pillion seat behind Ross. Fifty yards ahead of the leading tender, they crested the hill and began picking their way carefully down the reverse slope. After half a mile, the road began to climb again and with the overcast now lifting rapidly, by the time they got to the top of the next hillock there was a brightness in the east that let them see as far as the horizon. On the flight sergeant’s command, Ross turned off the road and stopped the engine, well ahead of the main convoy.

Swift stood with his feet astride the luggage and scanned the eastern skyline through a large pair of field glasses. His left arm described a forty-five degree radius. ‘I’m looking for a balloon, Mr. Graham,’ he said. ‘A German balloon – over there somewhere.’

‘I know the one you mean,’ Joe said, standing up on the foot-rests. ‘It’s a little bit farther north, I think.’ He squinted through the haze. ‘I can’t see anything… but I can hear aeroplanes… I think they’re ours?’

The unmistakable organ-drone of Beardmore engines approaching from the west swelled then faded again as the aircraft passed almost directly overhead but well above the overcast.

‘You’re quite right. In fact, that was our very own A Flight on its way to keep that old drachen’s head down while we get through this next stretch of road,’ said Corporal Ross. ‘If they see us now, we’ll never get to Vassy – or anywhere else.’ He looked sideways at Swift. ‘That’s why sensible people only travel at night on this part of the road.’ He kicked the engine back to life. ‘Come on, Flight – they’re catching up again!’

At a good average ten miles to the hour, the long chain of vehicles bumped its way up and down the highroad tramped by the Roman legions in their conquest of Gaul. The English had used it many times since then to make war in France – Agincourt and Crécy lay not far away. Indeed, the old province of Picardy was well accustomed to the afflictions of war, which took its menfolk and laid waste the land with historic regularity. But not since the early days of the present conflict, after the Germans had been held at the Marne, had there been much action hereabouts. The Department of the Somme had remained stolidly indifferent to the great British battles of 1915 – Second Ypres, Neuve Chappelle and Loos – fought some distance to the north. Now, in the summer of 1916, only Verdun, the greatest bastion of French hopes fifty miles to the south, prompted what vestiges of patriotic fervour remained for any fighting outside the province. Each day, the peasantry despatched its quota to this sacred sacrifice and went steadfastly about its labours. Preparations by the English for perhaps an even greater battle on the very doorstep were of little concern.

The squadron moving lock, stock and barrel down the Albert road that morning was one of a number of flying units drawn from the three established British armies in Northern France and Belgium, supplemented by fresh squadrons from England, to provide air support for an entirely new Fourth Army. Over half a million virgin soldiers were presently gathering behind a twenty mile front in this almost forgotten region of the Somme for an offensive designed to break the current deadlock for the British and at the same time draw off large German forces from Verdun.

The airfield at Vassy lay between the Ancre and Somme rivers, five miles west of Albert. It was ten miles closer to the front than the larger fields at Bertangles and Vert Galant on the old Doullens road, but normally only tenable in the dry summer months. The French had used it periodically in support of holding operations by their Sixth Army, astride the Somme.

The sun broke through long before the column reached the crossroads. For twenty minutes they trundled under the guns of numerous German batteries, any one of which could have brought the enterprise to a premature end. But, for the first time in weeks, the Feldluftschiffer-Abteilung had no balloon flying at four hundred metres in the neighbourhood of La Boisselle come daylight. Only one battery commander, witness to the slaughter of the observers in the spinning basket, put two and two together and guessed, rightly, that the attack on the balloon was no accidental encounter by English airmen on casual patrol. They had arrived at the precise moment to catch the bag neither up nor down. They were obviously less intent on destroying it than with keeping it on the ground. There must be something important happening beyond the British wire that they did not want him to know about – or shoot at. But what could that be? The lance corporal by the telephone shrugged a negative response to his unspoken question. The guns remained silent.

On reaching the crossroads, Corporal Ross stopped the motorcycle near a military police post and they watched the cavalcade negotiate the right-hand turn onto the Amiens road. Counting trailers, there were nearly forty vehicles.

‘How much farther, Albert?’ Joe asked, easing his left leg gingerly over the rear wheel.

‘About five miles, sir,’ Ross said, reaching for the half cigarette behind his right ear and adding wistfully, ‘Mother, where’s me breakfast?’

Flight Sergeant Swift was checking the passing vehicles against a list clipped to his map case. He stopped on the count of thirty-seven and looked back over his shoulder. The road was empty. Jumping from his seat, he ran across to the red-capped M.P. on duty.

‘We’ve lost one, Sergeant!’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t lost the bloody lot, mate. You must be a friend of the Kaiser?’

‘His uncle, in fact,’ said Swift, relieved as he spoke to see the sun glint on a windscreen at the top of the last rise. ‘We’ve got his grandmother in that last lorry.’

‘She’ll get one up the arse from Whistling Willie if she don’t move it shortly!’ the sergeant said, squinting in disbelief at a shell-free sky.

The old Leyland ambulance spluttered up to the crossroads, firing reluctantly on three cylinders. Swift chose to ignore the two-fingered right-hand turn signal from the exasperated driver, appended the final tick to his list and walked back to the side-car.

From thereon they could relax and enjoy what was left of the journey. The sun shone from a cloudless sky and the land at the foot of the downs flamed in all its early summer glory, almost all of it still under cultivation. Young corn rippled like green water in the turbulence raised by the passing lorries, and in a field of sugar beet, peasants in sun hats and smocks looked up from pre-breakfast weeding to wave a welcome.

‘They must think we’re more of their lot or they wouldn’t be quite as pleased to see us,’ Swift shouted above the popping engine. ‘They get mixed up with the old red, white and blue.’ In his ignorance, the pillion passenger might have made the same error of judgment in distinguishing between English and French roundels.

They stopped at one point where a large flock of geese was being driven from a small paddock picked bare of grass onto marshy ground on the other side of the road. For two of the birds, the transfer ended in tragedy. Swift made a mental note of the lorry involved after picking up the trail of feathers.

Along the wooded stretches and wherever there was supporting vegetation, the wild roses of Picardy bloomed in great profusion, dominating a floral display that had Flight Sergeant Swift leaping in and out of the side-car every few hundred yards to collect specimens.

‘He paints them,’ Ross explained.

The airfield lay behind a thick belt of trees on the left side of the road. A small advance party had been in occupation for several days, preparing for their reception, but there were few signs of life when the first tender turned in through the gates. Not until the third vehicle had passed him was the sentry sufficiently aroused to attempt a ‘present arms’ that would have earned him fifty lashes in any previous war and a certain bollocking from Swift had the flight sergeant’s botanical excursions not put him well down the column.

They trundled through the wood and onto the airfield itself. At the last postern, a short, podgy man, wearing an unconvincing sergeant major’s uniform waved a friendly signal to each driver. There were two sets of tracks beyond the gate. Those on the left led off around the perimeter, a freshly-drawn arrow indicating that this was indeed the prescribed route; the second set led straight across the field. But by this time the leading driver’s Crossley was in no condition to cope with any further diversion. His loose interpretation of the sergeant major’s vague instruction quickly transformed the whole procession into a spectacular charge for the promised land.

The sound of this unleashed horsepower brought the advance party out from between blankets in some alarm. The sight of six Leyland light tenders, seven Crossley heavy tenders with trailers, three shed lorries with portable sheds, four motor-repair lorries, four reserve equipment lorries, a motor generator lorry, an ambulance and several motor-cycle combinations bearing down on them in three-deep line-abreast prompted a general retreat from the line of bell tents. A Very signal fired by Flight Sergeant Swift fell unheeded in front of the leading tender, but the charge faltered in front of a cluster of tall trees harbouring petrol and oil storage tanks and Ross was able to make up what lost ground remained. The motorcycle fetched up on the tar-macadam strip in front of the main hangar, well ahead of the pack. The solitary mechanic in attendance walked through the hangar door and almost into their front wheel. Swift leaned forward and thrust his posy into the startled man’s hand. ‘Put these in water for me, Moran,’ he said, ‘and guard them with your life – comprenez vous?’

The transports wheeled to the left and right of the trees with horns blaring, but now a second motorcycle burst through the undergrowth, cutting bravely across their path. Perched on the pillion was the fat sergeant major. This time, there was no ambiguity about his signals; they were commanding and decisive. He led them off in a wide semi-circle, finally bringing them to a halt in three-column order on the main hangar apron, under the critical eye of Flight Sergeant Swift. At once, each lorry began discharging its quota of acetylene welders, armourers, batmen, blacksmiths, cooks, electricians and the other sixteen trades. Nearly all of them were in urgent need of physical relief, a condition brought to an advanced state over the final part of the journey.

Swift’s voice was immediately directed at a group of men gathering behind a trailer:

‘That is R.F.C. property you’re pissing on, Porter! Find the latrines, you men, or I’ll have you all on a charge – comprenez-vous?’

Discipline reasserted itself. N.C.O.s briefed by Swift and the fat sergeant major quickly organised work parties and assigned them to urgent tasks, including the preparation of breakfast for over two hundred men. After each lorry had disgorged its load, it was driven off the apron to an allotted park. The motor generator lorry drove straight into the maintenance hangar. Swift moved quickly to intercept it, rapping sharply on the driver’s door.

‘I want those geese, Perkins!’ he demanded. ‘Come on, Corporal – hand ‘em over. You’ll be lucky if I don’t put you on a charge. In any case, you’ll be too tired to think about food when you come off guard duty tonight!’

A chevroned arm lowered a weighty kitbag through the cab window, after which the lorry lurched with vexed crashing of gears to a corner of the hangar. Swift walked back to the side-car. Lifting out three of the four items of luggage, he stowed the kitbag carefully away and replaced the baggage. ‘We’ll just leave your bags here for the moment, Mr. Graham,’ he said. ‘You won’t need them for a while. We sleep out, here, by the way.’

‘Out? Out where?’

‘I wouldn’t know that yet, sir. My fat friend there was detailed to make the arrangements. There’ll be some in the village and some at the orchard, I expect.’ He pulled out an elegant half-hunter gold watch and flipped open the cover. ‘Six o’clock! So where are you, me brave boys?’ He cocked an ear. ‘Ah – there you are!’

Over the insulating belt of trees along the eastern boundary, the four F.E.2bs Joe had heard but not seen floated into view. Against the shunting lorries and with engines well throttled, they wheeled almost in silence, each reaching tentatively for its piece of level ground. With Joe and Corporal Ross struggling to keep pace, the flight sergeant set off at a brisk walk towards a row of corrugated iron sheds along the fringe of the trees. Three of the aircraft were taxiing towards the sheds; the fourth had come to a stop almost immediately upon landing. Somewhere behind them a Klaxon began making urgent noises, whereupon Swift suddenly changed direction for the stationary F.E.2b. The ambulance tender clattered past under a new lease of life. They saw Swift break into a trot and leap onto the running-board.

‘That’s Bobby Dawson’s Fee,’ Ross panted. ‘Looks like he’s been wounded.’

‘Fee?’

‘F.E.2b – the type of aeroplane. That’s Dawson in the back seat.’

Joe let the corporal draw ahead. Aggravated by the motorcycle ride, the wound in his left buttock was beginning to feel uncomfortable and he could barely disguise the limp. He stood on the fringe of the crowd and watched them lift the injured pilot from the high nacelle. They propped him against the front of the ambulance after removing his flying coat and tunic. The ambulance driver tore the blood-stained left shirt sleeve from cuff to shoulder and began applying a tourniquet. From what Joe could see of the injury, it looked like a first-class ticket back to Blighty. ‘How bad is it?’ he heard Swift ask.

‘There’s a bullet hole clean through the upper arm,’ said the ambulance driver, twisting the wooden toggles. ‘He’s lost a hell of a lot of blood. Lucky he didn’t pass out in the air.’

A tall aristocratic-looking airman in smart black leathers thrust his way through the crowd to join Swift and the wounded pilot’s observer.

‘Well, Swifty, is it serious?’

‘We don’t think so, Captain Renton, but he’s lost a lot of blood – oh, what a pity, you’ve put your foot right in it, sir!’

The flight commander’s face blanched and his foot lifted involuntarily. The crowd sniggered at his reaction. Renton forced himself to laugh with them. More than he could have admitted to anyone, he wished the blood on his boots were his own. Discarding flying helmet, goggles and gauntlets in slightly theatrical style, he handed these to Swift. Then, ignoring the flight sergeant’s obvious resentment, he inclined his tall frame towards the prostrate pilot, clasping both hands behind his back. It was the way royalty kept an intimate distance.

‘Well, Bobby, that was damn fine shootin’, if I may say so! I don’t think there was much left of the two Huns in the basket after your man Wilson here finished with them and you certainly gave that drachen’s arse a towsin’!’

Lieutenant Dawson managed to frame the question uppermost in his mind: ‘But why didn’t it burn, for Chris’sake? I put three drums into the blessed thing!’ He turned his head and addressed his observer. ‘Why didn’t you concentrate on the bag instead of the basket, Ollie? I’m sure the two of us together could have set the thing on fire.’

Sergeant Wilson put his finger on the knot of the bandage for them to tie it tightly, but said nothing. The pressure he exerted made Joe wince and Lieutenant Dawson cry.

‘Not to worry, laddie,’ said Captain Renton, cheerfully. ‘You’ve got your first wound stripe and a certain ticket to Blighty.’ They finished tying the bandage and he waved an imperious hand. ‘Come on – into the ambulance with him!’

They lifted Dawson onto a stretcher and put him in the ambulance. Corporal Ross climbed in beside him and the vehicle drove off. Mechanics began manhandling Dawson’s aircraft towards the hangars and the crowd dispersed, leaving Joe under the curious gaze of Captain Renton and the other members of the flight.

‘This is Second Lieutenant Joe Graham, DCM,’ said Flight Sergeant Swift, addressing the flight commander. ‘He’s an ex-Northumberland Fusilier.’

‘An ex-what?’

Joe felt his hackles rise.

‘The Northumberland Fusiliers is an infantry regiment from the north east of England, sir,’ Swift explained. ‘Mr. Graham is our latest replacement observer. I believe he is something of an expert with machine guns. His promotion from sergeant occurred only a matter of a few days ago,’ he added, seeking to explain the discrepancy between rank and uniform.

‘Well, well!’ said Renton, offering a limp hand after waiting in vain for the expected salute. ‘Glad to have you, Graham. We could certainly do with a little more distinguished conduct and some better shootin’ in this flight – could we not, Mr. Scott?’

The fresh-faced youth turned his head away. There were angry looks on the faces of the others.

‘I doubt very much whether Lieutenant Graham will be attached to this flight, Captain Renton,’ said Swift smugly, ‘except when Major Johnson is with you.’

‘Oh, what a pity… what a great pity,’ said Renton, mockingly. ‘Still, he may as well meet everybody.’ He began introducing them. ‘The chap they’ve just carried away was Lieutenant Bobby Dawson and this is his gunner, Sergeant Wilson. The little chap is Alec Scott, my observer, and, continuing with the schoolboy element, we have Trevor Busbie and Nigel Ashcroft – the life and soul of the squadron, they would have the rest of us believe. To end on a somewhat brighter note, we have Reg Porterfield and Sandy Martin, freshly arrived from 22 Squadron. There are two flights still to come and the skipper is expected back from leave some time today – is that right, Swifty?’

‘About midday,’ Swift confirmed.

‘So,’ said Renton, rubbing his hands, ‘that ends the formalities. Now, what about breakfast?’

‘Over there,’ said Swift, pointing to some wooden buildings behind the hangars.

Joe followed them towards the huts, musing on his first impressions of the company he had chosen to join in preference to the battalion of friends he had left behind in the Fricourt sector of the line now largely held by the New Army. He had left men from his own village; they had been his only direct link with home in fourteen months. There had been and still were occasional meetings with his younger brother Jonathan, serving with a medical unit near the French sector and less frequent reunions with his eldest brother Jack, a Royal Engineer. But unlike either of them, he had not had a home leave since coming to France early the previous year. Shit-houses like Captain Renton were a common hazard in any army unit and he hoped there weren’t more of them around. With Flight Sergeant Mowbray Swift, he was tremendously impressed, as with the brave Lieutenant Dawson. In the weasel-featured Sergeant Wilson, he sensed an alien spirit but friendliness in the rest that pleased him.

The place was now a hive of activity. Parties of men were erecting bell tents over yellow patches of earth recently vacated by Frenchmen. Sweating with the effort of driving wooden stakes into the iron-hard ground, many had already discarded their shirts and vests. They looked bronzed and healthy and stones heavier than the average trench party of his recent experience. Life in the Royal Flying Corps must have its compensations.

Joe noticed that the conversation going on around Captain Renton was calculated to ignore him completely. Animated and high-pitched, it had a familiar ring; excess nervous tension was finding blessed release. This time, Fate had settled for a couple of dead Huns and a pint of Bobby Dawson’s blood. Life flowed with the adrenaline and tasted oh so sweet. Lieutenant Trevor Busbie’s barely broken voice rose, piping above the rest:

‘D’you see that damn’ great hole in my top-plane, Graham? A howling great Howitzer shell did that! I saw it at the top of its parabola. No time to get out of the way – we simple barged into the thing – whoops!’ He sank to his knees, laughing, but still tightly clasping a large canvas covered box that Joe took to be an aerial camera. His almost hysterical giggle sounded childish and unfunny, but they all laughed.

‘Did I hear Swifty say you were with the Northumberland Fusiliers, Graham?’

Joe shortened his stride to match that of the young subaltern, Alec Scott. ‘Yes, I’ve been with the regiment since December ’fourteen,’ he said.

‘I’ve got a cousin in that regiment by the name of Watson,’ Scott said. ‘He’s a corporal.’

‘If you mean Corporal Tommy Watson, I know him well,’ Joe said, ‘although he isn’t in our battalion. He’s with the Tyneside Irish, not far from here.’

‘That’s the New Army, isn’t it? He sounds like the same animal.’

‘The Tommy Watson I know is just a kid,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t think he’s seventeen even now, although he’s been in the army almost as long as I have.’

‘We must have the same chap,’ said Scott. ‘My Tommy Watson claims to be the youngest corporal in the British Army.’

Joe laughed. ‘I wouldn’t like to argue the point with him. He looks at least twenty-two or three, weighs thirteen stones and has aggressive tendencies that multiply with the opposition.’

‘He is rather forthright,’ Scott acknowledged. ‘I must confess I find it difficult to understand a word he says in that awful Geordie dialect. Do you live in his part of the world, Joe? I wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Tommy comes from the rough end of Blaydon known as The Spike,’ Joe said. ‘I live at Ryton, a country village about three miles up river from Blaydon. My father helped to sink the shaft of one of the local collieries, although he originally hailed from Portsmouth and has seafaring blood in him. He married a local girl and stayed on as the colliery surveyor. We were all born in Ryton – four boys and a girl. A grammar school education knocked a few rough edges off me, but I’m a Geordie right enough. I worked at the Emma Colliery until I was eighteen.’

‘I come from Bath, myself,’ Scott said. ‘Most of us are from around the Bristol area. One or two of the gunners are from foreign parts but I don’t think you’ll find a single Geordie in the whole squadron.’

‘That doesn’t say much for the squadron,’ Joe said.

They had come to the larger of two wooden huts close to the trees. A chalked notice proclaimed it as the ‘Temp. Flight Mess – Officers & Sgts.’

‘Looks like we all mess together for a while,’ Scott said. ‘I hope the sergeants bring their cook with them; ours is rather non bon, I’m afraid.’

‘He has to be an improvement on what I’ve been used to,’ Joe said.

Flight Sergeant Swift put his head through the door. ‘You’d better be quick if you want some breakfast, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘There are only one or two places left and that hog Brown is still to come.’ He broke off to stare past them, shielding his eyes against the sun.

They turned and looked back. Over by the hangars, the fat sergeant major was standing with arms outspread, his hands turned in at the wrists, apparently trying to convey some sort of message to Flight Sergeant Swift.

Swift stood for several seconds, his brow furrowed in concentration. ‘My God, he’s right!’ he exclaimed. ‘They won’t go in!’ Brushing past them, he set off at a lively trot in the direction of his brother N.C.O.

Scott looked at Joe. ‘I wonder what that was all about?’

‘I think your aeroplanes might be too big for those little sheds,’ said Joe.

‘There were Bessoneau hangars here last time we did a recce,’ Scott said. ‘The Frogs must have taken them with them.’ He sighed regretfully, ‘I must confess I’m not very impressed with Vassy so far – not that we wanted to leave Izel; we’d spent months fixing that place up.’

Joe’s mind went back to the succession of dugouts he’d lived in off and on for the past year. Christ, what did this guy have to complain about? ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘that’s life.’

‘You’ll find we need that extra bit of comfort,’ Scott said defensively. ‘Come on – let’s eat.’

The company was sitting at a long table comprising three short table-tops placed end-to-end on trestles. There was a communal washbowl just inside the door. After a salutary dip of their hands into the grey liquid, they duly transferred their share of grime to a sodden roller-towel and found two places between Sergeant Wilson and Lieutenant Busbie’s gunner, Nigel Ashcroft. The smell of bacon frying had Joe’s stomach rumbling at the first hint of food in nine or ten hours.

‘It’s omelette, of course,’ said Ashcroft, making room for Scott.

‘Bates has a penchant for omelettes,’ Scott explained.

‘When this war is over, I’ll never eat another omelette,’ Ashcroft vowed.

Lieutenant Busbie had not been carrying an aerial camera, it now transpired, but a very high quality portable gramophone. He removed the canvas cover with great care and showmanship and set it down beside Sergeant Wilson at the end of the table. Next, he opened his flying coat to reveal the detachable horn of the instrument tied to his Sam Browne belt with string. From his right-hand pocket, he produced the winding handle and from the left, a small metal box containing gramophone needles. Finally, he unclipped the canvas pocket inside the lid and carefully extracted a record. He looked around the table. Only Joe was taking the slightest interest.

‘Ah, Graham! You look like a musical sort of chap. What would you like?’

‘That one,’ Joe said, making it easy for him.

Busbie squinted at the label. ‘I hope you’ve got highbrow tastes?’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘This is one of mater’s – can’t even read the damned title! I like the music hall songs best, but they’re nearly all worn to shreds.’

For a time, the obscure Italian aria sung by an unfamiliar German baritone made no impression on the breakfast conversation, to which Busbie himself contributed a major portion. Pausing only for the occasional swallow, they all talked at once on the one burning topic of conversation. Feeling he ought to join in, Joe asked ‘What actually happened to the balloon, Alec? There seems to be a difference of opinion.’

Scott threw a quick glance at Captain Renton, who was sitting at the end of the table. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said testily. ‘I only saw the wretched thing from a distance. We went in first, just as they were getting it into the air. I got off one drum – which only takes about five seconds – before Renton turned away. It’s difficult to see anything behind you in the Fee, but Porterfield and then Busbie followed us in. Then, after we’d come right round, I saw Bobby and Ollie almost on top of the thing, blazing away with both guns. They couldn’t have missed it if they’d tried but nothing seemed to happen. This Buckingham ammunition we’re using doesn’t seem to work very well. I’d say we all hit it, but they’ll probably patch it up again.’

‘You only made one attack?’

Scott nodded in Busbie’s direction. ‘Not the way he’s telling it, but believe me, it’s no picnic anywhere near German balloons. They’ve got piles of riflemen and scores of machine guns under every drachen, not to mention all sorts of flak. And to add to all that, there’s usually at least one flight of Fokkers somewhere handy.’

‘Were there any this morning?’

‘No. The Hun has been rather scarce lately. We reckon we’ve about got him licked but it was just as well there weren’t any. We had to stay there for quite a while in case they sent up another drachen. At twelve hundred feet we were sitting ducks for the likes of Boelcke or Immelmann, but they wouldn’t be expecting a balloon attack this far south. Old Swifty was right after all; he was quite certain we’d have no interference from the air, especially with the other two flights attracting attention elsewhere.’

‘Did Swift plan the balloon attack along with everything else?’ Joe said.

‘If he didn’t actually plan it, it was certainly Swifty who thought of it in the first place,’ said Scott, again with a sideways look at his flight commander. ‘Renton didn’t want to do it; he wanted to wait until the major got back. But we had our orders to move and Bob Crombie – he’s in charge of B Flight – shamed Renton into it. I suppose you know there’s a big push coming off shortly and the roads at night are absolutely chock-a-block.’

On Joe’s right, Sergeant Oliver Wilson had not said one word throughout the conversation. Indeed, with his mouth filled to capacity, it was not conceivable that he could have spoken at all. His sallow cheeks bulged with compressed omelette and semi-masticated croissant, whilst his straw-coloured teeth snapped at every morsel arriving on a darting fork, occasionally supplemented by his knife. He chewed open-mouthed, his jaws chomping like pistons and his Adam’s apple bobbing the full length of his throat as he swallowed. Only the gramophone distracted him. Periodically he put down his knife to give the handle a turn or move the needle back to the beginning of the record. He made no effort to turn the record over, much to Joe’s annoyance, but after a while the reason for his apparent interest in the music revealed itself. At a certain point in the aria where the baritone held a long note, Sergeant Wilson stopped chewing temporarily in order to concentrate on the precise moment for an adjustment to the speed control. This had the effect of modulating the work into a higher key and transforming the German’s guttural top F into an open-throated high C, of which Enrico Caruso would have been proud. The first time this happened Busbie glared reproachfully down the table, but on the second occasion he started to see the humour of it; by the third time, he was as anxious as Wilson that the adjustment be made with the necessary precision, after which everybody waited in eager anticipation to add their vocal support.

‘Queer old bird, Ollie,’ Scott whispered. ‘I don’t quite know what to make of him. Fair gives me the creeps. I was with B Flight the day he got his Albatros. He’s the only one apart from the major with a Hun to his credit, by the way.’

‘That can’t be bad, surely?’

Scott hesitated. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said, ‘but that Albatros was a B-type – it was unarmed. There were four of us. You should have seen Ollie murder those two Germans. I don’t think even Renton could have done it.’

‘You mean he enjoyed it?’

‘Yes – he did. I suppose there are people who… relish that sort of thing?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘A Flight lost three crews in two days that week,’ Scott said, raising his teacup, ‘so they transferred Bobby Dawson and Ollie to us.’ His hand shook. ‘Renton and I are the only survivors from the original flight. I suppose I should be grateful for that.’

Across the table, the two ex-members of No. 22 Squadron resumed a discussion interrupted by Sergeant Wilson’s diversion with the gramophone:

‘Getting back to what I was saying Reg, I think we ought to have done considerably better this morning and my combat report will definitely indicate where we went wrong,’ said Lieutenant Sandy Martin.

‘Oh, indeed! And what will be your excuse, old boy?’

‘My excuse?’

‘You are the bloody gunner, after all.’

‘Exactly. If you’d left the gunnery to the expert and concentrated on the flying, we might have got somewhere.’

‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ grated Porterfield, struggling to clear a piece of croissant threatening to lodge in his windpipe. ‘Concentrated my arse! Had I not been concentrating one hundred per cent, I’d have blown your scruffy little head off.’

Sandy Martin carefully picked over his plate in search of the ideal piece of bacon to match the square inch of egg mixture on his fork. ‘While you were popping away indiscriminately at that old drachen, there was nobody flying the aeroplane – am I right?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because we were all over the damned sky!’

‘I was taking evasive action, you nitwit.’

‘So you admit it then?’

‘Admit what?’

‘You admit you were shit-frightened, lost control of the aircraft and consequently put me completely off my aim.’

The croissant rose again in Porterfield’s throat, almost choking him. He was an immense man, several inches over six feet tall and carrying fifteen stones, of which not one ounce appeared to be superfluous. Martin, a good foot shorter and five stones lighter, looked frail by comparison. A man as dedicated as he was to the art of baiting Reginald Porterfield needed to be very sure of his man.

‘You know damn’ well how I detest having to fire the blasted machine gun,’ spluttered Porterfield, spraying crumbs down the side of Martin’s face. ‘That is the one and only reason for having you in my aeroplane at all. Yet, on this occasion, you seemed even more reluctant than usual to perform your limited duties. I therefore had no option but to take responsibility myself.’

‘I put it down to pure funk, culminating in panic,’ said Martin, delivering the final straw.

Porterfield hooked a shining boot around the leg of Martin’s chair and wrenched it from under him. The gunner’s head dipped onto the remains of his omelette and disappeared under the table.

‘That,’ said Porterfield, standing up and dusting his palms, ‘is what would have happened to you, my friend, if we had flown straight and level at that drachen.’ He spread his great arms, yawning loudly in mock fatigue. ‘God, I’m tired this morning. Where does one find a bed in this godforsaken place?’

‘Try the floor!’ Martin suggested, taking a firm grip on Porterfield’s ankles.

Porterfield wavered but then set himself to resist the pressure. His immense strength seemed too much for the lightweight gunner until Busbie leaned across the table to poke the pilot in the chest with a rigid forefinger, while Martin fetched him a telling blow behind the left knee. This and a final push from Busbie did the trick. A passing waiter carrying a tray of empty plates bore the brunt of his fall. Busbie leapt onto the table shouting encouragement:

‘Hang on, Sandy old man – reinforcements are on the way. Come on, Ashcroft!’

Closely followed by Ashcroft, Busbie launched himself at Porterfield’s sprawling figure, landing square across the big pilot’s chest. Ashcroft’s weight as he jumped brought the centre table whipping up behind him, catapulting crockery over his head. Partisan cheering broke out on the remaining two tables. Sergeant Wilson stopped chewing momentarily to give the gramophone handle a quick turn and flick the speed regulator to give maximum revolutions.

Feeling very old, Joe looked at his watch. It was still only a few minutes to seven. Was all this really happening or was he dreaming still on that old limber?

Ten black shadows flicked across the grass plot between the mess and the adjacent building. Lagging by a split second, the blasting roar of Beardmore engines at full power and only a few feet above the roof was made even more dramatic by the whipping crack of a large section of loose roofing felt caught in the slipstream. Under the impression that a shell or bomb had burst on the roof, the entire company, including Joe, joined the quartet on the floor. The building rocked on its founds and, whether due to sonic impact or the strain on rotting wood, the panel of twelve small windows opposite the doorway dropped with a crash out of its frame.

In the process of winding his way down the vocal register, the German baritone arrived at the end of his long groove. The needle churned wearily over the red circle of paper in the centre of the record and finally gouged its way to a stop. A shimmering cloud of paint flakes and dust drifted gently down over the prostrate assembly. Then the door opened on creaking hinges, letting the unmistakable shadow of Flight Sergeant Mowbray Swift fall across the floor.

‘Corporal Ross?’

After a pause, there came a muffled sneeze and the response, ‘Yes Flight?’ from behind the partition.

‘Make out a requisition for twelve panes of glass, nine-be-six, and present it with my compliments to Captain Crombie when he reports.’

‘Yes, Flight.’

‘Also, arrange for damages and breakages to be docked in equal proportions against Lieutenant Porterfield, Lieutenant Martin, Second Lieutenant Ashcroft and, of course, Lieutenant Busbie – comprenez vous?’

‘With pleasure, Flight.’

‘Thank you, Albert. And thank you, gentlemen!’

II

The aircraft were parked wing to wing in front of the corrugated iron canopies that had served at least one French squadron well enough as shelters for its Morane-Saulnier parasol monoplanes, but which were inches too low to accommodate the English biplanes. Quartermaster Sergeant Joseph Kilpatrick had promised Bessoneau canvas hangars within twenty-four hours, but, looking for an easier solution, the indefatigable Flight Sergeant Swift had suggested that digging shallow trenches down the centre of each shed would create the required headroom. Further trenching between and at the rear of the sheds would provide the necessary drainage. This work was now in progress.

They looked more impressive lined up on the ground than they did in the air, Joe thought. They were pusher-driven as opposed to the tractor type, the engine being situated behind the pilot’s cockpit, with slender wooden booms connecting wings and tail empennage – an arrangement designed to overcome the problem of frontal fire for the machine guns. It was the British answer, for the time being, to the Fokker-engineered forward-firing gun on the E-type Fokker monoplanes and other German aircraft.

A freshly carpentered wooden rostrum stood invitingly under the nose of the first machine in the line. Joe climbed two of the three steps and put his hands on the rim of the forward nacelle, in which a small, oil-covered mechanic was working.

‘Morning,’ he said, ‘I’m just having a look at my first aeroplane. Graham’s the name.’

The little man wrapped his scraggy arms around a machine gun and lifted it from its mounting. ‘Watch yer fingers, mate,’ he grunted, resting the barrel on the cockpit-coaming.

A young corporal in clean dungarees stepped up beside Joe. ‘Don’t mind Old Ted, Sergeant,’ he said, smiling. ‘He doesn’t go a bundle on polite conversation.’ He looked at Joe, quizzically. ‘Did I hear you say Graham? I’m Jim Stephenson, in charge of the armourers on this flight. Right, Ted, I’ve got it.’ He lifted the weapon over the side and stepped down, placing it carefully on a piece of canvas laid out on the grass. ‘Now the other one, Ted.’

The pilot’s seat was stepped up behind the observer’s cockpit. The gun-mounts in each nacelle were pieces of gas piping set into the floor.

‘She normally only carries one gun,’ the corporal explained. ‘It saves weight and the gunner can use the front or rear mountings.’

Joe tried to visualise himself standing in mid-flight to change a gun from one mounting to another and felt his knees weaken. He lifted the second gun out of Old Ted’s arms and passed it down to the corporal. ‘You chaps must be very important people in the scheme of things?’ he said, looking to encourage conversation.

Old Ted sent a stream of spittle curving over the side. ‘It stands to reason, mate,’ he said.

The corporal winked at Joe. ‘Who’s the best armourer in the Royal Flying Corps, Ted?’

‘I am, Stevie.’

‘And who’s second best?

‘I s’pose you are, Stevie.’

The corporal chuckled. ‘He’s about right, too.’ He pointed with his toe at the guns laid out on the canvas. ‘Know anything about these things, Sarge?’

‘A little,’ Joe said, turning one over with his foot. ‘It’s a Lewis gun without the cooling jacket.’ He knelt over the gun, shielding it from their view for a matter of seconds.

‘Christ!’ said Old Ted as Joe stepped back. ‘You wouldn’t be joshing us, mate?’ The gun lay in its major constituent parts.

Joe reached for an oily rag dangling from Stephenson’s pocket. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to show off,’ he said, ‘but I had charge of a machine gun section for a year. Mind you, the Lewis isn’t really my cup of tea. We found it a wee bit temperamental for the trenches. It didn’t take kindly to the mud.’

Stephenson knelt beside the dismantled gun. ‘They give us a fair bit of trouble in the air, too,’ he said. ‘One or two of these small parts – the breech-pawls for example – tend to break very easily, especially if the drum isn’t loaded just right or if they get rough treatment from a frightened gunner.’

‘You’ve got to treat ‘em right!’ said Old Ted, slightly aerated. ‘They’re temperamental alright, like some people I know, but that’s a very fine weapon that is – in the right ’ands.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing, Sarge,’ said the corporal, squinting along a dismembered gun barrel, ‘Old Ted Mowbray knows more about the Lewis aeroplane gun than any man alive – bar maybe Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis himself. Ted helped to set up the B.S.A. Sparbrook factory before the war. Then, after the war started, they talked him into joining the Royal Flying Corps – at sixty. It was his nephew, Mowbray Swift, who twisted his arm. No guards, no pack drill, no spit’n’polish at all, Swifty promised him, just so long as he keeps the major’s guns in good nick.’

‘And I do,’ Ted Mowbray said with pride. ‘The major never ’ad a gun pack up on ’im yet – not altogether. Told me so ’imself.’

‘Have you chaps got time for a smoke?’ Joe asked, taking out a flat tin box. ‘I’ve got Woodbines or Red Flag.’

‘Don’t see why not,’ the corporal said, glancing furtively in the direction of the main hangar.

Old Ted skipped down the steps and advanced on the outstretched cigarettes with a hungry light in his eyes. ‘We’re not s’posed to, mate,’ he said, ‘but since you’re twistin’ me arm… ’ He put a Woodbine in his mouth and a Red Flag behind his ear.

The mid-morning sun was hot on the canvas and Joe moved to the shade of the Fee’s broad bottom wing to sit on the grass. Old Ted sat on the bottom step, watching critically while Stephenson carried out the required maintenance on both machine guns. Reluctant to go through the rigmarole of his promotion and transfer for the tenth time that morning, Joe felt it could do no harm to keep them in the dark a little longer. He blew a thin stream of smoke between them. ‘This Major Johnson,’ he said, ‘I gather he’s a pretty fair soldier?’

‘Very fair,’ said Old Ted. ‘A bloody toff, ’e is.’

‘He’s the best officer I’ve ever met,’ Stephenson said, emphatically. ‘Only I doubt whether he’ll last very long. He takes all the rough jobs himself – which he’s not supposed to do – and he couldn’t hit a barn door with a shotgun. But he flies like a bird.’

‘Like a bleedin’ ’awk,’ Old Ted confirmed, drawing the life out of his cigarette through funneled fingers.

The corporal sat up. ‘You see those patches behind Ted’s head, Sarge? There are fifty-seven on this old kite! Both sets of tail booms have been renewed and how many new wing struts I can’t remember. That stain on the side of the nacelle – that’s blood, Sergeant. This is Major Johnson’s aeroplane. That bugger over there is the flight commander’s. There isn’t a bloody mark on it.’

‘Not a bleedin’ mark,’ Old Ted confirmed. ‘That’s in mint condition, that Fee is.’

The sudden outburst took Joe completely by surprise and made him feel uneasy. ‘You mean Captain Renton?’ he asked.

The corporal looked at him sharply. ‘Yes – you know him?’

Joe tried a smile. ‘I was introduced to him a little while ago. I joined the squadron early this morning, as a matter of fact, back along the Albert road. I’m a replacement gunner – I think you people call them observers?’

Old Ted choked over his cigarette. ‘Oh dear, oh dear – you won’t ’arf cop it now, Stevie boy!’ he said, directing an accusing stream between the corporal’s feet. ‘As you keep rightly telling me, the penalty for insybawdination is a fate worse than death!’

The tension dissolved in laughter. Joe flashed a grateful look at the little armourer and put out a hand to help the corporal to his feet. ‘Sorry if I’ve misled you, Jim,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t my intention. I’ve been trying to think of a way of telling you I was a replacement for your friend Sergeant Riley. Mowbray Swift hinted it might be a sore point with you.’

Stephenson let fall his cigarette, grinding it underfoot. ‘Forget it, Sergeant,’ he said with a forgiving shrug. ‘I suppose it’s about time I did, too.’

‘It takes a bit of doing, I know,’ Joe said, his mind flooding with names and faces. ‘I’ve lost a few good mates myself.’

The corporal looked into Joe’s face. ‘Yes, I was thinking you must have had it pretty rough,’ he said, softly. ‘I mean, you look as if you’ve had a bloody awful time somewhere. But Mick’s death seemed such a waste. He was the best rigger in the R.F.C., with never any ambition to be a gunner – he’d never fired a gun in his life! He just wanted to fly, that was all. He was a sailor who wanted to forsake the sea for the sky. We happened to be short of a gunner that day and he talked the major into letting him go; he could talk his way round anybody. Talked his way into an early grave in the end, poor bastard.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’d like to know what really happened myself,’ said Stephenson, bitterly. His fists closed around the base of a wing strut and he let his elbows rest on the taught fabric. ‘They were escorting B.E.2s taking photographs over Bapaume. The pilots were Major Johnson, Lieutenant Ormston, Lieutenant Westwood and Captain Renton. After they’d left the Quirks, they ran into an ambush of nine Fokker E.111s. They reckon it was old Boelcke leading them because nobody uses tactics the way he does. They were waiting behind some cloud and, after our four had gone past, they nipped out and let them have it. Johnson reckons it was Boelcke who got Mick – and the two Fees we lost. Mick was dead when they landed. And this is what gripes me; Captain Renton did off at the start of the fight with one of the Fokkers on his tail. I’m not saying he ran away, but a Fee is more than a match for a Fokker. If he’d stayed to help the major, Mick’s