The Black Knight: The Age of Innocence

By Roelof Steenbeek

To date, I have never piloted a biplane, but for many nights before I had any thought of writing this book, I dreamed I was sitting in the cockpit of a black biplane. Although I could not see the wings, I just somehow knew it was one. There was a tiny half-moon windshield, an instrument panel with some gauges, and a joystick in front of me. I could feel the wind on my face, icy cold in my bones, vibrations and movements of the aircraft through the seat of my pants, and a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

A few nights later, the silhouetted head and shoulders of a young man started to haunt my dreams instead. Every time I dreamed of him, his face became a little clearer, and I eventually saw he was wearing old-fashioned flying goggles and a leather cap: everything was sepia-colored like an old-fashioned photograph or daguerreotype plate. Silent at first, eventually he said, a trifle forlornly, but not bitterly, Please, ask them not to forget us. What we fought and died for, was it for nothing?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Nov 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482803693

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Copyright © 2014 by ROELOF STEENBEEK.

ISBN:                  Softcover            978-1-4828-0368-6

                            eBook                 978-1-4828-0369-3

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CONTENTS

Author’s Notes

Dedication

Introduction

1903

1904

1905

1906

1907

1908

1909

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

AUTHOR’S NOTES

To date I have never piloted a biplane, but for many nights before I had any thought of writing this book I dreamed I was sitting in the cockpit of a ‘black’ biplane. Although I could not see the wings, I just somehow ‘knew’ it was one. There was a tiny, half-moon windshield, an instrument panel with some gauges and a joystick in front of me. I could feel the wind on my face, icy cold in my bones, vibrations and movements of the aircraft through ‘the seat of my pants,’and a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach…

A few nights later, the silhouetted head and shoulders of a young man started to haunt my dreams instead. Every time I dreamed of him, his face became a little clearer, and I eventually saw he was wearing old-fashioned flying goggles and a leather cap: everything was sepia-coloured like an old-fashioned photograph or daguerreotype plate. Silent at first, eventually he ‘said,’ a trifle forlornly, but not bitterly: ‘Please… ask them not to forget us… What we fought and died for… was it for nothing?’

Books on WW1 kept coming my way, one or sometimes even more arriving simultaneously: they seemed to be put in my way deliberately. Once there was enough information to write these books the supply abruptly dried up…

I have tried to capture what it was like, and felt like, to be an intelligent, privileged boy born at the turn of the twentieth century, one who is naturally intrigued by the dawn of motoring and the new ‘sport’ of flying, and who grows up to be an aeronautical engineer and a fighter pilot flying an advanced aircraft mostly of his own design. His life, unlike the current comic book ‘Superheros,’ could indeed have happened as many things were kept secret for many, many years, like Rolls-Royce manufacturing aircraft engines, and the loss of the pride of the British Navy, the mighty Dreadnought warship H.M.S. Audacious.

Many of the events depicted and hereby ‘brought to life’ really happened. Even before 1903 flying was ‘the new fashionable sport,’ and some little-known but very advanced aeroplanes were built before 1911, like the giant Russian eight-engined seaplane, the little-known Sikorsky Bolshoi Bal’tisky, or ‘Great Baltic.’ Famous incidents such as the sinkings of the Titanic and Waratah form an integral part of the story, but are dramatized to make them more interesting.

‘Events’ experienced while I was asleep were written down as soon as I woke. The dream I remember the most fondly was once the first novel’s ‘bones had been laid out and connected:’ I was carousing and celebrating in a Mess in a wooden hut with ‘fellow-pilots.’ What made it the most memorable for me was the tremendous feeling of good will, cheer and camaraderie that I was experiencing when I woke…

I enjoyed researching and writing it, and hope that you get the same amount of enjoyment reading it. The whole period of WW1 will be covered in future Sir Black Knight Chronicles.

DEDICATION

TO ALL THOSE WHO FOUGHT IN THE

GREAT EUROPEAN WAR

KNOWN AS WW1,

THANK YOU FOR OUR FREEDOM:

WE TRULY VALUE THE SACRIFICES YOU MADE

I think that many of us have forgotten or do not know of the sacrifices made by those who fought in the Great War. Lack of respect and gratitude are surely among the ugliest of mankind’s vices.

Just one example: Private Thomas Whitham of the Coldstream Guards crept under heavy fire from shell-hole to shell-hole during the terrible Battle of Passchaendael and captured a machine-gun nest, earning a Victoria Cross for his extreme valour. His home town Council of Burnley feted him royally, with the equivalent of a ticker-tape parade, and bought him a gold watch.

In March 1919 after WW1 he tried to get a job with the Burnley Council – any job. He was turned down flat, as they ‘had too many so-called heroes clamouring for jobs.’ To help his family survive he pawned both his watch and his V.C. medal, which – unbelievably – were then purchased by the Burnley Council. To eternal shame, they still possess them at the time of writing, and his grave was totally neglected by the Council. The Coldstream Guards traced it, and have cared for it since the 1950s…

The following were the young pilot’s last words to me before he faded away back into the night:

‘If you break faith with us, and remember us not:

that we fought for you, and many died for you

and for your freedom: we shall not sleep…’

The young pilot’s words were eerily similar to some of those in the late Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s poem, but the young pilot’s were just a simple plea for remembrance, and not to continue the battle:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn,

saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved,

and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep,

though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

May they sleep peacefully, knowing that the sacrifices they so willingly made for our freedom from despotism and tyranny are remembered and appreciated.

INTRODUCTION

Saturday, 31st March, 1917: Western Front, France.

‘Contact!’

‘Contact!’

The mechanics spun the propellors of the three Sopwith Camels, and stood back hastily as the 100 horsepower Gnome rotary piston engines backfired explosively, then blatted into raucous, exuberant life. The cacophany was so loud it drowned out the heavy, bass rumble of the early morning ‘wake-up call’ of the dawn artillery barrage: the ground crew put their hands over their ears, the noise hurting their ears even though they were plugged with thick wads of cotton-wool.

The sky to the east was faintly streaked with pale yellow rays. The reflected glow from the rising sun, still well below the horizon, lent barely enough light for the pilots to be able to distinguish the ragged black silhouettes of the small trees lining the end of the short runway, and to paint the scalloped undersides of a few scattered clouds sailing just above the horizon with pale gold.

‘Look after her – scratch ma’ baby an’ y’re dead meat!’

The pilot in the centre single-seater fighter biplane could not hear the words, but he had heard them often enough before to guess what he was saying. He grinned down at ‘his’ mechanic, Sergeant Angus McDonagh, and the frantically wriggling, yodeling fox terrier held firmly in his grasp.

He rendered him a sloppy salute, grinning as he did so, knowing it would irk Angus. He was a perfectionist: the rumours that McDonagh even slept with his precious ‘babies’ – the aircraft entrusted to his care - were founded on fact.

‘One of the best things about Angus,’ the pilot thought, thinking about his friend and mechanic’s short temper and touchiness, ‘is that no aircraft has ever left his tender loving care unless everything on it has double-checked and made as perfect as humanly possible…’

The pilots and ground crew looked at him, waiting for the signal to pull the chocks away. Roderick ‘Roddy’ Anderson watched the needle on the engine temperature gauge impatiently, waiting for it to move. It hovered in the blue ‘cold’ arc, quivering on the edge of the green ‘go’ zone: irritably he tapped it hard with a leather-gloved finger. It jumped a quarter of an inch into the green, and he cursed the sticky needle under his breath: he had lost a few precious seconds in getting airborne.

He had a last, very good look above and around him at the sky, giving both highly polished stainless steel side mirrors – his own innovation - final adjustments before pulling his flight goggles down over his eyes and giving the ‘thumbs-up’ signal to the waiting ground crew. It would not be the first time the Huns had ‘jumped’ aircraft as they were taking off.

‘Damned unsporting, just like shooting sitting ducks,’ he thought, ‘even if this is war.’

He conveniently forgot that some years ago he had been among the very first to start the practice in the first place. The ground crew tugged at the rope handles, and the chocks slid away from the wheels. Immediately the three aircraft started waddling impatiently like fat, dark-brown ducks over the dew-soaked grass towards the edge of the dirt runway, blue smoke snorting excitedly from their exhausts. The bungee shock absorbers supporting the comically oversized wheels worked overtime, absorbing much of the unevenness of the tussocks, but it was still a bumpy ride.

As the aircraft moved away from the groundcrew, the noise of the engines abated somewhat, and the ground crew again heard the steady, unremitting ‘crump… crump… crump… crump… crump… crump… crump’ of the French 76mm artillery guns, each one firing an unrelenting 15 rounds a minute, punctuated every so often by the much heavier ‘thump!’ of a replying Austrian 30,5cm long range cannon. Nearly twenty miles behind the lines, the heavily camouflaged airfield was thankfully too far back for the airfield personnel to hear the continuous harsh staccato rattle of small arms, and the occasional louder stammer of water-cooled heavy machine-gun fire.

Roddy wriggled, trying to get comfortable on the bulky experimental parachute pack he was sitting on. ‘At least,’ he thought, ‘I’m not sitting directly on the basket seats like these other two poor chaps.’

The Camel was purely a fighting airplane, her design based on other successful fighters like the Sopwith Pup, and built with the single purpose of engaging with and destroying enemy fighters. To extend her flying range and increase her manouvreability every superfluous ounce had been painstakingly whittled away by the Sopwith designers – and that included the seat padding.

The cramped, steel-lined cockpit seemed to suck all the warmth out of the young pilot, and he shivered in spite of the layers of warm clothing he wore. He adjusted the straps of his safety harness, slackening a too-tight shoulder strap that was cutting into him.

‘This bloody ’plane was designed by a masochistic midget.’ He thought irritably, forgetting that his height of six feet three inches and two hundred pounds of solid muscle and bone were very much larger than that of the average man.

He coughed: some of the acrid smoke from the lines had drifted over the airfield with the change of wind during the night, and he pulled his yellow woolen scarf further up over his nose: Mixed with the exhaust fumes, the smell was irritating his throat. He shuddered involuntarily as he realized the probability of a gas attack, the Allied lines today being downwind of the enemy’s if the faint breeze was anything to go by.

‘Never mind,’ he thought, ‘we’ll be well above it. Poor bastards in the trenches, though… And it looks like there’ll be no rain this morning either for a change. Strange how there’s usually rain after a big bombardment, though, so it might just pour down again later this afternoon, if the artillery keep it up with their heavy guns…’

The ‘permanent’ airstrip was well drained, but nevertheless the Camels’ narrow wheels still sank a good couple of inches into the gravel surface, retarding the speed. Roddy signaled to his two companions to take off by ‘blipping’ the engine – the Camel had no throttle, and her speed was controlled by switching the ignition on and off. He left it on, and the exhausts blared exultantly as his wingmen followed suit. The vibration in the cockpit increased, setting his teeth chattering as the engine revolutions climbed and his aircraft began to move faster and faster along the ground, jolting along the uneven runway: the bumping ceased as the wheels lifted gently from the earth.

The familiar, exhilarating feeling of freedom as the machine lifted smoothly into the air lightened his sombre mood, and he flashed a thumbs-up to the other two pilots: they cheerfully returned the signal. The world around him suddenly grew much larger as the biplanes rose higher into the air.

He kept a good lookout, using his peripheral vision: he had found it extremely good for sensing movement. The biplanes cleared the trees at the end of the runway by a good ten feet, then hugged the tree-tops for two miles to hide the presence of the airfield from enemy observers. They climbed when the slender, copper-clad steeple of a village church topped with a rooster weathervane came into view, gaining as much precious height as possible while still over Allied territory. The air steadily became colder and colder as they flew higher and higher, and he snuggled down further into his scarf, breathing as much of his own warm expelled air back in as he could.

Far behind and below them the ground-crew watched until the last machine had disappeared, wondering how many would come back this time, then turned their attention to getting the next flight ready. The idea of flying in flights of three aircraft was new to this sector of the Western Front – before the enemy aircraft started hunting in huge packs it had usually been every man for himself. In reply to the Jagdgeschwader, or ‘Flying Circus,’ enemy squadron tactics of hunting in a pack of up to twenty aircraft, Roddy was trying out this new concept, that of ‘wings’ consisting of only three aircraft, with the leader, the attacker, protected by his two ‘wingmen.’ These new fighter-aircraft, designed solely for engaging enemy aircraft in aerial combat, were in desperately short supply.

Angus put the little black and white dog down, but, uncharacteristically, he started to howl dismally, his sharp muzzle pointed in the direction in which the Camels had disappeared. He scooped the dog up again, and patted him, then took him into the nearby hangar and gave him a little milk and bully beef as a treat. He ignored the offerings, however, and put his ears flat back against his head, then jumped onto the stretcher bed that Roddy occupied if he worked very late hours: he was one of the very few pilots that still owned and worked on his own aircraft and had his own mechanic assigned to him by the Royal Naval Air Services, or R.N.A.S, of the Admiralty. The little dog dug his nose under the pillow, then wriggled his way in until he had buried himself under it.

‘Are ye tryin’ tae tell me something?’ Angus wondered. ‘Weell, what will be, will be… Ah just wish he was flyin’ his own ’plane, not a borrowed one… Nivver min’, he can fly anything wi’ wings. He was born tae it - an’ ’es always wanted to fly a Camel in real combat… The other two lads jumped at the chance tae fly with him, too.’

‘Rat-tat-ta-tat…’

Roddy signalled, then test-fired the .303 machinegun, a 97 round Lewis, mounted on the Foster swivel-mounting above his head on the top wing, then briefly triggered the single, fixed forward-firing Vickers mounted on the engine cowling. Cordite smoke swirled through the cockpit, his nostrils flaring with the familiar smell he had come to associate with aerial combat.

His wingmen promptly followed suit, test-firing the twin Vickers machine-guns mounted on their engine cowlings. Acting on Roddy’s advice, the pilot originally assigned to the Camel Roddy was flying now had removed one of the twin fixed machine-guns to compensate for the added weight of the Lewis. Roddy thought the sacrifice well worth it: to him the Lewis’ ability to swivel left and right was a small but definite advantage in air combat.

He noticed his two wingmen were heeding his pre-flight warnings well, their heads twisting and turning as they scanned the skies and the ground beneath them. The pilots had good reason to be ultra-careful: the German Ace, ‘Baron’ Manfred Freiherr von Richthoven, was aiming for a personal score of 100 confirmed ‘kills,’ and at the same time also training many good German pilots. His preference for red-painted airplanes had earned him the feared nickname of ‘The Red Baron.’

The sun seemed to rise much quicker than usual as the aircraft climbed, bathing the aircraft and their leather-clad pilots in a golden glow, but the warmth was illusory and of no real comfort to the three pilots shivering inside their jerseys and fleece-lined flight jackets. Roddy pulled his thick scarf further up his face, noting absently that his nose felt like a wooden appendage with very little feeling. Somehow icy tendrils of air still persisted in threading their way through the folds of his thick scarf and into his neck. The machines banked, droning towards the fantastic jig-saw puzzle of trenches ahead and below, jinking as they hit air pockets.

They banked again, flying parallel to the lines and directly over no-man’s land, a bleak, desolate vista of churned, dark-brown mud, water-filled shell-holes, thousands upon thousands of blackened, splintered tree-stumps, tangled barbed-wire, overturned, broken wooden carts, shattered cannon, miles and miles of twisting trenches, and millions of skeletons and the rotting corpses of soldiers, horses and mules. The grim landscape was overlaid with the wreaths of smoke from the muzzles of hundreds of thousands of rifles, machine-guns and cannons, but this did nothing to soften the sheer ugliness of the ghastly killing ground, lending it instead a most macabre aspect.

A few miles away to the east silhouetted against the sky on the enemy side of the lines Roddy saw an oval shape slowly climbing skywards.

‘Ha, an observation balloon.’ He thought: ‘That’s one plump pigeon to pluck later today. Let him just get a little bit higher, then the observer can use his parachute – if he’s got one.’

Allied pilots were not allowed to use parachutes: even though Roddy had had one for five years, it was still classed as ‘experimental’, and he had to report back on its performance whenever he used it.

Roddy gestured, and the machines banked right, flying over the enemy trenches at just over a thousand feet –the ‘effective’ limit of the German troops’ rifles range, in theory anyway. Suddenly Roddy’s left wingman, ‘Buzz’ Rankin, waggled his wings, and pointed left and down to where a small, green cloud was creeping over no-man’s land towards the Allied lines. Roddy had already spotted another green cloud about fifty feet about further on, and then he saw two more, all about the same distance apart.

‘Gas! The bastards.’

He pointed down, then to his eye, directed a brief glance all around him and skywards - and the flight dived down for a closer look, following his lead. His keen eyes noted thin black lines snaking along the ground in no-man’s land, right through the German trenches, and extending well beyond them. It was tubing, probably nearly invisible at ground level, but easily seen from the air.

‘Must be another type of gas dispersal scheme dreamed up by that mad scientist, Fritz Haber.’ He thought. ‘Usually they fire it over contained in 76 or 100mm gas shells, which spread the choking, lung-destroying chlorine on impact. Huge amounts of expensive shells are needed to launch an effective attack, though, and this way, using gas cylinders and pipes, will obviously be much cheaper and more efficient. H’m… Haber used a green chlorine and phosgene mixture at Ypres in 1915, but I heard the swine’s now got a deadlier, yellow gas up his sleeve called mustard gas which rots flesh on contact. Filthy Hun bastard…’

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

A sudden burst of flak fifty feet above him, then another even closer, rocked the aircraft, and startled Roddy from his reverie. He glanced about him hurriedly, knowing the possible deadly penalty for day-dreaming for even a few seconds, but luckily the skies were clear of enemy aircraft.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

‘‘Archie’ is very keen to do business this morning, and he’s not usually here, so close to the lines?’ He thought. ‘When anti-aircraft guns are here, and so active they’re usually protecting something important – like this new way of spreading gas?’

‘Whooomp!’

A close burst rocked his aircraft, flying pieces of shrapnel piercing the doped, canvas-covered fuselage, and he silently blessed the armour-plating, thin as it was, that surrounded his cockpit and the fuel tank behind his seat.

‘Close one, that time. At least they’re not from our own artillery – though it would make no difference to me in the end, I suppose…’ He thought wryly.

The ground troops of both sides had the notorious but unfortunately well-deserved reputation for firing at any airplane they saw, treating it as harmless target practice – irrespective of whether it was friend or foe.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

The three aircraft took evasive action and dipped down below the ‘flak’ explosions, their shallow dives throwing the anti-aircraft gunners off from their height calculations.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

The straggling lines of gas piping converged on a long row of bedraggled trees that had somehow survived the heavy Allied shelling. The trees lined the side of a wide, muddy track, possibly formerly a properly constructed road in a more peaceful life. It was some five hundred feet behind the enemy supply trenches, and ran more or less parallel to them.

A dozen or so huge, horse-drawn carts were standing in a perfectly straight row with typical Teutonic neatness next to the trees under the sparse cover of the few early spring leaves sprouting on the shattered limbs, trying to hide from aerial surveillance.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

The carts were heavily laden with large metal drums, huge empty wooden reels and other equipment. Forty to fifty soldiers with black, pointed faces were working next to and on them.

‘Gasmasks… They’re operating the valves on those gas cylinders.’ He thought grimly. ‘I wish Fritz Haber himself was down there somewhere, but callous swine like him sit cosily at home or in safe laboratories, while real men choke to death on their deranged concoctions…’

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

The aircraft rocked again: these gunners were very good, following the aircraft as they dived, anticipating their altitude and quickly adjusting the exploding height of their shells.

Roddy spotted two motorized, camouflage-painted military vehicles, each slightly smaller than a one-ton lorry, parked some way beyond the rear end of the long line of carts. There were two soldiers on the rear of each vehicle, and a thick, almost vertical pole mounted on the back: an anti-aircraft cannon. There were another two similar vehicles at the head of the column, and all four guns, mounted on rotating bases bolted to the chassis of the vehicles, were targeting the diving aircraft. Flame and smoke erupted from them in bursts, the explosive shells heading towards the three approaching aircraft.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

‘Aha,’ Roddy thought, ‘mobile Krupps 77mm anti-aircraft guns… Heard of these small motorized units, this is the first time I’ve seen ’em – but then there’s a first time for everything. Wonder how they’ll like being on the receiving end for a change?’

‘Tally-ho!’ He shouted, although no-one could hear him.

He pointed a finger downwards, then sliced the open palm of his hand down like a meat cleaver, the signal to ‘attack in line.’ His wingmen promptly obediently fell in procession behind Roddy, and the Camel’s bracing-wires started to thrum happily, a vibrating noise like a giant, active beehive, as her air-speed increased.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp! Wheeeeeeeeeooooo.’

‘Those gunners are very good, that was a close one.’ He ducked as a flying shell splinter left a shiny mark as it riccochetted off the breech of the Vickers.

Roddy ‘blipped’ the engine, slowing the aircraft dramatically, and lined up on gunners on the first anti-aircraft vehicle in the line as the nose dropped….

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

He triggered the Vickers and it chattered viciously, the spent brass cartridges sparkling in the sun’s rays and creating small golden arcs as they were ejected over the side of the fuselage. The stream of red-hot .303 lead hit hime, decimating the first two anti-aircraft crews and their vehicles, and then small brown geysers of mud erupted as the leaden flow covered the short distance to the first of the wooden carts.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

Pandemonium reigned as the deadly torrent ‘walked’ the length of the carts, pulverizing and destroying everything it impacted with. Wounded and dying horses and mules bucked, rearing and kicking futilely in their traces, tipping the carts and tossing soldiers and equipment alike off onto the muddy road and verges. Some tried to stampede, rearing and kicking in their traces before falling down in tangled heaps. Chaos reigned supreme below as the three aircraft roared and swooped past, low overhead.

‘Whooomp! Whooomp!’

Some containers on the carts ruptured, and the escaping, pressurized gas rapidly formed into dense green clouds, melding into a thick, nebulous mass that started to cover the devastation. Gasmasks seemed to be ineffectual as those few still on their feet were staggering about, clutching their throats and tearing their gas-masks off in futile efforts to breathe: the acid gas, highly concentrated at its source, was dissolving their lungs into bloody froth.

‘Rat-tat-tat…’

‘Damn it all!’

The Vickers jammed suddenly, and Roddy fought to clear the mechanism while coaxing his machine to level flight. Behind him his wingmen continued strafing, and the cloud grew denser as more gas containers were pierced.

‘Whooomp!’

The anti-aircraft guns on the last two vehicles abruptly fell silent as the toxic green gas tentacles reached out, swirling hungrily around the armoured shields and affecting the gunners’ lungs. Slowly the cloud grew higher and higher until the carts, and eventually even the tops of the trees, disappeared from view. Gradually and relentlessly it started drifting with the wind towards the Allied Lines – but it would first cover the German trenches. The pilots did not wait around to see the effects on the unfortunate occupants.

Cursing, Roddy rapped the Vickers’s breech hard with the hammer tied close by to it for that very purpose. The brass cartridge suddenly sprang out, clearing the blockage, and he quickly reloaded as he circled, climbing. A glance showed him that his wingmen were back in position, one on either side and slightly behind him, and they exchanged ‘thumbs-up’ signals: it had been a job well done. The wingmen had finished off the job of destruction Roddy had started, and a ruptured fuel tank on one of the anti-aircraft vehicles was burning fiercely.

‘Hopefully,’ thought Roddy, ‘that gas will wreak the same death and destruction on the Huns that they wanted to inflict on our Troops – before it pours into our trenches.’

He thumbed the radio transmitter: ‘Green leader calling Sector Five… Come in, over…’

There was a crackling, then: ‘Sector Five here, Green leader… Standing by, over.’

‘Sector five gas attack. Repeat, Sector Five gas attack. Warn them, warn the trenches… Over.’

‘Roger. Sector five gas attack, will pass it on. Over.’

‘Over and out…’

Eastwards, to his right, and some three miles behind the enemy lines, Roddy spied a huge puff of black smoke as ir suddenly erupted above a large copse of trees.

‘Hello? They’re using old, antiquated blackpowder ammunition – they must be running short of the new smokeless nitroglycerins. That’s a huge gun deeply entrenched there, most probably one of the ‘Big Berthas,’ The gunners feel safe from being spotted from the air under that canopy of branches – and probably some camouflage netting…’

He waggled his wings to attract the attention of the other pilots and pointed, and the flight banked towards the trees.

‘I’ll bet they’re using information from that spotter in the balloon and possibly trying to target our own airfield. That big gun’s range is easily fifty miles, we must stop it.’

Roddy glanced about him, and thought: ‘Still clear skies. We’re early birds and apparently the only ones apart from the balloonist in the air so far. Well and good. Fuel: one third gone, engine temperature: on the cool side, engine oil pressure: fine, altitude: two thousand feet – and we’re going down, down…’

He held the palm of his hand out horizontally, then sliced it down vertically: the aircraft dived, this time staying in their shallow ‘V’ formation.

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

The three fired simultaneously into the copse of trees. Branches splintered and shattered by the lead hurricane flew in all directions, but there were no visible signs of damage to the hidden armed forces. For a few seconds Roddy started to doubt his own normally excellent eyesight, but then, suddenly, small pieces of fabric flapped up on the lower wings next to his cockpit, leaving small round holes in it as the trio zoomed low over the copse.

‘Groundfire – small arms. Definitely infantry down there that shouldn’t be there – not so far behind their lines: they’re defending something important. Rifle fire this close is not to be sneezed at, I just hope they missed my engine.’ He thought grimly: many aircraft had been lost to groundfire, both unfriendly - and friendly.

The flight swept around leisurely in a wide circle, then stooped and attacked again. This time they flew just above tree-top level and attacked from a different direction to confuse the enemy, and to try to put him off his aim.

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

The aircrafts’ machine-guns opened up, blazing harsh songs of hate, the angry chattering even louder than the Camels’ bellowing exhausts.

‘BADOOOM!’

Suddenly, Roddy’s head whip-lashed back, and he felt as though his aircraft had been kicked from underneath by the hooves of a gigantic mule. Large, jagged pieces of fabric ripped away from the fuselage around his cockpit, some swirling about in the cockpit before being sucked out into the slipstream. A flapping piece wrapped itself over his goggles, obscuring his sight, and he hastily tore it off and tossed it overboard. He risked a glance about him: the other aircraft had also been tossed about by the mighty concussion like feathers blowing erratically in the wind. The pilots were fighting desperately to regain control of their wildly bucking machines, while behind them a dense black cloud mushroomed skywards.

‘That’s one ammo dump of those huge shells – and hopefully one large calibre gun less.’ Roddy thought. ‘That’ll give them something to think about…’

Roddy’s lower wing and the fuselage underneath had lost much of their covering fabric, ragged pieces still twirling and dancing wildly before tearing off and whirling away. There was a cold draught under his chin, he risked a quick glance: he could see the ground and a portion of the Camel’s axle through the large, jagged hole punched right through the thin, so-called ‘armourplated’ floor of the cockpit.

Roddy’s aircraft was still responding fairly well, however, but when he glanced at his wingman on his right, the five feet zero tall ‘Lofty’ Townsend, he saw him pointing agitatedly at the engine of his own Camel, which had a thin stream of white smoke emanating from it. He waggled an open hand with outstretched thumb and small finger at Roddy: something was wrong with his machine, and Roddy pointed to him and then towards their own lines. Lofty gave him a ‘thumbs-up’ and banked, heading back to their airfield.

Buzz indicated ‘all’s well:’ somehow his aircraft had escaped much of the effects of the blast. Roddy and Buzz tailed Lofty, whose machine slowly lost altitude but still passed safely over the lines into Allied territory. Buzz’s aircraft had also lost a lot of fabric, but the stoutly-built Camel could take much more punishment and still survive. The young pilot – he had turned nineteen the day before - grinned happily, and waved triumphantly at Roddy.

‘Less than twenty minutes actual flying experience on aircraft before he was posted here: and that probably on some ancient Henri Farman or ‘Harry Tate’ trainer – nothing but flying box-kites. And now twenty minutes - so far - on Camels… It’s the difference between crawling and running - stick close to me, my friend…’ Thought Roddy.

The vicious escalation of the war in the air had virtually eliminated most of the experienced Allied pilots, and the latest crop of hastily-taught trainees were becoming known as ‘twenty-minute’ pilots, being only able to survive a few minutes in the air against the enemy in combat.

Roddy waggled his wings and pointed, alerting Buzz to another target: about two miles away the grey observation balloon was jerkily descending, its dangling wicker basket, complete with its solitary observer, swaying gently below it.

‘He’s seen us - and he knows what’s coming.’ Thought Roddy gleefully.

The two biplanes winged into the classic attack position, approaching directly between the ascending sun and their target to effectively blind their opponent: observers were not always helpless, vulnerable targets. As they swept closer, they saw the small figure in the swaying basket shouting excitedly into his telephone transmitter and gesticulating wildly towards them.

There was a black, stick-like object mounted on the lip of the basket, and the observer dropped his transmitter, and swung the barrel of the heavy, water-cooled Spandau machine-gun around, aiming it at them.

‘Tak-a-tak-tak-a-tak-a-tak…’

Yellow flashes winked as he opened fire, the tracers coming closer and closer to them, and the pilots jinked their aircraft up and down to put his aim off. Roddy suddenly spotted five Fokker D VII biplanes flying in a line abreast formation on the far side of the balloon. Distinctive from other types of aircraft with their unusually shorter lower than upper wings, rectangular engine nacelles and innermost wing struts mounted onto the fuselage instead of the lower wing, they were trying to ambush them by keeping the balloon between his flight and themselves.

Brand-new to the front, the D VII Fokkers were reportedly marginally superior to the Camels in both speed and ceiling height: their top speed was 124 m.p.h. compared to the Camel’s 115 m.p.h., and at 23,000 feet altitude their ‘ceiling’ height was 4,000 feet higher. Against this, though, they were also much heavier machines because of their tubular, steel-framed fuselages: 1,940 lb loaded, compared to the wood-framed Camel’s 1,453 lb. Also, the Camel was capable of great agility compared to most other machines, thanks to the bulk of its weight being centred in her unusually short fuselage and directly under the pilot’s seat. This allowed her to turn sharply, especially to the left thanks to the rotary engine’s tremendous torque. The Camel was capable of absorbing tremendous punishment and to keep right on flying, whereas the Fokker machines’ ability to take a hammering had yet to be proven in combat.

Roddy bared his teeth: he was determined he was going to test both the flying capabilities of the new machines - and the mettle of their pilots - to their very limits.

He thumbed the transmitter switch: ‘Buzz, five bandits approaching head-on on the far side of the balloon. If they know what they’re doing, they’ll keep their height advantage. You fly left under, I’ll go right under the balloon, and we’ll come up under and behind them… Just be careful in case they also fly under… Over.’

‘I go left under, you go right under… See you at the ball, Roddy… Tally-ho! Over and out…’

Height was one of the the great advantages in air battles, and Roddy felt fairly positive that the Fokker pilots would attempt to keep it at all costs, and would fly over the top of the balloon – but in combat there were no certainties.

‘We’ll be under the balloon before they can get there, and we’ll come up on the far side - right under their soft underbellies.’ He thought exultantly.

The two Camels swooped under the balloon, Buzz to the left and Roddy, making sure his wings would clear the wires suspending the gondola, to the right of the basket.

Unsighted by the Allied pilots, however, two aircraft of the enemy flight split away and dived, speeding up in a suicidal move to fly beneath the balloon exactly like Roddy and Buzz, one on either side of the swaying basket, while the other three of the Fokkers flew over the top of the balloon - leaving the Allied pilots nowhere to go.

‘Badooooom!’

Buzz’s Camel and the Fokker on his side of the balloon smashed head-on into each other, exploding thunderously in a great ball of flame. They started to fall to earth, locked in a final, deadly embrace, bits and pieces of wreckage breaking away and whirling madly about them as they twisted and twirled in a final, macabre dance of death.

‘Shit!’ Roddy, swearing with shock, instinctively banked hard right, away from the balloon, the Camel’s fantastic agility and handling ability coming to the fore and saving his life.

The surprised Fokker pilot opposite Roddy was blinded by the rising sun directly behind Roddy, but glimpsed something large coming head-on and straight at him. Roddy was slightly to his left, and he instinctively banked to his right to avoid a collision.

‘Riiiiiiip!’

The Fokker flew under the observer’s basket, and the balloon jerked wildly as the vertical telephone and tether cables sliced through both fragile starboard wings of the Fokker like wire through soft cheese, severing them a few feet away from the fuselage. The dismembered portions of the top and bottom wings gyrated madly as they whirled downm to the earth, tangled and bound together with broken struts and bracing wires.

The crippled Fokker rolled over, then twisted and turned erratically in the sky. The pilot managed to extricate himself from his cockpit and baled out, the rudder hitting him a glancing blow on his arm. He was one of the few enemy pilots Roddy had ever seen wearing a parachute, the material spilling and billowing out behind him to form a huge, grey mushroom.

The severed balloon cables were falling, coiling down to the ground far below and forming a tangled spider’s web, the winch operators scurried for their lives to avoid being crushed underneath them.

Roddy swooped upwards into a huge loop, then righted his aircraft at the top of it – an ‘Immelmann’ turn – and looked down, ignoring the pilot dangling under his parachute. He had more urgent matters on his mind: three Fokkers, probably seeking revenge…

The untethered balloon was soaring upwards, the light wind blowing it rapidly towards the Allied lines. Roddy banked hard left, and climbed at full throttle to its level, hoping to keep the balloon between him and the Fokkers, and to use it to his advantage to lessen the odds.

The three Fokkers had shot skywards after the collision, obviously a previously practiced emergency manoeuvre. However, instead of performing an Immelmann turn at the top of a half-loop, and twisting to fly right-side up like Roddy had, they had made complete loops. This was a potentially fatal mistake as when they reached the bottoms of their loops they had lost over a hundred and fifty feet of precious altitude. They were well below the untethered balloon, flying on a course that would take them directly under the balloon – and Roddy.

They seemed to have lost sight of Roddy, or thought his aircraft had also been destroyed, and one broke away from the formation, circling and following the parachuting pilot down to the ground. Roddy decided that the reduced odds of two against one were now very firmly in his favour.

‘Attack is the best form of defence, after all.’ He thought angrily: ‘This one’s for you, Buzz.’

A picture of the young pilot, standing next to him and laughing at a joke someone had told the night before in the Mess at his birthday party flashed into his mind, but he deliberately erased it, concentrating on the job in hand.

‘He hadn’t even unpacked all his gear yet.’ He thought angrily: ‘And it’s my fault, but who would have thought they’d do something as bloody stupid as that? Sorry, Buzz…Rest easy, my friend, at least it’s all over for you…’

He looked at the funeral pyre of the two burning aircraft on the ground far below, and lifted a hand to his forehead in a farewell salute. There was no time for regrets: an all too familiar red haze was right down over his eyes, and he was in killing mode. Controlling his fury, but ice-cold inside, he inverted the Camel before diving down on his prey: the extra pressure from the increased gravity – ‘g-force’ - as he turned upside-down kept him pressed firmly down in his seat. He pulled the joystick back as far as it would go and the Camel screamed as it nosed into a curved dive far steeper than the aircraft designers had ever intended, falling vertically out of the sky like a speeding brick - and straight down onto the two unsuspecting enemy aircraft.

The aircraft’s speed increased dramatically, more and more of the loosened fabric around the bullet-holes and the missing pieces in the fuselage and wings whipping violently, then ripping and peeling away. The frantic thrumming of the bracing-wires between the wing-struts rose in pitch until he could no longer hear it, the tips of the wings vibrating so much they were blurred.

‘At this rate,’ he thought, ‘they’ll soon tear off, but I dived the prototype even faster when I was testing her…’

‘Twangggg…..’

A bracing-wire stretched beyond endurance snapped, then another and another. The wind tore at his face through his scarf, forcing his cheeks inwards so that his teeth cut into the inner flesh of his lips: he gritted his teeth, debating on whether or not to throttle back. Then, suddenly, he was in range. He would only get one brief chance at the two of them, but the Lewis could swivel left and right, and had a full magazine…

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

He peppered the cockpit and the fuselage just behind it containing the fuel tank of the machine on his left with a brief split-second burst from the Lewis.

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

Immediately he swung the machine-gun to the right and fired again. Bullet-holes appeared as if by magic, stitching holes the length of the Fokker’s fuselage, pieces of dislodged, coloured fabric dancing madly in its wake. The pilots reacted as the first bullets of the unexpected attack hit them, banking steeply away from each other and diving, but too late to escape the flying lead.

As Roddy dived between the enemy machines the Lewis stuttered to a halt: he had expended the whole drum of ammunition. He tried to pull out of his headlong dive, the joystick pulled well back into his lap. Much of her wing fabric was missing and the Camel reacted very sluggishly: the ground came closer and closer, but without the angle of the machine to the ground decreasing very much…

Slowly, and ever so reluctantly the nose started to come up, but the ground was rapidly approaching far too quickly for comfort. The stricken Camel levelled off at less than thirty feet altitude, Roddy trying desperately to gain some height while heading towards his home airfield, hoping at the very least to reach the Allied lines… Much higher and behind him, thick black smoke poured from the engine of one of the two stricken Fokkers as it slowly swooped earthwards in huge circles, the pilot standing up in his seat and getting ready to bale out.

‘One down.’ Roddy thought aloud. ‘But where is the other one? Aha, I see him, but what on earth is he up to?’

The second Fokker had pulled out of its side-slip dive and was climbing vertically, a thin trail of white smoke marking its ascent. At around two thousand feet it suddenly stalled, then inverted and dived straight down. The pilot was slumped forward in the cockpit and obviously either dead or unconscious. The engine was screaming at full throttle, and at about a thousand feet altitude the biplane suddenly shed both its wings under the tremendous strain. The shorn fuselage plunged straight down, spearing like a huge, stubby javelin into a drowned shellhole which promptly erupted, sending a huge cataract of filthy brown water and mud cascading skywards.

Suddenly Roddy spotted the fifth Fokker: it was to his right, slightly above and in front of him, flying parallel to and behind the German Lines. The pilot was looking up at the circling, smoke-trailing Fokker, and Roddy pointed the Camel’s nose up to intercept him. It would be the easiest of ‘kills:’ he could rake the other machine from propellor to rudder, and he banked towards it…

‘Rat-tat-tat…..’

He squeezed the Vickers, but after a split-second, savage burst into the Fokker’s motor and cockpit it stopped, also out of ammunition. The pilot’s head snapped around - he seemed unhurt - and his machine dived, although there was less than a hundred feet between him and the ground.

‘He must have very thick armour around the cockpit,’ thought Roddy, ‘or he’s wounded - at least a couple of bullets definitely hit the cockpit area…’

He was a natural marksman and knew exactly where his bullets had driven home. Roddy cursed: there was no time to reload the Vickers, and the Lewis was also out of ammunition, but he could not reload as it was taking all his concentration and skill just to keep his ailing Camel airborne. Roddy fell in line with the enemy pilot’s course, flying slightly higher and behind him.

The Fokker pilot levelled off mere feet above the ground, then desperately weaved left and right at top speed, trying to get away from the fatal spectre hovering behind him. However, there was nowhere to go unless he climbed, but he knew it would be a fatal mistake if he did, as he would lose speed and the Camel would close in on him…

Roddy grinned mirthlessly as he flew nearer and nearer, looking over the side of the cockpit at the enemy machine some twenty feet below him: ‘What’s the matter, no place to go? There is one place you’re going, and that’s straight to hell. I’ve got no bullets in the machine-guns, and I can’t use my shotgun because I’ll lose control of the Camel, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat.’

He always flew with a shotgun clipped under the dashboard in the cockpit, but found that he could not spare a hand away from the shuddering joystick.

‘You’re not getting away, this is another one for you, Buzz!’ He hit the leather-padded edge of the cockpit with a gloved fist, then hastily grabbed the joystick again: the severely wounded Camel required both hands to keep it from spinning out of control…

He peered down through the ragged hole in the bottom of his cockpit, lining the Camel’s axle and two solid wheels over the Fokker’s propeller. He pushed the joystick forward, switching the engine off at the same time for a split-second. However, he miscalculated as the enemy pilot fractionally increased speed. His undercarriage missed the propeller, but punched straight down, smashing into the Fokker’s top wing like a massive battering ram and bending and breaking some of the longitudinal steel members.

For a few seconds the two machines flew on, welded together into an ungainly, four-winged unit, but perilously close to the ground, and then Roddy pulled his stick back into his stomach and turned the ignition on again. The Camel’s engine thundered and blared under full power, but the aircraft was fused to the Fokker below.

‘Crack!’

Suddenly, the Camel’s undercarriage broke free, and the aircraft jerked, then surged upwards. The Fokker’s top wing promptly snapped in half, the pieces along, with their struts, fluttering back and away from the aircraft, but leaving the lower.wing in place.

The Fokker biplane had suddenly become a highly unstable monoplane. Desperately the pilot pulled the joystick back, and as the machine’s nose lifted the underbelly of the Camel’s fuselage above and in front of him swam briefly into his gunsights.

‘Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…’

Courageously, knowing he was possibly doomed, but determined to go down fighting, the pilot of the Fokker pulled the triggers of his twin LMG 08/15 7.92mm machine-guns. They chattered viciously, and the Camel shuddered as the rounds maliciously ripped into the underside of the fuselage - and the sump.

Thick black smoke poured out from the riddled sump, swirling up through the hole in the bottom of the cockpit and threatening to choke Roddy. Roddy reacted instinctively, cutting the ignition, and the Camel immediately slowed. The speeding Fokker shot underneath and right past him, just missing the mangled remains of the Camel’s undercarriage, and Roddy quickly switched the ignition on again.

The strain of supporting the weight of the fuselage, combined with the heavy recoil of the machine-guns, proved too much for the Fokker’s unsupported left lower wing: it abruptly broke away from the fuselage, spinning and fluttering away in the slipstream like a huge, casually discarded autumn leaf. The fuselage, with the right lower wing still attached, rolled over onto its left side and dived the few feet under it into the ground below like a huge, power-driven bomb. The fuel tank exploded, creating a great ball of yellow and red flame.

‘That’s for Buzz! Number three!’ Yelled Roddy exultantly, pumping his fist in the air, but his excitement and triumph did not last long.

His mortally wounded Camel, never the best-behaved of aircraft, was behaving extremely badly, yawing hard to the left, and becoming more and more sluggish as it lost power and speed. The wings and fuselage shuddered and vibrated violently as the aircraft slowly but surely lost what little altitude it still had. The last of the oil was draining through the bullet-holes in the shattered sump, causing the faltering engine to overheat: its pistons started to expand and seize in their cylinders.

He banked left, heading for the rearmost of the enemy lines, the supply trenches, then dived the aircraft to pick up some speed while also hoping to make the trigger-happy German riflemen duck at the same time.

‘Doef… Doefdoefdoef… Doef… Doef..’

At nil altitude the Camel roared over the haphazard lines of enemy trenches, sickening thuds making the aircraft shudder violently, then suddenly he was past the multitude of enemy dug-outs, and over their front-line firing-trench.

He guessed what had happened: ‘A few of the soldiers stood up to shoot, or gawp, and were decapitated by the Camel’s undercarriage… Well, I’ll see them in hell shortly, because here I come too, Buzz, ready or not…’

The aircraft staggered as its undercarriage ripped apart a section of the tangled web of barbed wire lining the top of the German firing trench, some wrapping itself around it. He pulled hard back on the stick, and thanks to the speed gained during the short dive the Camel gained some twenty feet in altitude. More and more bullet-holes appeared in what little covering wing fabric was left on the wings, the troops opening fire at close range at the rapidly moving target. He winced as he felt a sudden sharp pain in his buttocks, and another, and then in his left thigh, and a comforting warmth slowly crept around the seat of his pants…

‘I’ve been shot. The bullets… So much for the so-called armour-plating, they’re going right through it…’ He thought: ‘Not as sore as I thought it would be… Damn!’

Then he was halfway across the 100 yard wide strip of no-man’s land, the metal armour-plating under and around his cockpit vibrating as the 7.92mm copper-coated bullets fired by the enthusiastic, experienced German ground troops behind him smashed into it. Their Mauser M1898 rifles, deadly up to a thousand yards, were firing at him now at the point-blank range of only a hundred: he was flying so low that many of the shellfire-shattered tops of the blackened trees were higher than he was…

The Camel, a notoriously highly temperamental flyer at the best of times, was wallowing drunkenly, yawing wildly from side to side, with only the few tattered remnants of the rudder covering keeping her flying in a more or less straight line. She was bucking like the untamed bronco he had seen in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and became stubbornly determined to roll over onto her left side. Never the easiest ’plane to fly, the extremely sensitive Camel was now surpassing even her own notorious reputation, yawing and threatening to side-slip and roll over at the same time, and he pulled the joystick back as far as he dared without allowing her to stall

‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Bang! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…… Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Bang! Rrrrrrrrrr…’

The temperature gauge needle was seated firmly against the restraining pin in the red danger zone, the oil pressure needle indicated zero, and the engine was faltering, backfiring - and rapidly losing power.

‘Sorry, Angus, your baby’s terminally ill this time. At least I’m not going home this time to face you…’ Roddy thought.

It had become a tradition for the two to bicker over any damage to the mechanic’s precious ‘babies,’ Roddy’s aircraft, although the bantering was - mostly - in fun. The aircraft was losing height rapidly, but was also fast approaching the Allied lines, now only ten or fifteen yards away. The nose rose a fraction, but as the airspeed dropped the joystick became even more sloppy and sluggish.

‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr……’

Suddenly the engine died completely, and the propeller jerked to a shuddering stop: Roddy switched the ignition off. The six feet high embankment protecting the forward Allied firing trench, topped with a small forest of short upright wooden stakes supporting rolls of barbed wire, loomed dead ahead, but he did not have the height to clear it.

The ear-splitting bellowing of the faltering, fast approaching engine, and its sudden silence, attracted the attention of the Allied soldiers, some of whom risked snipers’ deadly bullets to sneak quick peeks over the top of their earthern shield. In the split-second before his aircraft smashed into the embankment Roddy saw the whites of their wide-open, unbelieving eyes in dirty, smudged faces squashed under steel helmets.

His undercarriage and a propeller blade ploughed into and through the summit of the embankment, ripping through rolls of barbed wire and sending mounting stakes and earth clods flying. Roddy’s forehead smashed forward onto the padded cockpit rim with the impact in spite of his seat belt. Tripped up, the Camel’s tail somersaulted tiredly up and over and described a vertical semi-circle before the remains of the rudder crunched noisily to a stop, the inverted fuselage straddling the seven feet wide, ten feet deep firing trench below.

Roddy was flung about in the cockpit in spite of the tight fit, his breath driven mercilessly from his lungs by the impact. The cacophany of splintering and breaking wood ceased, but was followed by ‘pinking,’ the cooling noises from the engine, and a curious, continuing ‘slap-slap-slap-slap-slap’ noise. The smell of burnt cordite, raw fuel and the unbelievably foul stench of the trenches filled his nostrils.

Roddy opened his eyes, but it was as dark as night and he could see nothing at all. He pushed his mud-encrusted goggles up onto his helmet: he was hanging upside down in his harness, looking straight down at the filthy, dirt-encrusted side of a wood-lined trench. Several grim-faced soldiers clad in black kilts and filthy khaki aprons were staring up at him, their rifle muzzles pointing straight at him.

‘Hande hoch, Boche!’ Shouted one.

‘Fuck that crap, Glen, just shoot the bloody bastard. Remember what these bastards did yesterday when they strafed us… They shot George and Anthony MacGillivray stone bluidy dead, and wounded God alone knows how many other of our boys!’

The rifle steadied, aiming at his head.

‘Bang!’

‘No! Glen, he’s one of oors, I know him!’ Exclaimed Corporal Alfred MacLeod, knocking the barrel of the rifle up as he fired.

The bullet whistled past Roddy’s head and expended itself harmlessly in the air. Roddy had pulled his scarf below his chin just in time for MacLeod – a childhood friend - to recognize him.

He croaked, his throat dry and burning from inhaling fumes: ‘Top of the morn’n - tae ye all, I’m sorry tae drop in uninvited like this. Would ye mind terribly lending me a hand tae get doon?’

‘C’mon, lads, gi’ me a hand.’ MacLeod ordered.

The rifleman dropped the butt of his rifle to the duckboards, covered the tip of the barrel with a grubby condom, and leaned it carefully against the wood-lined side of the trench.

Roddy, his head starting to spin as blood rushed to his head, thought it strange that they wanted to shoot him: ‘Why didn’t they know I’m on their side? Don’t they know what the Allied blue, white and red roundels on the wings and fuselage mean?’

The slap-slap-slapping sounds increased in volume, and became an erratic drumming sound, like heavy hail on a tin roof: the downed ’plane had become the latest favourite target for enemy fire. A louder, regular and even heavier hammering signalled that a German water-cooled M1914 heavy machine-gun had joined in the fun and games.

Roddy hastily fumbled at his chest, releasing his safety harness, and dropped straight down out of the cockpit. Two burly soldiers caught his arms as he fell, and turned him right-side up, saving him from landing on his head or shoulders. He was too weak from loss of blood to stand, and slumped down in their arms.

‘Ah cain’t stand…’ Roddy mumbled: ‘Sorry…’

‘Careful, there’s a lot of blood on him. Shite, he’s b’n badly wounded, the poor bastard. He’s a big ’un, don’t drop him, Alf, he’s bloody heavy…’

They carefully laid him down on the filthy duckboards: something red, wet and sticky dripped sluggishly down onto his face from the inverted cockpit above him, and he realised it was his own blood. A burly, kilted Sergeant suddenly burst onto the scene, shouldering the hovering soldiers aside so roughly so that they bounced off the corrugated iron and wood-clad sides of the trench.

‘Did ye shoot him? Was he a Jerry?’ He demanded, summing up the situation in an instant.

‘No, Sarge, he’s Scots… I know him, I grew up with him - years ago…’ Alfie said.

The Sergeant started barking orders: ‘Take your emergency pads out of your pockets – now! You - get the First Aid kit from my bunker! Move it, move it! Call the stretcher-bearers, quick, he’s lost a lot of blood. Where are you wounded, sir?’

Roddy saw him looming over him dimly through a fuzzy haze: ‘Backside’s sore… Left thigh took one as well…’ He turned his head slightly: ‘Alfie? Is that really you? Look after my aircraft, please…