Lieutenant Andrew Pritchard shifted his oil smeared goggles onto his forehead and leaned to the left, peering through the broken clouds below in the hope of spotting some recognisable landmark. It was no use; the gaps were too small and flew by so fast that he couldn't see much of anything. His new home base near Soissons lay just a few miles south of the lines, and this part of the front ran roughly west-northwest to east-southeast. He wasn't going to risk dropping through the cloud so close to the front, so all he could do at this point was keep the setting sun on his starboard wingtip and hope for the best. At least he knew where he'd been. To Hell and back in a hand basket, he thought grimly. Damn he could do with a cigarette. Too bad he didn't smoke. Just about everyone else on the squadron did these days. Not that many were left now. Maybe he'd buy himself a pipe next time he went into town. He leaned over again and muttered a curse under his breath, put his gloved hand outside the cockpit and patted the snake motif on his fuselage with affection. No worries old girl, we'll have you home soon. Repositioning the goggles over his eyes he did a quick scan around and above, and with special care behind. No sign of the Hun at least, nor any other members of his Flight. Not to worry, The Doc would have them rounded up and home safe by now, he was sure of it. There'd been a brief but vicious dogfight on the way back. A typical escort job to St Quentin, he'd felt sorry for the men in the old BE2 recce kite when the swarm of Hun appeared high in the northwest sky. They were always higher, it seemed to him. There was no going around them so Doc signalled the Flight into a climbing attack while the Snakeman, as the squadron now called him, stayed slightly high and behind the BE2 as briefed, ready for a last ditch defence if any of the enemy got through the Skeleton Crew shield. With the rest of his flight now mere specks against the sun (damn he'd thought, sun in their faces - could it get any worse?) he'd shot a quick glance at the BE2 only to find the observer standing tall in his c0ckpit and waving feverishly to the south. Two Albatross coming in high and fast off the Pup's port upper wing. Damn! He threw the little machine around kicking the rudder hard left and then right, as he deftly moved the stick from one side of the 'pit to the other, crossing the controls and firing a long burst in the general direction of the oncoming German aircraft. Unsuprisingly, when the leading Hun saw the Pup break left and fly up at him, drifting across his front sideways spraying death, an impossible target but suddenly a serious threat, he got the wind up and broke over and down, gaining speed quickly as he dived away to the northeast. His wingman, who was apparently made of sterner stuff, and not yet exposed to any fire, pulled up and rolled out of the top of a half loop with his height advantage intact, looking down over his lower wing at the aggressive Lieutenant as his ageing fighter lost energy and forced him to lower his nose, exposing his tail to the gaudily painted shark like machine which now had him at its' mercy. The Albatross nosed over, twisting a little to the right, and dived.
This is it then, he thought, looking back over his shoulder at the oncoming snout with the beautifully streamlined fuselage behind it, those sturdy wings with the black crosses and the twin muzzles of the Spandau machine guns pointed right at him. He was, for a short time, out of options. Unfortunately he didn't have more than a very short time left to live, if this Hun had enough strength to pull the trigger. The Sopwith Pup, while extremely agile, still needed air under its' wings to fly, and Andrew Pritchard was just short of a stall, exposed, helpless. He had his own nose down now, but the few seconds it would take to pick up speed for manoeuvring would be enough for the Hun to take him. That skidding attack had given the crew of the BE2 time to escape to the southwest, he could still just make them out low off his rear quarter going like a bat out of Hell. He cursed again as he realised his own nose was pointed away from the lines, safety and home. Not that it mattered now. One more thing to try.... what was it Gunn had said? Better to kill yourself trying than die sitting there with your thumb.... well, the words had embarrassed him at the time, unnecessary vulgarity he'd thought; he'd been a novice then, very young and innocent, as yet unsullied by war. But the words had stayed with him, and maybe now they might just, with a lot of luck, save his life.
He was just about to reef back on the stick and kick the rudder over, looking back to judge the perfect moment, when the stuttering sound of machine gun fire ripped through the air. The lower right wing of the Albatross folded back, a sheet of flame erupted from somewhere in front of the c0ckpit, and the Hun snapped into a deadly spin belching thick black smoke into the cold blue sky as it corkscrewed towards the clouds below. An SE5 flew across his stern at speed, banked, rolled and fell into position off his port wingtip. The pilot lowered his facecloth, grinned, waved cheerfully then peeled away, climbing back to the north from whence he'd come. One of the lads from the newly equipped SE5 squadrons up near Amiens, he supposed. He wondered what the man was doing on his own this far south, and behind enemy lines. The thought prompted him to reverse his course, as he slowly recovered from this latest near death experience. He hadn't even thought to wave back or even look at the fellows' squadron markings.... poor show. Get yourself a bad reputation behaving like that. He'd mention the chap in his report, perhaps someone at HQ would put two and two together and give the man a medal or something. He snapped off a heartfelt salute at the receding SE5; a salute to all the anonymous airmen who risked their lives to save your bacon. What a war.
Half an hour later, and here he was floating around above ever thickening cloud totally lost. He must have crossed the lines by now. Time to ease down and find out how low the ceiling was. He leaned out and patted the snake for good luck. A wry smile crossed his face as he remembered the day they'd painted it on. Or more accurately, the day before that. He'd returned from a weekend leave in Paris with a harmless carpet snake won in a card game with an Australian artillery officer. He'd thought it might make a suitable mascot for the squadron, and his comrades had welcomed them both home with a knees-up in the mess tent (they'd been temporarily under canvas at the time). The snake passed from one man to another, coiling itself around each neck and arm in turn amid uproarious laughter, before finally climbing a support pole and settling itself down for the night on a cross beam. The party continued unabated with the snake largely forgotten until Gunn sauntered in, late back from a briefing at HQ, looked up and before anyone could say anything drew his service revolver and shot the reptiles' head off with one round. Restoring the pistol casually to its' webbing holster he looked from one astonished face to another and said "Blasted wilderness; not to worry, we're moving to a chateau down near Reims in the morning." There was a moment of incredulous silence before the whole squadron erupted in hysterical laughter, with the Captain standing there nonplussed, probably wondering if his boys had got into some bad wine. By the time Pritchard inspected his Pup the next morning prior to leaving, the snake emblem had mysteriously appeared, and from that day onward he became known as the Snakeman, or just plain Snake.
Throttling back the plucky little Le Rhone engine, Pritchard lowered the Pups' nose and quickly lost several hundred feet, bringing him in contact with the cloud which now obscured the earth below as far as he could see in every direction. Almost immediately he was encased in a dull grey world with no visual reference to help him hold his machine straight and level. All he could do was keep an eye on the compass and slip ball, and hope his sense of balance held true. He'd heard horror stories of pilots falling out of clouds inverted and had a couple of times himself had some suprises, feeling as if he was flying level until he emerged and saw the ground tilted unexpectedly - it was a disturbing experience for any pilot. The other danger was that the cloud ceiling might be very low, in which case he could easily fly into the ground (especially high ground) without warning. The trick was, he knew, not to fly in times of heavy cloud cover. Too late for that. As he dropped through the deadly mist, very alone and half expecting to die suddenly and brutally, he started to sing the chorus to his favourite song;
"It's a long way to Tipperary," ....a pause; still alive. "It's a long way to go." .....pause again. "It's a long way to Tipperary" .....so far so good. "To the sweetest girl I know!"........
He was saying farewell to Leicester Square for the third time when the grey wall ahead abruptly vanished, replaced by a nightmarish scene of onrushing trees and buildings skewed at an impossible angle, all hurling themselves at him as if he was standing still and the world had exploded.
Lieutenant B. Williams followed his Leader down in a burbling curved descent, lining up on the muddy field near the chateau just outside Soussons. Like Pritchard he was Canadian, and had joined the fight along with many of his countrymen despite the distance and cultural separation between his homeland and Great Britain. In fact the pilots of the Skeleton Crew, like so many other squadrons, came from countries all around the world, including a contingent of volunteers from the United States of America, which had only recently entered the war. In addition, and much like the Canadian pilots, Australia was represented in numbers disproportionate to its' population.
Glancing out to his left, Williams saw Watts and beyond him Whiskers following suit, each holding station through the turn and settling down towards the field in unison. He allowed his own wheels to kiss the grass and felt the Pup decelerate rapidly in the muddy topsoil. Rain and more rain, I should have joined the Navy, he quipped to himself dryly. Taxiing to the flight line and shutting down the engine he climbed over the side and sank immediately up to his ankles. His erks were already walking around his machine, checking for battle damage, but apart from a cheerful 'how was she, Sir?' they didn't intrude on his thoughts, mindful of the pilots special need to be alone, or at least in the company of other aviators, directly after a flight. The four men eventually gathered a few yards away from the Skippers' machine, which was closest to the Ops hut. Whiskers produced a packet of Woodbines, and those that smoked were soon drawing back on the precious drug and exhaling in luxurious relief after their recent forced abstinance.
"Anyone see what happened to Talbane?" The Skipper sounded tired. Whiskers looked up from studying the mud on his flying boots and nodded.
"He took some hits from that blasted red and yellow tripe. He just stopped turning and then went into a spin. I was too busy after that."
"He was still spinning when he reached the cloud.... not much chance I'm afraid." It was Watts, a resigned look on his face. They were all too familiar with this circumstance.
The Skipper took another pull on his cigarette, coughed, then flicked the half smoked stub into the mud. "Fair enough. Get cleaned up. Meet you in the Mess later. I'll call HQ and see if they've any news of the BE2 or Snakeman." He strode off to the Ops hut, clumps of cloying mud caking his boots and making him walk like a sailor. Blasted rain.... what a bloody war.
"Did you get that tripe?.....the red and yellow one?" It was Watts, to Whiskers.
Williams held his own cigarette stub up in front of his face and looked at it with distaste. "I did." With that he crushed the glowing tip between a calloused thumb and forefinger, ground the contents into so much chaff and sprinkled it into the grass. "Catch you guys later."
As he walked away Watts and Whiskers exchanged incredulous looks. They'd both seen Williams set a blue and white DR1 afire on that first Hell-for-leather head-on pass. It was tremendous shooting; the tripes had been high with the sun at their backs and looked set to fly straight over them to get at the BE2. But when that first one caught fire, they turned and came down, howling for blood. Seven of them. It was a nasty moment but everyone followed the Skeletons' Golden Rule; when outnumbered, turn and shoot and turn and shoot and don't fixate on one Hun. The object of the rule was to keep them alive and confound the enemy. You can't protect your wingmen if you're spiralling down chasing a kill. Stay together and snap shoot at anything else that moves, that was the rule. Tried and tested. Gunn had decreed it, now the Doc was enforcing it; many more Hun had fallen in dogfights with the Crew than their own losses would suggest, but more importantly they would always hold their piece of sky. The Hun seemed always to pair up, with one man protecting the others' tail. Fixating on an enemy machine for more than a few brief seconds nearly always brought disaster. When engaging the Skeleton Crew the Hun always found themselves under attack by one or the other machine, whereas the Crew knew that when under fire there was usually just one Hun on their tail, who would most certainly be under attack by all of his wingmen in turn as the fight progressed, and the rapid manoeuvres employed in his own sharp stabbing attacks served equally well as defensive manoeuvres provided he was aggressive. One experienced Jasta leader described it as 'like flying into a swarm of deadly bees'. Over time this tactic earned the squadron great respect amongst the enemy, at the expense of high personal kill tallies. But there was not one member of the squadron concerned with his own personal glory; and yet Williams, who was turning and snap shooting like everyone else, had just bagged two Huns.
"The man's a genius!"
"Yep." Watts clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Never mind Whiskers. If you could get your hands on them, the rest of us could go home!" Whiskers was a notoriously bad shot with a worse temper, but a steady pilot and a great man to have on your wing in a tight spot. Older than most, he was one of the more popular officers both in the Mess and amongst the erks. The standing joke was that the look on his face as he repeatedly missed his mark had scared more Hun to death than the rest of the squadron had shot down.
They followed Williams up the track to the chateau, looking skyward and listening hopefully for the telltale drone that would signal the return of their two missing friends.
Captain Docharty (who insisted his officers call him 'Doc' when off-duty) replaced the telephone handset in its' cradle and turned to his Executive Officer, Captain Fips.
"The BE2 got back ok. They were attacked by a couple of Albatross. Pritchard intercepted them before they could do any damage. The observer said he wasn't certain but it looked like a third aircraft - 'probably a Hun' - dove on the Snake while he was engaging the first two and shot him down. A flamer apparently. He was very apologetic.... said our man fought like a champion. Wants to write him up for a gong."
The X.O's cheeks puffed as he blew hard like a man with a broken whistle. How many more?
"Anything on Talbane?"
"Nothing yet; we won't hear anything for awhile if he's gone down over Hunland. If he's made it back we should know by noon tomorrow, I would think." Doc lifted a clay pipe from his pocket and began absently patting himself all over as he spoke; "I don't buy that line of bull from the BE2 boys..... what does that mean, 'probably a Hun'?" It was a rhetorical question, but he paused, and propping his knuckles on his hips looked about agitatedly and roared "Where's my damn shag?"
The Corporal clerk had seen the storm brewing and had been desperately scanning the room for the Captains' tobacco pouch. Finally spying it on the floor where the C.O. had apparently dropped it, he disappeared half under the desk on his hands and knees shouting "Over here Sir".
The C.O. looked over at the corporal, who was slowly making his egress from under the desk in clumsy reverse order, then caught Fips' eye. Under different circumstances they would have both roared with laughter. Captain Fips could have used a good laugh, but he met Docs' threatening stare as calm as a gunfighter in a wild west showdown.
"You may be right Sir. If they were running for home, and I don't blame them incidentally, and too far away to see the action, Snake might still be ok. I'll ring around and ask if anyone's seen or heard anything." With that he moved across to the telephone and lifting the heavy handset began cranking the handle. The Corporal, having finally regained his feet, proudly offered up the tobacco pouch feeling quite pleased with himself for averting another of the C.O's tirades. Fips thought that the look on his face when Doc snatched the article from his hands with a growled 'Damn fool!' was priceless.
Last Updated Tuesday, March 30 2010 @ 08:01 PM MDT|103 Hits 