Dusk Patrol Read online

  Dusk Patrol

  Richard Townsend Bickers

  © Richard Leslie 1980

  Richard Leslie has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1980 by Robert Hale Ltd.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Extract from Bombing Run by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Dusk Patrol is meant to be the first of four books dealing with four distinct phases of the Great War, as fought by the Royal Flying Corps.

  This first book covers the first half of 1916, when the dominance of the German Fokkers was at last overcome by British DH2s, BE2s and FE2s, and the French Nieuport XIs.

  The second, third and fourth books will be concerned with successive vagaries in the fortunes of the air forces engaged: which changed according to each advance made in the design of both fighters and bombers, and can be divided into distinct periods.

  Dominance in the air battles swayed back and forth and this, and the effects on the people in the story, provide the theme.

  Although the historical facts and flying technicalities in this story are authentic, and mention is made of real people, such as Ball, Hawker, Nungesser and Guynemer, this is a work of fiction and none of my fictitious characters is intended to represent anyone who really lived.

  I wish to make it clear that, although the number 59 has been attributed to the fighter squadron around which this story is written, absolutely no reference to the real 59 Squadron is intended.

  One

  Frost covered the aerodrome that February morning and a layer of mist lay over the whole Flanders countryside to a height of almost a hundred feet.

  But the mist was already thinning when the three pilots on dawn patrol trudged from their tents to the abandoned farmhouse that served as officers’ and sergeants’ messes and squadron offices.

  Boyd stopped at the bell-tent next to his and called, “Elliot, are you there?”

  Elliot Holt’s cheerful American voice answered at once. “Sure, Nick, come on in. I won’t be a minute.”

  Boyd opened the tent-flap and stood in the entrance. “Better hurry: mist’s lifting.” He sounded as though he barely held excitement in check.

  Holt grinned at him, his round and rubicund face emerging suddenly from a thick white sweater he had pulled over his head and was smoothing down his tall, thickset body. “Go ahead if you like; I’ve still got a couple more layers to put on.”

  “I’ll wait,” his friend replied; with resignation, but smiling. Whether the smile was prompted by tolerance or anticipation of their first dawn patrol, Holt did not know. “If you’re last you may get a ticking off from Chandler. If we’re together, he’ll either have to spread his wrath or say nothing.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t gone across yet.” Holt was now buttoning his double-breasted, high-necked Royal Flying Corps tunic.

  “According to my batman he hadn’t; but while you’re busy insulating yourself, he’s probably already drinking his cocoa.” Boyd looked at the American’s legs. “Honestly, Elliot, you look positively elephantine: what have you got on under your boots?”

  Holt wore beautifully polished brown riding-boots; Greenley boots, which laced up the front. “British football stockings: pulled up above the knee, instead of turning the tops down.”

  “Good Lord!” Boyd made a grimace of pretended disapproval. “Savile Row breeches with football stockings and bulging boots.” He moved his right leg forward. “I’ve got two pairs of thick socks on, but it doesn’t spoil the line of my puttees, does it?”

  “You wait till your tight boots and puttees stop your circulation when we’re at five thousand feet.”

  “If they do, I’ll take to slacks and over-trousers. I’m a rifleman and I don’t intend to fly in riding-boots. Do come on, man.”

  Holt was now struggling into a black bearskin coat that hung to below mid-calf. He snatched up a long woollen muffler and made towards the tent door. “OK, I’m on my way.”

  Boyd, in a belted leather coat that reached as far below his knees as the American’s, and with a striped silk square at his throat, visible under the flying-coat’s upturned collar buttoned to the chin, set a brisk pace. Holt, four inches taller than his companion’s five feet nine, loped easily at his side.

  “Oh, damn,” said Boyd, “the flight commander has beaten us to it.”

  Captain Chandler’s leather-coated, stocky figure was entering the front door of the house.

  “Take it easy, fella: he’s just another guy with two arms and two legs and the same natural functions as anyone else.”

  Boyd did not care for talk about bodily functions and he could not see what relevance they had to the awe B Flight’s commander inspired in him. What he did know was that Chandler, who had a face battered by no less than five aeroplane crashes and several falls at point-to-point and steeplechasing, was of uncertain temper. If he was in his arrogant ex-cavalryman’s mood this morning he would be unpleasant anyway and all the worse if he took exception to two subalterns arriving in mess after he did.

  It was some comfort, though, to know that Elliot Holt had an apparently infinite capacity for indifference to the vagaries of the captain’s temperament; or anyone else’s, Boyd had come to believe during the two months they had known each other. Henry Chandler may decide to greet them with the rough side of his tongue, but Boyd knew that his American friend would just smile and say “Sure, Cap’n; sorry about that,” and the outburst would appear to rebound on the other man as being unjustified and even petulant.

  One never knew, with Captain Chandler: if he had been drinking heavily the night before he could be liverish and sharp-tongued; on the other hand, if he were badly enough hung over he would be silent and ignoring: which, in its way, was as bad. He had a tough way of looking at you when he was not talkative that conveyed strong distaste and a rebuke. The only effect it had on Holt was to have made him remark the day before to Boyd: “When that guy looks at me that way, it makes me want to slug him right on the chin: it’s hard to be sure what he means; at least when he says something critical, you know what’s eating him.”

  “Doesn’t that make you want to punch him, all the same?”

  “Oddly enough, no.”

  “Don’t do it, anyway: you’d be court-martialled out of the RFC.”

  With his usual cheerfulness, Holt had said “That’s OK. Then I’d join the Escadrille Lafayette with all the other Americans.”

  And they had only been on the squadron for a week!

  They entered the dining-room, where Chandler waited at the long table for the duty batman to fetch the cocoa which was still keeping warm on the kitchen stove.

  Boyd quickly said, “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning.” The flight commander’s square, blunt-featured face was expressionless. He made Boyd feel as though he were a particularly nasty ha-ha over which Captain Henry Chandler had to jump a nappy hunter.

  “Good morning, sir.” Boyd asked himself if there was a provocative note in Holt’s Arizona drawl.

  “Good morning, Holt.” Chandler’s glance took in Holt’s legs as he opened his bearskin coat before sitting down. “Rheumatism in the knee-joints?”

  “I don’t think so, Cap’n. Why? You got some trouble with your knees, this cold weather?” Holt’s blue-eyed gaze was all innocence.

  “The only trouble I
’m likely to have with my knees is wearing them out in prayer that I’ll be able to make halfway decent pilots out of you warts.”

  Unexpectedly, Chandler laughed.

  The batman brought in a silver tray with a coffeepot containing cocoa, a jug of milk and sugar-bowl on it, and set it in front of him. The major commanding the squadron was also a cavalryman and insisted that the mess maintained a certain style; however rough the living conditions and notwithstanding that the new Corps had not yet acquired the silver and other little luxuries one expected in an officers’ mess. Being a rich man, he had contributed some items himself, and others who could afford to had followed suit. At the rate at which pilots and observers had been killed in 1915 and were still being disposed of by death or wounds in 1916, enough members passed through all RFC messes for a fair number to be better off than average and able to make their squadrons a gift.

  Chandler poured his cocoa and pushed the tray towards Boyd: who had been commissioned in September 1914, four weeks after war broke out, and was senior to Holt, whose commission was only four months old. Such matters of protocol were dear to the flight commander.

  Boyd was wary of his apparent good humour. He could not reconcile it with the look he had received. As nervous as a sprinter at the start of a hundred yards race, eager to be off the ground on his first dawn patrol, he ventured, “The mist seems to be clearing up quite quickly, sir.”

  Chandler ignored this and said, “We’ll take off in V-formation and climb to 3,000 feet, where we’ll probably be a couple of hundred feet below cloud base. We’ll continue east until we see a reasonable break in the clouds, then we’ll climb above them and look around behind enemy lines.” Getting up from the table, he added, “Tell me, Holt, did you shoot that bear yourself?”

  “Went up in the Rockies and got me this ol’ b’ar with mah bare hands, sir.”

  Boyd caught his breath. Chandler gave the American a bleak stare and led the way out.

  The grass crackled underfoot. The cold stung their faces. Beads of moisture from the grass gathered on Boyd’s dubbinned black boots; he had been in the Rifle Brigade before transferring to the RFC, and black was riflemen’s colour; his gesture in return for the side the cavalry, who were predominant in the Corps, persistently flaunted. Holt’s boots, oversize even for his huge feet, to allow him to wear the thickest socks and wiggle his toes for comfort, thudded down so heavily that they flung a shower of frost aside at every tread. Chandler’s spurs clinked. He would not abandon them merely because he no longer rode into action, but wore blunt ones after having torn the canvas of many aeroplanes.

  Air mechanics stood shivering by the three DH2s of the detail, cupping their woollen-gloved hands around their mouths and blowing on them, stamping their feet.

  The DH2 fighting scout had just come to France, the first real fighter built for the RFC. Its predecessors had all been primarily reconnaissance aircraft: this, at last, was purpose-designed to cope with the enemy’s Fokker scouts. So great had been the killing by the Fokkers the previous year that even in Parliament it had been referred to as the Fokker Scourge. The Corps eschewed such hyperbole, but none the less had gone so far as to admit to the Fokker Menace.

  Unfortunately, the Germans, thanks to their Dutch designer Anthony Fokker, had the advantage of a mechanism which enabled a machine-gun to be fired through what was known as the propeller disc; that was, between the blades. The British had been slow to emulate them, although they could have been the first in the world to manufacture such a device. A British patent had already been registered before 1914. In consequence, the DH2 had to be a pusher type with the propeller behind the pilot instead of in front of him. There were several disadvantages to such a design. If the aeroplane crashed, the engine tended to shift forward and crush the pilot. If the engine were hit by anti-aircraft shells or the bullets of enemy machine-guns, either on the ground or carried by enemy aircraft, pieces could fly off it and damage the airframe.

  These latest British single-seaters had French-made 100 horsepower Gnome single-valve engines; second-hand ones! The engine was a rotary and would sometimes fling off its cylinders or other components, to the grave damage of the DH2’s tail booms.

  Boyd turned towards his aircraft, settling his leather helmet comfortably on his head. He acknowledged the salutes of the two air mechanics who stood by the propeller, and said “Good morning” to them by name. “Did you get a hot cup of tea before you came out?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you, sir; and we’ll be ’aving another when we’ve seen you off.”

  Boyd walked round the aeroplane. Only the front part, from the trailing edge of the lower wing to the nose, was enclosed to form the nacelle. The longitudinal tail booms with their upright struts formed an open cage at the end of which were the tail plane and rudder. The open cockpit with its deeply cut-away sides was right forward. A Lewis gun capable of firing 600 rounds a minute was mounted in front of the pilot, slightly to his left.

  Boyd climbed aboard and fitted himself into the uncomfortable metal seat. In front of him were an air-speed indicator, altimeter, revolution counter, oil pressure gauge and spirit-level. No lavish array.

  He had left flying training school just over three weeks before. Then there had been two weeks’ leave, followed by two days’ travelling. He had joined the squadron, hoping and at the same time dreading that he would be in action at once. He might well have been, but for the fact that he had never yet flown a DH2. The first few days had been spent, when the weather permitted, familiarising himself with the new type and practising formation flying well behind the British lines. This was to be his first operation and he knew that the life expectancy of aircrew on the Western Front in 1916 was three weeks. He wondered, as he called “Contact” and one of the troops swung the propeller, whether that had been calculated from the day of joining a squadron or the day of making one’s first operational flight.

  But dawn patrols were usually uneventful. He was not sure whether he was glad or sorry about that. He had to face an air battle sooner or later, and the quicker he got it over the better. That was what he told himself, but he did not find conviction easy.

  The airfield actually boasted a runway: cinders laid across a field of beet. It was not the most even of surfaces, but the buoyancy of early aircraft enabled them to take off and land on rough terrain and up or down a slope, with a very short run.

  With flight commander’s red streamers fluttering from the outer aft struts of his wings in the wash from his propeller, Chandler waved away the chocks from his wheels, then raised his hand in signal to the other two pilots and began to taxy.

  Following his flight commander, and to the left of him, Boyd felt his lips and mouth were both dry. He recalled his first solo in the Shorthorn Henri Farman trainer, known to the pupils as the Flying Incinerator. He felt the same apprehension now. Why couldn’t he have thought about something pleasant? Such as taking the spiffing Marjorie Randall to see Tonight’s The Night at the Gaiety and laughing at the wonderful fooling of Leslie Henson and George Grossmith, only ten days ago.

  Of the past seven days, only four had been suitable for flying. Boyd wished he had a total of more than forty-seven hours in his logbook. He had added the last thirteen hours only because of the care that Chandler, despite his casual manner, took of his pilots.

  In recognition of the threat posed by the Fokkers, Major-General Trenchard, commanding the air arm of the British Expeditionary Force, had ordered, on 14th January, that a machine on reconnaissance must be escorted by at least three others. His order laid down that “These machines must fly in close formation and a reconnaissance should not be continued if any of the machipes become detached. Flying in close formation must be practised by all pilots.”

  Chandler had, accordingly, said to his three new arrivals: “You are to fly at least three hours a day, with me or one of the other senior pilots, until your formation flying is good enough to justify allowing you to escort one of our BE2s.” He had characteri
stically added: “It’s not you I’m concerned about; I don’t want to lose an experienced pilot and good observer if they happen to run into a Hun and have to rely on you beauties.”

  The previous evening he had sent for them at the end of the day’s flying. “You seem to have got the hang of formation, more or less. You are not ready yet to take on escort, but I’ll take Holt and Boyd out at dawn tomorrow to try to find a few Huns and see how you shape.” He had favoured them with his sardonic smile, and added: “If you come back intact, I’ll think about entrusting one of my BE2s and its crew to your tender mercies; with a decent pilot to lead you.”

  Climbing at sixty-two miles an hour, they were at 1,000 feet a little over two minutes after leaving the ground. At 3,500 feet they levelled off and the cold struck bitterly on the exposed parts of Boyd’s face. Now and again he and Holt glanced across at each other and he wondered if the big, self-assured American was feeling the same inward tremors as himself.

  They flew within a hundred yards of a British observation balloon and Chandler exchanged a wave with the officer in the basket dangling beneath it. Boyd did not envy the balloon observer, easy meat for a German airman. When fired on, balloons caught fire easily and burned fast; there was barely time for the occupants to scramble out and they had to be above 1,400 feet to give their parachutes time to open. Boyd reflected that at least those fellows had parachutes, which were denied to aeroplane pilots and observers.

  They were touching sixty-eight miles an hour now, in level flight. Boyd realised that Chandler had taken them higher than he had said he would because the clouds were not as low as had been expected, and height was an important advantage in an encounter with the enemy.

  Four miles east of the three observation balloons they had passed, they crossed the front line: support and communication trenches showed as dark gashes among shellholes and shattered buildings; then the front line itself, and Boyd knew exactly what it was like down there with the puddles, the mud, the rats and the stench. He was glad to be out of it. Fourteen months of infantry warfare had been enough and nothing could be worse, not even the prospect of being burned to death in an aeroplane or hitting the ground at a hundred miles an hour in a nosedive.