Air Men o' War - Boyd Cable

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her, Major … but y'see, … my leg … was a bit numb."

      He closed his eye; and died.

      A pilot lost doesn't very much count.

      (But don't tell his girl or his mater this!)

      There's always another to take his mount,

      And push the old 'bus where the Archies miss.

      But a 'bus that's lost you can't renew,

      For where one works there's the want of two

      And all they can make are still too few,

      So we must bring home the 'bus.

      III

      A TENDER SUBJECT

      The telling of this tale in the Squadron Mess came about through (1) a mishap, (2) a joke, and (3) an argument. The mishap was to a fighting two-seater, which landed on the Squadron's 'drome with a dud engine. The pilot and observer made their way to the Squadron office and, after a brief 'phone talk to their own C.O., borrowed a tender and pushed off for their own 'drome. The leader of "A" Flight walked down to the tender, chatting to them, and four of the Squadron's pilots took advantage of the chance of a lift in to a town the tender had to pass on the journey. All of them heard and all were a little surprised, at "A" Commander's parting word to the two visitors. "I've told the driver to go slow and careful," he said. "You fellows just watch he does it, will you?"

      The joke began to dawn on the four just after the tender had carefully cleared the first bend of the road from the 'drome and the driver began to open her up and let her rip. The joke grew with the journey, and the four on their return to the Squadron that afternoon burst into the full ante-room and, announcing it "Such a joke, oh, such a joke!" went on to tell it in competing quartette to a thoroughly appreciative audience. It appeared that one passenger – "the pale-faced nervy-looking little 'un with pink eye-rims" – had showed distinct uneasiness when the tender rushed a dip-and-rise at top speed, and his observer – "a reg'lar Pickwick Fat Boy, quakin' like a jelly" – complained openly and bitterly when the tender took a corner on the two outside wheels and missed a country cart with six inches and a following gust of French oaths to spare.

      When, by the grace o' God, and by a bare hand's-breadth, they shaved past a lumbering M.T. lorry, "Pink Eye" and "Fat Boy" clung dumb to each other and plainly devoted themselves to silent prayer. The dumbness deserted them and they made up all arrears of speech, and to spare, when the tender took four heaps of road-metal by the wayside in a series of switch-backing hand-springs. "'Course we twigged your joke by then," said the four to "A" leader. "I suppose you delivered the driver his go-slow order with a large-sized wink and he savvied what you meant." It appeared that Pink Eye had asked the four to make the driver slow down, or to kill him or something. They pretended innocence and said he was a most careful man, and so on. Fat Boy nearly wept when they met a Staff car travelling fast and, never slacking an ounce, whooped past with a roar; and after a hairpin bend, which the tender took like a fancy skater doing the figure-of-eight, Pink Eye completely broke up and swore that he was going to get off and walk. "He'd have done it too," said the four delightedly, "if we hadn't eased her up. But you never saw such a state of funk as those two were in. Kept moppin' their brows, and apologisin' for their nerves, and fidgetin' and shiverin' like wet kittens every time we took a corner or met a cart. It was too funny – really funny."

      This led to the argument – whether men with nerves of that sort could be any good in air work. "I know I'd hate to be a pilot with an observer of that kind watching my tail, almost as much as I'd hate to be an observer with Pink Eye for a pilot," said one, and most there agreed. A few argued that it was possible for men to be brave enough in one kind of show and the very opposite in another – that one fellow could do the V.C. act seven days a week under fire and take every sort of risk in action without turning a hair, and yet go goosey-fleshed on a Channel crossing in a choppy sea, while another man might enjoy sailing a boat single-handed in a boiling white sea, and yet be genuinely nervous about dodging across the full traffic-tide of a London thoroughfare. Most of those present declined to believe these theories, maintaining stoutly that a good plucked 'un was always such, and that an obvious funk couldn't be anything else – except in novelettes and melodrama. Then came the story.

      "Did y'ever hear of 'Charger' Wicks?" said the Captain of "A." "No? Well, you're rather recently out, so you mightn't, but – well, he's fairly well known out here. He's rather a case in point – "

      Being told by an expert to an audience of experts, his tale was put more briefly, technically, and air-slangily than I may hope to do, but here is the sense of it.

      "Charger" Wicks was a pilot in a well-known fighting squadron, and was so called from a favourite tactic of his in air fighting and his insistent advice to the rest of the Flight he came to command to follow his plan of attack. "Always charge straight at your Hun if you get a chance," he would say. "Drive straight and hard nose-on at him, keeping your gun going hot. If you keep straight, he'll flinch – every time; and as he turns up, down, or out, you get a full-length target underneath, topside, or broadside. If you keep on and shoot straight, you're bound to get a hatful of bullets into him somewhere."

      The plan certainly seemed to work, and Charger notched up a good tally of crashed Huns, but others in the Squadron warned him he'd try it once too often. "Charge straight at him, and he'll dodge," said Charger. "Wait," said the others. "Some day you'll meet a Hun who works on the same rule; then where'll you be?" "Yes," said Billy Bones, Charger's observer, "and where'll I be?" But although he pretended to grumble, Billy Bones was, as a matter of fact, quite in agreement on the nose-on charging stunt and believed in it as firmly as Charger himself. It took nerve, he admitted, but if you had that – and Charger certainly had – it worked all right. As it happened, the nerves of both were to be "put through it" rather severely.

      They were up with the Flight one day, Charger with Billy Bones leading in their pet 'bus Y221. They ran into a scrap with odds of about two to one against them, and in the course of it Charger got a chance to put his old tactic to the proof. The moment he swung Y221 and headed her straight at a Hun scout, Billy knew what was coming, and heaved his gun round ready for any shot that offered as the Hun flinched past. But this time it looked as if the Squadron's old warning was going to be fulfilled and that Charger had met the Hun with the same rule as himself. Charger's gun began to rattle at about one hundred yards' range, and the Hun opened at the same moment. Billy, crouching with his gun at the ready and his eyes glued on a scarlet boss in the centre of the Hun's propeller, saw and heard the bullets stream smoking and cracking past and on their machine. It does not take long for two machines travelling about a hundred miles per hour to cover a hundred yards, but to Billy, staring tense at that growing scarlet blot, each split fraction of a second was an age, and as the shape of the Hun grew but showed no sign of a changing outline, Billy's thoughts raced. Charger, he knew, wouldn't budge an inch from his line; if the Hun also held straight … he still held straight … the slightest deviation up or down would show instantly in the wings, seen edgeways in thin lines, thickening and widening. The bullets were coming deadly close … and the red boss grew and grew. If the Hun didn't give now – this instant – it would be too late … they must collide. The approaching wing-edges still showed their thin straight line, and Billy, with a mental "Too late now!" gasped and gripped his gun and waited the crash.

      Then, at the last possible instant, the Hun's nerve gave – or, rather, it gave just an instant too late. Billy had a momentary vision of the thin wing-edges flashing wide, of the black crosses on the under side, of a long narrow strip of underbody and tail suddenly appearing below the line of the planes; and then, before he could move or think, he felt the Y221 jar violently, heard horrible sounds of splintering, cracking, tearing, had a terrifying vision of a great green mass with splashed ugly yellow spots rearing up over the top plane before his startled eyes, plunging past over his ducking head with splintering wreckage and flapping streamers of fabric whizzing and rushing about his ears. Y221 – whirling, jolting, twisting all ways and every way at once apparently – fell away in a series of sickening jerks that threatened to wrench her joint from joint. Billy's thoughts raced down ahead of them to where they would hit the ground 15,000 feet below … how long would it take … would they hit nose-first or how … was there anything he could do? – and

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