Cavalry of the Clouds Part 5

V. looked round and smiled rea.s.suringly, though he himself was far from rea.s.sured. He tried an alteration in the carburettor mixture, but this did not remedy matters. Next, thinking that the engine might have been slightly choked, he cut off the petrol supply for a moment and put down the nose of the machine. The engine stopped, but picked up when the petrol was once more allowed to run. During the interval I thought the engine had ceased work altogether, and was about to stuff things into my pocket in readiness for a landing on hostile ground.

We continued in a westerly direction, with the one cylinder still cutting out. To make matters worse, the strong wind that had been our friend on the outward journey was now an enemy, for it was drifting us to the north, so that we were obliged to steer almost dead into it to follow the set course.

As we pa.s.sed along the straight ca.n.a.l from Le Recul to Princebourg many barges were in evidence. Those at the side of the ca.n.a.l were taken to be moored up, and those in the middle to be moving, though the slowness of their speed made it impossible to decide on their direction, for from a height of ten thousand feet they seemed to be stationary. About a dozen Hun machines were rising from aerodromes at Pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie, away to the left, but if they were after us the attempt to reach our height in time was futile.

Between Le Recul and Princebourg we dropped fifteen hundred feet below the three rear machines, which hovered above us. Though I was far from feeling at home, it was necessary to sweep the surrounding country for transport of all kinds. This was done almost automatically, since I found myself unable to give a whole-hearted attention to the job, while the infernal motif of the engine's rag-time drone dominated everything and invited speculation on how much lower we were than the others, and whether we were likely to reach a friendly landing-ground. And all the while a troublesome verse chose very inopportunely to race across the background of my mind, in time with the engine, each cut-out being the end of a line. Once or twice I caught myself murmuring--

"In that poor but honest 'ome, Where 'er sorrowin' parints live, They drink the shampyne wine she sends, But never, never can fergive."

Slightly to the east of Princebourg, a new complication appeared in the shape of a small German machine. Seeing that our bus was in difficulties, it awaited an opportunity to pounce, and remained at a height slightly greater than ours, but some distance behind the bus that acted as rearguard to the party. Its speed must have been about ten miles an hour more than our own, for though the Hun pilot had probably throttled down, he was obliged to make his craft snake its way in short curves, so that it should not come within dangerous range of our guns.

At times he varied this method by lifting the machine almost to stalling point, letting her down again, and repeating the process. Once I saw some motor transport on a road. I leaned over the side to estimate their number, but gave up the task of doing so with accuracy under the double strain of watching the Hun scout and listening to the jerky voice of the engine.

As we continued to drop, the German evidently decided to finish us. He climbed a little and then rushed ahead. I fired at him in rapid bursts, but he kept to his course. He did not come near enough for a dive, however, as the rest of the party, two thousand feet above, had watched his movements, and as soon as he began to move nearer two of them fell towards him. Seeing that his game was spoiled the Boche went down steeply, and only flattened out when he was low enough to be safe from attack.

Near St Guillaume an anti-aircraft battery opened fire. The Hun pilot then thought it better to leave Archie to deal with us, and he annoyed us no more. Some of the sh.e.l.l-bursts were quite near, but we could not afford to lose height in distance-dodging, with our machine in a dubious condition twenty-five miles on the wrong side of the trenches.

Toutpres, to the south-west, was to have been included in the list of towns covered, but under the adverse circ.u.mstances V. decided not to battle against the wind more than was necessary to get us home. He therefore veered to the right, and steered due west. The south-west wind cut across and drifted us, so that our actual course was north-west. Our ground speed was now a good deal greater than if we had travelled directly west, and there was no extra distance to be covered, because of a large eastward bend in the lines as they wound north. We skirted the ragged Foret de Quand-Meme, and pa.s.sed St Guillaume on our left.

The behaviour of the engine went from bad to worse, and the vibration became more and more intense. Once again I thought it would peter out before we were within gliding distance of British territory, and I therefore made ready to burn the machine--the last duty of an airman let in for the catastrophe of a landing among enemies. But the engine kept alive, obstinately and unevenly. V. held down the nose of the machine still farther, so as to gain the lines in the quickest possible time.

Soon we were treated to a display by the family ghost of the clan Archibald, otherwise an immense pillar of grey-white smoky substance that appeared very suddenly to windward of us. It stretched up vertically from the ground to a height about level with ours, which was then only five and a half thousand feet. We watched it curiously as it stood in an unbending rigidity similar to that of a giant waxwork, cold, unnatural, stupidly implacable, half unbelievable, and wholly ridiculous. At the top it sprayed round, like a stick of asparagus. For two or three months similar apparitions had been exhibited to us at rare intervals, nearly always in the same neighbourhood. At first sight the pillars of smoke seemed not to disperse, but after an interval they apparently faded away as mysteriously as they had appeared. What was meant to be their particular branch of frightfulness I cannot say. One rumour was that they were an experiment in aerial ga.s.sing, and another that they were of some phosphorous compound. All I know is that they entertained us from time to time, with no apparent damage.

Archie quickly distracted our attention from the phantom pillar. We had been drifted to just south of Lille, possibly the hottest spot on the whole western front as regards anti-aircraft fire. Seeing one machine four to five thousand feet below its companions, the gunners very naturally concentrated on it. A spasmodic chorus of barking coughs drowned the almost equally spasmodic roar of the engine. V. dodged steeply and then raced, full out, for the lines. A sight of the dirty brown jig-saw of trenches heartened us greatly. A few minutes later we were within gliding distance of the British front. When we realised that even if the engine lost all life we could reach safety, nothing else seemed to matter, not even the storm of sh.e.l.l-bursts.

Suddenly the machine quivered, swung to the left, and nearly put itself in a flat spin. A large splinter of H.E. had sliced away part of the rudder. V. banked to prevent an uncontrolled side-slip, righted the bus as far as possible, and dived for the lines. These we pa.s.sed at a great pace, but we did not shake off Archie until well on the right side, for at our low alt.i.tude the high-angle guns had a large radius of action that could include us. However, the menacing coughs finally ceased to annoy, and our immediate troubles were over. The strain snapped, the air was an exhilarating tonic, the sun was warmly comforting, and everything seemed attractive, even the desolated jumble of waste ground below us. I opened a packet of chocolate and shared it with V., who was trying hard to fly evenly with an uneven rudder. I sang to him down the speaking-tube, but his nerves had stood enough for the day, and he wriggled the machine from one side to the other until I became silent.

Contrariwise to the last, our engine recovered slightly now that its recovery was not so important, and it behaved well until it seized up for better or worse when we had landed.

From the aerodrome the pilots proceeded to tea and a bath, while we, the unfortunate observers, copied our notes into a detailed report, elaborated the sketches of the new aerodromes, and drove in our unkempt state to Headquarters, there to discuss the reconnaissance with spotlessly neat staff officers. At the end of the report one must give the height at which the job was done, and say whether the conditions were favourable or otherwise for observation. I thought of the absence of thick clouds or mist that might have made the work difficult. Then I thought of the cylinder that missed and the chunk of rudder that was missing, but decided that these little inconveniences were unofficial.

And the legend I felt in duty bound to write was: "Height 5,000-10,000 ft. Observation easy."

CHAPTER V.

THERE AND BACK.

An inhuman philosopher or a strong, silent poseur might affect to treat with indifference his leave from the Front. Personally I have never met a philosopher inhuman enough or a poseur strongly silent enough to repress evidence of wild satisfaction, after several months of war at close quarters, on being given a railway warrant ent.i.tling him to ten days of England, home, and no duty. But if you are a normal soldier who dislikes fighting and detests discomfort, the date of your near-future holiday from the dreary scene of war will be one of the few problems that really matter.

Let us imagine a slump in great pushes at your sector of the line, since only during the interval of attack is the leave-list unpigeonholed. The weeks pa.s.s and your turn creeps close, while you pray that the lull may last until the day when, with a heavy haversack and a light heart, you set off to become a transient in Arcadia. The desire for a taste of freedom is sharpened by delay; but finally, after disappointment and postponement, the day arrives and you depart. Exchanging a "So long"

with less fortunate members of the mess, you realise a vast difference in respective destinies. To-morrow the others will be dodging crumps, archies, or official chits "for your information, please"; to-morrow, with luck, you will be dodging taxis in London.

During the journey you begin to cast out the oppressive feeling that a world and a half separates you from the pleasantly undisciplined life you once led. The tense influence of those twin bores of active service, routine and risk, gradually loosens hold, and your state of mind is tuned to a pitch half-way between the note of battle and that of a bank-holiday.

Yet a slight sense of remoteness lingers as you enter London. At first view the Charing Cross loiterers seem more foreign than the peasants of Picardy, the Strand and Piccadilly less familiar than the Albert-Pozieres road. Not till a day or two later, when the remnants of strained pre-occupation with the big things of war have been charmed away by old haunts and old friends, do you feel wholly at home amid your rediscovered fellow-citizens, the Man in the Street, the Pacifist, the air-raid-funk Hysteric, the Lady Flag-Seller, the War Profiteer, the dear-boy Fluff Girl, the Prohibitionist, the England-for-the-Irish politician, the Conscientious Objector, the hotel-government bureaucrat, and other bulwarks of our united Empire. For the rest, you will want to cram into ten short days the average experiences of ten long weeks. If, like most of us, you are young and foolish, you will skim the bubbling froth of life and seek crowded diversion in the lighter follies, the pa.s.sing shows, and l'amour qui rit. And you will probably return to the big things of war tired but mightily refreshed, and almost ready to welcome a further spell of routine and risk.

The one unsatisfactory aspect of leave from France, apart from its rarity, is the travelling. This, in a region congested by the more important traffic of war, is slow and burdensome to the impatient holiday-maker. Occasionally the Flying Corps officer is able to subst.i.tute an excursion by air for the land and water journey, if on one of the dates that sandwich his leave a bus of the type already flown by him must be chauffeured across the Channel. Such an opportunity is welcome, for besides avoiding discomfort, a joy-ride of this description often saves time enough to provide an extra day in England.

On the last occasion when I was let loose from the front on ticket-of-leave, I added twenty-four hours to my Blighty period by a chance meeting with a friendly ferry-pilot and a resultant trip as pa.s.senger in an aeroplane from a home depot. Having covered the same route by train and boat a few days previously, a comparison between the two methods of travel left me an enthusiast for aerial transport in the golden age of after-the-war.

The leave train at Arriere was time-tabled for midnight, but as, under a war-time edict, French cafes and places where they lounge are closed at 10 P.M., it was at this hour that muddied officers and Tommies from every part of the Somme basin began to crowd the station.

Though confronted with a long period of waiting, in a packed entrance-hall that was only half-lit and contained five seats to be scrambled for by several hundred men, every one, projected beyond the immediate discomfort to the good time coming, seemed content. The atmosphere of jolly expectancy was comparable to that of Waterloo Station on the morning of Derby Day. Scores of little groups gathered to talk the latest shop-talk from the trenches. A few of us who were acquainted with the corpulent and affable R.T.O.--it is part of an R.T.O.'s stock-in-trade to be corpulent and affable--sought out his private den, and exchanged yarns while commandeering his whisky. Stuff Redoubt had been stormed a few days previously, and a Canadian captain, who had been among the first to enter the Hun stronghold, told of the a.s.sault. A sapper discussed some recent achievements of mining parties.

A tired gunner subaltern spoke viciously of a stupendous bombardment that allowed little rest, less sleep, and no change of clothes. Time was overcome easily in thus looking at war along the varying angles of the infantryman, the gunner, the engineer, the machine-gun performer, and the flying officer, all fresh from their work.

The train, true to the custom of leave trains, was very late. When it did arrive, the good-natured jostling for seats again reminded one of the London to Epsom traffic of Derby Day. Somehow the crowd was squeezed into carriage accommodation barely sufficient for two-thirds of its number, and we left Arriere. Two French and ten British officers obtained a minimum of s.p.a.ce in my compartment. We sorted out our legs, arms, and luggage, and tried to rest.

In my case sleep was ousted by thoughts of what was ahead. Ten days'

freedom in England! The stout major on my left snored. The head of the hard-breathing Frenchman to the right slipped on to my shoulder. An unkempt subaltern opposite wriggled and turned in a vain attempt to find ease. I was d.a.m.nably cramped, but above all impatient for the morrow. A pa.s.sing train shrieked. Cold whiffs from the half-open window cut the close atmosphere. Slowly, and with frequent halts for the pa.s.sage of war freights more urgent than ourselves, our train chugged northward. One hour, two hours, three hours of stuffy dimness and acute discomfort.

Finally I sank into a troubled doze. When we were called outside Boulogne, I found my hand poised on the stout major's bald head, as if in benediction.

The soldier on leave, eager to be done with the preliminary journey, chafes at inevitable delay in Boulogne. Yet this largest of channel ports, in its present state, can show the casual pa.s.ser-by much that is interesting. It has become almost a new town during the past three years. Formerly a headquarters of pleasure, a fis.h.i.+ng centre and a princ.i.p.al port of call for Anglo-Continental travel, it has been transformed into an important military base. It is now wholly of the war; the armies absorb everything that it transfers from sea to railway, from human fuel for war's blast-furnace to the fish caught outside the harbour. The mult.i.tude of visitors from across the Channel is larger than ever; but instead of Paris, the Mediterranean, and the East, they are bound for less attractive destinations--the muddy battle-area and Kingdom Come.

The spirit of the place is altogether changed. From time immemorial Boulogne has included an English alloy in its French composition, but prior to the war it shared with other coastal resorts of France an outlook of smiling carelessness. Superficially it now seems more British than French, and, partly by reason of this, it impresses one as being severely business-like. The great number of khaki travellers is rivalled by a huge colony of khaki Base workers. Except for a few matelots, French fishermen, and the wharfside cafes, there is nothing to distinguish the quays from those of a British port.

The blue-bloused porters who formerly met one with volubility and the expectation of a fabulous tip have given place to khakied orderlies, the polite customs officials to old-soldier myrmidons of the worried embarkation officer. Store dumps with English markings are packed symmetrically on the cobbled stones. The transport lorries are all British, some of them still branded with the names of well-known London firms. Newly-built supply depots, canteens, and military inst.i.tutes fringe the town proper or rise behind the sand-ridges. One-time hotels and casinos along the sea-front between Boulogne and Wimereux have become hospitals, to which, by day and by night, the smooth-running motor ambulances bring broken soldiers. Other of the larger hotels, like the Folkestone and the Meurice, are now patronised almost exclusively by British officers.

The military note dominates everything. A walk through the main streets leaves an impression of mixed uniforms--bedraggled uniforms from trench and dug-out, neat rainbow-tabbed uniforms worn by officers attached to the Base, graceful nursing uniforms, haphazard convalescent uniforms, discoloured blue uniforms of French permissionaires. Everybody is bilingual, speaking, if not both English and French, either one or other of these languages and the formless Angliche patois invented by Tommy and his hosts of the occupied zone. And everybody, soldier and civilian, treats as a matter of course the strange metamorphosis of what was formerly a haven for the gentle tourist.

The boat, due to steam off at eleven, left at noon,--a creditable performance as leave-boats go. On this occasion there was good reason for the delay, as we ceded the right of way to a hospital s.h.i.+p and waited while a procession of ambulance cars drove along the quay and unloaded their stretcher cases. The Red Cross vessel churned slowly out of the harbour, and we followed at a respectful distance.

Pa.s.sengers on a Channel leave-boat are quieter than might be expected.

With the country of war behind them they have attained the third degree of content, and so novel is this state after months of living on edge that the short crossing does not allow sufficient time for them to be moved to exuberance. One promenades the crowded deck happily, taking care not to tread on the staff spurs, and talks of fighting as if it were a thing of the half-forgotten past.

But there is no demonstration. In a well-known ill.u.s.trated weekly a recent frontispiece, supposedly drawn "from material supplied," depicts a band of beaming Tommies, with weird water-bottles, haversacks, mess-tins, and whatnots dangling from their sheepskin coats, throwing caps and cheers high into the air as they greet the cliffs of England.

As the subject of an Academy picture, or an ill.u.s.tration for "The Hero's Homecoming, or How a Bigamist Made Good," the sketch would be excellent.

But, except for the beaming faces, it is fanciful. A shadowy view of the English coast-line draws a crowd to the starboard side of the boat, whence one gazes long and joyfully at the dainty cliffs. Yet there is no outward sign of excitement; the deep satisfaction felt by all is of too intimate a nature to call for cheering and cap-throwing. The starboard deck remains crowded as the sh.o.r.e looms larger, and until, on entry into Dovstone harbour, one prepares for disembarkation.

The Front seemed very remote from the train that carried us from Dovstone to London. How could one think of the wilderness with the bright hop-fields of Kent chasing past the windows? Then came the ma.s.s-meeting of brick houses that skirt London, and finally the tunnel which is the approach to the terminus. As the wheels rumbled through the darkness of it they suggested some lines of stray verse beginning--

"Twenty to eleven by all the clocks of Piccadilly; Buy your love a lily-bloom, buy your love a rose."

It had been raining, and the faint yet unmistakable tang sniffed from wet London streets made one feel at home more than anything else. We dispersed, each to make his interval of heaven according to taste, means, and circ.u.mstances. That same evening I was fortunate in being helped to forget the realities of war by two experiences. A much-mustached A.P.M. threatened me with divers penalties for the wearing of a soft hat; and I was present at a merry gathering of theatrical luminaries, enormously interested in themselves, but enormously bored by the war, which usurped so much newspaper s.p.a.ce that belonged by rights to the lighter drama.

Curtain and interval of ten days, at the end of which I was offered a place as pa.s.senger in a machine destined for my own squadron. The bus was to be taken to an aircraft depot in France from Rafborough Aerodrome. Rafborough is a small town galvanised into importance by its a.s.sociation with flying. Years ago, in the far-away days when aviation itself was matter for wonder, the pioneers who concerned themselves with the possibilities of war flying made their headquarters at Rafborough.

An experimental factory, rich in theory, was established, and near it was laid out an aerodrome for the more practical work. Thousands of machines have since been tested on the rough-gra.s.sed aerodrome, while the neighbouring Royal Aircraft Factory has continued to produce designs, ideas, aeroplanes, engines, and aircraft accessories. Formerly most types of new machines were put through their official paces at Rafborough, and most types, including some captures from the Huns, were to be seen in its sheds. Probably Rafborough has harboured a larger variety of aircraft and aircraft experts than any other place in the world.

My friend the ferry-pilot having announced that the carriage waited, I strapped our baggage, some new gramophone records, and myself into the observer's office. I also took--tell this not in Gath, for the transport of dogs by aeroplane has been forbidden--a terrier pup sent to a fellow-officer by his family. At first the puppy was on a cord attached to some bracing-wires; but as he showed fright when the machine took off from the ground, I kept him on my lap for a time. Here he remained subdued and apparently uninterested. Later, becoming inured to the engine's drone and the slight vibration, he roused himself and wanted to explore the narrowing pa.s.sage toward the tail-end of the fuselage. The little chap was, however, distinctly pleased to be on land again at Saint Gregoire, where he kept well away from the machine, as if uncertain whether the strange giant of an animal were friendly or a dog-eater.

It was a morning lovely enough to be that of the world's birthday. Not a cloud flecked the sky, the flawless blue of which was made tenuous by sunlight. The sun brightened the kaleidoscopic earthscape below us, so that rivers and ca.n.a.ls looked like quicksilver threads, and even the railway lines glistened. The summer countryside, as viewed from an aeroplane, is to my mind the finest scene in the world--an unexampled scene, of which poets will sing in the coming days of universal flight.

The varying browns and greens of the field-pattern merge into one another delicately; the woods, splashes of bottle-green, relieve the patchwork of hedge from too ordered a scheme; rivers and roads criss-cross in riotous manner over the vast tapestry; pleasant villages and farm buildings snuggle in the valleys or straggle on the slopes. The wide and changing perspective is full of a harmony unspoiled by the jarring notes evident on solid ground. Ugliness and dirt are camouflaged by the clean top of everything. Grimy towns and jerry-built suburbs seem almost attractive when seen in ma.s.s from a height. Slums, the dead uniformity of long rows of houses, sordid back-gardens, bourgeois public statues--all these eyesores are mercifully hidden by the roofed surface.

The very factory chimneys have a certain air of impressiveness, in common with church towers and the higher buildings. Once, on flying over the pottery town of Coalport--the most uninviting place I have ever visited--I found that the altered perspective made it look delightful.

A westward course, with the fringe of London away on our left, brought us to the coast-line all too soon. Pa.s.sing Dovstone, the bus continued across the Channel. A few s.h.i.+ps, tiny and slow-moving when observed from a machine at 8000 feet and travelling 100 miles an hour, spotted the sea. A cl.u.s.ter of what were probably destroyers threw out trails of dark smoke. From above mid-Channel we could see plainly the two coasts--that of England knotted into small creeks and capes, that of France bent into large curves, except for the sharp corner at Grisnez. Behind was Blighty, with its greatness and its--sawdust. Ahead was the province of battle, with its good-fellows.h.i.+p and its--mud. I lifted the puppy to show him his new country, but he merely exhibited boredom and a dislike of the sudden rush of air.

From Cape Grisnez we steered north-east towards Calais, so as to have a clearly defined course to the aircraft depot of Saint Gregoire. After a cross-Channel flight one notes a marked difference between the French and English earthscapes. The French towns and villages seem to sprawl less than those of England, and the countryside in general is more compact and regular. The roads are straight and tree-bordered, so that they form almost as good a guide to an airman as the railways. In England the roads twist and twirl through each other like the threads of a spider's web, and failing rail or river or prominent landmarks, one usually steers by compa.s.s rather than trust to roads.

At Calais we turned to the right and followed a network of ca.n.a.ls south-westward to Saint Gregoire, where was an aircraft depot similar to the one at Rafborough. New machines call at Saint Gregoire before pa.s.sing to the service of aerodromes, and in its workshops machines damaged but repairable are made fit for further service. It is also a higher training centre for airmen. Before they join a squadron pilots fresh from their instruction in England gain experience on service machines belonging to the "pool" at Saint Gregoire.