Eleven Eleven

CHAPTER 9

8.00 a.m.

Eddie Hertz slept late – a rare luxury as he was often up before first light to fly the dawn patrol. Today he was off the roster. As he came to, the first thing he noticed was the scent of Céline’s perfume and he felt a stab of loneliness.

Eddie didn’t really believe her scarf would keep him safe, but he liked the idea of having something of hers so close to him. His fellow pilots were crazy about their rituals and superstitions. Some of them even took a cat up with them. Biederbeck had a black one – the classic witch’s familiar – but Eddie thought it was cruel to the poor animal. What would happen if it got stuck under your feet or was so terrified it wanted to jump out?

He threw on his clothes and splashed his face at the basin by the window. It was a short walk to the mess at the airbase, and if he hurried he’d be in time for breakfast.

Biederbeck was there, still in his flying gear, black soot on his face with an incongruous white patch around his eyes where he had removed his goggles.

‘Hey, Eddie,’ he shouted over. ‘Guess what I’ve been up to!’ He looked exceedingly pleased with himself.

‘Another notch on the propeller, huh?’ said Eddie. ‘Was it a Fokker? What does your cat think about that?’

‘Better than that, pal! I got one of those ammunition trains. About two in the morning. Saw it coming into this little town near to Mons. The smoke in the moonlight gave it away – so I came in low and dropped a couple of twenty-five-pounders. I’d like to tell you it was my skill and judgement –’ he winked, a habit Eddie was beginning to find irritating – ‘but I got lucky. Very lucky. The bombs had their usual delay, and as I was flying away I heard an explosion, then about ten seconds later the whole thing erupted like a volcano. The crate felt like it had been picked up by a wave. If I’d been just above, I’d have been fried along with all the Huns below.

‘Course, I circled around to check out the damage. Bright as day it was for a while. Then some of the Huns started on me with machine guns so I got out of there pretty damn quick.’

‘So you’re the one who disturbed my good night’s sleep,’ said Eddie.

Their conversation was interrupted by another airman, who burst into the mess with a delighted expression on his face. ‘Hold the front page, fellas. I got the scoop of the century!’

Biederbeck and Eddie looked at him expectantly. ‘War’s over!’ he announced breathlessly. ‘The whole shooting match ends at eleven o’clock this morning. Ceasefire!’

The mess erupted in a great cheer. ‘We’re done, boys. We’re all going to live,’ said one of the pilots.

Eddie cheered along with the rest of them. But something was bothering him. As he ate his bacon and scrambled eggs, he felt a twinge of disappointment. He’d got four Huns. You needed five to call yourself an ace. He’d love to go back home and have his picture in the paper: Eddie Hertz – fighter ace. That would make Janie Holland wish she hadn’t dumped him.

‘I’m going out to bag myself a Hun,’ he told Biederbeck.

‘Squadron leader won’t allow it, Eddie. There’s no operations now for the rest of the day.’

Another pilot leaned over from the next table. ‘That attack they told us about at yesterday’s briefing – Colonel Miller’s 91st Division. Going in at Aulnois this morning.’

Eddie looked blank. Then he remembered. ‘Ten o’clock, isn’t it?’

‘I’d guess they could do with some air support,’ said the pilot.

‘They’ll call that assault off surely,’ said Eddie, suddenly feeling deflated.

The pilot shook his head. ‘Not if I know that bastard Miller. He’ll be wanting to milk every last chance he’s got to chase the Hun. Those men will fight right up to the last minute.’

Eddie nodded. ‘I’m gonna get my erks to fuel her up and I’m going out. They can throw the book at me when I get back.’ ‘Erk’ was bit of slang they’d picked up from the Royal Flying Corps. It was an abbreviation of sorts, of ‘aircraftman’ – the mechanics that kept a plane airworthy.

He ran over to the barn that served as a temporary hangar for three of the squadron’s Sopwith Camels. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he shouted over to a couple of men in overalls who sat playing cards in the corner. ‘Get her fuelled up. I’m going out in fifteen.’

The ground crew leaped to their feet. They had heard there would be no more flying that morning. But Eddie was the boss. If he said he was going up, he was going up.

Eddie hurried to the farmhouse, grabbed his flying jacket and Céline’s scarf and hurriedly pulled on his calf-length brown boots. His flying helmet and leather gloves were waiting for him on the seat of his Camel. He looked out at the overcast grey sky and quickly pulled on a thick woollen sweater. It was going to be cold up there.

Leaving without so much as a final glance, he ran towards the Camel. The ground crew were finishing off the fuelling. ‘Give us five more minutes, boss. Then she’s ready to go.’

Whenever Eddie climbed into the wicker seat of his Camel, he had the strangest mixture of feelings. Always excitement – that, at least, had never left him, but fear too – a queasy nausea whenever he smelled the oil and gasoline and polished metal of the engine. That magnificent piece of gleaming machinery that whirred and popped and hammered with such precision right in front of his eyes, this extraordinary device that lifted him above the clouds, could also deliver him to a horrible burning death or crush his flesh and bones if he crashed to the ground. Flying was a Faustian pact. You had the chance to go up into the air and soar like a bird – but you also faced the fate that British song so vividly promised.

The drill for take-off was so ingrained Eddie ran through it without really thinking what he was doing. Engine checks, machine gun checks, two twenty-five-pound bombs right underneath him on the underside of the fuselage. Eddie didn’t like having those things on board. If he crashed on take-off, or got hit, who could say they wouldn’t go off?

‘OK, let’s get her off. Contact!’ said Eddie, and the mechanic swung the varnished wooden propeller. The engine spluttered into life with a spurt of blue exhaust, and his nostrils filled with the smell of petrol. And as it usually did on the first time, the prop came to an abrupt halt and had to be spun again. As it usually did, this time the rotary engine fired on all nine of its cylinders and Eddie felt an intoxicating power judder through the small biplane. It was like a great beast pulling on a leash.

That engine had terrified him when he first flew these Camels. The way it spun on its housing – this great lump of gleaming steel whizzing around at 1,500 revolutions per minute. It was like a great big gyroscope and it perpetually tugged the flimsy, wood-and-canvas plane off to the right. If you weren’t careful, that engine would be the death of you. And Eddie was convinced that crashing with the thing spinning around like that was far more dangerous than crashing with a stationary in-line engine.

But without it, the Camel wouldn’t be half the plane it was. Nothing did a right turn as quickly as a Camel, as many a German pilot had found out to their cost. Left turns were slower – laborious really. But the aircraft was agile, and that was what made it so formidable in a dogfight. If you could cope with its limitations – sluggish above 12,000 feet, slow compared to the latest German Fokkers – you were lucky to have one.

Take-off was the most dangerous time. A full fuel tank added to the forward weight of the craft and Eddie always felt anxious until the wheels left the ground and the shaking stopped. He gunned the engine, feeling it straining on its housing.

‘Chocks away,’ shouted Eddie, and made the usual gesture. He didn’t know why he even shouted. The noise drowned everything out. The ground crew spun the Camel on its spindly wheels, holding on to its tail, safely away from that roaring engine. The machine emerged from the barn and Eddie began to trundle along the bumpy grass to the runway.

Checking wind direction, and making sure he had maximum length for take-off, Eddie gave the engine a final gunning and then began his run. The wind started to sing in the struts and he could feel the terrific power of the machine at his fingertips.

This manoeuvre required supreme concentration, working the ailerons, elevators and rudder with hands and feet, and pushing the throttle just so. The torque was phenomenal. As Eddie gained speed, the whole aircraft was wrenched to the right. He set the stick and the pedals to counteract that swing and pulled back the throttle.

If he got this wrong, he could easily find himself in a high-speed collision with a tree, and then they really would have to take the cylinder out of his kidneys, and all the other grisly things from that song. Eddie had seen enough Camels leap in the air, only to stall and land with a sickening explosion, or worst of all tip forward, shattering the propeller and engine housing and mangling the pilot . . . it was all too easy to do.

He felt the tail lift. This was the trickiest part. Keeping her level for a few seconds more. His eyes darted down to the speedometer. It was at 70 mph. He pulled back the stick and the jolting stopped as he parted company with the ground. Immediately, his anxiety vanished. He climbed to the low cloud base, keen to break out into the vast blue domain above. He could feel the moisture of the heavy clouds in his throat and sensed their clammy coldness on his face.

Five minutes later he was through and basking in brilliant sunshine. The thrill of that never left him. Those mere mortals down on the ground – they had to put up with whatever weather the heavens decreed. A pilot could enjoy the sunshine whenever he took to the sky.

And the clouds up there. Some of them were as big as mountains – with craggy promontories and great gullies. And when you got really high up, you could see the cloud fields stretch to the horizon. You could even see the curve of the Earth.

Being able to do that made Eddie feel like a god. And the girls loved him. Even in New York, in the week before he left, they had flocked to hear his news. All the most glamorous girls went for the flyboys – especially the fighter pilots. They were the princes of the sky. Eddie enjoyed the attention, but he was wise enough to know how shallow it all was.

Now he had reached 1,000 feet, just above the cloud base. He turned the nose of his Camel to the east and the enemy.