Cavalry of the Clouds. Alan Bott
to a chance idea.
One by one our six war machines arrived and were allotted to their respective pilots. Each man treated his bus as if it were an only child. If another pilot were detailed to fly it the owner would watch the performance jealously, and lurid indeed was the subsequent talk if an outsider choked the carburettor, taxied the bus on the switch, or otherwise did something likely to reduce the efficiency of engine or aeroplane. On the whole, however, the period of waiting was dull, so that we welcomed comic relief provided by the affair of the Jabberwocks.
The first three machines delivered from the Rafborough depôt disappointed us in one particular. The movable mounting for the observer's gun in the rear cockpit was a weird contraption like a giant catapult. It occupied a great deal of room, was stiff-moving, reduced the speed by about five miles an hour owing to head resistance, refused to be slewed round sideways for sighting at an angle, and constantly collided with the observer's head. We called it the Christmas Tree, the Heath Robinson, the Jabberwock, the Ruddy Limit, and names unprintable. The next three buses were fitted with Scarff mountings, which were as satisfactory as the Jabberwocks were unsatisfactory.
Then, late in the evening, one of the new craft was crashed beyond repair. At early dawn a pilot and his observer left their beds, walked through the rain to the aerodrome, and sneaked to the flight shed. They returned two hours later, hungry, dirty, and flushed with suppressed joy. After breakfast we found that the crashed bus had lost a Scarff mounting, and the bus manned by the early risers had found one. The gargoyle shape of a discarded Jabberwock sprawled on the floor.
At lunch-time another pilot disappeared with his observer and an air of determination. When the shed was opened for the afternoon's work the Jabberwock had been replaced on the machine of the early risers, and the commandeered Scarff was affixed neatly to the machine of the quick-lunchers. While the two couples slanged each other a third pilot and observer sought out the flight-commander, and explained why they were entitled to the disputed mounting. The pilot, the observer pointed out, was the senior pilot of the three; the observer, the pilot pointed out, was the senior observer. Was it not right, therefore, that they should be given preferential treatment? The flight-commander agreed, and by the time the early-risers and quick-lunchers had settled their quarrel by the spin of a coin, the Scarff had found a fourth and permanent home.
The two remaining Jabberwocks became an obsession with their unwilling owners, who hinted darkly at mutiny when told that no more Scarffs could be obtained, the Naval Air Service having contracted for all the new ones in existence. But chance, in the form of a Big Bug's visit of inspection, opened the way for a last effort. In the machine examined by the Big Bug, an exhausted observer was making frantic efforts to swivel an archaic framework from back to front. The Big Bug looked puzzled, but passed on without comment. As he approached the next machine a second observer tried desperately to move a similar monstrosity round its hinges, while the pilot, stop-watch in hand, looked on with evident sorrow. The Big Bug now decided to investigate, and he demanded the reason for the stop-watch and the hard labour.
"We've just timed this mounting, sir, to see how quickly it could be moved for firing at a Hun. I find it travels at the rate of 6.5 inches a minute."
"Disgraceful," said the Big Bug. "We'll get them replaced by the new type." And get them replaced he did, the R.N.A.S. contract notwithstanding. The four conspirators have since believed themselves to be heaven-born strategists.
Followed the average number of delays due to crashed aeroplanes and late stores. At length, however, the transport moved away with our equipment, and we received orders to proceed by air a day later. But next day brought a steady drizzle, which continued for some forty-eight hours, so that instead of proceeding by air the kitless officers bought clean collars. Then came two days of low, clinging mist, and the purchase of shirts. A fine morning on the fifth day forestalled the necessity of new pyjamas.
At ten of the clock we were in our machines, saying good-bye to a band of lucky pilots who stayed at home to strafe the Zeppelin and be petted in the picture press and the Piccadilly grillroom. "Contaxer!" called a mechanic, facing the flight-commander's propeller. "Contact!" replied the flight-commander; his engine roared, around flew the propeller, the chocks were pulled clear, and away and up raced the machine. The rest followed and took up their appointed places behind the leader, at a height chosen for the rendezvous.
We headed in a south-easterly direction, passing on our left the ragged fringe of London. At this point the formation was not so good as it might have been, probably because we were taking leave of the Thames and other landmarks. But four of the twelve who comprised the party have since seen them, and of these four one was to return by way of a German hospital, a prison camp, a jump from the footboard of a train, a series of lone night-walks that extended over two months, and an escape across the frontier of Neutralia, while two fellow-fugitives were shot dead by Boche sentries.
Above the junction of Redhill the leader veered to the left and steered by railway to the coast. Each pilot paid close attention to his place in the group, for this was to be a test of whether our formation flying was up to the standard necessary for work over enemy country. To keep exact formation is far from easy for the novice who has to deal with the vagaries of a rotary engine in a machine sensitive on the controls. The engine develops a sudden increase of revolutions, and the pilot finds himself overhauling the craft in front; he throttles back and finds himself being overhauled by the craft behind; a slight deviation from the course and the craft all around seem to be swinging sideways or upwards. Not till a pilot can fly his bus unconsciously does he keep place without repeated reference to the throttle and instrument-board.
Beyond Redhill we met an unwieldy cloudbank and were forced to lose height. The clouds became denser and lower, and the formation continued to descend, so that when the coast came into view we were below 3000 feet.
A more serious complication happened near Dovstone, the port which was to be our cross-Channel springboard. There we ran into a mist, thick as a London fog. It covered the Channel like a blanket, and completely enveloped Dovstone and district. To cross under these conditions would have been absurd, for opaque vapour isolated us from the ground and cut the chain of vision which had bound together the six machines. We dropped through the pall of mist and trusted to Providence to save us from collision.
Four fortunate buses emerged directly above Dovstone aerodrome, where they landed. The other two, in one of which I was a passenger, came out a hundred feet over the cliffs. We turned inland, and soon found ourselves travelling over a wilderness of roofs and chimneys. A church-tower loomed ahead, so we climbed back into the mist. Next we all but crashed into the hill south of Dovstone. We banked steeply and swerved to the right, just as the slope seemed rushing towards us through the haze.
Once more we descended into the clear air. Down below was a large field, and in the middle of it was an aeroplane. Supposing this to be the aerodrome, we landed, only to find ourselves in an uneven meadow, containing, besides the aeroplane already mentioned, one cow, one pond, and some Brass Hats.[1] As the second bus was taxiing over the grass the pilot jerked it round sharply to avoid the pond. His undercarriage gave, the propeller hit the earth and smashed itself, and the machine heeled over and pulled up dead, with one wing leaning on the ground.
Marmaduke, our war baby, was the pilot of the maimed machine. He is distinctly young, but he can on occasion declaim impassioned language in a manner that would be creditable to the most liver-ridden major in the Indian Army. The Brass Hats seemed mildly surprised when, after inspecting the damage, Marmaduke danced around the unfortunate bus and cursed systematically persons and things so diverse as the thingumy fool whose machine had misled us into landing, the thingumy pond, the thingumy weather expert who ought to have warned us of the thingumy Channel mist, the Kaiser, his aunt, and his contemptible self.
He was no what-you-may-call-it good as a pilot, shouted Marmaduke to the ruminative cow, and he intended to leave the blank R.F.C. for the Blanky Army Service Corps or the blankety Grave-diggers Corps. As a last resort, he would get a job as a double-blank Cabinet Minister, being no blank-blank good for anything else.
The Brass Hats gazed and gazed and gazed. A heavy silence followed Marmaduke's