forward vision, was compared to the Albatros sleek shark-like snout, with its in-line Mercedes engine. How frail when considered against the Germans robust airframe.
God, when are they going to give us real aeroplanes to fly! he grunted, and Andrew did not reply. Too often they had lamented the endless wait for the new SEsa that they had been promised, the Scout Experimental No. 5a that would perhaps allow them to meet the Jastas on equal terms at last.
Andrew's Sopwith was painted bright green, to match his scarf, and the fuselage behind the cockpit was ringed by fourteen white circles, one for each of his confirmed victories, like notches on a sniper's rifle. The aircraft's name was painted on the engine housing: The Flying Haggis.
Michael had chosen bright yellow, and there was a winged tortoise with a worried frown painted below his cockpit and the appeal, Don't ask me, I just work here. His fuselage was ringed by six white circles.
Assisted by their ground crews, they clambered up on to the lower wing, and then eased themselves into the narrow cockpits. Michael settled his feet on to the rudder bars and pumped them left and right, peering back over his shoulder to watch the response of the rudder as he did so. Satisfied, he held up a thumb at his mechanic who had worked most of the night to replace one of the cables shot away on the last sortie. The mechanic grinned and ran to the front of the machine.
Switches off? he called.
Switches off! Michael confirmed, leaning out of the cockpit to peer around the monstrous engine.
Suck in' Suck in! Michael repeated, and worked at the handle of the hand fuel pump. When the mechanic swung the propeller, he heard the suck of fuel into the carburettor under the cowling as the engine primed.
Switches on! ContactV Switches on! At the next swing of the propeller the engine fired and blathered. Blue smoke blew out of the exhaust ports, and there was the stink of burning castor oil. The engine surged, and missed, caught again and settled down to its steady idling beat.
As Michael completed his preflight checks, his stomach rumbled and spasmed with colic. Castor oil lubricated the precision engines, and the fumes they breathed from the exhausts gave them all a perpetual low-grade diarrhoea. The old hands soon learned to control it; whisky had a marvellously binding effect if taken in sufficient quantity. However, the new chums were often affectionately referred to as treacle bottoms, or slippery breeks when they returned red-faced and odorous from a sortie.
Michael settled his goggles and glanced across at Andrew. They nodded at each other, and Andrew opened his throttle and rolled out on to the soggy turf. Michael followed him, his mechanic trotting at his starboard wing tip to help him swing and line up on the narrow muddy strip between the apple trees.
Ahead of him Andrew was airborne and Michael opened his throttle wide. Almost immediately the Sopwith threw her tail up, clearing his forward vision, Michael felt a prick of conscience at his earlier disloyalty. She was a lovely plane and a joy to fly. Despite the sticky mud of the strip, she broke swiftly free of the earth, and at 200 feet Michael levelled out behind Andrew's green machine. The light was just good enough by now for him to make out to his right the green copper-clad spire of the church of the little village of Mort Homme; ahead of him lay the T- shaped grove of oak and beech trees, the long leg of the T perfectly aligned with the squadron's landing strip, a most convenient navigational aid when coming in during bad weather. Beyond the trees stood the pinkroofed chAteau set in the midst of its lawns and formal gardens, and behind the chAteau the low knoll.
Andrew banked fractionally to the right, to pass the knoll. Michael conformed, peering ahead over the edge of his cockpit. Would she be there? It was too early, the knoll was bare, He felt the slide of disappointment and dread. Then he saw her, she was galloping up the pathway towards the crest. The big white stallion lunging powerfully under her slim girlish body.
The girl on the white horse was their good-luck talisman. If she was there waiting on the knoll to wave them away, all would be well. Today, when they were going against the balloons, they needed her, how desperately they needed her benediction.
She reached the crest of the knoll and reined the stallion down. just a few seconds before they drew level she whipped the hat off her head and the thick dark bush of her hair burst from under it. She waved the hat, and Andrew waggled his wings as he roared past.
Michael edged in closer to the crest. The white stallion backed up and nodded nervously as the yellow machine came bellowing at him, but the girl sat him easily, waving gaily. Michael wanted to see her face. He was almost at the same height as the top of the hillock and very close to where she sat. For an instant he looked into her eyes.
They were huge and dark, and he felt his heart trip. He touched his helmet in salute, and he knew now, deep down, that it would go well this day, then he put the memory of those eyes from his mind and looked ahead.
Ten miles ahead, where the low chalk ridges ran across their front, he saw with relief that he had been right, the breeze had not yet dispersed the morning mist that hung in the valleys. The chalk ridges were horribly chewed by shellfire, no vegetation remained upon them, the stumps of the shattered oak trees were nowhere as tall as a man's shoulder, and the shell craters overlapped each other, brimming with stagnant water. The ridges had been fought over, month after month, but at the moment they were in Allied hands, taken at the beginning of the preceding winter at a cost in human lives that challenged belief.
The leprous and pockmarked earth seemed deserted, but it was peopled by the legions of the living and the dead rotting together in the waterlogged earth. The smell of death home on the breeze reached even to the men in the low flying machines, an obscenity that coated the back of their throats and made them gag.
Behind the ridges the Allied troops, South Africans and New Zealanders of the Third Army, were preparing reserve positions as a contingency measure, for should the Allied offensive which was being prepared upon the Somme river further to the west fail, then all the fury of the German counter-attack would be unleashed upon them The preparation of the new line of defences was being seriously hampered by the massed German artillery to the north of the ridges, which deluged the area with an almost continuous barrage of high explosive. As they roared towards the front, Michael could see the yellow haze from the bursting howitzer shells hanging in a poison bank below the ridges, and he could imagine the anguish of the men toiling in the mud, harassed by the unremitting fall of explosives.
As Michael raced towards the ridges, the sound of the barrage rose above even the thunder of the big rotary Le Rhone engine and the buffeting rush of the slipstream.
The barrage was like the sound of storm surf on a rocky shore, like the beat of a demented drummer, like the fevered pulse of this sick, mad world, and Michael's fierce resentment at the men who had ordered them to go against the balloons abated as the roar of the barrage mounted. It was work that must be done, he realized it when he saw this dreadful suffering.
