managed to pull out just above the ground, God alone knows how. It wanders from side to side like a snake, while as for landing the thing, I don’t know how I managed not to tip over on my head like poor old Belounek. We took off from Marburg well enough—the pig climbs quite decently if nothing else—but we were hardly out of sight of the airfield when Metzger’s plane went into a spin for no reason at all.”
“I suppose that must have been Air Liaison’s ‘problems on take-off’?” Romanowicz smiled grimly and gulped his drink. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Only for Metzger it’s the end of his problems for ever. The poor bugger dived straight into the ground and went up like a firework: ‘strengthened the ranks of the angels,’ as we say back home.” “Why didn’t you turn back?”
“No choice, old man: orders and all that. Terszetanyi and I were with Flik 14 in the Ukraine, you see. We had some trouble there earlier this year over another flying abortion, the Aviatik BIII of blessed memory, commonly known as ‘the Rocking-Chair’ or ‘the Fairground Swingboat.’ The thing killed so many of our chaps that in the end we had a little mutiny—‘mass refusal of duty’ is the polite term among officers, I believe—and said that we weren’t going to fly it any more. So they broke up the unit and moved us all to other Fliks. We were officers and not rankers so they couldn’t shoot us all or stick us into a penal battalion. But I tell you, we’re marked men. One more refusal of duty and we’re for the high jump and no mistake.”
“What do you think the KD will be like as a fighting machine?” asked Potocznik. Romanowicz found this immensely amusing.
“A machine that will rapidly carve for itself a lasting niche in the brief annals of aerial warfare, if you ask me: the Italians will either think we’ve all gone mad and stop fighting or crash into the ground following us down. Here . . .” he rummaged inside his tunic. “Here’s my will, made out ready and signed. Be a good chap and leave it in the Kanzlei safe, will you? As for my personal effects, you can auction them here among yourselves to save you the bother of sending them back to Marburg.”
The mist was clearing from the valley the next morning as the remnants of Flik 19F took off from Caprovizza airfield, accompanied by their two ungainly escorts. I was in the leading aeroplane with Toth as pilot, while Potocznik and Leutnant Szuborits followed in the unit’s other serviceable Brandenburger. Low cloud lay over the Vippaco Valley, but the Meteorological Officer had assured us by telephone that it was clearing rapidly west of the Isonzo and giving way to bright autumn sunshine: ideal conditions for photography. We droned around in circles to gain height, entering the cloud at about a thousand metres and emerging at two thousand to form up with our escorts. We watched the two KDs pop up from the fleecy white carpet, then got into line with them on either side of us and about fifty metres above. I watched them anxiously from my place behind the machine gun. They seemed a little unsteady to be sure. I supposed that Terszetanyi and Romanowicz were sitting in the cockpits, knuckles white with gripping the control column and waiting for the first tell-tale lurch that would presage the fatal spin down to disaster. Not for the first time I was glad that, whatever the hazards of front-line aviation, at least the Brandenburg two-seater was an easy and gentle old bus to fly, with no conspicuous vices; sturdily built and tolerant of wayward piloting.
I waved to them, but they did not wave back: mainly (I suppose) because they were too frightened to take a hand off the controls. At least they seemed to be managing the aircraft a little better than on the previous day. Perhaps it was just that the KD took some getting used to for pilots who had previously flown only two-seaters. It certainly seemed to have adequate speed. We were flying at seven-eighths throttle to gain height, but the two KDs seemed to be ambling along at only about three- quarters to judge by the exhaust smoke, which used to turn black at high revs. Perhaps things would not work out so badly after all.
We met with a little ill-directed flak as we crossed the Monte Cosbana ridge north of Gorz. As agreed, we then made a wide circle over the town of Cormons and approached Gradisca from the rear. So far there was no sign of any hostile aircraft. We flew over the target at three thousand metres; Toth and I first, then Potocznik. We were covering the same area with our cameras, but the whole operation was judged so important that it had been decided to have two aeroplanes carry it out in case one failed to return. Try as I might I could see no sign of the railway gun on its carriage in the wood below, only the spur of railway track leading off the main line into the trees. But that was not my affair: my job was to work the camera, get the twenty or so plates back to Haidenschaft and then leave it to the intelligence experts with their magnifying-glasses and stereoscopic viewers to detect where exactly Waldschani was lurking. After about two minutes of ambling over the area as instructed, I fired a green signal rocket to indicate that we were finished. Potocznik waggled his wings in answer, and we all turned to give full throttle and run for home, the two Brandenburgers and their escorts who had been circling overhead. We had got away with it so far, but surely the Italians must be coming up after us by now. Being of a naturally rather suspicious cast of mind, it worried me more than a little that we had been allowed to fly over the target, quite obviously engaged in photography, without attracting so much as a single flak shell from below.
We found out as we crossed the Isonzo that it had indeed all been too good to be true: three Nieuports fell upon us out of a patch of cloud. I abandoned the camera and stood behind the Schwarzlose, ready and hoping that the ammunition feed would not seize up like last time. Remember, I thought, don’t fire too soon: rely on Toth to fly the aeroplane and just fire defensively when a target presents itself. Our real hope of salvation lay in getting up enough speed in a shallow dive to outrun the Italians. We were not far from our own lines after all. Weaving and jinking to throw them off their aim before it was absolutely necessary would only lose us speed and make us easier to catch. The Italians needed to close to thirty metres or less to be sure of hitting, and their gun magazines only held about fifty rounds . . . It was with thoughts such as these that I tried to hearten myself as the three familiar shapes closed with us. Yet when all is said and done, no thoughts are really cheering enough to console a man who will shortly be required to stand up full-length with only a thin plywood sheet for protection, three thousand metres above the ground, and face an assailant armed with a machine gun at a range less than the length of most people’s back gardens.
The thing about aerial combat, as opposed to making a U-Boat attack, is that everything happens so fast. I always found it rather like going under anaesthetic for an operation, when the last thought that one takes in is also the first thought as one comes out, the intervening couple of hours having somehow got lost. It was very like that over the Isonzo that morning: a desperate, savage, confused bout of wheeling and shooting which perhaps lasted no more than a minute. Our first concern was to keep formation and support one another as the Italians tried to break us up, seeking to fasten on to an aeroplane and worry it to death, as wolves will detach a stag from the herd and then run it down. A Nieuport flashed past us some way above with a KD—Terszetanyi’s as it turned out—on his tail trying to take aim. I think that I saw Terszetanyi fire a few times, but then I suppose that his gun must have jammed. At any rate, as he wheeled back into view below us I saw that he had broken off the attack and was now kneeling half out of his cockpit, steering with one foot and hammering at the gun fairing with his fist in an effort to pull it off and get at the gun. He did not succeed. Horror-struck, I watched as his aeroplane suddenly slipped sideways into a spin. My last sight of him is still branded into my mind’s eye seventy years later: of his arms and legs flailing wildly as he fell to his death on the Carso rocks three thousand metres below.
There was no time to mourn him, only to try and save ourselves as a Nieuport came at us out of the sun. Blinded by the glare, I swung the gun around and felt it jolt and clatter in my hands as I pressed the thumb triggers. Bullets spacked through the fuselage as he aimed for the black Maltese cross on our side. But we lived; the Nieuport shot past under our tail as I gave him another burst. He came up on the other side and I fired again. He was visible just long enough for me to make out the black-cat emblem on the side of his fuselage. Then it was hidden by a stream of smoke and a sudden bright tail of red and yellow flames. The Nieuport banked away and spun downwards, leaving a curving trail of smoke behind it as the fire licked around the wing roots and spread towards the tail. It dawned upon me belatedly that I had just shot down Major Oreste di Carraciolo, the Black Cat of Italy.
All this happened in an instant, though I see it still with the vivid clarity of a dream. But we had not the leisure to congratulate ourselves on our victory. We could only thank our lucky stars and run for home as best we could. In the end Potocznik and I crossed the lines circling around Romanowicz’s KD like lapwings protecting a fledgeling from hawks: a ludicrous state of affairs in which the escorted ended up escorting back the aeroplane which was supposed to have been escorting them. The Nieuports only left us in peace after we had reached Dornberg and the protection of our own flak batteries.
It was not until then, skimming down towards Caprovizza flying field, that I had time at last for the luxury of thought. The whole of the previous ten minutes or so had been conducted largely by instinct, on spinal cord alone. But now the sun was shining and it was peaceful once more, and apart from that constant throbbing of the air the war might never have existed. Only a smoke-grimed face and bullet holes letting the sunlight shine through the
