town.”
“Anyway, where is your commanding officer? And everyone else on this airfield, if it comes to that?”
“The Old Man’s in hospital in Trient. He got the horrors from drinking grappa. Keep well clear of it if you’ll take my advice: it’s foul stuff. As for the rest of them, it’s been a bad month for crashes, so we’re a bit low on aircraft and flying crew. We no sooner get a batch of stupid bastards from the flying schools than they all write themselves off on the mountainside. We’ve only got one aeroplane serviceable—an Aviatik on patrol now up Asiago way—so I thought I might as well give everyone the afternoon off, especially seeing as it’s Friday anyway.”
“I see,” I said, detecting the drift of the conversation, “so would I be right in assuming that we will get no assistance at this flying field today in replacing two worn-out magnetoes?”
“Perfectly correct: we aren’t authorised to carry out major engine repairs in the workshops here, and anyway we fly Lohners and Aviatiks— Hiero engines you see. Yours is a Brandenburger isn’t it?”
“How perceptive of you to have noticed, Herr Leutnant.”
“Thought so: Daimler 160. No luck I’m afraid. Flik 24 uses the other end of the field but they’ve got German Fokkers, Benz engine, so no use either.”
“So what do you suggest? We can’t stand here on your flying field until we take root.”
He yawned and swung his boots on to the desk. I was beginning to take a most intense dislike to this young man.
“Better try the Flep down in Trient, they might be able to oblige.”
I saluted and turned to leave. “Thank you for nothing then. Servitore.” “Don’t mention it. Oh, and by the way . . .”
“Yes?”
“Be a good chap and move your aeroplane; it’s blocking the entrance to our hangars.”
We moved the aeroplane across the field, Toth and I, laboriously pushing it along by ourselves since there were no ground crew to be seen. I left Toth on his own, bidding him to leave me something from the provisions given us by the anarcho-syndicalist peasants of Busovecchio, and set off on foot for Pergine village.
I returned empty-handed. It was Friday afternoon, so the post office was closed, and anyway the entire town was shut up for some church festival or other, St Thuribus of Mongrevejo, or the Veneration of the Authentic Elbow of Padua or something. It was late afternoon when I trudged back, footsore and dusty. There was no help for it: we would have to get airborne once more and fly the ten or so kilometres to Fliegeretappenpark 3 on the other side of the town of Trient. So I swung the propeller once more and the engine coughed and backfired into motion, pouring out clouds of smoke as we lurched unsteadily into the evening sky.
We had some difficulty finding Flep 3 from the air and making our landing. As we did so a bespectacled major came running out to us, waving his arms, and gave me a most severe dressing-down as I sat in the cockpit, even before the propeller had stopped turning. It was strictly forbidden, he said, for aircraft to land within the perimeters of the Fliegeretappenpark without first submitting a written application and being given express permission. Otherwise all aircraft whatever must arrive on a railway flatbed truck or by a special aeroplane transporter wagon (horse- or motor-powered) with wings and tailplane ready dismantled. I said as politely as I could that this was an emergency landing, and that we were here until repairs could be made for the simple reason that I doubted whether the engine would start again. In the end he consented to let us talk with a staff-sergeant engine fitter in one of the workshops, saying that it was no business of his and we were to get ourselves off his site as soon as we could fly.
In complete contrast to his commanding officer, the Stabsfeldwebel could not have been more helpful to us —at any rate, so far as he was able. Which, sadly, was not very far at all. He stood looking at the naked engine after we had removed the cowling panels. He shook his head slowly.
“Sorry, Herr Leutnant, but I can’t be of any help. We haven’t got a single spare magneto in stores for a 26- series Brandenburger.”
“But that’s ridiculous: the 160hp Austro-Daimler must be the most widely used engine in the entire Imperial and Royal Flying Service.”
“Not around here it isn’t, Herr Leutnant. The Brandenburger Fliks in the 11th Army sector use Mercedes 160s, on account of the mountains. They reckon the Mercedes is slower accelerating but a bit better at altitude. The trouble is that they use Bosch magnetoes, and this batch of Austro- Daimlers use Zoelly. And anyway . . .” (he glanced at his watch) “. . . it’s half-past five already—sorry, 1730 hours—so my lads couldn’t help you now even if we had anything in stores.”
“Why ever not?”
“Sorry, Herr Leutnant, but it’s a Friday and they all went off duty half an hour or more ago.”
“Gone home? But this is monstrous. What about duty-men? God damn it, man, there’s a war on: the Front’s not twenty kilometres south of here.”
He looked at me for some time: the sad, mildly reproachful gaze of one who has no time for such juvenile follies. He was a solid, calm, kindly- looking man in his early fifties, with the air about him of a watchmaker; or the sort of cobbler whom you almost feel the urge to thank when he tells you that he can’t have your dress-uniform boots ready for the gala on Thursday after all on account of how you just can’t get the leather these days.
“War or no war, Herr Leutnant, you won’t get them working shifts here. This is an aircraft-repair park so it would rate as a rear echelon even if the Italians were just across the fence. The men work peacetime hours here and go home early Fridays.”
“What the devil do you mean, peacetime hours? We’ve just come from an extremely dangerous mission over Venice in broad daylight. I’ve just been counting the bullet holes and I’ve got up to fifty-seven already. And while we’ve been getting our backsides shot at your men have been pushing off early!”
He nodded in agreement, utterly incapable of being provoked to anger. “Fair point, Herr Leutnant, fair point: there’s a lot in what you say, I don’t deny that. But the fact is, all my men here are reservists—1860 class, one or two of them—who’ve had nothing to do with the Army for thirty-odd years, then got called up. They’re in uniform, but they’ll be blowed if they’re going to keep army hours. Half of them are local men anyway and have families down in the town.”
“What about military discipline?”
“Oh, Herr Leutnant, Herr Leutnant. We get little enough work out of them as it is, and if I started coming the old eiserne Diszipline mallarkey here we’d get none at all. Military discipline my arse, if you’ll pardon the expression: you can’t get skilled engine fitters for love nor money now, so I have to keep them on a loose rein if I want to get anything done at all. As it is they’re on army pay, which is about a quarter what they’d be getting if they were in the munitions factories. Anyway . . .” (he adjusted his spectacles and turned to me), “if you like I can take out those contact breakers myself and clean them up a bit for you. That’d at least get you up the valley to Gardolo. If I remember rightly they’ve got a few old Aviatiks up there with Flik 17. They’ve got Austro-Daimler 160s, so they might have a couple of magnetoes lying around in stores.”
In the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe one word that was in constant use in those years was the noun “Kraxe,” derived from the verb “kraxeln,” which is Austro-German for “clamber up” but which had become fliers’ slang for a pile-up on landing. It was something that happened with depressing frequency around Haidenschaft, with the mountains towering above and savage, unpredictable winds whipping down the side valleys. Yet of all the flying fields of the South-West Front I think that none could have been more perfectly designed for kraxelling than Fliegerfeld Gardolo, some kilometres up the Adige valley from Trient. In the gathering darkness the landing at Fliegerfeld Gardolo was even more alarming than that at Pergine. The airfield lay in the narrow valley bottom with the walls of mountain soaring almost sheer on both sides for a thousand metres or more, so that landing was rather like touching down in a vast horse trough. On balance I was glad of the gathering dusk, in that I was at least spared the horror of seeing the precipices looming above us as we lined up to land. I thought that we had had it just as we reached the edge of the flying field. An eddying back-draught of wind off the mountainsides had created a sort of air-hollow, into which we suddenly dropped ten metres or more like a house-brick, to the sound of a great squeal of anguish from the wings. It took all Toth’s skill to bring us level again before the wheels bumped the ground.
But when we had landed safely we found that we might as well not have bothered. True, Flik 17 had a number of Aviatik two-seaters on the strength with 160hp Austro-Daimler engines. But, like Flik 19F, they had not seen a new magneto in months. All that they could suggest was that we stayed overnight with them and took off again in the morning to fly further up the valley to Feldfliegerschule 2 at Neumarkt, where they suspected there
