The Sea Witch

The 17th Day

“What’s a Yank doing in the bleedin’ RFC anyway, I’d like to know,” Nigel Cook asked between slurps of tea. “As if the bleedin’ RFC didn’t have troubles enough, eh, with the Diggers and Canucks and provincials from all over. Wouldn’t the Frogs take you for that Lafayette outfit?”

Paul Hyde had had more than enough of Nigel Cook the last two weeks. Two weeks and two days. Sixteen days of fun and games since he’d reported to the squadron in France. “I don’t speak Frog,” he muttered at Cook, because he had to say something. After all, Cook was the squadron pilot with the most service-time at the front.

Cook thought Hyde’s retort screamingly funny. He elbowed the pilot next to him at the breakfast table and giggled soundlessly. Finally he regained control of himself and managed, “Doesn’t speak Frog.” Then he succumbed to another silent giggling fit.

“Looks like ol’ Cook’s nerves are about shot,” Robert MacDonald murmured to Hyde.

“Has he really been in the squadron a whole year?”

“A week short. He should go home any day now.”

Hyde chewed his toast mechanically, sipped at strong, black tea. Down the table, Cook was pouring brandy into his tea and still giggling. He wiped tears from his eyes, managed to get a cigarette going.

“They ought to have sent him home months ago,” Hyde whispered to MacDonald.

“No doubt, Tex, old man. No doubt.” The Brits all called Hyde “Tex,” although he was from Boston and had never been west of the Hudson. Mac motored on: “Cook isn’t much good to us now, I’m afraid. Has the wind up rather badly.”

Having the wind up was an occupational hazard, Hyde had learned. He grunted in reply.

“But we’ve got you and those two virgins who arrived yesterday, so we’ll give the ol’ Hun a bloody good go today, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Today you go over the hump, I believe.”

“Today is my seventeenth day,” Hyde acknowledged, and finished up the last of his toast. Seventeen days was the average life expectancy of a British aviator at the front, according to army statistics compiled during the grim days of 1915 and 1916.

“We’ve got better machines now, thank God,” Mac said cheerfully. He had two months at the front under his belt and liked to play the role of veteran warrior. “If a chap learns the trade, stays fit and reasonably sober, snipes his Huns only after a careful look all about, why, I think he could grow old and gray in this business. It’s the new men getting potted who ruin the averages.”

“Quite so,” said Paul Hyde. He had fallen in love with these meaningless little phrases of conversational British and salted them around at every opportunity.

“After all, the average was made up of a few old birds who’d grown positively senile and a lot of young ducks who couldn’t see a Hun until he opened fire.”

“So they say.”

“Why, some of the new fools they send us these days get potted on their very first snipe.”

“Not very cricket, that,” Hyde said, as British as he could.

“Enough philosophy.” Robert MacDonald slapped the table. “They tell me you’re going up with me this morning. Keep your eyes peeled, don’t go swanning off on your own. We’ve got a push on and the Huns will be quite curious. The old man will be most unhappy if I come back without you.”

“I should hope.”

“Let’s not be overly keen, Tex. Not good form. Watch for Huns, obey my signals, don’t get the wind up.”

“Righto,” said Paul Hyde. As he left the table he saw Nigel Cook nipping brandy straight from the flask.

Rain had fallen the previous night. In the hour before dawn the cool, invigorating June air had a tangible substance and a pungent, earthy scent. Dew covered everything. Wisps of fog drifted through the circles of light.

“Bugger fog,” Mac said.

“Getting down through this stuff will be a little chancy, don’t you think, Mac?”

“The general staff isn’t going to call off the war. Might as well do our bit for the king, hadn’t we? Maybe this lot will burn off by the time we come back to land.”

“I was wondering about the getting off. Perhaps we should get off separately, then get together on top. What do you think, Mac?”

“Quite sound, that. I’ll go first, of course.”

They walked to the planes, which were already parked in the takeoff position.

The sky in the east was turning pink when Paul Hyde completed his preflight inspection. The mechanics seemed quite proud of the bullet-hole patches they had completed overnight. Hyde mouthed a compliment, fastened the collar of his leather flying coat tightly, and automatically held his hand a few inches from the exhaust pipe, which ran along each side of the cockpit and ended just behind it. The pipe was cool this morning, of course, but Hyde always checked. He put his left foot in the stirrup on the fuselage and swung his right leg into the cockpit, as if he were mounting a horse. When that exhaust pipe was hot, getting in or out of an S.E.5 was a task for a careful man. Hyde’s first burn, on the inside of his left thigh, was still tender.

Seated, strapped in, Hyde looked around carefully in the predawn gloom. The glow of a nearby light mounted on a pole behind him helped.

The S.E.5A had two guns, an air-cooled Lewis on a Foster mount on the top wing, which fired over the propeller arc, and a synchronized water-cooled Vickers mounted in front of the pilot, slightly to the left of the aircraft’s centerline. The Lewis used a 97-round drum that mounted on top of the weapon, the Vickers was belt-fed. Both guns were .303 caliber.

The Lewis was an anachronism, mounted above the top wing in the S.E.5A because it rode there in the Nieuport-17, a rotary-engined scout now obsolete. At the full forward position on the Foster mount, the gun fired above the prop arc along the axis of the aircraft. To clear a jam or change the drum, the pilot pulled the gun backwards and down on the mount. Flying the plane with his knees and fighting the 100-mph slipstream, he cleared the jam or wrested the empty drum off and replaced it with a full one. While still in the retracted position, the weapon could be swiveled through a limited arc and fired upward into the unprotected belly of another aircraft.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat, Hyde checked the circular drum magazine of the Lewis, made sure the cocking mechanism was lubricated and moved easily, made sure the trigger cable was properly rigged, and pushed the gun forward on the circular mount until it latched. An extra drum was carried in a case above the instrument panel.

Then he turned his attention to the fixed Vickers, which was much easier to reach. The Vickers was dependent upon the proper functioning of the Constantinesco synchronization gear. If the hydraulic gear developed a leak that hand pumping couldn’t overcome, the weapon was useless.

The cockpit in which he sat had been modified by the squadron. The armored seat had been removed and a wooden bench installed that allowed the pilot to sit much lower in the cockpit. The original huge windscreen was gone; in its place on this particular machine was a small, flat piece of glass that deflected the slipstream over the pilot’s head.

One of the mechanics leaned in and shone an electric torch on the instrument panel. Hyde studied the levers, dials, and switches in front of him. On the seventeenth day, they seemed like old friends. Mounted on the panel were an airspeed indicator, altimeter, compass, tachometer, switch and booster mag, and petrol shutoff. Gauges informed him of oil and air pressure and the temperature of the radiator coolant.

The mixture and throttle controls were on the right side of the panel. For reasons no one could explain, they worked exactly opposite of each other. The throttle lever was full forward for full throttle, but full rich required that the mixture control be all the way aft.

A fuel pump was on the left of the panel, and a hand pump for the synchronization gear was between his knees.

The control stick had a ring mounted vertically on the top of it, hence its nickname of “spade handle.” In the center on the ring were two toggle switches, one for each machine gun.

Hyde thanked the mech, who moved away. Hyde didn’t need the light; he knew where everything was.

He turned on the petrol, made sure the switch and booster mag were off.

“Gas on, mag off,” he called.

The linesman took the prop and moved it back and forth several times. Finally fuel began running out of the carburetor.

“Contact,” the linesman called.

“Contact,” Hyde echoed and turned on the mag switch.

The linesman seized the prop and gave it a mighty heave. As he did, Hyde rotated the booster mag handle and the engine started with a gentle rumble. It ticked over nicely at 500 RPM, the tach needle barely twitching at the bottom of its range.

The 200-HP liquid-cooled Hispano-Suiza engine took a while to warm up. On Hyde’s right the linesmen were trying to get Mac’s engine started. They pulled it through repeatedly.

Hyde settled himself into his seat, stirred the controls around, and visually checked the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. All okay.

The Hisso rumbling sweetly in the false dawn. The fog stirred by the spinning propeller, the smell of the earth, the waiting sky, life pungent and rich and mysterious — Paul Hyde had dropped out of college for this. Took a train to Montreal and joined the Canadian armed forces. In England he had wrangled a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, which was looking for volunteers for pilot training. The whole thing was a grand adventure, or so he had assured himself at least a thousand times. Friends had died in accidents, some before his eyes, and the Germans had killed both the young pilots who’d accompanied him to France just weeks ago.

An adventure … the word stuck in his throat now. If by some miracle he lived through this …

The truth was, he probably wouldn’t. Hyde knew that, and yet …

The best way was to take it a day at a time. Live through Day One, Day Two, etc. He was up to Day Seventeen now. If he made it through today, he had beaten the odds. If he made it through today — who knows? — he just might pull it off, live through the whole obscene bloody mess. Well, there was a chance, anyway. But first, make it through today.

The radiator thermometer indicated that the engine was warming nicely. In the cool, saturated morning air a thin ribbon of cloud developed at the tips of the slowly swinging prop and swirled back around the fuselage of the plane. The windsock hung limp.

To Hyde’s dismay, as the dawn progressed, the fog seemed to be thickening.

Mac’s engine was not going to start anytime soon. The sweating mechanics pulled it through a dozen times while Nigel Cook and one of the new puppies charged into the fog and got airborne. Finally Mac climbed from the cockpit in disgust and threw his leather flying helmet on the ground. He stomped over to Hyde’s plane, leaned in to make himself heard.

“Bloody Frog motor won’t start. Take a few minutes to set right, the fitters say. You go on and I’ll meet you in our sector.”

Hyde nodded.

“Wish we still had our Nieuports,” Mac added savagely.

Hyde didn’t share that opinion. The squadron had reequipped with the new S.E.5A’s only two weeks before Hyde arrived, and in truth, the S.E. was a better plane in every way — faster, easier to fly, more maneuverable, with two guns …. The only weak point was the S.E.’s geared French engine. The Hissos were temperamental. Worse, the metallurgy was substandard and quality control poor.

Now the linesmen waved Hyde off, so with his right hand he fed in throttle as he enriched the mixture and with his left he shoved the spade handle stick forward. The S.E. began to roll. Almost immediately the tail came up. Flames twinkled from the exhaust pipes on both sides of the plane and illuminated the underside of the top wings with a ghostly yellow glare.

There, tail up, accelerating, bumping along over the uneven grass as the engine’s song rose to a promising growl, not too loud. The prop turned so slowly on takeoff — only 1,500 RPM — that almost no right rudder was required.

After a bit over three hundred feet of run, Paul Hyde gave a gentle tug on the stick and the nose came off the ground.

He concentrated fiercely on flying the plane. If he lost contact with the earth or the dawn in this poor visibility, he was a dead man. And if the engine stopped for any reason — he had mentally prepared himself — he was landing straight ahead regardless. Just last week an old dog died trying to turn back to the field with the motor popping, barely turning over.

When he was safely above the fog layer, Paul Hyde looked back into the gloom. And saw nothing: The field had disappeared.

The dawn’s glow would be his reference this morning, for the compass was impossible to read in the dark cockpit. Hyde flew north, parallel to the trenches, with the dawn off his right wing as he climbed.

Mainly he looked for other aircraft, but he also scanned the gauzy sea below for landmarks. Here and there were towering pillars of cumulus cloud, monsters half hidden amid the patchy stratus. Hyde steered around these. In the east the sky was yellow and gold — in just moments the sun would appear.

German observation planes would be along when the light improved. Hyde’s mission was to prevent German crews from photographing the front, and, if possible, to shoot them down. The job sounded straightforward enough, but it wasn’t. When they weren’t taking pictures, German observers could give a good account of themselves with machine guns. And there were often enemy scouts perched above the two-seaters, ready to pounce on any British mice attracted to the cheese.

This morning the air was dead calm, without a bounce or burble of any kind. The engine ran sweetly and the ship obeyed Hyde’s every whim. The slightest twitch of the stick or rudders brought forth a gentle response.

Hyde charged each gun and fired a short burst. Everything was ready.

The plane swam upward past various layers of pink and gold patchy cloud, turning gently from time to time to avoid the cumulus buildups. Swatches of open sky were visible to the north and east.

The eastern sky drew Hyde’s attention. It was quite bright now as the rising sun chased away the night.

Hyde was searching for specks, little black specks in the bright sky that moved slowly this way and that. Those specks would be airplanes.

Finally he remembered to search the gloom in all the other directions. The Huns could be anywhere.

The altimeter recorded his upward progress. After about sixteen minutes of flight he passed fourteen thousand feet. Further progress upward would be much slower. Hyde wanted to be as high as possible, so he kept climbing.

Below he could occasionally catch a glimpse of the ground. Once he saw the ugly brown smear of trenches.

He was near Grommecourt, he thought, but nothing was certain. He couldn’t see enough of the earth to be sure. He must be careful this morning not to let the wind that must be at altitude push him too deep behind enemy lines.

He swung west, let the ship climb into the prevailing westerlies. There was enough light to easily see the altimeter now, which was moving very slowly upward. The temperature in the radiator was rising, so Hyde opened the radiator shutters to let more air through. Up, up, up as the minutes ticked past and the engine hummed sweetly. He leaned the fuel/air mixture, tightened his collar against the cold.

He was breathing shallowly now, and rapidly. The air here was thin. He must make no sudden movements, make no serious demands upon his body or his body would rebel from the lack of oxygen.

At seventeen thousand feet he let the nose come down a degree or two. The plane was slow, sluggish on the controls, and he was a touch light-headed.

He let the left wing drop a few degrees, let the nose track slowly around the horizon until he was again flying east. The sun was up now, filling the eastern sky. All the clouds were below him.

God, it was cold up here! He checked his watch. He had been airborne for forty minutes.

He put his hand over the sun, looked left and right, above and below. Out to the left, the right, behind, below, even above. His eyes never stopped moving.

Another quarter hour passed. The day was fully here, the sun a brilliant orb climbing the sky.

There, a speck against a cloud. No, two. Two specks. To his left and down a thousand feet or so.

He turned in that direction.

Definitely two planes. Flying south. Hyde was approaching them from their right front quarter, so he turned almost north, let them go past at about a mile, hoping they didn’t see him. As the specks passed behind his right wing, he turned toward them and lowered the nose a tad.

Two. One alone would have been more than enough, but Hyde wasn’t going to let the Hun strut about unmolested just because he had brought a friend.

At least there were no enemy scouts above. He looked carefully and saw only empty sky.

He was going fast now, the wires keening, the motor thundering again at full cry, coming down in the right rear quarter of those two planes. The distance closed nicely.

He fingered the trigger levers inside the round stick handle.

The victims flew on straight, seemingly oblivious to his ambush.

At three hundred yards he realized what they were: S.E.5’s.

He turned to cross behind them. If the pilots had seen him, they gave no indication.

Perhaps he should have flown alongside, waved. But they would rag him in the mess, say that he thought they were Germans and had come to pot them. All of which would be true and hard to laugh off, so he turned behind them to sneak away.

He kept the turn in.

There! Just off the nose! A plane coming in almost head-on.

He was so surprised he forgot to do anything.

The enemy pilot shot across almost in front of him, a Fokker D-VII, with a yellow nose and a black Maltese cross on the fuselage behind the pilot.

Hyde slammed the right wing down, pulled the nose around, used the speed that he still had to come hard around in the high thin air. Unfortunately the S.E. turned slowest to the right — maybe he should have turned left.

When he got straightened out he was too far behind the Fokker to shoot.

The enemy pilot roared in after the pair of S.E.’s.

If only he had been more alert! He could have taken a shot as the enemy scout crossed his nose. Damnation!

Now the Hun swooped in on the left-most S.E. A slender feather of white smoke poured aft from the German’s nose — he was shooting.

The S.E.5 seemed to stagger, the wings waggled, then the left wing dropped in a hard turn.

The Fokker closed relentlessly, its gun going.

The S.E. went over on its back and the Fokker swerved just enough to miss it, then lowered its nose even more and dove away.

Paul Hyde kept his nose down, the engine full on.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the S.E.’s nose drop until it was going almost straight down. It couldn’t do that long, he knew, or the wings would come off when the speed got too great.

He checked the Hun, going for a cloud.

Brass. The enemy pilot had brass.

But Hyde was overtaking.

He looked again for the stricken S.E., and couldn’t find it.

Only now did the possibility of another Hun following the first occur to him. Guiltily he looked aft, cleared his tail. Nothing. The sky seemed empty.

He was two hundred yards behind the Fokker now, closing slowly, but closing.

The Fokker was going for a cloud.

Suddenly Paul Hyde knew how it was going to be. He was going to get a shot before the enemy pilot reached the safety of the cloud. He moved his thumb over the firing levers, looked through the post and ring sight mounted on the cowling in front of him. The enemy plane was getting larger and larger.

Without warning the nose of the enemy plane rose sharply, up, up, up.

Hyde automatically pulled hard on the stick. He was going too fast, knew he couldn’t follow the Fokker into the loop, so he pulled the nose up hard and jabbed the triggers. Both guns hammered out a burst and the Fokker climbed straight up through it.

Then Hyde was flashing past, going for the cloud. He jammed the nose down just as the cloud swallowed him.

He throttled back, raised the nose until the altimeter stopped unwinding.

The S.E.5A had no attitude instruments whatsoever. All Hyde could do was hold the stick and rudder frozen, wait until his plane flew through the cloud to the other side.

His airspeed was dropping. He could feel the controls growing sloppy. He eased the nose forward a tad. The altimeter began unwinding.

God, he was high, still above thirteen thousand feet. The altimeter was going down too fast, his speed building relentlessly.

He pulled back on the stick. To no avail. The altimeter continued to fall. He was in a graveyard spiral, but whether to the right or left he could not tell.

Panic seized Paul Hyde. He tightened the pressure on the stick, pulled it back farther and farther.

No. No! Too much of this and he would tear the wings off.

He had no way of knowing if he was turning left or right. He could guess, of course, and try to right the plane with the stick. If he guessed wrong he would put the S.E. over on its back, the nose would come down, and the plane would accelerate until it shed its wings. If he guessed right, he could indeed bring the plane upright, or nearly so, but it would do him no good unless he could keep it upright in balanced flight — and he had no means to accomplish that feat. All this Hyde knew, so he fought the temptation to move the stick sideways. What he did do was pull back even harder, tighten the turn, increase the G-load.

Oh, God! Help me! Help me, please!

Something gave. He felt it break with a jolt that reached him through the seat, heard a sharp sound audible even above the engine noise.

Eleven thousand feet.

He kept back pressure on the stick. Instinct required that he do something, and he sensed that if he relaxed back pressure, the plane would accelerate out of control.

Ten thousand.

Fabric flapping caught his eye. A strip of fabric was peeling from the underside of the left wing. He looked, and watched the wind peel the strip the width of the wing.

Nine thousand.

Before his eyes one of the wing bracing wires failed, broke cleanly in two.

Eight.

Another jolt through the seat. Wooden wing compression ribs or longerons or something was breaking under the stress. If a wing spar went, he was a dead man.

Seven.

Hyde was having trouble seeing. The G was graying him out. He shook his head, fought against the G-forces, screamed at the top of his lungs, although he wasn’t aware he was screaming.

Six …

Five …

Four …

And then in an eye-blink he was out of the cloud, spiraling tightly to the left. The ground was several thousand feet below. He raised the left wing, gently lifted the nose. He was so frightened he couldn’t think.

Below he saw farmland. Squares of green, trees, roads, carts, horses ….

Was he east or west of the trenches? Think, man, think.

He was so cold, so scared he wanted to vomit.

A sunbeam caught his eye. He turned to place the sun on his tail, checked the compass. It was swimming round and round, useless.

At least two lift wires were broken, a wide strip of fabric flapped behind the upper wing, one of the struts was splintered, and the damn plane flew sideways. Not a lot, but noticeably so. Hyde used right rudder and left stick to keep it level and going west.

Up ahead, the trenches. Clouds of mud and smoke … artillery!

The artillery emplacements were impossible to avoid. The guns roared almost in his ear. If a shell hit him, he would never know it; he would be instantly launched into eternity.

He hunched his shoulders as if he were caught in a cloudburst, waited with nerves taut as steel for the inevitable.

Then, miraculously, he was past the artillery and out over the trenches, jagged tears in a muddy brown landscape. He saw infantrymen swing their rifles up, saw the flash of the muzzle blasts, felt the tiny jolts of bullets striking the plane. No-man’s-land lay beyond, torn by artillery shells which seemed to be landing randomly. The land was covered with men, British soldiers. Hyde weaved his way through the erupting fistulas of smoke and earth while he waited for a chance shell to smash him from the sky. After a lifetime he flew clear.

He recognized where he was. The airfield was just ten miles southwest.

He sweated every mile. Once he thought he felt another jolt of something breaking.

At least the fog had burned off a bit. Visibility was up to perhaps three miles.

When he saw the hangars and tents of the aerodrome, a wave of relief swept over him. With the sun shining over his shoulder onto the instrument panel, Paul Hyde eased the throttle and let the S.E. settle onto the ground. It bounced once. When it touched the second time he pulled the tail skid down into the dirt. When the plane slowed to taxi speed he used the rudder to turn the steerable tail skid, and taxied over in front of the maintenance hangar.

He was unstrapping, getting ready to climb from the cockpit, when three more bracing wires on the left side snapped and both the left wings sagged toward the ground.

A maintenance wallah came trotting up as Hyde pulled off his leather helmet and wiped the sweat from his face and hair.

From twenty feet away the damage was obvious: A strip of fabric was peeled from the lower right wing, too, one of the bracing wires for the tail was broken, at least one of the fuselage stringers behind the cockpit had snapped, the tip of the lower left wing hung only inches above the grass, the plane was peppered with several dozen bullet holes that he had picked up flying over the trenches.

The horrified M.O. didn’t say anything, merely stood and looked with a forlorn expression on his face.

Hyde didn’t care. He was still alive! That was something grand and exciting in a subtly glorious way.

He turned and walked across the field toward the mess. He desperately needed a drink of water.

“Rough go, old chap,” the major said, eyeing the broken S.E. out the window as the mechanics towed it off the field with a lorry. “What happened?”

Hyde explained. “Went out of control in the cloud,” he finished lamely.

“Albert Ball died like that, or so I’ve heard,” the major said. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Hyde carefully. “Are you fit?”

“I suppose,” Hyde said, taking a deep breath and setting his jaw just so. He didn’t want the major to think he had the wind up.

“There’s a push on, I needn’t tell you. Going to have to send you up again. We’ve got to do our bit.”

“Where’s Mac?”

“He got off just a few minutes ago. If you hurry you can catch him in this sector here.” The major showed him on the wall chart.

“I got a short burst into a D-VII just west of the Hun trenches.”

“Plucky lad you are, Tex. If someone reports one going down, I’ll let you know. Now off with you.”

The next machine was older and had seen more rough service than the one he had just bent. The engine didn’t seem to have the vigor it should have.

Paul Hyde coaxed it into the air and turned south. He was passing through five thousand when the engine popped a few times, then windmilled for a second or so before it resumed firing. He pulled the mixture lever full out and frantically worked the fuel pump handle.

Perhaps he should go back.

But no. The major would think …

The engine ran steadily enough now. Perhaps there was just a bit of dirt in the carb, maybe a slug of water in the petrol.

On he climbed, up into the morning.

He saw the German two-seater when he was still several thousand feet below it. He had been airborne about an hour and had seen a handful of British machines and several German kites, but they were too far away to stalk. This LVG was weaving around cloud towers at about twelve thousand feet. Hyde let it go over him, then turned to stalk it as he climbed.

Idly he wondered if that burst he had fired at the German scout earlier this morning had done any damage. Or if it had even struck the Fokker.

No way of knowing, of course.

In the past sixteen days he had destroyed two German machines. The first, a two-seater, he’d riddled before the observer finally slumped over.

Not willing to break off to change the Lewis drum, he’d closed to point-blank range and shot the pilot with the Vickers. The machine went out of control and eventually shed its wings. Before he died the observer put forty-two holes in Hyde’s S.E.

“As a general rule,” Mac had commented as he looked over the plane when Hyde returned, “it’s not conducive to longevity to let the Huns shoot you about. Sooner or later the blokes are bound to hit something vital. Perhaps you should get under them and shoot upward into their belly. S.E.’s are very good in that regard.”

“I was trying to do that.”

Mac pretended that he hadn’t heard. “Shoot the other fellow, Tex,” he advised, “while avoiding getting shot oneself. That’s my motto.”

Hyde’s second kill was a Fokker scout. Hyde didn’t even realize he had fired a killing shot. He got in a burst as the Fokker dove away after riddling Hyde’s leader, who fell in flames. Apparently Hyde’s burst hit the German pilot, who crashed amid the British artillery behind the trenches. By the time the Tommies got to him he had bled to death.

It was all very strange, this game of kill or be killed played among the clouds. And here he was playing it again.

The two-seater this morning was looking for him. The pilot was dropping one wing, then the other, as the two men scanned the sky below. Hyde turned away, put a towering buildup between the two planes as he continued to work his way higher into the atmosphere. The air was bumpy now as the sun heated the earth and it in turn heated the atmosphere. At least the fog was gone. Visibility was six or eight miles here.

He got a glimpse of the LVG through a gap in the cloud. It was still going in the right direction, about five hundred feet above him.

When next he saw it, he was at an equal altitude but the Hun was turning. Hyde banked sharply and kept climbing. If possible he would get well above it, then dive and overtake it, settling in beneath to spray it with the Lewis. The Brits assured him this was the best and safest way to kill two-seaters.

The Hun had turned again when next it loomed into view amid the cloud towers. It was close, within a quarter mile, and slightly below his altitude. He could see the heads of the crew. Fortunately they were looking in the opposite direction.

Hyde scanned the sky to see what had attracted the Germans’ attention.

Ah-ha. An S.E. swanning closer. That might be Mac.

Good old Mac!

Paul Hyde turned toward the LVG, pushed the nose forward into a gentle dive. His thumb was poised over the trigger levers.

He came in from the left stern quarter, closing rapidly. With the Hun filling the sight ring, he opened fire with both guns.

The Vickers spit five or six bullets out before it stopped abruptly. In less than a second the Lewis also ceased firing.

Holy damn! He backed off the throttle to stop his relative motion toward the enemy.

He tugged at the bolt of the Vickers. The damn thing was jammed solid. He hammered at it with his hand.

Now the observer began shooting at him. Streaks of tracer went just over the cockpit.

Cursing aloud, Hyde turned away.

He tried to get the Lewis gun to come backwards on the Foster mount. No. The damn thing was stuck!

Cursing, Hyde unfastened his seat belt, grasped the stick between his knees, and eyed the German, who was a quarter mile away now. The pilot stood up in the cockpit and used both hands to tug at the charging lever. The windblast was terrific, but he was a strong young man.

The Lewis was also jammed good. Old, inferior, shoddy ammo! What a way to fight a war!

Perhaps he could get at the bolt better if he took off the magazine drum. He pulled at the spring-loaded catch, tugged fiercely at the drum. It was jammed, too.

He was working frantically to free the drum when he realized the plane was going over on its back. The right wing was pointing at the earth.

His lower body fell from the cockpit. He latched onto the ammo drum with a death grip. His back was to the prop, his feet pointed toward the earth.

If the damned drum comes loose now …

The rat-tat-tat of a machine gun cut into his consciousness. Hyde heard it, but he had more pressing problems. If he fell forward into the prop, the damn thing would cut him in half.

He tried to curl his lower body back toward the cockpit. The windblast helped. He had his left foot in and his right almost there when the nose of the plane dipped toward the earth. The S.E. was going into an inverted dive.

He was screaming again, a scream of pure terror. He was still screaming when the plane passed the vertical and he got both feet inside the cockpit combing. Still screaming when the force of gravity took over and threw him back into the cockpit like a sack of potatoes thrown into a barrel. Still screaming as he pulled the plane out of its dive and looked about wildly for the Hun twoseater, which was far above and flying away.

He lowered the nose, let the plane dive as he struggled to get his seat belt refastened.

Praise God, he was still alive.

Still alive!

Just then the engine cut out.

“It’s these bloody cartridges, sir. All swelled up from moisture.” The mechanic, Thatcher, displayed three of the offending brass cylinders in the palm of his hand.

“They jammed the gun and the drum.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bad cartridges.”

“And a dud engine. The damned thing cut in and out on me all the way home. It’s junk. I’m up there risking my neck in a plane with a junk motor that runs only when it wants to. The bloody RFC has to do better, Thatcher.”

“We’re working on it, sir,” the mech said contritely. He was used to carrying the ills of the world on his thin shoulders. “But what I don’t understand, Mr. Hyde,” he continued, “is how you acquired two bullet holes through the pilot’s seat. Came right through the bottom of the plane and up through the seat. Or vice versa. Don’t see how those two bullets missed you.”

“It’s quite simple, Thatcher,” Paul Hyde said softly. “Perfectly logical. Obviously I wasn’t sitting in the seat when the bullets went sailing through.”

Without further explanation he walked toward the mess tent for lunch.

Mac was already there. “I heard you’ve had an exciting morning, Tex.”

“Much more excitement and my heart is going to stop dead.”

“Oh, I doubt it. Heart attacks are rather rare in this part of France.” Mac sipped a glass of red wine. “Lead poisoning and immolation seem much more prevalent.”

Hyde grunted. The wine looked tempting. One glass wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“You remember the new man, Cotswold-Smith? Reported last night and sat in that chair right there for breakfast? Hun shot him off Nigel’s wing this morning.”

Hyde helped himself to the pudding as the dish came by. “Too bad,” he said politely. He didn’t have any juice left to squander on Cotswold-Smith.

“Nigel says you came galloping to the rescue, chased the bleedin’ Hun off.”

“Little late,” Hyde remarked, and tasted the pudding.

“Not your fault, of course. Did the best you could. Can’t blame yourself, old man.”

“Oh, shut up, Mac.”

“It’s these new lads that ruin the average,” Mac mused.

“Don’t know how to take care of themselves in the air. Disheartening, that.”

The major wanted him to fly after lunch, but the plane was dud. Paul Hyde went to the little farmhouse room he shared with Mac and collapsed into his bed fully dressed. He was so tired ….

He couldn’t sleep. The adventures of the morning were too fresh. To get so close to death and somehow survive seared each subsequent moment on the brain. The way people moved, every word they said, the way something looked, all of it took on enormous significance.

His hands still trembled from this morning.

The worst moment was when the plane rolled over with him hanging onto the Lewis drum. If that thing had come off …

Well, he would have had a long fall.

He lay in bed listening to the hum of engines and the noises of the enlisted men banging on machinery and wondered how it would have felt, falling, falling, falling, down toward the waiting earth and certain death.

He was dangling from the ammo drum, nothing but clouds and haze below his shoetops and his fingers slipping, when someone shook him.

“Mr. Hyde, sir! Mr. Hyde! They want you in Ops.” The batman didn’t leave until Hyde had his feet on the floor.

Four-thirty in the afternoon. He had been asleep almost three hours. He splashed some water on his face, then left the room and closed the door behind him.

Three pilots stood in front of the major’s desk: MacDonald, Cook, and one of the new men, Fitzgerald or Fitzhugh or something like that. Hyde joined them.

“HQ wants us to attack the enemy troops advancing to reinforce their line,” the major explained. “Nigel, you’ll lead.” He stepped over to the wall chart and pointed out the roads he wanted the planes to hit.

MacDonald’s face was white when he stepped from the room into the daylight. “There must be two divisions on those roads marching for the front,” he whispered to Paul Hyde. “I saw them earlier this afternoon. The roads are black with them. This is murder.”

“I wouldn’t quite call it that,” Hyde replied. “The damned Huns will be shooting back with a great deal of vigor.”

“The bloody Huns are going to murder us. We don’t stand a chance.” Sweat ran down Mac’s face. “God, I’m sick of this,” he muttered.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Fitzgerald said. He was right behind the two.

“I’ve used up all my luck,” Nigel Cook said dryly. He had followed Fitzgerald through the door. “Come on, lads. Nobody lives forever. Let’s go kill some bloody Huns.”

Hyde snorted. Cook could act a good show on occasion. “This morning, Nigel, did you see that Fokker before he gunned Cotswold-Smith?”

Nigel Cook’s face froze. His eyes flicked in Hyde’s direction, then he looked forward. He walked stiffly toward the planes, which the mechanics had already started.

“Why did you ask him that?” Mac demanded.

“Everybody’s a damned hero.”

“You bloody fool,” Mac thundered. “Nothing is going to bring that puppy back. You hear? Nothing! Cook has to live with it. Don’t you understand anything?”

Mac stalked away, the new man trailing along uncertainly in his wake.

Hyde glanced at his watch. He had a few minutes. He sat down on the bench by the door of the Ops hut and lit a cigarette. The smoke tasted delicious.

One more hop today. If he lived through that, the seventeenth day was history. He had beaten the odds. Tomorrow he could worry about tomorrow.

Filthy Huns. This next little go was going to be bad. The S.E.’s were going to be ducks in the shooting gallery.

He would live or he wouldn’t. That was the truth of it.

He remembered his family, his parents and his sister. As he puffed on the cigarette he recalled how they looked, what they said the last time he saw them.

His hands were still trembling.

Nigel Cook led them across the lines at fifty feet. Hyde was on Cook’s wing, the new man on Mac’s. The plan was for Cook and Hyde to shoot up everything on the left side of the road, Mac and Fitz to shoot up the right. When the Lewis drum was empty, they would climb and change ammo drums, then select another road.

Each plane had four bombs under the wings that the pilot could release by pulling on a wire. With a lot of practice, a man might get so he could drop the things accurately, but to do it at two hundred feet with a hundred bullets a second coming your way was more than most men had in them. Hyde hated the things. If a bullet hit one as it hung on your wing, it would blow the wing in half. He planned to drop his at the very first opportunity, and whispered to the new man to do likewise.

Fitzwater his name was, or something like that. He looked pasty when Hyde shook his hand and wished him luck.

Hyde’s plane this evening was running well. Motor seemed tight, the controls well-rigged, the guns properly cleaned and lubricated.

What else is there?

“The M.O. asked that you try to bring this bus back more or less intact, Mr. Hyde,” the linesman said saucily. “He said you’ve been using them up rather freely of late.”

Hyde didn’t even bother to answer that blather.

Flashes from the German trenches — the scummy people were already popping away ….

The clouds were lower and darker than they had been this morning. Perhaps it would rain tonight.

The four S.E.’s crossed above the trenches and headed for a supply depot that the major had marked on the map.

A bullet shattered the altimeter on the panel. Slivers from the glass face stuck in the glove of Hyde’s left hand. He used his right to brush and pull the slivers out. Specks of blood appeared on the glove.

Several lorries ahead, some tents and boxes piled about. That must be the dump. Hyde gripped the bomb release wire. Cook and the others were shooting at the lorries, but Hyde didn’t bother. He flew directly toward the dump and toggled the bombs off. He checked to ensure they had fallen off the racks, but he didn’t look back to see where they hit. He didn’t care.

Tiny jolts came to him through the seat and stick. Those were bullets striking the aircraft, bullets fired by the men he saw just a few feet below the plane blazing away with rifles.

Fortunately most of the airplane was fabric and offered little resistance to steel projectiles. The frame was wood, however, and bullets would smash and break it. Then there was the motor and fuel lines and the fuel tank, a steel container mounted on the center of gravity in front of the pilot, under the Vickers gun. Bullets could do horrible damage to fuel tanks and engines.

And there was the petrol in the fuel tank.

Of course the whole airplane was covered with dope, a highly flammable chemical that pulled the fabric drumhead tight. The smallest fire would ignite the whole plane, make it blaze like a torch.

A truck loomed on the road ahead, amid the running men. Dipping the nose a trifle, Hyde lined the thing up with the bead and ring sight and let fly with the machine guns. He put in a long burst, saw the flashes as the bullets struck the metal. He ceased fire and pulled up just enough to let his wheels miss the top of the truck.

Gray-clad figures were everywhere, lying on the ground and running and kneeling and shooting. He pushed the triggers and kicked the rudder back and forth to spray his bullets around.

He heard the Lewis stop and knew it must be out of shells. He waited until Cook raised his nose and followed him up in a loose formation. Only when well away from the ground did he pull the gun back on the Foster mount so that he could get at the drum. It came off easily enough. He put it in the storage bin and lifted another drum into place with both hands while he flew the plane with his knees.

Fumbling, straining to hold the heavy drum against the windblast, he got the thing seated, worked the bolt to chamber a round, then pushed the gun back up the rail until it locked. All this while he maneuvered the stick with his knees to stay in Cook’s vicinity. Cook was similarly engaged changing his Lewis drum, so his plane was also flying erratically.

After the gun was reloaded Hyde looked around for Mac and Fitz-something. They were a mile or so to the left, under a gloomy cloud, descending onto another road.

He would stay with Nigel, who was going to fly back over the supply dump again! The blithering fool.

More fire from the ground, machine guns this time — the muzzle flashes were unmistakable. If Cook wasn’t careful the Germans were going to be shooting Big Bertha at him.

A hatful of bullets stitched Hyde’s right wing, broke one of the bracing wires. Hyde wiggled the plane instinctively, then settled down to slaughter troops on the road ahead.

He opened fire. Walked the bullets into a mass of men and saw them fall, shot down a solitary grey figure in a coal-scuttle helmet who was shooting at him, toppled a team of horses pulling a wagon, gunned men lying in a ditch ….

A bullet burned the back of his hand, furrowed a gouge through the glove, and flesh and blood welled up.

Cook flew lower and lower, his guns going steadily. Hyde saw him out of the corner of his eye as he picked his own targets from the mass of men and horses and lorries on the road ahead.

His face felt hot. He ignored it for a few seconds, then paid attention. Hot. Droplets of a hot liquid.

The radiator was holed. He was losing water from the radiator.

And he was again out of ammo for the Lewis. He had another drum, so without waiting for Cook, he pulled up and soared away from the fray.

The Germans opened up with a flak gun. The bursts were so close the plane shook. He got the empty ammo drum off the gun, tossed it over the side. Got a fresh drum up and the gun ready.

As he turned to descend, he saw Cook’s plane go into the ground. One second it was skimming the earth, the gun going nicely, then it was trailing a streak of flame. An eye-blink later the plane touched the earth and came apart in a welling smear of fire and smoke.

There were enemy troops everywhere he looked. Paul Hyde picked a concentration ahead and opened fire.

The hot water from the radiator was soaking him. There wasn’t enough of it to scald him, just enough to get him wet.

Wiggling the rudder, holding the trigger down, Hyde shot at everything he saw. The Vickers ceased firing. Out of ammo, probably.

When the Lewis jammed he instinctively turned for the trenches. The water was hotter now, so it was coming out of the radiator in more volume. The needle on the water temp gauge on the panel was pegged right. The engine was going to seize in a moment.

And his feet were wet. Hyde looked down. Liquid running along the floorboards, toward the rear of the plane. A lot of liquid. His shoes and socks were soaked.

Water?

Sweet Jesus, it must be petrol. There must be bullet holes in the tank! He flew with his right hand while he worked the fuel pump with his left.

When he crossed the German trenches the motor started knocking. A cylinder wasn’t firing — he could hear and feel the knocking. Backfires from the exhaust pipe. And some Hun was blasting away at him with a machine gun.

A violent vibration swept through the plane, then another.

The last enemy trench was behind. Ahead he could see the British trenches. At least this time he wasn’t going to cross in the middle of an artillery barrage.

He crossed the trenches twenty feet in the air, the engine knocking loudly and vibrating as if it were going to jump off the mount.

He didn’t have much speed left. He tried to hold the nose up and couldn’t.

The wheels hit something and he bounced. Pulled the stick back into his lap and cut the switch. The noise stopped as the ship slowed and settled.

It bounced once more, then the landing gear assembly tore off and the fuselage slid along the mud and smacked over a shell hole and came, finally, to rest.

Paul Hyde was out and running before the plane stopped moving.

He was gone about seventy feet when fuel vapor found the hot metal parts of the engine and burst into flame. The whuff of the whole ship lighting off pushed Hyde forward on his face.

He lay there in the cold mud gripping the earth with both hands.

Finally he turned over in the slime and looked up at the evening sky.

Two Tommies found him there.

“Are you injured, sir?” they demanded, running their hands over him, feeling his body for wounds or broken bones.

He tried to answer and couldn’t.

One of them held Hyde’s head in his hands and looked straight into his eyes.

“It’s all right, laddie,” he said. “You’re safe. You can stop screaming now.”