I was sure I would be dead in four to six weeks.
That winter we were flying over the front from the Wing HQ aerodrome behind Amiens. It was a bloody, blue-cold winter; the squadron was using Sopwith Camels nearly as bad as DH-4's, the goddam notorious Flaming Coffins. We pilots lived on milk and brandy, stinking of tension turned to sweat in our black flying breeks, going over the Hun lines, escorting the reconnaissaance camera planes with the enemy's Archie exploding high up, bursting in our faces.
In the British Sixth Wing, actually by count, we lost a third of our flyers, and it got worse before Cambrai fell, when the Boche began mounting heavier Spandau machine guns in their goddamn Jagdstaffel - 'hunting packs'. They had replaced their older planes with the Fokker triplane, and we were still in the flypaper and canvas and wood Sopwith F.I. Camels. We all took to carrying bottles of brandy in our coverall leg pockets.
Flying on patrol, the long-toothed major with the trick pipe got his, trying out over the lines a new Nieuport (as expected, the air valve jammed and the engine conked). He tried to climb vertically, went into a slow roll and a loop. A Hun dipped down out of the sun and begun to pour it into him, and I saw the major's face, the Sandhurst moustache standing out. I was flying on his left tip, trying to come up to protect him. He just looked disappointed, mouthed the word 'merde' and the crate began to smoke and flame and slide down discarding wings and parts. He waved.
I didn't follow him because I was trying to get the sun between me and the red-streaked Fokker, and when I had him in the sights, I prayed that the rotten mechanical device that synchronized my two Lewis guns to fire through the propeller would work. A week before I had shot off my own prop and landed in the middle of an Anzac battalion in the lines. I had been sweating it out, for the wind was always blowing to the east and there was the danger of coming down behind the German lines.
I fired a burst to clear the barrels and the blur of the spinning prop was all right. Oh, the Hun was good. He tried to keep the sun behind him, but my petrol was clean that morning in my tanks and I circled and got on his tail, he twisting, me after him, the Teutonic crosses on his wings black against the dark canvas. I pressed off half a drum right into him, and the sonofabitch didn't seem to hurt at all. I could see wood and canvas splintering off and falling away.
He lifted away to climb and I throttled back and thought fuckyoukraut, when I sensed something on my right, and there I was jumped by a staffel of Albatros who were laying for me. My pigeon had been a decoy.
I kicked the stick over and went into a long fast dive, wires screaming, did an evation spin that began to strain the wings, and I cursed the profiteers who cheated on aeroplane specifications. There was a wisp of cloud nearby, looking no bigger than a bathtowel, and I started for that and it was bigger than it looked. I was very young and I didn't want to die. Not before I sent my grandmother a picture of myself in my London-tailored uniform.
I went through the cloud and found myself with just one Hun. He had a skull and bones painted on his canvas side and I automatically pressed the Lewis button and a staccato burst caught him in the belly. I was just under him - his blind spot - and he fell, all black smoke, flames redder than any paint job. I could see the flier's protuberant bloodshot eyes as he screamed. Nobody carried parachutes in those days, and his right wing just touched mine - a kiss - as he fell away in a big gray world.
I scooted for our lines, sticky with fear. I vomited brandy and milk all over my instrument panel. Yes, it was very romantic, flying, like a knight errant in the clean blue sky of personal combat, in whipcord breeches and a British tunic with long Bond Street cut tails. So romantic... oh shit and piss. I was sobbing and set the plane down with a hard bounce - a bad show of nerves.
'W.W. Windstaff', a Flier's War (1930) ??
the Fokker scourge