Omnibus.The.Sea.Witch.2012 (12 page)

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.