He stood with his eyes closed until he heard harsh shouting in the wardroom, the German captain’s raving that Smith could not understand. He thrust away from the ladder and pushed through the curtain.
The wardroom was fifteen feet wide and twelve feet long. The couches down each side made beds for four. There were five of the drifter’s crew, the airman, and the two Germans. Four of Judy’s crew sat on the deck but the fifth, the one with the broken leg, and the two Germans and the airman, lay on beds. Brodie and the cook were at work on the man with the broken leg, Sanders crouched by the gasping, raving U-boat commander and a sentry armed with a Lee-Enfield rifle stood with his back to the bulkhead. The deadlights were tight-closed over the scuttles so what little light there was wouldn’t escape. The depth charges’ kick or the guns’ firing had put the circuits out of action and only a dim emergency lighting functioned. The atmosphere was thick with the smell of sweat and oil, smoke and salt, vomit and antiseptic. Smith gagged as he picked his way across the crowded deck to the airman who was wrapped in blankets and sitting up now with his legs stretched out. He was roundfaced, pale. He, or someone, had rubbed at his wet-black hair with a towel so it stuck up in spikes. Smith thought he was probably twenty. He looked about fifteen.
“I am Commander Smith. How are you?” He sat on the edge of the couch.
The young man shoved himself up so he sat straighter. “Lieutenant Morris, sir. Royal Naval Air Service. An’ I’m not too bad, sir, thank you. Starting to warm up a bit. Your Steward chappie gave me some cocoa. Said he’d put ‘a dram o’ the skipper’s malt in it’.”
Smith smiled faintly. The boy was a good mimic. That was Brodie to the life.
Morris said innocently, “Can’t tell in this cocoa but I suppose that would be Scotch.” He peered into the mug he clasped in both hands, and sniffed.
Smith said, “I think it would.” In this ship it certainly would. He asked, “What happened?”
Morris glanced across the wardroom as the German officer bellowed with an edge of panic and clawed up in the bunk with Sanders holding on to him. He subsided into muttering, let Sanders push him gently down.
The man with the broken leg yelped and swore and Brodie said, “A’ right! Ye’ll dae fine! Easy now!”
Morris looked back at Smith. “Happened? Oh —” He hesitated, looking into the mug again, then asked, “No sign of Bill — my observer, sir?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Morris nodded. Briefly he looked a very old fifteen. He blinked up at Smith, his gaze empty. “Never saw him after we hit. I paddled around for a long time and shouted, but it was very dark. I never saw him.”
Smith saw his mouth twitch. This wouldn’t do. If the boy broke down before the others he would be ashamed of himself afterwards. Though he should not. Smith knew something of that. He asked quickly, “What were you doing?”
The boy blinked again but this time focusing on Smith, trying to think, remembering…“Fairly routine, run-of-the-mill stuff. Reconnaissance over Ostende and the coast north of it. Only thing is, we’ve been getting a bit of a pasting up there lately. Margaret was our fourth loss in ten days.”
“Margaret?”
“My RE8, sir.” A faint grin. “I called her after a girl I know.”
Smith said, “I see. And you were the fourth?”
“Fourth aircraft lost. Nobody at all came back from the others. Henry — er, Squadron Commander Dennis, that is — he’ll be glad I’m all right but he won’t be too pleased about Margaret. Because of the other three he wasn’t frightfully keen on my going but — orders is orders. Anyway. The other times they sent some cover, a flight of fighters, but that ended up in a dog-fight and more losses. So this time I thought: Why not try a bit of cunning? So we went without cover, flew off in the early evening, made a big circle out to sea and came in with the sun behind us.”
He paused, sipped from the mug. Smith could smell the whisky, Brodie’s dram had been a hefty one. Morris went on, “It turned out there wasn’t much sun but the wheeze worked anyway, up to a point. We got in all right and I made a fast circle low over Ostende then ran inland and flew north. We ran right up to the north of De Haan, nearly up to Blankenberge and then we turned south along the coast.” He looked at Smith and explained. “You see, sir, they’ve been keeping a fighting patrol flying over De Haan permanently. There’s always one Albatros V-strutter in the air and they can whistle up a lot more in minutes.”
Smith said, “Albatros what?”
Morris explained, “Albatros V-strutter. Their lower wing is shorter and narrower than the upper so the struts come down to a point like a V. They’re hot stuff; two machine-guns. The Triplanes we’ve got at St. Pol can fight ’em because the ‘Tripe hound’ is more manoeuvrable an’ goes up like a rocket. But a Harry Tate hasn’t got much hope.”
Smith nodded and Morris went on, “So the idea was to come at them from the north. See? Not from the direction of France. Anyway, all the way up Bill had the camera going like mad but he kept shaking his head and making ‘wash-out’ signs with his hands meaning he couldn’t see anything new. So then we turned south and ran back down the coast. Sneaking in like that we got away with it for a few minutes. The light was a bit dim by then; it had started to rain again. It’s been raining a lot. Bill and me, we’ve got a cricket side together in the squadron but we haven’t had a knock for days. Bloody weather…” Morris’s voice trailed off and he was silent for a few seconds. When he went on his voice was a little louder, a little clearer, more deliberately casual. “I’d taken her down as low as I dared and Bill was hanging over the side of the cockpit and I had my head poked out so what there was to see, we saw. And there was nothing. Nothing new, that is. Except when we were just south of De Haan. There’s a biggish wood runs inland from the coast and there were a lot of chaps on the beach there. They seemed to be bringing a boat up from the sea.”
Smith broke in, “What kind of boat?”
“Well, we were over and past in a second.” Morris screwed up his face, trying to remember, then shook his head. “Bill could have told you but I was trying to fly as well. Might have been a fishing-boat. Seemed sort of wide-ish, blunt-ish. A bit like a shoe-box, it was so square. No armament, though, that’s definite. I’d have noticed a gun. Bill was excited, seemed to think he could see something in the wood, had the camera going.”
He took a swallow from the mug and Smith asked, “And that was all you saw?”
Morris nodded. “After that, for one reason and another I thought we might as well go home.”
“What reasons?”
“The light was going bad on us, of course. On top of that we started to get a lot of Archie coming up from the wood.”
Archie was anti-aircraft fire. Smith said quietly, “From the wood?”
Morris nodded. “That was new. We didn’t know they had Archie hidden in the wood. It gave us a hell of a fright.”
Smith could imagine it bursting around Morris and his observer, tossing their little aeroplane about the sky.