At first the two FEs had pretended to bypass the balloon, as if they were flying from north to south on some other business and the prevailing westerly wind just happened to push them near to it. It was a poor excuse and nobody believed it. A few ranging shots came and went, high and low, looking as harmless as tufts of black wool. Within twenty seconds the German batteries had adjusted for height. A string of shells burst in quick succession, starting wide and racing in for the kill. The last missed by less than fifty yards. Foster heard their gruff barks. The closest was as loud as his engine. Maybe its blast shook the plane, maybe the wind gusted. He dropped a wing and turned away. Yeo left by a different route, just to divide the targets.
For the next half-hour they tested the defences. Nothing made any difference. Come too close and you got shot at.
Yeo loathed archie. The FE gave him a lovely view of the world but no protection in front. Other planes had a big heavy engine in front, something to hide behind when the shell splinters came fizzing through the air. Nothing to hide behind in the FE, not even your observer, who was sitting in the stalls while you were in the balcony. It wasn’t the risk of death that upset Yeo. Where would the Army be without death? Like roulette without chips. You had to have something to lose, otherwise what’s the point? Nothing wrong with killing people in war. That was the only way to win medals, and Yeo accepted pain and mutilation and blindness and all the other unpleasantnesses as unavoidable side-effects of the process. But what he loathed and resented about archie was its stinking ugliness. It was worse than being attacked with a filthy bayonet by a chap who needed a bath. It was squalid. It was unmilitary. He despised the Hun for having dirty archie. British archie was white, or at least off-white.
Foster waggled his wings and pointed upwards. Yeo looked up and saw, very high, a formation of aircraft, at least six. How odd. He had never seen more than four planes together over the Lines before. Six was a crowd. It was like seeing six bishops or six Red Indian chiefs: you wondered what on earth they were up to. His observer put down his binoculars and shouted: “French.” Yeo nodded. “Nieuports,” the observer shouted. So that was all right. Clever little plane, the Nieuport. Came to pieces in a long dive, sometimes, but that was because the frogs were too cheap to tie it up with really strong string.
Foster gave a signal and the FEs separated again. There was one final test to be made: they would approach the balloon from opposite sides at the same time and see how the archie liked that. Then home for tea.
It took three or four minutes to get into position. When Yeo saw Foster’s FE lined up with the balloon he opened his throttle to the full, and turned. The six-cylinder Beardmore vibrated like a threshing machine and everything Yeo saw was blurred. Bloody awful engine, he thought. Why don’t they give us decent engines? He began worrying, in a remote, detached sort of way, what would happen if a piston snapped or a crankshaft broke, here and now. Collapse of stout party. Prisoner-of-war camp. He’d forgotten to bring his shaving kit, too. Parents would get a War Office telegram, Missing, believed killed. Hullo, hullo! Where was the German archie? Surely he must be within range by now. This was odd. He throttled back to cut the vibration and something hit him an almighty blow in the back, a huge thump that flung his body forward and jerked his head back. He crashed into the joystick and made the plane dive. His head slammed against the instrument panel, shattering glass and turning his face into a red ruin. Not that it mattered. Yeo was dead.
The observer did his utmost to reach him and shove him off the joystick. The FE was diving almost vertically, its wires screaming, its engine working hard to help it on its way. The observer was young, strong and fit, but it was like trying to climb up a cliff face and lift a rock that weighs as much as you do. The wires screamed, and in the end the observer screamed with them not from fear but from rage and frustration. He never knew what killed Yeo, and he was facing the wrong way to watch the ground come hurtling up to kill him.
“D’you know,” Paxton said,”that’s the fourth swimming pool I’ve seen being dug in the last week.” He aimed his mug of tea at a gang of Chinese labourers working a few hundred yards away. “Good show, isn’t it?”
He was talking to a captain in the Medical Corps. They were standing outside a new Casualty Clearing Station. “Is it?” the captain asked. He sounded doubtful.
“Well, I bet the Hun doesn’t look after his troops like that. I think it’s jolly thoughtful. It could get pretty hot this summer.”
“Oh, I think it will. Extremely hot.”
“There you are, then. I know the chaps at the aerodrome wouldn’t mind having a pool as big as that.”
“Give those Chinks a dozen loaves of bread,” the doctor said,”and they’ll dig night and day for you.”
Paxton laughed. “It takes a war to get things going, they say.”
“It’s certainly done my career a power of good. I’ve learned more about heroic surgery in a year than I would have done in a lifetime. Lucky old me. At this rate I’ll be the world’s greatest expert at high-speed multiple amputation. Did you know that the record for lopping off all four limbs is twelve minutes ten seconds?” He ditched the dregs of his tea.
“Good Lord.”
“It’s not good enough.” The doctor looked Paxton in the eye. “I can get that time down to eight minutes dead and throw in an appendectomy, if only they’ll let me use my surgical axe. You see,” he said, flexing his elbows, “it’s all in the follow-through. If this war has taught us doctors anything, it’s the need to use the wrists and follow through.” He lifted Paxton’s right arm and fingered the shoulder. “Otherwise it’s all chopping and hacking,” he said. “Which is. not only distressing to the patient but also very, very time-consuming.”
“Good heavens.”
“You’ve nothing to worry about.” He let the arm fall. “I could whip through that joint in half a minute. Be sure to ask for me, won’t you? Don’t let those butchers start hacking at you.”
Paxton wondered about this conversation all the way back to Pepriac. There had been a combative glint in the doctor’s eyes. Could have been drunk, of course. Except that he’d sounded so utterly clear and sure of himself. Queer coves, doctors.
“They could have been hit by archie,” Colonel Bliss suggested.
“No, sir,” Foster said. His face looked frozen.
“I mean you were both deliberately trying to provoke their guns. You went in until they forced you out. Isn’t that right?”
“I’ve seen planes hit by archie. I know what it looks like.”
Cleve-Cutler said: “You were a mile away, Frank.”
“What’s a mile? I could paint a picture of it all.” His voice was dead level. “The Nieuports came down in single file, steep dive, going for the balloon, that’s what I thought and so did the Hun. He turned all his guns on the frogs. Archie all around them. The frogs swung away, kept diving, passed behind Yeo’s machine. The last Nieuport was closer than the rest. I saw it fire, I saw the tracer, I saw it hit the FE, I saw the FE tip up like a… like a wheelbarrow. I saw it crash.”
They were in Cleve-Cutler’s office. Bliss picked up a pen and examined the nib from different angles. “Perhaps we ought to wait and see what the Hun drops over our Lines. By way of confirmation, I mean.”