May 1915, Artois Province, France
Warren Flynn examined the wings of his B.E.2 biplane, checking the repaired canvas and inhaling the scent of castor oil and petrol. Around him, the aerodrome roared to life as mechanics spun propellers and men shouted over the noise in preparation for takeoff.
“Ready for your dose of hate, Canada?” Captain Jimmy Prior asked.
Warren wasn’t the only Canadian in this squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, but the nickname had stuck, even though he’d left his father’s farm in Cardston, Alberta, almost five years ago. “Of course, sir. And Boyle is ready to dish it back out to any Hun unlucky enough to fly within range. That is, if Boyle’s willing to come up again. We had a rather thin time of it this morning with that Albatross.”
“I’m always happy to fly, sir.” Tommy Boyle looked up from the ground with a wide grin as he put away his wrench and other tools.
Prior studied the repairs. “Flynn, do you remember the village we ate in last Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“I’m meeting a mademoiselle there this evening.” Prior winked. “Should I see if she has a friend?”
“No. Thanks though.” Warren enjoyed the attention his uniform generated with women as much as the next man, but he wasn’t on the hunt for a lady friend.
“That’s right. You’ve got that Yankee girl. In Paris, isn’t she?”
Warren smiled. “Yes, but I don’t think Americans from the South refer to themselves as Yankees, even when they move to France.”
He owed Claire a letter. He’d received one from her the day before, written in flawless handwriting and smelling slightly of lavender. He would try to write back soon, but first he had to worry about the patrol.
“Carry on, then.” Prior nodded at the two of them before gathering his own observer and striding to his own plane.
Boyle stood and used a rag to wipe the oil from his hands. “Do you speak French, Lieutenant?”
“Badly.”
“I wish I did, even badly. Hard to talk to the women when you don’t speak the language.”
“Have you seen one you fancy?” Warren finished inspecting Boyle’s repairs. They looked perfect, as usual. Boyle was a competent gunner and a top-notch mechanic.
“I’d fancy a walk with just about any of them, sir, but someone has to keep this troublesome old plane flying.”
Warren didn’t mind the mismatched fabric patches or the scratched fuselage as long as the battered biplane continued to function. “I should have checked with you earlier about going up again, but I knew you’d say yes. You’re almost as addicted as I am.”
Boyle helped mount the twenty-eight-pound machine gun onto the plane. “I don’t suppose it’s likely that a tanner’s son could ever be a pilot, but I would like to fly someday, sir.”
“Your eyesight is sharp—probably better than mine. You have that in your favor.”
“Perhaps, but my birth puts me at a bit of a disadvantage.”
“I was born on a small farm in Western Canada. I’m lucky enough to have a rich English grandmother, but I imagine our boyhoods weren’t so different. You watch, this war isn’t going to end quickly. Soon a man’s abilities will be of greater worth to the Royal Flying Corps than a man’s birth, and I’ll be the first to recommend you for pilot’s training.” Most men would tell Warren not to encourage the lad, but Warren felt the hope he gave was real.
Boyle’s lips curved up in surprised joy. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m just not sure where I’ll find another mechanic as good as you.”
“You’ll find someone, sir. I’ll train him myself if needed.” Boyle’s eyes glimmered with anticipation. Warren recognized the yearning there, the deep desire to soar through the sky, because he’d had the same hunger since the moment he first witnessed flight. He could still picture the plane in the black-and-white newsreel, striking him with awe and inspiring a thirst for audacity.
Warren made his last preflight check, reaching into his pocket to make sure his good-luck charm, the broken handle of a teacup, was still there. He’d dropped his china cup the last time he’d had tea with Claire and her English grandmother in London, the day after Britain had entered the war. Claire had picked the piece up and tossed it to him, saying, “I trust this cup is the only thing you’ll be breaking during the war, Mr. Flynn. I would hate for this to be our last meeting. Do take care as you fly your plane off into glory.”
Off into glory . . . Warren had quickly discovered that war wasn’t glorious, but flying was, regardless of the circumstances that allowed him up in the air day after day.
The men climbed into the plane, Boyle in the forward observer’s seat and Warren in the rear pilot’s seat. They adjusted their goggles and safety straps, then Warren signaled for one of the mechanics to spin the propeller. Soon the Renault engine thrummed steadily.
Warren loved the feel of the airplane’s vibrations as it sped along the ground, seeming as eager to be airborne as he was. Even more, he loved the sensation of the plane leaving the ground and climbing ever higher, no longer bound by the rules that had held men to the earth for centuries. There was freedom in flight, marred only by the carnage below.
And the ground below was covered in carnage, even if all he saw from eight thousand feet was a colorless muddle of gray and brown sliced with trenches and pocked by high-explosive shells. Yesterday the British Expeditionary Force had attacked Auber’s Ridge in conjunction with a nearby French attack. Warren had spotted for the artillery before the men had charged across no-man’s land. Today the front line looked unchanged. The poor devils on the ground had advanced but a little, and they’d given up their meager gains the night before under persistent pressure from the Germans. The effort had been a waste of blood and munitions.
“There they are.” Over the roar of the engine, Warren could just hear Boyle’s shout from the observer’s seat. “Hun field guns.”
“Signal in the coordinates. Let our artillery know where to hit.”
Boyle pulled out his signal lamp and sent the initial flashes.
A series of shells streaked skyward from behind the German lines. “Here comes Archie.” Warren wasn’t sure who had started referring to the antiaircraft shells as Archibald, but he sent the plane into a dive to avoid the latest explosions. After his evasion, Warren pulled the nose of his plane up to regain the altitude he’d lost.
“How short was that?” Boyle asked as a British salvo hit the German lines. “Sixty yards? Seventy?”
“Fifty, I’d say. You’d best signal again.” Warren’s ability to judge distances from above was improving, but artillery spotting was still just trial and error.
He glanced behind him, squinting at three dark specs that grew into three biplanes. “On second thought, time to trade in that signal-lamp for the Lewis gun,” Warren shouted. He couldn’t yet make out the type of planes, but his gut told him they weren’t friendly.
Boyle made the switch in an instant. “You think we’ll be needing it?”
“Three aircraft, five o’clock high.” As they drew closer, he added, “Rumplers.”
“Do you think they’ll attack?”
Warren didn’t answer immediately, turning west and getting a better view of the German scout planes that adjusted their courses to match his. “If I had planes like that, I’d attack. They’ve got the advantage in numbers, and they can hit more than ninety miles per hour.”
“So can we, sir, in a dive with a tail wind.”
Warren forced a laugh as they crossed into British-held territory. He wasn’t opposed to scrapes with enemy aircraft, but when his machine was outnumbered and outmatched, he preferred to fight over his own lines in case he had to make an emergency landing. The Rumplers were faster than his B.E.2, but it would take them a while to catch up. He considered diving to increase his speed, but the Rumpler pack was already above him, and he didn’t want to increase their altitude advantage.
The next few minutes stretched out, each second slower than normal, as if time were caught in a roll of barbed wire and was having difficulty extracting itself. It was three against one, and the enemy had the better planes. But perhaps their pilots were poor or their gunners nearsighted. As the Rumplers grew progressively closer, a desperate plan formed in Warren’s head. It might backfire, but there weren’t many alternatives.
When the first Rumpler was about sixty yards away, nearly within firing range, Warren pulled his plane into a loop-the-loop. When he’d first learned to steer his plane through a vertical circle, he’d thought of it as a stunt, not a tactic, but that had been before the war had started.
Two of the enemy planes followed him as he returned to a level course, but the third was now ahead of him in perfect range for Boyle’s Lewis gun. The .303 caliber cartridges tore into the Rumpler, the rhythmic thumps of the bullets barely audible over the engine’s drone. Warren gave Boyle a few good seconds to shoot, then dove sharply to the left to lose the airplanes still on his tail. He heard the double sound of Rumpler guns but didn’t feel anything crash into his plane. He’d flown beneath the stream of bullets.
Warren sped through a cloud and leveled off. The plane Boyle had shot turned back to the German lines, smoke trailing from its engine. Warren’s dive had increased the distance between the two remaining Rumplers and him, but they would soon catch the B.E.2 again.
It took the Hun planes less than two minutes to return to firing range. Warren dove again, this time to the right, but his plane simply wasn’t fast enough. German bullets tore through the canvas wings and across the observer’s seat. Wires snapped, Boyle slumped forward, and the propeller splintered. The plane dropped.
“Boyle?” Warren switched off the engine to keep it from igniting. He tested the stick. The plane still responded to his commands, although its movements were no longer smooth.
“Boyle? Are you all right?” Boyle didn’t answer, but in case the lad could hear him, and because things seemed less dire if he spoke aloud, Warren continued. “We’ll glide down. We’re over our lines now—or the French lines. No hardship to make it back to our aerodrome once we land.”
The vast majority of pilots would recognize that Warren’s B.E.2 was going down and leave the damaged plane to its dismal chance of a successful landing, but one of the Rumplers came back for another pass. With a broken engine and an unresponsive gunner, Warren was as easy a target as the French troops had been charging across Alsace in bright red trousers the previous autumn. The bullets didn’t hit Warren, but the smooth glide he’d managed to coax his plane into disintegrated to a spin as bullets struck the fuselage and tail.
Warren fought with the stick and the rudder, trying to regain some measure of control. Between the clouds, the smoke, and the rotation of the plane, he could no longer see the Rumplers. He hoped they’d gone away. He was suddenly grateful for all the practice in coming out of spins that his flight instructor had insisted on. He’d lost track of his altitude, but the ground was coming up fast. He wrestled the plane into a straighter course and coaxed it past the rows of trenches.
Only feet above the earth, he braced himself for a crash landing.