Stuck away at the north-eastern end of the Baltic, there was a depressing feeling of being out of the world – especially when they heard stories of men in America preparing to fly the Atlantic. Only a few short years before when aeroplanes had been little more than powered box kites such a thing had appeared impossible, but from the newspapers they received it now seemed that Harry Hawker, the famous test pilot, and a companion, with a huge specially-built Sopwith powered with a Rolls Royce Eagle engine, two other men with a converted Vickers Vimy bomber with two Rolls Royce Eagles, and a squadron of American naval men in flying boats were all virtually on their way.
The uncertainty of the situation in the Baltic remained, however, and the White Russian forces were totally unreliable. The conscripted Russian peasants had had enough of autocracy to last them for ever and had no intention of supporting any move to restore the Romanovs. The Poles were working for an independent Poland and their interest was only in getting rid of their traditional enemies, the Russians, White or Red. The Letts wanted a free Latvia and were only too willing to fight with the British whose idea was to set up buffer states in Latvia, Esthonia and Lithuania to keep back the tide of Bolshevism. The German leaders were interested only in preserving their own estates by keeping East Prussia German and, if possible, adding to it while no one was looking.
It was always difficult to get the separate forces to operate together, and the White Russian officers remained terrified of their men. When one of their battalions mutinied and shot their officers in the back on parade, the Russian generals responded by rounding up a whole host of wrongdoers for punishment, and everybody had to face the business of the execution of the ringleaders. The Russian officers clearly intended to make an example and the court martial was a hurried affair with only lip service paid to justice. There was no appeal and the sentence was to be carried out almost immediately.
After a visit to a tent, where they were blessed by priests, the guilty men were sprinkled with holy water and kissed, then marched under escort to where Russian, German, Polish and British troops formed a hollow square. Some of them were weeping but one of them, a fine-looking sergeant, stood proudly erect as the stripes were torn from his sleeves. A small dog appeared and began to sniff the legs of the condemned men and for a while the affair seemed likely to descend into tragi-comedy because it refused to get out of the way. The officer in charge, a pale-faced young man wearing pince-nez and the enormous epaulettes of the Imperial Russian Army, timidly shooed it aside only for it to return again and again. In the end, a Russian colonel with an iron-grey board, stamped across and snarled at him to get on with it, lashing out with his boot at the dog which bolted, yelping, so that even the men waiting for execution managed a faint smile.
As the machine guns chattered, the men tied to the posts stiffened and slumped but, as the smoke cleared, the sergeant was seen to be still alive. He had somehow shed his blindfold and, though his face and clothes were smeared with blood, he was shouting ‘Long Live Bolshevism’. As the officer in the pince-nez moved up to him to administer the coup de grâce with his pistol, the sergeant spat at him. As the officer hesitated, the sergeant went on shouting. In the end the colonel did the job and the young officer promptly turned aside and vomited up his breakfast.
It was a depressing business and seemed to symbolise the uselessness and waste of the operations along the Baltic. However, the generals had finally decided that doing nothing was dangerous and a menace to morale and the following day news came that the army was to move forward. Several of the units passed the aerodrome, the Germans well-fed and well-equipped but the rest wearing only old torn uniforms without greatcoats, cast-offs from the war in France. Most of the fighting seemed to be left to them where possible while the Germans remained in the barracks near the river, arrogant, self-important and behaving more like a victorious army than a defeated one allowed to retain its weapons only because of the local political situation.
The flying went on, for the most part pointlessly because they were short of ammunition and had few bombs, and for a lot of the time only half the aircraft were serviceable through lack of spare parts. Eventually they heard that the allied intervention in Russia was falling apart, and that the British and the troops in the north around Archangel were to be withdrawn during the summer when the sea was free of ice, though they were hoping first to make a swift drive south to link up with Kolchak’s drive west from Siberia. Within a week, however, they heard that Denikin’s White forces in the south had been driven out of the Ukraine and the great plan to capture Moscow was dying on its feet.
Soon afterwards, the Russian pilots received instructions – God alone knew where from because they seemed to have no senior officers – to fly north. The Finns, as worried about Bolshevism as everybody else in Europe, were also standing with teeth bared in case the Bolsheviks came, and since the fighting round Murmansk appeared to have died down, they had agreed to give the Russians refuge. The airmen gathered their battered collection of machines together for departure and gave the most tremendous dinner, for which they hired a gypsy orchestra, and put on a display of Russian dancing and drinking that left everybody breathless. In turn they were hilariously excited and full of gloom, and the Russian major, Samonov, went round saying goodbye with an intensity that was heartbreaking, growing slowly more drunk as the evening went on. The party continued until dawn and was just breaking up when the roar of an aeroplane starting up came over the by now blurred strains of the orchestra. Rushing outside, they saw one of the Fokker DVIIs just lifting off the ground.
‘Who is it for God’s sake?’ Orr asked.
‘It’s Major Samonov,’ one of the Russians said. ‘It’s his way of saying goodbye.’
Banking steeply over the end of the field, the Fokker came hurtling towards them with a roar that set the windows shaking. At the top of its climb it turned and dived again and they all flung themselves flat as it howled past, its slipstream blowing stinging particles of grit in their faces. As they lifted their heads, it banked over the trees at the other end of the field and came howling back once more. Watching it narrow-eyed, they were convinced Samonov was trying to kill himself. As the Fokker came thundering towards them yet again one of the lorries was just coming in from the town and, as the Fokker flashed towards it at a height of nought feet, they saw the driver jump out and run. The Fokker leapt over the lorry and turned again at the end of the field for another run, but this time as it banked, standing on its wingtip, they heard the engine splutter and cough.
‘Oh, Christ!’ Handiside gasped.
A wing touched the ground in a puff of dust and, as they all started to run, the aeroplane banged down and began to slide sideways across the turf, shedding undercarriage, wings and tail in flying fragments until it finally hit a parked farm cart. As it disintegrated the pilot flew out of the cockpit to hit the ground several yards in front with a thud that sickened them.
As the tender slewed to a stop, Dicken dropped from the running board and fell on his knees alongside Samonov. The Russian’s skull seemed concave, one eye was missing, his nose was punched in and his lips were pulped, while his legs lay at impossible angles, as though the bones had been reduced to fragments. He died in Dicken’s arms even as the others panted up.
The funeral was held the following day, green-robed, boarded and ringleted priests circling the coffin, holding lighted candles and chanting in deep sonorous voices. Sprinkling holy water over the dead man, they bent to kiss his shattered forehead. His medals, which included his British MC, lay on a cushion at the foot of the coffin. It added to the feeling of waste.
The following day several DFCs were handed out as well as several Russian decorations.
‘You can get a gong out here,’ Hatto said dryly, ‘for things which were considered all in a day’s work in France. As for the Russian gongs, you can buy ’em in the shops without any trouble at all. Shows what a ragtime affair it is.’
As the Russian pilots vanished towards Finland, they heard that several battalions of White Russian troops had deserted, and immediately, as though they had prior knowledge of it, the Bolsheviks to the east began to become aggressive and the army sent up a wail of protest and demanded news of their whereabouts.
Flying with Hatto as his observer, Dicken forged eastwards over countryside that was flat and uninteresting with patches of forest and lakes and rivers steely in the harsh light. They found the Bolsheviks just north of a village called Mizchaikya. They were cavalry, fur-capped men on small shaggy ponies, their bodies festooned with ammunition belts. They seemed not to know how to behave against an aeroplane and remained in a solid phalanx, swarming along a dusty track that did duty as a road. Hatto fired at them with the machine gun from the rear cockpit, so that they scattered across the plain, but after only a few shots the gun jammed. Swinging away, they headed north until they found several Bolshevik batteries whose position Hatto marked on the map. On their return, with the gun working again, they bumped into the same group of cavalry crossing a wooden bridge. They were in a long file, hurrying now, and they caught them in the middle where they couldn’t escape. As the gun roared, men and horses crashed into the water and Dicken could see the splashes of bullets pursuing them along the surface of the river. An animal slipped and fell and, as the other horsemen began to bunch he saw the frail structure collapse, throwing them into the water. The rest of the cavalrymen tried to turn round but the other end had been blocked by fallen horses and stalled carts and in the end most of them spurred their mounts into the river and tried to escape by swimming.
They had no wireless and as they landed, the Crossley was sent off with a hurried message to the Navy, who were in touch with the army, to inform them of the position of the Bolshevik forces. It was a ridiculous situation and, in an attempt to improve communications, they were moved to a field alongside a river nearer the port, everybody living on barges moored to the bank.
It was a squalid area of mean, evil-smelling streets filled with refuse, the inhabitants not yet recovered from the deprivations of the war years, and Orr shot off in a fury to see the senior RAF officer, leaving Hatto in command. He had no sooner vanished than a crowd of civilians appeared on the bank, begging for food, the women half-clothed and sick, the children ragged little scarecrows with pale faces and hollow eyes lifting their bony arms to ask for bread. The cooks promptly organised a soup kitchen and started handing out army rations and soap.
‘I reckon,’ Handiside growled, ‘that when the Almighty was doing His stuff at the Creation, He realised He was going to be in a bit of a hurry to get it all finished, so He saved all the boners, blunders and blobs and shoved them down in one place for quickness – here! They do everything backwards and, as far as the Russians are concerned, titles are far more important than guts, and my strongest impression of the place got into my head through my nose.’
The following day the children were back again, this time with bowls, pleading for food, and in no time the cooks were handing out thick slices of bread and jam. One small boy, on a raft made of wood and old oil cans, appeared downriver and moored alongside. For his daring, Handiside lifted him aboard and saw him stuffed full of rice pudding.
Late in the afternoon a truculent young German officer appeared on the bank demanding to see the commanding officer. The sentry shouted to the sentry on board the officers’ barge. ‘There’s a bloke here wants to see the Old Man!’
The German scowled and, as he came on board, he complained in English of the rudeness of the sentry.
‘You’re bloody lucky you didn’t get a boot up the backside,’ Dicken pointed out. ‘That chap was fighting your lot for four years and he doesn’t like you very much.’
The situation ashore was still delicate, the Germans and the Letts still at each others’ throats with the British in between trying to persuade them to kill Bolsheviks instead of each other, and the German had arrived to register a protest that, under the terms of the agreement between the Allies and the Germans, civilians should not be permitted close to military establishments. Hatto told him what he thought of the complaint and within an hour a line of German sentries appeared to restrain the crowd from approaching. The adults did as they were told but the children were indifferent to the threats and when a small girl, clutching a slice of bread and jam, was knocked flying by a box on the ear, there was a roar of anger.
Dicken reached the deck just as the airmen were about to swarm over the rails ready to heave the German into the river.
‘Stay where you are!’ he roared. ‘Give the kid another slice of bread and jam and escort her to safety. And next time keep your heads. An incident could provoke fighting and that’s the last thing we want.’
The Germans watched sullenly as the child was escorted through their ranks but the following morning Dicken was wakened by the sound of hammering and sawing. Scrambling to the deck, he found Hatto placidly watching a large force of carpenters erecting a high wooden barricade on the bank by the barges.
‘What’s going on?’
Handiside shrugged. ‘I think we’re just about to find out.’
A German officer appeared, and, stopping in front of them gravely explained that General von der Goltz had heard the RAF were being troubled by the populace and that the fence was being built to ensure their privacy.
‘There will be a door in the fence, of course,’ he explained. ‘With a sentry.’
Hatto listened politely and watched throughout the day as the fence was erected.
‘Blighters don’t like us fraternising,’ he murmured. ‘That’s the trouble.’
Two days later, he strolled from the barge to the officer in charge of the building.
‘Finished?’ he asked.
The German beamed and saluted. ‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann!’
Hatto smiled, returned the salute and climbed back on board. ‘Handiside,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’ve decided our berths here are becoming too fouled with tins and empty bottles. I think we’d better find new ones further along.’
Watched by the furious Germans, the mooring ropes were unfastened and the barges dragged along the river, where the children began to appear again at once, grinning and holding out their hands for bread and jam.
Libau was not a place where there was a lot of life but it seemed it was the only area where the Allied attempts to bring order along the border of Russia and prevent the spread of Bolshevism was having any success. The army was steadily pushing the Bolshevik forces back and Riga fell to the Germans but, even as it did so, the Allied intervention was collapsing about their ears. In the south the White forces were in retreat and they were also withdrawing from Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Baku and Archangel, and an ambitious project for the formation of a Slavo-British legion in the north ended abruptly when two of its companies mutinied and murdered five British and four Russian officers in their beds. There didn’t seem a great deal of future in the plans for intervention.
With the summer hot and the midges almost unbearable, once more the feeling of being cut off prevailed. With the better weather, football matches were played between the men and the officers, and the officers and the NCOs, but it was unwise to go into the town where the Germans were in large numbers, arrogant and domineering and spoiling for a fight. Mail was slow arriving and out-of-date newspapers turned up only when a ship appeared. When they did, the news for the airmen was electrifying.
Hatto whirled round, his eyes alight. ‘Great Ned,’ he yelled ‘They made it!’
‘Who made what?’
‘The Atlantic! It’s been flown!’
‘It has? Who by? Hawker?’
‘No, he came down fifteen hundred miles out. The Americans. A whole squadron of flying boats going by the Azores. They shed aircraft with every step but they made it! One of them landed at Lisbon.’
‘That’s one in the eye for the people who said it couldn’t be done.’
Hatto’s eyes were still glued to the newsprint. ‘There are others preparing in Newfoundland, too. A whole crowd of them. Somebody’s bound to do it non-stop now the Americans have shown the way.’
The news made them feel more than ever isolated. The flying was monotonous and they rarely saw enemy troops and never another aircraft, though they heard from agents that now that the White Russian campaigns in the south had collapsed, the Bolsheviks had brought north machines which had been flying on that front.
When Orr returned he brought news received by wireless from the Navy.
‘They’ve done it,’ he announced. ‘Non-stop Newfoundland to a bog in Ireland. Jack Alcock and a chap called Brown. With a Vimy. It could carry six tons for almost twelve hours and they’d fitted extra tanks to give them a range of 2440 miles.’
The mess was noisy with the celebrations but behind the merriment they were also all aware that flying, even the world, had changed abruptly. With the Atlantic crossed in one hop, they knew that from now on flying must be regarded as having a future. If it had come to adulthood in the forcing house of the war in France, it had come of age with this new feat. Aircraft were no longer the toys of airminded sportsmen. They had joined ships and trains as a reliable form of transport.
They had finally decided that the personal request for Diplock was either going to bring no response or that Diplock had managed to fight it off when bombs arrived – not very many and not very big ones – and with them orders to use them on Bolshevik gunboats patrolling the Dvina.
In poor flying weather with a lot of low stratus they found the Bolshevik gunboats – sleek black vessels more like motor boats than anything – heading down the Dvina in the direction of Riga and, circling in worsening weather, they dropped their bombs. One of the boats ran aground and ended up partially capsized, while the other, sprayed by machine gun fire, turned and bolted for home. The return fire from the banks was heavy however, and to add to their misery as they swung round to head back for Libau it began to rain.
As they landed with the rain coming down in squally flurries out of a leaden sky, Orr appeared.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said. ‘You’ve arrived just in time to pack your bags.’
The capering stopped at once. ‘Where are we going, sir?’ Hatto asked. ‘South?’
‘Yes,’ Orr said. ‘The Empire’s falling apart elsewhere and we’re needed. It seems the Government’s having second thoughts about this part of the world. Especially now the White Armies are on the run. A destroyer’s taking us home.’
Hatto grinned. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘Duty free gin.’
Because the Letts had no pilots and because under the Armistice agreements of 1918, the Germans weren’t allowed to have any aeroplanes, they solemnly pushed the DHs together and set fire to them. Nobody was very sorry and they stood watching as the column of black smoke coiled into the sky. On Orr’s barge, they lined up for a Latvian minister they’d never seen before to hand out medals and make a speech none of them understood, then, without speaking, they tossed the last of their baggage on to the lorries and began to scramble aboard themselves.
When they took their last look back as the lorries turned on to the road, they saw an ancient cab appearing down the road from the city. As it came alongside, a head appeared.
‘Hey!’ A man in RAF uniform thrust his head out and started yelling. ‘What’s going on? I’ve been ordered to report to a Major Cuthbert Orr. Is he here?’
Hatto grinned at Dicken. ‘It’s Parasol Percy.’
Thrusting his head out, Dicken recognised at once the plump pale face and protruding ears of their old enemy, Diplock.
‘Just down there,’ Hatto yelled, pointing. ‘Just packing up the office!’
Diplock had recognised them immediately and was frowning. ‘I’ve just been ordered out here,’ he snapped, his expression suspicious as if he already suspected who was behind his unexpected posting. ‘What’s going on? Where’s everybody going?’
Hatto beamed. ‘Well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I don’t know where you’re going, but we’re going home.’