Chapter One

IT WAS MARCH 1918, and in the heart of the agricultural countryside that lay between Valenciennes and Douai, an open black Bugatti car was moving steadily along a winding dirt road. Like other byways of its kind in this part of northern France, the road was of little importance except to farmers and their carts.

At the wheel of the Bugatti was a young lady of exemplary background. The day was a challenge to her, the morning fine and cloudless, the sky blue, the air almost springlike after a crisp frost. From the west came the intermittent, murmuring rumble of guns; guns that had known few periods of silence since the far-off days of 1914. But apart from those uneasy murmurs of war, the countryside seemed placidly quiet. Fields patterned the landscapes. Some lay fallow, and some, richly furrowed, were hopefully awaiting the spring seed.

The young lady had passed German Army vehicles earlier, on major roads, but since taking to the winding byways she had seen only the occasional farm cart. She wondered how far she was from Douai. Had she kept to the main roads, she would have been more certain of distances, but even so, and despite the wandering nature of her preferred rural course, she felt she could not be more than fifteen kilometres from the town. And the rural quietness was reassuring. It told her she was alone; that no one was in pursuit of her. She drove on.

Then the quietness was broken by a sound from above. She heard a low, fretful noise that quickly turned into an urgent buzzing. She slowed down and stopped. She was very much alone, with no other human being in sight. She looked up. Something came out of the clear sky. The sun caught it, flashed light over it and etched it into shape. A plane. It was in steep descent. She stood up in the car to stare at it out of huge blue eyes.

It was a machine of war, a biplane. And there above it, screaming down on it, was another. The two planes split the sky apart. The air vibrated and the grass in the fields rippled. A machine gun opened up, and the rat-a-tat of its fire reached the young lady’s ears like the cracks of a whip. Tracer bullets, streaming light, burst from one of the planes.

A gasp escaped her. She realized the colour of the plane could only mean it was the war machine of the indestructible ace of the German Air Force, Baron von Richtofen. There was no one, friend or foe, who did not know that every Albatros in his squadron was painted predominantly red, but that he alone flew a machine wholly scarlet.

Spellbound, she watched.

She could hardly believe it was happening. That out of the tranquil sky had come two opposing machines of war, one in deadly pursuit of the other. Above her and to her left, the hunted plane, a British Sopwith Camel, seemed in its screaming descent to be aiming itself directly at the Bugatti. She froze. For one horrifying second she thought she and the car were going to be engulfed and obliterated.

But a miracle happened. The Camel levelled, rushed, stood up on its tail and soared to execute a high backward arc of escape. The roaring, flame-spitting red Albatros swept under it and made a wide fast turn that brought it back between the Camel and its homeward route to the British lines in the west. The Camel veered, drifted, slipped and buzzed. Richtofen dropped from the sky above. Scarlet flashed as the Albatros screamed at the Camel. The machine gun opened up again. The Camel shot upwards on surging power. The captivated young lady, heart hammering, saw a puff of smoke dart from beneath its engine. She trembled. Richtofen had maimed it. His Albatros, coming out of a climbing turn, rolled its wings and went in new pursuit as the Camel roared away. The German machine, faster than the British, was on its tail in seconds. But the Camel, more manoeuvrable, deftly slipped under another zipping stream of tracer bullets.

She felt for the British pilot, who needed every flying skill he possessed to escape Richtofen. Richtofen, she knew, was Germany’s hero of the skies, and every Allied fighter pilot acknowledged him as the supreme master of aerial combat. She felt there was little chance for the Camel. It buzzed, flipped and fell away from the path of the bright red Albatros. Flying low, it roared over her head, and the noise of its engine deafened her.

The chase continued. The climbing Camel emitted another spurt of oily smoke. Its engine coughed and faded, and its wings dithered. Wide-eyed, the young lady stared in stricken pity at what she thought was its approaching destruction. Desperately, the pilot put the nose down and searched the pastures for a crash landing. But the engine picked up, and strongly, and the plane roared over the fields attempting another climb. The Albatros, securely stationed above and behind it, flew fast towards its tail. Again the Camel stood up, looped out of Richtofen’s gunsight, and turned westwards, climbing. As the Albatros came round once more, a long ragged plume of smoke belched from the Camel.

She heard the roar of its engine die to a stutter. Her gloved hands tightened. The machine was crippled. It drifted out of its climb, wings faltering. The stuttering engine coughed, picked up once more, and the pilot straightened out to rush on a line parallel with the road. She saw it skimming fields and hedges, its shadow flying fast over the ground. And she saw the Albatros poised to strike, circling almost lazily above the crippled Camel. The oily smoke became thicker and blacker. The pilot sought height and landing space, but his machine began to cough itself to death. Its nose came down and the fields flew fast beneath it. The young lady saw it pass her, forty metres to her left, the helmeted head of the pilot visible. It was rolling and floundering, and he was fighting its urge to commit suicide. A tongue of flame darted out, licking at the engine. The plane flew crazily on, dipping and flipping above a high stone wall encrusted with briars. It dropped, disappearing from view, and came to grief in a field two hundred metres away. She shuddered and winced as she heard it crash.

Richtofen’s Albatros rolled its wings and flew away.

The young lady stood with her heart pounding. From beyond the screening hedge of stone and briar, she heard the Camel explode. A sheet of flame ripped high and nauseating smoke billowed. She plunged down into her seat and set the Bugatti in frantic motion, crashing the gears hideously, something she rarely did. She drove fast until she reached a gate on her left. There she stopped, for she saw the Camel, standing on its nose and burning furiously. Flames scarred the earth and seared the air. Smoke polluted the bright morning. She felt the heat of fiery destruction, and her breath caught in her throat. Richtofen may have earned his victory, but the British pilot had fought desperately and bravely, and now the fierce, terrible flames were consuming him. There was no chance, none whatever. Everything was engulfed in fire and smoke. Nevertheless, she jumped from the car and opened the gate. From her left, inside the shelter of the roadside hedge, someone spoke in French.

‘C’est la guerre, mademoiselle.’