Читать книгу Huts in Hell - Daniel A. Poling - Страница 7

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"The Boche is coming back," a man yelled into the entrance of the cellar. A second later I was above ground and with my head at the sky-scraper angle. There he was! Like a great homing pigeon he was streaking it for his own lines after an observation-flight far behind ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide the telltale crosses on the under side of his wings, and the churn of his engine was unmistakable.

When my eyes brought him into focus, he was at least a mile away, but in half a minute he was directly overhead. The guns were roaring all about; shrapnel bursts surrounded the pirate bird. Ah! that one broke near! For just an instant he faltered, but on he came.

I stepped into the doorway of an old shattered stone house to find cover from the falling shrapnel and stray pieces of shell. The Boche was flying as the eagle flies when his objective has anchored his eye; he turned neither to the right nor to the left. He quickly and constantly changed his elevation, however; but the batteries were doing splendidly, and that he escaped destruction is a miracle. Two minutes more, and he was out of hearing and virtually safe.

There was a chorus of disgust; strong words in lurid splashes filled the air. Particularly fluent were the men when they passed comment upon the French fliers.

"Where are they?" they inquired in derision.

"Taking in the side-shows on the Milky Way!" one husky volunteers.

Another added: "Always the same story, 'No speed, no pep.' 'Dutchmen come and Dutchmen go, but we stay down forever.' They'll come along presently like blind pigs looking for an acorn."

I knew the symptoms, and spared any comment. It had been noticeable, however, that the German airmen, on our sector at least, commanded swifter scout-planes than we did. In straightaway bursts they left our French brothers at the post. At the time of this particular incident only a few Americans were flying, and these were associated with French aviators, and were using French machines.

Sure enough, two minutes more brought the "silver queens," as the boys called them, although the name "silver queen" really belongs to the great British aluminum dirigibles. There were three of them, and the sunlight flashing upon their white pinions was a gallant sight. These "queens" are hard to follow because of their color, and we kept them located by the angry buzzing of their motors—an altogether different sound from that given out by the visitor from Germany—and by the light flashing from their wings. They were like angry hornets that had been disturbed early in the morning and were now furiously looking for their tormentor. The men continued to "grouse," but their tones indicated expectancy.

In the meantime all was quiet across the way, and our guns had been silent ever since the elusive foe roared out of range. The Frenchmen were circling high above us. Suddenly and with something of a shock I noticed that the circle was widening, that each new circumference was nearer the enemy's lines. Our airmen were inviting battle. They were prepared to go clear across to get it, and were challenging the foe to come out, or rather up. He was not eager. Indeed, I never saw him when he was. Perhaps his orders do not allow of the initiative that the Allies possess; but German airmen, as a class, rather than German aëroplanes, are inferior to those who so often hurl to them, without acceptance, the gage of battle.

Our little fleet was well "over" and drawing anti-aircraft fire before its invitation was acknowledged. Then up they came, five in all; and the deadly tourney was on. In spite of the odds, not an inch did the "silver queens" recede. The conflict was so far away that its fine details were lost to us; we could not distinguish the sound of the machine guns in the air from those in the front-line trenches below us, and only the sunlight flashing on the silver wings told that "our flag was still there."

It was a swirling vortex of currents that held to no fixed course. The war-birds swooped and climbed; puffs of smoke and streaks of fire marked their way. A dozen times machines seemed to collide; a dozen times we saw planes plunge as if to destruction, only to right themselves and return to the fray. Out of a nose-dive one Frenchman came when so near the ground that I had closed my eyes to avoid seeing the crash. A score of times men looped the loop and "tumbled." But not an inch did those Frenchmen give! And listen to these "grousers" now!—

"Come back! Come back! They'll not come back unless five more get up, until something happens! They're hungry, man! Those Frenchies eat 'em up. They haven't had a chance like this for five days." It was five days before that eighteen planes were in battle behind our lines only two miles back. In this affair two Germans were shot down without the loss of an Allied wing. "And, when they kiss the Hun good-by this morning, he'll have blisters on his mouth."

But such struggles simply cannot long endure. This one ended far more quickly than it began. With the speed of express-trains two machines drew away from the whirlpool. Their course paralleled the lines. We saw the "silver queen" on the tail of the Taube. Bitterly the German fought to outposition his rival, but his pursuer anticipated his every manœuvre. For once at least the German had no advantage in speed. They looped the loop together and almost as a double plane. In a second it was all over. As the warriors slid to the bottom of the great circle, the Frenchman poured a veritable stream of steel into his hapless enemy. A trail of smoke came away; then a ball of fire hung in the air; and then like a dead sun the crumpled skyship fell to the earth. The victor paused for a second above his triumph, and then flew to re-enforce his hard-pressed comrades.

We had forgotten the other six. When we looked at them again, the six were eight or ten; at the distance from which we observed them we could not be exact. But the odds were too great even for Frenchmen, and anyway they had "dined." They were not pursued beyond our advanced trenches. The Germans did not bring themselves into the range of our batteries, although they outnumbered our fliers at least two to one. As for France, three went over and three came back!

I cannot describe my feelings as I saw that German die in his burning chariot, but a flying man has described them for me. He was speaking at a patriotic meeting in western New York. Very handsome he was in the uniform of the Lafayette Escadrille, and he was very young, the youngest man ever allowed to wear that uniform. Already he had been cited for bringing down three enemy planes. He was recovering from a severe wound, and while convalescing in America was giving some of his time to platform work.

Again and again the men at his table (it was a dinner affair) urged him to tell of one of his battles. He was reluctant to do so. His consent was finally secured, but only after pressure that was hardly allowable had been brought to bear.

The tale was told without the slightest attempt at oratorical effect. He described his success in outmanœuvring his opponent, or rather his two opponents, for two men were in the enemy plane; the buckling of the German machine; the shooting of the observer from his seat, and how he hurtled through the air; the explosion and the fire. Then he said, "I stopped there in the sky, and all that I could think was, 'Do they feel it?'"

The lad's eyes—for his face and his years were those of a lad, though he had done already a man's stern work—were wistful as he spoke. These men are not killers.

But it was not at the front that I found the horror of aërial warfare. One afternoon I stepped from the American Y. M. C. A. headquarters in London, at 47 Russell Square, walked a little way, and found stones red with the blood of children. When I left Europe, not a single military objective had been found by an aërial bomb in all the raids over the capital of the United Kingdom. In the very nature of things it is not likely that a bomb will reach such an objective. The night-raider must have a large target. Twenty minutes sees him across the Channel and at the estuary of the Thames. He follows the silver trail into the heart of the city, and drops his "eggs." But of course a military programme is not intended. Imperial Germany built her aërial plans about the theory that terrorizing a people will destroy a nation's morale.

But Imperial Germany blundered again. Early one morning, following the sounding of the "all-clear" signals, a great company crowded against the ropes that the omnipresent "Bobby" had thrown about a lodging-house. Many murdered and maimed had been left behind by the Bluebeard of Berlin. A gray-haired man was lifted by the carriers. Surely he was dead; the top of his head was like a red, red poppy. But no. He raised his thin, white hand, and waved it feebly to the crowd below. Such a roar went up from that multitude as man seldom hears—the roar of the female lion standing over her cubs.

One night I reached Paris simultaneously with an air-raid warning. Later I stood—very foolishly, but I was ignorant of the danger then—on the roof of the Gibraltar Hotel, and watched first the star shells and the barrage at the city's edge, the flashing of the signals from the defending planes, and the long arms of the mighty searchlights as they policed the sky. So effective were the French that night that the enemy got no farther than the suburbs.

Many excruciatingly funny things happen during a raid, as for instance the raising of an umbrella by a gentleman who suddenly found shrapnel falling about him. He kept it up, too, while he galloped straight down the middle of the street instead of finding cover.

A very prominent gentleman, who is a friend of the writer, had been looking forward with some misgivings to his wartime trip abroad. He found his first night in Paris enlivened by a visit from Germany. He had made diligent inquiry and learned the exact location of the abri, had several times traversed the route between his room and the cellar, and had been particular to make himself familiar with the signals of alarm. He was restless when he first retired; but the long and wearisome journey was a sure sleep-producer, and it was out of profound slumber that the whistle and cries awoke him.

You may be sure that he lost no time in getting under headway; he even forgot his dressing-gown and the slippers by the side of his bed. He sacrificed all impedimenta for speed. I do not know whether he used the banisters or not, but I have reason to believe that nothing was left undone to cover the maximum of distance in the minimum of time. Afterwards he remembered the amazed countenances of the people in the halls as he flashed by. However, their indifference (indeed, they were not even bound in the direction of the cellar) did not deter him. What he regarded as carelessness due to long exposure and many similar experiences did not blind him to the obligations he owed to his own family and profession.