Night Bombing with the Bedouins Part 3

CHAPTER VI

THE GUIDING HAND

Mysterious d.i.c.k, or "Mystery" as he was usually called, was a slender, anaemic-looking boy with deep brown eyes. He was nicknamed "Mystery" for several reasons. In the first place, he gave every one on first acquaintance an uncomfortable feeling; no one could explain this, but every one admitted that he was a "bit queer." When he looked at you his eyes never appeared to be focused on you, but to be looking at something back of you; I have seen a man to whom d.i.c.k was talking suddenly turn and look over his shoulder. Another very noticeable trait of d.i.c.k's was to answer an unasked question, or to interrupt a man at the beginning of an argument with a refutation or agreement, as the case might be.

I remember coming into the mess one morning about five o'clock after an all-night raid; our machine was the third back. It was a bitter cold winter's night and "upstairs" it was absolutely numbing. In the mess there were Mac and d.i.c.k and one or two others, thawing their congealed blood and numbed brains with hot rum. It had been a nasty trip that night, dense, low clouds and a head wind on the return voyage; there were many machines still unaccounted for, although the supply of petrol would "keep them up" but another fifteen minutes. So in the mess we sipped our hot rum and sat and thought, or just sat.

"I think they were south of Dieuze"; it was d.i.c.k who broke the silence.

Mac jumped and looked hard at "Mysterious d.i.c.k," and as we all looked at him inquiringly a faint flush rose to his face, he gulped down his rum and left the mess.

"It's queer," said Mac, "how often he does that."

"Does what?" I asked.

"Answer your unasked question," replied Mac. "The green b.a.l.l.s must have been south of Dieuze just as 'Mystery' said, for after leaving Mannheim I followed up the Rhine to Hagenau Wald, turned west and crossed the Vosges over Zabern; here we went above low clouds and I didn't see the ground again for over an hour. I steered my course all right, but was fearing a change of wind when just ahead of me I saw the Hun signal of two green b.a.l.l.s come up through the clouds; as the last 'intelligence'

placed these two b.a.l.l.s at Morchange, I changed my course from 270 to 245. It was only luck that about half an hour later a rift in the clouds showed me 'F' lighthouse, and as that is about thirty miles south of 'B' lighthouse, my original course over Zabern of 270 must have been about right to strike 'B' lighthouse. So the green-ball signal, as 'Mystery' said, must have been moved from Morchange to south of Dieuze, and that is just what I was puzzling out when d.i.c.k answered the puzzle for me. He's queer, all right." And Mac called for another rum.

And "queer" is the best description of d.i.c.k that any of the Bedouins could have given you, if you had asked them, until one night he was finally coaxed after many "treats" to tell about his earlier war experiences.

"In 1912 I was a subaltern in the Indian army," d.i.c.k said quietly; "a row over a woman resulted in my court martial and disgrace.

"When the war broke out I joined as a dispatch rider; I was wounded and was in the hospital for over five months. When I came out I succeeded in getting into the Royal Flying Corps and eventually was granted a commission. But as a pilot I was a complete failure; I 'wrote off'

several machines and in my last crash I nearly 'wrote off' myself. I was unconscious for over a month and it was over eight months before I left the hospital.

"I finally got back to France as a recording officer to a Handley-Page squadron; here I ran into an old pal of mine, and one night, when his navigation officer was sick, my pal took me on a raid without saying a word to any one. It was the first time I had ever been in a Handley-Page aeroplane and it was the first time I had ever flown at night, but my pal was the best pilot in the squadron and the way to the Gontrode aerodrome was an open book to him, for he had been there many times before; he took me as a pa.s.senger for the experience.

"I remember as we 'taxied' over the aerodrome that the roar of the engine on each side of me, the flashing of lights, the other machines as they pa.s.sed us or waited with slowly 'ticking-over props' for us to pa.s.s, the different-colored lights which were being fired down from machines already in the air and the lights fired up from the ground, all combined and whirled through my excited brain like a meaningless nightmare. Then there was a deafening roar and we shot down a path of light, b.u.mped hard, b.u.mped less hard, b.u.mped again, and the huge plane with its great load of bombs was in the air. Lights on the ground and the lights of machines in the air became mixed until I could not tell one from the other.

"As we rose higher and higher, ground lights far off in the distance came hurtling toward us like the navigation lights of a fast approaching machine; I would clutch Jack, yell, and point out the lights in order to avoid a collision as it seemed to me; Jack would grin, pull me down on the seat beside him, and tell me the lights were on the ground and at least ten miles away. Gradually I got control of myself and tried to find the aerodrome we had just left; it was nowhere to be seen. There was a network of white threads on a black background, an occasional winding silver ribbon with here and there a silver blotch and queer-shaped blacker blacknesses on the general blackness; these were roads, rivers, lakes, and woods as they looked from the air at night.

"How long we had been in the air I don't know. Time seemed nothing, or an eternity. We were suspended in a sphere. Lights or stars rushed at us or receded or whirled about. Time and distance became mere words without meaning and I had fallen into a state resembling hypnotic sleep when suddenly roused by Jack. 'There are the lines,' he shouted, and as far as the eye could see, to left and right, out of the darkness beneath us were the constant flashes of the never silent guns of the Flanders front. Every now and then we got a sudden 'b.u.mp' as a sh.e.l.l pa.s.sed near us. I had fallen into an almost semiconscious state when 'tut-tut-tut-tut-tut' jumped me off my seat; I realized that I was surrounded by a dazzling whiteness; the machine itself was brilliant.

Amidst the 'tut-tut-tut' of our own machine guns shooting down at the searchlights there was a constant dull 'whonk,' 'whonk,' 'whonk,' and the whole machine seemed to be enveloped in puffs of black smoke as the anti-aircraft batteries found the range.

"Suddenly the nose of the machine went down and my breath left me in the crazy rush, my hands grasped at anything, and somehow, momentarily blinded with fright as I was, my right hand involuntarily clutching Jack conveyed the truth to my brain. Jack was dead. He had fallen forward on the wheel and the giant plane was rushing, roaring down to destruction.

With a spasmodic effort I pulled his body from the seat onto the floor at my feet and pulled back the wheel. With a sickening change and a shrill singing of wires we were climbing. How the fuselage and tail plane stood the strain of it, G.o.d knows. I was in Jack's seat now pushing the wheel from me, pulling it toward me, turning it to the right, then to the left, pushing the rudder bar with my right foot, then with my left. Panic was in control. We must have dropped three thousand feet before a sudden calmness came over me and I found this aerial monster as gentle to manage as a perfectly bitted horse.

"But there was Jack, huddled on the floor at my feet with part of his head gone. I remember leaning down and trying to pull him out of his cramped position, and then came an eternity of stargazing. I wondered why the stars didn't run into each other and crash. I leaned across the fuselage and turned a pet-c.o.c.k; a little spray of petrol came out with the escaping air; the hands of two dials on the left side of the c.o.c.k-pit began turning slowly anti-clockwise; I forgot them and looked at the stars. Later I pressed a b.u.t.ton on the dashboard and looked out at my starboard engine; a small dial was lit up. I looked at the port engine, a similar dial was lit up. I took my right hand from the wheel and pulled the throttle slightly back; again I star-gazed as if in a dream and without any volition I closed the pet-c.o.c.k which I had previously opened.

"This was my first time in a Handley-Page, and I knew nothing of pressures or temperatures. How long I flew I don't know; what direction I should have flown I did not know at that time. Occasionally I glanced at the compa.s.s and as well as I can remember the needle pointed west generally, but I gave it no thought. Finally I pulled back the throttle and began to glide. I leaned over the next seat and pulled two levers.

Remember that at this time I had never heard of shutters for the radiators. Down I came into heavier and heavier atmosphere. I was calm and happy. I never even gave the ground a thought, never even glanced at it. I remember taking from a rack on my left a stubby revolver with a huge bore, pointing it over the side and pulling the trigger, and I watched a green light go slowly down and searchlights that were blinking up at me went out. A few seconds later a k.n.o.b on the dashboard seemed to rivet my attention; it was a small k.n.o.b exactly like an electric-light switch. I began to play with this. To do this I had to lean forward and stretch out my left arm; this action brought my face around to the right, and as I played with the k.n.o.b I saw a light blinking on my right wing tip. I remember laughing at this.

"The plane took a sudden dip and I sat up. Just off to my right and very little below me were lights on the ground in the shape of a 'T,' and other lights were flashing at me. I turned toward the 'T' and stuck down the nose of the machine; I pulled the throttle farther back, and just as I seemed to be running into dense blackness I leaned forward and pressed a b.u.t.ton; a brilliant light sprang up under the machine; there was the ground not two feet away, apparently. I yanked back the wheel and a moment later there was a great b.u.mp, another and another, and we came to rest on our own aerodrome.

"The doctor told me that he had never seen such a collapse. I had been unconscious for hours after being lifted from the machine together with my dead pal. I was awarded this decoration, gentlemen, for bringing that machine home safely. Since that time I have been awarded these other decorations for feats you have all heard of. But I want to tell you,"

and "Mystery d.i.c.k" stood up with flushed face and blazing eyes, "that I have never flown an aeroplane in France. Jack, my old pal, dare-devil Jack, whose head was blown off beside me during my first trip across the lines, flies my machine. Jack, dear old Jack, has won these medals I wear."

And d.i.c.k, no longer "Mystery d.i.c.k," left the mess. I say no longer "Mystery d.i.c.k" because from that day on there was nothing mysterious about d.i.c.k to the "Bedouins."

Explain it as you may, call it G.o.d, the spirit of a dead friend, or a thought vibration to which their mind is attuned, explain it as you choose, or try to explain it not at all, every member of the "Bedouin"

Squadron has felt the "Guiding Hand" and every "Bedouin" knew, as every man who makes constant companions of danger and death must eventually know, that the dead still "carry on."

THE END