Eleven Eleven - By Paul Dowswell Page 0,23

‘Not if I know that bastard Miller. He’ll be wanting to milk every last chance he’s got to chase the Hun. Those men will fight right up to the last minute.’

Eddie nodded. ‘I’m gonna get my erks to fuel her up and I’m going out. They can throw the book at me when I get back.’ ‘Erk’ was bit of slang they’d picked up from the Royal Flying Corps. It was an abbreviation of sorts, of ‘aircraftman’ – the mechanics that kept a plane airworthy.

He ran over to the barn that served as a temporary hangar for three of the squadron’s Sopwith Camels. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he shouted over to a couple of men in overalls who sat playing cards in the corner. ‘Get her fuelled up. I’m going out in fifteen.’

The ground crew leaped to their feet. They had heard there would be no more flying that morning. But Eddie was the boss. If he said he was going up, he was going up.

Eddie hurried to the farmhouse, grabbed his flying jacket and Céline’s scarf and hurriedly pulled on his calf-length brown boots. His flying helmet and leather gloves were waiting for him on the seat of his Camel. He looked out at the overcast grey sky and quickly pulled on a thick woollen sweater. It was going to be cold up there.

Leaving without so much as a final glance, he ran towards the Camel. The ground crew were finishing off the fuelling. ‘Give us five more minutes, boss. Then she’s ready to go.’

Whenever Eddie climbed into the wicker seat of his Camel, he had the strangest mixture of feelings. Always excitement – that, at least, had never left him, but fear too – a queasy nausea whenever he smelled the oil and gasoline and polished metal of the engine. That magnificent piece of gleaming machinery that whirred and popped and hammered with such precision right in front of his eyes, this extraordinary device that lifted him above the clouds, could also deliver him to a horrible burning death or crush his flesh and bones if he crashed to the ground. Flying was a Faustian pact. You had the chance to go up into the air and soar like a bird – but you also faced the fate that British song so vividly promised.

The drill for take-off was so ingrained Eddie ran through it without really thinking what he was doing. Engine checks, machine gun checks, two twenty-five-pound bombs right underneath him on the underside of the fuselage. Eddie didn’t like having those things on board. If he crashed on take-off, or got hit, who could say they wouldn’t go off?

‘OK, let’s get her off. Contact!’ said Eddie, and the mechanic swung the varnished wooden propeller. The engine spluttered into life with a spurt of blue exhaust, and his nostrils filled with the smell of petrol. And as it usually did on the first time, the prop came to an abrupt halt and had to be spun again. As it usually did, this time the rotary engine fired on all nine of its cylinders and Eddie felt an intoxicating power judder through the small biplane. It was like a great beast pulling on a leash.

That engine had terrified him when he first flew these Camels. The way it spun on its housing – this great lump of gleaming steel whizzing around at 1,500 revolutions per minute. It was like a great big gyroscope and it perpetually tugged the flimsy, wood-and-canvas plane off to the right. If you weren’t careful, that engine would be the death of you. And Eddie was convinced that crashing with the thing spinning around like that was far more dangerous than crashing with a stationary in-line engine.

But without it, the Camel wouldn’t be half the plane it was. Nothing did a right turn as quickly as a Camel, as many a German pilot had found out to their cost. Left turns were slower – laborious really. But the aircraft was agile, and that was what made it so formidable in a dogfight. If you could cope with its limitations – sluggish above 12,000 feet, slow compared to the latest German Fokkers – you were lucky to have one.

Take-off was the most dangerous time. A full fuel tank added to the forward weight of the craft and Eddie always felt anxious until the wheels left the ground and the shaking stopped. He gunned the engine, feeling it straining on its housing.

‘Chocks away,’ shouted Eddie, and made the