'Green b.a.l.l.s'

by Paul Bewsher.

PREFACE.

Lest it should appear that in this book I have worked the personal p.r.o.noun to death, I wish to explain my reasons for describing always my own feelings, my own experiences, my own thoughts. I feel that the lay public who did not fly in the war, and knew little of its excitements and monotonies, would rather hear of the experiences of one person, related by himself, than merely a journalistic record of events which had come to his notice. Therefore I have tried faithfully to describe the sensations, the strange inexplicable fears, the equally inexplicable fearlessness, of a desk-bound London youth, pitchforked in a moment into the turmoil of war, and into a hitherto unknown, untried occupation--bombing at night from the air.

Those who read this book will never see me--I will be to them but a name--so I feel that my egotism is only an apparent one, and that I am justified in slightly transgressing the service tradition of personal silence in order to give as vivid a portrayal as possible of a branch of war which, in England at any rate, influenced the general public more than any other.

The fragments of verse quoted at the beginning of each chapter are taken from the author's poems, 'The Bombing of Bruges,' published by Messrs Hodder & Stoughton, and 'The Dawn Patrol,' published by Messrs Erskine Macdonald.

I.

THE DAWN PATROL.

"Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea, Where, underneath, the restless waters flow, Silver and cold and slow...."

--_The Dawn Patrol._

Somebody shakes me by my shoulder, and I wake to the consciousness of a dark room and a determined steward.

"Four o'clock, sir!"

I get out of my warm bed, very unwillingly, and dress lightly in a white cricket shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a blue pea-jacket and a m.u.f.fler, and go out of the hut to the garage. Dawn is just breaking. The sky is still bright with stars, and a moon is drowsily hanging like a golden gong in the south-west. The air is extraordinarily fresh and cold, and soon I am tearing joyfully through it on a clamorous motor-bicycle. Down the road through the marshes I rush on my mile-long ride to the sheds.

Outside the office I dismount and go inside the bare room, with its charts and its long table, and meet the sleepy-eyed duty-officer, who is wearing "gum-boots" and an overcoat over his pyjamas, and is obviously looking forward to settling down once more to sleep. The duty-pilot comes in after him, with a flying-cap on his head, and a m.u.f.fler round his neck, and a pair of gloves in his hand. A welcome cup of tea is brought in by a ma.s.sive bluejacket, and then I s.n.a.t.c.h up a life-belt, a pair of binoculars, the Thermos flask and Malted Milk tablets, my charts, and a few odd necessaries, and, accompanied by the pilot, I go over to the slipway, at the end of which floats the seaplane, with its wide white wings reflecting the pale light of dawn. A group of men in great rubber boots stand in the water holding the wings.

When I get to the edge of the water I climb on to the back of one, and he wades out into the water until I can stand on the float and climb up into a seat in front of the pilot.

It is an ample seat--wide enough for three people--and I sit on a soft cushion over a petrol-tank. The wireless sets, in varnished wooden boxes, are fixed in position in front of me. My machine-gun is ready to be fixed at a moment's notice, and I settle myself into the seat and put down my various impedimenta and wait for the start.

The pilot in the back seat examines his instruments, and soon there is a hissing noise as he turns on the compressed air. The propeller in front of me moves round slowly. The engine fires and begins to start with a roaring noise.

The propeller vanishes as it gathers speed, and I can see straight ahead with an uninterrupted view.

The engine is tested with men hanging on to the wings. The pilot waves his hand, the men leave go, and we begin to move out across the wide harbour with its grey battleships and lean destroyers, and merchant ships painted in strange patches.

The moon is growing paler now, and nearly all the stars have vanished before the silver of the dawn. On our right is the outline of a red-roofed harbour town, quiet and asleep. On the left are the great sheds of the station, and the low green hills beyond. We face the wind.

The engine recommences its roar, and the seaplane begins to move quickly across the water with a steady noise. Faster and faster it rushes on, then begins to leap from wave-top to wave-top until we rise into the air, and move at a rushing pace just over the pale oily water.

The roar of the motor is soon registered no more by my ear, lulled by its perpetuity. I find it glorious to be winging my way into the heart of the dawn over the silver water. Above a long floating boom we pa.s.s, and turn east towards the wide misty level of the sea. Ahead of me in the haze burns a red-eyed sun, looking hot and only half awake.

Far to my left and far to my right is a faint grey coast-line as we move up the widening estuary. I bring out a little blue-covered note-book, and sharpen a pencil and prepare to record the name, nationality, and type of every ship, with a brief note of its cargo, course, and characteristics.

Through the haze suddenly appears a little group of ships anch.o.r.ed round a stout red lightship, with its great lantern at the top of the mast and the cheery white-painted name on its side.

My pencil is very busy as we sweep round in circles, while I make notes of the different types of ships. Neutral ships being luridly decorated with painted colours and their names in enormous white letters, are easily recorded. It is somehow very dramatic to see a great steamer loom through the mist, and to read _Jan Petersen-Norge_ or _Hector-Sverige_ on its black sides as it sweeps majestically under the seaplane, its churning propeller leaving a wide lane of white bubbling foam.

It gives such a splendid idea of far-flung commerce--of nation linked up with nation by these loaded ships. You realise how the forests of Scandinavia have been despoiled to fill these decks with the towering piles of clean fair wood. There is something in the pa.s.sing of the great ship proclaiming its nationality and origin in such bold characters that seems like the triumphant note of an organ.

Yet these signs are the heartfelt appeal of an apprehensive and vulnerable vessel, hoping against hope that the vivid stripes of colour and the proclamation of nationality will protect it from the cruel, greedy submarine.

Then we leave the little crowd of anch.o.r.ed ships below and sail on into the mist to the lonelier levels of the sea. Now and then we overtake some heavily-laden freighter, low in the water, pounding outwards on its hazardous journey, its plain unlettered sides showing that it is a vessel of the Allies.

In front of me I wind a little handle. This causes the wireless set to connect with the engine, and the little motor revolves rapidly. I press the bra.s.s key, and a blue spark spits and splutters inside one of the boxes. Then I call up the seaplane station far behind me in the mist and record my position. Putting the telephone-receiver over my ears, I hear above the roar of our engines the sharp staccato signals of some warship below us on the grey sea. As I move a lever round a series of studs I hear it more clearly or more faintly as I get more or less in "tune"

with it. Then I remove the receiver, having tested the wireless instruments and found them correct, and once more look over the side to the chilly sea.

We fly over three or four little trawlers steaming slowly along, dredging the waterway for mines. Then over two leaning masts of some wreck, which pierce the water like thin lances. Next we pa.s.s above a Belgian relief ship, advertising its nature by means of innumerable placards and flags and colours, which are yet not sufficient to keep it immune from the Germans and their unreliable promises. Now it is a familiar line of mud-hoppers carrying a load of dredged mud to some deep dumping-ground. Now over a couple of lean grey torpedo-boats, nosing everywhere, carefully and suspiciously, protecting the Channels.

So at times over ever-varying craft, and at times over grey wet loneliness, we travel on in our long patrol, until at last the squat red shape of a lightship appears through the haze, and we know that we have reached the limit of our outward journey. We sweep low over the isolated vessel, wave our hands to the men on board, and start to return home by a different route, and roar on over mile after mile of water glittering in the sun, which is slowly dissipating the mist of early morning.

Soon a group of ships are met steaming along towards us, and I recognise the vessels which I had seen anch.o.r.ed together waiting for the dawn.

They are left behind us, and we regain the land from which we started.

Over the sleeping seaport town we pa.s.s, and can see its red and brown roofs lit by the sun, and its empty streets. Then we sweep over the harbour, the pilot turns the machine round to face the wind, and the roar of the engine stops. We begin to glide down slowly, drawing nearer and nearer to the water. Just above the surface of the glittering waves we rush, touch it with a long splash, and slowly pull up and stop, floating once more in the harbour. The engines roar out again, and we "taxi" quickly over the little waves in long even jolts towards the slipway, where the men are waiting to help us ash.o.r.e. When we are alongside they walk out to us in their waterproof thigh-boots and carry me on to the slipway.

I walk quickly through the hangars across the gra.s.s-covered lawn to the office, and sitting down at a typewriter begin to transcribe at once the notes I have written in my little blue book.

6.40. British cargo steamer, 5000 tons, steering S.W. Two patrol boats steering E.

6.45. Norwegian wood steamer _Christiania_, 3000 tons, steering W. in East Deep--

I write, and one after another I visualise the vessels as I record their positions for the benefit of the authorities.

As soon as the report is finished I give it to a messenger, who takes it down to the motor-boat which is waiting to carry it to a warship. Then I rush across the marsh on my motor-bicycle to the mess, and to a late but welcome breakfast.

The small amount of impression left by any particular flight is remarkable. If in the middle of the breakfast some one had said, "You have been fifty miles out to sea, charging through the air at sixty miles an hour, this morning!" I should almost have been surprised, and might have denied it. After your return you quickly forget the voyage you have made. I found the same in night-bombing. You are called away at dinner after beginning your soup. You go to Ostend, drop bombs, and return and carry on with the fish. By the time your are helping yourself to the vegetables you have a vague remembrance of a disturbed dinner, but little more.

You have a distant memory of innumerable searchlights waving like long weeds in an evil pool, and of the dim sweep of the Belgian coast, with the star-sh.e.l.ls of Nieuport; but it is like the faint remembrance of a weird dream, and little more.

This brief description of a seaplane patrol is an introduction to the portrayal of a night-flier's existence, because these flights over the sea were the prelude to my flying among the stars, and I found in them the strange allurement that I found later, in an even greater degree, in my night journeys.

It is a glorious sensation to roar on, a few hundred feet above the sea, with a white clinging mist all around in a vapoury circle, knowing by instinct where you are, and looking ahead for the little chequered buoy or red lightship to appear at its due moment; to hear the pilot's shouted inquiry, and to write "The Cat" or "Deep Sands" or "King's Channel" or "Long Deep," or one of those splendid-sounding sailor's names, on a piece of paper for him; to fly low over the lonely lightship, and wave a dawn greeting to the watchmen on the deck; to see a long British submarine rise dripping, to welcome the morning, from its all-night sleep far below the restless waters; to fly like a gull, flashing white wings towards the flaming East.

I found the same delight in poring over my charts and drawing a line right out to sea and back again, as later I found in checking on the map the villages and bridges over which I pa.s.sed on my way to Bruges and Ghent.

Once or twice I had a forced landing at sea. One incident is peculiarly vivid in my memory. Lightly clad, I flew on the seaplane about fifteen miles from land. There was a flaming sunset, and it was growing dark. We were about to turn when the engine began to splutter and pop. The pilot tried to cure its disease, but it was in vain. He throttled the engine back and slowly glided down. The few scattered ships and the dim line of coast slowly disappeared as we drew nearer to the surface of the water, and when we finally landed we were out of sight of any ship at all.

The pilot climbed on to the floats and tried to start the engine again by swinging the propeller, but with no success. Meanwhile it was growing darker. The red and orange splendours of the West were rapidly dying away before the creeping shadows of the East. The calm oily water reflected strangely the afterglow. As I sat on the float, the water lapped melodiously against it, and the shoals of jellyfish which pa.s.sed by seemed to be jeering at me.

There were no ships in sight, and a cold night wind began to come across the quivering, shining surface of the sea, and the horizon vanished in a faint haze.