A Sample Chapter

For those of you who might be interested here is a sample chapter of the new book:

Colombey des Belles

On the morning that he was to kill the two Germans Harry Braham woke long before dawn. Having tossed all night in the narrow canvas cot, his mind was racing, thinking of the day ahead and wondering how he would perform. He had to be at his best, for there was little room for error. Flying, especially combat flying, was an unforgiving business. In truth, he had slept fitfully ever since arriving in France, often lying awake through the long stretches of darkness more concerned about measuring up to his comrades’ expectations than about the bloody slaughter for which he had volunteered. Sleep was like a whore and stole away from him in the pre-dawn hours taking a part of his soul in payment.
At twenty-two he had already experienced his share of the rough and tumble of life. He had been a restless youth, taking jobs here and there, and always ready to move on to the next town. Yet nothing had prepared him for the knife’s edge existence that he was now facing. A year ago, back in the States, joining the Air Service seemed the right thing to do, even if it seemed more of a lark when he signed the papers.
The world had entered on to a new age of fighting. War in the skies with men astride winged chariots likened to the ancient Greek heroes. It was as if Achilles and Hector had been reborn in the young men who took the war into the clouds. Knights of the Air they were called in the newspapers. That was a distortion some that he would gladly debate with any one of those writers should one ever choose to leave their comforts in Paris for a few days with the fliers at the front. Nothing about the war was chivalrous; it was simply aerial murder, desperate and cold-blooded. For there were only two types of pilots flying in the skies over France that autumn, the hunters and the prey. As it was quickly learned, there were old pilots and bold pilots, but there were no old, bold pilots. If you didn’t have the aggressiveness to find and kill your enemy first, then you would not survive.
Back in the States Harry had seen only a few airplanes and read about the Army’s new flying service in newspaper Sunday supplements, before reporting for training. But what little he did see in those grainy rotogravure photos fired his imagination, so he decided to join. It was either that or finding a berth on some tramp steamer to nowhere, and he’d had enough rambling. Joining the Army was the easy part, they were hungry for bodies. Even the basic training wasn’t terrible, he had made it all the shouting and marching a game, but learning to fly, well that was something that had not come easily for Harry.
Once airborne he could fly well enough; it was getting the plane back on the ground in one piece that was his problem. Of course, the crates that they used for pilot training did not exude a lot of confidence for the fledgling flier. In an industrial world where power was demonstrated by massive iron and steel steam engines, or the sleek sides of a dreadnought bristling with long-range guns, the fabric covered spruce and wire contraptions that took to the sky reminded Harry of the piles of odd bits of lumber piled in the back of his grandfather’s cabinet shop. Getting inside one of these flammable crates seemed to border on insanity. Yet, the only way to learn to fly was to do it.
In 1915 the Air Service had introduced the Curtiss JN-4 to train pilots. The ‘Jenny’ was soon in service with the Army and the Navy. As a primary trainer it offered the basics for pilots. Slow and docile in the air it allowed the student pilot enough time to correct his mistakes before they killed him. With the instructor pilot shouting instructions through a long rubber tube into the student’s ear, or as often enough in Harry’s case, reaching forward with his clipboard and smacking Harry on the head. One way or another, the student learned.
Harry’s biggest problems came with landing the thing. Taking off, climbing, doing turns around the various water towers outside of the training base at Fort Sill, all of these basic maneuvers he executed with ease. It was getting the crate on the ground without nosing over or ground-looping that seemed to be his problem. Harry developed a technique called ‘cleaning the cockpit’ as he approached to land. Essentially all he did was move the stick around in circles effectively cancelling out every move and accomplishing nothing. Several instructors despaired over his long, floating approaches to landing. Close to the ground there was something called ‘ground effect’ that acted like a giant pillow of air, holding the plane’s wings off the field for a few seconds and sometimes, if the pilot was inexperienced, resulting in the propeller striking the earth and pitching everything over. Harry had been given several chances to correct his problem and the result were two JN-4’s now out of commission. On his last day he was assigned a new instructor; an old man of thirty years called Captain Nemetz, who it was rumored, had flown with the RAC in France. Nemetz spoke to him.
“Look, kid. They are giving you one last chance. I will either sign you off after this hop or send you home, it’s that simple. We will go around the pattern three times. If I am satisfied, I will get out and let you take it around yourself. If you don’t kill yourself or wreck the plane then, I will sign you off for solo.”
“Yes, sir!”
Nemetz nodded and smiled at Harry. “So, kid, it’s unbelievably simple. Here is all that you need to do. I saw you when you made your approach and then hit the propeller yesterday. I could see it coming. What I will teach you to do is not this business of floating down and hoping to settle gracefully, but flying the plane right onto the grass and then killing the power. It’ll take a little more distance to land, but you and the crate will be better off.”
Harry got it. With Nemetz talking him through the first approach and landing he greased the Jenny’s wheels onto the grass and rolled to a stop. Twice more he did it with the same results. By this time a small knot of his fellow students had gathered by the rail fence in front of the operations building to watch the unorthodox maneuver. They had heard the unusual sound of the plane’s engine running at power and not idling on the approaches and wondered what was happening.
Nemetz stepped out of the biplane after the third landing and walked over to the large metal dihedral that marked the general direction of the wind on the field. He leaned back on the thing and shook a cigarette out from a pack, lit it and waved Harry to go around again, this time solo. Harry gunned the engine and taxied to the far end of the field and put the power to it. Without Nemetz’s weight in the plane the Jenny leapt into the air almost at once. The plane climbed much faster than how Harry had been accustomed. He had a moment of panic, but that subsided as he leveled off and turned crosswind to make his final approach. Suddenly, he found himself singing at the top of his voice. Then, Nemetz’s voice was inside his head and he eased back on the power just enough to set up a steady sink rate. From the corner of his eyes he checked on the wingtips as he felt his way down letting the engine pull him onto the grass. Perfect.
Harry loved it. He loved all of it. From then on he flew every day that he could. He flew on sunny days, on cold days, even on those marginal days when he lost sight of the ground for uncomfortably long periods of time. He was in love with flight. His romance with flying was chilled slightly after arriving in France. On a brilliant September afternoon, flying under a cloudless blue sky and warmed by the sun he came to from a brief reverie to realize that those long undulating arms of red tracers that were reaching up into the air from the German positions were meant to kill him. What an ugly way to end such a pleasant afternoon. After that he kept his appreciation for the beauty of flight in check while making sure to stay alive.
He laid awake, sleep long dashed away and the ancient brass alarm clock next to his bunk showed him was just after four. His division was scheduled to fly at dawn. That was nearly two hours off at this time of the year. No, sleep would not return and Harry knew that just lying in the bed was not going to help. He rose quietly in the darkness of the converted stable that served as sleeping quarters for the band of American fliers. Fumbling a bit, and dancing on the cold stone floor in bare feet, he found his clothes and pulled them on. He thought about a shave, but there was no hot water at that hour of the morning, it would just have to wait. His beard, in any case, was still more of an idea than a reality. It didn’t really matter since the blowback of oil from the engine would soon cover his face and no one would know. Restless as he was, he needed to move around. There was always a pot of coffee going in the hangar. The mechanics kept a pot going all night as they worked to ready the battered Spads for work the next day. He had become a pre-dawn regular and would walk over and have a cup before the mess cooks had breakfast going.
Stepping out of the stable he hit a wall of cold morning air, making the relative warmth of the bunkroom but a brief memory. La belle France, huh? October in the Vosges felt like winter. A long way from home, and a lifetime from what he had expected he would be doing. It was still night, despite the hour on the clock and the stars above him showed silver against the blackness, filigrees of scattered light arched above, almost close enough to touch. His eyes scanned the autumn constellations and came to rest, as usual, on Orion. It was, he thought, his own, private constellation, his personal place in the heavens. The Hunter was like Harry a seeker, always in pursuit and yet never quite catching his prey. Bold and bright, Orion sat just off the ecliptic or else it would have been one of signs of the zodiac. Still, Orion called to Harry, as it must have to eons of men upon waking and stepping from their beds. Primitive hunters and centurions, knights and frontier patriots, unsure before the hunt or battle, they all must have looked up and asked the massive outline of stars seeking a dose of wisdom or courage.
Carried on the cold air, the aroma of the rigger’s bottomless pot of coffee drew him on like a dry fly to a hungry trout. Taking another breath of the night air he could smell war, out there somewhere in the dark. It was not a sharp odor, nor was he truly conscious of it until he tried to place the ever-present aroma. It was elusive, dank and sweet, a mixture of human waste, decaying flesh, moldy earth and burned explosives. The pall hung over this part of the world and it seemed to permeate everything. Even the ancient stones of the barns and stables of the farm that had become the squadron’s base had soaked in the stench. It was never far away.
Harry Braham walked toward the large tents that housed the riggers and mechanics, his feet crunching the stalks of dry stubbled grass. The previous spring this had been a grazing place for cows and sheep, all gone now. From the hangar quiet voices could be heard occasionally punctuated by the clang and clank of wrenches on metal as their work continued. Braham stepped into the light and nodded to a corporal who was artfully daubing paint over linen patches on the side of a Spad. The dots of white fabric clearly showing where a German Spandau had stitched a line of holes just behind the pilot’s seat the day before.
He drew a cup from the urn and sipped the bitter, French brew. Harry was beginning to like the heavy taste. Then holding the bowl-sized mug with both hands he stepped out of the tent’s arc of lights and walked east toward the line of parked airplanes. There were twelve aircraft, the squadron’s flyable contingent, silent and waiting, with their propellers pointed toward the coming dawn. The fliers, with the nonchalance that was the becoming their trademark, they called them crates, not unkindly, as these particular crates were the most advanced of their breed. These twelve were brand new airplanes from the Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés workshops and grudgingly entrusted by an exhausted French army to a bunch of American vagabonds. The Americans, uncertain of their French, called them SPADs. Now, these North American vagabonds were learning very quickly as to how to use them against a formidable, and much more experienced enemy.
Aside from the distant occasional clank or grunt coming from the mechanics, the scene before Harry harbored a primeval silence. Only the breeze caused a low moan as it vibrated the wires of the biplanes’ wings. Several hundred yards away, across the wide expanse of the landing field, in the dim fringe of scrub, his eyes caught a flash of movement. Just for an instant it appeared and then it was gone - a morning ghost. There, from where the land dipped toward a small wood through which there ran a rocky stream, a family of roe deer slowly emerged to chew the stubble.
Funny, he thought, with all the shelling and carnage in the countryside just to the east, how did these creatures survive? Did they know enough to get out of the way of the hordes of armed men nearby? He was surprised that one of the Army commissary sergeants had not shot them for a stew. If they did not, then likely some of the starving French peasants might. Like ghosts, the deer slipped in and out of view, hidden from moment to moment by the wisps of mist rising from the stream as they roamed the tall grass at the verge of the wood. For Harry, it felt like being at home on an autumn morning. The deer coming down to browse along the cornfields, taking chances up to the first day of hunting season, after which they would magically disappear from sight. Home, which way was that Harry? When was it, too many lifetimes ago, he thought?
Beyond the fringe of wood the sky was beginning to be defined. In mauves and gray with a pale orange tinge the sun caught a few decks of night clouds and slashed them open. This was the time of day that he lived for and that he held on to each day. He wished to prolong the dawn, to live alone in its peaceful embrace. His ears, used to the silence became aware of a low rumble and a few irresolute flashes of artillery on the horizon. The war was back and the deer had fled to the shelter of the wood. It would seem some German artillery officer couldn’t sleep. Harry thought it must be a German, and so kept his crews firing for effect. He looked up at the sky again.
What the sky did at this time of day meant something else to him. Weather was part of what his daily world had become for these crates were susceptible to any number of problems if the weather turned. Wind was always a problem; these planes barely flew fasted than a stiff breeze. But today would be fine, no problems. With a cold night, the morning would be cool followed by a warm afternoon. A real Indian summer, just like back in the States, yet so far from home, and the Indians here wore spiked helmets and ate sauerkraut.
Harry Braham was like all the others, who at his age followed the millions of men who had been drawn into this war to end all wars. By the time he had arrived in France nearly eight million soldiers of all the warring nations had been killed. No one had counted the civilian deaths as yet. Harry had no desire to follow their path into hell. Still, he had come to France to fly airplanes and if that meant to do battle against an enemy that sank American ships and stood for everything that he had been taught to loathe, well he was fine with that. Like most twenty-year olds he felt no sense of his own mortality. That was for the other guy. It was that way in all the battles from Troy to Tannenberg. Who would go to war if he were sure he would be the one to die? They had to live as if they were invincible. He had been in France for three months and had flown nearly every day since completing advanced training, at times dueling it out with the Boche, but mostly strafing ground troops. He had seen men die on the ground, in crashes or simply just bled out. In the air he had seen several more; friends and enemies alike, a puff of smoke, a flame and then a long fall to earth. If it was to be his turn he just hoped it would be quick, no lingering, no sense of his death as he fell of to earth. The worst thing was to burn to death in one of these coffins. Incendiary bullets could set the gas tanks on fire and the doped fabric would burn like a roman candle before the whole structure folded on you like being inside a lit matchbox. Still, he had an uncanny sense that this was not yet his time to die. Perhaps there was something more for him to do.
Behind him, the tiny aerodrome was coming to life. For generations had been a farm, raising some kind of crop on the land now taken as a flying field. As latecomers to the war, the Americans were at a disadvantage. They were not able to commandeer the chateaux and estates as their French and British aviating companions had done in order to house their aviators. Instead, like their pioneering forefathers, they had built ersatz lodgings for the men in deserted farmsteads and barns. In some extreme cases the US Army erected tent cities to house those who flew. Harry felt slightly better off. Harry’s plush quarters had been the decades-long residence of pairs of Belgian draft horses. Despite the best efforts of the orderlies and a hefty application of carbolic, it remained redolent of horseflesh and horse droppings. Lights were coming on and now illuminated the chow hall and the operations office. The American war machine was astir. People were up, there were things to do, but this was France so not before breakfast.
The American officers enjoyed one true benefit of being in France and that was Henri, their shanghaied chef. He had come to them courtesy of Captain Edwin Murray, their unit’s CO. A philandering Parisian chef, Henri had somehow found himself crosswise with his murderous wife, her lover and a dancer from a small club in Montmartre. One night in Paris Murray came upon him hiding in an alley off the Boulevard Clichy, scared, very agitated, and bearing two long slashes on his forearm from his wife’s paring knife. Murray, thinking Henri was about to rob him, pulled out his Army forty-five and pointed it at the hapless Frenchman. Henri began whimpering, “Non, non!” and waiving his hands. Through an exchange of schoolboy French and worse English, Henri offered to do anything if Murray could help him out of the city and away from his murderous spouse. Murray was already fed up with the ministrations of the unit’s mess sergeant and snapped up the diminutive Henri and packed him off in Murray’s Renault staff car.
Henri found solace at the farm and quickly set about transforming the kitchens. Soon the officer’s of the squadron were being treated to all kinds of exotic Gallic delicacies. But Henri was nothing if not an excellent pastry chef. So that breakfast was something no one missed and if you knew that shortly you were to be dueling at three thousand meters with the Huns, you could not afford to.
After indulging in Henri’s offerings for breakfast the pilot’s scheduled to fly gathered in the CO’s office for a quick review of the mission’s objectives. They were a mixed bunch from all over the States. They came in every size and shape. Sons of privilege and farm boys, eager to see the world, some were university men and a few, like Harry had dallied at college only to find it too confining. All of them were eager to fly and be part of this great adventure, an adventure that some of them would not survive.
Murray who was always a gentleman and very businesslike in these sessions and stressed the dictum of not losing sight of your wingman. A pilot on his own, he worried, especially one with as little combat experience as these kids had would be easy pickings for any German. This was a concept that had become religion with the fliers. Like so much in this new world of aerial combat, the participants, the surviving participants, were writing the rules. There was no manual of arms for the air services. Each day new concepts were tried and those that were successful were repeated, piles of burned wood and fabric half buried in French mud marked those that failed.
Once the flight assignments were made, and the hand signals repeated for everyone Murray dismissed them. Like a football team taking the field, the pilots ambled out to their planes as if their upcoming activity were no more than a lark. Out in the open, the sweet smell of castor oil cooking on hot engine manifolds greeted the pilots. Most hid their nervousness in testosterone-laden banter; a few stepped out to the latrine and gave up all of what they had just eaten. While the pilots had been at breakfast the ground crews had warmed up the engines, checked for any problems and then topped off each of the planes’ fuel tanks.
Harry Braham walked to his plane, with a sense of apprehension, but it was not fear. Death would come of its own accord and worrying about it was a waste of time. No, he simply wanted to do well, not make a mistake that would cost him or his wingmen their lives. The Spad he had been assigned was not really his; only the skipper and the most senior flight leaders had their own personal planes. Harry shared this aircraft with whoever was assigned to fly when he wasn’t.
Each of the Spads was painted a combination of dark olive and brown splotches with a large red, white and blue roundel on the sides and wings. The Spad Harry was to fly that day also bore the unit’s insignia painted on each side of the cockpit, an eagle with sharp talons each holding a sharp arrow. To keep the planes in shape each had a ground mechanic assigned to it. These ‘ground chiefs’ as they were beginning to be called doted, on their planes and made sure that everything could be done to make ‘their’ plane as airworthy as possible. Next to Harry’s Spad stood its ground chief. He was a buck sergeant, a former lathe operator from Trenton, New Jersey who was well over thirty and had a grizzled grey and brown mustache, named Haggerty.
Sergeant Haggerty, in charge of the plane until its pilot took over, held Braham’s flying helmet; a page in liege to his knight. Braham pulled on his thick leather-flying coat. He would need it. It might have been a pleasant and warm morning on the field, but up at nearly ten thousand feet the temperature would be below freezing.
“How is she this morning, sergeant?” Harry asked hopefully. He did not want to hear about any problems with the matchbox he was about to fly.
“Couldn’t be better, sir. Engine is running smooth and you have as much gas as will fit in the tank. I tested the guns yesterday and they were perfect – zeroed in at a hundred yards.”
“Well, then let me kick the tires and go.”
Harry walked around the Spad, touching the control surfaces and feeling the tension on the wing wires, and for luck, he kicked the large pneumatic tire.”
“Good hunting, sir.” Sergeant Haggerty offered as Harry returned his salute.
Like an orchestra tuning up, the eight aircraft that comprised the patrol started their engines. Amid coughing and sputtering the flight came to life. In a moment the air was filled with the heavy mechanical perfume of hot oil and blue exhaust. The morning’s patrol was split into two flights of four this morning. Four airplanes, including Harry Braham’s were to proceed to the northern end of their patrol sector above the trench lines and the other to the southern end. Both groups would reach their patrol limits at about the same time and then they would turn toward each other, following the tortured landscape of the front lines until they met near the midpoint. Along the route they were to engage any enemy aircraft, especially bombing planes or scouts. Otherwise, when they met, the two groups were to return to base. The same routine would be flown at midday and again, before dusk.
The eight planes bumped over the grass to face the light wind from the northeast. In a line abreast, four Spad XIII’s of the 148th Pursuit Squadron raced across the field skidding in spots on the heavy dew left over from the night. Ahead, beyond the line of trees that marked the field’s boundary the sky glowed pink while above the stars, so bright earlier, had been washed out. As they reached flying speed each quartet lifted from the ground their tailskids trailing strands of fresh grass. With wings rocking and engines straining they climbed up into the morning sky. Harry felt the exhilaration the instant his wheels left the ground – that incredible sense of being suspended between earth and sky. There was nothing quite like it. Instantly the tiny fighter became an extension of himself. As he climbed, he kept watch on the altimeter and airspeed indicator. His two most important gauges, they told him how he was flying. It was even more important for Harry to keep an eye on the flight leader, Captain Murray. In formation flying, the wingmen had to do what the leader did, follow where he went – it was a matter of life and death in the air. The planes climbed up into the autumn sky. The wind numbed Harry’s face while the bitter taste of oil seeped in between his lips.
By 1917 the Spad was about the best airplane that the Allies had produced. It was not difficult to fly and the Americans especially gravitated toward it. Its 220 horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine pulled it easily to altitude. The airplane had a top speed of around 130 miles per hour, which since the gauges in the plane were all metric the Americans forced to think in meters of altitude and kilometers per hour of speed. They were armed with a pair of Vickers .303 caliber machine guns that fired through the propeller, and when necessary the planes could be fitted carry hundred pound bombs or wing-mounted rockets. The rockets were best used for balloon busting, a tactic of swooping in on a ground tethered German observation balloon and shooting a rocket into the hydrogen-filled gasbag. The result would be a huge ball of fire and the German observer was forced to jump from the balloon’s basket at the first sight of the attacking fighter and take his chances with the new and somewhat risky invention called a parachute. Of course, the attacker could also be hit by concentrated ground fire or perhaps shot down by a Hun flying top cover for the balloon. In the hands of an experienced pilot the Spads were lethal. But flying the things required all one’s attention and physical strength as its one drawback was that with the heavy engine in the nose, the Spads glided like rocks and keeping level flight required constant backpressure on the stick.
The four planes of Harry’s flight flew northward, over the mottled bracken of the foothills of the Vosges. Below, the serenity of the French countryside spread out in a broad arc. Several miles ahead of the planes the dark gash of the trenches, spewing smoke and lit by gunfire, appeared on the horizon. Harry Braham was ever startled by this contrast of scenery; eternal France lay behind him, a pastoral symphony of fields and farms, while rapidly coming into focus was the man made hell of an endless war.
The Americans climbed sharply as they neared the front, keeping the rising sun on their right wings. No sense of a pot shot from some angry Hun ruining your day. As they climbed, the air rapidly cooled, dropping by nearly three degrees for each thousand feet they rose. The effect was made even colder by the hundred miles an hour wind of their forward speed. Despite the sunlight all of the pilots grew colder with each passing kilometer. After a half hour the formation reached its assigned patrol altitude of three thousand meters and leveled off. With their fuel gauges reading just less than three quarters full, the patrol assumed an easy cruising speed. At that speed they had only another half hour of flight time before they had to return to base. If they became entangled with German planes along the way, then that time would be cut further as combat maneuvering burned up fuel at an extraordinary rate.
Still, it was a glorious autumn morning at altitude. This time could be a great time for daydreaming, which was a habit, if indulged in, that might just cost you your life. Off to the east a few cirrus clouds, very high, with rippled undersides appeared, moving slowly on their journey to the Alps. Below them several dull pops could be heard and soon ochre mists of gas drifted across the trench lines. Orange flashes of shell bursts laced those abattoirs of death with a fiery necklace. From above, the shelling of the positions continued appeared to be random, just intended to casually wreak as much havoc as possible. The Germans had begun to increase the number of gas attacks and as the war edged to its inevitable close. They had large stockpiles of the hideous stuff and they were using up their supplies in an attempt to even the odds. ‘What a hell’, thought Harry.
In earnest anticipation, four pairs of eyes scanned the east and the air above the Spads for a sign of enemy planes. In late 1918, the adage “Beware the Hun in the sun” had become a fundamental of flight training that no one forgot. But this morning it seemed that the Huns were taking their time, maybe they had one too many schnapps last night.
Harry Braham, despite his weeks of combat flying, remained the newest member of this division of four airplanes and thus had earned the less than envious position of flying “tail end Charlie”. His position was in the rear of the four planes and so would be the first sacrificed to any attacker from the rear. The logic was simple; just as on the African savannah, you sacrificed your least experienced first. This concept had passed down the line in all military units since before Alexander, the best fliers, or at least those who had survived the longest were those who flew in front. It was assumed that because of their experience they were the most valuable and so those with less experience were easier to lose in a fight. It didn’t make Harry Braham any happier but it did force him to keep his head on a swivel. As his first instructor at Fort Sill, a one-eyed veteran of the Royal Flying Corps had warned him to do. “Flying tail end should make yer arse-hole pucker, Yank. Keep yer eyes on a swivel or yer’ll be dead meat.” The instructor had warned. “And remember this Laddie, get in close before you shoot. If you think you are too close, get closer. You’ll only have the one chance to burn those Hun bastards.”
Up, down, behind and either side of him, Braham kept his eyes in motion looking for that tell tale silhouette of enemy wings or the flash of a spinning propeller. In the tail end position he also had to maintain an eye on his flight leader, Captain W. F. Murray. It was Murray’s job to direct the flight of four using hand signals to indicate direction and when to attack.
Murray was a lanky twenty-eight year old former bond attorney from New York. Six years older than Harry he seemed to be older, but perhaps that was from the burden of having to take care of so many young fire-breathers like Harry. Bored with the business world and even less anxious to be around his fiancé’s stuffy Long Island family, Murray had opted to join the other young men attracted to the new world of aviation. He took to it immediately and in early 1917 found himself seconded to a Royal Flying Corps unit in Flanders and quickly learned his trade. Twice shot down by German anti-aircraft shells, he had made his way back to safety through the muck and mire of no-man’s land. After a couple of nights in Paris as a reward, he was ordered to return to the air. Recognizing that luck was not an inexhaustible commodity, he sought and was given a transfer to the new American pursuit squadrons forming in France. For several months he enjoyed the respite as he trained the neophytes from the states before taking them to the front. Murray was a role model to the younger men. At the same time he was a bit of a perplexity to the grizzled sergeants, most of who came from the horse cavalry and didn’t really grasp the mechanical age. He simply came off as man who was too nice to be in charge, a quiet gentleman in a bloody business. Affable enough on the ground, once airborne Murray was all business and brooked no stupidity from his wingmen. That Harry Braham was accompanying Murray’s flight today instead of flying with the more junior was a testament to Braham’s airmanship and his focus on the job.
Braham saw Murray’s hand come up to signal. He waved the division of planes into a wide right turn to the east. They were crossing the lines and heading over toward the German side. Black puffs appeared in the air below and just behind them. The gunners on the ground did not yet have the range. At this point the trench lines ran from west to east before swinging southeast toward the Swiss border. For the Americans if refuge or escape was needed the direction for them to head was due south as fast as they could manage.
Finally, the air at altitude was beginning to warm and the sun; now rising just south of east was warm on Harry’s face. The wing wires hummed contentedly and for a brief instant all was right with the world. Something alerted Braham’s senses and he looked again behind and above him. The air was clear where he looked, he though he saw something. When he glanced back a Murray he saw his leader point below them.
There, approaching the devastated landscape of the front lines was a flight of enemy aircraft. Below the Americans, a flight of three Gotha bombers, fat, mulit-engined, heavy and slow was headed westward from the German side of the lines and about to cross into Allied held territory. The Germans were becoming adept at aerial bombardment, an art that destroyed material and morale, and made civilian life near industrial centers pure hell. This escalation of the fighting, taking the war into the rear where civilians were likely victims was part of the declaration of total war that Germany had made. Ludendorff and Hindenburg had run out of military options, now whether by submarine or bomber, the Germans were taking the war to those who could not fight back.
The Gothas appeared to be headed toward the railway junction at Nancy. They presented fat targets for the four Spads. Murray’s hand went up signaling the attack. As Murray pushed over to descend on the bombers Braham saw what had alerted his senses a few minutes before. Just behind the bombers and slightly above them there cruised a flight of four German Albatross D.V fighters. Murray and the two other Spads were swooping down to attack the Gothas. In a moment the three Americans would fly between the Gothas and the waiting guns of the German fighters. Then the hunters would become the prey. There was no way for Braham, flying in the rear to alert them to the four wolves waiting for them to take the bait, but he could even the odds. Without taking time to think, he pulled up from his dive and made a wide right turn. In air combat it was suicide to be caught alone, but the Germans had not seen him turn, and Harry chanced that there were just these four. The German leader had been watching his flock of bombers and had then seen the three diving Spads. He never saw Harry and he waived to his wingmen to follow him as he set about positioning his pack of wolves to attack the Americans just as the Spads pounced on the heavy bombers.
Murray, with Forest and Foster, the other two wingmen, each selected a Gotha and watched as their bomber grew ever larger in their gun sights. Each of the lumbering Gotha’s had two gunners, one in the bomber’s nose and one in the rear. Ideally, working together with the other bombers, the six gunners could put up a curtain of bullets to fend off attackers. Murray knew that the best approach to attack them would be from high above, strafing the cockpit area and then diving below the heavy planes so as to hit their unprotected undersides. With luck, the speed of the diving Spad’s attack would offset any lucky shot from the gunners.
Within seconds the Spads closed on the lumbering Gothas. Swooping down the three Americans held off firing until all they could see the stitching on the fuselage where the sides of the German planes were stitched together in their gun sights. Instantly, flashes appeared from the Gotha’s Spandau machine guns and bits of the Spads’ fabric and spruce flew off. Then a flash of flame and black smoke blossomed from the lead bomber’s left engine. Murray had mortally wounded it. With the loss of the engine’s pull the plane started into a wide, slow left hand spiral heading for the ground. Flames from the burning engine raced along the wing and engulfed it. The fabric flashed and the wooden frame began to fold sending what remained of the bomber into a steep spiral as it plummeted to the ground.
Forrest continued to empty his magazine into his target until it began to flame almost from nose to tail. The fuel tank above the pilot exploded the wings folded backward taking three crewmen down in fiery terror. Foster had attacked the bomber on the far right and was dueling with an aggressive pair of gunners. He had been hit along the rear of his fuselage and was forced to pull up and break off the attack. At that moment the German fighters struck. Under fire from two Albatrosses, Forrest and Foster turned viciously and dove for the ground. Foster was losing large hunks of fabric from the fuselage. The Germans followed, weaving behind the Americans. Forrest and Foster raced south toward the Allied lines trying to distance themselves from their pursuers with the Germans catching hell from French ground gunners who had witnessed the fight. Recognizing the futility of their pursuit the two Germans broke off and headed north toward their base. That left Murray, alone in the sky, as the target of the remaining two Albatrosses.
It had been German practice to make their fighters as gaudy as they could, painting them with colorful splotches or designs resembling bargello quilts. These designs aided in quick recognition in a swirling dogfight, but it was also a representation of their supreme hubris. Painted with blotches of silver, black and purple, the German planes reminded Harry Braham of the pictures of knights in his schoolboy adventure books. Except that now this was real and the game was not being played out on some pages of a book. Murray was caught between the Germans, bracketed by two pair of firing Spandaus. It was a classic aerial dance of death.
As he ran south for his life, the game looked to be over for Murray. No matter which way the American turned his pursuers would have him in a few moments. It was inevitable. Right or left, his turning would bring him into firing range of one or the other. Harry Braham saw what need to be done and pulling his nose up into an almost vertical position while gripping the control stick and wedging himself so he would not slide out of the seat, then at the top of the climb Harry kicked his right rudder pedal and went into a tight hammerhead turn. In that instant his body and mind fused with his aircraft. His nerves and sinews reached out to become one with the spruce and wires and doped linen that made up the Spad. Reversed by the tight hammerhead turn, down he came rushing toward Murray’s right wing and aiming to a point behind Murray, but in front of the two Germans. He was closing at close to a hundred and seventy five miles an hour. The wing wires were screaming like wounded Valkyries and the force of the dive was pushing him back into his seat. Harry had stopped thinking; his brain was working independently, far faster than he could force it as it calculated distance and aiming points. His subconscious was in control, directing his feet, his hands and calculating how much lead to give the oncoming Germans. The first German was closing toward him; he could see the plane looming larger on his left. Then he tapped his firing bar and put a stream of bullets into the Albatross. He could see the pieces of the German’s engine spark as the bullets hit and then flame as fuel lines burst igniting everything. The remaining German saw him, his face registering a dull surprise, not ever expecting to be attacked head on and tried to pull off in a climbing left turn, but it was too late for him as well. Harry kicked in right rudder and put the Spad into a skidding turn. He could hear the wooden airframe scream at the strain, but it held together and the German was now right in front of him. Braham’s burst must have hit him in square in the chest because the Albatross simply nosed over and dove straight down into the churned up mire of no man’s land.
Braham made a wide arc to the right and saw Murray heading south, looking back over his shoulder. Murray turned and Harry joined on his wing and together they flew away from the scene. Four columns of greasy smoke rose from the ground; the impact points now the graves of eight downed Germans. As for the remaining Gotha, it had vanished. After the encounter it had apparently it headed off to its base without expending their ordnance. The score for the morning was Americans four, Germans zero, a very good start to the day.