À la Recherche du Temps Perdu - Part 79



24 April 1918


Early morning line patrol, Villers-Bretonneux to the Corbie-Amiens road. Five DFWs flew eastward at our altitude.


Dangerous to trade fire with the Observer but I got away with it.


One by one the DFWs fell


In after him! Southey had the penultimate Hun smoking.


I changed my Lewis drum and wrestled the gun back up the Foster mount. Southey sent the smoking DFW down in flames. Alone, turned toward the last of the Huns. It was then I saw them, the Baron’s men…


“But when the sun god stood bestride the middle heaven,
then the father balanced his golden scales, and in them
he set two fateful portions of death, which lays men prostrate,
for Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armed Achaians,
and balanced it by the middle. The Achaians death day was the heaviest.
There the fates of the Achaians settled down to the bountiful
earth, while those of the Trojans were lifted into the wide sky.”





Down came the Flying Circus. Tri-winged shapes against the empty blue they swarmed, grown to a vast menace.

Down came the Flying Circus, vengeance in their hearts, sighting a solitary foe of long acquaintance.

Down came the Flying Circus, in anger for their fallen champion, and none could withstand their onslaught.

I was one, versus many. Dodging the first two Huns, I broke hard right as a third attacked. He made no vain cast.

My goggles shattered. Something heavy jabbed my left shoulder, sending an icy jolt of agony down my left arm. A molten lash striped across my back. I snapped backwards in reaction, pulling the stick further back and right. The action sent C5333 down in a spin. The bullet knocked the wind from me. I fought for breath. Pushing the throttle wide open and I pointed C5333 down. The airspeed indicator pegged, rigging sang in an angry whine and the telltale standing wave rose on the wing canvas; one wave, then another. A third and she’d fly apart. I eased out of the dive at well over 200mph and fled west toward the mud.

Down came the Flying Circus…



Racing across the Hun trenches the grey borders of my vision constricted into a blurry tunnel of red. Tracers zipped through the planes as I dropped lower. One struck with a metallic clank followed by the hiss of escaping coolant.

I struggled to breathe and my numbed fingers barely held the throttle. My vision swam. Blood sheeted over my left eye. I needed to land.