Terrific tales, all. Lou - first the Circus and then the Boelckes....Swany's on a rampage!

Still laying catch-up on my end. Probably the only time I hope it rains!

2nd. Lt. Evan C. Easom,
No. 48 Squadron R.F.C.

April 6th, 1917.

In the early evening on April 5th, Holliday had called Headquarters and told them of ‘B’ flight’s fate. The first of the replacement aircrew arrived the next morning. As the pilots waited for their temporary C.O. to arrive for morning briefing, sipping at their coffees and trying to distract their thoughts of yesterday’s losses and the red machine of the ‘Bad Baron’, one of the new arrivals began enthusiastically introducing himself to the pilots nearest him. Eventually, he reached Ackerman. “‘Ello, mate! My name’s Benny” he chirped, in the immediately-recognisable Manchester dialect. “Piss off” Ackerman responded, not looking up from his paper. Benny withdrew his outstretched hand, a mix of confusion and outrage on his face. Before he opened his mouth again, Evan intervened. “Never mind him, eh? He’s had a rough time of it recently. I’m Evan Easom. Nice to meet you”. The Mancunian’s face brightened slightly. “Benny Isby. Pleasure’s all mine”.

Reclining in one of the armchairs nearby, Tidmarsh called out “How many hours, Isby?”. The bright-eyed pilot looked at him quizzically. “Dear God. Flying hours…?” Tidmarsh pressed, and the man reddened. “Oh, er, ten in total! One on Fees, even!” he said, obviously proud of the achievement. There was a collective groan from the pilots within earshot. “Bloody murder,” Ackerman muttered.

‘B’ flight was scheduled to patrol the lines at Loos, further North from the usual stomping-ground of Vimy, Lens and Arras. Tidmarsh, to his surprise, was appointed as Flight Leader, as Wilkinson and Holliday had scheduled their own patrol within allied lines to show the ‘new boys’ the lay of the land. At 8 O’Clock, the pilots of ‘B’ made ready for their patrol. As the machines were readied, Tidmarsh looked sullenly over the pilots. “Any sign of the damned circus and we’re going home,” was his brief pre-flight instruction. There were no complaints.

The flight towards the lines was cold and eventless. Bored and still tired from the early rise, Evan watched a distant storm rolling in from the sea, the dark, foreboding clouds underlining the horizon. As Tidmarsh turned the flight East, Evan looked down at the grey-brown swathe of carnage that once was Loos. He remembered reading the papers, back in England, of the great battle of 1915 that had taken place down there. The Army had used poison gas for the first time. Evan shuddered at the thought of the new, terrible weapon, swirling among the trenches like a plague, choking men to their death. The sudden bark of lewis guns at his back snapped him out of his daydreaming with a horrible suddenness, and in shock he threw his head around, craning his neck to see past Wickham, who he could see swinging the Lewis guns around to track some unseen threat. Suddenly panicked, Evan looked forwards again, just in time to see Tidmarsh’s Bristol go into a dive with a Vee-Strutter, horrifyingly close, chasing after him. As the pair dove, Evan could see the sun glinting off the German machine’s flying wires and its sleek, purple tail. Another Vee-Strutter rocketed over his head, and Evan took in its detail in an instant. The fuselage was painted a dull, cloudy grey - but what drew Evan’s eye was its wheels, bright scarlet in contrast to the sky. Oh god, Evan thought to himself, Is it the Circus?

The Albatri had split the formation like an axe carving through a treestump, and immediately Evan banked to the right, looking back on a chaotic scene. Bristols weaved left and right as the grey Vee-Strutter circled like a predator among them. Looking down, he saw Tidmarsh’s Bristol alone, being pursued still by the purple-tailed machine. In an instant, biting back the mounting fear, he dove at the German, firing wildly from distance. There was a sun-glint as the German’s goggled face turned upwards at him, and then the machine nimbly flicked Eastwards. Tidmarsh immediately spotted the change in circumstance and swung around to pursue. Evan dove to Tidmarsh’s side, and the two Bristols chattered away with their forward Vickers at the German. In response he curved to the left and looped underneath the two English machines, and then, in one sickening instant, the Albatros deftly looped back up, rolled on its axis, and leveled out - squarely on Evan’s Six O’Clock. Evan dumbly stared at the twin Spandaus as they coolly settled onto his tail, and he knew that he was about to be killed.

The harsh racket of two machine-guns filled Evan’s ears - but he felt no pain. It was then that Albatros’ nose lazily dropped down, and the machine fell into a dizzying, tumbling spin towards earth. Numbly, Evan realised that the gunfire hadn’t come from the German - it had come from Wickham’s Lewis guns. Evan banked to watch the purple-tailed machine as it crashed - but the German had been lost from sight.

It seemed bizarre to Evan that the return trip to La Bellevue should be every bit as eventless and sparse as the flight to Loos. In his head he replayed every moment of the battle. One question gnawed at him. Just where did those Albatri come from? Back on the aerodrome, the aircrew of ‘B’ flight, all of whom had returned, shuffled into the Adjutant’s office to make their reports. The stocky little Adjutant, Lt. Haye, listened impatiently as pilots blurted out their recountings of the fight. Among the frantic discussion, Evan and Tidmarsh both put in that they had shared in the driving-down of the Purple Tail.

There was much debate over lunch in the mess as to the identity of the two Albatri - Evan and Wilkie contended that the machines were, indeed, from the Richthofen Circus, whereas Tidmarsh and the rest argued against the point. “They can’t be from the circus! Richthofen’s gang only flies red machines!” Tidmarsh cried out. “Mary, how do you know?” replied Wilkie. “I heard their machines are all kinds of gaudy colours! On my last leave I spoke to a B.E driver that said he saw the Baron’s red machine at the head of a formation. They were painted in all kinds of bright colours. Blue, white, green…”. Tidmarsh frowned. “But then, why did we drive them off like that?”. “Nobody wants to be shot at for too long. Not even them, I bet,” replied Evan.

They finished their lunches and checked the operations board. Holliday had warned them in the morning that more flying had been ordered by Headquarters, and that the flights would likely be going up more than once in a day from now on. Sure enough, ‘B’ was scheduled for another patrol that day - over Vimy. Still with the morning’s fight in his head, Evan climbed back into his Bristol on the flight line, beside Wilkinson’s machine. He was determined that he would not be surprised by the Germans again.

Suddenly, just shy of the lines, Baker’s Bristol went into a screaming dive, followed closely by Wilkinson. Surprised and confused, Evan watched the two machines descend for 1,000 feet, before just as suddenly he spotted the Albatros - one of the older models, with the square wings, blissfully flying ahead of the two Bristols. There was a flash of tracer fire as Baker pressed down on his trigger, and the German machine immediately burst into flames, listing off and falling into a dive. Evan watched on, perturbed by the thick black smile that the smoke carved as the Albatros dropped, curled back up into a climb, and finally fell towards earth, colliding in an explosive shower of sparks.

Later that night, Holliday called Evan to the C.O’s office to congratulate him on his 2nd victory - not the Purple-tailed Albatros as he’d expected - but the DFW that had raided the aerodrome on the 4th. It had been found and reported on by an infantry column moving to the front for the big push, and Headquarters had connected the dots. Baker’s Albatros was also confirmed. That night the mess saw raucous celebration, as the men rejoiced at the news of the two German airmen’s deaths. Ackerman was the most lively of the bunch - no doubt feeling some sort of revenge on Rast’s behalf. At the end of the evening, back in the Bell tent and with Ackerman sleeping off his alcoholic haze, Evanthought deeply about the mens’ reaction. He supposed, in the end, that their savage joy came from the fact that the pilots had been raiders. It wasn’t on, he thought, to bomb defenceless airmen on the ground. Evan was glad they had died, too. The realisation of this unsettled him.



April 7th, 1917.

The resultant headache from the evening past’s decadence had clearly taken its toll on the pilots of ‘B’ flight. Gone was Baker’s enthusiasm from the night before, and Evan sat quietly trying to ignore the chatter of the pilots, nursing a murky cup of watery tea. It hadn’t helped that, for an as-of-yet unknown reason, the aircrew had been shaken awake by their batmen at the unreasonable hour of Five-Thirty. At a Quarter past Six, Holliday appeared in the mess, taking his place beside the operations board. “Listen up,” he started, and all chatter ceased. “H.Q. has special orders for us. There’s a Hun squadron at Rumbeke that’s being causing trouble for the Recon buses around Wipers. The Brass Hats want us to go and drop some eggs on it. We’ll be committing all our machines. ‘B’ Flight will raid the aerodrome while ‘A’ keeps a look out for any Huns trying to bite back. We leave in an hour.”.

The room was quiet. Each pilot must have been thinking the same - it was bad enough to cross into Hunland, but raiding an Aerodrome seemed like madness. Nonetheless, at Half-Past Eight, the Squadron’s ten Bristols were wheeled onto the aerodrome, two large HERL bombs slung under each wing, and the crews made ready. Beside Evan’s machine was an unfamiliar Observer, leaning against the fuselage and smoking a woodbine. Disinterestedly he regarded Evan as he approached. Before Evan could question him, Holliday intercepted him. “Mr. Easom, this is Mr. Aldridge, your new Observer. I hope he’ll be in good hands with you”. Evan and Aldridge briefly shook hands, and then boarded the machine. Looking back over his shoulder, Evan called out “Done many sorties?” to the bored-looking Aldridge. He shook his head. “First one”. Evan slowly turned back forwards, muttering a curse under his breath. Suddenly there was a droning of machines overhead, and for a moment Evan feared that the DFWs were back, but as he looked up he saw six Nieuport 17 Scouts flying low overhead. As he watched them, he saw one pilot reach over his cockpit and wave.

The machines got off the ground, heavily straining off the ground with the added weight of the bombs, and, after forming up, they headed North for the long flight towards Ypres. Apart from the odd B.E. headed out on a reconnaissance, the skies remained empty of all except the intermittent rolling cloud, passing lazily by from North to South. The flight first overflew Loos, then Bailleul, and finally the smoking, hulking wreck of Ypres loomed out from within the clouds. Ahead of the wrecked city the mud fanned out and grew on all sides and it seemed to Evan that the thick, decayed ‘line’ of no-man's-land was now replaced by an endless, terrible wasteland.

Wilkie, at the head of ‘B’ flight, dropped down to 4,000 feet as the five Bristols crossed into the mud, and Evan tensed at his controls as the distant greenery of Hunland rushed towards him. Before long, Rumbeke came into view at the edge of the mud, a semicircle of white canvas hangars like a perfect row of teeth shining brightly in the sun, and beside them were two large two-storey houses. Beside the aerodrome hung the bovine shape of a ‘Sausage’ balloon, swaying gently in the wind. Wilkie’s machine turned its nose towards the aerodrome, started in a dive, and then from the cockpit came a sudden flash as a red Very light separated itself, arcing up and to the left. The attack signal.

Following the formation’s dive, Evan’s heart raced. Almost if in reply to Wilkie’s signal, he now saw the Hun aerodrome come to life, with little grey specks darting to and fro across it. As he watched, he saw four machines being wheeled out of the hangars. The Bristols screamed down, their Falcon engines roaring their fury out as ‘Archie’ started up around them in desperation. Wilkie and Tidmarsh swept over the hangars, and there were four bright flashes as their HERL bombs connected with the ground, immediately setting the leftmost hangars ablaze. Evan now swept over the aerodrome, and with a stab of excited tension he yanked the bomb release lever, feeling his Bristol leap up into a climb as the added weight was shed. Curling to the side he watched as his two bombs exploded between the hangars and the houses, smashing the windows of one house and setting it on fire. Whooping in triumph, Evan circled the Aerodrome once. It was then that he spotted four Albatros machines starting their motors on the ground. As one, they shot forwards and raced down the airfield.

Instantly Evan set his sights on the lead Albatros, diving down sharply and firing as its wheels left the ground. Immediately it side-slipped and curled off to the right, smashing heavily into a treeline and coming to a sickening stop. Looking over his shoulder, Evan saw the other Bristols now falling upon the Germans as they tried desperately to claw their way into the air. A second German machine fell under Wilkie’s guns. Evan curled back, setting his sights on one of the two remaining Albatri. Re-cocking his vickers, he let fly at the German machine and saw its right wings buckle, folding backwards before shearing away. The Albatros immediately curled into a spin and landed heavily on its back, kicking up dust.

Evan grinned as he turned away again, looking over the chaos that the Bristols had caused. Panicked Germans in their grey uniforms scurried across the airfield, trying desperately to wheel machines out of the burning hangars. A second Very light went up - the signal to retreat - and the Bristols turned for home.

After landing, Evan was surprised to find his fellow pilots not jubilant, as he felt, but instead cursing and bitter. “Careful with him!” Tidmarsh cried angrily, as his Observer was lifted out of the cockpit by two Corporals. Evan suddenly realised as they lay the airman flat that he was dead, a bullet having penetrated through his right cheek. He then looked around the other machines, and his own, and realised with a start that each machine had been peppered to shreds. In his own machine he found that the right lower plane had been holed at least fifteen times, and several other holes could be seen on the fuselage. Baker gritted his teeth as he dropped down from his cockpit, clutching his right arm to his chest. Blood flowed freely from a bullet wound in his forearm.
‘A’ flight returned shortly afterwards, in better shape than ‘B’ had arrived in. Immediately once they had de-planed, Holliday called for each pilot to make his report, before gathering the pilots in the mess. There, he declared the mission a success. The pilots congratulated each other, and drinks were purchased from the mess bartender. A fresh Newspaper were delivered in the early evening, and the pilots lounged about as Wilkinson read the news aloud. The headline revealed that the U.S.A had declared war on Germany, which lifted the spirits of the men considerably. “Well? What do you reckon?” Ackerman had shouted, “Maybe this year it really will be over by christmas, if the Yanks are in our corner!”. There was a round of cheers, as Wilkinson started on the next article. “The Royal Flying Corps are…” he paused for a moment, paling slightly.

Expectantly, the pilots looked onward. In a quieter tone, Wilkinson continued reading. “The Royal Flying Corps are suffering terrible losses in what is now being called ‘Bloody’ April….”