The Bright Blue Sky by Max Hennessy

Author:Max Hennessy [Hennessy, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents, The Bright Blue Sky
ISBN: 9780755128013
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-16T14:00:00+00:00

Five

When Dicken arrived at Pewsey, the station for Upavon, Foote was also there, standing on the platform waiting for a tender to pick him up and take him to the airdrome.

“Willie, I guess,” he grinned. “Pulling strings. I must get him to pull a few for the kid brother.”

Their duties turned out to be very vague. Upavon was a bleak, windswept, inhospitable place and their attachment seemed to be very uncertain and very temporary. They were given a job checking machines for design and appearance, the way they handled, their suitability, comfort, and areas of vision, but it occupied very little of their time and they slipped in and out of the camp as they pleased. It wasn’t far to Sussex and, buying from a local doctor going into the army a small wheezy two-seater known as One-Lung, Dicken was able to get home easily, putting Foote en route on the train for London, where his brother was learning to fly.

Most of the pilots at Upavon had seen hard service in France and many of them were itching to get back. They didn’t like the atmosphere in England where the civilians tended to regard the war as if it were a rather rougher type of football match, and they didn’t like the way men who had never heard a shot fired in anger were picking up rewards. However, the disaster in Italy had started a panic around the home stations where comfortably-established officers began to reflect the politicians’ alarm by imagining, not for the first time since 1914, that the war was about to be decided in Germany’s favour. To their great alarm, some were even snatched from what they had considered secure jobs and sent to France to replace those hurriedly dispatched to help the Italians, and it came as no surprise to Dicken and Foote to learn they were not going back on 1½-Strutters.

“Experienced men are being kept at home,” they were told, “to give their knowledge to new squadrons which are being formed. Some of you will be given flights. Some will be given squadrons. You’re to do all the flying you can. On Bristols.”

There was a saying that an airplane that was good to look at was also good to fly, and the Bristol looked good. Fitted with a Rolls Royce engine, because of its size it looked like a fighter and Dicken studied it like a man buying a horse. It had a businesslike air about it and, while the pilot, boxed in between the upper and lower wings, was virtually blind above, the observer had a good arc of fire.

Hatto turned up at Upavon soon afterward and, deciding it would be pleasant if they could all go to the same squadron, they began to play poker to decide who should have command of the squadron and who should have command of the flights.

“I guess we should give Willie the squadron,” Foote decided. “After all, the guy’s been in this goddamn war since the beginning but he doesn’t seem to progress much.

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