The Interceptors by Max Hennessy

Author:Max Hennessy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The hospital train was due to leave that night for the south and, during the evening, Puddy had brought his sister over for tea with another nurse. It was while they were there that we got an alarm message to the effect that the Russian DH9s were in trouble again, and we left them flat, running out to the aeroplanes, looking tremendously dramatic as we charged away to do battle and taking off in a cloud of dust.

We soon saw the Red machines, this time with a Fokker triplane and a Pfalz we’d not seen before, and our old friend, the brown Fokker, in the lead. The DH9s were five miles away bolting for home with the Red planes dropping out of the sky like a set of vultures behind them. I fired a Very light and swung towards them.

Time was short and we went in without waiting to ask questions. I saw two Red Nieuports flutter down and began to wonder if perhaps the Russians weren’t finding it a little disheartening fighting against crack RAF squadrons blooded in France, but the odds were against us a little this time and I saw Munro go limping away to safety. I sat above the fight till he was safely to the south and, as I went down to join in again, Slingsby, who was developing into quite a flyer, seemed to be flying three ways at once, taking pot shots at a Spad, a triplane and the Pfalz. As he broke clear, the Pfalz’s rudder came off and it went down out of control, then the pilot of the brown Fokker, who’d been doing what I’d been doing and sitting on the fringe of the fight waiting for a victim, pounced.

Slingsby was in trouble at once and I went down after the Fokker in a dive that made the Camel shudder. As Slingsby broke away to safety, the Fokker swung out and the next moment we were going round in a ding-dong ring-a-roses firing snapshots at each other whenever the opportunity offered.

It was late now and the sky seemed to be filled with towering mountains of purple and blood-red. The Fokker was above me, swinging in a swift shadow against the dark-pillared gateway of a crimson castle, black-purple against the light, its wings and spars outlined with fire. Glancing up, I saw its nose drop as it tried to get into position behind me and snatched the Camel round to the left. Turning to the right, the Camel could swivel on a sixpence because of the torque of the big engine, so I allowed the Fokker to close up then pulled the Camel viciously the other way. The earth, misty blue beneath me, swung like a plate, and the Fokker shot beneath me in a flash of vermilion, the fabric rippling along the fuselage. In a second we were facing each other.

I’d suspected for a long time that the Fokker pilot was a German, because he handled his machine

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