Praying That We Meet Again, page 17
De Havilland made his salute, not especially military but doing his best.
“Major Griffin, do take a seat, sir.”
A few minutes and they had found common ground, were talking easily. An hour and Alfred was accompanying the flying man through his small factory.
“Pushers, the best answer I can come up with to the problem of the military aircraft, Major. Clear vision ahead for reconnaissance and the opportunity to place a light machinegun firing forwards. Trouble is, there is no reliable and powerful engine available in England just now. The best engines are those made in Germany, and I can’t get hold of them just now! Rolls Royce make too few engines and have no intention of going into mass production. They insist on hand made engines to maintain quality. Sunbeam, the motor car people, have engines on offer, but they are still not of the best – they lack the reliability required. I am trying to buy in from Hispano-Suiza, but so is everybody else! Wings are in our own control, of course. Come and see.”
An hour and de Havilland was content that Alfred knew what he was talking about, that he could apply theory to the reality of flight.
“I cannot afford to take you on full time and pay the wage you deserve, Major Griffin.”
“I was thinking of spending a day a week here initially, sir. Four days in my rooms at college and one applying the results of the previous week’s work to the actuality of an aircraft wing. Mathematics is all very well, but the equations occasionally have to dovetail with reality, and that is my prime concern now. I have seen a few aeroplanes in the sky in Flanders, and I must admit to being present when one was shot down. I want to have something to do with making aeroplanes bigger, faster, more effective. Their military potential is enormous, I am convinced.”
“So am I! Five pounds a day?”
“Done, sir!”
They shook hands and de Havilland enquired after the plane he had seen shot down.
“A Taube type. Very small but fast. A good sixty miles an hour I must have thought. I had a section of snipers. First class marksmen and with an outstanding sergeant. The Taube came towards us, very close and the sergeant led them as if he was pheasant shooting and called for a volley. Hit the pilot. Knocked the aeroplane down and it burst into flames on the ground.”
“Flying low, of course. The Taubes have no great ceiling. The wing configuration is dubious to my mind. There is a certain logic that says that the aeroplane must imitate the bird, but it is a thin argument. Birds tend not to have propellors!”
They talked another hour, parted company satisfied with each other, Alfred convinced he could be valuable in the aircraft factory.
He was called to the military hospital at Aldershot, brought before a panel of three doctors.
They examined his wounds and decided he was healing a little more slowly than they liked.
“I am to work part time for the de Havilland aircraft factory, gentlemen. I am a mathematician by training and can be of value to them on the design side for a week or two. When can I go back to the Salient?”
The senior of the three, an elderly RAMC lieutenant colonel, shook his head gravely.
“I do not believe you can, Major Griffin. I do not see any prospect of you healing fully. I am of the opinion that you have impaired your constitution to an extent and that you should not be exposed to the strains of service in the front line. I do not doubt, sir, knowing the man you are, that you wish to go back to your own men. I believe we should formally forbid you from so doing. How say you, gentlemen?”
A forty years old captain and a much younger lieutenant, both qualified doctors, spoke in turn.
“Not one hundred per cent and nor I believe ever will be. I do not consider France to be the place for you, Major. You have played your part there, sir, and will have your name in the history books, very rightly. You should not go back.”
“I wholly agree with my colleagues, Major. You have done your share, and more, sir. You should remain in England, sir.”
Alfred knew he could appeal against their findings. He discovered he had no wish at all to do so. He had played his part. He had lived. He realised that in his own mind he had been a dead man. He had not believed he could possibly survive. He had been reprieved.
“That is not what I had expected to hear, gentlemen. If in a few months I feel entirely well, can I return to you?”
“You can, Major. I do not think you should. You have done enough, sir. Indeed, you have done far more than most, as is publicly known. Your part is played, sir. Find another field to excel in – I do not doubt you will!”
They saluted him and he left, shaking his head.
A sergeant showed him the way out, the camp being huge and difficult to navigate.
“They have put me on the scrapheap, sergeant. I am not to go out again.”
“Done your bit, and more, sir. You earned the right to sit back, sir. Front gate, sir. Is that your car waiting outside, sir?”
“It is.”
“Good, sir. Sit back in comfort what you deserve, sir.”
The sergeant knew exactly what was right for a VC, was genuinely pleased to offer his little bit of assistance, signalled to the gatehouse to turn out. They gave a full salute and escorted Alfred to the car, marching stiff-backed and proud.
“They have put me out to grass, Robert!”
“Damned good thing, too, Alfred! I would not say it, obviously. Did not want to undermine you before you went back, but you are not quite the same man you were last year, old chap. Not in your head, I don’t mean that, but in your habit of body, shall we say. You are not quite so strong, don’t stand so tall as you used to. Overworked and badly fed would be one way of saying it. Give you a year and it will all come back, so I should expect, but just at the moment, you are less than you were.”
“Too much strain, Robert. Day after day unbroken. Sending too many of my men back broken and burying even more. It was a killing few months. You know, you saw it.”
“I missed more than half of it, Alfred. A staff officer don’t suffer the same way. From what I saw, I am glad I did. I feel sorry for John and Peter, still out there and not likely to be coming back home this coming year, or ever, very likely.”
“No chance of the war being fought to an end this year. If they will only start talking, then there is a chance of bringing the men Home. Not much of a chance, I fear.”
“None. Did you see the newspaper this morning? We are ‘getting our breath back’ over the winter. Spring will see a great and overwhelming attack, a march to the Rhine and victory.”
“Utter bullshit! Where do they get it from, Alfred?”
“Sir John French? It is moronically stupid, so it is well in keeping. If it does come from him, then he is planning an attack with a damned sight too few men. We are in conditions that are similar to a siege. To win, the attackers must outnumber the defenders by two, preferably three, to one. That is what they said at Sandhurst. We have fewer men than the Germans have in Flanders.”
“We need many more guns then, and we know we have fewer artillery pieces than the Boche. This is a recipe for disaster, Alfred.”
“Sir John French is a disaster on legs, Robert. We will be defeated.”
“And we shall lie to ourselves, Alfred. Britannia cannot suffer defeat. At worst, victory has been, what do they call it, postponed.”
“Well said, brother! I like that! Victory postponed. Try again next year!”
They were in rare harmony with each other, each able to see there was something very wrong in their world.
“The Military Cross has come into effect, the first awards made, Robert. Officers below the rank of major and warrant officers are eligible for the medal. Less than the DSO but more than a Mention in Despatches. A hole filled in, I think, allowing us to respect those junior officers who have shown outstanding merit. Backdated to August ’14, the beginning of the war. It will be allowable to earn a second or third, bars to the medal. There is a list in the paper…”
Alfred perused the small print of the long list, one hundred and seventy-eight names of England’s heroes, the newspaper informed him.
“Scots, Welsh and Irish don’t exist as far as Fleet Street is concerned! Ha! Lieutenant Peter Griffin, in action with the 12th Hussars. The only one of them to distinguish himself – well done whoever put his name up for that! Captain John Griffin, repeated bravery in action with the Hampshires. We know just how much your battalion did, Robert.”
“We do indeed, Alfred. Well done the pair of them!”
“A couple from the Kents, both marked as ‘now deceased’. Can’t give the Military Cross posthumously. Evidently, they would have been given the awards well before they died. Fair enough. Their families may appreciate that. Oh! They have given me an MC as a lieutenant. Give a dog a good name, if you ask me, Robert!”
“Building up the collection of letters after the name, old chap!”
“I don’t think you can put the Military Cross after the name, Robert. There has to be an Order in Council to allow that and I don’t see reference to it.”
“That will come, Alfred. It merely takes a few months for these things to percolate through the system. It will be VC, MC, BSc Hons before too long. PhD to follow, I do not doubt. KB soon after that, old chap. Need a big envelope to write your address on!”
“Sir Alfred, Knight Bachelor? That will be many years in the coming, if ever, Robert. I do not really expect it.”
“It will come, Alfred. Don’t need a crystal ball to prophesy that!”
“Now that I am not to go back to France, there is actually a chance of that being so. I wonder if it makes sense to take a wife in wartime, Robert?”
“Very much so, old chap. Particularly when you are thinking of such a handsome and sensible young female. A damned good match and everything in its favour!”
“I shall send a letter to the Old Man, I think…”
General Griffin found time to read the mail from England. He actually had a little of spare time now that winter had set in hard in Flanders. There was no movement in the Salient, both sides having chosen to crouch low in their trenches, wrapped up in blankets and huddled over their fires, swearing at the snow as it fell equally upon them.
A lengthy letter from Alfred and a sigh of relief from the older man. He turned to his senior staff officer.
“My son, Alfred, the VC. Won’t be coming back to us. Medical Board has ruled him unfit for active service. Not healing as he should from his collection of wounds. Going to work with the aircraft factories and continue his Mathematics at Oxford.”
“He has done his share, and more, sir. I do not doubt he will pull his weight back at Home.”
“Knowing him, he will. Thinking of getting married as well. Very sensible choice of a bride. Belgian girl, General Delacroix’ granddaughter. Good family, for foreigners, and I believe not a small amount of money. I would not expect the chateau and lands to be worth very much, these days, but the Germans will have a big bill for reparations when the war is over.”
“So they should, sir. They hit the French with massive payments after the War of 1870, only right the same should be done to them this time round.”
General Griffin had not known that, but it made it entirely fair to dish out the same medicine to the Hun.
“I shall send the message to my two boys in the Hampshires. They may well envy Alfred.”
Henry Redwood would not have envied Alfred in the least. He was most comfortably set up in Geneva, enjoying a fat income and a leisurely way of life. He was actually saving money! Never before in his life had he managed to spend less than the totality of his income but there it was, nearly a thousand pounds excess in his account at the bank. He did not know what to do with it. Despite being a banker’s son he had never learned anything about money other than how to spend it.
No matter. He could deal with that on another day.
He had been taken off on ‘business’ twice since his first excursion and had performed his duty with no worries at all. He had read the headlines in his copy of the Telegraph, delivered regularly to Switzerland only three days out of date, had seen the accounts of good old Alfred Griffin’s doings in France. He must have killed a hundred and there were no moral qualms there.
His superior arrived, early in the morning as was his habit. Henry did not enjoy doing business at eleven o’clock but the man seemed to be one of these ‘early to rise’ sorts.
“Confirmation of you last little job, Mr Redwood. Well done! Neat and tidy and suggestions that he was killed by the Germans themselves. The local press in Liechtenstein – their one paper, that is – have said that the fellow was thought to have been a secret agent working for the British and he was shot by a nine millimetre bullet!”
“Ha! Definitely foreign, sir. The English use the forty-five or thirty-eight, never these millimetre things!”
They had a quiet laugh together.
“Your bank account reflects our pleasure, Mr Redwood. The Swiss police have opened a file on you, however. My fault, not yours! I am known to be an associate of yours and I have been identified as an employee of one of the British agencies. Consequently, old chap, we are moving you. Across the border this afternoon and through France. Onto a train from Barcelona and to Cadiz by way of Madrid. Take ship there and you will be in New York ten days later – a slow passage but the Spanish have no big, fast liners. An amount of trade for you in the States, of course and you may have occasion to travel into Mexico as well.”
Henry was mildly annoyed – he liked the life in Geneva. He did not fancy an existence in a Swiss prison cell and accepted he must go.
“Very well, sir. You know you have but to give me an order. One thing, is New York right for me? My brother Mr George Redwood is a representative of Redwoods Bank, on Wall Street. It is a big city but it is not impossible we might bump into each other.”
It was not impossible, they agreed.
“Might be wiser to place you elsewhere, Mr Redwood. You are quite right. A big city but the circles of Society are not so very great. Elsewhere may well make sense. We shall see… Got to get you out of Switzerland, but there might well be an alternative to New York. The car will be here for two o’clock.”
Chapter Eleven
“Cold, miserable, bloody freezing! I have ice in my eyelashes!”
Captain Peter Redwood was not a happy young officer. He carried little spare flesh and felt the cold more than most. The tip of his nose was red and his ears had lost all feeling.
“Damned good thing they sent the woollies out from England, John. I don’t know I would have survived without them.”
His brother was equally cold, less inclined to mention the fact.
“We have a delivery of goatskins, Peter. Made up into waistcoats, sleeveless jackets in effect. The man say they are warm and windproof but they are already smelly.”
“What do they smell of?”
“Goat.”
“Ah. Logical in its way… Too cold to scrub them. Never get them dry. Pity. Must keep the men warm. What do they look like?”
“Goats.”
“Also logical, John. Do I gather you are inclined to disapprove?”
Major John Griffin occasionally remembered he was a regular soldier.
“I should, certainly, Peter. I cannot order them away. The cold was breaking the men, their greatcoats inadequate for these conditions. We have braziers coming, we are told, and coal to burn in them. Not sure that is wise.”
“Black smoke?”
“In part. The biggest concern is that the men will set them up in their dugouts, to dry them out as well as keep them warm. You know they have stopped up all the draughts, blocked off the entries with double hanging blankets. Put in a coal fire, or even worse coke, burning overnight and the fumes will kill them. Even if they build in a chimney, the risks will be massive.”
“They must be kept warm, John.”
“Accepted. We must police the dugouts, every night. We cannot lose men to smoke.”
They agreed, gloomily, knowing they would have to rise at least twice every night to walk the length of the trench and inspect every dugout personally. There was no certainty the sergeants and corporals would understand the need.
“No casualties to shellfire this week, John. Just one shot by a sniper.”
“But he was Winslade. I thought that boy might be going to survive and become a useful officer.”
They shrugged. Winslade had shown himself habitually at the same spot on the parapet. Only for ten seconds at a time but the sniper had taken his aim and squeezed the trigger the moment his head had appeared.
“Only a second lieutenant. Plenty more where they come from.”
There did seem to be an inexhaustible flow of green, not very bright, sheltered public schoolboys, all determined to win the war personally. They had noticed that the schools were becoming increasingly obscure, could more accurately be called ‘private’ schools in fact. All seemed to produce slightly inane, fairly athletic, very sheltered youths with exaggerated King’s English accents. They appeared, gave their names, fell to snipers or stood under an exploding shell, and were carried away without making any impact on the battalion. A few of them survived and mostly became competent officers. One or two were good.
“Do you think they should be trained first, John?”
“No. Can’t. They don’t need to be given military skills. They need an injection of common sense and, preferably, a degree of intelligence. Most of them die as a result of applied stupidity. We tell them not to expose themselves to the Boche. They smile and salute and agree and then stand up on the parapet to have a look around them. ‘Can’t win the war singlehanded if one don’t take a look at the foe, Captain!’ Born stupid and practised hard, Peter!”
“That is true, one must admit, John. Time we promoted our own men from the ranks.”
