Casca 21: The Trench Soldier (12 page)

Casca made another mighty effort, and this time he succeeded in shifting the corpses directly above him. Between the bodies he could see daylight and blue sky.

"But, what if one is alive?" the worried soldier said.

"You're going to make a lot of extra work for us, Arthur, if you go on like that," the other answered. "Let's get 'em filled in and get away for our tea.

As the earth started falling again Casca repeated the movement, hurling the two corpses apart with his arms and bellowing, "I'm alive! I'm alive!"

"Well," he heard the laconic voice say, "I suppose you could be right, Arthur. But you're making an awful lot of work for us."

With an enormous sigh of relief, Casca lay back in his stinking hole to wait for the two soldiers to get to him.

The army doctor was sorely confused and more than a little put out. "Only superficial wounds anyway," he scowled. "Don't see why you were ever in the hospital in the first place. You've made a damned awful mess of our records."

"I can't remember coming here, sir," Casca replied. "Maybe I was concussed."

"Or malingering to get out of the line," the doctor fumed and ordered him back to the front.

"Could you tell me anything of my officer's condition? Captain Bryce-Roberts. We were together when we got hit."

"Bryce-Roberts?
He's gone west," the doctor stated. "You were in his balloon? Why, I was on duty when the two of you were brought in. He was dead already, shot full of holes. You weren't much better, bleeding like a stuck pig and scarcely breathing. I can't believe you're the same man."

Casca certainly didn't wish to attract attention to his recuperative powers. He shrugged. "Well, I certainly feel a great deal more lively now, thank you, doctor."

"I'm a captain, Corporal. There are no doctors in the army."

"No, sir, Captain, I'll remember that."

The laconic soldier had been right. The day after he was lifted out of the hole, Casca was back at the aeronaut station with a new officer, Captain
Wothering, who told him that instead of a balloon, they would be observing from an airplane.

"Have you flown in an airplane before?"

"No, sir."

"Oh,
it's bags of fun, you'll find."

A motorcycle outfit carried them to where a biplane stood bearing red and blue roundels on the wings and a huge Union Jack on the tail.

"Not ours, of course," Wothering said. "It's a Nieuport, on loan from the Frogs."

The captain climbed into the rear cockpit and told Casca to turn the propeller. After two turns he shouted, "Contact!" and when Casca tugged at the propeller blade, the engine fired and the propeller disappeared in a whirling blur.

Casca got into the front cockpit, the ground crew dragged the chocks away from the wheel, and they were moving.

Very fast.
Much faster than Casca had ever travelled in his long life. Faster than he would have believed possible. The fastest car or train he had ever been in had not moved half as fast.

The ground ahead was a blur flowing toward the nose of the plane. Alongside the airstrip trees raced past like demented giants running from some awful disaster. Something like the disaster toward which they seemed to be heading, Casca thought grimly.

A terrifying upward lurch, and he felt his stomach thud downward in his body. They were up in the air. Another sickening lurch, this time downward. Casca looked over the side, expecting to see that they were crashing back to earth. But the ground was far below them. They were already very much higher than they had been in the balloon, and although they were still climbing, the motion of the plane was up and down, like a boat riding over waves. The ground below them was moving as if it were being unwound from a roll.

The German trenches came up quickly, and behind them their artillery positions, headquarters, and the ruined hospital.

As they passed over the trenches several infantrymen and some machine guns fired at them. Casca heard Wothering laugh at their attempt. Then he asked in a serious tone, "You alright?"

"Alright?
Sure."

"Good. I seem to have caught a packet back here."

Caught a packet? What's a packet? Some sort of cold from this enormous altitude? Why the hell don't the English speak English? Casca thought.

Casca's mind was much too occupied with other things: the horrifying height; the state of his stomach; the infernal racket from the engine; his terror that this racket might cease and the damned thing would fall like a stone.

The nose dipped, and Casca saw the ground. Nothing but the ground. The sky had disappeared, and the ground was rushing up toward them.

A sickening lurch and the ground
was gone, and he was staring at nothing but sky. Another frightful lurch, and the plane was flying level again.

Wothering's
voice came calmly from behind him. "Jesus," Casca said to himself, "here I am terrified out of my wits, and this character talks like he's at a tea party."

"Sorry about that, old chap.
Getting a bit faint back here, I'm afraid. Fell on the jolly old stick."

A bit faint?
Don't tell me he's going to pass out on me
. Wothering's voice confirmed Casca's worst fears. "Can't hold on, I'm afraid. Don't suppose you know how to fly one of these things, do you?"

"Where does the British Army find these guys?" Casca asked himself. He turned in his seat to shout to
Wothering, "No, sir, I can't properly drive a car!"

"Oh, it's much easier than driving a car. Don't have to watch the road. No worries about frightening horses."

Wothering suddenly sucked in his breath with a grimace, and Casca realized that the man was in severe pain.

Caught a packet?
A packet of lead – and somewhere that hurt.

"Have a feel about in your map pocket, will you?"
Wothering said. "Should be a spare stick in there."

Spare stick? This nightmare was getting worse by the second. He felt around and found the stick. Some sort of baton with a thread on one end.

"Stick the jolly thing in that socket sort of thing between your feet and give it a few twists."

Casca
homed the stick in its socket and turned it tight.

"Jolly good. Now pull it back – whoops, not too much."

The plane seemed to be standing on its tail. Casca felt that his bowels would have emptied onto his seat, but that they had congealed into a solid ball. He had the stick clutched to his abdomen with both hands. At least it was something to hang onto.

"Let's ease it forward a bit – whoa, easy now."

Casca lifted up out of the seat. He felt as if the plane were going to throw him out of the cockpit. And now he was looking at the ground again through the faint blur of the whirring propeller. He clutched the stick to him once more.

The ground disappeared again, the sky came back, and Casca was being rammed down into his seat by some immense force.

"That's the idea. You're getting the hang of it nicely. Now try to keep it about in the middle."

Getting the hang of it? Oh shit, I'm flying this thing!
His mind had at last made the connection between the movements of the stick and the swoops and dives of the plane.

He pushed the stick forward.
Oh, Jesus, the ground again
. Back.
Oh, my God!
The ground and the sky alternated a few times, and then he had the stick centered and the plane was flying level.

"Hang on, old chap." Casca's grip on the stick relaxed a little, and he could feel the slight pressure of
Wothering's hand through the controls.

"Now ease it over to the left, like this – easy."

The lower left wing dropped out of sight, and the ground was moving past below the upper wing. He felt Wothering easing the stick back and moved with him, watching in wonder as the ground vanished, and the wings returned to level.

"Now this way, to the right, that's it."

Then it wasn't too bad, and he could actually feel the vibration of the wings against his hand.

"Now try the jolly old foot pedals. Stick left and left rudder pedal, that's it."

Casca felt Wothering move the pedals under his feet and the plane banked abruptly to the left. Casca closed his eyes, took a deep breath and forced himself to look again. The plane seemed to be pivoted on its wing tips, the ground spinning around below them. Men the size of ants were pointing toy guns at them that fired little bursts of light and puffs of smoke.

They repeated the
maneuver to the right, and Casca was almost beginning to enjoy himself.

"By Jove, you've got it nicely. Now try that jigger by your right hand."

Casca took the short lever in his hand and felt Wothering move it gently back, then hard forward. The engine note changed, and Casca swayed forward as the plane slowed and was then pressed back into the seat as it speeded up again.

"That's about all there is to it, old fella. I'm going to take my stick out now.
Mustn't fall on it, y'know. You'd never be able to move it."

Suddenly the plane, freed of
Wothering's hand, was lurching all over the sky. Everything Casca did seemed to be too much. The plane climbed and dived, banked and swerved.

Gradually the wild movements modified, and they were more or less level.

"Pretty good, old boy. Don't get the nose too high, though. Mustn't stall while we're up here. But the trick is to put her down. Ease off on the throttle, bring up the nose, and the bird'll do the rest herself..."

The voice trailed off.

"Captain," Casca called with no answer. "Captain Wothering! Captain!" He shouted louder and louder. There was no answer.

Gingerly, holding the stick warily
centered, Casca turned in his seat. Wothering was slumped forward, his leather helmet against the control panel.

Near panic.
What did he mean about putting her down? He looked over the side at the ground. Surely he doesn't expect me to land this thing?

"Captain
Wothering! Captain! Oh, shee-it!"

Casca's stomach rebounded in his belly as he looked down over the side of the plane. Apart from the rocking-horse sensation, the plane seemed to be stationary. And seen from their height, the ground below no longer appeared to be moving.

The river valley ran in all directions as far as he could see, almost featureless. He could just make out the shapes of low hills and what he guessed were roads and rivers. But there was nothing that looked familiar. Or rather, it all looked vaguely familiar and similar in every direction.

The lines of the trenches and behind them the artillery emplacements, headquarters, and hospital were all now out of sight.

Casca was flying as an artillery spotter which simply meant an extra pair of eyes to enable the pilot to concentrate on his flying. His only task was to call the pilot's attention to any activity or features on the ground which the pilot would then record on his maps.

But the maps were in the pilot's cockpit, and there was no way Casca could get to them. Perhaps, he thought, if he were to fly back toward where he thought he might find the German position, he could recognize some minor feature in the landscape that would point him toward his own lines and the small airstrip.

"Never flown in a plane before, eh?"
Wothering had said to him as he climbed into the plane. "It's bags of fun, you'll find."

"Well, this is no fucking fun at all," Casca fumed. "I don't know where I am. And I don't know where I'm going. I seem to be alright while I'm up here, but I don't know where I can put her down or how to do it. And I can't see the fucking ground except when I'm heading for it."

As he stared desperately around, another horrible idea occurred to him. "I'll bet I'm about to run out of fucking gas."

So what to do?
Circle or grid pattern. Circling he could see the ground between the wings without losing too much height.

Out or in?

Out, he decided and pulled the stick left, applying the left rudder as the now unconscious pilot had shown him. The plane dipped into a sharp, corkscrew dive, the spiraling valley rushing up fast.

Oh, great wings of Mercury, how do I get out of this?

Some instinct warned him that jerking the stick back to center and equalizing the rudder would not do. He guessed that such a maneuver would probably break the frail airplane apart.

He gently eased off on the left rudder pedal, coaxing the stick back toward the
center. The plane leveled out, but he had lost most of his altitude. The ground now seemed threateningly close. Carefully he inched the stick back right and sighed in relief as the plane soared gently upward and away to the right. He caught a glimpse of the ground but could make nothing of it.

The plane continued to climb in a broad, clockwise sweep, and Casca could now watch the ground at his leisure, looking back and down between the right wings.

But he was none the wiser. The pleasant ever-upward spiral brought more and more territory under his gaze but also removed it so far below that he could not discern anything.

This could be fun - if
I knew what I was doing
, he thought. The climb was becoming intoxicating. "I am Icarus," Casca exulted.

Up above, white clouds about the size of cathedrals or maybe cities wandered slowly toward them, passed overhead, and drifted away astern. A wispy
gray cloud, much lower than the others, appeared dead ahead of them, and suddenly they were in it. The world disappeared in a gray mist, and Casca felt rain whipping at his face.

Then they were free of it, but still Casca couldn't see, his goggles wet and misted. He took them from his face and was astonished at the force of the wind on his eyes and hurriedly replaced the eye gear.

"Hey, Captain," he shouted over his shoulder, "wake up! You don't know what you're missing!" Casca was quite unaware that a large part of his ecstasy was due to the lack of oxygen being fed to his brain.

The engine was starting to suffer from the same problem, but its
coughings and splutterings scarcely registered in Casca's euphoria, and when it cut out completely, he was mightily pleased at the splendid silence. He lay back comfortably in his seat, the clear, sunlit blue sky his own private universe.

"Never," he said to himself, "have I realized just how truly beautiful is the blue sky and these lovely clouds."

Deprived of the lift of its motor, the plane fell out of its spiral and dipped toward the ground.

"Interesting," Casca mumbled, observing that he was now looking once more through the propeller. He also dimly noticed that the propeller was moving much more slowly, so that he could see the circling blades which seemed to be vibrating ominously.

"Shit!" he shouted, "the fucking thing is going to fall off! Well, what the fuck? Don't need it anymore anyway."

He leaned back comfortably, stretched both legs out against the pedals, and folded his arms over the stick. The plane straightened out, its splendid aerodynamic design allowing it to glide gently on the currents of the mobile air.

Casca was jerked back into wakefulness by the sudden re-firing of the motor as their descent once more brought them into oxygen-rich air. He stretched luxuriously like a man waking from pleasant dreams. As if still in dreamland, he blinked upward at the all-encompassing sky. He shrugged himself more erect in the seat and gazed serenely through the propeller at the distant horizon where the land met the sky.

As his lungs filled with richer quantities of oxygen, vague memories stirred of
takeoff, some sort of disturbance from the ground, some sort of problem – "Shit!"

Suddenly Casca was wide awake – and sweating.

He tried to stand up in the cockpit to get some better idea of what was going on. And quickly wished he didn't know. The ground was horribly far away, and at the same time, terrifyingly close. And getting closer every moment.

The plane was almost on the ground, much too low to use the parachute that he was sitting on, even if he knew how. Nor was there any way to get his officer out of the rear cockpit.

The plane was flying straight and level but progressively lowering toward the floor of the valley. Unless Casca did something drastic – and what could he do? – they were going to be on the ground in another few seconds. The ground was rushing past at a terrifying speed, much, much faster than Casca's brief experience with motorcars had ever provided.

Lower and lower the biplane dropped until Casca could see individual stones amongst short grass.
Goats were running in all directions, bucking and butting at the air in their panic.

Now the ground was alongside him. The plane was still airborne, but the wheels were almost on the ground.

"Ease off on the throttle," Wothering had said, "bring up the nose, and the bird'll do the rest herself."

There was a bump, the plane rebounding into the air.

Another bump. And another bounce into the air.

Casca eased back a little farther on the stick, and closed the throttle more.

He felt the wing stall and the plane settled and trundled along the ground as Casca shut off the throttle.

They rolled to a standstill, but Casca still sat in the cockpit, luxuriating in his new experience – and in his relief to be back on the ground in one piece.

A wave of exultation swept through him, and he climbed out of the cockpit onto the wing. His shout to the captain died in his throat. Wothering had slumped out of sight.

Casca lifted him by the armpits. This provoked a flow of blood which at least reassured Casca that the pilot was alive. He got
Wothering out of the plane and laid him on the grass. A bullet had torn through one buttock, missing all vital parts, but the large wound had bled profusely.

As Casca finished dressing the wound and rolled the pilot onto his back, his eyes flickered open. He half sat up, saw the plane,
then sank back to the ground.

"Ah, got her down, eh? Stout fella,"
Wothering said as he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Casca sat beside the unconscious officer and dismally surveyed their situation.

Almost certainly they were about out of gas. They had two canteens of water, and Wothering had a Webley .38 and maybe two dozen rounds. Casca had been told that as observer, he needed no arms, but had obstinately brought along what he had, his Lee Enfield .303 rifle and its bayonet. He also had all the ammunition he had been issued, twenty-five rounds, and another fifty he had managed to steal as well as a few Mills bombs.

"Why do you give us guns if you don't want us to fire bullets?" he had testily demanded of the miserly quartermaster sergeant major.

"Yer rifle is ter carry yer bayonet," the QSM had snarled, "which is all any decent British soldier should require." Casca climbed onto the wing and retrieved from the pilot's cockpit the blood-soaked map. He spread it on the grass beside Wothering. He noted the position of the British lines, the airstrip they had taken off from, the lines of the Germans who had fired at them. None of the information was what Casca wanted to see. Never, in almost two thousand years of poring over military maps, had he ever found what he wanted to see.

"I know where the airfield is, where the British
are, where the Germans are." He drew a deep breath and wailed to the heavens the same question he had asked so often over the centuries: "But where the fuck are we?"