A Time for Heroes

by Frank Barnard

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

War makes heroes of men, but at what price? A magnificent, sweeping, three-generation historical epic encompassing both World Wars, about heroism, the romance of aviation and the conflict between fathers and sons. Sure to enthral fans of Ken Follett's Fall of Giants and Robert Radcliffe's Under an English Heaven As the twentieth century dawns, Guv Sutro, against his father's will, becomes a pioneer of aviation, a fighter ace on the Western Front during the Great War and a record-breaker between the wars. From his first flight in a primitive glider over the fields of Sussex, helped by the dogged loyalty of his friend Stan Kemp, he charts his ruthless course to fame and adulation. But with the outbreak of World War Two 'the best of Old England' begins to crumble. Guv's son Tim is fighting a more covert war, desperate to shed the burden of his father's reputation, while Tim's childhood companion Will Kemp, the son Guv felt he deserved, is fighting heroically, against overwhelming odds, as a Spitfire pilot. The fates of the men are bound together in the monumental ambitions and terrible tragedies of an age of heroes. What readers are saying about A Time for Heroes 'A beautifully told epic of human love and error. A truly great read ' ' Highly entertaining, with great action scenes and moments of gut-wrenching excitement. A very human novel, about people and strife, and survival in extreme circumstances that have universal resonances' '[Frank Barnard] is without doubt the Wilbur Smith of the skies '

Release date: March 29, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 514

Sample

In most of us there seems to be something that makes us look to leaders, to individuals who exemplify the qualities we suspect we might lack ourselves: brainpower, confidence, a willingness to take responsibility, charisma, a readiness to take risks. There is no shortage of candidates eager to assume this role, for good or ill. They share the public’s good opinion of themselves and in many cases prosper, though just as many are found out.

Perhaps this need stems from our early years when adults presented the world to us in a way that made sense, at least to them and for a time to us. There was security in it, reassurance, respect and often admiration; fulfilling the need to look up to someone exceptional; someone with capabilities you did not possess yourself who appeared to know things you did not know and could do things you were unable to contemplate.

Into this category falls the hero, the man of action whose deeds inspire and provoke awe and something close to adulation, as if touched by the gods, someone apart who symbolises the indomitable spirit of Man. But great achievements can obscure the reality that exists behind the public image.

I was also conscious, when writing, of that ambivalence many of us feel when confronted with past wars and past deeds; how would we have measured up faced with the same challenges if we had been part of that generation that moved from the golden summer of 1914 into unimaginable horror and destruction and came through it, some of them, into a bruised world that had changed for ever; where many of the old traditions, and distinctions of class, and certainties of what the future might hold, had been blown away as surely as those ranks of men who fought and died on the battlefields of Europe and beyond? Or only two decades later were required to climb into the cockpit of an aeroplane to engage the enemy (the same enemy) in defence of their own country, spread out and seemingly defenceless, below.

To these wars the people (of whatever nationality they happened to be) were led by those in positions of power and with very different, often questionable and ulterior motives. And this I could understand because, as the story progressed, I came to realise that in part I was drawing on my experience of numbers of characters I had encountered in my working life; personalities invariably described as ‘dynamic’, ‘forceful’, ‘driven’, ‘high achievers’, and yes, possessing leadership qualities that convinced those around them to follow, because somehow it was assumed they knew what they were doing, that they knew best, that they had a broader grasp of situations and opportunities than those less gifted. I must admit, on occasions I also fell tamely into line, and believed, only to have those beliefs questioned when a career or a company or even a country unravelled. Fortunately for me, by comparison to the choices that faced some of my characters in A Time for Heroes, such issues only had commercial implications, rarely political and never military ones. Even so, I was left with a wariness of those we are encouraged look up to. In the case of my novel it is self-appointed professional heroes like Guv Sutro, who seem to know what they are doing and only require us to show faith. I suppose, then, if this story has a purpose it is this: choose your heroes carefully because it is just possible they chose you . . .

In writing this novel I owe a debt to the following:

Letters from an Early Bird, Donal MacCarron; Sagittarius Rising (inevitably), Cecil Lewis; Winged Victory, V.M. Yeates; On a Wing and a Prayer, Joshua Levine; Aces Falling, Peter Hart; a whole batch of Osprey publishing titles: British and Empire Aces of World War I; Sopwith Camel vs Fokker Dr I Fokker D VII Aces of World War I; Richtofen’s Circus; Airfields and Airmen of Arras and The Somme by Mike O’Connor, and The Royal Flying Corps Handbook by Peter G. Cooksley; My Golden Flying Years, Air Commodore D’Arcy Greig with Norman Franks and Simon Muggleton; The Story of Brooklands, W. Boddy; Rye & Winchelsea, Alan Dickenson; The Long Weekend, Robert Graves and Alan Hodge; The Fast Set, Charles Jennings; Hitler and Appeasement, Peter Neville; Germany Calling, Mary Kenny; Kent Airfields in the Second World War, Robin J. Brooks; Hornchurch Eagles, Richard C. Smith; and my two bibles for ensuring my characters behave authentically in the air: Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche and Basic Aerobatics, R.D. Campbell and B. Tempest.

I also covered ground in England and France and would like to thank the Alfriston & Cuckmere Valley Historical Society for their help in confirming the topography of that beautiful part of England, particularly High And Over, the hill that features prominently throughout the book; and John Pulford, Head of Collections & Interpretation at the Brooklands Museum for arranging for me to roam the site in search of ghosts from the old flying days.

Finally I would like to record my appreciation of my two editors: the unofficial one, my wife Jan, always first to read the day’s output with an objective eye whilst wondering if that man in the small room is the chap she used to go about with in the real world; and Martin Fletcher, the Headline professional who gave an aspiring old writer his chance to write fiction not so long ago, and still does.

Frank Barnard, Peasmarsh, Rye, September 2011

Will Kemp

At the wheel of a borrowed Riley Nine the young man in the blue uniform crossed the Thames on the Woolwich Ferry and motored south through Tunbridge Wells. At Flimwell he turned east and the countryside began to open up. He had the Riley’s windows wound down and the sun-roof slid back. The woodlands and fields were tender green and the air, disturbed by his passing, was fragrant with early summer. There was little traffic on the road and apart from the burble of the Riley’s engine and the hum of its tyres on the hot tarmac a heavy silence hung over the small, hedged fields and clustered dwellings. The tranquillity made England seem exposed and vulnerable.

It was 1940 and April had just inched into May. Will Kemp had recently returned from France, posted to a fighter squadron maintaining routine patrols over the Thames Estuary and the Channel coast. Although the scant news filtering through was not good, the flights from Hornchurch made only rare contact with enemy aircraft so, with the squadron at full strength, he had been granted a few days’ leave.

At Hawkhurst he was waved down by a police constable wearing a tin helmet.

‘And where are you bound?’

‘Rye.’

‘Purpose of journey?’

‘On leave.’

‘Funny time to choose, with things as they are.’

‘I didn’t choose. It was chosen for me by my CO.’

‘You don’t say?’ The policeman studied Will’s identity card, his lips moving as he read the details. ‘Seems to be in order.’ He sounded reluctant, passing it back through the car window. ‘Can’t be too careful. There’s talk of Fifth Columnists in this area.’

Will enagaged first gear. ‘I’ll keep my eyes open.’

The policeman thought he saw faint humour in the eyes that were going to be kept open for Fifth Columnists. ‘On your way, Sergeant. It’s not funny, you know. We all have a job to do.’

At Newenden, after crossing the water meadows and approaching the level-crossing of the Kent & East Sussex Railway, Will was stopped again, this time by a Royal Engineers private armed with a Lee Enfield rifle. In the goods yard behind the small corrugated-iron station, men in khaki were being drilled. Again he passed his identity card through the driver’s window. The private checked to see if Will was alone, noting the wings on his tunic and his Sergeant’s stripes.

‘What’s up?’ said Will.

‘This line’s under Government control,’ said the private. ‘That’s what’s up. We’re checking everybody who comes through.’

‘What use is a tin-pot set-up like this to the war effort?’

‘You’d be surprised, Sergeant. We’ve got rail-mounted guns at Rolvenden and Wittersham.’

‘Not sure you should tell me that. A copper at Hawkhurst said you can’t be too careful. He suspects there are Fifth Columnists in this area. I might be one.’

‘I can see you’re kosher,’ said the private.

‘How do I know you are? You and your mates could be Nazi paratroopers, for all I know.’

‘Don’t talk daft.’

‘Can I go now?’

The private continued to peer through the window. ‘What do you fly then?’

‘Classified.’

‘I hear the RAF let ordinary blokes have a go. I’m in the wrong mob.’ The man hesitated. ‘What that copper said – you ain’t seen nothing, have you?’

‘No,’ Will said, ‘but I’ll keep my eyes open.’

The private returned the identity card. ‘In the air and all, eh? “Beware the Hun in the sun.” Isn’t that what you fighter boys say?’

‘Never heard that before,’ said Will.

He approached Rye from the north, dropping down Rye Hill in third gear, ready for the difficult left-hand corner into Military Road that bent back on itself. It led towards the family garage a few miles further on. Beyond it, on its vantage point overlooking the flat plain of Romney Marsh, lay the turreted bulk of High And Over. As Will shaped to make the turn he saw Rye rising up behind Land Gate, that remnant of the town fortification built to keep out invaders from the sea. At the town’s heart, the spire of St Mary’s Church was sharp against the sky, its tower bells silent, stilled by war, no longer echoing across the marshland, waiting for deliverance – not this time from the French.

When he reached the garage it seemed, at first, much as usual; the frontage of white cement with its big black sliding doors to the workshop, the central plate-glass window of the showroom and, to its left, the smaller door leading to the reception desk and the partitioned office. Under the large clock was the sign: S&K Motor Engineers. The ‘s’ of Engineers hung loose, the white cement was stained and the clock had stopped at half past six.

Will parked the Riley by the petrol pumps flanking the showroom window. Its tyres ran over the rubber line that sounded the bell inside the office, but nobody came out. The glass of the window was dirty, and inside there was no vehicle, only some empty shelves once stacked with cans of motor-oil, and a scatter of leaflets and handbooks on the floor.

Will found his father in the inspection pit in the workshop, working on a battered two-stroke Trojan saloon. He squatted down, his head sideways.

‘Hello, Dad.’

Stan Kemp showed no surprise. He paused in his work, pulled a rag from his overall pocket and wiped his hands slowly. ‘You see the rubbish that’s coming through these days.’

‘The simplest car in the world.’

‘Until you come to repair it.’ Stan came up the steps of the inspection pit in his awkward, shuffling way, still wiping his hands. ‘I hope you’re not after petrol.’

‘I’ve got plenty.’

‘This ruddy fuel rationing. How am I expected to make a living? Hardly anyone drives anywhere any more. This old crock’s typical of the stuff I have to keep going because it’s cheap on fuel.’ Stan threw the rag into an upturned, empty oil drum. ‘How long have you got?’

Will knew the question would be asked. He had a forty-eight-hour pass.

‘Need to be back tonight.’

‘Hardly worth the trip.’

‘Thought I’d see how you were, while I had the chance.’

‘You see how I am. How are you?’

‘Fine.’ Stan Kemp locked the garage and they walked through to the bungalow at the back. He made tea and found some biscuits. When he sat down at the chipboard table in the kitchen he winced. ‘My ruddy leg. It’s giving me gyp.’

Will had lived with his father’s ruddy leg all his life. He had not seen the leg but only knew it had been pierced by shrapnel when he and Guv Sutro had flown low over German trenches in 1916, spotting for artillery. It gave him varying degrees of gyp that were mentioned but never explained. Nothing was explained: his father’s boyhood in Alfriston where he roamed the Downs with Guv, their experiments with primitive flying machines before the war, his service with the RFC on the Western Front, his wife Rose who walked out on him and Will without saying why or where she was going, most of all Guv Sutro, the man he had flown with in battle, his partner in the garage, living alone now in the chill rooms and echoing hallways of High And Over. Over the years these broad facts had come to be known through a casual remark, a bitter comment, but never details about what had happened and why, all questions brushed aside.

The bungalow was rank with the smell of motor-oil, tobacco, fried food and the whiff of feral cats that raised litters in the scrubby garden and scavenged on discarded scraps. Will felt a moment of doubt seeing his father in such a situation; wondered if he should stay longer, after all.

‘Let me buy you a beer, Dad,’ he said, ‘at the old place.’

‘I don’t know. I thought you were in a rush.’

‘Not that much of one. I’m parched.’

‘Alcohol and flying don’t mix.’

‘That’s a bit rich considering what your lot got up to in France.’

‘That’s what I mean. A lot of blokes learned it to their cost. If you want to get through this business, you’ll take it on board.’

‘Blimey, it’s just a beer to whet the whistle. I don’t intend to get us blotto.’ Will picked up the empty tea cups and put them on top of the unwashed crockery in the sink. ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve never been much of a drinker. You know that.’ He thought back to his bad head at the airfield at Glisy, after his night with the Lysander boys in France, and wondered if it was still true. He had drunk plenty since, like all of them, waiting for everything to start. Perhaps it would be different then. Perhaps he wouldn’t need it. Or perhaps he might need it more.

They did not talk on the drive to the Ferry Inn, going the back way through Stone-in-Oxney in the Riley. The pub was the same, ancient and run down, squatting beside the mosquito-clouded Reading Sewer, in summer barely a trickle that fed into the Military Canal just south of Appledore. But the ale was well cared for in its casks and the sawdust on the floor was fresh. When they entered the bar the regulars made the usual remarks about Will’s pilot’s wings, asked the usual questions, received the usual replies. Some of the old men told him about their time in distant wars. They were not interested in him, only themselves and what they had to say. His father leaned against the counter, not part of the conversation. He had always hung back like that.

When, years ago, Will’s mother Rose had paid them one of her visits, he had been brought here for a treat, sipping lemonade, until she demanded another gin-and-it and his father, nursing a half of bitter, began the usual arguments, so familiar that Will could predict the words they used.

Now, as they carried their beers into the small garden at the front of the pub, Will could sense her presence, cross-legged and tossing her foot, letting the little heeled shoe dangle, drawing hard on a cigarette and puffing out the smoke, looking around with her quick, sharp eyes, then holding out her empty glass and jerking her head towards the bar. ‘What’s a girl got to do to get a drink round here?’ He remembered how his father used to look at her, like a man regarding an exotic but unpredictable beast, with distrust yet admiration. He’d regarded her in a similar way, accepting her moods because that was all he knew; casually sentimental, ‘Darling Will, give your mum a nice, big kiss,’ or violent and abusive, ‘How you ever thought I’d be prepared to end my days in this dead-and-alive hole with you two bumpkins bloody well beats me.’ And yet in moments of calm she retained a fleeting, wistful beauty and Will could see the girl in her; the girl his father fell for, thought he knew and never had. Finally, she began to stay away, for days, for weeks and eventually she went for good. By then, they were glad to see her go.

‘I’ve just got back from France,’ Will said as they sat down on the old church pew that served for a bench to the side of the pub’s front door.

His father began to roll a cigarette with great deliberation. ‘Oh, yes?’

Will described his time at Le Touquet, some of it, his posting to Étain-Rouvres and how an engine problem had forced him down at Glisy en route. ‘The funny thing was, Tim Sutro was there with his Lysander bunch. What are the odds on that?’

Stan Kemp licked his lips and inserted the drooping smoke. ‘How was he then?’

‘Oh, much the same. He’s got a steady nerve, our Tim, like all those chaps. And by heck, they need it. They were already taking a hell of a hammering. Who knows what’s happened to them now?’

‘Why? What have you heard?’

‘It’s no secret things aren’t going well over there. And those poor old Lizzies are no match for what the Luftwaffe’s throwing at them.’

‘Well, Tim’s only got himself to blame.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He didn’t have to join the mob. No doubt the Sutros could have pulled strings and got him a nice easy billet somewhere.’

‘You don’t give Tim much credit, do you, Dad?’

‘Credit for what? He only did it to please his father.’ Instantly, Will heard Tim’s quiet voice, under the black sky and scatter of stars at Glisy: ‘I’m not out to seek his approval any more. I’m a big boy now.’ His father was saying: ‘Sutro’s gone through his whole life like that. People are always trying to please him, though God knows why. He takes it all for granted, never pays heed, takes everything as his due. That damned Sutro.’

‘I didn’t realise you hated him so much,’ Will said.

‘Well, now you know.’

‘But why? Something in the war, or after?’

‘I’m not prepared to talk about it. It’s personal.’

‘You never want to talk about it.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘I think there is. You never know what’s coming up these days. I’d like to understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Why things are the way they are, with you and Guv, with you and Mum, with the garage – why everything’s such a mess.’

‘You say it’s a mess, I don’t.’

Will shrugged. ‘I give up, Dad. Do you want another beer?’

‘No, we’d best be going back, there’s a mist coming up from the Marsh.’

Will looked at his father sitting on the bench, his beer hardly touched, rubbing his injured leg. His fingers were shiny-hard and stained with oil and nicotine. He was gaunt from neglect and had lost more hair since Will had seen him last. He struck his son as a hopeless case. He’d had his chances: a chance to make a name in France where he might have become a pilot; a chance to share the glory that came with Guv Sutro’s record-breaking between the wars – except he refused for reasons known only to himself; a chance to build the garage into something more than just a small-town business catering for local trade. Chances all along the line, none taken, no progress made. No wonder his mother had left. How had they ever got together, all those years ago? Even then, with youth on his side, Stan Kemp had nothing about him in the way of looks. And looks were so important to Rose. Will recalled how she had openly admired men when they were out. ‘Oh, look, he certainly cuts a dash.’ How she had always praised him as her handsome boy. ‘Thank God you take after my side of the family.’ It made no sense for them to have married. Maybe she’d realised too late and that was why she was the way she was, and that was why she’d left.

With the mist curling towards them across the banks of the sewer that the more genteel liked to call a stream, Will was not inclined to hurry this last, good pint in a familiar place. He was not like his father. He would take his chances and make his way. This war was the biggest chance of all. He was in the right place at the right time with the right skills and the right attitude. It was perfect, couldn’t be better. He’d wring the neck off his Spitfire, and wring the neck of any Jerry who got in the way. That was all it took. The biggest chance of all.

He looked again at his father restless and wanting to go. He symbolised everything Will refused to be – beaten and submissive, scratching a living in his workshop, existing in that rotten little bungalow. Did he wonder where the time had gone? Where he’d taken those turns to nowhere? Will had almost relented, deciding to stay the night after all, to keep the old man company. Now he changed his mind again. Let him stew. He was sick of trying to get through to him. He had better things to do with a leave than stooge around in the sticks. He still had time to get to London, find a room and take in a show.

Back at the bungalow he came around the Riley and opened the passenger door. His father climbed out stiffly.

‘I’m heading off,’ Will said.

Stan nodded. ‘Yes, all right. Like I said, hardly worth the trip.’

Will felt an irritation grow inside. ‘If that’s how you feel.’

‘Are you going back to France?’

‘Only at thirty thousand feet.’

The mention of France made him remember Chézy-au-Bois. His instinct had been to say nothing about it, sensing that it might rouse unwelcome memories. He had resolved to spare his father that, knowing anyway that he would receive no adequate response. Suddenly it didn’t matter any more. He resented this tight-lipped little man who always maintained a distance as though he was afraid of betraying any feeling. He didn’t need him, never had, and only felt a vague compassion. From him he had learned nothing. Stan was always ill-at-ease in company, his diffidence taken for aloofness, seeming to nurse some secret disappointment he could not share, seemingly preoccupied with himself and, in Rye, a reputed bore – sound enough if you got him onto the complexities of an MG J3 supercharger but otherwise best left alone.

Will had an overpowering impulse to provoke him now, curious to see what reaction he got; perhaps he’d learn a little of what had happened at Chézy.

‘Talking of France,’ he said, ‘Tim and me went on a bit of a jaunt when we met up at Glisy.’

‘A jaunt?’

‘We borrowed a motor-cycle combination and went out to your old airfield at Chézy-au-Bois.’

His father had turned his head slowly and was staring at him. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Tim had a photo of the place as it used to be, when you and Guv flew from there in FB5s. Guv was even in the picture.’

‘I know the picture.’

‘Except for the machines and the tents where you lived, the place has hardly changed. Farm buildings just the same. Even the farmer,’ he paused, ‘just the same.’

‘You met the farmer?’

‘Monsieur Pettit. Maybe you remember him? He certainly remembers you, or your squadron anyway.’

‘No doubt he would.’

‘No love lost, I’d say.’

‘A funny lot, the French.’

‘I don’t know what your outfit got up to out there. He was pleasant enough at first, but when Tim showed him the photograph, thinking he’d be interested, he tore the damned thing to pieces. No warning, just ripped it to shreds. Now why should he do that?’

‘Why ask me?’

‘I thought you might know.’

‘He’s a farmer, isn’t he? Hardly helped his farming, did we, requisitioning his land? Not surprising he’s still a bit touchy.’

‘So that’s your explanation?’

‘It’ll have to do.’ Stan Kemp took a last drag on his cigarette and ground the stub into the gravel with his heel. ‘Now I’ve got a old crock to fix. Give me some warning next time you come.’

‘Will I find you at home?’

‘Of course. It’s always good to have a chat.’

Will scanned his father’s face to see if he was joking, but it seemed that he was not. Again he felt a stab of guilt but thought he would push him further. ‘I might pop up to High And Over while I’m here.’

‘You won’t get past the gates.’

‘I know a thousand ways to get in there.’

‘Yes, I suppose you do. Well, it’s up to you. You’ll find him much changed, if you find him at all.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘“That damned Sutro”.’

‘Oh, that. You must do what you want. Pay no mind to me.’

They shook hands briefly. Will climbed back in the Riley and as he started the engine he heard the bungalow door bang closed. Behind it Stan Kemp waited, his head bowed, listening to the exhaust note of the Riley fade. His eyes were damp and he stumbled to the kitchen to find a cloth to wipe his face.

Will drove out to High And Over. He had known he would. The great house lay obscured behind untended banks of rhododendrons. The verges along the drive were uncut and clumps of grass and weed were sprouting in the gravel. The gates were securely chained. He listened for a while but heard only the beat of the distant sea and a rising wind disturbing the branches of the cedars. He did not choose to enter by one of the thousand ways he knew. Instead he turned the Riley round and drove back down the familiar lane. When he reached the garage it was growing dusk and a light was showing in the bungalow at the back. For a moment Will thought he still had something to say, perhaps in the way of regret, because he knew it had not gone well. Here was a man alone, locked away somehow, and at High And Over another man also locked away, both contained in their private worlds, once so close but split apart by some deep sense of wrong, an enmity that went back more than twenty years, crippling and corrosive and, it seemed, always to be hidden.

Will hesitated, his hands tensing on the steering wheel, ready to pull in to the forecourt, park by the Cleveland pumps and knock on the bungalow door. But he found himself driving past, deciding it could probably wait. He was not quite ready to leave Rye, even now. It occurred to him that he might not see the place again.

He parked the Riley in Church Square and walked around the graveyard to the Gungarden below the ramparts of Ypres Tower where cannon once aimed their barrels across the harbour mouth towards the open sea. Not so far away lay France, visible on a clear day; France where everything was said to be going wrong; France where he had spent some good times until, at the end of April, a Hurricane pilot named Tony Dibbs managed to kill himself in a flying accident at Étain-Rouvres near Verdun.

The death of Tony Dibbs seemed like an eternity ago. In fact, it had happened only a week or so before.

Pilot Officer Dibbs had taken off in coarse-pitch, like starting a car in second gear, realised too late that his machine was oddly sluggish, failed to gain height and came down in a meadow close to a farm, killing several cows and himself. The word went round the Hurricane squadrons in the vicinity and the CO at Le Touquet where Will was based chose him to replace Dibbs as Pilot Officer.

Le Touquet had not been without its attractions. There were few signs of concern about the threat from the east – more uniforms in evidence perhaps, and military vehicles and aeroplanes occasionally disturbing the coastal calm – but the resort seemed as popular with society as ever, with its casino, its golf course, its Hippodrome, its tennis courts and many smart hotels doing excellent trade. The weather was good, the food was good and the women, some of them, were not, particularly with the arrival at the nearby airfield of young fighter pilots in Royal Air Force blue. The atmosphere was redolent of Guv Sutro’s lurid accounts of the RFC on the Western Front; champagne instead of beer, acting the hero to sweet-smelling mamzelles who leaned in close, accordion music drifting from the doors and windows of bars and cafés, wide open against the heat, not understanding a damned word the locals said to you but loving the way they said it, and flying, always flying, rehearsing for a show that was a long time coming, the enemy not venturing this far west.

Some thought they might never come – that someone, somewhere, might show a little sense and call the whole thing off. Will hoped, strongly, that they were wrong. He knew how few men were given the chance to test themselves in battle. It had been his purpose for as long as he could remember, browsing through the flying books in High And Over’s library, reading of Mannock, McCudden, Guv Sutro and the rest. Then Dibbs forgot to push the black knob of the propeller lever on his throttle quadrant and it seemed that Will had got his wish.

Once in the air he looked back occasionally, watching Le Touquet gradually recede in a creeping sea mist, shimmering like a mirage. Then, twenty minutes into the flight, flicking his eyes over his instruments, he saw the needle of the oil-pressure gauge rising and falling, a fine haze of lubricant running back from the engine cowling, gathering at the starboard wing root to be whipped away by the slipstream. He checked his chart and confirmed that the smudge on the landscape 15,000 feet below was Doullens, on the Route Nationale running south to Amiens. On his R/T he raised Control at Glisy, the nearest RAF airfield and a few miles east of the city, and they gave him permission to land.

When he taxied in, he was met by a fire tender and an ambulance but the oil leak had diminished and he felt like a fraud. The fire crew drew up close alongside and the airman next to the driver shouted across to him. Will could make no sense of it but shook his head, held his hand out flat, palm down, and w