Casca 21: The Trench Soldier (13 page)

To Casca's great relief, Captain Wothering came around. He tried to sit up, winced mightily as his weight pressed on his mangled buttock, and rolled onto his belly.

"Ah, that's better. I say, old fella, you're a splendid medic.
Damned good pilot, too. Where the fuck are we by the way?"

Casca gestured to the map.
"Can't pick out a local feature, sir. All I can see is goats and grass. I'm sure there's a farmhouse full of terrified Frogs somewhere over one of these little hills. Maybe some kraut troops too. But even a farm wouldn't help. There are farms dotted all over the map."

"Aha, yes, usual problem. Well, we do know some things. For one it's a good bet we're down behind their lines. And if we're not, then we've nothing to worry about." He pointed one slim finger at a mark he had made. "This is where that Jerry machine gun nest is, the one that hit us. Do you know where that is from here?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. I blacked out, and I banked and turned so much, I really have no idea..."

"No matter," the officer airily dismissed the problem. "Let's see then. I bought it at just about eleven-fifty
ack emma, and it's now twelve-ten pip emma. How long have we been down d'you think?"

"Maybe ten minutes."

"Excellent. Then you were flying for ten minutes. Did you circle?"

"Yes, a couple of times.
Quite a bit altogether. But I think I flew straight for some time, too."

"Capital!"
Wothering accepted the confusing information as the best available. "Let's say we were doing a hundred and twenty to make it easy. Ten minutes. Twenty miles, right? So the Jerries are something like, say, fifteen miles away in some direction or other. That's not so bad." He shook his head. "Not so good, either, means we've got to survey something like six hundred square miles. Wonder if we have enough gas. Well, let's get at it. We've got quite a few rivers and roads. Must be able to identify something."

He pushed himself up off the ground – and promptly crashed back down on his face.

"Damn," he muttered, "weak as a kitten. I say, corporal, can you help me to the plane, d'you think?"

Casca lifted him erect, then
lay him over his shoulder and carried him to the plane where he placed him feet-first in the rear cockpit. Wothering slumped into the seat, then screamed and came erect again, holding painfully to the sides of the cockpit, his face stark white and pouring sweat from the effort.

"Damn.
Won't do at all. Can't sit down with half my bloody arse shot off. I say, d'you expect to use that parachute?"

"Don't even know how to, sir."

"Well, perhaps you could lend it to me, eh?"

With an enormous effort he hauled himself up while Casca stuffed his chute and the remnants of
Wothering's ruined one into one side of the cockpit, making a lopsided cushion to keep the officer's mangled butt clear of the seat.

"Yes, I can manage this alright. But I'll leave most of the flying to you, and save the pressure on my busted arse."

"But, sir, I can't fly."

"Nonsense, you're a natural. Besides, the
Jerries could be here any minute. Let's get going, shall we?"

Casca walked to the propeller and cranked it around twice.
Wothering closed the switch.

"Contact!" he called and on the next turn the motor fired and the propeller became a fast moving
blur. With considerable misgiving, but no real alternative, Casca climbed into the observer's seat. The plane was already moving forward. From behind him Casca heard the pilot's cheerful voice.

"We've got about a quarter tank of gas. Plenty of room here for a good long run."

As the plane gathered speed, Casca watched the grass and stones turn to a blur. Up ahead the grazing goats were once more racing about in terror. To Casca's astonishment he found that the pilot was right. Through the stick he could feel the wing surfaces of the plane being lifted by the fast moving air. He eased the stick back just a little, and the ground fell away beneath them.

"Perfect, old bean.
Jove, but you're a good flyer. Now I know we came east from our lines to where we spotted those Jerries," he groaned in pain. "Where they spotted us. So, I think we'll weave a sort of zigzag heading back west. Just weave over toward northwest for a bit, and then weave back to the southwest, eh?"

Casca banked slightly, and the plane soared away along the chosen route.

"See anything familiar?" Wothering shouted.

"Farms," Casca answered.

"Yes. It all looks pretty much the same, doesn't it? Let's try the other way for a little."

The flying, Casca discovered, was a delight. He played about in the air like a bird, whooping like an excited schoolboy when a sudden air pocket dropped them toward the ground or a draft of hot air pushed them aloft.

They made a number of passes back and forth, and Casca's anxiety about their petrol supply was beginning to build again when he saw something. He pointed and Wothering swivelled painfully to look.

"Jove!" he exclaimed. "We've found our pot of gold."

Casca wasn't too sure about that. What he had seen rapidly grew larger. This was no mere regiment's HQ, but a huge military encampment with a number of tents and even some timber buildings, a few trucks and ambulances, several large motorcars, half a dozen airplanes, and what was clearly a huge store of petrol, hundreds of barrels of the stuff. Beyond the petrol store there was another collection of squat cylindrical tanks, but Casca could not guess what they were.

"Climb, then bank right."
Wothering spoke just as Casca was thinking it might be time to get out of sight. As he responded he reflected that for the moment he had felt in command of the plane. The authority in Wothering's voice had reminded him that he was the driver.

"They've probably seen us anyway," the captain said. "
D'you have any of those Mills bombs with you? I hear you're a dab hand with them."

Casca confirmed that, as usual, he had half a dozen.

"Good, I'll take control. We'll come in low and level, and you select a target-pick something well ahead. We'll be going pretty fast, but otherwise it should be about the same as from a balloon. I'll make one recce pass and then two more as slow as I can."

Casca roved his eyes over the landscape, but their
maneuver to avoid detection had taken them too high to distinguish any of the few distinctive landmarks.

"Let's get down now and take a look-see,"
Wothering shouted and turned the nose downward.

The pilot
skillfully lost altitude. And as they approached the camp, they were at about treetop level.

Casca spotted an enormous parade; thousands, tens of thousands of men were drawn up in ranks, standing bareheaded in the sun. At the head of the parade a fat priest was waddling about before a field altar, celebrating holy Mass to call down from Heaven God's blessing on these troops who were, Casca guessed, to launch an offensive at dawn on the morrow. At that time the priest would, no doubt, be several miles away behind the lines, celebrating Mass for some nuns in a convent and looking forward to a nice breakfast of black sausage and sauerkraut.

The plane swept over the massed soldiers who were staring up at the small aircraft. There were so many men, it would be impossible to miss. Casca decided not to wait for Wothering's slow pass and bit the pins from three grenades and dropped them in quick succession.

He saw one fall among the praying men, scattering them in all directions, but it failed to explode. Then altar, priest, and tabernacle all disappeared in a flash of fire and a great cloud of dust. The third grenade exploded in the latrines beyond the parade ground, blowing into the air the broken timbers of the crude sheds along with various bits of the bodies of men who had been hiding there smoking.

"Hey, I say," protested Wothering, "that's hardly cricket, bombing a church parade."

"Judgment from heaven," the Eternal Mercenary said seriously. "If you come back to the right, I'll drop the others on that fuel dump."

Wothering did as Casca asked. Again the first grenade was a dud, but Casca had the satisfaction of seeing the other two explode among the piles of fuel drums, and the high octane petrol burst into flames. As they roared away gaining altitude, Casca looked back and saw more explosions as the fire spread.

"For sure all those men and equipment came along a main road," the pilot shouted. "I'm going to stay low and circle till we find it."

It didn't take long. As
Wothering had guessed there was a major road just to the north of the German encampment, and he quickly identified it on his map as Chemin des Dames. More German troops were marching east along the road, together with a number of artillery pieces drawn by mules.

Wothering
swooped low to inspect the moving army, attracting numerous bursts of rifle fire.

The road ran past several burned-out villages. The slopes of the low hills were a maze of trenches dotted with large shell craters. German Army engineers had hastily thrown bridges across the streams alongside the blackened and broken remains of the old ones that had been dynamited by French army engineers in their withdrawal or destroyed by artillery fire.

The only trees to be seen were charred stumps, and all the houses and barns were flattened ruins, the few standing walls riddled with rifle and machine gun fire. Casca could clearly see broken guns, ammunition carts and ambulances, the bloated bodies of dead horses rotting alongside them.

And on the near hills were hastily dug cemeteries, hundreds and hundreds of little white crosses in rows like infantry on parade.

Wothering climbed and set course for the British lines and handed the controls back to Casca announcing casually that he was going to take a little nap. His offhand manner didn't fool Casca who readily guessed that the demands of the brief flying action had reopened his wound and that he was once again faint from the loss of blood.

Wherever he looked, from this height the French countryside all appeared the same. Tiny houses and barns and hay ricks were dotted about the gently undulating landscape. Here and there were small rivers and a few roads that passed through small villages each with a church or two and a town hall.

At last, off to his left, he saw a larger town with bigger buildings. As he turned to shout to Wothering, he spotted a cathedral.

But the pilot was unconscious. Casca unbuckled his harness and stood on his seat to reach into the back cockpit and wake the wounded officer.
Wothering's pain-wracked eyes fluttered open, and he struggled upright in his seat. He gulped a mouthful of whisky from his flask and some color returned to his pallid face.

"Ah yes, that'll be Rheims," he mumbled. Our lines are just a few miles south. Now ....” The rest of what he had to say was drowned out by an enormous backfire as the engine cut out.

"Ah yes," Wothering muttered, "had to happen. Well, just set her down anywhere that looks pretty flat."

For a moment Casca remained standing as he was, staring in amazement at the calm face of the British officer, then he realized that
Wothering was about to pass out again, and he dropped back into his seat and turned his attention to seeking someplace that looked flat.

The gently rolling landscape suddenly looked very different, a patchwork of steep hillsides and narrow valleys with scarcely a level patch to be seen – and then only
plowed fields.

He chose one and pointed it out.

"Yes, it will have to do," came Wothering's tired voice. "Better buckle up, though. Could be rough on the undercart. Go around to the east and come back to land right into the northwest – I think that's where the wind is from."

The
Nieuport was gliding easily, and when Casca turned they were about forty feet above the ground.

"Now, head for that haystack in the next field,"
Wothering shouted. "Perfect. Exactly right. Aim to set her down just over that first stone fence. If you can..."

The voice died away, and Casca knew that the officer had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The stone fence was coming up, and Casca cleared it easily then brought up the nose for the stall, but the plane sailed on down the length of the field.

Casca lifted the nose a little more. It seemed to him that he had the aircraft standing on its tail, but still they stayed airborne, moving down the length of the field like a rag blown
on the wind. The stone fence at the farther end of the field was coming up fast. Then, at last, the Nieuport started to settle toward the ground. Too late. The fence was dead ahead.

Casca hauled back on the stick.

The Nieuport reared up and over the stone wall. The unpowered craft stalled, and the plane dived for the ground.

Casca came to in the cockpit, blood streaming from a gashed forehead where he had struck the instrument panel. His back felt like it had been wrenched out of line and one wrist was certainly sprained if not broken. His head throbbed unmercifully, and there was a hell of a lot of blood.

He unbuckled his harness and got groggily to his feet. The rear cockpit was empty. He climbed out onto the wing. The plane had sheared off the top half of the haystack, spreading it out over thirty yards, a large part of it pushed ahead of where the Nieuport had come to rest.

And in the hay scattered ahead of the plane, Casca could see
Wothering lying on his back. He had evidently been too weak to take his own advice about buckling up.

His eyes opened as Casca reached him. He glanced briefly around him and smiled wanly. Then he passed out again.

Casca felt him over, but couldn't find any further injuries. He dressed the reopened wound, then bandaged his own head, and sat wearily beside the wounded officer.

Wothering
came to again and tried to sit up, sucking in his breath in an agonized gasp as his gashed buttock took his weight. He turned onto his belly and lifted himself on his elbows to look around.

"Hmm.
I see you found the haystack alright."

"Yes," Casca answered, "I just couldn't get her down in time."

"My fault," the pilot said. "Should have started the approach farther back. The head doesn't function quite right when it's running short on blood. I see you've lost quite a bit, too."

"Yes." Casca felt the blood still seeping into the bandage around his head. "The flow is slowing now. I'll be alright in a bit."

"Stretch out," Wothering said. "That's an order. I can keep watch for a bit."

Casca didn't feel like arguing. And there was little choice anyway. Neither of them was in any sort of shape to run away – or to fight. Some troops, German for sure, should arrive any minute and take them prisoner. He allowed himself to sink into unconsciousness.

He woke to Wothering's urgent command. "Wake up, Corporal! We've got company coming, and it's not what we expected."

Casca opened his eyes expecting to see a number of field-
gray uniformed infantry toting Mauser rifles. What he saw was worse. There were only three gray uniforms, but they were bedecked with gold braid and riding in a large, open Mercedes motorcar.

Behind the wheel of the Mercedes sat a tall, elegant-looking German. But he was no chauffeur – the gold braid and the splendid uniform suggested that he was a high ranking officer if not a royal prince, and the wings on his chest denoted that he was a pilot.

With the agility of an athlete, the driver leaped from his seat, drawing a pistol as he did so. He walked toward the downed airplane casually displaying the Luger. He spoke politely in coarse English, addressing himself to Wothering. "Good afternoon, Englander. Welcome to the territory of the New Greater Germany. I gather you are wounded and will excuse you from standing."

He ignored Casca, but Casca included himself in the dispensation from standing since his bandaged head bore witness that he too was wounded.

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Hermann Goering, and these two gentlemen are my friends, the Baron Von Richtofen and Oberleutnant Max Immelmann. We are all flyers on our way to join our squadron. On behalf of all of us, I would like to thank you for a very entertaining spectacle." He laughed heartily.

"Good afternoon,"
Wothering replied. "I am Captain Henry Osgood Wothering, and this is Corporal Casterton. We are obviously your prisoners, and I accept that. I deny, however, your claim to this part of France. I happen to have read some of the ravings of your Herr Walter Rathenau, and I deny all of his claims."

"I am not surprised," Goering sneered. "From such an inferior pilot I would not expect any high level of intellectual understanding. But let me tell you, our
Rathneau is right when he talks of Lebensraum. As he puts it: "We need land on this earth.”

"Everybody does,"
Wothering replied, "but that doesn't entitle you to take it from France."

"We have the same right to take it from France as you have to take India, Ireland, or Africa. We are going to build a new German Empire here, `
Mitteleuropa,' and if the French are too stupid to see that it is in their own best interests, then we will just have to show them. A strong, unified central Europe under Germany will be able to stand and compete against the other empires – British, American, and Russian. History demands it, and we are going to accomplish it.

"But we are wasting time. What was the nature of the mission that you so clumsily aborted with your ridiculous landing?"

"We are your prisoners of war," Wothering answered, "and we are not required to give you any information."

"Well, no matter," Goering said. "There is little that we don't already know of the pathetic attempts of your contemptible little army to stand in the way of history. I probably know more of the dispositions and
strengths, I should say weaknesses, of your army than you do."

Casca, sitting ignored on the ground, grimaced. The arrogant German was surely right. There was so little left of the British Expeditionary Force that German flyers, who were over the lines daily, doubtless did know more of its circumstances than the British officers did.

"Well, you certainly will not be passing on the information you have gained of our situation. Just leave your weapons on the ground there and get into the car," Goering said.

They got into the rear seat with Immelmann,
then Goering pulled the big car around in a tight turn and roared away.

The Mercedes pulled up within the German encampment that they had just bombed, and Captain
Wothering was taken to the headquarters building. Casca was marched away to a compound where he joined a small number of other prisoners, French and British, and all enlisted men.

These other prisoners had been captured from scouting
parties, or even out of their own lines by raiding parties of German infantry, due to demands from the German high command for intelligence information. That they would risk such raids suggested that there must be a major push imminent. The prisoners had all been intensively interrogated and, Casca guessed, had told the Germans the little they knew.

It seemed scarcely worth the trouble. Nothing significant had changed in the positions of either army since the Battle of the Marne earlier in the month. Trains were daily rushing French troops to the front as the Germans either knew or should assume. Perhaps there were British reinforcements on the way, but certainly the
Tommies in the trenches would know nothing of such movements. With a bored sigh Casca sat down to wait his turn for interrogation.

He was not kept waiting long. To his surprise he was taken before the elegant officer who had found them.

Goering was in a rage. The sneering good humor that he had shown by the downed plane had been replaced by a seething tantrum.

"So, you are the barbarian who bombed our troops at their prayers? And who destroyed our fuel supply?

"When we came upon your plane, we were still on our way here and did not then know of your monstrous attacks."

Goering slammed his fist into the desk with such force that the gold seal ring that he wore on his little finger stamped his emblem into the wood.

"Himmelherrgott!" he snarled. "We have plenty of men, and, for that matter, plenty of priests, but you have cost us most of our petrol. It will take us many days to replenish supplies, and our assault upon Verdun cannot be delayed."

Verdun? Casca was puzzled. Verdun was certainly the key sector of the Maginot line. But it was not what he would consider a worthwhile military objective. But he tried to keep the conversation going. "You will not find Verdun an easy target."

The big German's good humor returned momentarily. "Ach, but you are wrong. You missed what should have been your real target. Had your bombs landed amongst our chlorine store, you might have really damaged our attack. Yes indeed, we are about to teach the French and you British a real lesson at Verdun. You will be totally defeated within a matter of hours. We have a new weapon that is about to completely revolutionize warfare.

"Our victory at Verdun will open the eyes of the French people to the fact that they have nothing more to hope for. Beyond Verdun there are objectives for which the French General Staff will be compelled to throw into battle every man they have
– and the forces of France will bleed to death. On the other hand, should the French withdraw and abandon their splendid fortress to us, the effect on the morale of France will be enormous."