A man equally elderly and frail turned a terrified face to Paul. “It’s my wife, Liddy, can you help?”
Paul put Julie in the cover of a shop entrance, then dashed into the street to attack the rubble on his knees. The elderly man tried to assist, but he did little more than scratch at the broken stones. Grunting, Paul heaved them aside one by one. He uncovered a crushed gardenia corsage.
The old lady watched intently, hopefully, as he lifted a last block off her bloodied hose. The Zeppelin dropped another bomb as it cruised westward. Guests from a small hotel, some in sleep attire, milled around yelling questions no one answered. Traffic backed up in the Strand in both directions. As Paul lifted the old woman from the rubble, he felt her stiffen. Her head lolled over his arm.
Paul and the elderly man stared at each other in the flickering light. “Oh no, Liddy, please God, no,” the old man said. “Please God, not Liddy. Tonight is our anniversary. Forty-nine years.”
The searchlights swept the sky. Little monoplanes with flaming cowl exhausts rose in futile pursuit of the disappearing airship. In the crowd packing the north side of the Strand, he saw Julie waving her tightly rolled program. He wanted to wave back, but it was impossible with a dead woman in his arms.
Street wardens covered the dead woman and routed traffic into the narrow thoroughfares north of Aldwych and the Strand. Paul and Julie trudged west to the Haymarket, up to Piccadilly, and on to the vicinity of the Ritz before they found a cruising taxi. On Cheyne Walk, they sat with Cecily for an hour, recounting the horror of the raid, then found a cab for her.
Paul couldn’t sleep. He held Julie in his arms while a screen in his head played an endless loop of film: the bright, moist eyes of the old lady as he lifted rubble off her crushed body. The sudden loll to the side when her eyes dimmed. He remembered again a night in Santiago, Cuba, at the end of another war, in another century. Michael had drunkenly shouted words from the Revelation of St. John the Divine:
There were lightnings, and thunderings, and an earthquake. And the cities of the nations fell….
At the dinner table next evening, a stack of papers lay near Paul’s hand, the London Light and Daily Mail among them. Paul picked up his cup of tea and looked steadily into his wife’s beautiful dark eyes. With his other hand he tapped the Light’s front page.
“Zeppelins. Poison gas. U-boats. Good God, Julie, what kind of world have we dreamed up for our children?”
“Nothing like the old one,” she sighed. “Let’s hope we all survive it.”
“Millions won’t. What Michael calls the Great Meat Grinder is running full speed in France.”
“But you’ll go back.”
“I have to go back. Sammy’s willing. It’s what we do, Julie.”
“Of course,” she said, holding his hand while tears welled in her eyes.
86. Casualties
In the late summer Carl shot down his second German plane. The kill wasn’t any easier, or less scary, than the first, but it was different, less emotional. Downing the first one had entitled him to paint a black Maltese cross on the Nieuport’s cowl. As he plied the little brush, he reflected that there was a mark on his heart too. One that would stay forever.
He was depressed by the news of Rene LeMaye’s sudden death. Rene had gone once too often against a Drachen, the penile-shaped observation balloon called in jest das Mädchens Traum—the Maidens’ Dream. Long lines of Drachens were strung along the German front, each moored at four thousand feet by a steel cable that carried a telephone line to the ground. Rene had closed in on a balloon as usual, to fire incendiary rounds and ignite the thousand cubic meters of hydrogen in the bag above the observation basket. Somehow his guns jammed, and he attempted to finish the job by slashing the balloon with his wing tip. A squadron mate said Rene accomplished that, only to disappear when some random spark set off the hydrogen, blowing up Rene, his airplane, and the spotter and his assistant in the dangling basket.
Carl lived with a mounting depression after he heard the story. The panache of combat flyers was just a veneer, he had discovered. Major Despardieu had put it candidly: “There is relentless pressure on the mind and nerves. Four months is about all a man can take before he cracks. Assuming he remains alive, of course.”
One beautiful October afternoon, about six miles into German-held territory, four planes from Carl’s squadron encountered six triple-wing aircraft with red cowls. The Germans were soon swarming all over them.
One of the red Fokkers doggedly pursued Carl; no matter how he dodged and maneuvered, the German was always there. Maybe the pilot recognized him; aviators had ways of identifying a specific enemy. Carl didn’t know the German, and didn’t care to know him.
After an aerial fight that lasted nearly ten minutes, with no victor, Carl took a burst that damaged his engine. He peered over the side to check his position. Enemy anti-aircraft guns—Archie—guarding the moored balloons had swung around to bang away at the French planes. As black clouds bloomed and billowed, Carl signaled a wing mate, pointing at his damaged engine, then banked and headed west.
The Fokker was right behind but withheld fire. Carl’s broken fuel line spewed aviation gas behind the Bébé. The balloons that spotted for the German artillery and watched for enemy advances were coming up ahead. Typically they were anchored three miles behind No-Man’s-Land, which told him how far he had to fly to safety. He tilted the Bébé to slide between two of the Drachens; the assistant in the basket on his left fired three rounds from a rifle but missed.
Soon all his fuel was gone. The engine sputtered, coughed, died. He lost altitude. The thud of Archie was fading. He snatched off his helmet, looked back. The German was still there. Carl expected to be shot down, perhaps not until he was almost out of danger. That was the mission of airmen, to down the other plane. But a certain code of honor prevailed on both sides. If one was feeling chivalrous, and the enemy plane had been rendered useless, there was no absolute obligation to kill the airman too. Evidently the German pilot was in that mood. He swooped past Carl on the right, saluting him with a smile of self-congratulation and a cheery wave of a leather gauntlet. Helmet and goggles concealed all of the man except the smirk.
He peeled away and was gone. Carl held the Bébé aloft until he saw the German trenches and, beyond them in the distance, French balloons, Caquots, moored in a similar line. He glided over the trenches at five hundred feet, drawing some careless ground fire that did no damage. He aimed the plane at a space between shell craters in No-Man’s-Land, well short of the forward trenches on the French side. As carefully as he could, he brought the plane down, and down….
The ground was rougher than it looked. Something caught the undercarriage, standing the plane on its nose and hurling Carl out of the cockpit. He tumbled through the air and landed violently on his left side. There was a red flash of pain, then he blacked out.
He woke to feel excruciating pain in his arm. Germans were firing at him from their trenches. He dragged himself the other way, smelling the filthy miasma of dirt and excrement that befouled the whole Western front. He felt no sensation in his left hand; his arm dangled like a broken twig. He crawled through loops of barbed wire, dragging himself with his right hand and pushing with his knees. The barbed wire raked the back of his neck; he bled on Tess’s scarf again.
Nearly unconscious, he fell over the edge of a trench and croaked his name to a French poilu before he sank into comforting darkness.
“Look,” they said, bringing him a small hand mirror in the hospital ward.
His hair was completely white.
“Your left arm is crippled,” they said. “If it is only damage to nerves, you will perhaps recover the use of it one day. Or perhaps not. In any case, you can no longer fly. We are sending you home.”
Carl was too weary and low to be relieved.
“This came for you, dropped in a canister by an enemy pilot,” they said.
Carl translated the letter with no difficulty.
&nbs
p; Reinhard Grotzman, the aviator whom you downed some weeks ago, was a friend and comrade. He came, as I did, from the infantry. Hearing of his death, I was determined to find the perpetrator and return the favor.
In the midst of our sky fight, I altered my course for this simple reason. Few aviators have challenged me as you did, sir. It would be a pleasure to meet a second time, and not as adversaries. Perhaps you will one day visit the Fatherland under happier circumstances, and if so, I should like to shake hands with a man of your mettle. Headquarters will always know my whereabouts, as the Army is my career.
With every good wish for your well-being, I remain
Yr. Obdt.,
Capt. Hermann Goering
Carl threw the letter on the floor and turned his face to the wall.
The German officer was still acting out a pageant of bravery and courtesy—fighting a war that no longer existed. In Carl’s squadron there were opinionated pilots who argued convincingly that air power shouldn’t be restricted to strategic battlefield missions, but should be used tactically, against factories, railways, cities—and civilians—to destroy the industrial base, demoralize the population, hasten the surrender. Hauptmann Goering wouldn’t understand such theories, though perhaps those who sent Zeppelins over London already did.
The German must be an old-fashioned, naive sort, Carl concluded as he lay with his good hand under his head, staring at nothing while others in the reeking ward raved and moaned. Hauptmann Goering was captivated by some kind of ideal that Carl had seen wither and die in the blood and suffering of a war that had become a slaughter.
“A telegraph message,” they said, showing a folded and grimy flimsy. “Much delayed.”
He read the first lines. “Oh, Jesus.” Then he read more. The General had survived the stroke.
Carl smoothed the flimsy, placed it on the front of his coarse gown, and covered it with his hand. He stared at the ceiling. Someone screamed in agony. He closed his eyes, feeling useless and abandoned.
In Paris, on his way to the coast, he went to a cinema to see his sister. He felt better, though his left arm was still useless, devoid of all sensation but a feeble tingle now and then. He protected it in a black sling.
The war had almost completely shut down French picture studios; the theaters depended on American imports, none more popular than those featuring the character Knockabout Nell. The French called her Clumsy Nell. “Nelle Gauche” à le Cirque was the usual misadventure of the lovable hoyden who could do nothing right until the end. Nell knocked down a tent pole, and the entire tent. She lost the circus cash box down a well, then burned up the wet money trying to dry it on a stove. But when the lion got loose she saved the day, even with her foot jammed in a water bucket. Smiling and cooing, she tamed the beast; he lay down, rolled over, and licked her cheek.
Carl always felt strange watching Fritzi’s pictures. She seemed remote from the older sister he’d lived with, teased, and forever adored. She’d always wanted to be a great dramatic actress, but it was clowning that had made her famous. He knew Fritzi deserved her fame when he heard all the chuckling, the roars and whoops of the war-weary French people seated around him. He sat smiling while the silver shadows chased over his face.
When he went out, it was still raining. He sat in a hotel bar for two hours, thinking of Tess.
87. In the Trenches
Must be the funniest damn war in history,” Sammy said minutes before the bombardment. “Blokes just standin’ still lookin’ and shootin’ at each other.” Sammy and Paul had photographed Allied troops for a week, under close supervision, then followed a circuitous route, via occupied Brussels, for a return visit to the German front line. Film of the Tommies would go to Lord Yorke; the German footage was for Paul’s own use.
The French howitzers fired their first rounds at four o’clock. Paul had given up filming much earlier, when the light of the winter afternoon was already failing. He and Sammy stood in a forward fire trench, peering over a wooden revetment improvised from pieces of a crate. The officer in charge of the sector, a Major Nagel, yelled into a field telephone while keeping one finger stuck in his ear.
Paul turned up his overcoat collar and chewed his cold cigar. Shells sent up geysers of earth in No-Man’s-Land; dirt rained on them. The artillery barrage directed from observation balloons tore gaps in the barbed wire strung for miles in either direction. That was the purpose—to open the way for an infantry assault.
In No-Man’s-Land a few shell-blasted trees stood like burned and amputated fingers, evidence that once there had been a pastoral landscape instead of mud and water-filled craters and the endless coils of wire. While he and Sammy watched, a tree trunk took a direct hit, bursting into flame and shooting off coruscating displays of sparks.
Major Nagel joined them. “We should see them come over the top in approximately one hour. The same pattern has prevailed all month. The French bastards call it nibbling us to death.” Nagel was an overweight Bavarian, bewildered by this peculiar form of warfare and resentful of the conditions in which it placed his men.
Sammy and Paul jumped out of the way as two machine gunners ran into the fire trench from one of the saps, narrower trenches leading to forward gun nests. The men lugged their gun, tripod, and ammo chest. Other gunners appeared in similar fashion. Nagel shouted, “Schnell, schnell,” waving them to dark openings in the trench’s forward wall. The gunners disappeared like rodents. “It’s the equipment we’re trying to protect, not the men,” Nagel said sourly.
Major Nagel’s position was in the sector stretching from Châlons-sur-Marne west to Epernay, in the department of the Marne. The major and his men faced units of Marshal Foch’s Ninth Army approximately eighty-five miles northeast of Paris. On the way to the forward area, Paul and Sammy had filmed German soldiers doing laundry, enjoying mess, marching and singing, tending the mammoth Skoda howitzers and the Big Berthas from Krupp. Each scene was carefully arranged by senior officers to impress the outside world with German morale and materiel. Looking closely, however, Paul saw something else. The troops, even the newest and youngest reinforcements, appeared wan and frightened. Gone were the showy uniforms of last summer, replaced by camouflage colors and new-issue steel helmets.
The German entrenchments were defensive, built to hold last year’s gains throughout the winter. Each trench was six feet deep, with three support trenches dug behind and parallel to the forward fire trench. Zigzag communications trenches ran at right angles, connecting them. It was all precise and fine except for the dirt, the smell of unwashed clothes, the reek of bodily waste overflowing the latrine trenches and churned into the mud by booted feet. Paul almost vomited the first time he smelled the trenches. He was told by the embittered Nagel that the whole Western front smelled bad.
As it grew dark, the bombardment continued. Nagel insisted Paul and Sammy go down into one of the dugouts. They huddled by a brazier made of an oil drum pierced with many holes. It gave off heat and a lot of smoke. You could suffocate breathing the smoke in the enclosed space. On the other hand, the smoke killed some of the stenches of soggy uniforms, unwashed armpits, excrement.
The earth above them shook as the French shells hit. Dirt fell in Paul’s hair. He eyed the timber supports of the dugout. Sammy looked nervous. “Hell of a spot to be in, huh, gov?”
Under Paul’s union suit a verminous visitor was exploring. He dug beneath his muddy overcoat, vest, two shirts, and underwear to scratch. “I wouldn’t want it for a permanent residence.”
At the mouth of the dugout someone yelled, “They’re coming.” Paul heard rifle fire as the artillery ceased. Major Nagel had sent sharpshooters forward into the saps to enfilade the poilus charging across No-Man’s-Land. Paul chewed his cigar to pieces as men began to wail and shriek aboveground.
Machine guns stuttered. Flashes of red and yellow reached the dugout—flares sent up to cast light on the attackers. The ground assault lasted forty minutes. The German position held; the lines remained unbroken
. Finally the sounds of firing diminished. Quiet returned. Someone shouted down that it was all clear. Paul and Sammy climbed out of the dugout. As Paul came into the open, he saw a young corporal slumped over the lip of the trench. His jaw was shot away; his eyeballs stood out like boiled eggs. Paul gagged.
The poilus had gone back to their trenches. Under the cold, distant stars Nagel’s men crept forward to drag bodies out of the saps and pile them in a heap several yards in front of the fire trench. Paul counted silently. Fifteen. Sammy sucked on a cigarette as they watched the activity.
“How many dead in this whole war so far?” he asked.
“God only knows. A million Germans, a million Frenchmen, maybe just as many English. Is it any wonder the reds call war a conspiracy of kings and capitalists against the poor and powerless?”
Sammy darted looks right and left, said softly, “But we know which side’s right, don’t we, gov?”
“Yes. We do.”
He slept half frozen in the dugout that night. At daybreak he loaded the camera, climbed out of the trench, and positioned himself to film the corpse heap. He remembered photographing the same kind of carnage after Colonel Roosevelt had taken San Juan Hill in ’98.
The disk of a pale yellow sun shone through a thin morning fog. Sounds were muffled, but Paul could hear men moving in No-Man’s-Land. He was just setting up when Major Nagel came tearing out of the fire trench to confront him.
“You can’t do this, it isn’t appropriate.”
“Major, I have permission. I have papers signed by—”
“I don’t care if they’re signed by General Moltke. I don’t care if the Blessed Virgin herself came down from heaven and signed them, it isn’t appropriate,” the distraught officer cried. “I lost good men last night. I lost my second, Captain Franz, a young officer of astonishing promise. What’s left of him is scattered in little pieces. It isn’t appropriate for you to photograph that, do you hear me?”