CHAPTER IX
THE FINAL FIGHT
The two aviators, their planes much shot with holes but otherwise unhurt, rose suddenly, swooping in long circles to higher and yet higher altitudes. The first flushes of dawn were breaking. In the air two observation planes flying over the Allied front were signaling to the German batteries in the rear, from which came the barrage protecting their infantry from Allied advances. At once they knew what to do.
Both drove on through the hostile fire and bore down upon these observation biplanes. Observation planes are not good fighters. In less than a minute after rising those two fighting planes had chased the larger, slower machines off the ground.
But what was Blaine's surprise to see Bangs, not a hundred yards away, making bold signals strange code to the Germans back in the rear. Lafe himself could not read them. What did it mean? For an instant there flashed to him a suspicion that Bangs from Montana might not be just plain American.
"I won't think such a thing!" thought Lafe. "What is he up to?"
Then he saw that the enemy barrage was falling further back, just about where the recovering infantry was resuming its advance, after the short shock occasioned by the two raiding triplanes that had suddenly gone aloft.
"Were the Allies in their turn assaulting the Boches? What could it mean? In another brief interval Blaine found out, when sudden demoralization set in at once. Without apparent cause the Boches, now nearly upon the first Allied trenches, found that they were the center of a bombardment from the rear. What did that mean? The fire was withering.
Could the foe they were attacking be taking them in the flank? The idea was almost unbelievable. And yet the fire was also insupportable.
With one accord the front lines recoiled, although their officers beat the privates with their sword flats, cursing and reviling them as cowards. Right on top of this, the queer noises in front materialized into certainties.
The Allies were advancing. Were there not also reinforcements behind? Reinforcements hitherto kept back by what? The barrage. Where was that barrage now? Falling not only on their rear but also further back. How did this happen? Where were their own planes?
Officers and men were dropping on every hand. A charging foe in front was almost on them. After a minute or two of this, that whole section of the advance appeared to melt like froth on the water.
Meantime up above, and from a higher altitude than before, Bangs continued his mysterious signaling; not to Blaine or to the Allies, but — wonder of all wonders — to the Boches themselves.
Blaine now understood this, for he had noticed that the barrage itself had fallen back. Instead of covering and protecting the Germans, it was slaughtering them even more than the two aviators had done with their machine guns from a lower altitude.
Upon the sudden rout below, which was sensed rather than seen by the two fliers as the dawn rapidly grew, came the new rush of the Allies.
By this time Blaine felt that he and Buck must do one of two things. Those retreating observation planes would undoubtedly bring up air reinforcements. The barrage had already stopped. This was good for the charging Allies as well as the retreating Boches.
"Buck and I have either got to get back inside our lines or fight," he thought, carefully balancing his triplane against a rising breeze. "Or we might rise higher and take another chance. One thing we have done. We've helped bust up that charge, no matter how their advance has fared at Appincourte or elsewhere."
Forward went the Allied infantry, driving the now disrupted Huns before them. The fog kept clearing. Presently both Blaine and Bangs saw heavy masses of men advancing in platoon formation over the scraggy battle-scarred plain. They were probably two miles distant from the retreating Huns.
Blaine darted back and sent out his signal flares, announcing the fact. Indicating the probable distance, he waited for the barrage he was sure would come. Bangs, seeing that Lafe was signaling, doused his now useless Boche flares and confirmed what Blaine had signaled. Presently the barrage began, and now both saw that it was incumbent on them to remain up there as long as possible to assist the new Allied assault by rendering their barrage effective.
But Bangs once more perplexed Lafe by another manifestation of his way of fooling the Germans. More and more Blaine was perplexed.
"Where in sin did Buck get read up in Boche code flares like he is now?
I know a thing or two, but he's got me beat to the woodpile this time!"
Bangs, spiraling upward and back towards the Hun front, was sending forth flare after flare that was meaningless to Lafe, yet which was for some purpose. Then suddenly Buck shot off on the side towards Blaine the following words in the code familiar to all Allied spad-pilots.
"Get back! Tell our folks to double their fire, keeping ahead of our advance. Savvy?"
Blaine mutely obeyed. The Allied fire was redoubled as per instructions. Buck, by this time far to the east, could now be seen making back towards the Allied front where Blaine was zigzagging to and fro waiting for what might come. Suddenly, behind Bangs, he saw the speck-like dots of Teuton planes emerging into the upper air and rapidly approaching. At the same time other planes in the west appeared, biplanes, scouts, and one or more heavy battle planes. Evidently the cards were being laid for a squadron air battle unless something else intervened. Instinctively Lafe thought of his ammunition roll. He was well supplied at starting on this trip, and had transferred his own remaining stock to Finzer's plane when abandoning his own. But the most of it had already been used. It was not likely that Buck was any better prepared in that line. At least they might wait and join their own planes, now coming out of the west.
In the east the hostile squadron came on rapidly. Deploying as they advanced, both Blaine and Bangs could see that there were battle planes, scouts, and heavy bombing machines. These last were sweeping lower, trying to get in range of the advancing Allies.
"Come on! Hurry up!" both aviators kept repeating to their own advancing air fleet. "No time to waste! Let's get at 'em. They're going to bomb our front lines."
Almost immediately a number of fast triplanes forged on ahead of the rest at a speed which a year before would have been deemed impossible. Joining the two weary airmen who had been up all night, yet were still full of the battle hunger, they swept low down and straight at the bombing planes, now beginning to drop their deadly explosives along the lines of advancing infantry. But only for an instant, as it were, did they go uninterrupted.
A hail of bullets from machine guns rained down upon them. In almost no time two of these planes went staggering earthward. Blaine, forgetting his almost empty sheaves of Lewis gun ammunition, hung upon the tail of one, while Buck, with side loops and a nose dive, flung himself almost literally on another.
"Holy Moses!" ejaculated Buck as his last full sheaf went into the cartridge roll, and he realized that with this gone he would be absolutely helpless. "I don't want to quit. But if this don't fetch another one, I'll have to. I'll have to anyhow."
In the meantime, the Boche fighting planes had mixed in with the Allied fighters, interrupting their assault upon the bombers. And such an exhibition of diving, darting, nose dipping, looping, and what not had seldom been seen along that extended front.
Realizing the damage to be done by bombs on the unprotected infantry charging below, both Blaine and his comrade kept strictly after the bombing planes. Let those fresh arrivals who had plenty of ammunition attend to the fighting Fokkers and other battling planes that had arrived so inopportunely.
By this time the anti-aircraft guns were getting in their work. With the targets so close, though darting hither and yonder with bewildering speed, two of the German fighting planes were soon zigzagging towards the ground. One fell right in the path of a disorderly advance of the infantry, which happened to be a well-known Canadian battalion. From his perch, his own ammunition exhausted, Blaine saw those troops surge around and over that unlucky plane, then pass on, leaving a flaming wreck behind.
The bombs began to explode. Blaine saw the danger to other troops behind. It so happened that these troops were Sammies and Blaine, with a swoosh, swept down to within a dozen yards right over the heads of these men and the column heard his megaphone bellowing:
"Watch out, bunkies! 'Ware that wrecked plane! She's full of Boche bombs. Watch out — spread out! Give it room! Oh, you doughboys! Rah for Uncle Sam!"
Recognizing the meaning and divining that it must be an American, the
Sammies shouted back as they divided and gave the necessary room:
"Oh, you Spaddy! What you doin' down so low? Rah for you! Bully boy!
Rah, rah, rah! You're all right!"
And on they went, comforted themselves, and comforting the weary, ammunitionless aviator who now recognized that his present job was about over.
His plane was literally shot to pieces. The wings hung in tatters. Only the vital mechanism that kept him moving, thereby supporting him in the air, fortunately remained untouched. Even now he staggered and with difficulty rose a trifle upward, while off to the right he saw Bangs in even a worse fix.
The latter, with his wings honeycombed by bullet holes, had received the full charge of a machine gun from some passing battle plane in an around his propellers. His supply of ammunition too was now exhausted.
Could he make the ground in a safe place? With every ounce of power, his propeller crank revolving like lightning, still he made alarmingly slow progress. Good reason why. Two of his propeller blades were shot off. The other two were revolving swifter than can be imagined. He felt that he was drifting down, down, amid the riff-raff, smoke and confusion of a battlefield over, which the thunders of conflict had twice passed.
Above, the aerial battle was still going on, though making towards the east; for the Germans, following their retiring columns, were being slowly yet persistently pushed back to their trenches. Occasional bullets spattered about him. Day was fully on, and a rising sun disclosed a prospect of clearing skies.
There was a ruined house or cabin just ahead. Could he land there? It lay deserted for the time being amid war wreck and ruin, its roof battered in, its stone walls crumbling. Still it promised temporary shelter. Blaine had vanished. Had his plane gone down? Was he smitten by a stray bullet? Had his plane, unguided, crashed to the earth? Would he, Bangs, live to?
Buck's hurried thoughts were suddenly checked by a sharp, stinging sensation that began at his side, then seemed to fill him completely. At the same time he realized that his hands no longer hold the steering wheel. He strove to seize it again, but his muscles did not obey. A stupor was on him. The sunlight faded, gave way to a bewildering maze of twinkling stars. His last conscious sensation was that his machine was crashing downward. Then came a long mental blank.
Meantime Blaine was having his own troubles.
The rest of the air fighting had gone eastward, while he was contending with the increased crippling of his planes. Overhead he saw only the now clearing sky. Ahead of him, beyond a rippling stream, lay certain trenches held, he felt sure, by his own side. But could be reach them? Far behind the noise of battle rumbled. Where was Buck? Somehow he had lost sight of his comrade within the last few minutes.
"Buck is a good, bang-up fellow. We ought to go back together."
But his power was waning. Try as he might, the plane was sagging groundward. Only Blaine's skillful efforts kept it from dropping with a crash which he knew would probably be the end of him — Lafe Blaine.
What was that just below him which some scraggy shell-torn timber had kept him from seeing before?
"Looks like a piece of a house," he muttered.
Stoutly he tried to make the small open space around this half ruined hovel. Almost he made, it. But just beyond a crumbling stone wall, that once must have been the enclosure of a tidy yard, the tail of his machine dipped all at once. It struck the wall, causing the heavier bow, weighted with the propellers, the petrol tank and the machinery, to crash downward with force.
The recoil sent Blaine, now at the last physical gasp, plunging forward over the almost perpendicular machine. He struck the earth heavily, and lay there almost insensible, while the vanquished plane fell sideways, striking wall and ground, then, with a last respiration not unlike that of its master, it lay still, a wreck for the time being.
From out the house two skirted figures ran, figures in nurse's attire, with the omnipresent red cross blazoned conspicuously on their white-capped headgear.
"Oh, Andra, Andra!" cried the first to the one following. The last cast a swift glance back inside the cabin. Then she, too, hurried to the prostrate form lying beside the wrecked machine.