That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

by Richard Dehan

"And where did they take you after you left the Wireless Station? Go on—I'd like to hear you tell!"

The boy glanced round uneasily and then mastered his apprehensions. The grimed hands went to his stocking-top and pulled out a squat little book. The coloured presentment of a Boy Scout adorned its soiled leather cover, and the thumbed leaves of the diary within were pencilled from end to end. The Odyssey of a Saxham Pup, one might have called the story whispered into the ear of the wounded man by the boy squatting at his side.

One had been taken by train to Bremen and thence to a place called Taubefeld, in West Hessen. Flight Station XXX was here on a vast stretch of heath. There were rows of great hangars, and a vast army of motor floats and lorries, upon which machines, hangars, telegraph-installations, workshops, mess-houses, and quarters for officers and mechanics, could be placed when the mobilisation-order came and transported by road or rail.

One had fallen sick at Taubefeld—the effects of that North Sea ducking. One had waked up with a skin-cropped head wondering where one was. A woman who helped in the cookhouse had given one broth and gruel and the medicine prescribed by the doctor. One had crawled off one's straw palliasse weakly and shakily, and so won forth into a new, unfriendly world.

One's parole had been taken—and one was thenceforth free to move about and see things—when one was not wanted to help oil or clean wires or sweep up the hangars. There was grub enough: bacon-soup, potato-salad, and sausage, queer but not uneatable. Nobody was really brutal as long as one didn't speak English, or even German with a British accent, too much at one time. Keine Unterhaltung da! ("No conversation there!") some officer or N.C. would yell at one, and the rebuke was generally accompanied by the swishing cut of a cane.

Consequently the Saxham Pup had bent himself to acquire German, as spoken by Germans, and schooled himself to employ his eyes and ears while maintaining economy in the use of his tongue. He had found out his whereabouts from an envelope he had picked up, and other things from listening to the officers' conversation, and the talk of the mechanics in the big hangars.

War was the thing everybody talked about. There was going to be bloody War in a twinkling. The German Navy was going to smash the British Navy into matchwood, everybody was quite sure. The German Army was going to walk over the miserable little British Army—and then would be expiated the sins of the British Government and the diabolical plottings of Sir Edward Grey. Throat-cuttings, shootings, and hangings were mentioned in connection with the above, and other personages whom British Boy Scouts hold in reverence. But one had had to bear it and hold one's tongue, and keep smiling. That was the method of the Chief who had said to one: "Quit yourself like a man."

Brave advice, possible to follow by day when alien eyes were watching. One could choke down weak tears and the ache of the lonely heart that cried for Home and the dear familiar faces, when the Birds of War were roaring and whirring up the night-field or down out of the sky. But at night, in the grim, unfriendly dark of the sleeping-cupboard, without other witness than the thin, sore-eyed white kitten that shared one's meals and slept beside one on the hard straw mattress under the foul-smelling grey blanket,—things were harder. One had got through, after a fashion, by "rotting" and making believe. One did not set down in the Scout's Note-Book or tell the wounded friend on the stretcher how one had kissed the back of one's own hand, and whispered, "Good-night, Mother!" and touched one's cheek with the tips of two fingers and whispered, "Good-night, and God keep and bless you, my darling boy!"

Amongst other things of interest picked up by day, one found out that Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung was cold-shouldered by the officers of the Flight Squadron, which he had captained before his fall. No longer top-dog, he was made to pay for his domineering and swaggering. He resented this, by swaggering more. The men talked of this in the hangars, as they tuned-up wires or cleaned the engines. Von Herrnung was Unglücklich. Nobody liked him. The Squadron would not stand him long. Hadn't he insulted the Herr Squadron-Captain Pilot who had succeeded and challenged him, and got his cartel back again?

"Colossal insolence!" he had fumed. "A challenge from a person of my rank confers an honour on him who receives it. Not a man among you stands upon my level. Deny it if you can!"