Free 1917 Eagles Fall by Griff Hosker Page B

had the satisfaction of hitting the Fokker’s engine.
    I began to bank and head west. Below me I saw two burning buses and the rest heading west. We could head home… if the Germans would allow us to. Suddenly I felt the thud of Parabellum rounds as they hit the engine.  I needed Lumpy on the rear gun.  “Hutton we have a German on our tail.”
    I heard a sob of pain and Flight Sergeant Hutton held up what remained of his left hand.  It was a bloody stump. His hand and part of his wrist had been shattered. He had had the wit to fashion a tourniquet. He tried to turn towards me. “I am sorry…” His head slumped forward. I hoped his tourniquet was tight else he would bleed to death before I could land. I had no time to reflect on his wounds for more bullets struck the engine and I felt the loss of power. My bus was mortally wounded. I banked right in an effort to throw him off.  The ground seemed to be coming at me rapidly… too rapidly and I pulled back on the stick. The old bus seemed sluggish.  I was not certain I could land.  “Come on old girl.  Lift your nose.”
    What saved us was the huge expanse of wings. Ever so slowly the nose came up. I saw the roof of a half destroyed house loom ahead of me.  We barely cleared it but I think it must have thrown off the aim of the German behind because the bullets stopped.
    “Well Lumpy, it’s time to get home and get you seen to.” There was an ominous silence from the front cockpit. I was too low to risk looking behind me and I was not certain how much power I had left.  I would keep at a lower altitude in case we had to crash land. I reached down for the Very pistol. I risked lifting the nose a little when I was a mile from the field.  I saw Gunbuses taxiing along the green sward as I fired my pistol.  I could see huddles of men around the parked aeroplanes.  The Major had suffered casualties too.
    The engine gave a sickly cough as we cleared the hedgerow. We were landing but it was the Gunbuses’ choice, not mine. There was an ugly crunch as the undercarriage hit the ground too hard and one wing dropped alarmingly to the ground.  If we flipped then we were both dead.  Luckily the lower wing bit into the ground and we slewed around.  The tail lifted a little before crashing to the ground and we were down.
    I scrambled out and ran to the cockpit.  Doc Brennan and his orderlies, as well as the fire crews, were running towards us too. When I saw the front of the cockpit it looked like a colander. I dreaded what I would see. I put my hand on Hutton’s neck and felt a pulse.  He was still alive.
    Doc Brennan reached me. “How are you Bill?”
    “Not a scratch but Lumpy has lost a hand.”
    “Right.  Clear off then.  You are only in the way.”
    It was brutally true and I stepped away from the wrecked aeroplane. My hands were shaking.  I took my pipe out to fill it.  I counted the aeroplanes as they landed.  We had lost aeroplanes.  I also saw slumped and bloodied gunners. The twin Spandau machine guns had decimated our squadron. Flight Sergeant Hutton was still, mercifully, unconscious as he was cut free from the cockpit and laid upon a stretcher. I wandered over. 
    Doc Brennan held something in his hand.  “Your sergeant might lose his hand, possibly his arm, but he has been extremely lucky.” He handed me the mangled bugle which had lain in his lap. “I think the bullets hit this and were deflected into his hand.  If it weren’t for the bugle then they would have gone through him and, I suspect, your legs too.  You have both been lucky.”
    I did not feel lucky.
    He followed the stretcher and I examined the bugle.  A spent shell dropped out of it. It would never be played again but it had done a job I never imagined it performing. I took it with me.  We would put it in the Sergeants’ Mess as a reminder.  Lumpy’s war was over but I could not even begin to conceive of his one armed future. He might become one of the crippled