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Chapter Nineteen


Quentin Roosevelt and the Squadron Pooch

Quentin Roosevelt and the Squadron Pooch



95th Aero Squadron, Saints, France

Quentin Roosevelt, son of the twenty-sixth President of the United States, had become an early riser. He’d also grown up a good deal.

It wasn’t that he didn’t feel tired. God knew that the rigors of war ground a man down day after day. Most nights, he fell like a sack of potatoes into his bed back in Maupertuis and was asleep before he’d even heard his roommate Ed’s soft “good night, Q.”

No, it was his job to be up early, but he had come to enjoy the quiet in these pre-dawn moments. None of the muffled booming of distant artillery, nothing but the soft shushing of the wind and the delicious thrill of anticipation curling deep in his belly.

Anticipation, because he knew that in a few short hours, that quiet would give way to the buzzing roar of his Nieuport 28 and the popping rush of his twin Vickers “Balloon Buster” aircraft guns. Despite the frigid cold, the dirty stink of exhaust, the constant spray of unburnt oil that had his guts twisting in a perpetual case of the runs . . . despite it all, Quentin loved flying.

Looking out over the moonlit grass strip, leaning against the rail in front of the squadron headquarters’ main entrance, Quentin’s reverie was interrupted by a stern greeting: “Lieutenant.”

“Good morning, sir.” Quentin stood suddenly straight as he sketched out a quick salute and winked as he grinned into the solemn gaze of his commander, Major Davenport Johnson. Major Johnson’s heavy eyebrows slammed together in a frown of disapproval. Quentin stifled a laugh as the old man turned away.

Not that Major Johnson was that much older than Quentin himself. Flying was a young man’s game. Some of the mechanics in their squadron might have been over thirty, but by and large, most everyone around was just like himself—young, eager, and aggressive.

But Major Johnson was the commander. The commander was always the “old man.” And this old man was nearly always cranky. Quentin didn’t fully know why. When he’d first arrived here at the 95th Aero Squadron last month, he’d heard some rumblings of rumor about Major Johnson. Something about leaving his wingman to be shot down by enemy fighters. As the son of a former President not always beloved by all, Quentin tended not to give much credence to rumor, but it made sense to him that the old man would adopt a stern demeanor to counter such stories.

Quentin reached out to open the door of the operations building that had been his destination and held it open while Major Johnson walked through, his heavy-browed frown intact. Through the slowly gathering light of false dawn, Quentin could see the shapes of two more men approaching, and so he continued waiting while Ed Buford and James Knowles hustled to enter.

“Morning, Q,” James said, while Ed just nodded hello. Quentin grinned at them both and followed them in. Ed wasn’t at his best until he’d had coffee.

Coffee was, thankfully, pretty readily available at Saints Aerodrome. With sorties going out every morning, the mechanics working on the Nieuports and newer, better SPAD XIIIs often worked at night, turning wrenches under the glow of shielded electric lights. Quentin figured he owed the mechanics his life several times over. Not just because they maintained the aircraft his life depended upon, but also because they kept the coffee pots hot and full.

The three aviators followed their commander to said coffee, poured their mugs with little discussion, and then found their way to the map room at the center of the long, low-slung building. Two more men joined them after a few minutes, and then three more. By the time the old man stepped up to the large map on the central table, most of the squadron had arrived.

“Gentlemen, today’s mission is patrol.” Major Johnson’s deep voice rumbled over the assembled group, stilling any remnants of conversation. “We are looking for German observation and reconnaissance vehicles. Our intent is to deny any useful information to the enemy. As you know, the Boche observation balloons tend to be heavily defended, including by that new Fokker, according to some reports. The Germans are cooking up another big offensive, we know that, so they’re hungry for information. Let’s make them starve.

“Your formation and aircraft assignments are posted, gentlemen. Good hunting.”

Quentin stood to attention with the others as the commander left, and then joined the fray at the bulletin board to see what he’d be flying, and who would be on his wing.

“Looks like it’s you and me, Q.” Ed Buford slapped Quentin on the back of his shoulder as the two men looked together at the posted sheet.

“Yes, with Buckley and Sewall as the lead.” Quentin smiled at Buford and then turned his grin on the other two aviators who would round out their formation. Lieutenant Sumner Sewall, however, was already turning away, waving for the other three to follow him up to the large map in the center of the room.

“All right,” Sewall said on a sigh, in a peculiar mannerism that had become something of a joke amongst the others. “Let’s look at our routing . . .”


By the time the sun broke over the Eastern horizon, Quentin had his prop spinning, his guns loaded, and his blood up and ready to go. The buzz of the Gnome-9 engine vibrated through his body with an almost sexual feeling as he nudged the throttle forward and coaxed the Nieuport-28 into a taxi across the dew-wet grass of the airfield. With his feet, Quentin stood on first the right rudder pedal, then the left as he maneuvered the airplane into takeoff position. She moved like a slow, ungainly turtle on the ground, but Quentin knew that was temporary. Once he got her into the air, she would be as responsive to his touch as the highest-priced courtesans in the Paris brothels . . . 

Not that he’d know anything about that. Not as far as anyone, particularly his fiancée Flora, knew. Never mind about the small booklet in his locker. If pressed, he’d insist that one of his buddies had given him the copy of The Pretty Women of Paris on a lark.

Buford’s airplane in front of him shuddered, and the noise from his engine built as Buford pushed the throttle up to takeoff power and started skimming down the grass runway. Quentin forced his mind to forget about Paris brothels and focus on the here and now as his wingman rotated and leapt into the air.

“Our turn, sweetheart,” Quentin said, as he stroked his thumb forward on the throttle. As promised, the Nieuport responded, her buzzing roar heightening as she started forward on her own takeoff roll. Quentin inhaled, tasting the burnt-dirt scent of fuel and oil coating his tongue as he pulled back on the stick, tilting her nose up and sliding into the dawn-pinkened sky.

The windsock stood steady out of the southwest, so Quentin put in a little bit of a crab as he performed his after-takeoff checks. His two Vickers machine guns waited, loaded with the 11mm Balloon Buster rounds, ready for him to drop the lever that would engage the firing mechanism and synchronize the guns to fire between the turns of his prop. He banked right to follow Sewall and Buford as they turned west in order to head back north. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the glint of the rising sun flashing off Buckley’s spinning prop to the rear of the formation.

Quentin breathed in deeply again, grateful for the silk scarf that shielded his nose and mouth from both the cold and the oil spray. Some always got through, of course, but that stopped the bulk of it. And it was damn helpful when some of the oil got on his goggles, obscuring his vision. He reached up with his left hand and wiped one such spatter away. It smeared a little bit, but it wasn’t bad.

Dawning sunlight flowed over the land below, highlighting the pockmarked hellscape that four years of war had created out of the once-lush French countryside. If it hadn’t been for the oil and exhaust stink, he might have even been able to smell the charnel house miasma of shit, mud, and decay that sometimes arose from the old lines. He knew his brothers were down there, somewhere, and the thought dampened his flight-fed exuberance for just a moment. He wasn’t entirely sure about religion as a whole, but he sent a quick prayer skyward to whoever might be inclined to watch over fools and aviators and then doggedly turned his mind back to his task.

Patrol flights were all about visual detection. See the enemy before he sees you and sneak up on his ass. Quentin trained his eyes just above the horizon, starting the methodical scan he’d been taught. Up ahead, Sewall banked to the right again, and Quentin followed, keeping back pressure steady on the stick to counteract the Nieuport’s tendency to dive in a right turn.

As soon as he rolled out, Quentin felt the extra push from the direct tailwind. The ground below slid by faster and faster as the formation arrowed toward the German lines and whatever they would find there.

They flew for about forty minutes at an altitude between five and six thousand feet. Quentin kept a periodic check on his fuel gauge, knowing that the help they were getting from the tailwind would be a hindrance if they had to hurry back home . . . if, say, they were being chased by a flight of Fokkers.

Guess I won’t go running home, then, Quentin thought, welcoming the savage edge to his thoughts. This wasn’t his first dogfight. He’d downed one of the Boche fighters four days ago, and nothing about that experience had changed his mind about one essential point: like his father, he was a hunter. Quentin Roosevelt didn’t run.

Quentin Roosevelt attacked.

He didn’t know at which point, exactly, they crossed over the lines into enemy territory. The ground below was even more pockmarked and riddled with trenches and shell craters. Plus, a small, scattered deck of clouds had started to form a couple of thousand feet below them. Quentin craned his neck upward to see that there were thin layers building above them as well: potential hiding places for enemy patrols. Adrenaline rocked through him, sharpening his focus as he turned his eyes back to the horizon.

They flew overhead some town . . . Dormans, maybe? Whatever it was, by now they were solidly in Boche territory, so he wasn’t exactly surprised when he saw the shadowy smudge of a formation coming at them from two o’clock high.

Quentin banked hard to the right, letting his Nieuport dive and accelerate as the first poppoppop of the Fokkers’ guns raked through their formation. “Fuckers are coming out of the sun,” he muttered through gritted teeth as he pulled out of the dive and rolled back left. He pulled back on the stick, trading some of his newly acquired airspeed for a tight, climbing turn as he threw his firing lever forward and pulled himself around to engage the closest of the five aircraft currently ambushing his friends.


Feldwebel Christian Donhauser was twenty-two years old. He stood five feet, four inches tall in his stocking feet and weighed in at a whopping ninety-four pounds. He was the smallest aviator in the Imperial German Air Force, which unfortunate fact had earned him the hated nickname “Milchbubi.”

He’d also earned the Iron Cross First Class for bravery after being wounded in action, and had a kill under his belt for taking out an enemy fighter while on a recon mission. “Milchbubi” Donhauser was no innocent child. Small in stature he might be, but behind the stick of a Fokker D.VII?

Christian “Milchbubi” Donhauser was deadly.

Due to some last-minute shuffling and assignments, Christian led a smaller formation of five, rather than the standard seven D.VIIs into a diving attack on the French—No, not French. American, he realized as the sun behind him illuminated the kicking mule insignia of one of the American Aero Squadrons.

Not that it will matter much. Whether flown by French or American pilots, the Nieuport-28s weren’t half the machine his D.VII was. Christian allowed himself a little smile as his twin Spandau 08/15’s barked out in rapid succession and the formation in front of them broke apart . . . just as he’d planned.


There! Quentin’s eyes locked on the tail flash of two enemy aircraft banking around to come up hard on Buckley’s tail. He raked his fire across the aft fuselage of one of the Fokkers, feeling more than hearing the pop-tink of his rounds hitting the enemy plane. That Boche pilot banked right and sliced down through the air, a growing smoke trail in his wake.

The other Boche, though, stayed hard on Buckley, matching him turn for turn until Buckley dove down into the scattered cloud deck. Quentin broke off as more enemy fire raked his own lower right wing. Buckley would lose his guy in the clouds, leaving Quentin free to defend himself.

He pulled up hard, letting his airspeed bleed off as he gained altitude and came up almost inverted. As he saw the ground start to come back into view “above” his head, Quentin rolled hard to the right, knowing that the Nieuport’s diving tendency would help him make up the airspeed he’d traded for the potential energy of altitude. She responded beautifully, snapping around in a tight little aileron roll that had him back in position and firing on the enemy that was now about to cross his nose a few hundred feet below him.

Adrenaline and savage glee shot through Quentin as he hit his firing lever again, engaging the two Vickers guns mounted on the fuselage just forward of his cockpit. Because he was firing Balloon Busters, he could see the line of tracer rounds bright against the grey-and-green background of the cloud-streaked vista below. As he pulled up out of his dive, he saw that the Boche pilot he’d engaged had maneuvered out of the stream of fire and was coming up and over the top, rolling inverted as he fought to get back to Quentin’s vulnerable tail.

Quentin laughed and raised a hand in a wave as his eyes met the Boche pilot’s. The Boche’s eyes widened, then narrowed in a glare.

Quentin slammed the stick to the right, once again letting the nose-down diving tendency of the Nieuport build his speed before racking it back up and to the left in a high, climbing left turn. The aircraft shuddered as she pulled against the gyroscopic forces of her own prop . . . but Quentin traded off that little bit of extra speed, and she stayed controllable.

C’mon sweetheart, almost there . . . 


Christian didn’t get angry when he fought. Personally, he thought that anger was a relatively useless emotion. He preferred the icy calm that settled in his being whenever he flew. Calm collectedness enabled him to be precise. Anger caused mistakes.

So when the Ami pilot raised his hand in a mocking wave, Christian didn’t get angry. He just tightened his turn and pulled his beautiful D.VII over and around just a little harder. Not hard enough to damage her wings, but enough to get his nose and his guns back on the arrogant ass’s tail . . . 

Except he wasn’t there. Christian looked wildly around, craning his neck to the right. The Nieuport-28 the Ami was flying was French trash . . . everyone knew they snapped down in a right turn and foundered like a whale in a left turn. So, they always turned right when in a dogfight. So where—

Pop! Poppoppop! Poppoppop!

Scheisse!” Christian howled as he whipped his aircraft to the left, passing underneath the nose of the firing Ami. Somehow he’d gotten his trash airplane up and to the left! And come around firing, raking a line of rounds down the left side of the D.VII from just aft of the wings to the tail. The Ami missed the cockpit, but as Christian rolled out, he could smell the acrid stink of fuel intensify. He glanced up in his mirror, and horror opened up a pit in his belly. Flames licked the side of his fuselage, meaning that one of the Ami’s damned tracer rounds must have impacted his tank. He had maybe minutes to put the damn thing out before it exploded.

Without even really thinking through it, Christian’s hands flew through the emergency shutdown procedure for the engine while he lowered his nose to dive through the wispy scud layer gathering below. He’d have to dive to try and put out the fire, then dead-stick it in.


Quentin felt his lips stretch in a savage grin as he watched the Boche break away and dive down, smoke trailing from his wounded Fokker. He lowered the nose to follow the dive through the bare remnants of clouds, but almost immediately pulled up as the Boche’s smoke trail thinned and disappeared.

What the . . . ? Oh my God. He just shut down his engine! This magnificent bastard is actually going to try and dead-stick it in!

Despite himself, Quentin couldn’t help but feel a surge of admiration for his enemy’s dogged courage. Gliding an aircraft in was no mean feat on its own, but to do it in a shot-up machine, with no real runway in sight . . . 

Well. The baby-faced kid he’d seen in the Fokker had balls. Quentin would give him that.

He was never sure, afterward, whether it was admiration or morbid curiosity that had him pull up out of his attacking dive to circle over the gliding Fokker. Probably some combination of both?

Crazy Boche. I see you going for that road. You’re damned sure to ball it up, though, as chewed up as this area is. Still. Hats off to you for having the guts to try.


Christian passed through the clouds and saw the terrain spread below. Normally, it would have been an inviting land of soft, ploughed fields perfect to land in. Now, however, the mud-churned, shell-pocked landscape offered no such luxury. Christian checked back to see that his dive had successfully put out the flames, then turned his scan outward.

There!

Up ahead, shining in the sunlight, a thin ribbon of road ran straight for a stretch of nearly a mile. If he could make it there, he should be able to put the crippled D.VII down on that length.

He exited the shadow of the clouds overhead and angled for that straightaway, limiting his bank so as to conserve his speed and height until he could be sure he’d make it.

A shadow passed over him. He looked up to see the belly of the Nieuport, about five hundred feet above, S-turning over his flight path. Watching him? Wanting to confirm his kill?

Christian shook his head and put his enemy out of his mind. If the Ami wasn’t shooting at him, then he wasn’t his biggest problem. He banked gently to the right in order to line up with the straightaway. It ran roughly east-west, so he headed for the eastern edge, in order to line up into the wind for landing.

One chance, Christian, he told himself. You get one chance to do this right.

As he passed below a hundred feet, Christian eased back on the stick to flare off his airspeed and assume a landing attitude. His tailwheel hit first, the impact jolting through the frame of the aircraft. His main gear slammed down next, his right main falling into an unfortunate rut that ran the length of the road. The D.VII’s right wing tilted toward the ground, and despite all that Christian could do to keep her level, his left main lifted back up into the air.

Christian shoved all ninety-four pounds of his bodyweight as hard to the left as he could. It wasn’t enough. The D.VII’s right wingtip snagged in another rut on the side of the road, and his speed sent the entire thing cartwheeling through the air. Christian saw a dizzying spin of white, blue, and gray before hearing a deep, muffled snap.

The world blinked black for a split second before coming rushing back with startling clarity.

For just a moment, Christian sat panting, wrapping his mind around what he’d just done. He hung half-inverted in his seat under the crumpled, almost tent-shaped wreckage of the D.VII’s lower wing struts. It took a second for him to process this orientation. His brain didn’t seem to want to make sense of it. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

The buzzing scream of an aircraft in a dive penetrated his muddled thoughts, followed by the pop! poppoppop! of enemy fire.

The Ami, Christian thought, his body like jelly. For the first time during the whole sequence, he felt anger ignite in his gut and he looked skyward to see the Nieuport approaching on a strafing run, his bullets kicking up the dried mud of the far end of the pocked field next to this treacherous stretch of road.

Christian didn’t think. He wasn’t conscious of unfastening or cutting his straps, but somehow he was free of them and pulling himself down and out of his seat. His legs didn’t seem to work right, but he could hear the Ami’s trash airplane’s scream getting louder.

“No time,” Christian whispered to himself through gritted teeth. “No time, no time.” He used every ounce of his upper body strength to pull himself free of the wreckage, and then crawled laboriously, arm over arm, to the side of the road, over the small berm at its edge, and into the dubious cover of the ditch beyond.

Poppoppoppoppop . . . BOOM!

A blast of heat hammered into him, and deadly stinging splinters of wood and flaming fabric rained down into his ditch, pelting Christian as he buried his face in the shit-stained mud and tried to protect his head with his arms.

A roaring sound rushed up from within him on a wave of pain-filled nausea. He managed one last inhale of hot, stinking air before the blackness rose up from the edges of his vision to engulf him and sweep him under.

X X X

I should go back. I should go back and kill him.

Quentin looked at his fuel gauge and tapped it, but the story it told didn’t change. One of the Boche rounds must have nicked a fuel line. If he didn’t head back now, he’d never make it to the aerodrome with that headwind. That was a good enough reason, surely?

But why didn’t I shoot him when I had the chance?

The truth was, he shouldn’t have had to. That Boche pilot not only had balls of steel, but some deity somewhere was watching out for him. The fire in his engine should have made the Fokker explode midair—it didn’t. He shouldn’t have been able to put the fire out—he did. And then to try and dead-stick a landing on a rutted-out, shell-pocked road through an old battlefield?

When the enemy balled it up on landing, Quentin rolled in for a strafing run, figuring that he might as well destroy the wreckage past the point of repair. But as he’d started firing, he saw movement in the cockpit. The magnificent bastard had survived!

Shock had him pulling up off his run early, so even though he’d destroyed the wreckage, he hadn’t been able to adjust and fire on the young man crawling for whatever shelter he could find.

In his heart of hearts, Quentin was secretly glad. Because suddenly, it seemed terribly wrong to kill such a brave, skilled aviator on the ground. Somehow, deep in his gut, Quentin knew that this Boche deserved better.

So even though a tiny part of his conscience screamed at him that one dead German meant several of his friends might not have to die, Quentin had waggled his wings in salute and turned for home. Thanks to the fuel leak, he was at bingo fuel anyway. Hell, he wasn’t even going to make it home. He’d have to point toward friendly lines and hope for the best.

“Godspeed, you crazy bastard,” Quentin whispered as he turned his thoughts toward finding a suitable landing field. “That was a hell of a fight.”




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