Andrew Wareham: The Balloonatics: A Tale of the Great War

“I presume we patrol at a given height depending on weather and cloud cover, sir. On spotting a submarine we send a message by wireless giving position and inform the convoy we are escorting and then go into the attack.”

Fitzjames was deeply pleased by Peter’s intuitive perception. He smiled, showing great horse teeth, his head looking even more like a fleshless skull.

“Exactly! Message first. We hope to arrange the wireless systems so that the escort to the convoy may listen in to all you say. That is difficult at the moment. Our current procedure is that you wireless to Shoreham and we telephone Dover, where the convoy escorts are based, and they send the message to their own people. A little slow.”

“Could we use flares, sir? Green for starboard, red for port, perhaps. That would at least alert the convoy.”

Fitzjames was immediately convinced that Peter was brilliant, a godsend, a blessing come to his people.

“Good idea! Marvellous! That’s the benefit of new blood, Naseby. You can think through the things we are doing and give a sensible opinion. Still, enough for today! Breakfast for seven and you start learning to pilot one of the balloons immediately after. An hour in the classroom, then it’s off to the cockpit. Learning by doing! We’ll have a chair fixed on the fuselage so your instructor can lean over your shoulder for the first while. Bit exposed but it works!”

Peter wondered just what sort of madhouse he had wandered into. Chairs on top of the fuselage? He could not complain – they had asked for volunteers and everybody knew that a volunteer was a man who had misunderstood the question. He had got what he had asked for, in the elegant expression of the day.

Not to worry. He had fallen into it, both feet first, and now he was stuck and must make the best of it. The very best. If he was in a madhouse then he would be king of the loonies.

He found that he had a single room, being a senior man in the wardroom, only three officers on the base superior to him. That was comfortable, at least. He unpacked his suitcase and hung his second-best uniform up in the wardrobe, shirts on the hangers next to it, ties on their rails. His best shoes were neatly aligned at the bottom, empty suitcase outside on top, as was correct. Handkerchiefs and underclothes to the small chest of drawers, regulation stockings and socks in the bottom drawer, that being where they lived. Washbag with soap and facecloth and shaving gear neatly placed on the right, next to the mirror.

He had been taught at Dartmouth how to pack and unpack a suitcase, Navy fashion, would never, could never vary from that ingrained routine.

Ten minutes taken up making himself ready. He changed out of reporting uniform into his older, working gear, identical but worn for three months. It was always wise to retain a ‘best’ uniform. He hung that last of all, neatly and tidily, shirt discarded into the laundry basket together with the used underclothes and socks. Dartmouth had been insistent on rigorous personal hygiene; all the cadets had seen and winced at what happened to the very few of their contemporaries who were so unwise as to smell and were corrected with scrubbing brushes and carbolic soap.

Time for afternoon tea.

He marched across to the wardroom, a large hut under corrugated iron, recently built from timber, not even a proper brick building. He stepped inside, was greeted by a petty officer, presumably in charge of running the wardroom.

“Afternoon, PO.”

“Sir! Askew, sir.”

“Lieutenant Naseby, posted today.”

“Yes, sir. You are on my list, sir. Due to go to Polegate when it opens, next week, probably, sir. Likely to be moving us all out to different bases, sir.”

“So I heard. I know nothing of the details, of course.”

“No, sir. Commander is in the wardroom, sir.”

It was a courtesy to inform a senior officer of who was in already.

“Thank you, Askew.”

Using the name to show that he remembered it on first hearing.

He pushed through the double doors leading into the wardroom proper, stopped just inside to get his bearings.

A big room, at least fifty feet long and thirty wide, a pair of formal dining tables to the rear, lounging chairs and drinks tables to the front and a large bar in the corner, big enough to take two barmen easily. The bar was closed, wise at three in the afternoon on a working day.

He put his cap up on the rack inside the door, making himself informal – no salutes demanded of the juniors in the room. Finlay, the Commander, waved to him, called him across.

“Naseby! This is John Fraser who will be teaching you to fly over the next few days.”

Fraser was a little older than Peter, in his mid-twenties, a normal, everyday sort of fellow except that his face was weather-beaten, tanned by sun and wind like the pictures of the old sailing ships’ crewmen.

“Open cockpit and a fifty mile an hour gale, old chap. We all get a little wind beaten, unless we grow beards.”

“I don’t think I could emulate the Captain, Fraser! I’ll keep my razors out.”

“Me too! Tea and biscuits at this time of day. Nothing stronger. What do you know of flying, Naseby?”

“Nothing at all. Before this morning, I had hardly heard of it!”

“Good. Flying a balloon is nothing like piloting a plane. You have nothing to unlearn!”

“One advantage, anyway. Are we permitted to talk shop in the wardroom here?”

“Oh, yes! Nothing but, in fact. All of us here are flying mad, apart from the mids – they’re just mad. All in the one room for lack of anywhere else to accommodate the mids. The subs are all volunteers. The mids are posted in. Most of them find they like the life.”

Peter thought that was a little hard on the midshipmen. On reflection, they were never permitted a choice in anything they did. Midshipmen obeyed orders, end of story.

“Not wishing to be tactless, Fraser, the mids we get – are they the cream of the cream, the pick of the bunch, as you might say?”

Fraser and the Commander laughed in unison.

“Not bloody likely, Naseby! We get the oiks, the no-hopers with two left feet and too much brain for their own good. Mids should never think for themselves in the wet navy; they are expected to have nothing to think with!”

Peter knew that was true from his own experience. He had learned to keep his mouth shut in his first term at Dartmouth, to hide the fact that he always knew the answers in the classrooms. ‘Clever’ was commonly an insult when applied to a midshipman or cadet.

“I suspect that might make them the right sort for us, sir?”

The Commander nodded and grinned.

“Bring them on, Naseby! Give us the mavericks, the overly-intelligent, the ones who ask why, the misfits – nine times out of ten they are perfect for us. They think and they fly and they quickly learn to fit in with our ways. By the time they make sub, which is normally quickly, they are fit to command their own balloons. We had a visiting admiral here for two days last month, trying to make sense of what we do and how we do it. He left saying they had given the bloody monkeys the keys to the banana plantation. It was a madhouse and we should all either be court-martialled today or promoted tomorrow. He agreed that we should be given more men and money.”

Peter laughed – it seemed to be the correct reaction there.

“I almost drowned C-in-C Portsmouth this morning, which is how I come to be here. I suppose I fit in.”

Fraser gave an admiring whistle.

“Well done, Naseby! Nothing like that for making a name for yourself. I was far less venturesome. On a destroyer out of Dover and I have always had the habit of whistling when I’m busy. Captain said if he heard ‘Whistling Rufus’ one more time he’d go bloody mad and it was either his sanity or my posting…”