Bertie's First Hun

By Sopwith

Disclaimer: I do not own, or claim to own, any of the Biggles series characters used in this work. This fan fiction was written for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered part of the official storyline.

Second Lieutenant Lord Bertie Lissie, recently posted to 257 Squadron in France, glowered at the sky above him in a somewhat irate manner. “Bally weather, what?” he murmured, to no one in particular.

It was Bertie’s first week in France. He had been over the Lines a few times since his arrival, but he had yet to snag his first enemy plane.

A casual observer would not, perhaps, have been favorably impressed by Bertie Lissie's appearance. He was young, clean-shaven, and somewhat too neat where his wardrobe was concerned. He was not overly tall, and nor did he have any features particularly out of the ordinary, except for his eyes, which were a startlingly bright shade of blue.

The same casual observer might be surprised to learn that Bertie Lissie had crashed—literally— through his flight training and tests in less than three days, and already had fifteen hours solo flying experience under his belt.

“No Huns about,” observed Templeton, joining Bertie on the tarmac. He was in the same Flight as Bertie. “That's something to be grateful for, at least.”

Bertie spun round and glared at the speaker in silence for almost all of a minute before he spoke. “Are you under the impression that the war can be won by the two sides keeping out of each other's way?” he demanded.

Templeton shifted uncomfortably. “Er, no.”

“Good!” declared Bertie. “Because that's not the way to think at all, by jove no!”

“Well, it’s clearing up now,” remarked Templeton, referring to the foggy sky that had incurred Bertie’s wrath. “If you’re lucky, you should be able to go up in time for the afternoon patrol.”

Bertie’s eyebrows raised, and a smile of delight crossed his face. “Has it, though?” he murmured. “Well, then, I’d better get my beastly kit ready in case Crans decides to go up.”

&&&

As Templeton had predicted, the sky cleared up in time for the afternoon patrol. Captain Crans, Bertie’s Flight Commander, was waiting for his men by the sheds. “All right,” he said, when all the pilots had arrived. “I don’t expect there’ll be too many Huns about, but you’d better keep your eyes peeled just in case. Let’s get away before the fog comes back.”

Bertie climbed into his Sopwith Pup, donned his goggles, and waited for the others to take off first.

Once in the air, he followed his formation over the Lines, doing his best to ignore the black archie bursts that shook his plane. He scanned the sky for Huns but saw none, which did not surprise him.

After about fifteen minutes of aimless flying, Crans began to lead his Flight home. Bertie, slightly annoyed that he had flown all the way for nothing, also turned for home.

But as he prepared to go down towards the Lines, a flash of metal caught his eye, and he spun his head around sharply. A black-crossed machine dove down on him, seemingly from nowhere, fixing itself to the tail of his Pup.

Two deadly streams of tracer shot out, shaking the machine as they impacted.

&&&

“What ho,” murmured Bertie to himself, as he calmly side-slipped to spoil the other pilot’s aim. “Here’s a jolly Hun.”

He was not as upset as another pilot might have been. It was a war, after all, and therefore it was quite natural to have someone shooting at him. In fact, to his mind, it would have been more upsetting if there had not been a Hun on his tail.

Bertie turned in a swift, tight circle in an effort to get on the other plane’s tail, but to his annoyance the Hun stuck tightly to him and refused to budge. Bertie made a face, to show what he thought of Huns in general, and then muttered a few choice words for the particular Hun on his tail.

Round and round they went, and Bertie started to get frustrated, knowing that at any minute the Hun would get in a shot that could cripple him in an instant.

He decided to try some new tactics.

Swinging the Pup around, he allowed it to fall into a spin.

The enemy plane—a red-nosed Fokker—followed him down, as he had expected that it would. Bertie saw the other pilot lean over the side of the cockpit, probably to ascertain whether the British machine was truly hit or not.

And in a flash, Bertie pulled himself out of his spin and jerked his nose upward. He held his fire as the Hun made a comical attempt to regain its former height. Then he took the other machine in his sights, aimed carefully, and fired. Only once.

The bullet took the prop off the other plane, and so close were the two machines that Bertie could clearly see the expression of horror on the pilot’s face as he realized his danger.

Bertie watched dispassionately as the plane spun earthwards and went to pieces on the ground. A cluster of tiny ant-like figures hurried towards the fallen plane. One or two of them looked up and waved at him, and he realized that he was back over his own Lines.

Pushing the hair out of his eyes, Bertie settled back down in his seat and headed for home.

&&&

He was writing up his combat report when the door to the squadron office opened and Crans came in.

“What cheer,” he greeted.

“What ho,” replied Bertie.

“Good show today,” congratulated the Flight Commander. “Your first Hun.”

Bertie finished the sentence he was writing, then put down his pen and looked up, waiting.

“Look, laddie,” said Crans awkwardly. “I’ve just been talking to the RO. That red-nosed fellow you shot down was apparently quite popular in his own squadron. His pals have sworn to get your head on a platter. So, er, the CO thinks that perhaps you should stay on the ground for the next couple of days.”

Bertie’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me,” he began softly. “That you think I should go to bed and hide under the bally blankets until the Huns promise to be good?”

“Er—”

“Because if you are, I think it’s pretty steep, practically vertical, in fact! This isn’t a jolly game of hide-and-seek, and I jolly well won’t act like it is.”

Crans grimaced. “All right,” he said wearily. “But you’d better be careful.”

&&&

Bertie, flying at ten thousand feet, was scanning the sky with bored idleness as he cruised along at his leader’s left wingtip. He swerved slightly to avoid a cloud, and then looked up sharply as some hidden instinct warned him of impeding danger.

It took him a minute to locate the reason for the unease: the sun’s rays reflecting off the wings of an aircraft.

Bertie squinted into the blinding glare, but could see nothing. Muttering to himself, he pushed the nose of his machine a little higher, shading his eyes with his left hand, peering through his fingers to see if he could see the plane that was obviously there.

But still he saw nothing.

A particularly vicious burst of archie distracted him, and he took his eyes away for a brief instant to make sure that his plane was all right. In that time—which could have not been longer than ten seconds—a dozen or so Hun planes suddenly materialized in front of his astonished eyes.

Bertie spluttered. He choked. It was outrageous. How could so many planes have possibly hidden themselves so effectively that he had been unable to see them? But yet there they were, and if he hoped to tell the tale in the mess that night, he would have to do something about it, and soon.

&&&

That Crans had not seen the enemy planes was obvious from the blissful way which he was flying.

Bertie thought fast. A dozen Huns against three lone Pups. Actually, as the other two Pups had not yet noticed the Huns, it was effectively a dozen planes against him, Bertie Lissie, alone.

The Huns made for him. Tracer slammed into the fabric of his wings.

Crans, realizing something was wrong at last, finally looked back. Templeton, the third member of the Flight, swerved to avoid an oncoming Hun, and promptly had his wing taken off by another plane behind it. The two machines went up in a sheet of flame, and Bertie had to turn away, so intense was the heat.

Five planes hemmed Bertie in, and he lost sight of his leader. He wondered for a brief minute whether Crans was all right, then decided that it would be better for him to worry about himself first.

Bertie eyed the leading Hun grimly as it dived down on him, guns spitting twin lines of lead.

&&&

At the very last instant, the plane zooming towards him swerved, and Bertie followed the wild, zigzagging path it took with a grim eye. Bertie realized that it would probably take the pilot a few minutes to get his balance back and his plane under control, so he shifted his attention back to the remaining four Huns still waiting to attack.

He wondered why they did not all come for him at once, and, turning slightly, he could see two of the Hun pilots gesturing to each other in a silent pantomime. One of the pilots pointed to him, and the other nodded in acknowledgement.

Now, up until this moment, Bertie had completely forgotten Crans’ warning to him regarding the pilot he had shot down the day before. But as he eyed the four German pilots’ antics, he suddenly remembered.

That explained why the other pilots were hanging back, he mused gloomily. They were probably taking him in order of seniority, or possibly the ones closest to the dead pilot were allowed first shot. The others were simply there to keep their prey from escaping, and to take over the fight if necessary.

Bertie grimaced to himself. He did not only have to survive this attack. He would have to send a clear message to the other pilots that might otherwise be sent after him should he somehow escape the wrath of the four planes in front of him.

One of the four broke away from its companions and sailed towards Bertie, guns spitting twin streams of fire. Bertie shifted in his seat, his plane twisting, snipe-like, as he strove to get out of the deadly line of fire. He thumbed the firing button, but to no obvious effect.

He turned, slowly, and in a flash one of the waiting Huns was on his tail, firing steady lines of tracer into his Pup. Bertie grunted with mild annoyance as another plane joined in the combat, launching itself straight at him so violently that Bertie wondered if his Pup would be cut in half by the inevitable impact.

Like a cucumber sandwich this curious formation hung in place for close to five minutes before Bertie made up his mind that something had to be done.

&&&

Two Huns hovered alongside his Pup, so close that Bertie could have reached out and touched the engines, almost. Their pilots, grim-faced, hemmed him in as the third Hun continued to fire at Bertie from behind. There was no sign of the fourth plane, and Bertie did not waste his time worrying about it.

To Bertie’s mind, it was a mild miracle that so far his plane had remained intact—or, at least, in reasonable working order—under the assault of the tracer being fired into from all sides. He knew, however, that he could hardly expect his luck to last for much longer.

Grimacing violently, he pasted his best slack-jawed expression on his face, staring emptily up at the sky some hundred feet above him. As he had hoped, the two Hun pilots beside him naturally followed his lead, craning their necks to see what had caused his obvious surprise.

As their attention was diverted, Bertie took hold of the joystick and pulled it right back into his stomach. The Pup jerked like a startled colt, bucking violently mid-air, and Bertie was compelled to mutter, “Easy there, old thing” as he steered the plane in a wild zooming loop.

He turned to face the three Huns, feeling a wave of rage wash over him. His blue eyes glared coldly at the oncoming pilots, and he was conscious of a desire to ram the leading plane.

Bertie was almost on the first Hun when, suddenly, the three Huns swerved, turned tail, and as one began to race away at an astonishing speed.

“What jolly game are they playing at now?” muttered Bertie, scanning the sky for some clue as to the Huns’ hurried departure.

He soon saw. A majestic formation, consisting of six Pups, was drifting serenely towards him. He recognized Crans in the lead, and then the formation was past him, chasing after the Huns like a pack of dogs on the hunt.

Bertie, loathed to be left out of the fun, fought his way to the middle of the formation, spotted the Hun that had been firing tracer at him earlier, and without thinking, tore savagely into the plane, his thumb never leaving the firing button as he drilled the Hun full of holes.

But even as the Hun turned slowly around to fight him, another Pup flashed past and shot the Hun’s wing off. The Hun rocked in place for less than a minute, and then fell heavily into an earthward spin.

The pilot of the Pup pushed up his goggles and grinned, turning his thumbs up. It was Crans.

Bertie did not grin back. Instead, he made a face at his commanding officer.

&&&

Bertie climbed wearily down from his plane and dropped heavily to the ground.

Crans, who had landed a few feet away, jumped lightly down and came over to Bertie. “Good show,” he began, but Bertie cut him off.

“You snaffled my Hun!”

Crans froze in the act of delivering a slap to Bertie’s back. “I beg your pardon?”

“I had him, and you jolly well stole him off of me,” said Bertie heatedly. “With all due respect, it’s a bit steep, what?”

“You could have taken him out when he was shooting tracer into your tail,” Crans pointed out coolly, sounding amused. “Oh, don’t look so self-righteous! You were doing quite well, but I thought you could use a hand.”

Bertie muttered something incomprehensible. “Where did all the other jolly little Pups come from anyway?” he asked at length, when he was finally able to speak normally.

Crans raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Them? I got them to follow us out. I thought the Huns might try something, and it turns out I was right. They would have joined in earlier, but they ran into some Fokkers on the way.”

Bertie grimaced. “And here I thought I’d scared them off myself.”

“I don’t think you’re in that league yet,” replied Crans, with a broad grin. “All I can say is, if we have to send half the squadron after you every time you kill a Hun, we might need to get a bigger squadron.”

THE END