“Ah! Good thought that, Naseby. Didn’t occur to me… You’re right, of course, you will definitely need somewhere to put things.”
Peter hoped the men from the Office in London were less amateur. He recalled Captain Holder at Portsmouth saying that Intelligence had lost three officers and their boats on the Belgian coast since Christmas – that did not fill him full of confidence.
They took off early, soon after six.
Griffiths expected the run to take less than four hours at easy cruising speed.
“Can’t get too far lost, sir. They say the lines are like a great snake across the countryside with miles of devastation on either side. Impossible to miss.”
“So are we if they have aeroplanes up, Griffiths.”
“The Germans never cross our lines, sir. So the papers say – our boys have to go over to hunt them.”
“From what I have read about the Fokkers, I wouldn’t describe the process as hunting them, Griffiths.”
“It does sound peculiar, sir.”
They crossed the Channel, looking out for submarines as always, seeing nothing as was the case in all except a tiny percentage of patrols.
Peter wondered if unseen periscopes were tracking him, hiding away in fear of his bombs. He hoped so, though it seemed unlikely, the sort of thing the newspapers would say.
They crossed the French coast, not so far from Boulogne, they thought. There was definitely a busy harbour to the northeast and ships entering and leaving accompanied by the navy. It did not look like Calais to Peter’s vague recollection, so Boulogne was a likely identity.
“Course for Ypres now, sir.”
Peter turned slowly, pointed the blunt nose of the blimp more to the north.
Silence for some while, Griffiths scanning the land ahead with his binoculars.
“Got a railway line, sir. Come around five degrees north.”
Another prolonged silence.
“Got the trenches in sight, sir. Must be the Salient from the shape, sir. That battered town must be Ypres… I think. Lots of small gauge tram lines and a standard gauge railway track and a metalled road, sir. Come ten degrees to starboard and drop us to two thousand feet, sir.”
Nothing for two minutes.
“Got an open field, sir, with lots of soldiers on either side, dead ahead. Drop us in, sir… Belay that, sir! They’re playing football.”
Peter held course at a thousand feet.
“Hard aport, sir! I can see a flag and they are firing green flares, sir.”
Less than a quarter of a mile distant, too close to go straight in.
Peter made a curling descent, circling the field and then lining up into the breeze. It made little difference but looked as if he was performing a deliberate manoeuvre, not lost and diving in hopefully.
“Aerial in.”
Griffiths wound in the trailing wire.
“Ready with the rope… Let go!”
The rope dropped and soldiers grabbed it and heaved mightily, pulling SS9 to the ground. Peter hopped out and supervised the process of mooring the ship to four anchor points, checking each was firm and secure. He spotted a lieutenant colonel, put his hat on and saluted.
“Commander Naseby and blimp SS9, sir. My second hand, Lieutenant Griffiths.”
“Jolly good show! Secombe-Askey, you know. Supposed to be running this business. Don’t know a damned thing about it. Just supplied the bodies. There’s one of your people here somewhere who actually knows what’s going on. Just happened to have a battalion back on rest and a couple of acres of flat ground, you know. Big, ain’t it, that balloon of yours! Thought they was smaller, from what I’d heard. Zeppelins supposed to be larger still, they say?”
“Far greater, sir. We have seventy thousand cubic feet of gas and they are supposed to run over the million. Bigger in every aspect than we are. Carry a ton of bombs to our one hundredweight.”
“But your small load was enough to sink a submarine, I gather.”
“Luck, sir. Got within a hundred feet and dropped smack on top of the sub.”
“You can call that luck, if you wish, Commander. I’ve got another word for it! No matter – here’s your own boss man.”
A rumpled-seeming lieutenant commander, apparently slept in his uniform, came running across.
“There you are, old chap. They said you would arrive at dawn.”
“No, take off at dawn. We don’t generally play games in the darkness, not with a bag of hydrogen over our heads.”
“Ha! H’m. Yes. Thinking on it, I wouldn’t wish to either. Good point, that man!”
“So I thought. What is the plan now?”
“Can you take off after dark, if you must?”
“Probably. Better to get into the air in the dusk and head off south for a slow hour before reversing course. Build four fires on the field in a square and we can come back and take a course from them.”
“How high?”
“Below the cloud. It’s a clear day, at the moment. Five thousand feet, if you want.”
“High enough not to be seen from the ground or heard. There’s always noise near the Front – convoys coming up with stores after dark and a bit of shellfire. We want you to go the better part of fifty miles north of here, on low ground within reach of Brussels for men on bicycles. They have to be out of sight before dawn, can’t have a landing ground closer to us. They will light paraffin lamps when they hear you coming, so you need to drop lower for the last few miles if you are to see them. Drop the bags over the side and get out quickly. If possible, try to get in for midnight – better that the people on the ground don’t have to hang around too long.”
“Make height and head back across the Lines. It will be difficult, almost impossible to find this landing ground before dawn.”
“Have you got the range to go straight home, to England?”
“Easily.”
“Do so. The less you hang about here, the smaller the chance of information getting back to Germany. We aren’t the only ones to have spies, you know. If they hear that we have been sending airships north then they will have another search for spies in Brussels. Best to keep all quiet.”
Griffiths sat down with the charts he was given
“Taking off at ten o’clock, sir, going south and then taking a heading almost due north at forty miles an hour will take us to the landing ground for one o’clock. To get there for midnight demands a nine o’clock start; its still not wholly dark then.”
“Makes taking off and setting a course easier. Means we will be able to get a better idea of the wind as well, being able to see our leeway. Take off at nine.”
Peter turned to the man from Intelligence, asked when the load would be put aboard.
“Can do that now, if you wish, Commander.”
The sooner the better, in case anything went wrong.
“Have you petrol for us?”
“Got some from the RNAS station near Dunkerque. Can top you up now. Do you want some Number One Grenades? Picked up a dozen in case you needed them.”
Peter had not seen the little grenades before. They seemed to be one pound bombs with a thick casing that would fragment and cause harm to groups of soldiers. There was a fusing string to pull before throwing them, or in this case dropping them over the side.
“Put them aboard, please. Odds are we shall have no use for them. Might come in handy, even so.”
“Better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them, Commander.”
That was the sort of truism that sounded terribly profound, Peter thought. He smiled his kindest.
“We can feed you in the mess here, Commander. The Brigadier is located here so the food is pretty good. You can have a room after lunch to get your head down. Always spare rooms – battalions coming back from the Trenches to rest never have a full complement of officers. Dinner for seven o’clock and you can make ready to fly for nine.”