Like Father Like Son - Parts One to Five

Phillip became aware of the soft stroking and his eyes opened wide in utter amazement. What was she doing? Her other hand reached down and cupped his sac and she gently manipulated his balls as her finger tips ran up and down the length of his hardness. She looked into his eyes and this time he did not turn away. Her face was serious but spoke volumes of kindness. She raised a finger to her lips, warning him to make no sound. He nodded dumbly. She resumed her ministrations, firmer and swifter now. He gave himself up to the pleasure coursing through his body and lay quiescent in the narrow bed. Something urgent was happening. It seemed to begin near the base of his spine then spread through him, as pervasive as sleep. Electricity jolted through his prick and her hands became a blur as she pumped him. Her fingers kneaded his balls and he almost fainted with the unexpected pleasure. Then he was swooping towards orgasm.

He felt himself contracting and ropes of thick, white semen spattered his chest and stomach as his entire being was concentrated for a few brief seconds in the bundle of supercharged nerves that appeared to have usurped all conscious thought. Her hand slowed and her touch became lighter as she pressed out the last few drops from his engorged member. Phillip came to himself to find his hand had clamped on that starched bosom and he felt the softness underlying the whalebone armour. Sister Hallam said not a word but simply removed his hand and placed it back on the bed beside him with a soft pat. She then completed his bath in her usual efficient and matter-of-fact fashion, wiping away the pooled semen with the sponge. 

“There! All clean.” 

She handed him a fresh nightshirt and bustled away with the bathing trolley as if nothing had happened. She seemed so completely normal that Phillip was forced to wonder if he had imagined the entire episode. 

It was never repeated and never mentioned but once or twice she visited him in dreams. He would wake just as he ejaculated, in fact as well as in dream. Perhaps that was why he never had another erection during his blanket baths. Maybe, he thought, Sister Hallam had known that. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

In December he was moved to a convalescent home. He could walk now, with the aid of crutches. His leg muscles had severely atrophied and he was told it would be a long while yet before he was fit again. His right thigh had taken two bullets, the left only one. They had left angry purple pits and the skin around the wounds seemed unusually thin and hot to the touch. But the bones had knitted well; the surgeon had been skilled. He was assured of a full recovery, given enough time. 

February - March 1916 The Student

Phillip worked hard through the winter to restore himself to full fitness. He was discharged from the convalescent home just in time for Christmas and spent the six weeks following driving himself remorselessly. At first with the help of a stick and later, unaided, he walked the Dorset hills from morning until night in every kind of weather. He was sustained through this self-inflicted ordeal by his deep and abiding love of the countryside he saw stretched out below him as he walked. This, he thought, this is worth fighting for. And as the grass cushioned his feet and the rain washed him, it seemed the land returned that love.

When he visited the hospital again for a final check-up, they were astounded at his progress. He had the merest trace of a limp and that only when tired. On the advice of his parents’ housekeeper he had rubbed his scarred flesh with goose-fat every day. The scars remained but the appearance of the wounds was much improved. He had no idea where the determination to drive himself so had come from. It had become an obsession. The months of inactivity had changed him. A restlessness had been born that would never subsequently leave him. He lost weight; the final softness of youth deserted his features. He was leaner and harder. The personal victory over his pain had left him altered in subtle but deep ways. 

Neither had he neglected his ambitions to fly during his convalescence. He had applied and been accepted for training as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps. Of course, he had had hopes of volunteering as a trainee pilot but had been persuaded that his chances of a successful transfer from the infantry would be greatly increased if he undertook a spell as an observer first and foremost. They had only just relaxed the rule that pilots had to be qualified before they applied. Phillip had heard of some officers taking private lessons to get their ‘ticket’ while awaiting posting or even when home on leave.

Thus, at the beginning of February, he had been passed fit by his final Medical Board and was sent to a training school near Oxford to begin his training. The duties of an observer were many and various. He had to learn navigation, gunnery, how to operate a camera and, in case of an emergency, the rudiments of how to pilot the aeroplane. Four weeks of ground school learning about vector triangles and magnetic variation dragged by. He wanted to be airborne. There he was, a member of the Army’s newest arm, and he had never been so much as an inch off the ground. Still, he willed himself to take in every pearl of wisdom the instructors tossed his way. 

To his fellow students he appeared aloof at first. He could not bring himself to join in with the wild games after dinner in the Officers’ Mess. The high spirits of the others eluded him. More than once he was taken aside by one of the staff and told not to be so serious, to relax a bit. He could not. He was haunted by the idea of failure, of having to return to the trenches. After a while the students accepted him as simply being reserved. Some put it down to the trauma of having been severely wounded. The staff were less sanguine. Phillip would have been alarmed to learn that more than one instructor had privately questioned his suitability to the RFC. 

Everything changed with his first flight. Even though the AIRCO De Havilland 1A was obsolete and took over eleven minutes to climb to just 3500 feet, Phillip was thrilled to the core. The 120 horsepower Beardmore engine blared and grumbled behind his head as the pilot played with the throttle. The wheel chocks were pulled away and the machine began slowly to move over the grass. As the aircraft was of the ‘pusher’ variety, that is to say, the propeller was at the rear of the fuselage, Phillip had an unobstructed view in front of him. After a choppy run of about eighty yards, the tail lifted and the motion became easier. The pilot held the nose down for a few more seconds and then, as he eased back on the stick, the venerable old aeroplane gave a slight lurch and clawed its way into the air. 

The racket from the Beardmore was deafening. Communication of any sort was only possible if the pilot leaned forward with his mouth close to Phillip’s ear and shouted at the top of his voice. For this reason, most exchanges were made with standard hand-signals. Phillip turned in his seat as the pilot tapped his shoulder. The man then pointed upwards and circled his hand, indicating they were going to climb. Phillip nodded vigorously. He turned back and smoothed his maps out over his knee then hung over the cockpit coaming, attempting, without much success, to identify landmarks. The aircraft’s instruments were basic in the extreme. There was an oil pressure gauge, a bubble variometer, which indicated whether the machine was climbing or diving, and a rev counter. Phillip threw out one of his weighted streamers to judge the wind direction. There was no compass fitted so he made do with a hand-held model he’d purchased in a Boy Scout Shop in Oxford. 

He slowly began to make sense of the map and relate it to the landscape he could see below. He picked up the course of the main Oxford to London railway line, assisted in no small measure by the plume of smoke sent up by a speeding express. The forward nacelle rattled and shook as the pilot tried to squeeze every last ounce of power from the complaining Beardmore. Phillip found it almost impossible to focus and was relieved when at last the pilot eased back the throttle and the plane levelled out. 

They made their way across the clear sky at a stately sixty miles per hour. The De H 1A had an absolute top speed of a fraction less than 80 mph but even those modest speeds were now beyond this tired example of the breed. Phillip didn’t care. He was scarcely even aware now of the droning engine. He put up his head and was buffeted by the wind and laughed out loud in pure delight. This was how things should be, clean, pure, somehow. He was detached from the earth, hanging between the heavens and the baser elements like a cloud. The pilot was tapping his shoulder again and gave the signal for directions. Phillip hurriedly gathered his wits and indicated a quarter turn to the right. The plane banked into the turn and Phillip’s heart sang with the joy of it. 

An hour later, considerably sobered by the experience of having been ‘lost,’ Phillip stood in silence as the pilot debriefed him on his first flight.

“You have to pay more attention to drift, old chap. In France, the wind almost always is blowing towards Hunland. You didn’t notice that the wind got up once we hit 4000 feet. You only launched one streamer. You need to do it about every fifteen minutes or so. Look here!”

The pilot pointed upwards. 

“Can you see how fast that cloud is moving? Yet down here there isn’t enough breeze to ruffle a milkmaid’s apron. Don’t worry, though, you’ll get the hang of it. first time is always a little shaky. You did well enough for a new boy.”

With that he strode away leaving Phillip, a forlorn figure, to follow in his wake.

The next three weeks passed in a blur of activity. Phillip learned to strip and reassemble a Lewis gun blindfolded. He learned also to check each cartridge carefully before loading the drums. Lewis guns were temperamental, prone to jamming. As one of the instructors said:

“If you’re under the guns of a Hun when the bloody thing decides to call it a day, you are cold meat, old son.” 

They practiced firing at moving targets on the ground at first. An old truck had a De H 1 nacelle mounted on its back. They took turns firing at a square target towed by another truck that would weave and swerve around the airfield. Phillip took to gunnery far more easily than navigation. He had owned a shotgun since he was twelve and readily understood the need to lead a target. Changing ammunition drums on the Lewis required the use of both hands and he rapidly learned to wedge himself tightly up against the coaming and to brace himself against the bucketing movement of the truck. 

“Drop a drum over the side, old chap, and you’re cold meat.” 

Only a few of the instructors had actual combat experience. Phillip learned that many of them had been civilian instructors before the war and had been pressed into service to help meet the demand for extra aircrew. The Royal Flying Corps had entered the war less than two years before with only four squadrons of twelve aircraft each. Now, in early 1916, there were thirty-eight squadrons, eight on Home Defence and the rest in France. Still more were being formed. All of this expansion was additional to the replacement of the inevitable, and heavy, combat losses. The air war had started as a leisurely affair. It was some months before opposing aviators had seriously starting shooting at each other. Violence is insidious, though, and during 1915, aerial combat had become the rule, rather than the exception. Now the Hun had found a way to make a machine gun fire through the propeller. Early British experiments to fit steel deflector plates to the wooden airscrews had ended ignominiously but rumour had it that a new and effective solution had been found and would be available shortly. 

“Still, can’t beat the old ‘pushers.’ Much better all-round vision and the Scarff Ring allows you to fire through 270 degrees.”

It sounded convincing enough to Phillip’s inexperienced ears. 

He ‘graduated’ in the middle of March and was sent home on embarkation leave with orders to report to the Aircrew Pool at Number One Aircraft Depot, St Omer, on the 28th. Ten glorious days stretched out in front of him but he didn’t have a clue what to do. One of his fellow students, Peter Riley, mentioned he was going to Hampshire to visit a wounded comrade in hospital at Bentley Hall. For want of a better alternative, Phillip agreed to accompany him. Both now sported the winged ‘O’ badge of the RFC observer. 

Little had changed at the hospital in the four months since he left it. Patients had come and gone, of course; some had died and some, like Phillip, had recovered. Sister Hallam still ruled the ground floor. She greeted a furiously-blushing Phillip with a mere nod. Bethan Meredith, on the other hand, flushed an even brighter shade of scarlet than did he. He approached her diffidently, avoiding her eyes.

“Hello, Nurse Meredith.”

Her reply was barely audible, her face averted.

“I’ve been wanting to speak to you. To apologise for what happened. I know it was unforgivable of me but I am so sorry I offended you like that. I wouldn’t wish to distress you for the world.”

She turned towards him, still pink with embarrassment but smiling faintly.

“Please don’t think of it, sir. Sister Hallam explained it to me and I know you couldn’t help it.”

“Nurse Meredith? Oh, would you mind awfully if I called you Bethan? Look, the thing is, frankly, I am at a bit of a loose end. Would you do me the honour of having supper with me sometime? I mean, if we were in London, I’d invite you to the Theatre or something but, well, the ‘Bull’ in the village does have a passable table and I would consider it the utmost kindness if you’ll agree.”

Bethan tilted her head and raised her large dark brown eyes to meet his. She was confused. Her first instinct was to run but she knew that was silly. Apart from that incident, Mr Welford -Barnes had always been a perfect gentleman and he was quite good looking in a sort of pale English way. Even so, she was about to decline the invitation when Sister Hallam’s voice boomed in her ear.

“Of course she will! Pick her up at seven o’clock and make sure you have her back by ten. Don’t be late!“

Phillip nodded dumbly and whirled away, elation surging through every fibre. Sister Hallam glared shrewdly at Bethan.

“It’s just what you need, young lady. And just what that one needs. All work and no play, my girl, is no good for Jack - or Jill! Now go and change the sheets on number three, we’ve a new one arriving this evening.”

“Yes, Sister. And thank you.”

Sister Hallam smiled at Bethan’s retreating back. ‘Such a pretty girl,’ she thought, ‘and such a pleasant young man.’ In different times they might be made for each other but the War hung over everything, blighting the simplest of pleasures. She had noted the new RFC observer’s badge. Flying was, well, unnatural, somehow. She stalked off to chivvy up some other nurse, vaguely wondering why the young ex-patient had blushed so much on seeing her.

Phillip caught up with Peter Riley and explained his arrangements for the evening. Peter shot him an envious grin and they agreed to meet back at the ‘Bull’ for a last drink after Phillip’s date. They spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to Peter’s wounded friend and some of the other young officers on the ward but Phillip found himself increasingly distracted. His thoughts kept straying to the pretty Nurse and more than once Peter had to repeat himself to get Phillip’s attention.

“You’ve really got it bad, old chum,” he said.

Phillip smiled. “D’you know, Peter, I rather think I have.”

Phillip would always remember that night. They had both been shy at first and reacted in contrasting ways. He had babbled incessantly and she had barely spoken. The Bull Inn was typical of its type. A seventeenth century coaching Inn with a wealth of low, black oak beams and an inglenook fireplace in which logs popped and hissed and emitted as much smoke as heat. Another consequence of the war, Phillip mused. Coal was needed for the warships and difficult to get. Still, the food was good and plentiful and the Landlord kept a reasonable cellar. Bethan eschewed alcohol as a rule – a consequence of her Methodist upbringing – but she did agree to a glass of fine Burgundy with the excellent venison. She loved the deep ruby colour of the wine and held up her glass to swirl the heady vintage in the lamplight. 

They slowly relaxed. Phillip prattled less and Bethan emerged from her shell to talk about her home and her family. She made him laugh with stories of life on the farm and the characters that inhabited her native village. Most of them were in the army now, of course. She wondered aloud what it would be like when the war was over.

“I mean it must be different, see. Before the war, now, well, no one really travelled, did they? Now, when they come back, well, they’ll have seen things most wouldn’t care to, isn’t it? How will they settle then?”

“I know what you mean. I used to worry about what I’d do when it was all over. Now, well, it doesn’t look likely to end anytime soon. The ones I feel most sorry for are the Reserve Officers. I’m a Regular; there will always be a place for me in the Army even if it means I have to go back to the regiment when this lot’s over. The RO’s, though, some of them interrupted their education or had already embarked on a career. It will be far harder for them to settle again.”

“And what about all the volunteers? My Dad has to get women now to help run the farm and what about them? They aren’t going to be willing to run back into the kitchen just like that once they’ve been earning wages, are they?”

“Bethan, do you know you finish every sentence with a question?”

“A question, is it? I don’t know, it’s the way I talk, see? I didn’t speak any Sais until I was ten or so. We always speak Welsh at home.”

“Sais? What’s that?”

“It means Saxon, really, but it’s our word for you English. Like the Scots call you Sassenachs – Saxons again, see?”

“Could you really not speak English until you were ten?”

“My part of Wales is mainly Welsh-speaking. There was no call to speak English until I went to the Grammar School, was there now?”

The evening passed all to quickly and Phillip was horrified to find it was nearly ten o’clock when he settled the bill with a crisp white five-pound note. He pocketed the change and ushered Bethan from the dining room. They hurried back to Bentley Hall. Bethan had to take his arm in the darkness and the contact flared through him like fire. They arrived at the door to nurses’ quarters with barely a minute to spare. Both were flushed from the effects of the wine and the brisk walking. The door opened to reveal the ample figure of Sister Hallam. 

“ I trust you had a pleasant evening? Good. Two minutes, Nurse Meredith.” 

She closed the door again and Bethan was seized by a kind of panic. Suppose he wanted to kiss her? What would she do? Before she had formulated an appropriate response, Phillip took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“Thank you for a most wonderful evening, Bethan. I’m off to see my people in Dorset tomorrow and then it’s France, I’m afraid. I would dearly love to see you again but time isn’t on my side. Would you mind awfully if I wrote to you sometimes?”

She gathered her scattered thoughts. The gentle brush of his lips on her fingers has sent a thrill of electricity through her. She gazed at him for a moment, unsure of what he’d asked. Then she ducked her head and nodded as realisation dawned. Without thinking she leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“Yes, please write, I’d like that very much.”

She spun on her heel and shot through the door without another word. Her heart was racing. Who would believe she could have been so bold! She danced a few steps along the empty corridor unaware that Sister Hallam was watching through the open doorway of her room. A smile passed briefly across the older nurse’s features and she nodded to herself. It was just what the pair of them needed.

Phillip stood outside, rooted to the spot. He stared blankly at the door for a full minute before turning slowly and walking away. His pace increased and there was a distinct spring in his step as he walked back to join Peter Riley in the ‘Bull’ for a nightcap. She had kissed him! And she said he could write! What a wonderful place the world had become! And its most magical creature gloried in the name of Bethan Meredith.

*****************************

Part Two

April 1916 Bertangles

The freezing air stung Phillip’s face as the elderly BE2c clawed its way back towards the British Lines. He tried to duck down further behind the cockpit coaming and shuffled his feet to try and restore some feeling. He was feeling nauseous from the effects of the castor oil fumes and light-headed from cold and the after-effects of the adrenaline rush he experienced when the Hun ‘archie’ – anti-aircraft fire – erupted in the sky around him. At first he had watched in astonishment when the little brown and red puffballs had appeared ahead and above the labouring aircraft. Then the German gunners had found their range and the very air about him seemed to split and convulse.

The old plane staggered under the impact of the blast and the pilot, ‘Pinky’ Harris, had flung them into a series of violent manoeuvres to throw the gunners off the scent. It hadn’t lasted that long but, to Phillip, it had seemed an eternity. He had a clear vision of being killed on his very first mission. He could imagine the BE just coming apart at the seams and saw himself tumbling through the clear air for eight thousand feet. He fought back the images and concentrated on working the camera. 

They had been sent, together with an escort of the new DH2 fighters, to photograph the German Trench system north of Albert. Pinky Harris was Phillip’s Flight Commander and one of the most experienced pilots on 14 Squadron. 

“Might as well break your duck, Phillip!” Pinky had said that morning and once the escort from 24 Squadron arrived, they set off over the battlefield. Phillip was amazed at how contained the war was. The whole sordid area of the trenches seemed barely a hand’s span wide as he gazed down from nearly three miles up. The cold was numbing despite his thigh-length ‘fug boots’ and leather flying coat. He pulled the scarf up around his face more and wiped the smears of oil and lubricant from his goggles with one trailing end. Pinky Harris pounded on his shoulder and gestured for him to look out for enemy aircraft. He nodded dumbly; neither could make themselves heard above the racket of the Renault engine.

Apart from the sudden storm of anti-aircraft fire, the flight had been uneventful. They had descended to eight thousand feet and taken their photographs. There was so little room in the cockpit that the camera was strapped to the outside of the fuselage and operated by a lanyard. Now, having turned tail, they were battling back westwards against the prevailing wind. Phillip’s mind had gone numb. He gazed about apathetically, conscious only of the abiding misery. Suddenly, Pinky was pounding his shoulder again and pointing aft behind the port tail-plane. Phillip squinted and made out a cluster of black dots. Enemy fighters! The shock jerked him out of his dismal reverie and he stood to swing the rearward-facing Lewis gun round to track the oncoming aircraft. Pinky waggled the BE’s wings to attract the attention of the escorting British fighters then dropped the aircraft’s nose and opened the throttle to the stops.

A sudden steep turn caught Phillip off-balance and he crashed against the side of the cockpit. He managed to grab at one of the struts and barely prevented himself from being catapulted clean out of the plane. He could now identify the Germans as Fokker ‘eindekkers’. The 24 Squadron fighters howled down into their path and soon the sky was a confused melee of circling aeroplanes. The elderly reconnaissance BE2 had no place in a dogfight and Pinky continued to hold them in a shallow dive. The engine thundered and the wind screamed through the bracing wires. A piece of patched fabric on the lower main-plane ripped off with a snap and Pinky eased the nose up. The old crate would only take so much. 

A sudden gout of bright fire blossomed in the sky behind them and Phillip watched an aeroplane tumble, a blazing firefly vivid against the faded blue of the heavens. A black cruciform shape detached itself from the burning plane and spun and tumbled silently to earth. His mouth filled with bile and he vomited over the side. Although he had only been in France again for five days, he had already heard the discussions in the mess as to whether it was better to jump or burn.

The dogfight receded slowly and Phillip was overcome with a wave of relief when he saw they were crossing the British Lines. Pinky, too, had noticed, for he throttled back and the engine resumed its customary throaty snarl. They turned south towards Bertangles and the wheels touched just as the sun was setting. Mechanics ran to the aircraft and helped the two men out. Phillip’s legs gave way beneath him and he would have fallen had not a burly corporal grabbed his arm and pulled him upright. Phillip turned to see that Pinky was wiping stray globules of vomit from the front of his flying coat and, at first, Phillip thought that the pilot had been sick as well. Then it dawned on him that it was his own and he reddened with shame.

“Don’t worry, old fruit. Took me the same the first time I saw a flamer. Was it one of ours or theirs?” 

“I’m most awfully sorry, Pinky.”

“Nah, don’t mention it. Was it one of ours or theirs?”

“Oh, Gosh, Pinky, I really couldn’t tell. It was too far way and I couldn’t really make out anything very much, just the fire.”

“Poor bastard, whoever he was. I heard of a chap in 11 Squadron who sideslipped his machine all the way down. He stood on the main-plane and flew it from there. Kept the flames away from him.”

“Golly, did he get away with it?”

“Nah, the kite somersaulted on landing and the poor old sod got thrown back into the fire. Still, it might be worth a try. Anything’s better than burning and I don’t think I’d have the courage to jump. Let’s go get some tea. I heard the mess servant’s got some fresh eggs!”

Phillip stumbled after Pinky’s retreating back. The castor oil used to lubricate the Renault engine seemed to have seized his stomach and twisted it into a queasy knot and he had to detour to the latrines at a shambling run, fumbling with the fastenings of his coat as he ran. After what seemed like an eternity, he began to feel better and pausing only briefly at the bell tent that served as his home to strip off his flying clothes, he donned his ‘maternity jacket’ and made his way to the Officers’ Mess. As he approached the wooden hut that housed the Mess, he heard Pinky’s voice.

“He’ll be all right. Got the wind up a bit but didn’t shirk when the Huns appeared. Silly young sod spewed all over me, though. Sometimes I wish they would put observers in the back.” 

Another voice sounded in agreement.

“I say, Pinky, did you hear what happened over in 16 Squadron? Some poor bastard took up an air mechanic as gunner, got into a bit of a scrap with some Huns and the bloody ‘erk’ shot their own tail off in an excess of enthusiasm.”

“No! What happened then?”

“The entirely predictable, old chap, large smoking hole in the bosom of La Belle France.”

“Good God, what a way to ‘buy it.’ Still, he won’t do it again, what?”

A loud gust of laughter greeted Phillip as he walked through the door. Curious eyes turned towards him.

“Ah, it’s our very own former virgin. And how was it for you, young sir?”

Phillip recognised the squadron commander, Major Wigram. 

“It was, uh, educational, sir.”

“Bless my soul! Educational, eh? Where are the precious pictures, then?”

With a look of horror, Phillip realised that he had left the camera on the aircraft. He was about to explain when Pinky said:

“Gave ‘em to the adjutant, Wiggy. The adj had some hound from Corps HQ who was mad for them and couldn’t wait.”