“BIGGLES” OF THE CAMEL SQUADRON

by Capt. W. E. Johns

III. THE BRIDGE PARTY (Pages 47 – 62)

Biggles is telling everyone how he saw a Camel earlier in the day, shooting up the bridge on the Lille road. Instead of flying up and down the bridge they were flying to and fro, across it. Henry was the pilot being referred to and he says to Biggles that the bridge won’t be there tomorrow. The following morning Henry has a 50-lb bomb loaded on his plane. He goes with Biggles and Algy to bomb the bridge. Biggles flies down on a bombing run, but misses and so does Algy. Henry, “the Professor” goes down in a vertical dive and when Biggles next looks, the centre of the bridge has been blown away, but Biggles can see no sign of Henry’s Camel. Returning home, there is no sign of Henry and so Biggles and Algy return to the bridge to look for him. They search for more than an hour, looking for a crashed Camel without success but both Biggles and Algy manage to shoot down an attacking German Pfalz scout, simultaneously “pumping lead through their props”. Biggles then attacks the Archie battery that is firing at him. It is mounted on a lorry and Biggles forces it into a ditch. Back at the Aerodrome both Biggles and Algy are “hoping against hope that the missing bird would come home to roost” but there is still no sign of Henry. The following night “a mud-stained, blood-stained, dishevelled figure” arrives – Henry has returned! Henry later explains what has happened. He decided to try and blow up the bridge from underneath by diving and dropping his bomb under the bridge – but the arch wasn’t wide enough to get through! His wings came off and the fuselage continued like a torpedo. Henry got out of the river and crawled along ditches for miles until he made it to the front line where he managed to get across the nightmare of ‘no man’s land’ back to the British lines. He then got a lift on a lorry back to their Aerodrome.