“BIGGLES” OF THE CAMEL SQUADRON

by Capt. W. E. Johns

IV. THE BOTTLE PARTY (Pages 63 – 77)

Algy bursts into the officer’s mess of No. 266 Squadron to tell Biggles there are now three balloons at Duneville. (Biggles replies “looking up from a well-thumped paper” we are told on page 63 of the first edition of the book. In the original story published in the April 1933 issue of ‘Popular Flying’ this was “a well-thumbed copy of La Vie Parisienne” (a risqué French magazine). This reference is removed from every book publication, from the first edition to the Norman Wright version, confirming once again that the stories were originally written for adults). Algy didn’t attack them as there were ten Fokker triplanes cruising above them. Colonel Raymond arrives and says there are three days leave in Paris and free transport for the person who knocks down a balloon at Duneville. Biggles says to Algy “No one but a madman would take on that job. Apart from the Huns upstairs, I bet the ground around the winches of those balloons is so thick with guns that you couldn’t walk a yard without stepping on one”. Henry Watkins says it wouldn’t be so hard if the Fokkers weren’t there and the gunners weren’t there. Henry outlines an outlandish idea. He says that a bottle dropped from ten thousand feet creates a din like nothing on earth. “It made more noise than a score of 230-pound bombs”. If you drop two to three dozen bottles, the gunners will go to earth in their dugouts. They can use all nine aircraft from the three flights. If the first six drop nine bottles each that would be fifty-four bottles. They dive for home underneath the Fokkers and lead them off. That will leave the remaining three planes, flown by Biggles, Algy and Henry, to get the balloons – “one sausage apiece”. The gunners will take cover and won’t hear the three planes coming due to the noise of the bottles. Biggles approves of the idea. He has to get written orders to fill up with Buckingham, a type of incendiary bullet that can only be used for balloon strafing. Nine Camels cross the line at Hamel to put the plan into action. The first six Camels successfully drop the bottles and lead off the Fokkers. Biggles attacks the central “sausage” and shoots it down. Algy get his, but Henry, “the Professor”, misses and goes back for a second attack. He gets the balloon just as an inferno of darting flames and smoke tear the air around them as the gunners get back into action. Then the ten Fokkers return. “This isn’t going to be so funny!” mutters Biggles. His windscreen is shot away as he faces the attack of a blue machine. “Out of the corner of his eye he saw two triplanes meet head-on and break up into fragments in a sheet of flame. The sight left him unmoved for he had seen it happen before. Another machine roared past him, leaving a long plume of black smoke in its wake as it plunged headlong to oblivion, but it was gone before he could see whether it was friend or foe”. Nine British S.E.5s arrive – “Wilks and his crowd!” Algy and Biggles return to base but there is no sign of Henry. ‘Wat’ Tyler, the Recording Officer takes a message about three enemy balloons being seen to fall – and “One Sopwith Camel – also seen – to fall – in – flames – message ends. Goodbye”. “Dead silence fell upon the group. Biggles leaned for a moment against the doorpost, staring at the ground. The knuckles of the hand that gripped his flying-cap had turned very white. His nostrils quivered once, quickly. He looked up mistily, and his face twisted into a semblance of a smile. “Come on, chaps!” he said huskily. “Let’s avaite!”