BIGGLES GOES TO WAR

by Captain W. E. Johns

XI. THE BRIDGE – AND A CAPTURE (Pages 126 – 137)

For an hour Biggles flies to the north-east of the country until his strikes the river a little way above the bridge. Everywhere is evidence of the coming invasion. “If we hadn’t come here, the Lovitznians would be inside Maltovia within a week”. Biggles flies in from Lovitzna, so it doesn’t look like he is coming from Maltovia in order to bomb the bridge. “Suppose someone is just going over the bridge?” asks Ginger. “Then it looks like being his unlucky day. It would be just too bad, as the Americans say” said Biggles. Biggles bombs the bridge and the two centre arches disappear. He flies into Lovitzna to keep up the illusion that he has come from there. As they fly over Lovitznian territory, they see a new high-performance Fokker day-bomber with Lovitznian markings and Biggles realises that it is being delivered to the Lovitznian Air Force. The pilots of both machines wave at each other and Biggles points at a suitable big field in the distance and invites the other machine to land. Algy is perplexed at them landing in Lovitzna but they do so and so does the Fokker day-bomber. Establishing that the pilot of this machine speaks English, Biggles says they are instructors to the Lovitznian Air Force and have come to meet him with special instructions. Biggles persuades the gullible pilot, who is a German named Wengel, that there is a big crowd waiting to greet the arrival of the new plane and they want to present the pilot with a decoration – the Purple Pigeon of Lovitzna. They want him to parachute down as the crowd have not seen a parachute-jump. Biggles has a spare pilot who will then land the new machine. Wengel agrees to do this. Biggles flies him in his new plane to the central airport of Lovitzna where he parachutes out. “A slow smile broke over Biggles’s fact as he watched the parachute open and the luckless German sail downward”. (In the Modern Boy version, for some reason, this line finishes “sail down” rather than “sail downward”). This leaves Biggles and Ginger to fly home in the now stolen new machine with Algy following on in the original Lovitznian aircraft. Biggles flies back to their aerodrome where he wants to land in the dark so they are not noticed in their Lovitznian aircraft. After landing, Ludwig arrives in a panic. The Count Max Stanhauser, returning from London by aircraft, is down – in Lovitzna!