BIGGLES
FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE
by Captain W.
E. Johns
VII. DEATH
IN THE AIR (Pages
76 – 86)
“For the next ten minutes all Ginger’s
worst nightmares seemed to be happening together. He could hear Biggles calling but to get to
him, anxious though he was to obey, was another matter. For one thing he was in darkness and the
lay-out of the aircraft unfamiliar. But
what put him in a state near to panic was the way the machine was
behaving. It was all over the sky, and
clearly, if not out of control, nearly so”.
Ginger gets to the cockpit and discovers that Voss had been hit and was
either dead or unconscious. His body had
fallen and jammed itself against the control column. Biggles, from the second pilot’s seat was
trying to hold him up and keep the aircraft on an even keel. Ginger gets Voss out of the cockpit and drags
him into the cabin. He returns to tell
Biggles to land as there is petrol everywhere.
Biggles asks if Voss is alive, “I think he was hit through the neck” he
tells Ginger. Ginger goes back to the
cabin. “He was just in time to hear the
death rattle in Voss’s throat”. He
returned to Biggles. “He’s had it,” he
announced. Biggles was silent for a
moment. Then he said “Bad luck. Still, he’s been asking for it for a long
time”. Biggles asks Ginger to check
Voss’s pockets for a map or a compass course, but there is nothing to show
their intended destination. Biggles says
they need to land. “Well buck up about
it,” pleaded Ginger. “If these petrol
fumes reach one of the exhausts –”. “All
right – all right,” rapped out Biggles.
“I know. Don’t make a song about
it”. Their aircraft is then shot at by
another aircraft, a fighter. They decide
to land in the desert below, not knowing whether the sand is level or broken by
dunes. There is a “violent jar as the
wheels touched. The machine bounced
high. The engines did not open up again,
so Ginger, knowing what was coming, put his hands over his head and lifted his
knees to his chin in the hope of saving them from being broken”. They crash land. “Ginger needed no invitation to get out, for
no man moves faster that a pilot removing himself from a petrol-soaked aircraft
knowing that one spark from a dying magneto is all that is necessary to explode
the airframe as if it were a bomb”. “Not
until he had put thirty yards between him and the wreck did
he stop, and then he sank to the ground, breathless and weak from shock”. (“Ginger sank to the ground, breathless”
is the illustration opposite page 65).
Biggles joined him. “We’re well
out of that,” he observed without emotion.
Biggles says they have to try to get back to camp. There is nothing else
they can do. He guesses it must be
fifteen to twenty miles away. They look
around and only to the north is there signs of human occupation so they head
that way until they come upon a house where a man is loading a decrepit camionette
(a small truck or van) with vegetables for market. They tell him they are on their way back to
camp at Zebrit after a wild night and have lost their
way. “You must have drunk a lot of
wine,” declared the farmer laughing.
“You’re fifteen miles from home”.
The farmer takes them five miles to a village called Chella where there
is a telephone. Biggles had intended to
ring the camp as they would be missed at roll-call but a local gendarme
arrives. He has obviously been informed
that two legionnaires are missing and wants to arrest them but the farmer says there
is no need as they are on their way back to camp. Onlookers side with Biggles and Ginger
against the gendarme. Biggles says to
the gendarme “I will do whatever you say.
I admit that last night my comrade and myself was slightly fou (tipsy) (The word tipsy in brackets is a
quote from the book but I understand ‘fou’ to
translate as “mad”). But what’s
wrong with that?” The gendarme rings the
camp and then tells Biggles an escort is on the way for them. Half an hour later, a service truck pulls up
and it is Voudron himself, who is in charge of the
escort. Voudron
takes them aside to anxiously ask “What happened?” Biggles briefly tells him about the crash and
that Voss is dead and the corporal, “was shot – killed I think”. Voudron asks if
they were seen near the crash. When he
is told no, he says “Good. Don’t
worry. You’ll be all right. Come on”.
They go to the truck.