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.