Mr. Standfast | Page 4

and I sat down on a roadside wall and read
his last letter. It nearly made me howl. Peter, you must know, had
shaved his beard and joined the Royal Flying Corps the summer before
when we got back from the Greenmantle affair. That was the only kind
of reward he wanted, and, though he was absurdly over age, the
authorities allowed it. They were wise not to stickle about rules, for
Peter's eyesight and nerve were as good as those of any boy of twenty. I
knew he would do well, but I was not prepared for his immediately
blazing success. He got his pilot's certificate in record time and went
out to France; and presently even we foot-sloggers, busy shifting
ground before the Somme, began to hear rumours of his doings. He
developed a perfect genius for air-fighting. There were plenty better
trick-flyers, and plenty who knew more about the science of the game,
but there was no one with quite Peter's genius for an actual scrap. He
was as full of dodges a couple of miles up in the sky as he had been
among the rocks of the Berg. He apparently knew how to hide in the
empty air as cleverly as in the long grass of the Lebombo Flats.
Amazing yarns began to circulate among the infantry about this new
airman, who could take cover below one plane of an enemy squadron
while all the rest were looking for him. I remember talking about him
with the South Africans when we were out resting next door to them

after the bloody Delville Wood business. The day before we had seen a
good battle in the clouds when the Boche plane had crashed, and a
Transvaal machine-gun officer brought the report that the British
airman had been Pienaar. 'Well done, the old takhaar!' he cried, and
started to yarn about Peter's methods. It appeared that Peter had a
theory that every man has a blind spot, and that he knew just how to
find that blind spot in the world of air. The best cover, he maintained,
was not in cloud or a wisp of fog, but in the unseeing patch in the eye
of your enemy. I recognized that talk for the real thing. It was on a par
with Peter's doctrine of 'atmosphere' and 'the double bluff' and all the
other principles that his queer old mind had cogitated out of his rackety
life.
By the end of August that year Peter's was about the best-known figure
in the Flying Corps. If the reports had mentioned names he would have
been a national hero, but he was only 'Lieutenant Blank', and the
newspapers, which expatiated on his deeds, had to praise the Service
and not the man. That was right enough, for half the magic of our
Flying Corps was its freedom from advertisement. But the British
Army knew all about him, and the men in the trenches used to discuss
him as if he were a crack football-player. There was a very big German
airman called Lensch, one of the Albatross heroes, who about the end
of August claimed to have destroyed thirty-two Allied machines. Peter
had then only seventeen planes to his credit, but he was rapidly
increasing his score. Lensch was a mighty man of valour and a good
sportsman after his fashion. He was amazingly quick at manoeuvring
his machine in the actual fight, but Peter was supposed to be better at
forcing the kind of fight he wanted. Lensch, if you like, was the
tactician and Peter the strategist. Anyhow the two were out to get each
other. There were plenty of fellows who saw the campaign as a struggle
not between Hun and Briton, but between Lensch and Pienaar.
The 15th September came, and I got knocked out and went to hospital.
When I was fit to read the papers again and receive letters, I found to
my consternation that Peter had been downed. It happened at the end of
October when the southwest gales badly handicapped our airwork.
When our bombing or reconnaissance jobs behind the enemy lines were

completed, instead of being able to glide back into safety, we had to
fight our way home slowly against a head-wind exposed to Archies and
Hun planes. Somewhere east of Bapaume on a return journey Peter fell
in with Lensch--at least the German Press gave Lensch the credit. His
petrol tank was shot to bits and he was forced to descend in a wood
near Morchies. 'The celebrated British airman, Pinner,' in the words of
the German communique, was made prisoner.
I had no letter from him till the beginning of the New Year, when I was
preparing to return to France. It was a very contented letter. He seemed