Many World War I flying novels concentrate on the air war, but only the air war. Drinking and whoring, yanking and banking, kill or be killed, in little more than paper airplanes, with a max speed of 100 miles per hour or less.
All good fun. Lots of death and destruction. But sometimes I yearn for a little more of the human element. The Larks, by Jem Shaw has what I was looking for.
I always say that everyone fought a different war, just as everyone went to a different high school. How is that? Even if you’re in the same squadron, flying the same type aircraft, you’re not on every mission. You’re not there when a squadron commander chews someone’s ass. You’re not listening to someone’s last thoughts when aircraft meets earth in a fiery ball. You weren’t best friends, but someone else was. You may not have been there last year when the commander was a self-serving jackass, but you’re there when a peach of a commander took over.
You each have different friends, different moods, different squadrons, different wars.
In the First World War, it was even more so. The average life span of a front line English pilot was less than a month. Many died their first day in combat. The makeup of the squadrons changed almost daily. Battle lines bulged and swayed. Squadrons picked up and moved in the early morning, or the dead of night. Cold bunks grew warm the very next day when more rosy-cheeked young men filled the ranks. What kinds of men were they?
It was a different kind of war. New weapons. Machine guns turned the time honored frontal assault into mass suicide. There had never been an air war. Maybe, thought the ground commanders, the aeroplane might be good to spot for artillery.
How do you train newly minted airmen for flying, for war? Here’s how you take off and land. Now go fight. Tactics? Ask one of the old heads who’s been in the squadron a month.
And as the war ran on and the bodies piled up in great masses, aeroplanes morphed into killing machines. more and more adept, like genetically modified wasps. And more aviators died, ever more efficiently. Yet somehow, determination, and a copious ration of black humor carried them through. As you read The Larks, you’ll find yourself plunging into the hopeless abyss of certain death one moment, only to laugh out loud on the next page. Yet, it is anything but a comic tale.
Many WW I flying novels paint a clear picture of living with death, wasting few brush strokes on the battle with death. What it does to your mind. What it does to your dreams. How it twists your loyalty.
Jem Shaw does a bang-up job of filling in the gaps, while the plot screams along. Difficult. In the heat of battle, moral dilemmas plunder your mind. What if you’re in love? Can you think about love and still maintain the fighting spirit? What if you’re offered a way out, can you take it and still be loyal to your comrades?
The Larks is populated with all the people you find in a real war. Desk bound colonels who would “Love to take a crack at the enemy,” yet never do. Politicians, who make idle decisions, then go for tea. Wives and lovers who mourn the casualties and are left to pick up the pieces. Pilots afraid of death, but even more afraid of letting their comrades down. Pilots who live for the hunt and die in foolhardy quests.
And in the middle of it all, men fly delicate machines and do a grand job of killing soldiers on the ground and other men who fly delicate machines. Day to day, hour to hour, in weather not fit for birds, in battles committed to open slaughter.
Jem Shaw has written a heart stoppping novel that lets you wade through the mud on the way to your aeroplane, let’s you feel the wind in your face, and smell the oil and cordite, all the while wondering if today will be the day you die.
