Knights of the air book.., p.1
Knights of the Air Book 4: Exile, page 1
Literary Awards Won by Knights of the Air, Book 1: RAGE, the first in this series of four books.
Maincrest Media Book 2022 Award Winner in Military Fiction category
International Impact Book Award Winner 2022 for Military History
Literary Titan Gold award winner 2022 for Military Fiction
Outstanding Creator Award 2022 Winner for Historical Fiction and 3rd place for All Fiction.
Praise for Iain Stewart’s
Knights of the Air, Book 1: Rage!
“A remarkable historical novel… A sharp and effective blend of WWI aviation action and adventure, a hefty dose of emotion and human drama, plus a dash of romance, keep the pages flying. Finely written and vividly imagined, this is a complex, gritty novel delving into the brutalities of war. Stewart is an author to watch.”
BookView Review, Gold Award Winner
“Rage!, the first book in Iain Stewart’s Knights of the Air series, is about as realistic and loyal to history as they come… If Rage! is any indicator for the rest of the series, military history buffs better be making some room on their bookshelves now.”
Independent Book Review
“Highly recommended… Splendid tale of aerial warfare in WWI… Book 1 of what promises to be a highly enjoyable series, and this reviewer, for one, is looking forward to the sequel.”
Historical Fiction Company
“A rousing yarn that deftly delivers both a wartime adventure and a character study.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Stewart weaves drama, integrity, and conflicting emotions through a captivating story of human spirit.”
Kristina Stanley, bestselling and award-winning author of the Stone Mountain Mystery series
“A thriller story replete with nonstop action.”
Midwest Book Review,
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
“Iain Stewart has created a cinematic viewpoint as seen through the career of a dedicated, determined, vengeful loner.”
Feathered Quill
“Author Iain Stewart knows how to throw readers into a scene and keep them enthralled until the end…a rousing and suspenseful military adventure novel that is filled with gritty air combat that sticks close to the WW1 facts but never forgets to entertain the reader.”
Literary Titan
The descriptions of combat are so intricate and fierce that you can't help but be on the edge your seat while reading this… it's like you're actually in the cockpit experiencing it.
Outstanding Creator
Written with care and woven with history, Stewart's Rage is an ambitious and chilling take on the men who were thrust into the skies to serve their countries.
Maincrest Media
© 2022 Iain Stewart
Published by Atmosphere Press
Cover design by Matthew Fielder
No part of this book may be reproduced without permission from the author except in brief quotations and in reviews. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to real places, persons, or events is entirely coincidental.
atmospherepress.com
To my mother, for inculcating a love of good stories. To my father, for encouraging and funding my early flying. And to Cassia, for her understanding that sometimes my body was present but my mind was cavorting in the skies of the Western Front.
Like generation of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
—Homer, Iliad
~
Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.
—Lord Wellington, after defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
~
Indeed, what better immortality could one ask than to live forever in the minds of living men?
—Cecil Lewis, WW1 ace and author of Sagittarius Rising
Prologue
Spring 1918.
Toul Aerodrome. 56th Pursuit Squadron, Army Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).
“Listen, mes enfants, listen to me and you might live a few weeks,” Major Raoul Lufbery growled, his welcome as warm as ground glass.
It took Joe Stanley a second or two to decipher the words. The 56th Aero Squadron belonged to the American Expeditionary Forces but their commanding officer, Major Lufbery, spoke with a heavy French accent. Joe wasn’t the only one struggling to understand; many of the fresh-faced American pilots were frowning as they clustered around their new commander on the damp grass of Toul Airfield.
Half an hour ago, they had piled off the truck, stiff from their long ride to their new airfield, and stared wide-eyed at their first glimpse of a fighting squadron in France. Some things were familiar to them: the hive of activity as the mechanics bustled between neat lines of single-seater biplanes, the puffs of white smoke as the rotary engines burst into their angry snarl, the prevailing stench of the castor oil engine lubricant, and the metallic chattering of machine gun testing.
But this airfield also invoked something new and intangible—a shiver of mortal danger. From here they would take off to fight the enemy and questions gnawed at Joe—and, he guessed, every single one of the new boys. What will it be like? Do I have the courage it will take? Who will live and who will die?
The stocky Lufbery glowered at them, hands on hips, his uniform crumpled and oil-stained. “Hawks and pigeons fly the skies of France. Which are you?”
“Hawks, of course,” Tex Lacey drawled. He looked around his fellow pilots for agreement. “We’re going to be famous aces.”
Joe winced. Tex and self-doubt were not exactly bedfellows.
“You want to be aces?” Lufbery’s growl went up an octave and his bushy eyebrows mashed together over deep-set eyes. Tex gave a curt nod, and many of the new pilots nodded too. Not Joe. He preferred to keep quiet until he knew what he was talking about. His first flying instructor had warned him, “When you cross the lines and engage the enemy for the first time, it is like losing your virginity. No-one can adequately describe it. Either you have done it, or you haven’t.”
Joe liked the analogy. Some of these young men were still virgins in both love and war, and they lusted for combat glory like they lusted after girls—with an exhilarating mixture of expectation and trepidation.
“Then you will die!” Joe jumped as Major Lufbery pistoned his right fist into his left palm. “You are pigeons, tender, ready to be plucked!” He scowled around his New World flock, a man severely disappointed by the offerings on view.
Lufbery might be short in stature but to Joe and the other pilots, he was a giant. They all knew the legend. An adventurer born of an American father and French mother, he had travelled across China, India and Africa as an airplane mechanic. When war broke out in 1914 but America stayed neutral, he joined the famous French Foreign Legion, fought his way up from sergeant to lieutenant, and helped launch the famous Escadrille Lafayette—the French air force squadron consisting of American volunteers. There he became an ace and won the prestigious Légion d’honneur and the Croix de Guerre. When America finally entered the war in 1917, he transferred to the neophyte United States Air Service where his sixteen kills made him their leading ace by a long way.
Joe shook his head in wonder. How lucky he and the rest of the group were—surely there was no-one better to guide them through their perilous initiation into the skies of the Western Front?
“Over there—” Lufbery pointed dramatically eastwards to where the distant guns sounded— “are the Germans. Some of them belong to Richthofen’s Circus, by definition hawks who have hunted these skies for a long time. I don’t care how good a flyer you are, until you see and understand all that is happening in the sky around you, you will be pigeons. Your job for the next month is to survive. Only that!”
A low drone drifted over the airfield and Lufbery’s head lifted like a hunting dog with the scent of prey in his nostrils. He broke off his lecture to listen with a cocked head, his weathered face tight with concentration, deep-set eyes gazing upwards at the clear blue sky. “Nieuport scouts, our patrol returning,” he said, and none of the acolytes hanging on his words contradicted him. They would not dare, partly because he was their commanding officer but mainly because he knew more about aero engines than all of them put together.
“If you survive, you may one day become a hawk.” The major held up a warning finger, smudged with oil and dirt, and scowled at them. “But to survive you must listen to me and do what I say. War flying is not glamorous. It is hard, dangerous work. Survival must be your focus.”
He turned from the group and counted the approaching planes. The muscular shoulders relaxed. “Four out, four back.” He focused on the returning planes, and his conversation with them seemed forgotten. Joe looked around the others, they shrugged back. They stood and waited without resentment, much as the disciples of Socrates must once have waited on the whims of their mentor. Three of the Nieuport 28s bumped into their landings, elegant and pretty with their blue-red-white striped cowlings and tailplanes.
As the fourth turned into its landing approach, Lufbery cocked his head again, and raised his hand for silence. No-one had spoken, but now they held their breath. A phone rang in the squadron office. Lufbery’s head straightened, and his eyes lifted to the sky in the east. “Mercedes engine,” he said, a
The adjutant ran out the door of his office. “A Hun,” he yelled, his voice cracking, “heading this way. Ground observers say it’s a two-seater.”
Lufbery ran towards his motorcycle, lumbering like a bear. “Is my plane refuelled and re-armed?” he shouted at the nearby mechanics.
“Not yet, sir. Ten more minutes.”
The motorcycle refused to start first time and the major stomped on the starter lever in frustration. “Any planes ready?”
“Yessir! Mr. Davis’ plane is ready to go.”
Finally, the motorbike engine fired, and Lufbery roared off in a cloud of white smoke towards the flight line.
Joe and the rest of them stood rooted to the spot.
The adjutant ran onto the landing strip, frantically crossing his arms repeatedly over his head in the abort signal, as the fourth plane flattened out to land. The Nieuport jerked in surprise and lifted back into the sky, engine bellowing. The adjutant thrust one hand upwards and fired a Very pistol. The red flare—enemy sighted!—burst over the aerodrome. The Nieuport circled once as the pilot searched, and then over the airfield boundary at two thousand feet appeared the rounded silhouette of an Albatross two-seater.
Joe gaped at the famous iron cross insignia of the German air force, painted thick and black as tombstones on the wings.
“Huns,” breathed one of the Americans, and their feet shuffled with the name of their bogeymen. The adjutant swaggered towards them. “You are in for a treat. The Huns seldom dare come over our airfields, but now you will see an expert at work, without even having to leave the ground.”
The pilots gave a small cheer. “Damned nice of them to lay on a sacrifice for us,” Tex grinned.
The adjutant smiled. “Indeed,”
The snarl of a rotary engine on full power swamped the group and they ducked as the Nieuport swept over them, the blast of prop-wash snatching their caps and sending them flying thirty feet. No-one moved to retrieve them. Instead they watched fascinated as Lufbery’s small Nieuport snarled upwards to join the other Nieuport in doing battle with the Hun.
Before Lufbery could reach the German, the first Nieuport engaged the enemy. White tracer lines speared both ways and the faint crackle of machine guns reached the ground. The Nieuport swerved wildly and tried to attack from another direction. The German drove him away with the contemptuous ease of a boxer with the longer reach. A third time the Nieuport attacked, a third time he swerved away, his own tracers wide. Joe exhaled in worry as the Albatross banked away from the airfield towards the town of Nancy.
But now Lufbery had gained the height.
“Notice,” the adjutant said, “how he does not attack at the same height. Instead he goes higher. Now look where the sun is. He has positioned himself so the Hun gunner will be looking into the sun. This is why he is a top ace.”
Their leader’s plane swooped—faster and more determined than the first Nieuport. Guns hammered, stitching white lines of tracer bullets. Neither plane swerved or deviated as their guns stuttered. The pilots held their breath. Even from two thousand feet below this felt like a fight to the death—no prevarication, no holding back, just deadly intent.
Joe waited for the Hun to fall from the sky.
“Christ, no!” The adjutant saw it first, the black blossom beneath the Nieuport, which grew a tail of greasy smoke. The plane entered a shallow dive. Now they could see the red flame at the heart of the black smoke, just underneath the cockpit, growing. A murmur grew among the watchers. The adjutant, neck craned skywards, shouted, “Luf! Get it down! Down, Luf!”
The plane half-rolled and a black figure plummeted, arms and legs flailing, more than a thousand feet.
“No, Luf!” The adjutant broke into a run towards the squadron Cadillac.
The new pilots looked at each other, faces pale and eyes wide in shock. “Jesus!” Joe said and ran after the adjutant. Joe and two other pilots jumped into the car as its wheels spun and the adjutant accelerated away.
Ten minutes later, they found a crowd of local civilians gathered by the village of Maron. They stopped and pushed through the throng. Joe stared, his mind refusing to believe his eyes. He had faced his nightmares of death, by bullet or flames, in the lonely hours of the night when the worms of doubt and fear had squirmed in his guts.
But nothing had prepared him for this sight. The body of Raoul Lufbery impaled on a picket fence, devoid of dignity and shrunk in death. Joe turned away and vomited.
Raoul Lufbery was supposed to be their mentor, the man who had taken on the best the Huns had to offer and not just survived but prospered. He was supposed to be the wily veteran who would teach them the ropes in the bitter air war against the experienced and vengeful Germans.
Joe looked around his mates and saw in their eyes the same questions that plagued him. If a poxy German two-seater could kill America’s top ace, what will happen to us novices when we meet the deadly Fokker Triplanes? And who will lead us now against the hawks of Richthofen’s Circus?
1
Turkeys Waiting To Be Plucked
16 May 1918.
France, Chaumont Haute-Marne, American Expeditionary Forces HQ
As Lance Fitch entered the office, the first thing he noticed was a pair of eyes glaring at him with the fire of an Old Testament prophet preparing to damn Beelzebub. Lance was clueless as to what he might have done to upset the lean American colonel, but he hoped like hell that this was not his new superior, Colonel Mitchell.
“Ah, Major Fitch, welcome on board,” a voice to one side said. Lance turned to find another colonel standing behind a sparse desk in a cramped and bare-boned office. Rolled up maps cluttered the desk and stood in stacks in every corner, and more maps—plentifully marked with coloured pencil tracks—were taped to all four whitewashed walls.
Lance reckoned the mess of maps was a good sign. It indicated that the button-downed colonel in front of him was a real soldier, not a hard-eyed, soft-bummed bureaucrat featherbedding a fancy office with paper and in-trays. This was a man he could work for.
The colonel came out from behind his desk and extended his hand. “George Marshall, aide-de-camp for General Pershing, head of the American Expeditionary Army. Major Baring spoke well of you.”
Marshall waved a casual hand at the mad prophet. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Billy Mitchell, head of combat operations for the United States Army Air Service. Billy, this is Major Lance Fitch. Lance, you’ll report directly to Billy.”
So much for hope. Lance should know better by now. All hope had ever done for him was lure him to the top of the mountain to show him a splendid view… before kicking him off the cliff.
A week ago, he had become Gwen’s lover. Pure Heaven. Four days ago, Arthur returned from the apparent dead, an event that unleashed the joy of Arthur’s survival and the misery of Lance’s guilt for having inadvertently cuckolded his best friend. Heaven and Hell. Three days ago, Gwen ditched Lance to stay Arthur’s wife, and General “Boom” Trenchard exiled him to the American air force. Pure Hell. The speed of his descent made his head spin.
He eyed Mitchell warily. At least the colonel wore wings pinned to his uniform. A pilot, so at least the bleeding obvious shouldn’t need stating.
Lance extended his hand as Mitchell’s piercing eyes searched him up and down. If Mitchell liked what he saw, he made a heroic effort to disguise it, and left Lance’s offer of a handshake hanging. The overt snub rankled Lance.
His secondment to the American air force and the subsequent trip from London to Chaumont by ship and car had left him tired, dusty, hungry and thirsty, and not in the mood for games. He took his cap from under his arm, placed it on his head, and turned to leave.
“Wait.” George Marshall caught his arm.
“Let him go,” Mitchell said. “We don’t need to import foreign talent. What qualifies him to lead Americans into battle?”
