Stray Biggles thoughts

[sholio]

I started reading Biggles' Chinese Puzzle after philomytha posted about it, and I have an observation based on the first few pages of the first story in the collection, which I think makes a really interesting compare/contrast with Terai, Buries a Hatchet, and perhaps especially Looks Back.


So, in this book, you get to see what Biggles is like when a friend, but not one of his core people, is in danger. Marcel (the French policeman from some of the other books) has gone missing in Vietnam. Biggles is concerned and goes looking for him. As philomytha pointed out, it's very touching! He's demonstrably willing to risk himself to help out a friend who isn't even one of the core group of "his people." They all are! It's excellent.

... however, it's also an interesting contrast to the absolute insanity that ensues when one of Biggles's core people is at risk. In other words, in Chinese Puzzle, Biggles behaves like a perfectly normal person who has had a friend go missing. He is openly concerned, he talks his boss into letting him go (but also mentions to the others that they aren't going anywhere if Raymond says no), and more or less follows the ground rules that he's been given.

Meanwhile, in the books where someone he truly can't live without has disappeared, he has two settings: I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING, and "creates 12 international incidents before breakfast." (Or both.)

Biggles in Chinese Puzzle: Obviously we're not going to French Indo-China without permission from the boss.

Biggles in Looks Back: Takes vacation time, BUYS A PLANE, sneaks into a Soviet-sphere country with full intentions of doing something illegal, gets chased all over the place by the secret police, eventually flees the country under the cover of darkness in a hail of gunfire.

No wonder Looks Back ends with Raymond yelling at him. I can only imagine what the experience was like from Raymond's point of view, in which his pilots keep taking vacation time and vanishing, while concerning bits of intel float back through the Iron Curtain.

Raymond, wandering through the Air Police office in which only Algy is left: heard from Biggles lately?
Algy, who just helped Bertie buy a plane that he 100% knows is going to be used to illegally sneak across the Czech border: define "Biggles" and "lately", sir

(Algy deserves a medal for putting up with this.)

But it also really highlights how out there Biggles's mental state is in Terai and Hatchet, because this book is what he looks like when he's normal levels of worried - he's fairly open about it, as well as being comparatively cautious in his plans-making - as opposed to OH WELL WHO CARES I **GUESS** I'LL GO I'M FINE (frantically chainsmoking).

Comments

[sheron]

Yes, and also note how the information is presented to Biggles by Fritz:

He was arrested and charged with treason. He could have escaped because he had been warned of what was going to happen. He still had one or two friends in high places. The night before they came for him, when he was at our house, one rang him up and told him he just had time to get out of the country. But he refused to run away. He said he would face the charge, although the result was a foregone conclusion.

Everything is Erich's choice, it's his wish to go to prison rather than accept the hand that Biggles has extended to him so many times. No wonder Biggles thinks Erich hates him and would rather Biggles not help at all! No wonder he thinks Erich might not wish to go with him from Sakhalin.

It's only later that he starts to understand that Erich might pretend to be fine when he is really really not.

Thus witness the switch up to Biggles in Looks Back, asking Erich is he's alright four times in the space of basically one conversation! Biggles finally learned what's what.

[sholio]

the switch up to Biggles in Looks Back, asking Erich is he's alright four times in the space of basically one conversation

This absolutely KILLS ME. He spent years making the mistake of assuming that Erich was totally fine because Erich said he was fine, and he's not ever making that mistake again. <3333

As far as interesting turnarounds, I also really love the switch from the way he assesses Erich's actions and his own part in it in Hatchet:

[Fritz]“You were the chief cause of his failure.’
‘He would have been the cause of mine had things fallen out differently,’ stated Biggles. ‘If he chose to take sides with people on the other side of the Iron Curtain that was entirely his affair. He knew the sort of people he was working for. I can’t accept responsibility for that.'

... to the later, retrospective version of it he describes in Gun Runners, in which he pins the culpability on himself:

“How did you come to fall out with them — if the question isn’t a personal one?’
‘They took on a professional German agent who had a grudge against us for winning the war. Through my fault he failed in a certain assignment. For that he was sent to spend the rest of his life in the political prison on Sakhalin Island. I thought that was a bit tough, so I took out a plane and picked him up. That’s all there was to it.’

[sheron]

Yeah I love that contrast. You really get a sense of how much closer they grow post Hatchet. I LOVE.

Also! Biggles goal, from Hatchet:

‘If I can make von Stalhein see that we bear no grudge against him for what has happened in the past I shall be satisfied.

Not only is he not thinking about all the hardships EvS has caused them. No, he actually wants Erich to know that there's no grudge on Biggles' end. It ties in with the idea he expresses several times throughout the books which is that his (Biggles') actions really hurt von Stalhein and even though he doesn't actually regret his actions because they were necessary he wishes it didn't come down to wounding Erich.

Takes Charge:
the fault may not be entirely his. An old wound may irritate him.

Follows On:
He’s never got over the fact that through us Germany lost the first war. ... The shock of that knocked him off the rails, and he’s never got on them again.

‘He hates the sight of you, and you know it.’
‘He has no reason to regard me with affection.’

etc.

Biggles is just so aware that he has "so often been the cause of" Erich's failure.
As Fritz puts it:
your efficiency, which he admired and which has now been the cause of his downfall

♥♥♥

[sheron]

Also, relating to above, you can see exactly when things went downhill from the still fixable Flies East dynamic, after which EvS apparently followed Biggles' career with some interest and bore him no grudge at all, reminiscing fondly, in Biggles & Co:

Von Stalhein laughed pleasantly, and his manner became reminiscent. ‘Funny how the wheel of fortune turns, isn’t it?’ he observed. ‘It’s a long step from the deserts of Palestine to the verdant plains of—er—Central Europe. Do you remember—’
‘Never mind about the past; I’m more interested in the present,’ interrupted Algy.

As relates to that discussion we had separately about bearing grudges, and how von Stalhein rarely bears any to those who have wronged him. But with Biggles somehow emotions and competitive pride gets in the way and things become more personal, especially after:

His arm flew up, and he brought the butt down sideways on the German’s closely cropped head. He hated doing it, but it was a matter of life or death now, and he had no alternative.
Von Stalhein collapsed limply, and Algy staggered as he allowed the inert weight to slip to the floor.