sholio | Stray Biggles thoughts

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).

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Biggles's attitude at the start of Hatchet is so fun to contemplate. This is the bit that strikes me particularly:

Again Biggles studied the face of the visitor. 'Were you very fond of your uncle?'
'Yes. He was always kind to me and my mother. I admired him, too, because I knew he was a brave soldier.'
'Tell me this, frankly,' requested Biggles, curiously. 'Had you any other motive in coming to see me, apart from warning me of my danger?'
The boy hesitated.
'Speak up. You're safe here.'
'I thought you might be able to help him.'

Biggles is absolutely leading Fritz to that request, he wants Fritz to ask him for help - but then once Fritz actually spits it out in response to Biggles's prompting, Biggles seems to realise what he's doing and backtracks wildly, and then it takes him several weeks to build back up to that point again.

But words cannot express my love of his conversation with Raymond, in which Raymond basically says, EvS might have information vital to national security and that could prevent thermonuclear war, find him and offer to rescue him in exchange for that vital information - and Biggles refuses! He's ok with the finding and rescuing bit, but he'll only do it for free <333

I have spent far too much time meticulously analyzing Biggles's state of mind in Hatchet. :D Because, yes, he seems to be intentionally drawing Fritz to ask him to help ... only to go, haha, why would we help you? Which seems oddly cold for him! But he's clearly dealing with his own issues in that book.

He's ok with the finding and rescuing bit, but he'll only do it for free <333

I know. <3333 And Raymond just goes along with it without a single complaint! Even though information is literally the entire reason why he's financing and justifying the expedition in the first place.

He is totally making his own arrangements with EvS at the end, though.

(I do find the entire conversation with EvS on the plane a bit revisionist about this, however, when Biggles implies - or outright states - that he's there on his own initiative and no one told him to go. Biggles! You may feel this way now, but you were literally ordered to go! And you said no at first!)

Honestly, I wonder what would've happened if it had gone the other way and Raymond had told him not to go. He's never directly gone against Raymond's orders even when he wants to, though he's found a number of ways of doing convenient end runs around them in a "la la la, I can't go against orders if you don't know I'm doing it in the first place" kind of way. But in this case, his orders and what he wanted to do, at heart, conveniently lined up and even gave him the extra push he seemed to need. It would be a really fascinating dilemma if his duty and heart had ended up in conflict instead ...

Hmm, I didn't read it as he's ordered to go! Biggles definitely has the choice to go! Raymond tells him so. He basically says "either you go or I'll send someone else, but I'm giving you the choice of going":

Biggles considered his chief with a wry smile. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, sir, but don’t you think, in asking me to take this on, you’re asking too much?’
‘Of course I do. I wouldn’t have asked you on my own account. Unfortunately the matter has come before a higher authority who regard the project as necessary in the national interest. There’s no compulsion about it. You are at liberty to decline. But if you don’t go someone else will have to be found who will go. I put the proposition to you, first because you’re officially employed here, and secondly, in the light of your experience, you’re better fitted than anyone else I know to tackle the job and pull it off.’
‘If you put it like that you make it difficult for me to refuse,’ muttered Biggles.
‘I thought you’d see it like that,’ murmured the Air Commodore.

Biggles: Well if Erich is getting rescued anyway it should be me, because I'll do it correctly -- with no strings attached, damnit.

I'm convinced he thinks that Erich doesn't want anything to do with them even in prison. BIGGLES!

Also there's a whole bunch of defeatism that is atypical for him that fascinates me:

‘But Sakhalin!’ protested Biggles. ‘The thing isn’t possible.’
‘It’s not like you to talk like that.’
‘I’m talking like it now.’

It's a fascinating book, I love to think about it. There needs to be approximately a bazillion of fic around this time period.

"la la la, I can't go against orders if you don't know I'm doing it in the first place" kind of way

Obviously anything could have happened, but I find it almost impossible to believe that Biggles wouldn't have eventually gone, even if ordered not to go.

In fact his entire emotional trajectory in the first 3 chapters of Hatchet seems to be being surprised by how well the other people around him know that he should be rescuing Erich. Algy's knowing reaction alone makes him so annoyed XD

‘There’s no need for you to get in a flap,’ announced Biggles. ‘You needn’t come if you don’t want to. That goes for everyone.’

I think the only time Biggles has these particular conversations with Algy about how Algy needn't come is when it comes to the Erich rescues XD It's glaringly obvious how personal it is for him.

You can tell from that conversation that Algy, Ginger and Bertie have been talking for WEEKS about how they're going to end up going to Sakhalin to rescue EvS! Biggles is the last one to know...

Why is this so accurate? XD

I love that Algy nails him with "Hold me up, someone, before I swoon."

YES. All of this!

I also always thought he leads Fritz to it, only to them insist he shouldn't. I imagine he's had that conversation inside his own head many a time already.

And the whole thing with Raymond where he only agrees once Raymond is fine with letting him rescue Erich with no strings attached!

I wonder if part of what worries Biggles about this whole thing is that he could have very easily ended up with a situation where Erich *is* rescued and in England but hates their guts because of all the strings attached and Biggles never wanted that. He's always wanted it to be Erich's choice. T_T

Stray Biggles thoughts

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