Too Late the Morrow

by Richard Townshend, Bickers

  ‘Are… are there, sir?’

  ‘Don’t you want to have a go?’

  ‘Well… yes, sir… if they’d release me from my trade, sir.’

  ‘They will. If you get through pilot training, you’ll stand a chance of a commission eventually.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that, sir.’

  ‘Well, it’s just as well I did. I don’t like to see young, games-playing, educated types waddling around on the deck like a lot of bloody penguins. You can do better: for the country and for yourself. Put an application into the squadron Orderly Room and I’ll sign it this afternoon. The group captain will want to see you; tomorrow, if you’re lucky.’

  ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’

  When James had gone, Sergeant Swallow, his erstwhile fitter, sauntered up. His round red face registered ironical amusement, his Yorkshire accent broadened when he addressed the well-spoken Millington, whom he regarded with an amused and slightly baffled tolerance.

  ‘C.O. tearing you off a strip, was he, Milly?’

  ‘No, Sergeant.’

  ‘Oh? Looked like it to me.’

  ‘He was ordering me to volunteer for air crew.’

  ‘Ordering you?’

  ‘Begging me, you might say, Sarge.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Take that grin off your face. And get on with your work.’

  ‘I’m just about finished, Sarge. Then I’ve got to nip over to the Orderly Room and put in an application to remuster to pilot.’

  ‘That’s enough of your bloody lip, Millington. Get on with it.’

  ‘Squadron Leader Fenton says the country’s crying out for chaps like me, Sergeant. He practically guaranteed me a commission.’

  ‘I’ll guarantee you a boot up the arse if you don’t get on with your fookin’ job.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry, Sarge. The C.O’s only chasing humble erks like me, not senior N.C.Os. You can go on waddling around on the deck like a bloody penguin.’ Millington put on an earnest, awe-struck expression. ‘D’you know, Sarge, there are women doing more dangerous jobs than we are?’ His eyes held amusement. ‘Like ferrying aircraft for the A.T.A.’

  James had not had the Air Transport Auxiliary, which delivered aeroplanes from factories to squadrons, in mind when he addressed himself, with a certain degree of icy severity underlying his words, to A/Cl Millington. But how could Millington possibly divine that it was his C.O’s mistress who would be indirectly responsible if he ultimately found himself in a cockpit, a gun turret or at a navigation table high above the ground with bullets flying around?

  *

  ‘Is two gazometr.’

  Big wore a quizzical, slightly hangdog and at the same time eager look: like a not very expert confidence trickster or a back-street abortionist.

  ‘Two gasometers? Where?’

  Big pulled a folded map from his flying boot and opened it briskly. Carrying maps stuffed into the leg of t lie right boot - unless one were left-handed - and sticking up so as to be ready to hand was a practical habit among fighter pilots when flying. It had become part of the ‘operational’ swagger by now and many walked around all day, even when the weather made Hying impossible, with maps bulging out of their boots. James thought of it sarcastically as similar to the virility display of gunmen in film Westerns who tied their holsters to the thigh with a leather thong, to aid a fast draw.

  ‘Here, sir.’ Big’s eyes lit up as though he had caught a glimpse of Betty Grable through her shower curtains. ‘Two blawdy great bang, James, if we hit with twenty-mil and De Wilde. Kill hundred German. Stop work in plenty factory.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  Tad was eager to add his persuasion. ‘This two gazometr make light for many factory. Is many German engineer and soldiers guard.’

  ‘How d’you two know all this?’

  Big and Tad exchanged a sly, furtive look.

  Big cleared his throat. ‘Two weeks ago, on Rhubarb, we finish ammunition, have plenty petrol… so we look.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible. I ought to ground you for a week. Both of you.’

  The Poles had never heard ‘incorrigible’ before but had no doubt of their commanding officer’s meaning.

  Independent scouting of that kind after an attack was forbidden. Pilots on a Rhubarb were supposed to come straight home after their attacks. It was the job of the photographic reconnaissance squadrons to obtain that sort of information.

  ‘Last Circus we fly over at angel ten after fight. We see gazometr again. Is not camouflage. This mean German want us think is not important. So must be very important.’

  ‘You think we should call their bluff?’

  This baffled the Poles, who looked at each other and shrugged.

  ‘Tu penses que nous devons relever le defi?’

  ‘Oui… tak… yes. I think ‘bluff’ is same as ‘blaga’ in Polsku.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good morning for a Rhubarb.’ And it will let me vent some of my bile, James thought. ‘Let’s have a proper look at the map and find out what Intelligence know about the target.’ He turned to MacRae. ‘I’ll take you, Ben. It’ll need two pairs. I wonder if the wily Boche has planted any flak around it.’

  ‘Only one way to find out: the usual way!’

  James was glad MacRae had not said ‘the hard way’. In comparison with what Nicole had committed herself too, nothing would seem so hard in future. Danielle in the lions’ den; voluntarily.

  The squadron Intelligence officer could find no record of any photographs of the target. ‘If Jerry has sited any flak there, it must be jolly well camouflaged. As for the grade of target: yes, it would stop production in local industry and it should make a big enough explosion to knock everything flat for a radius of a few hundred yards, and do a lot of damage even beyond that.’

  James was satisfied. ‘It’s on. Well done, you two.’

  They obtained information about wind and cloud from the Meteorological section at Group H.Q. and James worked out a course. He led them in finger four formation into.the lower fringe of the clouds over the Channel. If they flew just above the sea, they would avoid detection by the enemy radio direction-finding system (radar) but be vulnerable to flak, because visible. At 800 ft they would be picked up before they reached the French coast, but could hide in cloud. Also, the guns’ predictors could find them. There was not much to choose between the alternatives, but by making use of cloud they could disguise their intention.

  The course on which James had decided would pass five miles west of the target and continue five miles beyond. The Spitfires would then turn and come back on a heading which would bring them right over the gasometers.

  The R.A.F. Signals Intelligence organisation, the Y Service, had been monitoring Luftwaffe wireless telegraphy and radio telephony since before the war. Even the briefest transmission could betray preparations for take-off on a raid against Britain. Callsigns and individual accents and mannerisms of pilots told skilled listeners the identity of squadrons and the strength of formations. The Germans had a similar organisation. R.A.F. signals discipline had been tightened as the war progressed. James was very security-conscious.

  He had forbidden R/T chatter on the ground before taking off on Rhubarbs. To check radios, he made one curt transmission to which the others responded in turn by flipping on their transmitter switches for a second.

  The four engines started, the pilots ran them up and checked their instruments.

  ‘O.K?’

  One by one, three brief surges of carrier wave sounded in James’s headphones. The air traffic controller in the tower fired a green Verey light. The two sections accelerated across the grass and disappeared among the wisps of grey cloud at the bottom of the solid layer over southern Sussex and the Channel.

  The token flak which peppered the air when they crossed the coast confirmed that the enemy was alert. None of it came close enough to worry them. They had maintained silence all the way. Flying had been hard work. The essence of a finger four was that it
was a loose and flexible formation, but they could not stray far apart because they would lose visual contact. They dared not hang very closely together, for fear of collision. It put a heavy demand on pilots’ skill to hold formation in cloud, even when it was thin stuff on the fringes. Forty minutes of this sweated as much as two pounds off a man.

  James dipped below cloud, hugging it so that the lowest edge was only a couple of yards above his canopy. He verified their position by reference to a village, a river and a crossroads.

  A flurry of 37 mm flak greeted their brief appearance. There was a railway junction hereabouts and this was on the perimeter of its defences. Back into cloud.

  Another short emergence. No gunfire this time. The check points were easily visible: a railway line, a railway bridge, a road bridge, a chateau in its huge grounds.

  Time to wheel to the east. A careful watch on speed and time. Another peep at the ground. More flak: nasty stuff, this time, 88 mm as well as 37 mm. Why? Jerry must have moved troops into the area. James made a note of the places from which he could see the flames at gun muzzles, and returned to hiding.

  Another turn, a quick look ahead after he judged they had flown two miles on the final course. Two tall cylindrical shapes gleamed silvery in the cloud-filtered light.

  James signalled the attack. There was to be no acknowledgment.

  ‘O.K.’

  Three seconds’ pause, then he led them in a dive.

  Thirty-seven-millimetre tracer lashed the air from three directions. It followed them as they raced down towards the fat silver-painted gasometers.

  James fired a long burst with his cannons and machine-guns together, and saw his shells and bullets piercing the metal sides and top of his and MacRae’s agreed target. He saw MacRae’s fire battering it.

  On his left, Big and Tad were shooting at, and hitting, their target. James snatched a quick glance to the left. Smoke, white from glycol and black from oil, was pouring from Big’s aeroplane. Flames were leaping from beneath the engine cowling and along both wings.

  It was difficult, both then and later, to separate the events which happened next. He had the impression of flames stabbing through holes in both gasometers, of Big hurtling towards one of them, of Big’s Spitfire burying itself in the side of its target. The wall of the gasometer caved in and swallowed the Spitfire. For a second, James saw an enormous hole. Then there was an appalling detonation. Flames and smoke burst out of the gasometer. He had a glimpse of Tad’s aircraft being whirled into a flat spin as it dived. It was so close to the gasometer that it made only one complete gyration before the blast from the mighty explosion tore it into pieces: both wings, the front and rear halves of the fuselage, the tail unit, were hurled in different directions.

  James saw the other gasometer explode as he broke and turned, climbing at full throttle, with MacRae, for the clouds low overhead. He caught the blast of both explosions, which flipped him onto his back and a hundred feet up into the air. It was not his instruments which told him that he was inverted, but the raging brightness of the flames he saw when he forced his head back against the G force. The violence with which the huge billow of turbulent air had hurled him around had torn him from the path of the 37 mm guns’ fire, which was coning beneath him. He rolled the right way up just before the flak gunners adjusted their aim and they hit him only a few times in his wings and tail before he was safely in cloud again. ‘O.K. Ben?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Saw you go into cloud. I’m a hundred yards behind, on three-six-zero.’

  ‘Turning onto three-six-zero, three hundred indicated. We’ll join up in a minute. Any damage?’

  ‘A bit, I guess. I’ll make it back, O.K. How’bout you? I saw’em hit you.’

  ‘Nothing vital… I think!’

  *

  James had a poor appetite at lunch time; but a healthy thirst. He was haunted by mental images. Big and Tad so pleased with themselves that morning, behaving like boys confessing to truancy. The burning Spit plunging into the already ignited gasometer. The vast hole into which the Spit had disappeared. The way the side of the gasometer had buckled, like an empty tin trodden on by a heavy foot. The brilliant colours of its explosion. Tad’s dismembered Spitfire, its separate portions spinning and each following a curving trajectory as though tracing out a Prince Of Wales’s Feathers in the sky. The vividness with which his and MacRae’s shells and bullets had sent the other gasometer up in a tumult of flames, smoke and buffeting wind.

  He saw Nicole’s figure as she walked away from him and up the steps of the train. Her slim, trim, dark-blue-uniformed back and pretty legs in black silk; the forage cap tilted with jaunty gallantry on her dark head; her slender hand grasping the handle beside the door to help her aboard. Her brave smile, sad when she leaned from the window to give him a last parting kiss.

  Inwardly he seethed like a rumbling volcano while he maintained the conventional facade of imperviousness to tragedy and personal emotions.

  He wanted to be alone for a few minutes, and went up to his room. Higgs, always vigilant, knocked quietly and came to ask if he could do anything.

  James looked at him in a way that made Higgs feel guilty of intrusion. James was not aware of the stark and hostile glare he wore. He was not thinking about himself.

  ‘How old are you, Higgs?’

  ‘Twenty-seven, sir.’

  ‘You must be pretty fit. You’ve led a healthy life.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’

  ‘Stable lads’ champion at your weight, weren’t you? I think the P.T. officer mentioned it once.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you going to box for Fighter Command again next winter?’

  ‘I’ll be boxing, sir. I don’t know if I’ll get in the Command team again. There’s a lot of pros in the Service now, sir: they’re allowed to fight the amateurs… provided they’re not too well-known, like!’ Higgs gave a faint grin, although the bleak look on James’s face did not encourage levity.

  ‘Fourteen when you left school?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d have you for pilot training, or observer. You could be an air gunner… a wireless op-air gunner, if you liked.’

  Patches of red appeared on Higgs’s cheekbones. ‘Never thought of that, sir.’

  ‘Well, you ought to think about it. Seriously. There are women taking their chance… risking their lives in this war while thousands of fit young men carry on doing jobs an old woman could do just as well. And it looks bad when fit Englishmen stand back and leave the hard work to Poles and the rest of the foreigners.’ ‘Never looked at it like that, sir.’

  ‘You can’t be short of guts if you box.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, how about it?’

  ‘Sorry, sir… how about what?’

  ‘Applying for remustering to Wop/A.G. Doing a man’s job.’

  Higgs stood in thought, looking at the floor.

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno… s’pose it would be better paid than being a batman, sir.’

  ‘It would pay a big dividend in terms of self respect, Higgs.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The flight sergeant in charge of the Orderly Room will tell you how to apply.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have a word with the station commander. I’m sure he’ll give you a good recommendation. He’s quite a boxing fan, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know, sir.’

  Nor f ing care, thought Higgs glumly as he left the room. He knew that in the old days recruiting sergeants used to get a bob a nob for every rookie they cajoled into taking the King’s shilling. He doubted that Squadron Leader Fenton was getting a rake-off for recruiting, but you’d never know it, the way he’d carried on.

  Better go and do it, Higgs ruminated. Life would be sheer bloody misery if he didn’t, from what he knew of the squadron leader. Anyway, it took months to get on a course, then to do the cou
rse, and then go to O.T.U. It could be a year before he even reached a squadron. The war could be over in a year. It would be all right to walk around wearing an air gunner’s badge, looking like a bleedin’ hero, when the Service returned to peace-time conditions; and he had another sixteen years to go.

  Chapter Three

  Roger Hallowes recognised the handwriting on the envelope awaiting him in the officers’ mess letter-rack. He had hardly thought of Daphne during the six months since he had last seen her. What had prompted the preposterous and bossy Corporal Palmer to write to him? Surely not a reconciliation: she was too canny - and, to give her her due, independent - for that.

  ‘Dear Roger, I managed to get your address from a friend of mine at Baxton: a girl friend!’ Roger winced at the archness. ‘I hope you have fully recovered by now. You were certainly nothing like your usual self when I last saw you.’ A tart reminder that he had snubbed her. ‘I would sincerely like to hear how you are getting on, but while writing I thought you might be interested to know that I have got engaged.’ Why not become engaged? There was little to be said in favour of his former sweetheart’s literary style. ‘He is Adrian Symington-Browne, a young squadron leader who used to be a flight commander on Squadron, which is where he got his D.S.O. and D.F.C.’ She might have added ‘Yah! Sucks to you! And boo!’ She might further have added that she would certainly be a wing commander’s wife before long and probably a group-captain’s, to judge by current rates of promotion. Well played Daphne. ‘Adrian’s people have a big estate in Shropshire… ‘

  Roger read to the end of the letter. He smiled to himself. Good riddance.

  He joined Kate at their usual table for lunch, with one of the other W.A.A.F. officers and three of his fellow instructors. Despite three months at the O.T.U., he was self-conscious about the direct and admiring way in which new pupils gazed at his D.F.C. and D.F.M. ribbons. There was a whole table-full of them doing it now as he passed them and sat down. There were several D.F.Cs among the staff. He wished there were more with two decorations. Being conspicuous had always made him uncomfortable.