A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  Chapter Eleven

  The grim and unequal battle that would ensure or dash any hope of Britain’s survival as a free nation alone in an enslaved Europe took place in the late summer and lovely early autumn of 1940. Contrary to most people’s fearful expectations, it was fought not on the beleaguered nation’s beaches, nor through the streets of her towns and cities, but in the lovely summer skies above the peaceful countryside of southern England. While the fertile green fields of Kent and Sussex basked in endless days of sunshine, while fruit swelled and ripened, as it always had, on the orchard trees, while men, women and children tended their ordinary lives in circumstances extraordinary enough to try the courage of heroes, above them in the crystal, light-washed air the tiny machines of two air forces engaged in a deadly struggle.

  After the first anti-climactic, uneasily quiet wartime months of feint and skirmish, which had done little but wear down the nerves and then create a perilous complacency, the sudden revving of the engines of war, the rhythmic tread of marching feet, the howl of a Messerschmitt’s screaming dive heralded ruin for western Europe – a ruin effected in a few short, stunning months. Before primrose and coltsfoot had faded from the Kentish hedgerows, Denmark and Norway had fallen; by the time the woodland floor was showing its carpet of bluebells, Holland and Belgium had been lost. In the British Parliament, a new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had in absolute honesty promised his people blood, toil, tears and sweat, while in threatened France, the battlefield of a generation before, the Nazi war machine hammered on. Step by grim step, the French and their British allies were forced back to that seawater ditch that stood between them and relative safety, the narrow barrier that had for so long been Britain’s last line of defence against invasion and that now threatened to be the very trap into which the whole of the British Expeditionary Force, together with the imperilled French army, must surely fall. By the end of May 1940, with the advancing German forces already at Abbeville, a stone’s toss from the English Channel, and the Allies penned helplessly within a ring of armour, the inevitable end seemed close.

  Like her battered army, Britain herself faced an enemy whose successful impetus continued to carry all before it. An enemy whose only error was one of judgement. It was perfectly reasonable to suppose that a savagely mauled nation – especially one whose reputation for good sense perhaps obscured other, more dashing characteristics – would, as others had done, take the realistic course and surrender. By the time that such practical thinking on the part of the German High Command had proved a misconception, the evacuation of Dunkirk had begun. In the first three days of June, a trapped and exhausted army was snatched from the beaches of northern France by as motley a flotilla of craft as could ever before have put to sea. Half-dead on their feet, wounded, weary, hungry men were ferried home in their thousands by hundreds of small boats, some of which had until the year before been the playthings of a traditionally seafaring nation. And as the soldiers splashed through the surf and scrambled aboard with nothing more than the dirty clothes in which they stood, the boats and crowded beaches were bombed and strafed mercilessly by a Luftwaffe that seemed to the exposed and furiously helpless men to receive little or no opposition in the air.

  Across the Channel, on the hastily constructed airfields of southern England, young men – most of whom until a few short months before had never faced a harsher challenge than the opposition’s fastest bowler or toughest fullback – scrambled their Spitfires and Hurricanes into the air to face wave after wave of enemy fighters in a desperate attempt to give cover to the vulnerable, fleeing forces. Many of their planes, outgunned and outmanoeuvred by a more experienced enemy, were shot to pieces by the Luftwaffe squadrons, and the young flyers, after bailing out, slogged along refugee-choked roads to the evacuation beaches and embarked for England where, a matter of hours after being shot down, they became airborne again and headed out over the littered waters of the Channel. Perhaps understandably in the circumstances, not all the ‘brown jobs’ in the long, weary columns who had waited in some cases for days for their turn to embark took kindly to the apparent queue-jumping of a fresh-faced young man in flying jacket and provocatively jaunty silk scarf. The RAF had not yet earned its colours, especially in the jaundiced eyes of the hard-pressed army, and the harsh words of these battle-weary men on the Dunkirk beaches were not the only criticism it found itself facing.

  But the weeks after the evacuation were to change that once and for all. By the end of July the men of Britain’s youngest service were being given more than ample chance to prove themselves, and beyond any reasonable hope or expectation, they rose to the challenge magnificently. Meanwhile, beneath vapour trails and a hail of shrapnel, Britain prepared for what was regarded as inevitable invasion and south-eastern England became an armed camp.

  * * *

  Allie Jordan, stationed at Hawkinge Aerodrome, just a couple of miles north of Folkestone on the south coast, found herself, to her own surprise, in the front line of this new war. Her fluent German had earned her a place with a special group of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force stationed at Hawkinge, operating a ‘listening post’ that used shortwave radio to eavesdrop on transmissions both by Luftwaffe units and by the German E-boats that infested the Channel. In the weeks following Dunkirk, she and her companions worked long hours in far from comfortable conditions and under considerable strain. She survived air attacks and brass-button parades, discovered in about equal part the anguish and the camaraderie of war, found herself to possess, to her own surprise, reserves of stubborn courage that served her well in these strangest of circumstances. When the listening post was moved from the airfield itself to rather more comfortable – and safer – quarters in a secluded house that had been requisitioned just outside the village, she and her fellow eavesdroppers were grateful, though the hours were still long and the strain extreme. After a twelve-hour stint, Allie was not alone in finding it a positive effort not to think and speak in German.

  ‘I’m beginning to damn well dream in it,’ she complained, half-laughing, to the girl with whom she shared a room and whose intemperate good nature and utter refusal to take anything seriously were, she sometimes felt, the only sane things in a crazy world.

  Sergeant Sue Miller grinned unsympathetically. She was a tiny Cockney girl with a halo of bright blonde hair and the widest and most innocent blue eyes Allie had ever seen. She also had, as Allie was to discover, the vocabulary of a docker and a blithe capacity for mischief that would leave a monkey standing. ‘Don’t tell ’em that in the village. Old Tom at the Blue Boar’ll have you with his pitchfork for a fifth columnist soon as look at you!’

  The coast of southern England sprouted dragon’s teeth of barbed wire and solid, iron-bound cement. Pill boxes defended road and railway. Signs were taken down – and Sue was not the only one to find that, however potentially effective this particular measure might be in confounding an invading army, it certainly was a spectacular success when it came to confusing the natives.

  ‘I’d like to punch Herr flamin’ Hitler right on his stupid, ugly little nose, that I would. Him an’ his bloody invasion. Ruined my twenty-four-hour pass, that’s what…’

  Allie looked up from her book, laughing. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Sailed through the bloody station, didn’t I? Well, how the hell was I supposed to know where I was? By the time I found out, an’ waited best part of three hours for a train back, I’d lost my date to a Wren!’ Characteristically Sue threw back her fair head and giggled. ‘Serves him right. I hope he drowns. Never cared much for sailors meself…’

  During July the Luftwaffe launched a series of venomous attacks on British shipping in the Channel and on the coastal towns. Standing on the chalk downs above the camouflaged airfield one early July day, Allie watched a flight of German bombers attack a British convoy as it steamed past Folkestone, saw the Hurricanes of Hawkinge’s 79 Squadron lift one after the other from the ground and bank out over the light-spangled water to defend th
e ships. The night before, in the Lion, she and Sue had been talking and laughing with those same men. She watched the battle, riveted despite herself. The very atmosphere shook. Plumes of white water rose around the embattled convoy. Smoke poured darkly from a crippled ship, a shifting veil for the flame at its heart, and the quicksilver surface of the sea was foul with spilled and burning oil. The bombers had done their job. They lifted and banked for home. Their fighter escort had turned like eager hounds upon the little attacking Hurricanes and, looking like children’s toys, the planes chased each other over the lucent sky in a lunatic, life-and-death game of tag. The howl and whine of their engines, the flat chatter of their machine-guns came clearly to Allie’s ears above the melodious larksong and the lazy hum of the bees that bumbled about the clover at her feet. She watched two of the planes swooping and diving upon each other, each trying to gain the advantage. One climbed, blindingly, into the sun, dived, and a machine-gun ripped once, twice, and then again, a long, tearing burst. One of the planes lurched sideways, smoke and flame streaming from its tail like a party banner. Then it went into a straight, spinning dive. The familiar squared-off wings and camouflage grey identified it as the enemy. Allie held her breath, watching, praying without words, her hands clenched as if frozen in death. Jump, for God’s sake! Jump! But as the plane continued its manic dive, no silken parachute blossomed to hang gently in the summer air. A mile or so from where Allie stood, the machine hurtled down and hammered itself into the downs as if that had been its purpose all along, and perished in a bloom of flame.

  ‘God almighty,’ she said, helplessly. She would never get used to it.

  From the village, the all-clear sounded.

  This was a deliberate war of attrition, and though the enemy’s immediate and obvious objectives were to destroy British shipping and coastal towns and defences, its real target was Fighter Command. Numerically the RAF was at such a crushing disadvantage that every single fighter lost weakened the force disproportionately. The Channel attacks were designed to lure Fighter Command to risk its precious planes and even more precious pilots and, in doing so, fatally flaw the island’s fragile air defences and open the way to invasion. South-eastern England, shelled constantly from the occupied French coast, lay apprehensive beneath the summer sun and squinted into the glittering distances, watching for the first signs of an enemy fleet on the horizon. The fields were tilled by steel-hatted men, two to an ancient tractor, one facing forward and one back, First World War rifles in hands, eyes straining into the bright skies for the glint of a rogue raider whose engine-sound would be drowned by the tractor noise and who would swoop, strafe murderously and be gone in a moment. Nowhere was safe from such attacks – village streets, railway lines, roads, farms, lanes, footpaths were all vulnerable.

  People became used to the sight of combat in the sky. They would stand and watch, calling unheard encouragement, damning the enemy. The spirit of the ordinary people whose back gardens had become so unexpectedly a battlefield was astounding. When German planes dropped copies of Hitler’s so-called ‘Last Appeal to Reason’, begging the British people for their own sakes to defy their government and lay down their arms, the civilian population collected them and sold them to each other at threepence a time in aid of the Red Cross. In every pub in the country, the same happily hackneyed joke was told for a week: ‘Hear some lazy blighter of a Jerry couldn’t be bothered to undo the bundles before he dropped them. Bloody cheek. He could have killed someone…’

  And then came August, a month of sunshine and ripening harvests, of long, hot days that, thanks to British Summer Time, faded into late-lit evenings of soft light and sprawled, elongated shadows – a month in which the RAF found itself truly fighting for its life.

  * * *

  The raiders raced in from the sea, hordes of them, fast and low, skimming over the chalk downs like flung spears, or droned high, out of reach of the anti-aircraft guns, bearing their deadly loads of high explosives and incendiaries. However they came, their targets were the same – the fighting airfields of south-eastern England – their aim to break Fighter Command once and for all.

  Allie was walking to her billet a little way outside the village when the first major raid hit Hawkinge. From the vantage point of the village’s only street – Hawkinge nestled on the slope of the downs, overlooking the spread of the airfield below – she watched in helpless horror as, amid a series of enormous explosions, the airfield seemed to disintegrate before her eyes. The drone of the high-flying Junkers that had delivered the big bombs vibrated through the concussed air. Buildings, including one of the great hangars, splintered into matchwood and were blasted to flame.

  ‘Here, miss, quick!’

  She turned. A small, bright-eyed boy, dancing with excitement, beckoned wildly.

  ‘Grandad says to come in with us. You can’t stay out here.’ Numbly she followed him at a stumbling run, round the side of the cottage to where the welcome hump of an Anderson shelter huddled into the downland slope. As she scrambled into the sandbagged entrance and, blinded by the sudden darkness, dropped the few feet into the body of the shelter, she caught her leg on a sharp piece of corrugated iron, tearing her stocking and scratching her leg.

  ‘There, Charlie,’ scolded a good-humoured voice, ‘I do keep telling you to bend that bit back. The young lady’s hurt herself now.’

  Outside, a thunderous explosion, fit to rend the world from its moorings, shook the air. The plump, homely-looking woman who had spoken did not so much as blink but knitted on. ‘Get the first-aid box down, young Stan.’

  ‘Oh, no, really. It’s all right. Just a scratch.’ Allie’s eyes were getting used to the light. The pearl of faint daylight crept from the protected opening through which she had just come, and two candles guttered and swayed beneath the vaulted, corrugated-iron roof. The shelter had four bunks, a tier of two on each side. The boy had scrambled onto one of the top ones and sat with his legs swinging perilously close to the woman’s ear as she sat knitting beneath him. A great bear of a man sat on a chair in the aisle between the bunks. Allie could not see his face clearly, but when he spoke, his voice was mild and pleasant and carried the same warm country accent as his wife’s.

  ‘Gettin’ a bit warm out there, I’d say?’

  As if to add point to his words, above the cacophony outside came the sudden demented whine of a dive-bombing aircraft and the tearing sound of machine-gun fire. Somewhere, just able to be heard, glass shattered.

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t old Bill’s greenhouse gone,’ observed the woman thoughtfully.

  ‘Aye.’ In the gloom, Allie sensed rather than saw the man’s slow smile. ‘No great loss really, mind, Bill not being much of a gardener, like. You’d think Herr Goering’d find something better to shoot at, wouldn’t you?’ He pronounced the name ‘Gorring’, with a fine disdain for the niceties of the German language, Allie noticed. As she smiled, he turned to her. ‘There’ll be a cup of tea in two shakes, miss. When it quietens down a bit and I can pop in and make one.’

  ‘Oh, please – don’t bother for my sake.’ Allie felt absurdly awkward. ‘Thank you very much for – rescuing me,’ she added. ‘I don’t think I’d like to be out there at the moment.’

  He dismissed her thanks with a smile and a wave of his hand, then dug into the pocket of his overalls and produced a pouch of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers. ‘From the aerodrome, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grandad, can I have another look outside?’ The boy’s voice was shrill with excitement. His grandfather ignored him.

  ‘Been stationed here long?’

  ‘A couple of months.’ Allie was reticent.

  ‘Aye.’ Wisely, he asked no more questions.

  ‘Grandad!’

  ‘Hold your tongue, young Stan.’ The voice was still mild.

  ‘Oo-oh, but…’ There was a lull outside. The quiet seemed unnatural. Allie perched on the lower bunk opposite the woman, who had stopped knit
ting for a moment and had lifted her head, listening to the silence.

  The man had finished his carefully constructed cigarette. He surveyed it with satisfaction in the flickering light, pinched out the stray whiskers of tobacco from the ends and carefully stowed them back in his pouch, put the weedy, loose-packed tube between his lips with every appearance of enjoyment and lit it in an unexpected flare of flame with one of the candles. Then he extended a hand like a ham to Allie. ‘Charlie Jessup,’ he said. ‘This is my wife Rose, and this is our son’s lad, Stan.’

  Allie took the glad hand of friendship. ‘Allie Jordan. How do you do?’

  The sharp eyes twinkled at the stripes on her arm. ‘Sergeant Jordan.’

  She laughed, self-consciously. ‘Oh, we’re all—’ She stopped.

  ‘Didn’t serve in France for nothing, you know.’ Charlie filled the silence easily, covering her self-conscious confusion. ‘I’d recognize a sergeant at a hundred paces. Though I can’t say I remember any that looked a bit like you.’

  She smiled at him gratefully, cursing her own clumsiness. Of all the idiocies in this idiotic war, it seemed that the one she could least get used to was that she must never mention her or her comrades’ work, even in the most casual way. ‘Careless talk costs lives’ admonished a thousand posters, and she supposed it to be true, yet still the irksome need for secrecy faintly embarrassed her, as if she were a little girl caught putting on grown-up airs.

  Stan had been inching along the bunk towards the doorway. Keeping one eye on his grandfather, he swung a skinny leg nonchalantly towards the stepped platform that led outside.

  In no great haste, Charlie stood, reached for the leg, swung it none too gently back up onto the bunk and climbed up into the sheltered doorway himself and cautiously stuck his head out. ‘It’s quiet for the moment.’

  ‘Let’s see!’ Stan scrambled after him.