The Gathering Clouds (Innocent No More Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  Thomas agreed with the precaution – they needed a unified squadron.

  “Will we have any sergeant-pilots, Henry?”

  “No. If any are sent to us, I’ll push to have them commissioned immediately. I want every man in the same mess and talking together. Only way to keep all of your pilots singing the same tune. Not hard to get a sergeant made up, if you know the right people. Your records show you were a sergeant for at least three days!”

  Thomas laughed and said that his father knew the right people.

  “Almost all of the men with Air rank knew my father, knew of him at least. An advantage in some ways – but not in others, or so I suspect.”

  Falmersham nodded portentously.

  “A weight of expectations on you, Thomas. The more for you coming to us with a solid record. The newspaper people will be tipped off and will be waiting for you to match your father’s performance – there will be members of the gutter press most disappointed if you don’t kill yourself earning a VC. Nothing like a posthumous hero for making the front page!”

  “I could wish you were joking, Henry. The advantage of doing most of my flying in the Territory and in Spain. No papers in New Guinea and the war correspondents in Spain were mostly holed up in the bars – in their cellars, normally – writing alcoholically-fuelled confections of their imagination. Those ain’t my words, by the way – I couldn’t manage anything that fancy. There were a couple of blokes who actually got near the fighting and saw the butchered civilians. I don’t know if they got their despatches back to London. I can’t imagine they would have been printed – much too bloody and vulgar, my dear!”

  The squadron leader was not surprised.

  “Met some newspapermen, so-called, myself, Thomas. So-called because to be a ‘man’ you have to have balls. It will be worse when the war starts – the little bastards will lie more enthusiastically than they managed last time – they have the experience behind them now.”

  Thomas agreed. From all his father had said, the newspapers in his time had always been careful to discover the truth so that they should not inadvertently print it. He had no doubt they would not change their habits in the Second Great War that seemed sure to come.

  Chapter Four

  The Gathering Clouds

  Two taxis appeared, ancient Fords which had spent half an hour rattling their way from Eastbourne station. Three young men in dark three-piece lounge suits, ties properly knotted - two showing school old boy’s crests, one plain - levered themselves out of the rear seats, placed trilbies on their heads and began to dig out bags and suitcases.

  The solitary arrival spoke to his driver and told him to wait. He looked about for the offices and marched straight-backed inside.

  “Is 182 Squadron?”

  Billy came out of his office, a half-apprehensive grin on his face.

  “Hokay! I have warrant for travel here from Victoria. I have no money. Not one penny. Is taxi outside and driver what wants pay.”

  Thomas held up a hand, waved Billy away.

  “Red Flight looks after its own. I am Flight Lieutenant Stark.”

  The foreign pauper clicked his heels and gave a short bow.

  “Palach, Jan. Flying Officer, sir.”

  “Welcome to Red Flight, Mr Palach.”

  “Sir.”

  “Let’s deal with this taxi driver.”

  The driver complained he had driven a long way out of town and should be paid over the rate on the meter. Thomas glanced at the little machine, saw seven shillings showing and thought that was close to theft. There was no gain to saying so. He took a note from his wallet.

  “Ten shillings. There will be more of our pilots coming through over the next few days. They may not have any cash on them. Bring ‘em out at the same rate.”

  “Ten shillings a time, guv? No problem with that! Let’s help you get them cases out, sir.”

  An MG sports car came in, at far in excess of ten miles an hour, and a tall, lean gentleman with a bright blue silk cravat tucked into an open green checked shirt under a leather flying jacket levered himself from behind the wheel. He was bareheaded, presumably because a hat would have blown off his prematurely thinning dark hair. There was what Thomas suspected might be a permanent grin on his face.

  “Johnny Parker, Flight Lieutenant, old bean.”

  “Thomas Stark. Flying Officer Palach here is in my Red Flight. Do you want to take on the two boys from Cranwell – that’s what they look like - and pick up a foreigner when one comes in to make you up?”

  “Sounds good to me, Thomas. They call me Nosey. Who’s the boss?”

  “Falmersham.”

  “Never heard of him. Is he in his den? Better report to him. I’ll take my chaps in with me.”

  He waved to the boys and pointed, trotting inside without a further glance at them.

  “I’ll introduce you when they come out, Jan. I’m Thomas except when there’s brass hanging around.”

  “Brass?”

  “Big hats with gold leaf on them.”

  “Ha! We are more formal in the Czech Air Force. Hangover, you call it, from the Austrian Empire. All brass then.”

  “You speak English well, Jan.”

  “I think maybe one day to go to the States. I wait too long. Now, it is just to fly and fight. He will come this way one day, Hitler. No wife, so nothing to worry.”

  “Maybe. Come on inside and we’ll get you signed on the books. You need to get your pay sorted. Billy will do that. He can organise a few quid as an advance on your pay, to be clawed back over six months. How did you get your uniforms?”

  “Gieves, of course, Thomas. I send bill to Czech Embassy. Maybe they don’t like it. Argue later.”

  “You are going to fit in well, Jan.”

  An American appeared an hour later, driven in by a friend from London, he said.

  “Joe Kelly, from Boston, not that I’ve been there these last few years.”

  He was a short, dark, sun-tanned, active sort of fellow, Thomas thought; very broad across the shoulders. His driver was a highly decorative blonde of about Thomas’ age, probably five years younger than Joe.

  “Spain?”

  “And China, with Claire Chennault’s people.”

  “Heard of them, and all of it good. Where in Spain?”

  “Basque country, mostly. Flying old French bombers. Low level stuff – had to be to keep alive.”

  “I was over in Barcelona. Moscas, mostly.”

  “Sounds good to me, Thomas.”

  “And me. Come on in, I’ll take you through the ropes. You’re Red Flight with Jan and one more to come. Our fourth will be a boy just passed out of Cranwell – when he gets here later in the week. Probably be full of having passed out with three or four hundred hours up.”

  “Knows it all, I reckon”

  “Probably, Joe. Squadron Leader’s not a bad bloke, salute him and smile sweetly.”

  “Got you, Thomas. Not Tom or Tommy?”

  “My father was Tommy, last time round.”

  “Oh! I heard of him. Right, you need your own name.”

  “I do. Your accent, by the way, it’s not all that American?”

  “Ivy League, my dear chap. New England son of privilege who got bored and learned to fly, ended up in China.”

  “Happens, Joe.”

  Falmersham thought he was very civilised, for an American.

  “Your papers say you have six kills, Joe?”

  “Japanese bombers. Soft targets. We had old P30s which were good enough for them. The Zeroes came and I was shot down on the first day they appeared. I’ll show you the burn scars across my back if you want. I managed to splash down in a river and a bunch of fishermen pulled me out. I was lucky. They sent me out of the country to recover, down into Cochin China, and the French were Fascist bastards who put me aboard ship to Singapore and the Brits there decided I needed treatment for the burn scars and sent me back to England. By the time I got here the doctors said the scar tissue w
as too old and I must put up with it; so I buggered off to Spain. I met up with a few people I knew and enjoyed myself for a month or two, then I heard a whisper that the RAF wanted pilots, badly. Nothing more for me in Spain – or for anybody else – so I came back by foot over the Pyrenees and took trains to London and asked in my best English accent and they said yes and here I am.”

  “And very welcome, Joe. Thomas will ease you into the squadron – all informal here, while we can be.”

  “Thank you, sir. When do we fly?”

  Thomas answered.

  “Tomorrow, if it’s dry. We’ll talk it over this afternoon, with Jan. Let’s get you into a room first.”

  Lunch was eaten in the hut that would become the ready room when war broke out. It had been cooked in the sergeant’s mess, was not especially elegant but was full of flavour and hot.

  “Sausage, egg and chips – the food that made England great, gentlemen. Followed by rhubarb pie, the food which made England regular! Take tea, not coffee!”

  Billy laughed at the expression on Joe’s face when he decided to at least give the coffee a try once.

  “Told you so.”

  The three of Red Flight wandered down to the hangars after lunch, looking about the field as they went, the pair with experience in the rough assessing the local hazards.

  “Last field I was at in Spain was surrounded by hills on one side and bloody great trees on the other, Thomas. Take off was hairy.”

  “My last place was on flat fields, but there was a dry riverbed cutting the runway down to three hundred yards. It was just sufficient, except when it was very hot and there was too little lift. No flying between ten o’clock and five then.”

  Jan was very quiet – his field had benefitted from a tarmac runway half a mile long.

  There was an officer in the hangar, older than any of the pilots. He had not been present for lunch.

  “Trying to get this bloody engine to settle! Bloody Friday afternoon job!”

  “Red Flight, sir. I am Thomas Stark. Jan and Joe arrived today. Our fourth man is due any time.”

  “Glad to meet you. Witherspoon, also a Flight Lieutenant, though wingless, of course. Bloody daft these ranks, if you ask me. The aircraft haven’t been allocated to Flights yet. You get the first four to the left, that’s easiest. Where possible, you will fly your own plane. It won’t always be possible, obviously, but you can adjust your seats and belts to your own comfort. You will have your own personal mechanic and fitter. I haven’t got enough sergeants for one each, but the Flight will have its own man.”

  Thomas was impressed with the organisation.

  “What about the Armourer, Mr Witherspoon?”

  “Bugger the misters, Thomas – old Spoonie, that’s me. The armoury has a single flight sergeant together with three aircraftmen, only one of them trained. He’s a busy lad with one hundred and fifty-six guns in the planes and all of his spares and the belts of ammunition to fill. He needs at least five more men, preferably all of them trained. I have the command of the Armoury for the while but I am expecting a Pilot Officer soon, hopefully knowing something about guns.”

  “Fighters ain’t a lot of use if their guns don’t go bang, Spoonie.”

  “Tell me, Thomas!”

  They peered at their Hurricanes and sat inside them and picked up their smell and wriggled their seats to a comfortable position. Then they made the acquaintance of their mechanics and smiled at them, knowing that a bad-tempered mechanic who decided he did not like his pilot could be their death. The least slackness, an unwillingness to stay up till dawn to get the aircraft just right, would one day be fatal.

  An hour and they trooped across to the stores and picked up their Sidcot suits and flying boots.

  “Is so much wind in my room, maybe I sleep in this.”

  “We’ll organise more blankets, Jan.”

  They sat down with the manuals for the Hurricane. All had experienced an hour of training and thought it to be not quite sufficient to make them expert. None wished to crash on their first outing in the new squadron, not least because it might kill them.

  “Take off at one minute intervals, initially and then form up at five thousand feet over the field. Check the radios before take off. The squadron leader is going to sit in the radio room and pretend he’s a control tower. He will give the clear for take off and landing.”

  “Thomas, control tower is where?”

  “Over there, by the offices. You see the square of ground with the wooden fence around it, and the trenches dug? They had a choice – to start building a control tower or the officers mess. Guess which one was more important.”

  “So… in summer, maybe?”

  “In summer, perhaps. Not if they run out of money first.”

  “Not good?”

  “Piss poor, we’d call it in Queensland.”

  Henry Falmersham had explained the decision-making process over a beer the previous evening.

  “From Air Vice Marshal up, they are all Great War veterans. Some of them actually flew, but that sort didn’t generally get to the very top. The most senior men are those who kept to the staff and avoided nasty aeroplanes in their everyday existence. They want biplanes and dogfights, which they can watch from a distance. They disapprove of monoplanes and don’t like radios and certainly don’t want ground controllers – but they have been forced to accept all three. So they delay and block and niggle and run out of money and try to build a bombing force which can act independently of the Army. Anything to avoid cooperation and an end to their own little empire. They see fast fighters as defensive and they are committed to attack. They don’t like the French – but, then, who does? The effect is that the middle ranks of the RAF are in battle with the brass now, hoping we might win the war with Germany when it comes.”

  Thomas offered another beer.

  “Damned good idea, Thomas. I say nothing, of course, about the number of our revered leaders who support this bloody Fascist thug, Mosley. Half the government winks at him and the senior civil servants in the Treasury and the Home Office are ready to run his administration if he manages to take power in a coup. Word is that he is in contact with the abdicated King Edward VIII and will bring him back as his figurehead. Half the gutter press are ready to run his propaganda, as soon as they judge it’s safe. Rags like the Daily Mail just love to kiss Hitler’s arse already and their owners are putting money in Mosley’s direction. We’ve got a government of ball-less wonders like Chamberlain who don’t know what’s happening and thugs in the House of Lords who want to turn back the clock to the Middle Ages. This whole country is rotten and the only real opposition to them comes from Churchill, and he’s a bloody fool as well – his father was poxed and he suffers as a result. Don’t know where his head’s at half the time!”

  Thomas made a quick calculation, decided that Henry was on his twelfth beer and thirteen might be unlucky. He took him out to the cars and drove him back to his quarters, reflecting that beer might exaggerate but rarely invent – perhaps all was not well in the state of England.

  They took off in satisfactory style and proceeded to form up, using their radios, a novelty to all three. It was strange not to be alone in the cockpit, but not unpleasant, Thomas thought.

  “Red One to Red Two and Three. Get a feel for the ground. Beachy Head gives a good landmark for finding the field again. Eastbourne, Bexhill and Hastings are easily placed, and Romney Marsh is in the distance. Useful being on the coast. Over.”

  “Red Three to Red One. Is that Hastings like the Battle?” There was a few seconds of silence. “Sorry, Over.”

  “Red one to Red Three. Probably. Over.”

  Satisfied they would not get lost, Thomas led them up to ten thousand feet and a check of their oxygen systems and then brought them into line abreast and then to the RAF’s favoured vic formation, a tight ‘vee’, there only being three of them.

  “Red One to Red Flight. Time to go home. Over.”

  “Red One to Ground, r
eturning to base. Clearance to land. Over.”

  “Ground to Red Flight. Wind at ten knots, south-westerly. Permission to land. Over.”

  “Nice and tidy. Radios are a problem. We need something by way of code and shorter sentences. If we’re coming in shot up then messages must be short and snappy.”

  Henry said that the problem had been recognised and there was an official committee sitting on radio procedures. No doubt they would produce some conclusions within the next few months. Until the formal protocols were established there was little point to introducing their own system which they would have to learn and then forget again.

  “The Cranwell boys will need to be looked after that way – they’re good at the forgetting part but the learning comes slow.”

  “Not the world’s ultimate intellectuals, are they, Henry?”

  “No. The brass don’t want too much brain in the air. Better to be good horsemen and have fast reactions than think too much, you know. It’s sportsmen who will win the day for England, old boy! Besides that, if they held tests, and things, open to all comers, you might get some very undesirable types coming in – out of grammar schools and suchlike places!”

  Thomas understood – his father had raged on occasion at the stupidity of the selection system for pilots.

  “Germany picks the most able to be pilots. We pick the jolly fellows who’ve been to the right sort of schools.”

  “Precisely, Thomas. Nothing wrong with a bit of stupidity, after all. That’s what made England great!”

  The third flight lieutenant drove in and introduced himself as Michael Andrews. He was followed by another pair of Cranwellians, Hildebrand Burke and Christopher Byght, good pals from their schooldays who had joined together and had been delighted to be sent to the same squadron. They were upset to be put into separate flights.

  “No choice, Hildebrand, I need an Englishman to make up Red Flight. No flight is to be wholly foreign, none to be all English. You are mine and what’s-his-name is to go to Michael.”