by Ian Lindsey
“Well then, perhaps I shall start calling you Anne Fields of Gold!” Clara teased.
“Father has grown it from two thousand head of cattle when he took over to almost six thousand now on ten thousand acres. The grazing lands are so pretty with the mountains in the background. I love watching the sunset behind them.” Anne continued.
“That does sound lovely.” Clara added.
“Father has been taking orders non-stop to help supply the army. I think he’d trade the extra business to have my brother back home safely, though. The ranch house has been expanded several times, but it is still comfortable and cozy and rustic. Open roughhewn beams in an open great room that covers most of the downstairs. Most of the walls are covered in dark wood paneling. The kitchen in one corner, with an enormous dark wood scroll leg table just off the pantry. I’d sit at that table for hours as a child reading, or drawing. Mother and Father always seem to have people over, from just a few of the ranch hands to the Prime Minister. He came for dinner one night when I was a child though I can’t for the life of me tell you why.” Anne explained. “Once I was ready for university I wanted to live in a big city, so I went to McGill in Montreal. I’m almost done, but will have to finish one more term.”
“Maybe they’ll count nursing as part of the curriculum!” Clara laughed. “I don’t think it will fly there, or at Trinity. I’m in the same state, as I must make sure and finish up otherwise what was the point?”
Before Anne could reply, the air raid sirens blared their usual song of impending agony. Through mutual, silent consent neither girl hurried their pace towards a bomb shelter. The morning was too pleasant to even think of bombs falling near them. They waited for the usual far off rumble that signaled the start of a raid, but generally it took several minutes for the show to start. This time, however, the rumbling never came because a whistling sound presaged the bomb that fell just outside the nurse’s dormitory.
***
Dylan and Payton had been vectored to the incoming bombers not long before the klaxons went off in London. This particular flight had escaped the notice of both the radars at Chain Home Command and the Coast Watchers sitting on the beaches with radios to call in any raids. Squadron Leader Phillips had spotted the flight sneaking in behind them while hiding in the sun. The raid was small by the most recent standards which, along with the uncharacteristic early hour, probably explained the surprise. Only eight bombers flew with no Messerschmitts as escorts, and they must have taken off in the dark to arrive so early. The raid already touched the outskirts of London and would start dropping bombs before long.
“Quickly now lads.” Squadron Leader Phillips said “Those ruddy bastards are close to sneaking by us. Tally Ho!” he finished.
The twins pushed the throttles to the stops and climbed after the bombers. The tail gunners would see them any moment and let loose a stream of tracers in defense. Blue Section tore after the bombers in desperation, and began firing before they truly were in range, but they were not in time. The lead Luftwaffe aircraft opened his bomb doors, and moments later two thousand pound bombs began dropping in rapid succession. The next two aircraft followed suit, dropping their entire payloads on to the civilians below.
Blue section managed to take down the trailing aircraft before their bomb doors opened. Dylan and Payton each took one of the next two planes, while the rest of Blue section took out the rear of the attacking Luftwaffe formation. The twins circled back down in altitude to survey the gruesome damage. Buildings on both sides of the Thames billowed smoke. A deep crater indicated an explosion just outside Buckingham Palace they noted and prayed that the King was somewhere else. As they adjusted course across the river, the twins realized with horror that St. Marks was directly in the path of the bombs that had fallen. They could only waggle their wings over a smoldering column of smoke and fire as they raced overhead. Anxiety grew in their stomachs like ice encroaching from the edges of a wintry lake. Fear pulled at them as they rushed to land and find out what destruction had been wrought on the hospital and their loved ones.
The twins landed in parallel on the run way at Biggin Hill, despite the standing order to only do so in an emergency. They figured this qualified. Just as they slowed, Flight Sergeant Blinn raced up in a lorry and directed them just off the runway far enough for other planes to land. With the blades of their airscrews still turning, the twins scuttled out of their planes unsure what to do next.
Flight Sergeant Blinn already knew. “Go, take the lorry. I’ll get your planes parked and make sure the Squadron Leader knows you aren’t awol. Check in later.” Was all the omnipotent Blinn had to say.
“Thank you!” leapt from the twins lips simultaneously as they dashed to the car and drove off, on the wrong side of the road, without another word.
With the roads mostly clear due to the air raid, and the gas petal permanently against the floor, Payton managed to make the usual 45 minute drive to St. Thomas’ hospital in under thirty minutes, but that only got them close. Traffic slowed to a crawl as they approached along the river. Abandoning the lorry in favor or walking, they twins made better time trotting in the direction of the smoke filled air. From the time the bomb hit the hospital grounds barely forty minutes had passed.
“Normally I’d say we should split up and search for the girls, but I think if we split up in this chaos we won’t be able to find each other again.” Dylan commented.
“Yes. We’ll assume the girls are together and in one place. Stay close and start asking around about the nurses.” Payton answered.
After making it to the hospital grounds proper both Dylan and Payton noticed the scene was eerily quiet. With so much damage around the city the boys had beaten the already thin emergency response teams to the hospital. Soon, sirens would wail and the injured would stream in they were sure, but for the moment it was quiet except for the occasional crackle of a small fire. A few dazed souls had shaken off the shock and begun looking back at the charred blast site, and a few braver souls had even begun pulling away at the rubble to help in any way they could. Dylan helped a small old man pull away some rubble piled up next to him that trapped him on a park bench. Payton pulled down a pile of rubble built up around the base of a tree like a fortress freeing a young lady in the process.
As the smoke cleared, the boys could see the nurse’s dormitory from two blocks away slumped in on itself on the river side like a giant thumb had pressed in the middle of a soft cake and left a massive indentation. Anne and Clara’s room had been on that side, the side where the bomb had gone off and blown away a side of the dormitory. Fighting off the rising fear by praying the girls had been out of the room working, or anywhere else, the boys kept pressing closer to blast site. The expected sirens came as hundreds of emergency workers and regular citizens came pouring on to the hospital grounds to help. With the threat of the bombers gone, the regular British citizens thumbed their noses at the Third Reich and pulled together to help in any way possible. All were relieved to see that the bombs had done little damage to the main hospital. It would keep operating as normal with a few pieces of plywood to replace some blown out windows. The small blessing meant that the injured in the hospital and the newly injured from all around the city could continue to seek care.
With no better plan, Dylan headed for what he thought was the general area of the girls room and began pulling away rubble and digging with all his heart. Payton continued asking passerby’s if they had perchance seen a chestnut haired nurse with another redheaded nurse. No one had. Finally, after several futile minutes, he joined his brother. It had been nearly an hour since the initial bomb blast and the fear was turning in to a deep seated anxiety for both boys. As they dug deeper they began to find some of the things they knew belonged to their beloveds. A handkerchief of Clara’s that she’d used to wipe away blood from Dylan’s arm. The scarf that Anne had been wearing when Payton first saw her in the lobby of the Savoy….
“You’ll not find us in there.” Dylan heard a voic
e trying to be defiant behind them. Payton turned at the same time as his brother to see Clara and Anne arm in arm holding each other up in scorched uniforms, the sun shining brightly behind them. The twins reached the girls at the same time, and held them up as they sagged into their arms in pure shock. Without a word, they held each other for several minutes, each thanking God the others were all still alive.
“I’m so thankful you weren’t in that room.” Payton finally managed.
“We’d just gotten off extra shift, and were walking along the river.” Anne answered. “Luck more than anything.” she finished quietly.
“We were about a block away. The blast knocked me out.” Clara said, regaining her courage. “I woke up next to Anne, next to the wall down to the river. It’s another lucky thing that we didn’t get blown in to the river.”
“I don’t remember anything other than sitting up next to you, so I must have been knocked out too.” Anne added. “We checked each other, and don’t seem to be any the worse for wear.”
“Thank the Good Lord for that.” Dylan finally managed to get the lump out of his throat. “Come with us, we’ve got a lorry, let’s get out of here.”
“We should stay and help.” Clara protested.
“You’ve earned a break to get your strength back, and there is plenty of help here at the moment.” Payton said as he motioned at the swarm of people around them.
“Where shall we go?” Anne asked.
“Anywhere but here.” Clara finally consented as they headed for the lorry. “Simone’s, take us to Simone’s, we should check on her.” Clara said suddenly as she thought of it.
***
No one gave the lorry with two officers and two nurses in it a second look as it wound its way across the river and through London. As they drew closer to Simone’s home the quartet were relieved to see that her neighborhood had remained largely untouched.
The butler opened the door and ushered the shabby looking pairs in to the house while also calling for Lady Simone. She rushed down the stairs and threw herself in to the arms of the girls.
“I’d just heard about the hospital. I was on my way out the door to find you. I’m so relieved you are here!” Simone nearly wailed.
“We used a bit of Clara’s Irish luck, but made it through okay.” Anne replied.
“Have you seen Timothy?” Clara asked anxiously. “I haven’t seen him in nearly a week. I’ve no idea where he is.”
“He went back up to Dublin yesterday.” Simone answered. “He said not to worry, but that I wouldn’t hear from him for several weeks. I’ve no idea what he’s up to either.” She finished, unconsciously mimicking her friend. “No need to worry about him, at the moment. Come up with me, ladies, we’ll get you changed and we can rest here for as long as you like. Boys, you can raid my father’s closet if you need anything.” Simone finished as she whisked the girls upstairs.
“Thank you.” Both twins said to the three as they disappeared.
“We’ll report back in tonight.” Dylan thought out loud.
“Yeah, that should work. They won’t need us before then. This is as good a place as any to relax for a bit and make sure the girls are well and truly okay before we head back. Let’s go change. I wonder what Timothy is up to?” Payton wondered as they followed the butler up the stairs themselves.
Chapter 25
July 14th, 1940
The air raids only intensified. The Luftwaffe targeted both military installations and London, softening the Brits for an anticipated invasion. After Dunkirk, every last citizen felt the invasion was a question of when, not if, the Germans would come. The continual bombings only reinforced that feeling. What was becoming known as the Battle of Britain around the world continued high above the ground unabated against this tense backdrop.
Dylan and Payton continued patrolling over the English Channel in protection of London. As a matter of recourse, Blue Section began venturing further out over the Channel after the bombers slipped through ten days previously. They hoped to intercept the enemy flights earlier and enhance their chances of fully denying any bombs falling on the city. While largely successful, the Luftwaffe committed so many aircraft to each raid that it became impossible to engage them all, so London suffered as a consequence.
Each of the brothers had brought down two more Messerschmitts and two more bombers in a ferocious display of flying the day after they’d returned from finding Clara and Anne alive and well. Since that day they’d earned the reputation in the squadron for at least two kills per air raid attempt, so Squadron Leader Phillips had started referring to them as Anders Squared, meaning two times two, for a total of four kills at a time. Eventually he just shortened it and just called them Squared. They had become so skilled, in such a short time, that on good days they doubled that kill total. In the eleven days since the raid they had each totaled 27 confirmed kills, tops in the squadron. The twins also earned a reputation for going directly after the bombers at the expense of bullet holes in their fuselage from the tail guns of the big planes. Three quarters of their kills had been heavy bombers. They reasoned that the bombers were the only targets that mattered. The Messerschmitts weren’t going to do any harm to the people below. Squadron Leader Phillips endorsed the idea and assigned other squadron members to first engage and peel off the fighter coverage so the rest of the squadron could go after the lumbering bombers. The strategy worked, and the kill rate went up, but not enough to discourage the Luftwaffe from sending more bombers to devastate the city.
Whenever the twins flew back to base they saw the steel forest of London pock marked with craters, leveling a block like clear cutting an old growth forest. They would land exhausted, and thankful for another safe landing. They had stopped counting the bullet holes in the fuselage after each attack. Flight Sergeant Blinn and his crew continued to patch up each hole and paint over it so the planes had a mottled almost camouflage look from each shade of blueish grey paint denoting the length of time since application.
Each day the squadron woke more tired than the last, but energized by the urgency of their mission. Sometimes they were awoken by klaxons summoning them immediately to their aircraft. Other days they would eat a languid breakfast or lunch before climbing in to their cockpits at an appointed time to relieve the current patrol. About half of the squadron had been shot down since the twins joined, though a few of those men had been able to ditch and parachute out over the channel to be rescued. New recruits replenished the ranks at a steady trickle, but no end stood in sight, so onward they all pressed. No one stopped to think which side was the unstoppable force and which was the unmovable object.
Remarkably, the postal service around London remained unchanged. Each day the twins scrawled out a few words on a postcard to Clara and Anne (they usually shared one for economies sake) and it would magically appear at the hospital, care of Simone’s address. A response always came two days later, postmarked the next day after the twins had sent their card. The singsong card and response reassured each party that the other pair still roamed the earth. Since the bombing had taken out the dormitory Clara and Anne wrote that they had more or less taken up residence at Simone’s house at her insistence. They could walk to the hospital across the river in less than an hour, or if it was night they could usually catch a ride back across the Thames with an empty ambulance headed out on patrol. If they stayed on in to the night shift, they slept on sofas and cots in the nurse’s lounge. Clara wrote in her last missive that Timothy had dropped a postcard to Simone from London, but only mentioned that he was safe and would be out of contact for another couple of weeks.
With the afternoon patrol assigned to Blue Section, Dylan and Payton formed up as lead and wingman just behind Squadron Leader Phillips and his wingman. The Squadron Leader had again taken a green pilot as his wingman hoping to keep the newly minted pilot alive for at least one patrol.
“Follow me out to the southeast, if you please gentlemen.” Squadron Leader Phillips clipped over the radio
once the squadron fully formed behind him. Each plane followed his steep climbing turn out to sea while bantering lightly about the unusually cool, clear day. The sky above remained blue, but once at altitude each could see the line of clouds forming over the continent. Weather systems usually moved from west to east, covering the UK first, but this system must have come from the south. While not concerning, it was worth noting to each pilot. Cloud cover could nullify any bombing attempts, so the whole of Blue Section hoped that the clouds would shift back west over the channel to hide London from her enemies for a little while at least.
The Luftwaffe had other plans. As Blue Section reached mid Channel a massive sortie of bombers and covering fighter aircraft burst out of the high clouds. They’d used the cloud cover to hide as long as possible. However, such a large force could not hide forever.
“Bogies dead ahead. Estimated strength 120 aircraft.” Dylan barked.
“Roger, relaying to Chain Home command and requesting all available resources” Squadron Leader Phillips answered. “Tally Ho!”
The clouds had so well hidden the enemy forces that Blue Section had only moments to vector an attack. Each lead/wingman pair drove headlong in to the enemy formation and opened fire. Dylan quickly brought down an advancing Messerschmitt while Payton clipped a bombers wing followed by a quick kill shot at another Messerschmitt. As Payton rolled back on to Dylan’s wing he saw two more Messerschmitts pulling behind his brother looking for a shot.
“Dylan, pull right!” Payton ordered. Before his brother had finished his thought Dylan banked hard to the right, putting the two Messerschmitts in line with Payton’s gunsights. He pulled the trigger and watched as one, then the other exploded.