He circled the dinghy into which Henderson was climbing, looked at his fuel gauge again, waggled his wings and set course for Scarshall.
He had taxied only fifty yards after landing, when his engine stopped, his fuel tanks empty.
The pilot who had turned back with R/T and oil pressure trouble was standing on the fringe of the group of others who were waiting for their C.O’s return. He was a tall, pink-faced nineteen-year-old with a frank look and honest manner. Everyone was ignoring him despite his attempts to engage somebody in conversation.
“Bloody infuriating my R/T packing up like that. Just my luck to get an oil leak as things were getting interesting. Where’s the C.O.? What happened to Don Henderson? Where’s Chalky?”
Finally one of the Australians gave him a glare and said dismissively “Chalky baled out over Holland. Don’s in the drink. Now shut up, Poulsen.”
A Hillman pick-up van fetched James from his stalled aircraft. Pilot Officer Poulsen gave him a hesitant, rueful smirk. James ignored him and began talking to his other pilots, going from aircraft to aircraft, inspecting damage.
An airman came running from the crew room. “Telephone, sir. Ops Room.”
James hurried after him. A moment later he rejoined the others, calling out as he came “An A.S.R. launch has picked Don up.”
Poulsen, with a laugh to add conviction, said “I thought I’d have to bale out again. I didn’t think my engine would hold out until I got home.”
James took no notice. When he had finished looking at the damaged aircraft he turned to the Engineering officer. “What did you find wrong with Poulsen’s aeroplane?”
“Nothing yet, sir.”
“What about the R/T?”
“The set seems all right, sir. Apparently his jack wasn’t making a good contact when he plugged in.”
James looked at Poulsen. “Bring me your helmet.”
“Yes, sir. The lead’s frayed, sir.”
James gave the helmet lead a careful scrutiny. The sheathing looked frayed. It had been pared and bare wires broken. He looked pointedly down at Poulsen’s right flying boot. Poulsen always wore a sheath knife tucked into it, as well as a revolver on a belt.
“Come to my office.” He drove away in his Hillman staff car.
Poulsen followed on foot, looking scared. When he entered James’s office he found the squadron adjutant there; who avoided his eyes.
James, coldly stern, did not invite him to sit down. “You baled out into the Channel five weeks ago, I understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It appears to have shaken you badly.”
“No, sir, not really.”
“I don’t think I would persist in that attitude if I were you. You might be heard with a certain amount of sympathy if you were to admit having had a bad scare. In your two months on the squadron you haven’t put up much of a show. It’s not altogether clear that it was necessary for you to bale out that time. Nobody saw your aircraft being hit. The Engineering officer tells me that when he ran up the engine of your aeroplane just now, he could find no drop at all in oil pressure.”
“But I—”
“Keep quiet. It’s incredible that you wouldn’t notice that your R/T lead had become frayed badly enough to cause a break in contact. I am sure you know what I’m thinking.”
Poulsen’s expression of sincere amazement did not change. There was no sign of guilt.
“You’re not fit to be on a squadron. You’re a danger to everyone else. If I let you stay, you’d probably kill yourself; which would be the best possible thing, but I can’t spare the aircraft you’d certainly write off in the process. Pack your gear at once. Transport will pick you up at the mess in half an hour, to take you to Holtham. The group captain will deal with you as he thinks fit. If you are lucky you’ll spend the rest of your career target-towing or on a communication flight, well out of danger. If you’re unlucky, you’ll never fly again. It depends largely on what the doctors — the psychiatrists — say. That’s all.”
“Sir...”
“Get out, Poulsen. Fast.”
*
Henderson returned in time for lunch. James saw him in the bar.
“The guys tell me you ran out of gas as soon as you landed, sir.”
“Bad judgment on my part. It doesn’t mean you’ll go unpunished if you ever do the same.”
“Sir, thank you for sticking around. I didn’t have time to give a fix. I hear the D/F stations were hardly able to read you. From my altitude, they wouldn’t have heard me at all.”
“Have a drink, anyway.”
“Sir, it’s on me.”
After lunch James took both flight commanders to his office. He made no conversation on the way and their demeanour was sombre despite the fact that he had been jovial in the bar and at table. Seated in front of his desk, they waited in uneasy silence for his censure.
“This morning’s show wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but it’s a long way short of what it will have to be before I dare ask to take you back to Eleven Group. There wasn’t enough real fighting spirit. Most of the chaps were concerned only with avoiding being shot down, not with shooting down the enemy. Instead of four confirmed and two damaged, for the loss of one, we should have had at least six confirmed. We made a perfect bounce and Jerry was very slow to break. They must have been a bunch of new boys.
“The only feature about the whole party that gives me any kind of satisfaction is that, at least, the three of us got one apiece.” He had, in fact, shot down two himself. “It would have looked even worse if any of us had failed to bag at least one with a set-up like that. We had Jerry cold, and for long enough to hack down a dozen if everyone had had his finger out and really wanted to get stuck in.
“I’ll put up with lack of airmanship and marksmanship; for a while: because both can be acquired with practice. But the one thing I will riot tolerate is lack of guts; and that’s what it amounts to when people think first of self-preservation.”
“I’m not going to say anything to the others. It’s up to you to make your flights understand what I want from every pilot on this squadron. From my flight commanders I expect leadership. You tell them what will happen to anyone who doesn’t fight full out. I know the Spit Five doesn’t measure up to the One-ninety, but that’s no reason to go entirely onto the defensive when we run into them.
“For the next month the only ops we’ll do will be convoy patrols. In the intervals, we’ll practise aerobatics, formation and dogfighting till we’re good enough for the Hendon Air Display and good enough to out-smart any F.W. One-ninety pilot. When I’m satisfied that we’re fit for something better than convoy patrols, we’ll start Rhubarbs and sweeps; as a treat. Arid I’ll be binding all the time to get Spit Nines, I can assure you of that. I don’t really want to go south again until we have them. But don’t tell the boys that.
“By the way, you two didn’t do at all badly. Just one thing: you’re both too concerned about keeping an eye on your Number Twos. It’s up to them to look after themselves. Understand? Everyone on this squadron has to be entirely sell-reliant. In that way, we’ll all be sure we can rely on each other.”
He knew that they had been impressed by the way he had positioned the squadron for the attack on the outnumbering force of faster enemy fighters. He knew they would point out to the other pilots the refinements of his flying, the skill of his tactics. They had seen him save at least two of their number from being shot down, by damaging their attackers and driving them away. They had seen that he was doing as much as any three other pilots during that fight. It had cost only one pilot shot down to achieve his immediate purpose; and that one had baled out safely.
James had his personal objectives clearly defined. All the great fighter squadron commanders and wing leaders shared the common factors of outstanding and conspicuous bravery, ferocious fighting spirit, tactical ability and the gift of inspiring those whom they commanded. He had learned from them all, he had served with or under some. Sailor Malan, D
ouglas Bader — in a prison camp these last nine months, but his exploits already a legend and a continuing inspiration — Robert Tuck, also taken prisoner in France four months ago; Tug Wilson, his own old squadron C.O. and wing leader; Cowboy Blachford, the great Canadian; Johnny Johnson, Colin Gray, a fine New Zealander.
He believed he had the innate ability to lead by example and to give inspiration. He intended to prove his bravery, his tactical intelligence and his dauntless fighting spirit.
If all went well and he survived the war, he should be assured, at the end of it, of the permanent commission he so much wanted and which comparatively few short service commission officers were ever granted. Given that, the road would be open to the highest ranks. He would like to be an air marshal.
TWO
The sound of a cockerel crowing woke Roger Hallowes as it had every morning for the three weeks that he and Devonshire had been hiding in the farm. He came fully awake at once but lay with his eyes closed, absorbing the sounds of awakening day, the homely sounds that created a sense of security and put the war at a distance.
It was ten weeks since his crew had baled out. He and Devonshire had jumped within seconds of each other and been together from the time that they hit the ground. The others had left the Halifax some minutes earlier, when he first gave the order to abandon the aircraft, and had come down many miles away.
Roger and Devonshire had hidden for two days in thickly wooded and hilly country. Then they had cautiously accosted a farm labourer, who had taken them to the local Resistance leader. The Maquis had looked after them ever since. They had learned, after some days, that the five other members of the crew had been picked up by the Germans.
Two weeks after the Maquis had taken them into their care, the group, of which one of the members was sheltering them in the attic of his house in a large village, planned an ambush.
“Would you like to take part?” their host had asked Roger.
“What’s he say, Rodge?” From the moment that they had come together after parachuting out of the aircraft, Devonshire had persisted in urging Roger to demand that the Resistance must get them back to England as soon as possible. “Is it something about going home?”
“They’re going to ambush a convoy of Jerry ammunition lorries tonight. They need all the help they can get. He’s asking if we’d like to take part.”
“Yeah...well...I’m on for anything that means killing Jerries. But suppose we get hit? That’s going to hold things up. And if it’s an important convoy, it’ll be bloody well guarded. The Jerries aren’t mugs, are they? I don’t want to get myself wounded and ‘ave to ‘ang about waiting till I’m fit to get on my way to Gibraltar, do I?”
“I don’t think we have any option. We owe it to these chaps, for one thing. And if we don’t show willing, they’ll think we haven’t the guts. We’ll lose their respect. They won’t be so keen to help us on our way. That’s what you want, isn’t it; to move on as soon as we can?”
“Spoken like an officer, Roger! All right. Whatever you say. I suppose, seeing we’ve got our thirty-eights and a dozen rounds apiece, we may as well use ‘em.”
“I think you’ll find they’ll provide us with something a bit more lethal than revolvers.”
In the event, Roger was armed with a Sten gun; and Devonshire, to take advantage of his expertise as an air gunner, was detailed to fire a captured Spandau.
The convoy was preceded and followed by four motor cycle combinations with a machine-gun mounted on each sidecar, and an armoured car. Each of the six ammunition lorries carried a guard beside the driver, armed with a Schmeisser machine-pistol. In the centre of the convoy was a lorry-load of infantry with rifles or machine-pistols and grenades.
There were nineteen men in the ambush party. Four were killed, four were badly wounded, captured and subsequently tortured to death by the Gestapo. Seven were less gravely wounded. Roger was shot in the right thigh and Devonshire in the left arm.
All the wounded who escaped capture had to go into hiding in the outbuildings of remote farms, in village backstreets, or in caves among the thickly forested hills. Doctors who were members of the Maquis were able to treat some of them. When the two Englishmen had sufficiently recovered they were moved from a system of caves to a large farm where they lived in a loft above a barn. There were cellars under the farmhouse. One of these had been bricked in and Resistance arms and ammunition were stored there. It was accessible by a short, narrow tunnel whose entrance was in the floor of the barn.
Roger was comfortable on his straw-filled palliasse. He lay with his eyes closed, enjoying the blended odours of straw and hay, of cattle in the byre which stood at right angles to the barn and formed one of the three sides of the farmyard. Even the smell of manure was not offensive when it was carried faintly from the cattle shed on the gentle breeze of an early June morning.
His wound had given him an excellent reason for delaying strenuous efforts to return to England. He had been hit in the same leg that had already been wounded once by flak and in his frequently recurring moments of piety he had convinced himself that it was a sign from God. The Almighty was providing him with an excuse for putting off his return to the bomber operations which had struck such deep fear into him. God had spared his life yet again with a specific purpose. He believed that the wound, because it had been very painful for many weeks, was also a punishment for his persistent fornication. His thoughts about these matters had been confused, but fear of capture by the Germans and subsequent torture at the hands of the Gestapo and S.S., coupled with the fact that he had no access to attractive young women anyway, had induced — once again — a renewed interest in religion, a mood of contrition and of resolution on virtue. He was honest in all his dealings, he was kind to everyone and to all creatures, he was free from gluttony, envy, sloth or covetousness; he had never borne false witness against his neighbour. He did not feel the slightest inclination to take any other man’s wife away from him — to sleep with her was a different cup of tea — or to worship graven images; or any other sort of images. But, having been brought up a Christian, he equated sin with sexual intercourse, and was convinced that his Creator had punished him for his lust by having him punctured by a German bullet; two bullets, to be exact. And that left aside the matter of the flak splinters all those months before.
Taking part in the ambush had been totally different from flying on a raid by day or night; except in one respect: that it meant facing enemy fire. On the ground, however, he had felt an almost complete absence of fear. There had been some apprehension, which was a milder form of fear, because he knew there would be shooting, killing and maiming. But at the back of his mind there was always the thought that, in the darkness and on terra firma, he could turn and run if the bullets came too near. He could not retreat from a bombing target without attacking it, and wherever he went in the sky over Germany there were fighters, searchlights and flak. There was the threat of fire or explosion. And he was thousands of feet above the ground: a long way to fall. Parachute? Sure; if his hadn’t been torn by shells or bullets or singed by fire; if some violent turbulence had not shifted it from its stowage so that he could not find it in the darkness and chaos of a stricken aircraft.
There was one aspect of the ambush which he had actually enjoyed, and which was denied him in aerial operations. As a Blenheim pilot he had been able to fire a fixed machine-gun in the starboard wing. But there had seldom been a chance to do so, and, anyway, he could hardly aim it with any accuracy. As a Halifax pilot he had not had even that much gunnery under his hand. He could not strike back personally at the enemy. He did not even release the bombs. But in action with the Maquisards he had held a Sten gun and fired four full magazines into the German motor cyclists and infantry. He had seen them fall under his bullets. He had felt that he was giving as good as he was getting. It was a personal battle instead of a detached one and he had gloated when he saw hulking great Herrenvolk falling dead or wounded, heard them screaming, with his bu
llets in their bodies.
He would rather go through a hundred more battles like that than fly one more bomber op. Even the armoured cars had not made him much afraid: the Maquisards had knocked them out with grenades and with captured Teller mines buried in the road, and with a .55 inch Bor anti-tank rifle.
“I suppose you picked up all these weapons when the British Expeditionary Force retreated from France in 1940?” he had said. “And the German ones, of course, you’ve taken from Boches you’ve killed.”
The Maquisards had looked knowing and said “That’s right. Something like that.” They always looked sly when he asked how they armed new members, whom they were enrolling all the time. The most they would say was “We picked up plenty when you English cleared out.” They did not add “and left us in the lurch”; partly from politeness and partly because they knew that it was their politicians and professional officers who had betrayed them, with their decadence and their taste for Nazi and Fascist doctrine, not the British who had let them down.
When Roger opened his eyes to the first sunlight that was filtering into the loft, Devonshire was already sitting up. He made a mental bet with himself about what Creamy’s first words would be. Easygoing though he was, he was finding Flight Sergeant Devonshire’s insistence on the theme of crossing the Pyrenees into Spain an irritant and a bore.
“‘Morning, Rodge. Wonder if we’ll hear anything today about moving on.”
“I can’t go anywhere yet. This damned leg gave me another hellish night.”
“Yeah? Poor old sod.” Devonshire looked genuinely concerned. Despite his Cockney astuteness, he harboured no suspicions about his captain.
“No reason why you shouldn’t go, Creamy.”
“I’m not leaving you. That’s definite.”
“I might have to order you to.”
“And I might have to refuse to obey an order. Have a heart, Roger: I can’t speak a word of the bloody lingo; I’ll never get by on me own.”
“The Maquis types will see you through.”
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 58