“Red One to Bovril. One pass...one pass.”
Bellies low to sand, they scudded away and Tasker led them up in a steep climb to 200 ft so that they could reform and, orbiting, survey the result of their onslaught. Tall flames flickered all over the camouflaged lager. Charred vehicles stood black against the grey-buff sand in the crisp May sunlight.
“That’s enough, Bovril. The bomber boys can come and finish them off.”
“Well, I got a squirt in that time, Chris sport.” Malahide sounded as jolly as though he had been given an extra beer ration; almost.
“That peashooter of yours isn’t any use against armour.”
“Muck the armour, sport. I’ve just written off the crews of two bloody dingleberry guns.”
“Well done, our side.”
“Wonder what Tusker’s got in mind next?”
“I’ve got breakfast in mind. And I’m not going to follow him in any Charge of the Light Brigade stuff that’ll make me miss by bangers and eggs.”
Eggs were momentarily plentiful. The messing officer was bartering some of the rice ration for them. Neither officers nor men much liked rice except in puddings; and there was no prospect of rice pudding, with only tinned milk available.
“I told you...”
“I heard you the first time: types who’re trying to win a V.C. are a deathtrap. I agree. I’m not likely to forget it.”
Tasker was leading them on a north-westerly course now and Christopher wondered if he intended flying on to the coast road and strafing the traffic that was always heavy along it. The defences were fierce too. What fanatical ambition festered this morning in their stubble-headed, malodourous and ill-elocuting flight commander? He had no wish to die before taking part in thrusting the enemy back where he came from in a few days’ time.
He heard the pilot of the aircraft on the port wing of the rear section call.
“Yellow One from Three. My navigator says bandits eight-o’clock, high, flying parallel to us.”
“O.K. Yellow Three. Red One, did you read that?”
“Yeah, my nav’s looking naow.”
“I can see ‘em, Chris. Looks like twenty or more.”
“How far?”
“Maybe three miles. I’d say they’re about fifteen thousand.”
“They won’t bother with us. They’re looking for Hurricanes.”
The air was quiet for half a minute. Christopher searched ahead for some target that would attract Tasker’s attention. He left it to Malahide to keep watch on the Me 109s.
“Don’t you believe it sport. They’re headed this way: diving like dingbats.”
Evidently Tasker’s navigator had reported the same thing.
“Red one to Bovril. Here they come. Daown on the deck and we’ll turn into them.”
The Beaufighters plunged again to within a few feet of the ground, wheeling and crossing over as they did so, to face the approaching Messerschmitts.
It was only then that Christopher could see, for the first time, something else above and behind the enemy fighters. Right in the eye of the sun, so that he had partly to close his lids in order not to be blinded by the glare, a dozen brilliant silvery shards appeared, in neat array. They were Hurricanes, their surfaces, although camouflaged to blend with the desert landscape, reflecting the sun like burnished metal.
“Jerry won’t know what hit him. Suckers.”
“Too right, sport.”
“That’s the only kind of flying that’s real fun.” Christopher sounded envious and a touch wistful.
“For a pilot, maybe, but I’ll settle for this job.”
The 109s would come within cannon range of the Beaufighters before the Hurricanes caught up with them; but they would have to pull out of their attacking dive at a height of three hundred feet, at the speed and angle at which they were flying, to avoid crashing into the ground. They would be unable to get below the Beaufighters, which would greatly increase the risk of collision.
The Beaufighters’ evasive tactics were also limited, but they could spoil their attackers’ aim by sharp, flat burns and abrupt short climbs for 50 ft or so, which would still leave the 109s no room to fly underneath.
Tasker took the initiative. While the Messerschmitts were still 400 yards away, he raised the nose of his aeroplane and blasted at the leading enemy aircraft. The rest of the Beaufighter pilots did the same, each selecting a different target.
With no tracer in the Beaus’ cannon, all that the enemy could see was the flash of flames at their gun ports. It was impossible to judge the accuracy of their adversaries’ aim. Each man would feel that shells were hurtling straight at him.
The leading pair of Me 109s held steady. Others wavered. Two of the pairs broke away from the formation at once. It was the old Great War British trick of firing at one’s opponent even when there was no chance of hitting him, just to unsettle him and make him flinch.
Two 109s began at once to emit smoke. Another caught alight and dived straight into the desert, throwing up a great fountain of sand.
The rest of the enemy opened fire. The Beaufighters, well spaced out, began to snake from right to left in irregular rhythm. Bullets and shells zipped past Christopher’s cockpit and he saw that they were missing by many yards. The enemy pilots were pulling out of their dives. Behind him, Malahide was shooting at a 109 which was climbing away after passing directly above them. His machine-gun fired tracer and the air above the Beaus was thick with the stuff as all six navigators blazed away on the same principle of confusing and frightening the enemy even if they could not hit him.
The Germans had not yet spotted the Hurricanes. Their eyes were on the Beaufighters. Christopher glanced away from the 109s to look higher up the sky.
The Hurricane pilots were still out of range. The Beaus twisted and switch backed low over the ground with tracer bullets and shells ripping past in sporadic bursts as the Germans managed to fire a quick squirt before a target eluded them.
Come on, chaps! Fingers out! Christopher was sweating with the effort of dodging enemy fire while avoiding a fatal plunge into the ground that skimmed past in a blur so few feet beneath his wings.
A storm of tracer trails swept through the Germans, who were still fighting in pairs. A 109 right in Christopher’s path blew up and the shock wave of air rocked him as he raced through the smoke of its explosion and felt chunks of metal banging against his aeroplane. Another 109 stalled in flames as it climbed away from attacking one of the Beaus. A third flew steadily away from the fight with smoke and flames gushing from it, its pilot evidently dead with his hands and feet still holding the aircraft straight and level.
A Hurricane cartwheeled down to the ground fifty yards on Christopher’s port side and disappeared from sight in a welter of smoke, sand and long red flames.
But the enemy had had enough. Rommel already had too few aircraft in North Africa to be able to resist the R.A.F. It was the Messerschmitts’ job to catch reconnaissance aeroplanes unawares and shoot them down, or to intercept bombers which were outnumbered, not to tangle with determinedly flown fighters.
On the way back over the British advanced positions the Beaufighter crews saw eight Me 109s flying eastward at only 1000 feet. They prepared for another battle, but the 109s dived suddenly and they saw bombs dart away from them and explode around a sandbagged redoubt.
“Now Jerry’s using One-o-nines as fighter-bombers as well as sending bombers over from Crete and Pantelleria,” Christopher said. “He must be desperate.”
“You wouldn’t like to fly fighter-bombers, would you, sport? Not even if they were Spitfires.”
“I’d fly a Spit on any conditions, given the chance.”
Seeing the nimble Hurricanes wading into the 109s had stirred Christopher’s yearning once again to be what he called a real fighter pilot. Doing, in fact, what James was doing and had been doing since the beginning of this show; which had dragged him away from the readily available girls and friendly pubs of home to this fly-infes
ted, sandy, dry, womanless wilderness.
But, he reminded himself, June 1st was only a few days away, and then he would have a compensation for all that he was missing. They would have the enemy on the run.
May 26th was a moonlight night and General Rommel took advantage of it to launch a full-scale attack on the Allies.
With 10000 vehicles to convey them, his troops forged round the southern end of the Gazala Line at Bir Hacheim.
Christopher was roused an hour before first light. The airman who shook him awake said “Flap on, sir” hurriedly before hastening off to wake the next pilot or navigator on his list.
Malahide, unfailing, appeared with a mug of tea and was surprised to find Christopher already almost dressed.
“Know what the flap’s about, Chris?”
“Not a clue.”
“Maybe Auchinleck’s decided to throw the party early.”
“Most likely.”
Wing Commander King disabused them of this confident assumption a few minutes later as the crews assembled around him outside his tent.
“Rommel’s pulled a flanker on us and gone round south of Bir Hacheim. But Eighth Army think his main attack will come in the centre. Seventh Armoured Div. have got their hands full, so it’s the R.A.Fs job to support the French at Bir Hacheim. Don’t forget, it’s a key position and we’ve got to knock out every tank, armoured car, lorry and German soldier we see down there. Right. We’ll be flying without a break all day, so I’ve ordered early breakfast for everyone before we start.”
On his first sortie of the day, Christopher could see the dust cloud which marked the advance of the German tanks from many miles distant. They were trying to fight their way to the coast behind the British line. The Beaufighters, armed only with cannon, could disable a tank only with a lucky hit on its track or an equally flukey burst of fire through an open turret. It was the task of the Hurricane fighter-bombers with two 250 lb bombs under their wings, and of the big Kittyhawks, which could fly at over 360 m.p.h. and carry the same under-wing bombload plus a 500-pounder under the belly, to knock out the Panzer III(J) Specials.
He saw the German tanks halted well beyond their own guns’ range by the 75 mm guns of the Grant tanks, and watched the fighter-bombers dive on them. He saw Stukas and Me 109 fighter-bombers attacking the Grants. Everywhere the early morning was lit by the yellow, orange and red explosions of bombs and shells. On every side smoke and dust billowed, rolled, coiled, spread in slowly drifting grey-black layers. To east and west, to north and south, anti-tank guns and field artillery flared with short, stabbing flames at the muzzle and sent more fumes of cordite into the reeking air, more gouts of smoke to mingle with the haze that covered each square-mile pocket where the spread-out battle raged.
Time and again the Beaufighters plunged into the thick of it, cannonading enemy lorries and infantry in the face of heavy machine-gun fire and barrages thrown up by mobile light flak units. They hurled their armour-piercing shells into the steel sides of armoured cars and saw their incendiaries ignite and detonate petrol vapour and ammunition as they slammed through the rents.
They circled the beleaguered French garrison at Bir Hacheim all day, with other Beaufighter squadrons, with Kittyhawks and Hurricanes, Marauders, Bostons arid Blenheims. They flew low and their cockpits filled with grains of sand, with smoke and cordite fumes.
Their eyes grew red with fatigue and the stinging acrid miasma that floated above and around them, an insidious, burning, stinking fog that crept round the rims of their goggles and penetrated their nostrils and mouths.
At the end of each two- or three-hour sortie —depending on how long their ammunition lasted — they went back to rearm, to top up their tanks and to grab a few biscuits, a hunk of cheese, a handful of raisins or dates, a mug of tea. Then off again to hold the enemy back from Bir Hacheim.
Late in the afternoon, when they were briefly on the ground, the Intelligence officer came running out from his tent.
“Jerry’s captured Seventh Armoured Div. H.Q. They’ve taken General Messervy prisoner.”
“He’s accident prone, isn’t he!” Christopher tipped the dregs of his tea onto the sand. In January, the same general had been in command of 1st Armoured Division when Rommel over-ran it. “Come on, Harry, let’s go and rescue the general.”
When they walked away from their aircraft at the end of the day, as the sun was setting, the I.O. had a more encouraging morsel of information to offer.
“Jerry’s had heavy casualties and he’s still twenty miles short of the coast.”
On the next day it was confirmed that more than a third of the Germans’ tanks had been put out of action. The Intelligence appreciation gave the remaining strength as 150, with 90 Italian tanks. The British still had 420 tanks fit for battle.
The second day of the battle ground on along the same slow, indecisive course as the first. Rommel’s Battle headquarters had been captured while he was absent with his forward troops. His advance elements had been isolated, by the time darkness fell, behind the British Front along the Gazala Line, with their backs to a minefield. Here, Rommel ordered them to make a stand.
On the third day, Western Desert Air Force began to bomb this defensive position without cease around the clock. Eighth Army named it The Cauldron and the name spread quickly to every unit in the desert. Here, the Allies believed, they would crush the Afrika Korps.
The 7th Armoured Division was sent into action piecemeal and Rommel was able to engage each small portion of it with an adequate number of his Panzer Ills. Bombs rained down but the British made no ground.
Meanwhile the Air Force kept the enemy away from Bir Hacheim. General Koenig, in command of the garrison, sent the Air Officer Commanding a signal: “Bravo. Merci pour la R.A.F.”’
Then the sandstorms began and the enemy in The Cauldron could not be budged.
Christopher existed in a permanent state of being semi-dazed. The noise of engines dinned constantly in his ears; even an hour after he had finished flying for the day. His eyes smarted and his muscles ached with stiffness. His desert sores itched and wept, his stomach rumbled with hunger, the flies buzzed and settled on every exposed inch of skin whenever he sat down or stood still. At night his rest was almost a coma rather than a refreshing sleep. The optimism of a week earlier began to crumble.
Bir Hacheim held out for nine days, in the face of 15000 sorties by enemy bombers and fighter-bombers, the bombardments and fusillades and tank assaults of three divisions and three reconnaissance battalions. On the ninth night, the Free French at last had to fall back.
On the 14th June the 1st South African Division was ordered to retreat from Gazala, where it had stubbornly held on. For 48 hours its men and vehicles packed the road all the way east to Tobruk, moving slowly to take up a new position. And all the time the Luftwaffe sent Ju 87s to dive-bomb the column, while every available Western Desert Air Force fighter fought them off.
“This is more like it,” Christopher said with weary enthusiasm when, on the first morning of the retreat, he was patrolling the Gazala-Tobruk road and saw a wave of Stukas approaching.
The Stukas began their dive at the usual 12000 ft. At 1500 feet a warning hooter would sound in their pilots’ ears to warn them that they had only four seconds to go before having to pull out. They were at their most vulnerable when they began their climb after releasing their bombs: but by then it was too late to shoot them down; they had to be caught before they could bomb.
Christopher was at 10000 ft and the nearest Stuka was 500 yards ahead. It dived almost perpendicularly past him and he dived after it, overtaking. At 300 yards his shells began to strike all over its fuselage. It was still 6000 ft high when its bombs blew up and tore it to small pieces.
Christopher turned sharply to help himself to another.
That was the day on which Air Marshal Tedder, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief in North Africa and the Middle East, signalled all his squadrons in exhortation.
“Sure y
ou agree that visit of Rommel and his toughs to our area is personal insult. Good luck in your reply to his darned cheek. Keep weather eye open for G.A.F.”
But it was not the German Air Force that needed watching; it was the tank units and anti-tank batteries. Somehow, to the bafflement of the air crews, the enemy’s position of disadvantage was being reversed.
On the day that Tedder sent his message of encouragement, Churchill sent a signal to Auchinleck. “Presume there is no question in any case of giving up Tobruk.”
On 20th June Tobruk fell to the enemy with the loss of 35000 men who were taken prisoner.
When the sun rose on 30th June, the Allies had retreated more than 300 miles from Gazala. The enemy had driven them back to a point 250 miles east of the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and only 60 miles from Alexandria.
The new Allied line’s right flank now rested on a point at the edge of the Western Desert and on the sea coast, where a small huddle of buildings had grown up around a minor railway station.
On the map, it was marked El Alamein.
And by then Christopher felt as though he had been put through a mincing machine and then wrung in a mangle; both physically and mentally.
The pride and hope with which he had joined the campaign in North Africa had withered. Confidence had been crushed under the weight of a grievous disillusion. He felt bitter and angry.
He and Malahide sat in the tent they were now having to share, with a bottle of whisky on the ammunition box which served as table. He had saved the bottle for the day when they would celebrate a great victory in which the enemy had been forced to surrender. Now it helped to dull the misery of defeat.
“What a waste, Harry.” He thought of the dead infantrymen, the shell-blasted artillery crews torn asunder by counter-battery fire, the incinerated tank and armoured car crews he had seen from the air; and close-to as he had trudged for 24 hours across the desert.
It had been a long tramp. He and Malahide had been shot down again a few days before the retreat halted at El Alamein. They had had to find their own way back to their temporary base. For this they had been enrolled in The Late Arrivals Club, a body which conferred a winged silver boot and a certificate on its members. The “club” was the idea of a Public Relations officer and its motto “It’s Never Too Late To Come Back”. The certificate, with ponderous humour, stated “This is to certify that...of...Squadron is hereby nominated a member of the Late Arrivals Club. Inasmuch as he, in...on...when obliged to abandon his aircraft, on the ground or in the air, as a result of unfriendly action by the enemy, succeeded in returning to his squadron, on foot or by any other means, long after his Estimated Time of Arrival.”
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 62