“Yes. It was a bit of a wash-out. The Boches jumped us and we lost a lot of the arms that a Halifax had just dropped. We killed a hell of a lot of Boches, though. Apparently the types here who run the Resistance show reckon it was a success.”
“Was that when Viviane?”
“Yes.”
Devonshire turned a startled look at Roger. He had never seen such unhappiness in anyone’s face.
“Come on, Rodge. We’ll go and get proper pissed. There’s a new place, a drinking club in Chelsea, where all the lads go. I’ve seen Guy Gibson there, and Johnnie Johnson. You’ll like it. David Niven was there last time I went in.”
There was only one person Roger would have liked to see; and she was beyond recall.
He managed a smile. “Collecting autographs are you, Creamy?”
A few days after he arrived home, Roger received a letter. His parents, seeing him change colour as he read it, waited for him to say something. He put it in his pocket and when he had finished breakfast went to the Fentons’ house.
James looked surprised. “You’re pottering around early, old boy.”
“Want to show you something.”
James studied him for a moment. “What’s the matter? Some popsie trying to stick you with a paternity order?”
Even this did not bring a smile to Roger’s face. He shook his head and held out the letter. “Read it. I want to refuse.”
“From General de Gaulle!... your excellent leadership and example...great courage...devotion to France...exemplified by your impeccable command of our language...glowing reports received from your comrades of the Maquis...glad to award you the Croix de Guerre...ask you to wear the ribbon enclosed, immediately...‘ Damn good, Roger. Congratulations. What’s your trouble?”
“I don’t want it...don’t deserve it.”
“You obviously do, or that awkward sod wouldn’t have awarded it.”
“But it’s not fair on the others.”
“What others?”
Roger muttered “The ones who were killed.”
“You can’t refuse. This is official: Air Ministry approval, and all that.”
*
Three weeks later, in early October, Roger was posted to a heavy bomber station in Cambridgeshire, supernumerary to establishment for temporary Operations Room duties. He was glad not to be going back to his old squadron or to its base. He wanted no reminders of his last operational sortie or of the crew with which he had so reluctantly flown. He had no wish to resume his tour or even to go on flying Halifaxes. He was willing to start again in every way that he could. He would make the R.A.F. a present of the operations he had flown with his last squadron and begin afresh with a brand new tour. He would ask to be sent to a Lancaster operational training unit. If anyone had earned the right to fly the latest of the R.A.F’s heavy bombers, surely he had.
What about Creamy? He’d be all right. He had recently been promoted to warrant officer, a rare elevation for a wireless operator-air gunner. He would soon complete a tour and it would be his last; unless he insisted on another. He’d be an ass if he did. He could spend the rest of the war training wop/A.Gs and be sure of staying alive; barring accidents.
Roger had not been able to confide even in James, his most intimate and lifelong friend, about Viviane. He knew that Nicole occupied James’s thoughts as much as Viviane filled his own, but James had hardly spoken of her throughout this leave. For each of them, his feelings were too personal and too strong to share.
He had been blaming himself for Viviane’s death, arguing that it was not her turn to take part in the reception of the arms drop, and that she had done so only because he was in it. He had been going over in his mind the discussions he had had with Father Deferre in the last weeks before the Lysander picked him up. The more he dwelt on these matters, the greater the turmoil of his thoughts. Sitting in Father Deferre’s parlour, right and wrong, sin and forgiveness, repentance and good resolutions, had all seemed simple, obvious and clear-cut. Now, out of danger from arrest by the Gestapo or the S.S., in the sceptical, pragmatical atmosphere that was native to him, all the sharply-etched outlines were blurred.
There was something else as well. With the healing of his wounds and the recovery of his physical vigour, he began to have quite different regrets about Viviane’s death. Repentance and piety faded in pace with the renewal of his energies.
During his first week at his new station the group captain commanding summoned him. The group captain had a disconcerting wary-eyed manner, he was lantern-jawed and one corner of his mouth was pulled down by a scar where he had been hit by a flak splinter. This gave him a permanently disapproving expression which took a lot of getting used to.
“Sit down, Hallowes. I have some good news for you. Your escape from France has impressed our lords and masters no end. As have the reports about your work with the Resistance over there. I’m glad to tell you that you’ve been given the Military Cross.”
Roger felt as though he had lockjaw. He stared at the group captain, thinking that he must seem deaf or imbecilic.
“S-surely not, sir?”
“There it is.” The group captain pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.
Roger flinched back, transferring his stare to the teleprinter signal, not wanting to pick it up.
“B-b-but why, sir?”
“It gives the citation there.” The group captain’s mouth had curved upwards despite his scar. “Congratulations. An M.C. is a very rare event in the Royal Air Force.”
“Thank you, sir.” Roger knew he sounded ungrateful.
“Don’t sound so depressed about it, Hallowes.”
“Anybody would want to escape, sir. And anyone who was helped by the Maquis to the extent that I was would have...given them a hand.”
“I daresay. But the fact is that it wasn’t just anyone, in this instance; it was Flight Lieutenant Hallowes, D.F.C., D.F.M.”
“I hope Warrant Officer Devonshire has got something, sir.”
“Your Wop/A.G.? He’s mentioned here. You looked after him and sent him home while you remained behind.”
“Only because I happen to speak French and I couldn’t go with him anyway, because I had a gammy leg, sir.”
“I’m afraid there’s no decoration for Devonshire, that I’m aware of.”
“I think that’s unfair, sir.”
“That’s as maybe. You know an M.C. takes precedence over the D.F.C., don’t you? I’m afraid you’re going to be sporting a pongo gong at the head of your row. Unless, of course, you scoop up a D.S.O. later on.”
The group captain had a D.S.O. himself and from his tone it was apparent that he thought it more than likely that this new officer of his would have no difficulty in acquiring one as well.
“I doubt it, sir. I’ve had more than my fair share of luck as it is.”
“Well, you’d better go and find an M.C. ribbon from somewhere and have it stitched on. I shall look forward to wetting it this evening.”
Roger saluted and marched out feeling both fraudulent and frightened. Decorated for having been too scared to make a bid to escape, he was now more than ever burdened with the obligation to make a display of bravery in the air that would justify it.
He had already been twice to Buckingham Palace to be decorated. What on earth could he say this time when the King had his usual kindly word with him as he pinned the medal on his chest? His Majesty !lay have a benign and gentle manner, but there was something about him that suggested he was not easily fooled. Roger did riot look forward to looking him straight in the eye.
The Croix de Guerre already made him hot and bothered every time it caught his eye on his uniform or reflected in a mirror or window. What was worse, people stared at it because the ribbon was unfamiliar. With three years and more of war behind them, the R.A.F. took D.F.Cs and D.F.Ms, even D.S.Os, for granted. But a gaudy foreign gong ribbon attracted curiosity. Now, an M.C. was going to look freakish, out of place, and be a constant private taunt.
/>
The G.C.I to which James was detached was on the Sussex coast, a few miles east of Eastbourne. Although his right forearm was still in plaster and supported by a sling, he contrived to drive his car there by slipping out of it sling and resting his elbow on the door.
The camp had been hastily built. Long huts, wooden, concrete or Nissen, stood in a huge field surrounded by farmland. The Operations Room was underground. On an autumn day it all looked bleak. A cutting wind blew from the sea.
The unit was a squadron leader command. All James knew about the C.O. was that his name was Parry. He expected him to be some businessman or schoolmaster, probably a pre-war member of the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve. Or perhaps an observer or pilot who had served in the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War. He looked forward to doing a useful job for his fellow fighter pilots by teaching the chap a thing or two about how to handle fighter aircraft on interceptions to the best purpose and the least annoyance to their pilots.
The adjutant took him into the Commanding Officer’s office. The figure that rose from the chair behind the desk was at least six feet and two inches tall, with a massive chest and shoulders that looked as though they would jamb in the average doorway. His top button was undone in the current fighter-boy fashion. He had a D.F.C. ribbon under his pilot’s brevet. He was about James’s age. His hair was thick, dark and unruly. His eyebrows were strongly marked, bushy and curved, almost meeting. Squadron Leader Parry’s eyes had a quality which disconcerted James. They were brown and friendly, but there seemed to be an underlying coldness; in one of them, at least. As Parry glanced at him, his right eye moved while the left one kept still. The phenomenon gave James a shiver.
A long arm and a hand that looked about as big as the two trays on the desk reached towards James.
“Hello. I’m Mostyn Parry. Glad to have you with us. I see you’ve been in a spot of trouble.” The Welsh inflection was strong.
James extended his left hand. “Broken below the elbow. It’s mending well.”
“Sit down. How did that happen?”
“I got shot up a bit.”
“You’re luckier than I was, boyo.” Parry put up a forefinger the size of a courgette and touched his left eye. “This bugger’s glass, look you.”
“Oh...sorry about that...er...when ...?”
“August two years ago. I was on Thirty-two, at Biggin. The rear gunner in a Dornier did it, the bastard.”
“I hope you got him?”
“It was going down in flames, boyo. I thought they’d all be baling out. That gunner took me by surprise. I went up close to have a look, see.”
James couldn’t help laughing. There was more comedy than tragedy in Parry’s part-rueful part-indignant account of how he had lost his eye.
“On the whole, you were probably lucky it was no worse.”
“Not to worry. Operations controlling is the next best thing and there are plenty of compensations.” He winked. “Especially here. We’ve got the creem-dee-lar-creem of the Waaf in G.C.I., you know.”
The girls who worked in fighter sector Ops. Rooms had always been known as “The Beauty Chorus”. James could readily imagine what Parry’s innuendo implied. He’d heard that the pick of the girls were to be found in radar stations.
“Are they efficient...as well?”
“Dhu! You’ll see for yourself. I tell you, there’s as much rivalry between the G.C.Is as there is among the squadrons. We’ve got the second highest score on the south coast at present, and I tell everyone, every day, it’s not good enough.”
“How many of your controllers are pilots?”
“I’m the only one. But don’t get the idea that means they’re not as good as the few grounded pilots we’ve got in G.C.I. Some of them are absolutely first class. And all my non-flying bods are always scrounging trips in night fighters, to operate the A.I.” (Airborne interception, the radar in night fighters.) “and get some first-hand experience. Two of them have actually scored kills.”
“I didn’t know non-aircrew could every fly on ops.”
“There’s a hell of a lot...too much, in fact...that people don’t know about fighter controllers, boyo.” Parry looked at his watch. “I’ll take you down the hole and show you around. And if you’d like to see a good game of rugby this afternoon, the station’s playing at Eastbourne College.”
The wheels of memory had been turning slowly in James’s mind. Now he recalled Parry’s name.
“You used to play for Fighter Command, didn’t you, before the war? And had a trial for the Service?”
“That’s right. But the best rugby’s played in Wales. Nothing like it, boyo. I used to play for Llanelli whenever I could get home.”
James reflected that Parry had obviously not been to a public school if he referred to rugger as “rugby”. Unless he had been to a Welsh one — there were some, he had vaguely heard — where, perhaps, the social shibboleths of England were not observed. Anyway, Parry seemed a damn good type and one had grown accustomed to meeting all sorts in officers’ messes, even in pre-war days. The Service, bless it, took to its democratic bosom anyone who could fly decently; well, almost anyone, as long as he didn’t pick his nose in public or scatter too many aspirates around.
Parry, ushering him out of the door, grinned unexpectedly. “I must warn you the girls are all agog about your coming here. The Queen Bee tells me the most popular pin-up in their billets are photos of you high-scoring types, cut out of newspapers and The Illustrated London News.” For some reason, the R.A.F. always called sleeping quarters “billets”; which was a flagrant misuse of the term.
“Journalists!” James grumbled. “I wish they’d pester the bomber boys more. I’ve got a cousin who’s just been given an M.C. and a Croix de Guerre to add to his D.F.C., D.F.M., And he’s a handsome type; not like me. But we never see his picture in the papers.”
“Don’t complain, James. I wouldn’t, if the girls flocked round me like bees round a honeypot. Not that I’ve done so badly as it is, since I started working with The Beauty Chorus around all the time.”
*
Within a week, James had become as addicted to working at a G.C.I. tube (the cathode ray tube, normally called a “radar screen”) as a drug addict to opium. He spent every morning from 8.30 to 12.30 in “the hole”, every afternoon from 1.30 to five, and went back after dinner until midnight or as late as three in the morning. When he stayed very late, he began his morning stint at 10 or 11.
Apart from the enemy raids, which were now mostly carried out by night, there were practice interceptions when pairs of fighters took it in turns to act as target and made attacks on each other under G.C.I. control.
Whereas it took months to train a controller who started from scratch, James already knew the R/T code and where to position fighters. All he needed to do was learn to read the blips on the screen, which glowed briefly as the radar aerial rotated and its beam was reflected by an aircraft, to judge speed and distance, and acquire skill at giving a pilot the order to alter course at the precisely correct moment. Often, a few seconds too late ruined an interception.
After seven days of assiduous practice, Parry allowed him to try a night interception while he stood by to help. He was surprised to find that he was as taut as though he were about to close with the enemy in person instead of by proxy. This was absurd: nobody would be shooting at him, he didn’t have to worry about landing in bad visibility, there was no risk of any kind. But...if he foozled the interception, an enemy aircraft would escape destruction; and he would make an ass of himself.
He reminded himself that he was not engaged in this as a solo effort. There was an experienced team around him, of airmen and airwomen. He could see aircraft responses on his tube in one dimension only (hence the tube was called a P.P.I., plan positon indicator). There was a W.A.A.F. to give him aircraft heights, which were found by a separate aerial. There was another girl, beside him, to read the positions of target and fighter from the gridded map over the screen, and pa
ss them to an airman; who plotted them on a chart and worked out speeds, and the courses which James was estimating by eye.
The girl telling the plots was as confident as she was pretty, and she gave him a reassuring smile. It did reassure him, too. He had worked with her before and she was highly efficient at every job in the crew’s duties.
When he heard the call sign of the pilot allocated to him, he felt the hairs at the nape of his neck prickle. It was the C.O. of a celebrated night fighter squadron, a pilot with some 20 night kills, a D.S.O., D.F.C. His navigator was equally famous in Fighter Command, highly skilled and also highly decorated.
“Cutlass, Cutlass, this is Redskin One-four, over.”
Here we go. “Hello Redskin One-four. Cutlass reading you loud and clear. What vector and angels?”
“Vector one-eight-zero. Angels ten, climbing.”
“Roger, One-four, I can see you.” He knew from where the Beaufighter had taken off and roughly how far it could have travelled. A plotter at the general situation map in the Ops. Room had passed its supposed position to the crew in his cabin. It was not difficult to identify it on the P.P.I. “Continue climbing to angels twenty-one. Bandit thirty miles south on three-five-zero, at twenty-two thousand.”
“Roger, Cutlass.”
The blips crept closer, the fighter heading south and the target north, on nearly parallel tracks separated by five miles.
“Cutlass from Redskin One-four. At angels twenty-one.”
“One-four. Bandit steady on three-five-zero, height twenty-one thousand. Speed two-twenty.”
“Roger.”
“Bandit one-o’clock, range twelve.”
“One-o’clock, range twelve.”
James wiped dampness from his forehead and crouched tensely over the tube. If he left the turn too late, the fighter would be left behind. If he turned it too soon, it would cross in front of the enemy bomber.
“One-four, vector two-one-zero, target will be eleven-o’clock, range eight.”
“Understand two-one-zero, Cutlass.”
The narrow shaft of light on the tube, representing the aerial beam, swung round three times a minute. James watched the small maggots of green light glow for a few seconds, then fade.
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 69