Molly grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. ‘Today is supposed to be a day of hope,’ she said. ‘What is your hope for Peter?’
Andrew grimaced: ‘To be honest, I hope he got captured in Belgium. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be better than being driven into the sea.’
‘Will it be that bad?’
‘Yes, I believe it will.’
****
Molly ladled the steaming soup into Andrew’s bowl. ‘Will you stay tonight, darling?’
‘I shouldn’t. I’m on readiness tomorrow morning at six.’
She smiled: ‘I have an alarm clock.’
‘All right, but we should spend the time planning where you’re moving to.’
‘I thought I’d made it plain I’m going nowhere.’ She sprinkled salt onto her soup. ‘For goodness sake, my dear old mother is refusing to leave Eastbourne. You can probably see the Germans from there on a clear day.’ She reached across and touched his wrist. ‘I know it comes from your heart, but we’re all involved in this war and we all have to find our own ways of fighting it.
‘My mother fights her war by taking daily walks along a beach covered in tank traps, as if everything is normal. I fight my war by cutting hair and chatting with my customers, as if everything is normal.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘I can’t bear to think about the way you fight your war. Which is why I have to stay close to you. Because then I can spend as much time as possible by your side’ – she smiled – ‘as if everything is normal.’
‘But… what about the baby?’
‘She feels the same.’
****
Peter sat on the roadside. French civilians trailed past in carts, on bicycles and on foot – a never-ending centipede of misery searching for safety in a country that offered no sanctuary. When the platoon marched out of Belgium the refugees flowed with them. Now they marched north to the coast, the flood of humanity washed down the road against them.
Peter had no cigarettes. His head ached with a dull, sleepless throb and his hands trembled without respite.
‘On your feet, lads.’ The platoon sergeant worked his way down the roadside. ‘Dunkirk or bust.’ He winked at Peter as he passed.
‘Bloody hell.’ Angus bent to help Peter to his feet. ‘What a shambles.’
They stepped into the jostling stream of refugees, unheeding of the people they bumped and deaf to the curses thrown at them. Behind them, British trucks tangled in the human tide blared their horns in an unending litany.
Peter gazed out to his left where black smoke broiled a long column into the heavy sky.
‘Where’s that, Angus?’
‘That’ll be Calais.’
‘How far is Calais from Dun—’
Peter’s words were drowned in the whoosh of a descending shell. The ground bucked with a thunderous explosion 100 yards behind them. Two more shells hit in quick succession, stitching death across the crowded road. A moment of silence sucked away Peter’s breath and debris pattered down around him.
The soldiers straightened up, adjusted their packs and walked on through the screaming, crying crowd that pressed around them. None looked back.
27th May, 1940
The landward horizon lightened with the first fingers of the still dawn as Peter stumbled through the dunes. Everywhere dark figures huddled around in small groups, their outlines blurred by the swaying marram grass.
The platoon found a space on the beach below the dunes and the men sank into grateful repose.
The sergeant called for silence: ‘We’re not finished yet, lads, so watch your weapons in this sand.’ He nodded towards the looming shadows of cruisers in and around the docks: ‘We can get a lift with the Navy back to Folkestone from here, but we might need to keep the Krauts off the beach until we do.’
‘Stay here. I’m off to find the beach-master, see if he’s got a plan.’
Angus wiggled the butt of his rifle into the sand until the weapon stood on its own. Taking off his helmet he hung it over the barrel and scratched his head with vigour.
‘I hesitate to point this out…’
Peter glanced at him: ‘But?’
‘There’s an awful lot of fish in this barrel.’
****
The chill lifted from Peter’s flesh as the sun climbed above the horizon, chasing away the wisps of mist from amongst the dunes.
Men and vehicles packed the beach. The light breeze whipped along snatches of conversation and the occasional shouted command. In the distance soldiers moved in small groups towards the harbour.
‘We need to dig in, Angus.’ Tension reverberated in Peter’s voice: ‘What if they send fighter planes.’
Angus grabbed a handful of sand. Grimacing, he let it trickle through his fingers. ‘There’s no use, lad’ – he gestured at the crowded men around him – ‘and there’s no space. It’s like Margate Beach on a bank holiday.’
An artillery shell tore a tunnel through the air, striking the beach at the water’s edge. Wet sand and water erupted in a torpid plume. Men ran and staggered away. Another struck further along, then another, walking a path of destruction through the sprawling soldiers towards the docks.
Again and again the explosions pounded into the shoreline, the concussions rolling up the beach, popping Peter’s ears with pressure. Men pressed faces into the sand, writhing and wriggling in an agony of exposure. There was nowhere to run.
The last explosion echoed away off the harbour walls and a numb silence dropped across the sands, violated by the cries of shattered men and the shouts of soldiers.
Peter stood. Driven by the need to help, he took a few urgent steps towards the carnage by the water. Hopelessness strangled his movement and dread smothered his courage. He turned away, tears welling into his eyes.
The drone of aero-engines crept into his senses. He wiped away the tears and looked along the length of the beach. There in the distance, six shapes dived in low and fast. The noise expanded and the shapes became twin-engine bombers, their shiny glazed noses sparkling like the heads of malevolent insects. The middle one raced straight at Peter, bomb-bay open.
Terror tore a cry from his throat: ‘Daddy!’
The stick of bombs fell away from the plane, wobbled in the air and dropped towards him.
****
‘Bluebird Leader to Bluebird Squadron. Climb to angels fifteen. We cross south of Boulogne and head due east to Saint-Omer.’
The promontory of Dungeness slid away under the climbing squadron, their shadows flashing down the wide shingle beach and out over the flat calm water that reflected the innocent blue of the early summer sky.
Andrew studied the French shoreline away to his left. Rippling banners of black unfurled from Calais like bookmarks of destruction. The smoke roiled across the water obscuring the coast beyond from view. Ahead of the squadron, Boulogne sat under its own smoky haze of demolition. Both ports lay under German occupation.
As they skirted Boulogne, a few flak shells blossomed in the sky to the left and below the speeding Spitfires; their pristine white smoke hung against the dull green landscape and drifted sullenly seawards. Andrew ignored them, scanning the sky for hostile aircraft.
‘Bluebird Leader to Bluebird Squadron. That’s Saint-Omer. Set course zero-six-zero. Break up into sections and patrol parallel to the coast. Don’t go near the beaches or the bloody Navy will shoot you down.’
The squadron drifted apart in groups of three.
‘Yellow One to Yellow Section’ – Bryan’s voice sounded flat and calm – ‘Alan fly wingman for me, Andrew cover our tails. Let’s hunt some Germans.’ He eased the section into a gentle climb.
The sun bore down through the Perspex canopy and the sweat beaded on Andrew’s forehead. He scanned and squinted, searching for danger above and behind.
‘Yellow One to Yellow Section,’ Bryan called, ‘bandits below at 2 o’clock, heading west. I count nine. Heinkels. Can’t see any escort. Tally-ho!’
The enemy formation r
umbled its way across their path as Bryan led the section into a shallow diving turn for a rear attack. Accelerating into the dive Bryan flattened out and opened fire; Alan, on his right, fired moments later.
Andrew’s vision sparkled with clarity as he stabbed his firing button in turn. The gun smoke from the Spitfires’ ahead of him spiralled away in their slipstreams. Flashes decorated the bombers’ tails where German gunners rattled their retaliation. His tracer lines chased and penetrated the Heinkel formation, groping at the air and striking the bloated bodies of the lumbering planes.
Then a flicker of yellow. Bullets whipping close overhead. Andrew jammed the transmit button.
‘109s!’ he yelled. ‘Break right!’
He followed Bryan and Alan as they hauled into a tight right bank. Two yellow-nosed Messerschmitts flashed over, still firing.
Their tight turn brought the three Spitfires onto the tails of the 109s as they barrelled due east in a run for home. Bryan levelled out into a chase. The Germans split up, one heading north-east in a climb, the other diving south-east.
Bryan climbed after the first one. ‘Stick with me Yellow Section’ – the excitement stretched Bryan’s voice – ‘let’s nail this bastard!’
Black smoke coughed from his exhausts as Bryan engaged full boost. Andrew checked above, behind and below. All clear. The second 109 had not turned back to threaten them.
He saw Bryan open fire and hits danced along the enemy’s right wing towards the fuselage. Crystal shards erupted from the shattering canopy and the plane bucked, flipped onto its back and dropped into a spiralling power-dive to the ground.
‘Reform on me, Yellow Section’ – Bryan’s voice chimed like ice – ‘let’s get back to the patrol line.’
Andrew banked to port, following the other two onto their original heading. Past his lowered wing he could see the thick, oily smoke spiralling up from the burning core of the wrecked Messerschmitt.
They levelled out and Bryan’s voice broke through on the wireless.
‘Yellow Leader calling. Bandit below, 3 o’clock, Stuka I think. Silly sod is all on his own. Line astern, line astern.’
Andrew eased out to the left while Alan slid in behind and below Bryan’s plane, then he manoeuvred in behind and underneath them both.
‘Loosen up as we go down. Break right after attack. Tally-ho!’
Andrew dropped back 20 yards. The extra space gave him the chance to look for the enemy aircraft.
He saw it below and to the right. Dark against the landscape, its gull wings giving it an air of prehistoric menace.
The Stuka jinked from side to side as the Spitfires curved down in a shallow dive. The German pilot thrashed the engine for all the speed he could muster and black smoke streamed from its exhausts.
Bryan closed on the fleeing dive-bomber. Flashes blossomed from the back of the German canopy and the rear-gunner’s tracers spiralled up and through their formation. At the same moment Bryan stabbed a two-second burst, tearing fragments from the German’s tail. As Bryan pulled away to the right, Alan closed in, already firing.
The Stuka exploded in a violent flowering of red flames and black smoke. The blast sucked away the bomber’s momentum and Alan’s Spitfire flew into the collapsing enemy. The two planes arced away like crumpled birds in a last desperate embrace before the Spitfire’s fuel tank detonated with a flare of orange and the whole tangle dropped away towards the fields.
Andrew heaved the control column back into his stomach and careened through the black smoke, fragments pattering along his fuselage.
His tight turn brought him around on his starboard wingtip and he regained sight of the doomed planes just as they hit the centre of a vineyard, spreading fingers of burning fuel out into the trellised vines. He levelled out and looked around in shocked confusion.
‘I’m above you’ – Bryan’s voice broke through – ‘on your starboard quarter.’
Andrew located the other Spitfire and curved up to drop in behind its starboard wing.
‘What the hell happened there, Bryan?’
‘Looks like he still had his bomb on board. Keep your eyes peeled. Let’s get out of here.’
****
Andrew climbed out of his cockpit. Hauling his parachute after him he jumped to the grass. His engineer stood nearby.
‘Any luck, sir?’ the man asked.
‘We damaged a couple of Heinkels… Bryan got a 109 confirmed’ – he paused searching for the right words – ‘and a Stuka got destroyed.’
‘Good show, sir.’
‘But we lost Yellow Two’ – his voice sounded alien in his head – ‘Pilot Officer Gold…’ He swallowed against his dry throat. ‘…Alan.’
‘Green Section came back one short too, sir.’ The man’s face softened with sadness: ‘It’s been a rough old day for the Bluebirds.’
Andrew gazed at him for a moment: ‘It’s not even 8 o’clock in the morning.’
Chapter 12
Circumvorto
28th May, 1940
Gerry rocked gently in his seat as the train clattered over the points outside Michigan Central Station. Soft pillows of steam rolled past the carriage windows as the engine slowed alongside the stone platform. With a final wheeze the train staggered to a halt and Gerry stood to retrieve his holdall from the overhead rack.
Passengers bunched around the open doors, jostling to get out. Gerry stepped back, waiting for the crush to dissolve, savouring the hot, brassy smell of the steam engine wafting in on the fresh breeze.
Stepping onto the emptying platform he walked into the station building. The spectacle of ranked colonnades and huge tiled arches slowed his steps. He paused, sitting on one of the long wooden benches, gazing around at the splendid interior.
‘Are you okay, sir?’ A porter leaned over him.
‘It’s… big…’
‘Yes, sir, it is. Where are you going?’
‘Windsor.’ Gerry smiled. ‘That’s in Canada.’
‘Yes, sir, it is. Take a right out of the station on Dalzelle Street, then south on Twelfth Street. You’ll see the bridge.’
The man hurried away. Gerry lingered a few minutes longer, enjoying the ring and resonance of the cavernous space, before following the directions.
Emerging at the end of Twelfth, Gerry’s hair ruffled in the stiff breeze from the river. A broad smile creased his face as he remembered the porter’s words: ‘You’ll see the bridge.’
A mile-long bridge spanned the Detroit River. It hung from two metal towers tall enough to scrape the sky; cables and cantilevered trusses festooned its length. Following the road up to the bridge he walked out along the pavement over the water.
Trucks ground backwards and forwards and a few pedestrians hurried passed him, crossing back to Detroit in business suits.
Gerry stopped halfway across, leaning on the railings to watch a cargo steamer emerge from under the bridge. Looking down the river towards the Great Lake beyond, he sensed a moment of passing. Thoughts of Devline rippled a wave of sadness through his chest. He couldn’t expect her to wait, better to think of it as over.
Gerry turned away from Detroit and strode into Canada.
****
‘Walker Airport,’ the driver called.
‘That’s me,’ said Gerry. ‘Thank you.’
The bus pulled away and Gerry walked up the curving drive to the airport terminal. The whitewashed building had the air of a tiny battleship. The squat, single-storey structure, no longer than two railway carriages, was bisected by a control tower bristling with radio masts.
Gerry walked through the double doors to the main desk.
‘I need to talk to someone from the RCAF, please.’
The receptionist smiled: ‘Please take a seat.’
Gerry sat down. The girl made a brief phone call and a minute later a door opened across the waiting room. A man in a dark blue uniform leaned through the opening and peered across the space over round spectacles.
‘Son,’ he
called, ‘son, over here.’
Gerry walked across to the open door. The man returned to his desk and busied himself shuffling through some papers.
‘Come in, sit down. What can I do for you?’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Gerry sat. ‘I’ve come to join the Air Force.’
The man looked at Gerry over the top of his glasses: ‘Are you from Windsor?’
Gerry bit his lip, but the lie died in his throat. ‘No, sir’ – he sighed – ‘I’m from Minnesota.’
The man went back to his papers. ‘It’s called the Canadian Air Force for a reason, son.’
‘I’m a flying instructor.’ Gerry pulled out his log-book, placing it on the desk between them: ‘I have good experience.’
The man flipped open the book, leafing through the pages. Silence hung in the room. The man looked up at Gerry and back to the log-book. He reached for the phone and dialled. The faint buzz of the distant ringing chafed in the air, cut short by an indistinct voice at the other end.
‘Hello, Don,’ the man said, ‘I’ve got a volunteer sitting with me here at Walker…
‘He’s a flying instructor…
‘No. Minnesota…
‘I know that, Don. I said exactly the same thing…
‘Don, wait…
‘Don…
‘Listen…
‘He’s got over 1800 hours in his logbook…
‘Eighteen…
‘Various types…
‘Ok, Don. Will do.’
He clicked the receiver back into its cradle.
‘I’m putting you on the afternoon flight to Ottawa. There’ll be a car at the other end to meet you. You’ve got a flight test tomorrow.’ The man stood to shake Gerry’s hand. ‘God luck, son.’
29th May, 1940
Vincent hooked a square of oiled flannel onto the cleaning rod and plunged it down the machine-gun barrel. The smell of cordite sizzled in his nostrils as he moved along to the next gun-port. The wing wobbled under the armourer’s tread as he cleaned and oiled the breech blocks from above. They both paused at the sound of approaching engines. Dropping towards Gravesend airfield came three Spitfires, one trailing a line of white smoke.
‘Looks like trouble,’ Vincent said.
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