The noise and vibration ceased as the guns ran out of ammunition. Andrew eased out of the dive. He checked his mirror and scanned the sky. He was alone.
He banked round and followed the smoke trail of his kill to the sea. A small oil slick marked the spot where his victim was buried, sinking quickly, strapped in, charred and nameless behind a now-extinguished engine.
A sudden chill crept over Andrew’s skin; he was defenceless. Skimming over the waves, he pushed the throttle forward and headed for the Kentish cliffs.
16th August, 1940
Through the open window of the Red Cross car, the cool breeze from Southampton Water teased at Vincent’s hair. The car slowed and turned up a long, tree-lined gravel drive that opened out into a vast lawned courtyard. Men walked and limped along the paths between the grass; some pushed others in wheelchairs.
‘Netley Hospital,’ the driver said.
Vincent ducked his head to take in the height and breadth of the building they approached. It stood like a promontory of red Victorian brick, its corners and windows clad in white stone. Atop its third floor rose brick chimney stacks, cupolas and coppered domes. Its frontage marched solemnly away to the middle distance in a column of uniformly arched windows.
The car pulled up and a nurse trotted down the steps to meet them. Vincent and the driver got out of the car. While the driver retrieved his case Vincent stared up at the building: ‘Grand enough to be a palace,’ he thought.
The driver handed the suitcase to the nurse: ‘Sergeant Vincent Drew.’
‘Thank you. Welcome to Netley, Vincent. Follow me.’
She led Vincent up the steps and into the building. ‘You’ll be staying in Albert House, ‘E’ Block.’
The dark interior closed in about them, disconnecting Vincent from the sunlit grandeur of the fascia. He lost his bearings as they twisted through the corridored edifice, climbing two flights of wooden stairs that creaked under their feet. At the top of the second flight they came to a landing with a set of double oaken doors, the letter ‘E’ stencilled in black on the wall. The nurse elbowed her way through the doors, beckoning Vincent to follow. They entered a corridor lined with more solid-looking doors, most closed, a few standing open.
An orderly sat on a chair halfway down the corridor watching their approach. The nurse stopped at an open door and motioned Vincent inside. Following, she placed his case on the iron-framed bed.
‘Make yourself comfortable, Mr Drew’ – she smiled – ‘a doctor will be around to see you soon.’
The nurse left, pulling the heavy door closed behind her. Self-locking levers clonked into place. There was no handle on the inside.
Vincent sat on the bed and laid a hand on the rough striped pyjamas folded at its foot. A small chest of drawers lodged in the corner and a single window relieved the whitewashed blankness of the back wall. Through the dirty glass the bars on the outside were visible.
The light built into the ceiling was protected by a thick pane of glass. Desiccated insects littered the inside. Its flickering bulb teased the edge of Vincent’s nerves. He cast around for a light-switch. There was none.
Vincent stood and walked to the window. He lifted the lower sash. It banged against restraining bolts after six inches. He pulled the top sash down to hit corresponding bolts. He stooped to look through the lower gap, the chill sea air smarting his eyes.
Outside was a courtyard surrounded by a 12ft wall topped with broken glass set in cement. Another building stood beyond the wall, all its windows barred on the outside. Isolated trees stood around the buildings and beyond them a higher wall enclosed everything.
In the corner of the courtyard rows of upright slabs stood in haphazard lines. He stared for a moment before he recognised it as a cemetery.
Vincent returned to sit on the bed. The levers in the door clacked up and the orderly entered carrying a tin plate. He handed the plate to Vincent and gave him a spoon. Cottage pie and vegetables.
Vincent looked from the food to the spoon: ‘May I have a fork?’
The orderly shook his head and backed out the door. The latches dropped into place.
Vincent scooped the lukewarm food into his mouth and chewed disconsolately. It was growing dark when he placed the empty plate on the chest of drawers. He levered off his shoes and lay back on the bed.
The reverberation of a large switch being thrown somewhere in the block thrummed down the metal conduit and the light went off.
17th August, 1940
Vincent awoke as the levers clanked and the door swung open. A man in a white coat entered, followed by the orderly carrying two wooden chairs.
‘Good morning, Vincent.’ The white-coated man arranged himself on one of the chairs. He raised his eyebrows: ‘I may call you Vincent?’
Vincent nodded. The orderly placed the other chair in front of the open door and sat down.
‘Thank you’ – the man grinned – ‘I am Dr Robinson. I’m here to ask you a few questions.’
Vincent pulled himself up to a sitting position and waited.
‘Now, Vincent, do you have any idea why you’re here?’
‘I had a small seizure in my cockpit that stopped me from taking off.’
The doctor nodded, leafing through a folder on his lap. ‘Your record states your first patrol had a traumatic effect on you.’ He gazed into Vincent’s eyes: ‘Are you sure your failure to take off wasn’t rooted in a desire to avoid combat.’
Vincent met the doctor’s gaze. ‘I had a seizure,’ he said quietly. ‘If it had happened in my quarters I wouldn’t be here, I’d still be flying with Kingfisher.’
‘You’ve had these seizures before?’
‘When I was younger.’
‘What brought them on?’
Vincent broke his connection with the doctor’s eyes: ‘One at school, a few at home. They were random.’
‘Random?’
Still looking down, Vincent nodded.
‘All right, Vincent’ – the doctor stood – ‘I don’t think you’re a danger to yourself or anyone else. The orderly will take you to the shower-room and then out to the courtyard for some exercise.’ He pulled a benign smile: ‘And you’ll be allowed to use the day-room.’
‘When can I go back to my squadron?’
‘We just need to observe you for a few days, Vincent’ – the doctor beamed – ‘it’s just a routine measure.’
Chapter 19
Pugna
18th August, 1940
Gerry made his way up the approach road towards the officers’ mess, limping on his sore left leg, but glad to be back. The heavy suitcase in his right hand forced him into a lurching gait, causing the typewriter in his back-pack to lump against his body.
At the mess door he put down his suitcase and back-pack, flexing his fingers to restore the blood flow. A faint droning thrummed in the summer air, like bees patrolling a flowerbed. Gerry left his bags and walked to the gap between the mess and the operations room, looking west across the aerodrome.
A Hurricane squadron stood dotted around at dispersal. Armourers and riggers crawled over the planes, preparing for the afternoon’s patrols. The droning grew louder. The ground-crew paused, cocking their heads to listen. Something about the unbalanced throbbing caused the hairs on Gerry’s neck to stand up.
‘Take cover, take cover!’ The shout drifted across the field, truncated by the deliberate thud-thud-thud of the station’s Bofors guns and the winding moan of an air-raid siren. The field erupted into a melee of running men.
Three twin-engine aircraft burst over the tree-tops at the airfield’s southern end. Bombs tumbled from their undersides, punching holes in the hangar roofs and detonating with clanging reverberations inside. Men ran and staggered from the open hangar doors, emerging through billows of choking black smoke.
A few bombs overshot the buildings and erupted in the grass, throwing up plumes of earth. Machine-gun fire sparkled from the bombers, stitching lines through the standing planes, scatte
ring the ground-crews into scrambling panic.
A WAAF sergeant ran down the steps from the operations room.
‘Where’s Bluebird Squadron?’ Gerry yelled.
The woman pointed up as she ran past, her mute face tight with tension.
Three more bombers hurtled in over the trees. They held their bombs a moment longer, curving them in amongst the assembled Hurricanes. The fighters bucked and reared amid the explosions, blossoming with bright orange plumes of burning fuel.
The report of bombs echoed to silence, giving way to the mortar-thump of cable defences firing into the sky between the blast pens on the field’s west side. The steel cables snaked 700ft into the air and hung from small white parachutes unfurling at their ends.
The third trio of bombers scorched over the treetops, flying lower than the others. Their bombs dropped onto the runways, some exploding, others landing on their side, spinning and rolling across the grass without detonating.
One pilot saw the parachutes and clawed his aircraft into a vicious banking turn away from danger. The other two ploughed into the cables. One took a hit on each wing-tip and nose-dived into the ground. The other hit a cable between fuselage and engine, spun like a plate in the air and pancaked into the field beyond, breaking into pieces on impact.
Gerry ducked as engines roared overhead from behind. Six Hurricanes flashed across the airfield and banked over the descending cables in pursuit of the fleeing bombers.
The blanket of engine noise faded, replaced by shouts and curses mixed with the crackling of burning aluminium. A hangar collapsed with a long metallic creak and a billowing exhalation of smoke and flames.
Gerry looked up to see a large bomber formation higher in the sky heading in from the north-west.
****
‘Beehive Control to Bluebird Squadron. Bandits directly overhead. Kenley is under attack.’
Andrew glanced upwards in confusion at the empty blue sky.
‘Bluebird Leader to Bluebird Squadron. Bandits below. Individual attacks. Let’s break this up or we’ll have nowhere to sleep tonight. Tally-ho!’
Andrew looked down at the fat shapes of 50 Heinkels wallowing across the countryside about 10,000ft lower. The Spitfires around him rolled into dives. He flicked the safety off his firing button and followed them, slotting in behind Bryan’s starboard wing.
Bryan swooped to attack a bomber on the outer edge of the formation, pouring bullets into the starboard engine until it belched black smoke.
The bomber cleaved away from the formation, losing height rapidly. Andrew circled as Bryan wheeled in to attack it twice more.
‘I’m out of ammunition,’ Bryan called. ‘Can you finish him?’
Andrew dropped in behind the Heinkel and squeezed two bursts of fire into its fuselage. Flames licked out from the wing root and the huge aeroplane rolled over onto its back and dived into the ground.
****
Gerry watched the Spitfires nibbling at the edges of the formation; two bombers dropped away, one trailing flames. Escorting fighters fell from altitude into the battle and the Spitfires banked away to meet them. The Heinkels continued on their bomb-run. Tiny black dots tumbled from under the lead bomber. A moment later the others released their loads.
‘Get under cover!’ Gerry yelled across the field. He retreated to the mess building and crouched down by its wall, his fingers in his ears.
The first bombs erupted in the fields beyond the airfield, amongst the wreckage of the two attackers that lay scattered there, the thud of their explosions muffled by the heavy soil.
The bomb hits walked over the perimeter fence into the concrete blast pens, their concussive detonations accompanied by the metallic spatter of splinters against the pen walls. A direct hit threw a Spitfire spinning into the air.
Gerry gritted his teeth against the blast waves as bomb after bomb struck the base, the jarring explosions progressing across the field towards the already smoking buildings in the south corner.
The station headquarters took two direct hits in quick succession; the wreckage of the hangars clanged with detonations; and the sick-bay crumpled inwards on itself from a single hit.
The last few bombs hit the roads and houses outside the station entrance. Then silence fell.
****
Andrew climbed away, back towards the bombers. Bomb-flashes sparkled across Kenley, redoubling the smoke boiling out from the airfield.
Around the bombers, Hurricanes swirled in dogfights with twin-engine 110 fighters. A Hurricane banked past Andrew, a German fighter hanging on his tail. Andrew pulled into a tight turn, dropping in behind the 110. He fired a short burst, his tracers flashing high over the Messerschmitt’s canopy.
The rear-gunner returned fire, his shots splaying wide as the alerted pilot broke away from the Hurricane. Andrew skidded round under the German’s tail, out of the gunner’s reach and fired several short bursts into the port wing. Flames erupted from the engine and the aircraft side-slipped away, curving into a long dive to the ground.
Andrew checked his mirror and hauled his Spitfire into a loop. At the top of the loop he sighted the bombers, rolled the right way up and dived after them. Slicing through the whirling dogfights, he singled out a Heinkel and hit the firing button. His guns chattered for four seconds until his ammunition ran out.
Andrew dived away through the bomber formation, checking his tail for any pursuit.
He pressed transmit: ‘Yellow Three to Bluebird Yellow Section. Where are you?’
Bryan’s voice came back: ‘Hello, Yellow Three. I’m circling Redhill to land. Things looked a little too hectic at Kenley for my liking.’
****
Gerry lurched from the lee of the officers’ mess and limped out onto the airfield. Ground-crew tussled with wreckage and debris, pulling them off the runway. A woman with an armful of red flags trotted around looking for unexploded bombs, planting a flag next to each one she found. Ambulances and fire-engines clattered through the main gates. Medics and stretcher-bearers tended to the wounded and dying.
Gerry moved to the end of the runway between the mess building and the smoking wreckage of the aircraft hangars, where a fountain of water gushed from a broken water main. He sighted down the runway between the craters. With an offset approach it might just be possible for a Spitfire to land without mishap. He set off to check the other runway.
Walking across the front of the hangars he came across a slit-trench. One end terminated in the ragged crater of a direct hit. At the other end, blown into a heap against the trench wall, lay the remains of four people tangled together, their clothes tattered by blast and their skin blackened by heat. Thick gouts of blood congealed in their ears and noses.
****
Andrew drifted down onto Redhill aerodrome and taxied across to a small group of Spitfires he recognised as Bluebird’s. Shutting down his engine, he pulled back his canopy and climbed out. Bryan’s anger carried his voice across the airfield.
‘What do you mean?’ he shouted. ‘I need ammunition so I can get back in the air.’
Andrew walked towards the commotion.
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ An orderly grasping a clipboard withered under Bryan’s glare. ‘I simply don’t have any armourers.’
‘What’s the point of having a bloody airfield if you can’t make it work?’ Bryan’s rage notched up a level. ‘I’m trying to save your baggy arse from getting bombed to Kingdom Come, and you tell me you don’t have any armourers? What kind of funfair are you running?’
Andrew trotted across and put a restraining hand on Bryan’s shoulder. ‘We need to get away from these Spitfires, Bryan, in case this field is attacked.’
Andrew smiled at the orderly: ‘Would you telephone someone, see if you can find out what we should do?’
Relief washed over the man’s face and he hurried off towards a hut at the edge of the field. The pilots wandered away from the planes to sit on the grass outside the perimeter track.
‘Looks like it�
��s getting bloody serious, Bryan.’ Andrew sank onto the grass. ‘Did you see what they’ve done to Kenley?’
Bryan stared straight ahead at his Spitfire: ‘Like the man once said, ‘the bomber will always get through’. If every one of us shot down one bomber every time they came across, we’d still only be scratching the surface.’
‘So, you think it’s hopeless?’
‘No’ – Bryan shook his head and lit a cigarette – ‘they’re scared of us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Bryan blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘The Heinkel we just shot down carried a four-man crew. That’s four empty places in their mess hall tonight. The bombers flying next to it saw what happened. They watched their own worst nightmare happen to somebody else. They’re scared now, and they’ll be scared tomorrow.’
‘Didn’t we watch that happen to Alan and George?’ Andrew asked.
‘There’s a difference.’ Bryan patted the ground next to him. ‘We’re fighting for England over England. Now, the Germans… everything they care about, everything they value is far away. Their homes and families are in Germany, beyond attack. How many of that bomber crew actually wanted to conquer England? How many of them dreamed of owning a nice three-bedroomed semi in Margate?’
Andrew shook his head.
‘And, the poor sods that got away with it today aren’t even going home. They’ll be landing in France, surrounded by people who hate their guts. They’ll eat what they can of their dinner amongst the empty chairs and go to bed to have nightmares about a pair of Spitfires picking out their plane tomorrow.’
‘That doesn’t really sound like we’re winning.’
‘We can’t beat them, Andrew’ – Bryan flicked his cigarette-butt away in a long graceful arc – ‘but we can win.’
Andrew frowned: ‘You’re not making sense.’
‘As long as we can put up at least one squadron to meet them every time they come, and that one squadron can put a hole or two in their formations, they will go back scared. As long as they go back scared, there’ll be no invasion.’
****
Gerry tore himself away from the carnage in the trench. He had no help to give. A knot of ground-crew stood at the perimeter looking around, dazed at the chaos. Gerry walked towards them.
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 19