‘All right, lads,’ he said, ‘there’s your taxi. You’ll find some food laid on for you in Eindhoven. I’ll see you for a beer later on this evening, maybe, but in any case I want you to come to my office — the hut next to 505 Squadron Dispersal — at 0800 tomorrow. Bring your log-books with you and don’t miss the bus from Eindhoven, it’s a bloody long walk.’
He turned to the Anson pilot, who had been half dozing on top of his pile of mail bags.
‘I expect you’ll be staying the night too, Ken?’ he asked.
The Anson pilot nodded, rising to his feet. ‘Too true, sir.’ He pointed at the leaden sky. ‘No chance of churning my way through that lot — I value my little pink body far too much.’
‘You’d better get on the truck, then,’ Yeoman told him. ‘You might have to bunk up with somebody, though; accommodation is pretty full at the moment, because there’s a Typhoon Wing here in addition to ourselves.’
‘We’ll draw lots for him,’ Tim Phelan grinned.
The Anson pilot tapped the side of his nose significantly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I have my connections in Eindhoven. A widow, she is, and very nice too. I keep my spare toothbrush there.’ He followed the others out of the caravan.
Yeoman swung round suddenly to face the burned man and a broad grin split his features. In two strides he was across the caravan, clasping the burned man’s scarred hand warmly.
‘Simon! You old so-and-so — it’s damned good to see you!’
The burned man’s face twisted. ‘You too, George,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s been a long time. I thought for a moment you hadn’t recognized me — although I wouldn’t blame you for that.’ There was no trace of bitterness in the burned man’s voice.
‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, Simon’, Yeoman said mildly. ‘I just thought it might have been a bit unnerving for the other replacements to discover that one of their number was an old pal of mine.’
He turned to Tim Phelan, who had been listening to the exchange with interest. ‘Tim, I’d like you to meet Simon Wynne-Williams. We flew with 505 Squadron as NCO pilots in France in 1940, and in the Battle of Britain. That is, until — ’
He broke off, embarrassed, and Wynne-Williams finished the sentence for him.
‘Until I stopped a 109’s cannon shell in my petrol tank, the result of which encounter you see here.’ He pointed to his ravaged face. ‘Actually, it might have been a lot worse — the medics didn’t do a bad job in patching me up. In fact, the skin of my face is made up mainly of grafts from my backside. So if anyone kisses me these days, I take great delight in telling them that they’ve just kissed my arse.’
They laughed, the tension broken. Wynne-Williams’ voice gave no indication of the two and a half years of agony he had suffered in the Burns Unit at East Grinstead, while dedicated plastic surgeons painstakingly rebuilt his face and hands. Philosophically, he believed that he had been far luckier than most; in the same ward there had been a bomber navigator with no eyes, and another pilot whose hands and forearms had been burned completely away below the elbows. At least he, Wynne-Williams, had been discharged with all his faculties, permitting him to return to operational flying. That was the important thing; the fact that his once-handsome features no longer existed had ceased to trouble him now he was back in action.
*
The road to Eindhoven was potholed and waterlogged. Despite hurried repairs, carried out with the help of locally-recruited labour, it still bore the scars inflicted over the past months by Allied fighter-bombers as they harried the retreated Wehrmacht. Yeoman’s car — a Mercedes which had been found abandoned in a ditch on the airfield perimeter and which had presumably once been the property of a Luftwaffe officer — lurched violently as the driver spun the wheel this way and that in a bid to avoid the worst of the ruts; a hopeless task, for the road surface had been churned up even more in recent weeks by the passage of countless tracked vehicles. This afternoon, for a change, there was no movement on the road. Once, they passed a column of a dozen Sherman tanks, parked in the mud by the roadside; as they passed the leading tank a few soldiers, huddled under drenched capes, peered miserably at them through the rain. Apart from that dismal group, there was no sign of life.
Eindhoven was a grey town, filled with grey people. It had not always been so. At the turn of the century, Eindhoven had been a typical, thriving rural community of some six thousand people, the majority of whom had never strayed further than neighbouring villages. The great industrialist Anton Philips had altered all that. By the late 1930s, his new electrical components factories had transformed Eindhoven into a huge industrial town, one of the best-equipped and most modern centres of production in the world. In 1940, it had been one of the richest prizes to fall into the hands of the invading Germans, who had not been slow to turn its resources over to their wartime needs.
Sadly, the German possession of the Philips factories had turned Eindhoven into a primary Allied target. Time after time during the four bitter years that followed the enemy occupation the factories had been hit by the bombers of the RAF and, later, the USAAF. In an attempt to spare Dutch lives, and for the sake of precision, these attacks had been carried out at low level and in daylight, but despite the gallant efforts of the Allied aircrews — who had suffered heavy losses in the process — the town itself had inevitably sustained severe damage. The war had dropped a grey veil over Eindhoven. One day, it would be lifted. In the meantime, now that the Allies were here, the inhabitants were content to bear their privations and wait for the better things to come.
Dusk was falling as the Mercedes entered the outskirts of the town, bumping over slippery cobbled streets that were crammed with military vehicles of all kinds. The driver turned into a square, surrounded by trees on three sides. On the remaining side, a big gateway flanked by stone pillars and a high wall gave access to a forecourt and a grey, featureless building whose rows of small windows and plain wooden door spoke of austerity.
The car drew up and the occupants got out, shivering in the cold, moist air. Yeoman smiled in the gloom.
‘Well, Simon, this is home — for the time being, at least. You are about to sleep in a convent.’
‘Are any of the nuns still around?’ Wynne-Williams wanted to know.
‘Oh, no. They left a long time ago, shortly after the Germans came. The last occupants were the Waffen SS. At least they left the place tidy, which is more than it is now. Come on, let’s get out of this damned rain.’
They went inside, pushing their way past a dusty blackout curtain, and found themselves at the end of a long corridor. Doors on either side opened on to small rooms that were filled with camp beds, kitbags, flying clothing and other items of pilots’ equipment. Bodies, in various stages of undress, were sprawled on a few of the beds, but most were empty. The whole place stank of sweat, wet clothing, beer and fried bacon.
‘It’s a bit less unsavoury upstairs,’ Yeoman told him. ‘That’s where the flight lieutenants and above live. Apart from our own batmen — we share one between four of us, by the way — we employ a couple of old Dutchmen to come along and muck us out twice a week. Come on.’
He led the way up a narrow, winding staircase to the floor above. Here, too, small cell-like rooms, each containing two beds, opened on to another long corridor. Phelan disappeared into one of the rooms, while Yeoman conducted Wynne-Williams to another some way down the corridor. The door was open, and the room was empty.
‘There you are, Simon,’ Yeoman said. ‘You’ll be sharing with Jackie Burgess; he’s on leave at the moment.’
Wynne-Williams peered inside the room, reached round the doorjamb and switched on the light. One of the beds inside was cluttered with odds and ends; the other was empty except for a few blankets, stacked in a neat pile. A few pin-ups graced the walls, which were otherwise barren apart from a battered crucifix. Wynne-Williams noticed that Christ had lost his head, and that the wall around the crucifix was pock-marked with bullet holes.
&nbs
p; ‘The work of the Waffen SS?’ he queried.
‘The work of Dick Coombes,’ Yeoman corrected him. ‘He was the previous occupant of your bed. He woke up one night and started blazing away at old J.C. with his revolver — scared the shits out of all of us. He swore blind that Jesus was coming down to get him. He might have been right, at that, because he got the chop a couple of days later.’
‘Charming,’ Wynne-Williams commented wryly. He gave the remains of the crucifix a mock salute and sat down on the edge of his bed, looking up at Yeoman quizzically.
‘I suppose I ought to call you “sir”, in view of your present exalted position,’ he said.
‘Yes, I suppose you ought to,’ the other replied, smiling. ‘It just doesn’t seem right, somehow, though. I owe you a lot, Simon, and I often think about those early days in France. God, it seems a long time ago.’
There was a semi-embarrassed pause, then Yeoman said: ‘Anyway, we’ll have a good old yarn over a beer before dinner, and I’ll fill you in about the operational side of things here.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Dinner is at seven, and unless we’re on duty we always change into number one uniform. See you in the bar at six-thirty? If you take the stairs at the opposite end of the corridor, you’ll find the bar on the left-hand side at the bottom.’
Yeoman smiled and went out, closing the door behind him. Wynne-Williams listened to his footfalls receding along the corridor, shrugged and smiled to himself, as though enjoying some secret joke. Then he threw his kitbag into a corner, pushed the mound of blankets aside and stretched out on the bed, his hands clasped behind his head. After a while, despite the chill in the room, he dozed off.
He awoke, drenched in perspiration, to blind, unreasoning panic. Wildly he looked about him, not remembering where he was. The last vestiges of daylight had long since gone and the cold darkness closed in on him, beating his face with its wings. The only sound in the room was the incessant spatter of the rain against the panes of the solitary tiny window, and it was this reassuring, everyday noise that brought him slowly back to reality.
He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He was trembling violently, but he knew that it would pass. The sweat began to dry on his body and he shivered. Groping in the darkness, he found a blanket and draped it over his shoulders, pulling it round his body like a cloak. It was slightly damp, but it helped to keep the cold at bay.
The dream was always the same. It was not like earlier dreams, in which all-consuming flames had reduced him to screaming, mindless insensibility; in a way, the new dream was infinitely more terrifying, a dream of cold, clammy darkness that whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind for days afterwards.
Feeling slightly sick, he took a deep breath and looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was 0615. He rose and, groping his way in the blackness, crossed over to the doorway and felt for the light switch. A moment later he stood blinking in the sudden harsh glare of a naked electric light bulb, surveying his surroundings clearly for the first time.
He went over and quickly closed the shutters at the little window, blocking out the rain-swept night. The simple action had the effect of steadying his nerves a little; he held out his hands in front of him and studied them intently, seeing the tremors subside little by little until finally the hands were still.
Satisfied, he picked up his kitbag and emptied its contents on to the bed. Retrieving his best uniform from the pile, he draped it over a hanger, smoothing out the creases, and hung it from a nail behind the door. Turning away, he automatically felt his chin for stubble, then smiled to himself; the last time he had shaved had been in September 1940, before the searing flames of high-octane petrol burned away the skin of his face.
A sudden sharp rap on the door startled him and he swung round, reaching for the handle, but the door opened before his hand made contact and a small, tubby airman burst into the room, carrying an enamel bowl and a steaming bucket. Ignoring Wynne-Williams completely, he set down the bowl with a clatter on the small locker beside the latter’s bed and tipped a careful measure of the bucket’s contents into the receptacle. Only then did he speak, addressing the pilot in an almost unintelligible accent which, Wynne-Williams guessed, had its origins in the slums of Glasgow.
‘Guidevenin’ sorr. Ah thochtye’d likeadrap o’hotwatter. Ah’m McGann. Ah’ll seet’ye.’
The man grinned lopsidedly and bundled himself out of the room, leaving the pilot standing in open-mouthed amazement. Once again Wynne-Williams began to shake all over. Sitting down heavily on the edge of his bed, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The tears coursed down his cheeks, washing away the awful tension he had experienced only minutes before.
After a little while, still chuckling, he got up and washed carefully in the hot water the extraordinary McGann had brought him. There was a new briskness in his movements as he changed into his other uniform, and a few minutes later, as he made his way down the stairs towards the bar, he realized with some surprise that he was whistling a little tune. It was as though, somehow, the clock had been turned back four years.
He opened the door of the bar and stood there for a moment, peering through the haze of tobacco smoke at the press of blue uniforms, listening to the hubbub of voices. In a corner of the bar Yeoman was standing with arm upraised, beckoning to him.
His dark dream forgotten, Wynne-Williams pushed his way through the throng. He was happy now, for he knew that this was where he belonged. Once again, he was part of an operational squadron.
Chapter Two
OBERSTLEUTNANT JOACHIM RICHTER STARED AT THE sheet of paper he had just lifted from the pile that lay on his desk top and frowned deeply. After studying the document for a few moments, he pressed a buzzer. Almost instantly, a door flew open and a young, blond lieutenant entered the office, clicking his heels sharply and stiffening like a ramrod to the position of attention. Richter looked at the earnest face and the immaculately pressed uniform with vague annoyance; his adjutant, Hasso von Gleiwitz, always made him feel slightly uncomfortable. The man — the son of an aristocratic Prussian family with a military pedigree as long as one’s arm — was a conceited prig, and by no means popular with his fellow officers. He was also unswervingly loyal to whoever was his immediate superior, and for the last few months that superior had been Richter. Not only that; the man was a damned fine adjutant, with an uncanny perception for small detail in whatever job he tackled, and an ice-cold incisive voice which, on occasion, had been known to send shivers up the spines of officers several times his senior.
‘Hasso,’ Richter said, waving the sheet of paper, ‘just what the hell is all this about?’
The lieutenant inclined the top half of his body slightly, leaning forward to get a better view of the document, then straightened himself again.
‘Orders from the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, sir, asking for lists of personnel surplus to our immediate requirements. For transfer to the Eastern Front as temporary infantrymen, sir.’
‘Infantry!’ Richter roared in sudden fury. ‘Surplus personnel! What do those fat-arsed, chairbound bastards in the OKL think we are!’
Von Gleiwitz winced almost imperceptibly. Privately, he thought that his outspoken commanding officer would get himself into trouble one day, if he happened to air his views when the wrong people were listening. Yet he knew that Richter was right; serious though the situation in the east might be, the Luftwaffe needed every single man to keep its fighter squadrons operational.
Richter took a deep breath and calmed down a little. He stared hard at the lieutenant, then tapped the paper and said in a low, even voice:
‘Hasso, I have not seen this. Have you?’
Von Gleiwitz looked straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a photograph of a Focke-Wulf 190 that hung on the far wall. ‘No, sir,’ he said woodenly.
Richter screwed the offending document into a ball and tossed it into the waste-paper basket w
ith studied contempt.
‘Will that be all, sir?’ von Gleiwitz asked. Richter nodded.
‘Yes, thank you, Hasso,’ he said tiredly. ‘No — wait a minute. Tell someone to get a pot of coffee going and give Major Schumacher a ring. I’d like him to join me.’
Von Gleiwitz clicked his heels again and went out. Richter pushed back his chair, got up and crossed over to the window, staring moodily at the lowering rain-clouds. The downpour which had drenched northern Europe for several days now continued unabated, although according to the weather boys the clouds would start to break up in the course of the afternoon. Nevertheless, this grey, wet morning of Monday, 13 November, was just about as depressing as any Richter had known.
He took a case from his pocket and extracted a long cigar, rolling it thoughtfully between his fingers as he stared out over the rain-swept surface of Rheine airfield. It was deserted, for the aircraft that were not undergoing maintenance in the hangars were dispersed in carefully concealed blast-proof shelters around the perimeter.
Richter lit his cigar and turned away from the rain-streaked window, resting his weight lightly on the sill. His eyes roved over the photographs on the wall behind his desk, every one of which told a story. France, 1940; Russia 1941; Sicily, the following year, when the Luftwaffe had made an abortive attempt to smash Malta ... He looked at the young, eager, smiling faces with infinite sadness, and the boys who had been his companions looked back at him as they clustered in front of their Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. Most of them were gone now, the ashes of their bodies scattered over the battlegrounds of Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East.
Those that were left, like himself, had the almost impossible task of welding the stream of replacement pilots into an efficient fighting force capable of taking on the ever-growing hordes of Allied fighters and bombers that now swarmed across the Third Reich. There was no doubt that the new pilots were keen enough to play their part in the defence of Germany, but there was no time to train them properly, and unless they were very lucky they soon fell victim to experienced Allied fighter leaders or to their own inexperience, which resulted in an appalling accident rate. The sad truth was that as 1944 drew to a close, the Luftwaffe was producing fighter aircraft in greater numbers than ever before — but the new generation of German pilots was lacking in the necessary skill and experience to get the best out of these machines.
Tempest Squadron Page 2