Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  But when it worked, very satisfying.

  There was another reason for CH3’s contentment. He was far from Hornet squadron. He was still thinking about that when a bowser turned up, towing a trolley-accumulator.

  Squadron Leader Rex was not content. The squadron’s formation-flying had gone to pieces. No matter how much he nagged and chivvied, the pilots couldn’t seem to hold a tight pattern for two minutes on end. “Jester Leader to Jester aircraft,” he said. “For God’s sake close up. You’re like a bunch of Girl Guides on a picnic.” They edged together. It still wasn’t very good, but he was sick of the sound of his own voice.

  They had been up and down the patrol line Rheims-Verdun once already and now they were cruising back toward Verdun. There was no sign of the raids with which the ops officer had said the air was black. Plenty of smoke and occasional flames on the ground but no intruders. And then there were dozens of them.

  They came out of a screen of hazy cloud, head-on to the Hurricanes so that at first they were no more than dots, spaced as evenly as perforations. “Bandits at twelve o’clock,” Rex said. “Close up.”

  Each pilot felt fear. Some felt it at once, remembering the day before, the madhouse with the Heinkels and their Me-110 escort when Trevelyan bought it, nobody knew how, but the end result was all that mattered: Trevelyan and his Hurricane wrapped around a frog haystack and all fried to a crisp. Those who didn’t think of Trevelyan got a stab of fear when they saw the enemy more clearly. Three separate lots, each of squadron strength or more.

  “Number five attack,” Rex announced. “Sections astern, go.”

  The squadron altered shape, altered course, altered shape again, altered course again. The pilots were kept busy watching wingtips. Rex watched the enemy, gauging the timing of his turns and plotting the precise moment of interception. “Tighten up,” he said. He could identify the types now: twenty Heinkel 111’s, a dozen Dornier 17’s, and behind them both a swarm of Messerschmitt 110’s.

  His number five attack was maturing nicely when the Heinkels changed course, banking steeply to their right. “Shit!” Rex muttered. The whole point of a number five attack was that it brought the fighters and the bombers together at the approved angle and speed. Now he would have to start again, only there wasn’t time … “Change, change,” he announced. “Number four attack on the Dorniers. Sections astern, go.” Once more the squadron altered shape and altered course. Meanwhile the Heinkels had turned again, back to their left. “Make up your bloody Teutonic minds!” Rex muttered. Now there was something wrong with the Dorniers, too: they were closing much more rapidly than they should. Damn damn damn! “Aircraft echelon starboard, go!” he ordered. The Dorniers were less than a mile away. The Hurricanes swung right to let them pass through, swung left to cut in behind them. “Aircraft, form vic, go!” As the sections restored themselves, he said: “We hit the Dorniers, break right, regroup and hit the Heinkels.” Tracer streamed from the upper turrets, crisscrossed, flicked past the Hurricanes. “Number four attack, go!” Rex called. “Red Section, attack, go!”

  Mother Cox, at Red Three on Rex’s left, hated the tracer, hated the casual way it leaked out of the Dorniers and then seemed to bend and suddenly accelerate at him, bright beads flicking past his wings, under his prop, over his canopy. And the Dorniers were very fast, he was creeping up on them so slowly … Angry with everyone—Rex, himself, the enemy—he rammed the throttle wide open and tugged the emergency boost button. The effect startled him: a great surge of speed that jerked his head back, and made a monstrous, raucous bellowing in front. The engine seemed to be shaking itself to bits: everything vibrated: even the Dorniers were blurred. He thumbed the gun-button. The blast of eight Brownings knocked the edge off the Hurricane’s speed. The nose jumped, turbulence from the bombers’ slipstream rocked the fighter, Cox was shooting at the moon, he was over the formation and something was hacking hell out of his port wing so he quit, broke left, fled, escaped into the great big safe empty spaces.

  Cattermole, at Red Two, went in and out fast. He began firing as soon as Rex said the word, kept his thumb on the button and his eyes on the target, and turned sharp right when the enemy was still a hundred yards away.

  Rex found himself bouncing and rocking in the German slipstream. He pulled above it and dived and fired down at a Dornier in the center of the bunch, held it in his sights and kept hammering at it and doing absolutely no damage, until suddenly the Dornier behind it staggered and gushed smoke. Rex broke right and snatched a look over his shoulder to see which bloody fool was doing the firing. Nobody. Yellow Section was still out of range. Peculiar. Jerry must have shot himself.

  Yellow Section—Barton plus Miller and Fitzgerald—ran into trouble at once. The damaged Dornier was staggering about so much, and spreading so much smoke, that Barton decided to pass it, attack the next section instead. Miller and Fitzgerald went with him, leapfrogging their obvious targets and waiting for his order to fire. It never came: Barton found himself in the middle of the formation, caught in the crossfire of at least twenty machineguns. Bullets severed his control cables, smashed his radiator, blew up his engine, ripped open the petrol tank in front of him. The onslaught was overwhelming. One moment he was hurdling the crippled Dornier and picking out his target, the next he was sitting in a burning wreck, utterly out of control. The heat of the flames on his legs jerked him out of his shock. He slung the canopy back, heaved the pin from his straps, shoved up and dived out. Something wrenched his head: he’d forgotten to disconnect his radio and oxygen leads. Then he was whirling through space, end over end, spinning like a rubber ball. The roar of engines faded, and still he went on spinning. He opened his eyes and saw only his knees. He was curled up tightly, arms wrapped around his legs. Why? He could think of no reason. He let go of his legs. They straightened and trailed behind him. He stopped spinning. The rush of air was refreshing and the view was stunning: far better than anything you got in a Hurricane. He felt amazingly calm. It was like doing an endless swallow-dive. Everything was under control. Should he use his parachute? Why not? He found the ring and gave it a firm pull. The silk bag opened with a smart bang. There was still a long way to fall. Well, he was in no hurry, and there was plenty to look at. Upstairs they were having quite a fight; but that was their affair.

  The instant Miller and Fitzgerald saw Barton’s Hurricane stagger and catch fire they abandoned the attack and sheered off in a hurry. Rex’s voice grated over the R/T: “Regroup! Regroup!” But to them it was just noise: what mattered now was escape, survival.

  Blue Section ignored the call too. They had just been bounced.

  When things began whizzing past him, Flip Moran looked around so fast that he ricked his neck. What he saw over his shoulder was a bunch of twin-engined fighters with big bright shark’s teeth painted under their noses. The front four planes were firing. “Blue Section break right!” he shouted. It was the wrong way to break, away from the attack: that merely gave the 110’s a longer hunt. Patterson at Blue Three suffered most. Cannonfire chewed off a wingtip and battered great holes in his tail. The wallop knocked his Hurricane into a sprawling tumbling roll that dragged down its speed and left him shaken and bewildered, not knowing up from down.

  Moran flinched at the havoc blasting past him and wrenched his machine into an ever-tighter turn. Gordon at Blue Two had no choice but to go with him. His arms and legs quivered with tension as he hauled on the controls. He sensed a flutter in the wings, and the rudder pedal trembled under his feet: the plane was strained to its limits. He ignored the signs and heaved harder.

  Patterson took out two of the enemy without firing a shot. He was completely helpless. His Hurricane seemed obsessed with flying sideways. He kept stamping the pedals, shoving the stick: nothing answered. The 110’s came charging at him, apparently standing on their wingtips, but that was an illusion: he was tipped over, they were level. He went skidding across the face of the formation, sliding between two of them, their engines roaring and fadi
ng in a second, and got so buffeted by their slipstream that the second row of fighters was just a juddering blur.

  What the crew of the number three Messerschmitt saw was a Hurricane intent on crashing into them. The pilot banked violently. As the planes flashed past, the German’s tail-wheel whacked Patterson’s canopy.

  Compared with other fighters the Hurricane was big but the Me-110 was monstrous. Its wings measured over fifty-three feet from tip to tip, with two Daimler-Benz twelve-cylinder engines slung beneath: good for speed, bad for agility. The heave that threw the number three Messerschmitt clear of Patterson’s berserk Hurricane also flung it onto a wide arc that met the path of the number four Messerschmitt. Luck played a part: a difference of inches might have saved them. As it was, a wing sliced through a fuselage just foward of a tail unit. The tailless machine plunged like a hawk, its engines rushing it to earth with a huge and senseless energy. The other 110 wobbled in circles spilling its crew, until air pressure snapped off the fractured wing. By then Patterson was miles away, stumbling home with the air howling through a great hole in his Perspex.

  Nobody else saw any of this. Rex was calling everyone to regroup while the bombers flew on and the rest of Blue Section sweated to bend their Hurricanes out of the other 110s’ line of fire. This move worked. Moran, craning his neck, saw them stop firing. It more than worked. He kept turning, kept hauling the plane round in the tightest circle, kept up the pressure even though it was graying his vision: and into that graying vision crept the tails of two Me-110’s.

  Moran’s face was too stiff to smile but his foggy brain felt pleasantly surprised. Jerry couldn’t turn. He was big and fast and ugly but he turned like a battleship. More of the enemy came in view, edged further into his sights, but Moran waited, screwing the turn tighter yet, allowing for the speed of the target, aiming ahead. Then he fired, and Gordon inside him fired too, a savage chatter as if something pent-up and furious had been released. Moran was aiming for an engine and he hit it. Black smoke flooded out, thick as cream, rich as velvet. Gordon aimed for the pilot and missed, but the hefty recoil clipped his speed and the focus of fire wandered back, found the Messerschmitt’s tail, chopped off a fin.

  Both enemy planes dived.

  “Leave them, Flash!” Moran ordered. He straightened, climbed, searched. No sign of Patterson. Far away, two 110’s were tumbling down: good. Gordon came alongside him and pointed: thin, scattered smoke growing thicker and tighter as it led down to a falling, burning Hurricane: not so good. The rest of the 110’s had banded together and were chasing after the bombers. Odd Hurricanes were stooging about. And Rex was shouting Regroup! Regroup!

  Normally when combat ended the sky was empty. This time half the squadron found each other. It took time: nobody knew where to regroup; most of them formated on Fitzgerald, thinking he was Rex. And by the time they got sorted out, the enemy had gone.

  “Close up,” Rex said. “What a fucking shambles that was. What in Christ’s name were you up to? Attack and regroup, I said. Now you’ve let the bastards get away! Where’s your damn discipline?”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Let’s get back on the patrol line,” Rex said. “And for God’s sake close up.”

  Ten minutes later they met the Heinkels coming back, this time without their escort of 110’s. The enemy was much lower, down to about four thousand, and much slower: one or two looked to be limping. The Hurricanes still had a longish trip home. Fuel was getting short.

  “No time for a proper attack,” Rex said. “We’ll just dive in and trust to luck.”

  Their luck was in. They shot down three Heinkels and damaged five before they ran out of ammunition.

  When they reached Mailly-le-Camp, Patterson’s Hurricane was lying on its belly in the middle of the field, its propeller splayed back like the petals of a dead flower.

  The groundcrews had arrived and tents were going up. Rex walked into the wooden hut and found Skull and Kellaway talking to an RAF chaplain. “It’s this hot weather, d’you see,” the chaplain was saying. “You can’t afford to hang around. Believe me, I’ve seen it before. Or rather, smelt it.”

  “Get more replacements, uncle,” Rex said. “Pilots and planes. What’s your problem, padre?”

  “Three funerals. The coffins are in a truck, outside. I’m afraid they won’t improve with time, not in this heat.”

  As the adjutant reached for the phone, it rang.

  “Three?” Rex said. He sat on the floor; there were no chairs. “I don’t remember three.”

  “Trevelyan, Nugent, McPhee,” Skull said.

  “Trevelyan.” Rex scratched his head. “Trevelyan, Trevelyan. I thought he baled out.”

  “Ops on the phone, sir,” Kellaway said.

  “Not Trevelyan,” Skull said. “Trevelyan bought it.”

  “Who baled out, then? Someone must have baled out.”

  “They want to know when you’ll be ready to take off, sir,” Kellaway said. He had his palm over the mouthpiece. “Lots of trade, apparently.”

  Rex looked at him steadily but blankly. “Any chance of a cup of tea, adj?” he asked.

  “Not for half an hour,” Kellaway told the phone, and hung up.

  “Did anyone see Fanny Barton bale out?” Skull asked. Rex shrugged. In the still heat of the afternoon, one of the timbers of the hut creaked.

  “It’s up to you,” the chaplain said, “but you can’t hang around in this weather. Believe me.”

  Hornet squadron took off again at three-thirty. It consisted of only two sections: Red (Rex, Miller and Cattermole) and Yellow (Moran, Fitzgerald and Gordon). Barton was missing; Patterson’s Hurricane was a write-off; Cox’s hydraulic system had been shot up. All the planes that flew carried bare patches over bulletholes: there had been no time to paint them.

  CH3 did not fly. He had been grounded.

  Rex had sent for him and told him the Reconnaissance Liaison patrols were finished and he was flying with the squadron now. “I’ve lost three pilots, four if you count Barton,” he said, “and God knows when we’ll get replacements, so you and Lloyd will form Blue Section. Understand?”

  CH3 cocked his head and gazed at Rex’s face, especially his lips.

  “Do you understand?” Rex repeated sharply. They were in his tent. It was so hot that even the flies were sluggish.

  “I can’t hear you, sir,” CH3 said. “I’ve gone deaf.”

  “Don’t play the giddy bloody goat with me, you stupid bloody Yank, I haven’t got time for jokes.”

  Again, CH3 watched him closely and waited a few seconds before speaking. “It’s no good, I’m afraid,” he said. “All I can hear is very low-pitched noises.”

  Rex groaned.

  “I heard that,” CH3 said. “If that was you. Did you make a low noise then, sir?”

  Rex folded his arms and stared. His face was heavy with fatigue and disgust. “I ought to have you shot,” he said.

  “I’m not sure,” CH3 told him seriously. “I was all right when I landed, but then my ears suddenly went funny.”

  Rex shouted: “Uncle!” The adjutant hurried in from the next tent. “He says he’s gone deaf,” Rex said.

  “Deaf, eh? What a bind. It happened to a lot of chaps in the last show, you know.”

  “Get a doctor,” Rex ordered.

  “It’s usually only temporary. Try blowing your nose,” Kellaway told CH3, who frowned.

  “You get a damn doctor,” Rex said. “Now.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to look, sir,” Kellaway said. “Have you tried blowing your nose, old boy?” he shouted.

  “Low noises, that’s all.” CH3 pointed downward. “Can you hear me?” he asked Kellaway.

  “Get a doctor, adj. I want his bloody ears tested. That’s an order.”

  “Do my best, sir.” Kellaway gave CH3 a handkerchief, and smiled encouragingly. “Try it,” he said.

  “Until then, this bastard’s grounded,” Rex said.

  “Jolly good. He couldn’t fly a
nyway, could he? Not in this condition.”

  CH3 had shaken out the handkerchief and tucked it up his sleeve. “Can you hear me?” he asked Kellaway.

  Rex looked away. “I’ve lost three good men,” he said. “Maybe four. You treat this war like a tennis-match. You make me sick.”

  CH3 touched a finger to his ear. “Dennis?” he said. Rex turned, and Kellaway thought he was going to hit CH3. He tugged the American’s arm. “Come on,” he said.

  Nicole and Mary sent the children home at midday and locked the school. They each packed a suitcase and said goodbye. Nicole had a bicycle; she strapped the suitcase onto the carrier over the rear wheel and rode away toward the west. With luck she reckoned to reach Mailly-le-Camp before night. If Flash had not arranged rooms by then, she would find some. Mary waited for the bus to Nancy. She had decided to return to Britain and wait there for Fitz. She was nearly five months pregnant; she ought to play safe.

  The bus never came. She went home, unpacked half the stuff in her suitcase, changed her shoes to a heavier pair, drank a pint of milk, and set off to walk to Nancy.

  After a while the road joined a bigger road and she saw her first refugees: a ragged column of families on foot, pushing handcarts or plodding beside horses that pulled over-loaded wagons. For the first hour or two she walked past them. But as the sun went down she tired. She merged with the procession and trudged at its pace. The suitcase strained her arm and banged her knee and made her fingers ache. Eventually a man let her rest it on the tailgate of his wagon.

  Boy Lloyd’s Hurricane refused to start, which was why only six aircraft took off.

  Rex led them, close-echeloned to port, toward the northeast to patrol the area St. Dizier-Joinville-Bar-le-Duc. The heat had manufactured cumulus clouds: they towered from five thousand feet to eight or ten thousand, and they were still climbing. A squadron could pass by on the other side of one and never be seen. From time to time the ops officer called up Jester squadron with news of trade, but nothing was seen for the first half-hour. Rex went up to fifteen thousand, then eighteen thousand. They were on oxygen. A little crowd of Me-109’s passed overhead, at least a mile above, looking no bigger than flies. “Nothing to do with us,” Rex said. “Close up.”