Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  “Fritz,” Bletchley said, “has outsmarted himself. He’s managed to do the impossible: he’s got an armored column through the Ardennes and over the river Meuse into France. The French are not amused, and intend to biff Fritz extremely hard. Fritz, of course, is very pleased with himself. However, his attack is an arrowhead without an arrow behind it. The Ardennes is appalling terrain. No supply column could cross it in less than a week. So Fritz has cut himself off from his support. Fritz is on his own. Our bombers will now isolate him completely by pulverizing his bridgehead at Sedan. Every available Battle and Blenheim is joining in the attack. Your job: keep the sky clear for them. With a little bit of luck, Fritz will shortly discover that he has stuck his neck out too far and cut his own head off.”

  “Any questions?” Rex said.

  “Flak,” Moran said.

  “Minimal,” Bletchley said; and was surprised when they laughed.

  “Fighters?” Cox said.

  “Bound to be a few, but nothing you can’t handle.” They laughed again, more coarsely, and Bletchley looked at Rex for explanation; but Rex just smiled.

  “The usual formation, I suppose,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Of course,” Rex said.

  Nobody laughed at that. Bletchley was puzzled, and slightly offended.

  The pilots had left the mess, and Rex was talking to Bletchley, when Rex began to feel faint. His legs were rubbery and his face was clammy with sweat. Bletchley took his arm and, with the help of a mess servant, walked him to the sickbay.

  “I’m not surprised,” the doctor said. Rex’s face was the color of wet cement.

  “Look, old boy,” Bletchley said, “you’ve done one show today. Let somebody else lead this one.”

  Rex shook his head: a single, feeble movement.

  “Is he fit to fly?” Bletchley asked.

  “He isn’t fit to breathe.”

  Rex touched his fingers to his mouth. “Pills,” he whispered. Bletchley looked at the doctor. “Too slow,” the doctor said. “Besides, they don’t make a Lazarus pill; not yet, anyway. I can give him a shot of something to get him on his feet. The only question is: how strong is his heart?” Bletchley shrugged.

  The doctor loaded the syringe and prepared Rex’s arm. Five minutes later Rex was on his feet. The doctor put on a stethoscope and listened to his heart. “Ravel’s Bolero,” he told Bletchley.

  “By the way, how’s Miller?” Rex asked.

  The doctor went to a washbasin in the corner of the room and began soaping his hands. “Miller,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about Miller if I were you.”

  Bletchley had a job to keep up with Rex when they got outside. He was glad to see Jacky Bellamy approaching: conversation might slow him down. “Greetings, scribe!” Rex shouted. “How goes the battle?”

  “Isn’t that my question?” She looked depressed and discouraged, which made Rex feel even brighter by contrast. “What did you think of Maastricht?” she asked him.

  “Lively. Quite lively. We enjoyed good sport.”

  “How thrilling.” The sarcasm escaped before she could stop it. “What was the score?”

  “Ah, now that’s asking!” Rex chuckled. He felt slightly drunk. Pain hovered around him like an aura: it was there but it couldn’t touch him. Not yet, anyway. “Trade secret, old girl. I can tell you that we definitely drew blood.”

  “At a price, I gather.”

  “Oh well … You can’t make sauerkraut without chopping cabbage, can you?”

  She looked from Rex to Bletchley.

  “Figure of speech,” Bletchley said. “Got all you need now?”

  “Yes. No. How is morale?”

  “Oh, morale’s fine,” Rex said. “Top-class. All the chaps are itching to do battle.”

  “But didn’t Maastricht—”

  “Maastricht was a wizard show,” Rex said cheerfully. “Piece of cake. Everything is absolutely tickety-boo.”

  “Tickety-what?”

  “Boo,” Bletchley said. “Or as you would say, Hubba-hubba.”

  The pilots were standing around, watching the final checks being made to their machines, when Skull arrived. “Got something for you,” Fitzgerald said, and handed him a letter. “For Mary. In case I turn into a pumpkin.”

  Skull nodded. “I’ve been doing some telephoning. Apparently this isn’t the first raid on Sedan. Several squadrons have had a go already. Bombers and fighters.”

  “You’re becoming a terrible skeptic,” Moran said. “You weren’t like this when you joined us. War has depraved you, so it has.”

  “They say the flak’s worse than Maastricht and the 109’s are thick as tarts at Piccadilly Circus.”

  “You see?” Moran said. “Thoroughly corrupted.”

  “What’s the time?” Barton asked. “I ought to go and see how Moke is, before we go.”

  “No need,” Skull said.

  There were a few seconds of bitter silence. “Oh well,” Cox said. “Probably for the best, in the circs.”

  Rex came striding toward them, waving his gloves. “All set, everyone?”

  “Heard about Moke, sir?” Barton asked.

  “Yes indeed. The doctors say there’s nothing to worry about … Right, let’s go.” He headed for his Hurricane.

  “God give me strength,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Remember the punch-line,” Cattermole said. “Close ranks.”

  It was about a hundred miles from Amifontaine to Sedan. The wind that had blown the bank of cloud across their path as they flew north now began to blow it away. Soon Rex was able to pick up landmarks: Cambrai, Le Cateau, St. Quentin off to his right, Maubeuge away to his left: names that had a comfortingly familiar ring: he had known them well as a boy, sticking little paper flags in a big map of the Western Front. There had been no official maps at Amifontaine so he had borrowed somebody’s Michelin guide. From Cambrai and Le Cateau route nationale 39 led to La Capelle which had a six-way crossroads. It showed up clearly. He was dead on course.

  The squadron was in vic formation, sections astern. Rex was at the point, flanked by Cox and Cattermole. Barton flew behind him with Patterson and Gordon on either side. Moran led the ass-end section with Fitzgerald and CH3, but in fact CH3 kept his distance and flew a continuous weaving pattern. That was a little bit sloppy, but Rex didn’t really care. Whatever magic juice the doc had pumped into his arm made him feel remarkably happy. He was alert and keen and very ready for action. Some of the dressings on his back seemed to have come adrift when he heaved himself into the cockpit, and his shirt felt strangely slippery with what must be blood, but that only strengthened his sense of accomplishment and well-being. It was a fine late afternoon. Everywhere he looked he saw colors of an extraordinary beauty and brilliance. It was going to be a splendid evening.

  Rex set a keen pace. After thirty minutes they crossed the first hills and forests of the Ardennes, and they picked up the Meuse, looking as looped and twisted as a fallen strand of wool. Rex turned south and followed it. In the distance he could see black smoke and the faint flicker of shellfire. Sedan. “Close up,” he said. “Nice and tight.”

  He saw the bombs burst before he saw the bombers. Hornet squadron was at eight thousand feet, and the bombers were at least a mile below. The sudden fountains of earth caught the setting sun and stood briefly golden on one side. He hunted for the bombers and found them, ten or a dozen, looked like Blenheims. At once he looked up and searched for enemy fighters, and he found them too, a great pack of 109’s arriving from the east at about fifteen thousand feet; had to be 109’s, there weren’t that many Hurricanes in Europe. By God, what a scrap this was going to be! He checked the bombers again, hoping they had finished and were going home, and they were, but as they banked the sun lit up the crosses on their wings and they were Junkers 88’s, not Blenheims. So those bombs had fallen on the wrong side of the bridgehead. Those bombs had killed Allied troops. What evil. What savagery. What filth.

  Rex felt the clear, pure rage of a C
rusader knight. He was washed clean of fear or pain or worry. He was indestructible. They could kill him but they could not destroy him! “Bandits below,” he called. “Eighty-eights at three o’clock. Going down, chaps. Let’s get ’em.” It was the first time he had said chaps in an order. He thrust the stick forward and fell on the enemy. “Close ranks,” someone said, and Rex fell alone.

  “Close ranks!” the voice repeated. Immediately the formation tightened. Cox and Cattermole edged in to fill Rex’s space. Patterson slid half-under Barton’s left wing, Gordon eased over Barton’s right wingtip. Fitzgerald crowded Moran. The flight commanders were so boxed-in they could do nothing but fly straight and level.

  Rex, plunging through the mile of empty sky, heard none of their shouts and curses: someone else’s transmission switch was open, blocking the channel. If he had heard, he would not have turned away. This was his mission, his crusade: to smite the ungodly! To biff Fritz extremely hard! Bring me my bow of burning gold, he sang to himself. God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

  The bombers saw him coming. Their gunners raked his path with crossfire. At four hundred yards he squeezed his gun-button and experienced a jolt of exultation as the Hurricane kicked and trembled and his shining streams of death raged across the formation, ceasing only when he sliced between a pair of 88’s.

  Rex hauled the stick back and opened the throttle to climb and attack again, tracer still hounding him, and he wondered where everyone was. Then a pair of 109’s appeared above. For a second they hung like trapeze artists at the height of their swing. They turned and dropped, and he climbed into their fire. Cannonshells ripped through his tank and the fuel gushed over his legs. Rex never saw that, never even heard the walloping impact. Before the stench of fuel could reach his nostrils, a bullet smashed into his oxygen bottle. It exploded. The Hurricane blew up like a bomb. Pure oxygen mixed with high-octane fuel made a furnace-heat that incinerated Rex, literally in a flash. His clothing turned to ash in a second, and his body was boiled in its own fluids. The cockpit melted around him. The fighter separated into a hundred parts which blew away like a handful of dust. Looking down, Pip Patterson saw only the flash of white, as stark as lightning. And then nothing.

  For a moment what remained of the squadron cruised on. They were so bunched-up that Patterson and Gordon and Fitzgerald could see Moran and Barton gesturing furiously, shouting silently. The unknown pilot’s transmission switch was still open, swamping all the earphones with his cockpit roar. Then CH3 went past them, waggling his wings. He put his nose up and fired a warning burst toward the pack of 109’s, now tumbling out of the sky. At once the switch was closed. The formation relaxed and spread itself. Barton found himself in front, leading. “Trouble at ten o’clock,” he announced. “We’ll go up and meet it.” The Hurricanes turned and climbed.

  It was a quick scrap. Not even a proper fight: just a sudden firestorm. Cattermole, watching the 109’s get bigger, told himself: I’ve got a ton of engine to protect me. The enemy arrived in a rush. Both sides blasted away. Cattermole’s head wobbled to the pounding of his guns. The enemy vanished. Cattermole still lived.

  The 109’s outnumbered them four to one but they did not return for another attack. A more attractive target lay below. Battle bombers, a dozen of them, came flying along the Meuse valley, their pattern heavily outlined by German flak. A couple of 109’s, dribbling smoke, had broken off and were heading for home, but the rest went hunting the Battles. Barton’s instinct was to dive and fight. “I’m hit in the engine, dammit,” someone complained. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  It was Pip Patterson. His engine was coughing and missing and shaking the plane so hard that it frightened him. Then Moran called up: he was losing glycol. “Any more?” Barton asked. Cox reported that his guns had jammed. Barton looked about him and saw Flash Gordon gesture thumbs-down and tap his earphones. Radio dead. God knows what else damaged. “Let’s try and get back to Amifontaine,” Barton said. As they banked to head north he saw the 109’s go slamming into the Battles. Before he had leveled out, two Battles were on fire and falling.

  Moran had to switch off his engine when he lost all his coolant. They circled while he forced-landed in a field, and saw him get out. Patterson’s engine shook itself to death soon afterward. He could see nothing but woodland beneath. He baled out. Six machines reached Amifontaine. Half of Flash Gordon’s undercarriage collapsed on landing and the Hurricane made hectic circles across the grass, destroying its left wing.

  Béziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne: the express raced smoothly across the south of France. Mary read a little, dozed, strolled up and down the corridor, read some more, watched the scenery stream by. At tea-time she went to the dining-car and got into conversation with a French naval officer returning to his ship in Bordeaux. He was able to recommend a good hotel not far from the station. They sat and talked for a long time: about the war, Fitz, education, gardening. They shared an enthusiasm for gardening. It was the only drawback to being in the Navy, he said. But he kept several gardening books in his cabin, so it wasn’t so bad.

  Nicole was having mixed luck. She walked to Épernay, searching always for the little old man on her bicycle, and half-afraid of finding him because what would she do then? Fight him for it? He might not have it with him, he might have hidden it. Take him to the police? He might refuse to go, might have large friends to protect him. Yet she couldn’t discard the fact that he had stolen her property, and in broad daylight. It was scandalous, intolerable. If you started letting people get away with that sort of thing, where would it all end?

  She needn’t have worried; she never saw him. At Épernay she pawned her watch for three hundred francs and ate some stew in a workmen’s cafe. It was a good watch, a gift from Flash, and she hated losing it, but better to be with Flash than to know what time it was.

  There was a bus service to Rheims and to her great surprise it was still running. She bought a cheap map and studied it as the bus wandered north by twisting country roads. Three roads went from Rheims toward Belgium. The one on the left, via St. Quentin, looked best. The one up the middle was more direct but it wiggled a lot. The one on the right went through the Ardennes, so the hell with that.

  The bus gave up on the outskirts of Rheims: refugees had arrived and the streets were choked with them. Nicole spent an exhausting, infuriating hour trying to find the railway station, and when she found it she couldn’t even get inside. Furious at this shouting, squalid, sweating mob, she turned her back on them and determined to walk out of town, if possible pinching a bicycle on-the way. But there were no unguarded bicycles and she couldn’t find the right road. A combination of German bombs and French military police had brought Rheims to a state of confusion.

  The problem was that many bombs had failed to explode. Maybe they were duds. Maybe not. Whole streets were cordoned off. The detours were long and complicated, and at the end of them Nicole could not be sure she was going the right way because the military police had removed all road signs. Or, if not the military police, then fifth columnists posing as military police. Or Communist anarchists seeking to put the blame on fifth columnists. Rumors abounded. Certainly there were plenty of military policemen, shouting and blowing whistles as they struggled to get endless columns of trucks, guns and tanks through Rheims. The police had no time for Nicole; told her to get out without even looking at her. Eventually, by keeping the sun on her left, she found a road that pointed more or less toward Belgium and she reached the countryside. It was a fine road, good for walking, and she was well on her way before she discovered that it led to the Ardennes.

  Debriefing took place in the corner of a hangar. It lasted only a minute. Fanny Barton answered for everybody.

  Lots of enemy aircraft over the target. Short sharp scrap. Rex killed, Moran forced down. Patterson baled out. Two 109’s damaged. Gordon’s Hurricane a write-off.

  “I see,” Skull said. It made a very concise report. They all seemed unusually silent. It wasn’t t
he silence of fatigue: they were alert enough. He felt the need to contribute, and he said: “I suppose there’s absolutely no doubt about Rex?”

  “None.”

  “I could easily organize a search, if you think …”

  “No. Forget it.”

  “Oh.” Skull felt excluded. “Very well.” He shut his notebook. “In that case I might as well get on the phone and report the sad news.”

  They watched him leave. The hangar had been damaged by blast and part of the roof was split open. Sheets of metal banged in the wind with a kind of idiot insistence, like small children trying to infuriate the grown-ups.

  “All right,” Barton said. “Let’s get it over with. I’m prepared to believe you didn’t mean to kill him.” He looked at each of them in turn, and they looked back, calmly and candidly. He waited for an answer. After a moment Cattermole said: “Oh, yes?” It wasn’t a reply; it was an encouraging noise: How interesting, it seemed to say; tell us more.

  “Presumably you knew what you were doing,” Barton said. “Or at least you thought you did. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Again, they simply let his stare bounce back at him. “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

  “Give up,” Fitz said. “What did we think we were doing, Fanny?”

  “Whose idea was it, anyway? Who started it? Who said ‘Close ranks’? Who?”

  “Rex,” Cox said confidently. “Rex said ‘Close ranks.’ It was his idea.”

  “Not over Sedan, it wasn’t. Rex said dive and somebody else—”

  “No he didn’t, Fanny,” Fitz said. “I never heard Rex give the order to dive. Nor did the rest of us.”

  “We heard the order to close ranks,” Cattermole said. “So that’s what we did.”