“Not really. I knew they were pretty fluent when they arrived, that’s why they were sent here. They were just being bloody-minded. Now, are you going to reveal what this peculiar snapshot is all about?”
CH3 banged a spoon on the table. “Take a good look,” he said to them. “There’s something special about this picture.”
“Moggy’s flies are undone,” Patterson said. “But then, they usually are.”
“Colossal pressure on them,” Cattermole said. “No wonder the buttons pop.”
“Look at the heads,” CH3 said. “Nearly everybody turned his head to the left. Why?”
“Because the bang was on the left?” Quirk suggested.
“No, the bang was in the middle.” He waited, but nobody else spoke. “The fact is, most people, if they want to look behind them, turn to the left. Maybe it’s because the right-hand neck muscles are stronger or something, I don’t know.”
“Iron Filings turned his head to the right,” Barton pointed out.
“I’m left-handed,” Steele-Stebbing said.
“The point of that picture is this,” CH3 said. “When the average pilot suddenly has to look behind him, it’s ten to one he’ll turn his head to the left. So if you’re lucky enough to get on Jerry’s tail, the best place to be is not slap behind him but slightly to the right.”
“About five degrees to the right is good, I find,” Haducek said.
Barton said: “You give him a squirt, he looks left, doesn’t see you, and that gives you time to give him another squirt. Nice. I like it.”
“There’s something else,” CH3 said, and paused.
They all looked at the blow-up on the wall.
“Suppose it’s the other way around,” CH3 said. “Now all of a sudden he’s on your tail.”
“Ah, yes!” Zabarnowski said. “Break right. Am I correct?”
“It’s up to you, but it’s certainly worth thinking about. Most people, when they’re jumped, break left, for the same reason most people look left, I suppose. So Jerry instinctively expects you to break left too. If you break right, you may just shake him off, or at least it might give you an extra half-second.”
“Very interesting,” Barton said. “Well worth remembering.”
“I happen to know for a fact,” Flash Gordon said, “that all German pilots are left-handed.”
“Bring on the grub,” Barton told a cook.
“The Luftwaffe deliberately chose left-handed pilots in order to baffle us,” Gordon explained. “Cunning buggers … Ah! Fish and chips. Wizard prang.” He smiled genially. “Whatever that means.”
During lunch a signal arrived, releasing “B” flight immediately. They were to return to Brambledown to attend Flip Moran’s funeral. Fanny made Fitz temporary flight commander and they took off as soon as they had shoveled down their fish and chips.
Fitz worried all the way. He had never been in charge of a funeral. Those he had attended had all produced cock-ups of one sort or another. Above all he was nervous of that ceremonial sword-drill. So he was delighted to find Cox standing talking to the adjutant when he taxied to dispersal. “Hello, Mother!” he shouted. “You okay? You can have your flight back now. What happened?” He climbed down.
“This is a most extraordinary war, Fitz,” Cox said. He was in full flying kit and carrying his parachute. “I managed to glide back and I put her down on a cricket pitch near Eastbourne. Big expensive boys’ school, lovely bit of grass, perfect three-pointer, not a scratch. Got out, nobody there. Place was deserted. Not a soul. School holidays, see. So I sniffed around, found a bike, kind of thing the butcher’s boy rides, stuffed the parachute in the basket, stooged off. Rode down the hill, guess what: lovely big railway station. Only trouble is, the stupid bloody ticket inspector won’t let me on the platform. No ticket, see. No money, of course, so nothing doing. Utter deadlock.”
“You should’ve clocked him one,” Fitz said.
“Six foot four, chum. Anyway, I explained everything to him but I don’t think he believed it. Thought it was a practical joke. Took a very dim view of me, actually.”
“Bloody fool.”
“Yes, that’s what I told him, but he still didn’t agree, so I toddled off and found a pawn shop.”
“Hey, that’s clever.”
“Thanks. Well, they weren’t too keen, they didn’t want my watch, it’s got ‘RAF property’ engraved on the back, so I offered them the parachute but they turned up their noses at that too, and in the end I popped the bicycle.”
“Good show. What did you get for it?”
“A quid.”
“That’s not much.”
“Well, it wasn’t my bike, was it?”
“Look here, you two,” Kellaway said. “You’d better get cracking.”
“You know, they ought to give us travel vouchers,” Fitz said. “In case we get forced down.”
“They ought to give us lots of things,” Cox said. “Starting with back-pay.”
“I’m doing my best,” Kellaway told him. “You’ll get it eventually.”
Cox grunted. “Flip didn’t,” he said. Kellaway wisely let that pass.
They went off, got changed into their best blue, and reported to the station chapel. All the stained-glass windows had been blown in by the bombing, and bright sunlight lit up the flag that covered the coffin. A young airman was playing Bach on the organ.
“All right, this is the form,” Cox told his flight softly. “We carry the doings out. Three a side. Me, Zab and Pip on the left, the others on the right. Drive to the cemetery, it’s just around the corner, take the doings to the hole, the adj knows where, we follow him. Short service, back here. Okay? Oh … One little thing. There wasn’t very much left, so they’ve put a few sandbags in the box to help sort of pack it out. If you hear things sliding about when we pick it up, don’t worry.”
“So we’re doing all this just to bury a bit of Southend Sands,” Patterson said wearily. “What a pathetic joke.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Gordon observed.
“Well, I think it stinks.”
Gordon sniffed like a rabbit. “No, you’re wrong there,” he said. “That’s Quirk’s Brylcreem. Totally different pong.”
“Hello hello,” Zabarnowski said. “There are guests. Relatives, maybe?”
The adjutant had arrived with a middleaged civilian couple, evidently man and wife. Cox went over. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Burnett,” Kellaway said. “Next-of-kin. Flight Lieutenant Cox.” They shook hands. The man was wearing a blue suit and carrying a bowler hat; his wife’s face was almost invisible behind a gray veil. “Very kind of you to come all this way,” Cox said.
“Only London,” Burnett said. “No distance, really, on the train.” His face was tanned as far as the line of his hat and baby-white above. His grip was hard. There was still plenty of Ulster in his voice.
“Our last chance to pay our respects,” Mrs. Burnett said. Her accent churned the syllables like butter. “Poor dear Maurice,” she said. “A lovely boy.”
Cox was startled. Maurice? It seemed an unsuitable name. Maurice. Good God. Fancy old Flip …
Burnett was speaking. “I hope we got here in time,” he was saying. “So we can have one last glimpse of the dear man before … you know …”
“Ah … well …” Cox glanced sharply at the adjutant.
“It would give Maurice’s poor mother such tremendous comfort, I know it would,” Mrs. Burnett said, “if we could tell her we were the last to set eyes on her Maurice, us being his own flesh and blood too, d’ye see.”
“Oh dear,” Kellaway said. “What a shame. What a very great pity. I’m afraid it’s too late for that now. I am sorry.”
“’twould only take a couple of minutes,” she said. “His poor dear mother in Ballymena …”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Cox said, “but you see the coffin has been … um … sealed.”
“Scaled, is it?” Burnett said. “Would that mean they’ve screwed the lid
on?”
“It would. I mean, yes, they have.”
“Ah, well, that’s no great problem, is it?” He took a short screwdriver from his pocket. “There would be no disrespect, would there? Half a tick, that’s all it would take.”
“Look: I’m afraid a screwdriver won’t do,” Cox said. “It’s just not on, I’m afraid.”
Burnett looked at him, not understanding.
“Take care of this lady for a moment,” the adjutant told Cox. He took Burnett outside. “If you insist,” he said, “I’ll have the coffin opened, but believe me you won’t recognize anything you see and your wife will be very upset.”
It took a moment for Burnett to realize what this meant. “Maurice wasn’t just … you know … killed, then?” He didn’t want to look at Kellaway. He brushed dust from his bowler hat with his thick, strong fingers. He was accustomed to death and corpses, funerals and wakes; they were an important part of family life, a necessary and satisfying ritual. But this was different, horribly different. This was more than death. This was something so ugly and agonizing that it had to be shut away. This was pain and suffering so severe that it could hurt others, even after the body had died. This had the makings of a nightmare. “We thought … I suppose we thought … maybe a bullet or something …”
“Flight Lieutenant Moran was shot down in flames,” Kellaway said. “He was burned to death.” There, you stupid civilian, he thought, you asked for it, now you’ve got it, so can we please get on with the job? Thank you.
Burnett had to take a digestive tablet before he could go inside. He said nothing to his wife; simply shook his head. The funeral went off all right. Cox noticed that the chaplain said Moran instead of Moran. It made Flip sound like an idiot.
They changed from best blue back to flying kit and landed at Bodkin Hazel at four o’clock, just in time for tea, except that Jerry didn’t believe in tea. The first cups were being filled when the squadron got scrambled.
Sometimes the Luftwaffe made cock-ups too.
Thirty Heinkel 111’s were three miles ahead, circling the Isle of Sheppey at fourteen thousand. Barton leveled out at sixteen thousand—fourteen for the controller and two for luck—and called the tally-ho. With the sun on his left and the sky bright and empty, he had a huge view; and what he could see, in addition to the Essex flatlands and all the Thames estuary, and half of Kent, was that Jerry had cocked it up. These slow Heinkels had gone on ahead expecting to rendezvous with their escort, and now they were having to stooge about and wait for the escort to turn up. In fact he could see the escort belting along the north Kent coast: twenty or so Messerschmitt 110’s. No doubt the kraut R/T was crackling with bad temper.
The 110’s started to climb as soon as they saw the Hurricanes, and the Heinkels came out of their orbit and headed west.
“Mango Leader to Blue Leader,” Barton called. “Your flight can handle those fighters. Better go now.”
“Okay, Mango Leader,” CH3 said. With Cox away, he was leading “B” flight. The squadron divided, “B” flight turning toward the escort; but immediately that happened, the Messerschmitts also divided. Half of them made for the Heinkels again.
“In and out fast,” Barton ordered. “Beat ’em up, shake ’em up, then back on top PDQ.”
They dived: three sections in line abreast, each wingman a few lengths behind his leader. When they leveled out, the leaders raced at the flank of the raid, fired, vaulted the outside bombers, climbed steeply away. Half a second later, the wingmen did the same. Bing Macfarlane clearly saw faces at the glossy, porpoise-like nose of one Heinkel, an upflung arm, a gaping mouth; then he boomed over the fuselage, snatching the bomber’s aerial with his tail-wheel. It was enough to make any pilot twitch; Bing himself twitched a little at the cat’s-cradle of tracer all around him; and several Heinkel pilots lost control. One began wallowing violently, like a dinghy in surf. Another wandered suicidally across the formation. A third started drifting back on the next bomber, but there was an excuse for that: his port engine was laying down a broad black carpet of smoke.
Barton checked the scene while his flight regrouped. A mile or two away, “B” flight was roaming around one group of Me-110’s. These had changed formation: now they formed a perfect circle, ten or a dozen planes chasing each other’s tails, endlessly. Extraordinary, Barton thought. Where’s that going to get them? Below him, the rest of the escort had reached the bombers and were zigzagging alongside in an effort to match their trudging speed.
“Same again, ‘A’ flight,” Barton called. “In and out fast. Don’t mix it.”
As the attack went down, two or three of the big Messerschmitts swung away from the raid. Lacking speed, they were more cumbersome than ever. The Hurricanes swept past them, stormed into the Heinkels’ flank, soared away to safety. Craning his neck to look behind, Barton saw heavy flak bursting a few hundred yards ahead of the bombers. As he leveled out, they were rocking and bouncing wildly on the broken, smoky air and not liking it. One plane jettisoned its bombload, then another, then six at once. Suddenly half the raid was turning back. Barton turned his flight loose. “Forget the escort, stay out of trouble,” he ordered. “Hit the stragglers.”
Haducek and Macfarlane formed White Section. They fell away at once. Barton, with Brook as his wingman, circled for a while and then went after the Heinkel with the shot-up engine, now trailing well behind the rest. Cattermole, leading Yellow Section, was in no such hurry. He waited and watched, while the raid straggled southeast over Kent, and Steele-Stebbing guarded his tail. Haducek and Macfarlane were streaking in and out making fools of the escort, closing to point-blank range, scoring hits, dashing off. Eventually, a bomber lurched and stumbled and sheered away, slicing the air like a big fish dodging the rushing current.
“Come on, Iron Filings,” Cattermole said. “Let’s murder that invalid.”
It was not so easy.
The Me-110’s did not interfere: their brief, it seemed, was to stick with the mass of bombers: stragglers were abandoned. This straggler defended himself cleverly and desperately. Hopeless to try to outrun the fighters. Pointless to remain at height and shoot it out with them. So the German pilot used the advantages left to him: size, slowness, skill.
By making a series of diving turns he kept the fighters behind him and he gave his belly and upper gunners repeated chances of a shot. The Heinkel had a vast wing, nearly a thousand square feet, and he made the most of it, side-slipping and skidding almost sideways, dragging his speed so low that the Hurricanes kept having to break away before they overshot. It made the bomber a tantalizingly awkward target. And all the time the crew kept flinging out stuff to lighten the plane: ammo boxes, radio, sheets of armor plating, fire extinguishers, all came whirling past the Hurricanes. Worst of all, oil spattered their windscreens. For the Heinkel had been hit, and badly.
Steele-Stebbing fired off his last rounds as they crossed the coast. The Heinkel was down to a thousand feet but France was clearly visible. Then, as if it had tired of the whole silly business, the Heinkel banked to the right and headed for the Atlantic. Flames made a bright red garland, tipped with yellow, around its starboard engine.
The two Hurricanes flew alongside and watched. The bomber remained horizontal but it was sinking steadily. Nobody had baled out. Perhaps they were dead, or perhaps they had dumped their parachutes to save weight. Five hundred feet. The sea shone like tarmac after rain. Cattermole saw movement under the fuselage, as if someone were waving. He edged closer and lower. It was a man’s legs, sticking out of the belly-hatch. They flexed and worked, running on air. The man was stuck in the hatch.
Four hundred feet. Speed, say, a hundred and fifty knots. When the Heinkel hit the sea, the impact would rip his legs off.
Cattermole turned, lined up the bomber in his sights, closed to a hundred yards, judged the deflection to a nicety, and poured eight streams of bullets into the dangling man. His legs kicked once and then trailed in the slipstream. A minute later the plane buried its
elf in a mound of foam, and when the foam subsided there was nothing left but the scarred sea.
“Home for tea, Yellow Two,” Cattermole said; but the patrol was not over yet. They were crossing the South Downs at two thousand feet, only a few minutes from Bodkin Hazel, when Cattermole’s engine died.
“Feeling tired?” Steele-Stebbing asked. Already the Hurricane was sliding downhill, and the angle steepened as its airspeed fell away.
“It’s this cheap knicker-elastic,” Cattermole said. He was checking his fuel, switching tanks. No joy.
“My word, it looks awfully bumpy down there.” It did: hills, woods, valleys. Even a quarry.
“Save me some tea.” Cattermole searched ahead but he couldn’t see anything flat and open. The late-afternoon sun flickered on lots of glass and made him squint. “And send a car to pick me up.”
“I will if you ask me nicely.”
“Get fucked.”
“In that case you can walk home. And no tea, either.”
At twelve hundred feet the bumps looked even bumpier. Cattermole uncoupled everything and baled out. Steele-Stebbing circled and saw him land, and flew on home. “He’s not far from Ashford,” he told Barton. “By the way, how did we get on?”
“Your Heinkel makes four, plus a couple of 110’s.”
“I say! Not a bad show.”
“That was before Skull got to work. Now it’s only two Heinkels and half a 110.” Barton shrugged. “Who cares, anyway?”
Air Commodore Bletchley’s car was waiting when they landed at Brambledown. Barton got driven straight to the station commander’s office. Group Captain Dalgleish was there with Bletchley and a wing commander without wings whom Barton did not know. They all had expressions of deep concern. “You lost a kite this afternoon,” Bletchley said. “About half-past four. It crashed. Have you heard from the pilot?”
“Not directly, sir. The police phoned to say he’d baled out and landed on somebody’s farm.”
“So he’s alive?”
“Presumably.”
The answer did not seem to please them. “Had he been in action?” Dalgleish asked. “I mean, actually involved in combat?”
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