Armstrong and Baird stared at him. Armstrong felt his hackles beginning to rise. He set his glass down on the bar. “Unnecessary?”
“Of course. All Herr Hitler has attempted to do is restore his country to a leading position in Europe, to break free of the shackles imposed upon it by the shameful Treaty of Versailles. Look at his achievements in just a few short years — the industry he has created, the discipline, the pride. He has made Germany a bulwark against communism. That bulwark could be even stronger, if only our politicians had the sense to throw in their lot with him. That’s what Sir Oswald Mosely wanted, but his aspirations were thwarted by a conspiracy between the communists and Jews.”
Armstrong recalled the pitched street battles fought in the 1930s between the black-shirted members of Mosely’s British Union of Fascists and their opponents — not all of whom, he knew, were communists.
“Haven’t they just locked him up?” he queried mildly.
“A tragedy!” Wilmslow huffed. “A terrible tragedy for this country! Such a great leader. Such wasted talent.”
Armstrong was suddenly conscious of another presence. He half-turned to face another man, one of the domino players, who had quietly approached the bar. He was a big fellow, a good six feet four inches tall, deeply tanned by years of exposure to the elements. He wore corduroy trousers and what appeared to be a moleskin waistcoat over a rough, striped shirt. He had hands like shovels. He grinned amiably at Baird and Armstrong.
“Just mind your backs a minute, lads, if you don’t mind.”
The two officers stepped aside hurriedly, eyeing the massive hands. The farmer — for such he was — reached down, seized the commercial traveller under the armpits and, with no apparent effort, lifted him off the floor like a sack of potatoes. Slowly, he raised him until Wilmslow’s eyes were on a level with his own. The farmer gave a grin that would have done justice to a timber wolf.
“I think,” he said in a low rumble, “that you had better bugger off.” Wilmslow made a strangled bleating noise and turned scarlet. He began to slobber at the mouth.
“Come on now, Jed Cartwright,” Phyllis said sharply, “he’ll be having a fit if you’re not careful. If you must do him in, take him outside first.”
“Aye, all right, Phyllis. Open the door, Barney, will you?”
A little man with a wizened face and a battered trilby hat perched on the back of his head got up and did as he was asked, grinning broadly. He gave a mocking bow as Jed crossed the room, still carrying the squirming Wilmslow, who was now twittering about having the law on all and sundry. Jed whispered something in his ear, and the twittering ceased. The two disappeared outside. An expectant hush fell over the bar. From outside there came a distinct thud, closely followed by a squeal, as Jed’s boot came into violent contact with Wilmslow’s backside. The farmer came back indoors and sat down at his table.
“Not standin’ for that sort of talk,” he said. “Bloody Germans.” He picked up his hand of dominoes and glared at his fellow players. “I hope nobody’s been havin’ a peek at these while I was busy,” he said menacingly.
Baird looked at his companion and raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s removed a rather nasty smell,” he said. He looked at the drinks Wilmslow had forced on them and pushed them across the bar. “I think those would choke us now, Phyllis. Two more, please.”
“On the house, Sir,” the barmaid said, fluttering her eyelashes at him. Armstrong chuckled. “Looks as though you’ve clicked. I knew I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell the moment the fleet moved in.”
Baird’s face was serious. “I hope to God there aren’t many like him,” he said, referring to the humiliated Wilmslow.
“I’m afraid there probably are,” Armstrong told him. He grinned and glanced at Jed, engrossed in his dominoes. “I reckon they’re outnumbered, though,” he added.
The pilot’s gaze travelled around the room, taking in the little knots of men as they relaxed after their day’s toil. The harvest was in, and they were contented. He suddenly realized that he was witnessing a tableau that typified the British way of life as it had been for centuries, a comfortable, orderly pattern that was now in dire peril of being destroyed forever. This will not be over by Christmas, he thought. It will be a long, hard and bloody battle, and God only knew what the world would be like when it was over.
*
INTERLUDE: POLAND
A thousand miles from where Armstrong and Baird were drinking their beer, Stanislaw Kalinski and his fellow pilots — pitifully few of them were left now — had already had a bitter vision of that future world. They had seen it in the blazing ruins of Poland’s ancient and beautiful cities, in the corpses strewn by the roadsides, in the smoking wreckage of aircraft plunging to earth.
Kalinski knew that there was no shame, for he and his peers had battled on valiantly to the bitter end, holding on while they awaited reinforcements in the shape of Hawker Hurricane fighters from England — reinforcements that never came.
In the first week of September, the Polish Pursuit Brigade, fighting in the skies over Warsaw, destroyed 42 enemy aircraft for the loss of 37 of its own. The cost was fairly equal in numerical terms, but the difference was this: whereas the Germans could replace their combat aircraft, the Poles could not. On 7 September, the remains of the Brigade were withdrawn from the Warsaw area to be reorganized. They never returned to the defence of the capital. Crippled by the lack of essential supplies and spares, the Brigade ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.
The turning point of the Polish campaign came on 8 September. On that day, several Polish divisions were surrounded near Radom and shattered by concentrated Stuka attacks, and the 4th Panzer Division reached the defensive perimeter around Warsaw. In the air the Polish position was desperate, with more and more aircraft being put out of action by the lack of spare parts and shortage of fuel. Only the Bomber Brigade was still able to operate in any strength, because its main supply base at Deblin was still functioning, but even so the bombers had suffered crippling losses, and their last major mission against enemy armour and supply columns was flown on 12 September. Scattered attacks were made after that date by aircraft operating in twos and threes, but they were of little significance.
Then, on 17 September, there came a new development: nine Soviet fighter-bombers swept down on a Polish airfield at Buczacz, strafing installations and the handful of aircraft that were left. In accordance with a secret agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union — an agreement that involved the partition of Poland between the two powers — Russian troops and armour came flooding into the country from the east.
For the Poles, it was the final, bitter stab in the back, but there was one last act still to be played in the Polish tragedy. On four occasions, between 18 and 24 September, Luftwaffe aircraft dropped leaflets over Warsaw, calling on the strongly-fortified Polish garrison to surrender. The Poles did not reply; instead, the 100,000 troops in the besieged city dug themselves in even deeper and grimly awaited the onslaught.
It was not long in coming. At eight o’clock in the morning of 25 September, wave after wave of bombers and dive-bombers droned over the city, systematically bombing it from end to end. By noon an immense pall of smoke hung over the Polish capital, rising to a height of 10,000 feet and spreading out in a great banner across the countryside. And the assault continued; for hour after hour, 400 bombers of Luftflotten 1 and 2 dropped 500 tons of high explosive on the city, pounding street after street into smoking rubble.
Early the following morning, stunned by the ferocity of the attacks, the garrison and what remained of the civilian population crawled out of their shelters and stared uncomprehendingly at the devastation around them. They knew that it was futile to resist any longer. That same day, the garrison offered to surrender, and the capitulation was signed on the 27.
It was hopeless to fight on. And yet … two hours before the victorious German troops marched into Warsaw, a trio of ancient R.31 army co-opera
tion biplanes took off from Mokotow airfield, virtually under the noses of the advancing enemy, and machine-gunned a German convoy that was approaching the city. There was only time left for one pass before the Messerschmitts pounced. Seconds later, three funeral pyres blazed by the roadside.
Just before the end, what was left of the Polish Air Force — 54 bombers and 38 fighters, many of them damaged and barely airworthy — flew to neighbouring Romania. With them went Stanislaw Kalinski and the two surviving pilots of his squadron. They had no idea, as yet, what their ultimate destination might be; it didn’t matter, as long as they could continue the fight.
They had lost a battle, and the experiences of the last few weeks had turned them into hardened, bitter men whose hearts were filled with an implacable hatred. But Poland’s destiny, they told themselves, could wait. There was still a war to be fought.
Chapter Seven
Monday, 16 October 1939: 12.15 hours
The nine Junkers Ju 88 dive-bombers flew in two loose arrowhead formations, scudding between banks of cloud. An hour and a quarter earlier they had taken off from their base at Westerland, on the Friesian island of Sylt; below them now was the Firth of Forth. In the leading aircraft, the raid commander, Hauptmann Helmuth Pohle, could almost taste the rising tension as their objective crept nearer. Pohle’s orders were to attack any warships sighted at the British naval base of Rosyth; at last, six weeks after the outbreak of war, German bombers were to venture into British airspace for the first time.
Pohle was conscious that the German Navy had beaten the Luftwaffe to first place in striking a telling blow; two days earlier, a U-boat commander called Gunther Prien had crept daringly into Scapa Flow in the Orkneys in the U-47 and sunk the battleship Royal Oak with heavy loss of life. A few hours later, reconnaissance aircraft, keeping a close watch on the east coast of Scotland, reported that the battle-cruiser HMS Hood had entered the Firth of Forth and appeared to be making for the anchorage at Rosyth. She was Pohle’s principal target.
Pohle was content to fly in loose battle formation, for German Intelligence had indicated that the RAF had only a handful of obsolescent Gloster Gladiator fighters in Scotland. In fact, Intelligence was wrong. Fighter Command had two squadrons of Spitfires based near Edinburgh, and that very morning a squadron of Hurricanes had flown in to the airfield of Drem on the southern bank of the Firth.
Pohle’s formation droned on. From 13,000 feet, the crews could see the sprawling, smoke-shrouded complex of Edinburgh, then the spidery structure of the Forth Bridge, beneath their wings. And there, dead ahead on the north bank, was Rosyth.
The first ship that Pohle saw in the harbour was the Hood, dwarfing the lesser warships that clustered around her. She presented a beautiful target. Pohle ground his teeth in frustration; on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler, the Ju 88 crews were not to attack the battle-cruiser if she had already entered harbour. At this stage of the war, both the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force had an unspoken, unwritten agreement that bombs were not to be dropped if there was danger of causing civilian casualties.
But there were several other cruisers and some destroyers anchored in the Firth and Pohle selected one of the former as his target, pushing the Junkers into a dive. Anti-aircraft fire was coming up in streams, exploding with a horrible gritty crunch, rocking the aircraft with near misses. Pohle fought to hold the Junkers steady as it screamed downhill in a 70-degree dive.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang and a gale of icy air roared into the cockpit. Pohle glanced up: the transparent escape hatch in the cockpit roof had gone. Desperately, he forced his attention back to the target, which now filled his sights. A second later, his bombs fell away and he was rocketing skywards again, crushed down into his seat by the g-force. One of the bombs exploded in the water; the other hit the cruiser HMS Southampton starboard amidships, smashed through three decks, emerged from the side of the hull and reduced the Admiral’s barge, lying alongside, to matchwood. It failed to explode.
“Achtung! Enemy fighters astern, closing!” The rear gunner’s voice was high-pitched with fear as he crouched behind his gun, watching the fighters as they bored in, steeling himself to hold his fire until they were within range.
They were the Spitfires of No 603 Squadron. Smoky lines of tracer from the Junkers’ rear gun position flickered past the leading fighter’s wings. The pilot braced himself and jabbed his thumb down on the firing button, seeing the strikes of his bullets dancing and sparkling on the Ju 88’s dark green camouflage. There was a flicker of fire from one engine and the Junkers started to go down, two more Spitfires attacking it in turn.
Pohle’s cockpit was a shambles. Engineer and rear gunner were both dead, and the navigator was lying on the cockpit floor in a pool of blood, retching and choking, a bullet through one of his lungs. Pohle spotted a trawler and turned towards it, using all his strength to keep the crippled aircraft flying on one engine. Then the Junkers ploughed into the sea with a jarring crash and he lost consciousness. A few minutes later the trawler crew fished him out of the sinking aircraft. He woke up five days later in Port Edwards hospital, with the sickening knowledge that his war was over.
*
It was a damp, depressing day, with a light drizzle sweeping in from the North Sea. The dampness glistened on the wings of the Vickers Wellington bombers, standing like forlorn cattle in their dispersals around Newton Heath airfield.
An armed sentry stood outside the main door of the Operations Block. The man, in dripping gas cape and steel helmet, brought his rifle to the slope and slapped its butt in salute as an officer approached. Armstrong returned the salute, showed the sentry his pass and went inside, shaking drops from his raincoat as he went. The depressing day matched his mood, for he was still leading the life of an itinerant, moving from bomber base to bomber base to carry out liaison duties. There was still no sign of the promised PR Spitfires, and such photographic reconnaissance as there was remained in the hands of the luckless Blenheims, which were still suffering appalling losses.
Back at Fordingham in September, Armstrong and Baird had decided that they would do their best to team up as they travelled around the bomber bases of East Anglia, and had put in the appropriate request to their respective authorities. There had been no objection; it seemed that nobody gave two hoots what they did. So here they were at Newton Heath, just up the road from Newmarket. The aerodrome was home to a single squadron of 12 Wellingtons, part of Bomber Command’s No 3 Group, and in contrast to Fordingham, Armstrong and Baird had found the crews friendly and, for the most part, eager to assimilate the information the two officers were there to impart.
The bomber crews were itching to attack something, but the shipping searches they had been carrying out since the war started had proved fruitless. Armstrong had flown on a couple of them, and had seen nothing but grey seas and a few fishing boats. So far, the Wellingtons had suffered no losses due to enemy action — unlike the Handley Page Hampdens of No 5 Group. At the end of September, a formation of five aircraft had encountered enemy fighters off Heligoland and the whole lot had been shot down, information that had been gleefully passed on by a German radio broadcaster.
The telephone call that had summoned Armstrong to the Operations Block had come from the Senior Intelligence Officer, and Armstrong made straight for his office. He knocked, opened the door without waiting, and went inside. To his surprise, the Station Commander was present, seated at the SIO’s desk; so was the Wing Commander (Flying), Dickie Baird and the SIO himself. Armstrong came to attention and saluted the Station Commander, Group Captain Harrington. As he did so, he glanced at Baird out of the corner of his eye; his friend did not appear to be over-happy.
“Sit down, Armstrong,” Harrington said, waving a hand towards a vacant chair. The Group Captain was a small man with greying hair and a chestful of medal ribbons; he had flown Sopwith Camels in the last war. Armstrong removed his cap and did as he was told, looking at the Station Commander expectantly.
“I’ll come straight to the point,” Harrington said. “You know that the Huns attacked Rosyth yesterday?”
Armstrong nodded. “Yes, Sir. I’ve seen the preliminary report. I understand they didn’t do much damage, and that we got a couple.”
“That’s right. Well, apparently some politicians are making a lot of noise about the raid, and there’s considerable pressure on the War Cabinet to take some sort of retaliatory action. The upshot is that the Chief of the Air Staff wants Bomber Command to carry out an attack on Wilhelmshaven. Not the town itself, of course, but on enemy shipping in the vicinity. Apparently the Huns used only a single squadron for the Rosyth raid, so we’ve been told to do something similar. When I say ‘we’ I mean the Wellington squadron here. Our name came out of the hat.”
Harrington paused and cleared his throat. “The thing is,” he continued, “I’d like you and Lieutenant Baird to go along as observers. Baird tells me that he’s made an extensive study of Wilhelmshaven’s layout, and you have actually been there, so you’ll know what to look for. Any questions so far?”
Armstrong looked dubious. “I’m afraid I’ve very little night flying experience, Sir. I don’t mind going, but I doubt that I shall be able to contribute anything useful in the way of observation.”
Harrington shifted in his seat and picked up a pencil from the desk top, toying with it.
“Ah, well, you see, that’s the other thing. Night flying doesn’t come into it. We’ve been ordered to make a daylight attack, for fear of damaging civilian property.”
Armstrong shot bolt upright in his seat, aghast. “But that’s bloody well ridiculous!” he burst out. “I’m sorry, Sir, but Wilhelmshaven’s a hornets’ nest. I was almost clobbered there myself, and not one of the recce Blenheims sent out there has come back. Without fighter escort — and we’ve nothing capable of getting there and back — a daylight attack would be suicide.”
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