A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  “Have you consulted him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Excuse me.”

  When von Mansdorf came back, he said, “I’ve had a talk with Captain di Marco and he says it can’t be done.”

  Schramm was bewildered. “Just like that?” he said.

  “It’s three times as far as the longest unbroken journey the SAS patrols make. Below Kufra the going is bad, very bad. To carry enough fuel and water you would need a huge column of vehicles. The operation would be highly visible. The Takoradi Trail runs through Chad, which is French. The French would be hostile.”

  Colonel von Mansdorf walked with Schramm to his car. “Be kind to yourself,” he advised. “Don’t try to see General Schaefer again. You’ll find yourself on the Russian Front, honestly you will.”

  Schramm drove back to Barce. There was a message on his desk. It said that a signal had been received from a stay-behind agent the Italians had left at Kufra. Captain Lampard’s patrol had come and gone.

  * * *

  When the patrol stopped for a midday meal, Lampard opened his sealed orders. He read them twice and called for the other officers: Dunn, Gibbon and Sandiman. “Primary target is Beda Fomm,” he told them.

  Gibbon had his maps ready. “Ninety-odd kilometers south of Benghazi, just east of the coast road.”

  “Beda Fomm is a big airfield,” Lampard said. “Very juicy.”

  “German or Italian?” Dunn asked.

  “German. Two squadrons of 109s, so I’m told. Don’t tell the men anything. I’ll brief them later. And certainly don’t tell our distinguished passengers.”

  Lester and Malplacket were relatively content. They had escaped from Kufra; unknown adventures lay over the horizon; and in the meanwhile everything was holiday. All their decisions were made for them. Food was rich and plentiful. Travel was not too uncomfortable, and when it stopped there were amusing soldiers to talk to.

  By the end of the first day the patrol had maneuvered its way across the narrow neck of the Calanscio Sand Sea. It would have made more progress if one truck had not lost its steering. There was tinned steak and fresh eggs from Kufra for supper, with fried potatoes and tinned carrots, followed by tinned pineapple. The sunset was as spectacular as ever. Lester lay in his blankets and watched the staggering display put on by the stars until he felt giddy. He closed his eyes and began writing in his head. Deep in the merciless Sahara we advanced stealthily . . . Soon he fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Is it a good idea? I don’t know whether it’s a good idea, Paul. Did you talk it over with di Marco? After von Whats-hisname?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s brilliant, isn’t it? You nominate di Marco to lead your astonishing expedition, but you don’t discuss it with him.”

  “It’s pointless now. He killed it.”

  Hoffmann grunted, and the top of his cigar glowed in the night. “Sounds like it was dead to start with.” They were strolling around the airfield. Strictly speaking he was breaking his own blackout regulations, but in his opinion any British bomber pilot who could see a cigar two miles below him deserved a direct hit.

  “Schaefer’s got no imagination,” Schramm said. “He can’t see the possibilities. Takoradi is the Achilles’ heel of the Desert Air Force.”

  “Two thousand kilometers away.”

  “Ever heard of fuel dumps?”

  “Over some of the worst terrain in Africa. Keep your voice down.”

  They were a couple of hundred yards from a row of 109s. The night was so black that the fighters were lost in its darkness, but Hoffmann knew where he was. He and Schramm stepped slowly and cautiously. Their approach seemed to take an age. Toward the end, Schramm felt ill with the tension of expectation. The sentries were armed. At any instant the night might be ripped apart. So might he. Ripped and smashed. He remembered what the bodies of the deserters had looked like.

  Hoffmann tripped the alarm first: he felt a tiny pressure on his leg and immediately called out: “Don’t shoot! Station commander.”

  Three spotlights dazzled them. Nobody spoke. The spotlights went out. Schramm relaxed his fists.

  As they walked back to their quarters, he said, “I don’t know why I suggested doing that. Ludicrously dangerous.”

  “See what happens when you fall in love? All of a sudden you want to live forever. Fatal, old chap, fatal.”

  Schramm didn’t want to think about love, or women, or anything that suggested Italian lady doctors, life, death, or waltzes on the accordion. “What went wrong at Benina?” he asked.

  “Oh, sheer bad luck. Endless trouble with the radar. All night long it kept producing phantom aircraft until finally everyone just ignored it. So inevitably five genuine plots appeared, dive-bombed the field and departed. We lost five or six machines on the ground, plus ten dead and twenty wounded. Flak got one of theirs.”

  “Yes? What type?”

  “Nobody knows. The pilot’s thirty feet underground, splashed all over his engine. Flak gunners reckon they were P-40s. Tomahawks or Kittyhawks.”

  “That’s not possible. They haven’t got the range.”

  “Tell Benina. They’ll be very relieved.”

  * * *

  LG 250 was even more austere than LG 181. A few tents; a couple of packing-cases where spares and tools were kept; a canvas cover under which people ate; and a latrine screen: that was it, all bleached white by the sun and scoured by the endless wind, and lost in a rippling infinity of sand. The adjutant came out from behind the latrine screen, late in the morning, and squinted into the glare. Tents floated like fishing boats on lakes of trembling heat. An airplane distorted and shrank until it seemed that nothing connected the tail unit to the fuselage. A man walked, but his limbs were blobs. Kellaway found the whole scene thoroughly unsatisfactory.

  He set off for the orderly room and could not find it. It seemed to have been removed. This was getting worse and worse.

  A corporal-armorer walked by, dressed in boots and shorts and with belted ammunition draped around his neck. “Not Wednesday, is it?” Kellaway asked.

  “Beats me, sir. Dunno the month, let alone the day.”

  “In this squadron, sports afternoon is Wednesday, corporal. If this isn’t Wednesday then you’re improperly dressed.”

  “Sir.” The corporal looked around for help.

  “If I had my way, you’d be on a 252 and inside the guardroom in double-quick time,” Kellaway said. “Trouble is, all the 252s are kept in the orderly room and somebody’s moved it.” He looked everywhere. “Don’t tell me they’ve taken the guardroom too!” he exclaimed.

  “Sir, I think the doctor wants you.”

  “Where?” The doctor was not in sight. “By God, have they taken the bloody doctor?” Kellaway was indignant. He stamped up and down, shaking his head. “Turn your back for five minutes,” he muttered, “this is what happens.”

  The corporal saw Skull, and waved. “I expect Mr. Skelton knows all about it, sir,” he said.

  “He’d better. Don’t see how we can carry on like this.”

  Skull opened his golf umbrella and came over. “Something troubling you, Uncle?”

  “No, no. Nothing of any consequence,” the adjutant said with heavy sarcasm. “It’s just that I don’t see how we can possibly have a CO’s parade without a flagpole, do you?” He folded his arms and tightened his jaw: the very picture of a hardworking staff officer who has done his utmost and got absolutely no cooperation from anyone.

  “A flagpole,” Skull said. “Where did you see it last, Uncle?” He nodded to the corporal, who marched off, ammo belts swinging.

  “Where it always was: right there, in front of the admin block. Where I had my orderly room. Don’t suppose I shall see that again. Guardroom’s gone, too. And the camp cinema. Airmen’s ablutions. Sickbay. Cookhouse. All gone.”

  “Not the cookhouse, Uncle,” Skull said. “We still have a sort of a cookhouse.” He pointed.

  “Nonsense. Cook
house should be over there, next to the airmen’s mess. Then the NAAFI, stores, transport section, squash court, officers’ mess. Now we haven’t even got a flagpole. The whole squadron’s gone to pot.”

  The doctor came hurrying across the sand. “Didn’t I tell him to stay out of the sun?” he complained.

  “He thinks he’s back at Kingsmere,” Skull told him. “That’s where the squadron was based before the war. It’s in Essex.”

  “Are you going on leave?” Kellaway demanded.

  “No, Uncle,” Skull said sadly. “I’m not going on leave.”

  “Then why aren’t you in uniform? Customs of the Service say that an officer wears mufti only when he’s outside the camp. And mufti means a dark suit with a tie. That’s not a dark suit.”

  “No, Uncle. It’s a rowing blazer.”

  “But today isn’t Wednesday.” By now the adjutant was trembling with distress. “In this squadron, sports afternoon is on a Wednesday!”

  “Come with me, Uncle.” The doctor took his arm and led him away. “Customs of the Service,” Kellaway said. “That chap’s wearing suede boots. An officer does not appear in public in suede boots, for God’s sake . . .”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Barton briefed the three pilots. Skull listened. The target was a Luftwaffe landing-ground at the eastern end of the Jebel, called Bir Dagnish. They would make a high approach, taking advantage of the poor visibility at midday, bomb the place and beat it for home. Barton was giving them radio frequencies and compass bearings in case anyone got lost, when the adjutant could be heard, shouting. Then they saw him attacking the doctor with a folding canvas chair. A wild swing made the doctor jump and stumble. A lucky thrust caught him in the stomach and he went down. The adjutant trod on him firmly, folded up the canvas chair, went back and trod on him again, and finally set off for Barton and the pilots.

  “He’s got to go,” Barton said.

  “No, no. He’s only winded,” Skull said. “He’ll recover.” Kellaway marched over to them.

  “Jolly good,” he said. “Just wanted half a minute with the chaps before you all toddled off, if I may, sir.” Barton nodded.

  They all watched carefully. Uncle, in this state, was like an elderly dog that could wag its tail and bite simultaneously.

  “That fool of a doctor wanted me to drink his rum,” he said. “I told him, an officer does not ‘stand drinks’ to a brother officer in the mess. Just not done. Customs of the Service. He wouldn’t listen. Kept insisting. Not the sort of thing a chap can take sitting down.” He opened the canvas chair, shook it, closed it, and looked at Skull. “What?” he said.

  “Of course you know he’s Irish,” Skull said.

  “Yes? Drink a lot of rum in Ireland, do they? Anyway . . . That’s not the point. The point is Takoradi. Now I know you chaps think you’re here to hammer the Hun and thus avoid getting sent to Takoradi, wherever that is. But such is not the case. You can forget Takoradi.”

  “Yeah? Who says?” Barton asked.

  “Baggy Bletchley. He told me they don’t need ferry pilots for Takoradi any more. Someone found a bunch of ferry pilots. They fell down the back of a filing cabinet. Typical HQ cock-up. Anyway, that’s not the point.” He did his trick with the folding chair again.

  “I don’t want to hurry you, Uncle,” Pip Patterson said, “but we’ve got an airfield to blow up.”

  “Exactly,” Uncle said. “That’s the thing. That’s what all this strafing and bombing’s been about. Fanny was going to get the chop.”

  “Oh, shit,” Barton said wearily.

  “You mean sacked?” Skull said. “Fired? Posted?”

  “Another cock-up, obviously,” Uncle said. “But Fanny foxed ’em, didn’t you, Fanny?” Loyalty and friendship shone in his eyes. “We all knew the squadron would die without Fanny, so Fanny fixed it with Group that he could stay if we strafed like billy-ho, and . . . and . . .” Uncle looked at the little group. “And here we are.”

  “We few,” Skull said. “We happy few.”

  “Sure, sure,” Kit said. He was bored with all this talk.

  “I had to tell you,” Kellaway said, “because Fanny’s too modest.”

  “For Christ’s sake belt up, Uncle,” Barton said.

  “You foxed ’em,” Kellaway said. “He foxed ’em,” he told the others. He saw the doc approach, holding his stomach and wheezing. “You’re not fit,” he told him accusingly. “It’s not Wednesday. How dare you wear suede boots in the face of the enemy?” He suddenly swung the folding chair at the doc’s feet and whacked an ankle. The doc cried in pain and punched the adjutant in the mouth. Kellaway ended up on his hands and knees, dribbling blood. “Take yourself off to your tent, you loony!” the doc roared. Kellaway crawled a few yards, then got up and walked.

  “Was that strictly necessary?” Skull asked. “The poor chap’s doolally.”

  “That’s his bad luck,” the doc growled. “I don’t know how to treat insanity. I probably missed that lecture.” He massaged his ankle. “I expect I was drunk or fornicating or playing rugby. Split lips are different, I went to that lecture, I know all about them. I’ll do a grand job on his face, you watch. By the way, he knocked over our last bottle of rum, the idiot.”

  “Go and sock him one for me,” Barton said. The doc limped away.

  “I have to tell you this,” Skull said. “There are two Luftwaffe fields within five minutes’ flying time of Bir Dagnish. Abiar bu Seeia is west of it and Mechili is south. There must be at least ten more fields within fifty kilometers to the north.”

  “I know. We’ll fox ’em.” Barton signaled to his ground crew: start up.

  The three pilots set off for their aircraft.

  “Look what you’ve done to the squadron,” Skull said. “This isn’t going to win the war.”

  “War? What war?” Barton flung his arms out sideways, palms up, and turned in a full circle. “I don’t see any war. This is just a bloody good scrap. What’s it about? I don’t know! And I don’t care. I’ll fight anyone who fights me.” The Kittyhawk engines were coughing and crackling.

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Skull said.

  “It’s twice as simple as that,” Barton said, “but you wouldn’t understand. Intelligence never understands. Go and cook something, Skull. Make us some nice angel cakes for tea.”

  From fifteen thousand feet the long olive-green hump of the Jebel was soon visible. Hick Hooper gave his neck muscles no rest. He scanned the colossal sky like a young man whose girlfriend is late for a date, never tiring of the search. And in the end, when the hunt paid off, he felt the same lover’s jolt of recognition. A flicker of silver glinted high above. “Hornet leader,” he called. “Bandits five o’clock high.” Barton raised a hand. Hick realized the CO had seen them long ago.

  The Kittyhawks cruised on, in the formation which the RAF had borrowed from the Luftwaffe, the “finger-four,” so-called because the aircraft made the same pattern as the fingertips of an outstretched hand: Hooper, Barton, Patterson, Carson. Hick could not take his eyes off the enemy. The silver glints were falling, taking shape, growing tiny fins. Peculiar things happened to his body: his toes clenched, his hands prickled, the skin from his scalp to his neck crawled. He was frightened. This was the first time an airplane, several airplanes, five or six, had dropped out of the sky intent on killing him. He took his left hand off the throttle and punched himself in the face. Real pain drove out fear.

  Kit Carson was muttering to himself: “Lumberjack, Lumberjack. Razorblade, Razorblade.” They had practiced this maneuver often enough. Me 109s liked to dive, fire, break away, climb. Barton would fly straight and level. When the 109s reached a point four hundred yards behind the formation he would call, “Lumberjack, Lumberjack.” Or “Razorblade, Razorblade.” The first code word meant break hard left, the second meant break hard right. L for left, R for right. Get it wrong and you’d fly smack into another Kitty.

  Barton looked up and back and watched the 1
09s falling like swimmers in an endless swallow-dive. He could make out their camouflage: a spatter of colors called sand and spaghetti. Now he saw the shimmer of prop-discs. Wait. Dirty great cannons in the middle of those discs. One shell could knock a Kitty sideways. Wait, wait, wait. His head was pulled hard around to the right. Wait. His eyeballs were screwed up as far as they’d go. Wait. The trick was to break exactly one second before the enemy fired. Wait. Wait. Now! “Razorblade, Razorblade!” he shouted, and threw the machine into a steep right turn.

  Everyone went with him. Pip had broken hard a thousand times before, but the bombs under the wings made the Kittyhawk fly like a runaway fairground ride, redoubling the centrifugal force until he felt as if something hideously heavy was being rammed down inside him and trying to thrust his guts out at the other end. But his foggy brain ordered his hands and feet to hold the turn as tight as possible. With those bombs under the wings, it was like trying to run while carrying suitcases. When he straightened out, the formation had completed a circle and the 109s had overshot, just as Barton had known they must. They were dots on the horizon, climbing.

  The Kittyhawks pressed on, faster now. The 109s came at them again. Barton left it very late. He saw tracer before he called “Lumberjack, Lumberjack!” Again the 109s overshot, again the Kittyhawks covered more ground before the third attack was made. This time the 109s came down in a long, extended stream, and the last two had time to alter their dive and fire before they hurtled through the circle. It was the briefest of snap shots and they missed.

  “Going down,” Barton said. “Follow me, girls.”

  It was like Benina all over again. First a shallow dive, then a sight of the target, with its crossed runways looking like old sticking-plaster on the wrinkled terrain, then the nose steadily down and the speed steadily up. The Kittyhawk’s controls usually responded to a nudge or a twitch; now they demanded a heavy boot and hard muscle. Gradually the finger-four spread apart. The 109s had vanished. At that speed their controls would have locked solid, as if cast in bronze. Not many 109 pilots had tried to catch a P-40 in a full-blown power-dive, and those who had tried too hard were so many stains on the desert floor.