by Ray Ollis
Joe took Paps around the waist. ‘Clear the decks for a navel battle,’ he joked, and they waltzed away, dancing very close.
Vincent headed for their table, but Hyde and Wendy were there, alone, so he walked over to the bar and watched them.
She was smiling now. Shyly. Smiling at something Hyde had said. ‘Her coyness has a charm all its own’, Vincent thought. With Wendy he would be able to relax.
‘So having asked her to marry him,’ Hyde was saying, ‘Krink is now flabbergasted to find she’s in a position to accept.’
‘But does he want to marry her?’
‘Hell, no!’
‘Then why did he ask her?’
‘Well,’ he said, and he shot a glance at Wendy. He thought, ‘she honestly doesn’t understand.’
‘Well, just to make her feel better about things.’
‘But how could it?’
‘Because she’d think the affaire less casual if she thought he would marry her if he could.’
‘L’affaire de coeur?’ Wendy could not hide her surprise.
‘Of course.’
‘Then he should marry her.’
‘Not if Krink can help it.’ Hyde thought this was getting out of control. But he wanted to gauge Wendy’s feelings. ‘So he’s devised this elaborate scheme. If they should turn up here tonight …’
‘They?’
‘Yes. Blondie’s got a chum. Another night-fighter. They always fly formation.’
‘A night-fighter?’ Wendy’s voice faltered.
‘Yes. If they turn up tonight, Krink’s going to …’
‘A couple of night-fighters,’ Wendy was thinking. So her fears were well-founded. Hyde had not admitted the other was his own mistress, but asked about Krink he had said ‘of course’ as though doubts were foolish. Oh, it was monstrous! To ask her out then tell her this! But, had he asked her out? He had also asked Paps. It was a party. If these horrid night-fighters arrived he would probably ask them to join the party, too.
‘It’s the funniest situation in years,’ Hyde was saying.
But Wendy did not hear. Emotions were thundering against her ears and she was lost to every other sound.
‘But a situation I carefully avoid,’ Hyde continued. ‘I’ve been looking for something more honest and sincere.’
Wendy sat deaf to everything but the fear that she had made a fool of herself. This man had exchanged a few pleasant remarks with her, he had been friendly and amusing, and she imagined he was courting. She had flung herself at him as brazenly as she knew how. And all the time he had been laughing at her and making love to other women.
‘Wendy,’ Hyde said solemnly, and took her hand. ‘Wendy, my dear …’
His action returned Wendy’s mind to the present. This … this monster was caressing her! She jumped to her feet.
‘Excuse me,’ she said coldly, and walked quickly across the room, where she found herself standing next to Vincent. She did her best to smile at him and said, ‘Buy me a drink, please.’ She raised the glass with trembling hand and drank greedily. Then she murmured ‘Excuse me,’ and started to leave.
As she was collecting her cap and great-coat, Vincent appeared. ‘May I see you home, m’am?’ he asked softly. ‘Yes,’ she said. She did not have to try to smile this time. ‘Yes, I would like that. Please do.’
As they walked to the door, two girls came in: two very pretty girls. One was tall and blonde, the other had straight black hair like a ballerina, lash-swept eyes and vivid mouth. They were fresh, sweet-looking girls. Especially the one with dark hair. ‘She won’t be safe in the same room with that monster,’ thought Wendy.
Hyde glanced approvingly at Daisy Mae. A real woman with some understanding of the world, who knew what it was for, and had a sense of humour.
He could relax now. With Wendy he was always acting.
‘It’s unreal,’ said H-H. ‘Having you here, Petal, is utterly unreal. In this vulgar world around the squadron I did not think you could exist.’
‘You exist here. That’s all I need.’
‘But surely you are loftier, Petal. Isn’t this too earthy?’
‘I’m feeling earthy. We’re in love and that happens at all altitudes.’
‘Even in different worlds?’
‘Any world with you is heaven.
Their bright eyes kissed across the table.
There was a crash and a nearby ATS girl leapt to her feet with gin-and-it spilling down her tight khaki skirt.
‘Oh, you clumsy sod, Kiwi,’ she complained to the young airman trying to wipe her dry with a handkerchief. ‘Here, give me that,’ she said, taking it from him. ‘It’s bad enough getting a wet skirt without you pawing at it.’
The rough diversion snapped H-H back to earth. The vulgar dialogue and the smell of gin eclipsed the stars in his eyes. ‘No, Petal,’ he said. ‘This wouldn’t work. We agreed to wait. Let’s stick to that. It isn’t as if we must deny ourselves everything.’
Barbara lowered her eyes and H-H said quickly; ‘Waiting a month, or a year we’ll forget before our honeymoon is …’
He was interrupted by a dark, saturnine young air-gunner.
‘Yes?’ asked H-H, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.
‘I should like to buy you and your lady friend a drink, sir,’ said the youth. ‘If you would permit me I should be honoured.’
‘Really? Oh, that’s jolly decent of you.’ H-H was almost embarrassed. ‘Darling,’ he said to Barbara, ‘may I introduce Sergeant Schydt, one of my Specials.’
‘To your fiance,’ said Schydt to Barbara, when the drinks arrived. ‘A born leader and a brilliant tactician.’
‘To One-o-one Squadron,’ H-H responded, embarrassed. ‘They’re the ones who got the original brain-wave.’
H-H instantly cursed himself for saying the wrong thing; in trying to pass the credit to XYZ itself he implied that credit did exist.
‘It was tactics then, sir?’ asked Schydt. ‘I knew it! You made it seem so casual; almost unintentional. But you knew if we understood the role we were playing we might sound forced and unnatural. Brilliant indeed!’
Again H-H cursed the un-English minds of his Specials; minds that showed too much emotion, too much excitement. They injected drama into every tiny aspect of life. He decided to change the subject. ‘Have another drink,’ he offered. He did not wish to keep this fellow in the party, but another drink was the first other subject he could think of. Schydt had no urge to leave; he accepted readily.
‘Here’s fun,’ H-H said quickly.
There followed a moment’s silence. Evidently it was what Schydt had been waiting for, because he drew his chair nearer and said, seriously: ‘There is a little thing you could tell me, sir; what prospects have we Specials of being commissioned?’
So this little crawler wants promotion! What a slimy, un-British way of going about it! A sip of whisky and a mouthful of flattery.
‘I’d bust him to a corporal if I could,’ thought H-H. He would deal with Sergeant Schydt. But not now and not in front of Barbara. ‘That is your flight commander’s decision,’ said H-H. ‘See him about it.’
‘Squadron Leader Parke, sir? He’s over at the bar. Could we see him now?’
What an insufferable little dandy! A cheap attempt to win favour and now this blitzkrieg to enforce an imagined advantage. ‘This is hardly opportune,’ said H-H coldly. ‘I do not suggest you approach him here.’
‘We don’t have to, sir,’ said Schydt, happily. ‘He is joining us.’
No sooner had Hyde’s group joined the party than Schydt returned to the attack. ‘This is indeed fortunate, sir,’ he said to Hyde. ‘I have been ordered to approach you on the matter of my commission. Flight Lieutenant Holbrook-Hardwicke seems to comply for he has referred me up to you.’
‘Then I would refer you to the time: close on midnight. And the place: a party at Cleethorpes. And the company: mixed and informal. If you consider yourself worthy of commissioning—despit
e this untimely intrusion—apply in writing through the proper channels.’
If Sergeant Schydt was quick to sense and press and advantage he was equally quick to recognize a rebuff. Without a word he clicked his heels, gave a stiff little bow, and left.
It was not long before H-H said that he and Barbara must be going.
‘Where are you staying?’ Daisy Mae asked Barbara politely.
‘The Dolphin.’
‘I thought I might stay in town tonight,’ offered Krink. ‘I asked at the Dolphin but they only had double rooms left.’
Barbara coloured to her eyes but H-H responded quickly: ‘Then Miss Cunard must have booked before you.’
Daisy Mae and Blondie started talking about Barbara the second that she and H-H were out of earshot, and every word was praise. They liked her looks, her clothes, and most of all her charm.
‘Not at all stuck up.’
‘She’s less of a snob than my manageress.’
‘H-H is a lucky boy.’
‘She’s lucky too. He’s cute.’
The foursome was all that remained of the party and, having exhausted the Barbara and H-H topic, they remained silent.
‘Another drink?’ asked Krink.
‘I’ve got some Scotch at home,’ volunteered Blondie.
‘Good!’ said Daisy Mae, and she squeezed Hyde’s hand. ‘Let’s all go to Blondie’s place.’
The Air Vice-Marshal had arrived at briefing and 101 Squadron were suitably impressed. Ludford Magna housed Base HQ as well as Squadron HQ, but AVM’s only attended briefings on very special occasions.3
The AVM confirmed it. ‘Tonight we use new tactics. Your target will be illuminated by specially equipped aircraft called Pathfinders. They will find the target using radar navigation, and mark it three minutes before the first main-force attack with bombs which will burst on the target and continue to burn in several vivid colours. These tactics will necessitate closer bomber concentration. The XYZ function of 101 Squadron will therefore be all the more vital.’
Q-Queenie had just crossed over enemy territory when Johnnie Muller’s voice, seldom heard on intercom, interrupted excitedly.
‘Special to crew. Here’s a problem. The German fighter instructions are being given by women. What shall we do?’4
The seriousness of this change quickly sank in. With female voices directing them from the ground, the German fighter pilots could not possibly be tricked by false orders from the 101 Squadron Specials. The German counter was one of those delightfully simple but devastatingly effective inspirations. The loss of almost a hundred night-fighters had seemingly provoked the Hun to combat 101’s counter-fighter tactics. ‘Fly north and await instructions’ was being avenged with this counter counter-fighter device. And twenty-six airborne Specials were puzzling vainly to evolve a counter-counter counter-fighter scheme. Where would it all end?
But Special number twenty-seven, Flight Lieutenant Holbrooke-Hardwicke, who was flying with A Flight commander, had already worked it out. Defying the radio-silence orders in consideration of the urgency of his message, he broadcast tersely: ‘All Special to jam only, no speech. Repeat: jam only, no speech. Do not acknowledge. ‘Brylcreem’ captains advise crew. Out!’ (‘Brylcreem’ was the 101 code call-sign, in deference to advertising and the title ‘The Brylcreem Boys’.)
Tonight, of all nights, it seemed that there was greater radio activity than ever. The sky was full of fighter messages. Johnnie’s hand was seldom off his key. Once he jammed a message and, having finished with apparent success, searched for new transmissions to obstruct. He quickly found one and began jamming it, but not before he had been able to recognize it as the same message he had just finished jamming. There were, obviously, new tactics to be surmounted tonight.
Alert to the many new complications, H-H had sent a coded message back to England by morse advising that many listening-out radios be set to find out what the Germans were up to. He hoped that, by studying and carefully timing every transmission that went out, he could later analyse them and discover any system of duplication that the Huns might be using.
‘Huns’, he told himself, ‘were suckers for systems. And systems were easier to crack than random operations. So first find the system and soon would come the answer.’
Meanwhile it was obvious that the Hun tactics were succeeding. XYZ jamming was impeding them but not decisively. Combats filled the sky.
H-H was cursing the luck that had fated this new German counter to coincide with the RAF’s first Pathfinder attack. Perhaps, if tonight’s losses were unreasonably heavy, the brass-hats would blame Pathfinder concentrations and abandon their welcome protege with all its brilliant prospects. Not only XYZ, but perhaps the future of the whole Pathfinder force was threatened tonight.5
Nor was that all. Most men, flying this fighter-lined gauntlet, would arrive at the target shaken and jumpy. The attack would not find them at their calmest and best, so the likely success of the new tactics would be further threatened.
These were the fears that spurred the Specials’ efforts. Their fears were well-founded and their efforts extreme and well-directed. But the German transmitters were too many; the fighters hammered at the bomber stream repeatedly, and it was indeed a jumpy, shaken force that beheld the first ever attack marked with vivid-burning candle bombs.
Pathfinder markers were dropped, it is true, and remained clearly visible from the air. Some of those markers were spot on the target. But others were too wide to be anything but confusing. Clusters of candle bombs were burning over an area many miles across.
The main force saw them all right. Bill saw the first batch go down and shouted, ‘Spot fires fifteen starb’d!’
‘Turning on,’ said Hyde. They tracked towards the burning bombs with careful confidence.
‘This is a piece of cake,’ said Bill.
Then the next cluster dropped, but at least a mile beyond and ten degrees port. Then another cluster somewhere between and two more far out on either side. ‘Eeeh, hold on, lad!’ Bill exclaimed. ‘I can’t bomb six places at once.’
‘Can you see any substantiating ground detail?’ Hyde asked, quickly grasping the situation.
‘Can’t see a thing through that glare,’ said Bill, and added, ‘Left, left.’
‘Don’t bomb yet,’ said Hyde. ‘That first cluster seems wide. I’ll fly over the centre. See if you can recognize anything.’
Bill cursed under his breath, stopped looking through his bomb-sight and squinted over it, trying to recognise the target. The spot markers helped by lighting some of the countryside around them but they also hindered by dazzling the bomb-aimer’s vision.
‘I can see a factory chimney-stack between those two reds on the port bow,’ said Bill. ‘It’s obviously something worth hitting.’
‘Right! Going round again.’
Q-Queenie completed her sweeping, five-mile circuit and turned her nose once more the target. Bill had just given a rough alteration on to the markers when, one by one, they started going out. Suddenly he remembered the warning at briefing; ‘Each cluster will burn about three minutes.’
Hyde had seen it, too. ‘Line up on the spot as quickly as you can. Keep it in sight even if the fires go out completely.’
‘Left-left. Left-left, steady.’ Bill spoke quickly, his voice high-pitched and strained. ‘Steady, steady, eh, drat it! They’ve all gone out. Hold her steady, lad, I can still see target.’
It was now seven minutes since Queenie had started her first bombing run and nerves were fraying fast. As Bill’s voice droned on—‘steady, steadee’—seven other voices were aching to scream ‘Bombs away for Chrissake!’ But when it came, the voice that spoke was Joe’s;
‘Rear-gunner to bomb-aimer. Hold it, there’s a Manchester straight below us.’6
‘Would our bombs hit him?’
‘Sure to. He’s dead below.’
‘This be proper muck-up an’ all.’
Bill dared not take his eyes off the target.
He could only just keep it pinpointed as it was.
And then the flak got them. Three shells burst below. Far enough below, fortunately, for Queenie to miss most of the shrapnel, but close enough to be flung in the air by the blast.
Magnetic spoke on the intercom, his clear voice perfectly calm and modulated; ‘Have you ever had one of those days when everything, but absolutely everything, goes wrong?’
‘Get off the bloody air!’, Hyde snapped viciously. ‘Bomb-aimer! Can you still see a target?’
‘Yes, skipper. Left a bit.’
‘Gunners! Is that Manchester still below?’
‘Yes,’ said Joe.
‘No he’s not!’ screamed Yarpi. ‘He’s clear port. The flak blew us off him. He’s clear, man! For Chrisake bomb!’
‘Okay,’ said Bill. ‘Steadee …’
The next instant three voices spoke simultaneously. Joe said, ‘He’s dead below!’
Hyde said, ‘Hold it!’
And Bill said, ‘Bombs away!’
It takes seven seconds for bombs to fall the first thousand feet. Aboard Q-Queenie the count was made in utter silence. With every eternal tick the referee’s finger of Fate pointed over the Manchester and its crew below. One. Two. Three. Four.
The Manchester lay on the canvas, not hearing the mortal count above.
Five. Six. If only it could stay there, take a count of nine, then they would know it was on its feet again and still in the fight. Seven!
Queenie shuddered and groaned with her crew under the impact of two bomb-loads and an aircraft blowing up just a few hundred yards below her. Nobody spoke. Queenie turned for home. She had a lump in her throat.7
Back at Base the radio message from H-H had set every available wireless-operator in Bomber Command system. Already they had discovered the new German tactics. ‘They transmit every message on three channels,’ the Station Commander explained H-H. ‘We assume the German pilots have receivers with three-switch positions. If they encounter XYZ jamming on one, they switch straight over to another and we’ve only caused them a moment’s interruption. We’ll simply have to copy them; jam all three channels simultaneously.’