War Wounds

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Not to discourage the crew, Macpherson refrained from saying that half the front gunner’s chest had been shot away and there was so much blood on the floor that he could barely keep his feet.

  “Wireless op to Captain. I’m manning the waist guns now, sir. I’m on the starboard side.”

  “I hear you. Second pilot, are the front guns serviceable?”

  “They don’t look damaged, sir. I don’t know if I can shift him, though.”

  “Never mind. Come back here.”

  “Rear gunner, sir ... fighter coming in again from high port quarter.”

  Templer made a diving turn to port, then to starboard, the Me 110 passed overhead and to the port side. The waist gunner had moved and tracer from his gun followed it.

  Templer dived into a cloud and levelled off. He wondered how many minutes he had before ice started forming on his wings.

  Half an hour later, with a gale howling through the aircraft, moaning and screaming as it poured through the holes in the nose, they were still on course for Hanover and back at 18,000 ft.

  They were 12 minutes late arriving over target. The second pilot and wireless operator heaved the heavy bundles of pamphlets down the flare chute. The leaflets were tied in such a way that the packs would open at a certain height and scatter over the city.

  Searchlights lit the sky. The red glow of bursting shells surrounded the Wellington as Templer circled. He held his height and could not bank steeply, or the men at the flare chute would lose their footing.

  The flak came closer. The beams held the Wellington. A shell burst so close to it that the crew heard it and felt its shock wave throw the aircraft up and to one side. Rents appeared in the canvas of the fuselage, more air gushed in and new weird organ notes were added to the cacophony in the nose.

  Templer made his way from cloud to cloud until the whole load had been dropped. Jones gave him a course for home and he turned onto it.

  Staying just above the clouds, at their lowest level of between five and six thousand feet, where it was warmer than at eighteen thousand, Templer made his way towards the Dutch-German frontier.

  Half an hour after leaving the target, when crossing a large area of clear sky, search-lights sprang to life once more. Again, flak opened up.

  The Wellington shuddered as a cluster of shells burst around it. There was a strike on the starboard side that jarred the whole airframe. The starboard oil pressure dropped. Smoke wreathed from the engine. For a few seconds small flames danced out of it. The engine raced without warning. Templer feathered it and prepared to fly all the way back to England on one engine.

  The silence on the intercom was heavy and morose.

  “E.T.A. German coast in five minutes, sir.”

  The second pilot reported from the astrodome “Exhaust flames three-o’clock, same height, Captain.”

  Looking to the right, Templer saw the silhouette of a 110. He watched it cross their bows, then lost sight of it. The next indication of its presence came as they crossed the coast.

  Tracer cut into the cockpit on Templer’s side. He felt first a burning and then a throbbing in his left ankle and foot. Soon they became numb and he was scarcely able to use them on the rudder pedal. He wondered how quickly he was losing blood.

  “Macpherson, prepare to take control, will you. I think I can get us home. But, if I can’t, make for the nearest point on the coast ... nearest bomber station.”

  *

  Harry Templer was in the crew room, with the rest of those on the Dawn Battle Order, when, at half past eight, he was called to the telephone.

  “It’s the Adj,” said the observer who had answered the telephone.

  “Squadron or station?”

  “Our own.”

  Templer wondered what chore was about to be wished on him.

  “Harry? C.O. wants you right away.”

  “Haven’t put up a black, have I?”

  “Guilty conscience? No, nothing to worry about.”

  When the squadron Adjutant took him into Wing Commander Arnott’s office, Harry suspected for a moment that Arnott was uneasy. But any kind of nervousness was difficult to associate with the phlegmatic Arnott, although he seemed to be fumbling with his pipe and tobacco pouch.

  “Have a pew, Harry.”

  Harry took off his cap, sat down and was quite certain that he was feeling uneasy.

  “Just had a call from your mother. I want you to call her in a moment. You can use this office: I’ve got to go out.”

  Harry felt a chill creep through him. It was not premonitory, for he was not in the least given to fancy or to extra-sensory perception; or to imaginings thereof.

  “Don’t tell me Father’s been dicing, and bought it, sir?”

  Harry managed a smile, albeit rather twisted.

  “No, old boy; not quite. As a matter of fact he seems to have put up a hell of a good show. He went on ops last night, apparently: bumph-spreading. They got a bit shot up. The front gunner was killed and they lost an engine. Your father brought the aeroplane back and made an emergency landing at Lindholme.”

  “He always did like Yorkshire.” Harry’s smile this time was from relief, and genuine.

  “It’s the cricket and the beer, old boy. Nowhere quite like it.” Arnott hailed from the North Riding himself. “I’m afraid your father was hurt.” Arnott added hastily: “Not badly. But he was wounded in the leg by a One-one-o and I’m afraid the M.O. had to send him to hospital at once. As a matter of fact, Harry, I’m sorry to tell you he’s had to have it off.”

  “Sir?”

  “They’ve amputated his left foot.”

  “Oh, Christ! Poor old Father.”

  “Your mother has taken it marvellously well; as one would expect.” Arnott rose. “So give her a call at once, will you.”

  “Yes, sir. And thank you for the way you broke it to me.”

  Arnott paused at the door, donning his cap. He looked embarrassed.

  “Your father is a highly respected and popular officer, Harry. The Service can’t afford to lose him.”

  “Christ, sir! You aren’t preparing me for the news that he’s going to die from this wound?”

  “Good God, no. But I’m afraid that he’ll be invalided out.”

  “They could give him a chairborne job, sir. You don’t need two feet for a Staff job.”

  The wing commander smiled ruefully. “Staff officers have to be mobile, you know. They don’t spend all their time on their backsides. They have to get out around the parish: the Group or Command. Even Air Ministry wallahs have to get out and about. When they can, they’re supposed to fly themselves. So you had better prepare yourself for your father’s retirement.”

  Alice sounded cheerful.

  “Darling, did I drag you away from something important? It’s Father, as Wing Commander Arnott must have told you. I’m afraid they’ve had to take his foot off from above the ankle. He’s going to be utterly disconsolate when he comes round.”

  “I’ll fly up tomorrow, Mother.”

  “He deserves a D.F.C. for bringing back the aircraft and the crew; apart from that one poor boy.”

  “He’ll probably get one, Mother.”

  More likely an imperial rocket for risking his life on a trivial task like dropping bumph.

  *

  Harry was allowed to borrow the squadron’s Miles Magister trainer to fly himself to Scantlebury.

  His mother smiled radiantly at him when he walked into the house; then she burst into tears and he took her in his arms.

  “Oh, darling, I’m sorry to be so stupid. They’ve had to take off half your father’s leg between the knee and the foot. He’ll never be allowed to serve on. And he’ll have an artificial leg, and limp for the rest of his life.”

  “I’m more worried about the effect it’ll have on his mind, than about his limping. Thank God he’s got the Manor and the home farm to keep him interested.”

  “That won’t take his mind off what he’s lost, poor darling.
His career gone, just as the war had started. He’ll feel terribly bitter about being left out of it.”

  “We’ll all have to make him absorb himself in farming. After all, food production is going to be as important as commanding a station.”

  “You try to make him see it that way!”

  Alice tried to smile through her tears.

  It was five years since Lionel Templer’s father had died, in his 70s, and he had inherited the family home.

  Staton Manor, in Berkshire, was a big estate comprising a farm which had been Harry’s grandfather’s most fervent interest. It was well managed, and there was no reason why his father should not now take an active part in developing it. He could find the present manager another good job and put in a younger man who would leave the general administration to him while dealing with the professional agricultural side of the business.

  “I’m glad we’ve got Mrs Meyer to run things in the house, because I’m going to be very busy with all sorts of war work. That will be one way of forcing Father to take an active part in farming.”

  Mrs Meyer, who had been Frau Meyer until the late 1930s, was an Austrian Jewess whose husband had been murdered by the Nazis. She had fled to England, where a charity had placed her with the Templers as housekeeper: she ran the Manor during their long absences from their family home. Templer had needed no persuasion to employ her.

  “I know what it’s like to run foul of the Boche,” he had said. And that was before this latest catastrophe.

  4.

  On 9th May 1940 the first enemy bombs since those dropped in May 1918, when the Gothas made their last raid on London, fell on Britain: on the north-east coast of Scotland and east coast of England.

  In the small hours of the following morning, Germany invaded Belgium and Holland, preparatory to attacking France.

  Templer, listening to the B.B.C’s seven-o’clock news in his study, as was his wont, sipping a cup of tea that the devoted Mrs Meyer insisted on rising at 6.45 to make for him, spoke his thoughts aloud.

  “Now the Hun frightfulness is beginning all over again.”

  He had fallen into the habit of talking to himself in the last few months. Each time he did so, he chided himself silently and ceased; but the habit persisted.

  Every morning he strapped on his artificial limb as soon as he rose, and hobbled downstairs with the aid of a stick. As the day progressed, he walked better and without a stick; until late afternoon, when he tired and his stump felt sore: then, he resorted to a stick once more. A travelling clock with a discreet alarm roused him without disturbing Alice.

  At eight-fifteen, by which time they had both bathed and dressed, she joined him for breakfast. On Sundays, they lay in for an extra hour, made love, and listened to the news at eight, on their portable wireless set.

  At the table, Templer repeated himself. Alice smiled gently.

  “People don’t use the term ‘Hun’ much any more darling. It’s usually a patronising ‘Jerry’. And ‘frightfulness’ is very ’Fourteen-’Eighteen: all that propaganda about Germans bayonetting babies in France and ‘gallant little Belgium’.”

  “They’ll always be the Boche and Hun to me. And if what the Nazis have done to the Jews isn’t frightfulness, I don’t know what is. Now they’ve marched into Belgium and Holland, you’ll see I’m right: they’ll bomb and strafe; and their artillery will bombard, without regard for the civilian population. There’ll be thousands of refugees crowding the roads and the Hun will massacre them to clear them out of the way: women and children, the old, the sick.” He gave a short bitter laugh. “And cripples.”

  Alice reached out and touched his hand.

  “Never use that word, darling. Don’t even think it.” He changed the subject abruptly; to one that was never out of their minds.

  “Harry will tell us about it: the home squadrons are bound to be needed to support the ones we sent to France.”

  Alice looked unhappy. “What will it be like? Bad?”

  “Fairly low-level attacks, on troop concentrations and transport, mostly. They should be well below the height at which Boche fighters patrol, and awkward for flak to do much about them.”

  She looked at him, wondering to what extent he was trying to delude her. He was, as always when he was telling her a half-truth to spare her anxiety, inscrutable.

  “What are you doing today, darling?”

  She knew it was an attempt to distract her thoughts from their son.

  “A stint at the canteen.” The Women’s Voluntary Service ran one in the village, for the benefit of anti-aircraft and search-light units in the area. “A meeting of the welfare committee.” This organised entertainments for the local troops. “A couple of hours in the parish hall, helping make up parcels.” These went to the uncommissioned ranks of the county regiment and yeomanry and to individual men from the village who were serving in other units. “And a few other odd jobs.”

  Templer stood up, bent over and kissed her on the lips.

  “See you at lunch.”

  He went to the stable yard and mounted the 16-hand chestnut hunter that had been saddled for him by the elderly groom. He was pleased by the progress he had made at riding with “my gammy leg”. He hacked off towards his fields to look at the crops and the cattle, the pigs and poultry, his orchards.

  I’m damn lucky, really, he told himself. He repeated it insistently every day in his thoughts and several times a day.

  He remained profoundly unhappy and dogged by a feeling that fate had been cruel to him and that the Germans were the instrument of its malignancy.

  *

  Harry saw the staff car approaching, an air vice marshal’s pennant snapping in the breeze the big Humber created as it swept along the perimeter road. The station commander’s car was immediately astern, followed by the squadron commander’s.

  Both flight commanders were already at the door of the wooden hut which formed the crew room since the aircraft had been dispersed far from the hangars. Squadron Leader Snaith, looking more foxy and fine-drawn as the strain of the last eight months took its toll, was chewing his ginger moustache. “Snaith’s twitch”, the squadron called it. There were other twitches to be seen. Some aircrew had a habit of shaking their heads as though they suffered from St. Vitus’s dance: some kept shrugging their shoulders; there were those who blinked and those who kept cracking their knuckles. Not a few showed more than one of these symptoms and became the subject of the closest scrutiny by their squadron Medical officers and the squadron leader who was station M.O.

  Harry saw a tall man with a glossy flaxen moustache, gleaming hand-made shoes, a red silk handkerchief tucked into the left cuff of his tunic, emerge from the staff car. He had the beautiful features that could make a man a fortune in the film industry. Under his pilot’s brevet he wore the ribbons of the K.C.B., C.B., C.B.E., D.S.O. and bar, M.C. and two bars, D.F.C., with high French decorations, and campaign and coronation medals.

  After him came a genial-looking air commodore, his moustache a gleaming chestnut shot with grey, his uniform as pristine as though it had come fresh from his tailor, his shoes boned to perfection; with decorations for gallantry that were almost as numerous as the other’s, and as many campaign ribbons.

  The station commander introduced the two flight commanders. By comparison he was a bird of drab plumage. His lumpy figure made any uniform look dowdy. He sported an A.F.C., two ribbons from the last war and one for service in Iraq in the recent past.

  Group Captain Hobdey was an excellent administrator and test pilot rather than an inspiring leader in action. When the party was inside the crew room, Snaith presented Harry first.

  “Flight Lieutenant Templer, sir, my deputy flight commander.”

  Air Marshal Sir Alaric Crichton gave Harry a sharp look, then a faint smile as they shook hands.

  “I believe I must have known your father in the last show; and since, of course. You are Lionel Templer’s boy?”

  “Yes, sir. You commanded his wi
ng in nineteen-eighteen.”

  The air marshal looked pleased. “I'm afraid the spot of bad luck he had then has dogged him. How is he?”

  “Well enough to ride again, sir, thank you.”

  “Delighted to hear it. Remember me to him.” He shot Harry another sort of look, almost mischievous. “I’ve made some lucky bets on your mounts, my boy.”

  Harry allowed himself a broad grin. “I’m relieved to hear it, sir. Most people who like a flutter over the sticks tell me they’d like to boil me in oil.”

  Crichton laughed and moved on.

  Wing Commander Arnott said “Flight Lieutenant Templer, sir. Air Commodore Bentinck, Templer.”

  “Hello, Harry.” Bentinck looked round at Arnott. “I’ve known this type since he was a nipper.

  “I spoke to your father on the telephone only yesterday. He sounded in pretty fair form. Your mother sounded in great form, bless her.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  Harry said no more, but his heart was full of kind thoughts about his father’s old squadron commander; who, he knew, had been to see his father twice and telephoned once a fortnight, since he lost his foot.

  Bentinck was about to move on, then paused. “By the way, James is on Spitfires. The squadron has just re-equipped from Hurricanes.”

  “He must be chuffed, sir.”

  Bentinck explained to Arnott: “James is my younger boy. He says he never feels uncomfortable sitting on a parachute in the cockpit: says he’s got a leather bottom; thanks to Templer here. James used to fag for him and it seems he was chastised with some vigour, and pretty frequently.”

  The three of them laughed, and Templer felt obscurely that he had been scored off, but did not know exactly how. He thought for a moment of James Bentinck and told himself that he would not care to try to cane him now: he was as big as a house and an inter-Service heavyweight boxer. A Spit must be a tight fit for him.

  He had another thought: was there something ominous in this visitation by an air marshal from Air Ministry and an air commodore from Bomber Command Headquarters?

  Was lunch in the mess today going to be a symbolic surrogate Last Supper?

  If it were, Harry was not destined to attend. The telephone in the crew room summoned the Battle Order crews to briefing while Air Marshal Crichton and Air Commodore Bentinck were still there.