War Wounds

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Harry was embarrassed. His undemonstrative father must have very strong feelings indeed to be so overt. Harry knew that it was his having killed a German in a hand-to-hand fight that mostly aroused his father’s pride; and that he thought it a fine jest as well as gesture of defiance that he had lain hidden for so long where the Germans could easily have caught him.

  “I’ll be satisfied if they accelerate my promotion, Father. Anyway, how are you?”

  “Heard from Air Ministry ...”

  “Good.”

  “They want me to spend a couple of days in hospital at Wroughton. Just a check-over. If I pass, they’ll have me back.”

  “Wonderful, Father. I’m delighted.”

  Harry felt mean, a party to a deception. He knew that it was to the Psychiatric Unit at Wroughton that his father would be confined. But still, if he behaved rationally, now that a return to the Active List was within his grasp, he would be all right.

  “What’s more, Alaric Crichton told me in confidence there’s an air commodore post waiting for me at Bomber Command.”

  A wave of relief washed over Harry.

  “He wouldn’t even have mentioned it if it weren’t a racing certainty that you’ll be passed, Father.”

  “That’s what I rather felt. Well, my boy, mustn’t keep you gossiping: you’ll be wanting to beat it up a bit this evening, to wet your gong, what?”

  “That was rather the idea, Father.”

  “Good. New crew settled down?”

  “Very well, thanks. Good types, both.”

  “Couldn’t have a better pilot. Goodbye, Harry.”

  Harry had hardly put the telephone down when he was called to it again.

  “Harry, my poppet, gratters on the gong.”

  “Thank you, Margaret. Why have you gone back to Peg’s Paper language? Gratters! Is that how the fighter boys talk?”

  “Pig. Listen, there’s an end-of-course dance next Saturday. Can you come?”

  “I should think so. I’ll let you know. Now listen, Father has just called ...” He gave her the news.

  Then there was Elizabeth. “Harry, dear, well done. I’m madly proud of you. And Hector sends his congratulations.”

  “Thanks. And Father’s heard from the Air Works. They’re sending him to be checked out at Wroughton: the Psychiatric Unit, obviously, although of course he won’t know that; or, when he finds he’s being seen by a trick-cyclist, exactly why. But I think it’s going to be all right: he sounded perfectly O.K. on the blower, and they’ve hinted at an air commodore job at Bomber H.Q. It was Crichton who told him. He’d never have raised Father’s hopes unless ...”

  “Unless it was a racing certainty.” She knew her brother’s and father’s forms of expression well. “I agree.”

  “He has a lot to thank you for ... and Hector. How is he?”

  “Reporting to Uxbridge next week to learn how to be an R.A.F. officer. He’s going straight in as a flight lieutenant.”

  “He deserves it, after what he did for Father.” Harry felt expansive and generous.

  His sister laughed. “Your decoration has put you in a good mood. Have a good party.”

  *

  Templer heard the desynchronised beat of German bomber engines from his study, where he sat with the window open and the light out, sipping a final cognac and contemplating his future in a euphoric mood. Now, at H.Q. Bomber Command, he would be an instrument of vengeance: for Alice, for himself and for Harry, who very nearly had not come safely home.

  He was sure he could fly with his one artificial half-calf and flexed-jointed foot. Alaric didn’t demur when I suggested I should spend a few days at the Central Flying School; that’s where they sent young Bader. Even if I’m only allowed to fly trainer types, any aviating is better than none. I’ll be able to fly myself around on Staff visits. And, even if I can’t go as second pilot, I can wangle my way onto an op now and then as a supernumerary. At least I’ll be able to see bombs dropping on the Boche instead of just hearing about it.

  Above all, he would be involved in the planning; and that would mean a chance to urge bigger and more destructive raids, irrespective of the danger to the Hun population.

  His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a raider high overhead. He rose and went out through the French window.

  Now that he was outside he could make out the drone of three separate aircraft, all enemy. He knew that none of them could be a night fighter: they all had the same Jumo engine note.

  There were searchlights searching already. Perhaps they had been tracked for several minutes. He counted four beams. Why was there no ack-ack? Probably a fighter boy up there, chasing them. The brutes had given south-east and eastern England a heavy pounding that day. The wireless had reported sixteen shot down. Allowing for duplication, inevitable in the confusion of an air battle, that might mean ten or twelve. Too few. We’ll never shoot them out of our sky at this rate.

  The guns opened up. Templer distinguished the rapid thump of 40 mm Bofors and pictured the site of the battery beyond the village which was in action. He heard the much louder and slower reverberations of the three-inch guns that were further away. Then came the angry crash of a 3.7 inch, and a second. The gunners really meant business, then. He wondered at what height the Boches were flying. About ten thousand, he guessed. Well within the range of all the guns, and only just too high for the smallest, the 20 mm Hispano.

  The others were effective up to 23,500 and the 3.7 as high as 33,500. Surely they wouldn’t miss?

  He heard footsteps on the gravel and smelled Mrs Meyer’s lavender water. She stood beside him.

  He pointed. “Up there. You can just catch a glimpse of one of the swine in the lights.” He was suddenly excited: “Two of them, nicely caught by the lights. Well done! Come on, you gunners ...”

  A sudden flare of red in the crossed beams of two of the searchlights became a spreading glow that began to fall instead of continuing its course. A few seconds later, the second aircraft which the searchlights held began to dive. Templer focused the night glasses that he always kept at hand.

  “By Jove! I can see smoke ... and flames.”

  The bomber was steepening its dive.

  “By God! There are three parachutes ... I think ... yes, I’m fairly certain.”

  He began to run towards the garage at the back of the house.

  Frau Meyer trotted after him, breathlessly calling. “Group Captain ... Group Captain ... where are you going?”

  Templer turned, and in the moonlight she saw a radiant smile on his face, but he did not reply.

  In his mind was the thought: if I can catch one, single-handed, they’ll have to pass me fit ... for anything. He was making good speed at his limping run, helped by a stout ash plant. He had ample petrol, on account of the farm and his many activities concerned with the war. He started his Bentley with a roar. He stopped outside the study, dashed in and across to the adjoining gun room, and took a 12-bore from its case; thrust some cartridges into a pocket and two into the breech, and returned quickly to the car.

  “Liebe Gott!” Mrs Meyer watched him drive off, still smiling broadly in anticipation. Gravel flew from the fat rear tyres of the big, dark green saloon car with its enormous luggage boot that was like a separate cabin trunk at the back.

  The third enemy bomber still droned on, its engines growing fainter.

  The Bentley’s tail light, glowing ruby, disappeared around a bend in the road.

  Its exhaust smoke still hung outside the house.

  Mrs Meyer thought that it smelled suspiciously of sulphur and brimstone. And the Group Captain, the Herr Oberst, when she saw him rush off with that gun in his hand, might well have had a forked tail and horns; and the 12-bore could have been a trident with which to prod wicked souls into the burning coals of hell.

  She gave a little shriek at her vivid imaginings and went hurriedly inside for a tot of medicinal brandy.

  8.

  Templer, a countryman, deer-
stalker and fisherman, was a quiet and stealthy mover about the countryside and could flit through a wood as skilfully as any poacher. Here, on his home ground, where he had grown up and to which he had returned frequently throughout his life, he was able to estimate accurately where the parachuting airmen would come down.

  He knew he would not be the only one to judge the spot and he knew also that there was a searchlight battery less than a mile from it and an anti-aircraft gun site as close in another direction. The military and Police would be hurrying to capture the enemy airmen.

  He chortled as he drove fast along a winding lane which was barely wide enough to take his Bentley. He knew a thing or two that no one else did; of that he was confident. There was a fire path through his wood in which the Boches must have landed. From it, branched a narrow track which ended in an abandoned quarry. It was a very small quarry; working it had been a failure as long ago as the 1870s, when his father was a boy. Nobody went there: except his father, and, later, he himself. There was a tunnel from the quarry that led to an air shaft where steps had been cut and made an easy climb to the ground, only ten feet above. If he took that route, it would be a short cut of which no one else knew.

  He roared along the fire path, irritated by the dimness of the masked headlights; but there was a moon and he told himself that he could, anyway, have found his way blindfolded. The wood was in the southeast corner of his property and it was even possible that the Police or Army party that would be out searching would call at the Manor first for permission to cross his grounds.

  I’ve always realised I was privileged, he was telling himself, as exhilarated as a boy on a clandestine escapade. Born comfortably off, to be a considerable landowner, with a decent private income to make my life in the Service extremely agreeable. But this is the greatest privilege of all: to be able to get to those bloody Huns before anyone else can find them. His heart was beating so rapidly from excitement that he began to pant.

  He turned off the fire path into a glade and stopped the car behind three oaks that stood in its centre. It was fairly well hidden, even though he did not expect anyone to come that way.

  Progress along the narrow path to the old quarry was difficult. He thrust through a tangle of nettles and bushes, slashing at them with his heavy stick to clear his way. Then he was at the quarry’s edge, and there was a footpath down its side. The earth was crumbling here and he nearly slipped and fell several times. He used the torch he had brought from the car to light his way across the rough bottom of the excavation. The mouth of the gallery that led to the tunnel was pitch black. He plunged through and along the tunnel. Up the steps, his breath laboured now, his maimed leg throbbing and aching. Anger mounted, with anxiety that he might have wrongly estimated the place where the Germans must descend.

  He stumbled across the tussocky grass at the top of the air shaft, towards the place where the ground rose some thirty feet in a hummock that covered an acre. Here, the trees stood higher than the rest.

  And there, as he had intelligently estimated, he found them.

  He saw the white parachutes first, and then the dangling figure some twenty feet from the ground. The harness of the other parachute was empty and swinging in the light breeze.

  He approached cautiously, his gun ready to fire a snap shot from hip or shoulder. He had put the crook of his stick over his left forearm to facilitate handling the gun, and this meant that he was limping badly.

  Suddenly he realised that he was in a savage temper: he had suffered a lot of pain; and, once again, all on account of the bloody Boche.

  He paused under a tree to look up at the hanging body. Its head drooped in the characteristic attitude of a man on the gallows.

  His eyes searched for the man who had come down from the tree in which his parachute had been entangled. The two were separated by twenty or thirty yards. He moved towards the abandoned parachute.

  It was a moment of anti-climax when he heard a voice call “Ich bin hier.”

  He found the German sitting on the ground with his back to a tree.

  Templer shone the torch on his enemy. “Get up.”

  “Mein Fussknöchel gebrochen ist.”

  “What? Stand up, damn you.”

  The German leaned forward and touched his right ankle. “Gebrochen.”

  “Broken, are you trying to say?”

  “Gebrochen, ja.”

  Templer looked towards the tree where the corpse hung, and pointed, although it was out of sight.

  “What about that other brute?”

  “Was sagen Sie?”

  “What about the other Boche?” Templer pointed again.

  “Mein Kamerad? Er war gewundet.”

  “Wounded?”

  “Ja, ja. Aber nur ist er tot. Er haste zu mir geruft, and dann war er mit das Geschirr von seinem Fallschirm ergewügt.”

  “What?”

  “Er tot ist… mein freund ist tot.”

  Templer remembered reading in The Times that the badge of the S.S. was the Totenkopf, deathshead.

  “Dead?”

  “Ja, ja.”

  “And you’ve broken your ankle?”

  “Bitte?”

  Templer went up to him and jabbed his right ankle with the stick, unslung from his arm.

  The German drew his foot back and grunted with pain.

  “Can’t stand?”

  “Ich kann nicht aufstehen, nein.”

  “Then you’d better crawl.”

  “Bitte?”

  A thought struck Templer.

  “Have you got a pistol?”

  The German hesitated, then reluctantly said “Ja.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Bitte?”

  Templer held out his left hand. “Give it to me.”

  The German undid his flying overall and tossed a Luger onto the ground. Templer drew it towards him with his stick, then pocketed it.

  “Can’t stand? Then you’ll have to go on all fours.”

  “Bitte?”

  “Like a dog.”

  “Ein Hund?” The German was plainly puzzled.

  Templer took some paces back, then fell to his hands and knees.

  “Like this.”

  “Was?” The German was incredulous.

  “Come on, damn you. I haven’t got all night.”

  The German looked angry and stubborn.

  “Nein. Ich bin Offizier. Das ist die Versammlung von Genf gegen ...” The German appeared to recall a word: “Genf ... Geneva ... Versammlung.”

  “Geneva? Geneva Convention?”

  “Ja, ja.”

  “And you’re an officer?”

  “Ja. Ich bin Offizier. Leutnant Loerzer.”

  “Well, Loerzer, we’re a damn long way from Geneva, and you’re going to crawl. Unless you can hobble.”

  Templer threw him the ash plant.

  The German glared, seemed not to believe Templer’s intention, then clumsily scrambled upright.

  “Good. Now move.”

  The German took a tentative step, then a few more, then collapsed with a groan.

  “Right, then: doggy-fashion. Get moving.”

  “Was?”

  “Like a dog ... a Hund.”

  They glowered at each other for a long moment.

  Then the German contemptuously turned onto his hands and knees and began to crawl. Presently he held out his hand for the stick again and, when it was given to him, dragged himself to his feet.

  In this way, with the German alternately crawling and limping, they came to the quarry.

  Loerzer, panting from effort and agony, stopped and swore at Templer. His face was twisted with rage and hatred.

  “No idea what you’re saying, you foul Hun. Move.”

  “Nein.”

  “Ten, Jack, Queen, King, ace.” Templer laughed in the way that had occasionally unnerved his comrades in the Great War. It had a manic note. “And I hold all the aces. Move.” He threatened his prisoner with his twelve bore and Loerzer swore a
gain, then began to haul himself down the steps, sliding on his bottom.

  When, eventually, they reached the Bentley, Loerzer’s flying gloves were torn to shreds and the knees of his overalls and trousers ripped.

  Templer opened the luggage boot.

  “Climb in.”

  “Nein.”

  Loerzer leaned against the open boot for support. From his stubborn expression, Templer knew that he would never budge. He gave him a smart rap on the base of the skull with the gun barrels and Loerzer folded at the waist, sagging half into the huge trunk. Templer heaved him in and locked the lid.

  He was between the wood and the Manor when he saw masked headlights approaching. He flashed his torch and the lights became stationary. When he arrived at the car, an Army officer came up to him.

  “Good evening, Captain. I’m Group Captain Templer, from Marston Manor.”

  “Good evening, sir. I recognised your car. Have you seen…”

  Templer cut him short, knowing what he was about to say, and not intending to lie, even in this extremity.

  “You’ll find a Boche dangling on the end of his parachute in Danes’ Wood.”

  “Thank you, sir. Only one, sir?”

  “Two parachutes in the trees, one Hun. Looks dead to me. Seen rebels on the North-West Frontier strung up for murder, you know: this fella looks the same: head lolling, neck broken.”

  “The other one must be around here, somewhere, then.”

  “Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” said Templer. “Now, if you can back about fifty yards, I’ll be able to squeeze past.”

  There was a jeep followed by a 15 cwt truck carrying a squad of soldiers.

  The young captain said, “By the way, sir, we called at Marston Manor to ask your leave to come onto your land. Hope it’s all right?”

  “Go anywhere you please, Captain.”

  Templer drove off. I don’t know that I really had made up my mind about what to do with this Boche, he mused; but there’s only one thing for it now.

  *

  Mrs Meyer came flapping and clucking down the steps when she heard the Bentley draw up.

  “Oh, sir! Are you all right? The soldiers were here…”

  “I met them.” Templer spoke as he unlocked the boot.