War Wounds

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  He called jestingly, in German, “You look like Lot’s wife: what have you seen that has turned you into a pillar of salt?”

  Her reaction amazed him. She blushed deeply, croaked, in the same language, and hastily, “N-nothing ... nothing at all, Herr Major.” She scuttled away behind the door that led to the kitchen.

  The strain of coping with Father must be telling on her, Harry reflected. She looks far from well: dark rings under the eyes, and a furtive manner. I hope she isn’t going to crack up as well. Father has only just been snatched from the brink of lunacy. We don’t want the old bird toppling over the edge. She’ll be better when he goes off to Bomber and she needn’t worry about him anymore.

  Anxiety did not mar his enjoyment of his cucumber sandwiches and fruit cake. Mrs Meyer had made a Sachetorte as well, with which she had always tried to win him away from a lifelong addiction to fruit cake; he did justice to it, and his sharp appetite made him realise how tense he had been for weeks past, and unable to eat with zest. Father recovering and going back onto the Active List has done me good, too. But there was still the spectre of low level daylight operations to blunt his appetite.

  He put flying out of his mind. After tea he helped the groom to saddle one of the horses and went for a hack, after which he put the well-mannered bay over the jumps in the paddock.

  The sound of the Bentley’s engine impinged on senses that had been more tranquil than for many months. He was startled to find how much time had passed, when he looked at his watch.

  He returned to the house quickly, without going first to the stables.

  His father was still in the car and Mrs Meyer was standing beside it. They were in earnest conversation.

  He called a greeting and they both started. Guiltily? he asked himself. It looked suspiciously like it. What the hell is going on here?

  They had been so engrossed that they had not heard the trotting hooves on the gravel. Templer jerked round, Mrs Meyer’s head shuddered galvanically and tilted up to dart a wild stare at Harry.

  “Hello, my boy.” There was a false note of geniality there.

  Harry rode up to the car. “How did it go, Father?”

  “Very well, I think. The P.M.O told me there’s no reason why I shouldn’t get back into harness.” Mrs Meyer jinked at the last word. “They’ll write to me officially within a week.”

  The word of the Principal Medical Officer at Wroughton was not to be contested; but Harry knew that the ultimate decision rested with the Air Council. And one could never take for granted the pronouncements from the summit of any organisation. Accepting Flying Officer — now Squadron Leader — Bader back, not only to the Active List but also the cockpit of a fighter, had set a precedent; but taking back a group captain aged 48 to do a chairborne job would not necessarily follow it.

  I’d better make some sort of encouraging noises. “It’ll be C.F.S. next, then, to check out your flying.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Templer stepped out of the car. “I didn’t even take a stick with me, you see.”

  “Good show, Father.”

  When Harry had seen his mount into its stable, bathed, and changed from boots and breeches into a civilian suit, he was surprised to see his father still wearing uniform. Obviously a great boost for him ... and it’s not pathetic, because I believe he really is going to be accepted back. There’s an air of satisfaction ... triumph about him that couldn’t be there unless he’s had private confirmation and it’s too confidential for him to tell even me until it’s official.

  There was a febrile, contained excitement about Templer which Harry noted with affection and compassion. His father had been through bad times for long enough. No wonder he was so worked up by the change in his fortunes.

  He noticed the frequency with which his father was looking at his watch or a clock. A kind of nervous tic, he decided. Counting the passing minutes until the day when he can expect the letter from Air Ministry. Poor old boy.

  At nine they listened to the news. Their faces grew increasingly serious as they heard the details. It had been a day of heavy attacks on fighter airfields, in which the R.A.F. had shot down 75 enemy aircraft and lost 34. That was the information that censorship permitted to be given to the public. Templer and Harry were able to fill in the wide gaps from their professional knowledge: devastation of fighter airfields that were essential to the country’s defence; some among the dead young pilots whom Harry surely knew; the death and wounding of W.A.A.F. as well as airmen, on the ground.

  “But we hacked down more than twice as many as we lost,” Harry said, grimly, when the news was over.

  Templer rose and went to a window. “I wonder if they’ll keep it up tonight.”

  “Probably. The weather isn’t against it.”

  “I’d like to be on a fighter station tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t! What makes you say that, Father?”

  “The more of them overhead, the better the odds on bringing some of them down inside the perimeter.”

  “Why would you want that?”

  Templer turned to him, his face expressing loathing. “Because it gives ... it would give me such enormous pleasure to have the arrogant Huns lined up in front of me ... my prisoners.”

  “I can understand that. You never heard any more about the Jerry who was supposed to have baled out into Danes’ Wood and wasn’t found, have you?”

  His father turned away while Harry was speaking and there was a long silence before he replied. “Nothing in the papers ... nothing on the wireless ... the local Police and soldiery haven’t said a word about catching the brute.”

  “If you hadn’t seen the parachute yourself, I’d have suspected the story to be apocryphal. A damn dangerous rumour, if it were.”

  “It was no invention, Harry. Saw both parachutes as plain as a pikestaff.”

  “He’s bound to be caught one day. Not a hope of escaping from this tight little island.”

  “Unless he steals an aeroplane.”

  “I suppose that’s always a possibility.”

  At ten, Templer said, “You must be tired. Ready for bed?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve been off ops for a couple of days.”

  “Tiredness is cumulative, as I know well. You’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you. Why not turn in?”

  “I’d rather stay up and talk to you, Father.”

  “As you like.” It was hardly an enthusiastic invitation, nor did Templer prove to be in a mood for conversation. When, at half past ten, he said, “ ‘Fraid I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, my boy,” Harry was not sorry to follow him upstairs.

  He fell asleep quickly, but with uneasy thoughts about his father’s manifest tension and his morose manner during the last hour and a half.

  The sound of air raid sirens woke him. He heard the thud of anti-aircraft guns and the drone of German aircraft. When he went to the window, he saw search-lights. It was only half past eleven.

  He heard a door slam and footsteps in the corridor. Opening the door, he saw his father about to enter his bedroom; and still in uniform.

  He called, “Father?”

  Templer paused. “Why aren’t you asleep, Harry?”

  “I thought you were sleepy, Father. You’re still dressed.”

  “Damn it, a man has a right, in his own house, to ...” Templer made an obvious effort and took control of his quick surge of temper. “I found there were things I had to do.”

  The door at the foot of the stairs that led to the second floor, where the servants’ quarters were, opened. Mrs Meyer, still in her day clothes, stood there. Her face, in the corridor light, was ashen. Her lips were trembling.

  She looked at Harry. He had never seen a more agonised appeal in anyone’s eyes.

  She addressed him in German. “I am so afraid ... he is a fine man ... he means no wrong ... I understand his feelings, but I am a God-fearing woman.”

  “Speak English,” Templer said it as though he were giving a parade ground order.
>
  Harry ignored the edict. “What are you so terrified of?”

  “Damn it, Harry, I won’t have you speaking that barbarous language under my roof. Why the hell you need to, I can’t understand. You’re an Englishman, dammit, and Mrs Meyer speaks English as well as we do.”

  Trembling, Mrs Meyer beckoned. Her lips moved, but no speech came except “P-p-please.” And then, in a spate of her own language, “For the love of God, Herr Major ... help your father.”

  She turned and began hastily to mount the stairs. Harry started after her.

  Templer shouted, “Where the devil d’you think you’re going?”

  “To see what she’s so frightened and worried about.”

  “I forbid you ...”

  “Sorry, Father.”

  Harry followed Mrs Meyer to a door he remembered well. It was at the end of a passage and gave access to a set of rooms over the west wing. His father’s old nanny, who had had charge not only of his father, but also a younger brother who was killed in 1916, and their three sisters, had lived there in retirement; a more than slightly dotty retirement. She had died when Harry was in his early teens, at a great age. In her last years she had been confined there, for she was wont to rove vaguely and had twice fallen and broken bones. There had been a fear that she might throw herself out of a window, or fall out accidentally: all the windows had been fitted with iron bars. Every window on that top floor, under a mansard roof, had shutters.

  Mrs Meyer took a huge key from a hook by the door and opened it, then stood aside.

  Harry went into the small sitting-room. The air smelled stale. He saw that the window, which looked over the flagged court at the side of the house, was closed. Mrs Meyer unlocked the door of the little bedroom, off which a bathroom and lavatory gave. A waft of bad air struck Harry.

  There was a dim light in the first room, but the second was in darkness.

  A feeble voice demanded, “Wie sind Sie?”

  Harry stood, rigid with shock.

  He heard his father behind him. “Damn it, Harry, can’t you obey orders? Have you no respect for me, boy?”

  Harry’s eyes had adjusted to the poor light provided by the 30 Watt lamp in the sitting-room, which faintly lit the bedroom.

  He could see a man in the bed. Going closer, he saw that the prisoner was gaunt and pale, with a full set of facial hair. He wore pyjamas that hung loosely on him.

  The German threw the bedclothes aside and pointed to his right leg. The foot was at a grotesque angle and the ankle was swollen. “I cannot walk,” he said. “Verstehen?”

  “Ja, ich Verstehe.”

  “Thank God you speak German. This lunatic,” he pointed at Templer, “has kept me here for I do not know how long. I have lost count of time ... my bones were broken and they have set badly ... I am in constant pain ...”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am a Luftwaffe officer, a pilot, Leutnant Loerzer ...”

  “I am Squadron Leader Templer. I am also a bomber pilot and this is my father.”

  “This is an outrage against the Geneva Convention ...”

  “I’m afraid you’re right. You look very ill ...”

  Mrs Meyer said, “He has been on bread and water and nothing else, for a month. I hate his kind, but the poor man has suffered too much ...”

  “All right.” Harry was crisp. “Loerzer, you will be given a proper meal at once. I shall ensure you have medical attention as soon as possible ...”

  Loerzer was able, typically, to raise a shout. “I insist on being handed over to the proper authorities.”

  Harry, knowing how to treat Germans, bellowed back. “Keep quiet, Lieutenant. Remember my rank. You are in no position to make demands of any kind. Now be quiet, be thankful I have found you, and behave yourself. Above all, be prepared to cooperate; in every way.”

  He turned to Mrs Meyer. “Bring him hot food. First, bring him a decent glass and a bottle of whisky.”

  His father had gone. In alarm, Harry hastened off to find him. He was in his study, standing by the open French window, with the curtains open.

  “Please draw the curtains, Father, I want to put the light on.”

  Templer went to his chair and subsided in it. “I feel so tired ... exhausted.”

  Harry drew the curtains, switched on a standard lamp and sat facing his father.

  “I understand your motives, Father; but this is a hell of a mess.”

  “Don’t I know it. But,” defiantly, “the brute deserved it.”

  “No, he didn’t, Father. The German nation deserved it, but not this individual man.”

  “Oh, Harry, if only you knew what it meant to repay old scores ...”

  Harry almost wept at the defeat, weariness and bitterness he heard.

  “Cheer up, Father. You’re surrounded by a loving and loyal family ... and Mrs Meyer feels the same as we do. You have powerful and loyal friends. We’ll make sure this doesn’t ruin your recall to active service.”

  “What can anyone do now?”

  “A great deal. We’re going to the telephone. I’ll ring the numbers and get the right people on the line, and you will do the talking. Simply say what you’ve done: taken a German pilot prisoner and held him here instead of handing him over to the Police, the Army or our own Provost Marshal.”

  “You’re right. You can’t turn a blind eye: it would mean the end of your career.”

  “We’ll talk to Ted Liversedge first, because he’s a friend. Then Chimp Monks, because he’s a friend and an Intelligence officer. We’ll call A.V.M. Bentinck and Sir Alaric Crichton. We’ll call Dr Bradley.”

  “Couldn’t Elizabeth come?”

  “I think we’d better get the nearest doctor and not waste any time about it.”

  “I’m beginning to feel a bit of a damn fool, Harry; but I don’t for a moment regret what I did.”

  “Why should you, Father? You took a German prisoner, single-handed. You kept him securely confined. You were going through severe mental trauma at the time. You are absolutely all right now: so the first thing you’re doing is reporting the capture to the proper authorities, to hand over your prisoner.”

  Templer ventured a wayward smile. “Put like that, Harry, it sounds eminently reasonable. I only hope it works.”

  “It will.” Harry sounded confident. “Give me fifteen minutes with Loerzer, after Mrs Meyer has filled him with whisky and good hot food, and I think you’ll find he’ll be as helpful as we want him to be.”

  “You really think so?” Templer was self-possessed and assured again.

  “You’ve just been given a clean bill of health, haven’t you? You’re voluntarily taking the right action. You’ve been through a bad time, Father, but you’re all right now. You’ve got it out of your system. We belong to a very understanding Service. And, to be cynical as well as practical, the Service badly needs your expertise. That is why they’re making you an air commodore. There aren’t too many last war bomber types around to point the way to us present lot, you know.”

  Templer began to smile. “Your mother always said I’d reach Air rank, God bless her.”

  If you enjoyed reading War Wounds you might be interested in Fighters Up, also by Richard Townsend Bickers.

  Extract from Fighters Up by Richard Townsend Bickers

  One

  Images and sensations; and the cold.

  The pictures forming in his mind of violent death and flaming destruction, the icy tremors of his body, the voices - sometimes the screams - in his ears: all formed a pattern, and, he supposed, a kind of crazy rhythm. Every experience, every event and situation, had its own rhythm, and this one was the rhythm of aerial combat.

  The memories came whether he was sleeping or awake. If asleep, they roused him with a start and sweating: in bed, or a deep doze in a canvas chair in the pilots’ but out at dispersals, where the Hurricanes and Spitfires stood ranged in their blast pens. They came when he was wide awake: ostensibly reading Flight or The Aeroplane in the di
spersal hut, or the Daily Telegraph in the mess ante-room. They recurred even when he was in conversation, or among a group with a pint tankard in his hand in mess or a pub. All it needed to set the images and the sensations going was the glimpse of a face that had shared them, the mention of a name, or some allusion.

  “Break! Blue Two, break!”

  “Behind you, Simon!”

  And his own voice: “Break right, Tug!” “Bandits, two-o’clock, above, coming in.” “Blast you, Robbie, you nearly took my tail off.”

  But Robbie had not heard him. When the Hurricane flashed past, Howard saw that it was burning and its pilot was limp, head lolling.

  The rhythm of air fighting: attack and defence, thrust and parry in a three-dimensional brawl at over three hundred miles an hour, closing speeds of twice that much.

  The rhythm of gunfire from an adversary, coming at him in short bursts: of multi-coloured tracer drawing curved lines across the sky, the bark of cannon and the rattle of machineguns; the cadence of his own shooting and the joyful shock of the bright splashes his incendiaries made when they hit their target; the dazzle from his .303 Brownings and 20 millimetre Hispanos, at first light and dusk, from muzzle flashes and tracer; the wing-overs, half-rolls off the top of a loop, sideslips and stall turns that were the aerobatics of battle; the shrieking of the wind in his gun muzzles when he had blasted their canvas covers off, the howling it made as it tore through the holes that enemy fighters or flak had punched in his Hurricane or Spitfire: these were the kaleidoscopic fragments of sight and sound that composed the pictures and noises which tormented him.

  The war would enter its third year in four months’ time. In 1939 - away back in 1939 - four months had been a short period which brought no change to his life; except the addition of several hours’ flying time in his logbook. Now, in the early summer of 1942, four months seemed as long as a peacetime year used to. No operational fighter pilot could delude himself with the certainty that he would live so long.

  The mental pictures, lively with their accompanying noises, were sharper now than they had been for six months. R.A.F. Monkston lay only another twenty miles ahead; and it was at Monkston that he was stationed when war broke out.