And beyond the hill, smoke still boiled upwards from the remains of Rory McManners’ Mosquito. No one quite knew what had happened; his number two. Flight Sergeant Lorrimer, had seen the aircraft climb steeply away from attacking a gun emplacement when it had suddenly burst into flames, tipped over and dived almost vertically in the ground. There was no possibility that the calm, quietly-spoken Scot or his navigator could have survived.
The thirteen surviving Mosquitos flew back the way they had come, bypassing Amiens and keeping the River Somme in sight a few miles off their starboard wing-tips. Poix airfield slid by to the left, but this presented no danger to them; Poix was inhabited by a couple of enemy bomber squadrons, but there were no fighter units there.
The real danger lay to the north of their track, at Abbéville, but the Spitfires of 126 Wing appeared to have done their work well. If the Focke-Wulfs had been airborne, they would have been drawn off to the north-east, towards Lille, and would now be short of fuel and ammunition. In any event, Yeoman and his crews saw no enemy fighters; but as they crossed the Channel coast the sleek shapes of 127 Wing’s Spitfires, sent out to cover their withdrawal, came sliding down from the northern sky and wove protectively overhead, detaching themselves only when the Mosquitos were half-way home.
Yeoman led his Mosquitos into Tangmere at 0915. His first task, on climbing from the cockpit, was to walk round the aircraft and take a look at the damage.
He and Hardy had been lucky. Close to the tail a large patch of fabric had been torn away, and several of the wooden spars were punctured by shell splinters. The port wing, too, was riddled with holes outboard of the engine, and there were jagged rents in the metal of the engine cowling itself. It was a miracle that nothing vital had been hit.
Hardy poked an exploratory finger through one of the holes in the fuselage and grimaced. ‘Must do something about these moths,’ he said. Then, looking sideways at Yeoman, he added:
‘Tough about poor old Rory.’
Yeoman nodded. ‘Yes, tough. And the others. Come on, here’s the bus.’
The RAF coach deposited the crews outside the debriefing-room and they tramped inside, slumping wearily at the trestle tables and reaching out to take cigarettes from the packets that had been placed there by one of Freddie Barnes’ acolytes. Yeoman and Hardy went over to the table in the centre of the room, the one with the model of the tunnel system on it. The Intelligence Officer was hovering behind it, peering short-sightedly through the lenses of his spectacles at the faces of the aircrews in the room, lines of anxiety furrowing his brow. He waved to a little WAAF aircraft woman, who brought two mugs of tea across for Yeoman and his navigator.
‘How did things go?’ Barnes asked.
‘We lost Rory McManners,’ Yeoman replied wearily. ‘Sergeant Carr, too, and Atkins, the new boy. And their navs, of course. No chance of getting out at that height.’
Barnes’ face fell. The former schoolmaster would never get used to it, as long as he lived — this snuffing out of young lives, the striking out of names from the nominal roll of a squadron. He blinked rapidly, then, after a pause, he said:
‘The target. What about the target?’
Yeoman stretched out an arm and brought his clenched fist down on top of Barnes’ model. The papier mache crumpled. ‘It blew up,’ the pilot said. ‘Or rather, it collapsed on top of itself. The whole hill, I mean. We must have touched off something pretty big inside there.’
Barnes sighed, took some more details from Yeoman and Hardy, then went off to confer with the other crews. Thank God, he thought, that it had not all been for nothing. Then, almost immediately afterwards, he felt bitter guilt for allowing the thought to enter his mind; for what cause, however outwardly valid, could justify the brutal extinction of men like McManners? And who would replace them in the years to come?
Had Barnes but known it, Yeoman was thinking along much the same lines. Later, when the bar opened at lunchtime, he ordered six pints of beer, one for each of the men who had not returned. He carried them over to a table in the corner and began to drink them systematically, not speaking to anyone.
The others left him alone, knowing that this was his ritual prelude to the writing of letters to next-of-kin, a job he hated. There had been times in the past, fortunately very few, when Squadron Leader George Yeoman had got very, very drunk.
Chapter Five
Yeoman and Clive Bowen, whose 373 Squadron had flown into Tangmere a few days earlier, at the beginning of May, sat in deckchairs outside 380 Squadron’s dispersal, sheltered from the gusty wind by a small caravan that was used as a rest-room by the armourers. The two men were taking advantage of a period of sunshine, unusually weak for the time of year, that had brightened up what was otherwise a grey and blustery day.
‘It doesn’t look too promising, George,’ Bowen commented, looking up at the clouds that were once more rolling in to extinguish the sun.
His companion agreed. ‘I wouldn’t like to be those poor bastards out in the Channel,’ he said, ‘sitting there in the middle of a force five westerly, with damn all to do except be seasick and worry about what they’ve got coming to them.’
He was referring to the quarter of a million British, American and Canadian troops who, battened below decks in five thousand ships of all shapes and sizes, blind to everything except the constant misery of nausea, were riding the forbidding waters of the Channel in their various assembly areas. Some of them had been on the vessels for days, praying for the moment when they would be spewed ashore on the coast of France, for shells and bullets would be a merciful alternative to the heaving and tossing of the steel-plated decks and the acrid stench of vomit.
The great armada stretched all the way round the south coast of England, from Cornwall to the Thames, lashed by the spume wind-whipped from the wave crests. Inland, the past few weeks had seen the coastal belt turned into an armed camp, stiff with trucks, guns, armoured fighting vehicles and heavy support equipment. Nothing like it had been known in the history of warfare; and yet, only four years earlier, these same waters had seen the remnants of a defeated army struggling back from the bomb-swept beaches of Dunkirk.
The man whose naval forces had rescued a third of a million men from destruction in 1940 was once again in command of a mighty naval force, one which, if all went well, would enable the Allies to smash a breach in Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’ in just a few more hours. His name was Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; it was a name uttered with respect by the men who had once fought in Flanders as boys of eighteen and nineteen. Now, with the campaigns of the Desert and Italy behind them, they were going back to France, supremely confident that this time there would be no retreat.
‘“Fair stood the wind for France,”’ said Yeoman, quoting vaguely from Drayton’s Battle of Agincourt.
‘What occasioned that sudden burst of poetry?’ Bowen grinned. Yeoman smiled back.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Clive. It’s just that…well, I was at Dunkirk, you know, and I can’t help feeling a great surge of — pride, I suppose it is. No, that’s not it. Pride isn’t the right word. Somehow, it’s all so — so appropriate. Ourselves…the boys from the Commonwealth…the Yanks…all of us one big force now, bent on giving that little bastard in Berlin just what he deserves after holding most of Europe in slavery for all these years. It’s been a long, long haul,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘When do you think they’ll go?’ Bowen asked, meaning the invasion fleet.
Yeoman shrugged. ‘When the wind drops, I should imagine. Can’t keep them sitting out there indefinitely. I hope it’s soon, though. I’m getting tired of all this hanging around.’
The squadrons had been on standby for twenty-four hours — as, indeed, had all units of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces. The aircraft — with the exception of the all-black night fighters — were now sporting broad black-and-white stripes on their wings and fuselages as an aid to identification, for in the confusion that would undoubtedly attend the invasion the anti
-aircraft gunners on the ships were certain to open fire on any aircraft that came too close, unless they immediately recognized it as friendly. Also, with large formations of British and American fighters patrolling the beachheads, an operation involving half a dozen different types of aircraft, the possibility of a ghastly mistake was very real.
The aircrews had all been briefed; everyone knew now, after months of total secrecy, that the Allied landings would take place on the coast of Normandy, on a line between the estuaries of the Orne and the Vire.
The task of No. 83 Group’s fighters was to provide air cover, by night and day, for the eastern flank of the invasion, where British and Canadian forces would go ashore on three beaches code-named ‘Gold’, ‘Juno’ and ‘Sword’. Further west, the Americans assaulting ‘Utah’ and ‘Omaha’ beaches would be protected by fighters of the USAAF.
Clive Bowen’s Mosquito night fighters were likely to be the first in action, for — together with other Mosquito night fighter units — they were to patrol the enemy coastline from Cap Gris Nez to Cherbourg, on the lookout for German aircraft attempting to attack the invasion fleet as it moved across the Channel under cover of darkness. From dawn onwards, while single-engined day fighters provided an umbrella over the beaches, the Mosquito fighter-bomber squadrons of the 2nd Tactical Air Force — of which Yeoman’s No. 380 was now part — would fly ‘Ranger’ sorties deep into enemy territory beyond the beach-heads, shooting up enemy airfields and communications. For this task, the aircraft would usually operate in pairs.
There was nothing to do now but wait. Later, when Bowen went off to join his crews at their final briefing for the night’s operations, Yeoman wandered disconsolately round the airfield, itching to get into the air, but knowing that his squadron would not be allowed to cross the Channel until the invasion had actually begun. This restriction was placed on all aircrew who had knowledge of where the landings would take place, for obvious reasons of security.
Yeoman wondered where Julia was tonight, and whether she had a newspaper assignment connected with the coming invasion in some way. Luckily for his peace of mind, he was unaware of her involvement with the Special Operations Executive. They had not met for some time now, but by letter and telephone they had arranged to spend a weekend in London as soon as it was mutually convenient. It seemed to Yeoman, that their times off duty were doomed never to coincide.
He wished that she were with him now, to share this momentous piece of history. It seemed an age since those days they had shared together in France, fleeing one step ahead of the German panzers; days when she had told him, with the utmost conviction, that America would one day be fighting alongside Britain in this war.
He had not quite believed her, then, but her prediction had turned out to be true. Nevertheless, despite all the aid they had given, despite all the lend-lease, he doubted very much whether the Americans would ever have entered the war had it not been for the attack on Pearl Harbour by Japan, Germany’s Axis partner. But perhaps, he told himself, that was uncharitable. In a sense this had been America’s war right from the start, thanks to adventurers and idealists, men like his friend Jim Callender, who had made it their fight long before that day of infamy in December 1941.
Immediately after dinner Yeoman made a tour of the Mess, to round up anyone he could find from his squadron and tell them to go to bed; they were likely to be up well before dawn. He need not have bothered. The anteroom and the bar were empty; it seemed that everyone had made an individual decision that tomorrow might be a rough day and had turned in early. Yeoman smoked a last pipe and followed their example.
*
It must have been one o’clock in the morning, that earth-shaking morning of 6 June 1944, which would forever be known as D-Day, when Yeoman awoke from a fitful sleep. He shook his head to clear it and got out of bed, crossing to the window and opening it wide.
A rising moon, little more than a quarter full, spread its glow over the coast and the Channel beyond. Although he could not see the latter, which was some four miles distant beyond Bognor Regis, he could visualize the great mass of ships which must now be heading in a solid phalanx for their objective on the shore of Occupied France.
The sky was filled with the sound of hundreds of aero-engines. The night vibrated and shuddered with them; the continual roar battered the ears and numbed the senses.
They came in wave after wave, those invisible aircraft, skimming through the moonlit shreds of wind-driven cloud, laden with paratroops or towing gliders; the spearhead of the invasion. Yeoman did not envy the glider pilots, who would have to grope their way down through the night to a precarious landing in the fields of Normandy, with their natural obstacles of high hedgerows. It needed a particular kind of courage to do that sort of job.
Yeoman closed the window and went back to bed, but the roaring overhead continued almost unabated and sleep proved impossible. By the time his batman tapped on the door at 0300, bearing the inevitable cup of dark brown and lukewarm tea (which Yeoman invariably tipped down the washbasin as soon as the man had left, so as not to hurt his feelings) the pilot was up, shaven and dressed.
Dawn was breaking as he ate breakfast, in company with several other drowsy pilots and navigators of his squadron. Outside, across the airfield, there was a sudden roar of massed Merlin engines: the Spitfire boys were already taking off for the beaches.
Yeoman himself took off on 380 Squadron’s first D-Day patrol an hour later, with Warrant Officer Laurie as his number two. The idea was for the Squadron’s Mosquitos to operate in pairs throughout the morning, taking off at thirty-minute intervals, penetrating French territory east of the invasion area and circling round to attack targets of opportunity immediately to the rear of it.
As he climbed out over the Channel, Yeoman was pleasantly surprised to find that the weather conditions were better than he had expected; the forecast had been bad for several days past, but now he found that the cloud base was more than two thousand feet and visibility at least six miles.
Below the speeding Mosquito, the Channel was an awe-inspiring sight. As far as the eye could see, stretching away to starboard, the arrowhead wakes of ships made white furrows in the slate grey of the sea. Above the armada a forest of barrage balloons drifted, silvery blobs against the clouds.
As the Mosquitos approached the French coastline near Honfleur, with Le Havre off their port wing-tips, the eastern sector of the Allied beachhead slid into view. Some distance offshore, two great battleships, standing broadside on to the beach, were hurling salvoes of shells at some target inland, the smoke of their 15-in guns boiling out across the water. More smoke, shot with twinkling flashes, obscured the landing areas.
The Mosquitos pushed inland towards Lisieux, following a parallel road and railway-line that cleaved their way through a valley winding between wooded hillsides. Just short of the town they came upon a train, steaming its way towards the coast, and shot it up with their cannon, leaving it stopped with the locomotive spurting satisfactory clouds of smoke; then, skirting the town to avoid the flak concentrations there, they swung in a broad turn to starboard, following the railroad as it veered off towards Caen.
Five miles west of Lisieux, the line passed through a long tunnel. It had been heavily bombed and blocked by the 2nd Tactical Air Force on numerous occasions, but the enemy had an unlimited supply of forced labour and it had been unblocked just as quickly. Yeoman knew that it had been attacked again the previous evening, during the massive air strikes that had been a prelude to the invasion, but he had decided to take a look at it none the less, and had ordered each Mosquito to be armed with two 500-lb bombs.
The ground around the railway-line looked like the surface of the moon, pock-marked for miles with a rash of craters. The line, however, appeared to be intact, and as they swept on Hardy spotted a plume of steam, rising into the morning air.
It was a train all right, a big locomotive pulling a line of flat cars which appeared to be laden with tanks, and as they dre
w nearer the first part of it vanished into the tunnel like a snake slithering into its underground burrow.
Yeoman called up Laurie on the R/T. There were only seconds in which to act.
‘Get this end of the tunnel.’ he yelled. ‘I’m going for the other end!’
He pulled back the stick, leap-frogging over the high ground just as the train’s tail disappeared into the darkness. He swept over the ridge and brought the fighter-bomber curving round towards the other end of the tunnel, about a mile distant on the other side of the hill, lowering the bomb-doors as he did so. He would use the same technique as the Mosquitos had employed against the V-1 tunnels at St Leu, diving at a shallow angle and then tossing the bombs at the tunnel mouth.
The round, dark maw of the tunnel yawned at him through the perspex of the windscreen. He dropped the nose a little, aiming a couple of hundred yards short, and watched his speed build up to 300 mph. Then he pulled back on the stick, pressed the bomb release, heard the ‘clunk’ of the missiles falling away, held the Mosquito in a steady ten-degree climb for a moment to ensure that they dropped cleanly from the weapons bay, then hauled back hard so that the Mosquito bounced towards the clouds as though tossed from a catapult.
Yeoman kept up the pressure on the stick, pulling the aircraft into the beginning of a loop, then half-rolled out into level flight, looking back as he did so.
Where the tunnel mouth had been there was a tumbled mass of earth and rock. The railway tracks leading to it were buckled and twisted at grotesque angles. Yellow smoke drifted away on the breeze and clouds of chalky dust settled slowly on the hillside.
Laurie’s Mosquito slid into view and came alongside, rocking its wings. Yeoman pressed the R/T button:
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