Kemp shook his head. ‘No. I think not.’ He leaned forward in his chair and said quietly: ‘We’re going to the Far East, George. Victorious, Indomitable and Illustrious are already out at Ceylon, and my own carrier, the Indefatigable, is leaving to join them in a couple of weeks’ time. We’re going to form a new task force to operate alongside the Americans in the Pacific.’
Yeoman raised his eyebrows. ‘Now that sounds like an interesting job of work,’ he said. ‘One thing I have always regretted is that I never got out to the Far East. Mind you, it can’t have been much fun in the early days, with the Japs shooting our blokes out of the sky like flies.’
‘No,’ Kemp agreed, ‘and if we’d had the equipment then that we’ve got now, it wouldn’t have happened. The tragic, bloody part of it is that we could have had it right at the start of the war, if it hadn’t been for a lot of purblind politicians in the early thirties. Well, I hope they’ve learned their lesson. “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” I can’t remember who said that, but it had better be the motto of this country from now on.’
‘I wonder when it’ll all end, Russ,’ Yeoman said thoughtfully. ‘This war, I mean.’
Kemp shrugged. ‘I’ve a feeling there’s a long way to go yet,’ he answered. ‘Another year, at least, out in the Pacific. Invading Japan is going to be a murderous bloody business; from what I’ve heard, the Japs would rather be annihilated than surrender.’
Yeoman nodded soberly. ‘God,’ he said, ‘there are going to be some pieces to pick up when this lot’s over, and no mistake.’
Both men were silent for a few moments; then Yeoman got up suddenly and slapped Kemp on the shoulder.
‘To hell with it, Russ,’ he said, ‘this conversation is getting too deadly serious. Let’s go and have another beer or six.’
They went back to the noise and smoke of the bar, circumventing a mass of tangled bodies in the middle of the floor where an impromptu game of rugby was in full swing. Freddie Barnes was still at the piano, playing to a dwindling audience; his glasses now hung from one ear and his eyes were slightly crossed.
Clive Bowen rose from the scrum, shedding two sergeants and a flying officer, and yelled: ‘George, you old bastard! Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to buy you a drink all evening.’
Yeoman introduced Kemp to 373 Squadron’s burly commander and the three of them headed for the bar. Bowen got the drinks, then raised his glass to Yeoman and said quietly:
‘Well, George, we’ve been a good team between us, this past year. I wish we were coming with you.’
‘So do I, Clive,’ Yeoman answered. ‘So do I.’
That was the way it always was, he reflected sadly. Shared dangers turned total strangers into good friends; they fought alongside you, lived and played alongside you, and sometimes died alongside you, and then the demands of war one day sent the living on their separate ways. There were inevitable promises of keeping in touch, but one seldom did; paths sometimes crossed again, but such encounters were usually accidental. To Yeoman, an unexpected meeting with old friends such as Russ Kemp and Jim Callender was a source of vast pleasure; but always, deep down, was the pain of knowing that the meeting might be for the last time.
Paradoxically, wartime was the best, and yet the worst of times in which to form close friendships. It brought greater value, greater trust. But often, when friends departed, it was better to leave it there; better, in the long run, not to know what had become of them.
Chapter Ten
The ancient town of Caen was a shambles. Yeoman had never seen anything like it: not in Tobruk, nor Malta, nor anywhere. Together with Hardy and Tim Sloane, he stood beside the ruins of what had once been a church and stared in horror at the scene of utter devastation.
Hundreds of heavy bombers had transformed Caen into a sea of shattered concrete. Walls were still standing, but the bombs had wrought havoc among the blocks of closely packed stone buildings and a mass of rubble stretched as far as the eye could see. Nearly two months after the great bombing attack, bulldozers were still working to clear lanes through the blocked streets, and small groups of silent, haggard civilians wandered through the ruins of what had once been their homes, searching for remnants of their belongings. An appalling stench of death and decay hung over everything.
Hardy summed up the feelings of all three men.
‘Jesus,’ he muttered, ‘This place stinks. Let’s get out of it.’
They got back into their jeep. Yeoman settled himself behind the wheel, but before starting up he pulled out his pipe and lit it in the hope that the tobacco smoke would overcome the smell that cloyed his throat.
‘It makes you wonder whether all that was really necessary,’ Sloane commented as they drove off. ‘I thought we were supposed to liberate the French, not knock hell out of them.’
‘Remember that soldier we spoke to earlier — that Pioneer Corps chap?’ Hardy interjected. ‘He said there weren’t any German positions in the town, they were all outside it. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me.’
They arrived back at the airfield — their home for three days now — in time for lunch and made for the mess tent, although none of them felt much like eating.
There were no permanent buildings at Carpiquet; all those had been destroyed long since. Everyone now lived under canvas, the crews sleeping in tents pitched close to their aircraft dispersals and snatching hasty meals in a communal mess tent which also served from time to time as a briefing-room. A battered caravan served as an operations-room and had once apparently served for other functions too, because when 380 Squadron took it over it had been knee-deep in empty wine bottles. The airfield’s previous occupants had been a wing of Typhoon fighter-bombers; they had left precipitately to another airfield up the coast, hard on the heels of Montgomery’s dash towards Belgium.
Yeoman entered the mess tent and stopped in amazement when he saw Yves Romilly sitting disconsolately in a corner, nursing a half-empty glass.
‘Yves! What the devil are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Paris for another two days.’
Faithful to his earlier promise, Yeoman had sent Romilly off to the French capital on a short spell of leave as soon as the squadron arrived in France. Something serious must have happened to account for his premature return. The Frenchman looked up at him, and with a shock Yeoman realized that there were tears in his eyes.
‘It has changed,’ Romilly said softly. ‘It has all changed. I never dreamed it would be like it is.’
He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, extracted one and lit it. Letting the smoke trickle through his nostrils, he continued:
‘I met people I used to call my friends, and they hardly cared to recognize me. They treated me with a kind of contempt, as though blaming me for not having been in Paris through the Occupation. Most of them were wearing Resistance armbands, although I doubt whether some of them had ever been actively involved.’
Romilly’s face was tragic; it was clear that his morale was at a desperately low ebb. Yeoman and the others listened to him in sympathetic silence, knowing that nothing they could say would be of any use.
‘They didn’t care about us,’ Romilly went on. ‘They had no time for us, we of the Fighting French, who have striven to uphold the honour of France during four long years of shame. They could speak only of their own experiences under the Germans, of the privations and the danger they had endured.
‘Danger!’ he said bitterly. His hands were trembling. ‘What do they know of danger? They are brave enough now, those scum, shaving the heads of women who slept with the Germans, showing off steel helmets taken from soldiers taken prisoner by someone else!’
Suddenly, he seemed to regain control of himself. Looking hard at Yeoman and the others, he said:
‘There will be a reckoning. One day soon, there will be a reckoning.’ He threw the butt of his cigarette on the floor and ground it savagely under his heel.
Yeoman sat down, his elbows on the table, an
d faced the Frenchman.
‘Take it easy, Yves,’ he said gently. ‘We all know how you must feel. Now, why don’t you go over to the MO’s tent, get yourself a sleeping-pill and turn in for a few hours? You’ll feel better for it.’
Romilly shook his head, and Yeoman brought a firmer note into his voice.
‘Yves, that’s an order.’
Romilly looked at him for a moment, then gave a sigh of resignation.
‘Oui mon commandant!’ He rose and left the tent.
Tim Sloane stared after him thoughtfully. ‘He’s cracking up,’ he murmured.
‘He’s had a long war,’ Yeoman commented grimly. ‘Come to think of it, we’ve all had a long war. I just hope we can see more of a future at the end of it than Yves can see, right now.’
Privately, he resolved to keep a tactful eye on Yves Romilly; he had a feeling that the Frenchman might be tempted to do something crazy, and he had come too far to throw away his life at this stage in some senseless act of bravado.
*
During the first week in September 1944, the Allied armies were pushing forward all along the front in hot pursuit of a fleeing enemy. In just four days, the spearheads of Montgomery’s British forces covered the astonishing distance of 195 miles, culminating in the capture of Antwerp — its vital port facilities still intact — and the liberation of Brussels amid scenes of wild jubilation. Meanwhile, General Patton’s racing US Third Army had reached Verdun, on the Meuse, and General Hodges’ US First Army was already probing the defences of the Siegfried Line.
The Battle of France had been won; but everywhere, the Allied armies were meeting stiffening resistance as they approached the frontiers of Germany.
In the air, the Luftwaffe, after its hurried departure from France, had consolidated on airfields east of the Rhine and, thanks to superhuman efforts by the German aircraft industry, had managed to re-equip its front-line squadrons, concentrating on fighters and fighter-bombers at the expense of other types. A few V-1 flying-bombs continued to be air-launched against London, but the bulk of these weapons was now directed against objectives in Belgium newly captured by the Allies; hundreds were launched against Antwerp alone.
The people of London had to contend with a new menace. On the evening of 8 September the first V-II rocket impacted in Chiswick. Launched from a mobile base in northern Holland, nearly two hundred miles away, the rocket had arced nearly sixty miles up into space and then plummeted to earth again at a speed of 3,000 mph. Its coming was completely unheralded; there was no warning, as there had been with the V-1s. Those in the vicinity of the impact point saw a streak of flame in the sky, like a flash of lightning, as the 46-foot missile — made white hot by friction — plunged down through the last miles of the atmosphere; then came the explosion of its one-ton warhead, followed instantly by the whiplash crack of the supersonic shock wave that chased it down the sky.
The following day the Mosquitos of 380 Squadron were hurriedly despatched to the former Luftwaffe airfield of Le Culot, ten miles south of Louvain in Belgium. The move occurred so quickly that there was no time to send an advance ground party; the ground personnel would have to follow as soon as they could in three-ton trucks.
‘Never mind,’ a harassed staff officer at Group HQ told Yeoman over the telephone, ‘there are already a couple of Spitfire squadrons at Le Culot; the airfield had been pretty badly knocked about, but it’s serviceable all right, Don’t worry about a thing, old boy.’
The airfield was indeed badly cratered, but most of the holes had been filled in by troops, willingly assisted by Belgian civilians, and landing presented no problems.
Yeoman went straight to the briefing tent to find out what was going on and found a scene of utter chaos, with RAF types and army liaison officers all apparently getting in each other’s way. At length he spotted a wing commander who seemed to be in overall charge and picked his way towards him through the maze of chairs, tables and charts.
‘380 Squadron?’ the wing commander said, stroking a wispy blond moustache and looking vacantly at Yeoman. ‘Sorry, old chap, don’t know anything about you.’ He stood on tiptoe, peering over the heads of the tent’s other occupants, then said: ‘Ah, yes. There’s the 83 Group liaison type. He might be able to help.’
He pointed to a tall, lean squadron leader who was standing in one corner with a finger stuck in his ear, shouting down a telephone. He had Australia flashes on the shoulders of his battledress blouse and the ribbon of the DFC under his pilot’s wings.
Yeoman came to him just as he put the telephone down and stuck out a hand by way of greeting.
‘George Yeoman,’ he said, ‘380 Squadron. We’ve just arrived, and nobody seems to know what to do with us. Any ideas?’
‘Bill Forbes,’ the other answered. ‘Let’s see now, 380, 380. Yes. Oh, Christ, yes!’ He rummaged in a briefcase and handed Yeoman a bulky folder.
‘You were the chaps who bombed the tunnels at St Leu, weren’t you? Well take a look at that lot. All German rocket sites around the Hague.’
Yeoman flicked briefly through the folder. It was full of target photographs, maps and various other data on typed sheets of paper.
‘Rocket sites?’ he queried. ‘You don’t mean flying-bomb sites? They look pretty similar.’
‘No,’ said Forbes, ‘these are long-range rocket sites. The Huns call the rockets V-IIs and our Intelligence people have known about them for some time. We’ve photographed them, as you can see. The thing is, we didn’t think they’d be operational before we overran that bit of Holland, but we were wrong, because the first one landed in London the day before yesterday, followed in quick succession by several more. We want you to bomb ’em.’
‘What,’ said Yeoman, appalled, ‘all of them?’
Forbes smiled. ‘No, just the ones marked 1 to 6 on the target list. The heavy boys are taking care of the rest. Yours are the most difficult to find.’
‘Thanks,’ said Yeoman wryly. ‘Thanks very much. Can I take all this gen away with me?’
‘Sure,’ said Forbes readily. ‘Just sign here, and take good care of it. Get your boys together and take ’em off to some spare tents you’ll find next to where the Spitfire boys are billeted; you can use them for your accommodation and whatever else you need. We’re having to rough it at the moment, I’m afraid, until we get properly organized.’
As Yeoman turned to leave, Forbes added: ‘Oh, by the way, don’t bother dashing around in a mad panic in search of armament officers and so on. Fact is, we haven’t got any 500-lb bombs for you yet; they’re due to arrive in the morning.’
The tents assigned to 380 Squadron were completely devoid of even the most primitive furniture, and seemed to have been pitched on the muddiest patch of ground on the airfield. Yeoman and his crews surveyed them with dismay.
‘Right,’ said Yeoman, ‘let’s get organized. Yves and Tim, you stay here with me; there are things I want to discuss with you. I’m sending the rest of you off on a scrounging expedition. Happy, you’re in charge. See if you can find stores, if there are any. We need duckboards, paillasses, blankets — you know the sort of thing. If you can’t get them by legal means…’ He left the sentence unfinished, but looked at them meaningfully, producing a number of broad grins as they departed on their errand.
Yeoman found a patch of dry ground and sat down with Romilly and Sloane to study the target folder Forbes had given him. They were still studying it two hours later, when the foraging party returned clinging precariously to an army truck that was laden with all the equipment Yeoman had asked for, and more besides. Within minutes the tents had been converted into billets which, if not exactly snug, would at least keep the crews warm and dry — and there was enough gear stowed away for the ground personnel when they eventually arrived.
Last of all. Hardy reverently unloaded a prodigious quantity of wine and beer. Yeoman stared at it in awe.
‘Good God, Happy,’ he said. ‘Where on earth did you find that?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, skipper,’ his redoubtable navigator replied. ‘They’ll never miss it.’
Who ‘they’ were, Yeoman never found out; and he never bothered to make enquiries.
*
On the eastern fringe of the Hague, the Dutch seat of government, lie the Hague Woods, a long expanse of greenery stretching over a mile and a half from south-west to north-east. They are bisected by New East India Lane; beyond this, in the north-eastern half, is a long lake, and adjacent to the lake is an ancient building that is part of Holland’s heritage — the ‘Huis den Bosch’, or House in the Wood. Built in 1645 as a palace for the Consort of the Prince of Orange, the walls of the Huis den Bosch, over the centuries, witnessed many of history’s milestones. In 1899 the world’s first international peace conference was held there.
That was ironic, for in the autumn of 1944 war arrived on the doorstep of the Huis den Bosch in the form of one of the most futuristic weapons science had devised — the V-II rocket.
The Germans installed a battery of the missiles in a woodland clearing close to the shore of the lake, only a couple of hundred yards from the House. The location was spotted purely by chance by an RAF reconnaissance pilot, who actually saw one of the rockets being launched.
‘There was a bright flash on the ground,’ he reported, ‘and then I saw the V-II emerging from the trees on a long column of flame at what seemed no more than a few miles an hour. It was wobbling slightly at first, then it gathered speed and accelerated at a fantastic rate, straight up in front of my nose, I kept its vapour trail in sight until it disappeared at what must have been more than fifty thousand feet.
Braving intense light flak, the reconnaissance pilot made two low runs over the site and secured the photographs that formed part of the collection in the target folder given to Yeoman. To the RAF Intelligence experts who had studied them earlier, it was immediately apparent that the Germans had selected this site because they believed that the Allied air forces would not dare to attack it for fear of hitting the ancient building. They were wrong.
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