Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  For a moment, Archie had stood just looking at the aircraft. The wide curve of the wings, the slope of the nose – barely a straight line anywhere. He ran a hand over the cold stressed metal of the wing, wet with condensation as the frost melted.

  ‘She’s a thoroughbred,’ Will had said as they had walked out together, ‘an absolute thoroughbred.’ The sun was well over the hedgerows at the far end of the field and as Archie walked around the engine cowling he was suddenly blinded by the brilliant light.

  ‘All right, sir?’ said his fitter, who was standing on the wing root and polishing the canopy with a cloth.

  ‘Yes, fine, thank you. Perfect flying weather,’ said Archie, hoping he sounded calmer and more nonchalant than he felt.

  ‘Perfect,’ agreed the rigger, who was busy fixing the cable from the starter trolley into the nose of the Spitfire. Archie looked back up at the fitter and noticed he was smiling. Was he laughing at Archie’s inexperience or just being friendly?

  ‘When you’re ready, sir,’ said the fitter, in a thick Scottish accent.

  Archie muttered, ‘Yes, absolutely,’ then stepped up beside him. The paintwork by the footplate was chipped, revealing flecks of bare steel. The tiny half-door hung open, allowing him to lower himself into the narrow cockpit. His fitter helped strap him in.

  ‘OK, sir?’ asked the fitter. ‘Lean forward a little for me.’

  Archie did so, then looked behind him. Only if he really strained could he see the rudder, but the harness felt binding and secure. He nodded to the fitter, who then shut the door. Archie took a few deep breaths, the air around him suddenly close, then began going through his cockpit checks and trying to remember everything he’d been told. Throttle, undercarriage pump, magnetos, canopy release, temperature gauges, oil pressure. Look at it any longer and he’d never get off the ground.

  He waved a gloved hand at the two ground crew, then pressed the starter button. A chug from the engine, then another, the propeller creaking, then suddenly flames spurted from the blackened exhaust stubs, the propeller whirred and the Merlin burst into life, a deep, guttural roar, noisier than any engine he’d heard before. Its pounding pistons vibrated his seat and shook the airframe.

  Blimey, he thought, this is the moment. The moment he’d looked forward to – yearned for – ever since he’d first seen pictures of a Spitfire in one of his magazines four years earlier. Ever since he’d been sent for training. Wasn’t it the dream of every boy in Britain to be doing what he was doing now? And yet he knew he had just one chance to get it right. There was no instructor sitting behind him talking him through what he had to do. Will’s casual briefing had not given him much confidence.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ he’d told Archie, as they had walked around the machine. ‘Yours for an hour. Go and have some fun.’ Then he’d turned back and said, ‘Just watch you don’t push the nose too far forward when you take off or else you’ll flip over. And another thing: bear in mind that this machine is much, much more powerful than anything you’ve ever flown before. Oh, and I almost forgot: wreck this aircraft and there’ll be hell to pay. Serious hell to pay.’ Then he’d winked and wandered off.

  Some briefing, thought Archie. He loved the laid-back attitude of the squadron’s pilots – the devil-may-care approach to everything – but sometimes, just sometimes, he wished Will and Pip Winters and the other seniors would take life a little more seriously.

  Above his feet lay a tank full of high-octane fuel; beyond that, the giant Merlin engine; ahead of that, the whirr of the variable-pitch propeller, very different from the single-speed Harvard. The Spit was unlike anything he’d ever flown before. Nausea rose from his stomach. His mouth tasted sour. The airframe shook; he could feel his entire body shaking with it, like an electrical charge pulsing through him.

  He closed his eyes a moment, breathed in deeply, opened them again and then released the brakes and gently rolled forward. He couldn’t see anything, then he remembered Will had warned him that forward vision was terrible and that during taxiing he should weave from side to side until ready to start his take-off. He’d also been warned that the controls were more sensitive than those of any other plane he’d flown – well, he could tell that just from the way the rudder responded.

  He swung the plane round at the far end of the airfield. A glance at the temperature gauges – already above a hundred degrees. Now facing into the wind, he counted to three. Here goes. Brakes released, throttle open, and then the Spitfire was hurtling across the grass, the surge of power intense. Archie glanced at the vast elliptical wings, visibly straining as the Merlin growled deeper and the speed increased. Stick forward a shade, and the nose dropped, so that he could now see the perimeter rushing towards him. Fifty miles per hour, sixty, seventy, ease back on the stick and suddenly the two of them had left the ground and were surging through the air.

  Hedgerows, houses, trees flashed beneath him. In what seemed like a few moments, the airfield was nothing but a tiny patch of grass behind him. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead as the Spitfire continued its rapid climb. Turning his head from side to side, he tried to work out where he was.

  Shocked by the unaccustomed power, Archie felt completely out of control, as though the Spitfire were running away with him. Think, he told himself. Throttle back, coarsen the pitch – much better. Then he remembered the undercarriage. A manual pump. He looked down and realized he needed to swap hands, but as soon as he started pumping with his right hand, he found his left began aping it and the Spitfire started bobbing through the air.

  As soon as both wheels clicked into place within the wings, he levelled off. Six thousand feet already! And so light on the controls! Perhaps this machine wasn’t quite so formidable after all, and, for the moment, his fears evaporated. As Archie took the plane through a gentle turn, the horizon tilted. Arcing through the sky, he left behind the expanse of clear blue and flew into a mass of rolling white cumulus. He shouted out loud with joy – how many hundreds of thousands of people would wish to do what he was doing, cavorting and dancing around the sky in this wondrous machine? Effortlessly, he climbed over a towering column of cloud, then, laughing, rolled and dived and climbed once more.

  This is perfect, he thought. For this moment in time, he had become the master of all he surveyed: the sky, the clouds were his. Time had stopped. The war no longer existed. A glorious solitude, in which he had discovered harmony with both machine and nature. The morning sun gleamed across the top of the clouds, capping them with shining gold, and Archie understood why many believed heaven lay somewhere high in the sky. At just the slightest command, the lightest pressure, the Spitfire twisted and pirouetted as it was bidden, a mighty beast indeed, but one already tamed.

  ‘Trim her properly,’ Will had told him, ‘and you’ll find her controls are as light as a feather.’ Archie laughed again, climbed and rolled the plane, watched the great wings slice through the sky and felt his stomach churn as the Spitfire effortlessly corkscrewed. Never before had he experienced such pure, unbridled joy.

  What a thrilling moment that had been. He remembered finally landing again, clambering out of the cockpit and jumping down on to legs that suddenly seemed so weak they could barely support him. The mighty Merlin engine had ticked impatiently as it cooled. But the moment of pure joy had passed. Today he had used his Spitfire for the purpose it had been designed for: destroying other aircraft. Killing pilots. He’d killed three men that morning, something he had hardly dared think about until now. He’d barely killed a living thing in his life before – perhaps the odd fly, but that was all. Now three young men were dead because of him. It was incredible, impossible to comprehend. A lump rose in his throat. Outside the rushing train, the Kent countryside looked a picture of peacefulness. A patchwork of fields, woods, villages and farms. He looked at one farmhouse with its high conical-roofed oast house, bathed in late evening sunlight. The trees and hedgerows all seemed to be bursting with life. England looked so beautiful.

&nbs
p; If they lost in France, Britain would be next, and the scene outside his window might be lost for ever. Lost for ever unless he and his comrades in the squadron and in the RAF managed to stop the enemy.

  The enormity of this responsibility now overwhelmed him. I just wanted to fly, he thought to himself. Not kill anyone. Not be shot at. That lump in his throat refused to go away and he now felt tears begin to prick at the corner of his eyes. He glanced at the couple opposite him. The lady looked at him with such pity, such compassion, that he could do nothing but quickly look away and close his eyes.

  It had been such a long and difficult day, and yet Archie knew that this was just the very beginning …

  6

  Grounded

  It was after half-past eleven by the time Archie finally reached Northolt. The train had pulled into Charing Cross by ten, and he was wondering how he might get to north-west London when it occurred to him that someone at the RAF Club might be able to fix up a lift. At any rate, he had thought it worth a try. Walking up through Trafalgar Square, and then down Piccadilly, he had reached the club twenty minutes later.

  No sooner had he walked into the main hallway than an air commodore had looked at him and said, ‘My God, are you all right?’ Archie had explained that he had just arrived back from France and that really, he ought to get back to Northolt.

  ‘I was going to get a bus or something,’ he’d said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the air commodore. ‘I’ve got a driver outside. He’ll take you.’

  And so he had, right up to the main entrance of the Mess.

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ said the driver, as he brought the car to a halt. He jumped out and hurried around the front of the car to hold the passenger door open.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ said Archie.

  ‘You’ll be all right now, sir? Get that head looked at, won’t you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Archie smiled, then shook hands. The driver bade him farewell and drove off. For a moment, Archie stood there, looking up at the sky. It was clear, the stars twinkling brightly. He could see his breath on the night air as he peered towards the bar. The windows had been blacked out, but he suddenly heard laughter. Good, he thought. There’re some still there.

  The intense fatigue he had felt earlier had now gone and so had the sombre thoughts that had plagued him. His head still throbbed, but a sudden wave of excitement allowed him to force the pain into the background. I’ve made it, he thought, and, grinning, he pushed open the door and headed to the bar.

  Pip and Will were playing billiards, but a number of other pilots were still gathered around the bar. Archie glanced at them all, unable to stop grinning, then spotted Ted, slumped against the counter, head in his arm.

  ‘Well, look what the cat brought in!’ said Will, looking up, then slamming the end of his cue on the floor. ‘Honestly, Baby, we thought you’d bought it!’

  Still grinning from ear to ear, Archie now saw Ted suddenly look up, a startled expression on his face. He looked as though he had seen a ghost. And then his expression changed to one of relief and then joy. Pushing back his stool, he jumped down and hurried over to Archie.

  ‘Archie, thank God, I can’t believe it –’ He stopped, looked him up and down, then held out his hand, clasping Archie’s firmly. He was laughing now. ‘It’s good to see you, Archie. Damn good to see you. I thought I’d lost you. Everyone thought …’

  ‘What the hell happened?’ asked Will, slapping an arm round his shoulder.

  ‘One minute you were shooting down a 110,’ said ‘Pinky’ Parmeter, another of the A Flight pilots, ‘and then I lost sight of you.’

  ‘Dennis here thinks you might have got a 109 too,’ said Will.

  ‘I definitely saw you on the tail of one,’ said Ted, ‘then the next minute I was being nobbled myself. I rather had other things to look at then – like my own backside.’

  ‘But I saw you in a spin,’ said Pip, ‘or at least, I guessed it was you. It was certainly a Spitfire, had smoke trailing and looked as though it was plunging straight into Flanders.’

  Archie glanced around, unable to shake off the inane grin he was wearing. ‘I think it probably was me,’ he said. ‘I hit a 109 but then there were two more and one of them got me. It was like being punched sideways, and the next thing I know, the Spit’s on its back and the world is going round.’

  ‘Ah, told like a true raconteur!’

  Archie looked up to see the CO. Dix was a tall man, with a long, square chin and aquiline nose, and wavy, straw-blond hair. He had always seemed an age older to Archie. ‘Welcome back, Archie,’ he said. ‘And congratulations. Your 110 has been confirmed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Archie.

  ‘And what about his 109?’ said Will, an expression of mock outrage on his face.

  Dix smiled. ‘You’ll need to talk to Calder about that. He’s the IO. You definitely saw it go in, did you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Archie. ‘It must have done.’

  Dix raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, you can sort that out with Calder in the morning.’

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Pip, ‘is how on earth you got out of that spin.’ Archie had always liked Pip. He was a small-framed man in his mid-twenties, who always spoke slowly with a tone of perpetual amusement, as though life were all a bit of a joke. Nothing seemed to faze him; Archie envied him that.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Archie. ‘I felt the stick respond, pushed it forward and kicked on the rudder. Next thing I know I’m crash-landing in a field. I was rescued by some Tommies, given a lift to Dunkirk, put on a ship and here I am.’

  ‘Quite an adventure, Archie,’ said Pip. ‘Quite an adventure.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky,’ said Archie.

  ‘Well, good for you, Baby!’ said Will. ‘Now, what you need is a drink, young man.’ He led him to the bar and ordered him a double Scotch.

  ‘Did we get any others?’ Archie asked.

  ‘One or two,’ said Will.

  ‘He reckons he bagged a 109,’ said the CO, ‘but we all know what a line-shooter Will is.’

  Will laughed. ‘I’m not even going to begin to respond to such blatant jealousy. The skipper thinks it’s his right to claim the squadron’s first kill.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Dix. He turned to Archie. ‘We’ve put in claims for six – seven if you include your 109. Ted got two as well, so it looks like you’re both keeping pace.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Archie, turning to his friend.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re back,’ said Ted. ‘I really thought you’d had it.’ He looked up at the bloody bandage. ‘What have you done to your head?’

  ‘Cut it a bit – on the reflector sight, I think.’

  ‘Down that,’ said Ted, ‘then let’s go and find the MO.’

  ‘MO?’ said Will. ‘MO? Who needs an MO when there’s whisky? Come on, Archie, drink up!’

  Archie glanced at Ted then knocked back the Scotch. The spirit burned his throat and he spluttered slightly as it closed his windpipe, then gasped.

  ‘Another!’ called out Will. Several of the others cheered.

  ‘Where’s Dennis?’ said Archie, looking round. He hadn’t noticed Dennis was not there until now.

  ‘Dennis bought it,’ said Will, his voice flat, the exuberance suddenly vanished.

  ‘Bought it? How?’ Archie felt the blood draining from his face.

  Will made a plunging movement with his hand.

  ‘Got hit by 109s,’ said Ted. ‘No doubt about it. I saw him hit the ground.’

  ‘He didn’t get out?’

  Ted shook his head.

  ‘Everyone else got back, though?’

  ‘Yes. It was just you and Dennis,’ said Ted.

  ‘Now,’ said Will, clearing his throat, ‘what about another drink?’

  ‘No, no more,’ said Archie, putting his hand over the top of the glass. ‘Sorry, Will, but I suddenly feel all done in.’

  ‘Ah, Baby needs his sleep, does he?
’ Will patted Archie on the shoulder. ‘All right, Archie. You get your kip.’ He smiled. ‘I’m glad you made it back. One down in the squadron is bad luck, but two was looking downright careless.’ The others laughed, but Archie turned away.

  ‘See you in the morning,’ he muttered, and stumbled with Ted towards the door.

  They found the medical officer, who grumbled a little at being called upon so late, but who none the less cleaned Archie’s wound. The bandage had stuck to the congealed blood, but carefully, using warm water, Flight Lieutenant Dr Grady prised the bloodied bandage free, gave Archie four stitches and then put on a fresh bandage.

  ‘I’m grounding you for twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine, but if you’ve suffered concussion, you should stay off flying for a day.’

  Archie agreed, then, with Ted, they walked in silence up to their digs, a simple square room at the Mess with two iron beds, cupboard, writing desk and chair. Archie thought he was exhausted – his body ached, his eyes stung with fatigue – and yet once he was finally in bed sleep eluded him. For a while, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, marvelling that he was still alive, that he had somehow made it back all the way from that field in no-man’s-land somewhere in France. He’d been so lucky, and yet Dennis was now no more. Dennis, who had been laughing and joking that morning, who had led Archie and Ted in their section, was now no longer a living, breathing, thinking, functioning person, but snuffed out. Dead. It was incomprehensible. And what about those Germans? Three he’d killed earlier that day.

  ‘Archie?’ whispered Ted suddenly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh. So you are awake,’ he said, no longer whispering. ‘I thought you were, but wasn’t sure.’

  ‘I can’t sleep. It’s ridiculous. I can’t stop thinking about Dennis. I can’t believe he’s gone.’

  ‘I know.’ They were silent for a moment, then Ted said, ‘I know this sounds stupid, but I never really gave much thought to people actually dying. I mean, I was nervous this morning – actually, I was terrified – but I hadn’t really considered that anything would happen to anyone else – that you’d get shot down. I can’t believe how naïve I’ve been. Too busy thinking about flying to really consider what we were getting into.’