The force on his body was immense. Round and round, the engine screaming, the airframe rattling. Think, think, think.
‘Get out! Archie, get out! Archie! Archie! For God’s sake, get out of there!’
Was that his own voice? Or Ted’s? Terror gripped him, paralysed him. Get out – he had to get out. The hood – he had to get the canopy open. Despite the weight pressing down on him, he forced his hands to where the canopy hooked on to the windscreen and yanked the handle. A jolt, and the canopy slipped back an inch and smoke gushed out, sucked from the cockpit, and now he could see, the ground spinning towards him. He yanked the canopy again, but it was stuck.
Oh, Jesus, no. He pulled again – nothing. Calm down and think. THINK. His mind cleared – he’d been here before. It wasn’t so hard. Stick forward, kick on full rudder, open the throttle, and suddenly the spinning stopped and the Spitfire swooped, inverted, out of its spiralling dive. Again Archie yanked the canopy, and this time, with the strength in his arms returning, it slid open. Quick, quick, get out! The Spitfire had had it, flames licking back along the cowling, but the ground was horribly close now. Ripping off his oxygen and radio leads, he released the harness catch and felt himself falling, tumbling. Gripping the cord, he pulled, felt the pack release and a moment later the parachute billowed open, yanking his shoulders. He cried out, then saw his Spitfire hit the ground half a mile away and explode.
Seconds later, the ground was rushing up towards him – a cornfield, a wood at one end, the vague impression of a farmhouse a short distance away, and then, whoomp, he landed. A bolt of pain shot from his leg right up his back. Gasping, he hit the quick-release catch on his harness and lay back, grimacing. His right leg was sticky with blood. But I’m alive, he thought. I am alive.
For some minutes he lay there, surrounded by ripe, unharvested wheat. It smelled of earth and dust, and somehow gentle and good and peaceful. An image flashed across his mind: the plunging, spinning Spitfire, the cockpit filled with smoke, the paralysing panic. He’d not seen his attacker. Not seen him at all. He thought of the poster in the dispersal hut, a cartoon with the warning, ‘Look out! It’s the one you don’t see who gets you!’ He’d thought he’d developed into quite a good fighter pilot, but who was he trying to fool? He’d been shot down three times. Three times! And yet he’d survived every time – and here he was again, not eviscerated, but alive, even if his leg was agony. No wonder Jock had started to call him Lucky. Above him, the sky from which he had fallen at such speed. Deep and endless blue, but marked with swirls of white contrails. At least he’d saved Ted, he thought. He hoped they’d all got back all right.
Shouts not far away, then rustling, and suddenly a black Labrador was standing over him, snuffling and licking his face.
‘Nelson! Nelson!’ someone shouted. The dog looked up and barked. A moment later, a boy – maybe eleven or twelve – appeared.
‘Dad! He’s here!’ he yelled. Turning to Archie he said, ‘Are you all right?’ and at the same time saw his bloodied leg.
‘I think so,’ said Archie, ‘although my leg hurts rather.’
‘We saw you coming down.’ He made a diving movement with his arm. ‘Your plane hit the field over there.’ He pointed.
‘I know – I saw it hit before I landed.’
A middle-aged man appeared, wearing an open-necked cotton shirt and soft brown hat, and with gaiters round his legs.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ll get you sorted. How bad d’you think your leg is? Let me have a look.’ He crouched down.
‘I’m not really sure. I wasn’t aware of it until I landed. I’m sorry about your field.’
The man waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry. You very considerately crashed it into a pasture. Gave the sheep a bit of scare, but no crops lost.’ He smiled. ‘I’m David Galloway, by the way,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m the farmer here.’
‘Archie Jackson. Where am I? Last time I looked we were over north Kent.’
‘You’ve come down on the North Downs. Between Wye and Canterbury. Quite a battle going on up there.’ Galloway peered at Archie’s leg. ‘Looks like you’ve been hit in a couple of places.’ He pulled out a large spotted handkerchief. ‘I’m going to tie this around the top of your thigh, then, if you think you can manage, we’ll get you up and I can help you to the house. All right?’
Archie nodded, then, as Galloway tied the tourniquet, clenched his teeth as new barbs of pain shot through him.
‘Shall we try?’ said Galloway.
Archie gasped and nodded again.
‘Put your arm around my neck,’ said Galloway. ‘One, two, three!’ He straightened and Archie was pulled up, hopping on one leg. He gasped again, his breathing heavy.
‘All right?’ said Galloway.
‘Yes – yes, thank you.’
Ahead, hurrying from the farm, were several soldiers. ‘The Home Guard to the rescue.’
Good, thought Archie, because this hurts like hell.
‘We’ll wait, shall we?’ said Galloway.
‘Did you get any?’ the boy now asked Archie.
‘Er, yes, I did as a matter of fact,’ Archie replied. ‘A 109, just before I was hit.’
The boy looked impressed. ‘Have you got many?’
‘Eddie!’ said his father. ‘You shouldn’t ask things like that. It’s enough that he’s getting into the sky every day.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Archie. ‘Actually, I’ve got eleven and a half confirmed.’
‘Blimey!’ said Eddie. ‘An ace twice over!’
‘You might not be adding to that for a bit, though,’ said Galloway.
Archie hadn’t thought of that. He felt his spirits rise. Perhaps he would see Tess. Maybe I’ll get some leave. Then he chided himself; there were the others to think about. More than that – there was the small matter of stopping the Germans invading their country. According to what he’d read in the papers, Britain was facing the greatest threat since Napoleon – and here he was, thinking of leave and Tess!
The four men from the Home Guard reached them. They were all middle-aged except for the officer, who wore a colonel’s uniform from the last war, and, Archie guessed, was in his sixties.
‘Colonel Hanbury from the Wye Home Guard,’ he said. ‘Come on, chaps,’ he said to his men, ‘let’s lift this young man.’
Two of them made a cradle with their hands, and the third helped to hoist Archie up. He felt embarrassed, a ridiculous figure being carried through the corn. It reminded him of being lifted from the rugby field with a broken leg as a twelve-year-old. The memory of that sense of shame flooded back now.
‘I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance,’ he said.
‘Not at all, not at all,’ said the colonel, who appeared to have assumed command of the situation. ‘Have you right as rain in no time.’
At the farmhouse, they laid him on a sofa, Mrs Galloway cutting away his trouser leg and gently dabbing at the wounds with warm water.
‘How old are you?’ she asked. She had a soft, gentle face.
‘Nineteen,’ he said.
‘Goodness,’ she replied. ‘So young. You’re still a boy.’
Soon after, an army ambulance arrived. Archie was given a shot of morphine and put on to a stretcher. He felt suddenly very tired.
‘Good luck,’ he heard the Galloways say. The Home Guard seemed to have gone.
‘Thank you,’ said Archie. ‘Thank you for helping me.’ He put his hand to his neck. Good, the scarf was still there. He really did feel very tired. He was vaguely conscious of being in sunlight again, and then almost immediately it was shut out and he was bumping down a lane. And at that point, consciousness left him.
The same day, around four in the afternoon. Group Captain Guy Tyler was in his office in King Charles II Street when the Air Ministry operator put a call through to him.
‘Hello, Pops?’
‘Ted, are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine, although I nearly
wasn’t. Look, I’m sorry to ring you at work – I know how busy you are, but –’
‘Ted, it’s all right – honestly. What’s happened?’
‘It’s Archie.’
Oh, no, thought Tyler. He was very fond of Archie – and he knew what a good friend he was to Ted and how much Tess thought of him.
‘He’s been wounded. Not too badly, though.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Pops, he was saving my life. I was being hammered – this 109 – I don’t know how he did it, because we all thought a 109 couldn’t out-turn a Spit – but he was turning inside me and I couldn’t dive because a 109 can definitely dive faster than a Spitfire, and I was moments away from being badly clobbered, and then Archie swooped in and shot him down, but was then shot down in turn, and I watched him go into a vertical spin, trailing smoke, and I honestly thought he’d been killed – God only knows how he got out of that spin, but he did and bailed out, but he’s been shot up in the legs and he’s now in the Kent and Canterbury Hospital.’
‘All right, all right, Ted – calm down.’
‘Actually, I am all right – I’m not calm, but I am all right, anyway. Skipper says I can go down and see him later, but I wanted you to tell Tess. Will you do that, Pops?’
‘Of course I will. And well done – all of you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m very proud of you, Ted.’
‘And tell Mama I’ll be back tomorrow. I know I said tonight, but it’ll have to be tomorrow now.’
‘Of course. And I’ll go and find Tess right away.’
Ted rang off and Tyler sat at his desk and thought for a moment. He had seen plenty of vertical spins in the last war, and only one when a pilot had managed to pull out successfully. The problem was that they had had no parachutes then – Trenchard wouldn’t allow them. If one ever got into a vertical spin, the chances were that your kite was finished already, even if one did manage to pull out of it. Terrifying, he thought. Absolutely terrifying. Thank God they had parachutes now.
He also knew that a 109 could out-turn a Spitfire. Tests had been carried out on a captured model and had proved it conclusively. They had decided, however, to keep that one quiet; it was a difficult manoeuvre and there was felt to be no benefit in undermining the confidence they all had in the manoeuvrability of both the Spitfire and the Hurricane. But perhaps, he thought, he would explain it to Ted. After all, forewarned was forearmed. Hmm. He would think about it.
Having told his secretary he was stepping out for ten minutes, he walked down the stairs and along a corridor to where Tess was working, then, having spoken to her superior, waited for his daughter to appear.
‘What is it, Pops?’ she said, worry etched on her face.
‘Archie’s been wounded.’
She put her hands to her face. ‘Oh, no. Badly? He’s not burned, is he?’
‘No, no, he’s all right. He’s going to be fine. Wounded in the leg, that’s all.’ He put his arm around her. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go out and get some tea. We’ll go to that café in the park. The war can wait for us for twenty minutes.’
She nodded, then said, ‘What happened, Pops?’
He repeated what Ted had told him.
‘Can I go and see him?’
‘I’m sure. Let me have a word. Perhaps you can go down tomorrow.’
‘I am owed a day off, actually, because I worked all weekend.’
‘There you are, then.’
They found the café, bought two cups of sweet tea and a bun each, and sat down at a small table in the sun overlooking the lake.
‘Poor Archie,’ she said.
‘Or perhaps he’s been rather fortunate. He’ll be out of the battle for a bit.’
She brightened. ‘I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t bear the thought of them both being at Biggin and so in the front line. You should read Archie’s letters. He tries to be cheery and to make light of it all, but they’ve been flying three sorties a day, and meeting formations of aircraft sometimes sixty and even a hundred strong. They’re exhausted.’
‘I know.’ In fact, he was aware that 337 Squadron were about to be rotated out of the front line. He wasn’t quite sure when, but any day now. Dowding and Park had concluded it was time for a different squadron to take the flak at Biggin.
‘Pops, two weeks ago, you said we’d know by now which way the battle was going. Do we? Are we winning, do you think?’
Tyler took his daughter’s hand and smiled. ‘I think we might just be starting to, yes.’
25
Convalescence
Saturday 31 August, around seven in the evening. King’s Cross Station was busy. A mass of uniforms – soldiers, sailors, airmen – as well as civilians clambering down from trains, boarding trains; some hurrying along the platform, others ambling; porters with trolleys piled high with luggage. The hiss of steam, the clack of shutting doors, the shrill blast of the guard’s whistle. A low hubbub of British men, women and children, and, Archie noticed, a fair few foreigners besides: some Canadian troops, for example, stood together, smoking, as he and Tess walked past towards his train.
Reaching the sleeper, he stopped and turned, putting down his case.
‘Thank you for meeting me today,’ he said, ‘and for seeing me off.’
She hugged him. ‘Have a good time with your family.’
‘I will. And thank you for coming to visit me in hospital too.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ she said. ‘Scotland seems such an awfully long way.’
‘I’ll miss you too, but it’s only a week. It’ll go by in a flash.’
‘Let’s hope we won’t have been invaded by then.’
Archie smiled. ‘No chance.’
She squeezed him tightly, then kissed him, and he turned and swung his case on to the train, then carefully hoisted himself up using his crutch. The door shut with a loud clack, but he turned and leaned out of the window and took her hands in his. Steam swirled along the platform from the locomotive, then suddenly a whistle blasted and with a slow, deliberate chunt, chunt, the train began to move. Tess kept pace, walking then running along the platform. Then, as the train slowly gathered speed, she let go and Archie watched her waving from the platform, until, in a flurry of steam, she disappeared from view.
He found his cabin and, although it was a twin, was pleased to discover he had it to himself. The bed had yet to be made up and so for a while he sat on the seat, his leg straight up in front of him, staring out of the window.
The fragments of a cannon shell had done for him. His leg had been lacerated in several places, but no bone had been broken, and no artery severed. All the pieces had been taken out – the surgeon had presented them to him in a small tin pot – the wounds stitched and dressed, and five days later he had been discharged, the doctor assuring him that with a bit of rest, he would soon be ‘as right as rain’.
‘Take a week’s rest, young man,’ the doctor had told him. ‘Where’s home?’
‘Perthshire, sir.’
‘Perfect – best place for you. Get away from it all. Rest the mind as well as the body.’ He had signed Archie’s release form. ‘Good luck. You’ve been lucky, Jackson. A half-inch to the left with that big piece and it might have been a very different story, but, as it is, I’m expecting your leg to heal very nicely. You have a GP up in Perthshire?’
‘My father’s a GP, sir.’
The doctor had laughed. ‘Well, well – you are lucky. Your father can take out the stitches for you. I’ll book you in for a medical on Sunday 8 September. Then, assuming all is well, you should be fit enough to rejoin your squadron.’
Archie opened his bag and took out a paperback and his journal. Ted had brought it down that first evening. He’d still been a bit dazed then, doped up as he was with morphine, but Ted had been profusely grateful to him. ‘You’d have done the same,’ Archie had told him, ‘and, anyway, I didn’t see the blighter that got me. That was my fault and because I forgot to look roun
d rather than because I nobbled your Hun.’
The next day Tess had arrived. One minute he’d been asleep, the journal resting on his lap, the next he had opened his eyes and there she was, a vision of loveliness, standing before him. She’d stayed all afternoon, and outside the rain had poured down. There had been little going on in the air that day. She had told him that her father was more optimistic now, that he thought the RAF was slowly but surely winning.
‘But he’s worried about London,’ she said, ‘now that we’ve bombed Berlin.’
‘Have we?’ Archie had replied. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t think we could fly that far.’
‘Pops was against it,’ she told him. ‘He told them that the RAF was surviving without too much damage to their airfields and that if we bombed Berlin, the Luftwaffe would turn on London in retaliation. Apparently, Churchill said that if the RAF bombed Berlin, it would show the world we could fight back and hit at the heart of the Reich.’
‘And so we really have bombed Berlin?’
‘Yes. It’s a little frightening to think they might start bombing us.’
‘I don’t think I like the thought of that at all,’ Archie had told her. ‘I’d be worried stiff about you.’
‘Well, they haven’t yet. Maybe they won’t after all.’
They had also talked of their plans – their tour of Scotland on the motorcycle and sidecar – of things that one day they would like to do and how they wanted to live their lives. There was so much future to be had: there was the perfect house to live in, or owning an open-topped sports car, in which they would travel around Europe after the war; and there was an unspoken understanding that these things would be done together, even though Archie thought, But I’m still only nineteen, and you’re the only girl I’ve ever really known.
Two days on, the weather had once again closed in, and later in the afternoon Ted had turned up again, this time with Jock and Charlie Bannerman. And they brought news: they were moving. 337 Squadron had been posted to Boscombe Down, near Salisbury, in 10 Group.
‘So hopefully we can put our feet up a bit.’ Jock grinned. ‘God knows, we could all do with a breather. We lost a couple more yesterday, I’m afraid.’
Battle of Britain Page 24