On your next flight you’ll be keeping the enemy off your leader’s tail. I expect your leader will have some words of advice for you on that. But your next ‘instructor’ will be the enemy. Who will show you, not tell you, how he’s just about to kill you. So he can then kill your leader. …He’ll show you. Not tell you.
*
On his Flying Officer’s paypacket now, Mick could send more money home. He’d sent off the majority of his pay every month to date, and did so this time from central London’s ‘Australia House’. The RAAF personnel centre taking up a whole floor of the giant old building was called the Boomerang Club, a place that thronged with Australian aircrew, as did the street outside with servicemen of all types and many nationalities.
Having then wandered down the bustling London street, sandbags bordering every shop and building entrance, it was soon, under a clear mid-morning sky, that Mick O’Regan from Lewisham, Sydney, found himself standing in Trafalgar Square – at the very foot of Nelson’s Column.
He’d long known the name of this famous site, even had a mental picture of it, but realised he’d never given it a proper thought until he stood upon it, a little awed to find it felt like it did. And how it felt – he couldn’t deny it – was thrilling: The column, enormous and towering directly above him, atop it, the great man himself, looking south – at the Empire, Mick presumed, the empire he’d just kept British at his Battle of Trafalgar… Around the column’s base right before Mick were these huge polished metal lions, each as if guarding Britain itself, everything about them saying ‘KEEP OFF.’ Beyond these lay the whole vast symmetry of the square, bordering it, the most monumental buildings, stone pillars, domes and spires, and grand avenues leading off in every direction – down one, Big Ben itself. His vision came to rest, though, on a building his map called ‘Admiralty Arch’, its windows over three giant archways under which traffic streamed. As he gazed at it, Mick assumed it was from one of these very windows that Captain Cook had once looked out and decided to discover Australia before the French did. It was a strange feeling, looking at the windows in which such decisions had been taken, and to be standing on the very spot from where the influence of an entire empire had fanned outwards: So much of the world he knew, it came from here. The English language, most importantly, so Jules Bellingham-Pitt had vowed late one night…
Bally peculiar race, you Irish… You and your love of English. Little wonder given my lot outlawed Gaelic… Michael, my dear chap, there’s one thing you must promise me you’ll never forget: The English language. Your people paid a hell of a price for it. And now you own it. My people once said it was all your people could own… Now you do. And no one can take that away from you. Ever.
The thought reminded Mick of another late night, and a very different sort of voice: that of Dave Matthews, one night on lookout duty mid-Atlantic. He’d been no slouch on the subject of language – Dave was no slouch on any subject – for Mick, heaven-sent distraction against the thought of the torpedo that might hit the side of their ship at any second…
Y’know, mate… if the Germans win this, that’s what we’ll be speaking. German. Now, I’ve heard tell it’s real nice language – real expressive… But they’ll make us . And I don’t see why the fuck I should. I mean, who the hell are they to tell old Dave Matthews how t’speak? …Fuck ’em, I say.
Mick looked up at Nelson again. He hadn’t planned to be here. Quite the opposite. Still, here he was.
In Trafalgar Square.
And in complete agreement with Dave Matthews.
Fuck ’em.
He leaned for a moment against the massive stone slab pedestal of the column’s lion guardians, only to wish he hadn’t: It proved to be coated in soot and grime. A few hundred years of both it seemed…
CHAPTER NINE
Mick had given it everything. Absolutely everything. And the Spitfire IX had made it so very easy to give.
Oddly though, his new leader, a Pole, either wasn’t a particularly skilled flyer or couldn’t be bothered tailing Mick too closely through his ‘check flight’. In any case, after landing, taxiing, parking, switches off, Mick climbed out of the cockpit of his new Spit, and, standing on the wing-root for a moment, could not help just a bit of a smile; he’d flown the new Spit well and he knew it. Just as the Pole trudged past, pronouncing one word as he did.
‘Shit.’
Mick’s smile dropped flat. ‘… Eh?’
The Pole only huffed over his shoulder, ‘Your flying it is worth shit.’
At a complete loss, Mick jumped down onto the grass and jogged to catch him up. For the life of him, he could not remember ever having flown with more confidence of control over an aircraft, and, when alongside the Pole, Mick’s words simply issued: ‘What the fuck’s wrong with it?’
‘Everythink,’ breathed the Pole. ‘You have learned to fly most beautifully, most precisely. Unless you un-learn you are deadmeat. Because the so very precise German pilot behind you will know where your aircraft will be in next moment and put his bullets there precisely. I have had other so very nice pilots like you as my wingmen before. They now are dead. And so will you be. And bluddy so will I. Unless you bluddy un-learn.’
*
His name was Feliks Brozek.
He looked like a wrestler except in miniature, his eyes, his whole face set in a perpetual squint. He was a Flight Lieutenant, though had been ‘demoted’, it seemed, some time back – all the way down to Sergeant, evidently, from where he’d worked his way back up. Despite his rank, although required to by air force law, Mick observed that none of the ground staff addressed him as ‘sir’, also that they liked him. And that Brozek called no one ‘sir’ either. As they kitted up for their second flight together, Mick assumed he had nothing much further to lose by asking it…
‘So why’d they demote you?’
‘Which time?’ replied Brozek, adjusting a buckle on his flying jacket. He shrugged within it. ‘In 1940 I was having to fly with a squadron whose leader was very good pilot but with battle tactics out of the bluddy book. Close ‘vic’ formations of three, you know? This was all the time forcing pilots, so as not to collide, to look inwards at each other, not out for the enemy. So too often were our pilots never seeing the enemy which killed them because their leader desired this so elegant formation. I told the fellow to stop it. He would not. So I break his nose. They wanted to put me in military prison for this but they need me to kill Germans so I go from Pilot Officer down to Sergeant – I don’ bluddy care; I was still fighting…’
Mick zipped up his own flying jacket. ‘So what happened to the bloke you hit?’
‘He goes to hospital, we get replacement Squadron Leader, this fellow listens to me, we get new tactics, fellows fly looser, live longer.’
‘Well done,’ offered Mick, fitting into his Mae West vest with the usual difficulty over the bulk of his leather jacket.
‘Is just bluddy commonsense. Then after end of Battle of Britain, I am back up to Flying Officer but is winter, bad weather, so no Germans for a while. Until one day some fly over airfield above low cloud. I request to take off and get the bluddy bastards. New CO says no but I take Kaminsky, we go up anyway and shoot them down. The CO wants I should be a Sergeant again but this would mean I must give back my DFC as only officers can have this medal. But this would mean insult to your King – who gave it to me – so I have to be just Pilot Officer again.’ Brozek pulled on his leather flying helmet, face mask dangling to one side of it. ‘This was the problem with some English back in the early days… Some were very good pilots and some very nice fellows too. But even some of the so very good ones they played by the rules, as you say. They were defending their country. Mine I had already lost. I was killing Germans. This I still am doing.’ He plugged the tip of his oxygen cord into the face mask. ‘When none are left perhaps I can have back my country.’ He toyed with the fastening ring on the end of the cord, muttering as he did, ‘Who was instructor for you at OTU?’
To Mick, the cord, dark blue with gold stitching along its length, looked for all the world like a snake draped round Brozek’s neck. ‘A Squadron Leader Rickard.’
Brozek looked up. ‘… Peter Rickard?’
Mick nodded.
Brozek’s eyes opened almost fully. ‘I know this man. He is decent fellow; I would drink with him.’ He breathed on a lens of his flying googles. ‘He taught you shoot them between the eyes?’
‘No. In the back.’
‘Is correct. Perhaps you last five minutes then. Listen to Feliks, perhaps you last ten.’
*
As they walked out across the aerodrome grass together, Mick saw they were not headed towards the spot they’d parked their Spits the previous day. They were headed, instead, round one side of a hangar.
Drawing into view were two Spitfires with noticeably faded paintwork. They also had the older style three-pipe exhaust stubs each side of their engines, not the Mark IX’s more streamlined six. Brozek explained as they approached.
‘The CO he does not trust me with his brand new Mark IXs… Not where we are going today… I think he is sensible fellow. These are Mark Vs.’ Reaching them, Brozek stopped, and turned to Mick. ‘The Mark V it is bluddy marvellous fighter – against Messerschmitt. Against the new Focke-Wulf it is deadmeat. In Spit IX, if you any good then Focke-Wulf is deadmeat. But only few squadrons have new Mark IX and what if we get sent to Mark V squadron next week?’
‘I’m deadmeat.’
‘Is correct. Unless you do what I shall show you today.’ Brozek paused, his slitted eyes darting around Mick’s face. ‘Today you must un-learn… If you fly precisely, Oregan, with so accurate control of your aircraft, is thing of beauty. But this is for air shows. Not for here. You must not harness the energy of your aircraft. You must unleash it. …You are understanding this perfect? Do not say so if you are not; if you are not I will not fly with you… You stay on ground.’
Mick thought he understood: Let the aircraft sort of ‘follow-through’ as he manoeuvred it, control it less, go with it more: more fluid; more energy; more speed. ‘…Unleash it,’ he murmured.
‘Is correct. Consider, please, the birds. I do not believe a bird decides what it wants to do then does it – It certainly does not look so. It just happens. This is how you must fly. Without thought. This will defy the thinking of the so very, very clever German on your tail. This will defy his thinking because you are not. Against this very clever German, let your aggression take over. Because your aggression will let you to act faster than him. Not thought, act. And you will win, not him.’
*
It was just short of 60 miles east from RAF Redhill to RAF Hawkinge on the English Channel coast. They did it in 12 minutes, and Brozek took them the whole way well below the steeple-tops and smoke-stacks of the towns en route. Coming in to land at Hawkinge, their Spits as ever subtly nose-up in the descent, Mick touched down as usual with the airfield unseen straight ahead. For once he was glad he could do it ‘blind’ like this as the windscreen of his Spit was fairly plastered with squashed bugs: He had never flown such a distance so low and fast and felt Brozek must be leading up to something… A warm, blue morning for whatever that something turned out to be, after taxiing their Spits the moment they’d applied brakes they were being refuelled.
As the ground crew at Hawkinge first scraped, then washed, then polished Mick’s windscreen, the slight relief he felt at the sight evapourated quick smart as Brozek leaned in to Mick’s cockpit and explained.
‘Now you ready for some low flight. Across Channel: Luftwaffe airfield at Wissant, is five minutes.’
‘Right,’ returned Mick. ‘So what’s the, ah…’ He faltered.
‘Strategy?’ offered Brozek.
‘Well… yeah.’
‘Strategy, my friend, is kill another German.’
It was the first time Mick had seen a smile on the Pole’s face. Though it reverted to his usual wry squint as he spoke again.
‘You need to pee?’
*
It had been only a short trudge for Mick to the Dispersals Hut, but not an easy one wearing a parachute, its straps over his shoulders, round his thighs and up between his legs – all clipped into the metal lock and release disc over his stomach, the parachute pack itself thumping heavily against the back of his thighs as he went. It was even more difficult taking the piss itself, the operative part of his anatomy to be located somewhere beneath parachute straps, Mae West, leather flying jacket, battledress then underwear finally, though he managed – only to miss the porcelain at least once as the hut’s rafters shook with roar after roar of Merlin engines overhead, a whole squadron of Spits coming in to land by the sound of it. Urinal aim re-established, Mick went through Brozek’s instructional briefing in his head, the briefing with which he had been issued while trying to miss every steeple, chimney and high-tension cable between Redhill and Hawkinge…
‘Today,’ Brozek’s voice had barked in Mick’s headphones, ‘today we fly loose but as one. Always, always as one. We use each other as bait. As bait, you understand me? Book calls it “Thatch-weave Manoeuvre”. Feliks calls it “I kill your attacker, you kill mine”.’
Mick pulled the chain and zipped up.
*
He headed back out through a group of fully kitted-up pilots reclined in the deckchairs outside the Dispersals Hut – on ‘readiness’, their own Spitfires just a short way off across the grass. Passing these Mick noticed some other pilots walking in across the airfield – the ones who’d just landed, he presumed.
Approaching his Spit, Mick saw Brozek turning towards one of the incoming pilots, and looking animated indeed.
‘East-wood! East-wood! Bob Eastwood!’ hailed the Pole. ‘How are you, my good friend?!’
Brozek had grabbed the pilot by the forearms of his flying jacket, and now caught Mick’s arrival. ‘Is one of your bluddy stupid mob, Mike! But is good bloke; I would drink with him.’ Brozek focused on the pilot once more, his tone still warm, yet lowering a notch. ‘How glad I am to see you again, Bob. How are things?’
The pilot looked haggard, his accent distinctly Australian.
‘Bloody awful, Feliks… Bloody awful.’
Brozek’s voice lowered further, and intensified. ‘What has happened, my friend?’
The pilot ripped off his leather flying helmet, dragged an arm across the sweat of his brow. ‘Just got bounced by Focke-Wulfs, didn’t we. CO bought it.’
Brozek grimaced. ‘The Belgian, yes?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Is bad, Robert. …I am very sorry for you.’
‘Not as sorry as he was,’ returned the pilot. ‘Whole squadron heard him over the air as he went down. On fire and screaming his head off. …Radio stuck on transmit.’
Brozek shook his head slightly. ‘ This very bad for squadron.’
‘Yeah. I had t’bring ’em in f’fuel. The bastards that got us were pissing off anyway – Bet they were very bloody pleased with themselves…’ The Australian pilot’s own focus sharpened at Brozek, as did his tone. ‘An’ I think they’d just called up some reinforcements…’
Brozek clutched his forearms again. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said the pilot.
Brozek spun to Mick, his face wild, voice resolute.
‘In Spit, Mike. NOW.’
A nearby groundcrew Sergeant protested: ‘But they’re only half fuelled, sir…’
‘Is better,’ flung Brozek. ‘We get higher faster.’
*
In the Dispersals Hut, the telephone rang. The Duty-Corporal took the call, leaned out his window and howled. ‘SQUAD-RON SCRAM-BAWLLL!!’ As he did, he noticed two Spitfires already just airborne at the far end of the field.
Wheels up, Mick had his throttle full forward with Emergency Boost just to keep up with Brozek. Just 50 feet off to Mick’s right and slightly ahead, Brozek was keeping them dead flat and low over the countryside, their speed building rapidly as a result – 225, 250, 275 miles per h
our on the dial. Pressed soundly back in his seat with the acceleration, Mick managed a sideways look: They were banking gently to the right now, so gently; Brozek bleeding not a drop of energy in the curve – 300, 325 mph, the rooftops of Folkstone passing on the right, a beach whipping under, out over the water now and straightening. The slate-green rippled surface of the English Channel receded below them as Brozek pulled them into a subtle climb, airspeed now steady on 350. If there was any blue sky out over the Channel it was hidden; a glary layer of stratus cloud at about 2000 feet, the layer seeming to lower down upon them as they climbed. Whatever might await them above it, the next moments would tell.
The last thing Mick saw was Brozek just off to the right. Up into the murk, he was blind. Grey nothingness. He just hoped like hell Brozek would still be there when they emerged – and it might take anything from seconds to long minutes. Yet the greyness was already glowing brighter. Markedly now.
The clean perspex of Mick’s cockpit canopy emerged into brilliant, clear blue sky in all directions, and Brozek still precisely where he had been. As Mick scanned desperately in all directions he could see Brozek’s helmeted head doing the same thing, Mick squinting into the mid-morning sun at which they flew. In his windscreen mirror he saw dark specks… Then, to his right, Brozek’s Spit shooting almost straight up.
Mick pulled back on his joystick handle and followed him, thinking, as he did, that Brozek had just done the worst possible thing in the situation.
Fatal.
If they had enemy fighters on their tail, the steep climb he and Brozek were now both in would lower their speed and German fighters could out-climb Spits anyway! Jesus Christ, they should have pulled a quick and very lateral bank left or right; the one sure thing the Spit V could do was out- turn a German fighter. Yet they had not. Brozek had just got them both killed; they were climbing, vertically now, with German fighters on their tails.
As Mick pulled with Brozek toward the top of their giant loop, now hanging upside-down in his cockpit straps, he expected to see German tracers overtaking his Spit from behind, and knew that, when he did, they would be the last thing he ever saw.
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