A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  And then he saw them. Ten miles ahead. The once tight bomber formation spread out now over miles of sky. A bomber dropping in a ball of fire. Another with one wing gone, twirling down like a leaf from a tree. The vicious little Messerschmitts and the Spitfires churning in and out among the bombers. A Spitfire went into a dive and never pulled out of it. One of the Hurricanes rolled lazily past, flames roaring out of the cockpit, through the black form of the pilot now mercifully dead. Squadron Leader Powell’s plane. Then Barratt’s voice through the cacophony of the radio.

  “I’ve been hit! I’ve been hit!”

  He looked wildly around but could not see him. Many of the bombers were jettisoning their loads now and breaking out of the fight. Time to go for all of them.

  “This is Fox Green leader … Skipper bought it … break for home. Buster!”

  He power dived for the coast and pulled out low over the sand dunes. A glance in the rearview mirror. Other Hurricanes behind him. He dropped lower, keeping twenty feet above the flat sea, and set a course for the Kentish coast.

  JOLLY RODGERS SAT unmoving in his neat little station commander’s office. The window was open and he stared unseeing at the bright grass of the airfield, the distant woods.

  “We were always such a tight little group,” he said in a dull, faraway voice. “Pals, Ramsay. All good pals together. Powelly and me … ten years. In the squadron every weekend … in the City during the week. I’m a solicitor, you know. Weeks, Parsons, Rodgers, and Bolton … Gough Square. I can’t tell you how many cases old Powelly pleaded in court for me. Bloody fine lawyer. Finer man. Three kids. Not fair, Ramsay. Powell gone … and Shepherd. Young Barratt. Wilson saw him go. Plane looked okay. Must have been killed in his seat.” He wiped a hand slowly across his forehead. He looked suddenly very old and tired. “They’ll be sending a new skipper tomorrow and replacements. You’re a level-headed chap. Natural flier. Two planes to your credit now. Damn good show.” He sighed deeply and continued to stare through the window as though hoping to see Squadron Leader Jeremy Thomas Powell come skimming in over the trees in time for lunch. “If ops scrambles the squadron this afternoon, which they probably will, you’d best take command of it.”

  “Thanks. And I’m sorry, Jolly.”

  “Of course, old man … of course.”

  Derek walked toward the mess, still wearing his cumbersome Irvin suit and flying boots. The squadron leader of the Spitfire squadron came up to him on a bicycle and stopped. He was a tall, rangy-looking man with thick eyebrows. A regular. “Ramsay. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sorry we had such a brief meet-to this morning. Shame about your skipper. You chaps did bloody okay this morning. Lost three, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We lost two of ours. But bloody pranged them proper, eh?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Break the bastards up. That’s the ticket, Ramsay. Give ‘em a squirt and look for another. Rattle the bastards. Well, see you in the mess. Buy you a beer.”

  Derek watched him cycle furiously off. He paused for a moment and looked out across the field. The ground crew were working on the planes, fuel trucks—so damn few of them—moving from one to another. Fitters, mechanics, and armorers swarming over their particular plane. Getting them ready. Probably fly out in an hour or so. Back across. Today … and tomorrow. And all the tomorrows to come.

  14

  THE FEW MATILDAS that were left were run into the ditches so that only the turret and the two-pounder gun could be seen above the ground. The light tanks were parked in strategic spots among the rubble at the edge of the town to serve as machine-gun support for the infantry. Their engines were drained of oil and allowed to run until they smoked and died. There was no fuel left in the dumps to move them very far anyway.

  “It’s dig in and pray,” Fenton said, pulling the cork on a bottle of wine. He walked around the shell-holed post office that served as his command post and splashed wine into the tin mugs of his junior officers. It was an hour past sundown, but the room was bright from the burning buildings across the street. No one was fighting the flames. There was no water and less time. “I want the buggers to pay for every foot of ground. Make that clearly understood, Tomlinson. No indiscriminate firing. Make every bloody shot count.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said. He was a young man, his eyes sunken in a drawn face. He looked ancient.

  “Forlorn hope,” the general muttered, pacing the room with its counter and clerks’ cage, the postal regulations set in a framed box on one wall, the glass long shattered. “I was a boy during the Boer War. One heard a good deal of that expression then … ‘forlorn hope’ … the gallant charge of doomed men. Boer words actually … verloren hoop … lost troop. That’s us, lads, in case no one is aware of it.”

  There was some strained laughter and the men drank their wine and left.

  “Not the most encouraging little speech I’ve ever heard,” Albert said. He was seated on the countertop, legs dangling, nursing his cup of wine.

  “I’d be a proper shit if I told them any different. They’re good lads and appreciate the truth—even if it is a trifle nasty.”

  “‘Trifle’? You sounded like a Spartan general at Thermopylae.”

  Fenton snorted and downed his wine in a gulp. “The old Spartans prettied themselves up before battle. Did you know that? Plucked their body hair and painted their lips and eyes. Can you see my lot doing that? Take an order from the king to make them clean their fingernails. My boys won’t die gloriously, they’ll just die—scruffy and tough to the bloody end. You’ll see.” He frowned and opened another bottle with the corkscrew in his pocketknife. “To be frank, I hope you don’t see. I’m ordering you off. Go back to Blightly and do your writing there.”

  “You can’t order me to do anything. All you can do is kick me out of your area.”

  “Which is the blasted trouble with civilians. Never do what they’re told.”

  There was a stir outside and a sergeant stuck his head through the jagged gap where a door had once been. “General White arriving, sir.”

  The elderly corps commander came into the room, stepping carefully over the rubble.

  “Hello, Chalky,” Fenton said. “Care for some plonk? A Cotes du Rhone. Modest, but pleasant.”

  “I don’t think so, Hawk. Thanks just the same.” He sat wearily on a bench, removed his cap, and slapped the dust from it. His kindly face was ingrained with soot and his mustache gray with ash. “Orders came in for you, Hawk. Direct from Downing Street. The French will take over your positions tonight. You’re to pull your people down to the beach.”

  “Bugger that.”

  “An order is an order. If it were up to me I’d gladly sell you to Jerry for thirty pieces of silver—less, even. You can be such a pain in the arse.”

  “Now look here, Chalky—”

  “No arguments please. I’ve been a firm supporter of your theories for over ten years. The tank is the key to victory. Everyone knows that now. Winston doesn’t want his few experts dead or lolling away in prison camps. Don’t be a fool, Hawk. Get your mob to the beach as quickly as possible. There’ll be three destroyers coming in before midnight and you’d damn well better get on one of them.”

  Fenton poured wine into his cup and handed it to the general. “I would appreciate your judgment, Chalky.”

  The man took a sip. “Good body. Soft on the palate. You might leave some bottles behind. The French will appreciate it.”

  They moved through the shattered, burning town and down to the beach. Night brought little relief from the bombing. Parachute flares drifted eerily above the harbor, bringing into sharp relief the wooden girders of the long pier. Stukas dived through the sulfurous mist of the flares, aiming for the pier and the long lines of shuffling men, but their bombs fell wide.

  “A bloody charmed life that pier,” one of the naval embarkation officers said.

  Fenton eyed the rickety structure dubio
usly. “And we’re to go out on that?”

  “Afraid so. No other spot for the destroyers to dock. Javelin, Verity, and Venomous are due within the hour … or as soon as the hospital ship finishes loading on. You can stay here if you wish. I have your group down for Venomous. Four hundred and twelve. Is that correct?”

  “More like three ninety—and one civilian.”

  “A civilian? Oh, I say. I wasn’t told. Not Belgian royalty or anything like that I suppose?”

  “Hardly. A newspaper reporter. Albert Thaxton of the Post.”

  “Oh, dear. Probably be charged for the passage I expect. Be all right with him, do you think?”

  Fenton merely stared at him until he hurried away into the flickering darkness.

  “War,” he said to Albert, “is truly the province of madness.”

  DAWN WAS BREAKING across a cloudless sky when the army staff car pulled up in front of the Café Moskva.

  “Care to come up?” Albert asked.

  Fenton shook his head. “Just give her my love. We’ll have dinner together if at all possible.”

  Dinner together! It seemed unreal to Albert. He stood on the pavement in the cool quiet of the London street, the howls and shrieks of Dunkirk still buzzing in his ears. Unlocking the front door, he carried his gear up the stairs and left it in the hall. The bedroom door was open and he could see Jennifer’s blanketed form. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand softly on her shoulder.

  She awoke with a jump and a startled cry.

  “It’s only me,” he said.

  “Oh, my God!” she sobbed, throwing herself into his arms. “Only you! Oh, Thax … Thax … Thax!”

  “I’m as filthy as a tramp.”

  She buried her face in his shoulder and clenched his back. “I don’t care. I don’t care …”

  “I do. I’m a fastidious man. Would you draw me a bath? I’m too tired to move another step.”

  She bounded off the bed, putting on lights, turning on the taps in the bath, boiling water for tea. He continued to sit on the bed, talking to her to keep awake and watching her darting back and forth in her nightgown. She helped him undress, clucking her tongue over the appalling condition of his clothes. “I think we’ll have to burn this lot.” She helped him into the tub and knelt by the side of it to scrub his back vigorously with a sponge.

  “I think I must have died and gone to paradise,” he said, sinking down under the foam.

  “And then bed for you … sleep for a week.”

  “A few hours is more like it. I have to see Jacob.”

  “Jacob can come and see you.”

  “Either way. I must go back, Jenny.”

  “Why?” Her hand shook slightly as she began to shampoo his hair. “You’ve been through enough.”

  “It’s the story of the century and I have to follow it up. I saw only one tiny piece of the picture falling back with your father. I want Jacob to fill me in, put it all into perspective. Then I’ll go over again. That is, unless the Germans get there first.”

  He slept as though drugged. No dreams. An immense blackness. When he woke up it was to see Jacob seated in a chair by the window reading through the copy he had typed in France.

  “Meet with your approval?”

  Jacob removed his glasses and placed the sheets on a table. “Very much so. Jenny told me you’re considering going back.”

  “If the army hasn’t surrendered.”

  “Where did they drop you off?”

  “Dover was full up so they took us to Ramsgate.”

  “Notice anything in the harbor while you were there?”

  “An unusual number of yachts and motorboats.”

  “Part of the new plan, Thax. I just left the Admiralty. It’s quite impossible to get enough men off the pier … taking too much time and we’re losing too many destroyers doing it. They’re going to start taking the men right off the beaches. Thousands of little boats are gathering. In Ramsgate … Dover … Folkestone. Everywhere. Yachts, trawlers, drifters, tugs … even large rowboats. All going across the Channel starting this afternoon. Civilians all, Thax. An armada of workaday seamen and weekend sailors … fishermen, tugboat captains, dentists, and clerks.”

  Albert sat up in bed. “Christ. Maybe something can be salvaged from the disaster yet.”

  “One man’s disaster is another man’s victory. I wish you could have known my father. He was the last of the press lords. Took an obscure little sheet called the London and Provinces Daily Post and Times Register and turned it into the largest paper in the world. He had a genius for putting the right slant to a story. The British army is no stranger to debacles. There was one in the last war … right at the beginning when the Germans forced the BEF to retreat from Mons. My father didn’t want a headline that read ‘retreat’ from Mons, so he inserted the word glorious … the ‘glorious’ retreat from Mons. Made quite a difference, don’t you think? We have the same situation now.”

  “Nothing particularly glorious about Dunkirk, Jacob.”

  “There will be if we can save the army.”

  “Wars, as they say, are not won by retreats or evacuations.”

  “Perhaps not, but the will to fight … the courage and pride to go on, can be won by them. We English have always taken a perverse pride in our military adversities—every schoolboy knows that. If those little ships sailing and chugging and rowing out of Ramsgate and Dover this afternoon can pull it off—well, there’s a miracle for you. And there’s nothing quite like a miracle for giving people faith.”

  SQUADRON LEADER ALLISON broke the news before the morning patrol. There had been some idle speculation among the crews for the delay in takeoff and now they knew.

  “Ops are canceled for the day, chums. We’re to have no part in this Dunkirk show. They’re moving us to Beauty Firth.”

  “Where the hell’s that?” Colin asked.

  “Scotland, old chum. Hard by Inverness. It places us nearly three hundred miles closer to Narvik. The air chief marshal of Coastal Command has not seen fit to confide in me as yet, but I would say that our pathetic little force sitting in Norway is on the verge of being withdrawn.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “After the briefing get your personal gear packed and stowed. We should fly out of here within the hour.”

  “What’s Inverness like, Skipper?”

  “Chilly and wet. And no one, as far as I know, has been laid there since Bonnie Prince Charlie. A spell of celibacy should do you randy chums a world of good.”

  Colin fell into step beside him as they walked toward the mess hall for the flight briefing. “Any chance of my ringing Kate? I was supposed to meet her tonight at the Nelson.”

  “Sorry. No telephone calls permitted. Leading Aircraftman Jones will be going into Norwich later to pick up the railroad warrants for the ground crew. Dash off a note to her. I’m sure Jones will gladly deliver it.”

  Colin strode along in silence for a moment, scowling at the ground; then he stopped and plucked Allison’s sleeve. “Look here, Skip, I know that some of the guys screw around with the local tarts, but me and Kate …” He stopped, face red with embarrassment.

  The faintest of smiles stretched Allison’s thin lips. “That thought never crossed my mind.”

  “She’s … well, something special.”

  “Of course. And I can quite see why.”

  “A real … friend.”

  Allison’s smile broadened. “Ah, indeed yes. A particularly lovely and infinitely desirable … chum!”

  RAF BEAULY FIRTH was near Charlestown, across the broad firth from Inverness. It had been a small seaplane base before the war and, although construction was proceeding day and night, was hardly equipped to handle the number of flying boats sent there. A squadron of giant four-engine Sunderlands was moored on the slate-gray waters when Allison’s group set down. Their officers, most of whom Allison knew, were crowded morosely in the ramshackle officers’ mess.

  “It’s a real cock-u
p, Allison,” their squadron leader said bitterly. “It’ll be days before our ground crew gets here.”

  “The same with ours.”

  “Not to mention parts and spares. I think someone at the Air Ministry is running around without a head. Oh, Lord, here comes The Comedian.”

  The station commander entered the mess in a burst of ebullient good fellowship. He was a middle-aged, portly man who might have been a hotel manager or golf-club secretary in civilian life.

  “That’s the spirit, lads. Make yourselves at home. May I welcome you boys from Thurne Mere. Sorry we’re a bit cramped here at present, but that will change shortly. I must also apologize for the dirth of maintenance facilities. The fact is, we were not scheduled to expect aircraft here for another two weeks, but we shall muddle through, what? I have just made arrangements to billet most of you in the local hotels and rooming houses. A lot of them about, don’t you know. Popular spot before the war for the summer tourist trade, what with Loch Ness and its monster just down the road. If the squadron leaders will pop along to my office we can go over the details.”