There were fifteen tugs, three abreast, each with a double file of fourteen barges. Alden could see four flak ships and two destroyers. Nothing had been said about destroyers at briefing. He saw six E-boats as well, armed with a 20-mm cannon.
The fighters were still trying to break up the bomber formation. One pulled away with smoke and flames rippling out of its engine. The combined fire of two Beauforts had at least achieved that much.
'Gunner to Captain... one of A Flight going down in flames... two of… Squadron going down... and another's just blown up.'
The shipboard flak began to shoot. Suddenly the fighters attacking the leading squadron pulled away.
The Beauforts dived. The barges quickly grew from small shapes that looked almost impossible to hit, to big ones that no bomb could miss.
But the flak didn't look as though it could miss Alden's Beaufort, either. The tracer laid such a closely meshed web of tracks across the sky that Alden blinked more than once as he hurtled down at the train of broad-beamed, rocking barges he had chosen. The smoke from the tug's stubby funnel plumed astern and dispersed over the middle of the tow. Lalabalava, at his bomb sight in the perspex nose, could not have asked for a better indication of the wind drift.
Shells burst through both wings. Shells punched holes in the fuselage. The wind howled through them with the booming noise of an organ played by a madman.
Alden fired the Browning gun in his port wing and saw with pleasure the stream of tracer that seemed to be lancing directly at the two men who were shooting at him with a heavy machinegun on the tug's quarterdeck. He saw his bullets strike the transom. A second later they were riddling the machine gunners. The two Germans fell and rolled about the deck. The satisfaction he felt had nothing to do with pride at the sureness of his aim. It had everything to do with revenge: with killing two of the race who had brought such terror and suffering to Austria… Czechoslovakia… Poland... Belgium… Holland… France… Norway… Denmark… and was now threatening the freedom and happiness of Britain.
'Bombs gone.' Lalabalava's voice was crisp and unemotional.
Fifteen hundred pounds lighter, the Beaufort responded readily to aileron, rudder and elevators. It swept away from its target in an elegant steeply banked diving turn away from the tug and barges. Tracer bullets and shells still followed it.
'Gunner to Pilot… a few hits near the tail.'
'Serious?'
'No, sir.'
Alden had turned 180 degrees to port and could now see the tug wallowing, down by the stern and giving forth a dense mass of steam and smoke. Half her barge train had sunk already and the rest were foundering. Flames and smoke leaped and rolled over them.
Other tugs and barges were burning and sinking. But he could see only five Beauforts, so a third one must have been shot down by flak or a fighter.
'Fighters coming in from both sides, Pilot.' Dymond-Forbes's voice was urgent. 'Dive starboard.'
Since Alden had turned in a half circle, it was the open sea that lay on his starboard, the direction in which he wanted to go anyway. He heeled the Beaufort over onto a wingtip, turning as tightly as he could. Sea and sky reeled and tilted, gravity tugged at his body. Bewildering blurs of red and yellow raced across his vision: tracer still coming unnervingly close.
He flung the aeroplane into a downward twist in the opposite direction. Still the tracer flitted by the windscreen and windows. Small holes made a line across the cockpit roof. A shrieking whistle was added to the deeper booming of the wind through flak holes. A score of knife-sharp draughts tore through the cockpit.
The backward-firing Browning was hammering away. He could hear the chatter of the Vickers in descant with it. The Beaufort was rushing down towards the sea. He corrected the spiralling descent at a moment when he was facing due west, judging his direction from the lie of the land and the position of the sun. He was only fifteen or twenty feet above the water.
Low altitude did not seem to deter these particular Messerschmitt pilots He saw one coming head-on. Vicious flames licked from the barrels of its cannon and machineguns. He skidded flatly to one side and then back in the opposite direction. He almost ducked instinctively to shift his head out of the path of the shells and bullets.
The fighter scraped over the top of the Beaufort.
Dymond-Forbes's well-bred and public-schooltrained self-control deserted him. 'I've got one, I've got one... sir.'
A Me109 with flames gushing from its cockpit hurtled a few feet above the Beaufort. The compression of the air between them thrust the Beaufort down and Alden heaved the stick back barely in time to avoid a plunge beneath the choppy little waves. Then he caught the slipstream and the aircraft bucked and yawed.
The 109, streaming the flames of a raging fire and a scarf of smoke, hurled itself into the sea no more than a furlong ahead. The impact was accompanied by a spectacular explosion as its fuel vapour detonated. A fresh confusion of colours, red, yellow, orange, blue, burst through the smoke. Alden swung to one side to avoid another violent buffeting from air that was both disturbed and heated. This also gave him a longer view by turning his head as he raced past.
The 109 had dived beneath the surface in the blink of an eye. A few seconds later only a circle of eddies, some oil and a few pieces of wreckage showed that it had ever been there.
Only now did Alden have time to say, 'Good shooting, Gunner. Did you do it on your own?'
'Yes, sir. There was nobody else close enough to shoot at it.'
'Very well done.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Lalabalava emerged, grinning, from the nose and took the second pilot's seat. He plugged into the intercom. 'That was the most exciting performance I ever saw. Looks as if we've got a fairly useful marksman in the turret.'
'Not bad. And well bombed, Lala.'
'Thanks, but it was a well-judged dive. All I had to do was press the tit.'
'At the right moment.' Alden felt relaxed and Lalabalava cast him a quick glance of amused surprise. There was an unwonted levity in his usually serious, and even stiff, pilot's voice.
Looks to me as though we've got a fairly useful crew, thought Alden.
'Wireless Op, are you all right?'
Fussell's response came so feebly that Alden had to strain to hear it. 'Missed... missed most of the f-fun, sir... c-can't see much from... from... here...' Lalabalava was already out of his seat and turning towards the wireless operator's post. 'Afraid I've been... hit… sir.'
Alden's elation at the success of his crew's co-operation and their attack, and the destruction of the enemy fighter, turned in a trice to leaden dejection.
Every moment of achievement seemed to be spoiled. It had been the same with Elizabeth... ardent kisses and an assignation with a rival suitor... but that was trivial compared with this, a wounded man aboard and still more than an hour's flying to base.
Six
'Lend a hand, Gunner… the fighters have turned back,' Alden ordered.
Dymond-Forbes slithered on the blood that had dripped onto the floor of the wireless cabin. 'How bad is he, sir?'
Lalabalava, blood all over his flying overalls, was kneeling over Fussell, whom he had lifted from his seat and laid on the floor.
'He's out cold… I'm just trying to find all the damage.' He had undone Fussell's overall and removed it. He was unbuttoning his tunic hastily.
'Not dead, is he?' Dymond-Forbes' voice had suddenly risen to a scared treble. He crouched beside Lalabalava and began lowering Fussell's blood-sodden trousers while the former peeled away the bloody tunic.
The second pilot looked up without pausing. The young air gunner's pinched face, pale now instead of its usual rosy hue, was creased in an unhappy frown. His eyes seemed damp. 'No, he's alive. We'll have to get tourniquets on his right arm and both legs. Get all the dressings and bandages you can… and antiseptic.'
'How are you doing?' asked Alden on the intercom.
The observer had plugged into the wireless operator's
socket. 'He's been hit in both legs… looks like fragments from a twenty-mil shell... probably two… and three times by bullets, it looks like... one through the right shoulder ... one through the upper arm... one all along his forearm.'
'Can you stop the bleeding?'
'Yes, we're staunching it... slowly. We're putting tourniquets on both legs and the arm… packed the shoulder wound with a dressing.'
Alden was surprised by the strength of his own distress. He was no less astonished by the strength of his attachment to his wireless operator thus revealed. He was not a man to despair, but he was in a mood of sullen urgency and haste, morose and unreasonably guilt-ridden. He was demanding from the engines the maximum output of which they were capable, fearful lest Fussell should die before he was in the M.O.'s care, from loss of blood. He blamed himself for what was, he admitted, beyond his control: but every member of the crew was in his hands from take-off to landing. A foot or two to left or right, or up or down, and those shells and bullets would probably not have touched Fussell.
The bond between them was stronger than between himself and the others, by virtue of the much longer time they had flown together. There was also an endearing simplicity about Fussell which contrasted with their sophistication; and his own.
He kept looking at the time and at the engine gauges. He climbed to 5,000 ft. when safely beyond enemy fighter range. That would give him room to lose height gradually if an engine failed, or to glide if both did. It would give Lalabalava time to send a distress signal, if either happened, and hope that direction-finders in England had fixed their ditching position. The prospect of having to ditch far from land with Fussell so badly wounded was not to be borne. He began to nurse the engines, sacrificing a little speed for greater assurance that the engines would see them home.
He thought bleakly of the weeks, perhaps months, which must elapse before Fussell returned to duty. Perhaps he would be permanently grounded, medically. The prospect had to be dismissed. It was too depressing to tolerate. Absence from flying duty while in hospital might delay Fussell's overdue promotion to sergeant and the consequent rise in pay. That would hurt him as badly as must his wounds.
Lalabalava came to stand beside him. 'We've done as much as possible for him, Derek. The gunner will ease the tourniquets from time to time, if that's O.K. with you?'
'Of course. We don't need the turret manned now. Can you work out a rough position quickly, to make sure we're on a good course? Then try to get a signal out reporting that we've got a badly wounded man aboard?'
'Do my best.' The second pilot disappeared for'ard to the navigation desk.
The engines throbbed steadily, but Alden's ears kept suspecting that they heard a sudden faltering or racing, a change in rhythm that could mean death for Fussell, unconscious, his resistance lowered by shock and loss of blood. When he first glimpsed a distant change in the horizon he thought at once that his tired eyes were deceiving him. But very soon the East Anglian shoreline was definite between sky and sea and it was not long before he recognised features.
'Good show, Lala... we're only about five miles north of expected landfall… must be the wind.'
'Thanks for that, but it could be I didn't do my sums quite right.'
'Well enough, old boy.' Relief and euphoria made Alden sound uncharacteristically hearty. He heard his second dicky chuckle.
The radio-telephone sets in the Beauforts had a miserably short range. Alden called for permission to make a straight-in approach as soon as he considered that he was close enough to base. He was! A faint voice gave him clearance.
If an engine let them down now… He felt as tense as at any time during the trip as he brought his aircraft over the boundary fence. Even in these last few seconds a lost engine could kill them all.
The wheels touched the ground with both engines still rumbling healthily. An ambulance was moving fast along the perimeter track to the point where Alden would turn off the landing field. It met him and stayed alongside until he was well enough out of the way not to impede other aircraft. He stopped and his air gunner opened the port hatch. The squadron Medical officer was already beside it and scrambled in quickly.
Alden, seeing Fussell for the first time since they had come aboard, was stricken by the pallor of his usually rubicund face and by the shrunken look of his fleshy cheeks.
'We've got to get some blood into him fast,' the doctor said. In a moment Fussell was being carried swiftly on a stretcher to the ambulance.
The station commander had followed the ambulance in his staff car. He walked beside the stretcher until it was loaded, then turned back to speak to the other members of the crew.
'Don't worry, Alden: he's in good hands. I've seen even worse cases. You'd be surprised how remarkably quickly a young, fit, strong chap recovers.'
'Yes, sir.'
'How did it go, otherwise?'
'My air gunner shot down a Me One-o-nine, sir.'
Group Captain Jameson's sternly anxious face relaxed. He looked at the lethal marksman; who was showing no signs at all of pride or pleasure in his achievement. 'Good show. What is your name?'
'Dymond-Forbes, sir.' It was spoken in a voice of almost inaudible weariness.
'Diamond-Forbes? You're Scots?'
'Yes, sir: but I've never lived in Scotland. And… er... it's Dymond, sir.'
The Group Captain nodded. An air gunner by any name would smell sweet if he had just shot down a Jerry, he seemed to imply. 'On your own, or was it combined fire with another aircraft?'
'Just me, sir. No-one else close enough.'
'Very good shooting.' Jameson turned to Alden. 'And you played hell with the barges?'
'We hit them, sir, and sunk or blew up several... and the tug was being dragged under by the weight of the sinking ones, as far as we could see.'
'Well done. I'll see all of you presently.'
The Group Captain got into his car and drove back to the Watch Office to await the next arrival. Alden and his crew clambered into a pickup van and were driven to Ops.
The two squadron Intelligence officers were waiting at tables to take down the crew's reports. Alden was surprised to see their squadron Adjutant there; but the Adj only nodded and kept out of the way, listening from a discreet distance, very much a mere visitor.
The debriefing of another crew was just finishing. While Alden and his were going through theirs, two more crews filed in. The Adjutant came to speak to Alden as he and his two crewmen rose to leave.
'Derek... just a moment... some good news for your chaps. Some more promotions have come through for the A.G.s. Both of yours are among them: sergeants with effect from today. I thought you'd like to tell them before it appears in P.O.R.s.' (Personnel Occurrence Report.)
'Thanks, Adj.' And then the Adjutant looked surprised at the bitterness with which Alden added: 'Perhaps it will get Fussell a better bed in hospital.'
There was an uproarious party in both officers' and sergeants' messes that evening. The two squadrons had lost five aircraft, and five men had been killed in other crews, three wounded. Traditionally, dating back to the last war, the greater the casualties the more riotous the compensatory and commemorative drinking and horseplay.
Alden left the rough-and-tumble and the tumultuous singing twice to telephone the hospital where Fussell had been stitched up. Each time a cool sister had told him that the patient was 'as well as could be expected.' That did not cheer him much. He was not expecting a great deal and would have preferred a more fulsome expression of hope. Lalabalava accompanied him each time, his dark face lugubrious, his eyes clouded with concern.
'It's all they ever tell you, Derek,' he said. 'Don't worry. If they're worried, they'll call the M.O. and he'll let you know. Come on, let's pulverise A Flight at hicockalorum.'
Dymond-Forbes, the three pristine white tapes on his sleeves duly doused in beer by the senior sergeants of his squadron, made use of the mess telephone box. The hospital gave him the same stereotyped reassurance as his c
aptain had had to be content with. He rejoined his friends and drank his share of pints, but it did not escape notice that he seemed detached, withdrawn into his own ruminations, and had a tendency to break into loud 'Rat-a-tat-tat' imitations of machinegun fire, and utter cries of 'Another Redskin bit the dust... another bloody Jerry gone to Kingdom Come.' Soon he had a group of air gunners around him, all joining in the rat-a-tat-tatting and the chorused paean of triumph. He neither looked nor felt very triumphant, however: just a trifle drunk.
It was after ten-o'clock when a sudden notion seized Alden and he went to telephone, but not to the hospital.
Elizabeth sounded astonished. She was living on camp by now, in an evacuated married quarter, vacated by a squadron leader and his family. 'You sound a trifle incoherent, Derek.' He tried to determine whether she was being critical or was merely amused.
'Just wanted to hear your voice.' He spoke with the careful enunciation of the consciously tipsy.
'Oh!' There was a silence. 'Well... I'm flattered... I suppose... it... it sounds quite a romantic gambit, anyway. How are you? Apart from slightly tight.'
But the rebuke passed him by. Romantic! That was the very word. Rose-coloured fancies took possession of his clouded brain. 'When am I going to see you?'
There was some concern now in the way she spoke. 'Derek... have you had a bad day?'
'Ssh! Security and all that... careless talk and so on. Do I have to have a bad day before I make a civilised telephone call to say I wanted to talk to you?'
'I hope not. I mean, I wouldn't like to think you've been through... well... you're right... careless talk. Well, you've spoken to me now.'
'Don't hang up, Elizabeth... wanted to ask you... suppose I take a forty-eight and come down to see you? Or I could borrow the Maggie and fly down for a night.' The squadron had a Miles Magister elementary trainer for communications. 'Or... we could meet in London, if you're due for a forty-eight.'
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