“Scramble! Scramble! Protect base!”
A Junkers 88 roared past above us. We both dived as the bomb dropped. BOOM! We picked ourselves up and ran to a trench near the ack-ack guns. The crew were already getting our Spits going and we grabbed our gear and made a dash for our aircraft.
Pieces of shrapnel and stones were raining down, pinging off the aluminium of my Spit. The take-off was total chaos, with aircraft jinking this way and that, lit up by blinding flashes. BOOM! We got away, though. Up and away and at those blasted bombers.
Below us the airmen and WAAFs were making for their shelters. The Ops Room was hit. So was one of the hangars. Smoke blinded me for a second and then I was through and out into the fight.
I chased after a Junkers but lost him before I could even think about firing. A Hurricane zipped by me, white smoke pouring out of its exhaust and the pilot climbing out of the cockpit. Ack-ack fire burst all around me.
Then I spotted an Me109 in my mirror, homing in for me. I rolled away just as he opened fire and he must have missed me by inches. BOOM! Another bomb exploded well wide of the airfield, sending clods of earth into the air.
When I righted myself I saw a Hurricane blasting away at a Dornier. He roared in so close I thought he hadn’t left enough time to pull out of his dive, but at the last instant he did and the Dornier wobbled and then flipped down, nose first.
But the bombers were getting through. Clouds of black smoke rose up from around the base. A Junkers suddenly appeared heading straight for me. Instinctively, I let off a burst. But I missed him by miles and then had to spin away.
Then, as always, they were gone and there was that gnawing frustration of not having done enough. When I got back to the base I found the place in chaos. A couple of the hangars were up in flames and there were pieces of aircraft scattered across the airfield. A dog went past, limping and whimpering.
I saw the mechanic I had torn a strip off, blood trickling from a head wound, trying desperately to fix a damaged Spit while fire-fighters tackled a blaze only yards away from him. A hanger roof collapsed to my left with an almighty crunch and clang.
An ambulance swung round in front of me, swerving to avoid the severed tailplane of a Hurricane. A German pilot parachuted slowly down into the midst of all this activity, but he was already dead, hanging limply from his harness. About 50 feet up, his chute caught a spark and burst into flames and he flopped to the ground.
One of our chaps was walking backwards and forwards along a stretch of about ten feet. He was wearing pyjamas with an Irvin jacket over the top and nothing on his feet. The all-clear wailed out over everything.
Civilians and Home Guard ran this way and that, carrying stretchers and buckets of water. Chaps from the Ops room, covered in dust, helped clear a bombed out trench with their bare hands. Spits and Hurricanes landed on the pot-holed strip.
A young WAAF staggered towards me supporting an airman whose face sparkled with broken glass.
“Well?” she yelled. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to give me a hand?”
“The gratitude of every home in our island,” said Winston on the 20th, his voice growling out of the mess wireless, “in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion.”
“Cheers!” shouted one of the lads, raising a glass.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. . .”
“He must have been looking at our mess bills!” shouted someone at the back.
Later that week I spent half an hour chasing a Dornier across Kent, amazed at the speed it seemed to be doing – only to find that it was not a Dornier at all, but a fleck of dirt on my screen. I was in a foul mood and almost out of fuel when I got back to base. As I walked into the mess, I saw one of the chaps look at me and then nudge another. They all turned to face me. All except Lenny, who wasn’t there.
He’d been jumped by an Me109 over the Thames estuary. He’d managed to haul his Spit back to base, but with a hole the size of a cricket ball in the side of the cockpit. He was unconscious by the time they’d got to him and he had been taken to hospital. He was in a bad way – but he’d live, they said.
It was a couple of days before I could get to see him. Hospitals always give me the shivers and this one was no exception. Sunlight poured through the high windows in diagonal shafts. The glass had been crisscrossed with tape to stop it from splintering in an air raid, and the tape cast crazy shadows on the corridor walls. I could see plum-coloured hollyhocks growing between the sandbags outside.
I asked an Aussie nurse for directions and I eventually found Lenny’s room. He was sitting up in bed – reading a book as usual. I knocked and walked in.
“Harry,” he said, looking up. “Good of you to come.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “How are you, old chap?”
“I’ve been better, I must say. But there are chaps a lot worse off than me.” We’d talked about burns before and I knew that’s what he meant. We all had a dread of being burnt to death in our aircraft. And maybe even more of a dread of being burnt and surviving.
“Your folks been in?”
“Just missed them, actually. My mother’s in a bit of a state. You know what mothers are like.”
“I do. I certainly do. Must be tough for them, though.”
“Yes it must.”
“How about your dad?”
“He never wanted me to go in the RAF in the first place, so it’s difficult. He doesn’t say much, but I know he thinks it’s all my fault.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t, Lenny.”
“So tell me about things. Are they coping without me back at base?”
“Oh, just about,” I said smiling.
“I hear things have been rather lively.”
“I’ll say. But look, you don’t want to talk about all that, surely. . .”
“No I do, I really do,” he said. “You’ve got no idea how boring it is here. Come on, what’s been happening?”
So I gave him the gen on everything that had happened in the last few weeks. It was odd talking about it. I hadn’t really had much of a chance to take it all in, but telling Lenny about it brought out what a wild time it had been.
“You know the RAF bombed Berlin again last night,” said Lenny.
“Yes, I know. The Germans started it, though.” Jerry bombers had hit the City of London on 24 August.
“Look, that had to be an accident, those bombs falling on the City,” said Lenny. “If that had been the real target they’d have flattened it. And how many times do you think Hitler is going to put up with us bombing Berlin before he goes off? It’s like hitting a hornet’s nest with a stick.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe so.”
Then a nurse popped her head round the door and said I ought to be leaving so Lenny could rest.
“I say,” I said when she’d gone. “She’s a bit of a stunner.”
“Hands off,” he said with a grin. “I saw her first.”
“You take good care of yourself, my friend,” I said, and reached out to shake his hand.
“And you,” said Lenny. “Don’t get stupid up there.”
“I won’t. You take care and I’ll see you around.” And then I left, walking through those long hospital corridors, in and out of the shadows, and into the waiting sunlight. Neither of us had mentioned Lenny’s missing leg.
September 1940
It felt like the world was slowing down. I could feel my pulse in my thumb on the stick as it rested next to the red firing button. Tiny wisps of cloud were scudding across the front of my cockpit.
It was magical, like a dream. I didn’t fe
el the harness that strapped me in, or even the cockpit around me. It just felt like I was flying up there, really flying. It was as if I had melted into the Spitfire. As if I had grown wings. I no longer had to think about turning, I just turned as a bird would, swooped as a bird would swoop.
We did our usual dance, the Luftwaffe and ourselves, round and round. Then I saw the Me109 below me, standing out against the mashed-potato clouds, the crippled cross of the swastika standing on its tail. I banked to port and dived down towards it. I could hear nothing but my own breath inside my mask. I could feel my pulse on the trigger.
I willed the German into the gun sight. Just a little more. Just a little more. Don’t rush it. Wait. Wait. I could see the pilot in the cage of his cockpit. But he didn’t see me.
“This is for Lenny,” I said, but not out loud. Only in my head. “This one is for Lenny,” I said and I pressed the fire button.
I spoke to Lenny the next day and told him about the 109. I didn’t say it was for him, but he somehow seemed to know. Lenny was funny like that. It was as if he knew what I was thinking.
“Don’t get sloppy up there, Harry, will you,” he said. “Don’t start getting sloppy.”
“Who me?” I said. “Not a chance.”
“You OK, Harry?” he asked.
“Me?” I said. “I’m fine. Well, maybe a little tired.”
“Listen,” he said, picking up a newspaper. “Have you seen this speech by Hitler? I told you that the Berlin raids would get his goat. Listen to this: ‘If the British Air Force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150, 250, 300 or 400 thousand kilograms. When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground. We will stop the handiwork of these night air pirates, so help us God! In England they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking, “Why doesn’t he come?” Be calm. He’s coming. He’s coming!’”
“He’s a friendly sort of chap, isn’t he?” I said. “What a madman. And mad enough to do it, Lenny,” I said.
“Yes, Harry. He is.”
On the 7th we busied ourselves on stand-by once again. Some of the chaps dozed, some read books or magazines, some played chess, or dominoes, or cards. Everyone had different ways of staving off the boredom and the nausea.
One of the chaps was reading Picture Post. It had a photo of a smiling RAF pilot on it. It was the issue from 31 August and had a heading “The Men Against Goering.” The pilot on the cover was already dead.
At about 4.30 we were airborne again. It was a sunny autumn day. The afternoon sun was warming up the colours in the trees. As I climbed, I saw a game of cricket being played down below me on a village green. Someone in the crowd waved.
We assumed that Jerry was heading for our bases or maybe the aircraft factories they’d attacked a few days before. I was climbing to patrol height, the sun lighting up my rear-view mirror, when I saw them.
“What the. . .” I said out loud. I heard a string of stronger exclamations coming from others in the flight.
It was a vast swarm of hundreds of Heinkels, Dorniers and Me109s, a formation bigger than anything I’d ever seen – bigger than any of us had ever seen.
“London,” I muttered to myself. “They’re heading for London!” I thought of Edith.
I was still climbing as they dropped the bombs. I could see them tumbling towards the docks. We were too late; too late by half. We were spectators and great bursts of white light lit up the scene.
I flew straight at them and I let go with my guns. You couldn’t miss really, there were just so many of them. I fired wildly into the mass. I just kept firing, like I was in some kind of trance. There was something overwhelming about the scale of it, something hypnotic.
I looked in my mirror. The Spit playing tail-end Charlie was weaving about at the back of us, checking for enemy fighters. A shadow passed across the cockpit. I looked up but there was nothing there. I looked back in my mirror. The tail-end Charlie was gone.
Me109s. They must have been up at 25,000 feet. All thoughts of attacking the bombers had to be forgotten. This was just about saving our own necks. There were just too many of them. I swung my Spit round and twisted away from them, turning and dodging for all I was worth. At least two stayed on my tail as I shot over Tower Bridge. I turned my Spit as sharply as I could and shook them off. As I turned back, going east past the dome of St Paul’s, I saw it all. It was like hell. It was like looking into the mouth of hell.
Hundreds of bottle-shaped incendiary bombs were tumbling down, turning the docks into an inferno; raining down on to streets and houses. The sky was black with smoke and the horizon red with the glow of the fires. Bomb after bomb after bomb. It was unbelievable.
I saw a warehouse collapse in a ball of flame. I saw a roof explode, spraying tiles and bricks up into the air. Ack-ack positions pounded and flak crackled in the air below us. A barrage balloon blew up to my starboard, and sank away, trailing flames.
“Cowards! Dirty cowards!” I shouted, banging my fist on the side of my cockpit in sheer frustration.
We did our best, but it wasn’t nearly good enough. I could see Hurricanes and Spits blasting away at the mass of German aircraft and making no impression at all. We were like sparrows pecking a huge flock of crows. I felt useless.
Another Me109 took after me, but gave up pretty soon. They’d done their job and were getting low on fuel. The Germans were heading back. I managed to let rip at a Heinkel but it carried on regardless. And now I was out of ammo. Bitterly, I returned to base.
The place was frantic; ground crew running about like crazy. I gave my report and got ready for the next battle. Meanwhile my Spit was refuelled and rearmed. There was another wave coming in, as big as the first. It was hard to believe really. I just tried to pull myself together and steel myself to do better next time. In 40 minutes I was back up.
Again, we were too late and still climbing when we met them. Even so, I shared in a Heinkel and did some damage to a Dornier. On another day I would have been proud, but that day it felt puny considering what we were up against. The second wave hit London at about 8.30pm and dropped as many bombs as the first.
And of all those hundreds of German planes, we found out later that we had managed to down just 41. Forty-one! And on top of that we’d lost 28 of our fighters. But at least we did better than the ack-ack guns. They didn’t hit any Germans at all!
The papers said that hundreds of civilians and rescue workers were killed and hundreds more were badly injured. Thank God Edith wasn’t one of them. She told me later what a time she’d had of it, though. People brought in with hideous injuries, terrible burns. Women. Children.
Edith had seen Churchill touring Silvertown, one of the worst affected areas. He did a little Chaplin-type thing, twirling his hat on the end of his cane. He shouted, “Are we downhearted?” and the answer from the crowd was very firmly, “No!” Morale was high. It needed to be. The very next day the bombers came back. And they came back again and again and again.
On Sunday morning, 15 September, I sat in a chair dozing after breakfast. There was a slight breeze blowing over the aerodrome and I closed my eyes. I dreamt I was back in the meadow up near Hunter’s Hill, standing in the flowing yellow grass, running my hands back and forth across the grass seeds. I was nine, maybe ten.
Behind me I heard the drone of an engine and I looked round. Over the tops of the beech trees came an aircraft, swooping in low. Not a biplane this time, but a Spitfire. It swooped so low that it sent a ripple across the grass. I ran after it, shouting and whooping.
But then I heard another noise behind me. I stopped running and turned, staring into the sun. I squinted upwards and another aircraft burst from the blinding light. A Messerschmitt 109 shot across the field towards the Spit. I shouted, knowing it was futile. I yelled as the 109’s canons erupted into life.
The sirens shrieked out and I was already running as I snapped awake. Then, booming out over the speakers: “Squadrons scramble, London angels 20!”
It was another bright, clear day and we chased our shadows across the grass to our planes. As usual I patted my Spitfire on its flank and whispered a few words of encouragement before I climbed into the cockpit.
Still half-asleep, I strapped myself in and got her going, swinging round into the dazzling sun and taking my place in the formation. Then we bumped over the airfield and up into the air, wood pigeons bursting from the trees. The gilt cockerel on the top of a church spire caught the late morning sun.
“Two hundred bandits crossing Dover flying north at angels 20,” said the voice on the R/T, but at that moment the War seemed far, far away. I felt as though I was soaring above the whole sorry world. My love of flying seemed to flood back into me.
This time we ignored the instructions coming from the ground and headed in an arc to the west, climbing all the while. Height was the thing and we all knew it. You just didn’t stand a chance if you caught them as you were still scrabbling for altitude, because you just didn’t have the speed. The other thing was to hit the bombers, not the fighters.
But then there they were, like a flock of crows or a swarm of fat black flies: a big rectangular pack of Heinkels with their escorts of Me110s and 109s. Antiaircraft batteries were booming way below and shells were bursting all around.
This time we were early. This time we climbed above them, flying in the same direction, mirroring their formation. We each looked down at our targets. I shrugged my shoulders and took a deep breath. This one had to count. This one had to count.
Then we dived. The 110s screamed out to intercept us but they weren’t quick enough. I flew towards the flank of a Heinkel, the rear gunner blasting away wildly. I fired a quick burst. The gunner stopped firing.
A Heinkel exploded to starboard and a piece of wing spun wildly towards me, missing my cockpit by inches. I sent out a burst and a Heinkel slumped out of formation with smoke pouring out of its engines.
Battle of Britain Page 5