I remember being in the theatre when there was a very close one just off Piccadilly Circus. The whole building shook and seemed to move, the noise could be felt as well as heard, like an enormous wave. The lights went out, and the air was full of dust and plaster. But when the lights flickered on again, at the back of the stage the young nude, probably about seventeen or eighteen, was still in her statuesque pose, her hair covered in dust and debris, which also covered her naked body and the pure white child-like breasts, one of which was scratched by a piece of falling plaster. After all these years I can still see that scene so vividly. The contrast between the snow-white breast and the dirty plaster and dust, and the angry red scratch was what I felt so often in those early days of the war. Whether it was the Windmill girls, or the eager young pilots arriving bright-eyed and innocent at the squadron as they had a few months ago for their school cricket match; or the Vicar’s wife asking us for tea on the lawn while above us our squadron mates twisted and turned, sweated and swore, killed or were killed; or whether it was the bedraggled Home Guard with pitch-forks and bread knives tied to broomsticks preparing to stop Hitler’s invasion or die on their village green; it was bombs in the nursery, massacre in toyland. It was pathetic and noble, silly and magnificent, ludicrous and tragic. But above all it was wonderful and we’ll never be so innocent again.
I was thinking of all this when Audrey, Joy and Joan came into the pseudo luxury of the Salted Almond bar. It was always amazing how they managed to look so good, in spite of the hours of hard work they did in the theatre, where they all squeezed into one little corridor of a dressing-room; in spite of their long walks and bus-rides to and from work, often at night; and in spite of having to rely on revamped pre-war dresses of their mothers or the meagre choice of rationed war-time ‘utility’ clothes. But to us they were radiant, and when I look around, I think they still would be today.
They were duly installed and were drinking their Planter’s Punches and gin-and-lime squashes when I became aware that a few other members of the First Cast had come in. Since the show was non-stop, they had two casts that worked in shifts, but it was unusual that they came along to the Troc.
But it was then that Vic arrived, and then that it was evident why the girls were there. Every female eye in the place turned to look as all 6 feet 4 inches of him ambled in. There was something very slow and relaxed about Vic. An early version of Robert Mitchum and Elvis Presley. Although he wore the uniform of an RAF pilot officer, you had to look twice before you realised it. Clever tailoring had accentuated the broad shoulders, thin hips and long frame, and when he reached in his pocket, you could see the flash of a crimson silk lining. The pants were cut narrow and bore little resemblance to the somewhat baggy trousers normally worn by everyone else in those days. What’s more, the impression of length and slimness was highlighted by the fact that, peering discreetly out from under the narrow cuffs were a pair of highly polished, black, pointed-toe high-heeled Texas boots.
Vic had gone one better for Texas. On the shoulder of his jacket where foreign volunteers in the RAF had their ‘USA’, ‘Canada’, ‘New Zealand’, ‘Rhodesia’, etc., Vic had a neat ‘Texas’. Since underneath, he also wore the official eagle emblem of the Eagle Squadron, the whole ensemble managed to look as different from the official RAF pilot officer’s uniform as possible. And yet it never flagrantly broke with the King’s Rules and Regulations for official dress.
Vic moved slowly but smoothly and extremely effectively. He nodded to three girls who were obviously expecting him, and who immediately got up and followed him. On his way out he saw us and said ‘Hi’, peeled a pound note off a wad he had pulled from his pocket and gave it to the barman. From the time he had first appeared to the moment the door closed behind him and the three girls, about half a minute had passed.
The next time I saw Vic was at Southend. I’d landed there in the evening to refuel after a convoy patrol in the North Sea. 71 Eagle Squadron had been there for a few weeks, and when I walked into the mess, I saw my friends Bud Care and Brewster Morgan. They had organised some sort of transport to town and wanted me to come along. I didn’t have money or a complete uniform, but ‘Bruce’ insisted he could arrange everything. He was a big amiable blond from Honolulu where his father was a church minister, and he’d give you the shirt off his back. Of course, I guess, we were all pretty generous in those days. After all, even if we thought we were going to be one of the lucky ones to survive the war, we knew that the odds were dead against it. It was only much later, when things eased up, and we realised that there was a good chance of the war ending before we’d ‘bought it’ that we started to worry about money and possessions and trying to collect old debts.
But all that was far in the future. At that time our thirteen shillings and sixpence a day was more than enough, and as Bud, Bruce and I sat in the bar of the Queen’s Hotel, Southend, we felt we had never been so rich before and never would be again. How right we were.
There were a number of nice-looking girls in the bar, but they all seemed to be very much in the company of officers of the Guards Regiment based nearby. This seemed like heavy competition to me, particularly since it was getting on for the witching hour of 10 p.m. when the barman’s call of ‘Time, Gentlemen, please’ would clear the room.
But at ten minutes to ten a vaguely familiar figure moved through the bar; it was partly the height, partly the gait, but mostly that uniform, which most men compared to a Greyhound bus driver’s, but which most women said made him look like a Hollywood musical star. I knew it had to be Vic.
He ambled past a table where a truly beautiful girl was sitting with a Guards captain, paused to say a few words then slowly moved down the bar with an occasional ‘Hi’ to an occasional girl, and then went out the door.
‘Not like the Playboy of the West End to give up like that, is it?’ I asked.
‘Wait!’ said Bud.
The captain’s gorgeous companion whispered something to him and slowly got up and went towards the door. Two or three girls at the bar excused themselves from their officer escorts and sidled out.
I looked at Bruce who shrugged, ‘The Guards buy them drinks all evening, and then Vic comes through and takes over.’
At that moment the barman’s stentorian voice announced ‘Time, Gentlemen, please’.
So time went by and one morning we heard about Pearl Harbour and learned that our own country had declared war. The Texans were worried that the USA had taken on more than it could handle until they heard that Texas was joining in too.
We switched to Thunderbolts, and then to Mustangs, and carried the fight ever deeper into Germany. As we went farther and farther, the veterans who survived slowly built up their score of victories, but the casualties built up too, usually among the less experienced. Sometimes we hardly had time to get to know the new arrivals. Many were shot down on their first mission, and probably never even saw the plane that shot them down.
But Vic was still around. He was a brilliant pilot, and his plane ‘Miss Dallas’, with its emblem of a provocative nude holding a Texas ten-gallon hat to cover her most strategic areas, was always among those who straggled home. And Vic’s victories were not confined to the pubs around Saffron Walden and the bars in London’s West End. Behind Miss Dallas’ left thigh were ten neat swastikas, and Vic had become a captain and was heading a flight. It was about that time that things were at their hottest. Our P-51’s with their two droppable tanks slung under each wing meant we could cover the bombers wherever they went, and the red-noses of the Fourth Group Mustangs were always with the bombers on their bomb run or as they turned for home, and it was there at the far end of our range that the German fighters concentrated their attacks.
That’s the way it was on one of our first Berlin raids. They were making head-on attacks on the lead bombers when we made rendezvous and Blakeslee took 335 Squadron down straightaway. I followed with 336 to give cover, and 334 who were flying top cover came down behind us. No sooner wer
e 335 attacking the first waves of 109’s when others were coming in to hit them from behind. I took our squadron in to cover 335 as close as possible, but had to yell to our own sections to break as more came in behind us.
Soon it was a whirling maelstrom of fighters flashing by, bombers ploughing through; puffs and flashes of flak; streams of tracers from both bombers and fighters; and over the earphones, the cries and curses of panic and victory, the screams and prayers of fear and death.
We had covered 335, and I’d shot a 109 off a Mustang who was getting hit, and we were climbing back up to join the fray behind the last box of bombers. Through the screaming, jarring, crackling of the RT I heard a breathless plea ‘Shirtblue Yellow 4, I’m being hit’, and an unhurried steady drawl which I couldn’t quite recognise replying with confident authority: ‘Break harder left, Yellow 4, I’ll have him off you right quick’. A few seconds later, the same slow monotone ordered: ‘Yellow 4 get stuck in on my wing. The rest of you guys follow me back up over the last box of bombers to cover them out.’
Back in the mess that night after dinner, I was heading down the corridor with Mike Sobanski when a new pilot I didn’t know pushed past us to catch up with a tall figure slouching along, ahead of us.
‘Vic,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to get to you to thank you for today.’
Vic looked at him and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. ‘Forget it’, he said, and ambled out into the night.
‘I’ll be damned,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Mike.
‘I’ve just recognised a Texas accent.’
The new pilot held the door open for us, awkward and embarrassed. ‘Who’s that?’ said Mike.
‘That’s Shirtblue Yellow 4,’ I said.
The big Berlin raids had started for us in early 1944, and in a little over a month, we’d lost Freeburger, Brandenburg, Fiedler, Saunders, Richards, Lehman, Hobert, Davis, Hustwit, Barnes, Goetz, Vilhinger, Herter, Skilton, Siefert and a few others I can’t remember. Looking at the names now, they seem bare as skeletons, but to us, each one was a warm, laughing, close ‘Ol’ buddy’, so much alive we couldn’t believe he wasn’t. We were lucky. There weren’t bodies or funerals, they just weren’t around any more.
Maybe that’s why we were still willing and eager to climb into the cockpit once more, take off by two’s, wheel into formation and climb on out on the now familiar trail: out over Orfordness, over the North Sea, crossing into Holland over the Hook, dodging the flak on the coast, moving past the flat Dutch countryside, stretching out below, with the sun flashing on the many glass green-houses, then through the flak of the Ruhr, out over the open, green fields of Westphalia, past the reliable check-point, the perfect round Dummer Lake, and on past Hannover, Braunschweig, Magdeburg, and finally the vast stretch of built-up area, ‘Big B’ itself.
I don’t know that we realised it at the time, but the Luftwaffe fighters were giving their all to defend the cities of their homeland. After that summer of 1944, the Luftwaffe would never be the same. As 1940 had been the Battle of Britain, 1944 was the Battle of Germany. Galland, who was then still General of the German Fighter Command, wrote in a report to the German Air Ministry: ‘Between January and April 1944, our daytime fighters lost over 1,000 pilots. They included our best squadron, Gruppe, and Geschwader Commanders. Each incursion of the enemy is costing us some fifty aircrew. The time has come when our weapon is in sight of collapse.’
Albert Speer, Ministry for Armaments and War Production, agreed that this was the period during which Germany lost the war. In his interrogation under oath (18th July 1945) he said: ‘The Allied air attacks remained without decisive success until early 1944 … The Americans’ attacks which followed a definite system of assault on industrial targets, were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry. The attacks on the chemical industry would have sufficed, without the impact of purely military events, to render Germany defenceless.’
April 18th saw us on the familiar trail again. We had broken up the German fighter attacks on the last group of bombers, but they had taken their toll. There were a few gaps in the formations. Somewhere over Magdeburg, I heard Blakeslee call, ‘Everybody out’. Then I heard a Texas drawl which this time I recognised: ‘There’s a bunch of 109’s on the rear Fort, reckon we’ll go back and help.’
I figured most of the Group were up ahead, but I could see that straggling B-17, so I wheeled and punched my RT button: ‘I’ll cover you, Vic, but we’re low on ammo and damn low on gas, so break off as soon as you can, or you won’t make it back.’
‘Well, if I don’t, tell my girl so-long for me.’
‘Which one, Vic?’ I asked.
‘All of them!’ he said.
Then all I heard were those disjointed snatches that come over the radio during a dog-fight. ‘You got him, Vic,’ ‘Break right, there’s one on your tail. … OK, I got him off … He’s going in on the bomber again …’.
I was closer to the straggler now, and could see the fighters around him. Then I saw him peel off slowly and go into his death-dive. Vic hadn’t been able to get to that one German fighter soon enough. He’d got one of them and saved his wingman, but when I heard him, I knew he was mad. ‘The rest of you guys go home, I’m gonna get that bastard!’
‘For God’s sake, Vic, break off,’ I said. ‘Let him go.’
‘Not this baby,’ he said.
By now I could see the 109, split-essing and diving for the deck, and almost in unison behind him, a lone Mustang, which I knew carried the curves and ten-gallon hat of ‘Miss Dallas’.
I watched as the two planes hurtled down in a screaming vertical dive, winding up to terminal velocity.
Even my own plane was shuddering as I followed them down. The controls were rigid and I had to ease it out by slowly winding the trim handle back a fraction. I yelled: ‘Pull out, Vic, pull out. God damn it!’
But there was no stopping him now. ‘I’m hitting him, I’m gonna git ’im.’
He got him all right. A great ball of flame flared on the ground where the German went in.
But almost immediately a second searing flash burst close to the first as ‘Miss Dallas’ followed her victim in.
I started back up to collect what was left of my scattered squadron: ‘Goody here. I’m climbing back up to angels twenty-five on a heading of 268 – it’s time to go home.’
I’d made a few phone calls, so when I walked into the Salted Almond bar, the girls were there. I ordered drinks.
Audrey said: ‘Vic?’
I said: ‘Yep.’
Someone said: ‘When?’
I said, ‘To-day.’
Jackie said: ‘Cheers.’
And we raised our glasses.
After a while, more of the girls drifted off to do their shows – or whatever, and I was about to leave to get back to Debden, but Jackie stopped me. ‘There’s another one,’ she said. ‘The special one.’
She was special, all right. I knew she’d arrived because the bar went quiet and every eye was turned to the door. Sure, she was beautiful, with her English rose complexion and blonde hair. Yes, she was well-dressed, with her black velvet jacket and skirt, black pill-box hat to match and lace blouse. But it wasn’t that. Jackie got it right when she said, almost with reverence, ‘That’s class!’
She declined a drink and didn’t even sit down.
‘It’s Vic,’ I said. ‘He’d have wanted you to know.’
She sat down then. Her eyes got very big and she started straight ahead, and I knew this one was really hurt.
To ease the strain, I said: ‘He went out in a blaze of glory!’
It was a mistake. The girl looked at me incomprehensibly. Woman knew there’s no glory in death. It takes men years to learn it.
The girl got up to go. Lamely I said: ‘If I can be of any help.’
‘Thanks’, she said, ‘but I can weep on my own,’ and she turned and was gone.
Jean said: ‘She shouldn’t be so cut up, poor kid. I mean he wasn’t exactly faithful to her.’
Rita turned on her and flashed her dark Spanish eyes. ‘He was faithful,’ she said defiantly. ‘To all of us!’
We stepped out into the evening bustle of Piccadilly with its stream of soldiers, sailors and airmen of all nationalities out-numbering the drab civilians.
It was a starry night, and we looked up at the sky.
‘Do you think Vic’s gone to Heaven?’ said Rita.
‘If he has,’ said Audrey, ‘the angels won’t know what’s hit them!’
CHAPTER FIVE
The Swede
He wasn’t what you’d call a big-time hero.
I suppose he’d have made his home town newspaper, if Red Bluff, California, had a newspaper. He’d probably be quite a hero around home if they knew about his war-career, but he wasn’t much of a hand at talking about what he’d done.
In fact there wasn’t much glamour and glory about the Swede, but he was a nice guy to have around – if you know what I mean. He wasn’t one of those big Swedes. In fact, he was a bit of a runt, and he wasn’t what you’d call beautiful. His face was kind of homely and puckered up.
The first night I saw him down at the end of the bar he looked like the original Gremlin. He had a grin on him that wouldn’t quit. It was the kind of grin that makes you forget what the rest of the guy looks like because it’s the first and last thing you notice.
Tumult in the Clouds Page 10