Hurricane Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  The stranger rose from the armchair and strolled across the room, standing in front of the window with his hands behind his back. He turned and surveyed Richter thoughtfully.

  ‘First operation?’ he asked. Richter nodded.

  The other grinned. ‘All right. So we all make mistakes. Look at the fellows m the last war. Immelmann, for instance. Wrecked more aircraft than you’ve had hot dinners before he even got his pilot’s licence. I know your problem — you wanted to make a great impression, right from the start, and you think you’ve let everyone down — worst of all, that you’ve let yourself down.’

  He wagged a finger at Richter. ‘I’m sorry about the three fellows who didn’t come back, but this is war and such things happen. I don’t intend to condemn your squadron commander, either. He was quite right to give you a bollocking. It will help the others to learn from your mistake and probably save some of their lives, one day. But console yourself with this thought: there were more pairs of eyes than yours in that formation, and they didn’t see any danger either.’

  He moved towards the door. ‘What you need right now,’ he went on, ‘is a strong coffee or two and a long talk about tactics. All this will be forgotten tomorrow. This war is going to last for a long time, never mind what anyone says. There’ll be plenty more Tommies for you to have a crack at.’

  Richter got up, straightening his tunic. Already, he felt as though a black cloud had been lifted from his mind. He felt that he owed a great debt to this man, and said so. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked the other’s name.

  The stranger turned, clicking his heels and giving a small, almost mocking bow, extending his hand at the same time.

  ‘Mölders,’ he said. ‘Werner Mölders.’

  *

  Had Richter but known it, the ‘Tommy’ with whom he had been locked in mortal combat a bare two hours earlier was having every bit as hard a time, and the German might have derived some small consolation from the fact.

  Yeoman was at that moment standing rigidly to attention in front of the trestle table that served as his commanding officer’s desk, with Callender in the same posture beside him. Yeoman kept his eyes fixed firmly on the map on the opposite wall; anything was better than meeting Hillier’s stony gaze.

  Squadron Leader Richard Fitzhugh Hillier was an angry man. He was also weary, and nursing an inward misery that he dare not show. He had lost three pilots that morning — four, counting Wynne-Williams — and that was far from good arithmetic in exchange for six enemy aircraft destroyed.

  He held a pencil between the tips of his index fingers and rotated it slowly, switching his gaze coldly from Yeoman to Callender and back again.

  ‘You are a pair of bloody fools.’ His voice was low and even, but it cut like a whiplash. ‘Let me just catalogue your stupidity. First of all, you take off on a so-called escort sortie. An unauthorized escort sortie into the bargain.’ He threw the pencil on to the table. It rolled across the top and clattered on the floor.

  ‘Christ!’ Hillier exploded, rising abruptly and planting both palms flat on the table, leaning forward to glare at the two pilots. ‘Somebody rings up and says he’s a wing commander on the Panther staff, and on the strength of that you launch yourselves off on some wild goose chase! Did you find the Battles? Did you hell! Instead, you decide to take on a Jerry formation and be heroes. I don’t care if you do claim to have knocked a couple down — the fact remains that one of you didn’t come back and that both your aircraft are knackered. That leaves me with five serviceable aircraft to fight half the blasted Luftwaffe. What happens now if the bomber boys really need our help? Stupid pair of bastards!’

  He sat down again and sighed heavily, passing a hand over his face. His voice became suddenly weary. ‘I need pilots,’ he said. ‘You can thank God for that. Otherwise I’d bust you so low you’d be able to crawl under a door. Just remember this: I will not tolerate individual heroics. This squadron is a team and it’s going to stay that way. Now get out.’

  The two saluted, turned on their heels and marched out. Hillier lit a cigarette and stared moodily at the map on the wall. He hated tearing strips off his men, but survival was what counted now and if they were going to survive they would have to pull together. Callender was a good pilot, but wild; he’d have to watch that. Young Yeoman had shown up well, taking everything into account. He’d be all right — if he lived long enough.

  Hillier wondered how the other AASF fighter squadrons were getting on. No one seemed to know what was happening, except that a lot of airfields had been bombed and the Luftwaffe was everywhere. There were a lot of rumours flying about, but Hillier discounted most of them. According to the grapevine, the countryside was stiff with enemy agents and parachutists, all of them disguised as priests and nuns. Hillier had a pretty good idea that the rumours had been started deliberately in order to spread panic, and he proposed to take no chances. He had already ordered the airfield perimeter guard to be doubled, and had instructed his pilots to carry sidearms at all times.

  The telephone shrilled. It was Panther, requesting a standing patrol over the Air Headquarters at Reims. Bastards, he thought, sitting nice and secure in their concrete champagne cellars. They were probably burning their paperwork already. He grabbed his flying helmet and stamped out, slamming the door behind him.

  *

  Yeoman lay stretched out under a tree, his head resting on a parachute pack. Callender sat beside him, idly flicking at the May bugs which were dropping from the branches like miniature paratroops. The heat was stifling, and the shade afforded scant relief. Yeoman couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so dirty. His body was caked with sweat and grime and he longed for a bath. His head ached intolerably, his eyes hurt and his throat felt as though coarse sandpaper had been passed over it.

  A section of Hurricanes roared off, momentarily drowning the rumble of bombing in the distance. Yeoman watched as they swung away to the northwest, in the direction of Reims. He felt thoroughly miserable. He didn’t give a damn if he never sat in an aircraft’s cockpit again. Everything and everyone seemed to be against him, including the intelligence officer. Yeoman had put in a claim for a 109 destroyed, but since he had not seen the aircraft crash or the pilot bail out, the intelligence officer had only awarded him ‘one damaged’ — and grudgingly at that.

  He jumped as a clod of earth hit him on the chest. He looked up to see Callender grinning at him. ‘Come on, snap out of it. You look like a centipede with corns.’

  Yeoman shrugged. ‘Just feel cheesed off, that’s all.’

  Callender’s face became serious. ‘If my guess is correct you soon won’t have time to feel cheesed off. None of us will.’ He waved a hand in the general direction of the muted bombing. ‘Listen to that. Somebody’s getting plastered, and it’ll be our turn again before long. We’ve already lost more than half our kites, and we haven’t even had a chance to get stuck in yet. Much more of this, and we’ll be fighting with balloons on sticks.’

  Bert Duggan came over, his bull neck even redder than usual, and filled a fire bucket from a small water bowser that was standing nearby. He buried his nose in the bucket and drank thirstily, then tipped the rest of the water over his head. He shook himself like a dog, grunted at Yeoman and Callender, then shambled off.

  ‘There goes one hell of a fine guy,’ Callender said softly. ‘He’ll be working his men like slaves, but you can bet your last dollar he’ll be working twice as hard himself. It’s people like —’

  Callender broke off abruptly and scrambled up, his eyes on the armourer. Duggan had stopped and was staring at the eastern sky, his head making small jerky movements like a dog scenting a quarry. Suddenly he turned and began to run towards the operations shack, waving his arms and shouting something to the small group of pilots who lounged on the grass outside. Yeoman and Callender, who were fifty yards away, couldn’t make out what Duggan was saying.

  Callender looked at the sky. An aircraft was making its approach to land, but
it was only a Fairey Battle. There was no apparent danger, and Callender turned to Yeoman with a puzzled expression on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, then froze as his companion jumped up, his arm outflung and pointing.

  Beyond the Battle, flying very low and very fast, skimming the hedgerows, three twin-engined aircraft were bearing down on the airfield. The Battle crew must have seen them too, because the aircraft suddenly dived steeply as the pilot tried to lose height in a desperate attempt to get down before the enemy caught up with him.

  He was too late. The leading aircraft — identifiable now as a Messerschmitt 110 — opened fire, raking the luckless Battle almost casually as it swept past. The light bomber, its undercarriage down, hit the ground and bounced, shedding fragments. The wheels folded up as it struck the ground again, sliding on its belly for a hundred yards before slewing to a stop.

  Yeoman and Callender hurled themselves flat under their tree as the Messerschmitts howled over the field. Horrified, Yeoman saw two airmen, running for their lives, blown apart by cannon shells. The Messerschmitts broke to left and right and turned, running in from the opposite direction. A pile of fuel drums exploded with a dull boom, turning a screaming airman into a torch.

  Yeoman raised his head, then buried it under his arms again as shells and bullets raised fountains of earth a few yards in front of his eyes. The trail of fire swept towards the operations shack and punched holes in it, filling the interior with a hornet’s nest of splinters which, miraculously, left the duty corporal unscathed.

  The snarl of engines died away. Belatedly, the antiaircraft guns around the airfield perimeter began to bark, their shells spraying the countryside with shrapnel and doing no damage at all to the attackers.

  Yeoman and Callender scrambled up and began to run towards the wrecked Battle. Others reached the aircraft first, and Yeoman suddenly felt his stomach turn over as he saw an airman reel away and sit down heavily, his shoulders heaving with nausea. As he drew closer, he saw the reason for the man’s distress.

  The Messerschmitt had placed a burst of cannon fire squarely inside the Battle’s cockpit, blowing away the canopy. The pilot hung head down, half out of the cockpit, his back gaping open like a red-and-white flower. Behind him, the observer lay back in his seat, riddled with splinters, an astonished expression on his face. The gunner, in the rear of the cockpit, had no expression at all, because he had no head. His blood was already beginning to congeal over the rear fuselage.

  Yeoman stood in silence and surveyed the carnage. He was horrified at his own lack of emotion. He felt no urge to be sick, nor did he feel compassion for the three shapeless lumps of meat which, just a few minutes earlier, had been vital young men like himself.

  He just felt very old, and very tired. He had been at war for less than twelve hours, and already he was becoming a veteran.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Messerschmitt was racing at him head-on. Tracers floated towards him. They were the colour of blood and they were converging on a point between his eyes. He could see the enemy pilot in the cockpit, and it was strange because he had no head. He wanted to bail out, to get away before the deadly tracers struck, but the cockpit canopy was jammed. He tore at it with hands that were bony claws. He threw himself against the side of the cockpit, screaming.

  He was shaking and crying and there was a light in his eyes. He wanted it to go away, but it persisted. He put a hand out to push it away, and in that instant he came fully awake.

  Callender was standing by his bed, holding a torch. Yeoman sat up groggily and rubbed his eyes. He felt awful. His mouth seemed to be filled with cotton wool and his head swam. The hangover from his nightmare had left him drained and weak. He was soaked in sweat. He looked at his watch in the light of Callender’s torch; it was three o’clock.

  ‘You were having a nasty one,’ Callender said. ‘What were you doing, making love to an alligator?’ He thrust a mug of tea at the man in the bed, and Yeoman sipped it gratefully.

  ‘Come on, abandon your pit. We’ve got orders to move.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Yeoman said wearily. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Charleroi,’ the other replied. ‘The Jerries are crossing into Holland and the bomber boys are going to take a crack at them. Air HQ’s raking together every available fighter for escort. The Battles took one hell of a hammering yesterday, and we don’t want it to happen again.’

  The fighter pilots did not know it yet, but the Battle squadrons had already been decimated. At noon on 10 May, thirty-two of them had set out to attack the enemy columns advancing through Luxembourg; thirteen had been shot down by the mobile 30-mm cannon that were accompanying the enemy advance, and most of the others had been damaged. It was this raid that Yeoman, Callender and Wynne-Williams had been supposed to escort on the way back. In the event, eight Hurricanes from Nos 1 and 73 Squadrons had provided top cover for the bombers, but they had not met any enemy fighters.

  The Battles had tried again in the middle of the afternoon, with thirty-two aircraft again attacking the columns of the German 16th Army in Luxembourg. This time there had been no fighter escort at all, and the Messerschmitts had pounced. Ten Battles had failed to return. With twenty-three aircraft destroyed out of sixty-four, and many of the others damaged, the Air Striking Force had flown no more sorties that day.

  Yeoman roused himself, feeling better as the hot tea took effect, and swung his legs out of bed. ‘It looks like being quite a do,’ he commented.

  Callender nodded. ‘We’ll be busy, all right,’ he said. ‘Oh, by the way — that’s the good news. The bad news is that you, me and a couple of other guys are going to Charleroi by road. There aren’t enough aircraft to go round. We’ll be able to pick up some more up there, or so we’re told.’

  Yeoman grinned. ‘Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad. I haven’t had a chance to take a look at France yet. A conducted tour sounds just the ticket.’

  ‘You needn’t sound so happy,’ the other retorted. ‘I’m driving, so you’re in for a bit of education. These bloody Frogs won’t keep to the left, you know, no matter how hard you blow your horn at ’em. Come on, out of it. You’ve just got time for a shave and a bite to eat before we get cracking.’

  The Sergeants’ Mess was on the top floor of an inn overlooking the cobbled main street of Ecury village, a mile up the road from the airfield. Yeoman, who had been warned that he would probably have to live in a tent, had been pleasantly surprised by the degree of comfort. The men slept two to a room, but the other bed in Yeoman’s was empty; he didn’t like to ask about the previous occupant, and no one seemed prepared to volunteer any information. A pin-up on a wardrobe door was the only evidence that anyone had slept there at all.

  Hillier had stood down the squadron at dusk the day before, and there had been time for the luxury of a bath and a meal before Yeoman had fallen into bed. He smiled as he remembered his first meeting with the plump, motherly Frenchwoman who kept the inn. French troops who passed through Ecury knew her affectionately as ‘Mémère’, the English simply as ‘Mum’. Rumour had it that she and Bert Duggan had more than a passing interest in one another, but if it were true they were very discreet about it.

  She didn’t seem to mind that 505 Squadron had virtually taken the inn over and furnished the bar as close to the lines of an English country pub as they could manage. She had taken the boys of the ‘Cinq-Cents-Cinq’ to her heart, treating the older ones like favourite brothers and the younger ones like sons. She had wept when they had broken the news to her that Simon Wynne-Williams was missing; but that night she had pressed his shirts and laid them neatly on his bed, as usual. ‘Il reviendra,’ she had told the others, as she dried her tears. ‘Je le sais, au fond de mon cœur. Il reviendra, sain et sauf.’

  The choice of the inn to billet the sergeants had been inspired, and they would not have changed it for any of the estaminets that littered Ecury — or the stately home further up the road that served as the Officers’ Mess. The word ‘Pelican’ stood out in
bold red letters on a large sign above the door, and although this referred to a brand of French beer and not the pub itself, it was the nearest thing the RAF men had seen to their own ‘locals’ back home. The Deer was above average, too, which counted for a great deal.

  Yeoman got out of bed and lit the gas lamp over the wash basin; electricity was a luxury that had not yet reached Mémère’s establishment. Callender went off to order breakfast.

  There was no hot water, but he didn’t mind; he was grateful for the cold splash on his face, and his razor blade was sharp enough to remove his stubble without too much discomfort. He dressed quickly, then picked up an empty gas-mask container that was lying in a corner and stuffed his shaving kit, toothbrush and some clean socks and underclothing into it.

  He glanced out of the landing window as he made his way downstairs. Dawn was breaking, and it was going to be another glorious day. Outside, a blackbird sat on the branch of a cherry tree and sang its heart out.

  Callender was already in the dining-room, tucking into a plateful of eggs and fried bread. Three other men were seated at the table; Yeoman recognized one of them, a flight sergeant pilot named Joe Shaw, but the other two were both flying officers and strangers. Callender introduced them as Jamieson and Wardell. The latter, a burly, fair-haired man who spoke with a pronounced Australian twang, grinned at Yeoman. ‘We thought we’d gate-crash,’ he said. ‘You’re a hell of a sight better organized down here than we are up at the château. No hope whatsoever of getting any grub before seven o’clock.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Callender, waving his fork in the air. ‘That’s because we occasionally deign to cook our own food. You have to descend among the hewers of wood and drawers of water to find out what hardship really is.’ The Australian laughed. ‘Some hardship!’ He pulled a plate piled with thick slices of bread towards him, reaching for a jar of marmalade with his other hand.