by Nevil Shute
Each ship was to get one gun and one case of ammunition. The LCT’s were lying in pairs all down the river, moored bow and stern to buoys, and half their crews had gone off on week-end leave. Viola Dawson took Janet down the river in the LCP to where the ships were lying near Needs Oar Point surrounded by the open marshes of the estuary and went alongside LCT 968. The captain came to the rail; he was an RNVR lieutenant called Craigie. From the boat Janet said, “Good morning, sir. I’ve got a Sten gun here for you, and one for each of 538, 946, and 702.”
“Morning, Janet,” he said. “702 is lying alongside us here. Pass up a couple of them. Wait, I’ll get a chap to help you.” A rating came down into the boat and they passed the guns and the heavy ammunition boxes up into the tank landing craft. Janet swung herself on board after them. They passed one gun and one box of ammunition across onto the next ship, whose captain was on leave. A sub-lieutenant met Janet at the rail. She knew how to deal with hesitant and incompetent-looking young officers. “I’ve got to get a signature for these,” she said. She pulled a pink form from a trouser pocket. “Just sign it there. It only means that you’ve received them in good condition. Put the number of your ship there, and the date there, sir, and sign it at the bottom, there.” The sub took the form from her and went off to the wardroom to find his pen.
Janet turned to Lieutenant Craigie beside her. “I’m sorry we could only let you have one, sir.”
“Every little helps,” he said. “You might let me know if there’s a chance of getting another.”
“I will indeed,” she said. The sense of impending battle was very heavy on her; it would be intolerable if any serviceable weapons should remain in her store when the balloon went up. “We should be getting a lot more in a few days.”
There was a sound of firing from the Isle of Wight, between Newtown and Yarmouth. Craigie turned to look, and Janet turned with him. There was an aircraft there, quite low down, flying more or less towards them, at eleven o’clock in the morning of a bright spring day. And there were little puffs of smoke in the blue sky all round it.
For a moment they stood staring, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes. It was many months since the Germans had done anything like that. Then Craigie shouted, “Enemy aircraft over! Anti-aircraft stations!” and men came tumbling out on deck.
On the LCT beside them the sub and several ratings came out and looked with interest at the coming aeroplane; it was not more than a thousand feet up. Janet, furious at their slowness, said, “That’s a German. Better man those Oerlikons.”
The sub looked at her helplessly. “Can’t. Both gunners are on leave.”
The girl said, “My bloody Christ!” and slipped over the rail on to the other ship. Behind her Craigie roared, “Okay, Janet — you take the port gun and I’ll take the starboard!” The inner guns of both ships were practically useless, their field of fire blanked off by the other ship. “You — Jamieson! Get the R.U. lockers open and pass out the drums! What the hell are you standing there for — don’t you know the drill? And where are your tin hats?”
At the gun Janet pulled the cocking lever and slipped the heavy drum in place with quick, experienced hands; she released the securing catch and put her shoulders in the hoops. Behind her someone strained the strap across her back. She swung the gun at the approaching aircraft but it was turning away. It was two thousand yards from her and broadside on now, a hopeless shot. She stood watching it in disappointment, and called across to Craigie, “Everything all right on your side, sir?”
He called back to her, “All okay here, but I’m afraid we’ve lost him.” The aircraft was flying westwards over the middle of the Solent now, a heavy, black, twin-engined thing; they could see the white cross upon the fuselage. One or two ships were firing at it at long range, and a Bofors from a cliff top to the east of Yarmouth, but it was momentarily out of range of most guns in the district.
She called across, “What sort is it?”
Craigie replied, “A Junkers 188.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Making a survey, I suppose. Photographing everything he can. He’s got a bloody nerve.”
The aircraft began turning towards the north. It went on turning, and now it was flying more or less towards them from the southwest. From behind her Craigie called, “I shall be blanked out by Monkey’s Island in a minute. It’s all yours, Janet.”
The Junkers was not more than a thousand feet up now and coming straight towards them, a beautiful, copybook example of a sitting shot. She had it fixed below the centre of her sight exactly as she wanted it; she swung her body slowly, waiting for it, savouring the moment. It was impossible that she could miss; she felt too confident. She pressed the grip and opened fire, and the gun started beating rhythmically, and the smoke of cordite and burned grease was all around her. She swung her body down slowly till she was crouching almost on her knees, holding it exactly as it should be in the sight.
As she fired the wheels came down; she knew that something had happened but it meant nothing to her. She went on firing and the glass and perspex nose of the cabin shattered, and three bright stars appeared inside the cabin quickly in succession. It reared up suddenly and passed right over the LCT’s in a steep climb towards Mastodon; she scrambled round with the gun to get it on a reverse bearing, but now her own ship blanked her fire. She swung her body to the side to look round the obstruction and saw it again. A Bofors from the shore opened up on it as it passed from the river marshes over land. It stalled with full power on and fell into a dive, and as it fell the Bofors blew its fin off. It plunged steeply into a field near the marshes and crashed with a great thud, and a whoof, and a towering pillar of flame, and a huge cloud of black smoke. Janet stood trembling in the harness of the Oerlikon, appalled at the sight.
Around her men were clamouring and shouting; she stood bewildered while they unfastened the back strap for her. It was incredible that this had happened because of what she did. By her side Craigie cried, “Good show, Janet! I bet you’re the only Wren who’s ever done that!” A rating said, “That’s bloody right, sir.”
She said stupidly, “Did I do it? Wasn’t it anybody else firing?”
“Of course you did. My gun was blanked off by the bridge. You got three direct hits in the pilot’s cockpit. It was marvellous shooting.”
“Four hits, sir,” said the rating. “She hit it four times. I saw ‘um. Eh, ba goom, I never seen shooting to touch it.”
She became concerned about the cleaning of the gun that she had fired, both gunners being on leave; she told Craigie that she must get down to work at once and clean the gun. I think psychologists would call that a defence mechanism or something; her mind turned to the routine job rather than face the implications of what she had done. The officer called a gunner from his own ship and set him to work upon the Oerlikon; she left it reluctantly and went back on board his ship with him. Viola Dawson and Doris Smith were on deck to congratulate her; for a few minutes she moved about the deck amongst the men in a welter of praise. Craigie stood looking over to the fields in front of Mastodon where a little black smoke was still eddying up. “I’m going on shore to have a look at it,” he said. “Like to come, Janet?”
An awful fascination seized her; she would have to go. She said, “Yes, please.”
He hesitated for a moment. “You know what it’s going to look like? Think you’d better come?”
“I’m all right, sir. I was in the Fleet Air Arm before I got drafted here. I know what a crash looks like.”
He was relieved. “Oh, well then — come along.”
They got down into the LCP. The tide was flowing, and Viola nosed the boat gingerly through a small channel in the marshes to a little disused jetty; from there they walked across the fields to the crash.
The Junkers had been pulling out of the dive when she hit the ground; she had not plunged straight in. She had hit first on a little mound covered in low bushes, and here one of her engines was lying. She h
ad then cut a swathe through a hedge, across a lane, and through the other hedge. The wings had been torn from the fuselage here and had taken fire from the fuel in the tanks; what was left of the aircraft had spread itself all over the field in scraps of torn Duralumin sheet. It bore no resemblance to an aeroplane at all.
A number of soldiers were already there; under the directions of an officer they were gathering up the bodies and laying them in a row under the hedge. All were dead, all very badly mutilated, and there seemed to be a great many of them. The subaltern had found two parachute packs relatively undamaged in the wreckage and he was fumbling with the unfamiliar fastenings to open them to get the silk out to lay over the bodies; evidently he had done this job before.
Craigie went up to him. “Do you mind if we have a look? This Wren shot it down.”
“I wish to God she’d done it somewhere else,” the young man said testily. “Look all you like, so far as I’m concerned. It’s nothing whatever to do with me, but one can’t just leave them lying in the field.”
Craigie asked, “How many of them were there in it?”
“Seven.”
“Seven? I thought the JU 188 had a crew of four.”
“So did I. Go and count them, if you like. They must have been jammed in sitting on each other’s knees. We’ve telephoned the RAF, but I don’t suppose they’ll be here for a bit yet.”
Craigie hesitated, and then, impelled by morbid curiosity, he walked over to the hedge to look at the bodies. Janet followed him. The bodies were poor, battered hulks of things that had once been men; all were either corporals or sergeants, dressed in the blue uniform of the Luftwaffe.
Janet had seen a good bit of this sort of thing before, and she was not particularly upset at the sight though a couple of glances were enough for her; she turned away. It was difficult for her to associate these grotesque, battered things with living men. It was sobering to think that she had killed them, but she had seen her own friends and acquaintances killed at Ford by Germans in air raids and reduced to bodies that looked just like that. She would rather that she had not had to fire the Oerlikon, rather that somebody else had had the job of doing this and not her, but she felt no particular sense of guilt.
She went back to the LCP with Craigie, and Viola Dawson took them back to the tank landing craft. Craigie drafted a long signal to be sent by Aldis lamp to the signal station at Lepe House and then to his commanding officer, with a copy for the captain of Mastodon since Janet was involved. Janet went on with her job and finished distributing her Sten guns and then went back to Mastodon for dinner.
She was working in the Ordnance store after dinner when Third Officer Collins, her Wren officer, telephoned down to tell her to go back to her hut and put on her No. 1’s and then come to the office; the captain wanted to see her. Twenty minutes later she was shown in to the captain’s office and stood to attention before his desk. There was an RAF officer, a flight lieutenant, sitting beside him.
“Leading Wren Prentice,” said the RN officer, “I understand that you shot down a German aeroplane this morning.”
“I shot at it and hit it, sir,” she said. “Other people hit it too. I don’t know if I was the one to shoot it down.”
“Lieutenant Craigie tells me that you hit it first,” he said. “Tell me, why did you fire at it at all? It’s not your job to fire at enemy aircraft. You’re not part of an operational unit.”
She was taken aback. “There were no gunners on 702, sir, and the sub wasn’t doing anything about it. It seemed the right thing to do, that somebody should man the guns. I think I asked Lieutenant Craigie — I’m not sure.” She hesitated. “It all happened so quickly.”
“I know.” He paused, and then he said, “You can stand easy, Prentice. Sit down.” She did so. “Lieutenant Craigie says that you were acting under his orders. Actually, he had no business to give you any orders at all. You’re not a part of his command and you haven’t been trained for operations. You understand that?”
She said quietly, “Yes, sir.”
The naval officer turned to the flight lieutenant, who leaned forward. He was an intelligence officer from Beaulieu aerodrome. “The Army say that at about the time you started firing the machine put its wheels down,” he said. “Did you see that?”
She hesitated. “Yes, I think I did.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I remember noticing the wheels were down after it passed over and was going towards the shore,” she said. “I think I shot them down.”
“Shot the wheels down?”
“Yes, sir. I knew the wheels came down while I was shooting. I’d say that I’d hit the machine once at least before that happened, but I couldn’t be quite sure.”
“Did you go on firing after you saw the wheels come down?”
She said, “Yes, I think I did.”
“Do you know what it means when an enemy aeroplane puts its wheels down?”
She had a vague idea. “Does it mean that he wants to surrender?”
“That’s generally the meaning. In a case like this it’s difficult to judge. I’m not blaming you, Miss Prentice. I’ve just got to establish the facts, whether the Junkers was making a motion for surrender or not.”
She said unhappily, “A lot of other people were firing at it after the wheels went down, after it passed over us.”
“I know. We don’t know for certain that you were responsible for its destruction. The trouble is that we now think that the machine was trying to find an aerodrome and make a peaceful landing.”
She stared at the intelligence officer. “How could that be, sir?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “There were seven men in a machine with seats for four, they were all NCO’s, and their paybooks show they were all Poles or Czechs. They may have stolen the Junkers to fly it over here and surrender.”
The captain said, “If so, they picked the hottest spot on the south coast to try and land.”
“Maybe,” the air force officer remarked. “But they wouldn’t have known that. They couldn’t have been briefed at all for this flight, or they’d never have come over in the way they did. We think that they were probably escaping from the Germans to join our side.” He turned to the naval captain. “That’s all I wanted to establish for the report, sir, whether the wheels came down before this Wren began firing, or afterwards. As regards the aircraft, there’s no need for anybody to lose sleep over it. I think it probably was trying to land, but who’s to say?”
“No more questions for this young lady?”
“No, sir.”
The captain turned to Janet. “Well, I’m not going to take any disciplinary action, Leading Wren Prentice. I don’t blame you for acting as you did. But remember this in future. You’ve not been trained for operations and you don’t know operations. You have absolutely no right to fire any gun against the enemy, because in doing so you may make very serious mistakes. Remember that. That’s all. You may go now.”
She went back to her hut to change back into working clothes, dazed and unhappy. Normally she would have seen Bill next day, which was a Sunday; I think that must have been the week-end following our trip to Keyhaven. In the normal course of things neither of them worked on Sundays, and they were in the habit of meeting then and spending most of the day together. But Bill was not available. He had told her that he had a job to do over the week-end, and he would meet her one evening in the following week, as soon as he got back. Piecing together what he had been doing in the weeks before Overlord from information that I could collect about him six years later, I think this must have been the time that he was taken in a submarine to St. Malo by night, to paddle ashore in a folboat to make a survey of obstacles upon the beach at Dinard.
Janet had the week-end alone to brood over what she had done. “She took it badly,” May Cunningham told me, years afterwards. “I mean, after all, it’s what any one of us might have done, and nobody knew really what the aeroplane was up to. But she got it fixed fi
rm in her mind that they were on our side, and that she’d killed them. I tried to tell her — we all tried — that the Bofors hit them too — I mean, if she hadn’t fired at all they’d have been dead anyway, whoever they were and whatever they were up to. But she couldn’t see it like that. She didn’t cry or anything. Might have been better if she had. She just carried on, but she got very quiet — hardly talked at all. It’s a pity her boy friend — your brother — it’s a pity he wasn’t around so she could talk it over with him.”
Looking through her documents at Coombargana nine years later, I found two letters, each dated April 29th, 1944. I think that date was the same Saturday on which she shot down the Junkers, and so she would have got these letters on the Monday morning after her week-end of troubled thought about the crash. One of them was from her mother and one from her father. The one from her mother read,
My darling girl,
Daddy went off yesterday with Mr. Grimston; they were to report at the headquarters of the Observer Corps in London but they didn’t know where they would go after that except that it would be to a place on the south coast somewhere for a week in training and after that they would be sent to join a ship. It seems very lonely in the house without him, but I have plenty to do of course. I think he is going to write to you when he knows where he is going to be. Poor dear, he was getting terribly disappointed because he volunteered nearly three weeks ago and Mr. Grimston heard on Saturday but then he’s two years younger than your father only sixty-two and Daddy thought they might have decided that he was too old to go. But then the letter came on Wednesday and he was to go in the same party as Mr. Grimston it is nice they’ll be together, isn’t it? I try not to think of what may happen. I do wish he was safe in England like you are but of course all the fighting will be over by the time the merchant ships get there, he says, and he’s afraid they won’t have anything to do at all. I am glad they took him in the end, because he did want to go so badly.
I must stop now because I have seven pounds of gooseberries from the garden and just enough sugar to make jam.