A Pair of Silver Wings

by James Holland

  Then a strange calm descended upon him. He no longer heard the scream of the engine; his panic had gone. His end had come and that was that. He worried for his parents, hoped that Harry and the others might miss him a bit, but the terror had left him. Come on, he then told himself, one last try. He kicked the rudder, pushed the stick forward as far as it would go, and felt it catch – a glimmer of hope – and then the sea stopped spinning before him. Thank God. He eased open the throttle, pulled back the stick and suddenly, for a brief moment, the Spitfire was flying the right way up, but then a wing dropped and he felt himself being pulled over. Grabbing the stick, he pushed it to one side and the Spitfire corrected itself. Only then did he glance at his port-side wing and see a large three-foot chunk had been ripped off the end. Jesus, he thought. He breathed heavily, felt sweat run from underneath his helmet and down his face.

  He was now only a thousand feet or so above sea level. Of the mass of swirling aircraft there was no sign, although Malta now lay just a few miles ahead of him and he could see smoke and the tiny dots of dive bombers still swarming over the airfields. His plane was shaking, the whole aircraft vibrating and creaking. Edward grimaced and he wondered how he was ever going to land again. Glancing around, the sky seemed clear behind him, so he dived gently until he was skimming the sea. The white crests of the breakers seemed so close he could almost touch them. The cockpit felt close, the heat overwhelming, and the smell of rubber, oil, and hot metal suddenly claustrophobic and cloying. Tugging off his oxygen mask, he pulled back his canopy and a blast of cool air buffeted his face.

  The giant screen of Dingli Cliffs drew towards him and he climbed, clearing them with the Island suddenly spread before him. Both Takali and Luqa had been attacked – clouds of dust and smoke covered both. Above him, 109s still circled, waiting, he knew, to pounce as the defenders returned to land. Just fifty feet from the ground, he roared over the dense network of small stone-walled fields, then began circling around Takali. Smoke and dust still hid much of it, and he hoped that if he ever managed to land he would be able to avoid the bomb craters. Above, the 109s were still there, circling like vultures, ready to swoop down and tear him to pieces. He glanced at his fuel gauge – empty. He was out of ammunition too – fifteen seconds of firepower was always used up too easily. His back felt clammy, and sweat now poured down his face despite the draught from the open canopy. What to do? Risk running out of fuel and crashing into those vicious stone walls, or come in and land at Takali and hope to avoid being shot to pieces as he did so? His arms – especially his left arm – had begun to ache terribly from the strain of trying to keep the Spitfire on an even keel. For a few moments he felt paralysed with indecision. There was Imtarfa, with its clock tower, and there, as he banked gently again, was Mdina, and the Xara Palace, looming above him. He wished he could be standing on the balcony there, watching instead. Then the engine spluttered. He looked up again – why can’t you bastards piss off? – then took a deep breath and turned in towards Takali. He lowered the undercarriage and heard the gentle hum of the hydraulics as the wheels clicked into place. Flaps down – hold her steady – throttle cut.

  Two loud cracks and the aircraft slewed as though it had been punched by a giant sledgehammer. He looked up in his mirror and saw a yellow-nosed 109 bearing down upon him, fizzing arcs of tracer hurtling towards him. Another deafening bang, smoke billowed up from the engine, and the aircraft dropped. He was now going to hit the ground too fast – the Spitfire would tip over – so he quickly retracted the undercarriage once more and braced himself. It all happened so quickly: shells flicking past his head, the ground looming towards him, the aircraft enveloped by smoke – and that acrid stench – then he closed his eyes tightly, breathed rapidly and then felt the wind knocked out of him as the Spitfire hit the ground and continued to slide and grind and scrape along the surface. Stop, please stop, he prayed – and eventually it did so, amidst another cloud of choking dust and fine grit. Fumbling fingers tugged at the rest of the leads, and then he pushed himself up out of the cockpit, leapt onto the wing and to the ground, and ran as fast as could as two more Messerschmitts roared overhead, their guns firing and tearing into the wrecked Spitfire behind him.

  He glanced back, tripped, and fell into a bomb crater, cutting his hands and knees as he did so. Another 109 hurtled over his head – a brief blur of silvery grey, streaked with oil – and he ducked involuntarily, then scrambled out of the hole and ran on towards a slit trench at the edge of the airfield, where several erks were still taking cover.

  ‘You all right, sir?’ It was Pete Summersby.

  Edward gasped and nodded.

  ‘Reckon they must have known the new Spits were coming. Bastards.’

  Edward nodded again, then, when he finally felt his breath coming back to him, croaked, ‘I’m sorry about my plane. I know how hard you worked on it.’

  Pete shrugged. ‘Did you get anything, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward, then he shuddered and added, ‘a 109. It went into the sea.’

  ‘Congratulations, sir. One less Jerry to worry about.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Edward.

  When the raiders eventually left and the dust began to settle, Edward clambered out of the slit trench and made his way back to dispersal. Harry was there, so too was Lucky. Alex and Laurie had got back safely as well, as had Mike Lindsay, although he had already been taken off to Imtarfa – a cannon shell had smashed his canopy and his face had been cut by the splinters.

  ‘Zulu?’ asked Edward.

  The others shook their heads. ‘A Jerry flew over his parachute and it collapsed,’ said Lucky.

  ‘Bastard did it deliberately,’ said Harry. ‘Must have done. He was hit, but he’d got out. I saw him. Then whoosh – just a few feet above him.’

  Edward had never seen Harry so angry. Lucky shifted his feet, bit his lip and glanced at the others anxiously. Edward looked away – we’re all to blame, he thought. We should never have let him fly. The intelligence officer hovered, wanting their statements. Lucky had also got a 109, Harry had seen hits on a Stuka and a Messerschmitt, and Laurie also claimed strikes on a Junkers 88. Two confirmed kills in return for one pilot dead, one wounded, two Spitfires wrecked and another badly damaged.

  Soon after, they trudged back towards Mdina. Edward felt exhausted. The hill seemed longer and steeper than normal. So Zulu’s gone, he thought. He would miss him – they all would.

  ‘It was murder,’ Harry said to him as they went back to their room to clean up. ‘Nothing less. It sickens me, Eddie. How could anyone do that? How could you deliberately fly over someone so his parachute failed? So he would die a horrible death?’

  Edward said nothing.

  ‘Poor Zulu,’ Harry continued. ‘He would have known. For all that time that he fell, he would have known he was going to die.’

  ‘Don’t, Harry.’

  ‘This – this fucking war.’ He scrunched up his towel and hurled it at the wall, then walked out. Edward paused a moment, then took out his logbook. ‘Squirted at Ju 87 and 109s. One 109 confirmed,’ he wrote, drawing a small swastika beside it. Then he added, ‘Collided with 109 head-on and crashed on landing. Zulu Purnell killed.’

  The raiders returned later that afternoon. Not only were most of ‘A’ Flight out on the balcony of the Xara Palace to witness the attack, so too were a number of the new arrivals. Edward counted sixty bombers then gave up. For the second time that day, black bomb-burst began gushing up from the ground in huge mushrooms of smoke. Layers of the billowing cloud soon merged with one another until the entire airfield and much of the Island disappeared beneath the fog. A few minutes later they were gone. One moment the air was being ripped apart by the noise of guns, engines and explosions, while the next these had faded into nothing and then to an eerie silence. Edward glanced at some of the new pilots. They looked stunned as they gazed out at the slowly dispersing cloud. No-one said a word. The dome at Mostar gradually reappeared, then the outline of the
stone-walled fields. Then so did Takali, but a number of narrow columns of smoke remained, rising like black needles into the sky.

  ‘What are those?’ asked one of the new boys standing nearby.

  ‘Our wonderful Spitfires,’ said Harry. ‘Burning.’

  Two days later, only seven of the new planes were still fit to fly.

  Malta – May, 1942

  By the last day of April, 1942, there were just seven airworthy Spitfires left. Edward had flown four times all month. The last occasion, the day after he’d crash-landed, had been another desperate melee, in which they’d once again been hopelessly outnumbered. Two more pilots had been killed and a further eight shot down. Even back on the ground, there was the relentless bombing, the ever-present danger; the aircraft graveyard at Takali was a constant reminder of the mayhem in which they found themselves. And they were hungry, too. The food on the Island had hardly been plentiful even when they’d first arrived, but by the onset of summer the shortages were beginning to be felt more keenly: a small, single rasher of bacon for breakfast, watery soup and hard bread for lunch, a ladle of goat stew or a sardine for dinner. Edward had to tighten the straps on the sides of his shorts. The relentlessness of the action, even when they were not flying, the constantly disturbed nights, the dawn starts, and the lack of basic sustenance meant that the pilots were always exhausted. Edward had never felt so tired in his life. It was fatigue that seemed to shroud him like a cloak: his head felt heavy and throbbed almost constantly; his eyes stung and he found it hard to concentrate. Trudging back and forth between the Xara Palace, he sometimes wondered how he had the energy to lift his feet.

  Both at dispersal and in the mess, the atmosphere was like that of a morgue. No-one said much – what was there to say? Everyone was tense, edgy. It wasn’t just Butch Hammond glowering about the place. They were losing; it was obvious. So much hope had been placed in the arrival of those Spitfires. That hope had been shattered, and now rumours were going round that gliders were being brought over to Sicily – the photo reconnaissance boys had taken pictures – and that meant only one thing: an airborne invasion was being prepared.

  For the first time in his life, Edward began to doubt his immortality. Death was such an incomprehensible thought, and yet he knew there were only so many times he could survive these one-sided aerial battles. As it was, he’d been lucky, but he felt that luck would surely run out, and he would be hit. Despite his fatigue he began lying awake at night, staring up at the ceiling, thoughts of his body being crushed and mangled or incinerated. He wondered how he would live if he lost an arm, or a leg – or both. I’m not even twenty, he thought. He wanted to talk to Harry, but stopped himself – he had barely admitted such fears to himself. In any case, Harry was as dispirited as the rest of them. More so; Harry was pining for Kitty.

  There were further changes in the squadron, too. Tony, the CO, recovered from his bout of Malta Dog only to be shot down and badly wounded. Squadron Leader Pip Winters arrived to take over. Michael Lindsay was wounded too – by flying shrapnel during another raid on Takali. Harry was given command of ‘B’ Flight and promoted to Flight Lieutenant. Edward was made a Flying Officer and switched over to ‘B’ Flight as well. Of the ten Spitfire pilots that had flown out in February, half were now dead or wounded.

  At the beginning of May, Butch summoned the four other survivors to the Intelligence Room at the Xara Palace. He had news for them. It was evening, a hot early summer’s day drawing to an end. The four of them – Lucky, Harry, Laurie and Edward – stood outside Butch’s door like schoolboys summoned before the headmaster.

  Lucky knocked, and Butch flung open the door. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. Pip, the new CO, was already there. So too was Woody Woodhall. ‘Sit anywhere,’ said Butch. ‘Drink?’ They nodded and he went over to a sideboard and poured them all a Scotch. ‘White Horse,’ he muttered, ‘fresh in from Cairo.’ Chipped, whisky-stained tumblers were passed around. ‘Cheers,’ said Butch. He took a large sip himself, grimaced, then said, ‘You chaps are old hands now. The original Spitfire pilots on this Island.’ He paused and looked at them. ‘The Originals – yes, I like that. Anyway, there’s good news. It seems some of the Luftwaffe on Sicily are finally being moved out.’

  ‘I thought they were getting ready for invasion,’ said Lucky.

  ‘Maybe, but if so, they’re going to do it without all their air forces.’

  ‘Where are they going?’ asked Harry.

  ‘God knows. Russia. North Africa. Who cares, so long as they’re not bombing us. You must have noticed there have been less raids the past couple of days.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ interjected Woody, ‘they might think they’ve already done what they need to do. I think they could be forgiven for thinking they’ve neutralised our air capabilities.’

  ‘But they’d be wrong about that,’ Butch grinned, ‘because we’ve got more Spits coming.’

  ‘Our good friend President Roosevelt has leant us the USS Wasp for a second time,’ Woody continued. ‘Much bigger than any of our aircraft carriers. And we’ve got our own Eagle. Together that means more than sixty new Spits.’

  Lucky whistled.

  ‘Spitfires in numbers – that’s what we need,’ added Butch. ‘It’s no good bringing in penny packets of twelve here, ten there.’

  ‘And we need to make sure we use them properly,’ continued Woody. ‘We made mistakes last time. Big mistakes, at both ends. Well, that’s in the past – what we’ve got to do now is make sure we learn from them.’ Woody stroked his moustache, then said, ‘So Butch and I have devised a plan. First and foremost, we can’t have aircraft arriving that are unfit for battle and which take our overstretched erks three days to put right. So we’ve talked to the bigwigs in London and they’ve promised that our sixty Spits will not leave those carriers without the proper paint scheme, without their guns properly harmonised at 250 yards, or without being fully equipped for immediate combat flying. There’s also going to be a faster turnaround once they land. We’re going to split them into three groups for landing, at Takali, Luqa and Hal Far. Each aircraft will also be clearly numbered, and on touching down will be directed by waiting erks into their corresponding pen. There, an experienced Malta pilot will be poised to hop into the cockpit. At each pen there will be a sufficient number of army and ground crew ready with cans of fuel and ammunition, as well as mechanics to make any necessary adjustments. Our aim is to have each one ready for action no more than twenty minutes after touchdown.’

  The pilots glanced at each other. ‘Sounds more like it, Woody,’ said Lucky.

  ‘Good. Glad you think so. But there’s more. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of the Magic Carpet Service?’

  They shook their heads. Woody grinned. ‘No? I’m glad. At least some things are still secret on this damned place.’ He looked at Butch, who chuckled and rubbed his neck. ‘The Magic Carpet Service, gentlemen,’ Woody continued, ‘is what has been keeping you in fuel. It consists of fast Royal Navy minelayers and minelaying submarines. They’ve been regularly visiting Malta in the dead of night, offloading as much fuel as they can hold, and zipping off back to Alex and Gib. So far we haven’t been caught out but summer’s here and with the shorter nights it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do this undetected. The Spits are due in on the morning of the ninth. We’ve got enough fuel put by for a day or so of flying, but it is absolutely imperative that the minelayer Welshman successfully reaches Malta that night, 9th/10th May. We’re going to cover Grand Harbour in smoke to hide her, and we’re going to send up as many of our fighters as possible. If we unload Welshman without any problem and keep enough Spits in the air, we may yet turn the tables. Everything will hang on those twenty-four hours. The entire future of this Island.’ He paused again, stood up and looked out of the window towards Takali. ‘Now you’re probably wondering why we’re telling you all this now. Well, the reason is this: we need some experienced pilots to lead the new boys
in, and we want you four to do that.’ The pilots glanced at each other again. Edward shifted in his seat. ‘Tomorrow night, a Hudson is going to take you back to Gib, where you’ll meet the carriers and join the pilots headed for Malta. You’re not to fly tomorrow. Just stay out of trouble and keep yourselves fit. Pip here is going to stay with the rest of the squadron until you get back. Clear?’ They nodded. ‘You’ll be briefed properly once you get to Gib. Questions? No? Well then, good luck. I know you won’t let us down.’

  Three days in Gibraltar. Three days of lights, beer and steaks, of streets thronging with men, women, and an array of Allied servicemen. It took them a day just to get over the shock, another day to get over their exhaustion and then, just as they began to really enjoy themselves, it was time to leave. Back to business. Back onto an aircraft carrier, and back into the Mediterranean.