Secret Letters

by John Willis

  Jonathan Reeve used Blatchford’s own words to describe what happened.

  ‘I must say that the Italians, as they turned out to be, stood up to it very well. I singled out one of the enemy and gave him a burst. Immediately he went straight up into a loop. I followed him when he suddenly went down into a vertical dive. I still followed, waiting for him to pull out. Then I saw a black dot move away from him and a puff like a white mushroom – someone bailing out. The next second the bomber seemed to start crumpling up and it suddenly burst into hundreds of small pieces. They fell down to sea like a snowstorm. I must have killed the pilot. I think he fell back, pulling the stick with him. That’s what caused the loop. Then he probably slumped forwards, putting the plane into an uncontrollable dive.’81

  Then, Cowboy Blatchford spotted more bombers who were mixed up in the sky and were streaming smoke. He continued:

  ‘At that moment another one shot past me flaming like a torch, and plunged into the sea. I saw a dogfight going on above with another type of aircraft I had never seen before. They were Fiat fighter biplanes. There must have been about twenty of them milling around with the Hurricanes.’

  Although underpowered, the Fiats were very manoeuvrable and Cowboy soon found himself in a sustained battle with one Italian fighter.

  ‘It was a long dogfight, as dogfights go. We did tight turns, climbing turns and half-rolls till it seemed we would never stop. Neither of us was getting anywhere until one of my bursts seem to hit him and he started waffling. For a moment he looked completely out of control. I got in two or three more bursts and then ran out of ammunition. That put me in a bit of a fix and I didn’t know what to do next… then he straightened up – he was just thirty yards ahead and I was a few feet above. At that moment I decided that, as I could not shoot him down, I would try and knock him out of the sky with my airplane. I went kind of haywire.’

  Although Peter Blatchford had lost up to nine inches from both his propellers, and later found them splattered with blood, that did not stop the Canadian. With no ammunition, he launched a dummy head-on attack on two more Italian planes which promptly turned tail and fled. Myers was away from the squadron that day but recorded the event in a letter home in his notebook.

  November 18 1940

  The RAF pilots pounced on the bombers and pumped their ammunition into them. Then they punished the Italian fighter protection planes. Three of the Italian planes came to grief on land, several others crashed into the sea. Blatchford got so excited when he had finished his ammunition he swept right into one of the Italian planes, smashing the end of his own propeller and the Italian’s as well. The intelligence officer who was deputising for me described how the acting Squadron Leader ‘rammed’ the enemy plane.

  As the operations record book concluded, ‘F/Lt Blatchford, on running out of ammunition, attacked a fighter by ramming it, milling the enemy aircraft’s main top wing with his propeller. Two blades of F/Lt Blatchford’s propeller were damaged. The squadron got two crests off the crashed bomber which was at Woodbridge and a bayonet sheath and two steel helmets as trophies.’82

  Polish pilot, Karl Pniak, played his full part. According to Sergeant Pilot Reg Nutter, Pilot Officer Pniak ‘forced one of the bombers to surrender.’ 83 This was indicated to him by the upper rear gunner who stood up in his turret with his hands above his head. ‘He [Pniak] attempted to guide the aircraft to Martlesham but the Italian made a crash-landing near Woodbridge, Suffolk.’

  As Blatchford put it, ‘I was a bit worried because my plane had begun to vibrate badly, but I managed to land all right. Just as I got out of my Hurricane and was walking away, my fitter and rigger ran after me saying that I had six inches missing from one of my propeller blades and nine inches from another. All the same, it was certainly a grand day for the squadron.’84

  In his notebook, Geoff continued, For the next few days the wireless, press and the films were full of the squadron’s action. Our pilots were photographed with bottles of chianti, crests, Finn hats, daggers and other spoils taken from the Italian planes. Peter Blatchford is to talk on the wireless of his exploits. The speech has been prepared with the aid of a press officer. Soon, I hope, Peter will get a Distinguished Flying Cross.

  On November 17, six days after the vanquishing of the Italians, Blatchford hit another Messerschmitt in a minor skirmish. South-east of Harwich he opened fire on the leading 109 but as he levelled out, he saw a Hurricane flown by Sergeant Bernard Henson across right in front of the smoking 109. The damaged German fired into the easy target, sending Sergeant Henson toppling down towards the ground. His Hurricane was seen to hit Lighthouse Sunk, a sandbar off Harwich. It was not until January 1941 that Henson’s body was washed ashore miles away, near Dover in Kent.

  We tried to slur over the battle and went on hoping that Sergeant Henson would turn up. This evening there was no longer any hope. The action remained on Blatchford’s mind. It was as if the film of the battle was repeated over and over before his eyes.

  He said, ‘I know you understand, Geoff. It’s not the Italian business but this. I saw Sergeant Henson go down. He did not appear to be crashing but was gliding down in gentle circles with smoke pouring out. I thought he would get away with it.’

  After the German had shot down Bernard Henson, Blatchford had not hesitated to chase the limping 109.

  ‘When I shot at that pilot,’ he went on to say, ‘his Me 109 started belching smoke. I was chasing him… I closed in and got within fifty yards. Then he suddenly put out his arm and looked at me as if to say ‘Don’t fire’. But I pressed the button and the Messerschmitt crashed into the sea. He was thrown out and then I saw him for a moment stretched out on the water. Then he disappeared. He must have been dead when he fell out of the plane as it crashed. He was a tough guy, Geoff, a stout fellow. I didn’t want to kill him. I’ve been thinking about it all the time.

  Peter screwed up his eyes slightly and pulled up his shoulders to give himself poise. ‘I’m not a killer, Geoff,’ he said, looking straight into my eyes. ‘I don’t like it. I just do it because I’ve got to.’ He hesitated and continued to hold my eyes in his.

  He must have seen something in my eyes. ‘No Geoff,’ he said, ‘I won’t let it get me down. No, I won’t do that. I promise you that.’

  The two men had another drink but the incident was still on Blatchford’s mind.

  ‘Maybe he might have jumped and bailed out, Geoff, if I hadn’t shot the second time. Perhaps he would have been picked up by a boat. I was so excited, I just pressed the button.’ I tried to talk but couldn’t. ‘Oh Geoff,’ he said, ‘my dream is to bring down a great big bomber, with all the men on board, and just have them as prisoners. I am not a killer.’

  He raised a smile. ‘I like Germany,’ he continued, ‘I liked the people I met there. You know, Geoff, I went to a German school at home and learned quite a lot of the language. I can understand what they say. I had a good Canadian-German friend, a butcher called Otto Sass. I used to go behind the counter in his butcher shop when I was a boy and loved it. He was a fine man. He was a good Canadian but loved his home.

  That evening, Cowboy Blatchford continued to drink as a pheasant shot by one of his fellow pilots, the Hon. David Coke, was passed round.

  Blatchford picked up a leg with his fingers and bit into it. ‘We’re not at a dinner party,’ he said, ‘we can eat pheasant properly.’ He enjoyed his pheasant and enjoyed drinking champagne with it… he put down his glass and that special smile of his played round his lips.

  Myers had the melancholy duty of packing up the belongings of Bernard Henson. He wrote a letter to his wife in France down in his notebook.

  November 18 1940

  I packed Sergeant Henson’s belongings this evening. Sergeant Deash, who was previously in the same squadron as he, and was posted here with him, helped me to go through his papers. They had been sharing a room since we arrived here. Deash is now the only sergeant left in A Flight. His three companions were shot down dur
ing the last three weeks. He does not feel he can carry on. He would like to apply for an instructor’s post. He wants to get away from here but nothing can be done about it.

  ‘We must go through his letters carefully,’ Sergeant Deash said, with a wicked little grin on his face which meant, of course, further explanation is unnecessary.

  The first letters were from Henson’s wife.

  ‘They had been married for three years now,’ Deash said. ‘She loved him very much. The curious thing was that he wrote to her every day… she’s expecting a baby in about two months,’ said Sergeant Deash as he put the letters on the pile of correspondence to be returned to her.

  A different handwriting. We looked at the last words, ‘your loving Mother,’ and the words before the end, ‘May God preserve you, my Dear Son.’

  That was not the end of the letters.

  The next letter was in round, schoolgirlish characters and was signed Violet. It was on pink paper. ‘That one goes on the fire,’ Deash said with a decisive nod ‘… she’s a WAAF. Saucy girl. They carried on together at the Nine Gates Inn and he wangled a room for them there. He may have put her in the family way too.’

  The next letter involved a third woman.

  The next letter I took up gave substance to Sergeant Deash’s remark. It was from a solicitor and read: ‘Dear Sir, The case will come before the court next Thursday. I take it from your letter of the 19th instant that you have decided to admit paternity…’

  ‘That’s another woman,’ Sergeant Deash said. ‘He told me he was in a bit of a fix about her, but I didn’t know she had taken the case to court.’

  We went on sifting. One or two unpaid bills. A powder puff. Secret instructions on Very High Frequency Wireless for Fighter Aircraft. More letters from his wife.

  We went on sorting. Letters from Eleanor, from May, from Tilly, WAAFs and girls outside every aerodrome. It seemed improbable that our sorting and sifting would do much good. Perhaps the court case would not be heard now that he was missing. Even if it were heard and the woman won, she would only get a few shillings from the widow’s pension.

  Nonetheless, the two men continued to look through the dead sergeant’s belongings. Myers was conscious of his wish to protect the pregnant wife as best he could.

  We emptied the suitcase and shook it. Just as I was about to close it, a photograph the size of my thumbnail fluttered out. It was of a girl in a bathing dress. Her bosoms were exposed above the dress which was cut to allow a band of flesh and her navel to be on view. I was struck by the girl’s broad mouth and sensual, vulgar laugh.

  In the Battle of Britain everything speeded up, including relationships. Young men grabbed at pleasure because they knew that they might not be alive the next day. Women did not know if a man they liked and had hopes for would be around much longer. That same evening, Squadron Leader Stanford Tuck had shown up at the mess where, over a few drinks, Blatchford and Myers had been rerunning both Sergeant Henson’s death and the shooting down by Blatchford of the German pilot.

  We jumped into the squadron car. Tuck drove us over to Woodbridge, to the Crown and Anchor. On the way we sang the songs that the RAF enjoy. I won’t repeat them.

  A pilot from another squadron was giving a party because he was getting married in two days’ time.

  Drinks all round. The pilot’s eyes were bleary already. Getting married was just like bringing down a Gerry plane to him. Just another bit of adventure.

  The soon-to-be married pilot, who had a DFC and had distinguished himself in the Battle of Britain, was pouring drinks rapidly.

  ‘Have another drink, old boy. I’m getting married. Ha! Ha!’

  Myers looked round for Tuck, wanting a lift home in the squadron car Tuck had driven them to the pub in.

  Tuck had disappeared. Women were sometimes more important than drinks. A luscious body, a soft bosom, a comfortable bed. The juice of life. A beer afterwards. A night drive, a thick head in the morning. Clear it with a few aerobatics and a good sniff of oxygen. ‘Where’s Tuck?’ someone asked… The pilots looked doubtfully at the womenfolk. The womenfolk giggled and tittered.

  The rest of the pilots continued to drink.

  Pete Brothers came up to me with a half-filled glass dangling in his fingers. ‘Absolutely sozzled. Whistled as a coot. Shozzled…’ he said, swinging from side to side and gracefully waving his first finger in circles as if it were a plane evading a German attack. ‘Absolutely sozzled-sozzled. Thanks Geoff, I’d have spilled the lot on the carpet. You saved it.’ I had rescued his glass. ‘Take me home, Geoff. I must get out of here or I won’t be able to get home. Ha! Ha!’

  I got him out of the inn and into his Bentley sports car. The cold air steadied him. After cracking a mudguard against the wall of the courtyard he sobered up and drove the five miles back at high speed. Sitting by his side, I expected at every turn of the road to end up in a ditch. I was limp with fear and could not remember the password to enter the aerodrome.

  In December 1940, Cowboy Blatchford was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The citation read, ‘In November 1940 this officer was the leader of a squadron which destroyed eight and damaged a further five enemy aircraft in one day. In the course of the combat he rammed and damaged a hostile fighter when his ammunition was expended, and then made two determined head-on feint attacks on enemy fighters, which drove them off. He has shown magnificent leadership and outstanding courage.’85

  80Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  81Jonathan Reeve, Battle of Britain Voices (Amberley, 2015)

  82National Archives, Kew

  83Battle of Britain Monument

  84Jonathan Reeve, Battle of Britain Voices (Amberley, 2015)

  85London Gazette, December 1940

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Even if the Battle of Britain was at an end, the danger for the young pilots of Fighter Command was not over. The war had nearly four more years to run and, although Hitler had abandoned plans to invade, Britain was still at war with Germany and attacks were frequent. For the Myers family, occupied France was dangerous too, with informers only too ready to identify Jewish children to their Nazi occupiers.

  November 30 1940

  For the last few days I have found it more difficult than usual to be jolly. I have been with you at Beaurepaire, trying to imagine your daily life, failing, and then have been prey to doubts and fears. I keep on feeling that perhaps I have not done something which I might have done but I don’t know what it is.

  My Love, I would not lose those wonderful seven years of our married life, even if I knew beforehand that I would suffer afterwards. The thought of you keeps me going. I adore you. I long to see you and my little ones. But there is no horizon.

  Myers still had plenty of work to do as intelligence officer, supporting 257 and listening to the pilots’ problems, both professional and personal. A Polish pilot from the neighbouring squadron – with whom 257 shared the aerodrome – was angry at being overlooked for promotion. So on the same day Geoff wrote a second letter to his wife that was to be read after the war.

  Seeing me in the chair opposite, or rather, somebody in a chair opposite he said, ‘Have a drink.’ He would not hear of a refusal. We would all get drunk together. ‘You may think me sissy,’ he said, ‘but I’m fucking annoyed – furious in fact. They’ve just had a bloody twerp of a flight lieutenant posted to the squadron when I’ve been leading the flight for three months. You’ll think it is a bloody line I’m shooting but I’m not… Of the last seventy sorties I have led fifty, not the flight but the whole fucking squadron… It’s because I’m a foreigner that they won’t have me as flight commander. Why did they give me a DFC?

  Myers tried to reason with the pilot, pointing to other pilots from overseas who were leading flights or squadrons. But it was to no avail.

  ‘I could cry with rage,’ he said, stamping his foot and taking another gulp of gin. He screwed up his eyes and stamped, ‘It took me three bloody years
to become a fighter pilot and now I’m going to be posted as a bomber, because I won’t stand for this. Have another drink. I’m drunk already. If I stay on as a fighter pilot, I’ll shoot down our own pilots. I’m brassed off.’

  As the Pole continued to drink the real reason for his concern and anger began to emerge.

  He sprawled in the armchair. The uncertain look which entered his weak, dreamy eyes, fluttered around the room. The words that came out of his mouth continued to make sense, ‘I need the extra pay… I’ll soon be having a kid. I’ve got to keep the wife going. I need the extra pay.’

  Myers sought out reassurance from his fellow intelligence officer from the Polish pilot’s squadron. The man told him with a laugh,

  ‘Take no notice of him… he gets easily depressed, but he’s all right the next day. He may think he’s led the squadron, but he hasn’t. He’ll be all right tomorrow if you leave him alone.’

  Drinking was still the chosen means of escape from wartime pressures. One day, Geoff and the squadron had a visit from the senior staff at the local searchlight post. Drinking moved from the mess to the back room of a local inn and, initially at least, the conversation was serious as the men discussed the politics of a post-war world.

  December 1 1940

  The usual round of drinks started. Double whiskies, sherries, half cans… one of the searchlight lieutenants said, ‘Of course, you’ve got to cut Germany up into small states again, but you can’t let them start building another army as soon as the war is over. Sterilise all the men is what I say. Do what they’ve been doing in their own country. It’s a much less painful method than killing them off. It is they who have brought all this misery and ruin on Europe. Sterilise the bastards, I say.’

  I said that this suggestion filled me with disgust. There seemed to be no point in fighting if we were prepared to adopt Nazi methods after the war. Others agreed.