Too Late the Morrow

by Richard Townshend, Bickers

  Too Late The Morrow

  Richard Townshend Bickers

  © Richard Townshend Bickers 1999

  Richard Townshend Bickers has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1984 by Robert Hale Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Author’s Note

  This is the third volume of a quartet. The first, The Gifts of Jove, covered the period from the week before the declaration of war in September 1939 to the end of the Battle of Britain in October 1940.

  The second, A Time For Haste, took the story on to May 1941.

  The title is taken from an epigram by Robert Herrick, ‘To Youth’.

  ‘Drink wine, and live here blitheful while ye may; The morrow’s life too late is; live today.’

  No reference is intended to any real people, alive or dead; except, of course, recognised historical characters.

  Chapter One

  James Fenton woke when he heard the knock on his door. His batman never made any attempt to be quiet. It was his job to waken Squadron Leader Fenton, who tipped him a pound a month and was pleasant to look after, not to let him sleep on while his tea grew cold. Leading Aircraftman Higgs was a logical man.

  James kept his eyes closed. He heard the door shut, LAC Higgs’s boots cross the red linoleum floor, the blackout curtains being jerked open. Higgs put the cup and saucer on the table beside the bed with enough force to rattle them and the spoon without spilling any tea.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Seven-o’clock.’

  James opened his eyes. He knew that it embarrassed Higgs to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, as he sometimes had to after night flying or a riotous evening in the mess.

  Higgs was short, thin and in his late twenties. He had sharp features, large red ears and a Suffolk accent. He had been a stable lad in Newmarket before enlisting in the Royal Air Force a year or so before the war. In those days officers’ messes employed civilian servants and Higgs had started his Service career as the lowest form of life, a tradeless aircrafthand, in a Signals section somewhere: mostly cleaning floors and windows and running errands and messages.

  With the sudden expansion in numbers, more mess staff were needed. Higgs, who was always conspicuously clean and smart - grooming horses, mucking out stables and polishing tack had taught him a thing or two - was suddenly transformed into a batman. It frightened him, for he held officers in awe. He still felt much the same; hence his reluctance to lay hands on any of his slumbering charges.

  Higgs felt at home in the R.A.F. It was an extension of the discipline imposed in a racing stable: and the insistence on neatnss and the care of property were familiar to him. He had liked Newmarket because it was laid out in such an orderly fashion and kept so spick and span. He liked R.A.F. stations for the same reason. He had joined up because it was, he thought, an easier life than being a groom; and his ambition to be a successful jockey was plainly not going to be fulfilled.

  James sat up.

  ‘Good morning, Higgs. What’s the weather doing?’

  Higgs, a countryman born and bred, veteran of years of rides out at dawn with a string of racehorses, fancied himself as a weather prophet. He was usually reliable. To his store of folklore he had added snatches of Service jargon.

  ‘Two-tenths cloud, sir. Wind’s from the west, about ten knots. It’ll stay fine; here, anyway: can’t say what it’s like over there.’

  ‘Over there’ meant enemy-occupied France; and the way Higgs said it, one would suppose that it was as distant and mysterious as central Africa. To him, it probably was. He had been around a fair number of racecourses, but never further than Felixstowe of his own volition.

  He took James’s everyday tunic from the wardrobe, picked up one of his three pairs of uniform shoes and went off to polish brass and leather, which he enjoyed. He had pressed James’s battle dress blouse and slacks - a recent innovation, as yet for air crew only - the previous evening. This was the rig James would wear.

  James sipped his tea, then picked up the chromium-plated perpetual calendar beside his bed. He turned the knobs to advance it to the day’s date, 20 July 1941.

  From the calendar his attention turned to a photograph of a beautiful dark-haired girl in a silver frame, standing on the bedside table. It was two months since he had seen Nicole: when she had broken the news to him that she was going to be dropped back in France to work - to fight, she had said - with the Resistance. There would be two months’ training before she went, during which she would not be allowed to see him, she had added. His first thought every day, after the weather, was of her. Contemplating today’s date, he wondered if she had gone already.

  She had assured him she would return to England after three months. He had worried about her from that moment. And five months of celibacy? The past nine weeks had been a burden as it was. At twenty-two, with an uncertain life expectation, that was one asceticism too many.

  The twenty minutes he spent bathing, shaving and dressing he reserved as the private part of his day. This was when he had time to think about his family and his mistress, before preoccupation with the day’s work and the exigencies of command took over. After duty, personal affairs were crowded out by retrospective examination of the day’s flying and fighting, long professional discussions, the general boisterousness of squadron life, the evening’s activities: planning the next day’s programme with the Wing Leader and the two other squadron commanders, going out to a cinema or one of the local pubs, staying up talking over a pint or two of beer in the mess; perhaps letting off steam with vigorous mess games in which injuries were not unknown.

  He was anxious about his parents at home on Hayling Island, close enough to Southampton and Portsmouth to be endangered by badly-aimed or jettisoned bombs when the enemy made their frequent attacks against south coast ports.

  He was concerned about his young brother Christopher who had marked a miserable twentieth birthday last month on a Coastal Command airstrip in the Outer Hebrides, where he was doing penance for a low-flying escapade which had earned him a court martial. He had been severely reprimanded and lost six months’ seniority. To rub the lesson home, Command had posted him to flying control duties at the remotest R.A.F. operational station in the British Isles.

  Christopher was having to watch others fly Hudsons on anti-submarine patrols, chafing until he would be allowed to return to his Beaufort squadron and torpedo strikes against enemy surface ships. James knew that he considered the air crews who flew on general reconnaissance - which was what hunting U-boats was called - to be stodgy. They needed patience, a phlegmatic temperament and a different sort of courage, a different general outlook from the strike crews. Christopher was all headstrong dash and a love of excitement. The G.R. types were resolute and fearless in attack, but, in Christopher’s view, dull by temperament; an unjustified but typically prejudiced attitude. In the Services, everyone scorned everyone else’s trade.

  What was more, there were no women on the island, no civilians at all. And leave came only every three months. Christopher was used to having attractive girls at his beck and call. He had told James that he was sure his temporary grounding would not last more than three months and that he would then return to operations. James had not damped h
is optimism, but thought it likely that, although Christopher was a very good pilot with an excellent operational record, his punishment would be prolonged by a posting that would humiliate him: flying some superannuated type which towed drogues for embryo fighter pilots and air gunners to shoot at; or an old Dominie biplane on communications work; or an obsolescent biplane Valentia - the Flying Pig - laden with student wireless operators all tapping out Morse and trying to read it at twenty words a minute.

  There was a danger in such repression for anyone as ebullient as Christopher. When released from it, he might break out so wildly that he would run an even greater than normal risk of a fatal accident. It was little comfort to James that their parents were not as worried as he was. He and Christopher had concealed the court martial from them - and from Nicole - and they thought that their younger son was continuing his operational flying from his treeless, gale-lashed islet.

  *

  At 9 a.m. twelve Spitfire Mk VBs taxyed away from their brick and sandbag blast pens, crossed the perimeter track and formed four abreast in three ranks fifteen yards apart. Their pilots wove a snaking path to left and right in order to see ahead out of the sides of their cockpits and avoid colliding with the aircraft in front. The Spitfire’s long nose, rising steeply, obscured the view. The pilots had all, in their early days on Spits, heard of or seen one over-running another, its propeller chewing into the fuselage. Sometimes the propeller sliced into the pilot of the overtaken aeroplane, a peculiarly nasty end.

  Ahead of James Fenton’s squadron, another squadron of the Dallingfield Wing, led by Wing Commander Wilson, the Wing Leader, was already positioned for take-off: also four abreast and in three ranks. The third squadron was taxying to take its place behind James’s.

  Their thirty-six 1440 h.p. Rolls-Royce Merlin engines could be heard on the farthest side of the station and brought many of the men and women serving there out of doors to watch them fly overhead. Those who could not take part in operations took almost as much pride in the Spitfires as the pilots did.

  A green Verey light flared from the Control Tower and the leading squadron released brakes and opened throttles. The din of the accelerating engines filled the ears of the twenty-four men awaiting their turn. James’s twelve crept forward and stopped. A green flare burst above the tower for them and they surged ahead. On James’s right his Number Two followed a few feet behind. To his left, each stepped back two yards, the two aircraft of the other pair which comprised the leading finger four accompanied them.

  Before the last four of these were airborne the rear squadron was rolling forward in their wake.

  The wing took off into a westerly wind, over the Sussex farmland and woods which surrounded the station on three sides. They swung southward to the sea which bordered the fourth side beyond the main road, the village, and the beach which was now separated from the Channel by barbed wire and other obstacles to invasion erected the previous summer.

  The Dallingfield squadrons were to fly at 30,000 ft and provide top cover for the other 108 Spitfires and twenty-four Blenheim bombers comprising the Circus. The objective was to tempt the enemy up to attack the Blenheims, so that the fighters could shoot them down. Circuses varied in size. Usually, the Germans were reluctant to be drawn. It was hoped that this morning, with more than the usual number of bombers in proportion to the immediately visible fighters, and the top cover unlikely to be seen until it was too late, the Luftwaffe would take the bait.

  The rest of the escort flew either at 15,000 ft on a level with the bombers, at 20,000 ft or at 25,000 ft. Some were Spitfire Mk IIBs, which had four.303 machine-guns, two 20 mm cannons and a top speed of 357 m.p.h. The MkVBs, like James’s, carried the same armament but could attain 374 m.p.h. There were also Mk VA squadrons among them, which had the same speed as the VBs but were armed with eight.303 machine-guns.

  The Blenheims needed close protection although their mutual cross-fire provided quite a strong defence. Their own armament consisted only of a fully rotatable dorsal turret with two.303 machine-guns, a third similar gun in the nose and a fourth, firing astern, in a blister under the chin.

  If the Luftwaffe accepted the dare, its Messerschmitt 109Fs would be interesting adversaries. They had a maximum speed of 390 m.p.h. and were armed either with two 7.9 mm machine-guns and one 20 mm cannon or with two 15 mm and one 20 mm cannons.

  The most important factor was that a cannon could destroy an aircraft at longer range than a machine-gun; and with a mere one-second burst if its shells hit the right spot. But, and almost as important, the Spitfire possessed the great advantage of being able to turn inside a Messerschmitt; although an inexperienced pilot in combat with an experienced German could not always achieve this.

  The Circus, formed by fighter wings stationed in Sussex and Kent and bombers from East Anglia, was to rendez-vous over Dungeness.

  James always viewed these large assemblies with mixed feelings: satisfaction at the strength that Fighter Command could muster after the lean months in 1940 when the Hurricanes and Spitfires were outnumbered by anything from three to one to five to one; and a cynical pessimism about the enemy’s willingness to fight when numbers were about equal. He would almost rather have gone out as part of a much smaller force, to ensure that a fight did develop. He was confident that the superiority of the Spitfire, the rigid mentality of the German pilots and the R.A.F’s high morale would compensate for lack of numbers. He thought, these days, in terms of the R.A.F. rather than the British: for it now comprised scores of French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Poles and Czechs as well: in addition to Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans; and two squadrons of American volunteers.

  The Blenheims, with their much longer endurance, could afford to arrive first at the meeting place. The Spitfires, converging from four different directions, were still climbing when they reached it. The close-escort wing levelled out to surround the bombers while the remainder continued to gain height. When they headed south across the Channel, Tug Wilson led his wing up until they just entered the level at which condensation trails formed, then took them down again to fly close beneath. In this way there would be no vapour trails to betray them and if the enemy approached from above they would make trails which would warn the Spitfires.

  Crossing the French coast at such an altitude, James could see a vast panorama of the country and for a moment his concentration on searching for the enemy was invaded by a personal thought. Was Nicole somewhere down there, a miniscule pinprick in all those hundreds of square miles? If he turned his head this way or that and looked at a certain point or at another, would he be looking directly at the town, the street, the very house where she was at that moment?

  Wing Commander Wilson had adopted ‘Tugboat’ as his personal callsign. The wing was known as ‘Red Funnel Line’ and he had the spinner on his aircraft painted scarlet. The code names of sectors and squadrons were changed from time to time to confuse the enemy. Dallingfield’s for the time being was ‘Tiptop’.

  James’s brief reflection was interrupted by Tug Wilson’s voice. ‘Tiptop, you’re missing something: we can see some gorgeous nudist popsies on the beach.’

  It was as good a way as any of letting the controller in the Operations Room at Dallingfield know that they were crossing into France, without telling any enemy listeners so.

  ‘Tugboat, you’d better shift your gaze. Fifty-plus bandits at about your level heading your way, fifteen miles south.’

  ‘O.K. Tiptop. Can’t see anything yet.’

  Nor could James; but, looking to his left, he saw a swarm of black smudges five miles away and five thousand feet below.

  ‘Tugboat from Corsair Red One. Another fifty-plus bandits, nine-o’clock, range five, five thousand below.’

  ‘O.K., James, I’ve got’em. Did you get that, Tiptop?’

  ‘Yes, Tugboat. I’ve already passed it on.’

  Each of the four wings was on a different radio channel. The controller could communicate with the
m all. He had warned the leaders of the wings at the lower levels.

  James saw streaks of white to the right and ahead, above.

  Wilson gave the warning first. ‘Red Funnel Line, bandits one-o’clock, above.’

  Now James could see more large formations of enemy fighters far below and to both sides of the Blenheims and their close escort.

  There was not far to go to the Blenheims’ target: they intended to bomb two fighter airfields about ten miles apart and a few miles inland, between Boulogne and Abbeville. It would be in some measure a defeat if the bombers did not reach their objectives, but the bombing was not the main purpose of the raid: the enemy response had fulfilled that.

  ‘Tugboat to Red Funnel Line. Let these bastards come closer. Nobody break until I tell you.’

  The condensation trails overhead had resolved themselves into a widespread cluster of black cruciform shapes which were rapidly growing bigger. Their trails were slanting down towards the Spitfires.

  ‘Hold it, Red Funnel, hold it.’

  Come on, James silently urged. Come on. Let’s get stuck into them and then go down and see if the chaps below need a hand.’

  ‘Red Funnel… break!’

  The finger fours turned left and right alternately, banking hard to come round, in line astern, behind the Me 109s.

  James led his two sections in a tight turn to starboard. Out of the corner of an eye he could see his No 2 just below him, sliding back onto his tail. He began to grey out as gravity drained the blood from his brain. He held the turn while he counted off fifteen seconds, the time he had prescribed some weeks ago after practising and timing this manoeuvre. He eased out of the bank gently and his vision cleared. Tracer flitted past. But there was a 109 ahead as well as the one shooting at him which he couldn’t see.

  He fired a short burst and saw his tracer go past the target’s canopy. Bullets began to thud against the armour plating that protected his back. He banked onto a wingtip and resumed his tight turn. For a few seconds he blacked out. Then, levelling out gradually, the blood flowed back, black turned to grey and then to daylight.