Too Late the Morrow

by Richard Townshend, Bickers

  The air was a confusion of vapour trails and streaks of tracer. A 109 was turning steeply a hundred yards in front. He fired his cannons. The shells hit the starboard wing root with bright yellow flashes. The wing sheared off and fell fluttering away. The 109 began to spin and to somersault at the same time.

  Four violent thuds behind him made the Spitfire vibrate. Twenty-millimetre cannon shells, part of James’s mind registered while he reefed hard around again towards the 109 whose gun ports he could see in his mirror, flames spurting from them as the German fired again.

  A Spitfire tore past a few feet beneath him, a gust of disturbed air tossed his aircraft up and tilted the wings past the vertical. He was forced to complete the roll. When he emerged from it he saw that the 109 which had been closing on him from astern had overshot. It was so close that he fired only his four.303 Brownings and saw strikes from his incendiary De Wilde ammunition make bright yellow splashes on its underside before its pilot swung away in an aileron turn that spoiled his aim.

  Looking down, James saw bombs bursting on the aerodrome a mile away on his port bow: one target hit. He had no time to assess their effectiveness, but it looked as though one stick had fallen on and near two hangars. A fire had taken hold down there, anyway, and smoke was being blown across the buildings by the wind, flames were flickering through it.

  The highest formation of Messerschmitts had dived through the top-cover Spitfires and James dived towards the dogfighting a few thousand feet below him which had spread across a square mile of sky. Turning his head to the right, he saw that his No 2 was still with him but a hundred yards further out than when they had first engaged the enemy. Good lad. A typically tenacious Canadian, of whom there were three on the squadron.

  ‘O.K. Ben?’

  ‘Yes, sir… closing up.’

  ‘Get one?’

  ‘Sure did.’

  Pilot Officer MacRae resumed his position as they slanted down to rejoin the battle. James wondered what damage those four cannon shells had done. He could feel nothing wrong with the way his aircraft responded to the controls and the radio was all right. He could only hope that nothing was breaking up in the fuselage behind him.

  Four 109s were coming in fast from two-o’clock to cut them off.

  From the moment that the fight had started two or three minutes ago, the radio had been alive with the usual brief transmissions which formed the background of every air battle. James automatically comprehended them and heeded whatever he had to for his own safety. It was a process which required no conscious effort. He had heard men trapped by a jammed hood in the cockpit of a burning aircraft screaming in terror, and wounded men shouting curses or prayers in the last seconds of their lives while their aircraft dived towards the grounds or sea. These had stirred no pity in him, even when he recognised the voice. There was no time for pity, only for self-preservation and for the protection of any hard-beset comrade whom one could rescue from death.

  These curt warnings and exchanges were going on now while he watched his reflector sight and judged the right moment at which to shoot.

  ‘Behind you, Joe.’

  ‘Break port, Blue One.’

  ‘Two behind you, Lofty.’

  ‘Look out above, Simmy.’

  ‘I can see them.’

  ‘He nearly got you, Pete.’

  ‘Christ, Billy, that was me.’

  ‘I’ll take the one on the left, Yellow Two.’

  ‘Missed, you Jerry bastard.’’

  ‘Got you, you sod.’

  ‘Jesus! Look at that poor bugger with his chute on fire!’

  ‘Only a bloody Jerry.’

  ‘Come in closer, damn you, Blue Two.’

  ‘Five more of the sods, two-o’clock, above.’ ‘They’re turning away, no panic.’

  ‘Butch, break starboard.’

  ‘Tom here… baling out.’

  ‘This is Green Two… sorry, I’ve had it.’

  It was the calmest announcement of the imminent end of a nineteen-year-old life that James had ever heard. It pierced his concentration more brutally than any agonised cry. In his mind’s eye he associated the quiet, cultured voice with a pinkcheeked, smiling face, an agile figure on the squash court. He saw a Spit going down enveloped in flames.

  A tremendous G force dragged at his limbs and entrails as he pulled his aeroplane into a sharp steep climb to shoot into the belly of the nearest of the four attacking 109s. His cannon shells ripped into it and its undercarriage legs flopped down while smoke and flames gushed out of it.

  Sparks rippled along the engine cowling of the Spitfire. James flattened out and skidded to port. He saw another of the 109s plunge steeply past with white coolant smoke pluming out of the its engine, cannon shell holes in its wings and tail, a flap apparently jammed half-down and an aileron shot away.

  He heard MacRae’s exultant ‘Whoopee! Bloody Hun bastard… hope he can’t bale out.’

  James shared the sentiment. He had abandoned the fiction that aerial combat was an affair of machine-to-machine. It was man-to-man; as he had decided a year ago during the Battle of Britain, when he reminded himself that the bombers which dropped their lethal loads on England were not automatons, they were flown by human beings who deliberately aimed the bombs. His feeling of enmity had grown stronger and more bitter when he had seen Luftwaffe pilots and air gunners shooting down parachuting R.A.F. fighter pilots. He had felt no qualm when he saw this murderous treatment reciprocated.

  He did not, however, believe that he could bring himself to do it. Tit-for-tat, an eye for an eye was all very well in theory. Angry hatred for an enemy whom one saw shoot down a comrade while he dangled under a parachute should be vented on the man who had perpetrated the act and not on someone else merely because he wore the same uniform. James did not denigrate vengeance or put himself above taking revenge. It was human instinct to wish to wreak it. He could not understand why sociologists and reformers expressed horror for capital punishment and imprisonment on account of their element of vengeance. He knew that if someone were to put his eyes out or deliberately break his legs he would feel dissatisfied unless the same could be done in return; preferably by himself. But to shoot a parachuting airman was utterly abhorrent and beyond his own capability: unless that man had already done it to an R.A.F. pilot and the killing were in revenge.

  The Blenheims, still in formation, had bombed the second aerodrome. He could see fires on the ground.

  The close-escort Spitfires had been in combat but were still keeping their charges close company. The whole Circus had turned for home. The enemy fighters were dispersing. Vapour trails were disintegrating and the smoke left by guns, exhausts and fires hung and drifted in thinning wraiths.

  ‘Time to go, Ben.’

  ‘I’m right with you, James.’

  MacRae had been on the squadron since before James was promoted to command it and informality was in order. In any event, James considered it incongruous to demand strict formality from a man on whose vigilance your life depended almost daily. Ben MacRae was the best No 2 he had ever had, sharp-eyed in spotting the enemy and leech-like in sticking with him whatever manoeuvres he made. When they flew in the old V formation, Ben was the weaver behind and above the rest of them. It was a task fraught with the greatest danger in a fighter formation and carrying the most responsibility. Ben Macrae was utterly reliable at it.

  The battle was not quite over yet. Far ahead and some thousands of feet below, James could see two Me 109s darting and swooping at two weaving Spitfires. He could just discern the twinkle of tracer fire. It was obvious that the Spits had run out of ammunition and were using fuel, which they might need to see them back to base, in taking evasive action. There seemed to be no help close at hand.

  ‘See that party at twelve-o’clock about three thousand below, Ben?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘We’d better get stuck in.’

  ‘O.K. I’ve got about four seconds’ worth left.’ ‘Same here. Shoul
d be enough.’

  ‘For a coupla dead shots like us? You bet.’

  Eight seconds’ worth of ammunition between them should certainly be enough to drive the enemy away, even if they did not fetch either of them down.

  ‘Gate.’

  That was the code word for pushing the throttle lever right forward, ‘through the gate’, breaking the wire seal that hindered this movement. It was forbidden to fly at these high revolutions for more than five minutes, on account of the damage it would do to the engine. James felt justified in giving the order, with two lives and two £5,000 aeroplanes at stake.

  The speed of the diving Spitfires well exceeded 450 m.p.h. The controls were stiff. James felt intermittent vibrations transmitted to his hands and feet by the airframe, the wings and the control surfaces. This disquieted him and he recalled the shell and bullet strikes behind and in front of him. But this was not the moment for concern about himself.

  The French coast was well astern of them by now. Dungeness was clearly visible, jutting out into the Channel many miles to the north-west. Dover stood out clearly to the north-east. Dymchurch and Folkestone lay ahead. When they crossed the coast they would have to turn west to reach Dallingfield. The Circus had returned from France by this short route in order to be safely over England as soon as possible in case anyone had to make a forced landing.

  There were a few scattered clumps of cloud between five and fifteen thousand feet.

  The two Me 109 pilots were not aware of approaching Nemesis.

  James touched his transmitter switch. ‘Piece of cake.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  James pressed the trigger for his cannons and the button for his machine-guns.

  A violent vibration shook the front of the Spitfire, flinging his shots wide of the mark. Both 109s jinked like nappy horses scared by the sudden apparition of a tank or a London bus, as tracer whipped between them.

  Black oily smoke came curling out of James’s engine. The oil pressure indicator reading dropped.

  The engine began to stutter. The petrol gauge gave him a shock.

  Ten miles to the coast and he had come all this way with his glycol, oil and petrol leaking out. Now the engine was running hot, on the point of seizing. So much for the bullets that had hit the Spitfire’s nose. What other unpleasant surprises were developing behind his back as the result of those four cannon shells?

  He fought to bring his sight to bear on his target again and fired. His cannons were empty and his machine-guns missed again as the 109 skidded away.

  An explosion flared nearby on his starboard and he turned his head. MacRae’s incendiaries had hit the other 109 in its fuel tank and it was plummeting down, a flamer.

  James, his engine dead, started gliding towards the coast of Kent.

  The pilots of the two other Spitfires, who were not from Dallingfield, therefore on a different radio channel, were making gestures: thanks for your help… we’re short of fuel… sorry, can’t stay. It was amazing how much one could understand from a few gesticulations and from facial expressions revealed by unfastened oxygen and microphone masks.

  But MacRae was there.

  So was the surviving 109.

  The German pilot opened fire on James and bullets struck his starboard wing, gouging out chunks of metal and lacerating the flap.

  MacRae fired and his guns stopped suddenly after a second. He turned head-on at the enemy. The enemy pilot swung aside.

  James could see a patrolling air sea rescue launch ahead and no more than a mile distant. He could not hold his glide to clear the cliffs with certainty and ditching a Spit was an unhealthy operation: the radiator usually snagged on the water, tilted the aircraft on its nose and carried its pilot down to drown before he could scramble clear.

  He opened the canopy, undid his straps, unplugged his oxygen tube and radio lead, rolled the Spitfire onto its back and fell out. It was his third time but he was still worried lest the tail might cut his head off; but he saw it pass a few feet away. He still had reservations about the parachute, however. Just because the previous two had opened, there was no guarantee that this one… Ah, there it went. That reassuring tug on the shoulders as the canopy opened above him.

  And the Me 109 was coming in again.

  James waited for the burst of gunfire that would kill him. A wave of disturbed air buffeted him and tossed him so that he began to swing like a pendulum, gripping the parachute shrouds and fearing that at any moment the swaying canopy would turn inside out or twist into a skein and allow him to drop thousands of feet to be crushed flat when his body met the water.

  The 109 veered aside and MacRae’s Spitfire circled above the parachute.

  The German pilot came in again, heading straight for the canopy lines, intent, James could guess, on slicing his wingtip through them. MacRae half-rolled and dived.

  By God, I’m not going to hang here like an Aunt Sally. James remembered that he had his Webley.38 revolver in a holster belted around his waist outside his overalls. He never flew without it. He wore a lanyard around his neck with the end fastened to a ring in the revolver’s butt. He unfastened the holster flap and drew the Webley. At least he could make the bloody bastard Hun blink if he fired straight at his windscreen.

  The 109 came in for a third attempt. MacRae came slicing between them. James fired three times at the 109. He could not tell where his bullets went, but the flashes at the revolver’s muzzle might just disconcert the pilot momentarily. It worked, or MacRae’s next swoop, for the enemy pulled aside, but again his slipstream sent James swaying wildly from side to side through an arc of nearly ninety degrees. He looked for signs of tearing in the canopy, his stomach lurching as not even the most violen aerobatics could make it.

  He watched MacRae make a head-on rush at the Messerschmitt, waiting for them to collide, exclaiming with relief when the enemy pulled up at the last split second.

  He looked down and saw how close the sea had suddenly come while his attention had been distracted. The R.A.F. high speed launch seemed to be directly beneath him. And there was fresh tracer lashing the air: but, this time, it came from the H.S.L’s four-gun turret and was aimed at the Me 109.

  He twisted around to look for his attacker and saw it streaking away southward.

  MacRae was orbiting slowly around him, mask unfastened, grinning and giving him a thumbs-up and a V sign.

  James prepared himself for a chilly immersion. He watched the rescue launch, hoping that he might by lucky chance land on its deck. But it kept well clear. No doubt there were rules about not allowing balers-out to risk breaking bones by landing on board. He doubted that he could have judged it, anyway: the craft looked very narrow from up here.

  As before, he seemed to drop like a brick for the last couple of hundred feet; as though unrestrained by that great canopy attached to his shoulders.

  The Channel water surged saltily into his nostrils and filled his ears with a roaring sound. He could hear the three screws of the powerful launch thrusting it towards him. He came to the surface and his sense of humour got the better of anger and recent fear.

  He trod water and looked up at the faces leaning over the rail and grinning triumphantly at him.

  Not more than fifteen seconds had elapsed between his breaking the surface and the launch coming alongside.

  Summoning all the indignation of which he was capable, James shouted up at the crew.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? What kept you?’

  Then, as their looks of self-congratulation changed to real indignation and amazement, he began to laugh so much that he swallowed salt water and started to splutter and gag.

  Chapter Two

  James had received seven letters from Nicole in the nine weeks since their parting: one letter at the end of each week. The address she gave him to which to write back was an Army Post Office and he wondered whereabouts she had gone to do her two months of secret training in the arts of clandestine warfare, or sabotage, or subversion or whatever it w
as that she had volunteered for.

  Her letters were affectionate but brief and she wrote in French because, although she spoke English almost perfectly after having begun to speak it in childhood with his family and this last year spent in England, she never felt that she had mastered its written subtleties.

  His letters to her were as loving and necessarily short as well. He wrote to her in a mixture of English and French, according to what shade of meaning he wished to express. He knew this would entertain her, and it did: she told him so.

  He felt that one could learn rather more about people, in many ways, from their letters than from even a long and fairly intimate friendship without correspondence. If a person were unimaginative or had an unfortunate propensity towards facetiousness, these defects might be concealed in conversation but would emerge in the written word. Although he had known Nicole since he was six years old and she was five, she had surprised him so much in the last few months that he was prepared to suspect that there was still an abundance of surprises in store. He was glad that disappointment in her manner of expressing herself in her letters was not one of them.

  It was seven days since he had had her last letter and if one did not come tomorrow he would have to conclude that she had arrived back in France. How? He knew nothing about the way in which such work was organised or carried out. What should one properly call it: espionage, intelligence? Was Nicole a spy, an agent? It sounded melodramatic and improbable, but it was an essential part of any war - and of peacetime - so it must be going on on a wide and varied scale. Had she parachuted in, been landed from a submarine on some deserted stretch of coast, taken across the Channel in a naval motor torpedo boat at forty knots, flown over in some light aircraft to a field in some remote part of the countryside?

  He wished he knew, he wished that he could have a share in it. If she had been flown across, he resented anyone else having the task. If she had made a parachute jump, he would like to be the pilot who had flown her to the dropping zone.