The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  She came to a halt well away from the entrance to the hangar. Her fitters would have to push the aircraft further to get it to the ramp, but she really didn’t want to try to taxi into her place in the flight line only to black out again and plough through a crowd of people. It was the work of moments to shut the spring down and secure it and only then did she allow herself to relax, close her eyes and lean back against her headrest.

  The next thing she knew, she was on her back and being lifted into the air. She opened her eye and found herself on a stretcher, being carried towards the ramp, with Kitty peering down at her, a panicked look on her face. She frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Kitty stared at her. ‘What’s wrong?!? Gwen, you were unconscious in your cockpit and you’re covered in blood!’

  Gwen tried to shake her head, but found that it had been restrained. ‘It’s just a flesh wound.’

  ‘We’ll be the judge of that, ma’am,’ the burly-looking female medical orderly holding the stretcher at her head smiled down at her, ‘but from where I’m standing it looks like you’ve been very lucky. Although you’re probably going to need a new helmet and lenses.’

  ‘My lenses!’ Gwen automatically tried to reach up to pull her helmet off, but found her arms had been strapped down as well. She looked imploringly at Kitty. ‘How bad is it?’

  Kitty grimaced. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, but... it’s bad. Sorry.’

  Scarlet appeared in Gwen’s vision on the other side of the stretcher to Kitty. ‘Hey! What’s...?’ Her eyes widened as she looked down at Gwen and she turned slightly green. ‘Oh wow, that’s a lot of blood.’

  ‘She insists she’s fine,’ said Kitty, deadpan.

  ‘But I’m going to wait until I get an expert opinion,’ said Gwen, with a quick glance up at the orderly, who smiled and nodded.

  Scarlet pulled her hip flask from the thigh pocket of her work coveralls and sloshed it back and forth a couple of times. ‘If you need anything for the pain, just let me know.’ She grinned at the medical orderly’s disapproving look. ‘Medicinal brandy. Honest.’ She winked, not very subtly, at Gwen. ‘Oh, and we’ve just got word that Derek and Tanya have been picked up by the Biscuit Bangers. They’re bringing them back now. There’s still two launches out there, though, you know, just in case...’

  Gwen shook her head. ‘I really don’t think they’re going to find anything.’

  ‘You never know.’ Scarlet and Kitty had to back away from the side of the stretcher as it was carried down the relatively narrow personnel entrance to the bunker, but they returned when the orderlies took Gwen around the corner and into the emergency station. The station was small, though, and there was no room for them, so they left, promising to come back when they could, which meant they weren’t there to see Gwen almost passing out again when her helmet was removed.

  It didn’t take long for the orderlies to find out that, apart from a mild concussion and moderate blood loss, Gwen was in fact almost as fine as she insisted she was. The piece of flak that had come in through her canopy should by all rights have killed her, but it had hit the mounting of her lenses at her right temple and the brass mechanism had deflected the shard of metal enough to save her life. The impact had still been enough to knock her out and a fairly deep furrow had been sliced across her forehead, but there was no lasting damage and the orderlies assured her that if it did leave a scar it would be almost invisible.

  Gwen was more worried about her lenses than her health, though, and, as soon as they gave their verdict, she thanked them, then pulled her helmet towards her - they had insisted that she stay under observation for an hour and she intended to use the time dismantling the lenses.

  The mounting on her right temple had been destroyed, but that was easy enough to repair, especially because the intricate controls, like a miniature switchboard, were on the left side of the helmet and had been touched. The eight wafer-thin lenses were another matter, though, and she became more and more dismayed as she removed one scratched, cracked or shattered piece of glass after another. In the end she found only a single one of the lenses intact and she wrapped it in a piece of cloth that the sympathetic orderly gave her and put it inside her bloodstained helmet for safe keeping.

  The hour was soon up and she went to the ready room to shower and clean her flightsuit before changing into her day uniform and going in search of the rest of the squadron.

  She found them sitting at a table in the mess. Predictably, they were all looking rather down in the dumps, although when Kitty caught sight of her she scowled.

  ‘I told that orderly to come and get me when you were ready to leave!’

  ‘I didn’t need you to come; I told you - I’m fine!’

  ‘I know that! I just wanted to be there to help you in the shower.’ The American grinned and the mood around the table lightened a little at the reminder that, even though they had lost a lot that day, life still went on.

  ‘My flightsuit needs some care, you can help me with that instead.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’ Kitty pouted.

  ‘I know.’ Gwen took the seat next to her and gave her a long kiss. ‘I’ll make it up to you later.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Abby?’

  ‘She went to Luqa with Dot,’ said Scarlet, without looking up from her glass of what looked suspiciously like whisky. ‘The bigwigs are having a meeting to work out what the hell we’re going to do next.’

  ‘I would have thought it was obvious what we do - we bunker down like Campbell said.’

  ‘If that’s all we need to do, then why did we just throw away our friends’ lives trying to bloody destroy Bertha?’ asked Scarlet, a note of bitterness in her voice.

  Before Gwen could answer there was an influx of men and women, the pilots from the other squadrons.

  The Misfits watched as they queued up at the buffet table. The contrast between them and the Misfits in that moment couldn’t have been more profound, despite the fact that they had lost far more pilots - while they weren’t exactly laughing and joking, they were in good spirits, jostling for position and stealing choice pieces of food from each other’s plates. They were also describing the dogfights they had just taken part in and more than once the Misfits caught the word “Baron”. Tellingly, though, the word wasn’t uttered in the hushed and fearful tones that it used to be; it seemed that the elite Prussian squadron was no longer held in so much awe by the RAC’s pilots.

  Scarlet turned away from them and sighed as she pushed her drink away. ‘I’m sorry, I just feel so helpless. I have the whole time we’ve been here.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ grumbled Wendy.

  The Misfits fell silent as the pilots from the other squadrons began taking seats around them within earshot. Quite a few called out greetings, but there weren’t any remarks about Monty and Bruce; it just wasn’t done.

  Gwen stole a slice of cold toast from Kitty’s plate and took a bite, then waved it as she spoke with her mouth full. ‘So, are we going up with the next raid or are we waiting for Abby to get back?’

  ‘Abby said to wait,’ said Kitty. ‘None of our aircraft are completely fit to fly anyway and there aren’t any spare Spits or Harrys for us to borrow while they’re repaired.’

  ‘Oh. Alright.’ Gwen shoved the remains of the toast into her mouth then grabbed another slice as she stood. ‘Well, I’m going to go and see how Excalibur is anyway.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Kitty pushed her chair back and accompanied Gwen out into the hangar.

  The Misfit aircraft were swarming with fitters and those Navy mechanics whose ships had been destroyed and had volunteered to stay on at Hal Far. None of the aircraft had escaped damage, not even the Spitsteams which had retreated from the fight early - they were all liberally peppered with small holes from the ack-ack fire, some of which had penetrated and damaged the wiring inside, requiring them to be at least partially dismantled. Dragon was the worst off, though, and it was a wo
nder Abby had been able to bring her home with most of her tail gone, including three-quarters of the vertical stabiliser and the left-side elevator.

  Gwen barely spared a glance for the other machines; her focus was firmly on Excalibur. There were multiple holes of various sizes in her right wing and fuselage from the explosion of flak which had almost killed her and the flap on that side had been knocked off its mountings and was hanging uselessly, which explained her problems controlling the machine on landing. She had been extremely lucky.

  After she’d inspected her aircraft and had a word with Giuseppe and his team about repairs, Gwen went to stores, where she was issued with a set of RAC lenses. They were rudimentary at best, with only three thick, poor quality lenses - two for magnification and a smoked one to reduce glare - but they were better than nothing and it wouldn’t take long for her to repair the mechanism on her helmet and attach them.

  Campbell and Abby returned in the mid-afternoon, bringing with them not only Tanya and Derek, but also some very welcome news - Bruce had been found by one of the naval launches. He’d been knocked unconscious when his aircraft had fallen apart around him and only just woken in time to deploy his glidewings to arrest his fall, which was why nobody had seen him do so. He’d been liberally peppered by shrapnel, losing a fair amount of blood as a result, and was suffering from exposure, but he was alive in the hospital at Valletta and was expected to make a full recovery eventually.

  The senior officers had come to a decision about how best to proceed with the battle, but the Harridan and Spitsteam squadrons were up in the air, intercepting another raid, so Campbell had to wait until they came back down to inform the pilots of what it was.

  In the meantime, the Misfits went to their ready room and got themselves tea and biscuits.

  The pilots said nothing as they sat in the sofas, they just looked to Abby. They knew full well that there was going to be a briefing shortly, but they also knew they wouldn’t have the chance to discuss whatever Campbell had to tell them in such a formal setting.

  Abby stared at the coffee table while she sipped her drink and for a few seconds the pilots thought that she wasn’t going to say anything, that they were going to have to draw the news from her, but then she looked up and stared directly at Derek.

  ‘Before anything else, I want to know why Monty said to ask you why it was worth him risking his life.’

  ‘He did, did he?’ Derek smiled sadly. ‘Well, that’s because he and I had a very long and very enjoyable conversation back in England after we heard about Bertha. To cut a long story short, we came to the conclusion that if we managed to destroy her it would probably set in motion a chain of events leading to a Prussian defeat in the not so far future. We also theorised that if she were left unchecked then there would be no way that defeat would ever come about.’

  Gwen nodded. ‘I was up most of last night thinking about it...’

  Kitty grinned. ‘I can corroborate that, although she did take a rather enjoyable couple of breaks from thinking during the course of the night.’

  Gwen blushed as the other pilots laughed, but forged on bravely. ‘But that was the conclusion I came to as well.’

  Derek raised an eyebrow at her. ‘In one night while trying to get to sleep?’

  When Gwen nodded he laughed. ‘It took us almost a week and several reams of paper.’

  Gwen shrugged. ‘Maybe I was oversimplifying it.’

  Scarlet chuckled. ‘Or maybe they were over-drinking while they were over-thinking.’

  ‘Probably.’ Derek agreed, giving her a grin. ‘Whatever the reason for us taking so long, it was the inevitable conclusion. So yes, in my eyes that justifies us risking our lives this morning. I also fully believe that if we get the chance we should try again.’

  ‘I agree,’ Gwen said nodding emphatically.

  Abby looked from Derek to Gwen and back again, then sighed. ‘Dot has been trying to tell me exactly that all morning, but I thought she was just trying to console me and I hadn’t wanted to believe it until now. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re not going to get another chance any time soon; Owen reports that Bertha has been pulled back over Sicily and is now holding steady at forty thousand feet. Gruber’s taken his airship out of reach, as we knew he would.’

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Derek with a shrug.

  ‘Yes. Unless something changes,’ replied Abby. ‘Which brings me to the news an undersea boat brought from Alexandria this morning.’ She took a deep breath to steel herself before delivering another blow to her pilots’ already low morale. ‘Greece fell at the end of April. Bertha dropped thousands of glidewing troopers behind our army and they were forced to surrender after taking heavy losses. The Prussians then went on to assault Crete and the island is expected to fall soon since most of the men and women that had been stationed there had been sent to reinforce Greece.’

  The pilots murmured, expressing their dismay, and she let them finish before continuing. ‘All along we’ve been assuming that an attack would come by sea, like in Britain last summer, and that we would be able to stop it like we did then, by using our undersea boats and aircraft. It seems that the Prussians have circumvented the need for a seaborne invasion with the glidewing troopers, though, and our army just doesn’t have a big enough presence on Malta to defeat the kind of numbers that were reported in Greece.’

  ‘So, what you’re saying is we’re in serious trouble.’ Drake said.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’

  ‘I think Bruce will find a far more colourful way of putting it when we tell him.’ Scarlet said with a grin.

  ‘I’m sure he will.’ Abby said, smiling for the first time. ‘But we’re not lost yet. We know what the Prussians are going to try so they don’t have surprise on their side and with Owen in the air we’ll see them coming. Also, Bertha is going to have to get close enough to drop the troops and we have a significant amount of anti-aircraft batteries around the island to make that difficult. Those troops then have to make it to the ground alive...’ She hesitated, knowing that her pilots weren’t going to like what she was going to say next. ‘And that is where we come in - our job will be to shoot as many of them out of the sky as possible.’

  To her surprise, though, nobody seemed to baulk at the idea and Scarlet even smiled and rubbed her hands together gleefully.

  ‘At last! Something I can do!’

  Abby looked around the table. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘They’re not pilots who’ve bailed out, they’re shock troops,’ Kitty said, ‘it’s the same as shooting them on the ground. Besides, after what Gruber did to Gwen how can they expect us not to?’

  Abby nodded in understanding; Gruber had shot Gwen down in Muscovy, then tried to kill her when she was hanging helplessly from her glidewings.

  ‘In the meantime we’re doing what Campbell said - we’re not going to carry out any bombing raids, or attack any convoys that aren’t coming here, we’re going to restrict ourselves to meeting the raids that come over, because they might just decide to send over a few transport aircraft filled with soldiers while we’re not looking.’

  Derek frowned. ‘At the rate we’re losing fighters, we’re not going to be able to do that very effectively for long and what’s to stop the Prussians from just sending Bertha now, with one of the raids, and brute forcing their way through?’

  ‘Dot did ask the same thing in the meeting. The only thing we could come up with was that, if they were able to, they would have done so already, before they showed their hand with Bertha. Maybe the troops aren’t ready yet, or they want to be sure they have air superiority before they try to land them, we just don’t know.’ Abby shrugged. ‘Whatever the reason, though, all we have to do is hold out for another week; there is a convoy on the way and this ones all for us. The War Minister, in his infinite wisdom, has finally decided that Malta might be important after all and, as well as sending enough supplies and troops to hold the island indefinitely, he has divert
ed two of our newest carriers from the Atlantic. When they get here, they will have an immediate effect on, not just the air battle over Malta, but the balance of power in the whole Mediterranean.’

  Since they were grounded, the Misfits had some time on their hands and they used it to go to the hospital in Valletta to see Bruce, timing the journey between enemy raids.

  The Australian had lost so much blood that he’d had to have an emergency transfusion on the boat that had picked him up, but the naval medics hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding and they’d run out of supplies on the way back to the island. They had only been able to keep him alive long enough to get him to the hospital by taking blood directly from a string of volunteers. His wounds had been patched up easily enough by the doctors using the proper facilities at the hospital, but he was still so weak that he wasn’t even able to sit up to greet them. He didn’t smile very much, either, but none of them were sure whether that was because he couldn’t summon the energy, or the will, after the death of his best friend and wingmate.

  They stayed for an hour, keeping him company, but in the end he asked them to leave, pleading tiredness. Even though it was obvious he was lying and just wanted to be alone with his misery, they said nothing and obeyed his wishes, knowing that he just needed time.

  They went back to Hal Far to lend moral support to the pilots going up to confront the bombers, but there was very little they could actually do and it was demoralising seeing the numbers of men and women coming back dwindling slowly with each sortie and not being able to do anything about it.

  Eventually, darkness came, the Coalition air raids finished for the day, and Father Bugelli arrived to collect photographs of the day’s fallen pilots to take to the cathedral. The Misfits gave him Monty’s photograph, then left to go back to the house.