‘Flight Leader to Ta’Qali Control. Seeking permission to land. Twelve Hurricanes. Can you take us?’
A few moments of static crackle disturbed the silence.
‘Fighter Control here. Yes, when you’re ready. It should be alright.’
The squadron dropped down in pairs to the dust-shrouded airfield, their propellers swirling vortexes in the smoke that drifted thickly from the many bomb craters smouldering across the station. Ground crew met them, grabbing wingtips and guiding the fighters over the rough ground out to the perimeter and into makeshift stone blast-pens, many unfinished, some blown apart.
****
Bryan shut down his Hurricane and climbed out of the cockpit on stiff legs. He jumped down from the wing where mechanics were removing panels to retrieve his kit, lit a crumpled cigarette and surveyed the field around him. Ragged piles of rubble dotted the spaces between surviving buildings. Scattered through these, bell-tents stood in small groups, their khaki canvas filmed with pale dust. Parties of men with spades swarmed around the fresh craters, hurling the fractured earth back into place. A hundred yards further along the perimeter, the skeleton of a burning Hurricane drooped and twisted in the heat of its own conflagration. Another, next to it, tilted painfully on a broken leg, its wingtip bent and crumpled against the ground.
‘What the hell…’ Ben arrived at his side.
‘Yes,’ Bryan murmured, ‘you might be right.’ He cast his eyes around the dry, flat-featured airfield. ‘Look, there’s the boss.’ He gestured at Copeland striding across the field at the head of a knot of pilots. ‘I suppose we’d better follow him.’
****
Dust drifted from their boots as the group of weary pilots trailed across the perimeter track to a low building set apart from the airfield. The earth-coloured stone on its front elevation bore shrapnel scars from nearby bomb-strikes and most windows were cracked or shattered. An orderly hurried out to meet them and dropped into a hushed conversation with the squadron leader.
Bryan squinted into the strengthening sunlight. ‘I’d forgotten how sweaty this part of the world could be.’
‘Forgotten?’ Ben asked.
‘I was stationed just outside Cairo in 1935, the last time we had to keep a close eye on our friend Mussolini.’
‘Thirty-five?’ Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘How old are you?’
‘Old enough to be worried about the odds of getting much older.’
Ben’s retort died in his throat at the sound of Copeland’s voice.
‘The resident squadron is rotating out, but they’re not leaving until tomorrow. So, there’ll be a spot of overcrowding tonight. There are camp beds set up in the corridors, so you’ll just have to make the best of it.’
‘Typical,’ Bryan tutted, ‘I knew I should’ve booked a hotel.’
Chapter 2
Tuesday, 3 June 1941
Another figure shuffled past in the gloom, walking with stiff discomfort. Bryan’s eyes flicked open. Further down the corridor, the man pushed through the latrine door. Bryan stared at the dark ceiling and waited. A gushing of liquid and a quiet groan broke the silence. A minute later, tendrils of stench slithered down the corridor, building to a nauseating miasma that cloyed like grease in his nostrils. Bryan clamped his lips firmly shut, struck a match and held it in front of his face to beat back the fetid gases.
After several minutes, the man walked back along the corridor with a less encumbered gait and Bryan shot him a glance.
‘Sorry, mate,’ the man whispered as he passed. ‘Malta Dog, you have to take it for a walk about once an hour.’
The match guttered and died.
‘If my dog smelled that bad, I’d shoot the poor bastard,’ Bryan muttered.
Somewhere in the middle distance a stick of bombs rumbled their detonations through the humid night like distant summer thunder.
****
Bryan and Ben sat on a low wall adjoining the barrack block, pushing their breakfast of scrambled egg around their greasy mess tins.
‘If it is dysentery, I’d like to know how to avoid it, to be frank,’ Bryan said, eyeing the yellow stodge with suspicion.
‘It’s down to dodgy water, I reckon,’ Ben speculated.
Bryan switched his scrutiny to the tepid, beige tea in his mug. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t sign up to get the shits.’
Engines kicked into life on the airfield and a bank of dust rose in harmony with the noise, blocking out their view of the runway. As they finished their breakfast, a section of three Hurricanes rose from the dust blanket, carving vortexes through its shroud. Three more sections followed at short intervals. The full squadron circled the airfield once and then struck out on an easterly course. The dust cloud rose higher, slowly surrendering its form to the gentle shredding of the breeze.
‘They looked like the new Hurricanes. I wonder what the flap is?’ Bryan mused.
‘And I wonder who’s flying them?’ Ben said.
‘Indeed. Come on, let’s find Copeland.’
The two pilots took their utensils back to the mess and walked the short distance to the perimeter. They stopped and surveyed the aerodrome. Apart from a team of mechanics stripping the fighter destroyed in yesterday’s raid, and the slowly rotting wrecks that had fallen victim to previous attacks, the main field was empty of aircraft.
The pair walked around the perimeter track until they came to a makeshift blast-pen in which two Hurricanes sat. One was running an engine test with an airman in the cockpit gunning the revs while another stood to one side of the fuselage, listening like a connoisseur at a concerto. A third airman leaned against the other plane’s wing, watching his companions at work.
Bryan approached the idle man. ‘Who’s gone up in the new Hurricanes?’ he shouted over the noise.
The mechanic drew himself upright. ‘They posted the last squadron to Egypt, sir.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth to be better heard. ‘They’re on their way to Alexandria.’
‘What, in our aircraft?’
‘Yes.’ The airman nodded.
‘What does that leave for us?’
‘As of this morning, we’ve got four serviceable, sir.’
The air cracked to a loud metallic impact and the spinning propeller clanked to a sudden standstill, lurching the Hurricane viciously two feet to the right.
The mechanic glanced nervously at the now-silent fighter and chewed his lower lip. ‘We’ve got three serviceable.’
Bryan looked from the airman’s reddening face to the seized engine’s battered and scratched cowling, his eyes lingering on the curl of smoke that twisted up from behind the propeller boss.
‘Where’s the readiness hut?’ he asked quietly.
‘Tent, sir.’ The mechanic grimaced his discomfiture. ‘It’s a readiness tent, over by what’s left of the hangars.’
Bryan and Ben strode across the airfield, sweat prickling their foreheads and spreading across the backs of their shirts.
‘Imagine,’ Bryan muttered, ‘if that engine had seized on take-off. You’d have no chance.’
They entered the large bell-tent to find Copeland leaning over a trestle table scribbling into a notebook, a field telephone stood close by his feet.
He looked up from his writing. ‘Yes, I know, Hale.’ He held up a hand to forestall Bryan’s question. ‘There was nothing I could do to stop it. We’re to use what we have until the next batch gets flown in. That’ll be ten days, maybe.’
‘What we have, at the very latest count, is three serviceable Hurricanes,’ Bryan said.
‘It’s not as bad as it could be.’ The squadron leader straightened and picked his notes up from the desk. ‘There have been no Luftwaffe sorties for over a week, probably too busy supporting their infantry in Crete. In any event, they’ve left us to the Italians for now, and it seems they prefer bombing at night.’
Outside, air-raid sirens lifted their bitter, mechanical chorus to the skies. A frown creased Copeland’s brow and he looked down at the t
elephone. A moment later the bell jangled and the squadron leader grabbed the handset.
‘Hello…’ He listened intently for a moment. ‘If that’s the case, then surely we should scramble?’
The first stick of bombs detonated at the airfield’s far edge, their blast waves tugging at the canvas flaps.
‘Christ!’ Copeland dropped the handset. ‘Take cover!’
The tent disgorged a knot of men, skidding in the dust and sprinting towards the slit trenches that slashed the ground at intervals around the perimeter. Bombs pounded across the field, coughing gouts of dry earth into the air. The noise redoubled as heavy anti-aircraft guns stationed around the aerodrome slung retaliatory explosions towards the heavens.
Bryan dropped into a trench, scraping skin from his elbows on the hard-baked earth. Ben fell in beside him followed by a tangle of airmen and ground crew.
Ben squinted up to where the AA shells blossomed a thickening pattern of grey blobs against the blue, and caught the small silhouettes of bombers amongst them.
‘They’re bloody high.’ He raised his voice against the noise.
‘They’re bloody Italian,’ Bryan shouted back, ducking his head to protect his face from the small chunks of concrete-hard earth that pattered down, in and around the trench. ‘Safety first with that lot.’
‘Why isn’t anybody taking off?’
Bryan shook his head. ‘They’ll be back in Sicily boiling pasta for lunch before you could get any of our tractors to that altitude. At least there’s bugger all left on the airfield for them to hit.’
A fresh stick of bombs walked over the perimeter somewhere to their left, crashing impotent destruction into the scrubby wasteland between the airfield and the barracks. The last explosion echoed away to leave the staccato bark of AA guns to beat their steady tattoo. This too subsided as the attackers drifted out of range.
Dust drifted down, settling across the huddled men as they waited, listening to the ringing in their ears and the babble of unintelligible shouting drifting across the field. The short blare of the all-clear siren released them into action and they helped each other clamber out of the trench.
Soldiers with shovels trotted through the sandy haze to throw their backs into re-filling craters. Something large burned in the distance, throwing out furiously tight coils of orange flame, the source of the excited voices.
‘Hale.’ Copeland appeared at Bryan’s shoulder. ‘As we’ve got next to no fighters, we don’t really need a dozen pilots on readiness. But I would like to know something about the organisation on this island and what it can or can’t do for us. Phoning me up ten seconds before the first bomb goes off won’t get us anywhere.’ He grimaced. ‘So, tomorrow I want you and Stevens to visit the control rooms in Valletta. Have a chat with a few people, see if there are any trade secrets we need to be aware of.’
****
As dusk became night, the heat turned viscous, piling extra weight on Bryan’s limbs and making his blood pulse like porridge through his restless leg muscles. He lay on his cot and read the chit written by the squadron leader listing their two names and requesting they be allowed to observe the work taking place in the control room. Flipping the paper over he studied the pencil-drawn map and directions from the bus-stop to the control centre. He sighed, tucked the chit into his shirt pocket and looked across at the man on the other cot in the room. Ben Stevens was leafing through an old Daily Mirror, seeking out the photographs to draw moustaches on the men’s faces and exaggerate the natural endowments of the women with a red crayon.
Bomb blasts rumbled in the distance. Bryan guessed the target was Valletta and the harbours that skirted the capital.
‘I can’t fathom why we’re hanging on to it,’ Ben mused to the room in general. ‘It seems an awfully small rock to get so worked up about. Is it to do with national pride or something?’
‘It’s to do with oil,’ Bryan answered.
Ben propped himself up on his elbow and pursed his lips in thought. ‘Where’s the oil?’
‘Where it’s always been,’ Bryan said, ‘in the Middle East. And as long as we hold Egypt, we control those oilfields.’
‘So why aren’t we in Egypt?’ Ben asked.
Bryan lit a cigarette. ‘The Germans have a socking great army in North Africa, commanded by a nasty little man called Rommel. He’s been told to capture Egypt.’
The frown deepened on Ben’s forehead. ‘So… why are we not in Egypt?’
‘Well, Rommel gets his supplies in boats that sail from Italy to Tripoli. And Malta is smack in the middle of their shipping lanes.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Ben rolled onto his back to continue his editorial enhancement of his newspaper. ‘You’d think they’d send us some aeroplanes, then.’
Wednesday, 4 June 1941
The two men watched the scratched and rusty bus lurch to a halt at the airfield gates.
Bryan climbed aboard, ‘Valletta?’ he asked.
The driver nodded and smiled with glee as he and Ben boarded. They sat on the stained leather seats, next to windows completely bereft of glass. The bus pulled off and jolted violently three times as the driver ascended the gears. The passengers blinked and squinted until the vehicle moved ahead of its own thick wake of dust.
The uneven road surface swayed their charabanc on its creaking suspension and they gripped their seats for support. Scrubby trees lined the road, each leaning away from the prevailing wind. Behind the trees, a low wall delineated the road, built from a jumble of sandstone blocks, bleached near-white by the sun and interlocking without the assistance of mortar. The hard edges of the walls were softened at intervals by large cacti; collections of flat, spiny, paddle-shaped appendages jumbled haphazardly on a single plant.
As they travelled east, they came to residential streets. Terraces of flat-roofed houses, some white, some golden yellow, with balustraded balconies. Many balconies overflowed with large pots of basil, the glossy green plants poking their fragrant leaves between the rounded balusters. Men stood outside shops wearing black suits and black hats. Women hurried along the pavements in hooded cloaks, the starched cloth forming an umbrella-like arch over their heads to ward off the sun’s heat. A grizzled old man with goats trailing behind him paused his procession to watch the bus rattle past.
As they entered the outskirts of the island’s capital, the intermittent bomb damage became denser and the character of the architecture changed. The industrial necessities of a port city stripped many buildings of their picturesque niceties, drawing them up instead like opposing sandstone cliffs between which the river of traffic was obliged to flow.
Abruptly the yellow bulk of barefaced warehouses dropped away on their right to reveal a view across Valletta’s Grand Harbour to the domes and towers of churches dotted amongst the buildings on the opposite bank. Half a dozen fat barrage balloons lolled in the sky like corpulent, khaki war pigs exhausted by the unremitting conflict that swirled around their passive bulk. A warship berthed against the quay bristled with guns pointing skyward, as if to hold the balloons to their mundane duty.
The road narrowed towards a huge and ancient fortification, sitting squat and impassive in the strengthening sun. The road dived into a tunnel beneath this colossus, its sudden confines amplifying the clattering of the bus amidst the trapped fumes of smoking engines. Breaking out the other side into the re-dazzling sunlight, the driver pulled over to the edge of the quay wall.
‘Valletta,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Quarry Wharf,’ he added by way of explanation as the two pilots stood to disembark.
Bryan paused by the driver and fished in his pocket for change. The driver shook his head and waved him off the bus. The door closed and the bus clattered away.
‘Nice people,’ Bryan muttered as the bus receded down the quay. He pulled the makeshift map from his pocket and looked around to get his bearings. ‘This way I think.’
They climbed a sloping, dog-legged road, feeling the sweat prickling on their brows. A shor
t, enclosed stairway took them into a courtyard surmounted by a large arch. At the courtyard’s far end a double-doorway stood open, flanked by two armed infantrymen guarding whatever lay in its dim interior. Bryan led the way across the courtyard and presented the chit to one of the guards. The man read the paper and ducked inside to use a wall-hung telephone. The other guard eyed Bryan suspiciously and unslung his rifle, hefting it in his hands.
Bryan’s thoughts chased back to a London street and the smoke curling from a bombed-out café.
‘Flight Lieutenant Hale?’ the voice derailed his memories.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Sergeant Tanner.’ The man handed back the chit. ‘I can show you around, but we need to stay as quiet as possible. Follow me.’
The sergeant led them through the door. Bryan and the belligerent soldier exchanged sidelong glances before the gloom swallowed the pilots from view.
They walked along the dimly-lit stone corridor, its incline leading them deeper into the solid rock of the bony promontory that supported the city of Valletta. They walked past many doors; most were closed, but through others they caught glimpses of charts on walls, wireless sets on tables, soldiers seated at desks, bookshelves filled with files, bunks and lockers.
They reached a door marked RAF Operations. Sergeant Tanner placed a finger on his lips to emphasise the need for silence and, opening the door, ushered them onto a balcony overlooking a large room. Below them a huge oblong table bore a painted map. Almost half the map was taken up by the yellow bulk of Sicily and the tip of Italy’s toe. Shockingly small by comparison, and separated from Sicily by a narrow channel of blue, sat the sister islands of Malta and Gozo. Half a dozen civilian women sat on stools around the table wearing headsets. To their right, the wall supported a blackboard showing available aircraft. Above them, the balcony held desks with telephones where two officers sat, peering at the map with detached boredom. Only two plot markers sat on the map, both over the coastal waters of Sicily. One of the women stretched across and moved one marker back over the land.
‘It all seems quiet at the moment,’ Tanner whispered. ‘Those are probably single bombers on flight tests.’
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 53
