Pilot Officer Lotnikski had not yet developed much esprit de corps towards his squadron comrade Lieutenant Dunal. Perhaps understandably. Dunal avoided speaking to him or the other Polish pilot. And perhaps that was understandable too.
Pilot Officer 'Spy' Herrick, the Intelligence Officer, looked up from the form on which he was writing. 'Any joy, Peter?'
Knight's rigger brought him a mug of tea, and between gulps he said 'When we broke I dived on a Heinkel in the centre of the second vic and gave him a four second burst from the port quarter. His port engine started to smoke... ' And so it went on, each pilot's story the same: attacks on bombers which had to be broken off to deal with the fighter escort before the Heinkels could be destroyed. Their orders were to attack the bombers and leave the German fighters alone, but the Me. 109s wouldn't leave them alone and too many bombers were still getting through.
At the end of it the I.O. reckoned up two Heinkel llls destroyed and three damaged, and one Messerschmitt shot down.
Two of the returned Hurricanes had bullet holes but were fit to fly again as soon as they had been refuelled and rearmed.
It was an encouraging start to the day's work. 172's 'A' Flight pilots reclined in their chairs and went on talking among themselves about the first sortie, their hands moving to simulate aircraft attitudes, their voices rising as they talked each other down. 'B' Flight, whose turn it was to scramble next, unless the whole squadron were ordered up, were quiet and alert.
A slow, high-winged aircraft that looked like a dragonfly flopped on to the airfield, taxied over to 172's dispersal and stopped. Pierre Dunal emerged from it. He looked sheepish as he strolled over to the Intelligence Officer but tried to be non-chalant in the R.A.F. style.
He went straight to his flight commander. 'I am sorry, Jumpair. I tried to shake them off, but there are three of them on my tail, and...'He shrugged expressively.
Lee replied quietly 'All right, Pierre, I saw what happened. But don't make a habit of it: we haven't got the aircraft to spare.'
Maxwell, from the door of his office, holding a file in his hand, waved his pipe to attract the Frenchman's attention. Dunal walked quickly over and stood at attention. 'I am sorry, Sair...'
'Glad to see you back, Pierre. Are you fit?'
'Yes, thank you, Sair. I am ready for the next scramble...' Maxwell smiled. 'You may be, but the aircraft state isn't. Take it easy for a couple of hours.' He nodded amiably and withdrew indoors.
Herrick beckoned to Dunal and they walked away to find a quiet spot.
Knight had been interrupted three times in questioning Blakeney-Smith since they had landed. At that stage of the war, fighters flew in sections of three: Red and Yellow Sections making up 'A' Flight, and Blue and Green, 'B'. The members of a section identified themselves, on the radio, by their section colour and a number. Thus, the leader of Yellow section was 'Yellow 1'; his right and left wing men were, respectively, 'Yellow 2' and 'Yellow 3'. The composition of sections was changed frequently; not only because casualties compelled this, but to train leaders. On the last sortie, Knight was leading Yellow Section, with Dunal as Number Two. Blakeney-Smith, who was an experienced leader himself, was Number Three, charged with the duty of staying with Dunal if the latter became separated from the leader.
Now Knight was asking, for the third time, 'What the hell happened to you, Simon? I told you to stick to Pierre like glue if he lost me. If you can't do better than that, with your experience as a section leader, you ought to go back to a training unit…'
'Don't be so damn pompous. 'Blakeney-Smith was lighting a cheroot and his voice was offensively muffled.
'If Froggy's ever going to lead a section, he needs confidence; and I don't think you helped.'
'I can't wet nurse sprogs when I've got four 109s on my own tail, Peter.'
'I didn't see them. And I didn't see you anywhere around when I tried to cover him myself.'
'Don't tell me what you didn't see, chum. They were there. If you didn't see them, you need your eyes tested: so tell the doc, not me.'
It was, as always, impossible to pin down the slippery Simon. You could hack away at him and he'd deflect the blows with his enormous shield of evasiveness.
Jumper Lee broke in. 'Next sortie, Simon, you'll be Number Two to Pete: Six-gun'll fly Number Three; you learn to hang on to your leader.'
Blakeney-Smith glared at his flight commander but said nothing. The implication of being kept under observation was best dismissed quickly.
Dunal came to sit next to Knight, who asked 'Did you get a good look at the leader of those three 109s that jumped you?'
'Too good a look, cher ami!'
'He had a wolf’s head painted on his kite.'
'I was not looking for…for…blasons…badges, I assure you: I do not think I would have recognised my own mother in those moments, I was concentrating so much on…on other matters.'
'I've seen that blighter before. He's got a black wolf's head on his cowling, with blood dripping from its jaws: very melodramatic and line-shooting. It's time someone put him out of business. I got a quick squirt at him, but then three more of them took a dirty dart at me and I thought it was time to give priority to a spot of self-preservation instead of gawping at Jerry art. That wolf thing annoys me like hell; it's such a line.' In the pre-war peacetime air force, boasting, showing off, shooting a line, carried special penalties: such as debagging, being thrown into the river, finding one's room turned upside down. Knight bad been conditioned to regard it as the most unofficer-like, and therefore ungentlemanly, of offences. He had a defiant emblem painted on his own aircraft, but it was humorous rather than vain glorious.
He looked at Blakeney-Smith, who, with his tunic off, had his head tilted back to expose his face to the sun, cheroot between his teeth. 'You'd better take care that Jerry wolf doesn't do a Little Red Riding Hood on you, Simon.'
Then Peter Knight fell asleep in his chair.
Five
It was good to be back on the ground again alive and unhurt. That Hurricane which came so fast out of the sun had put a burst right through his cockpit: he could hear the wicked whine of the bullets now as they had sounded when they ripped through the metal and barely missed his suddenly cringing flesh. Erich Hafner wiped a handkerchief across his forehead as he stood with his comrades on the coarse meadow grass. Three of them had formed up over the Channel and landed together. They had seen the fourth member of the Schwarm go down in flames over England. Hafner said 'By God! We hit the Tommies hard this time. Did anyone see Heinrich get out?'
The other two shook their heads.
They were standing by Hafner's aircraft. His mechanic was putting a finger into each of the bullet holes and exclaiming. Hafner watched for a moment, then said nonchalantly, 'Unless it was sheer luck, that Tommy pilot wasn't bad.' He held up his arm and shewed them where the doth of his flying suit was torn. 'At least one of his shots came fairly close.'
Laughing, his friends linked arms with him and together the three of them strode towards the tents on the edge of the airfield.
Oberleutnant Richter, who had landed first, watched them approaching and his heart went out to them. He felt proud and possessive and privileged to lead them. He loved them all; and if it was with as much carnality as admiration and protectiveness, perhaps he was all the better commander for that. Most men would condemn his emotion as a weakness, but he was sure that it gave him a greater sensitivity to their feelings than other commanders could have. At the same time he knew that if his pilots ever suspected his true nature they would turn from him in disgust. If the Oberstleutnant (lieutenant-colonel) commanding the Geschwader were to recognise it he would lose his command of the Staffel at once and for ever. The strain of concealment was almost as great as the tension of battle and caring about his young men.
Grouped around him, the rest of the Staffel talked excitedly and gesticulated, shewing how they had attacked, been attacked, taken evasive action. In the midst of it all their Intelligenc
e Officer, a harassed looking ex-schoolmaster, sought myopically to make notes and extract coherent stories from them. He and Herrick would have sympathised with each other instinctively: they had the same problems; condensing and clarifying the recollections of exuberant youths into the dry formulae of intelligence reports was never easy, and often irritating; but, unlike the pilots, they were not allowed to display their temperament.
With sympathy, Richter caught his eye and smiled. Then spoke to the three last to land: 'What happened to Heinrich, boys? Did you see him go down, Erich? Did he get out?'
Hafner made a gesture of disgust. 'It was a Hurricane with a mongrel painted on it, chewing a bone...a swastika-shaped bone, the blasphemous swine. It got on his tail and put two long bursts into his engine before we could get there. I've seen that bastard before. He had four victories painted on his aeroplane already. Five is too many. I know his markings too: YZ-E. I'm going to keep a special watch for him.' He paused. 'Where's Horst?'
'Missing,' replied Richter shortly and walked away.
Hafner looked up at the sky. 'No sign of a break in the weather. Let's get at the Scheissenkärle again. What are our bomber boys waiting for? We can give them all the protection they need. Or do they want better odds than five to one?'
Otto Ihlefeld suggested 'Perhaps they're afraid of the British flak.’
That made everyone laugh. They had all seen Hurricanes and Spitfires caught in British anti-aircraft fire over England and by the guns of British naval vessels escorting Channel convoys. It was a standing joke that the German bombers had less to fear from the British Army and naval anti-aircraft gunners than the British fighters had.
Corporal Connie Gates was a batwoman/waitress of rare beauty. In any situation her face and figure would have turned men's heads and aroused the envy of other women. She had won beauty contests and been carnival queen of the Devon seaside town where she was born and raised. After a monotonous life of work in hotel dining rooms she had married a junior merchant marine officer. Five years later, as soon as she had sped him on his way in the first convoy for the Far East, she had joined the W.A.A.F. Twenty-six, childless and tender hearted, she lavished on the young pilots of East Malford all her unfulfilled maternal warmth; and the rich peasant sensuality that was bred in her by generations of forebears who had worked on the land and never took a maid to the altar before they had put her fertility to the proof.
She worked in the Officers' Mess and her first daily concern was to ensure that the pilots at their dispersal points were well fed. In these hectic times lunch was eaten, on most days, on the airfield. Connie delivered the meals personally.
The Officers' Mess steward, who had seen service in the houses of the rich, and ran the mess in a manner which would not have disgraced them, approved of Cpl. Gates. If he was aware of the generous lengths to which she went in her elected role of comforter to the pilots, he maintained a perfect discretion.
They were discussing the lunch arrangements when the quietness of the mess was tom apart by the bellow of twelve Hurricanes directly overhead. Before the noise had died another squadron screamed over the roof, also on a southerly course.
The elderly man and the young woman looked at each other. He shook his head in an expression of bleak resignation. She flushed and glanced down at the sheet of paper in her hand, tears threatening. They shared an angry, impotent reaction: the number of lunches they were preparing was based on an illusion. From the list the mess secretary's office had given them, they knew that there were sixty-four pilots and nine intelligence and technical officers out at dispersals. Of the pilots, eighteen were N.C.O.s, but the mess steward had arranged with the Sergeants' Mess caterer that he would send food out for them also and take repayment in rations. Sixty four flying men to feed, then; in theory. Both knew that, by lunch time, there would not be so many.
Soon after 'A' Flight had come back from their first sortie, 'B' Flight were scrambled. But the order came too late and they returned, frustrated, without having made contact with the enemy. While they were climbing to get above the top layer of Me. 109s, and up-sun, the raiders turned south and made back for France. Vapour trails patterned the sky and there were drifting plumes and patches of smoke from burning aircraft. In the distance the sun glinted on the fast disappearing Heinkels and their escorting Messerschmitts.
The disgruntled pilots of 'B' Flight flung themselves into their chairs and cursed the slow reactions of their seniors in the various Operations Rooms all the way up to Headquarters Fighter Command itself. They swore and grumbled because they had no proper idea of the problems that their commanders at Group and Command Headquarters had to grapple with. For the men who flew the Hurricanes and Spitfires it was simply a matter of attack and defence. The enemy approached, the radiolocation (radar) early warning system alerted the Operations Rooms, and all that the Group Commanders and controllers had to do was send fighters off at once, giving them time to make height and position themselves up-sun. Then, despite the Me 109s' greater speed and rate of climb, they would reach the bombers before the enemy fighters could intervene. In their minds, it was all very straightforward and easy.
The pilots, knowing only the system of defence and little of its defects or the scarcity of aircraft in Fighter Command, and with no personal experience of controlling, over simplified. To them it seemed plain that two squadrons could keep a hundred German fighters busy while a third shot down the bombers. If there was an early warning system, and if fighter squadrons were kept at readiness all day, what prevented the top brass from ordering them off in time to do just that?
But the situation and the tactics were not, in reality, so uncomplicated, and the pity of it was that nobody explained to the fighting airmen how the defence system really operated. Spoof raids would appear on the radar screens to draw up the British fighters; then landed, and while the R.A.F. was refuelling the real raids came in. So someone in command had to decide whether each enemy movement was a feint or genuine. Early radar was inaccurate. Electrical faults were frequent. Someone had to decide how to make the best use of the seven hundred fighters and fourteen hundred fighter pilots the R.A.F. had, against a Luftwaffe that could call on nearly fifteen hundred bombers and over a thousand fighters: and it was the bombers which would obliterate Britain's factories, airfields and towns; the fighters could only knock out the defending fighters. And their pilots.
172 Squadron amused itself in its various ways.
'Catch!' Massey flung aside the magazine he was trying to read and grabbed successfully for the hurled orange that was sailing towards him; only he didn't notice that there were two of them, and the second one biffed him between the eyes, making him yell and demand arbitration.
Sqdn. Leader Maxwell, disturbed in his reading of intelligence reports clipped to a plywood board, glanced around. His sensitive bony face gave him an austere look: a good instrument of discipline. In fact, he was a tolerant man; except towards Germans. The Squadron Medical Officer was sitting comfortably on his motor cycle, propped on its stand, chatting to two of the sergeant pilots and Bernie Harmon. Maxwell let his eyes dwell for a while on Pilot Officer Harmon. He knew he worried too much about Bernie, but after all who wouldn't worry about a twenty-year-old brat who looked seventeen and had shot down eleven hostiles already, with five probables and a dozen or so badly damaged; who had won a D.F.M. and whom he had recently recommended for a D.F.C. The boy looked too frail to fire a popgun, let alone eight .303 Brownings, yet he fed on Germans with the appetite of an ogre.
Bernie Harmon had entered the R.A.F. Apprentices' School at the age of fourteen and qualified as a sergeant pilot four years later. It was only two months since he had been commissioned. Maxwell and the M.O. watched him with covert anxiety for signs of a mental or physical breakdown, but they might as well have expected a crack in the Rock of Gibraltar. Harmon was a Cockney from Bethnal Green, half Jewish, sallow and stunted, brave as a lion. And now, for God's sake, Maxwell reflected irritably, the silly little sod had
gone clean off his rocker as soon as he got his commission, and leaped into matrimony. Sarah, his brand new wife, small, dark, glowing, a full blooded Jewess, was installed in lodgings in the local village. She and Bernie had bicycles. which they rode with perfect equilibrium after even the wildest squadron party: both of them being virtually teetotal. Maxwell felt that he had enough on his hands without a child bride (Sarah was eighteen) who might at any moment become a child widow. At the back of his mind, too, was a vague but discouraging notion that if Bernie did get the chop there would be a mournful visitation by a weeping rabbi, all long black coat, greasy ringlets and beard, and biblical incantations; not to mention a tear bottle.
If only Bernie Harmon were a bit more like Sergeant Wilkins, now. Wilkie was a burly, laconic Geordie who had fled the coalmines to breathe clean air as a regular airman. He shared with his flight commander, Fit. Lt. Poynter, a passionate love for cars. There he was now, pottering with the engine of his red 'J' model M.G. while Spike Poynter hovered around with his head also under the bonnet. Spike's own elderly Aston Martin (bought before the war with a small legacy), a draughty noisy It litre open sports job with a polished aluminium body, stood in the shade of a Nissen hut. Other members of the squadron often told its devoted owner that it was a totally useless form of transport, because there was no room to stretch out with a bit of crumpet. This calumny always got a rise out of him. Cars were meant for one sort of fun and beds for quite another, and neither should be made to perform the other's function, he said. Nobody agreed with him, except Sergeant Wilkins: and even Wilkins, Maxwell suspected, would tell his superior officer, any minute now, to buzz off and tune his own motor. No need to worry about Wilkins; he was as solid and unflappable as they come.
Maxwell considered the two new arrivals, Cunningham and Webb: they sat a little apart from the rest, sharing a set of aircraft recognition cards; silhouettes of friendly and enemy aeroplanes depicted from various angles. They kept their distance not only because they sought quiet for their concentration but also because they felt diffident about mixing with the rest of the squadron. They were questioning each other seriously, each briefly holding a card up and asking what aircraft it shewed. Well, Maxwell told himself, that was one way to buy some insurance in staying alive; and avoid the ultimate crime of shooting down one of your own side. He had to approve, although these two new boys were more subdued than he liked his young officers to be. They had better lose their shyness soon: some of the pilots with twenty or thirty sorties to their names had only been with the squadron two or three weeks; there was no need to stand in awe of them.
Summer of No Surrender Page 4
