Webb and Cunningham had arrived two days before from the same operational training unit, with only ten hours apiece on Hurricanes. Maxwell had not made them operational yet; had not dared to: first, the squadron would have to teach them how to fly a fighter in battle. The O.T.U.s merely gave them the rudiments: just enough to get them killed quickly. But there were no aircraft to spare for teaching these youngsters dog fighting. At the present casualty rate, pilots were being turned out of training schools before they were ready for action; and they were the ones who got killed, while the veterans survived.
He had no way of knowing that, a month later, pilots would leave some of the training units without ever having fired their guns, even at a towed target.
Despite the lack of experienced pilots and serviceable aircraft, he had to find some way of giving these new types adequate instruction. If he had been praised for his concern he would have replied, with unconvincing but statutory cynicism, that he had enough letters of condolence to write every week as it was without adding unnecessarily to the number.
He knew that the risks were the same for all of them but felt particular compassion for new arrivals; especially these, with their pink faced schoolboy youthfulness. At their age he had just entered the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell and started learning to fly comparatively slow and easily handled biplanes. Whereas today's new pilots, who were not even professionals but war time temporaries, were being rushed through their training and into the cockpits of fast, sensitive Hurricanes and Spitfires; and thrown into action at once, before they had learned to shoot decently or fly with polish.
The telephone rang on his desk: two Hurricanes were already being brought over from the hangar and the third would be serviceable in an hour; well ahead of schedule. Maxwell congratulated his Engineer Officer: he, and the technical flight sergeant and the rest of the ground crews, all deserved medals, he thought, for their hard and skilful work.
The telephone rang again and a few seconds later twelve pilots were pelting for their aircraft.
Five or six were left staring after them and there were a couple of absentees; even at the height of war, ordinary human affairs took their toll: one was having dental treatment at that moment and another was on leave to visit a dying mother.
Pilot Officer Cunningham turned to P.O. Webb and said 'That's the twelfth scramble we've watched in forty-eight hours. At that rate, with aircraft coming back badly damaged, or not at all, we'll see another dozen and still not be operational.'
'Might as well go back to O.T.U. At least they did have some aircraft for us.'
They had jumped to their feet when the scramble order was given and watched the Hurricanes waddling and bouncing over the airfield, gaining flying speed and soaring away beyond the boundary fence.
Nigel Cunningham glanced at his friend. 'Makes me feel such a fraud to sit here doing damn all, when my poor bloody parents are worried sick imagining I'm fighting battles all day.' 'Hadn't thought of that. Know how you feel. Wish you hadn't brought it up, though: feeling frustrated is bad enough without feeling bloody bogus into the bargain. Come on, let's get on with these silhouettes.'
They put their heads together and sat with their shoulders touching, subconsciously drawing mutual comfort from one another, as they became absorbed again in their study.
Pierre Dunal watched them from behind his sunglasses, speculating. He had been feeling sorry for them ever since their arrival, as he did for all newcomers to the close, guarded fraternity of the squadron. He knew they were only nineteen. He was only three years older than they, but the gap between a sophisticated Frenchman of good family and callow British youths was ineffable. He very much wanted to bridge it and offer them some open sympathy, but it was not for him to make the move when their own compatriots ignored them. He knew that this was neither from unfriendliness nor from any convention that pilots had to prove themselves in action before being truly accepted, but from sheer preoccupation and weariness. And, in some, a deliberate avoidance of close friendships which were quickly and hurtfully ended by death. It was not good to care too much about one's comrades in these times; better to take their loss without any personal sense of bereavement.
There were many reasons why newcomers to any fighter squadron this long, .brilliant summer met an indifferent welcome.
Dunal's eyes lingered sympathetically just the same, as the two friends sat in such manifest intimacy. He hoped the voyou, the grosse brute Blakeney-Smith would not take it into his head to molest them with his acid taunts. After all, their unconscious yearning for mutual comfort and affection among strange surroundings was no more unnatural than his own for Ia belle Connie; or Blakeney-Smith's for the barmaids and chorus girls whom his money bought.
Beyond the Airmen's Married Quarters was a pasture shielded from the camp by trees. Here was privacy for the taking of illicit photographs. Tuttle took first turn at wearing Flying Officer Knight's best tunic.
He stood in the sunlight, smiling; broad shouldered and bare headed, his thick black hair set in an unfortunate quiff which would not have been approved in an Officers' Mess, even in wartime. He smoothed the last wrinkle out of the officer's tunic and presented his left side to the photographer. For a moment his thick fingers went up to run over the embroidered wings on the breast; the badge stood proud of the cloth and was silkily smooth: it had taken Knight more than a year's hard work and no small measure of guts to earn the right to wear it.
'Take yer toime,' the batman admonished his friend with the camera. 'Yer know 'ow 'ard it is to get fillums, so down't wiste it. There's a war on y'know.'
Hafner had been granted his wish. Yet another force of bombers, forty of them, had been sent to attack R.A.F. airfields in southern England. Nearly a hundred Me. 109s and Me.ll0s escorted them. II JG97 flew high cover, which would give them the chance to attack the Spitfires and Hurricanes as soon as they appeared.
Private Greiner had swept and dusted Richter's room, tidied away his letters and the newspapers from home, and polished his boots and shoes. Now he was going to press Richter's spare uniforms and then he thought he would take a rest in the shade of a tree by the bam, where he would enjoy a pipe and read the German newspapers: one of his own and one which he would borrow from his officer's room. It would never have occurred to him to pry into Hafner's mail, but borrowing his newspaper was a liberty he did allow himself: like his comrades, he craved news from home.
Greiner had no iron of his own, but the farmer's widow would lend him one. He had made a point of being civil to her. She had a hard enough job in running the farm since her husband was killed behind his field gun in the French retreat. Any German soldier who helped to lighten it could, maybe, expect some favours; she was a fine woman, broad bosomed and full lipped; and Greiner's wife was five hundred miles away.
For the use of her flat iron he protected her from the marauding troops who came to pester her for eggs, milk and chickens. He thought he was already beginning to see signs of a thaw in her frosty demeanour towards the invaders who had widowed her. After all, he, a batman in the airforce, had had no hand in her bereavement. Why should she bear him a grudge? He was a decent, home loving fellow, as no doubt her husband had been; and doubtless with the same burning desire to return to the plump arms of his wife. A little persistence and he was sure that Madame Prudhomme's legs, as well as her arms, would open to him.
He looked forward to an industrious morning and afternoon, with a well merited spell of leisure when his work was done; culminating in a little erotic Franco German sodality sooner or later.
He did not ask much for himself. His first concern was to do his duty to Leutnant Hafner. If, in the course of it, he could get to lay his hand on the bare white leg of the farmer's widow, thick though it was, patterned with incipient varicose veins and more than a little hirsute, he was sure his master would not begrudge him the legitimate spoils of war. For the young devil was hot blooded enough himself.
He wholeheartedly admired and respecte
d his officers. Some of the old soldiers on the Staffel affected to despise or ridicule them, and perhaps it was not pretence, maybe many of them did look on the officers as over-privileged and selfish, fair game for exploitation. Not that it was easy to exploit a German officer: the tough N.C.O.s made sure of that.
Greiner believed that 'the Comrades', as the pilots called each other, were heroes. He could not imagine himself attempting the desperate deeds which were the fabric of their daily lives. If it would have relieved Hafner's nervous tension, on the bad days, to strike him, Greiner would willingly have stood to attention while he did so as often as he wished.
With a screech of wind noise and a roar of engines twelve aircraft of No. 1 Staffel climbed above the farm and spiralled out of sight to join the other twenty-four Messerschmitts of the Gruppe.
Greiner, with his square head tilted back, watched them. He hoped that the Virgin whose image on a disc of cheap white metal Hafner carried in his pocket would protect him. Being a Lutheran himself, he was sceptical about this.
Six
Squadron Leader Maxwell led his squadron in loose formation on their third sortie of the day, climbing north eastward to make enough height to be above the enemy when they crossed the coast. Coming from the south, the Germans had the sun behind them: that was a disadvantage that the defenders could not completely offset, but they could at least intercept from abeam, either east or west, and avoid looking directly into the sun.
Maxwell's policy was to train all his pilots in leadership, although this sometimes meant leaving a good, battle hardened man behind so that a comparative novice could learn a new role.
It was something of a luxury in these hard pressed days, but Maxwell knew the importance of ensuring that every section, flight or squadron leader could be adequately replaced immediately. Neither he nor his flight commanders could be any more certain than the other pilots that they would return from a sortie. He was satisfied that either Lee or Poynter could take over his job; Knight, Harmon and one or two others could replace them; except that Harmon, as a very newly commissioned officer, was too junior and would have to jump a rank to get command of a flight.
Blakeney-Smith, in theory, should be ready for promotion. He was a regular officer with enough seniority. But it would have been an unhappy flight that Simple Simon commanded.
Jumper Lee was not satisfied with Blakeney-Smith's recent performance, Maxwell knew. Simon should not have let himself be separated from Dunal on the first sortie that morning: it was only the Frenchman's second chance at flying Number Two, and his experienced Number Three should have stayed as close to him as a destraining bailiff. But Jumper had taken immediate steps to ensure it didn't happen again.
Maxwell knew who would give the first warning call: Simon Blakeney-Smith, with his innate competitiveness, always determined to get in before anyone else. And the first accurate sighting would be given by Bernie Harmon. It was Bernie's sharpness of eye which was the basic reason for his longevity (barely twenty years of age but survivor of a hundred combats) and his lethal record of success in battle. With his superlative sense of timing, he acted at precisely the right split second: whether it was to turn, to dive, to climb or to shoot. With his abnormal vision he saw trouble coming soon enough to have made himself a legend for his brilliant evasive action.
Maxwell never knew whether to be amused or pitying when Blakeney-Smith legged it for his Hurricane on a scramble. Driven by the compulsion to outshine everyone, he was always first into the cockpit: he took care to sit on the fringe of the group outside the crew room door, or nearest the door when they sat inside, so as to be the closest to the dispersal line. On his long legs he lolloped across the grass like an absconding cashier. He boasted that although he never played games, and smoked, drank, and wenched more than anyone else on the squadron (he didn't: Jumper, and others, beat him at the last two and Pierre and Lottie smoked like overtime factory chimneys), he could outstrip them all when it came to a scramble.
'You've got damn all to shew for it,' Peter Knight told him one day. 'You may get in your cockpit before the rest of us, but you don't seem to shoot down many hostiles.' Even that direct rudeness did not deter Blakeney-Smith from reiterating the boast.
The C.O. had overheard his pilots, last week, discussing this vanity (among many) of the unlovable Simon's. They had thought it would be a good idea to persuade the adjutant to arrange a posting to 172 Squadron for any champion sprinter who happened to be leaving an operational training unit. They reckoned that Simple Simon would have apoplexy in his efforts to beat a trained athlete who could easily run a hundred yards in ten seconds. But Blakeney-Smith was not an interesting enough subject to hold their attention for long and the idea was dropped after half a day.
A minute later the radio crackled: 'Yellow Leader from Yellow Two. Bandits ten-o'clock high.' Blakeney-Smith on the ball.
His section leader sounded bored. 'Spots before the eyes. Red Leader from Yellow One: about twenty one-o-nines one o'clock, below.'
Maxwell looked down to his right, then called Harmon: 'Green Leader, see anything?'
'Twenty-four one-o-nines, at one o'clock, about twenty thousand. Bombers behind them at ten thousand.'
Maxwell rocked his wings to get a better view. 'I've got 'em. Blue and Green watch for fighters above. Red and Yellow, let's go for the bombers. Tallyho!'
Anne Holt stood on the lawn in front of her parents' house and scanned the sky.
She had been listening to gunfire. High overhead, machine guns rattled and occasionally she saw the sparkle of tracer. Nearby, light anti-aircraft guns pumped shells at the German bombers and then fell silent as the Gun Operations Room ordered them to cease fire for the safety of friendly fighters in the zone. Anne knew nothing about Gun Operations Room or the danger to the Spitfires and Hurricanes from friendly antiaircraft fire, and felt indignant because the Army was apparently leaving all the fighting to the R.A.F. Vapour trails streaked the whole area of sky that she could see.
The sights and sounds were familiar. She had seen many aeroplanes falling to the ground during the last few weeks. She had heard them explode and watched the smoke billow where men had died. She had seen parachutes open and drift earthward, each with a small human speck beneath it, often swinging like a pendulum.
She was a frequent guest at dances and cocktail parties in the Officers' Mess at East Malford and felt personally involved in the battles that she witnessed almost every day.
The first pilot who had taken her out was killed during the second week of their friendship. The next, who had survived long enough to escort her for a month, was now in hospital burn scarred and blinded in one eye. She was glad she had been kind to him; he wouldn't find it so easy to get girls when he came out of hospital with half his nose gone, disfigured cheeks and an empty eye socket.
And now there was Peter Knight and she was scared for him.
He wasn't as handsome as Charles (as Charles had been before enemy gunfire ripped his face to ruin), or as tall and magnificent as Pip, who was still strapped into his Hurricane at the bottom of the English Channel. But he had a straight look, mischievous eyes and good manners; he flirted mildly with her mother, who enjoyed it, and talked sport with her father, who took him seriously because he played rugger for Fighter Command.
She had gone out once with Blakeney-Smith. He had offered to take her to dinner after a mess party and she accepted because she was still grieving over Pip; and because she recognised some destructive sense of insecurity in Simon and pitied him. She did not enjoy herself. He tried to give the impression that anything different from his own way of doing things was either bad form, poor quality or old hat. He always knew how to fare better than the common herd: where the food was superior, which road was quickest, who dealt in black market supplies.
Recently he had taken to flaunting a complaisant A.T.S. officer who was ten years older than he and talked shrilly about her husband, a major who had been captured at Dunkirk. It was the fact that h
e was a senior officer, not that he was in a German prisoner of war camp, which prompted her to speak of him. Anne agreed with Peter and his friends that Simon's woman's husband had got the better of the bargain: he was free of her for a year or two; with little incentive to risk escape.
Anne went indoors. As long as she stayed outside she watched the sky compulsively for a tumbling Hurricane or Spitfire at the end of a lengthening trail of smoke.
She found her mother in the kitchen with the cook, making jam. She lingered to help absent mindedly for a while, but as soon as she heard fighters returning to the airfield two miles away she hurried to a window to count them. She had seen twelve leave. She did not want to know how many did not return, yet she was overcome by the compulsion to find out just that. She leaned on the window sill and felt her hands trembling.
Cpl. Gates sat beside the driver of a pick-up van which was on its way around the perimeter road. The back was laden with trays full of sandwiches and fruit and urns of tea and coffee.
172 and 82 Squadrons had been scrambled an hour ago and by now all those who were coming back would have landed. 699 had gone back to their messes, released for an hour. The officer pilots had been in high spirits and Connie had heard them tell an off-duty controller that the squadron was officially operational from two-o'clock. They would be back at their dispersal, Mae Wests on and ready to scramble, half an hour before then.
Summer of No Surrender Page 5
