The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  Another signal was sent to headquarters but the reply was exactly the same. They passed on the news to Tafas, trying to convince him it was none of their doing. The old man was fatalistic and, though some of his young men went in for angry murmurings, he showed no sign of bitterness towards them, asking only that they would give him and his small son a final ride in the machine like a bird.

  They took coffee with him and shared the ceremonial mansef, and this time Dicken managed to down the sheep’s eyeball without a shudder because his thoughts were concerned with the old man’s safety. A tent was offered them for the night but they slept alongside the aircraft and the cars. Lying under the cold stars in the silence of the desert night, Dicken found himself reflecting that despite his dirty clothes and vermin, and the hardships of his life, Tafas Hashim Fitna had a finer code of honour than a few white men he knew.

  They left for the south at dawn, having first turned over every scrap of ammunition they could get away with, despite the fact that it all had to be accounted for. Dicken even handed over a loaded revolver, putting it down as lost due to enemy action. The old man took it gravely, then looked at his small son. Dicken knew what he was thinking. Rather than let Kerim Fatah Agha get him, he was prepared to shoot him himself.

  On the southward trips towards civilisation they normally talked of meals and hot baths but this time there was no talking. A surprising rapport had grown up between the car crews and the Shammar tribesmen, and they were all well aware that if Tafas Hashim Fitna had his messengers going south, Kerim Fatah Agha had his spies who would even now be going north.

  Shemshemal was a cheerless place surrounded by hills. The land itself was stony, metallic and brittle, thorn bushes sprouting from every scrap of soft sand with stout sword-like blades of grass like marram grass, straw-coloured and knee-high. The cars arrived in a storm to find Hatto already there with the aeroplanes pegged down and shuddering in the bitter wind. With the fitful sun vanished in the rags of yellow air, a brown wall of cloud came down from the hills and wrapped a blanket of bitter stinging dust round them as they fought to get the covers over the engines of the cars. Whorls of sand enveloped them and torn-up bushes clattered and banged against them, and just as they were completely smothered in dust the rain came in torrents to mould their dusty clothes to their body in layers of yellow mud.

  The area was one of low ridges covered with slivers of sandstone and slate, ugly, bare, cheerless and inhabited by puff-adders. The local cure was to bind the bite with a plaster and read the Koran to the victim until he died.

  The search for Kerim Fatah Agha started at once. Because of the weather, there was little flying but the armoured cars were constantly moving among the rocky hills, slipping and sliding, their crews cold, wet and cursing. As they had expected, there was no sign of the raiders.

  In the evenings, there was nothing to do but read, talk, play cards or look at the mist rising from the plain as the sun sank out of sight in a splash of cold fire in a grey-purple sky. Then for three successive days the air was icy enough to freeze them while the wind never let up, flapping their coats and bellying the cloaks of the local inhabitants. The sleet it carried plastered them with mud and when the sun finally appeared there was a white dome of snow on the hills.

  ‘The mountains wear their skull caps,’ the locals said, as the camels bent their long necks to sniff at the strange whiteness that covered the ground.

  The misty valleys were sluggish streams of melting snow when they heard that Kerim Fatah Agha had finally descended on Kerchian. The whole village had been put to the sword and flame, and Tafas and his sons, even the smallest, were among the dead.

  ‘Just so that bastard, Diplock, could get a little revenge on us!’ Dicken snarled. ‘It makes you ashamed to be British!’

  Soon afterwards a signal came, ordering the cars back to the Kerchian area and the aircraft to Hinaidi. It was signed by the Air Officer Commanding and despite the formal wording had a note of anger in it.

  Kerchian was a ruin of shattered houses and collapsed roofs, silent under the scattered ash that lay over it like snow. Among the ruins were silent heaps clutching the ground. A solitary living thing was a small girl who ran from among the ruins, her clothing stained red. The arrival of the cars had frightened her and, as she collapsed, the Arab interpreter, choking with rage, scooped her up and held her to him. Tafas lay sprawled in the charred ruins of his home with all his family, his smallest son held close to his side, and Dicken stood staring down at them, aware of real hatred for the first time in his life.

  They buried the dead and left the place for the south. Hatto met them as they arrived, his face grim.

  ‘The AOC’s been,’ he said. ‘He wants to know why we abandoned Tafas and accused me of disobeying orders. Diplock and that bastard, St Aubyn, had got in first with their story, but I’d saved copies of the signals they sent and the signals we sent – complete with times and dates. The AOC didn’t say anything but I reckon that Parasol Percy and his pal have put up a bloody great black.’

  ‘Not for the first time,’ Dicken growled.

  ‘No,’ Hatto said. ‘But this time it showed.’

  The only satisfaction that came out of the episode was that Group Captain St Aubyn disappeared hurriedly back to England – it was made to look as though he’d been given another command but they knew very well that he hadn’t – and soon afterwards Diplock handed over to a man from headquarters and also disappeared.

  ‘To Hong Kong,’ Hatto said. ‘Nearly off the map.’

  It didn’t bring back Tafas and his sons but it gave them a small measure of satisfaction, particularly when Dicken was instructed to hand over his armoured cars and take up his temporary position once more with Hatto’s flight, now at Kirkuk and working with the Iraqi army.

  Kirkuk was to the north of Baghdad at the end of a wide plain and at the base of the foothills that led to the mountainous country of Kurdistan. Their duties consisted of continuing the harassment of Kerim Fatah Agha’s tribesmen, and aircraft took off almost daily in flights of three and five to search them out and drop bombs on the fringes of their column to frighten them over the border.

  It was a time when things were beginning to change. The Arab army, its units started by the new King Feisal, Lawrence’s comrade in the Arab revolt against the Turks, was beginning to show its strength. It had already occupied Tektak, Sheikh Mahmoud’s HQ, and was now set to occupy El Runu from where Kerim Fatah Agha was operating, and aircraft had been busy escorting the columns through the ranges of hills where snipers could have held up an army for days.

  Because of the temporary nature of the posting, the squadron was living in tents round the edge of the field, an uncomfortable business when the wind blew because blankets, bedding and clothes became covered with dust and there was grit over everything they ate or drank. As the winter passed the weather grew warmer and eventually a hot dry spell left them fighting for breath.

  Lying on his bed, gasping in the heat with nothing on but a towel, Dicken stared at the latest letter from Zoë. As usual, it was brief and hurried and seemed totally devoid of affection, a duty letter and no more. She now had five garages along the south coast of England and had appointed a manager to run them for her so that she had more time for flying. At the moment, she was in the States engaged on some project in Baltimore, and was not only doing more flying than he was but was also flying now with an Irishman called Spud Murphy, who because of the insistence on licences and safety factors in Europe, had moved to the States where there was more freedom.

  ‘Over here freelance fliers are playing a valuable part in furthering airmindedness,’ she wrote. ‘Something that the stuffy people in England don’t seem to realise.’

  Perhaps they were, Dicken thought. But most air circuses, like the late Charley Wright’s, were run on a shoestring and there had been a few avoidable accidents which had given flyi
ng a bad name. Standing on the wings of an aeroplane – with or without a harness – wasn’t flying. In his youth, he had often been tempted himself to fly under bridges – one RAF pilot had flown through the Arch of Ctesiphon and a Frenchman had flown through the Arc de Triomphe – but that sort of thing didn’t advance flying, it merely indicated a man’s skill.

  Zoë, however, seemed eager to be where not only the excitement but the money was and flying was beginning to get off the ground in a big way in the States. Because of the size of the country, people were realising it was the only quick way of moving about it, and Zoë was anxious to get in on the ground floor of what could only be an expanding industry. Dicken hadn’t been slow to notice in the flying magazines that littered the mess the references to Harmer Aircraft Incorporated of St Louis. Obviously Casey Harmer was forging ahead, too, as she had always said he would and he wondered more than once if she had bothered to look him up.

  Certainly her letter contained no indication that she was pining for Dicken. Indeed, there were references to men she met, casual references as though she had done no more than take a meal with them, but he continued to suspect that she and Casey Harmer had been lovers during the war even while she was professing to be in love with Dicken, and now that Casey Harmer was back in circulation her visit to the States seemed highly suspicious.

  He was still frowning, the letter a damp sheet in his fingers, the ink on it smeared by the sweat from his hand, when Hatto appeared in the doorway. Somehow, Hatto always managed to look cool when everybody else looked roasted.

  ‘It’s the blue blood,’ he explained. ‘Takes longer to come to the boil.’ He sat in the camp chair. ‘I’ve got news, old son. We’ve passed the exam for Staff College and eventually we’ll be going. God knows when, of course, but I understand the AOC took rather a shine to the way we stood up to Parasol Percy and that bastard, St Aubyn.’ As he talked he became aware of the stuffy heat. ‘Hotter than usual, don’t you think?’ he commented.

  Somewhere in the camp a dog howled, followed immediately by another, then another. A mule brayed, then another, followed by a donkey, then the birds started filling the air with an agitated twittering. Hatto’s head turned and Dicken sat up, conscious of something strange happening and they had just started for the door when the ground suddenly started to move beneath their feet. As they stared at each other, a dog passed the door, bolting for safety in a wobbly run as if its legs were weak.

  ‘Good God,’ Hatto yelled. ‘It’s an earthquake!’

  Eight

  The whole area of the Middle East, in particular Turkey just to the north, was a place where failures in the earth’s crust often led to minor earthquakes, but it had never occurred to anyone that they might be involved in one.

  As they burst outside and stood staring about them, nearby buildings seemed to be quivering, so that their outline looked blurred, and they saw cracks running crazily up the walls and the earth moving beneath their feet.

  The shock stopped almost before they had become aware of it but the air was filled with yellow dust like a fog. A roll call was ordered at once and the station commander began to check his buildings, many of which were already being evacuated. Nobody had been hurt and no machines damaged but it was clear that many of the buildings would have to be pulled down and rebuilt. They were just offering up thanks for not being hurt when all aircrews were summoned to the hangars.

  ‘The epicentre was at Zebar,’ they were told. ‘We got away lightly. There must have been an estimated thousand deaths in the town and a lot more in the surrounding towns and villages. They’re desperately in need of help, but there’s no radio contact and we want operators flown in with their sets so they can tell us what’s needed and where. It’ll take the cars days to get there because it’s disputed territory and there’s a lot of hostility, but the aircraft can do it in a matter of hours and be sending messages back at once. We want reports on the situation.’

  The aircraft began to take off in the middle of the afternoon, for various points along the fault where the wrecked villages lay; Dicken’s assignment was Jehuddin, a narrow-gutted little town under the hills. As he passed over the ridges, his engine started faltering, but, as he looked down at the forbidding terrain beneath, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do, the engine started firing again and, as he descended on the other side of the ridge, it began to behave itself once more. The air over Jehuddin was yellow with dust up to a height of three hundred feet as if the wrecked town had expired in a great gasp. The narrow landing strip had been damaged and a great jagged crack ran in a zigzag down its entire length. All the buildings had collapsed and the landing area was full of people and carts.

  They flew low, waving frantically to the crowd to clear the field, but the Iraqis gave no indication that they were intending to move and Dicken started climbing again to find somewhere else to land. As he reached 6000 feet the engine started faltering once more, then cut abruptly. He tried diving with the propeller windmilling to start it again but it had no effect whatsoever and, turning off-course in the hope of finding a less cluttered area, he spotted a piece of ground just ahead which looked flatter and was at least clear. It was boulder strewn, but with no engine and the rocky side of a mountain the only alternative, he decided to get in quickly. Side-slipping off his remaining height, he stalled the Bristol on to the ground from a height of ten feet, losing all flying speed at once so that the aeroplane dropped under its own weight and stayed more or less where it arrived. The impact came in a crash and a twanging of wires but the aeroplane was down.

  They were several miles from the village and had been warned to expect hostility so, for safety, the wireless operator, a leading aircraftman called Babington, unbolted the Lewis gun, pushed to the top of a small knoll which would give a commanding field of fire, and sat down to wait. The silence in the hills was unnerving.

  After a while a group of men with donkeys, all armed to the teeth, appeared. Babington worked the cocking handle of the gun but the men said they were the bodyguards of the headman of Jehuddin and were anxious to help. Cigarettes were handed round, and they made an examination of the machine. The tail-skid and several fuselage cross members had been broken.

  More men had now appeared and one spoke enough English for them to make him understand what was wanted and, while Babington erected his set and its aerial, Dicken went by donkey into the town. No one showed any hostility to him because they were still dragging half-suffocated victims from the wrecked buildings. There were no doctors and, in no time, he became involved in digging an old woman from what had been her house. Leaving her moaning in the street with two broken legs because there was nothing else he could do until more help arrived, he immediately afterwards found himself crawling under the ruins of another wrecked house where a baby was screaming. Lifting the naked morsel from its dead mother’s arms, he carried it to a nearby tent where the village medicine men were doing their best to set broken limbs and cure wounds with things like chupattis or the skin of freshly-killed chickens and a great deal of reading from the Koran. The water supply had disappeared and all there was came from a few stinking wells, already polluted by putrefying bodies. There was no food and no transport except donkeys and one or two ancient carts.

  A second shock occurred even as they worked. Immediately, all the rescuers bolted from the wrecked buildings, and it was some time before they could be persuaded to return. By this time the original naked baby Dicken had rescued had been joined by a dozen more, all of them yelling in the heat and all of them without parents to claim them.

  The following day a Vernon arrived packed with tents, blankets, and British and Iraqi medical men and supplies. A second arrived during the afternoon with Iraqi army officers and NCOs to bring order to the shattered town, and the worst of the injured were removed. As the dead were buried and the dangerous houses knocked down, the situation began to improve. More food, blankets and tents
arrived by lorry and mule trains from undamaged areas, and as the situation was brought under control, Dicken decided it was time to consider the damaged Bristol.

  Despite the smashed tail-skid and the broken cross members, he felt it could be flown again and, coming to the conclusion that it could even be got off the ground where it stood if only the landing area could be increased, he persuaded the headman to allocate helpers, and set about clearing it. The trouble had been caused by the fuel, which must have come from contaminated petrol, doubtless part of the drums Diplock had resurrected and then lost.

  During the next two days, he carefully drained and filtered it, then, with the aid of the headman’s carpenters, the leg of a broken chair and a lot of luck, they managed to get the tail end of the Bristol sufficiently patched to risk a take-off. The following day another Vernon arrived with more supplies, more Iraqi soldiers, a relief wireless operator with a spare set, and instructions for Dicken that he was to remain at Jehuddin and await orders.

  The problem was to get into the air again and, staring round him from the small saucer-like depression where they had come down, he began to remove all the stowed items from the aircraft, the spare drum of water, the guns, ammunition and tool kit.

  ‘Think you can do it, sir?’ Babington asked.

  ‘Just, I reckon.’

  ‘Then I’d like to come with you, sir.’

  Dicken slapped his shoulder, pleased by the show of confidence. ‘Under the circumstances,’ he said, ‘I think you’d better stick around to pick up the pieces if I don’t pull it off.’

  The area sloped slightly and, between them and with the help of the local people, they made a last search for dangerous stones. What little breeze there was came down from the hills and was blowing up the slope of the take-off area. As Dicken ran the engine up and checked it, Babington, standing on the wing alongside him, held up his thumb.