The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  He was grateful to be flying again, aware of the brightness of the upper air which glowed in a way earthbound mortals could never conceive, aware once more of that feeling of being one of God’s chosen few because he felt the sun before it reached other people, because he’d acquired the skill to support himself in the sky in the way man had always wished to since the Middle Ages. He wasn’t sure what to make of the Hyderabads, however. They were big and clumsy, but surprisingly responsive with their two Napier Lion engines, so that sometimes he was inclined to bank them too steeply on the tight turns.

  He had always been basically a fighter pilot and at first he didn’t fancy the prospect of flying with a crew but suddenly he realised he’d been missing something and found an unexpected compensation in the team spirit and comradeship. Especially at night, when the rest of the country was asleep and the sense of loneliness was relieved by the tightness of the little group of men in their black machine high above the earth.

  Then Zoë reappeared like a ghost from the past in a paragraph in the newspapers. She was far too photogenic not to have her picture in regularly and she had a gift for getting her personality across. Considering she’d broken only one rather unimportant record which had added nothing to the future of flying, it was almost as if the newspapers were falling over themselves simply because she photographed well.

  This time it was because she’d finally decided to buy a British machine for her attempt to fly to Australia, and was debating between one of her Avro tens and a new type of De Havilland.

  The Hyderabads began to bore Dicken a little because he felt at times little better than a chauffeur for a group of men whose tasks were more important than his own, which was simply to deliver them from one place to another, but then a squadron leader at RAF HQ in India was killed when a DH9 flew into a mountainside near the Khyber Pass and, with no one of sufficient rank and experience to take his place, Dicken found himself on a ship ploughing through the Mediterranean with a draft of men heading for Egypt.

  They left the ship at Alexandria where he was able to visit Tom Howarth who, by this time, was working on a new training scheme in the Middle East and they ate dinner in Cairo, watching the dahabiyas drifting past on the Nile.

  ‘Egypt gets under your skin,’ Howarth observed. ‘Egyptians bumping their foreheads on the ground to the priest’s chanting, the face of the Sphinx, sunset on the Nile, the silhouettes of the Pyramids at dusk.

  ‘There are disadvantages, of course. Water has to be filtered and dosed with chlorine – considering the corpses of animals floating in it, Sweet Water Canal’s a complete misnomer – the heat makes the engines erratic, and the windsock’s always in danger of being stolen by the Arabs to make clothing. But the desert can be incredibly beautiful and there are always the Gezirah Club, cocktails on the terrace at Shepherds’, and polo at Heliopolis.’

  The journey that followed was an anti-climax – the Red Sea, so calm the sea melted into the sky and there was no horizon in the heat, then the brown sun-baked coast of India. The journey from Bombay by train was monotonously khaki-coloured and heavy with dust, but Delhi was a civilised city, though the formality had to be seen to be believed.

  Appointed Squadron Leader Air Staff, Dicken was responsible to his immediate superior, who turned out to be Cuthbert Orr, bigger and more hearty than ever. He welcomed Dicken like a long-lost brother and made their position clear at once. ‘Out here,’ he said, ‘Trenchard’s influence carries no weight whatsoever. The Indian Army runs the show and we’re short of spares – tyres and radios especially – and it’s not so damned long since we announced that for all intents and purposes the RAF in India was non-existent. Out of seventy aircraft only seven were serviceable and half of ’em were 1918 vintage and still had patches sewn over the bullet holes they got in France. All squadrons are up in the North-West Frontier Province but at last they’re sending us two new ones – the first post-war machines we’ve had. Westland Wapitis. Know anything of ’em?’

  Dicken smiled. ‘Yes, sir. They had a lot of spare parts for the DH9s so they designed the Wapitis to use ’em up.’

  Orr pushed a packet of cigarettes across. ‘Only part of the Frontier Province is administered by us, of course,’ he pointed out. ‘The rest’s controlled by independent tribes who owe us no direct allegiance and live in what’s known as tribal territory with their own laws and customs. We let ’em get on with it, so long as they don’t raid into British India. It’s only six years since one lot attacked an officer’s home at Kohat, murdered him and his wife and kidnapped his daughter. There’s one other snag. We’re expecting trouble in Rezhanistan.’

  ‘Does it affect us? It’s not part of India.’

  ‘We have an embassy there. The King made a tour last year of Turkey, Iran, England and a few other places and was so impressed with the emancipation of women he came back determined to carry out reforms in Rezhanistan. Unfortunately religion there goes a bit deeper than it does at Stow-on-the-Wold on a sunny Sunday morning and just lately, the mullahs have been as restless as a lot of fleas. They’re not interested in the King’s lectures at the palace, or the pictures of Lindbergh he put up and it’s surprising no one’s taken a pot-shot at him. But he’s still opening new schools and demanding that young ladies wear short skirts and have their hair bobbed as they do in London.’ Orr grinned. ‘I think the thing that irritates his ministers and tribal leaders most, though, is that he expects them to wear top hats and tail coats. I saw them once. They looked like a lot of out of work undertakers. I reckon they’ll explode any day now.’

  Dicken’s arrival coincided with the move from Delhi to Simla in the foothills of the Himalayas for the hot months of the year. It was a dreadful period for those wives and families who were in India only on a short-term tour and had to worry about how to live within their means. His job was to be responsible through Orr and the Chief of Staff to the Air Officer Commanding for operational policy and intelligence, sharing responsibilities for the preparation of the RAF budget, organisation and re-equipping and the provision of answers to parliamentary questions sent from England. One such asked the number of bombs dropped on the frontier since 1919, the number of people killed and the value of the property destroyed by bombing. It took one minute flat to answer. For the number of bombs, he wrote ‘Sixty-five’, which was the first number that sprang to his mind. For the number of people killed, he wrote ‘One’, adding that it was impossible to be certain as bombing usually took place in conjunction with army operations and it was therefore difficult to differentiate between those killed by guns and those killed by bombs. For the value of property destroyed, he wrote ‘Unknown, since there is no value placed on a mud hut, and there are no house agents on the frontier.’ Orr considered it good enough to buy him an extra drink.

  Zoë continued to crop up. She had decided finally to buy a machine nobody had ever heard of, its only qualification being, it seemed, that it was British. It was called a Munson Ghost, and there she was in The Times of India, standing alongside a high-winged monoplane with a pair of Gypsy I engines mounted on a single crankcase. She had hired an ex-Merchant Navy officer called Angus Packer, who had transferred to flying and was considered to be an expert navigator. He had flown the route more than once with British Airways and was considered unlikely to make mistakes.

  Dicken’s stay at headquarters was short because Almonde, who had been commanding a squadron of DH9s at Kohat went down with jaundice and it was necessary for someone to take over. Since it was a single-squadron station it was a good job because it meant Dicken would also be the station commander, and as the squadron was working with the army in Waziristan it offered a chance of action.

  The frontier area was divided into two administrative sections, each with its own provincial government responsible to the government of India. The North-West Frontier Province was roughly four hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide, with Peshawar – known to e
verybody there as ‘Pshah’ – as its capital. The dominant note about the country was its size. To the north were vast silent mountains cloaked in eternal snow, wild glacier-born torrents, cruel precipices and pastureless hillsides, all the colour purged away by the glare of the sun. Very little was cultivated and, dwarfed by the limitless expanse of rock, glacier and mountain, the fertile patches were the only relief in the monotonous grey-brown of the vast slopes of shale and shingle, while the willows and plane trees and the soldier-like poplars marching across the valleys were the only points of coolness after the fierce light and dust on the hillsides. The cantonment in which they lived was surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by Indian sentries. All movement in or out of the camp was forbidden after sundown and if a married officer was away on duty for a night it was automatic to place an armed guard on his home.

  Looking for the Signals Section to send a signal to Simla indicating his arrival, the first person Dicken saw was Babington, who had flown with him in Iraq. He was now a corporal and gave him a grin of delight, while, sitting at the Signals Officer’s desk, was Handiside, a flight-sergeant once more, a little redder in the face these days but still wearing the same grin.

  ‘The Signals Officer’s gone down with jaundice, sir,’ he said. ‘It seems to be catching. I’m running the show till he gets back.’

  It was Handiside as much as anyone who filled Dicken in about the squadron. It had been a long time in India and its machines were as old as its pilots were young. They had all joined since the war and, with many of them inexperienced, it was Dicken’s job to start a series of exercises in bombing, navigation and gunnery.

  Despite being operations officer as well as CO, whenever active operations were in swing he managed to take part. His chief task was to impose a blockade day and night on a section of the Bohmand country where difficult tribesmen were living. It was a small area adjoining that of friendly tribesmen, so the blockade called for a high standard of map reading and very careful briefing. Flying mostly at night or at midday when weather conditions were uncomfortably rough and bumpy, he knew that more sensible men were taking it easy and that nobody objected to him flying their aircraft.

  Below him the countryside was inhabited by some of the toughest fighting men in India. Moving columns through their mountains was a specialised form of warfare in which inexperienced units could suffer heavy casualties, and the RAF and the army had worked out a system of close support. If trouble was expected, the RAF kept one or more aircraft over the area throughout the hours of daylight, and there were times when they bombed and shot up the tribesmen within thirty yards of an army outpost.

  The work went along without serious harm to either side until a man called Shimi Par, who was well known as a troublemaker, appeared in the area. A Persian by birth, he had arrived in India via Karachi and made his way to Waziristan where he had made a reputation for himself as an orator in the mosques. Gradually it became noticed that he was preaching a jehad, a holy war, against the government of India, and suddenly all the tribes in the area were on the move.

  There was a hurried exodus further south of families and government officials from Peshawar, and Orr flew in from Simla with orders.

  ‘We can’t get land forces up to the front in time,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to run the show. We’re to drop messages warning the tribes to return to their villages within forty-eight hours with the threat of air action if they don’t.’

  Two days later, Dicken took off with another aircraft, to make sure the tribes had disappeared. He could see no movement below him and was on the point of giving up the search when he caught sight of a cloud of dust moving along a narrow valley two and a half miles south of Kat. The country they were flying over provided good cover, and with the tribesmen moving at speed, it was important that they be stopped before they broke into open country.

  ‘Get a message to Group Headquarters,’ he warned Babington who was flying with him. ‘Give map references and ask for instructions. It’s not our job to start a war.’

  For a long time the aircraft circled, while Babington struggled with his set, but it was impossible to raise Group.

  ‘The ball’s in our court,’ Dicken decided and, indicating to the other aircraft to follow him, pushed his nose down and headed for the moving tribesmen.

  Swooping along the valley, one behind the other, they dropped their bombs, and as they lifted, Babington’s gun began to clatter. Swinging round, they strafed the column again and again, the howl of the engine echoing back off the craggy slopes of the gorges. By the time they had finished, the column had scattered in both directions, some riding ahead, others hurrying back the way they had come, men on foot scrambling up the slopes to crouch behind rocks to fire defiant shots at them.

  Before first light, the aircraft took off again, five of them this time, and found the tribesmen grouped together round their camp fires. As they returned, more aircraft took off to keep them moving and when Dicken went up again in the evening, it was clear Shimi Par had given up his invasion and his men were straggling homewards.

  As he landed, the telephone went and he lifted it, expecting Orr’s congratulations. The message was somewhat different.

  ‘It’s started,’ Orr said.

  ‘What’s started, sir?’

  ‘Rezhanistan. The bloody place’s risen in rebellion and the whole place’s become a battlefield, with the British Legation smack in the middle.’

  Four

  It was the girls in their summer dresses who had caused all the trouble. Young Rezhan females dressed in European style passing through tribal country to Peshawar to be educated in the European manner had stirred up the resentment of the Amwaris, a backward and fanatical tribe who had never paid taxes, and they had risen as one man prepared to forfeit their lives rather than send a quota of their daughters on some ungodly journey such as had been ordered. To unveil their women was against their religion and, in a country where religion was the dominant feature of life, the bitterness spread, and the Amwaris, joined by other tribes, had taken up a position astride the main road that ran from Ambul, the capital of Rezhanistan, to the Khyber pass and the safety of India. All road communication along the route was cut, and the tribesmen, joined now by Bohmands and other Pathan tribes, had invaded Ambul, blowing up bridges en route and raising to revolt the tribes in the southern half of the state. The British Legation was cut off and left with the Ambul wireless station as their only communication with the outside world and that very doubtful because thousands of armed Rezhans were marching on the city.

  In Peshawar and stations along the frontier, Intelligence and Equipment Officers hurriedly began going through their papers to find out what they knew about Rezhanistan. The Rezhans were Pathans, speaking Pushtu, and virtually a law unto themselves. Every man was armed with a long rifle or a jezail, which could shoot further than a normal British rifle, and they had all been taught to fight from childhood. Their faith in Islam far outweighed all their earthly possessions and they were devoted to their religious leaders. Their country was a desolation of great peaks and deep valleys, of precipitous gorges and rushing grey rivers – barren and beautiful in the intense sunlight, and when the shadows lengthened and the peaks turned gold, pink and mauve in the setting sun. Every road and path and pass of it was said to be soaked in blood.

  The rebel leader was a man called Bachi-i-Adab, the son of a water carrier. British Intelligence knew him as a bandit and the hero or villain of every fantastic story that came out of the bazaars. His quarrel was only with the King of Rezhanistan and he was not interfering with ordinary travellers, but a force of the King’s cavalry sent to deal with him had deserted to him. By this time, disaffected Kohistanis, Afridis and Waziris, to say nothing of supporters of Shimi Par, had joined him and forts to the north-west of Ambul had been captured and the whole yelling horde of fanatics was camped to the west of the British Legation, their bullets
knocking in the windows as they fired on the King’s troops to the east. The possibility of a massacre was only too great and preparations were made in case a decision was taken to evacuate the women and children.

  Dicken was among the officers called to a conference by Orr. The commanding officers of all squadrons were present, as well as the Air Officer Commanding in India and staff officers from Peshawar and Simla, among them, Dicken noticed, Diplock, representing his chief, Air Commodore St Aubyn.

  ‘This operation,’ the AOC began, ‘is going to fall entirely on the RAF. The army can’t get through because all bridges have been blown up and the casualties could be enormous because the Rezhans would initially resist such an invasion. However, if we’re to bring these people out, we’re going to need far more aeroplanes than India can provide and I’ve asked for Victorias to be sent from Baghdad.’

  There were a few sidelong glances. Though the Victorias could carry twenty soldiers and their kit, their range left something to be desired.

  ‘That’s a distance of nearly three thousand miles, sir.’ The voice was Diplock’s.

  ‘Two thousand eight hundred to be exact,’ the AOC said mildly. ‘They’ll need refuelling en route. But it’s the only course open to us. They can reach Karachi in two days. There’s only one question in doubt: is the Victoria able to take off with a heavy load in Ambul, which is 6000 feet above sea level, and climb to a height of 10,000 feet to cross the mountains. Last year it was decided they could do no such thing.’

  ‘We can take everything off them that’s not needed,’ Orr offered.

  ‘We can try,’ the AOC agreed. ‘There’s also a Hinaidi heavy transport in Iraq, waiting to take the Foreign Secretary home from India. The total evacuating power, therefore, consists of twenty-four DH9s and two Wapitis, with, two thousand eight hundred miles away, a number of Victorias and the Hinaidi. I’d like to know your views, gentlemen.’