by John Harris
His thoughts were still scurrying through his mind when he spotted the small brick huts of the rifle range. There were two of them, one a store where the targets were kept, the other where the target operators sheltered when they weren’t in the orchestra pit indicating hits, and he suddenly realised they might be his salvation. They were about fifteen feet apart – at least he hoped they were fifteen feet apart, though he had never measured them – and he decided to take a chance.
‘Come aft, Darling,’ he said to the cadet. ‘If I put this thing down as she is, you and I are going to be cooked meat because the wheels will collapse and she’ll go up in flames. Make sure you’re properly strapped in and hold your hat on.’
He turned again, the machine behaving awkwardly as it tilted, dangerously close to a stall and a spin. Righting it, he headed for the rifle range. Darling gave him a nervous look and Boumphrey tried to reassure him.
‘See those two buildings, Darling,’ he said. ‘I’m going straight between them. At full speed.’
Darling’s look this time was one of alarm. ‘Between them, sir?’
‘Yes. You’ll see why when we’ve done it – if we do it. Now shut up and let me concentrate. There’s going to be only one try and it’s got to come off.’
The two huts were approaching now, growing larger and larger. Boumphrey held the machine close to the ground and headed for the gap between them. Suddenly, horrifyingly, he felt it might not be big enough, or even that he might not hit it dead centre so that the machine would slew round and plough into one or the other of the buildings. But it was too late now to do anything about it, and he heard Darling draw in his breath and saw him raise his arms to shield his face.
The buildings were huge now, racing towards them, growing in size until they filled the whole of his vision. He held the nose of the Oxford on the centre of the gap and the crash came in a tearing, rending roar. The machine shuddered, but they were going at such a speed the crash ripped the wings clean off in a shower of flying bricks, and the fuselage, containing Boumphrey and Darling, went racing on.
As the wheels touched, the bounding fuselage tilted to starboard and hit the ground with an almighty rending crash. Splinters of wood flew in all directions, then the fuselage slewed round, and came to an abrupt stop. The nose went down and the tail came up, then it rocked back on to its belly.
‘Out!’ Boumphrey yelled.
The overhead hatch was jammed so they tossed off their parachutes and scrambled down the fuselage and over the splintered woodwork round the main spar to the door. The door also seemed to be jammed but by throwing their weight against it, they burst it open and fell out into the sunshine. A machine gun was raising spurts of dust all round the wrecked fuselage and they flung themselves flat. The wings had both fallen off and lay in a splintered wreckage against the huts, the petrol they had contained blazing furiously to send up a coil of black smoke towards the escarpment.
Darling was staring at them with startled eyes as if it had just dawned on him what they had missed.
‘If we’d tried to land on one wheel,’ he said slowly, ‘we’d have gone up like Guy Fawkes night.’
‘That we would, Darling,’ Boumphrey said cheerfully. ‘Are you damaged at all?’
‘Not a scratch, sir. How about you?’
‘Same here. And it looks as though rescue’s on its way.’
Two armoured cars were bounding towards them across the airfield. As they reached them, Flight Sergeant Madoc’s head appeared from the nearest. ‘Round the back!’ he yelled.
The armour-plated door was open and they scrambled aboard. Then, as the car was about to set off from among a forest of small puffs of dust, the driver’s voice came.
‘Flight! We’ll have to hang on! One of the Wimpeys is coming in. It looks as though he’s in trouble.’
The big machine was coming down in an uncertain manner, one propeller windmilling, the engine stopped, flying in a nose-up attitude as the pilot sought to bring it in at the minimum safe speed. He left his landing flare just too late, the wheels hit the ground and the undercarriage legs shortened as the rams were compressed. The aeroplane was projected back into the air and the engines roared as the pilot tried to catch the bounce and soften the next impact. But he was too late and the great machine fell back as if exhausted. The wheels struck the earth in another puff of dust, then the pilot slammed down the tail as fast as possible and they heard the brakes squeal. As it slowed, every gun on the escarpment seemed to spot it and, now that the Audaxes and Harts had disappeared, they swung away from the wreckage of the Oxford and began to drop their shells round the better target presented by the Wellington. They saw the crew running through the smoke and dust.
A tractor was heading out of the gate from the hangar towards the Wellington and Madoc yelled to Boumphrey.
‘Hang on, sir! That chap’s going to need some cover!’
The two armoured cars began to race across the dusty surface of the field to take up positions on either side of the tractor to shield the driver and his mate from the gunfire with their armoured sides. The driver’s face was tense and strained.
As they swung round the stern of the Wellington, the driver’s mate produced a wire rope and started to secure it to the tail wheel but, as he did so, a shell from the escarpment burst close by and they both went on their faces. The driver lifted his head, his face covered with blood, and crossed to his mate, who managed to raise himself one-handed to his knees.
‘Come on, Darling,’ Boumphrey yelled.
Clambering from Madoc’s car, they ran to the men crouched under the tail surface of the Wellington. Shells were still cracking around them as they hoisted them to their feet and stumbled with them to the doors of the armoured cars. Hands reached out and dragged them aboard, then Darling looked at Boumphrey.
‘What about the Wimpey, sir?’ he asked. ‘My old man’s a farmer and I’ve been driving tractors since I was ten.’
Boumphrey managed a grin. ‘Get cracking,’ he said.
They ran to the Wellington and between them managed to secure the wire from the tail wheel of the big bomber to the heavy hook behind the tractor. After a jerk or two, Darling got the tractor going and swung the Wellington round towards the hangars. Immediately the armoured cars moved alongside them, again trying to provide protection from the gunners on the heights. Slowly they began to head across the field.
The shells were still cracking round them and Darling, glancing backwards over Boumphrey where he clung to the back of the tractor, flinched. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I think the bugger’s caught alight!’
Because the wind was carrying the flames away from them, they hadn’t noticed that the Wellington was on fire but now, as they turned towards the hangars away from the wind they could feel the heat searing their flesh, and Boumphrey could see a pom-pom at the bottom of the escarpment only a few yards from the wire perimeter fence hammering away at them.
‘I think it’s time we left,’ he announced.
As the tractor stopped, he slipped to the ground.
‘Back up,’ he screamed, shielding his face from the flames. ‘The wire’s too tight.’
Darling put the tractor into reverse so hard it almost ran over Boumphrey. The wire slackened and Boumphrey struggled to throw it off. But the loop had tightened round the hook and he had to lie on his back to try to kick it off. With the heat scorching his skin, he became aware of another armoured car racing from the hangars towards them. As it reached them, it swung round and slid with locked wheels. A head appeared from the hatch wearing a flying helmet, the jack of the intercom flapping.
‘Get away, you bloody idiots!’ the owner yelled. ‘She’s still got bombs on board! She’ll go up any minute!’
Boumphrey’s eyes met Darling’s, then he gave one final frantic kick. As the wire rope came free he ran to the tractor and jumped aboard.
‘Go!’ he yelled.
As Darling let in the clutch, the tractor hurtled away, the engine roaring, tak
ing them thankfully away from the heat of the flames. They hadn’t gone fifty yards when there was a tremendous iron crash behind them as the bombs went off. It was followed by two more and, turning, they saw the Wellington had been torn apart. One of the Hercules engines landed forty feet away, then pieces of metal and burning scraps of fabric glittering like golden bats fluttered down around them. A wheel landed nearby in a puff of dust that blew into their faces as they raced for the gate leading to the hangars, the armoured cars keeping pace with them to shield them. More fragments of steel came down in a shower among the shell bursts and the blowing smoke, then they hurtled through the gate, narrowly missing an Oxford that was moving across their front, and swung round behind the hangars. Darling stopped the tractor so suddenly, Boumphrey fell off.
Someone picked him up and he found himself staring at the helmeted Jenno who had scrambled from the armoured car that had rescued them.
‘That was a bloody silly thing to do, Ratter,’ he said.
Boumphrey grinned. Then Darling appeared. His face was black and when he laughed his tongue seemed extraordinarily pink.
‘You’ve lost your eyebrows, sir,’ he said.
Three
With darkness, the shelling stopped and they began to take stock. The Wellingtons, they learned, had dropped sixteen and a half tons of bombs in seventeen sorties, and the flying training school about the same amount in 193 sorties. Some men had taken off nine times and aircraft had been in the air over the escarpment for all of a solid nineteen hours.
The results seemed disappointing under the circumstances. A total of twenty-two aircraft had been destroyed or put out of action, reducing the operational strength from the seventy-three to which it had risen with the new arrivals to fifty-one, and the ground staff looked like working all night to prepare the machines that were left for the following day. In addition to the Wellington and Boumphrey’s Oxford, one Oxford had been shot down in flames, killing the crew. One of the Audax pilots had been shot through the shoulder and lung but the pupil who was acting as his gunner had managed to pull him off the controls and, although only half-conscious, guided by the pupil the pilot had managed to right the aircraft with only one hand and had actually landed on the polo ground before fainting. Another pilot had been hit in the jaw but had managed to get down, while Wing Commander Atkin, the desk job who had been given the Audax-Hart command, had been shot through the thigh by a bullet which had broken in two, one piece going into his groin and knee, the other working its way up to his buttock. He also had managed to land. Another aircraft, its pilot injured, had been saved by the cadet acting as bomb-aimer, who had taken over the controls and brought the machine down after half a dozen hairy attempts and a final series of colossal bounces. In addition, one of the parked Gordons had received a direct hit from the escarpment, killing one of the ground personnel and injuring two more, and two stationary Oxfords had also been hit and set on fire. They had simply been pulled out of the way and allowed to burn themselves out.
Altogether there had been thirteen killed and twenty-nine wounded among the airmen and soldiers, and another three killed and twelve wounded among the civilians inside the camp. One shell had landed near the Irazhi mess staff who had dodged behind a wall for safety, only for the wall to be hit by the next shell. Three of them had been killed and two hurt. The remainder hadn’t been seen since.
By the end of the day, Prudence Wood-Withnell had found she could look on groaning blood-splashed people without much more than a queasiness in her stomach. Her own clothing was spotted with blood and her skirt was smeared with stains where she had automatically wiped her hands. But she was pleased with herself because she had overcome her nausea and been of some help.
What was most significant was that out of thirty-seven available pilots ten were now either dead or in hospital, and though the Irazhi infantry had shown no inclination to do much in the way of fighting, preferring to remain in their trenches with their heads down, the well-camouflaged batteries were still in position for the next day, while the remaining aircraft looked as if they had measles with the doped patches which had been put over the bullet holes. The record was held by one of the Audaxes which could count thirty-two.
However, the second flight of Wellingtons was reported to have landed at Shaibah from Egypt and, though fighting had now started on the coast, these machines would be available for the defence of Kubaiyah because the situation was not critical in the south and a local army co-operation squadron, aided by Swordfish from the carrier, HMS Hermes, lying in the Gulf, had been able to give the ground forces there the air support they needed, while a group of venerable but invaluable Vincents had cut the Shaibah-Mandadad railway.
A few Irazhi aircraft had appeared over the airfield. The newly arrived Gladiators had chased them away but had been able to catch neither the Northrops nor a group of Italian twin-engined Savoias which had come over too high to be reached, but they had swooped on airfields from which the Irazhi aircraft had been joining the fight and had managed to do some damage.
On the credit side, the Irazhis had miraculously still not had the sense to switch off the pumps in the pumping station at Dhubban and the sanitary system still worked, while many more women and children had been flown out, the Europeans to Basra on the coast, the families of the levies to Palestine.
‘And,’ someone pointed out, ‘they didn’t hit the water tower.’
‘Or the magazine, the petrol dump, the radio mast, the power station or the telephone exchange.’
‘They also,’ the adjutant said, ‘didn’t disturb the storks. They’re still here. I don’t think the Irazhis were trying.’
The air vice-marshal wasn’t offering a lot in the way of praise because there was still a long way to go, but it was clear that he was far from dissatisfied.
‘Despite our losses,’ he said, ‘we’ve more than held our own and the enemy’s made no attempt to move forward. However, it’s far from over, and the Irazhis are still round the fort at Hatbah, and the Engineers and the cavalry aren’t going to be able to move to our help yet.’
‘We’ll have to reverse the usual procedure, sir,’ someone at the back said. ‘Instead of the cavalry coming to the aid of the besieged fortress, the besieged fortress will have to go to the aid of the cavalry.’
Someone else laughed. ‘It would kill the horse-versus-machine argument stone dead.’
The AVM let them have their say then he held up his hand. ‘We know that a relieving force has started assembling in Palestine,’ he went on. ‘But we can’t expect them too soon. They’ve a long way to come under very bad conditions and we shan’t see them for some days yet. So it’s up to us. However, I think from today’s showing we can not only hold our own here but might even be able to carry the attack to the Irazhi airfields and lines of communications. We’re going from the defensive to the offensive.’
There were gasps and exchanged glances. It was a bold decision after one day’s fighting but the Irazhis were still preferring to stay inside their fortifications and rely on shelling the camp.
As the AVM sat down, Fogarty rose. He made no bones about what was in front of them. ‘Same again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘From first light until darkness. The only method we have is to swamp them. They’ve established a few more gun positions. Here – and here – and here.’ His hand moved across the screened picture of the map. ‘Keep a look-out for them. Wellingtons will be coming from Shaibah again and they and you will keep up constant patrols over the enemy to force the Irazhi gunners to stay under cover. The Wellingtons will also set up raids on Sayid aerodrome near Mandadad to keep the enemy air force down. The idea’s to make sure they don’t fire more than necessary on the cantonment. We want to keep them quiet.’
As he spoke there was an explosion somewhere on the airfield followed by the rat-tat-tat of a heavy machine gun.
‘Or fairly quiet, anyway,’ Fogarty said. ‘If we get the chance we shall try to get more of the civilians away, using the same metho
d as today – Harts and Audaxes forcing heads down round the guns, the armoured cars patrolling the perimeter.’ He paused, glancing at his notes, then lifted his head. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘A few surprises. Workshops have come up with the idea of frightening the Irazhis with noise. After all, Joshua fought the battle of Jericho not far from here and, as all who aren’t Philistines among you doubtless know, he blew his trumpets and the walls fell down flat. Well, we can’t quite manage that but Workshops have been at it all day making organ flutes to attach to the bombs you’re going to drop and sirens to attach to the undercarts of the Audaxes and Harts who’re going to do the dive-bombing. I’ve seen them and they should make a hell of a noise. It’s something the Germans did very successfully in France. But that’s not all. By the time darkness arrives tomorrow those Irazhis on the escarpment will have been cowering in their trenches for two days running and they’ll be glad to climb out of them to stretch their legs. When they do, they’re going to get a surprise because Major Verity’s levies will be not far away in the shadows.’
The briefing ended with the crews being told to go to the hangars to help with the fitting of sirens. As they rose, Fogarty called to Boumphrey.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you won’t be flying, Ratter.’
‘Sir?’
‘I want you and Jenno to get some rest. You’ve had quite a day. You heard what I said about Verity’s levies going for the Irazhis after dark. I want you to take your legion with them. Can they do it?’
‘You bet, sir.’
‘Talk to Verity. You take one sector and he can take the other. We don’t want you cutting each other’s throats.’
As the senior officers left, Major Verity approached. He had a map in his hand which he laid on the edge of the stage so they could study it.
‘You quite happy with this idea of carrying the battle to the enemy?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Boumphrey said. ‘We’ll have a go. Whose idea was it? Yours?’
