Every phase of the air battle of the Blenheims and Hurricanes with the Messerschmitt 110s was gone over in detail. Denton and his crew, the squadron leader who had led the fighters, and two senior R.A.F. Staff officers analysed the enemy’s performance and motives. About the latter the Army had strong views. These were expressed by Colonel Alaric Smith-Jones, M.C., whose grocer (but hardly grosser) grandfather would have been proud of him.
“It seems to me that the main reason why we didn’t do better with Battleaxe was that Rommel did the unorthodox: he used his eighty-eight-millimetre flak guns in the anti-tank role as well, and in addition he had a huge number of conventional anti-tank artillery. Reports kept coming in from the field that he was doing this with the eighty-eights, but they weren’t given credence; because it was insisted in some quarters that a gun of that size could only be used from a prepared or more or less permanent position and it couldn’t possibly be made mobile. This scepticism existed presumably because the majority of the reports were made by very junior officers and even sergeants: mere tank commanders: only the fellows who were actually fighting the battle! Yet it became obvious afterwards that Rommel had made up for his comparative dearth of tanks by moving his anti-tank guns forward in pace with them. And among those there was undoubtedly, in my view, a large proportion of eighty-eights which had previously been used as ack-ack.”
Smith-Jones had neatly camouflaged withering criticism of his fellow Staff officers — in other departments, naturally — as rueful retrospective ratiocination.
Having made his vitriolic point with bland and polished obliquity, he proceeded to his adduction. “It’s all Lombard Street to a china orange” (He often affected Ewardian forms of speech, which he thought rather smart; like always calling £25 “a pony” and £500 “a monkey”.) “that those Boche” (shades of service in France in 1939-40) “fighters were so insistent in trying to keep you chaps from going further south because there’s something down there the enemy wants to hide. Now that we know the alleged dump you were sent to bomb was in fact spurious, it makes the theory even more tenable. I’m told that the Air cannot put up a big enough P.R.” (photographic reconnaissance) “effort to cover the whole area which has come under suspicion. Therefore we have to select those parts of it which seem logically most likely, and subject them to P.R., to observation by the L.R.D.G.” (Long Range Desert Group, forerunner of the S.A.S.) “and bombing.”
Denton felt he ought to say something to fill the silence that followed. He had a notion that the colonel’s fellow Staff officers, of all the Services, were dumbstruck by his chicanery; and he knew that the other operational people present were both too deferential towards and contemptuous of base wallahs to offer any comment. He was prompted by an instinctive recognition of charlatanism: as he had long ago penetrated Critchley’s facade. But Critchley amused him and had shown himself to be a brave man: even though he had been given little option by circumstances to be other than brave. The colonel did not amuse him; and Heaven alone knew what he had done to merit the Military Cross: as likely as not it had been won by the troops he commanded rather than by any individual display of courage.
“Do you suspect, sir, that Jerry’s building up eighty-eights, ordinary anti-tank guns and tanks down there?”
“That is precisely of what I am convinced, Denton. That’s why the one-one-os became so agitated when they intercepted you on a course which might lead to the spot where this build-up is going on.”
“Do you think they might have worked out that we’d arrive at this conclusion, and shifted the site where they’re building up, sir?’’
Colonel Smith-Jones smiled charmingly. “That would call for a certain amount of imagination, which is not a conspicuous Teutonic trait. But it is possible, of course. Rommel seems to be an exceptional man, and perhaps he has more than the normal quota of Boche flexibility and imagination. I mean, he did show he has some, by the very way he used his eighty-eights, what?”
Denton, aware that he was having rather too much to say for himself, as a junior officer and not even a Staff one at that, still had one more fragrant thought to offer.
“Could it be, sir, that when the one-one-os intercepted us, it was part of a premeditated plan to mislead us? Couldn’t it be possible that there was nothing there to hide at all and he was deliberately deceiving us?”
While he spoke, Colonel Smith-Jones’s high complexion had deepened in colour. The alcohol-suffused blood vessels which gave his nose and cheeks a permanent magenta shade began to empurple and the rest of his face and his neck appeared to swell as they turned brick-red: the very shade of those eponymous universities he so much despised and to one of which his own father had been grateful to obtain a bursary (and later gone on to found a grocery chain which provided the private fortune that had enabled Smith-Jones to afford life in the Household Brigade and marry a baronet’s cousin). His nostrils had flared like those of one of his own racehorses under extreme exertion, but, unlike a horse’s, had also become white with rage.
With his Adam’s apple jerking like an erratic lift, and in a strangled tone, he managed to say “That ... would ... be ... what ... is ... commonly ... called ... being ... too ... clever ... by ... half.”
His eyes at that moment started from their sockets every bit as divertingly as Teddie Nash’s.
There had been a ripple of amusement around the table in which base wallahs and operational types were temporarily and unwontedly united. It continued, subdued and sporadic, while the colonel uttered his icy reproof.
Creon, grinning broadly, caught Denton’s eye and nodded approval.
The Hurricanes’ squadron commander, who had flown in the night before and was fiercely hungover, guffawed and began to hiccup.
Kathia, sitting on the colonel’s right, hastily stood up and began to scoop up files and loose papers. The colonel thanked everyone for attending, declared the meeting closed and bolted with his flews aglow from indignity and indignation under his glossy moustache.
*
In Kathia’s office, with only Creon present, she smiled and gently chided Denton.
“You’re naughty, Geoffrey. You knew perfectly well that old booby isn’t capable of originating a single constructive thought. You must have guessed that the whole proposition about the eighty-eights and all the rest emanated from his subordinates. As it happens, it was I who put the notion into that one-track apology for a mind of his. He’s so patently obsessed with making a career that it’s pathetically easy to brief him with a new theory and get him to run wild with it.”
“I wasn’t trying to dig a hole for him. I was only pointing out ...”
“The obvious. Yes. Which I had carefully concealed from him, because his fourteen-ounce brain — did you know that’s the smallest possible human size, just this side of a monkey’s? He barely makes it! — his brain simply isn’t capable of grasping three possibilities at a time. We don’t want to confuse him — do we, Creon? —because we’re all convinced that the enemy has got something secret going on in the desert far south of the Jebel Akhdar.”
“I’m going down to take a look for myself.” Creon said.
“They’ve given me a small show of my own, a reconnaissance unit : two men and a boy, more or less, with a couple of jeeps and a lorry or two. A sort of poor man’s L.R.D.G. The difference is that we masquerade convincingly as Arabs when necessary. We’re all Greeks who’ve lived out here for years, or half-Gyppos born and bred here, and we’re all dark-skinned or sunburned enough to pass as Wogs. We all speak Egyptian and Libyan Arabic like natives, most of us wear moustaches and if we grow beards we even frighten our own families, we look so Wog. It’s called the Headquarters Reconnaissance Group. I’ll divide my time between this H.Q. and being out on patrol.”
“I didn’t think you’d settle for being a base wallah, Creon. Come and visit the squadron: I’ll take you on an op.”
“Nothing I’d like better.”
That evening Denton, Kathia, Creon and Cy
rene painted Cairo a modest shade of red. They did not stay up very late: Denton had a better way of spending his time than in public places. After a very private night in Kathia’s flat he picked up the new Blenheim, and, with Critchley and Butler both looking thoroughly dissipated and thoroughly pleased with themselves, was back at Landing Ground 44 before lunch.
*
As soon as Denton had reported to his squadron commander about the conference, Nash sent a signal to H.Q. Desert Air Force and followed it with a personal visit. He landed by the light of the flarepath on his return and was soon surrounded in the mess by his officers. He puffed so vigorously on his nargileh that the water gurgled and bubbled as though it were boiling, clouds of smoke hung around his head (“Even the flies are on instruments,” Critchley remarked.) and he quickly drained two glasses of araq.
“This is just what we wanted while we’re waiting for the next big offensive,” he told his audience. “It’s right up our street. I’ve convinced the A.O.C. that nobody is better placed to spearhead these ops, than we are. It’s going to take a few days to do the P.R. and get reports from these weird gangs of pongoes who go sculling around deep in the desert. But as soon as there’s a target, we’ll be the first onto it. And we’ll have strong escort.”
For several days the effort demanded from the squadron was light, to ensure the greatest number of serviceable aircraft when the maximum effort was called for. Nobody liked being grounded but knowledge of its purpose kept morale high.
Denton had ample time to think about Kathia and he did so with pride. Creon had told him how big a part she had played in fostering the theory from which their forthcoming operations were evolved.
He had said, equivocally. “You’re going to find her a handful when you’re married, Geoffrey. She’s a bright girl with a strong mind. But you know that already. You know how inflexible her will is, from the way she got here from Greece. I’ve come to know her well since we’ve been working pretty closely together, and she’s continually surprising me. I wouldn’t describe her as devious, because you’d take that as an insult; but she’s very ... let’s say ingenious.”
“She’s been among diplomats most of her life, after all. Must have picked up the technique.”
“She’s very wily, the way she handles Smith-Jones.”
“She needs to be, I should imagine; in self-defence. From what she was telling me, he’s got as many arms as an octopus when it comes to groping girls.”
“I wasn’t thinking only of that. She’ll deserve all the credit when he does get his next promotion. If one can claim credit for manipulating the advancement of a fool. But of course she’ll rise with him and make certain he doesn’t make any fatal mistakes.”
“There’s a limit to how far anyone can protect anyone else. I’ve got a bad habit of quoting Robert Herrick. My mother liked him and I used to read him to her when she was very ill. D’you know an epigram he wrote, ‘Things Mortal Still Mutable’?”
“No.” Creon smiled. “But no doubt you’re about to enlighten me.”
“It is rather apt.
‘Things are uncertain; and the more we get,
‘The more on icy pavements we are set.’
I’d say Smith-Jones is on very slippery ground already and as he goes higher he’s going to find his footing more and more unsteady. There’s bound to be a time when even Kathia can’t keep him from making a fatal ass of himself.”
“If he does, he’ll simply suffer the fate of many others in the Army: promotion, as the only way to shift him!”
Denton recalled the conversation often, and always with as much pride as he took in Kathia’s beauty, charm, self-reliance, courage, sense of humour and poise. It pleased him that he was one day going to marry someone who had these qualities and was also highly intelligent and able to impose her personality and will on others.
*
The photographic interpreters found evidence of a great assembly of eighty-eights, anti-tank guns and tanks 300 miles from the coast. The Operational Order came by signal late one afternoon. Twenty-eight Blenheims, twelve from Nash’s squadron and eight each from two others, were to take off an hour after first light to attack the target. Wing Commander Nash would lead the formation and there would be an escort of eighteen Hurricanes, provided equally by two squadrons, which would rendezvous with the bombers over the latter’s airfield, Landing Ground 44.
The area of desert for which they took off next morning was featureless. The objective was difficult to see and identify, because it was well camouflaged. The operation demanded navigation of perfect accuracy. Only one aid was available: the H.Q. Reconnaissance Group would move to the vicinity of the target, check its position by star and sun sights with a sextant and act as a beacon by transmitting a wireless signal for the raiders to home onto.
The low angle of the rising sun cast long shadows that would help to spot the targets from the air. In every bomber the observer was poring over his navigation, not trusting blindly to the squadron commander’s observer alone. If for some reason Nash had to turn back, there would be no fumbling. The fighter pilots kept their own, less accurate, checks. In its way, this was the most significant mission on which Denton and most of the others had ever flown. The atmosphere at the final quick briefing before take-off had been charged with a current of unusual expectancy. They were going to spring a surprise on the enemy and the knowledge, particularly after days of light activity, enlivened them all. Denton pictured Kathia waiting expectantly at G.H.Q. for the signal from Teddie Nash that would confirm success. His own expectancy suddenly quickened his pulse: perhaps there would be another conference in Cairo to discuss the operation; perhaps deputy flight commanders would be summoned to attend. Perhaps he would soon spend another night with Kathia’s arms around him and waken again to the happiness of finding her in his.
Butler picked up the first faint trace of the signal from Creon’s patrol and reported it. Demon thought affectionately of his friend, so quickly and astonishingly transformed from an easy-going, hedonistic merchant for whom the only crises were the occasional ailments of his three young children or a bad day at the races, a sorry night at the poker table, into a dedicated and efficient officer of field rank who carried responsibility for the lives of the 102 men in the Blenheims and Hurricanes.
The signal grew stronger. The tension that always preceded action began to sharpen, despite all assurances that this raid was going to catch the enemy unawares.
“Ten minutes to target.”
“Thank you, Ian.”
There was still nothing to see on the tawny desert. From training and habit, all three of them were searching the sky although this was a surprise party.
There was no surprise in Butler’s voice. There never was. He had taken a pair of binoculars from one of the Italian scout cars they had put out of action on that long-ago evening of their first operation, and never flew without it.
“You’re not going to believe this, Skipper. There’s a bloody great bunch of Jerries coming in from eight-o’clock.” (Up-sun). “One-one-os and one-o-nines five thousand above and must be more than ten miles.”
Denton did not question him. Butler never spoke until he was sure.
He switched the radio to “Transmit”. “Imshee Leader from Imshee F for Freddie. Hostiles ...” He repeated what Butler had said.
Before Nash had time to acknowledge, the first streaks of tracer from 37 mm cannon and the first shell bursts from 88s sizzled and exploded around them.
Denton felt a hand on his shoulder and looked round impatiently. Butler, looking perplexed, shoved a signal form in front of him. “Recall, Skipper ... return to base immediately ... operation cancelled ... repeat, return to base immediately ...”
Denton heard Nash’s voice in his headphones, ordering them all to abandon the sortie and turn back for base, in confirmation of what all the Blenheim wireless operators had received in Morse but could not be heard by the Hurricane pilots.
With fragments of
shrapnel clattering against them, three Blenheims going down on fire, an exploding Hurricane scattering bits of itself and its pilot around the sky, the formation wheeled onto a northward course and prepared to do battle with the enemy fighters which were by now all too clearly seen by the naked eye.
*
It was dark by the time Creon arrived with his two jeeps and a former Italian scout car at Landing Ground 44. By the time he had talked at length to Wing Commander Nash and the other squadron commanders it was almost midnight. He had taken a bottle of whisky with him to Denton’s tent; and now they, with Critchley and Butler, were seated on the two camp beds with enamel mugs of Scotch and water in their hands, the cramped space lit by a smelly, smoky oil lantern.
The whisky was small help as an anodyne for what Denton had to listen to.
“Nazism is more than a creed,” Creon said quietly. “It is a disease. For a well-off family like Kathia’s — and mine! — communism is anathema ... frightening. You know that, without my telling you. Fortunately, few of us go so far as to swallow the insidious Nazi poison as a reaction to the communist threat. The Pefkos family, with their German blood and other associations, took to it like ... like an alcoholic takes to this.” He gave a wry smile and raised his mug. “They have always been Nazi supporters. Kathia made no secret of the fact that many of her father’s friends from the days when he was at our Berlin embassy are powerful men now in the Party. That’s what is called disarming frankness. What she never admitted, of course, was that he was an active believer in Hitler. And so was she. She was up to her neck in politics when she lived in Hamburg.”
The Eagle's Cry Page 17
