Night Raiders

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  His first bomb burst wide of the mark but must have torn up yards of track.

  He waited until his second bomb went off. It had fallen between the last two platforms to the east and he saw walls tumble in the flash from its detonation.

  Other people’s bombs were bursting by now and flames and smoke leaped and coiled all over the area.

  Yardley released his third bomb, aiming again at an engine and trucks. This time he saw the blast overturn some of the trucks and the engine stop.

  He picked out his fourth objective: the station again, but this time he would aim off, allowing for some wind drift. He toggled and there was no response. He should have felt the lightened aircraft rise steeply as the bomb left it. He toggled again. Nothing happened. He rocked his wings violently and tried a third time. The fused bomb, alive, still hung under the port wing.

  Yardley began to circle outside the perimeter of the junction, to try to count how many machines were attacking. There were fires burning in all directions, columns of steam, smoke and sparks soaring up from damaged locomotives. In the glow from fires and searchlights he could see that much of the station building had been damaged.

  One of his machines was hit by gunfire and exploded, another was descending steeply with flames darting from it.

  He counted two... three... a fourth machine came into the light.

  There was not enough fuel in his tank to allow him to linger and he headed for home, climbing for the clouds as he went.

  The live bomb was still in its rack.

  He attracted Wotton’s attention and shouted into the mouthpiece of the tube, “Last bomb did not release.”

  To his surprise, and for the first time that night, the answer came quite clearly.

  “I know. Better not risk landing with it. I’ll try to get it free.”

  “No! Stay put, you blasted fool.”

  “Sorry, sir... can’t hear you.”

  “Well, I can hear you all right, Alec. Don’t play the fool.”

  “Still can’t hear you. If you can hear me, don’t worry. I’m good at gym.”

  “No, Alec.”

  But Yardley knew that the danger of a fused bomb under his wing when he landed was not only to them. He had seen such a bomb shaken loose and it had rolled into the air mechanics waiting for the returning machine. It had exploded among them. The pilot and observer were unharmed, but four of the troops were killed.

  In the first two years of the war, when aircraft flew at 60 and 70 m.p.h., it had not been unusual to climb out of the cockpit and hang on to wing struts and the fuselage: sometimes to deal with a hung-up bomb and sometimes for the sheer hell of it. As a test of nerve, pilots and observers used to change places in the air, crawling over and under one another. Sometimes a pilot would take up a two-seater on his own and change places just to prove his own courage to himself.

  Antics of that sort at night, however, were quite another matter.

  Yardley had done the swap-over trick himself with his first observer years ago, in 1915, flying a BE2. He had tried it on his own as well and almost come to grief when his weight upset the machine’s balance and nearly sent it into a fatal spin.

  His first thought now was that he ought to release the bomb while Alec Wotton flew the aircraft. He had to dismiss that. He was much heavier and bulkier than Alec, even Alec in all his flying clobber. And Alec lacked the ability to keep the machine straight and level while he clambered about and kept disturbing its balance.

  He used the speaking-tube once more.

  “All right, Alec. I don’t want any of the ground crew killed. I’m too heavy to risk unbalancing the machine, and you can’t fly it. So I’ll have to let you do it.”

  “Jolly good, Major. I can hear you all right again.”

  “Yes, I thought you would. We’ll wait until we’re over safe ground, then I’ll go down low where it won’t be so cold for you. And I’ll fly as slowly as I can.”

  “Any time, sir.”

  For luck, Yardley tried the bomb release yet again and yet again the bomb stuck where it was.

  He would stay above cloud until they were out of enemy territory. Then he would go down to 1,000 ft, where the wind would be less strong than it was above cloud. That would be safer for Alec and it would be warmer, so that he would not be quite so stiff. There would be enough air under them to recover from a spin if they fell into one.

  That was settled, then. And now his thoughts reverted to the raid and possible casualties. It made dismal thinking.

  He saw the Rhine and later he saw the flashes of German artillery, before once more the flares and star shells over no-man’s-land told him he was back in friendly skies and he began to let down to 1,000 ft.

  He rocked the machine about for a last time to try to shake the bomb loose and then for the last time he tried the toggle. The bomb did not budge.

  Straight and level at 1,000 ft, he told Wotton to go ahead.

  It was an unpleasant task even for a man who boasted of his gymnastic ability. First, Wotton had to cover the four feet between his cockpit and Yardley’s. He knelt on his seat, leaned over his low, curved windscreen and began to slide himself forward along the top of the fuselage; with the wind tugging at his bulky Sidcot.

  He grasped the rear coaming of the front cockpit and locked his feet under the seat he had just left. Yardley turned to give him an encouraging nod.

  I’d rather he kept his eyes on his instruments, Wotton thought.

  The bomb was under the lower starboard wing. He moved his right arm forward to take hold of the starboard edge of the front cockpit and gently shifted his weight. As he transferred it to the right, Yardley compensated by tilting the aeroplane to the left, so that in fact it stayed level.

  Wotton unhooked his feet and gave himself a sharp pull forward.

  Yardley moved his body as far to the left as he could.

  Wotton’s feet slid off the slippery, icy surface of the fuselage and swung into space. He dangled with one hand gripping the back rim of the cockpit and the other its side, scrabbling to get his feet forward onto the lower wing or a strut, while the wind shoved his legs back.

  Yardley tipped the machine forward, grabbing Wotton’s left hand before he did so. Wotton’s dangling legs swung forward like a pendulum and his feet hit the first strut. He thrust a leg each side of it and gripped it between his ankles, then locked them on the far side. The aeroplane came up to level flight again.

  Wotton was panting. He slid his left hand along the cockpit coaming, then transferred his right to the strut. He stayed like that for a moment, then shifted the left hand further forward and flattened himself as close as he could to the nose of the machine.

  The stench of oil at close quarters made him feel sick, his stomach already heaving with terror. The heat of the engine started to singe his Sidcot.

  He swung his left shoulder round with all the force he could muster and got his left hand to the strut. The wind almost foiled this move and his fingers slipped, but he just managed to hold firm.

  Now he lowered himself and turned gingerly until he was crouching with his back to the leading edge of the wing and with care began to push his legs out so that he lay on his stomach and facing aft. He gripped the strut tightly with both hands. The wind and the engine roared in his ears. The propeller whirled a few feet away, ready to chop him to pieces if anything threw the aeroplane onto its nose and forced him to loosen his grip and slide feet-first over the leading edge.

  He hooked his left arm around the strut and, with his right hand, fumbled out his torch from a pocket. He shone it under the trailing edge of the wing and squirmed forward to lean over and look for the bomb.

  A minute or so of fumbling with clumsy gloved hands and he felt the bomb come away.

  The wing on which he lay tilted up, relieved of 112 lb, rolling him against the fuselage.

  Yardley corrected, then leaned out of the cockpit, grinning down at him.

  Wotton lay where he was for a couple of min
utes, getting his breath back, trying to relax. Getting back was going to be even more dangerous than getting out, because by now his muscles were tired, his fingers were aching and sore, his nerves were stretched so far that he would have preferred not to move at all.

  He bent his knees, to kneel on the wing, and the wind caught him so fiercely that it almost swept him over the trailing edge of the wing. He dropped flat once more and turned to look up at Yardley, who was gazing down at him.

  Yardley shook his head vigorously from side to side and made a negative gesture with his right hand. Then he pointed to himself and then jabbed his finger downwards. Wotton thought he understood what Yardley meant. He was too numb with cold and fear to argue. He hung on.

  In a gentle glide, the machine went down to 100 ft and Wotton watched the ground whip past beneath in a blur of trees and farm buildings, a village which he recognised, and then the row of hangars on one side of the aerodrome.

  He was glad he had such a good pilot. Landing with a man who weighed eleven and a half stone in all his flying gear on the wing was not something for the average pilot to attempt.

  Despite the poor light, Yardley set the DH4 down with hardly a bump.

  In the silence when the engine stopped, pilot and observer grinned at each other in relief and Yardley leaned down to give Wotton a hand up.

  “Not worth it, was it, Alec?” Yardley said, laughing.

  The bomb had obviously been a dud. They had not seen it burst when it hit the ground.

  Wotton looked rueful and his teeth chattered with the cold. He had been out of his cockpit, unprotected from the wind, for 20 minutes.

  “Never mind, sir. We proved it can be done, in case we ever have to do it again!”

  Chapter Ten

  It was about five o’clock and the first light of day was spreading in a curdled greyish red-tinged wash along the eastern horizon. That was the direction in which the watchers’ heads were turned.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Quinn glowered at Yardley. Yardley stared back at him with patent loathing.

  Yardley always looked at everyone with a challenge, even when he was showing his amiable face to a friend. Even when he was dispensing sweetness and light to some frisky girl — there were many of them — who had taken his fancy.

  A chilly breeze gusted across the aerodrome and another, as cold and clammy, blew through Yardley’s soul. So far, he could account for only eight of his eighteen crews.

  Three crews were awaiting his return. They had been forced, by engine trouble, to turn back before reaching the target. Two had been seen shot down over the target. He and Wotton and two others had landed in the past quarter of an hour.

  He had stayed in the target area long enough to count four machines besides his own attacking, before his fuel state had made it imprudent to linger. The next crew to return said they had seen six drop their bombs, including him.

  Quinn, his lip going up and down in a fury of malice, had put in a few hours’ sleep before the hour at which he had told his batman to call him. Even so, his eyes, under their masking lids, were pink-rimmed. His temper was none the sweeter for his rest.

  “You should have turned back,” he told Yardley.

  “Why?”

  Yardley dispensed with any respectful form of address: there was no one within earshot and he had no respect for the Colonel.

  “Because the weather was obviously unsuitable.”

  Wars were not won by caution, but Quinn, who had seen little action, was bold only at his desk. He was a natural exhorter, but when it came to taking a decision between action and dash he chose the less heroic way. If Yardley had abandoned the operation, Quinn would have sneered. If he had been on the operation himself he would not have hesitated to give up and turn back.

  Yardley did not really want to debate the issue. It was beneath his pride to justify himself to Quinn. Yet his reputation was largely in the Colonel’s hands and so he had to offer some comment.

  “We’ve all — those of us with any worthwhile experience of operations — flown in worse conditions. And hit our targets.”

  A convulsive leap of Quinn’s upper lip and a drooping of his already heavy eyelids: signs to all on the wing that this strangely emotional man was on the verge of eruption.

  “That was in daylight, damn it all.”

  “There’s only one way to learn about night bombing.”

  Quinn, with nearly four decades of cruelties to his name, said, “You do not seem to take much account of your crews.”

  Yardley looked away from him and said, “I can see three more coming in.”

  He had heard them first, but evidently the blood was pounding so loudly in the Colonel’s ears that he had been temporarily deafened.

  “Three! Excellent,” Quinn said sarcastically. His voice sounded congested. Yardley knew what thoughts were seething in that narrow skull. They were enough to choke a less self-seeking man than Quinn. His own attitude, he thought with pleasure, must have been pushing Quinn fairly close to bursting a blood vessel.

  “Excuse me, Colonel,” Yardley said politely and walked briskly away to greet the three crews.

  There are many ways of showing defiance and this damned Yardley knows them all, the Colonel was thinking. He had to maintain his dignity. He also walked towards the three aircraft which had just landed; but he walked slowly.

  A duty clerk from the Wing Orderly Room hurried to intercept Yardley.

  “Sir! Major Yardley, sir.”

  Yardley kept going as he called, “What is it?”

  The man panted up to him. “Telephone message, sir. Captain Harris had to land at Mattigny, out of fuel.”

  “Thank you. Tell the Colonel.”

  There were six more machines for which to account.

  The first of the three about to land now taxied towards the hangars with its engine stuttering. The engine of the second one, giving similar warnings of fuel starvation, died while it was still halfway across the airfield. The third machine had to glide in, its engine already dead.

  Yardley watched them with an irrational hostility, as though he blamed them for the bad weather and inefficient compasses. It was almost, he realised with a shock, as though he were ascribing an anthropomorphic nature to them. He had not fully realised how personally he was taking the success or failure of these night sorties.

  I shall soon be as rabid as Quinn, he warned himself. We have enough deranged people among us already, without my adding to the numbers. Quinn was a notable example of imbalance; but there were others, who had been seriously affected by too much operational flying in too harassing conditions. One found them on every squadron and there was no getting rid of them and no apparent cure. Courts-martial were more readily resorted to for aberrations than was psychiatry or neurology.

  It was a strange place and a strange time to be thinking of Greek mythology, but Yardley’s thoughts flashed to Prometheus, chained to a mountain peak while an eagle gnawed daily at his liver. The victim grew a new liver overnight, so both he and the eagle were frustrated. He thought of Sisyphus, condemned to an eternity of shoving a boulder up a mountain, only for it to slip from his hands and roll to the bottom again when it had reached the summit.

  The common experience he claimed with them was frustration.

  He extended his analogy to include Quinn as a reincarnation of Procrustes, mercilessly compressing or stretching his pilots and navigators to conform with the demands his ambition dictated.

  Quinn was a ragingly frustrated man, too.

  Yardley, with Tearle and Wotton, who had converged on the nearest aeroplane from where they had been waiting, well away from Quinn and him, tried to appear unconcerned while the pilot and his observer were clambering down from their cockpits.

  “Did you get there?” he asked.

  The pilot, stretching cramped limbs, said, “Yes, sir. But we went badly off course coming home. We picked up a beacon in the nick of time.” He looked strained and fed up.

  This was not t
he moment for asking about the accuracy of his bombing. Yardley hurried on to the next machine, which was being pushed towards the hangars while the crew trudged beside it. Tearle and Wotton kept pace with him, silently.

  The second crew and the third looked as angry and shaken as the first. One expected Archie and fighters, searchlights and balloon barrages. One was resigned to the fact that they grew in numbers and effectiveness as the war continued. What one did not reconcile oneself to was a continuing inadequacy of aero engines, compasses and weather prediction. Death in action was a price no one grudged paying for doing what he believed in and wanted to do. Death in a crash was very near to being an insult. It made men feel expendable.

  In the next hour four more aeroplanes reached base after being forced down at British or French aerodromes, blown there by the wind, misled by compass error, forced down by engine failure or petrol starvation.

  Four crews did not show up at all.

  Time and protests in the German press would show how accurate the bombing had been. Three crews had failed to find the primary target and dropped their bombs instead on what they thought were military or industrial objectives.

  *

  Yardley slept uneasily. His metabolism did not adapt readily to a change of routine. Going to bed at 8 a.m. after a breakfast of porridge, sausages and eggs was not conducive to easy sleep. His body energised by, and digesting, food, was as unready for repose as his troubled mind.

  The most he could achieve after staying up all night was four or five hours of heavy unconsciousness, when he eventually defeated the clamour in his thoughts and fell asleep. It was not refreshing. This morning he had two hours of exhausted oblivion before he began to have bad dreams.

  The burden of command fell more heavily on him than it did on Lieutenant-Colonel Quinn, despite the fact that Quinn had three squadrons under his orders.

  A Wing Commander did not fly on operations. A Squadron Commander did (although there were some who flew infrequently or even not at all). There lay the difference. The Wing Commander could justify errors of judgment by pleading pressure from above or inadequate, perhaps downright bad, information and advice from his Squadron Commanders. A Squadron Commander was supposed to be a pragmatist and pragmatists in positions of authority were not allowed excuses.