Flames over France

by Robert Jackson

  The small group made its way towards the aerodrome buildings, some wooden huts on the perimeter of the field. Martigny airfield, Armstrong saw, was situated on a plateau and was completely surrounded by woods in which clearings had been cut as dispersal areas. The Potez 63s had already arrived and had been pushed into the shelter of the trees. The natural camouflage was excellent and the place would be very difficult to spot from the air, which probably accounted for the fact that it had not yet been bombed. The village of Martigny-les-Gerbonvaux was a mere half-mile away, and Armstrong discovered that the personnel were billeted there.

  Captain Le Roy emerged from one of the huts to meet the new arrivals. Grinning, he shook Armstrong by the hand.

  “So,” he said, “you survived the experience?”

  Armstrong knew exactly what he meant. “Only just,” he admitted. “I wonder where that fellow learned to fly?”

  Le Roy laughed. “In Africa, I understand. He is well known to us, and something of a character. Before the war he was a pilot with the postal service on the West African route. He has sand in his boots, like the Legionnaires. Knows more about the Sahara than anyone I have ever met. He is, as you have no doubt noticed, très sérieux, but I expect that is a consequence of several years spent in the anticipation of having his balls removed by the Tuareg. Yet even our blue-veiled nomad friends have their price; several airmen who have made forced landings in the Sahara have been returned intact, after the appropriate ransom was paid. Others, unfortunately, were not.” He shrugged philosophically.

  Armstrong noticed that, in addition to the Potez reconnaissance aircraft, several squat, radial-engined fighters were parked among the trees. He could not identify them, and asked Le Roy what they were. The other informed him that they were American-built Curtiss Hawks, with which several French fighter groups were equipped. A flight of them had been deployed to Martigny to provide escort for the Potez 63s and also for air defence.

  “I was an Air Force test pilot when the first Hawks were delivered in the spring of 1939,” he explained, “and had the opportunity to fly them on several occasions. They are robust, but they suffer from a poor armament of only four machine-guns, which freeze up easily, and they do not have self-sealing fuel tanks, which makes them vulnerable in combat. But it is a nice aircraft to fly, and is very manoeuvrable, with a particularly fast rate of roll — faster, even, than that of your Spitfire, which I have also flown.” He grinned and tapped the side of his nose with his index finger.

  Armstrong expressed his surprise, and the Frenchman explained that he had been one of two test pilots sent to England to fly the Spitfire in September 1938. “We wanted a hundred of them by September 1939,” he said, “but your government said that they could not fulfil such an order, because all the Spitfire production was allocated to the RAF. The American Curtiss Company, on the other hand, told us that they could deliver the Hawk — and, since our own new single-seat fighters would not be ready for some time, we had to be content with that. It is a pity.” He shook his head sadly.

  The sun was setting in a sky that was almost cloudless. Armstrong asked Le Roy if there would be any flying that night, and the Frenchman told him that two aircraft were to make reconnaissance sorties of the Saarbrucken sector. “For myself, I shall not be flying again until tomorrow,” he said. “In the meantime, I intend to enjoy a glass of wine and some good food in the village auberge, where I trust you will join me. I have been allocated a room there, and I expect the innkeeper will be able to fit you in, too.” He looked Armstrong up and down and smiled. “No doubt you will wish to refresh yourself. I shall acquire some soap, a razor and a towel for you. Your socks, I regret, you will have to wash yourself.”

  Armstrong laughed; he was already developing a deep liking for the French pilot, whose sense of humour seemed to be in much the same mould as his own. Collecting a couple of fellow pilots, whose names Armstrong immediately forgot, they set off down the slope towards the village, following a path that wound its way between the trees. On reaching the main street, Armstrong noticed that many houses had a steaming muckheap piled in front of them, and commented on this to his companions. They laughed as though he had made a huge joke.

  “In Lorraine, it is a sign of prosperity,” Le Roy explained, still chuckling. “They are strange people; a little cold, you might think on first meeting them. No, that is not the right word; they are reserved, as you English would say. You will doubtless feel at home here.” The Frenchmen laughed again, good-naturedly, and Armstrong was suddenly struck by their apparent lack of concern that their world was in the process of falling apart round their ears. My God, he thought with some alarm, they really believe that they are going to beat the Germans, and that this war is going to be over in just a few weeks. Hasn’t anyone told them that their Maginot Line is worse than useless, and that the Germans are pouring round the end of it?

  He made an effort to shrug off his sudden melancholy as they reached the inn. The door was open and they trooped inside, Le Roy leading the way. The entrance gave access to a surprisingly large room, lit by the last rays of the sun. A few French officers and some locals were already seated at well-scrubbed, white-topped tables, sipping wine.

  At the far side of the room there as a long counter, with bottles of wine arranged on it like guardsmen on parade. Le Roy made straight for it and rapped on it with his knuckles. After a few moments an elderly man with an enormous white moustache emerged from a side room, clutching a grubby cloth. He surveyed the newcomers without smiling, contenting himself with raising an eyebrow. Le Roy nodded affably at him and informed him that he was given to understand that rooms had been allocated.

  The innkeeper peered at him with watery eyes. “Two rooms, to be exact, monsieur. I regret that you will have to share.”

  Le Roy spread his hands. “Diable! Well, I suppose that it is war, and we must make the best of it. My friend here, incidentally, will require a razor and some soap, if that is possible, for he lost his belongings when the Boche shot down his aircraft.”

  “It is possible, monsieur.” He smiled unexpectedly and extended a hand towards Armstrong, his gaze taking in the pilot’s blue-grey uniform. “I take you for an Englishman,” he said. “You are welcome here. I fought alongside the English, on the Somme. I am Raymond Bessodes. We should have destroyed these pigs utterly, in nineteen-eighteen. Do you not agree?”

  Armstrong thought it prudent to agree wholeheartedly, since he was famished and would have killed for a drink.

  The innkeeper stuck his head round the jamb of a door that led to a room in the rear of the building and called out to someone. A minute later a tall woman emerged, dressed all in black and with her hair tied back in a severe bun. Madame Bessodes had a face like a hatchet, which doubtless accounted for her husband’s miserable expression. She carried a rough towel and a bar of soap which she handed to the pilot on Bessodes’ instructions, muttering something to the effect that he would have to find a razor for himself, and turned on her heel.

  Bessodes shrugged and gave Armstrong a look that spoke volumes, then beckoned to the pilot to follow him up a winding staircase to the room which, he learned, he was to share with Le Roy. There were three beds, or rather cots, in it, all neatly made up. Armstrong dropped his rolled-up flying overall on one and thanked the innkeeper for his hospitality, telling him that he would be back downstairs directly; Bessodes nodded and made himself scarce after pointing out a washstand with a large bowl of water on it.

  Armstrong took his forage cap from the pocket of his tunic, where he had stowed it before take-off from Berry-au-Bac that morning (was it only that morning? he asked himself, with a sudden shock) and hung it on a peg behind the door. Then he stripped off to the waist and sluiced himself down thoroughly. The water was cold, but he welcomed that, for it was refreshingly pleasant on his hot and sticky body.

  Half an hour later he was back with the others, sitting at one of the scrubbed tables and tucking into a huge bowl of heavily-seasoned stew w
hose main ingredient, he discovered, was goat. Taken with chunks of white bread and washed down with red wine, he found it delicious. Between mouthfuls, he conversed with his companions as best he could, although they were several glasses of wine ahead of him and he found their boisterous argot — slang — difficult to understand. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world; it was though tomorrow didn’t exist.

  Suddenly, to his surprise, he found that he was being shaken out of a doze by Le Roy. The Frenchman grinned at him. “Too much of Lorraine’s good wine, my friend?”

  Armstrong shook his head and looked around. The lights were on in the room and someone had drawn the curtains. He felt dog-tired, and although the food and wine had certainly helped to induce his weariness, they were not the primary cause. He was aware that he was suffering from reaction, the delayed effects of his crash-landing. He was conscious that he ached all over.

  It was a condition that a good sleep would cure. He excused himself and made his way upstairs to the bedroom. The curtains were open and there was just enough light to see that a candle had been placed on the bedside table, with a box of matches next to it. He closed the curtains and lit the candle, then stripped off his uniform, hanging it behind the door. His shirt and underwear he left in a small heap beside the bed. Absent-mindedly, he noticed that the water bowl had been refilled. Madame Bessodes, he told himself, was no oil painting, but she was certainly efficient.

  He climbed between the sheets and prepared to blow out the candle, then decided to leave it lit so that Le Roy could find his way around the room without tripping over anything. An instant later, as though someone had turned a switch, he was asleep.

  Armstrong slept the sleep of the drugged. He did not hear Le Roy come in, nor did he hear the Frenchman leave again, early the next morning. The curtains were still closed when he awoke, but their thickness could not conceal the fact that it was broad daylight outside.

  He got out of bed and opened the curtains, then looked at his watch; it was seven-thirty. He struggled for a moment to remember what day it was, then realised that it must be Saturday. Saturday, the eleventh of May. Turning back to the interior of the bedroom, he saw to his surprise and delight that his shirt and underclothing had been laundered and had been arranged in a neat pile on top of a chest of drawers. His uniform, too, had been brushed and pressed and was on a hanger behind the door. Madame Bessodes, he told himself, must have been up and about until the small hours. There was also a razor, placed next to his laundry. He fingered his chin, feeling the rough stubble, and decided that a shave was going to be his first priority, but the washing bowl was missing. He was wondering what to do about that when there was a rap on the door.

  Realising that he was stark naked, he hurriedly dived back into bed before calling “Entrez!’ A moment later Madame Bessodes came in, bearing the missing bowl; it had steam rising from it. She bade him good morning as she placed the bowl on the washstand, and asked him if he had slept well. He told her that he had, and tried to thank her for washing his clothing. She waved his thanks aside and, fishing in her apron pocket, produced a note which she handed to him, explaining that it was from Captain Le Roy. “I will provide breakfast for you in twenty minutes, monsieur,” she told Armstrong, in a tone that suggested she would brook no excuse for lateness.

  Armstrong read the note, which was an instruction to make himself known to the adjutant — the rank corresponded roughly with the RAF’s warrant officer — who was in charge of running the airfield’s administration. There was, the note stressed, no hurry at all to report in. Nevertheless, Armstrong shaved quickly and then washed himself from head to foot; it wasn’t as good as a bath, but it was better than nothing at all. He allowed himself the luxury of soaking his feet in the bowl for a few moments, then dried himself off and got dressed.

  There was no sign of the innkeeper downstairs, but Madame Bessodes made the pilot sit down at one of the tables and, to his astonishment, brought him a plateful of eggs and cold slices of ham, along with a bowl of very milky tea. “Voilà,” she said, “le petit dejeuner Anglais pour vous.” It was not exactly an English breakfast, as she claimed, but he realised that she had made a considerable effort to please him and he expressed his gratitude as best he could. To his even greater amazement, she smiled at him and patted him lightly on the shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.

  A few moments later she returned, carrying a framed photograph which she showed to him hesitantly. A round-faced young man in French naval uniform stared out at him. “My son,” she explained. “He will be about the same age as you … He is in the Mediterranean and safe from the war, I pray. He serves on a great battleship, the Bretagne, at a place called Mers-el-Kebir. Better for him to be there than here, I think.”

  Armstrong murmured something and handed the photograph back to her. She gave a sigh, and returned to her chores. Strange, the pilot thought, how war and danger compels people to confide details of their private affairs to total strangers … the little things that are their pride.

  He finished his breakfast and carried the utensils into the kitchen, placing them on a table. Madame Bessodes was busying herself at the sink, her back to him, and he sensed that she was crying. So as not to embarrass her, he left without a word.

  The morning was bright and clear and filled with birdsong, and Armstrong found himself whistling as he made his way through the woods towards the airfield. Two sentries challenged him as he reached the gate, and although he had left his identity documents in England — a standard procedure before flying on operations, as each aircrew member had his identity disc around his neck by way of identification — the guards were satisfied by Le Roy’s note and one of them escorted Armstrong to the adjutant’s office in one of the wooden buildings.

  The adjutant, a much-decorated veteran of the last war, greeted Armstrong affably enough and gave him some coffee, but seemed at a loss when it came to finding the RAF pilot something to do. All the reconnaissance aircraft and their escorting fighters — except one, which had been undergoing repair — were airborne, and it would be some time before they returned. Then the adjutant had a brainwave; would the RAF capitaine care to inspect the Curtiss Hawk that was still on the ground? The mechanics, he assured Armstrong, would be happy to show him the cockpit.

  He led the pilot out to the aircraft, which stood in a clearing facing outwards on to the airstrip. The repairs to the engine had been completed and the mechanics were about to run-up the motor to see if everything worked.

  The Hawk, Armstrong found, was already armed and almost fully fuelled; its pilot had already taken off on a mission the previous day when engine trouble had forced him to turn back. This morning, in another aircraft, he was somewhere over the Maginot Line.

  Armstrong stood on the Hawk’s wing and peered into the cockpit as the mechanic who was already sitting inside, ready to start the big Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp radial engine, showed him where all the switches were. The cockpit, Armstrong noted, wasn’t much different from that of a Spitfire or Hurricane, except that it was roomier and the guns — two.50 and two.30 calibre weapons — were tired by triggers rather than a button. The flap and undercarriage levers, he saw, were a little too close together for comfort; it would be very easy to mistake one for the other.

  The mechanic signalled that he was going to start the motor. Armstrong nodded and jumped down off the wing, wandering out of the trees into the sunlight. Behind him, the engine gave a couple of bangs and then burst into life, emitting a cloud of blue smoke. It roared throatily for a minute as the mechanic opened the throttle to clear excess oil from the plugs, then the noise died away to a steady rumble as the man brought the throttle setting to ‘idle’ while he checked the engine instruments.

  A shadow rippled over the grass of the airstrip. Armstrong looked round, peering into the eastern sky, squinting into the sun which was now high above the treetops. A moment later, a twin-engined aircraft roared low over the aerodrome, the sound bringing personnel tum
bling out of the buildings. There were black crosses under the aircraft’s wings; it was a Dornier 17.

  Something fell from the Dornier’s belly and hit the ground right in the centre of the airfield. There was a thud and a cloud of bright yellow smoke burst from the object, billowing upwards in the still air. Still keeping low, the Dornier sped away from the field, pursued by some ineffectual bursts of machine-gun fire. Armstrong saw it turn steeply in the distance, coming round in a circle that would keep it well clear of any defensive fire, but at the same time enable its crew to keep the smoke marker in sight and guide the bombers that must be following directly on to it.

  Armstrong did not pause to think. Turning on his heel, he dashed back into the clearing, thrusting aside the startled ground crew and leaping onto the wing of the Hawk. The man in the cockpit, who had heard nothing above the noise of the engine, looked at Armstrong as though he had gone mad.

  “Vite, vite!” the RAF pilot yelled at him, pointing at the sky. “Get out, quick! The Germans are here!”

  Suddenly white-faced, the man scrambled from the cockpit and dropped from the wing onto the ground. Armstrong looked inside for a second; there was no parachute, just a cushion of some sort which the mechanic had placed in the seat pan where the parachute normally fitted. There was no time to worry about that now.

  Settling himself into the cockpit, he strapped himself in quickly, fumbling with the unfamiliar harness. He released the brakes and, holding the stick back, opened the throttle slowly. The Hawk began to move, its speed increasing, and left the shelter of the trees. A figure came running towards it, gesticulating wildly, and Armstrong recognised the adjutant. The pilot took no notice of him and taxied on, opening the throttle wider. As the speed built up he relaxed the backward pressure on the stick, allowing the tail to lift off the ground. He now had a clear view ahead past the big radial engine.