by Murray Pura
“I received the following signal an hour ago. ‘Peter Sweet was shot down over the Arun Valley in West Sussex in pursuit of enemy fighters. His aircraft’s descent was spotted by local farmers, who hurried to the crash site. He was still in the cockpit and was likely dead before he hit the ground. Please convey the condolences of all flight personnel and ground crew at RAF King’s Cross to Corporal Jane Fordyce at RAF Hillingdon.’ ”
The sergeant dropped her hand with the note in it to her side.
Jane stared at her.
“I’m terribly sorry, Jane. So terribly sorry. If it were a different set of circumstances, I should give you leave to travel to King’s Cross. But we must have you here. At any rate, you would not be permitted to go to the base. The enemy attacks are far too frequent. But you are relieved for the evening. Is there anything I can do?”
Jane heard her voice. “No. That’s quite all right. Thank you for letting me know so promptly.”
“I shall see you in the morning then?”
“Of course.”
“I’m so sorry, Jane. What a brave lad he was.”
Jane made her way up the stairs and along the street, paying no attention to the Friday afternoon traffic or the people on the sidewalks. Her roommates greeted her cheerfully, saw her face, and stopped chattering.
“What is it, Jane?” asked the one with short brown hair.
“What’s happened?” The other, a young woman with Chinese blood like Jane, took her hand. “What did you hear?”
“The brothers I told you about, the pilots.” Jane felt the heat build in her eyes and her throat tighten. “The one’s dead. Shot down.”
“Oh, no.” The one who was holding her hand embraced her.
The brown-haired one was pale. “He could be wounded.”
“They pulled him out of the cockpit, Jenny.” The tears burst onto Jane’s cheeks. “They were sure he was dead before the crash.”
“I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
“Best give her the telegram, Jenny,” said the young woman holding Jane.
“D’you think that’s a good idea, Liz?”
“It can’t get worse than it already is, can it?”
Jenny brought the telegram out of her dress pocket.
“I can’t read it.” Jane gripped Liz’s back and sobbed. “I can’t see. Tell me what it says, Jenny.”
“Are you sure?”
“Please.”
Jenny opened it.
I’M SO SORRY, JANE. NO ONE WAS EVER BRAVER THAN PETER. HE HAD BAGGED ONE ME 109 THAT STRAFED OUR BASE. HE WAS AFTER THE OTHERS. HE OUTDISTANCED ALL OF US. THEY TURNED ON HIM AND IT WAS THREE ON ONE. EVEN THEN THEY HAD A HARD TIME OF IT. HE WILL BE BURIED WITH OUR OTHER PILOTS AT KING’S CROSS CHAPEL. WHEN YOU ARE ABLE TO GET DOWN HERE I WILL TAKE YOU TO HIM. I WISH YOU ALL THE COMFORT GOD CAN GIVE.
MY PRAYERS
BEN
“He’s a hero,” said Jenny.
“He is that,” agreed Liz.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The tears poured across Jane’s face. “I should have loved him more. I was sure I’d see him again. I was certain of it.”
“Shh…shh…” Liz stroked her back.
“I want to talk about him. I want to talk about Peter all night.”
“Then do it. We’ll listen, won’t we, Jenn? Stay with you right through to morning.”
Jenny nodded. “Yes, of course we will. I’ll put the kettle on the stove.”
“They said he wasn’t strong. But they weren’t right about that. They weren’t, were they? Look how brave he was. Look how he fought the German planes…look how he defended us.”
Liz held her more tightly. “He was strong. Very strong. You knew that. That’s why you doted on him, Jane. That’s why you loved him so much.”
After very little sleep, Liz and Jenny walked Jane to the gate at RAF Hillingdon and hugged her before she stepped through. In the bunker she nodded at Sergeant Turnbull and the other WAAFs and put on her headset. The day was slow. During a break, a telegram from RAF Pickering Green was handed to her.
JANE
WE BOTH LOVED YOU. HE LOVED BOTH OF US. THEY WILL BURY HIM TODAY. OUR FIELD WON’T BE OPERATIONAL FOR ANOTHER 24 HOURS BUT I WON’T BE GRANTED LEAVE. BEN WILL SEE THE FUNERAL IS DONE RIGHT. OUR PHONE LINES ARE CUT OR I WOULD HAVE CALLED MUM AND DAD. I WILL TRY AS SOON AS THEY ARE REPAIRED. PETER AND I BOTH SAID IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ONE OF US IT WOULD BE UP TO THE OTHER TO LOVE YOU FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. THAT IS WHAT I AM GOING TO DO.
JAMES
Rainy weather and poor visibility set in for the week. There were still raids, but nothing like August 15 and 16. Jane remained at the plotting table day after day. On Tuesday, August 20, the WAAFs turned the radio on in their lunchroom to listen to a speech from the prime minister. Jane sat with her fingers around a cup of tea she never drank. She half listened to the broadcast, one part of her mind on Peter lying in the ground, the other on James sitting in his cockpit.
The great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks has recently attained a high intensity. It is too soon to attempt to assign limits either to its scale or to its duration. We must certainly expect that greater efforts will be made by the enemy than any he has so far put forth. Hostile airfields are still being developed in France and the Low Countries, and the movement of squadrons and material for attacking us is still proceeding…
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
The young women went back to chatting and laughing after the speech. Jane got to her feet and walked to the operations room, placed a headset on, and stood waiting for directives. Nothing much happened. Eventually she planted herself in a chair set back from the table and map. Across her sectors pilots sat in their cockpits on standby most of the day and the rest of the week. Jane returned home on Friday to find a letter from James, hastily scrawled out on a sheet of paper torn from the back of a book.
Jane,
I think of you constantly, and I can safely say I pray for you constantly. I’m not exaggerating. Perhaps Peter’s death has made a better Christian out of me. I rarely start a day without my tea and my newspaper and my prayers.
The bad weather has given all of us time to take stock. The constant bombing and strafing of our airfields, jumping in and out of the cockpit, sitting in them for what feels like days at a time, twisting and turning after Me 109s, and sticking it to the bombers—the constant go, go, go is beginning to wear on everyone, including the ground crew, who are called upon to work miracles on our planes in the blink of an eye. You really have to wonder how long we can keep this up. We’re like cables pulled impossibly tight by a ship too big and too strong for us. The cables are going to break one by one or all at once.
People in the village ask us, “Is it over?” They hope the Germans are done. I shake my head. “They’re just waiting for the next stretch of fine weather,” I tell them. “The next sunny day they’ll pounce on us like a cat on a mouse.” I don’t say what else is on my mind, but I can tell you. I don’t know if we’re up for it anymore. We don’t have the pilots. There are too few of us. We don’t have the strength, really.
Your James, one of the few
8
Saturday, August 24, 1940
Kensington Gate, London
Lord Preston sat in the backyard and watched a male robin, his chest vividly scarlet, cock his head, listen a moment, and drive his beak into the thick grass. Sunlight striped the yard as the sun continued to rise over the hedges and treetops. Lord Preston leaned his head back and looked at the blue sky over the house.
A beautiful day now. The best weather we’ve had all week. They will come today. Th
ey will most certainly come.
He imagined the dark cross shapes of hundreds of bombers, squadron after squadron, roaring over the Channel and over Kent, just as he had seen them from the porch at Dover Sky two weeks before. He remembered the thumping sound of bombs exploding on the docks at Dover. Saw again the white vapor trails of dogfights between Hurricanes or Spitfires and Messerschmitts high in the air over southern England, for all the world as if dozens of biplanes were trailing smoke to thrill the crowds at an airshow, or as if scores of angels were sketching loops and lines with sticks of chalk.
Not everyone can live forever in wartime. Not everyone can survive. It’s like asking that no one on earth die from anything at all, not from accidents or illness or old age. It’s like asking that a drowning victim suddenly sport gills so he can breathe underwater, or it’s like asking that a man falling from a plane sprout wings so that he will not plunge to his death. We live in a world of tragedy as well as great beauty, a realm of darkness as well as light.
I know all this, my God. I do not wish to offer You a nonsense prayer and demand that none of my children or grandchildren are injured or killed, that You should choose other people’s children for that. I only ask that not all are lost, that not all are sacrificed. In the scheme of things, a scheme I confess I rarely understand, my prayer is that many children return to their parents and grandparents, in Britain, yes, but in Germany too. I would also pray the war be short.
Yet men have the freedom in this arena of earth to exercise their free will to the blessing or the destruction of others. We are made in Your image, aren’t we? Our decisions matter, our choices change whole worlds for good or ill. You are over all, the one true God, yet we have our role to play, and we answer to You for the actions we undertake. We are weighed and measured according to what we do or don’t do. So Hitler can prolong the war for years if he so desires. And we can attempt to shorten it if we muster the ability and strength to counter his actions and plans.
Yet You set the ultimate boundaries we cannot cross or exceed. We humans work out our plans within the plans of others and within the greater plans of heaven. Who can comprehend it all? I bow to Your will. Save those we love, so far as it is within Your plans to do so, save them, I ask You, in Christ’s name. I pray this well aware there are mysteries of this life and Your ways I shall never penetrate with my thoughts or my worship. The secret things belong unto the Lord our God. But those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of Your law.
“Lord Preston. William.”
Lord Preston blinked. “Ah. There you are. Come sit beside me, Albrecht. How is your new book selling, do you know?”
Albrecht took a seat on the bench beside his father-in-law. “Surprisingly well for a book on theology. What is most exciting is that my German edition has been smuggled into the Reich, thousands of them are circulating, and now and then I hear how what I have written blesses someone or lifts them out of the morass of Nazism.”
“Praise the Lord exceedingly for that.” Lord Preston patted Albrecht’s knee. “I wished to tell you something. It must remain a secret between us. I do not want my wife to find out—she frets enough for the family and the grandchildren. Certainly I don’t want the wives to hear about this. If it comes to pass there will be time enough to deal with it then. For now I should just like you and me to agree to pray about this matter together.”
“Why, certainly, Lord Preston, you may rest assured I will not betray any of your confidences.”
“Of course not. I only mention it so you are aware of the gravity of what I am about to tell you.” He spotted another robin. “Ah, to be like one of the birds of the air.” He fixed his eyes on the green treetops. “I have seen the photographs taken by aerial reconnaissance. The bays across the water are filled with barges and troopships, Albrecht. The Germans are preparing for the invasion. Unquestionably there are gliders as well for airborne assault, in addition to regiments of their Fallschirmjäger, who will board aircraft and drop upon England like a hard rain from the southwest.”
Albrecht took this in. “I see. But Herr Hitler will not launch these craft if he thinks most of them will be sunk by the RAF.”
“This is why there have been so many strikes against our airfields. It has only been quiet due to the inclement weather. I expect to hear from Westminster today that the Germans have renewed their assault.” Lord Preston held out his palm. Light dropped into it. “The skies are clear.”
“Ramsay and Matthew are both in flight training now.”
“Yes. I was somewhat surprised. But once Peter’s death was announced and the family saw the grief in Jeremy’s and Emma’s eyes, Victoria and Caroline no longer felt they could hold back their own sons from defending our nation and our people.”
“From defending Christian civilization,” Albrecht added quietly. “Just as the prime minister has said.”
“You went to the vicarage yesterday, didn’t you?”
“I did. Jeremy and Emma are holding up. Catherine accompanied me. We spoke with them, prayed with them, had tea. They have faith they will see him again and that his life made a difference. What more can anyone give them but that peace which God has given them?”
“Quite.”
“Jane was there.”
“Jane. Was she indeed? I haven’t seen her since Peter’s death, though Elizabeth and I spoke with her on the phone the day we heard. How is she?”
“She was staying overnight. Not too well, I think. To tell you the truth, a good deal of the strength I saw in Jeremy and Emma was there for Jane, I believe.”
“I understand. I will see them tomorrow when we attend services at St. Andrew’s Cross. They have heard from James, I expect?”
“By phone and by letter. He was actually hoping to get home on a twenty-four or forty-eight-hour leave this weekend, so perhaps that’s still on.”
“With the weather like this?”
“Well, we’ll see.” Albrecht put a hand on Lord Preston’s shoulder. “Listen. I wanted to tell you. Catherine and I heard from Sean last night. It was late, so you’re the first person I’ve had a chance to share the news with.”
“What’s that?”
“Sean is posted to Pickering Green. Not only that, but he’s flying Spitfires in your son’s squadron. It’s a great blessing to Catherine and me that he should be under Kipp’s wing.”
“Why, this is magnificent, magnificent! I thank God.”
“Of course it means he’s with James as well. In fact, he told us he had been assigned to A Flight within the squadron, and both Kipp and James are in A Flight along with another fellow. Kipp is keeping his eye on family.”
“Just like him. Mind, he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. God and our prayers will have to lend him a hand.”
“Ja. As much a hand as possible.”
Lord Preston slapped both hands to his knees. “Well, my head was filled with gloomy thoughts due to the photographs of the barges tucked along the French coast, yes, and the acres of army tents spread out under the trees. The loss of my grandchild Peter has not gone down well with me either, of course. Thinking of Sean and James and Kipp in the same squadron, however, puts a bit of life back in my heart. I must tell Elizabeth. She needs a great deal of good cheer to keep going these days. Peter’s death was a blow. I shall—”
“My lord.”
Tavy had stepped through the open French doors and into the yard.
Lord Preston was on his feet. “Yes? What is it?”
“Westminster rang you up. It was one of the prime minister’s secretaries. Mr. Churchill should like to see his inner circle immediately at Ten Downing Street.”
“Did they give you any idea what this is about?”
“She said the German bombers were crossing the Channel in droves. In droves, my lord.”
Lord Preston gripped the back of the bench. “I see. Thank you, Tavy.”
Saturday, August 24, 1940
“Squadron scramble! Squadron scramble!”
Kipp broke off his conversation with Sean and jumped from the armchair he’d dragged outside from the Officers’ Mess. “Right! Let’s go!”
Sean spilled tea over his uniform and leather flight jacket. “I’m with you!”
Pilots were sprinting across the airfield with their parachutes strapped to their backs. Sean ran with his in one hand and the empty teacup in the other.
“Stay glued to me!” Kipp shouted as he jumped onto the wing of his plane. “And to Patrick—you’re his wingman!”
“What about vics of three, sir?” Sean shouted back.
“No more vics of three. Jerry’s made marmalade out of us in our vics of three. Stick with A Flight and stick with Patrick. I’ve got the blue nose on my Spit, remember. If you get turned around up there, look for that.”
“Yes, sir.” Sean clambered up onto the plane next to Kipp, banging his knees and dropping his teacup. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
“You’ll be fine, Sean. But don’t fly in a straight line for more than a few seconds. And make sure you swivel your head like a top all the time—you’ve got to keep an eye out for Jerry. He’ll pop out of the sun, the clouds, from above, beneath, you never know.”
Kipp started his engine, and the roar obliterated the rest of what he had to say though Sean saw his lips moving.
“Chin up, Cousin.” James ran past and gave Sean a thumbs-up. “These scraps never last long. We’ll be back down in less than an hour.”
“I’m not sure which plane is Patrick’s.”
James jerked his head to the left. “See him? Has the devil skewering a swastika painted just beneath the canopy.”
“The black devil?”
“That’s the one.”
Sean struggled into his parachute with the help of two of his ground crew and squeezed himself into the cockpit. He wrestled with his seat straps and tried to look over the gauges on the control panel. Engines howled in his ears, and he glanced up. Fighter planes with crosses on their wings were streaking low over the airfield. Flames erupted from their wings and the grass exploded around his aircraft.
