London Dawn

by Murray Pura

  Albrecht put his arm around Lord Preston’s shoulders. “I shall cry out with you. I shall cry out for an end to the evil of the Nazi regime. And I shall pray a better Germany, a truer Germany, rises from the embers of the one that was false. Durch unseren Herrn Jesus Christus—Through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  Tuesday, September 3, 1940, 4:37 p.m.

  RAF Pickering Green, Kent

  Kipp came into the Officers’ Mess with his hands in his pockets and a cold, dark look in his eyes. Men from both of the Pickering Green squadrons glanced his way, and the laughter and loud chatter dropped. James was at a table nearest the door with Patrick and Sean.

  “What is it then, sir?” James asked. “What have you heard?”

  “Swansbury’s bought it. They pulled his body out of the wreck of his Spitfire near Biggin Hill. We lost Evans too. Merchant Marine confirmed a Spitfire with his markings went into the drink after tangling with an Me 109.”

  “That’s rough, sir.”

  Kipp lingered near the table. “The fellows in the convoy caught a good look at the Messerschmitt. It didn’t just have a yellow nose. It had a yellow and black checker pattern over the whole fuselage. I know the pilot from the first war. He should be in mothballs just as I should be. But he stayed fit and lean and now he commands a number of squadrons. He was leading that five hundred plus sweep of Me 109s a few days ago.”

  “Are you talking about that von Zeltner bloke?” asked Patrick as the talk picked up at the other tables in the Mess.

  Kipp looked even more like death than he had when he walked into the room. “Right. Wolfgang von Zeltner.”

  “Zeltner’s quite the ace. Lord Tanner’s always crowing about him during his broadcasts. He’s the darling of Goering and the Nazis.”

  “He’s not my darling, Patrick. He just killed one of my men. One of your mates.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The phone behind the bar rang. The talking and laughter stopped again. Kipp, hands in his pockets, swung around to look as the corporal picked up the receiver.

  “Scramble!” he called out. “Both squadrons!”

  Men pushed away from the tables quickly, chairs smacked against the walls, and there was a rush for the door. Kipp waited till the Mess was clear.

  “Did they tell you anything else?” he asked the corporal behind the bar.

  “Only that it was a big raid headed our way, sir, headed for the airfields in Kent.”

  “No mention of the Luftwaffe squadrons involved?”

  “No, sir. They never give us any detailed information. Now and then we might get the sort of numbers that are involved, fifty plus, one hundred plus. But the main thing is they just want us to announce the scramble and get the boys up quickly.”

  “Right. Well, if they ever bend the rules and tell you any of the German squadrons involved, let me know.”

  “Yes, sir. Good luck, sir.”

  “Good luck with what?”

  “Up there, sir. You’re going to have a go at Jerry.”

  Kipp half laughed as he went out the door. “I thought you were wishing me luck with something else.”

  James watched as Sean peeled off to attack the Heinkel 111s, Patrick just ahead of him and already firing. A Flight was after the bombers; B and C Flights were up above tangling with Me 109s and 110s. He waited a moment as Kipp went into a short dive.

  You’ve done well for yourself, Sean, and caught on quickly. Soon you’ll be as nimble as Uncle Kipp. I’m not sure where I fit in the scheme of things. Solid, sure, steady, dependable? Not the fastest but the most dogged? A grip on the enemy like a bulldog?

  The vast blue shimmered all around him as he dove after a Heinkel and gave it a short burst. He never tired of the beauty of the sky even when it filled with the swift violence of fighter aircraft, even when black smoke and orange flame dominated his windscreen. The Heinkel’s starboard engine caught fire, and parachutes suddenly dotted the blue like the white puffs of dandelions. Dark streaks from burning and tumbling bombers interlaced the sky. He moved quickly against another Heinkel, late afternoon sunlight glimmering on its wings, the tracers he fired flowing toward it, red flames wrapping themselves around its body.

  Take to the silk, Jerry, take to the silk.

  And then a Spitfire fell across his sight and across the sky, one wing gone, the prop spinning wildly, and it was Sean’s plane, and there was no chute, there was nothing but an aircraft breaking to pieces over southern England.

  Jane waited until the attack was over and done and she’d been ordered to stand down. All the way to her flat she prayed for James. And not only James but his whole squadron, especially the family members who flew with him—her uncle Kipp and cousin Sean. For whatever reason, Sean came to mind again and again, and she prayed a verse Uncle Jeremy had often quoted to her.

  “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

  The feeling didn’t go away while she chatted with her roommates or after she had laid her head on her pillow. It lingered through the morning even as her work at the plotting table grew more and more intense. It struck her as odd that the moment she began to push counters toward Pickering Green and Biggin Hill, the anxiety about Sean went away, and not only the anxiety but also the fear that usually emerged whenever German attack formations headed toward Pickering Green and James. It didn’t make sense to her but she welcomed the peace that went through her and decided it must have been from God.

  It seems that You are more real than I think You are.

  A fierce assault from hundreds of bombers that afternoon was met by fourteen RAF squadrons, and she was as busy as she had ever been. James’s squadron was involved, yet it didn’t rob her of the calm that enveloped her. Factories were struck at Brooklands and Rochester, and Canterbury was also hit. She was told during one of her breaks that over six hundred sorties had been flown by the RAF and more than fifty enemy aircraft had been confirmed as shot down, with better than a dozen as probable.

  “What about our losses?” she asked.

  “Twelve or fifteen so far. Four pilots killed.”

  Jane poured herself tea, and her hand was steady. “Thank you.”

  Sitting alone and sipping from her cup, ignoring two WAAFs who went on and on about the likelihood of invasion, she marveled again that warmth had settled inside her instead of coldness and that the peace hadn’t been wrenched out of her by the casualty figures. For a few minutes her mind turned to supernatural things, to angels and God and heaven. But soon enough she was back at the plotting table, tagging the wooden blocks, moving them about with her rake, thinking only of airplanes and numbers and sectors. Her walk home was under a soft evening sky that pulsed with copper and blue and added to her feeling of well-being. She watched a large barrage balloon turn slowly on its steel cable, one side of it gold from a sun low in the sky, the other the deep blue of a coming night.

  A note was attached to the door of her flat.

  We are out for the evening. If you need anything at all feel free to make your request to the man of the house. Ta.

  Liz

  “Man of the house?” Jane took the slip of paper down. “What rubbish.”

  The door opened and James was standing there in his blue RAF uniform.

  “I thought it was you,” he said. “I recognized the light footfall. The same sound I’d hear when you were creeping up on me when we were twelve.”

  “James!” She threw her arms around him. “What are you doing here? They can’t possibly have given you leave in the midst of all this fighting! Are you a ghost?”

  “I’ll show you how much of a ghost I am.”

  She was still asking questions when his lips came against hers. Arms around her, he tugged her into the flat, shut the door, and locked it, never breaking the kiss.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally managed to get out. “I don’t.”

  “I love you. I should have thought that part was obvious.”

  “But
how can you be here?”

  “They’ve given me leave. Twenty-four hours, no more, no less. Tomorrow it will be Sean’s turn. Then Patrick’s. They knew they’d have to do something for us or we’d go mad.”

  “Sean? Is he all right then?”

  “Well, he did get shot down the other day. We finally saw a chute but we thought he’d ended up in the drink. Kipp was fretting it for hours. Sees himself as responsible for all of us from the family, let alone the rest of the squadron.” James kissed her slowly on the lips. “Nothing to fear, love. He got picked up by a sailboat after an hour bobbing about in his Mae West. Chilled to the marrow, he told us, but the chaps on the boat filled him with hot tea and wrapped him in wool blankets. Right as rain when last I saw him. He’s an ace now, you know. Five Jerry in the bag. So am I, actually. Seven and a half.”

  “Oh, such good news about Sean.” She began to giggle. “How can you have a half? Is there half a German plane floating about out there?”

  “There is and I’ll get the other half of him soon enough.”

  She placed a hand on his chest to hold him back a moment. “It’s bad, isn’t it? It’s bad up there.”

  “Bad enough.”

  “Shouldn’t you have gone to see your mum and dad first?”

  “I did. Spent the afternoon with them. Of course they rang everyone up and pretty soon the whole tribe was there. I didn’t mind. It was good to see how everyone is getting on.”

  “You don’t have anywhere else to go?”

  “Not at all.”

  “And you chased the girls out?”

  “It was their idea. I spent an hour chatting with them. They’re quite nice, aren’t they?”

  “You think they’re nice, do you?”

  His hands framed her face. “Not as nice as you. Why is your hair pinned up like that?”

  She laughed. “What do you think? I should have it down to my shoulders for Vice Marshal Park?”

  “You’re not at Uxbridge now, are you? So let’s do away with the starched shirt military look, shall we?”

  “I’ve just made it in the door, silly boy.”

  “Can I help?”

  “You can unbutton my tunic if you like, and it will just be me in my shirt and skirt. Then I can use my hands to take out those hairpins you find so disagreeable.”

  “Just the tunic?”

  “Just the tunic. If you want to go any further you shall have to marry me.”

  He smiled as he unbuttoned her blue tunic. “I’m game for that.”

  “I suppose you’d wed me right now, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would.”

  “Well, Mister Fast Flying Fighter Pilot with his shirt unbuttoned at the top, I want something more than a quick run through at the chapel. I want the family there and I should like a nice reception after the ceremony. And a honeymoon. Even if it’s only for twenty-four hours, I should like a proper honeymoon.”

  “I’ll see what I can do with the time left to me.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. This will take some arranging.”

  “Are you going to use the plotting table at the bunker to set everything up?”

  “I might.” She shook her dark hair so that it fell loosely about her shoulders. “How’s that, ace?”

  “Not bad. But there’s still this tunic.” He peeled it off her back and her arms. “There. That will do nicely. A pretty girl in a white shirt and blue skirt and tie.”

  “I thought you didn’t like starched shirts?”

  “Somehow they look better on you than anyone else.”

  “Oh, do they? That’s nice to know.”

  He took her chin in one hand. “I’ve missed you. It’s been torture, really. I’ve missed your scent, your eyes, your laugh, everything.”

  “Well, you don’t have to miss them now. Come here.”

  “I am here.”

  “Not close enough.”

  He held her tightly against his chest. “There. Wingtip to wingtip.”

  She slid her hands over his uniform to his shoulders. “All day I’ve felt like God’s been putting dreams in me. Is this another one? Or a dream come true?”

  He kissed her. “Is this what dreams do?”

  “It’s what dreams come true do.” She laced her white-shirted arms about his neck. “How long can you stay?”

  “I have to catch the midnight train south. Be ready to fly at first scramble. Until then I’m all yours. And you’re all mine.”

  “It’s true. I am.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m in love. It’s a wonderful feeling. But it doesn’t seem quite right to be in such high spirits when there are such frightful things going on around us and so many dying.”

  “We’re fighting so people can be free to be in high spirits, Jane. And our family has paid the price.”

  Her eyes glimmered. “Do you…do you ever think about him?”

  “We were inseparable. I think about him all the time. Especially in the air. It’s funny how we both came to love flying when the only reason we kept at it was to impress you.”

  “You did impress me. Both of you.” She traced a line on his face while tears moved slowly down from her eyes. “But you were the one I absolutely fell for. How do you think he feels about that?”

  “Right now? From where he sits? He’s glad for us, Jane. He couldn’t be happier. I was supposed to marry you if anything happened to him, remember? So I’m honoring that. And honoring him. And honoring you.”

  “So much honor.”

  His thumb gently rubbed away the teardrops. “Nothing wrong with honor.”

  “It makes me think of tombs and statues and monuments. I don’t want that coldness, James. I don’t want that death. They speak it into my headphones every day. ‘Heinkels, two hundred plus, angels two zero, twenty thousand feet, bearing on Biggin Hill and Pickering Green and Hornchurch.’ I just want love, James. As much love as you can spare me for as long as you can spare it.”

  “I have lots to spare.” He smiled. “I’ve been saving it up. No one else to give it to. It’s always been you. Since we’ve been kids. You know that. Always been Jane, our beauty from America, our beauty from the Orient. My arms are full of your beauty and my heart is full of love. So naturally I want to give it away.”

  She began to kiss him again. “Do that, James. Do that and don’t stop.”

  She fell asleep in his arms. He got up slowly, placed a cushion from the sofa under her head, pulled a blanket over her, and walked silently out the door and down the stairs. On the train he found he couldn’t sleep and began to read a book a passenger had left behind on a seat.

  Hours later, he made his way through the village to the RAF base and saw Kipp climbing into his Spitfire.

  “There you are.” Kipp grinned. “How was it, James?”

  “The best. Your mum and dad and wife say hullo.”

  “How was Jane?”

  “As beautiful as the sunrise.”

  “Any word on Matthew?”

  “I’ve heard they speeded up his training. They’ve done that with all the lads.”

  Kipp jerked his thumb at a nearby Spitfire. “The WAAFs ferried in three new ones yesterday evening. Jump in. Yours was hit by a bomb from an Me 110.”

  “Rotten. They came for Pickering Green again?”

  “They did. We expect more trouble from that lot today. Perfect weather. Vice Marshal Park wants us on standby. He has a hunch they’ll go after the Hurricane factory at Brooklands or the Spitfire one in Southampton. And us and Biggin Hill.”

  James had picked up his flying jacket and gear from his room on the base. He got into the cockpit of the new plane, book still in his hand.

  “What’s that you have there?” asked Kipp.

  James was strapping himself in. “The book? Found it on the train. It’s written by an old prof of mine at Oxford. Good man but deucedly hard to understand. His writing is clearer than his lectures.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  “It’s called The Hobbi
t. A bit of mythology, really. Dwarves and ogres and all that. They have to slay a dragon.”

  “A dragon?”

  “That’s what we do, isn’t it? I shall get Bobby Scott to paint a dragon on my new plane here. A sort of St. George and the Dragon with a swastika under the dragon’s wing and a spear going through his heart.”

  “Dragonslayer.”

  “That’s it, sir.” James glanced over at Patrick sitting in his cockpit and a new pilot he didn’t know sitting in another Spitfire nearby. “Sean make it out on leave?”

  “He’s in London now, yeah.”

  “The lads look stove in. Even the new bloke looks like he was dragged here behind a lorry.”

  The dark rings under Kipp’s eyes were obvious as the sun rose above the horizon. “We’re all knackered, James. But we’ll keep going, won’t we? No choice.”

  “Right.”

  “You look pretty rough yourself. If you’d been smart you’d have spent your twenty-four hour leave sleeping.”

  “I’m not that smart. Especially when it comes to Jane Fordyce.” James craned his neck and looked toward the hangars. “I could use a cuppa to clear out the cobwebs. Do the ground crew have any brewed?”

  The radio transmitter, or R/T, suddenly snapped and popped in Kipp’s plane. “We have trade for you, Squadron Leader. Bomber force heading straight for Pickering Green. Angels two zero.”

  “Right. Squadron Leader to A, B, and C Flights. The game’s afoot. Rendezvous at twenty thousand feet.” Kipp gave James a thumbs up. “Best of luck, Dragonslayer.”

  “Thank you, sir. Same to you.”

  The surge James needed forced its way through him the moment he saw the bombers and fighters. For the first time, he imagined Peter tearing past him and tackling the bombers head-on. He chased the ghost and gave a Ju 88 a short burst. Its port engine poured purple-black smoke.