Trial By Fire

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  It was an evening to relish and to remember after all the hard months of toil, emotional stress and physical fatigue. The station dance band, composed of conscripted professional musicians, played until an hour after midnight. The mess chef and his staff produced a buffet which made food rationing seem like a myth. Big and Tad danced energetically with all the plainest ladies, and Ross said that either they had a theory that gratitude brought the most certain rewards or Poles had their own peculiar values of female pulchritude.

  Roger followed Daphne (more stunning than ever, in a black silk frock) around like a St. Bernard padding along behind a mountaineer, ready to offer aid and comfort or protection. She flirted demurely with James and Christopher, with Tiny Ross, Walter Addison and Tug Wilson: smiling sweetly at the wives of these last two when she allowed one or the other to lead her to the dance floor. Roger claimed her as often as he could; and watched her with a look of glum pride whenever they were separated.

  Nicole teased Tad and Big and came back from two dances with each of them looking flushed with something more than exertion, and giggling. She confided in James and Christopher “Ils ont fait des propositions monstrueuses, ces deux rapaces.”

  James put a hand on her arm and smiled. “At least they showed good taste.”

  She gave him a brief, startled glance and he wondered why she had turned pink again.

  In the early hours of the morning she strolled to her quarters between them, her arms linked with theirs.

  “I am almost as fond of dear Roger as I am of you both. After all, I have known him nearly as long. I wonder if he realises that minx of a girl has him just where she wants him: wrapped around her little finger.”

  James said “I like her well enough; but she has all the makings of a shrew: and the old buffer’s so besotted he can’t see it.”

  At her door, Nicole gave them each a polite French handshake and a cool kiss on both cheeks.

  Walking back to the mess, Christopher muttered “D’you suppose old Roger’s poking her?”

  “I’d feel happier about her if he were. He’s obviously not, or he’d have stayed in the same pub.”

  In the morning, before James saw Christopher off and Roger went to fetch Daphne, the three of them stood on the mess steps looking at the sky. The Stanswick Wing was on stand-down until 1000 hrs.

  “Not even a con trail in sight,” said James. “I don’t think we’ll see Jerry over here in large numbers by daylight any more.” The B.B.C. that morning had reported another raid on London during the night. “Hurricanes and Spitfires are no good at night. It’s up to the fighter Blenheims: I believe they’ve got some new radio equipment that helps them find the bombers. We’ll have to go across to France during daylight, to get Jerry to come up and fight so that we can knock him down again.”

  Roger cleared his throat. “Oh, Jerry’ll come up and fight, all right! Pity you haven’t the range to escort us. Of course, they might give us targets a lot closer to base now; and then maybe you could.” He laughed. “That would be better than nipping in in the nick of time.”

  James knew he was alluding to the morning over Furnes when they had been shot down almost side by side, but he let it go.

  Christopher looked from one to the other and wondered what he would have to say about the war a year from now. “Well, we’ve got this far. Or, rather, you two have. I’m only just starting. Let’s see if we can get together again at home at Christmas or New Year. I’d better get cracking now.”

  When James said goodbye to Nicole at the railway station she ignored the hand offered her. She held his eyes with a long, speculative look, and when he bent to kiss her cheek she turned her head, took his face between her hands and kissed him unhurriedly on the lips.

  He stood waving to her as the train bore her away, and he remembered his brother’s words.

  Christopher had said that he was only just starting.

  James had a feeling that he was also on the brink of a new experience. Already he was wondering how soon he could see Nicole again.

  Their relationship on their recent meetings had had a half-formal, half-intimate diffidence. He had a feeling that as their intimacy grew, so a shared hesitancy and restraint had grown with it. He would like to explore their relationship further; while there was still time. He was no pessimist; but he was not sanguine, either, that he, Christopher or James could look forward to Christmas or the New Year with any real confidence.

  Still, as Christopher had said, they had got this far. Only a month ago it had looked as though by now they would be fighting an invading enemy on British soil. Matters could surely be no worse than they had been. Not for Roger and him, at least. Christopher, poor chap, had still to find out how bad things could be.

  He drove back to camp and out to dispersals to put on his sheepskin lined Irvine jacket — it was getting chilly now aloft — and mae west, and wait at readiness for the scramble that must inevitably come sooner or later.

  If you enjoyed Bombing Run you might be interested in My Enemy Came Nigh by Richard Townsend Bickers, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from My Enemy Came Nigh by Richard Townsend Bickers

  One

  The islands off the coast of Jugoslavia lend themselves to parody: Krk, Rab, Hvar; Brac, Pag and Losinj. One could invent Splodge, Bum, Prik, Pop and Cnt and strangers would be unable to tell fact from fiction.

  Seen from a height of twenty feet above the sea and at a speed of three hundred miles an hour, from a rocket-armed Beaufighter, there was nothing comical about these islands.

  The R.A.F. anti-shipping strike squadrons based on the Adriatic coast of Italy had to fly among them at low level every day under heavy fire from German anti-aircraft guns. They were seeking steamers and barges loaded with war materials, E-boats, destroyers and an occasional troopship; and, the ultimate target, the most valued prize, submarines.

  The flak positions on the islands were not the only danger: even the smallest German naval vessels had guns which could shoot down low flying aircraft, and many of the barges were anti-aircraft gun platforms and not the harmless cargo-carriers they seemed.

  Zdenka, beautiful, high-breasted and at this moment lying on her back stark naked with her ankles locked in the small of a German officer’s back, her arms around his heaving shoulders, heard a formation of twelve Beaufighters thunder overhead. She gave an involuntary cry that her lover mistook for carnal delight. He groaned “Ja, ja, Liebling, es ist die Entzükung, die Ekstase.”

  But if he had known Serbo-Croat he would have recognised Zdenka’s happy squeal to mean “Good boys! Let the bastards have it.”

  Middleton, flying in the centre of the’ third section of the formation as the squadron raced over the island of Sprot, spoke no Serbo-Croat either. If he could have received and understood Zdenka’s message he would certainly rather have been giving her what the German officer clasped between her shapely legs was contributing to her wellbeing than the attention he himself was in fact giving the enemy, to which her unheard exhortation so passionately urged him and his comrades.

  He saw the familiar shapes of the twin islands of Wrk and Rojn, which everybody, including the Intelligence officers, called Wrack and Ruin. They were dead ahead and guarded the only practical low level approach to a larger island named Taf. The R.A.F. had not parodied that name, because it was easy to pronounce and, moreover, had a cosy Welsh sound which reminded them of home. Some even referred to the place familiarly as Taffy.

  There was no hint of a cosy, homely Welsh invitation about Taf in the summer of 1944. The Germans who occupied it did not welcome even its rightful Jugoslav inhabitants and were lethally discouraging to the British and Americans. But the R.A.F. Beaufighter squadrons from such bases as Afrona on the north-east Italian coast persisted with their unwelcome visits.

  Middleton cleared his throat, which felt dry and constricted. He had flown on this type of operation so often that he would have felt under-employed if there were less than three a wee
k. But veteran though he was he felt a tightening of his vocal chords and a choking sensation in his windpipe each time he saw Wrk and Rojn. There were heavy machinegun posts and anti-aircraft batteries on both islands, and the strait between them was latticed by bullets and shells. The big guns could not easily shoot at aircraft flying at less than a hundred feet: only the batteries right down at sea level could attempt it, and then only if they could aim clear of their neighbouring islands. The German machinegunners used tracer ammunition, and attacking British and American pilots could try to swoop under or zoom above the glittering arcs that shewed the path of the heavy bullets. Once safely through the gap between these two islands the feeling of apprehension was not reduced, but heightened; for the defences on Taf were the strongest in this part of the archipelago.

  Middleton said “Heavenly Twins coming up, Tommy.” He spoke only to steady his voice, not to bore his navigator with an announcement of the obvious. He wanted to make sure that his voice was under control before he had to talk seriously to Tommy Tindall or use the radio.

  A few feet behind, in his separate small compartment, Tindall replied “The Infernal Twins.” Every time they came here they referred to Wrk and Rojn by some different, obliquely descriptive, euphemism. It removed a little of the terror; not much, though. Three days earlier, the last time they had passed this way, Tommy had just spoken of the twin islands as “Bangers and Mash” when there was an almighty explosion alongside and the aircraft on their starboard blew up. The crew were particular friends of theirs and the pilot’s headless, limbless torso had landed on their wing for a moment; before, smearing blood and entrails, it bounced and slid off. An unhealthy and discouraging spectacle, Tindall had called it later.

  He was feeling no more relaxed than Middleton. His throat felt tight too, and his bowels rather loose. On his first tour of operations, in the desert, he had been wounded: on occasions like this he remembered the many weeks of pain he had suffered then; and this morning these were brought back more sharply by a mental image of what had happened to their starboard wing men on the last trip here.

  The squadron flew sorties of two kinds; patrols on which they attacked targets of opportunity, and strikes against specific objectives. News of good targets came sometimes from reconnaissance flights and sometimes from agents and partisans.

  This sunny morning in late August the twelve Beaufighters were attacking a concentration of coastal steamers, tugs, barges and E-boats in the harbour at Taf. The trouble about juicy targets was that the anti-aircraft defences became stronger in proportion to their importance and additional flak batteries were brought in from other places to fight off attacks by the R.A.F.’s bombs and rockets. The Beaufighters each carried eight eighty-pound rockets and though they would create havoc when they fired them their crews knew they had first to face a homicidal reception.

  Middleton was sweating. It was hot in the cockpit at low altitude. Tension made him sweat, too. No euphemisms, he told himself; call it tension, but it’s plain fear. He did not feel ashamed; he had known pilots who apparently were unafraid and they were all dead now.

  They were flying into the sun and despite his dark glasses there was a strong glare. When they turned for their run in, not only would the sun be out of his eyes but it would also be hidden by the hills and trees on Taf and the other islands to the south. He would have an unobstructed view of the target. And of the flak.

  They could not hold their present very low height on this attack, because there was a rocky islet a hundred feet high in their path. Also they needed altitude to pick out their targets and to dive on them. After that they had to pull up sharply and break away over a hog’s back ridge that crossed Taf behind the harbour. They all preferred operations on which they could fly below fifty feet, with the wash from their propellers churning the sea into foaming ripples; thus, they presented the most difficult target to the flak gunners.

  Today’s task was a hairy one. Everyone felt elated, at first, when briefed for a particularly attractive target, but jubilation wore off by the time they reached the flak belt. Then, they all wished this were over and done with; or that it had never happened in the first place; or that it were just another routine sweep, looking for something to shoot at. Perversely, when they returned from a humdrum sortie they felt cheated and to some extent as though they were cheating too; for it seemed pointless to spend a couple of hours in the air with little to show for it.

  “The natives are hostile, Carruthers,” suggested Tommy Tindall.

  “The natives are friendly enough, Postleton-Smythe: it’s the blasted jackbooted Herrenvolk who are acting nasty.”

  Tracer was reaching out towards them now.

  Flight Lieutenant Middleton liked flying Beaufighters but wished, not for the first time, that he were back on a single-engined fighter squadron; Spitfires, Mustangs, Thunderbolts or Typhoons: memory suggested that it had been easier to stay alive when one had the whole sky in which to take evasive action than if one had to fly straight and level and the sea was only a few feet below, waiting to snatch at any misjudgment. It was no compensation to tell himself that he could have been worse off in heavy bombers, making a much longer straight and level run in to a target and with manoeuvrability after the attack limited to a few slow, clumsy diving and climbing turns. He had done his first tour of operations on Hurricanes and it hadn’t seemed so safe then: but he had forgotten what it had been like, after four years.

  He wasn’t worried about attack by enemy fighters, since the Spitfire and Mustang squadrons had driven most of them out of the sky over this theatre of operations by now. But they could not be ignored, for they kept reappearing stubbornly. And the flak was always there. It was never close season for shelling aircraft.

  The tracer scintillated in long, curving whiplashes of yellow under the bright sun as the formation heaved itself over the hundred-foot obstruction that closed the entrance to Taf’s harbour. Heavy guns began to fire also and shells burst in smudged clusters of grey with vicious red centres.

  The squadron commander gave a few curt orders over the radio as the enemy shipping came in view. The leader of Middleton’s section went into a short, steep climb to two hundred feet and Middleton, to starboard, and the pilot on the other wing, followed. There was a loud noise and a lot of flame and smoke as the aircraft on the section leader’s port side exploded. Middleton caught his breath and said “Bastards.”

  Flying Officer Tindall observed “Bloody hell, that was close,” in a voice that wavered.

  A moment later there was another thunderclap nearby and, looking back, Tindall reported “Smithy’s had it.” That was the pilot of the Beaufighter directly behind them, starboard wing man in the last section. Too uncomfortably close: a left .and right, as it were, and they had been lucky to slip through the middle.

  The two surviving aircraft in the third section, the leader’s and Middleton’s, swung right and put their noses down. Middleton felt sweat running down his ribs and drying cold on his back. An E-boat was crossing their path, her bows high and her stern well down, a handsome sight with bow waves and wash merging in a creamy froth of wake. Her guns were shooting at them. The section leader launched his rockets and four of them hit the E-boat. In a sheet of flame she heeled over and sank instantly.

  The rest of his rockets hit two barges, which were thrown clear out of the water and flopped down again broken­ backed and sinking.

  Middleton picked a tug moored to the quay, and fired. The tug boiled up in smoke and flame. One of his rockets hit a barge, which capsized.

  “Good shooting,” Tindall yelled. He was gazing back. “The tug’s set another barge alight, too.”

  They skimmed over rooftops, treetops, scraped over the ridge with less than ten feet to spare, and hurtled down on the other side to fly home with the tips of their propeller blades no more than ten feet above the calm, blue water.

  Heavy machinegun fire followed them but they were out of range in half a minute.

  Middleto
n wiped his sleeve across his forehead and spoke into the intercom. “You all right, Tommy?”

  “Yes, but no thanks to our friendly neighbourhood Huns. I counted eight hundred near misses.”

  “A miss is as good as a mile.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Kite seems to be O.K.”

  “I can’t see any holes.”

  It was the uninspired banter that always followed a narrow squeak.

  “How are the others getting on back there?” Middleton asked.

  “Both still with us. Only poor old Smithy bought it.”

  They did not mention the aircraft in their own section which had been shot down. Neither that nor poor old Smithy was a fit subject for further discussion.

  Middleton, still sweating, and tired but satisfied, flew back to Afrona.

  *

  Zdenka and her German lover, satisfied too in their different ways, and she with much in common with Middleton’s satisfaction, lay side by side on the warm, sandy beach of Sprot.

  The Beaufighters flew over them on their way home, but they were safe from view in the shade of a rock.

  Leutnant Scheusal, a podgy, amiable young man, satiated and drowsy, commented smugly “Only ten of them.”

  “The other two must have taken a different way home.” She had listened to the firing and explosions with pleasure marred by sadness. It was good to know that the tyrannical invaders were getting a pasting; distressing to think of those nice, brave young Englishmen who were trying to liberate her people being killed in the process.

  Leutnant Scheusal turned his head accusingly. “You mean you hope they have.” He raised himself on one elbow and unexpectedly leaned over and bit her on the stomach.

  Zdenka gave a yelp of pain. There was always a streak of sadism in Scheusal’s love play, so she was not immediately frightened; but the look in his eyes when he turned to her again warned her to be cautious.

  “You hurt me,” she said. But in a tone that she hoped would distract him from his dangerous train of thought.