by John Wilcox
Gladwin shot another quick glance at the three good engines. They seemed to be functioning perfectly. And, judging by the thin, high cloud that was scudding by them, the jettisoning of gear had stopped them from losing height. With Squadron Leader Pickering at the controls, Gladwin had once survived a long, slow trip back from Hamburg on only two engines. Still, that was different: the sprinklers had put out the flames on those motors, and Proctor was no cool, experienced Pickering. As he weighed their chances, Gladwin’s eyes never relinquished their search pattern. The sky above was perfectly clear but, with the moon tucked away somewhere, it was as dark as the pit. He looked down. Much lighter and there was some cloud. If they were attacked they could dive into it and hope that it would give them just enough cover to get away. But could Proctor handle it?
As if to answer him, the pilot came on the intercom. His voice was stronger now. “We have stopped losing height now, so Mac and Smithie can stop hacking the aircraft to pieces. The sprinklers look as though they are controlling the flames on the engine and I think I can hold her at this speed, for a bit, anyway.” He paused. “We’re making about 150 mph, which is as much as we can do. Everyone, keep your eyes peeled for fighters. If we are attacked, I can’t do much manoeuvring.”
For Proctor, this was a crew announcement of the utmost optimism and Gladwin breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps they could do it, after all. He continued his twisting and squinting with a slightly lighter heart.
They had flown in this fashion for more than an hour when the fighter hit them. As usual, Gladwin sensed his presence and had swung his turret round before the tracer began streaming frighteningly directly at him from below and to starboard. There he was, the big radial engine of the Focke Wulf quite visible, coming up terrifyingly fast, shooting as he came. Gladwin shouted: “Corkscrew starboard, now, now.” But, as the Lancaster began to heel, he held his fire momentarily. He knew his best chance would be as the fighter overshot and revealed his belly to him. Yet it was a risk, for the cannons shells could rake the bomber in the time it took the clumsy aircraft to go into the dive.
Gladwin saw the tracers loop past him and knew that he had won. He depressed the control column to swing the turret round and pressed the firing studs, so that all four of the Brownings fired a burst directly into the underside of the fighter as it swung over him, banking as it did so. The bank, however, was too late. The .303 bullets tore into the engine, petrol tank and underside of the cockpit of the Focke Wulf and the consequent explosion seemed to hasten the descent of the Lancaster. Particles of the stricken fighter clattered into the bomber and a cheer went up on the intercom, as Proctor managed to pull the heavy machine out of its dive.
“Bloody good shooting, Taff,” shouted the navigator. “Deadeye Dick scores again,” crowed Smithie.
“Well done, Taff,” said Proctor. Then, querulously: “He nearly had us, though. Why didn’t we spot him earlier? I told you all to…”
He was interrupted by Gladwin: “Dive left, dive left NOW.” This time he did not have the luxury of delaying his fire. The second fighter had come from above and to the right and his burst of cannon shells ran along the starboard wing, hitting both engines, straddling the central fuselage of the Lancaster and raking the port wing. Immediately, the fuel in the starboard tanks exploded and a ball of fire consumed the wing. The aircraft lurched, rolled and arched away to port in a sickening dive.
Gladwin tried to turn his turret but the power was gone. The intercom was dead, too. He craned his neck to look back and saw that flames were licking back up the fuselage towards him, fanned by the force of the dive. He had always been told that the Lancasters burned well and now he was perched right up at the end of a flaming torch. Time to get out.
He fumbled behind him for the handle to the steel doors; if they jammed he was a dead man. But they opened well enough, letting in a blast of hot air that, literally, took his breath away. For the moment, the draughtproof doors that were his first line of defence for just such a moment were doing their job well enough, although he could see the paint blistering on them. Oh God, where was the blasted parachute? His groping hand found it jammed behind his unopened thermos flask, but the fabric was all torn. Had it been holed by the fighter’s bullets? Only one way to find out. He clipped it to his midriff, tore off his helmet, disconnected his various umbilical cords and began the laborious job of winding the turret round so that the open doors at his back would give him space to tumble out. As he did so he saw a body flash past him and then the white canopy of a parachute open. Good. One out, anyway. Then, a cold blast of air brought tears to his eyes and he edged his bottom onto the rim of the open turret and took a last look back at the stricken aircraft. Flames were consuming what was left of both wings and had gained a firm hold on the fuselage. There was no sign of life. He took a deep breath and rolled backwards.
Something crashed into his ribs as he fell but he remembered to count to ten and then pulled the ripcord. Immediately, a comforting jerk wrenched his chest and looking upwards he saw the parachute open above him – open, but pitted with holes, like a colander. Yet it seemed to be holding well enough, for the clouds below were not coming up at him frighteningly fast and the motion seemed gentle and almost comforting after the panic of the attack. Tight in the harness, he looked around for some sign of the dying Lancaster or the other parachutist, but there was nothing. He was alone in the darkness. It was though all of the last few minutes had been a nightmare, banished now on awakening.
Gladwin now realised that his chest was hurting him and he wondered if whatever he had hit – unlikely to have been the tailplane, since he was perched above it in the dive, more likely to have been a broken-off part of the fuselage – had fractured a rib. Well, that would hamper his attempt to get home all right. Home… For the first time since entering the briefing room, his thoughts turned to his wife and daughter, back in Brecon, Wales. Kathleen would be fast asleep, of course, tucked up in that small front bedroom in the terraced house they rented – unless, that is, she had tiptoed across the landing to make sure that baby Caitlin was sleeping soundly in the next room. He had only seen the child twice since her birth six months ago. Swinging high above France now, he sighed at the memory of that little bundle with the solemn black eyes. Had she saved their marriage? Only time would tell. And then he realised that he was not likely to be around to find out, at least not for some time yet. A rumour had spread in the base that the Germans had begun handing over captured bomber crews to the Gestapo, who, after interrogating them, shot them. Well, he would soon find out – unless, that is, he could somehow make his way back home.
Escape – evasion, he remembered, was the precise word. His mind raced as he tried to recall the advice given to aircrew by Intelligence Officers in their lectures on survival in occupied territory if shot down. As a veteran, he had sat through several of these and he had grinned at their inconsistency: do steal a bicycle, for it’s the easiest and least conspicuous way of travelling. And then later: whatever you do, don’t steal a bike – they are easily traceable and will surely lead to capture… Ah well, at least the advice was clearly being adapted in the light of experience.
The cold was now bitter and his eyes were watering but, as he hung in space, he tried to recall the elements of those lectures that once had seemed so unimportant but were now so very relevant. The first moments on enemy soil were vital, they had been told, because that was when the would-be evader was at his most vulnerable. He must not be captured right away. If landed safely by parachute – oh, yes please! – one should approach schoolteachers, doctors or priests, because they often spoke English. A good way of approaching the latter was through the confessional. Move by day not night, for the curfew was strictly observed. Don’t offer cigarettes to anyone, nor should the chocolate ration be eaten in public; this luxury was unknown in occupied territory. When crossing the road, remember to look left first, not right. What else…? Oh hell, he couldn’t remember. Oh yes. Importantly, escape lines –
they called them rat lines, he recalled – had now been well established and they had been told that shot-down aircrew, if they were able to contact the right people, had a fifty-fifty chance of reaching home. Fifty-fifty. That meant half didn’t make it. A glass half full or half empty?
Gladwin swung down now into the thin cloud and he sensed that his descent was faster than was comfortable. Obviously, the holed canopy was leaking air. As the vapour drifted away he looked down and, for the first time, glimpsed the ground below him, now coming up at an alarming rate. There was no sign of habitation; just a dark mass of trees fringing what seemed like a wide fire break towards which, luckily, he was heading fast, away from the trees. Where the hell was he? There was no time to speculate because he was swinging down now towards what clearly was more of a ploughed field than a fire break. He clenched his teeth, put both knees together and bent them to cushion the impact.
He hit the ground hard and screamed as his ankle turned underneath him and pain shot through his body. Then his head crashed into a furrow and he just had time to think “welcome back to France” before he fainted.
*
Gladwin was probably unconscious for no longer than a few seconds, for the cord of the parachute harness hardly had time to tighten around his neck before he realised that he was choking. Somehow, on hitting the ground awkwardly, he had rolled into the tangle of cord that, on taking a gust of wind into the canopy, was now cutting into his neck. He plucked at the line with a gloved hand, then threw the glove away and tried vainly to relieve the tension with cold fingers. A knife? No, he never carried one. With one hand he attempted to ease the pressure on the harness while, with the other, he clawed at the churned soil at his side seeking something to hook into the unrelenting cord that had saved his life and was now threatening to take it. As spots began to appear before his eyes, his fingers closed on something small and smooth with a hooked, sharp end. Desperately, he inserted the hooked end under the line and pulled hard. His left hand had loosened the pressure and the hook looped the cord over his head and away.
He lay gasping, his cheek pressed into the cold, hard earth until, slowly, he regained full consciousness and composure. Immediately, his body flooded with pain again and he realised that he could have broken his ankle on hitting the ground and groaned with despair. Wedging his left elbow into the ground he attempted to reach down to the injured ankle, only to have a fresh sensation of pain – less intense this time, more a high degree of irritation, which came from the inside of both thighs.
He lay back and groaned again. Gladwin was a fastidious man and the thought that he had defecated involuntarily filled him with disgust. Gingerly, he unzipped his flying suit, unbuttoned the fly of his trousers and inserted his hand. Nothing – dry as a bone. Yet the burning sensation remained. Perhaps he had been burned?
Then, gradually, he became aware of something else. From somewhere – and he could not pin down the direction – came a dull, thudding noise. It was remote at first but he realised that it was becoming louder by the second and pervasive, all around him. Overlaying the thuds were indistinct sharper sounds, steel on steel or, at least, a rattling on something hard and metallic. The ground beneath him was now shaking perceptibly as though an earthquake was rumbling beneath him. Eyes wide and forgetting his pain, he looked around him. All he could see were trees on either side of the ploughed land, with the field itself stretching away into the dark mist before and behind him. The effect was haunting and Gladwin began to feel his flesh creep. The pain he could understand and even cope with. But this was eerie and more frightening than tracer bullets. It was unworldly, for try as he might to peer into the half mist all around, he could trace no source for the noise, unless… Yes, a German armoured column! It must be travelling down a road just the other side of the trees. He must get into the shelter of those trees before he was discovered.
The pain was back now with a vengeance. His ribs hurt as he breathed, his thighs were on fire, but it was his right ankle which caused the most distress. It was sprained or broken. He began to gather in the cords of the ‘chute, which now lay behind him, no longer malign but glaringly white in the half darkness. Bundling the silk to his chest, he realised that he was still clutching the stone with which he had freed himself from the parachute cord. He drew back his hand to throw it away, then thought better of it and put it into his pocket. It was a talisman. It had saved his life. And it was part of France.
Painfully, he rolled onto his left haunch and, pulling the earth towards him with his left hand while he clutched the parachute with his right, he began to inch towards the black fringe of the wood. He could put no weight onto his injured ankle, of course, and, encumbered by the bulk of the ‘chute, he made only slow progress towards the sanctuary of the trees. The moon had appeared now and he realised that he must be clearly visible, clutching his white burden in the middle of the darkly-ploughed field. Then he became aware that the terrifying noise had died away. The column, if column it was, must have passed on. Nevertheless, the brightness of the night made it essential for him to reach the trees. If there was a road nearby, then he could probably be seen through the trees and anyone abroad at this time in the morning in occupied France would almost certainly be unfriendly.
Gradually, his face crinkled with pain and with perspiration running into his eyes, he dragged himself along until he reached the long grass at the edge of wood and, crawling underneath the shelter of a wide arched bush, lay down with a sigh to regain his breath. He realised then that, whether consciously or not, he had been crawling towards a clearing at the edge of the wood, which contained a monument of sorts. His eyes were moist and his sight bleared by the pain from his ankle and ribs but he could dimly perceive that it consisted of a tall crucifix from which hung a white-stoned replica of Christ, erected upon a brick base which, in turn, framed a stone on which some ten lines of dedication, in French, had been carved.
Gladwin looked at his watch. Never wear your watch on your wrist, the lecturer had said. Always put it in your pocket. The illuminated dial told him that it was 2.30 am. He closed his eyes and sighed. Was it only six hours ago that they had taken off? He squinted at the stone but was too far away to read the dedication. His French would probably not be up to the translation, anyway, and – what the hell! He undid the zip on his flying suit and pushed half of the parachute within it, so leaving both hands free to haul himself further into the shelter of the big bush. One thing was for sure: he could not walk anywhere in his present state.
He pushed an intruding branch of the bush away from his face and tried to reduce the pain by settling deeper into the detritus of twigs and leaves under the heart of the bush. For the first time he was aware of the cruel, biting cold. The strain of the events crowded into less than two hours – the bombing run, the flak explosion, the psychological conflict with Proctor, the attack of the fighters and the escape from the blazing aircraft – all sang in his head and left him consumed by a desperate tiredness compounded by growing depression. What awaited him now: capture, interrogation and a final bullet? He could not possibly crawl his way to freedom but perhaps if he could find a friendly Frenchman – the statutory priest, teacher or doctor? – he might be able to hole up until his ankle recovered and then make his way… to where? He groaned with the misery of it all.
He hoped that the shrine, if that’s what it was, was not frequently visited. Was it Sunday today? No, of course not. He would wait until morning and then take stock. Now, all he wanted to do was sleep.
CHAPTER 2
Gladwin was not sure what woke him, nor how long he had been asleep; perhaps only a few minutes, because the night was still dark and there was no glimmer of light from the east. Then he heard it again: the crunch of a heel on dry winter leaves and then, unmistakeable and quite near, the panting of a dog. A dog – damn!
He huddled further into the protection of the bush and then lay quite still, waiting and hardly daring to breath.
The steps came closer with litt
le other sound. Whoever was with the dog was walking quietly and keeping to the fringe of trees at the side of the field. He – she? No, it must be a man at this time in the morning – seemed to be alone, apart from the dog. Not, then, a search party? If he had been seen dropping down under his white canopy then the Germans would surely have sent more than one man to hunt him down. His mind raced in its anxiety to all those Hollywood jail breaks: scores of men crashing through the undergrowth. Not now, though. Whoever was approaching was doing so stealthily.
Turning his head slowly, Gladwin tried to see through the network of branches. Nothing. And then the dog, very close now, began to whine. Its owner spoke to him quietly, so softly, in fact, that the hidden man could pick out neither the words nor the language used and yet to Gladwin’s anxious ears it seemed to be more mellifluous than guttural. Please God make it French!
It took but a moment for the dog, a labrador as black as the night itself, to find him. It nosed its way into the little clearing off the field and then pushed through the branches and sniffed at his boots. The barrel of a shotgun gently pushed the dog aside and Gladwin found himself looking up at a figure silhouetted against the dark sky.
