Once More the Hawks

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Dark patch over there,’ he pointed out. ‘Under them trees. Go on, while you’ve got the chance. If you make it,’ he went on as Dicken squeezed his hand, ‘go and see my old lady. Mortenson’s the name. Twelve, Waterloo Street, Wapping. It’s not ’ard to remember.’

  As the prisoners were herded away, Dicken dived behind one of the tombs. Its bulk shielded him from the light and, wriggling on his stomach, he headed for a neighbouring headstone. From there he made it to another tomb and then to the shelter of the trees. Crouching in the long grass, he saw one of the prisoners try to make a run for it but the German sergeant fired at him and the man stopped dead, frozen to immobility until two of the guards grabbed him and swung him round to fling him in among the others.

  Lights were being brought now and two lorries had arrived to shine their headlights on the dilapidated group. Then the priest arrived, bareheaded, followed by several of his parishioners with pitchforks who dived inside the church to re-emerge with bundles of smoking straw. Dicken watched until the last bundle had been dumped, then the German sergeant and his men began to push the prisoners back inside.

  ‘This time there’ll be no straw,’ he roared. ‘You can sleep on the floor, and I hope you freeze to death.’

  Slamming and locking the door, the Germans stood in a group, lighting cigarettes, then the sergeant posted doubled sentries and the lorries disappeared. As the place went back to darkness and he heard boots crunching on gravel, Dicken turned away and headed into the dark fields.

  By first light he had walked several kilometres and the only person he saw was a woman milking a cow in a farmyard. At first she didn’t move then she beckoned, but as he stepped into the road, he saw her change her mind and hurriedly give him a warning signal. There was nowhere to hide. He could already hear the noise of a motorcycle so he turned his jacket inside out and pulled his trousers outside his flying boots. As the motorcycle combination came in sight, he was bent over the ditch hauling a rotting log aside. As the Germans passed, he lifted the log to his shoulder and walked boldly on to the road. As the motorcycle combination disappeared, he looked towards the woman but she once more signalled care. This time it was a convoy of two lorries but again they took no notice of him and, as they disappeared, he waved his thanks to the woman and headed into a clump of brambles.

  He decided to head for Paris and travel after dark. But he continually ran into barbed wire or fell into ditches and the following morning, wet with dew and shivering with cold, he decided he had had enough of night-time travel and, finding a length of cord holding a gate, he made himself a bundle of long sticks and tied them together as if he were a labourer collecting fuel. He was desperately hungry by this time but could see no chance of obtaining food.

  After dusk he heard a cow bawling to be milked and decided to try his luck. But he had nothing for a container so he searched around until he found a reasonably clean tin and, washing it in a stream, managed to direct the milk into it.

  The following morning he found a deserted farm with a yard containing a battered lorry. There was a loft full of straw which he decided would give him a bed for the night, and in the house he found a bottle of sour wine and a stale loaf and in the hen house several newly-laid eggs. Using the pump, he washed the grime off his hands and face and took stock of his possessions. As he did so he realised he was still wearing his RAF watch, so he shoved it hurriedly into his pocket. Deciding to abandon his uniform jacket, he scraped the grime off an old coat he found and, building a fire, dried it sufficiently for it to be wearable. Then he boiled the eggs in a tin and began at once to feel more capable. Examining the lorry, he discovered that the key was missing but using his penknife, he managed to turn the ignition on and start it. Knowing he could now move faster, he removed the rotor arm and, climbing to the loft, buried himself in the hay and fell asleep almost at once.

  Searching the house the following morning, he found a pantry with a mouldy quiche in it but there were more eggs in the hen house and, catching two of the chickens, he killed them for use as barter. He couldn’t imagine why everything about the place had been abandoned and could only put it down to some sudden raid by the Germans on someone suspected of helping the British.

  Tossing the chickens into the lorry’s cabin, he replaced the rotor arm and started the engine. The petrol gauge didn’t work but, by poking into the tank with a stick, he came to the conclusion that there was enough fuel to take him further south. Loading the lorry with straw to give him an excuse for being on the road, he hadn’t gone more than a few dozen kilometres, when it ran out of petrol. As he was checking the tank a man dressed like a farmer came along on a bicycle.

  ‘In trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘Out of petrol,’ Dicken told him.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’

  ‘The starting handle caught me.’

  The Frenchman studied him for a moment. ‘Where were you heading?’ he asked.

  ‘Paris,’ Dicken said. ‘Want to buy a lorry?’

  The farmer gave him a sidelong look. ‘Are you English?’

  Dicken admitted the fact and the farmer smiled. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I can raise enough to help you.’

  As he cycled off, Dicken stared after him, wondering if he’d made a mistake and the Frenchman had gone to fetch the Germans. For safety, he hid in a nearby wood but an hour later the farmer came back with a can tied to his handlebars. Stopping by the lorry, he looked round him, puzzled, then began to pour the petrol into the tank. When Dicken stepped from the trees he waved.

  ‘Three hundred francs,’ he said. ‘It’s all I can raise but it ought to help.’ He fished into the pannier on the back of his bicycle and produced a haversack containing a loaf, a tin of meat and a bottle of wine. ‘I’ve brought you some food, a hat and a coat that’s a bit better than the one you’re wearing.’

  As the lorry rattled away, Dicken set off southwards again, more confident in a passable coat and hat. He reached Paris four days later and headed for the American Consulate. The woman who interviewed him looked a little like Katie Foote. She studied the scar over his eye. ‘That’s a nasty injury you’ve got there,’ she said. ‘It needs attention. Have you anywhere to spend the night?’

  ‘No. But I have money if you can recommend a quiet hotel.’

  ‘You’d better come to my apartment,’ she said softly. ‘Wait outside until you see me leave then follow me. Don’t speak to me.’

  To kill time, he made his way to the Champs Elysées. The Germans were just marching from the Etoile to the Place de la Concorde. The Parisians were boycotting the parade, their eyes averted as the Germans passed, kettledrums beating the step in a triumphant note, file on file of soldiers, their bayonets fixed, a polished, unhurried symbol of France’s humiliation.

  The woman from the Consulate said she had offered her help because she was convinced that America would eventually enter the war on Britain’s side. She bathed his eye, gave him a meal and for the first time in days he had a bath and slept in a proper bed. The following morning she provided him with a pair of trousers to replace his RAF ones, a pair of shoes in place of his flying boots, and a battered bicycle. By that evening, he had covered two hundred and twenty kilometres and had almost reached Tours where he spent the night in a shabby hotel before passing through the checkpoint between Occupied and Unoccupied France. The Germans were demanding papers but there was such a crowd of gesticulating people that, by waiting his opportunity, he was able to slip by as if he were a member of a party moving south seeking employment.

  With a French loaf tied to his handlebars, he looked like a French labourer and he found nobody looked twice at him. With the money he had obtained for the lorry, he was able to sleep in small hotels and, though a few people eyed him curiously, none of them asked questions.

  He remained on the south coast close to the Spanish border for over a fortnight, trying t
o make contact with the British Consul in Barcelona. The area seemed to be full of disguised British soldiers trying to reach neutral territory but, though everybody seemed to know who they were, none of them was prepared to admit their identity because the German secret police were busy in the area. Several times Dicken had to bolt down a side street, and once he saw several of his companions being marched off to jail. The local gendarmerie seemed willing enough to help, however, and eventually a sous-brigadier who was crossing the frontier smuggled Dicken over in the boot of his car.

  After that it wasn’t difficult to reach Madrid from where he was flown to England. Put on the train to London, he was met by Hatto.

  ‘You look like an onion seller, old lad,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You smell a bit like one, too. Fancy a meal at the Ritz?’

  They were halfway through the meal, with Dicken tackling it as if he hadn’t seen food for months, when Hatto dropped his bombshell.

  ‘The King’s heard about you,’ he said. ‘He wants to meet you. After that there’s a job for you. You’re growing too old to get yourself shot down. How fit are you? When Basil Embry got back he found he’d contracted a form of scurvy and needed two months leave.’

  ‘A week or two’ll do me.’ Dicken looked up from his plate. ‘I’ve got someone to see – a Mrs Mortensen in Wapping – and then I’m yours. Where am I going? If you say to a wireless school, I’ll resign and join the Home Guard.’

  Hatto grinned. ‘No need for that, old son. It’ll be Greece.’

  ‘What the hell’s happening in Greece?’

  ‘You’ll remember Mussolini had a go at the place and got a kick in the pants for his trouble. We sent a few RAF types from North Africa to help the Greeks and, like Topsy, British Air Force, Greece, has grown and they’re now in need of senior officers to help carry the load.’

  Dicken was silent for a moment. ‘What makes you think the Germans won’t go to Mussolini’s aid? They’ll never allow us to get a foothold on the mainland of Europe.’

  Hatto smiled. ‘My view exactly,’ he said. ‘But Churchill wants us not to break faith – or something else equally high-sounding and political. Personally I think it would be a much better idea to kick the Eyeties out of North Africa first. However–’ he shrugged ‘–I don’t make the plans. So, if you don’t want to be kicked out of the bum end of the Balkans before you’ve even gone in, it would seem to me a good idea not to delay.’

  Two

  ‘Someone,’ Babington said, ‘boobed badly. We’ll end up losing both Greece and North Africa. We’re short of pilots, aeroplanes, weapons, radios, mechanics, vehicles and petrol, and because of that the Italians, whom we’d fought to a standstill, are beginning to recover their spirits.’

  Arriving in Athens via the Middle East as senior administrative officer to the air vice-marshal in command of the RAF in Greece, the first person Dicken had met was his senior signals officer who turned out to be Babington, by now a flight lieutenant. His warrant officer was Handiside.

  ‘It’s like an old comrades’ club,’ he said.

  The first thing he had seen as he landed was a shuffling procession of Wolves of Tuscany, Indomitable Centaurs, or other bombastically labelled members of Mussolini’s vaunted Army of Victory, but there were also dozens of legless Greek soldiers, evidence of frostbite during the fighting of the severe winter. After eighteen months facing the Germans across the Channel, it was also strange to be passing the German Legation – lying arrogantly side by side with the American Legation – every time he left the Hotel Grand Bretagne to go to headquarters, and stranger still to meet German officers at Greek tea parties.

  But the war in Greece was officially against the Italians and didn’t concern the Germans and every British serviceman arriving at the Piraeus by sea from North Africa was greeted by the swastika flying over the German consulate, while it took only twenty-four hours to discover that the Germans were deliberately flaunting themselves in the bars that were popular with the RAF. Despite the fact that Britain was supposed to have gone to the aid of the Greeks, there were many influential Greeks who were clearly unfriendly and Babington pointed out that their attitude varied according to the news, and warned of Fascists who waylaid British airmen who strayed away from the main streets.

  ‘It’s because they know damn well the Germans will be joining in before long,’ he explained.

  Drawn from the Desert Air Force, the RAF consisted of Blenheims and Gladiators, together with one squadron of Hurricanes. Other aircraft were constantly arriving but it was very clear there would never be enough when the Germans attacked. There were eight headquarters and maintenance units and a total strength of over 4000, but because a headquarters in Greece had never been contemplated, what existed consisted of officers drawn from a variety of other headquarters who had never before worked together. Operations were being conducted by a wing in the north-east and a wing in the north-west, and the overburdened senior administrative officer was trying not only to run his own organisation but also to co-ordinate the activities of other administrative departments. With a routine of early-morning conferences where instructions were given and difficulties were ironed out, there was little time for pleasure flying, because the shortcomings arising from the hasty entry into the campaign were becoming daily more obvious and Babington’s complaint had clearly not been a frivolous one. There were not enough airfields and landing grounds and there was a complete lack of aerodrome defences because there were no spare weapons and no personnel to man them. There were also no blast pens and nobody to construct them, fitters were in short supply and there were not enough vehicles, aircraft or spare parts.

  Babington was working overtime as impassioned signals flashed to Air Headquarters, Middle East, begging for supplies. The replies were always disappointing because there was fighting in Eritrea and Abyssinia and in the Western Desert where recent victories had suddenly gone into reverse, and, because of the need to show an aggressive face to the Continent of Europe, none whatsoever available from Britain itself. In Cairo there was even a tendency to regard Greece as a sideshow.

  They still had the whip hand over the Italians, however, and had destroyed ten times as many aircraft as they had lost, but it was obvious it wasn’t going to last, if only from the influx of war correspondents and the arrival in civilian clothes of a large portly gentleman with a sharp sense of humour who spoke down his nose as if he had permanent catarrh – the general who was to be in command if and when British troops arrived.

  ‘Goddab silly,’ he claimed. ‘I bet the Gerbads dow I’b here eved if dobody else does.’

  A Blenheim was available for Dicken’s use but when he had to visit tricky landing grounds near the Albanian or Yugoslav borders, he landed at a neighbouring aerodrome and had himself flown in by someone familiar with the terrain because the unpredictable Greek flying conditions were among the worst in the world.

  He found Larissa in ruins, not from bombing, but from an earthquake which had occurred the week before. The whole town looked like a house of cards which had collapsed on itself and police and soldiery were still digging out the bodies. Heading for Paramythea and Yannina on the Albanian front, he had to fly along the Gulf of Corinth and up the coast to Corfu before swinging in to land. As he descended he found himself over a lush green valley flanked by snow-capped mountains. The airfield looked like an English meadow carpeted with spring flowers, the grass kept short by a flock of grazing sheep. There were no runways and no hangars, and aeroplanes were hidden among the bushes and undergrowth. A mud-spattered bus took the pilots to their billets in the town.

  Enormous numbers of Greek soldiers were moving northwards through the cobbled streets, all bearded and all dirty, with thousands of mules carrying heavy packs. The RAF men had had a terrible time during the winter, the pouring rain making the town’s main street a river and the temperature dropping several degrees below zero. Fresh crews a
nd aircraft parts were being flown in by ancient Junkers of the Pan-Hellenic Airlines but they were still having to fill tanks from drums when the bowser was out of action and only the fact that the Greeks were in worse condition had kept their spirits up. The Greek wounded were housed in appalling conditions and all the doctors could do was try to prevent the spread of infection and disease. The town had been badly hit by Italian bombing and there were still the rusty remains of cars and lorries in the streets and buildings scorched by blast.

  The aerodrome lacked facilities but the field was covered with thousands of alpine flowers with a tremendous range of mountains in stark silhouette to the east. The airmen were living among the olive groves, alongside a fast-moving stream which had been blocked so they could bathe. There was no restaurant in the town and for a mess the officers sat on wooden boxes, eating rations cooked inside a tent. As Dicken arrived a pair of Greek PZLs, obsolete high-wing monoplanes, came in to land, one of them from the wrong direction so that they met in an abrupt halt in the middle of the field. Neither pilot was hurt but both were shouting and gesticulating in rage.

  The RAF men were experimenting with whistles. They had attached them to their bombs to create panic among the Italians as the Junkers 87s had in France, and were even wondering if they could attach them to their aircraft for ground-strafing.

  ‘If you drop a bottle it sounds like a bomb,’ one of them said.

  ‘So why not drop a latrine bucket?’ another suggested. ‘That ought to make ’em jump.’

  Flying back to Athens, Dicken was enchanted by the beauty of the country under the cloudless sky. He could see all the way from snow-covered peaks to indented rocky coasts with a sprinkling of white dolls’ houses and the green of olive groves running down to blue waters which seemed to be clear for a hundred feet down. As he appeared in his office, he was greeted by Babington with a long face.