Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Am I coming, too, sir?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, Albert, old son,’ Kelly said gently. ‘You’re going home to Biddy.’

  ‘I would come.’

  ‘I know you would. But I think Biddy needs you more than I do.’

  There was an awkward pause because they were both thinking of Paddy, and Kelly hurried on.

  ‘The garden needs your attention,’ he said. ‘And they’ll be starting the demob scheme as soon as the war ends here in Europe. You’ll be one of the first out. When I join you, we’ll grow roses.’

  The aircraft landed at Brize Norton in a downpour and Charley was waiting at Thakeham, smiling in a way that told him the doubts and fears had finally gone.

  ‘You got it, Kelly?’

  ‘I’ve come home for briefing.’

  She stared at him, then suddenly she threw her arms round him.

  ‘I’m so pleased for you and so proud!’

  It was the first impulsive show of love she’d shown. It was spontaneous and full of warmth and he swept her into his arms and began to carry her to the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You could say I’m carrying you over the threshold,’ he said. ‘Something I omitted to do when I married you.’ He stopped at the curve of the stairs and looked at her with a serious face. ‘It’s all right now between us, isn’t it, Charley?’

  She stared back at him, equally straight-faced, but her eyes were shining. His head was swimming a little as he saw the tears in them, and he was swept away in a torrent of memories, which he’d thought had gone forever. She tilted her head to kiss him. ‘Yes, Kelly,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

  He grinned and began to stamp up the remaining stairs.

  ‘For God’s sake be careful,’ she warned. ‘You’ll have a heart attack.’

  ‘Not yet, please God,’ he said. ‘Afterwards.’

  When he went to the Admiralty the following day, for once Corbett was not there to greet him. In his place was Admiral Orrmont, who’d been his commanding officer in Russia in the destroyer, Mordant.

  ‘Cuthbert Corbett’s dead,’ he said. ‘A week ago. I think he wore himself out.’ Orrmont smiled. ‘Now you’ve got me and I’m to fill you in with everything you’re to do. You’ll fly to Washington from Bourne and then to Trincomalee where you’ll pick up your ships. We’re assembling them now.’

  Bourne was full of aircraft – Liberators, Lancasters, Dakotas, even a few fighters. They ate a meal at the restaurant which had been set up for transients.

  ‘Better eat plenty, sir,’ Boyle warned. ‘It’s a long trip.’

  ‘I hope you’ve got us a few comfortable seats for a change, Seamus.’

  As they finished eating, they heard the metallic roar of engines and saw a big square-bodied Liberator moving towards them. An American WAAC officer appeared with a list and began to call names. She looked as beautiful as Verschoyle’s driver.

  There seemed to be hundreds of aircraft on the tarmac and more in the air, landing and taking off in both directions in what seemed a precarious proximity to each other. In the distance they could see the wrecked shell of a Dakota, without engines, the wings charred and black as though it had been on fire.

  Latimer was waiting by the aircraft as they climbed from the car. There were three other British naval officers, and three Americans, as well as twenty American air force officers going home after completing their tours of duty. The camera cases over their shoulders made them look as if they’d been on a tourist visit to England.

  One of them kicked at the huge tyres of the aircraft. ‘I sure hope they put all the rivets in,’ he said.

  The pilot was already on board, shouting instructions out of his window to a fitter on the ground. Beneath him, painted in white on the aircraft’s side, was the name – ‘Raidin’ Maiden.’

  As they climbed in, the WAAC officer gave them all a smile and shook hands.

  ‘Anyone would think we weren’t coming back,’ Boyle said.

  The seats were more comfortable than they’d been used to in the Dakotas but Kelly found he wasn’t looking forward to six hours of sitting in them, and the machine was still a bomber with the usual sharp angles and the usual spartan interior.

  An American lieutenant appeared. ‘The skipper sends his compliments,’ he said. ‘And says not to worry. It’s a straightforward trip. We shall land in Northern Ireland to top up tanks, then go on to Gander and from there to Washington. We’re doing it in easy stages for safety. He’d also like you to know that this will be his last trip after fifty-three operational ones, because when he arrives, he’s grounded and he’s never going higher off the deck after that than his bedroom.’

  They were sitting in the waist, each of them with a parachute beneath his feet, wondering how much use it would be if they had to bale out over the Atlantic. The machine had been stripped of everything possible for the trip, every ounce of superfluous weight removed to make the crossing safer.

  ‘Safe as Fort Knox,’ one of the American officers observed. ‘She’s got around a thousand miles safety margin.’

  The engines howled as they began to taxi towards the runway. The way the aeroplane moved was far from reassuring and Kelly decided that the pilot was either keen to show off or he’d got used to moving into position fast for the big raids on Germany. As they waited for the tower, one of the American naval officers moved aft and squatted down in the alleyway alongside Kelly. ‘Admiral Maguire, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. Commander Kaysor. I was on the staff of Admiral Allington. He was with you in the North African landings. I never met you but I sure heard a lot about you. He put his parachute down and sat on it in the alleyway. ‘I’m going out to the Pacific, sir.’

  ‘So am I,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll probably be asking your advice.’

  The aircraft jerked suddenly as the pilot turned on full power to swing on to the runway, then without a pause, the engines thundering at full throttle, it began to hurtle down the tarmacadam, the wheels rumbling beneath them, loose objects rattling and clattering.

  The centrifugal force as they’d swung had caused Kaysor to slide off his parachute and roll on to his back. He began to get up, grinning, but an unexpected oscillation prevented him and he was still fighting to get to his feet when the aeroplane began an up-and-down motion as if it were bowing over its nose wheel.

  They were moving at full speed down the runway when it began to swing to port and starboard. It seemed to be nothing because nobody showed any alarm, but Kaysor’s smile had changed to one of bewilderment and suddenly the motion increased and the aircraft began to tilt backwards and forwards in a violent seesaw. Wondering if the controls had jammed, Kelly glanced through the window but the rudder seemed to be moving freely.

  ‘Goddam fly-boys–!’

  Kaysor was trying to yell something to Kelly over the din of the engines when there was a tremendous wrench and a bang and Kelly realised he could see pieces of metal flying through the air. There was a yell from up forward and he saw Latimer’s jaw drop in a sudden expression of horror as they felt the bulkhead twisting behind their backs. There was a vicious snap and the tail section lifted into the air and fell back again, and still dazed, Kelly realised that for some reason the pilot’s final trip was ending in disaster. They were crashing, and he was going to die as Ramsay had died.

  There was a colossal bang and the sound of tearing metal, and they came to a stop with a jerk that flung him on top of Kaysor. Latimer was rolling in the space between the seats, his feet in the air. Of Boyle he could see no sign. He fought free of the tangle of arms and legs and, seeing an opening surrounded by torn metal, realised in an instant that it was his only chance of life.

  He shoved Latimer out of the hole in front of him and fell out after him. He seemed to go on falling forever and landed on his shoulder. Something gave with a crack but he knew he had to get clear and scrambled away on hands and knees.
Almost unconsciously he was aware of the tail section of the Liberator lying at an angle to the rest of the machine, the nose dipped to the ground, and a torn stretch of tarmacadam, then there was a violent ‘pouf’ sound and a blast of air lifted him several feet and threw him on to his injured shoulder again as the petrol caught fire.

  Violent heat seared his face and he was conscious of a tremendous yellow glare and a new agony in his right leg that he hadn’t noticed before. Struggling away on his knees and one hand through petrol that was dripping to the tarmac and made it look as if it were shimmering, he saw that seven men in addition to himself were scrambling about in the flare of flame. One of them was Latimer, dragging himself along by his elbows, his clothes on fire. He was yelling and looked as though he were blind, and Kelly flung himself at him, beating at the flames with his good hand, crying out at the pain because the petrol caused the flames to stick to his flesh. As fast as he slapped at them they sprang up elsewhere and he realised that Latimer was soaked with petrol. Dragging him from the wreckage, he rolled across him, and as he fell back, gasping, wondering where Boyle was and if he ought to have made sure he’d got clear, too, he heard the sound of engines and the shriek of tyres and brakes. Men were running towards him and he felt someone grab him by the armpits and drag him clear then he was being rolled on the ground in a brutal fashion that caused the broken bones in his shoulder to scrape against each other in agonising fashion. Sand was thrown on him, and it was only then that he realised his own clothing had been on fire.

  Hurriedly, the survivors were shoved aboard a truck, several of them with flesh hanging from them in charred strips. They were already heading for the hospital as the ambulances arrived, and dazedly, he noticed that the rest of the aerodrome seemed untouched by the disaster and that planes were still taking off and landing as if nothing had happened, flying unheedingly through the pillar of black smoke that was drifting across the runway.

  Bouncing about in the lorry, he stared round, still in shock and only half aware of what had happened. To his surprise, he found that in addition to his broken shoulder there was an appalling gash in his thigh that was pouring blood down his trousers. But the other men in the truck looked like burned toast with here and there a patch of clothing or a jagged strip of khaki or navy with gold buttons clinging by a seam or a collar or a cuff to the blackened flesh.

  ‘Christ, what happened?’ one of them said, and Kelly was surprised that his voice seemed as normal and unaffected as if nothing had happened.

  He began to recognise them at last. Keysor was babbling about the need to inform his wife, and Latimer’s blackened charred face was trying to smile at him.

  ‘Fire burn, cauldron bubble,’ he said. ‘Macbeth, sir.’

  ‘Shut up, William,’ Kelly said, struggling to tuck the blanket round him.

  Latimer winced with pain, so shocked he didn’t feel the sear of the fire but recoiled from the slightest touch.

  Someone gave Kelly an injection as the truck stopped and when he came round he found they’d stripped off his clothing and put his broken shoulder into a hideously uncomfortable splint like an aeroplane’s wing that supported his arm at an angle of ninety degrees from his body. The ward was full of white-garbed nurses, one of whom told him he’d had twenty-seven stitches in his leg. It was in plaster now and covered by a thing like a kitchen fireguard to keep the weight of the bedclothes off it. They seemed to have no doubt that he would survive because after six years of war they could judge exactly what the human frame could stand.

  His burns had come chiefly from touching the others and were clearly far from fatal. Kaysor, they said, was likely to die that day. Latimer might survive but they had their doubts. In addition to his terrible burns, he had two broken legs, two broken wrists and several broken ribs, but they weren’t even thinking about those yet.

  ‘The problem,’ the doctor said, ‘is that when the burns are as bad as this the serum just seeps through the damaged tissue. We’ve tried a lot of things but I’m afraid none of them is really effective yet.’

  They knew nothing of anybody called Boyle.

  Despite the splintered arm and the cage over his leg, Kelly insisted on having his bed placed next to Latimer’s. Because he was a vice-admiral, they didn’t argue. Latimer was bandaged beyond recognition and was connected to glucose and plasma bottles and was in deep sedation. Later in the day, he came round and looked at Kelly through his only visible eye. His hand moved in a slow floppy movement that rattled the tubes attached to him.

  ‘What happened to your arm, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not my arm,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s my shoulder. I broke it.’

  ‘That’s buggered up the Pacific, hasn’t it?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘I’m glad you got out, sir.’

  ‘I’m glad we both did. We were lucky. It broke in two just about where we were sitting.’

  ‘How about Boyle?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have made it.’ Kelly sighed. ‘I think you ought to dry up now, William. The nurse’ll be after you.’

  Kaysor died soon afterwards and then the others one after another. The doctor gave Kelly pills that eased the pain a little and made him doze, and when he woke up they told him Latimer wasn’t suffering.

  He accepted that this meant that Latimer was going to die but not in pain, and he asked if all their wives had been told.

  ‘They’re on their way now.’

  The nurses arrived soon afterwards and a bed was wheeled out.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Not Captain Latimer. Go to sleep.’

  Soon afterwards he saw the nurse bending over the next bed, touching Latimer here and there gently with her fingers as if to make sure he was alive. There was only the slightest gasp as he died, and even that was almost lost as an aeroplane thundered overhead.

  Eight

  Curiously, it was Verschoyle who was the first to arrive. He appeared at the end of the ward and came slowly towards Kelly, moving cautiously to the bed, his scarred face concerned.

  ‘Hello, Kelly,’ he said quietly. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Better than most,’ Kelly said shortly. ‘William Latimer’s dead.’

  Verschoyle sat down. ‘Yes, I heard so.’

  ‘His wife came a few minutes after he went. She walked in expecting to find him alive.’ Kelly paused. ‘Boyle’s wife came, too. I met her first in Russia, you know. She was French. We fished her out of Odessa with her family. Christ–’ Kelly fought to keep the tears back ‘–what a bloody waste! What happened?’

  ‘They don’t know yet. Charley been?’

  ‘Not yet. What’s happened to her?’

  ‘I think there’s been some balls-up somewhere. They told me you were at Burn but I knew you were going to Bourne. Perhaps they told her Burn, too.

  ‘Poor William,’ Kelly said. ‘All that Shakespeare. What’s going to happen now, James?’

  Verschoyle shrugged. ‘Well, it’s obvious you won’t be going to Trincomalee,’ he said. ‘It’ll be six months before you’re right again and by that time the war could be over. We’ve already heard that the Germans are making pacific noises. They’ve all fallen out with each other and they’re all trying to grab themselves a bit of security by posing as someone who wanted peace all the time and wasn’t allowed to because Hitler was on his neck. I don’t think it’ll help ’em much because there seems to be a move afoot to bring the whole bloody lot to trial in front of the German people so they can see their guilt.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean a thing.’ Kelly moved his hand. ‘If we’d lost, they’d have brought Winston to trial, and, God knows, he didn’t start the war.’

  ‘You sound low. Fed up about the task force?’

  Kelly considered. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It’ll mean I’ll have a bit of time with Charley, which’ll make a change, because in the whole of my life I’m damned if we’ve spent more than a few consecutive days together. Retirement would be nice.�
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  Verschoyle smiled. ‘Who said anything about retirement? This business has caused a bit of switching about, of course, but they reckon you’ll be back on the ball in a couple of months, and, knowing you, I reckon they’re right. And, since by the time you’re out the Germans’ll have thrown their hand in, they’re suggesting you for that job Ramsay turned down.’

  Kelly stared at the bed cover. ‘Do they really mean it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And you’ll want a deputy, and that’s a job I wouldn’t mind.’

  Kelly paused, thinking of Boyle and Latimer. ‘It’s nice to know there’ll still be someone around I know,’ he said slowly. He managed a smile. ‘It’s a long time since we half killed each other fighting.’

  Verschoyle smiled back. ‘It was a good scrap,’ he said. ‘You’d never have won if you hadn’t cheated.’

  Charley didn’t arrive until the evening.

  The nurse was making a brave effort to cheer him up and he didn’t want to be cheered up. He felt as low as he’d ever felt and blasted off at her as she punched his pillows.

  ‘Look, sir,’ she said finally, ‘you may be very important in your ship, but here you’re just a patient. And it’s time to take your sleeping pills.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to sleep,’ Kelly snapped. ‘My missis hasn’t been yet.’

  ‘You’ll be no fun for your wife if you’re in pain, will you? You’ve got third-degree burns on your hands, a broken collar bone and a gash as long as my arm in your thigh.’

  He took the pills unwillingly and she went away with such an angry expression he made up his mind to apologise and be particularly nice to her next time.

  He lay in bed, glowering at the cage over his leg, waiting for the pills to take effect. Poor Latimer, he thought. It had been a long association and it still seemed bloody sad that all that knowledge had been wasted.

  Mentally he was calling the roll of the men he’d known. So few of them had been granted his own luck. A few would reappear eventually from prisoner of war camps, a few would recover their health to be useful again, and life would go on. But he wondered how much anybody really knew of what it had cost. They’d spent the last six years seeing their friends whittled away by attrition and even when it was all over, whenever they heard of another one dying it would be like another wound because a war never ended and the grief was never gone while ever there were survivors.