Operation Diver

by Robert Jackson

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ Julia said suddenly, pulling Yeoman towards a park bench. ‘We don’t know how long the sunshine is going to last. We may as well soak it up while we can.’

  They sat for a long time in the dappled sunlight. Julia plucked a sprig of yellow laburnum blossom and fastened it to her lapel of her light green uniform, on which shoulder flashes proclaimed her trade of war correspondent. Only a handful of people knew that Julia Connors followed another trade, one infinitely more dangerous and taxing, and only she could appreciate how much these moments of peace and tranquillity meant to her, far from the darkness of Occupied Europe and the nerve-racking, sickening fear that gripped her when, roused by some noise in the night, she lay soaked in her own sweat, clutching the gun that was her constant bedside companion, waiting for the pounding on the door…

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Yeoman was looking at her, a puzzled expression on his face. With a shock, she realized that she was trembling, her heart pounding furiously, perspiration standing out on her face. She pulled herself together with a supreme effort.

  ‘Sorry, darling.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘Yes, I’m okay. Just felt a little chilly breeze for a moment, that’s all. It brought me out in goose-pimples. I’m all right, really. Now who’s fussing?’

  Yeoman smiled, but the morning was still and warm, with no trace of a breeze, and he sensed that something was amiss. He knew better, though, than to press the point; she would tell him in her own good time, if she so wished.

  He had noticed the change in her as soon as they had met again. Beautiful and loving she still was; but her infectious humour bubbled to the surface far less frequently than it had done in the past, and the tension in her was apparent. There were lines and shadows around her eyes, and her sleep, once deep and untroubled in his arms, was now fitful and disturbed, as though her subconscious mind was haunted by some awful spectre.

  It hurt him to see her like this, left him with a feeling of helplessness. He could cope with most things, but not this. Sometimes, over the past week, he had looked at her and felt a deep and unaccountable sense of foreboding, as though the pair of them were standing on the edge of a chasm that would soon gape wide to swallow up one or both of them for ever.

  From Julia’s point of view, the worst thing of all was that she was aware of his feelings, and yet in her turn there was nothing she could do to reassure him. She longed to hold him, to tell him everything, that the nightmare in which she was ensnared would soon be over, that they could both awaken to the daylight and the sun; but she knew she never could, not for a long, long time to come.

  So instead she sat there with him, on the bench in St James’s Park, and made meaningless small-talk about the price of vegetables — carrots four shillings and sixpence per bunch, no less, and peas and beans three shillings a pound — about the books they had read in recent months and the film they had seen the other evening. They had had a friendly argument about that; Yeoman had wanted to go to the Plaza in Piccadilly Circus to see Lady in the Dark (‘The Most-Discussed Picture of the Year — Radiant Revelations of a Woman’s Secret Desires’, or so the posters had proclaimed) while Julia’s choice had been The Eve of St Mark at the Odeon in Leicester Square (‘Sensational Long-Run Play Becomes a Love Story so Poignant that Millions will Make it Their Own!’)

  In the end they had stood in the middle of the road and spun a coin, which had fallen down a drain, and so, laughing, they had gone to the Carlton instead to see Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and both agreed afterwards that it had been a wise choice.

  An old lady, wearing a threadbare black coat and a shiny hat of matching colour with a bunch of artificial cherries dangling from it over one ear, waddled up to their bench and flopped down on it, settling herself with a long sigh. Then, peering at them with a rheumy gaze, she asked:

  ‘Mind if I join you, dearies? Lovely morning, isn’t it?’

  Julia smiled, agreeing that it was, and that they didn’t mind in the least.

  The old woman squinted at Yeoman’s uniform and embarked on a long, rambling monologue as she unwrapped some sandwiches from a grubby piece of greaseproof paper.

  ‘Air Force, eh? Wish you’d do something about them things.’ She rolled her eyes skywards, and Yeoman assumed that she was referring to the V-1s.

  ‘Can’t get any sleep nowadays,’ she grumbled. ‘Worse than during the Blitz. At least you knew when the Jerries were coming over, then. There’s no warning with these bloody things. All times of the day and night. The Jones family had their roof blown off last night, and now my cat’s missing. Probably gone to ground somewhere. Can’t say as I blame the poor little bugger, must be scared out of his wits.’

  She broke off a piece of crust and hurled it at a sparrow, which side-stepped adroitly and then seized the morsel in its beak, carrying it off into the bushes.

  ‘Do you live nearby?’ asked Julia, conversationally. The old woman glared at her, then emitted a shrill cackle.

  ‘Yes, ducks, ’course I do. That’s my house, over there.’ She gestured towards Buckingham Palace. Then, as though regretting her sarcasm, she said: ‘No, lovey, not me. Born and bred in Stepney, I was; top end of Whitehorse Road. Not much left out that way, now,’ she went on mournfully. ‘Caught a packet during the Blitz, we did. And now these bloody things.’ She rolled her eyes expressively heavenwards again.

  She rubbed her right eye, brushing away a real or imagined tear. ‘Live all on me own now, I do,’ she said. ‘Have done since when my Tom was took with the influenza. Went all through the last war without a scratch, too, he did, then along comes the bloody influenza and takes him off.’

  She crammed the last of her sandwiches into her mouth and chewed it furiously.

  ‘Only pleasure I get, these days,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs, ‘coming out here with my sandwiches when it’s sunny and strolling round the parks. Well, I’ll be off.’

  She rose on creaking limbs and walked away around the end of the lake in the direction of Birdcage Walk, a stooped huddle of black gradually diminishing amid the summer greenery and blossoms.

  They watched her go in silence, neither speaking for some moments, Yeoman took out his pipe and tamped tobacco into the bowl.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ Julia said suddenly. ‘All alone like that, with no one to care for her.’

  Yeoman gave an unsympathetic grunt. ‘You shouldn’t take people at face value,’ he admonished, half in jest. ‘She was probably waiting for one of us to give her a few shillings so that she could go and drown her sorrows. She reminded me of an old woman who used to tramp the roads around North Yorkshire when I was a boy, begging from house to house; she collapsed and died by the roadside one day, and they found a fortune in five-pound notes stitched into the lining of her coat.’

  Julia looked at him, aghast.

  ‘George Yeoman!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a horribly cynical thing to say! The poor woman probably hasn’t had a square meal in months. Why, I’ve half a mind to go after her and —’

  The strident howl of an air-raid siren distant and spine-chilling, cut through her sentence. Its harsh notes were taken up by another, much closer.

  Julia’s eyes were wide and frightened, and Yeoman thought: my God, she can’t take it any more. She’s burnt out inside.

  She stepped close to him and gripped his arm. ‘Should we find a shelter?’ she asked tremulously. He placed a comforting arm round her shoulders and brought her closer still.

  ‘No, let’s stay here. Out in the open, and the sun. It might be a false alarm, anyway.’

  But it was real enough. A few moments later, they both heard the strange uncanny mutter in the sky that heralded the approach of a flying-bomb. The noise grew steadily louder, and now there was no longer any doubt that the bomb was heading in their direction.

  Yeoman looked round and spotted a huge, gnarled oak tree fifty yards away. Taking Julia by the hand, he trotted over to it and
they stood together in the shelter of its trunk, pressing themselves apprehensively against it as the noise increased in volume until it blotted out all other sounds.

  Julia clasped both hands to her ears, closing her eyes. Yeoman moved until her body was between his own and the tree trunk, holding her close to him.

  ‘For God’s sake don’t stop,’ Julia whispered, praying to the soulless mechanical device that was bearing down on them, as yet unseen. ‘For God’s sake keep going.’

  The motor stopped. In the sudden silence, a bird sang.

  Julia was trembling violently, her fists clenched now. Yeoman held her tighter, unconscious of the fact that he was holding his breath.

  There was an eternity of waiting in which time froze.

  The explosion, when it came, was surprisingly dull, but the blast and shock-wave that accompanied it were violent enough. The earth heaved under them, throwing them temporarily off balance, and the blast wave that ripped across the park tore branches brutally from the trees.

  The stout oak sheltered Yeoman and Julia from the effects of the blast, but twigs and leaves showered down on them. A little bird struck the tree trunk and fluttered to the ground dying, its neck broken.

  Yeoman stepped from the shadow of the oak and looked out across the park. On the far side, beyond the narrow lake, a great pall of dust and smoke rose into the sky where the park joined Birdcage Walk.

  ‘Come on!’ Yeoman seized Julia’s hand and they ran across the little bridge that joined the two halves of the park, heading for the mushrooming smoke. In the distance they could hear the bells of ambulances and fire-engines. A few people were standing motionless, staring fixedly at the smoke as though dazed; others were converging on the scene of the disaster. The sharp odour of sap, released when the blast tore bark from the trees hung over everything.

  They reached the edge of Birdcage Walk and stopped dead in their tracks, horrified and stunned by the scene of devastation that met their eyes. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ Julia said softly, ‘it’s hit the Guards Chapel.’

  Where the chapel had stood, on the edge of Wellington Barracks, there was now only a great mound of rubble, shrouded in smoke, grit and dust.

  Rescuers, many of them Guardsmen, were already at work, tearing at the débris with their bare hands or any tools they could find.

  The Guards Chapel, in its picturesque setting close to the Palace, had always been a favourite place of worship. On this bright Sunday morning of 18 June 1944, it had been packed. The final tally of the tragedy, after many hours of toil among the wreckage, would be 121 dead and 68 seriously injured, the majority of them Servicemen and women.

  Yeoman would never have a clear memory of the next few hours — hours filled with murderous thirst, choking dust and sweat as he and Julia toiled alongside the other rescuers.

  The task was nightmarishly difficult. The walls still stood, forming an enclosure that was choked with bricks, mortar and massed chunks of grey concrete; every entrance was blocked solid, and it was not until someone discovered a way in behind the altar that the rescuers were able to reach the dead and the injured, whose pitiful, dust-smothered cries made the morning hideous.

  Julia had been an auxiliary nurse during the London Blitz of 1940 and had become hardened to the sight of death and mutilation, yet she wept as the crushed and broken bodies were brought from the rubble, the tears making long furrows down her dust-grimed face. The children were the worst…two little girls in their pretty summer frocks, lying silent and still beside their parents, a Grenadier Guards officer and his wife, a whole family wiped out brutally in an instant of time.

  The horror went on for hour after hour. Yeoman, his once-spotless uniform now caked with filth, his hands bloody and raw, worked shoulder to shoulder with two young soldiers, their faces white with shock, burrowing into a black tunnel to free two ATS girls. One of the latter, her face a mask of blood, clutched the pilot’s sleeve and whispered hoarsely:

  ‘Please, please, get me out into the light. I can’t move my legs. Don’t let me die down here. I want to see the sun.’

  ‘You aren’t going to die,’ Yeoman reassured her. ‘We’ll get you out. And don’t worry about your legs; it’s just temporary shock, that’s all.’

  They got her into the fresh air and laid her on a stretcher. She moved her head, looking up at the sky and over towards the park, where the birds still sang; then she gave a tiny smile, and died.

  Members of the Salvation Army, the Women’s Voluntary Service and the Red Cross moved among the rescuers and the rescued like ministering angels, distributing mugs of tea which was like nectar to parched, dirt-clogged throats. Yeoman, holding a scalding mug, went in search of Julia and found her leaning weakly against the remains of a wall. She looked all in, but she smiled as he came up to her.

  ‘You look a bit of a mess,’ she said.

  He grinned ruefully, looking down at his ruined uniform. ‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ he retorted. ‘God, what a bloody awful mess this all is!’

  Suddenly, he reached out and took her by the shoulders.

  ‘Julia,’ he said, ‘there’s something I must tell you. I’m going back to the Squadron. Tonight. It seems all so wrong, continuing my leave when this — this murder is happening. I have to get back. I’m sorry, love. You do understand, don’t you?’

  For a few moments she made no reply. Then, as though suddenly oblivious to the turmoil around them, she threw herself into his arms and pressed her face to his chest. In a dull, muffled voice, she said:

  ‘I knew you were going to say that. I knew it. Damn you, George, no, I don’t understand. But you’ll go back anyway, and I won’t stop you.’

  Suddenly she was weeping bitterly, the pent-up tension flowing from her.

  ‘Oh, George,’ she sobbed, ‘to hell with everything! The very next time we meet, the very next time, get a special licence or whatever it is and marry me. I’ve had enough…let me be with you, always…’

  Chapter Seven

  Yeoman sat in Freddie Barnes’ office, catching up with the latest Intelligence reports on Operation Diver, the air defence of southern England against the flying-bomb menace. There was a lot of catching up to be done, too, for events had moved at an alarming pace while he had been away on leave.

  The Intelligence summary told him that at 0400 hours on 13 June, a Mosquito crew of 418 Squadron, returning from an intruder operation, had seen what they reported as ‘a rocket projectile heading northwards and leaving a red trail’. This had been one of the first salvo of four V-1s launched by the Germans. Six more bombs had been launched during the hours that followed; of the total of ten, the most severe damage was caused by the one which fell at Bethnal Green, London. To divert the defences, a lone Messerschmitt 410 had been sent over the capital and had succeeded in its task very well, because it had got itself shot down.

  During the next two days the enemy had launched an estimated 250 flying-bombs, of which 144 had crossed the British coast and seventy-three had reached Greater London. By this time, many anti-aircraft batteries had been moved from the immediate London area and relocated in a series of defensive belts nearer to the coast. Additional units of the Air Defence of Great Britain — fighter squadrons equipped with Tempests, Spitfires, Typhoons, Mustangs and Mosquitos — had also been rushed to forward airfields in Kent and Sussex, from where constant patrols were flown.

  Yeoman was elated to learn that it was a Mosquito crew, from 605 Squadron, which had been the first to destroy one of the bombs. They had caught one at low level over the Channel soon after midnight on 15 June and dived after it. The pilot’s report was attached to the Intelligence summary.

  ‘It was like chasing a ball of fire across the sky,’ Yeoman read. ‘It flashed by our starboard side a few thousand feet away at the same height as we were flying. I quickly turned to port and gave chase. It was going pretty fast, but I caught up with it and opened fire from astern. At first, there was no effect so I closed in another hundred yards and g
ave it another burst. Then I went closer still and pressed the gun button again. This time, there was a terrific flash and explosion and the thing fell down in a vertical dive into the sea. The whole show was over in about three minutes.’

  At first sight, shooting down the flying-bombs seemed easy enough, but as Yeoman read further that notion was soon dispelled.

  Usually, intercepting pilots had only thirty miles — sometimes considerably less — in which to catch the bombs before they arrived over British territory. The technique developed in the first few days of the V-1 offensive was to patrol at medium altitude and build up speed in a dive once the target was sighted; as the majority of the bombs seemed to fly at about 2,500 feet, at a speed of 350 mph. overtaking them did not prove to be much of a problem.

  ‘Pilots have found considerable difficulty,’ the summary went on, ‘in judging the vector and distance at which to open fire on these small targets. The problem is particularly acute at night, when the distance between the intercepting fighter and the flame from the tail of the flying-bomb can be very deceptive, and no doubt accounts for the failure of many pilots to hit their target even after several lengthy bursts of fire. Particular importance is attached to finding a solution to this problem, in view of the limited time available to pilots in which to engage the enemy weapons. If a pilot fails to engage a flying-bomb before it reaches the coastal gun belt, he is at once to break off his attack and, if the bomb is not destroyed by the anti-aircraft barrage, he is to engage it again as it passes between the gun belt and the balloon barrage, which is situated immediately to the south of London…’

  Doesn’t give a chap much of a chance, thought Yeoman. It was obviously essential to get the attack right first time. The question was, how?

  His thoughts were interrupted by Tim Sloane, who put his head round the door and grinned. Yeoman’s deputy was in good spirits; he had just returned from a Diver patrol, and although he had not sighted any flying-bombs he had caught a Junkers 88 off Dieppe and had shot it blazing on to the French coast.