Squadron Scramble (1978)

by Jackson, Robert

  The visitor was Jim Callender. Yeoman felt a great upsurge of friendship as he breezed into the room. The American looked dog-tired, but his grin was bright enough. He grabbed a sausage from Yeoman’s plate and bit into it.

  ‘Well, George,’ he said, chewing furiously, ‘what’s the verdict?’

  Yeoman told him what the M.O. had said, and asked how the squadron had fared during the afternoon’s air battle. Callender slammed his clenched fist into the open palm of his other hand.

  ‘We really clobbered ’em,’ he said. ‘The Huns lost thirty Stukas all told, and we got twelve of ’em — not to mention a couple of 110s and a 109. We lost three kites, though, and most of the others are damaged. Between you and me, I don’t think we can stand the pace for much longer, especially if they keep on hitting the airfields. We’re knocking a hell of a lot of them down, but if they can keep up this kind of pace we’re going to run out of fighters and pilots in about ten days, by my reckoning. Pilots, most of all. Some of the squadrons have really taken a beating.’

  It was a sobering thought. Suddenly, Yeoman remembered Wynne-Williams.

  ‘What happened to Simon?’ he asked. ‘I saw him going down.’

  Callender hesitated for a moment. Then he said: ‘He baled out.’

  Yeoman felt a vast relief. ‘Thank God for that, at least, he said. ‘That’s really good news.’

  Callender’s face was serious, his eyes haunted by an expression Yeoman couldn’t quite place.

  ‘Not really,’ he said quietly. ‘You see, he burned. He hasn’t got a face any more.’

  Chapter Six

  Yeoman popped like a cork from the gate of platform three, pressured by the crush of people behind him, and stood helplessly in the main concourse of Waterloo Station. The great mass of the crowd flowed around him, moving this way and that. He spotted a news-stand, an island of refuge in the human sea, and forced his way towards it, leaning heavily on his stick. A railway porter took him by the arm, helping him along.

  ‘Come on there,’ the man called, ‘make a bit of room. Can’t you see the lad’s wounded?’

  Yeoman reached the news-stand, feeling somewhat embarrassed, and thanked the porter. The man touched his cap in a friendly gesture and moved away.

  Someone rose from a nearby seat and the pilot sank gratefully into the vacant space. He’d had about enough for one morning. The journey from the south coast had seemed endless, the train stopping every couple of miles, and the bombastic conversation of his fellow-travellers had put him in a foul mood. They were businessmen from the City, and one of them — a florid-faced, whisky-soaked individual with a plummy voice — had spent the entire trip complaining about shortages. Yeoman had been on the point of ramming his stick down the man’s throat when, mercifully, the train had reached London.

  Squadron Leader McKenzie was right, Yeoman reflected. If anything, the M.O. had been over-optimistic. It was nearly three weeks now since he had been wounded, and his foot still hadn’t healed properly. Still, he felt confident that he could handle a Spitfire — and the way things were going he was sure that he would not be kept on the ground much longer, even with a damaged foot.

  Bad weather on 19 August had brought the R.A.F. a much-needed respite, but even so the depleted fighter squadrons were in a bad way when the attacks resumed in earnest on the twenty-third. During the last week of August the Luftwaffe had really stepped up its assault, hammering again and again at the R.A.F. airfields that lay in a defensive half-circle before London: Kenley, Redhill, Biggin Hill, West Malling, Detling and Gravesend to the south-east; Hornchurch, Rochford, Debden and North Weald to the northeast. On the thirtieth Biggin Hill had been completely wrecked by a squadron of low-flying Dorniers, attacking with 1,000-pound bombs, and a lot of valuable personnel had been killed or wounded. Fortunately, the station’s two Spitfire squadrons had been airborne at the time.

  Other airfields had been hit equally badly, if not worse. Manston, the Kentish airfield from which Yeoman had helped to cover the Dunkirk evacuation in May, had been completely abandoned, its surface pitted and cratered like the face of the moon. Hornchurch had also been badly hit, and here the squadrons had not been so lucky; the base had been attacked just as a squadron of Spitfires was taking off, and several had been destroyed. The last day of August, in particular, had been a bad one for Fighter Command; thirty-nine enemy aircraft had been shot down, but thirty-two Spitfires and Hurricanes had been destroyed too.

  Yeoman had been allowed out of bed after a week and, equipped with a pair of crutches and later a stick, was assigned to the operations room at Tangmere. From his position on the raised dais with its bank of telephones at the fighter controller’s elbow, he had participated in the daily battles at second hand, following the movement of the coloured counters on the plotting table below and listening for the profane shouts over the loudspeaker that were the war cries of young men locked in mortal combat miles above the earth. Yeoman had found his days in the operations room intensely dramatic and charged with suspense; more so, in some ways, than if he had been fighting in the cockpit of his Spitfire.

  Yes, a great deal had happened during the past three weeks. For a start, the Luftwaffe had bombed London on 25 August. Some said it had been a mistake, that the Germans had been going for oil storage tanks up the river — a legitimate military target — but whatever the truth R.A.F. Bomber Command had attacked Berlin the next night by way of reprisal. The gloves were off with a vengeance now, and the ordeal of the cities was beginning.

  Yeoman got up and limped over to the news-stand. He bought a paper and turned to his seat again, only to find that it had been occupied by an enormously fat woman. She glared at him belligerently, as though daring him to challenge her. He smiled at her and winked, leaned against the wooden side of the kiosk, and opened his paper.

  He scanned the news headlines briefly, smiling to himself at their greatly inflated optimism. According to the headlines, Fighter Command was winning the battle by a handsome margin. Still, that was what the public wanted to hear. Britain was a frightened, uncertain nation, still shaken by the hammer-blows her forces had sustained on the Continent and in Norway, and it would not take much to destroy civilian morale. Anyway, the people seemed to accept the inflated figures of enemy aircraft destroyed without question; the pilots, however, knew differently. It always happened in the heat of air combat; three or four pilots would fire at one bomber, and if it went down they would all claim it as their own ‘kill’.

  The true facts were infinitely more alarming. On the first day of September, according to the reports of R.A.F. fighter pilots, the Germans had begun to tighten up their escort procedures. The ratio now was roughly four fighters to every bomber. One strong German formation had bombed the docks at Tilbury unmolested simply because Fighter Command had not been able to break through the screen of Messerschmitts.

  One thing puzzled Yeoman. No doubt it was puzzling the air staff even more. Suddenly, at a point when Fighter Command seemed about to fall apart at the seams, the Germans had cut down their attacks on the British fighter airfields and focused their attention on London. Smoke was still rising from the London docks, which had been heavily attacked on the night of 5 September. Now, two days later, London was a nervous city, wondering when the raiders would come again.

  He folded the paper and tossed it into a waste-paper bin. He looked at his watch; it was twelve-thirty. He felt a sudden twinge of alarm. Julia was late; suppose she had missed him in the crowd and gone away again? All kinds of thoughts flashed through his mind. He turned his head this way and that, searching frantically for a glimpse of her.

  ‘Hello, George.’ The voice came softly at his elbow.

  He turned. She was not as he remembered her. Her red hair was cropped short and tucked under a small cap. She wore a grey nurse’s uniform. Her green eyes regarded him steadily, and there were dark shadows of weariness under them.

  Suddenly, the green eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, George,’ she said,
‘you’re hurt. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Her left hand came up and touched him gently on the cheek. Awkwardly, leaning on his stick, he put his own free hand around her waist and pulled her towards him, kissing her on the forehead. Her arms went about his neck and she clung to him tightly. He could feel her trembling slightly through the roughness of his uniform.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ he told her. ‘Just a scratch, really. It’ll be O.K. in a day or two.’

  She pulled away from him a little and looked up into his face, her nose red. She sniffled and managed a watery smile, then, rummaging in her shoulder bag, she produced a handkerchief and blew her nose.

  ‘Sorry, George. It’s just — well, it’s just that I’m so glad to see you in one piece. It’s been such a long time.’

  He smiled and took the handkerchief from her, gently wiping away a tear that trickled down the side of her nose. ‘I never realised I had this kind of effect on women,’ he said jokingly.

  ‘Oh, it’s not just you. I’m worn out, George. I’ve just come off duty, you know. I’m a V.A.D., now. Doing my bit for the Old Country.’

  ‘You’re a what?’ he asked.

  ‘V.A.D. stands for Voluntary Aid Detachment. We’re auxiliary nurses. Come on, let’s go and find a restaurant and I’ll treat you to some lunch. We’ve a lot to talk about.’

  They took the Underground from Waterloo to Blackfriars, emerging into the early afternoon sunshine. Arm in arm, they walked through the heartland of Britain’s newspaper industry into Fleet Street. Yeoman was fascinated; he had worked for a time on a newspaper in Yorkshire before the war, and he had always wanted to visit Fleet Street. Now he was here at last, but under far different circumstances from any he had ever envisaged.

  Julia led him to a pub which was famous for its associations with Charles Dickens and a host of other well-known writers since his day. The dining-room was crowded, but Julia was evidently a regular customer and they were quickly shown to a vacant table for two.

  She grinned at Yeoman as they sat down. ‘Being heavily involved in the newspaper world has its compensations,’ she said. ‘Now, are you going to let me organise you and trust my excellent judgement, or will your masculine pride be hurt if I order?’

  Yeoman laughed. ‘You go right ahead,’ he told her. ‘You organised me pretty well in France, if you remember, and when it comes to food I haven’t got any pride. 1 could eat a horse.’

  The lunch — traditionally English, with oxtail soup followed by roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and vegetables, then apple pie and cream — was excellent. Yeoman had tasted nothing like it since before the war. It was clear that, even in wartime, Fleet Street looked after its own.

  Julia was ravenous too, and there was little conversation during the meal. Afterwards, satisfied, they settled down over a cup of tea — no coffee was available — and appraised one another. Yeoman lit his pipe, which made Julia laugh.

  ‘I see you’ve acquired the odd anti-social habit since I saw you last,’ she said. ‘That puts me one up on you. I seem to remember I once offered you a cigarette and you looked at me as though I’d made an immoral suggestion. I stopped smoking weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ the pilot retorted. ‘I think it’s highly un-feminine. But then, I’m old-fashioned. Have you noticed the way I’ve been looking at you?’

  She looked at him archly. ‘It hasn’t escaped my attention, but we’ll have none of that in here — this is a respectable pub. There’s a time and place for everything.’

  He took her hand in his and squeezed it. ‘You said we had a lot to talk about.’ he said. ‘You first. I want to know all your adventures since you got out of France. How did you come to be mixed up with the V.A.D.s, or whatever you call them?’

  She looked at him seriously. ‘There were two reasons, mainly. The first, of course, is that I’m a journalist first and foremost, and I wanted to put some really accurate stuff in front of the people back home. You can’t do that second-hand. You’ve got to get involved.’

  There was a strange expression on her face, a mixture of determination and earnestness that gave her a kind of beauty Yeoman had not seen before. ‘That wasn’t the principal reason, though,’ she went on. ‘George, this is my fight, too. It has been ever since we were in France, and I saw what was happening to ordinary, innocent people.’

  She looked down suddenly and her voice grew very quiet and full of emotion. ‘I was down at the docks the night before last,’ she said. ‘There was a church in one of the streets … people, women and children mostly, were sheltering there when the bombers came. They were in a vault underneath the building. A bomb came through the wall of the church, went straight through the floor and exploded among them.’

  Her voice shook. ‘It was hideous … unimaginable. Bodies … limbs and bits of flesh, all mixed up with clothing and children’s toys. People were literally blown to pieces.

  ‘We got there a few minutes after the bomb fell. The raid was still in progress and there were explosions and fires all around. I was terrified; we all were. We had a hard time getting into the vault, because the only entrance was choked with bodies. The bomb had set fire to a big pile of coke, too, and we could hardly see.’

  She choked suddenly, her whole body shaking. ‘What we saw in there was bad enough, but that wasn’t the worst. The A.R.P. men brought the bodies out, and … and we had to help piece them together ready for burial.’

  She gripped his arm tightly and turned an anguished face towards him. ‘Oh, George, it was just like a horrible jigsaw puzzle, with a lot of the bits missing. We worked in pairs, a few minutes at a time, because we couldn’t stand it any longer than that. I’ll never forget the awful smell as long as I live — that, and the knowledge that these frightful lumps of flesh had once been living, breathing people, made it an utter nightmare.

  ‘Maybe I coped better than some of the others because I’d studied anatomy at college, and I tried to imagine I was back in the anatomy class again. But nothing seemed to fit. We would put one body together, only to find that a lot of bits were missing from another. We just kept being sick all the time.’ She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Yeoman put his arm round her shoulders and held her close. People were staring at them curiously.

  ‘Come on, love,’ he said, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  She patted his hand. ‘I’m sorry about all this, George,’ she apologised, ‘but I’ve been bottling it up inside me for nearly two days now. You’ve no idea what a relief it is just to talk about it. I was on duty until ten this morning, too, so I’m just about all-in. Would you mind very much if we just went home?’

  He told her he did not, and they went out into the street. Suddenly, she stopped dead and turned to him.

  ‘I’ve been going on about my own troubles so much you haven’t had a chance to get a word in, poor dear. I haven’t even asked you how long you’ve got before you have to go back.’

  Yeoman smiled. ‘Forty-eight hours,’ he told her. He patted the gas-mask container slung over his shoulder in regulation style. ‘Brought my toothbrush and pyjamas, just in case I happen to meet an obliging young lady.’

  She laughed at him. ‘You’re a tonic. All I want right now is sleep. We can talk about the pyjamas later.’

  Together, they walked towards the Underground. Around them, the sirens were wailing.

  *

  Her flat was in Kensington, on the second floor of one of those faceless but solidly imposing Victorian houses that characterised the London suburbs. She shared it with a telephone supervisor who worked at the U.S. Embassy, a girl called Sheila, but Sheila was away on leave and Julia and Yeoman had the place to themselves.

  Julia, so tired that she had barely been able to manage the stairs, had collapsed on her bed fully clothed and fallen into a deep sleep almost at once. Yeoman had taken a bath and shaved, then settled down in the small lounge to read and wait for her to come round.

  He must have dozed
for a while, too. The noise of the sirens roused him and he looked at his watch; it was nearly six o’clock. He peeped into the bedroom; Julia was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear water running in the bathroom.

  He crossed the lounge. French windows opened on to a small balcony and he stepped outside, looking up into the eastern sky. It was criss-crossed from horizon to horizon by innumerable vapour trails. As he watched, the first sticks of bombs went down into the East End, exploding with a roar that made London tremble. Leisurely, great mushrooms of black and brown smoke, boiling with crimson at their heart, climbed into the rays of the evening sun. There was no wind and they hung there, expanding very slowly, feeding on the fires at their roots. More explosions boomed out, making the windows around Yeoman rattle alarmingly, and more evil, cancerous pillars erected themselves. A slate, loosened by the concussions, rattled down a nearby roof and shattered on the pavement below.

  He caught a whiff of perfume, and half turned. Julia was standing at his elbow, her eyes wide.

  ‘It’s horrifying,’ she said. ‘Horrifying, but there’s a kind of beauty in it. A strange, violent beauty.’ She pointed. ‘Look … those thin trails up there. Are those our fighters?’

  Yeoman nodded. The air battle that was raging three miles above the London docks was too distant for him to make out any details, although a gleaming dot showed up now and then as an aircraft turned, catching the sun.

  He circled her waist with his arm. She wore a silken dressing gown, and his heart leaped at the firm pressure of her supple body against his hand. Suddenly, she pressed herself tightly against him. He buried his face in her hair. The fragrance of violets filled his nostrils.

  ‘George,’ she whispered, ‘dear George. It could be you up there. Thank God it isn’t. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you.’