‘No!’ said Archie, instant panic enveloping him. I can’t get a shot, I can’t get a shot! ‘Break, Ted, break!’ he yelled but it was too late. The German had manoeuvred on to Ted’s blind side and at just fifty yards’ range opened fire.
‘No!’ shouted Archie. For a brief moment, Ted’s Spitfire seemed to hang there, suspended, then a flash of orange, and Archie felt his Spitfire jolt and flip over. No, no, no, this can’t be. Frantically, he regained control. ‘Ted!’ he shouted, ‘Ted!’ but his friend was gone, the Spitfire plunging in a ball of fire and debris.
‘No!’ yelled Archie. The Messerschmitt crossed his path, four hundred yards ahead, and Archie now opened the throttle wide, applied burst, and surged towards it. Numb – he felt numb. All sound seemed to have gone – the drone of the Merlin, the chatter of machine guns; it was as though he were in some strange vacuum where the only thing that mattered was catching the man who had killed Ted.
The 109 banked lazily, turning back towards the coast, as Archie swooped in behind, latching on to the 109’s tail and giving him a quick burst. He saw his bullets strike home, but the 109 flipped over and dived, and Archie followed after. For a brief moment, his engine cut as the carburettor flooded, then caught again, but already the German was getting away from him.
No, you don’t, thought Archie.
His Spitfire screamed and his airframe shook as they plunged from sixteen thousand feet to three thousand in a matter of seconds, the lush Kent countryside visible once more. At two thousand feet the German pulled out, and Archie followed, grimacing with the strain, but at last he was level again, the weight on his arms lessening and the controls lightening. As they sped over the long finger of Kent, the gap began to close once more, and Archie now saw a wisp of smoke coming from the 109’s engine cowling. They were losing height, the German dropping down towards the deck.
Villages and towns rushed by beneath them as they fell to just a hundred and fifty feet, and then they were passing through valleys, sweeping around church spires, almost brushing the treetops. Two hundred yards now. The Messerschmitt filled Archie’s reflector sight. A river snaked below as they sped over another village, the Downs to their right. One hundred and fifty yards.
Archie held his thumb over the gun button then pressed down, his eight machine guns spitting bullets. Another puff of smoke and the German dropped further still and began weaving frantically from side to side, so that Archie was forced to pull back on the throttle. Another burst of bullets and then nothing.
‘No!’ shouted Archie again. He could not be out of ammo already – surely not! But smoke was belching from the 109, and the German banked his aircraft, circling. He’s looking for somewhere to land, Archie thought. He saw a school below, with long swathes of playing fields stretching away from the main buildings.
The German had clearly had the same thought. Archie circled overhead as he watched the enemy pilot glide towards the flat open grassland. Wheels up, the Messerschmitt hit the ground, sliding and yawing a long furrow of churned-up grass, before finally coming to a halt. Was he dead? No – there he was, hurriedly clambering out. The man who killed Ted.
Archie looked out at the playing fields. Long enough, he thought. Pulling back on the throttle, he circled, then, lowering his flaps and undercarriage, came in to land. Touching down, he bounced, landed again, then throttled back and turned his Spitfire towards the smouldering Messerschmitt. The pilot was hurrying away from the plane towards him as Archie cut the engine, unclipped his leads and jumped down.
Ten yards from the pilot he stopped, his mind suddenly clearing. What was he going to do now? What should he say to this man, this German who had killed his friend?
The German continued walking towards him, slowly, uncertainly, then took off his helmet. The resemblance to Ted was uncanny – long, dark hair, brown eyes – similar height and build too – and for a moment Archie wondered whether he was dreaming, whether this was some terrible nightmare from which he would soon awake.
‘Well done,’ said the man, his English heavily accented. ‘I offer you my congratulations.’
Archie stared at him, his mind racing, then said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘You brought me down. And Lieutenant Hartmann.’
‘You killed my best friend,’ said Archie. Some people were shouting behind him. The German glanced towards the school then back at Archie.
‘And your friend killed my friend.’
‘Your friend?’ Archie frowned, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ he said again.
The German stared back at him. ‘Lieutenant Hartmann. Mani. We were like brothers.’ He took another step towards him. This German man was young too. For so long the enemy had been the ‘Hun’ or ‘Jerry’ – a nameless automaton, Nazis one and all, and somehow a quite different breed, barely human. But here before him was a young man just like him and Ted – a young man who had also lost his best friend. Archie did not know what to say, but his anger – his intense rage – was already melting away.
‘Mani and I,’ said the German. ‘We were friends since childhood.’ He blinked and looked up. ‘This war,’ he said. ‘So pointless. It’s not us who should be shooting at each other, but our leaders. Let them fight it out, not us.’
Archie nodded.
For a moment, the two men continued to stare at each other and then suddenly the young German’s face began to crumple, his head dropped and he brought a hand to his face and began to weep. Archie stood there, dumbstruck, then felt something rise from deep inside and flood over him, and he knew he could not control it. Tears ran down his own cheeks and he was sobbing – sobbing like he had never sobbed before, he and the German together, united in their grief and despair.
28
Getting to the Party
Saturday 21 June 1941. Midsummer. Sitting outside the dispersal hut at Kenley, Archie Jackson was thinking. He had his journal on his lap, his pen in his hand, poised, about to write. A skylark was twittering away nearby and he immediately thought of Ted. It happened often, and when it did, Archie was always overcome by a wave of sadness that seemed to enclose him like a heavy shroud.
He had become rather fatalistic about the war. He had survived thirteen months of almost continuous front-line action and was still alive. He now felt a curious sense of certainty that he would somehow survive – something that he had rather doubted last year. It was based on little. Just a feeling.
So many hadn’t made it, of course. Henry Dix had become a prisoner of war, Will Merton-Moore had been shot down in flames. Dennis Cotton had ended up in the Channel. At Biggin, poor old Ginger had had that dodgy parachute, Mick had been burned to a cinder, and then there was Ted. Ted …
Those were just his good friends. He couldn’t even remember the names of half the others – some had been with the squadron less than an hour. Of course he missed them, and their deaths upset him dreadfully, but after Ted’s death, he’d become an expert at not dwelling on it, even if one of his close friends died – like Dougal, for instance, who had been killed in a flying accident back in April. He had not forgotten something Reynolds, the adjutant of 629 Squadron, had told him: that back in the last war, he’d tried not to think of them as dead, but as having simply gone away.
And it worked, to a large extent. Archie would have his nightly bath and think about them very hard, imagining them in the place he thought was most appropriate. He felt sure, for example, that Mick would be back in Canada, living in some log cabin and hunting bear and elk. As soon as an image of his friend’s death came into view, or he thought of the screams in his earpiece, he concentrated for a few moments and there was Mick surrounded by furs, and wood fires, and a big hunting rifle. Ginger would have gone to the South Pacific – Tahiti, for example. If he thought of Ginger’s parachute plummeting to the ground, he pushed it from his mind and instead pictured his friend lying on a beach, surrounded by nubile Tahitian girls, the shadows of the palm trees flickering gently across his face. It was as though he had gone of
f on his travels, but had liked the place so much he’d not bothered coming back, or as though Mick had simply decided to head home across the Atlantic to the Canadian Rockies. Or Dougal was stalking some deer in the Highlands.
It was harder with Ted. He thought of Ted with Jenny, imagining them in America, in California – only because Ted had once said that he fancied visiting Hollywood and becoming a film star. But his ploy didn’t work so well with Ted, his very best friend. When thoughts of Ted entered his mind, he found himself swallowing hard and wishing he could think of something entirely different.
It wasn’t easy to do. The end was still so vivid – Ted’s Spitfire engulfed in flame, disintegrating as it fell from the sky. There’d been a funeral, but God knows what they’d put in the coffin. Tess had told him that their father had learned his son was dead while he’d been in the Operations Room at Bentley Priory, that he’d waited until his watch was over, then driven home to tell his wife. Ted’s parents had not been the same since. Archie felt their pain every time he saw them. There was guilt too – guilt that Ted had died and not him. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.
And it had happened so near the end of the Battle of Britain, as it was now called. That Sunday had been the last of the really big air battles; the Germans had continued to come over, men had continued to be shot down, but there had been no invasion. The barges massed in the ports across the Channel had been taken away and gradually the daylight battles petered out until, towards the end of October, Archie and the others at 599 Squadron realized they’d not once been scrambled in four days on the trot.
It was nine months now since Ted had died, and, sad though he felt whenever he thought of his friend, Archie recognized that life went on. Ted would not have wanted him to brood, as Tess often reminded him. Ah, Tess. How lucky he was to have her – and working in the Operations Room at Kenley too, where 599 Squadron were still stationed.
‘Having an air commodore as a father has its advantages,’ she had said when her posting came through. They still didn’t see each other as much as they’d like – she was in the Ops Room away from the airfield, and he was either flying or at dispersal, but they could meet up some evenings when she wasn’t on duty, and they usually managed to make their leave coincide. One day, he thought to himself, they would get married and, when the war was over, they would live happily ever after. He had written in his journal:
Really, I have a lot to be thankful for. Far better flying around the sky at three hundred and fifty miles an hour in one of the most beautiful machines ever built, than slogging my guts out on the ground. Think of those poor beggars who rescued me in France. If I have to die – and I don’t think I will – far better to do so in style.
And as a fighter pilot, rationing barely affected him, especially since they had started taking the fight to the enemy. Instead of waiting for the Germans to come over when they chose, it was the turn of the RAF to decide when attacks would occur. Since December, he’d had three hot meals a day. He felt a bit guilty that his family in Scotland were going hungry, but then, as his mother had said in a letter to him, he needed to keep his strength up if he were to fight to the best of his ability. And he had Tess. He would put up with quite a lot to keep hold of her.
It was a beautiful midsummer’s day. A few wispy white clouds, but otherwise blue all over. Archie and the other pilots had moved some of the old chairs from the dispersal hut outside, and he sat in one of these, his backside low in the seat, legs stretched out, his eyelids flickering gently in the brightness. A bee was busily visiting the daisies in the grass. In the distance an occasional clang of a spanner or wrench on metal could be heard. Otherwise, all was still and peaceful. No one spoke.
He was thinking about Tess – the perfect antidote to more maudlin thoughts of Ted; the ten days of leave they had had in May: the tour of Scotland they had talked of so often. It had been wonderful – a time he would never, ever forget, even if he lived to a hundred. He couldn’t imagine ever tiring of her. Mrs Tess Jackson. He liked that – it had a good ring to it.
The telephone rang, shattering the peace of the slumbering pilots. It was rarely a scramble these days, but, after the previous summer, living on a knife-edge waiting for the dreaded call, it still made Archie jump.
‘For you, Archie.’ Tom Wilson, the current Intelligence Officer, was standing by the open window, holding the receiver.
Archie eased himself out of his armchair with a sigh, wondering who it could be.
‘Archie?’
‘Hello. Tess!’
‘I know I shouldn’t be ringing on this line, but I was worried you’d forgotten about tonight.’
Tonight. Tonight? His mind raced. What was happening? Then he suddenly remembered: Diana Thorpe’s engagement party at her parents’ house near Tonbridge. He cursed to himself. How could he have been so stupid?
‘Of course I haven’t. How would I ever forget that?’
‘Well, I didn’t think you had, only I was wondering how we’re going to get there.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry, I’ve got it sorted,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Er, tell you what: why don’t you meet me outside the Mess at six-thirty. Sound all right?’
‘Perfect. And, Archie?’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t wait to see you. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
Archie put the receiver down and thought for a moment. Damn! He hadn’t a clue how they were going to get there. They’d left the Enfield at his parents’ house, and his Norton was in pieces after Barnie Fuller had crashed it two days before. The train would take too long, so would a bus, and it was unlikely he’d be able to find another motorbike in time. He gently thumped his head against the door frame, then ambled back outside. There had to be an alternative.
At six-thirty, Archie was pacing up and down outside the Mess when Tess appeared. She had changed from her WAAF uniform into a sleek, pale blue evening dress, with a small cape to keep her shoulders warm.
‘You look wonderful,’ said Archie, meaning it.
She smiled at him, and kissed him. ‘Thank you. So do you.’ Then she looked around and seeing no obvious means of transport said, ‘Did you manage to get a car?’
‘No – I’ve done better than that. Follow me.’ He took her hand and led her round the back of the Mess towards one of the airfield hangars.
‘Archie?’ A note of alarm in her voice.
‘Trust me,’ said Archie, and he beamed, then even gave her a quick wink. Round to the front, away from the main buildings of the airfield, stood a lone Spitfire, its wings and perspex canopy glinting in the early evening sun. Archie stopped and bowed.
‘My lady, your carriage awaits.’
‘Archie!’ exclaimed Tess, her hands clasping her face. ‘We can’t really be going in that!’
‘We can and we will. Come on, it’ll be fun. All this time, and you’ve never been in one. Don’t you think it’s about time?’
Slowly, her face turned from an expression of shocked horror to one of capricious delight. Inwardly, Archie gave a sigh of relief. Outwardly, he hoped he was maintaining the debonair attitude he’d been trying to convey.
‘Archie, I can’t believe it,’ said Tess, gripping his hand tightly and giving him one of her most radiant smiles.
Archie quickly manipulated the pumps, switched on the magnetos, then gave a signal to his ground crew, already waiting by the plane. They waved back, and then the propeller slowly and silently began to turn until, with a puff of smoke and flame from the exhaust stubs, the engine roared into life.
‘Come on,’ said Archie, ‘let’s go, although we’ve got to be quick.’ Glancing around, he led her briskly to the plane.
‘Thanks, you two,’ he said to Barlow and Lucas, who were now standing by the wing waiting for them.
‘Let the lady get in first, sir, then you,’ said Barlow.
Archie nodded, then clambered on to the wing and held out a hand for Tess. Holding up her dress, she took
his arm and allowed him to pull her up. Balancing gingerly beside him, she looked at him apprehensively, then hopped into the cockpit.
‘Good job you’re not some huge fat oaf,’ she said, laughing, as Archie lowered himself on to her lap.
‘Sorry, but there’s no other way. Normally, I’m sitting on a parachute, you see.’ He was a bit closer to the instrument panel than he was used to but, actually, his all-round vision was improved by sitting so far forward. Now he knew how people had managed before.
‘Are you all right? I’ll try not to squash you completely.’
‘I’m fine. Anyway, I’m far too excited to mind.’
Archie signalled to Barlow and Lucas, then slowly opened the throttle. The Merlin engine roared and the airframe shook, and they began rolling briskly towards the start of the runway.
‘Great thing about a Spit,’ shouted Archie, ‘they don’t need much to take off. Let’s hope no one spots you.’ He released the brakes and opened the throttle further, the engine responding with a deep, guttural bellow. They surged down the grass strip. Either side, the wings began to wobble with the increased power. It felt as though they were racing over a rough, potholed track. Then they were airborne, and the shaking had gone, replaced by a soothing gentle vibration. In moments, the horizon had slid beneath them as the Spitfire sped skywards.
Archie had to remind himself that he was not climbing into battle, but taking Tess on a gentle jaunt. The Spitfire always seemed to want to fly faster and turn tighter, revelling in its own speed and manoeuvrability; but today, he must rein her in. He gently pulled the canopy shut and turned them with the gentlest of sweeps. The horizon slowly tilted as they turned back and circled wide.
Battle of Britain Page 28
