New Heavens

by Boris Senior

  MISCHIEF IN THE AIR

  After a hundred hours of advanced flying instruction, I had my first night flight. At night, the air is usually smooth. To be up on your own, high above the lights on the ground, gives a feeling of being divorced from the earth and your environment while you are suspended in an immense black vault with no beginning and no end. The muted glow of the instrument panel lends a quietness and intimacy to the mood in the cockpit as you glance from the instruments to the world outside. All sounds sound different at night, more muted, and even voices were more subdued. I always felt more at one with my aircraft at night than during the day. The conclusion to a night flight invariably gave me a sense of achievement, and the gooseneck paraffin flares on the side of the runway lent an unusually dramatic atmosphere to our familiar environment.

  The Harvard (AT-6) trainers we graduated to were much superior to the Tiger Moths in elementary flying school, and this was the reason I was nearly washed out of the course. Shortly before the great day of the wings parade, we had to make a long solo, triangular cross-country flight. During the flight, I spotted a yellow Tiger Moth flying on a course well below me across my track. Only one of the cockpits was occupied, and assuming that it was a junior pupil on a cross-country flight from the elementary flying school, I could not resist buzzing him repeatedly, thinking that I was showing the sprog some ace flying. I was a little surprised that he did not seem fazed by the mock attacks I made on him, merely continuing to fly a straight and level course. I saw his head in the open cockpit probably giving me a baleful look as I dived down on him at high speed from above. After attending funerals at flying school, I have come to the conclusion that the most dangerous period in one’s flying career is after solo and completing a number of hours at flying school. That is when you are convinced that you are probably the hottest pilot around.

  About a week later, I was called into the base commander’s office and was told that I had been seen dangerously buzzing a Tiger Moth flown by no less than a colonel who was the aide-de-camp to Prime Minister General Smuts. He had made a note of the number of my aircraft and reported me. A court martial followed, ending in a sentence of ten days detention. I remember standing at attention facing the judge in my short pants and struggling to keep my knees from knocking together. I spent the time in a cell in a military police post. One memory that I have of that confinement was that the door to my cell had no handle on the inside making me feel completely cut off from the world outside. It occurred to me that it would be very unpleasant should a fire break out. However, the most important point was that I was not going to be washed out of my flying course and merely faced a delay of one course, about six weeks.

  Finally, the great day came for the wings parade. It was already getting late in the war, and I was concerned that the fighting might end before I could get to a fighter squadron. After rehearsals for the wings parade, we were at last ready for the ceremony, which came after eighteen months of hard training, dropping off, by the way, three-quarters of those who had appeared at the beginning for the aircrew medical and aptitude tests.

  My mother and my brother came for the ceremony, and Leon and his wife gave me a silver identity bracelet wishing me luck. As it turned out, we both needed luck in the final months of the war, for Leon never made it and I very nearly didn’t either. I was awarded the rank of second lieutenant, and though I wore my rank proudly, it was nothing compared to the wings on my left breast. I was graded as a fighter pilot, a target for which I had aimed for years.

  KITTYHAWK

  From the advanced flying school, I was posted to the Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Waterkloof near Pretoria. Here we were treated as officers and gentlemen, having rooms with hot and cold water. We ate in a mess at separate tables with food served by waiters. By this time I had bought a small secondhand Morris Eight car and could drive to Johannesburg on weekends and often again during the week.

  At Waterkloof I flew my first fighter aircraft, the P-40 Kittyhawk and the Hawker Hurricane. The high performance of these fighters was exhilarating after having flown only training aircraft. As they were single-seat aircraft, we immediately went solo with surprisingly few mishaps.

  To me the ex–Battle of Britain Hurricanes faded quickly into the background after flying the Kittyhawk. This aircraft seemed to kindle in me, and I believe in most of us, a blind faith and affection. Being American it had most of the human comforts that could be crammed into a restricted fighter cockpit, including enough leg room and ample space on either side of the pilot’s seat. The canopy also could be rolled back to leave a comfortably large aperture when entering or leaving the cockpit. The Kittyhawk was a beautiful airplane with classic lines. The pointed nose, painted like the gaping maw of a shark, and the large tail made her stand out among other fighters. The history of her almost identical sister aircraft, the Tomahawk, used by China in the war against the Japanese invader in 1941–42 by General Chennault’s Flying Tigers, lent a special aura to the Kitty.

  OTU was great, and here I experienced my first real blackouts when pulling out of high-speed dives. But by far the best part was the dogfight training. We were encouraged to practice by selecting a partner and entering into a mad pursuit of one another, twisting and turning, diving and zooming in the skies. This routine, made more precarious by the large number of dogfights in the same general area, did sometimes claim victims.

  One of our instructors was Lieutenant Robinson, an experienced fighter pilot. Despite his English-sounding name, he was a dyed-in-the-wool, wiry Afrikaner who, during his tour of operations in North Africa, had been shot down in error by a P-38 Lightning flown by a U.S. pilot who was new to operations in the area and mistook him for a Jerry. Poor Robbie, after having survived a tough tour of operations in North Africa, was killed when an OTU pupil collided with him over Pretoria, his hometown.

  After the OTU course, we received embarkation leave before departing for Egypt to await a transfer to a squadron. Leon had just completed his third tour of instructing at various training bases in South Africa and got a posting to an OTU in Palestine before transferring to a bomber squadron. I gave up my embarkation leave to leave for Cairo in the same aircraft with him.

  EGYPT

  The flight north to Egypt took five days in a Dakota [C-47] with four night stops: northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, Kenya, and the Sudan. Everywhere, Leon and I were looked upon as unique—two brothers wearing wings and flying together to a theater of war. We were more than once asked to sign a visitor’s book. The long flight gave us views of Africa’s changing landscape, changes only in degree, for it was just different kinds of bush all the way up to the Sudan. Thereafter, the expanse of desert and sand was broken only by the life-giving Nile, which kept us company for most of the time after Lake Victoria. During the long leg of 2,000 kilometers through the Sudan, the forsaken towns of Juba and Malakal were the only signs of civilization in the endless wastes of the desert.

  In Khartoum we stayed at the Grand Hotel for the night, and we noted with surprise the tall, jet-black Sudanese waiters dressed in white galabiyas with a red sash and red tar-bush headgear. I was introduced to the British way of coping with the heat of Sudan using many huge ceiling fans in the lounge of the hotel. In Khartoum I had my first experience of life in an outpost of the British Empire. That was in a nightclub on a roof, replete with a cabaret and tired girls from France, who were obviously at their last stop before moving to an older profession. After Khartoum we stopped to refuel in Wadi Halfa, a dry desert town in the middle of featureless sandy wastes. A blast of heat like a furnace seared our faces as the door of the Dakota was opened.

  We eventually arrived in Cairo and headed to the air force camp at Almaza, some miles beyond the eastern outskirts of Cairo in the desert, a flat and uninteresting scene. We were housed in tents in the sand, and here we made our acquaintance with the huge Egyptian onions, which were fed to us interminably and which served also as the raw material for Stella beer. Commuting to the city from
Almaza was by fast electric train, which looked like a line of oversized city trams. On the half-hour journey we got a good view of Cairo. The filth and backwardness was a shock. The people of the city used the gutters on the roads as toilets. No one paid attention as men in their galabiyas and women in their shifts simply squatted, deftly did their bodily functions, then got up and walked off.

  Our first confrontation with the families in the poorer quarters was when, through the train windows, we were puzzled at seeing babies with huge black eyes. On closer scrutiny we found that the large black patches were swarms of flies! The mothers holding the babies appeared to be oblivious to the danger of infection, and this is probably one of the reasons for the great amount of trachoma in the country.

  The Heliopolis tram terminus was where we alighted in downtown Cairo and where young boys waited to beg or sell us trinkets. I fancied a short leather cane, which was the fashion among British officers at the time. I had seen one locally made that had a long sword cunningly hidden inside. A quick glance from me at one of the canes was enough to reveal my interest, and the boy asked for five Egyptian pounds. I had already learned not to react, and he followed me from place to place, reducing the price from time to time while I remained silent. After a week of his waiting for me at the terminus, we finally did the deal at thirty-five piastre, less than half a pound. Apart from their prices and shameless bargaining, however, the Egyptian boys were harmless and charming.

  Masses of people everywhere and the nagging vendors of everything from “nice French girl, very sanitary, very hygienic, sir” to perfume, ivory chess sets, and anything one could possibly think of were novel at first but became tiresome. I found it hard to avoid their pestering until an old Cairo hand suggested that when they name a price, to offer a much higher one. That proved to be the only way to be free of them for they would slouch off saying madjnum (crazy).

  I pitied the boys of seven and eight years, who spent their lives in the Mouski Bazaar making silver-filigree jewelry. When we traveled by train, we saw there was an ongoing battle between the railway police and the Egyptian boys, who rode on the roof without paying. Shoe-shine boys accosted us constantly, and if we refused their services when in a quiet street, they splashed our shoes with mud from tins they carried as marketing tools.

  Cairo is alluring with its Arab music, the men’s flowing robes, shops open until 11 o’clock at night, and trams like floating masses of humanity, with passengers clinging like locusts to the outside of the car in such numbers that the vehicles are entirely hidden beneath them.

  The South African Officer’s Club was in the center of the city and a convenient place for us to spend time; it was a microcosm of the life of pampered South African whites with Sudanese staff who saw to your every comfort from the moment you walked in, running your bath, pressing your uniform, and serving drinks and food.

  There was little nightlife, only the Badia Cabaret with young attractive girls dancing on the stage, covered from tip to toe in gold paint. They were chaperoned by their mothers, and my request to meet one such beauty for a drink or a meal was firmly rejected by her mother who speedily interposed herself between us. It was also strange to see Egyptian men from villages and strange to the city and its nightlife getting excited by the girls’ dancing and rushing forward to the stage while blowing passionate kisses.

  In perfume shops the merchants seated us like maharajas and served Turkish coffee while we were induced to sample every fragrance in the shop. Many of us fell for the slick marketing trick, and our girls at home received small bottles of perfume often containing only colored tea.

  The color and the vibrancy of the great city with its millions was overwhelming for someone like me, shielded from the masses by the orderly society of South Africa with its smaller cities. I was also separated by the race barriers from the poorer blacks, their trials and tribulations hidden from us so completely that we led a sheltered and, in retrospect, unreal existence.

  To be suddenly thrown into the maelstrom of Cairo’s millions who tend to live a large part of their lives in the street was a shock to us, and we were troubled by the adversities of the people among whom we were stationed. Too often, however, we didn’t heed their situation and were contemptuous of what appeared to be their strange, sometimes even reprehensible, customs and morals. On one occasion, though, I visited the home of a girl who belonged to a wealthy family in the Cairo suburb of Zamalek and found that they had nothing to learn about luxurious living from the South African well-to-do classes. The rich and fashionable lifestyle in the luxurious villas in Zamalek and Gezireh were in stark contrast to the abject poverty and filth elsewhere in Cairo.

  SPITFIRE

  After waiting impatiently in Cairo for news of an assignment to a fighter squadron, I was posted to a conversion course on Spitfires in Fayid, near the Suez Canal. There, I made my acquaintance with the legendary Spitfire. The Spit VB with the clipped wingtips was a small aircraft with a cockpit looking like an afterthought, everything cramped and seemingly added at the last minute. For example, the handle for retracting the undercarriage was on the right side of the cockpit down near the floor in an inconvenient place below your leg, demanding a change of hands at the critical times of takeoff and landing. The flying characteristics were superb, however, and the performance of the Spitfire was untouched in many respects by any fighter at the time. It had a rate of climb that surpassed anything in the air and could outmaneuver any fighter of the time. Its many idiosyncrasies demanded that it be treated with extreme delicacy, and it could be compared only to a dainty female of great beauty and sensitivity.

  Because of its very long nose and narrow undercarriage, landing was not easy, for it necessitated a curving turn in the last phase of the approach. Otherwise, it was difficult to see the runway. This curving turn had to be maintained until just before touchdown, not an easy maneuver at that stage of the flight. The Spitfire had an elliptical wing, which was also unique. Ground attack roles were a different matter. Though it was used more often for those missions toward the end of the war in Europe, it suffered greatly, like other water-cooled engine fighters, from anti-aircraft fire if hit anywhere under the belly where the unprotected Glycol coolant flowed.

  One of the more irksome features was the inability to open the canopy at any speed above 120 miles per hour. My first flight was alarming, for I hadn’t noted this feature in the pilot’s manual, and while coming in for my first landing at Fayid, I tried to open the canopy on the approach. All my efforts were to no avail leaving me close to panic with the feeling that I was trapped in the cockpit. I should, of course, have paid more attention to the instructions before that first flight.

  After Fayid I had the choice of either waiting in Cairo for a posting to a squadron or, in the meantime, ferrying Corsair fighters from Egypt to India. Though I was interested in flying this gull-wing radial-engine navy fighter, with some hesitation because of my interest in seeing India, I chose the former option. I feared that a vacancy might come in a squadron, and I might miss it.

  In the end, my hunch proved to be right, for soon I got a posting to 250 (Sudan) Squadron of the Desert Air Force in Italy. As it was a Royal Air Force squadron, I was to be seconded from the South African Air Force to the RAF. Within a few days I flew to Bari in southern Italy.

  ITALY

  Bari was my first stop in Italy, and for me, it was a disappointing first view of Europe. In late September 1944, at the onset of a freezing winter, the rains created mud and filth everywhere. The towns under the Allied occupation looked gray and suffering with their shuttered windows and bolted doors. Many of the buildings were crumbling from the persistent rain.

  The cities were sad reflections of what they had once been. They were crowded with aimless groups of poorly clad men and women in wooden clogs. The dimly lit shops offered little, while the women engaged in the never-ending barter of eggs for military issue cigarettes.

  Only in the largest cities was there some nightlife, with off
icers and other ranks defying military orders and fraternizing with the local Italian population. Some of the cabarets I later visited in Rome were of an unexpectedly high standard with the acrobats and dancers bravely trying to preserve their artistic level and their dignity amid the drunkenness and the groping. The servicemen were looking for sex but were often also seeking tenderness, sentimentality, and romance. The opera was crowded. There were jarring cheers and applause bursting from the masses in uniform at the appearance of a comely singer. A raucous disclaim of talent. The nightclubs were awash with cheap asti spumante white wine, and the performers tried to put on a good front in the atmosphere of darkness, tobacco smoke, and drunkenness.

  In Italy I found the American servicemen very different from the British. Usually, Allied troops got on well, but once in Rome during a night’s frivolity in a large nightclub, a drunken American infantry major rushed from table to table, scowling threateningly as he asked all the RAF pilots if they had been flying a P-47 Thunderbolt in operations anywhere near the front line on the Adriatic side of Italy. I soon discovered that he was searching for fighter-bombers with markings different from those of the United States, which had mistakenly attacked his unit, killing some of his comrades. Fortunately I had been flying P-51s and P-40s, and I prefer not to think of what might have happened to me had I told him that I was flying P-47s.

  I walked back to the hotel with two RAF men, and I recall my exaggerated praise of Britain alone in its stand against Hitler for so long and my disappointment with the United States for having entered the war so late. There is no doubt that had it not been for Britain in its stand in the early days of the war, the world would have fallen to the Nazis. Neither can there be doubt that without the power and industrial strength of the United States, Britain and her allies would not have been able to withstand the forces of Nazi evil.