Call to Duty

by Richard Herman

  Finally, Ruffy said, “We’re there.” Zack turned to the left and entered a racetrack pattern. They strained to see, hoping the first streaks of morning light in the east would help them find the other three Mosquitoes. The radio came alive. “I’ve got you in sight.” It was Sammy. Elation replaced worry when the other two Mosquitoes checked in. Now they could see better in the growing light.

  “I hope Jerry hasn’t tumbled to this yet,” Ruffy said.

  “We’ll know in about four minutes,” Zack told him. He could see a small town emerging out of the morning mist coming under the nose. “I hope that’s Leper,” Zack said. The small town of Leper had been chosen as the checkpoint to start their ingress into the target area. Ruffy told him that it was.

  “This is Tango leader,” Zack radioed. “Dance time starts in twenty seconds.” He firewalled the throttles and flew over the town with Sammy on his right wing. The second element of two Mosquitoes fell in behind them.

  When the Mosquitoes were three minutes out, the German air defense warning system received a warning that four unidentified aircraft were operating in the area well inland from Dunkirk. Since the German radars had not picked up any inbound hostile traffic coming from across the Channel into the sector since midnight, the plot officer hesitated. It had been the first quiet period they had experienced in over three weeks and everyone was exhausted, including him. The German major suspected the reported aircraft were Focke-Wulf 190s out of Abbeville on a dawn patrol. Rather than send a full alert out over the net, he brought the system to standby and had his telephone operator call the Jagdgeschwader at Abbeville for confirmation.

  When the Mosquitoes were two minutes out, the telephone operator told the major that the Focke-Wulfs were still on the ground and taxiing out for takeoff. Then a second report came in that four Mosquitoes were spotted nine miles southeast of Dunkirk and headed directly toward the port. “Four Mosquitoes in that quadrant?” he shouted. “That is not possible!” Despite his doubts, he put the system on full alert and sent the ack-ack crews scrambling for the gun pits. The Mosquitoes were seventy seconds out of Dunkirk.

  Zack had planned to start the attack with a run-in from the southeast just as the sun broke the eastern horizon. They dropped down over the town and cleared the rooftops by a few feet. At one point, Zack and Sammy bracketed the spire of a cathedral by flying around it on opposite sides. When they reached the water’s edge, they turned left forty-five degrees to a westerly heading, paralleled the docks and dropped even lower, barely ten feet above the smooth water of the inner harbor. For the first time, they could see the cavelike arched entrances to the pens set in the base of the concrete cliff. The low sun angle at their back spotlighted the tunnel and gave them a perfect aim point. Zack was going for the left entrance, Sammy for the right, and they would drop their bombs at point-blank range—seventy yards. The bombs would fly straight ahead like a rifle shot into the darkened tunnels while they pulled up to clear the forty-foot wall in front of them.

  “Bomb bay doors open!” Ruffy yelled. He glanced at the concrete dock they were paralleling and saw dark figures running for the sandbagged gun emplacements. They were too late. Ruffy glued his right eye onto the bombsight. The crosshairs were fixed on the tunnel opening—Zack had killed the drift and lined up perfectly. “Spot on!” he yelled as the indices started to align. When they came together, their two 500-pound bombs would automatically release.

  Tracers erupted from a gun emplacement that was on top of the wall and directly in front of them. “Nail those bastards!” Zack yelled as he lifted K for King up to fifty feet. He had shifted targets. They had to get the four barrel Vierlings-Geschutzen cannon or the two Mosquitoes running in behind them would be setting ducks for the gunners.

  “Come right, come right,” Ruffy told him. “Steady, steady.” The indices came together and the Mosquito shuddered as the bombs fell free. Zack smashed the trigger on the twenty-millimeter cannon and flew directly at the rapidly firing cannon. Then they were off, skimming over the low shed on the roof of the pens that housed the French workers and prisoners. They didn’t see their bombs explode. Zack wracked the Mosquito into a hard left turn over the town to check on his flight and saw the second two Mosquitoes that were still inbound on their bomb run.

  “Where’s Sammy?” Zack asked. A deep sense of worry for his wingman drove out any concern for his own safety. He had planned this raid, led it, and felt a deep responsibility for all his wingmen.

  “I lost him,” Ruffy said. “But we got the bastards.” He could clearly see a smoking hole where the antiaircraft battery had been.

  The two Mosquitoes lifted over the high concrete face of the pens and raced for open water and safety. Smoke belched out of the tunnel entrances as Zack turned to follow them, three miles in trail.

  “Bandits ten o’clock high,” Ruffy called. Swooping down onto the two Mosquitoes in front of them were four Focke-Wulf 190 Butcherbirds. The boys from Abbeville had arrived.

  “Bandits at your eight o’clock high!” Zack called out on the radio. He altered course to the left, splitting the distance between the Focke-Wulfs and the two Mossies and firewalled the throttles. As expected, the two Mosquitoes accelerated straight ahead and moved farther apart, relying on their superior speed at low level to outrun the Germans. But the 190s had the height advantage and were screaming down in high-speed dives with enough speed to catch the Mosquitoes. But they would only have one pass and then the Mosquitoes would have the speed advantage and be able to scamper home free. Zack watched in horror as the engagement developed and, with a sickening finality, realized the 190s would gun the two Mossies out of the sky. I won’t lose any more! he swore to himself.

  “Turn into ’em!” he yelled over the radio. He pushed K for King for all it was worth and hit the button to the nitrous oxide bottle, overboosting the two engines. The two Merlins responded, howling in a high-pitched wail.

  “Understand, Tango Leader,” came the cool reply as the two Mosquitoes turned into the threat. Both started to jink back and forth as the planes rushed at each other. Now all six planes were firing as they merged in a head-on cannon attack. One Focke-Wulf disintegrated in pieces as twenty-millimeter shells slammed into its engine. The Mossie flew straight through the debris.

  “Oh, my God,” Ruffy said, just loud enough for Zack to hear. Then: “He made it!” The Mossie was still flying and disengaging, apparently undamaged. The second Mosquito was also clear but was trailing a white contrail of glycol from the port engine. “They got his radiator,” Ruffy said. They could see the Mosquito slow when it lost the engine. Two of the Focke-Wulfs turned on him, once again able to close.

  “Hang on!” Zack yelled as he closed the distance. They were only a few feet above the waves and the rough ride was slamming them into their seats and throwing them against their lap and shoulder harnesses. “Where’s the other fucker?”

  “No joy,” Ruffy said as he tried to get a visual on the one unaccounted-for 190.

  “He’s in the sun,” Zack said. He sensed, rather than knew, that was where the third 190 would be.

  “Tallyho!” Ruffy shouted. “Coming out of the sun! At four o’clock, on us.”

  Zack turned right fifteen degrees to get a visual on the 190 coming at them and immediately turned back onto the other two Germans. The one look had been enough for him to sort out the geometry of the developing engagement. He would close on the two 190s that were converging onto the damaged Mossie before the lone 190 could reach a guns-firing position on him. “Watch him,” Zack grunted as he concentrated on the two 190s that were closing on the damaged Mosquito. He was certain that the two 190s hadn’t seen him. Why doesn’t the bastard coming at us warn them? he thought. He would never know that the German pilot was a nineteen-year-old boy fresh out of pilot training and on his first combat mission. In the heat of the battle, the teenager had target fixation on K for King and had lost track of the fight.

  What happened next had none of the chivalry or ga
llantry the public imagination credited to pilots. Unseen, Zack closed to the seven o’clock of the nearest Focke-Wulf 190 and gunned him out of the sky with his machine guns. The German pilot never saw what killed him. It was the work of an assassin and Zack felt no sense of elation. The other Focke-Wulf did see K for King and turned into the new threat. They passed head-on, guns firing, both missing. Zack skidded K for King across the wave tops, certain that the 190 on his tail was now in range. He wracked the throttles back and pulled back on the stick, causing the Mosquito to suddenly slow and balloon. The novice 190 pilot had not been expecting that maneuver and was spit out in front, passing underneath. The American kicked the pedals, ruddered over and squeezed off a gunshot. The .303 Brownings did their work and tore into the Focke-Wulf. The agile German fighter disappeared in a blazing explosion. But K for King was too close and flew through the fiery cloud, momentarily blinding Zack.

  Instinctively, Zack pulled back on the stick, gaining height. He felt Ruffy’s hand over his on the stick. “It’s all right,” the navigator said as he leveled them off. A red glow burned into Zack’s returning eyesight. His vision cleared and he gasped. A red haze was licking over the front of the windscreen and the tops of the wings. They were on fire—the one thing he feared most in the wooden aircraft. But the controls and instruments were perfectly normal.

  “I’ve got it,” Zack said and Ruffy’s touch disappeared. Again, he scanned the instruments and the wings. Instinctively, he jammed the throttles forward. The Merlins responded and they accelerated crisply to 270 knots as he dropped them back onto the deck. He was hoping speed or spray from the ocean’s surface would snuff out whatever was burning. It worked. Then he noticed that the rudder was not responding to commands from the pedals. He wanted to weave to check his six o’clock position and see if the one remaining Focke-Wulf had found them. But without the rudder, it was not to be. He inched the throttles forward as he checked the Mossie’s controls. Other than the dead rudder, they were fine. Now speed had to save them. He lifted K for King up to two hundred feet and ran for home as an acrid smell invaded the cockpit. Were they still burning? “What’s the closest airfield?” he asked. “We need to get on the ground.”

  “Manston,” Ruffy answered. “Set course two-nine-zero. Five minutes to landfall. Use the lighthouse as an initial approach fix. Piece of cake.” He hit the IFF switch so they would be identified as a friendly aircraft to British radar.

  “Stalwart fellow,” Zack mumbled. He punched at the buttons on the TR. 1133 radio control unit and changed to the recovery frequency.

  The sharp smell was still with them when they saw the low headlands of the English coast and overflew the lighthouse. Magically, the wide expanse of concrete that was the runway appeared in front of them. Because Manston was the primary emergency recovery base for battle-damaged aircraft returning from raids over the continent, the British engineers had made the runway as wide as it was long. It was a simple matter of flying over the lighthouse, dropping the gear, and descending. There would be a runway wherever they touched down.

  Zack dropped the undercarriage and they made a smooth landing on the mains. The numerous crash wagons and ambulances spotted around the field were reassuring. He braked to a halt and shut the engines down. Ruffy popped the hatch and clambered out in a headlong rush. He was careful to avoid the right propeller that was still spinning down. Zack was right behind him. They ran away from the Mossie, afraid that it would explode. Nothing happened and they stared at the aircraft. It was totally blackened like a scorched potato. “We were damn lucky,” Ruffy said. “I could have sworn we were on fire.”

  “We were,” Zack said as they cautiously approached their Mosquito. Zack ran his hand over the plywood fuselage and examined the linen fabric that covered the plane like a thin outer layer of skin. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “The madapalon burned, nothing else.” He checked the rudder. The fabric covering the framework of the tail fin was totally burned away. “There’s the control problem with the rudder,” he said. “That shouldn’t take long to fix.”

  They retrieved their flying kits out of the cockpit and started the long walk into the operations section. A maintenance officer gave them a lift and discussed the condition of their aircraft. He told them that the plane would be flyable in two or three days as soon as the tail surfaces were recovered. “It happens all the time,” he told them. “The Intelligence wallahs will want your combat report. Then call your squadron and report in. They’ll probably have you sit on your finger here until we get it fixed. All very routine.”

  A scholarly-looking flying officer in his early forties met them for the debrief with Intelligence. Cups of tea appeared when he sat them down and he methodically recorded their answers to his questions. “When did you last observe your number two?” he asked. Zack hesitated as he sought the answer. When had he last seen Sammy? Then it hit him. His wingman had simply disappeared. What had happened to him?

  Ruffy answered. “On the run to target. We were abeam the concrete loading piers and he was to our starboard, on the seaward side, slightly behind us.”

  “Then you were definitely ahead of your number two.”

  Still Zack could not answer. “That’s correct,” Ruffy said. He then described how they had dropped their bombs on the cannon that was shooting at them from the roof of the E-boat pens. “We had to get those bastards,” Ruffy explained, “or they would have gotten our number three and four.”

  “So you released two bombs on the gun emplacement?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And for what time delay were they fused?”

  “Four seconds to allow time for us to escape the frag pattern if we missed the entrances and they exploded in the open.”

  “I see.”

  And so did Zack. “Sammy was behind us and could have flown right into the frag from our bombs.” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  “If he were lagging too far behind, yes, that is a possibility.”

  “Oh my God,” Zack moaned. “K for King was going like a…” Words failed him and he stood up, knocking his chair over.

  “It is only a possibility,” the older man said. “Luck of the game.”

  Zack bolted to his feet and hurried from the room. Outside, he fought for breath. With a will he did not know he possessed he forced himself to move, to think of other things. He found a telephone in a nearby Nissen hut and called his squadron. As the maintenance officer had predicted, they were told to wait until K for King was fixed and then fly to their new base at Hunsdon. He went in search of Ruffy, thankful for the activity, the need to do anything however trivial. He found Ruffy outside the officers mess talking to Wilhelmina Crafton. Damn, he thought, what the hell is she doing here? She keeps coming back like the plague. He turned to walk away, not wanting to speak to her.

  “Zack,” Ruffy called, “please. Over here.” His voice was strained.

  He walked over to them. “Well,” he said, putting a front over his feelings, “what brings you here?”

  “I’m posted here now,” she said, “and I happened to see Mr. Ruffum…” Security barred her from revealing that she had set up a station at Manston to monitor the Pas de Calais operation. The SOE had discovered that because of a fluke in the frequency wave propagation of the radios their agents in France were using, the best reception was in the vicinity of Manston or Belfast, Ireland. The SOE had never considered the latter location.

  “There’s bad news,” Ruffy said. He shook his head and walked away to give them some privacy.

  “My grandfather…” she began, “passed away.” She turned her head so he wouldn’t see her pain. “I know that you were fond of him….” She couldn’t say more.

  “What happened?” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  She steeled herself to tell him. “A Doodlebug…one of those damn pilotless rockets…. He saw it when the motor cut out and it fell on our village. He turned into a madman and was everywhere…organizing the f
irefighters, digging people out, making sure all the children were safe. He…he wouldn’t stop until everything that could be done had been done. He finally went home to bed. He died in his sleep.”

  “Why did he do all that?” Zack asked. “He was a sick old man.”

  Then it came to her. The American didn’t really understand. She had to explain it to him. Now her own hurt and frustration came out and focused on him. “They were his people and he cared for them. He knew their names, their problems, their children. All you saw were people divided by class…a duke surrounded by privilege and comfort while the common people around him struggled to get through each day. He wasn’t wealthy. In fact, he was nearly bankrupt and deep in debt. He did what he could for them and tried to provide them with a livelihood. But the modern world was beyond him and he hated the twentieth century. All he could do was give them a sense of belonging and place.” She paused to let that sink in. “Two values you Americans…” She bit her words off when she saw the stricken look on his face.

  “Go ahead, say it,” Zack said. “Two values we wouldn’t understand.” He looked at her and raised his hand, wanting to touch her, not sure how to say he was sorry. “You’re right, I didn’t understand.” He looked away and stared across the field. “I am sorry.” When he turned, Willi had disappeared into the building. He suddenly felt drained of emotion and purpose. Sammy, now the duke, how many more? he thought. Chantal? A sense of loss engulfed him and he froze, unable to move.