by W E Johns
Thus Biggles reasoned, putting himself in the Nazi commander’s place. But for the British prisoners at Wadi Umbo, he would, even with the limited force at his disposal, have carried out an offensive patrol over the enemy camp, but he dare not risk killing the prisoners there.
However, even with these thoughts on his mind, Biggles did not waste time, but kept every man on the station as hard at work as the heat would permit, digging trenches for cover against bombs and piling sand around the store dumps. Apart from the three Spitfires he had no defence against air attack. The machine he feared most was the Messerschmitt 110, a formidable three-seater fighter-bomber, capable of doing an immense amount of damage. As far as he knew, von Zoyton had only one, for which he was thankful. The oasis was an easy target to find, yet owing to the heat of the sun he dare not move either men or machines out of it. If the bomber came over they would have to take what came down – apart from what the three Spitfires could do to prevent the bomber from operating with accuracy. He knew roughly when the enemy would come over – if they were coming.
‘I don’t think they’ll come in the heat of the day,’ he told Flight-Sergeant Smythe, who had followed him round the camp on a final inspection. ‘Von Zoyton will hardly expect to attack us without suffering some damage, and if he’s as clever as I think he is, he won’t risk subjecting his pilots to a possible forced landing on the homeward journey, knowing that anyone so landing would probably die of thirst before help could reach him. If he’s coming it will be just before sundown; then anyone cracking up between here and Wadi Umbo would have a chance to get home in the cool of the night. If anything starts, blow your whistle. That will be the signal for the men to take cover. There’s nothing else we can do. They understand that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Lord Lissie and Mr. O’Hara will fly the Spitfires with me if trouble starts.’
‘So I understand, sir.’
Biggles lit a cigarette and strolled back to the northern fringe of the oasis. In the west, the sun was sinking like a big red toy balloon towards the horizon, and he began to hope seriously that von Zoyton was not coming – at any rate, before Angus in the Defiant got back. That would give him another machine.
As events turned out, this hope was not to be fulfilled. His surmise regarding von Zoyton’s tactics was correct. A hum, so slight as to be almost inaudible, reached his ears, and he gave an exclamation of annoyance. For a moment he stood staring up at the sky, but seeing nothing he turned and raced towards his machine.
In the camp the flight-sergeant’s whistle shrilled.
When Biggles reached his aircraft Bertie and Tex were already in their machines, their airscrews whirling.
‘Watch my tail, as far as you can!’ he shouted as he slipped into his parachute harness. ‘If the bomber is there I’m going to get it.’
With that he swung himself into the cockpit, started the engine, taxied tail-up to the open sand and swept like a winged torpedo into the air. As he climbed steadily for height, swinging round towards the north-west, a glance in the reflector showed the two other Spitfires close behind him.
He now concentrated his attention on the sky, seeking the enemy, and soon made out two ME 109’s flying together at about eight thousand feet. To the three Spitfires they may have looked, as no doubt they were intended to look, easy victims; but Biggles was not deceived by so transparent a ruse. Long experience, amounting almost to instinct, made him lift his eyes to the sky overhead, and it did not take him long to spot four more ME 109’s flying in line ahead at about ten thousand feet above the two lower machines.
‘Six,’ he mused. ‘That’s probably the lot. Von Zoyton can’t have many machines left.’
But even now he was not satisfied. Where was the bomber? He felt certain that if it was serviceable von Zoyton would use it, because one well-placed bomb might do more damage to the oasis than all the single-seaters. But where was it?
Keyed up now for the fight that was inevitable, he half turned in his seat and studied the air below him. For a moment he saw nothing; then a movement far below, on the far side of the oasis, caught his eye, and he recognized the sinister shape of the ME 110. The six fighters were obviously intended to attract attention to themselves while the bomber did its work. That was why, Biggles realized, the fighters had as yet made no move towards him, although they must have seen him. They were trying to draw him away from the oasis.
Turning his tail to the Nazi fighters he streaked for the bomber, now steepening its dive towards its target. It was some distance away, and he hardly hoped to reach it before it dropped its first bomb, but he thought he might get close enough to upset the pilot’s aim. A swift glance behind and upward showed the six Messerschmitts, their ruse having failed, coming down behind him – the top four almost vertically. Bertie and Tex were turning to meet them.
Biggles was sorry to leave the two Spitfires, but the destruction of the bomber was imperative if the oasis was not to be blitzed out of existence, and he might never get a better chance. His lips tightened to a thin line as, with his eyes on the bomber, he held his control column forward in a power-dive as steep as the aircraft would stand. The bomber was still going down, too, apparently unaware of his presence.
It may have been that one of the gunners in the bomber actually helped him by calling his pilot’s attention to him by opening fire. Tracers streamed upwards, cutting glittering white lines through the air between the two machines; but the range was still too long for effective shooting, and Biggles merely increased the pressure of his right foot on the rudder-bar so that the Spitfire swerved just enough to take it clear of the bullets. At the same time the pilot of the ME 110, who must have heard the guns at the rear of his own machine, looked up and saw death coming like a meteor – at least, so Biggles supposed, for the bomber started to turn away, dropping a stick of bombs that fell harmlessly across the area of sand that had been used for a landing ground.
This told Biggles much. He knew that the rear gunner was new to the business, probably a beginner, or he would have held his fire; and the pilot’s swerve indicated clearly that he was nervous. Biggles acted accordingly, deliberately adding to the enemy pilot’s anxiety by firing a short burst, not so much with any real hope of hitting the bomber as to ‘rattle’ the pilot.
The Nazi responded as Biggles hoped he would – in fact, as he was almost sure he would. In a not unnatural desire to save his life, or at any rate improve his position, he abandoned his target and tried to get under the protective curtain of the 109’s. From his erratic flying it was apparent that he was flustered. A fleeting glance in his reflector showed Biggles three of the 109’s engaged with Bertie and Tex, while the other three came tearing down on his tail to save the bomber. Clearly, he would have to finish the bomber before they reached him.
At this moment the pilot of the ME 110 made a blunder which brought a bleak smile to Biggles’ lips. He started to climb steeply towards his comrades, losing speed accordingly, and offering an easier target. Biggles was travelling at a rate that jammed his head tight against the head-rest. His zoom at the bottom of the dive brought momentary black-out, but when he could see clearly again the bomber appeared to be floating towards him, slowly, like a fish swimming lazily, so fast was he overtaking it. With cold deliberation he took it in the cross-lines of his sight, waited until he was well inside effective range, and then fired a long burst.
As the bullets struck the machine the enemy pilot turned flat at a speed that could have given his gunners no chance of returning the fire. Indeed, centrifugal force probably made it impossible for them to move at all. Biggles knew it, and seized the opportunity thus presented. Half rolling at the top of his zoom he brought his nose round and raked the bomber from airscrew to tailskid. The convulsive jerk of the machine told him that the pilot had been hit. For a moment it hung in the air, wallowing like a rolling porpoise, its airscrew clawing vainly at the super-heated atmosphere; then its nose swung down in a vicious stall which ended in
a spin.
Biggles turned away from the stricken machine to meet the three ME 109’s that had followed in his wake. He had watched them in his reflector out of the tail of his eye. Behind them another machine was plunging earthward trailing smoke and flame. Another was gliding away. He could see only one Spitfire, but there was no time to look for the other. The three oncoming ME’s, flying abreast, were launching a flank attack, and were already within five hundred feet, so he turned to take them head-on, firing at the same time. For a split second tracers flew between the Spitfire and the Messerchmitts. All four machines were shooting, and Biggles could feel bullets smashing through his wings. With his finger still on the firing button he held his machine steady and waited for the collision that seemed inevitable. He had no intention of turning away, for the first to turn away in head-on attack admits inferiority, and one of the first traditions laid down by the Flying Corps in the early days of air combat was ‘never turn’.
At the last instant the Messerschmitts split and hurtled past on either side of him. Biggles was round with the speed of light. Choosing the centre machine, he clung to its tail, firing short bursts until a shadow falling across him made him kick out his foot and fling the joystick hard over. He was only just in time. A Messerschmitt flashed past, its tracer streaking through the spot where the Spitfire should have been but was not.
Biggles looked around, although one of the most difficult things in a dogfight is to keep in touch with events. A Messerschmitt with a Spitfire on its tail was racing towards the north. Three more Messerschmitts were scattered about the sky, converging on him – two of them from above, which he did not like. Still, he was not prepared to take the defensive, so, turning on the machine below him, he went down like a thunderbolt in a deliberate attempt to intimidate the pilot and so get him in a disadvantageous position before opening fire, for he knew he must be getting short of ammunition. He succeeded. The Messerschmitt dived, and in a desperate effort to escape the pilot pulled up and over in a terrific loop; but if by this means he hoped to throw the Spitfire off his tail he was doomed to disappointment. Biggles followed him into the loop, but at the top pulled the joystick into his stomach, so that his loop, instead of being a true circle, was cut to an oval. The Messerschmitt, completing its loop, was about to pass immediately below him. Biggles stood his machine on its nose and from a vertical position opened fire. The Messerschmitt flew straight into the stream of bullets.
Biggles had no time to watch the effect of his fire, for even while he was shooting he felt bullets hitting his own machine, and was obliged to roll out of the way. Looking round quickly for his assailant, he was just in time to see a Messerschmitt go to pieces in the air, some of the splinters narrowly missing another ME that had evidently been keeping it company. Thoughts crowded into Biggles’ brain, although to his racing nerves the scene seemed to be moving in slow motion. He wondered why the pilot of the broken machine, who was falling like a stone, did not use his parachute. He wondered what had caused the machine to disintegrate. A moment later he knew. An aircraft flashed across his nose. It was the Defiant, the gunner in the rear seat crouching over his gun. Angus had arrived.
Biggles took a deep breath, and looking around saw that the battle was over. A Spitfire was approaching from the north, gliding down to land. Two specks in the sky, fast disappearing, were all that remained of the Messerschmitts. Only he and the Defiant remained over the oasis, so after a last survey of the atmosphere he side-slipped down and landed. He was desperately anxious to know what had happened, for he had been too occupied to keep track of things. The Defiant followed him down.
One of the first things he saw as he jumped from his machine was Tex, limping in from the desert. There was a crimson streak on his left cheek, and one sleeve of his tunic hung in rags; but his face was wreathed in smiles.
‘Suffering coyotes!’ he cried deliriously. ‘What a party!’
‘Are you all right?’ asked Biggles sharply.
‘Sure I’m all right,’ answered Tex cheerfully. ‘More or less,’ he added. ‘I’ve lost a bit of skin here and there.’
‘What about your machine?’
Tex pointed to a heap of wreckage that lay some way off, from the middle of which a crumpled tail stuck derisively into the air. ‘She’s finished, I guess. I got one guy, but his pal hit me with a ton of bricks and I lost a wing.’
Bertie taxied in and stood up in his cockpit, regarding Tex with disfavour through a glinting eyeglass. ‘I say, look here, I wish you’d look where you’re going. Really, you know, you jolly nearly scalped me,’ he said severely.
The sight of a group of figures round the Defiant took Biggles to it at a run. A hush warned him of serious trouble, and a moment later he saw it. An air gunner, a corporal unknown to him, a fair lad with a boyish face, was being lifted carefully to the sand, where his head was pillowed on a parachute. His ashen face and a spreading crimson stain on the breast of his tunic told their own dire story. Angus, looking very upset, bent over him.
Biggles pushed his way to the front and dropped on his knees beside the wounded gunner. Looking up over his shoulder at Angus he said quietly: ‘Who is it?’
‘Boy from Wadi Halfa,’ answered Angus in a broken voice. ‘He volunteered to come with me. I thought I’d better have a gunner in case I ran into trouble. I wish now—’
‘Wishing doesn’t help anybody,’ interrupted Biggles softly. ‘You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with, Angus. These things will happen in a war, you know.’
He turned to the wounded man. Grey eyes looked into his own apologetically.
‘Sorry, sir,’ came in a faint whisper from the pallid lips.
‘Sorry? What about?’ asked Biggles.
‘About giving you – this – trouble.’
‘No need to worry about that,’ replied Biggles gently. He had looked on similar scenes too often to deceive himself. He knew it was only a matter of minutes. There was nothing he could do – nothing anyone could do.
‘I got – one,’ whispered the dying gunner, with a twisted smile. ‘He fired first – but I got – him.’
‘Yes, you got him,’ agreed Biggles – a fact which Angus confirmed.
Nobody else spoke.
‘That’s good enough – for me,’ breathed the airman. ‘Wish I could have stayed – and seen – things through. I always wanted – to be – in your squadron – sir.’
‘You’re in it,’ said Biggles, forcing a smile.
‘Reckon I’m – booked – for topsides1 – sir.’
‘I reckon we all are,’ answered Biggles grimly. ‘It’s just a matter of who goes first. Someone has to make a reconnaissance for the others.’
‘That’s right – sir.’
For a little while there was silence, while the sun sank behind the oasis in a sea of gold, causing the palms to throw out long shadows like arms towards the little group. The boy muttered once or twice as his mind wandered, while the light faded from his eyes, serenely, as it faded from the sky. Then with a little sigh his head dropped into Biggles’ arms.
Biggles laid the head gently on the parachute and stood up.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
‘I shouldn’t ha’ brought the lad,’ blurted Angus.
‘Forget it,’ Biggles told him calmly. ‘This is war, not kindergarten. Today it was the boy’s bad luck. Tomorrow it may be me – or you. You know that. He didn’t bleat about it. Neither, I hope, shall we, when our turn comes.’ He turned to the flight-sergeant. ‘All right,’ he said in a normal voice. ‘Carry him in. We’ll bury him tonight. All ranks will attend. By the way, what happened to the bomber?’
‘Went into the ground with the engine full on, sir. Everyone in it must have been killed.’
Biggles nodded. ‘Better bring in the enemy casualties. They can be buried at the same time. I want all officers in the mess tent, please. We’ll have a check up. You’d better come along, too, Flight-Sergeant, when you’ve given your orders.’
; Through the quickly-fading twilight, Biggles, with the others following, led the way to the tent.
1 Slang: heaven
CHAPTER 13
BIGGLES TAKES HIS TURN
WHEN THEY WERE inside the tent Tex was the first to speak. ‘How about von Zoyton?’ he asked. ‘Was he among the people we shot down?’
‘No,’ answered Biggles, shortly.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because 1 fancy that had von Zoyton been over some of us might not now be here. I’ve seen him fly, and there was nothing like his tactics in this evening’s affair. You’ll find he didn’t come. He was probably exhausted after his night in the desert. He’ll be over soon, though, now he knows how short we are of machines.’
‘How can he know we are short?’ demanded Bertie.
‘Because we only put up three Spitfires against seven hostile machines this afternoon. Von Zoyton isn’t a fool. Obviously, he will know perfectly well that if we had had more we should have used them.’
‘Of course – absolutely – I didn’t think of that,’ muttered Bertie. ‘Good thing you’re here to do the thinking.’
Biggles pulled out a camp chair. ‘Sit down, everybody, and we’ll see how things look. I still don’t know exactly how the show finished. All I know is we’re down to two Spitfires, and they both need patching – at least, mine does. The tail looks like a sieve. Von Zoyton can’t have many machines left, either. He’ll have still fewer, I hope, when we’ve had our innings.’
The check-up, to which the flight-sergeant largely contributed, for he had watched the whole thing from the ground, revealed that the battle had been won at really very small cost. They had lost only one man killed, the volunteer gunner of the Defiant. Tex had been slightly hurt. A cannon shell had exploded in his cockpit tearing a nasty gash in his face; he had also wrenched the muscles of a leg when landing by parachute. His machine was destroyed. The two other Spitfires had been damaged, but both were serviceable. On the German side the bomber had been destroyed and its three occupants killed. Three Messerschmitt l09’s had also been destroyed for certain, all the pilots being killed. One, apparently, had baled out, but his parachute had not opened. Another 109, the one that had been chased by Bertie, had been damaged, and might not have reached its base. Bertie had abandoned the pursuit when he had run out of ammunition. The two remaining Messerschmitts had presumably got home. If von Zoyton had come on the show he must have been in one of these, for his body was not among the Nazi dead; Biggles was convinced, however, that he had not been with the attacking formation.
