My Enemy Came Nigh

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Each time a Beaufighter was destroyed he exulted although giving no sign of it. He was equally impassive while he raged inwardly at the destruction they wrought on his shipping.

  His family estates were near Hamburg and he had many relations and friends whose homes were in the city. Since the R.A.F. air raids which had set the whole of Hamburg alight in what was spoken of as a "fire storm", he was less than tolerant of British airmen. He had heard about, and seen photographs of, the rivers of molten tar running through the streets, trapping thousands of the fifty thousand people who died in the air raids. He thought of himself as civilised but looked on his desire for revenge as legitimate. The rocket-firing Beaufighters, he knew, had nothing to do with the bombing of Germany but it gave him satisfaction to see them shot down by gunners whom he commanded.

  Even now, nine years since she had retired to her native Aberdeen, Fregattankapitän von Trampel often thought how Nanny Mcleod would have expressed disapproval of what she would call his vindictiveness. He had enjoyed a special intimacy with the formidable Scotswoman from the time she came to the family when he was three years old until she left twenty-four years later. So far as that granite personality could be said to shew favouritism, she had favoured him; because he was a boy and the eldest. His three sisters had, in varying degrees, resented this and mocked her. He had taken her side in any dispute with the girls; not that she, with the blood of fighting clansmen in her veins, needed his aid or support.

  One of his sisters was killed in an air raid and the other two were married, raising little Herrenvolk and doing war work. He doubted if either of them ever spared a sentimental thought for Nanny Mcleod and her pawky sense of humour. He hoped that the Luftwaffe had spared Aberdeen from its bombs. Miss Morag Mcleod had first gone to Germany in 1911, returned to Scotland just before the outbreak of the 1914 war, and come back to the von Trampel family in 1919. She retired in 1935. Erich had married in 1937 and paid her fare so that she could attend as an honoured guest. His first child was born in 1939, the second a year later and the youngest in 1943. When this damned war was over he would find the nearest possible duplicate of Nanny Mcleod for them. They would be too old to need a nursemaid, but a good Scottish governess would be a wholesome influence and give them an early and valuable command of English.

  In spite of his warm feelings for his old nurse and tutor in the English language he felt no compassion for the enemy.

  When the Beaufighters had done their work and gone he limped quickly down to the dockside and stared bleakly at the destruction with which the harbour was strewn. Some barges were still burning. The wreckage of E-boats, barges and a steamer floated on the oily water or thrust above its surface, resting on the bottom.

  Kapitänleutnant Wüstling arrived, out of breath and dishevelled, his clothes grimy. "No casualties among the army, sir, but at least thirty of our officers and ratings killed and wounded."

  "And the guns only managed to bring down two of them. For the expenditure of how many thousands of rounds of ammunition, I wonder? Where's Holzkopf?"

  "Going round his gun sites, I presume, sir. They hit another four of them, sir. Some of them may not have got back to their base."

  "Brilliant shooting!" The commander turned and glared at Wüstling. "Naval gunners would have shot down at least half of them. From a pitching and rolling ship, at that. For these landlubbers, shooting from a firm platform, it should have been easy to bag the whole lot. Before they even had time to fire their rockets."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I want a full written report from Wüstling within two hours. Tell him."

  ''Very good, sir."

  "Now I'm going to sick bay to see the wounded, then to my office to make the appropriate signals. Go and do your damage report now, and bring it to me at my quarters. Stay to lunch."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "And tell the Intelligence officer to report to my office in half an hour."

  The lieutenant commander saluted and von Trampel hurried away, striking the ground savagely with the point of his shooting stick at every second pace. He had not gone far when he heard excited shouting and stopped. Turning, he saw a group of men standing at the edge of a jetty, pointing across the water. Now he could discern a body, its yellow R.A.F. life jacket supporting a lolling head, floating a hundred yards offshore. A petty officer ordered two men to go out in a dinghy to fetch it; and search for the three other dead Beaufighter crewmen.

  *

  There were few big houses on Taf and von Trampel lived in the best of them, a solid, whitewashed building halfway up the hill behind the town, half a mile from the waterfront.

  All his requirements were supplied by a pretty Jugoslav housekeeper, a buxom young Italian cook and his orderly.

  When he limped into the house, two hours later, Eva, his housekeeper, was waiting for him in the sitting room with a glass of marsala.

  "I want brandy," he said, sinking into an armchair. I need a brandy would have been more accurate, he admitted to himself.

  "Then I’ll drink this." She gave him an insolent look, poured him a glass of local plum brandy and stood looking down at him. "Are you all right?" She sounded indifferent.

  'von Trampel nodded. He had no intention of discussing his business with her. He did not dislike her; indeed, he admired her spirit. In bed he enjoyed her and was proud that, despite herself, he was able to make her respond by the sheer vigour of his fornicating: he did not try to delude himself by thinking of it as love-making. She provided a physical need and he did his best to give her pleasure, so that he would relish it the more; and from male pride.

  He knew what was worrying her. "No civilians were killed."

  She knew that he was aware of her total lack of interest in what happened to his men, and her constant anxiety about the fate of her own people. "Thank God for that, at least. And how many...?" Her voice trailed away to silence. She did not really care how many Germans had been killed, but it was useful information to send the British.

  He looked cynically at her. "Too many."

  "I saw two English aeroplanes come down."

  "That cannot have pleased you."

  "What do you mean?"

  He usually remembered to speak slowly to her, for her German was rudimentary and she had only a small vocabulary. But now his voice quickened. "We are the enemy, the invaders, the hated usurpers. You share my bed, but you would like to see me dead, wouldn't you?"

  The words Angriefer and Usurbator were new to her but she took their obvious meaning. "I am my own woman. I do not have to stay here with you."

  The expression in his eyes became cold and contemptuous. "Kapitänleutnant Wüstling is coming to lunch. Lay a place for him."

  "I’ll tell Schwuler." She glared resentment at his peremptory manner.

  His eyes followed her as she left the room. He wondered how much it would take to bribe her to put rat poison in his food, if the Jugoslav partisans could suborn her. But she wasn't the sneaky, poisoning kind: she would rather dispose of him with a knife in the belly or a bullet through the head. But until she did, he enjoyed her tall, sturdy body and forced her ripe lips at least to pretend to return his lust for her. That was enough to concern him for the time being. If the war took a worse turn it would be time enough to start worrying about how and when she would kill him.

  Eva strutted into the kitchen, flushed with anger, in time to hear a squeal from Maria-Pia at the cooking range. She knew the cause without having to look. Leading Seaman Schwuler's cucumber fingers were still on the plump Italian girl's buttock, which he habitually pinched whenever his rolling gait took him within range.

  Schwuler was a long-service sailor in his late forties, red­ faced, thick-necked, broad-shouldered, stupid and devoted to his master. An ideal orderly for von Trampel. He had a stiff right leg, the result of a wound in the knee, and a wounded right elbow had left him unable to straighten the arm. He also wheezed a lot, as though suffering from asthma; an offensive condition which was much agg
ravated by the noisome tobacco he smoked in a pipe or hand-rolled cigarettes. Ashore or afloat he preferred a hammock .to a bunk and only deserted the former twice a week to inflict his amorous attentions on Maria-Pia.

  She suffered Schwuler's rutting in order to keep her job; which carried many perquisites, including abundant food which was more varied than her accustomed diet, and the gleaning of information. Her fisherman grandfather had migrated from Trieste to Fiume, that city long disputed between Italy and Jugoslavia. Her father had come to Taf when she was a child, in the days when it offered exceptionally good fishing.

  Eva said, in Serbo-Croat, which Schwuler did not understand (he understood scarcely anything): "He is expecting Wüstling to lunch. He told me to lay another place in the same tone as he would have ordered a dog to lick his boots. "

  "I hope he's not late: the food will spoil."

  "Don't worry. It'll be good enough for them. Too good."

  Schwuler, who had been peering suspiciously from one to the other, and had heard the name Wüstling, smacked the cook's bottom and asked, in broken Italian, "What you talk about? I tell you before, learn German and always speak

  "Guest... for... lunch." Maria-Pia spoke slowly, as though to a child. "German too difficult."

  "You too lazy and stupid," her lover retorted, turning away to fuss with some cutlery. She stuck out her tongue at his back.

  Eva told him, in her threadbare German, to set a place on the commander's right; and not to forget the glass and a napkin.

  Schwuler hesitated. He resented taking orders from her. But he took himself off like a snuffly old spaniel, happy at the excuse to go and fuss around near his master.

  When the two girls were alone, Eva asked urgently "Can you see Guido early this evening?"

  "Yes. I have sent him a message." Maria-Pia always looked coy at mention of her affianced, a burly young fisherman. If he knew what the dreadful Schwuler did to her' She shuddered deliciously at the thought of being disputed by two men and a knife plunged into the German's entrails.

  "Good. And I am visiting my parents this afternoon ..."

  "Unless he decides to take a siesta," Maria-Pia giggled. At least Schwuler only bothered her at night, but von Trampel not infrequently wanted Eva in the afternoon as well.

  "I'm going immediately after I've had my food, while he's still talking to Wüstling. Anyway, he'll be too busy for a siesta after what happened this morning. I must see Petar without delay."

  The two girls heard many matters discussed and saw much with their own eyes, which were the start of a series of clandestine meetings, messages and night time movements by sea, that resulted in attacks like the Beaufighter squadron's this morning. It was important, now, to report details of the damage done. What they whispered about in the kitchen would ultimately find its way to the desk of Flight Lieutenant Hargreaves.

  Three

  They were a well-established octet: Middleton and Tindall; their flight commander Joe Anstey and his navigator Robin Truscott; a pilot from Hong Kong, Charlie Teoh Tai Mo, and his navigator Harry Tunks; an Indian navigator from the Punjab, Enver Aziz, and Don Bradley his pilot.

  The liberty bus, a three-ton lorry with benches which rocked and slid and between the ends of which bottoms were badly pinched on rough stretches, took them to town. In the messes everyone was rationed to a modest weekly quantity of whisky, English beer and good gin. If they had to drink Italian gin, brandy and beer, vermouth and marsala, they may as well do it somewhere else for the sake of a change of scene. There were two officers' clubs in Afrona but civilian bars and restaurants were out of bounds. This made it difficult for officer and N.C.O. aircrew to enjoy the shared social life they all preferred and which did much to maintain squadron morale.

  Middleton was still feeling jaded, despite the swimming and an hour's sleep in the sun. He had volunteered for the R.A.F. a week before war was declared, a 23-year-old master at a minor public school; and this war had dragged on too long. He had volunteered for several reasons: his stomach heaved at the thought of leaving other people to do his fighting for him, even though he would have been conscripted sooner rather than later, anyway. Then there was the prospect of some excitement and the learning of a skill he would never otherwise acquire. The comradeship of young, adventurous, proud men whom he could respect attracted him too. But he had found a fair proportion of bad types among them; and the adventure had worn thin by now. It had also been bloody dangerous most of the time, he often reflected these days. It was time to get back to the quiet Somerset countryside, the handsome, grey stone buildings that, for three hundred years, had echoed to the cheerful sound of youthful voices and the measured tones of learning. He yearned for the tree-lined playing fields, the scent of a freshly mown cricket pitch; the thud of a cleanly kicked rugger ball, soaring over the crossbar; the good talk about books and current affairs and how to make a young schoolmaster's salary stretch to a four-week exploration of France in the summer holidays.

  After five years, he had forgotten the boredom and spitefulness of the staff common room and the petty jealousies and rivalries between some of the housemasters and heads of the various departments: the way in which the Head of the Classical Side regarded the Head of the Science Side as almost a leper, and the senior mathematics master favoured boys who were good at boxing, because he was in charge of that sport; and how one housemaster marked his own boys too liberally.

  He wanted to return to the peaceful valley where Wellscombe School unobtrusively made its contribution to the decencies of British life, to find himself a wife, and forget the Germans.

  But if Wellscombe, where he had spent five years of his own schooldays, and to which he had returned after only three years' absence at London University, went about its mission in the world unobtrusively, the same could not be said about the Germans. He had seen them at close quarters many times. He recalled columns of prisoners in North Africa, marching well and singing defiantly. The crew of a Heinkel he had shot down when he was on Hurricanes, and their arrogance, almost contempt for their vanquisher and captors. The survivors from an E-boat he had helped to sink, who had looked at him and the other members of the squadron who visited their wounded in hospital, with hatred because the Beaufighters had killed their young skipper whom they had loved. He had had enough of their brand of obtrusiveness and he felt stale and tired with half a decade of war behind him. He craved some variety in the predictable pattern of his days; that they may be numbered did not trouble him unduly: he had known the risks when he joined. It was beginning to bother him, though, that at 28 he felt more than five years older than he had at 23.

  "Wake up, George. We're here." Tommy Tindall pushed him towards the tail gate of the truck.

  Enver Aziz, of the leisured, economical movements and the smooth speech that matched them, was out already. Standing an inch taller than any of them, he did his usual act of pretending to help Charlie Teoh down. Charlie, who stood five feet three, told him with his habitual grin to get stuffed and jumped nimbly down on his own. "I'll tell you what, though, Enver; you can give me a piggy-back. I don't feel like walking."

  In high spirited R.A.F. company it was an unwise suggestion. Anything that put ideas into his companions' heads was risky. Tommy Tindall looked at Middleton, who nodded. Joe Anstey asked "What are you waiting for?" and Robin Truscott and Tindall clasped wrists so as to form a seat; Enver Aziz swung the little Chinese off his feet and planted him on it, and Don Bradley firmly held him there. Squirming and giggling, with his navigator Harry Tunks going ahead and calling "Gangway for the Emperor of China", Charlie was borne at a trot fifty yards down the pavement, up the steps of the requisitioned hotel which housed a British officers' club, and into the bar. Some of the naval and army officers frowned and a group of bomber pilots, navigators and air gunners cheered. So did some American pilots who were their guests.

  After their third round of drinks Aziz made a quick reconnaissance of the dining room and came back to curl his lip and drawl "Dreary
menu. Inedible. Let's go to Teresa's." No one opposed. Teresa was a fat girl who cooked divinely and ran a small restaurant tucked away in a back street. It had no windows open to the street and was so obscure that it was probable that the Service Police had never discovered it. If they had, they ignored it: with civilian restaurants out of bounds, it was essential to have some safe, discreet one where officers and senior N.C.Os could gratify their natural Instinct to break rules, and come to no harm.

  Enver Aziz's Italian was quite wonderful to hear and Middleton, who taught Latin to the Third and Fourth Forms, had a respectable command of it. Teresa cooked them a huge pile of spaghetti, drenched in tomato puree which had spent many hours maturing in open, fly-infested dishes on the pavement, and a mountain of fresh fish. They drank a lot of red wine with it and some of them began to feel amorous.

  "Let's go back to the club and tell Salvatore to scramble Clara," Joe Anstey suggested.

  Clara worked as a manicurist by day and on her back at night, keeping assignations arranged by Salvatore the head waiter at the British officers' club. Scramble was fighter code for leaping into one's aircraft and taking off: Clara, given thirty minutes' warning, could summon other complaisant ladies to provide aid and comfort if there were more customers than she could handle (so to speak) on her own.

  Robin Truscott said "I'm on. What about you, Harry?"

  "I'll pass." Tunks had a girl in the village near the aerodrome, who sneaked into his tent in return for soap and chocolate and packs of cigarettes.

  "I'll come with you." No inscrutable oriental was Charlie Teoh Tai Mo tonight. He was almost panting.

  "I'm going to stay and practise my Italian on Teresa," Enver Aziz told them. "Catch you up at the bus stop."

  They left him, and while Teresa and her mother and three small sisters and brother cleared the tables and washed up he waited, over a grappa and a pipe of Balkan Sobranie, for the last of the other diners to leave.