My Enemy Came Nigh

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Middleton reminded himself that he had been wanting a change. He had certainly got it.

  Eight

  Sqdn. Ldr. Grimes landed on Bardoc at nine-o'clock the next morning. "We're going to practise a short-range strike," he told them all. "Afrona will signal an operations order and we'll see how long it takes to decode it and carry it out."

  "Is there anything at Taf, sir?" Anstey asked.

  "We're not going there. They'll choose another target at approximately the same distance."

  Anstey turned to Dunn, the controller. "Your head's on "the block first. We can't do anything until you've decoded the signal."

  Dunn had flown two tours of operations as a Beaufighter pilot, had a D.F.M. and was unflappable. He chewed his pipestem and grunted "If they encode it correctly I 'II decode it correctly. A half-wit could crack the simple code we're using: if Gerry picks it up, it won't take him five minutes to break it."

  "If it's as high as half-wit standard," Tindall muttered, "there's no guarantee it will be properly encoded at Afrona." He shared Middleton's lack of esteem for the mentality of the paranoiacs who held the squadron's lives in their hands.

  Hargreaves whispered "Don't be naughty, Tommy. It'll be done by Intelligence and Signals."

  Tindall was having none of this reproach. "By guess and by God, more likely."

  When, ten minutes later, the signal was received, Hargreaves's confidence was justified. It took Dunn less than ten minutes to put it into plain language and check it.

  All four aircraft of the detachment were to scramble for Stalvej, a large island to the south-east, to attack barges, tugs and an oil storage dump. They were then to return to Bardoc, rearm and attack again. The main purposes of the operation were to surprise the enemy and to complete it in the shortest possible time.

  The ground crews had started running up the engines as soon as the signal came in. It took only fifteen minutes for Hargreaves and Anstey to carry out the briefing. Two minutes later they were airborne.

  They had all been to Stalvej before, the last time three weeks earlier. It was a less important and heavily defended port than Taf, but they had to weave through even more islands on their way and most were manned by anti-aircraft artillery. It was never a comfortable trip, although the approach and the run out were easier than at Taf.

  Anstey led them westward, on take-off, then round the northern tip of Bardoc and onto a south-easterly heading at twenty feet. Three minutes and twelve miles later the enemy guns were spitting at them. The next two minutes were unsettling, with Anstey leading them in an irregular zigzag and the air made turbulent by shellbursts. They switchbacked as well as weaving, climbing and diving between a hundred feet and twenty. They were using the finger four formation developed by Hurricanes and Spitfires after the Battle of Britain: two pairs, Anstey in front with Bradley on his right and slightly astern; Middleton on Anstey's left and a few yards behind, with Charlie Teoh on his left and a similar distance back.

  To mislead the gunners, Anstey took the section up to two hundred feet as they closed the target. From there they dived, firing their nose cannons and wing machineguns; launched their rockets, and fanned out to clear the target individually. Widely spaced apart, Anstey and Bradley soared up to four hundred feet while Middleton and Teoh, also well separated, hugged the water.

  Seven minutes later they were all back at Bardoc, standing in the usual voluble group.

  "We hit a tug... she half-rolled and the boiler burst..."

  "We put all ours right into the middle of that group of ten barges. Don't know what the cargo was, but it caught fire..."

  "The oil dump went up with a hell of a whump..."

  Twenty minutes later they were off again.

  "Must be ersatz coffee break," Tindall remarked as they snaked among the islands. "It never entered their square heads we'd be back so soon." For they had covered almost the whole distance through light and sporadic fire.

  Billows of smoke rolled across the harbour, obscuring their view but, at the same time, protecting them from the flak.

  A tug was trying to move some of the undamaged barges among those moored offshore which had been attacked on the first strike. Anstey fired all his rockets at it. Bradley, unsighted the first time around by smoke, came in again, launched his rockets, and the tug broke up. Middleton, searching keenly for something worth shooting at, spotted an emplacement from which two guns were pumping shells at him and Teoh. That would do. He lined it up and fired. In a shower of concrete and sand the emplacement cracked, lurched and began to subside; the guns stopped firing. He pulled tightly to starboard to come round on Charlie Teoh's tail and opened up with cannon and machineguns on any place where, through the smoke, he saw the flash of guns or the sparkle of tracer. Teoh was heard on the R/T, briefly, plaintively saying "I can't see anything to hit..." But they saw his rockets bursting a few seconds later around a floating crane.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, sprawled on the grass outside the Operations tent, with mugs of tea, they agreed that the double punch seemed to have worked.

  "Well done everyone," Grimes said, with the disturbing manic gleam in his eyes that they had learned not to welcome. "We don't want to overdo it and make Gerry think this is going to be our regular pattern. We can try one more, then go back to normal ops. until we're ready for another strike on Taf."

  "When d'you think we should give him another left and right, sir?" asked Anstey.

  "After lunch."

  "I rather think I've just lost my appetite," Tindall announced.

  "Good. More for the rest of us," Grimes told him.

  Anstey asked "You're staying, sir?"

  Grimes remembered his manners. "If I may. I brought a load of rations with me; including some more beer for the troops. The Navy will be bringing you supplies two nights from now."

  "I think I'll spend my leave here," said Tindall.

  Grimes was equal to him. "Good idea, Tommy. We'll establish a special leave centre for the Bardoc detachment. There." He pointed. "On Sprat."

  "Fearless Foster's going to have a look at it, as soon as he can find a spare moment, sir. If it's' any good, I'll take you up on that."

  Grimes smiled. He took a good view of Tindall; had, in fact, put him and Middleton up for D.F.Cs. He hoped they would both be approved for the next gazetting.

  Meanwhile, Hargreaves and Dunn were preparing a coded report to be transmitted to Afrona; then they would have to wait for another operation order. There was time for a swim.

  In the afternoon they were ordered to fly an offensive patrol rather than carry out another strike and risk arousing the enemy's suspicion. They would make a twenty-minute circuit of the islands to the north-east, for a change, and attack any vessel or gun position they found. They would then return to re-arm; and take off, after de­ briefing, on another run, of thirty minutes this time, slightly north of the first one. This would give them practice in re-arming and briefing in the shortest possible time, coding and decoding, and target selection.

  "Happy in your work?" Middleton asked his navigator.

  "This, I don't mind; as long as Beale or Grubby doesn't lead. Joe's no giant intellect, but he does have the same objective as the rest of us: a ripe old age, if at all possible. There'll be none of that diving into the shallow end off the ten-metre board stuff as long as we're flying behind him." This was not meant to be derogatory. On the contrary, Tindall had the greatest regard for anyone who eschewed irrational risks. There was no question of Anstey's courage, but he was confident that the flight commander wouldn't be leading them, at fifty feet altitude, with their wingspan of approximately 58 feet, between radio masts a hundred and twenty feet high and forty feet apart. Nor would he fly straight at a hill as though intending to scrape over the top, and turn sharply at the last second to go round it.

  In the event they had some trouble finding adequate targets in twenty minutes but had got rid of all their rockets before heading back for base. They claimed two machinegun
posts and an ammunition store destroyed and four barges, being towed by a motorboat, damaged.

  On their second sortie they had a surprise that was even more disagreeable than the accustomed flak.

  They were forty miles north of Bardoc when they spotted a steamer of some one thousand tons; a target that brought an exultant whoop from Anstey. She was on open water with no shelter nearer than ten miles, travelling at an estimated ten to twelve knots. The ship was heavily laden, well down to her waterline, and they could see deck cargo in addition to what must be in her holds.

  There were several small islands scattered around, the closest to the ship being about two miles to her starboard, but with no anchorage to protect her. There must have been some urgent reason for her to be making this passage by daylight and they were astonished that she was not escorted. She must be heavily armed. But although she began firing at them from forecastle and poop, she had only two heavy calibre machineguns.

  Anstey gave them their orders: Middleton to throttle back and position himself further to the left. The two sections would attack from different directions, one after the other, and break outwards.

  They were beginning this manoeuvre when two shadows appeared on the water, racing towards them, and they heard machinegun fire overhead. Two Me. 109s flashed past above.

  "So much for air supremacy,"Tindall said in exaggerated disgust. He had never disliked anything more than being attacked by enemy fighters. When they were being shot at from the ground it was pretty much the same for both pilot and navigator. But under fighter attack it was a different matter. Only the pilot could fire the four cannons in the nose of the Beaufighter and the six machineguns in its wings. The navigator could merely sit there with his one Vickers K gun trying to defend the rear. Tindall wished he had a proper four-gun turret.

  At low level it was difficult for fighters to make their attacks. But the best defensive action was to turn into them; and if they did that they would be turning away from the ship.

  Anstey called hurriedly "Turn into them and engage, you two: we'll go for the ship."

  Middleton turned steeply, with Teoh glued in position behind and to his port. He had one Messerschmitt in his sights and pressed his firing button. To his amazement the enemy fighter disintegrated in a flash of flame and a balloon of smoke. The shock wave thumped the Beaufighter into a dangerous sideslip, from which Middleton righted it with his wingtip barely two feet above the water.

  He could hear Tindall on the intercom and Teoh was on the R/T, both at the same time. His headphones were filled with the squeals of oscillation and their excited cries.

  As he turned again, he saw the leading pair of Beaufighters hitting the ship fore and aft with cannon and machinegun fire, and as he watched, their rockets struck the sea and the vessel's side.

  He could hear the other Me. 109 shooting, and he saw the tracer from Teoh's guns pass above his own canopy.

  "We’ll take the fighter now," Anstey yelled. "You go for the ship."

  Disoriented and dazed, with Tindall's voice telling him "Charlie's following, out of position, about a hundred yards behind," Middleton registered that both the heavy machine guns on the ship had ceased firing. He saw bodies on the deck around them. He took steady aim and released his rockets. The ship's speed was already down to about six knots and all but three of his rockets hit her. He pulled up and away in a hard climbing turn and was in time to see Teoh's rockets strike the ship, and then he saw the Me. 109 climbing away with Anstey and Bradley hopelessly chasing it. They used up the last of their ammunition as it receded from range and soon it was a speck high above them, on its way to its base.

  The ship was sinking fast, burning in a pool of spreading oil. A lifeboat put off but there was an explosion when it was only fifty yards away and large pieces of flaming debris spattered around it, setting the oil alight. There was one last explosion after the ship had disappeared, which rocked the lifeboat so violently that it capsized and spilled the four men aboard into the fiery sea. Middleton saw that Anstey and Bradley had rejoined him and Teoh; so he tucked himself in close to the flight commander's port wing and, in good formation, they flew sedately back to Bardoc.

  Teoh was unscathed, but Middleton's aircraft had been hit by the Messerschmitt he had shot down, and both the other aircraft had been damaged by the ship's machineguns.

  "You’ll have to stand down tomorrow," said Grimes. "It'll take even Sgt. Tucker and his chaps until tomorrow night to finish patching you up."

  "In that case," Foster suggested, flushing with pleasure, "as there'll be plenty of people here to defend the place, it'll be a good time for me to go and recce. Sprat."

  *

  Gp. Capt. Mason strode about the Ops. room gleefully batting himself about and thinking of Matron. He always thought about Matron when he became excited; probably because she represented the epitome of excitement for him and one thing led to another.

  "We've got to get those chaps off on a really decent target before they go stale," he decided.

  He, and Wg. Cdr. Beale muttering a periodical "Cracking good show," had just heard Grime's report on the day's events.

  Grimes flinched. Too often, Shagger said something which one didn't really want to hear from someone of his seniority. Grimes remembered the drawn looks on the faces of his crews after their four sorties and felt that there was little chance of inactivity staling them. He welcomed the break for them. He hoped that Cracker wouldn't now suggest that replacement aircraft should be flown to Bardoc so that they could have "another crack" tomorrow. Grimes wanted them to rest so that he could justifiably call on them for further effort when it became truly worthwhile. He did not intend to let Mason or Beale send them into action merely to justify their presence on the island. And he knew that the group captain was capable of magnifying the importance of any passing small vessel into justification for scrambling to intercept it.

  The whole purpose of putting the detachment on Bardoc was to strike at Taf and that was what he was determined they would do.

  Beale tapped the plotting table with the bowl of his pipe. A symbol on it showed the position of a German hospital ship far to the south. There were two of these, the Heidelberg and the Nürnberg, which plied frequently up and down the Adriatic picking up sick and wounded German soldiers at Trieste or Venice and taking them to convalesce in Greece. They signalled their intention to sail, twenty-four hours in advance, reported their positions every twelve hours and showed lights at night: under the Geneva Convention they were thus assured of safety.

  "Nürnberg coming up," said Beale. "We could do a recce. to make sure it really is the Nurnberg. I've never been comfortable about letting Gerry crack up and down unmolested."

  "Bardoc's certainly closer to her than we are," Mason agreed. "It would save fuel and keep the chaps from getting bored. Must say I'd rather give them something to take a shot at than a mere recce."

  He thinks he's Cromwell, Grimes was thinking, and sometimes I think he's Cromwell too; he's mad enough.

  Beale tapped again on the plotting table, slowly, in rhythm with the plodding steps in which his mind moved. He was in thought and Grimes watched him with wary scepticism; rather as an animal-tamer might keep an eye on a tiger he knew well but which was still unpredictable. This time, Beale's utterance surprised Grimes by its shrewdness: "Those two hospital ships have been making the passage more frequently in the last month than they've ever done before: we must be wounding a hell of a lot more Gerries. And that, I doubt."

  "I see what you mean, sir," Grimes said wonderingly: that fat head of Cracker's contained a certain measure of native astuteness after all.

  Mason seized on this as fast as a springtime horsefly (which he quite resembled) leaping on its mate. "Good thinking, Arthur. I think we will take a look at her. Not tomorrow: let the Bardoc section stand down and get their aircraft serviceable, and allow the Nürnberg time to come a bit closer. Let's say first light the day after tomorrow."

  Nine

 
Flight Sergeant Tucker was a stringy little man with big ears, a face seamed by many years' peacetime service in India and Iraq, and the general build and demeanour of a truculent rooster. He and his maintenance crews had worked until the small hours of the morning, by dim lights, and were back at their tasks before dawn. He viewed the departure of the R.A.F. Regiment party, as he drank a mug of tea before taking up his tools again, with disapproval.

  "Excuse for a skive," he said to his corporal fitter. "As soon as they get there they'll be larking about like a lot of tarts at a christening. They're going on a picnic, that's what they're doing."

  The corporal agreed that this was very probable.

  The flight sergeant called on Cpl. Bodgener for evidence: "Taking rations with them, are they?"

  The cook said they were, in case they saw anything interesting and the officer decided to stay; or if it turned out to be unsafe to return by daylight.

  "There you are! The only interesting thing that lot'll hope to see is some jug. bints: if they run into Gerry they'll be away out of it quicker than a Pathan stealing rifles on the Frontier."

  Both corporals, with the first show of interest, asked if there were likely to be any Jugoslav ladies on Sprot.

  "Not unless their mother's have been crossed with a goat," Tucker told them, sucking his teeth, a habit he had learned from the sailors during his time in an aircraft carrier when R.A.F. squadrons still served with the Fleet. "And even the Regiment wouldn't fancy a bit of goat. I suppose."

  The corporal fitter suggested that that rather depended on which part was goat and which human.

  "Come to think of it," the flight sergeant went on, "I don't suppose even a goat would be too keen on one of those Regiment wallahs." Which reflection cheered him so much that he led his men back to work whistling.

  All of this had been overheard by the sergeant and four aircraftmen who were going to accompany Pilot Officer Foster, but none of them had been unwise enough to show that he was listening: F/Sgt. Tucker was a genial, relaxed and popular member of the sergeants' mess, but the lower ranks were terrified of him and the Regiment sergeant had the wit not to rise to the bait. Foster was out of earshot, having conscientiously risen even earlier than his men, swallowed his tea and gone down to the beach to make a final inspection of their rubber boat.