My Enemy Came Nigh

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The Group Captain was in the Ops Room when the pilots filed in. He looked as fresh as though he had recently risen from eight hours' sleep, gone for a three mile run, and had ample time to bathe and shave. His square, ruddy, bulldoggish face was, as usual, impassive. Eleven medal ribbons, in three rows, including both the French and Belgian Croix de Guerre, and his barrel-like shape, gave him an air of vast competence and reliability.

  He was standing up; so, perforce, were the controller and his staff. There were not enough chairs to seat the audience, nor were there any benches. The time had not yet come when briefings were formally ritualised and Ops Rooms were furnished accordingly.

  Both squadron commanders and their four flight commanders were already present. The murmur of conversation among some of the arriving pilots ceased as soon as they crossed the threshold.

  There was no dais. Group Captain Jameson did not need one, anyway. He faced the assembly. 'Good morning. I am sorry to have given you such an early revéille without any warning.' If he was sorry, he managed to conceal it very well; a notion which occurred to many present. 'As you can see from the map,' which covered one wall 'the enemy has put to sea and is carrying out exercises in the Heligoland Bight. The fleet consists of two battle cruisers, four light cruisers and six destroyers. There are also two fourteen thousand ton merchant vessels, serving as troop carriers. The Intelligence appreciation is that the object of the exercise is to demonstrate the ease with which Germany could make a landing on the Dutch coast. Our task is to attack with torpedoes in two waves, by squadrons: Number… Squadron first, followed by… Squadron fifteen minutes later.'

  The squadron nominated to attack first was Tregear's. Alden wondered how many other pilots' mouths had turned as dry as his.

  He had been wondering why Bomber Command Blenheims and Wellingtons were not being given the job. Now he knew. Air Ministry had decided to give the Vildebeest a final fling before it was superseded by the Beaufort, and use torpedoes instead of bombs.

  The latest meteorological report and forecast from Group H.Q. had been chalked on a blackboard. The pilots made notes. The station Armament officer told them that their 18 inch torpedoes would be set to run at 40 knots. This meant that their total range would be 2000 yards and attacks were expected to be made from 600 to 1000 yards.

  Dropping a torp 1000 yards from a ship whose guns would be blazing away at the attacking aircraft sounded less uncomfortable than flying over it to drop bombs. But Alden found little cheer in the thought.

  They were given a take-off time: one hour from now. This should allow them to reach the target area unseen, take the enemy by surprise just as dawn was breaking, and turn for home before any enemy fighters could be sent to intercept them. Bombing up with torpedoes had started while the aircrews were still asleep. The call to armourers to report had been for the off duty men.

  The Wop/A.G.s were being briefed on procedures and frequencies by the squadron Signals officers. Alden wondered who had been crewed with him. He was glad when Wing Commander Tregear read out names and he learned that it was Lac Fussell. Fussell was imperturbable and reliable. At least, he had been imperturbable on exercises. So, I think, have I, Alden reflected; but I can only hope that I'll be the same when we come under fire.

  The station Intelligence officer identified the battle cruisers for them and conjectured about the light cruisers. The formation leaders gave orders about heights, routes and formation and the attack tactics. Briefing over, the pilots drew charts on which to lay off their courses. They would be led by their senior flight commanders, but had to be prepared to do their own navigating in any of a dozen different eventualities. The Squadron Commanders were not taking part.

  It was eerie to go out into the darkness again, amid the quiet of the East Anglian countryside, to prepare to go to battle. Alden had accepted the fact that the squadron could not hope to be called on until it had its Beauforts. The shock of thus suddenly being hurried into action had seemed unreal when he woke to the sound of the Tannoy and immediately guessed its probable portent. It was even less credible nearly an hour later as he emerged into the fresh air that bore the scent of rural autumn and a tang of ozone from the nearby seashore. Going to war should surely be different from this. He had imagined it as some horrific and lurid scene painted by El Greco at his most macabre: all raging fires and screaming wounded, devastation and terror.

  He was longing for a cup of tea or coffee. Urns of tea from the airmen's cookhouse had preceded the pilots: nobody had thought of providing cups or mugs. A telephone call to the officers' mess produced cups and saucers. Flight Sergeant Jenkins was heard to say, with his usual mocking grin, 'What an honour… drinking from a cup which has never before felt the touch of a non-commissioned lip.'

  Courtney was standing next to him. 'Lip is something you've got plenty of, Taffy... and as for what your lips are in the habit of touching... the less said about that the better.'

  'Sir!' Jenkins was good at simulated indignation. 'Suppose I don't come back from this op? You wouldn't want to suffer agonies of remorse, would you, remembering the last words you spoke to me were insulting?'

  Alden wished that Jenkins had not said that. Not coming back was a possibility he had been shoving to the back of his mind from the forefront where it had thrust itself.

  Courtney did not reply directly. 'You've seen that barbed wire fence going up around the old barrack huts from the last war?'

  'Yes.' Jenkins looked as though he knew there was a catch in this, but not where it lay.

  'Air Ministry are posting a covey of Waaf here. The barbed wire is to keep types like you out.'

  'Some hope! I was pole-vaulting champion of Llanelli!'

  This exchange as they all stood around the tea urns was the cause of attention and amusement. Anything, Alden felt, to take everyone's mind off what lay ahead.

  It was time to go. He found Fussell chatting to the ground crew. 'Have you had a hot drink?'

  'Yes, thank you, sir. Buckshee chain the cookhouse. First time we've ever been given anything special because we're flying.'

  Alden well knew how few concessions were allowed to air gunners. They were not even excused fire pickets or guard duties if they had just landed after a long flight. 'Things will change as this war gets into its stride, Fussell.'

  'Change they will, sir. It seems we're getting Waafs here. Doesn't seem right, having women all over camp.'

  'You might come to enjoy it. Now, anything you want to know before we go aboard?'

  'Yes, please, sir. Where are we going and what's the target?'

  Things would certainly have to change, Alden told himself. Perhaps one day Wop/A.G.s would actually be required to attend the general briefing: on the late realisation that they were intelligent, sentient human beings, just the same as pilots. When he answered his air gunner's question, Fussell said 'Oh! Is that all? How long d'you reckon it'll take to get there, sir?'

  'Couple of hundred miles… Squadron Leader Hanbury has planned for eighty-five minutes: there's a tail wind. Longer coming home.'

  'Not much fuel in hand for a search if we don't find them spot-on, sir.' 'We will.'

  But do I really hope so? Alden, being honest with himself, admitted that he would rather they could wait until the Beauforts were delivered.

  There were other matters to think about and the main one was that he had never before taken off with a full load: ammunition for his Vickers gun and Fussell's Lewis, full tanks and an 18 inch torp weighing 1610 lb. How would the aircraft behave? At briefing, he had hoped that either the squadron Engineering officer or the station E.O. himself would say something about the technique for a fully-laden take-off. Pride had prevented him asking. He wished he had not been so unwilling to reveal self-doubt. Too late now.

  He was flying Number Three in the second V of three aeroplanes, led by Courtney. Hanbury was leading the first V, the other flight commander the third one, his deputy the last. Alden watched others' tail and wingtip lights move ahead of
him to the down-wind end of the flarepath. They would show the blue formation light on the trailing edge of each wingtip, to avoid collision and maintain contact, until the rising sun gave them enough visibility. This did not matter: they would be flying low and there was no expectation of enemy fighters on this side of the North Sea or even halfway across it.

  There were no aborted take-offs. Nobody found a fault in any of his aircraft's mechanical or electrical equipment. They were on their way, all of them. Hanbury led them straight towards the coast.

  Dimly, familiar landmarks scudded past close beneath their wings. The aircraft rose and fell gently with the vagaries of the air temperature, updraughts, downdraughts, eddies of wind. Fishing boats were working a few miles out to sea. It was a misleadingly peaceful prelude to violent action, bloodshed and devastation.

  Alden felt the first pangs of hunger. A lot had been going on in his stomach since he woke, including a mild cramp. He was sure he would have felt better and braver on a plate of bacon and egg. Too late now. Perhaps everything was too late now…

  He had joined the Air Force because he was besotted by the desire to fly and because he felt sure that his companions in the Service would have more in common with him than any other community and he would find them the best company in the world. Going to war had had nothing to do with it. He had been for two five­ shilling aerial joyrides in old Avro 504Ks that had been made obsolescent and sold off by the R.A.F. He was fourteen and fifteen at the time and had enjoyed the two short flights more than any other experience in his life. As for the comradeship: a friend of his elder brother's was a Cranwell cadet and later fighter pilot, who had spoken with affection and delight about the life he led. Both flying and good fellowship had come up to Alden's expectations. Having to fight one day was an eventuality that he had never entertained seriously although every day of his Service life entailed training for just that.

  Now he was about to confront the highly dangerous reality that underlay all that had gone before; the happy times and high spirits, the friendships and the serious application to constantly improving his skills. The only way to think of it was as repayment to his Service and his country for all the delights that being in the R.A.F. had given him.

  He was looking forward to finding the enemy ships, as a reward for accurate navigation, even though he was not having to rely on his own calculations; and as a chance to put his torpedo aiming to the test. But he was not looking forward to the gunfire. I'm afraid but not scared, he told himself. Any sensible man is bound to be afraid of the prospect of possible death or severe injury, but my chances of survival are as good as anyone else's and I'm no funk.

  What was Fussell, stoically waiting in the rear cockpit, thinking? He did not envy Fussell. He would not like to put his life in the hands of anyone else, no matter how good a pilot. In the end, Fussell's chances of survival depended entirely on his pilot's competence and his actions when they went into the attack. That must be a highly discomfiting realisation. How much confidence could Fussell place in him, with whom he had flown only four times and then in conditions in which the only danger could come from pilot error?

  'Everything all right, Gunner?'

  'Yes, thank you, sir.' Fussell sounded as though he had something in his mouth.

  'What are you eating?' 'Sucking barley sugar, sir.'

  This evidence of his air gunner's phlegmatic acceptance of the job cheered Alden more than any explicit assurance could have.

  When he saw the outlines of warships appear against the horizon at last, he felt no tremor, only a cold satisfaction that he had arrived in the battle area and could get on with what he had been sent to do.

  They were black silhouettes at first, either head or stern on: it was not possible to judge at the present range. The nearest ships were obviously destroyers. The great bulk of the towering battle cruisers reared in the midst of the fleet. The light cruisers were ahead and astern of them.

  Gradually it became possible to descry bow waves. The ships were surging towards the aircraft, not away from them. The wings of Hanbury's Vildebeest rocked and the formation swung away to starboard, widening the angle to facilitate the task of aiming. Head-on or stern-on, the ships presented small targets. Broadside, they offered the biggest. But the drill was to estimate a target's course and speed and aim ahead of its bows so that ship and torpedo arrived at the same point at the same time. From whichever angle one attacked, there was always the expectation of a violent change of the target's course to frustrate one's judgment.

  Against the grey sky of dawn and the grey, white­ dappled water the dark shapes grew clearer, better defined. Instead of fear, excitement was Alden's dominant emotion. The ships looked too big to miss and appeared to be moving slowly. The latter illusion soon passed; so did the delusion that his torpedo must inevitably strike home. The bow waves and wash of the destroyers were churned into spume that rose as high as their decks and a furiously bubbling wake that left a foaming streak which lengthened with their increase in speed. The destroyers began to circle the bigger ships.

  The air between the turning aircraft and the ships suddenly became a web of glittering tracer shells from the quadruple-mounted 20 mm light flak. Then the 37 mm opened up and on every vessel there was a series of big red flashes with each shell despatched. Huge flaming belches glowed crimson as the cruisers' 4.1 inch flak began to shoot.

  Alden drifted into an incongruous mood of indifference to the growing thunder of the big guns and the riot of colours whose bright streaks smudged the gloom of the early morning, even the ugly violent eruptions at the mouths of the heavy guns. He was immersed in the fascinating calculations that would, if he made them correctly, ensure that he did not waste his torpedo.

  He was snatched out of his momentary unconcern with the threat of sudden death by a vivid streak of light that flashed across the sky and he saw a Vildebeest in the leading vic disintegrate into thousands of small pieces.

  A flood of equally brilliant light somewhere astern of him lit the sky and was reflected by the base of the low overcast ahead of him. Someone else had flown into a shell that had blown his aircraft to bits, with the added detonation of his fuel tanks and torpedo.

  Now it was anger that became Alden's dominant mood. The ships were the embodiment of death to his comrades and the Nazis' evil doctrine and intentions. A crazy impulse to hurl his aircraft headlong at one of the battle cruisers in order to make sure of sinking it made him shake with tension. Even as the madness momentarily possessed him, he reasoned that crashing into the vast structure of thick steel would achieve little. Only a well-placed torpedo below the waterline had any chance of doing real damage.

  He saw the furrow of somebody's torpedo streaking towards one of the battle cruisers… then a second from a different direction.

  Ponderously the big ship turned, heeling. Both torpedoes sped past.

  A Vildebeest was burning. Its torpedo no longer hung beneath it. It lurched onto its starboard wingtips and slid into the sea. A column of smoke and steam hissed up.

  At a little over 1000 yards, aiming carefully ahead of the nearer of the two biggest vessels, judging where it would be, if it held its course, in 90 seconds' time, Alden released his torpedo. A few seconds later he swung away in a tight turn. Twenty-millimetre shells tore holes in his wings. Heavier shells burst close enough to hurl the Vildebeest up to make it pitch and skid. He tried to keep the track of his torpedo in sight. The last he saw of it, it was obviously going to miss its target by several yards.

  One of the troopships was down by the bows, motionless. That was the only damage he could see. He searched the sky and could count only seven other Vildebeests.

  Shortly after, the second wave passed him and the remnants of his squadron, on its way to take its turn in that maelstrom of gunfire; and with no more hope of success than the first waves.

  Three

  The second attack scored no hits and lost five aircraft; two of them to enemy fighters that had been scrambled
as soon as the first squadron was spotted. Fortunately, the Messerschmitts had fuel for only a few minutes' combat when the second squadron arrived.

  The survivors' bitterness about the futility of the venture held no resentment. What they had suffered was only the same as the Hampdens, Blenheims and Wellingtons had been through. It was true that the bombers were the most modern in Bomber Command, whereas their own antiquated aircraft should have been withdrawn from front line service long ago. Chances had not been equal. But Coastal Command was the poor relation in the Service family. Even the other operational Commands had little notion of what Coastal's duties entailed. To them, as to the public, life for a Coastal Command crew consisted of tedious uneventful patrols over the North Sea and Atlantic, looking for U-boats. They flew comfortably in big flying boats - Sunderlands, were they? - or some unaggressive type like an Anson or a... a... Boston, was it? The one that was really an American airliner, with a gun turret fitted on top. U-boats seldom showed up, anyway. And when they did, all the hunting crews had to do was dump depth charges on them before they dived. And they were in such a hurry to dive, that they didn't stay to fight ... they only had one small gun, anyway...

  This patronising and uninformed view was known to

  the men who flew these sorties but they remained ironically unperturbed by them. Ignorance was to be ignored, not to be irritated by.

  There was, none the less, a noticeable lack of the habitual exuberance in the atmosphere at East Crondal after the last aircraft had landed. Alden felt, in a way, detached from the quiet, implicit grief that it would have been an inconceivable breach of tradition to mention. The others on the squadron, with the exception of the handful of Reservists, had been together for a long time: some, for the last two years. He felt, in a way, unqualified to mourn for dead comrades with the depth of feeling that he knew they must be. Also, in a way, he felt apart from them and this distressed him because he had identified himself totally with his own squadron from the moment he joined it. He felt a fraternal attachment to the sister squadron.