Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  A few hours after arriving at Taukkyan, Lacey was approached by his Adjutant, who was smiling broadly. ‘Sir, we’ve had a signal from You-know-who.’

  ‘Oh? What does he want?’

  ‘Wing H.Q. have just moved to Kalemyo and he says you’re to send all available airmen there at once on temporary duty.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To help erect a flagstaff and prepare a parade ground.’

  ‘All my airmen are on essential duty. Tell him I’ll come and help put the flagstaff …’

  The squadron spent many hours on balloon patrol over The Longest Bailey Bridge In The World; a nostalgic duty, reminiscent of home: the sight of the fat silver envelopes swaying in the upper breeze like trunkless but dignified elephants, brought memories of the same silver guardian shapes tethered among the gentler hills and fields of Britain.

  But reminders of home were no compensation for the boredom of this sort of flying: constantly protecting balloons (that protected the bridge) from aircraft which they knew the enemy had not got.

  ‘If the Japs were going to shoot down those balloons, they would have done so at dawn and been back in Indo-China before we could get after them. But day after day, in the heat, we flew monotonously up and down and when the pilots landed they reported the number of balloons still there: it never varied. Morale was getting pretty low, with our whole effort concentrated on a job like that.’

  Lacey had his own way of dealing with the problem. The 3/1 (King George V’s Own) Gurkha Regiment was guarding the airfield. No. 17 Squadron’s C.O. issued a Daily Routine Order that all ranks would immediately shave their heads in the Gurkha style; thus becoming ‘the first Gurkha squadron in the R.A.F.’

  The novelty and the defiance of Service custom delighted both officers and airmen. It also delighted the Gurkhas. A good relationship already existed between them and the squadron. The regiment had been decimated in the fighting in the Kalewa gorge, and was reforming. In the meantime it defended the air strip. When 17 arrived with a detachment of the R.A.F. Regiment the Gurkhas pointed out to their C.O. Colonel Bond that, since they had guarded the place when there were no aeroplanes there, it was their right to continue to protect it and the aeroplanes on it.

  Told politely that the R.A.F. Regiment had come for that purpose, the little men drew up their own guard roster and continued with their duties as though the latter were not there.

  The shaven heads, with the Hindu topknot which the members of 17 Squadron duly left in place on their scalps (to be hauled up to Heaven by!) sent the Gurkhas into paroxysms of laughter.

  Lacey’s bête noir paid him a visit.

  ‘What’s this damned nonsense about your men shaving their heads, Lacey?’ His eyes opened even more widely as three N.C.O.s walked past. One had a Mohican haircut, another had left a ‘V’ of hair on the crown of his head, and the third had a ‘V’ in Morse code—three dots and a dash.

  Lacey watched them nonchalantly.

  You-know-who barked: ‘Abominable.’

  ‘Nothing odd about that,’ replied Lacey, casually removing his own bush hat to reveal his bare, top knotted scalp.

  A smouldering senior officer put Calcutta out of bounds until hair had been grown again. ‘Needless to say we didn’t take very much notice of that either.’

  But there was plenty to do in the jungle and not many people could get away for a weekend’s leave.

  The 3/1 Gurkhas, having reformed, were ordered to attack a village called Kin. They gave a farewell party in the Gurkha Officers’ Mess. The Subadar Major, a villainous looking warrior with a black eye patch, called at Lacey’s office tent to request that the squadron’s officers would honour the Viceroy Commissioned Officers’ Mess with their presence.

  Squadron Leader Lacey consulted Colonel Bond.

  ‘It’s quite in order,’ said the colonel, ‘provided you know what you are doing.’

  ‘What do you mean, Colonel?’

  `Well, you know they’re rather hard rum drinkers.’

  ‘You know by this time that my little bunch are rather hard drinkers too.

  ‘Very well, your blood’s on your own head. There’s nothing in King’s Regulations to stop you from drinking with the V.C.Os.’

  So No. 17 Squadron’s officers went.

  The V.C.Os’ Mess was a cheerful little building, with walls standing two and a half feet high and a roof supported on eight-foot bamboo poles. As they stood, with some formality, inside and made polite conversation over their first round of drinks, the R.A.F. officers could see some thirty Gurkha soldiers squatting on the ground outside. As always, they were laughing and chattering; and taking great interest in what went on inside the Mess.

  Lacey rather austerely spoke to the Subadar Major. ‘Are your men treating this as a peepshow?’

  ‘No, sahib. They are your orderlies.’

  ‘But what on earth do we want orderlies for?’

  The Subadar Major grinned his large grin and said nothing.

  Lacey found out, the first time he left the Mess to walk across to the latrine. Two Gurkhas rose from the group and accompanied him there and back. Then left him, to rejoin the group, when he returned to the party.

  This amiable escort continued for each guest or Gurkha officer who left the Mess. Until, when one of them had decided he would drink no more and sought to leave, he was gently caught by his two orderlies; who held him while he vomited and gently propelled him back into the party. ‘He wanted to go home, but they weren’t having that: he was still on his feet and so he was put back into the party.’

  For the rest of the evening, this fantastic game of ‘touch’ continued. Each time a rum-laden host or guest sought to weave his queasy route to bed, he was intercepted by two orderlies, helped to be sick, and helped back to the revels. It did not matter how many times any one person was sick: he went on coming back to the Mess. Only ultimate unconsciousness could put an end to this process; whereupon the orderlies took him to bed.

  The last three survivors were Lacey, the Subadar Major and one of the Flight Commanders.

  This put the seal on the mutual admiration which already existed between the English pilot and the Gurkha officer. Lacey had delighted the latter by taking him up in the Harvard and giving him the full aerobatic treatment: spins, rolls, loops, upward Charlies and everything else that could be done with the aircraft. In appreciation the Subadar Major had presented him with a magnificent kukri. This, thereafter, was a regular part of the squadron leader’s jungle escape kit and flew with him on all his operations. It became known in the squadron as the C.O’s ‘Mrs Beeton’; a not unsubtle pun!

  On Christmas Day the squadron gave ground support to their Gurkha friends as the attack on Kin went in. The infantry were provided with strips of canvas with which to lay signals for the aircraft which would convey whatever attack instructions they wished to give.

  The 3/1 Gurkha laid only one signal that day: ‘Merry Christmas’.

  Lacey remarks that there seemed to be something wrong with seeking to kill every Jap you could get your sights on with ‘Merry Christmas’ to speed you.

  Christmas Day was celebrated with a supply drop of tinned chicken and beer.

  The communications Harvard came back from one of its trips to Calcutta with toys for Chico and, piled around a tinselled branch from a jungle tree, they reminded the men of 17 Squadron of the family parties at home that they were missing; and gave them at least some vicarious satisfaction as they watched the little boy’s face gleam with pleasure and his eyes sparkle as he tore the paper wrappings from each parcel.

  On 19th January 1945 the squadron went forward to Tabingaung only ten miles from Jap lines. The move was bedevilled with discomfort. While the advance party slept in the open, waiting for tents to be flown to them, the rear party also slept in the open, with tents ready packed to be loaded on transport aircraft as soon as they came. For six days most of the men slept unprotected from rain, mosquitoes and bugs.

  But nobody
minded much, because operations began to develop a faster pace. The squadron worked on a three-day rota. One day attacking ground targets under the orders of the Visual Control Posts which were sited right forward and gave the pilots an on-the-spot briefing on what they were looking for. One day flying ‘Rhubarbs’ against ground targets of opportunity. One day resting. But they usually spent their rest day in flying their own Rhubarbs; and on one of these days, the 28th January, when they flew six Rhubarbs, four damaged trains and one destroyed two trains. At that time there were only thirty trains in Burma.

  As if the rain, the snakes and the insects were not irritants enough, there was the intense heat which made the metal of the aircraft so hot that to touch it with the bare skin was to suffer a severe burn.

  And the deolali birds. These small, white creatures with red throats would whistle maddeningly by day and night. Starting with a soft, low whistle, they repeated it on a higher note until, after fifteen minutes, they had reached a nerve-tearing shrillness that was enough to make tired men, suffering discomfort, scream in sympathy.

  One of their operations from Taukkyan had left them all in a mood of disgust and some depression. The Japanese were moving their stores out of Ye U along a long, straight road, on commandeered Burmese bullock carts. The squadron saw this great, slow convoy, reported it and were told to attack.

  They made several dummy attacks to give the Burmese drivers time to leave their vehicles and hide in the trees; but these wretched people were ignorant of the devastation threatened by Spitfires which were armed with cannons and machine guns, and they thought that they would be adequately protected if they stopped and hid under the bullock carts.

  By this time the Spitfires were getting short of fuel and the attack could no longer be held off. They went in. In less than a minute the convoy was reduced to a shambles of burning petrol. (lead and wounded men and beasts, and living torches that ran from under the carts: the four-gallon cans, dripping petrol onto them, had set alight those of the sheltering drivers who were not killed outright. The pilots saw faces turned up towards them in agony and mouths opened to utter screams which, mercifully, were inaudible. Operating against trains, lorries and Japanese troops soon dispelled the horrid memory of this carnage.

  In Lacey’s log-book is a letter from the Supreme Commander, Lord Louis Mountbatten, dated 26th January, 1945.

  Dear Lacey,

  I shall be most grateful if you would pass on to Rutherford and his co-pilots my thanks for providing fighter escort for my flight from Kalemyo to Ye U on my recent visit to the front.

  I hope that now you are right forward again you will have the opportunities of dealing with the enemy as they should be dealt with.

  Yours sincerely,

  Louis Mountbatten.

  Lacey’s squadron escorted the Supreme Commander many times and never once did he fail to write and thank them.

  The Army was hitting hard at Kabwet on the river Irrawady, which was wanted as a jumping off place for a river crossing, on the way to Mandalay.

  17 Squadron was briefed to attack in front of the advance, for thirty minutes. This would keep down the Japanese fire and enable the British units to advance right up to the enemy positions.

  The twelve Spitfires dived time after time, only forty yards ahead of the advancing infantry. To make their ammunition last as long as possible they only fired on one dive in every three. This was a successful manoeuvre, originated by the squadron commander, and kept the heads of the Japanese well down.

  Elation over the congratulations which came from the General commanding the operation was still a cause for celebration two nights later when ‘after a small party’ Lacey and his pilots went to bed. Small parties were not infrequent in 17’s Mess. The Harvard two-seat aircraft allotted for communications purposes was flown regularly between whatever airfield the squadron was on, and Calcutta on ‘the Hooch Run’; bringing in some thirteen cases of gin a time. It was said never to be on the ground except for refuelling. This produced one distressing crisis, when a King’s Messenger arrived and could not be flown on to the next unit. But it produced a lot of gin—and anyone asking for a gin and lime was given his own bottle of each. Even drunk with water that had dripped through a tent, it was not to be scorned: when every other squadron in Burma suffered a gin ration.

  On this night, despite the soporific effects of his gin ration, Lacey woke suddenly. He lay for a few moments listening to the familiar jungle noises: the unbroken hum of insects forming a loud background to the shrill calls of birds and monkeys and the occasional howl, grunt or roar of the bigger beasts out hunting. The humid darkness presses in, so that the night seems to have tangible dimensions and to weigh heavily on human bodies, crushing the breath out of them and enveloping them with indefinable threats.

  He tried to tune his ears to separate kinds of sound in the vast darkness and presently one grew dominant: an aircraft engine; and a strange one, at that. He knew it was not a Beaufighter going out on an interdiction mission.

  The engine was approaching.

  It could only be a Jap.

  He rolled swiftly under his mosquito net and dashed out of the tent, to stand searching the starlit sky. Screwing up his eyes—which were unwilling to open fully, anyway, from sleepiness and the benefits of the Hooch Run—he quickly spotted the stabbing blue flashes of an exhaust flame from an aircraft which was by now directly over the airfield.

  By this time nearly all the tents had emptied and most of the squadron was outside, delivering bitter commentary on the intruder’s ancestry and intentions.

  They heard it dive over the disused runway along which the aircraft were dispersed. As it hurtled down Lacey saw its silhouette and identified it as an ‘Oscar’—presumably one which had been recently stationed on this very strip and flown by a pilot who knew his surroundings intimately even in the dark.

  As the enemy aircraft, with its engine bellowing, hurtled down the line of Spitfires, the gallant Squadron Commander made the gesture of emptying his thirty-eight revolver in the general direction of its silhouette. ‘It was the only anti-aircraft fire delivered during the whole of the attack!’

  Bombs thudded down. Stones and earth pattered heavily on the earth from the eruptions which followed each explosion. They came frighteningly close … and closer …

  A sizzling sheet of flame lit the darkness close at hand and a wave of heat smashed at the group of men. Voices called and flashlights flickered to the sound of running feet. They had to fall back, shielding their faces from the blaze, and watch one of the Spitfires burned out before they could save it.

  Officers and N.C.O.s were shouting orders and summoning fire parties. Men ducked as there was a deafening metallic clang followed by a shower of sparks and muffled explosions. Someone shouted: ‘It’s all right—the-so-and-so dropped a canister of incendiary bombs on the C.O’s kite, but it bounced off before it opened.’

  Had the enemy pilot dropped his bombs from a greater height he would have destroyed Lacey’s aircraft and several more. As it was, he was responsible only for burning out one and damaging two others, because he attacked from so low that his canisters of incendiaries were not fully effective.

  Even this frightening night attack had its droll corollary. One of the more cautious airmen had, in preparation for any type of nocturnal danger, dug a trench under his bed. When his friends returned to their tents they found him still in bed: tightly entangled in his mosquito net, into which he had dived when trying to leap into his trench. The more he struggled the more closely was he enmeshed. Of them all, he was in the greatest danger.

  But places with unpleasant associations were quickly left behind in the rapid advance and on the 2nd February the squadron was operating from Ywadon. This was a satellite airfield to Monywa, where 909 Wing H.Q. was.

  The latter was notably free of flies. And it must have been the worst possible shaker to the Japanese who had only just been driven out of it, when a formation of Dakotas sprayed the aerodrome w
ith D.D.T. in blatant preparation for and certainty of its imminent occupation by the British. The enemy had taken the hint and moved out immediately.

  Lacey’s first flight from Ywadon was to air test his new aircraft. He had only been airborne a few minutes when a Visual Control Post called him on the R/T. ‘I’m being shelled.’

  ‘Well … hard luck !’

  ‘I say again, I am being shelled. Can you please report the gun site.’

  ‘I’ll have a go.’ Lacey pulled into a steep bank and circled. The thick jungle and the broken landscape of hills and gorges concealed the V.C.P. but presently he made out shell bursts in the area where he had been told to look. ‘I can see the shells bursting near you …’

  ‘Thanks! Did you say near? They’re on, old boy.’

  Lacey climbed a thousand feet and scanned the ground again. Yes. Three or four miles from the V.C.P’s position he saw intermittent clouds of dust spurting up and hanging in the still air. ‘O.K. I think I’ve got it.’

  He flew straight towards the place and saw at once that the dust was being thrown up by the muzzle blast of two field guns. Diving into the attack he raked the artillery position with his machine guns and cannon and saw the gunners flung aside like scarecrows scattered by a typhoon as his bullets and shells hammered into them.

  The V.C.P’s thanks were quite touching.

  The episode must have put Lacey in an exceptionally good humour, because when he got back and was shewn a signal which said that the Japanese might drop parachutists that night to round up the stragglers of their retreating army, he suggested to the I.O., ‘Spy, you’d better put that Jap flag you’ve got, on top of your tent so that they’ll think it’s their H.Q.’

  ‘Yes, sir. If you’ll swap tents with me.’

  But the Japs didn’t come that night, and the next day it rained so hard that the airstrip was unserviceable. The rain stopped. Lacey, restless, wandered over to the tent on which he had suggested hoisting an enemy flag as a lure to stragglers and parachutists. Flying Officer Britton looked up. Lacey held a gun in his hand.