Wilcox’s voice, in reply, sounded nervous. ‘That bastard must have hit my coolant tank,’ he said. ‘Temperature’s going off the clock now.’
Yeoman allowed his Spitfire to drop back until he was flying alongside Wilcox’s aircraft. The trail of glycol was growing denser, and trickles of darker smoke were beginning to emerge from under the engine cowling.
‘It doesn’t look too good, Johnny,’ he told the Rhodesian. ‘Think you can make it?’
‘I ... I’m not sure. She sounds rough. Starting to vibrate a lot. I think I’d better get ready to ditch.’
‘No, Johnny,’ Yeoman said urgently. ‘Don’t try and ditch. I repeat, do not try to ditch.’ The auxiliary fuel tank, which could not be jettisoned in flight, would be a dangerous obstacle in the way of an attempted landing on the sea, and might drag the Spitfire down like a stone.
‘Why ... oh, Roger. The tank. I’d forgotten ... Okay, getting ready to bale out.’
Yeoman saw Wilcox slide back his cockpit hood and unfasten his seat harness. The smoke was getting worse, partly obscuring the cockpit and the hunched figure of the pilot.
‘Try and stretch it as long as you can, Johnny,’ he said. ‘Another fifteen minutes will see us home.’
‘Roger ... I don’t think she’ll hold that long.’ Wilcox’s voice was growing more tense and strained as the seconds ticked away. ‘She’s shaking like hell.’
Yeoman made no reply. There was nothing to say. He was imagining the ordeal Wilcox was going through, because he himself had experienced something similar on more than one occasion. Sweat pouring into the eyes ... hands slippery on the stick, the needles on the instruments coldly spelling out one’s fate.
‘She’s gone.’ The words were flat and without emotion. Wilcox’s Spitfire began to go down, shrouded in smoke, its engine seized and useless.
‘I’m getting out now. So long, chaps.’
The Spitfire rolled over on its back, and Yeoman saw the dark bundle of Wilcox’s body drop from the cockpit, curving down toward the sea. Yeoman felt a flood of relief as the Rhodesian’s parachute streamed and then deployed fully; at least he was safe so far.
Their low fuel state did not permit them to circle the spot until Wilcox climbed into his dinghy. All Yeoman could do was to put out a distress call to Malta’s air-sea rescue service and hope for the best. He made up his mind that if he could secure permission, he would take off again as soon as possible and take part in the search.
The rest of the flight back to the island was without incident, the Spitfires landing at Luqa shortly after the returning Beaufort torpedo-bombers, or what was left of them. Two had been shot down, a third had crashed on landing and the others had been punched full of holes. Nevertheless, they brought back a report of success: their torpedoes had hit two Italian cruisers and a destroyer. The Malta garrison would not know it for some time, but the Beauforts’ gallant torpedo strike had so unnerved the Italian naval commander that he had turned his force round and headed back towards Taranto. The convoy from Alexandria would have been able to get through after all.
All four of Roger Graham’s Spitfires had got back safely, and the squadron commander told Yeoman that they had arrived over the convoy just in time to break up an attack by a large formation of Stukas. The dive-bombers had been unescorted and the Spitfire pilots had destroyed five of them, Graham himself accounting for two, before shortage of fuel had forced them to break off the action.
Yeoman asked if he might go out again in search of Wilcox but Graham refused, pointing out quite rightly that fuel was desperately scarce and that there was none to spare for what might easily turn out to be a wild-goose chase. Fishing pilots out of the sea was the job of air-sea rescue, and they did it very efficiently. Besides, Wilcox had come down approximately in the path of the convoy, and there was a reasonable chance that a passing ship might pick him up.
But Wilcox never returned to Malta. A long time later, Yeoman learned that he had been rescued by an Italian flying-boat and flown to Syracuse. The Rhodesian was destined to spend the rest of the war as a prisoner.
The Luqa Spitfires, refuelled and re-armed, nestled in their pens while their pilots waited, sweltering in the heat, for orders to take off on a second mission to the convoy. Most of them remained in the vicinity of G Shelter, wandering down the steps from time to time to take advantage of the coolness and to hear the latest reports on the convoy’s progress. A couple of tents had been rigged up nearby, the stone hut that had served as the mess having been flattened some time ago, but no one was using them; the heat inside, and the stuffiness, were unbearable.
Yeoman sat on the rocks outside the shelter, sharing a mug of tea with a flight lieutenant who had come down from Takali on some errand or other. The man looked utterly haggard, and Yeoman realized with a sudden shock that he must look much the same himself. They were all worn out, and for some the strain had become too much. The man who now sat next to Yeoman was showing all the classic symptoms of the Malta fighter pilot’s ‘twitch’. When he spoke, his voice was dull and monosyllabic.
‘They shot a kid at Takali the other day,’ he said suddenly.
‘They did what?’ Yeoman asked, startled by the other’s comment.
‘Shot a kid. At Takali. A young Malt.’
‘What the hell for?’ Yeoman wanted to know.
‘They said it was sabotage. He was one of the kids who help out, refuelling the Spits and so on. You know.’
Yeoman nodded. Luqa, too, had its share of young Maltese, local boys who had volunteered to fetch and carry and generally do odd jobs around the airfield. They did their work proudly and extremely well, and the few shillings they earned was a welcome extra source of income for their families.
‘He was only a kid,’ the flight lieutenant went on, staring at the dusty ground between his feet. ‘Couldn’t have been more than seventeen. A hell of a nice lad. Got on well with everybody. The erks thought the world of him.’
‘What did he do?’ Yeoman asked.
‘Poured some oil into a Spit’s fuel tank,’ the other replied. ‘Everybody swore it was an accident, but it made no difference. You know the orders: anybody found guilty of sabotage or theft, whether he’s service or civilian, is liable to be summarily tried and executed. So they shot the poor little bastard. In front of everybody.’
Yeoman was silent, thinking. Drastic measures were certainly necessary to preserve security and discipline in an island under siege, but surely ... to shoot a mere boy for something he didn’t intend seemed utterly heartless, calculated to inculcate hatred among the islanders. And yet, on the other side of the coin, the boy’s action might have cost the life of a pilot, had the slip not been detected in time. It all took a lot of weighing up, but there was something barbaric and horrible about putting someone before a firing squad — and a civilian, at that — with hundreds of personnel looking on.
‘I’ll bet they wouldn’t have done it if it had been one of our blokes,’ he commented.
His companion looked at him and nodded slowly. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ he said. ‘Wherever we go, the Brits I mean, we seem to take it out on the poor bloody natives.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Remember the old saying about the colonial British? “I can’t understand why they don’t like us,” said the District Commissioner, idly flicking a passing wog with his bull whip!’
Yeoman grinned. ‘There’s a lot of truth in that,’ he said. ‘But I’ve a feeling there’ll be big changes when all this lot is over. There won’t be an Empire any more, at least not as we used to know it.’
He stood up, and the flight lieutenant looked at him quizzically. ‘What are you,’ he asked jokingly, ‘some sort of bloody bolshevik?’
‘No,’ Yeoman smiled, ‘just what you might call a realist. I’m off downstairs to see what’s going on. Coming?’
The other shook his head. ‘No, I’ve got to be getting back to Takali. Might be able to grab a lift with somebody. See you around.’
Yeoman
re-emerged from the underground operations room adjacent to G Shelter ten minutes later, blinking in the harsh sunlight. The embattled convoy was reported to be somewhere between the islands of Lampedusa and Linosa, with over a hundred miles still to run. Roger Graham’s four Spitfires were already out there, making their second trip that morning, and Yeoman had orders to bring his Yellow Section to immediate readiness. He got his pilots together — a sergeant named Randall filling the gap caused by the loss of Wilcox — and they went out to their aircraft, blistering in their pens under the brazen sun.
They waited for twenty minutes, fuming at the delay in the scorching heat, and still no call came for them to scramble. Then, suddenly, they heard the roar of Merlin engines swelling from Takali. Spitfires swung up through the rippling heat haze, tucking up their wheels and climbing out to sea. More came racing up from Hal Far, showing their elliptical wings as they turned over Zurrieq and sped off to the west, climbing hard.
Another five minutes went by, then Yeoman threw his helmet on to the wing of his Spitfire and called out to Powell, in the next pen:
‘Bugger this. I’m going back to G Shelter to find out what’s going on. Keep an eye on things here; if the flare goes up while I’m away you take over and get airborne. I’ll catch up with you.’
He grabbed a bicycle that was propped against the wall of sandbags and mounted it, pedalling off towards G Shelter and cursing because of the amount of sweat it cost him. By the time he arrived he was in no mood to mince words with anyone. Flinging down the bicycle, he stormed down the steps into the ops room and made for the controller, a squadron leader.
‘What the blazes is going on?’ he demanded.
The controller looked at him coldly. ‘Are you talking to me?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I bloody well am,’ Yeoman retorted, still fuming. ‘We’ve been sitting out there roasting for half an hour on readiness, and then we see everybody else getting airborne except us. So what’s happening?’
There was a long pause while the squadron leader, his face turning slowly purple, looked Yeoman up and down as though the pilot were something that had just crept out from under a stone. Then he said:
‘As a matter of fact, the convoy is now within range of the Takali and Hal Far fighters. They will be providing the air cover from now on.’
‘Well,’ stormed Yeoman, ‘somebody might have bloody well told us. My pilots need all the rest they can get.’ He put his face very close to the controller’s and said, in a low, level voice:
‘Have you any idea what it costs us every time we have to sit out there waiting for a scramble? No, I don’t suppose you have, so I’ll tell you. We have our guts in our mouths. We want to relieve ourselves all the time. We feel sick. The longer the wait lasts, the worse it gets. In some ways, it’s worse when no scramble comes than when it does. The anticlimax rips you apart, makes you feel washed out. And yet you know that you have to go on doing it, over and over again, your nerves getting more strung up each time. Some can’t take it any more, and do away with themselves. You’ve heard about those cases, haven’t you?’ He stood with his hands on his hips, feet apart, and glared truculently at the other officer. The squadron leader, a man in his forties who wore an observer’s brevet, took a deep breath, stared back at Yeoman and then let out a long sigh, relaxing visibly.
‘Let me tell you a couple of things,’ he said quietly. ‘First, I don’t like your tone or your manner, but we’ll forget that. Second, yes, I do know what it’s like. In the last war I was an observer on RE8S — you may have heard of them. Flying around at five thousand feet over the enemy lines, taking photographs — not exactly the recipe for a long and healthy life. I arrived on the squadron in Flanders in February 1918, and by the end of March there were only three of the original bunch left. I was wounded, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here now. When things were really hectic, we lived on a diet of milk and cognac. We couldn’t keep anything else down. So don’t go sounding off to me about strain and the like.’
‘All right, sir,’ Yeoman said, somewhat chastened. ‘I went off at half-cock and I apologize.’
‘Forget it,’ the squadron leader said. ‘We’re all on edge. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to remain at readiness for another half hour or so; all the Spits we can spare are out looking after the convoy, and Jerry might put over a sneak raid. But I’ll stand you down as soon as possible, that I promise you.’
Mollified, and angry with himself because of his impetuosity, Yeoman left the operations room and cycled back to the pens. Powell noticed the expression on his face and was curious.
‘You look as though you’ve had a brush with authority,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, I just blew my top and made a silly ass of myself, that’s all,’ Yeoman replied. ‘Anyhow, we have to stay on readiness for another half-hour or so.’
Briefly, he outlined what the controller had told him about the convoy’s progress. As it turned out, the squadron leader was correct in his assumption that the enemy would send over a raid while the Takali and Hal Far Spitfires were absent: fifteen minutes later, the alarm went up.
The four Spitfires of Yellow Section, still burdened by their auxiliary tanks, climbed hard into the blue-white dome of the sky. For Yeoman, the sortie was a nightmare; during the climb he was seized by violent stomach cramps, and it took all his will-power to avoid vomiting over himself. Weakly, his head swimming, he called up Group Captain Douglas and asked for instructions. The reply came back immediately:
‘Six plus big jobs approaching Gozo, Angels fifteen. Steer three-oh-five.’
There was no report of any fighters. The Spitfires continued their climb, the pilots searching the sky for first sight of the enemy. At eight thousand feet the instrument panel swam in front of Yeoman’s eyes and he was having trouble focusing. At ten thousand feet he almost passed out, recovering to find that his Spitfire was in a shallow dive.
Powell’s voice came over the radio, full of concern.
‘Yellow One, are you in trouble? George, are you okay?’
Fighting off an attack of nausea, Yeoman replied: ‘I’ve had it, Gerry. The Dog. Take over.’
Powell acknowledged and Yeoman turned away, flying instinctively as he turned down towards Luqa. The rubbery smell of his oxygen mask made his gorge rise and he tore it away from his face, opening the cockpit canopy and taking great gulps of the air that rushed in.
Waves of heat and cold swept over him alternately as he began his approach to land, his senses swimming. Automatically he lowered the undercarriage and flaps, fishtailing to lose speed as he sank towards the runway, touching down with a series of jarring bumps. He turned off the runway as the Spitfire slowed, following the winding taxi-track towards his blast pen on the airfield perimeter close by the village of Siggiewi. Stopping beside the sandbags, he hastily undid his straps and fell from the cockpit, disgorging the contents of his stomach into the dust, clinging to the trailing edge of the wing for support. Then, the pain in his stomach like a red-hot knife, he staggered round the pen and managed to drop his shorts in the nick of time.
A few minutes later, feeling a little better, he sat in the shelter of the sandbags and sipped water from a bottle proffered by Sykes. A few miles away, the Takali antiaircraft barrage was making a thunderous din. Tozer stuck his head over the parapet, shading his eyes against the glare as he peered upwards.
‘There they are,’ he said, pointing. ‘Two ... four ... eight of ’em. Junkers 88s. Whoops —’ his voice rose excitedly — ‘there go the Spits!’
Yeoman looked up, his sickness and weariness temporarily forgotten, following the direction of Tozer’s outstretched arm. The bombers were turning over the west coast of the island at about twelve thousand feet, flying in two diamond-shaped formations, slipping through layers of flak bursts like silvery fish. Above them, streaking down to intercept, came the three Spitfires, the clarion note of their Merlin engines under full power cutting through the deeper throb of the Junkers’
motors.
The Spitfires flashed through the rearmost box of bombers, the popping of their cannon clearly audible, their wings glittering in the sun as they pulled out below and rocketed into a climb in line astern. A Junkers turned lazily out of formation, spiralled twice and then went into a vertical dive, trailing a chalk slash of white smoke from both engines.
The leading box of bombers was nosing over, the silhouettes of the aircraft growing larger.
‘It’s us,’ said Sykes breathlessly. ‘Better take cover.’
Yeoman, mentally calculating the bombers’ diving angle, corrected him. ‘No, I think it’s Valletta again. They’ll pass over the top of us.’
He was right. The bombers came on, plunging through the smoke of the shell-bursts from the ack-ack batteries in and around Hamrun, Floriana, Valletta, Sliema, Senglea and Luqa itself, carpeting the sky with such an intensity of fire that the diving aircraft were only briefly visible. Through the murk their bombs fell, shrieking down in a long parabola towards the installations of Grand Harbour.
Before they hit the ground, there was a terrific explosion from the opposite direction. Startled, the three men turned their heads. The stricken Junkers had hit the ground somewhere between Rabat and Luqa with its bombs still on board. Dark clouds of smoke boiled up from the spot, and the thick white trail of its fall rose arrow-straight into the sky like a tombstone.
There were more cracking detonations as the bombs from the other Junkers exploded, and pillars of smoke rose from the Grand Harbour area, forming a line on the horizon. The bombers, having pulled out of their dives, were twisting and turning this way and that through the murderous barrage, seeking the sanctuary of the sea. They appeared to get away unscathed.
Yeoman suddenly remembered the second box of four bombers and looked for it, locating it through the howl of Spitfire engines. The three surviving Ju 88s. had passed overhead and were diving on Hal Far, still harassed by the fighters whose pilots were braving the ack-ack from Safi, Kalafrana, Marsaxlokk and Delimara to press home their attacks.
Malta Victory Page 13
