Battle of Britain

by Chris Priestley

“I am pretending!” the pilot said.

  Then the director said he didn’t look startled enough. Then he didn’t like the way he ran. Eventually the chap snapped, and when he had been asked to do it for the umpteenth time, he jumped up from his bunk and yelled, “I hope you’re not going to ask me to do it again when I ditch into the Channel!”

  Then it was my go. In the next scene we had to sit around playing chess and whatever and then when he gave us the shout of “Go!” we had to run like crazy for our aircraft. I was right in front, looking very thoughtful, holding a knight, just ready to move.

  “Go!” he shouted, and off we went.

  “No, no, no!” he shouted, and brought us all back. He had his head in his hands and was groaning.

  “Some of you are grinning. This is serious. This is for morale. This is for your folks back home. Now, let’s do it properly, shall we?” We all shuffled back to our positions. “And . . . action!”

  I picked up my knight again and tried to look even more thoughtful than before. Then the siren went off. We jumped up. I knocked the chess table over with my knee. Papers were thrown down, pipes dropped, half-finished cups of tea left on the ground.

  “No, no, no!” the director shouted, apparently. He thought we were too over-the-top this time. In fact he was so busy trying to call us back that he missed filming us taking off. This was a real scramble.

  When we got back, the crews met us and set to work on patching up the aircraft. I had a jagged hole in the port wing, and the airmen looked cross with me as usual, for giving them even more work to do. The film crew were still there. The director ran over to me as we walked away from the plane.

  “I know this is going to seem a liberty, but we have to get back to the footage we were shooting. The light’s changing all the time. . .”

  “You’re persistent, I’ll say that for you,” I said.

  “Look, I’ve got my job to do, just like you. It may not be quite so glamorous. . .”

  “Glamorous,” I said. “Is that what it is?”

  “Yes,” he said, “As a matter of fact, I think it is.”

  “Not long ago this place was being bombed. I wonder how glamorous you’d have found that?”

  “Listen, sonny,” he said, walking a little closer. “I’m based in London. You may have heard on the wireless that we’ve had a few bombs of our own. I take it you’ve heard of the Blitz?”

  I came very close to thumping him there and then.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I have work to do. I have a Combat Report to file. . .”

  “My job is important too, you know, whatever you may think,” he said. “We might not get the credit, like you chaps, but we can’t all be Spitfire pilots, now can we? Now, I have your CO’s assurance that you will give me every assistance. And that’s an order, by the way.”

  “OK,” I said with a shrug, walking back to where the other chaps were milling about. “What do you want?”

  “OK then,” he said. “I need you to do the chess scene again. Where’s the blond-haired chap you were playing?”

  “I’m sorry, but he can’t join us, I’m afraid,” I said.

  “Can’t,” said the director with a sneer. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. He bought it half an hour ago.”

  “Bought it? Oh, you mean. . .” He looked at the other pilots who were sharing a joke as they walked to debriefing. Then he looked back at me.

  “Now,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me. I have that Combat Report to get in.”

  I was chatting to one of the WAAFs from the Ops Room at the entrance to the base. I’d seen her a few times, but we’d never spoken. Her name was Harriet. “Definitely not Hattie,” she said. I liked her. I liked her a lot. Despite the fact that she’d nearly run me over on her way in. . .

  She had green eyes. I’d never met anyone with green eyes before. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I was trying to think of some way of asking her out, but somehow I never managed to get round to the right set of words.

  Just then a Hurricane flew low over the base. It banked round and came in to land, but it was wobbling around all over the place.

  “He’s not going to make it,” I said. The Hurricane shot over us at tree height, over the perimeter fence and into the field beyond.

  “Hop in,” said Harriet. “Let’s go and see if he’s OK.”

  I jumped in and she drove like the clappers in the direction we’d seen the Hurricane come down. She’d have made a decent pilot, I reckon. By the time we arrived at the scene, the locals were already there.

  The Hurricane had taken a few branches off a willow and pancaked into a field, coming to a halt next to a hump-backed barn. The pilot seemed to be OK, but I could hear him shouting and something didn’t feel quite right.

  “I think it might be better if you stayed here, just for the minute,” I said. I got out of the car and trotted over. A Home Guard with pebble glasses swung round and pointed his peashooter at me. He looked about a hundred years old.

  “Woah, tiger,” I said, putting my hands up and smiling at him. “I’m on your side!”

  He scowled and looked a little disappointed not to be able to shoot me. But he turned away to point his rifle at the pilot who was climbing out of the cockpit and shouting a stream of what were obviously swear words.

  When he finally became aware of the crowd around the plane, pointing rifles and pitchforks at him, he smiled. But when no smiles came back he scowled angrily and began to climb down from his plane. He tried to brush a pitchfork away as he walked forward but the farmhand holding it shoved it towards him.

  “Stay right where you are, Fritz!” yelled another of the Home Guard.

  “Fritz?” yelled the pilot angrily. “You call me German?”

  He was going to get shot for sure, so I pushed my way to the front.

  “He’s not German! Can’t you recognize a Hurricane when you see one?”

  “How do we know it’s not a trick?” shouted one of the farmhands. “You hear about stuff like that.”

  “He’s not English!” yelled another. “How come a Jerry’s flyin’ a Hurricane?”

  “He’s Polish, you idiot! He’s on our side!”

  “Don’t you call me an idiot!”

  “Useless Poles!” said the farmhand nearest to me. “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “How do you work that out?” I said.

  “If those cowards had stood up for themselves, none of this would have started.” The Polish pilot lurched forward and it took all my strength to stop him from grabbing the farmhand. “You call me coward, you English pig? I kill you with my bare hands! I kill you with bare hands!” As he lurched forward, pitchforks were levelled and rifles aimed.

  “OK, OK!” I yelled. “Let’s all calm down, shall we?”

  “He threatened to kill me,” said the farmhand. “You ’eard ’im, Bill, didn’t you? Little so-and-so wanted to murder me.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, turning to the pilot and making a “let’s just humour them and get out of here” kind of face. He spat out another stream of Polish.

  “What’s he saying? What’s he saying? Speaka the English, mate!”

  “I said you are ignorant son-of-a-dwarf and I will be happy to teach you some manners.”

  “Oh brother,” I sighed.

  The farmhand grabbed a pitchfork from a man nearby and very nearly harpooned us both with it. He was coming in for another go when a gun went off and everyone turned round. It was the old Home Guard chap I’d passed on the way in.

  “Let’s save it for the Germans, eh boys?” he said.

  Everyone held their ground for a few minutes and then they all stepped back a little. The farmhand stuck his pitchfork in the ground and stared off into the distance.

  “Having fun, boys?�
� said Harriet, sauntering over from the car. “Anyone for a lift?”

  The Polish pilot smiled. “I would be delighted,” he said.

  After he had been debriefed and he phoned his base to tell them he was safe, the Polish pilot joined me in the mess. I bought him a drink and we sat down in the corner away from the rest of the lads.

  “Gorka,” he said, shaking my hand. “Waldemar Gorka.”

  “Harry Woods,” I said. I asked him how he came to be flying a Hurricane so far from home. He looked down at the table, as if he was talking to his glass. He took a deep breath.

  “I join flying club at university and learn to fly,” he said. “Then I join Polish Air Force. Then I think, ‘This is fantastic. This is my life now!’” I nodded and smiled again, but his expression turned grim as he went on. “Then Germans come. Russians come. We do our best, but it is not good enough.”

  “At end of September I get out. I say goodbye to mother, to father, to my little brother. I want to stay and fight, but father say that there is no use. I would be killed for sure. He is right. I kiss them goodbye. My mother kisses me here –” he pointed to his forehead – “and says she will pray for me. She makes sign of cross and I go.”

  “I fly my plane to Romania. Romanians are friends but Germans already there. Gestapo already rounding up Jews. Romanians arrest us but guards let us go. I get to Italy, then France and then England. Tell them I am flyer. They train me on Hurricanes. They make me pilot. So here I am.”

  “And your parents? Your brother?”

  “Dead. All dead,” he said, taking another drink. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “It makes me feel even worse about what happened back there with the farm lad. What with you fighting for England after everything that’s happened to you.”

  “I don’t fight for England,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I fight for Poland! I fight in RAF only because English give me plane, give me bullets. Bullets to kill Germans. To kill them like they kill my people.” He was wild-eyed now and leaned closer to me to whisper in my face. “Know what I think when they bomb London?” I shook my head. “I think ‘Good! Let them see what war is like!’” I looked away. He calmed a little. “How about you? What you fight for, English? King and Country?”

  I shook my head. “Someone else asked me that a long time ago,” I said smiling. “Then I said I was fighting for my family. Down here, I’d still stay the same thing . . . but up there, I’m not thinking of anyone but me. Up there I’m just fighting for my life, nothing more than that.”

  He nodded. “Look, English, I sorry if I don’t talk like you gentlemen of RAF. I am Polish. Understand?” I smiled weakly and nodded my head, although I didn’t really understand at all. How could I?

  “Don’t apologize for farmer. He think I am German. He want to kill me because I am German. If German pilot lands near me I shoot him dead, and they do the same to me. This I understand.” He drained his drink and asked for another. “I hear about German pilot they shot down. He picked up by Home Guard. They take him to pub and buy him drink before taking him in! They buy him drink!”

  I laughed. I hadn’t the heart to tell him we’d had a German pilot in the mess only the week before when he’d baled out near the base. “We are a funny lot, I suppose,” I said. But he didn’t laugh.

  “Look, war is not cricket match. I hear English pilot talk about dogfight being like – how do you call. . .?” He made a fencing motion in the air.

  “Like a fencing match? Like a duel?”

  “A duel, yes,” he said. Then he banged his fist on the counter. “It is not like duel. It is like knife fight in back alley. You dodge your enemy, you avoid his attack, you see your chance, you stick him in guts and run. In. Out. Is it not true?”

  “Well,” I said, laughing. “I’ve heard it described more poetically, but you’re right, people do talk a lot of rot about jousting and the like. It never feels like that to me. Mostly it’s just staying alive.”

  “And shooting down Germans,” he added.

  “And shooting down Germans,” I agreed, but I couldn’t quite compete with his thirst for German blood.

  I liked him, though. Admired him too, I suppose. He was a tough nut, that’s for sure. For all my months of experience, I felt a kid again next to him.

  “Look, I make you a deal,” he said. “I fight for you freedom. I fight to keep England free – free for the cricket – free from German dogs. Then we free Poland. No Germans, no Russians – we kick them all out, OK? We free my country. We drink to Poland!”

  “To Poland,” I said. “To freedom.”

  “To freedom!”

  I arranged to meet and talk to Lenny about the desk job he’d been given. We met up in St James Park in London. He was already there when I arrived and I saw him standing, looking off towards Whitehall. He was wearing his new leg. If you didn’t know, you’d never have guessed. Only I did know.

  “I’ve brought some of the gang with me, if that’s all right?” Lenny turned round, startled slightly from his thoughts, and then his face mellowed and finally cracked into a grin as they all walked up behind me.

  “Good grief!” he said. “You’re all still alive! Those Germans must be getting slow.”

  They all came in to ruffle his hair and punch his shoulder. One of the chaps jostled him a little too roughly, and for one awful moment it looked like he was going to fall over. Everyone went quiet as Lenny managed to stay upright.

  “Not as steady on my pins as I used to be,” said Lenny with a grin.

  “So, Lenny,” said one of the chaps. “How did you get on with those nurses, then? We all know what nurses are like.”

  “Hey – watch your mouth,” I said, laughing. “My sister’s a nurse.”

  “Whoops! Sorry, Woody. Don’t happen to have her number do you?” I thumped him in the shoulder.

  “Ow! That hurt, you oaf! That’s my bowling arm, too.”

  “You can’t bowl to save your life,” said Lenny.

  “True. True. So anyway how are you, you old misery?”

  “Missing you all dreadfully, of course,” he said with a sarcastic raise of one eyebrow.

  “Of course. Goes without saying, old chap.”

  And then we were off. We were more like a group of students than a group of seasoned fighters. The sun shone and golden leaves occasionally fluttered down. As I looked across at them smiling and joking, we all seemed young again.

  We stayed quite a long time. I think we were all reluctant to be the first to talk about leaving. Someone produced a hip flask of whisky – something he’d bought on the black market – and tiny glasses were pulled from jacket pockets, with spares for Lenny and me. We waited for a policeman to walk past and then we poured a tot into each glass.

  “Absent friends!” said somebody. We raised our glasses and clinked them together.

  “Absent friends!” I drank a mouthful and spat it out. Everyone did the same. It was vile!

  It really was time to move off then. Lenny shook everyone’s hand and he looked almost like his old self. I told him to take care of himself and he told me to do the same. Then, as each man left, he absent-mindedly patted Lenny on the shoulder, just as they used to.

  The immediate threat of invasion was gone now, but things were scarcely any easier. We had made the Germans think twice about daylight bombing raids, but that didn’t stop them bombing London every night.

  At the end of October, we were patrolling along the Thames estuary when I flew over London from the east. It was quite a sight. All across the city there were bombed-out buildings, roofless, with black and hollow windows and walls all scorched and pock marked. Piles of rubble filled the streets.

  We were heading back when the Messerschmitts jumped us. They tore down like hawks, scattering us. It was mayhem. The Spit to starboard crumpled in on i
tself and went down in flames.

  They seemed to be everywhere but no matter what I did I couldn’t get a clear view of them. That same feeling of frustration, of helplessness. The same feeling of wanting to puke that I’d had since my first patrol.

  I told myself to be calm. “Come on, come on,” I said, “get on with it. You’ve done this a hundred times before,” as if saying it would make it all right. As if anyone could ever get used to this.

  It was like standing on a cliff with just your heels touching, leaning out, fear holding you back, Death pulling you on – and we looked over that cliff every day. Every day. Maybe it was only luck that saved you from falling. And maybe my luck was running out.

  Suddenly there was a bomber right in front of me. “Pull up! Pull up, you idiot!” I yelled, and my hands obeyed, yanking back on the stick in the nick of time. “Idiot. Idiot,” I muttered to myself. “Get a grip!”

  Then a dull thud and bump. I was hit. And I never even saw the plane that hit me. I just felt a jolt – and then two more – then a teeth-clenching pain seared through my right leg. I could see daylight through the floor of the cockpit. I could feel cold air rushing past me.

  I decided to make a dash for base, but the plane wouldn’t respond. The R/T was dead and whistled in my ear. I was losing altitude rapidly and I now could smell burning. Glycol fumes were leaking into the cockpit.

  “No, no, please, please. . .” Panic shot through me as I realized the fuel tank might be about to blow. “Please, please. . .”

  Then a voice said, “Bale out!” and then again – “Bale out!” But I just sat there staring at the control panel and at the flames that had begun to appear behind it. “Bale out!” a voice screamed in my ear. My voice.

  This time I took notice. I slid back the cockpit cover, relieved – very relieved – that it slid back so easily, and then I undid my harness and climbed out, remembering at the last second to disengage my oxygen and radio.

  I was out, free of my aircraft, tumbling wildly in the air – there was the sky, there was my plane arcing away on a streamer of black smoke, there was the sky again, there was my plane crashing into the sea. I pulled the ripcord.