A Funny Place to Hold a War

by John Harris

  Everybody knew Ginger – even the station warrant officer, the station admin. officer and the group captain – because Ginger was an eccentric and, up to a point, the RAF, like the other services, was surprisingly tolerant of eccentrics of any rank. In addition to managing to look scruffier than anyone else, ashore he invariably carried a long stick with a forked end so that he looked a little like a disreputable bishop with his crook. Having discovered that among his other attributes he could kill snakes, he was unofficially snake catcher to the camp. Someone had once told him a snake could strike only one-third of its length and he operated on that principle. So far it had worked and when some barefooted African set up an uproar among the long grass as he disturbed a sleeping green mamba, Ginger was invariably called on to dispatch it. The stick had come to be his sign of office.

  Mostly he worked around the hangar with a gang of Temne and Mende tribesmen who were employed about the base. His duties were not clearly defined – save that he was officially part of the mooring party – and that suited him down to the ground, because it meant he could dodge parades and keep out of the way of the station warrant officer, who knew his reputation and was always on the lookout for him.

  Sitting in the canoe, unseen against the shadows thrown by the mangroves in the thin moonlight, he became aware of another boat nearby. It was motionless and there were two men in it, he saw now; he could even hear their voices, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Since he had no right to be out of camp, it was just possible that the station police had found out about his night-time jaunts to Makinkundi and had commandeered one of the marine section’s dinghies to catch him. But Ginger was an expert with the paddle and could move as swiftly and as tirelessly as the Africans themselves. He knew the best places to fish, where the lagoon had no tide race and just where he was sheltered from the swirls and eddies. Dipping the pointed, spade-shaped blade into the water, he moved further into the bank where the stale smell of the mangroves came out strongly to him on the warm night air.

  The Catalina was facing Freetown now, its navigation lights on. With its high wing and two Pratt and Whitney engines mounted on a pylon housing the flight engineer, the Catalina was a versatile and reliable aircraft which could fly tremendous distances. Getting it into the air, however, was sometimes a sophisticated pastime. Landing was a test of seamanship as well as of airmanship, but taking off was an art that sometimes bordered on black magic. It needed a quiet prayer and a judicious pull back on the control column at exactly the right moment, because a pull back at the wrong moment could ruin any chance of success and, with the moon barely risen in the black night, an old, tired aircraft, a full load of petrol and explosive, nothing but three lighted dinghies to give direction, and a surround of hills, there were all the elements of a disaster. Like everybody else, Ginger always watched with interest when a take-off was in progress.

  The roar of the engines opening up rolled along the whole river bank. It could be heard quite distinctly above the noise in the camp cinema where the comedian had now got the audience singing ‘Roll Out The Barrel’ to the pounding piano. It could be heard in Hawkinge and Brighton, two other military bases in the Freetown peninsula, and in the native villages up-river where fruit was collected and taken in bullom boats down to Freetown market. It had been heard so often and so regularly no one took much notice, though everyone cocked an ear nevertheless.

  The big machine began to move forward, its boat-shaped hull sweeping aside the water, the wing floats brushing the surface in showers of spray. As its speed increased and it drew level with the seaplane tender, Corporal Bates opened the throttles and the thirty-seven-foot boat jumped forward, its two diesels thundering.

  ‘He’s on the step!’

  By the light of the moon, it was possible to see the machine as it lifted out of the water, riding with only the pointed tip of the hull skimming the surface. Then the floats folded outward to become part of the wingtip, a sure sign that the pilot was happy with his take-off, and the machine lifted from the water, leaving a white streak of wash across the dark swirls of the lagoon.

  Watching it, Ginger Donnelly glanced round for the other boat but it had disappeared, and as he turned his attention once more to the lifting aircraft, he saw what looked like a faint glow somewhere near the top of the pylon which supported the wing. Then he heard a faint thump over the roar of the engines, and the glow increased to a pinkish light, which swelled and increased.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ he said.

  The small thump was followed by a bigger thump and the machine disappeared in a vast flare of flame that shot into the sky, trailing curving sparks as it went. The engines screamed then the Catalina dived abruptly downwards until one wingtip touched the water and it cartwheeled end over huge end, the enormous wing breaking away like a plank flung haphazardly into a pond. The rudder flew off then Ginger saw the machine settle on the water in a huge white wave, surrounded by a sea of burning petrol that lit up the water and the mangroves for miles around. The sudden silence was enormous.

  For a second he stared at the crashed machine, then, aware that help would be urgently needed, he dug savagely at the water with his paddle.

  In the concert hall, they had all noticed the change in the engine note and the sudden silence. They knew at once what it meant because they’d all heard it before.

  Corporal Feverel quietly rose to his feet and began to head for the door because the mooring party were also the salvage party and he’d be needed. Kneller took one last agonized look full of entreaty at the stage, then went after him. Several other men had risen, too, now. Wing Commander Molyneux followed; then, after a while the group captain, a tall, stately figure, rose and walked slowly down the aisle.

  The performers on the stage were aware of the drift towards the door and for a moment their singing wavered, but the pianist, who belonged to the Jum Jesters and knew what to do, began to hammer harder at the keys and the singing picked up again.

  ‘It’s Landon’s crew.’

  The muttering flickered in fits and starts about the hall like the fuse connected to an explosive charge. Mori-Moncrieff watched Kneller halt at the door, staring backwards, beseeching him not to forget him, and wondered what had happened. Something clearly had, because the audience’s attention was gone. They seemed to be listening to something outside the hall and no longer to the stage.

  As the singing came to an end and they moved into the wings they found out what it was.

  ‘Aircraft crashed on take-off!’

  The seaplane tender was racing towards the lake of blazing petrol.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Nobby,’ Corporal Bates yelled to the airman alongside him. ‘What happened? Did he catch a wingtip?’

  ‘He was off and clear,’ Nobby Clark said. ‘Well clear. It seemed to me like an explosion.’ His eyes flickered towards the locker in the stern of the boat which contained axes, bolt croppers, fire extinguishers and other tools for use in such an emergency as they faced now. ‘I hope to Christ somebody’s alive.’

  ‘You must be joking. There never is.’

  The aeroplane had settled in the water by this time and only the tail and one wingtip, both hideously buckled, were sticking above the surface. Bates had seen crashes before and knew what hitting the water at a hundred miles an hour could do to the aluminium surfaces of the machine. Torn metal became razor-edged knives and, unlike crashes on the solid surface of the land, injured survivors were all too often swept away and drowned before they knew what had happened.

  The flames were just ahead of them now, lighting up their faces. Glancing back, Bates saw the dark shape of the dinghy coming after them, the bow wave pinkish in the glow. He knew what to do. The problem was doing it. In England when night flying was on, a pinnace, a heavy sixty-four-foot boat with a winch and a lifting derrick, was stationed at the end of the flarepath with the duty officer on board, while the tender followed the aircraft with the crash gear. When there was a crash, the pinnace was suppo
sed to keep the aircraft afloat while the tender moved in to cut survivors free. In Jum, there was only one pinnace and it was needed for other things besides flying and there was no duty officer to take control, so that the responsibility rested wholly on Corporal Bates’ shoulders. As he skirted the pool of fire, the bow of the tender brushing against a wing float lying lopsidedly in the water, trailing its struts and the pipes of the hydraulic gear, he heard the fitter yell.

  ‘There!’

  A hand shot out to indicate a black figure among the flames.

  ‘I’m going in,’ Bates said. ‘Stand by with the extinguisher.’

  He opened the throttles and the boat nosed through the burning petrol to the struggling man.

  ‘Make it quick!’

  Closing the throttles, Bates ran back to the well-deck. Clark and the fitter were reaching over the side near the stern where the tender sat low in the water.

  ‘It’s Landon!’

  As they heaved him up, the pilot cried out, then they had him lying on the well-deck like a landed fish, almost stripped of his clothing, small flames still licking at the collar of his shirt which clung like a blackened cord round his neck. Smothering them with a blanket, they lifted him into the cabin where they laid him on one of the bunks, and Bates ran back to the controls. As the tender emerged from the flames, the paint on its hull bubbling in the heat, it almost collided with the motor dinghy.

  ‘See anybody?’

  ‘We’ve got one!’ Bates shouted. ‘Scout round the edges!’

  The dinghy’s engine roared as it began to circle the dying pool of flames. Its searchlight sweeping the water, the seaplane tender moved in the opposite direction. There were a few floating objects, a cap, a bush jacket, a duffel bag with the air trapped inside it, all of which were quickly yanked aboard, but no sign of any more of the crew.

  By the time Ginger Donnelly arrived on the scene the flames were dying quickly in the manner of all petrol fires. Ginger didn’t head into them because he was watching how they were trailing downstream on the tide and he guessed that if there were any survivors in the water that was where they would be.

  He picked up a floating cap, then a water bottle bobbing on the surface, and he was just about to turn away when he heard a cry. Swinging the canoe round with a couple of expert sweeps of the paddle, he dug at the water.

  ‘Where are you, mate?’

  A small white blur appeared on his starboard side and he swung the canoe towards it. It was the face of a man swimming with great difficulty. Blood was streaming from his scalp and gashes in his face to mingle with the water that he splashed over himself in his frantic efforts to stay afloat. As the canoe came alongside, he grabbed it.

  ‘Hang on,’ Ginger yelled. ‘You’ll have the bloody thing over!’

  ‘Get me aboard!’

  Reaching over, Ginger grabbed the swimming man whom he recognised as Sergeant Purdy, the flight engineer who was always so free with the tins of peanut butter.

  ‘I was in the pylon,’ he panted. ‘The wing tore the top off as it went and I floated out.’

  Ginger had him across the canoe now. ‘Can you get your legs in?’ he asked.

  The canoe rolled as Purdy made the effort, his left foot swinging loosely in its stocking. ‘Marine section’s a bit bankrupt, isn’t it?’ he gasped. ‘This the best you can manage?’

  He was still trying to get into the canoe as Ginger leaned forward and grabbed his foot. As he heaved, Purdy rolled into the canoe and Ginger stared down at the shoe and stocking he held in his hand, complete with Purdy’s foot still inside it.

  Another seaplane tender, two more dinghies and the pinnace arrived on the scene, though by this time it was obvious there was little they could do.

  As the seaplane tender with Landon on board approached the jetty, a dinghy appeared from the shore containing the station MO, Squadron Leader Greeno. Scrambling aboard the tender, his face grim, he bent over the figure lying on the soaking cushions in a mixture of blood and muddy water and felt for a pulse.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said abruptly. ‘Is he the only one?’

  ‘Only one we saw, sir.’

  As they put Landon ashore, the padre was waiting by the ambulance, a crucified look on his face. Daniel Morgan was older than most men at Jum and had served as a subaltern in the earlier war. Red-faced, black-haired, beetle-browed with vast tufts of hair protruding from his cheeks above a large black moustache, he was tenderer in heart than his appearance suggested. He was generally supposed to be a little mad but the blasé air he affected was Morgan’s way of hiding the unhappiness he felt at being involved for a second time in the vast sad business of war. Though not afraid of death himself, he hated it in young men barely old enough to understand what it was all about, who, here in Jum, usually died not because they were standing face to face with the enemy but because of the vagaries of the weather, the climate and a general lowering of standards due to shortages and the conditions in which they lived. He watched the blanketed shape carried down the ramshackle jetty to a lorry, then climbed into the back with it.

  Out on the lagoon, the pinnace was still circling the wreck which was now floating half-submerged with the tail and one wingtip in the air. A little further out, two dinghies were moving slowly in the faint hope that someone might still be swimming. As the pinnace’s searchlight swept over the black water, it picked up a canoe. The man in it was waving.

  ‘What’s that damn fisherman doing here?’

  Corporal Fox, the coxswain, peered over the wheel. ‘The bastards know they’re not allowed on the lagoon when flying’s taking place.’

  ‘That’s not a fisherman,’ one of the deckhands shouted. ‘It’s Ginger Donnelly and he’s picked somebody up!’

  The pinnace swung to approach the canoe, and as the two vessels touched, a rope was passed round Purdy’s limp shape and he was lifted gently to the deck. As the pinnace crew turned away, Ginger called them back. ‘Hang on,’ he said, holding up the stocking and shoe with Purdy’s foot inside it. ‘You’d better have this.’

  As the pinnace moved off, he dug at the water and, for another hour, searched the black lagoon before finally deciding there was no longer any point, and began to move upstream to where he had earlier seen the boat. The moon was higher now and the shadows were deeper.

  For some time he paddled up and down but there was nothing to indicate what the boat had been or who had been in it, nothing but the moon-touched tops of the mangroves and the few taller trees further inland, and he decided that the boat had been a figment of his imagination, and the voices he’d heard only the chattering of the frogs.

  Three

  The boats were still in the river at daylight. By this time, the pinnace had half X-X-ray’s wing lying across the deck. The rest of the aeroplane was marked with a wreck buoy so that the navy could hoist out of the water whatever could be salvaged.

  Taking the half-wing back to the base, the pinnace crew and the mooring party watched it dragged, screeching, over the concrete of the slip by the winch that was normally used to haul up the aircraft when they came ashore for major servicing. Very soon they would be moving back down the lagoon, the pinnace this time towing a flat-bottomed punt and carrying a cargo of coffins. When the warm West African water brought bodies to the surface, it was a case merely of removing the identity discs and lowering them into the coffins for a hurried burial at the nearest point ashore. The real problem was getting them out of the water without scratching your hands on splintered bone because, in an area where every small wound festered, a scratch from a fragmented bone could result in gangrene.

  In his office at the Catalina squadron headquarters, Wing Commander Molyneux smoked a cigarette as he talked with Wing Commander George Mackintosh, RAAF, of the Sunderland squadron. The two squadron huts occupied adjacent sides of a small spit of high ground behind the hangar and contained the flight offices, the crew rooms, and all the other appurtenances of squadron organization. The two wing commanders’
offices occupied opposite ends so they could confer with each other without having to use the telephone.

  Molyneux was a man of no particular physical distinction, lightly but strongly built, pushing thirty so that he felt ancient alongside some of his younger pilots, with crisp sandy hair going grey, and indeterminate features that were still attractive because they were lean and strong and there was an alert look in his young-old eyes. He had won the DFC for sinking a submarine off Gibraltar in 1940 when he was still a flying officer piloting a Sunderland, and another for putting his machine down in a difficult sea off Spain to rescue a boatload of survivors from a torpedoed ship.

  He looked up at Mackintosh, who was a typical Australian, tall, lean-featured, a grin always ready to appear on his lips. He too, held a DFC – for touching down in an emergency in a river in neutral French Dahomey and, with his Australian cheek, so bamboozling the French harbourmaster that he had been allowed to make repairs to a faulty fuel feed before taking off again over a line of fishing boats which had been strung across the river mouth to stop him. Before arriving in West Africa, they had both done their share of flying in northern hemispheres, guarding convoys, shepherding strays, searching through fog and rain and gusty gale-force winds over miles of sullen grey sea for a periscope or a drifting lifeboat.

  ‘Purdy’ll live,’ Molyneux was saying. ‘He said the engines were behaving perfectly. He’s under sedation and a bit dopey, but he insists there was nothing wrong until he heard a loud bang and saw a flash. He didn’t know what it was.’

  ‘Fuse of some sort?’ Mackintosh looked up from exploring the bowl of his pipe with a penknife.

  ‘He says not. It seemed, he said, to come from outside the machine close to the wing root.’

  Mackintosh frowned. ‘Anybody else see it?’

  ‘The crew of the seaplane tender saw it, and heard what sounded like a small explosion, then the next minute the whole machine was surrounded by flames. Flames, George! That’s something that doesn’t usually occur. Whatever it was, it was close enough to the fuel tanks to send them up. There’s another witness, too, a chap called Donnelly, also of the marine section. It seems he has a canoe and goes fishing at night round the edges of the creek. He’s the one who picked up Purdy.’