Tom Dellow, who had gone into the hut to fetch a magazine, saw her as he emerged again. He gave her a wave and said to Upton, “I think you’ve got a visitor.”
“Tell him to go away,” Upton murmured sleepily. “I’m not receiving this morning. Who is it, anyway, the A.O.C.?”
“If it is, he’s in drag.”
Upton sat up and opened his eyes. A moment later he had scrambled to his feet and was strolling to meet Ann, smiling.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked.
“I had enough last night. I’ll take a nap after lunch.”
“I must say you do look very bright-eyed. What an amazing effect I have on women.”
They laughed together at this and some more of his typical absurdities, moving slowly away side by side from earshot of the others.
Ann was glad she had come. The eager look in his eyes and the warmth of his smile were more welcoming and appreciative than any pretty speeches. She had been out with him more often than she ever had with anyone else; not that there had been so many, she reflected. Two or three boys at home whom she had known most of her life, and whom she regarded as friends rather than sweethearts. Three or four pilots since she joined the W.A.A.F. at the very start of the war, but nobody serious. A couple of them had tried to take matters further than she wanted, and she had stopped seeing them. Kissing someone goodnight or letting him have a few minutes’ necking was as enjoyable for her as for her escort, but when his hands started to stray and he began fiddling with her buttons she pushed him away; and if he persisted, she dropped him. There was no bother of that kind with Clive; although, oddly enough, she had found herself wishing sometimes that he would be a bit more pressing.
“Let’s go and have a quick bite somewhere this evening,” he said.
“I’d love to.”
“I’ll give you a call when we’re released.” There was a telephone in the W.A.A.F. guard room at the airmen’s married quarters which had been given them as billets.
“Nice and early, I hope.” Not only because it would give them more time together but also because the stress of the endless long days of uncertainty was telling on them all, mentally and physically.
“Hitler permitting,” he smiled.
***
The Bar des Sports was shut for the first time anyone could remember. When the Pelegrands went away every autumn to visit relatives for two weeks, another couple, old friends of theirs, came to take over temporarily.
The locked door was draped in black and on it was a photograph of a laughing, sturdy little boy whose six years of life had ended the day before under the muzzles of a German firing squad.
Berthe lay in bed behind drawn curtains, her mind numb, her senses still reeling from shock. She dozed fitfully from sheer exhaustion and every time she woke she relived the horror of the moment when the Gestapo officer had given her the brutal news and how Hercule had reacted to it.
Without a word he had risen to his feet and smashed his huge fists into the German, knocking him unconscious. Then he had turned on the other one, the lieutenant of military police, and swung a blow at him. But the policeman had been too quick. He had drawn his pistol and at the very moment that Hercule had landed an ox-felling punch he had clubbed Hercule on the side of the head with the barrel of his Luger. They had crashed to the floor together. The Gestapo man had regained consciousness first and staggered to the door to shout to the nearest German soldiers for help.
They had dragged Hercule away and Berthe did not know what had happened to him.
Her waking moments were distraught and punctuated by sobs. She had sent a message to her son and now all she could do was wait for him to reach her by some means, and that would be a terrible moment too, for they would talk about the little dead boy and he would wrack her afresh with an account of all that had happened.
She wished to God that they had had nothing to do with the English pilot.
***
The bombers were going out for the third time that morning and it was the turn of Kreft and Voss to take part.
Voss rose unwillingly from his place at the card table. The feeling had been strengthening in him that this was not going to be a lucky day for him. So sure was he that being sent on the first mission was part of the pattern of good fortune that he and his pilot had enjoyed, that a disturbance in their routine became at once an ill omen. To add to his gloom, he had played his cards badly too. He had lost more during the morning than he had lost in any week before: and he was usually a substantial winner. His friends even chaffed him about being a card-sharper. This afternoon he would play chess, he had decided; and then the operation order had brought them all running to their aircraft.
Fifty-four Stukas, sixty He 111s and forty-five Do 17s made up the bomber force this time. Two hundred Me 109s and 110s escorted them.
When they had all climbed, circled, reached their final rendezvous point and formed up, Kreft, looking around at the whole assembly, said to Voss: “I see the fighters have changed their habits: there’s no high cover; they’re all keeping at our level.
“Good thing,” Voss replied. “I like to see them close in, not up there somewhere. It’s all very well to stay high and hope to surprise the enemy, but I prefer close escort where I can see it. By the time those chaps up top can get down here it’s often too late.”
“The powers that be have obviously learned that lesson, hence the change.”
“Usually, I don’t like change, but this is one I welcome.”
“We’ll see how well it works.”
There he goes again, thought Voss: always some snide hint that the top brass don’t know their job. I wish he wouldn’t; it unsettles me.
Below them they saw two of the rafts moored offshore for the benefit of comrades who baled out. An efficient, sensible and typically Teutonic provision. The rafts provided shelter, dry clothing, food and drink. They also saw their rescue launches and E-boats cruising along the coast, ready to give a hand; and the E-boats to shoot at any pursuers.
When they were five miles from the English coast a cluster of bright, flaring lights appeared in the sky. Flames flickered in a dozen different places, sinking slowly towards the ground.
“See that?” asked Kreft.
“What is it?”
“Barrage balloons on fire. The fighters out in front must have fired at them.”
“I always wish we could send out a separate bunch well ahead to shoot all the balloons down before we go in.” Voss spoke with much fervour.
“I’m not too fond of them myself. “ Kreft remembered the last time he had nearly flown into some, and the Spitfire that had nearly killed Voss and him while they were trying to find a way through. It gave him an unpleasant sensation at the back of his scalp. He could do without any more such experiences.
Like Voss, he was glad to see that their escorting fighters were close around them; but, because he did not have the same lack of imagination, he was worried about the Spitfires and Hurricanes that dived out of sun and went through bomber formations like wolves into a flock of sheep. When that happened, the bombers paid dearly for keeping formation. He had seen enemy fighters leapfrogging along a line of Heinkels and shooting down alternate ones until their ammunition ran out. Dive on the first victim, shoot, dive under the next one, climb towards the third and shoot it in the belly; then keep climbing, over the top of the next in line, dive at the one ahead of it... and so on. Those pilots who couldn’t stand it broke away and at least part of the formation became scattered. That reduced the effectiveness of their bombing and, at the same time, weakened the defences of those who had broken away: on their own, they were easier victims for the fighters. Then the 109s and 110s went after the Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the bombers lost their protection: which, in turn, exposed them to further enemy attacks.
Kreft kept searching the sky above rather than around him.
They were at twelve thousand feet. The Spitfires had been climbing to twenty thousand to interce
pt them, day after day; and higher. He doubted that they would oblige the Luftwaffe by changing their tactics. What was that, at one-o’clock, some five thousand feet above? He blinked his eyes twice and stared again.
“Voss, do you see something at one-o’clock, high?” “Wait... n-no... yes, yes, I can...”
Within seconds a tidal wave of disturbed air billowed through the closely packed formation as twelve Spitfires dived through it, guns firing. The Heinkels were a thousand feet above the Stukas. Kreft saw three catch fire. He could see tracer from their upper turrets shooting at the enemy. A thousand feet above the Heinkels, the Dorniers were also in trouble: two flamers there.
The Stukas held firm. With pride, Kreft saw them to right and left of him, and ahead, refusing to panic although they were in every way the most vulnerable.
Kette meant “chain”, and the two wing men in a Kette of three were known as Kettenhunde, chained dogs, because they had to follow their leader wherever he went.
Kreft glanced in turn at his two Kettenhunde and gave them a cheerful wave. They waved back. Good lads, he thought; they had fought many battles together and they would come unscathed out of this one as long as they kept their heads.
The formation began to split into three, each part composed of all three types of bomber, wheeling towards their separate target areas.
More blazing barrage balloons ahead... twenty or more... God bless the 109 pilots... the way was clear now for Kreft’s own bombing run.
With those pestilential balloons out of the way they would be able to go right down to the limit of safety before they released their bombs. They could start their dive at eight thousand feet.
Kreft and his Kettenhunde began their dive on the radar station where Ronnie Maidment’s wife-to-be sat in a wooden hut, in front of a radar tube. The raiders had made a cunning indirect approach after sweeping well inland and feinting at one of the main airfields. Now the small buildings of the radar site were nicely in Kreft’s sights.
He had dived four thousand feet when a sudden eruption of yellow flashes in a straight row on the inland side of the early warning station made him jink involuntarily and shut his eyes.
A moment later a row of parachutes opened at about six hundred feet above the ground. The Kette directly ahead of Kreft’s broke wildly left and right. The one in front of it had no time to do so. It had dropped its bombs, but in pulling out the leader flew directly under one of the parachutes. Kreft, incredulous, saw a cable suspended from the ‘chute catch the Stuka’s port wing; a moment later a second parachute opened at the other end of the cable. The Stuka dived to the ground and exploded.
The two Stukas on its flanks turned frantically to avoid flying directly beneath any of the other parachutes that had taken them by surprise; but a few seconds later they, too, were flaming wreckage on the ground.
Kreft gritted his teeth and held his dive undeviatingly.
Another salvo erupted in the same way: a string of bright flashes; rocketing, as he could see now that he was closer, a row of canisters, less than two wingspans apart, high into the air: where they opened and each released a parachute and cable. He could see ten of them directly in his path.
FOURTEEN
Upton wiped sweat, flecks of oil and streaks of gunsmoke from his face and gratefully drank a cup of hot tea. His cockpit hood and windscreen had been showered with oil from a Heinkel he had shot down, and when he opened the hood on coming in to land some of it had blown in on him. The gunsmoke had been sucked into his cockpit through bullet holes punched by a Dornier’s upper gunner.
The fight had been mad turmoil in which they had had to abandon their first target, the top layer of Dorniers, and continue their dive almost down to ground level to save the radar station from the Stukas. He had picked one off neatly and was on the point of firing at another when he thought his eyes had played a trick on him: a line of rockets flared up from the ground and suddenly parachutes with dangling cables were hanging all over the place.
He had gone into a wild turn and pulled away as fast as he could. By the time he recovered he could see four enemy bombers burning on the ground: which, he wondered, had fallen to the surprising new weapon and which to Spits ?
“God, that was a near one.” Squadron Leader Maidment, standing beside him, jerked his silk scarf open and rubbed the back of his neck.
Oh, Lord, yes, of course. In the heat of things, Upton had not thought of it, but that was the early warning station where the C.O.’s fiancée was. “They didn’t hit at all, did they, sir?”
“No, thank God. Did you ever see anything like the way those rockets fizzed up and the ‘chutes burst open?”
“Did you expect it, sir?” asked one of the flight commanders.
“No, but I had heard something about them from the S.I.O. Didn’t expect to find myself nearly flying into the damned things, though.”
“How do they work?” asked Taylor.
“Basically, they’re rockets that fire a parachute six hundred feet up, where a canister releases a cable about five hundred feet long,” Maidment explained. “As soon as an aircraft flies into the cable another parachute opens at the other end. Result: one aeroplane dragged down to the dec.k. Same principle as the ordinary barrage balloon cables, but with the advantage of surprise.”
“Indecently simple and diabolically ingenious,” said Dellow.
“Pretty discouraging for the Hun, I should imagine,” Upton suggested. “They won’t be in any hurry to send over another show when they all get down and start talking about it... der Englishe Secret Veapon.”
“We should have time to swallow some lunch, anyway, while they recover from the shock,” said Maidment. A van loaded with trays of sandwiches and urns of tea stood outside the squadron hut and four of the ground crew were unloading the food. Everyone was already clustered around a tea urn that had been set on a table. Quenching thirst was the first priority, and there were dry mouths after nearly an hour in the air: among a tangle of enemy aircraft after the usual long climb and taut anticipation following the first early warning and the scramble order.
“I don’t believe it,” said von Brauneck.
“Dammit, Otto, I was there... I saw it with my own eyes,” von Hohndorf insisted. He had gone straight to the fighter airfield after his returned crews had been debriefed.
“If you’re sure, we can’t postpone Operation Angel any longer. Let’s do it this evening.”
“Right. I’ll lead, with just two Kettenhunde: Kreft, of course, and... well, I’ll have to give that a little more thought... I lost two of my best crews this morning... perhaps two will be enough?”
“Better, I think: after all, we have only one target and it only needs one bomb to demolish it. The fewer of you we have to look after, the better.”
“Agreed, then: just Kreft and myself. And your chaps?” “Myself, of course, plus Hintsch, Festner and Siegert.” “That sounds like a formidable enough bunch. You reckon about twenty-one hundred hours?”
“On target at twenty-one hundred, yes: that will give them plenty of time to gather for their evening drinking, and fall at the awkward time when the day squadrons are released and the night fighter squadrons will be unprepared: expecting nothing until after dark.”
“So we won’t put any of us on any other missions until Operation Angel, then.”
“That’s right, Sepp.” No use taking risks: they were all still alive; better keep it that way.
“It seems a pity to interrupt their evening so rudely,” said von Hohndorf.
“It’s the only way we can be reasonably sure of wiping out a lot of fighter pilots: attacking their bases hasn’t done it. Pity, because I really liked the landlord and his wife; and the pub itself is a beautiful old building.”
“Yes, I’ve been admiring it each time I’ve flown low over it lately. I saw a very fat couple in the garden this morning, watching us instead of taking shelter.”
“Arthur and Maidie Goldsmith: yes, I can’t imagine them bolt
ing down an air raid shelter. I don’t mean them any harm... but I do mean the worst possible harm to the Longley pilots.”
“This time, we’ll get the blighters,” von Hohndorf said confidently.
***
Ann was on watch from 1700 to 2000. An hour after she went on duty she had a call on the rest room telephone. “Ann? It’s me.”
“Hello, Clive: what’s up?”
“Slight change of plan, I’m afraid. We’re doing a dusk patrol: I’ve fixed it so that I’ve got Roy and Tom in section with me, so we’ll all be able to meet for a quickie in the Angel afterwards. Dinner out is off until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll consider about tomorrow: don’t take me for granted!” There was laughter behind her words.
“I stand corrected. Anyway, is it all right for this evening? Can you get yourselves there, and we’ll come straight from dispersals because they’re sending some hot food out for us at nineteen hundred.”
“Of course we can get there: it’s a short enough walk.”
“Good. See you then.”
***
“Sorry to mess up your evening, Hiltrud,” von Brauneck apologised, “but I want you to take me to the airfield at twenty hundred, and wait for me: we’ve got an operation on.
“That’s all right. I’ll let Werner know I can’t see him.”
“He’s on the same job, escorting us. You can see him afterwards: in fact I’ll take you both out to dinner; to celebrate.”
“What are we going to celebrate?”
“Success.” He chuckled. “A very special success which has been eluding our lords and masters and of which I, with help from Sepp and Werner and two or three other good comrades, am going to make them a present. I think Reichsmarschall Goring is going to be rather pleased with me. Swords will look well on my Knight’s Cross, don’t you think?”
Battle Climb Page 15
