As a result of his conversation with Sir Richard Peck, on the sunny morning of June 3rd Gregory left London in an Air Ministry car. Owing to the rationing of petrol the Great West Road was almost empty, so the car soon reached Maidenhead. In peacetime the river there would have been gay with picnic parties in punts and launches, but it was now still and deserted. The car sped on past the even lovelier reaches of the upper Thames, then across downlands until over the horizon there appeared the widely spaced hangars of Harwell Aerodrome.
It was a peacetime R.A.F. station with well-designed buildings and commodious quarters, but as it was now also the headquarters of the 6th Airborne Division it was crowded with soldiers as well as airmen. Gregory reported to the Adjutant who took him to the mess, where within half an hour he had made a dozen new friends.
Among them was Wing Commander Macnamara, whose aircraft was to tow the glider that would take General Richard Gale to France, and the Station Commander, Group Captain Surplice, who his officers united in saying was the finest C.O. under whom they had ever served. Squadron Leader Pound, a veteran of the First World War and Principal Administrative Officer, then took Gregory to the Briefing Room.
There, behind a locked door with an armed sentry on guard and blacked-out windows, another beribboned veteran was preparing the maps from which the air crews would be briefed when the signal came through that the ‘party’ was definitely on. Then at six o’clock the visitor was taken on a tour of the great airfield with its broad runways and scores of parked aircraft and gliders. They were wearing their war-paint: special recognition signs painted on only the night before, after the camp had been ‘sealed’. No-one who now entered it would be permitted to leave or write or telephone from it until the invasion had taken place.
After the drive round, Major Griffiths, who was to pilot the General’s glider, took Gregory up for a twenty-minute flight in it. There was a stiff wind so it was a little bumpy, but that did not worry him. The roar from Macnamara’s towing aircraft came plainly back to them; then, as he cast off, there came a sudden silence and a few minutes later they glided safely back on to a runway.
Next Gregory attended a preliminary briefing. It took the form of a colour film showing a part of France. For those in the long, darkened room it was just as though they were seated in a huge aircraft flying over the country shown in the film. Again and again they seemed to be carried over the German-held beaches to the fields on which the paratroops were to be dropped and the gliders come down, while the commentator pointed out the principal landmarks by which the pilots could identify their objectives.
Back in the big mess Gregory found it now packed to capacity with equal numbers of officers in khaki and Air Force blue. They all looked wonderfully fit and their morale was terrific. Macnamara introduced him to General Gale, a huge man with a ready laugh, shrewd eyes, a bristling moustache and a bulldog chin.
They soon discovered that they were the same age. ‘And a damn’ good vintage, too,’ said the General.
An officer asked the General what weapon he was going to take for the battle. He roared with laughter. ‘Weapon! What the hell do I want with a weapon? If I have the luck to get near any of those so-and-sos I’ll use my boot to kick them in the guts.’
After dinner Gregory drank and laughed with a score of officers; then, as they drifted off to bed, he stayed up for another hour talking to General Gale alone. Among other things they discussed the qualities that make a good leader, and the General said:
‘Efficiency; that’s the only thing that counts. If the men know that you really know your job, they’ll follow you blindly anywhere.’
Gregory did not agree. He argued that efficiency might be nine-tenths of the game, but the last tenth was personality. To make his point he instanced that his companion was wearing light grey jodhpurs instead of battle-dress.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ the General wanted to know. ‘I wear the damned things because they’re comfortable and I hate the feel of that beastly khaki serge.’
‘Exactly,’ Gregory laughed. ‘Most people would be shy about dressing differently, but you don’t care a hoot. You’ve the courage of your convictions and if you have them about clothes you must also have them about running your show.’
When they at last went to bed they were a little worried about the weather, but they knew that a postponement of the operation would not even be considered unless it became exceptionally bad. That Saturday night hundreds of ships were already moving to their concentration points, so the security of the whole operation might be jeopardised if the invasion were put off even for a single day.
In the morning the weather had worsened. Nevertheless a Wing Commander Bangey took Gregory up for a flight in one of the paratroop-dropping aircraft. They did a practice run over a diagonal road that had a certain similarity to a road in the target area and the crew went through the exact drill they would follow when they were dropped in France.
Then, when Gregory got back, the blow fell. At 11.30 the Station Commander sent for him to tell him that the operation would not take place that night.
Both Gregory and General Gale were utterly appalled. They were the only people on the station who realised the full implications of a postponement. There were now over four thousand ships which had moved up in the night and many thousands of smaller craft massed round the Isle of Wight. The enemy had only to send over one recce plane and he would learn that the invasion was just about to start. That would give him twenty-four hours in which to rush additional troops to the French coast and when our troops landed they would find every gun manned.
Worse, the Germans might send their whole bomber force over that Sunday night to the Solent and if they did it must result in the most ghastly massacre among our close-berthed stationary shipping.
Fortunately, no more than a dozen people on the station knew the date that had been decided for D-Day, so remained unaware of the postponement and the terrible consequences that might arise from it. They knew only that, the camp having been sealed, D-Day must be imminent, and their joy was unbounded at the thought of at last being able to put into real use the drills they had practised for so long.
In consequence that night the crowded mess was a scene of even greater excitement and mirth. Both soldiers and airmen were offering long odds that within a week of the invasion the enemy would collapse and the war be over, but finding few takers. About nine o’clock a sing-song started. The station doctor, Squadron Leader Evan Jones, produced his accordion and they made the rafters ring with all the old favourites, from ‘She was poor but she was honest’ to ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Then three-quarters of an hour after midnight Gregory learned from the General’s A.D.C. that a signal had just come in. The great decision had been taken. The following night the show was definitely on.
The morning of Monday June 5th passed quietly. Very few people knew as yet that this was D minus 1. But at lunchtime the whispered word went round, ‘Final briefing at three o’clock.’
For the past week the Italian campaign had become the forgotten front, but while Gregory was still at lunch it was suddenly announced that General Alexander had captured Rome. An outburst of cheering greeted this splendid news and Gregory was particularly delighted, because everybody in the War Cabinet Offices regarded ‘Alex’ as by far the best of our Generals, and that his triumph should not have been spoilt by coming after D-Day was a most happy occurrence.
In the afternoon there were three briefings, each taking an hour, for the three separate but co-ordinated operations. Major-General Crawford, the Director of Air Operations War Office, had arrived from London and with him was Air Vice-Marshal Hollinghurst, the A.O.C. of the Group. Group Captain Surplice opened the proceedings by reading Orders of the Day from General Eisenhower and the Air Commander-in-Chief, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Then, having run through the general lay-out, he asked General Gale to describe the part his Division was to play.
The General said that his task was to protect the left flank of the Allied Armies. To achieve this three landings would be made to the east of the River Orne. It was imperative that a large fortified battery that enfiladed the assault beaches should be silenced. One of the first parties to land would raid a small chateau and seize a car known to be in its garage. Two paratroopers, both Austrians, would drive the car hell-for-leather towards the steel gates of the emplacement, shouting in German, ‘Open the gates! Open the gates! The invasion has started.’
The Germans would have heard the aircraft overhead, so it was hoped that they would open up; then the paratroopers would hurl bombs through which would make it impossible to close the gates again. It was a suicide job and might not come off. To make certain of silencing the battery, the General intended to crash-land three gliders across the fort’s concrete and barbed-wired surrounding ditch.
The other two parties were to seize two adjacent bridges about five miles from the coast, one of which crossed the Orne and the other a canal running parallel to it. He then meant to establish his battle H.Q. between the two seized bridges and infest with his men all the territory to the west in order to delay an attack against the British flank. Then when the attack came, as come it must, he would fight with his back to the double water line.
As Gregory listened he was thrilled by the thought that this was no academic lecture, no Staff College exercise, but the real thing. That was brought even more sharply home a few minutes later as the General went on to say that the 21st Panzer Division would be at them pretty soon, so he would need every anti-tank gun he could get in and need them pretty badly. Then, as though it had only just occurred to him, he added, ‘As a matter of fact we shall want them tomorrow.’ At that a roar of laughter went up from the packed benches.
Other briefings followed: by the Station Commander, the Signals Officer, the Secret Devices Expert and the Meteorological Officer. The last predicted clear skies under two thousand feet and broken cloud above which would let enough moonlight through for the pilots to pick up their dropping zones without difficulty.
At dinner that night Gregory looked down the lines of young faces. All of them were flushed with excitement, eager and merry. Not one of them seemed conscious of the fact that this might be the last meal he would ever eat; and Gregory thought how proud their parents and friends would be if they could see them.
Before leaving London he had looted Sir Pellinore’s cellar of a few bottles of one of the finest hocks in the world—Ruppertsberg Hoheburg Gewürztramminer feinste Edelbeeren Auslese 1920. At his suggestion General Gale asked General Crawford, Air Vice-Marshal Hollinghurst, Wing Commander Macnamara and his A.D.C. to help drink them to an Allied victory.
As they drank the fine wine they talked of the coming battle, but Gregory’s thoughts were temporarily elsewhere. They had gone back to that other fine hock of the same vintage that he had drunk with Malacou the first night they met at Sassen; and he found himself once more overlooking the occultist.
Malacou and Tarik were still in their lonely cottage and had made themselves very comfortable. The former had succeeded in bringing his astrological gear with him and was seated at the table in the living room working on some problem. A third man was present: a tall, lean fellow dressed in rough clothes but with a fine-featured intelligent face. On Malacou becoming aware of Gregory’s ethereal presence he broke off his work to communicate that they had no fears for the moment, and that their companion was a Polish engineer, also in hiding from the Nazis, who had recently taken refuge with them.
At ten o’clock Group Captain Surplice came into the mess and carried Gregory off with him. First, in his car they made a complete tour of the airfield, but everything was in perfect order and there was no need for even one last-minute instruction. Then they went to the Watch Tower, to within a few yards of which every aircraft had to taxi up before receiving the signal to take off. The weather was still far from good, but it had improved a little and there were breaks in the clouds so that the late summer twilight faded almost imperceptibly into moonlight.
The first wave consisted of fourteen aircraft carrying paratroopers, followed by four aircraft towing gliders containing special material needed as soon as possible after the paratroops had landed. The wave was led by Wing Commander Bangley, and with him as a passenger went Air Vice-Marshal Hollinghurst. He had been forbidden to go, but ‘Holly’, as this plump, dynamic little man was affectionately called by his subordinates, declared that only being handcuffed and locked up would stop him from witnessing the fine show his boys would put up after their many months of training.
At three minutes past eleven precisely the first aircraft took off. The others followed at thirty-second intervals. A Wing Commander standing beside Gregory timed them with a watch. Not a single aircraft was early or late by a split second.
There now came a period of waiting, as the second wave was not due to start until 1.50 a.m. During it Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory flew in. Hurried explanations had to be thought up to account for ‘Holly’s’ absence. Someone said he thought he was at the Signals Office, but he could not be found and, fortunately, his C.-in-C. had to take off again to continue his round of inspections.
Midnight came, but somehow it did not seem to Gregory to be the beginning of the long-awaited D-Day. For him and his companions that had started hours ago. Accompanied by Surplice he walked along to General Gale’s glider so as to spend this last three-quarters of an hour with him. The General had just returned from a visit to his men before they left their tented camp, where he had been drinking good English beer with them, and they were still cheering him to the echo as he came on to the airfield.
To ease the suspense of these last minutes Gregory started telling bawdy stories; the others joined in and laughed a lot. The General looked a more massive figure than ever now that the many pockets of his special kit were stuffed with maps and the dozens of other things he would need when he landed in France; but he was still wearing his light grey jodhpurs.
‘What about your Mae West, sir?’ one of his officers asked.
‘Oh, I can put that on later if I have to,’ he protested.
‘Might be a bit tricky then, sir,’ the officer persisted.
Turning to Gregory the General said, ‘I’m supposed to be commanding this damn’ Division, yet look how these fellows bully me. All right; I’ll put it on if you like.’
About six people then tried to help him into it and one of them said, ‘The tapes should go as high up under your arms as possible, sir.’
He burbled with laughter again. ‘I know what you’re up to. If we fall in the sea you want my head to go under and my bottom left sticking up in the air.’ Then a moment later he slapped his broad chest and exclaimed, ‘Good God, look at me! I must look like Henry VIII.’
His jest was not without point and some minutes earlier Gregory had noticed that painted on the side of the glider was the name of another English King—Richard the First. That, the A.D.C. had said, was because Richard Gale was to be the first British General to land in France by many hours, but the unintended parallel struck Gregory most forcibly. The great Crusader, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, had been physically just such another big man as the General who now towered over the little group standing round him, and this modern lion-hearted Richard was about to lead another Crusade against far more evil men than the Saracens who had then occupied Jerusalem.
The last little scene before he emplaned was another of those jests which delight true British fighting men when about to go into battle. A few mornings earlier, on finding that there was golden syrup for breakfast, the General had exclaimed, ‘By Jove! I love golden syrup and I haven’t seen any for years.’ So now Surplice, who had been his official host, presented him with a tin to take to France with him.
A few minutes later Gregory returned with the Station Commander to the Watch Tower. The signal was given and the twenty-five gliders, towed by Albemarles, began to move off. They were led by Macnamara in S for Sugar, towing Richard the First and his personal staff. With the regularity of clockwork they took off at the rate of one a minute and lifted gently to disappear in the night sky.
The aircraft in the first wave were now due back; so Gregory and his host hurried over to the Briefing Room, hardly able to contain their impatience to learn if all had gone well. At last the first pilot and his crew came in. He said that, in spite of a sudden worsening of the weather, he had dropped his parachutists right on the spot at seventeen and a half minutes past midnight. But he seemed a little disappointed. Asked by Surplice why he was looking so glum, he replied:
‘Well, sir, it might have been one of the practice droppings we’ve carred out so often here. It was quite dark, no flak, nothing to see, no excitement. In fact it’s difficult to believe that we’ve had anything to do with opening up the Second Front.’
To Gregory that was the best possible news. It meant that his friends in the Deception Section had achieved an almost unbelievable triumph. The enemy could have known neither the date nor place of the expected assault. General Montgomery had been given the dream of all Commanders when opening a great battle: complete tactical surprise. Our losses during the landings a few hours hence would now be only a tithe of what they would have been against an alerted opposition.
As other pilots came in this splendid news was confirmed. Only the later comers had seen anything. Not till after they had dropped their parachutists had some enemy batteries opened up with light flak. Then ‘Holly’, safely returned, said that he had seen the synchronised attack by heavy bombers on the fortified battery—a last attempt to destroy it by pinpoint bombing. All who had seen the terrific explosions by which the redoubt had been lit up agreed that very few of its German garrison of one hundred and eight could still be alive or in any state to lay a gun.
But then, to discount this excellent beginning, a little group of face-blackened paratroopers came in. Their team had included their Brigade Major and it was he who was to lead the way down. He was a big man and had got stuck in the hatch; they could not push him through or pull him out. The pilot had taken the aircraft out to sea and ran it up and down the coast for half an hour, but the Major’s men could not get him either in or out. At length he had lost consciousness, so it had been decided that the only thing to do was to return to England. Only after the aircraft had landed had they succeeded in getting him free. The pilot pleaded desperately to be allowed to make a second run so that at least the others might join in the battle, but Surplice would not let him. The air over the whole Channel was now alive with aircraft on exactly timed and carefully planned routes; so for a lone ’plane to attempt to pass through them would have been much too dangerous.
Worse was to come. A pale-faced young pilot entered the room and came up to his Station Commander. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he reported. ‘I don’t know what to say, but my string broke. We lost our glider about three miles from the French coast.’
Surplice laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. Tell me what happened.’
‘Well, sir, it was those bloody Met. men who let us down. Our orders were to drop the gliders off at sixteen hundred feet. But there was cloud down to eight hundred and no moon coming through. It was as black as pitch. I went down as low as I dared to try to get in the clear but in the darkness the glider must have lost my tail light and have become unmanageable. With him trailing wild, the strain snapped the tow-rope. There was nothing we could do about it.’
It was estimated that the glider might have had enough height to make the beach or, at least, shallow water. But it was certain that the load of stores it carried would never reach the leading paratroops for their urgent operations.
A few minutes later a second tug pilot came in. The same sad story. Low cloud several miles before he had reached the French coast, the following glider suddenly losing control and its tow-rope snapping. The third and fourth pilots arrived, white-faced and shaken. They, too, had lost their gliders out over the sea.
The Briefing Room was now crowded with returned air crews drinking tea and munching hot scones while waiting to make their detailed reports to the Intelligence Officers. But they spoke in low voices. Whispered word of the bad news had gone round and the atmosphere was one of gloom.
It was now about a quarter to three in the morning, and the next two hours were grim. Gregory, having no duties to perform, had accepted the many drinks pressed upon him during the long evening. It had turned cold and misty and he felt stale from the amount of liquor he had consumed. He would have given a lot to go back to the mess and brace himself up a little with a brandy and soda; but he did not like to suggest it.
With Surplice, Squadron Leader Pound, the little Welsh doctor and a few others, he stood miserably about waiting fearfully for news. If all four of the first flight of gliders had gone into the ‘drink’ what chance had General Gale and his string of twenty-five and all the other flights that had headed for the same area with the rest of the Airborne Division from other stations in the Group?
Dozens of those young daredevils who had been drinking so cheerfully in the mess only a few hours before were now almost certainly dead, and others, weighed down by their heavy equipment, must be swimming desperately for their lives in the cold waters of the Channel. Hundreds more might be crashing and drowning while Gregory and his companions stood miserably waiting for news.
If the General and a large part of the Airborne Division were lost their task would remain unaccomplished and the left flank of the British Army would then be left open to attack. There were hours to go yet before the first seaborne troops were due to splash their way ashore, and the Germans must now have known for over three hours that the invasion had really started. If the airborne operation failed the enemy would counter-attack the open beaches in the morning and quite possibly hurl our troops back into the sea, rendering the whole vast plan for liberating Europe a complete failure. The strain of waiting for news was appalling, and for Gregory, so used to action, so unused to patient vigil, it was a positive agony.
At last, soon after half past four, they heard the drone of aircraft. The tugs of the second wave were returning. At a quarter to five the first air crew came in. The Briefing Room was now still with a breathless silence. Scores of anxious eyes searched the faces of the newcomers for a verdict. They looked about them in surprise at this tense reception. Then they reported. The cloud had lifted and they had cast off their gliders dead on the mark.
Crew after crew appeared with the same glad tidings. When Macnamara came in there was a rush towards him. He was smiling, laughing. He had put General Gale down at half past two exactly at the place where he had planned to land. Soon afterward it was known that not a single glider in the second wave had been lost.
Douglas Warth, an official war reporter, had gone over with the first wave of paratroops. Since his return he had been waiting only to learn what had happened to General Gale and the others. Three days ago, that now seemed like a week, he had come down in a jeep, and he offered to take Gregory back to London in it.
Gregory gladly accepted. As he was saying good-bye to Surplice and thanking him for his kindness, the Chief Intelligence Officer came up with a message from the Control Room; he said, ‘All aircraft safely landed, sir, and no casualties.’
Beaming with delight, Gregory congratulated the Station Commander and shook hands with several other new friends he had made during those never-to-be-forgotten days. He then collected his kit and accompanied Warth to the jeep. No longer tired but filled with elation they drove through the summer dawn, with birds singing in the hedgerows, back to London.
By seven o’clock he was in the Cabinet Offices War Room and got the broader picture. Of the two hundred and eighty-six aircraft despatched to land the Airborne Division only eight had failed to return and the glider losses had been far fewer than anticipated. A few hours later he learned that General Gale had landed without accident and, achieving complete surprise, had secured the two bridges that were his principal objective. That night Gregory listened with Sir Pellinore to one of the finest broadcasts delivered in the war. It was given by the King and in well-informed circles it was known that His Majesty had written every word of it himself. Then they drank a health to George VI and Richard the First.
D-Day and its terrible hazards were, at last, over; but the war was still a long way from being won, and a week later it entered a new phase. On the night of June 12th/13th the first pilotless aircraft descended on London. As had been anticipated its warhead was no bigger than an average-sized bomb; so, after the first excitement, the public proceeded to settle down and grin and bear this new affliction; although they proved to be disconcerting things, as they had a nasty habit of suddenly turning round and coming down in a place where they were not expected. But a high proportion of them were prevented from reaching London by fighter aircraft, Ack-ack and the balloon barrages. The foremost thought in most people’s minds was still joy that the invasion had at last taken place, and that ‘Monty’ was now safely established in Normandy with a bridgehead deep enough for there to be little fear that our men would be driven back into the sea. So the general feeling was that the buzz-bombs were only a temporary annoyance which might soon be brought to an end by the Germans throwing in their hand.
Throughout June Malacou’s communications to Gregory continued, and he soon became aware that the occultist’s thoughts were now mainly engaged by a new interest. The Polish engineer was a member of the Underground and the cottage in which they were living was on the new experimental range being used to test the giant rockets. The firing point for the rockets was a good twenty miles away from the cottage so most of them sailed high overhead, but now and again one came down prematurely and fell in the marshes.
The Pole was the leader of a group spread widely over the countryside and its members spent some of their time making notes of the number of rockets fired, how many of them were duds and where those duds fell. But the group had no wireless or any other means of communicating their information to London, as they had started up independently and were not in touch with the main Polish Underground. In addition to charting the rockets they went out at night and committed various acts of sabotage, such as tearing up sections of railway line and destroying small bridges. To aid these exploits Malacou was again busy with his astrological studies in order to be able to predict for his new friends the most favourable nights for them to undertake their clandestine activities.
Sir Pellinore had now come to the conclusion that as Gregory was obviously sane there must be a genuine foundation for the telepathic communication he was receiving; and when Gregory told him about the Pole’s plotting of the rockets he was greatly interested. The anxiety about them in high quarters, far from dying down, had considerably increased. Thousands of tents were being manufactured to house the refugees who would be driven out of London and great dumps of medical stores and tinned food were being accumulated secretly at various places in the Home Counties. Plans were being made to deceive the public who were not in the immediate area of the first mighty explosion as to its cause, so that they should not panic, and arrangements were being made for the immediate evacuation of hospitals, children and pregnant mothers in the Metropolitan area.
By early July public morale was beginning to decline again. The V.1’s were starting to get on people’s nerves and the destruction caused by them had become considerable. Moreover, matters were not going anything like as well in France as had been expected. Most fortunately, the Deception Plans were continuing to function admirably. By the creation of a mock army in Kent, and other measures, Hitler continued to be convinced that the Normandy landings were only a feint, and that the main assault against his Fortress Europa was due to be launched at any moment across the narrows into the Pas de Calais. In consequence, he flatly refused the pleas of his Generals to allow the Armoured Divisions there to be brought south against the Normandy beach-head.
Yet, in spite of this, Montgomery was making no progress. He had informed the Chiefs of Staff that his object was to draw the Germans down on the positions he held and then destroy them. But it had been expected that a month after their landing the Allies would be well into France and, possibly, across the Seine. So far he had not even captured Caen; and to those who had originally planned it, the Second Front was proving a grievous disappointment.
On July 16th Gregory was on day duty, so he went to bed in his flat at his normal hour, which was about eleven o’clock. But he found that he could neither concentrate on his book nor, when he put out the light, get to sleep, because Malacou was in a great state of excitement and his thoughts were coming through with exceptional clarity.
In addition to keeping a careful record of the performance of the rockets, the Polish Resistance leader had been seeking to get at and examine one of them. To do so was far from easy; because, whenever there were firing trials, the Germans stationed little squads of their men over many square miles of the marshland and when a rocket came down prematurely their job was to locate and dismantle it as soon as possible.
Two days ago a rocket had gone wild and fallen miles away from the marshes, on the bank of the river Bug. No German patrol had been anywhere near and some Poles had rolled the rocket down the bank into the river; so that when the Germans reached the locality they had failed to find it. The previous night the Poles had retrieved the rocket from the river and hidden it among the reeds, then sent word to the engineer who was living with Malacou. That night he had gone off to join them and they were now working like demons to dismantle the tail of the rocket, which contained its mechanism. Malacou meanwhile was still in his cottage and a prey to fearful anxiety lest the Germans should catch the Pole and his companions either while working on it or, still worse, when they brought the pieces they secured to his dwelling, where they intended to hide them in the woodshed.
Eventually Gregory dropped off to sleep, but he woke next morning with the knowledge that the job had been completed without mishap and that the Polish engineer was now in possession of a complete set of the parts that made the rocket work.
After lunch that day Gregory walked across the Horse Guards and looked in on Sir Pellinore. When he retailed what he believed to have happened the elderly Baronet’s blue eyes popped. Jerking forward in his chair he slapped a long leg encased in a pin-striped trouser with a mighty thud and cried:
‘By Jove! If only we could get hold of those bits and pieces! Might be the savin’ of London! I was talkin’ to Lindemann the other day. Seems we’re working on a device now that’ll explode shells and bombs in mid-air. What these science wizards will get up to next, God knows. Still, the Prof. says it’s perfectly possible. Got to make one box of tricks to set off the other, though. But if the boffins knew how these rockets worked we might blow ’em up while they were still sailin’ over mid-Channel.’
‘If that’s so,’ Gregory said, ‘we ought to do our utmost to collect the mechanism that this Polish engineer has secured. And, of course, to let us have it is the reason he risked his neck to get it. But how we could set about that I don’t see.’
‘I do,’ replied Sir Pellinore promptly. ‘Our bombers haven’t the range to reach Poland. But lighter aircraft fitted with extra fuel tanks can. S.O.E. are sending one or two in every week now to drop supplies for the Polish Underground. I’ll have a talk with Gubbie about this.’
‘By all means do. But I doubt if that will get us anywhere. Even if General Gubbins can be persuaded that I am in telepathic communication with a man hundreds of miles from England, and is willing to send an aircraft to collect this stuff, I couldn’t tell him where to send it. I’ve only the vaguest idea where this place is. It can’t be many miles from Ostroleka, where Malacou had his house; I’m sure of that. And the cottage is situated near a stretch of broad very winding river from which tributaries make forks some miles on either side of the cottage. But there are any number of rivers in that part of Poland and I couldn’t possibly describe it well enough for a pilot to identify.’
‘But you … No.’ Sir Pellinore hastily hauled himself to his feet. ‘Forget it, Gregory. Odds are it’s all moonshine.’
‘It’s not moonshine,’ Gregory replied uneasily. ‘And I’ll not be allowed to forget it. I’m certain of that. As sure as God made little apples Malacou will be coming through to me again and urging me to think of some way of getting those bits of mechanism to England.’
His prediction proved right. That night Malacou ceaselessly bombarded Gregory with his thoughts. He declared that the prize the Poles had secured was invaluable. His friend the engineer had managed to get away with the whole works and now knew how the rockets functioned. It was imperative that an aircraft be sent to pick him up and fly him with the mechanism to England. Then the rockets could also be made in Britain and Hitler would derive no overwhelming advantage by having sole possession of his secret weapon. The nearest village to the cottage was Rózan, and westward from it there ran a long stretch of good straight road along which there was never any traffic at night; so an aircraft could land on it. Gregory had only to let him know the night the aircraft would come in and they would be waiting for it. Three-quarters of an hour would be enough to load the stuff on to the ‘plane. In that desolate area the risk of the Germans arriving on the scene while they were doing so was negligible. The aircraft could then take off again for England.
In the morning, still tired after his restless night and far from happy, Gregory telephoned the War Room to say he had an urgent matter to deal with so would not be in till midday. Then he went to Sir Pellinore. They had a lengthy talk, at the end of which with a heavy sigh the elderly Baronet rang up General Gubbins. Half an hour later, in Sir Pellinore’s Rolls, they drove to Baker Street.
The little General, dapper as ever in the Bedford Cord riding breeches and well-polished field boots he affected, listened noncommittally to what they had to say, then he said:
‘Of course telepathy has been scientifically proved, so it’s pointless to argue about that; although I find it very difficult to believe that it could be maintained between two people continuously and over such a great distance. Frankly, I’d turn this proposition down flat had it to do with anything other than the rocket. But to find means of protecting ourselves from that is now an all-time high priority.
‘It’s not only London we have to think of; though God knows the results it may have here are too ghastly to contemplate. It’s the invasion ports as well. Monty is blazing off thousands of rounds every day. If the ports that are supplying him with shells and hundreds of other items could be rendered unusable, even for a week, he would be a dead duck. The beach-head he is holding is still narrow enough in all conscience and deprived of ammunition he could not possibly stop the Boche from driving his whole Army back into the Channel.
‘In view of all that is at stake I’d be prepared to send an aircraft on a sortie to the moon if there were the least chance of its bringing back information which might scotch these hellish rockets. The devil of it is, though, that we have no down-to-earth means of communicating with these people. Since we can’t arrange with them to put out recognition signals and be ready to receive our aircraft on a certain night, there can be no hope of such an operation succeeding. No pilot could even find the place.’
‘No,’ Gregory agreed heavily, ‘but given moonlight I’m certain I could tell the pilot where to land; and it happens to be my bad luck that I am the only person capable of making the necessary arrangements with Malacou. I swore I’d never again set foot on German-held territory until the war was over, but on those two counts I see no alternative. I’ll have to guide the pilot in and pick up the mechanism of the rocket myself.’