In about the middle of April, we were flying cab-rank for the ground troops. Doing a holding pattern and waiting to peel off in ones or twos, or the whole lot, if they hit some obstacle. And they’d hit a particularly tough nut: an S.S. Officer Training School, cadets of fifteen and sixteen. You can imagine how hard those Nazi-reared soldiers fought. So we were called in — all of Red Section — to plaster the main building and gun positions with bombs and rockets, and this we duly did.
Peeling up from the attack, we were jumped by two Focke-Wulf 190s, one with a blue-painted cowling. One firing pass and one Tempest — Jako the Czech — disintegrating in midair and they headed back up into the clouds. Jingo took us up after them and they came back down.
Damn good and damn clever move, another firing pass and this time Piotr’s Tempest spun out of control, streaming smoke and flames. The Focke-Wulfs disappeared again and this time it was for good.
‘Blue cowling, mark that bugger,’ growled Jingo as we split away, Linus and I following Piotr’s Tempest down. The canopy flew off, by a miracle he righted it long enough to roll over and drop out — easily the best way to exit — and we breathed a sigh of relief when his parachute blossomed.
Even so, he was not safe. We were low on fuel so Jingo sent the rest of Red Section home — ignoring vocal protests — and he and I flew top-cover while he called up units in the area. A couple of American half-tracks crawled like metal slugs over the snowscape towards Piotr and he was safe. By then we were too low on gas and headed for a small supply airfield, just behind our lines.
They refuelled us but it was near dark and we were tired. Jingo called our Field, said we’d stay over and get back in the morning. So we had dinner with the cargo pilots — flying Dakotas mainly — and for once Jingo was a model of tact. He didn’t mention ‘bus drivers’ once or even growl when they took us at poker.
Back at base, Jingo called all the pilots together for an announcement. It was something only Jingo could say; another clue to those deep dark fires under his boisterous good humour.
He grinned now, white teeth showing under his black moustache but his voice had that level hard note we all knew. ‘If we see that blue-nose job again — he’s mine.’
Sometimes the visibility closed down too low, even for us, so we would sit around waiting for the sky to clear. In some ways, this was worse than going up; certainly worse for Jingo, who would stump up and down like a caged tiger. When in one of these moods, he spared nobody.
This time, we were in the mess and the world outside was a waterlogged grey soup. We could hear the distant sounds of battle because the ground war never stopped. We had a new boy, Dougal Riley from Tasmania. He looked over at some louder thuds.
‘Are they closer?’ he asked, trying to sound normal.
Jingo stopped pacing and turned a bleak eye on him. ‘Jerry’s throwing over 155mm crap. Don’t worry.’ The bullet-torn tarpaulin bucked and flapped, flicking cold water inside. Riley was about to ask ‘why’ and Jingo went on. ‘Because just one of those bricks will blow us all to sweet nothing.’
‘Send you back to the island of apples in a shoe-box, mate,’ cracked Ten-Yards Reg, who equated Tasmanians with New Zealanders.
Reg’s humour had all the finesse of a steamroller. Riley tried to grin and sat back uneasily. Jingo went over to the mess-table and poured himself some coffee. He spilled some on his fingers and swore loudly. There was an empty chair beside mine and he came over and sat down.
‘Jeeze, I hate this stuffing around,’ he muttered.
He did, I understood that much later. Like some modern-day drug addict needing his fix, Jingo needed that injection of combat and peril in his veins. He sipped his coffee and swore again — no sugar.
‘Hell!’
I think he was about to chuck it across the room when he heard the engine outside. You could tell a kite by its engine-noise and we knew this engine-noise only too well. Jingo was already up and running, his overturned cup streaming coffee all over the table.
I was right behind him as he ran, his boots splashing icy muck up into my face. He roared and waved to the nearest gunners, around a sandbagged quad-forty.
‘Look alert you dozy shower, that’s not Santa Claus!’
The gunners had heard, their big four-barrelled anti-aircraft gun already turning like long multi-antennae at the approaching sound. It seems to circle in the murk, then grew louder and louder. The familiar long-nosed shape of a Focke-Wulf 190 came dimly into view.
‘Alright, tickle him where it hurts.’ Then, a sudden hoarse note of astonishment, ‘Wait, wait. Hell I don’t believe it —’
The Focke-Wulf was dipping even lower and its undercarriage came down. Dropping undercarriage was a universal sign of surrender. Lower and lower, visible now through the gusting rain. Camouflage colours I’d never seen before, a pale green and spotted yellow on top, light grey underneath. Then the wheels skidded mud-marks as it landed, the big engine already ending its roar as it taxied up towards us.
‘One wrong move and you blast him,’ shouted Jingo to the gunners.
We ran over, most of us pulling out our service revolvers as the canopy slid back and we saw the pilot, in helmet, goggles and blue Luftwaffe uniform. Not in flying kit, I noticed, as he stared around and put up his hands.
‘That’s right Herman,’ shouted Ten-Yards Reg. ‘Wrong airfield — but why don’t you stay for tea and buns?’
Jingo roared again, with laughter this time, as we pulled the pilot down. A skinny fair-haired guy in his twenties, his blue eyes wide and anxious. We hauled him off to the mess-tent and he kept shooting looks back at his fighter. Jingo slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after it,’ still laughing. ‘Saw our resident Heinkel and thought you were home, yes?’
We sat him down in the mess hall and poured coffee into him. Real coffee, not the ground-acorn stuff they drank. He relaxed visibly, still ducking glances at his fighter and began talking. He spoke some English and Jingo some German. So between them we heard his story.
Reinhard Diels was his name, a ‘Sudetanland’ German. So, Czechoslovakia conquered, Reinhard found himself serving the Third Reich. He fought on the Russian front, later back in Czechoslovakia as the Red Army pushed through. His squadron flew out as Russian tanks overran their airfield, and in the murk he was separated from the others. Saw our airfield, saw the Resident Heinkel and …
Jingo was like a boy with a new toy. Protocol said Reinhard should be packed straight off to headquarters for questioning, but he stayed for dinner. Reinhard was an Ace and Jingo produced some wine, still roaring with delight.
I didn’t like that. It was another little warning that Jingo thought more about war than consequence. But the evening passed off alright and Pinky — good tenor — sang a few songs before he downed one too many.
I did notice Jingo and Reinhard spent some time in a corner, talking away to each other as best they could. I didn’t think any more about it at the time. Not until when I woke up in the early morning, needing to make an urgent call of nature.
I wasn’t walking a single frozen metre more than necessary, so stopped just outside and relieved myself against the wall. Then heard a noise and turned, just avoiding splashing my greatcoat. The fields ahead were white, carpeted with a shimmering silver frost. A gun-emplacement stood nearby like an upended black mushroom. I heard the noise again — voices — and two dark figures came out of the shadows.
They were headed for the parked Focke-Wulf fighter.
I was curious — who wouldn’t be? It was not an escape attempt because our ground crew had drained the tank, let down the tyres and crocked the engine. Now they were at the aircraft and moving down to the tailfin. I walked up, my breath puffing in icy clouds and my footsteps crackling slightly; the sentries must have been asleep. A louder crack as my boot broke the ice of a deeper puddle and a familiar voice cursed softly and fluently.
‘Gus, you snooping —’
He broke off and said something in German to the man beside him — Reinhard. Reinhard blinked at me anxiously and Jingo went on, grinning suddenly. ‘Told him you’re okay, said I’d shoot you if you opened your mouth.’
They were standing by the tailfin and Jingo went to work with a screwdriver. He was pulling out a back inspection panel, that let ground crew get at the air inside. Jingo flashed a grin at me as he shoved the screwdriver back in his belt.
‘Bet you never knew one of these things could give birth.’
Reinhard bent over and whispered inside. Then a pair of stockinged feet appeared, and legs encased in thick army trousers. Reinhard grunted and pulled the rest of the person out. A girl, in trousers and a thick jersey. In one hand, a little bundle of possessions.
She flinched, looked very scared as Jingo spoke. ‘Reinhard here, brought his sister with him. What do we do with her, eh?’
I looked at him uncertainly. ‘We’ve got to hand them over, Jingo.’
He just grinned again and sadly shook his head. ‘No sense of fair play lad, none at all. Hop back to bed, I’ll look after these two.’
He did. There was no sign of Reinhard’s sister — I never did learn her name — next morning. Reinhard himself left the camp the same day, driven by Jingo and an armed guard to a holding camp.
As they slowed at a corner, near a thick belt of forest, Reinhard suddenly leapt out and bolted for the trees. Jingo braked hard, throwing the guard over. As he recovered and raised his rifle, Jingo somehow collided with him. Jingo himself (who could shoot the eyebrows off a gnat) loosed off a few revolver shots and also missed.
Some of the boys put two and two together and there were some broad grins and admiring comments about Jingo taking the law into his own hands. Camaraderie among flyboys, etc.
Jingo had a different view of war. A different reality.
I have said bombers die hard. And so do their crews, but in different ways. There was death — and the living death of brave men pushed too far. Aircrew sat in the narrow cramped confines, ten or twelve hours of freezing blackness in the night skies of Europe and tense every moment for sudden death.
It was one of the last thousand-bomber raids, I forget which city got flattened. And what was left of the German night-fighters got among them. They shot bomber after bomber out of the skies, but there were simply not enough night-fighters left then to make a difference. But they still struck and the big Lancasters and Stirlings went down. Some were only damaged and limped on into the darkness, seeking somewhere to land.
One such, found our airfield and came down in the dawn mist. Our own control office was calling pilots to briefing, and the tannoy stayed on so that we could hear the pilot. A British voice, very laid-back — and very tired.
‘Hello, tower. Request emergency landing, two engines down, third failing.’
Jingo himself grabbed the mike. ‘Request granted.’
A signal fire drifted upward, burning a luminous green in the haze. Then the huge black Lancaster appeared, dropping like some monstrous stiff-winged whale. Closer and closer, under superb control. Jingo muttered something and I caught the words ‘hard hit’. She was, port inner- and outer-engines stopped and smoke drifting from them; on starboard, one engine still turning, the other coughing more thick black smoke.
The laid-back voice came again, level, flat and precise. ‘Copped a dose of slanting music. Two down, need a blood-tub.’
Jingo snapped an order for the ambulance. And slanting music, those upward-angled guns of the Owl-fighter; the miracle was they had survived it. But the Lancaster could not stay in the air on one engine and dropped more quickly, wings wobbling as the pilot fought to keep a trim.
No sound came from the intercom. I would have been swearing like blazes. One wheel dropped and Jingo’s voice crackled in the cold dawn. ‘Lancaster, you are only one wheel down, repeat one wheel down.’ Then the pilot to his own men, ‘Sorry lads, bit of a bump ahead.’
Moments now before they landed. The Owl-fighter had gutted them hard. The belly-turret smashed, the double-tail flayed and shot, torn, the left rudder in fragments. Holes punched along the side and wings because 30mm shells do a lot of damage. That precise calm voice came again.
‘Hold tight, lads.’
And quite deliberately, still moving fast, the big Lancaster flew into the ground. It lurched, almost swinging sideways, one propeller-boss torn away, the blades spinning loose. A shower of sparks as it hit the metal netting covering the runway, lurching on and on, one wing dipping, a sudden lick of yellow flame from the wing — then lurching to a side-winged stop.
The fire-truck was already there, hosing it down. And, regardless, we were running over. Jingo himself tore open the emergency hatch and he clambered inside, Nessie and I behind him. I wish to this day that I had not.
Inside the plane was carnage, as though some mad artist had splashed a thick red brush around. The rear-gunner still in his turret but blasted to bloody shreds. Mid-upper gunner alive and not wounded, but clinging so tight to his gun that we had to prise his fingers away.
You have to climb over the huge wing-spar of a Lancaster to get into the control cabin. The radio-operator was collapsed over his set, one leg missing below the knee. The navigator, dead white, a tourniquet twisted around his arm, which was shattered below the elbow. The flight engineer also dead, the bombardier alive but shaking.
In the cockpit sat our pilot. He was just staring straight ahead, his co-pilot headless beside him, his flying tunic and helmet splattered with blood. Apart from that, he was untouched. Slowly, as though his hands weighed heavy, he removed his helmet, goggles and throat-mike. He got up, stiff-legged and stepped over his co-pilot, without looking at him.
He did not speak. Outside he waited while the radio-operator and the co-pilot were brought out. Then the gunners. He nodded to the wounded men as they were brought out, to the bombardier and the gunner. Then he just stood there, leaning slightly against the fuselage. He breathed in the icy air and blew out frosty clouds, speaking in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘Kite’s a write-off. Alright if I use the phone?’
He walked off to call his base. We had morning patrol; he was gone when we returned.
Jingo was unusually quiet in the mess that night. He sat moodily over a drink. I commented what a cool type the pilot was and got a bleak look. ‘Gus, he was hanging on by his eyelids. Been doing it too long.’
And it didn’t matter how long he’d been doing it. He would have to keep on. Because if not, he would get L.M.F. stamped on his papers, and be demoted and put on the worst ground jobs.
There was a note of fear in Jingo’s voice. Because he’d been doing it too long too. He tugged his moustache, muttered something and stalked off to bed.
A team arrived the next day and stripped the Lancaster of anything serviceable. The guns, one engine, little else. No fancy cartoons or nicknames on the nose, just the aircraft callname C-Cyril.
Then a bulldozer shunted the carcass over to one side, among the trees, just up from the Resident Heinkel. There it stayed, one black wing jutting darkly upward. I would see the wing every time I took off, stuck stiffly up like some bizarre black-armed wave.
Goodbye, it said. You are going to the hell that destroyed me.
I never found out what happened to the pilot.
Emile the Belgian was easily the quietest pilot in the squadron. A little guy and as graceful as a cat; about twenty-five, thinning black hair, a thick moustache and a small pointed beard. He was a born pilot, and when Belgium fell he flew a clapped-out Devoine across the Channel and got shot down for his pains. He would give a little smile at that.
Easily the loudest pilot was Ten-Yards Reg, son of a Darwin farmer. He was tall with untidy fair hair, his face permanently brown from the Darwin sun and a permanent mad grin fixed on his mouth. Reg had sworn to ‘de-bag’ every pilot in the squadron, and when I told him to try it, he did. I had to go back to my quarters with the cold air whipping around my shirt-tails and bare legs; next morning haul my trousers down from the flag-pole before a grinning bunch of Erks.
He never tried to de-bag Emile though. In fact, they were unlikely mates and spent a lot of time together, playing draughts. If Reg won, he would give his kookaburra scream; Emile would flinch and set the pieces for a new game. When Reg’s girlfriend broke off their engagement, he just shrugged; she was marrying a Kiwi so obviously had no real character. That was about the time Nessie lost his trousers.
About March, Emile had taken a couple of days’ leave. He seemed much the same when he returned, maybe a little quieter. Another draughts game with Reg that night and they talked a bit; business as usual in the morning. A dawn sortie, blasting out some Jerry guns that were stopping our tanks.
These were bastard missions; an 88mm Pak-40’s hard enough to hit and practically suicidal when backed by nests of four-barrelled 20mm cannon whose crews just love ground-strafers. On our first pass they got Max the South African, his Tempest exploding. Gaston broke off, his engine smoking, managing to reach our lines before bailing out.
A second pass. There were four of these quad-20s. On the second pass, we got one more but Frank Todd, a Canadian, went, a wing shattered by the lethal punch of those cannon. A second Tempest hobbling back skyward with the tail-rudder damaged. One more quad-20, but the cost was too high and Jingo called us off. But not before a last cannon-shell from that second nest tore a big hole in the wing of Reg’s fighter.
About the same time I heard a scream on the intercom — no, more a howl of frustration, hate and even grief. And in that moment, Emile’s Tempest went streaking down low, straight at the remaining gunpits. You have to understand: this was suicide. One 20mm shell in the right place could destroy a fighter, these things chucked up hundreds in a minute.
‘Emile, break!’ shouted Jingo. ‘That’s an order!’
The gunners had not been expecting it. Even so, they recovered instantly and that fretwork of yellow tracer flashed blindingly up. Emile’s Tempest should have been hit, shattered into burning pieces, but somehow was not. His own wing-cannon flamed, his own cannon-shells shredded the sandbags, flung away the gunners and sparked on the quad-20 mounting. The long barrels swung up, useless, and already he was turning.
Deflection-shooting means aiming ahead so that bullets and target will meet. An essential skill for any gunner, and a ‘no-deflection’ shot is so close it cannot miss. The last quad-20 had a shot like that as Emile turned and their cannon-barrels blazed.
Jingo was already turning us down to strike the gunners again, but we were too late. Not for Emile but for the gunners because — impossibly — they missed, by terror or shock, and Emile’s wing-cannon flamed again. All his remaining ammo that time, reducing the gunpit to a collapsing mass of sandbags, sprawled gunners and destroyed gun, the barrels leaning out like broken stalks.
Emile was a good pilot and got stuck in, so did we all. But for sheer cold hate and daring, I never saw anything like that.
We returned to the airfield. Ten-Yards Reg had gone ahead, the hole in his wing meaning he couldn’t slow down; so he hit the runway at a hundred-and-forty k’s and managed to stop by slewing over and wrapping one wing around a tree. He hopped out, whistling Waltzing Matilda.
The rest of the flight came in. Jingo jumped down, mad, not only because Emile had ignored orders, but because a very good pilot had nearly got himself shot down for no good reason. Another flight was coming off the cab rank to take out those last two guns. Emile was getting out of his fighter and Jingo yelled. Emile ignored him and walked over to his quarters. I glimpsed his face and his cheeks were wet with tears. Jingo bellowed and went after him, but Reg got in his way.
Quietly — for someone who usually shouted everything — Reg reminded Jingo of that forty-eight-hour leave Emile had taken. It turned out that a French brigade had overrun the camp where Emile’s parents and sister were imprisoned. They were dead: his father savaged by a guard dog, mother and sister of typhus. So, just once — and it was just once — Emile had snapped.
Jingo said no more about it and Emile carried on, as quiet as ever. There were no physical scars — although he would have those too, one day. But he had found out that the scars that hurt the most, and hurt the longest, are the ones that nobody can see.
One more incident. One more day. The war went on, and on.
This time we were on extended patrol over the Bremerhaven coastline. Radio intercepts hinted that Jerry had something big planned for that day — but what the ‘something big’ was, we had no idea.
I say ‘extended’ because we had drop-tanks fitted for this mission. Jingo hated them, as did we all. Of course you could stay up much longer, but if the damn thing does not disconnect when empty, it becomes a bomb, full of petrol vapour and needing only one bullet to touch it off.
Result — as Jingo put it — one carbonised pilot.
Anyway, mine dropped alright this time. Jingo’s, Nessie’s and Linus’s, too. Then Pinky’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Red Leader, my tank’s stuck.’
‘Roger that, Red Four.’ Jingo’s voice was expressionless, but we all knew what he was thinking.
Pinky headed back, and somehow his fuel tank disengaged just before landing. Nothing was said, but we knew Pinky would be on his way home soon. A few weeks before, I would have called him a yellow rat. Now I realised that would be what he was calling himself as he headed back. It also meant that Linus did not have a wingman.
‘Can you handle that, Linus?’ Jingo asked over the intercom.
He got a snort. ‘No, Massah, but’ve you got any cotton that needs picking?’
I heard this and looked down at blue lakes, belts of green forest and the choppy blue-grey coastline. So much forest on the shoreline that half of it must be camouflage. I blinked because the foreshore was moving.
‘Red Leader, lake surface below — hell, it’s moving.’
Yes, the placid blue suddenly stirred by moving shapes and white skimming wakes. Jingo roared orders as we wheeled around, shouting for Blue Section to keep top-cover. Then he led us down into that moving blur of choppy dully-green waters and white tufting lines. Big camouflaged shapes — very big — suddenly moved into clear focus.
‘What are those things?’ crackled Nessie’s voice.
‘Bloody big things,’ returned Jingo.
And they were bloody big things. The four-engined, even six-engined flying-boats that Jerry had built, massive and chunky things roaring over lake surface and shoreline. Blom & Voss-222s, even the six-engined 2388. From hidden land runways, came more grey-green giants lumbering skywards. Heinkel 177bs, Dornier-19s, Junkers-390s, even an ME-390 — what a collection of dinosaurs.
But even dinosaurs had teeth. These giants were armed with front- and rear-turrets of heavy machine-guns and 20mm cannon. As they roared into airborne life, those turrets moved and spat their green venom upwards towards us. But it was no contest.
Jingo led Red Section down in a firing pass and I concentrated on one six-engined Blom & Voss. My cannon-shells were sparking yellow up at that massive green body, but still the giant kept going. It soaked up enormous punishment; even when the top-turret shattered and one inner port-engine caught fire, it lumbered skyward.
These were aircraft designed to cross the Atlantic ocean and bomb the American sea-board.
Massive, solidly-built and well-gunned, these dinosaurs were made to take damage and they did.
My Blom & Voss target was still flying — unshakily leaving the water. I swung around and got more fire from the front-turret as I swooped again. In my ears, the excited chatter of all Red Section as they dived and gunned. Ten-Yards Reg, screaming like a demented kookaburra as he plastered a four-engined Heinkel bomber. Nessie on a big Dornier, yelling with frustration because it would not go down.
It may have been a ‘turkey-shoot’, but bullets splattered across my starboard wing, Jingo cursed as one side of his canopy starred, one Tempest jerked away, streaming white glycol. Lars the Norwegian, calm as ever, saying he could make it back, nobody to worry.
Jingo called one of Blue Section to follow him. And the rest down while we flew cover. So I watched as they swooped and gunned like us. And so, taking turns, we got them all. Not one of those great broad-winged dinosaurs became airborne inside the time it took to blast them unwillingly down.
It took two firing passes from both sections and our breech-blocks clicked empty, but we did it. All of those lumbering monsters from land or sea, finally collapsed into the green bullet-splashed waters as my Red Section completed its second pass.
They sank like fat wounded whales and the green seawater closed over them. An incredible sight, I’d seen nothing like it. A broad estuary of coast covered with broken floating litter, upturned wings and massive shot-torn fuselage bodies, floating like so many huge dead beasts. Or their tail sections sticking out like the upturned tail-flukes of a whale. One turned over on its pale belly.
We made a last low pass. An ME-390, slowly sinking as her crew scrambled out like ants. Life-rafts sprouting everywhere like round yellow toadstools, black smoke rising as one giant burned while it slowly sank into the ice-cold water. They all sank and not because they were riddled with cannon-fire; they were too heavily-laden to float anyway.
Their cargo was not bombs but riches looted from everywhere in east and west Europe.
When we got back, Pinky was full of excuses.