Since boyhood Wing Commander Cavendish had been impressed by the story of that brave and dogged man Andrew Walker who, single-handed and working in the dark, had underpinned Winchester Cathedral when it threatened to sink into the peat bog on which it was built.
Now Charles Cavendish found himself in a similar situation. A telephone call that afternoon from Air Vice Marshal Stalybrass had informed him that Group’s patience was at an end. Thirteen Squadron must become operational at once.
‘Those youngsters should be rarin’ to go!’ Stalybrass boomed.
And yet far from rarin’ to go, squadron morale was sinking into a slough of under-confidence and inadequacy. His underpinning was just two seasoned pilots. No wonder he felt alone and in the dark. No wonder that, like Walker, lacking any trusted confidant, he talked to himself.
That night he sat in his office, feet on the table, asking himself who the hell he could enlist to help him to pep up morale. The Group Captain in his opinion was a cipher, intent only on keeping his chair warm. Group was simply greedy for results, terrified of displeasing Command. And any Group that could land him with a medical officer now known throughout the squadron as Luscious Lesley, needed its corporate head examined. While the intelligence officer, who should have been a good up-and-at-’em officer, was only a marginal ally.
‘Frankly,’ Cavendish told himself, ‘I suspect he has humanitarian leanings. He hasn’t a press-on bone in his body.’
‘How about MacGregor?’
‘MacGregor is turning out worse than I supposed. There’s something strange about MacGregor. Maybe overdue a rest.’
It had come to Cavendish’s ears, actually through his batman who was having an affair with MacGregor’s batwoman, that MacGregor had heard a dog howling, and this bit of nonsense had given a real fillip to the superstitions that haunt RAF stations in general and aircrew in particular. The superstition had been added to by the information culled from the village that Marshfield had been haunted by a dog ever since the Yanks were here in the Great War. Surely even sailors couldn’t be worse than airmen.
So casting around in the darkness for possible material to shore up the squadron’s sinking morale and get them into a press-on mood before their first operation, the only person he could think of was, to his shame, the padre. At his home in Lincolnshire, his father had in his gift the incumbency of St Mary’s at Great Hartford. The cleric there was always a biddable, presentable chap, a good dinner guest and always open to his patron’s suggestions.
‘But not this Marshfield chap! He’s not much cop,’ he warned himself. ‘A most unprepossessing person. Old Bicycle Clips, as the airmen call him. But at least, supposedly, he has the ear of God. And even if he hasn’t, some amongst the chaps must believe that he has.’
It was a simple matter to persuade Group Captain Hurst that a church parade this coming Sunday would be timely.
‘I’m very glad to hear you want one,’ the Group Captain said enthusiastically. ‘Usually you squadron types…’
‘Scrounge off them? I know what you were going to say.’
‘I’m right, aren’t I, Charles? Usually you can’t see the squadron for dust.’
‘But not this time, sir. As you know we’re into an important phase – the commencement of operations. Group has high expectations of us. We would like a church parade.’
‘I didn’t know you were a religious man, Charles.’
‘Well, I’m not. Not unduly so. Just the right amount, I like to think. But I’m all for the God of Battle… how does it go?… Steel our soldiers hearts, isn’t it? That sort of thing. The squadron like to think God’s on their side. It puts heart into the men.’
He said much the same only at greater length when the padre telephoned him in response to the Group Captain’s order.
‘Sir, I’m delighted!’ Bicycle Clips alias F/Lt Simon Wetherby’s voice sizzled with the enthusiastic saliva that always seemed to flood his speech. ‘That you actually want a church parade shows I’m getting through.’
He did not specify where or how he was getting through, but Wing Commander Cavendish replied, ‘You’re absolutely right, padre. I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength. Now, if I might outline the points I think it would be a good thing to emphasise…?’
Simon Wetherby drew a sheet of paper towards himself, picked up a pencil and listened with it poised.
His delight at the Wing Commander’s request was unfeigned. He had so far found Marshfield a tough nut to crack. Not that he hadn’t found most of his duties, since he was ordained, tough nuts of different size and strength. He was a solitary soul. Ardent and well-meaning, loving even, but tending to be unloved. He was only too well aware that he lacked the physical and social graces which endeared people to one. His mirror told him he was an odd-looking chap – too tall with sloping shoulders and flat feet. He hadn’t exactly had a call from God to join the ministry but he had a nameless desire to seek out some meaning in life. His Oxford tutor had expressed doubt about his choice, but he had gone ahead, had found theological college tolerable, and in his first parish as a curate had honed his social skills a little, and even had a mild flirtation with the churchwarden’s nubile daughter. At the same time he had got on very well indeed with all the youngsters in the choir, a facility for which he had been grossly misunderstood.
It was Munich which had made him join up in a flurry of patriotic shame. Not by nature belligerent, Chamberlain’s betrayal of the Czechs had made him briefly so. He had not exactly regretted his decision. He looked better in the skilfully tailored RAF uniform than out of it. His first posting to HQ Maintenance at Andover had been nauseatingly easy – well-fed older men wining and dining in a glorious country house.
Marshfield was the opposite, full of youngsters, most of whom wore the letters CofE on their green and red identification dog tags, so that they could have the appropriate burial, but who shunned the station chapel and who had christened him Bicycle Clips – he couldn’t even drive a car, and that to them expressed his ineptitude.
‘I’d like a good rousing sermon, of course, padre. Don’t be ashamed of patriotism. That’s why we’re here. That’s our duty! To fight the good fight. Isn’t there a hymn that goes something like that?’
‘Yes, sir. It starts with that line. “Fight the good fight/ With all thy might”.’
‘Excellent. Excellent! Just the right sentiments. That must be one of the hymns. There’s another one I have in mind.’ He hummed over the telephone wire. ‘About soldiers arising.’
‘I know it.’
‘You’re writing these down, I hope?’
‘Indeed I am, sir.’
‘And the one about trampling out the vineyards?’
‘Well, I think we’ve probably got enough, sir. And it’s a bit Yankee.’
‘Perhaps. But no bad thing for that. Did you know the Yanks were here in the last war?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, they were. Very gallant, the Station Commander told me. Died to a man.’
‘Oh, dear!’
‘And that brings me to another matter, padre. A rumour’s going around about a dog howling!’
‘Oh, dear. Poor thing!’
‘It’s not a poor thing, padre. Certain weak-minded people are the poor things. Saying it heralds casualties.’
‘Oh, dear!’ the padre repeated, to the intense irritation of his hearer. He was about to compound his error by telling the Wing Commander that a dog belonging to one of the old ladies whose funeral service he had conducted had howled all night before she died, but he stopped himself in time. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said again. ‘But what do you want me to do, sir?’
‘Stamp on it, man!’
And then he hung up.
Next day the padre pored over the order of the church parade service. He consulted his one assistant, a gawky ACH called Trimble who was responsible for cleaning the chapel, polishing the cross and the altar rail, and on such occasions as church parade, donning a surplice and lighting the candles and playing the piano. Together they selected the hymns from the limited range that Trimble could play, and the lessons. Then the padre wrestled alone with the address.
Sunday was a mixture of cloud and a watery, wintry sun.
‘Cavendish has a nerve ordering us to turn out for church parade!’ Horner grumbled. ‘But I wish he’d get a move on!’
There wasn’t going to be enough room in the small station chapel, so half of the personnel would have to stand outside while the service was broadcast to them through loudspeakers.
As they assembled in ranks of three outside on the main station parade ground, Horner and Johnson were craning their necks to see if they could spot Pip and Pam in the squad of smartly turned out Waafs.
‘A-tenshun!’ called the big thick-necked brute of a Station Warrant Officer, and then gave the order, ‘Fall out Jews and Catholics!’
Half the station mendaciously fell out.
‘What are you? Jew or Catholic?’ Horner demanded accusingly of the equipment sergeant, who was smiling broadly as he sneaked past them, making his exit.
‘Jew.’
‘Then how come you were eating all those pork chops yesterday, you lying bastard?’
‘Mind your own business, Jack-o.’
‘I’ve a good mind to fall out myself…’ Horner began.
‘No. Don’t,’ Ginger said. ‘Cavendish knows you’re not a Jew or a Catholic. He’d spot you if you fell out. He reckons we’re troublemakers as it is.’
‘It’s religious persecution! Letting them off and not us! And look at that! Now they’re marching the girls in first. What a cheek!’ Then his face softened, and actually broke into a smile as he spotted Pip marching briskly. ‘She’s a good little mover,’ he said tenderly.
‘Pam wanted us to go to church,’ Ginger said.
‘Why? To get you used to walking up the aisle?’
‘No… to say one or two. To get us through ops.’
‘Better than mascots, eh?’
‘I’m willing to try anything, believe you me!’
After more hoarsely shouted orders from the SWO, a squad of RAF officers was marching past towards the chapel.
‘Christ,’ Horner sighed, ‘I’m willing to try anything as well. But we need more than one or two prayers. Look at Maddox! He can’t march any better than he can fly. Talk about two left feet!’
And to increase Horner’s irritation the chapel was full by the time they got there. So Horner and Maddox, and the rest of the sergeants who hadn’t claimed to be Jews or Catholics, stood at ease, their hymn sheets blowing in a rising east wind.
And then, just as Trimble hit the first notes of the National Anthem with which all church parades began, the air raid warning sounded.
‘Carry on!’ Cavendish told the padre when he glanced at him uncertainly.
So to the bass accompaniment of the Bofors guns of Station Defence and the distant roar of aircraft engines, they finished the National Anthem and began on their first hymn, ‘The King of Love my Shepherd is’.
How had that crept in? Not to Cavendish’s taste at all.
But to Pam’s. ‘If Ginger gets through this lot and I get him to marry me, I’ll have this for my main wedding hymn,’ she whispered dreamily to Pip.
Outside her intended bridegroom and Horner grumbled about the cold, now blustery wind and watched high up in the east a Spitfire and two Messerschmidts in combat, weaving in and out of the sunlight, soaring, diving amongst little dandelion puffs of white smoke.
‘Shape of things to come,’ Ginger said. ‘The Spit’ll knock them for six!’ Then he closed his eyes as there was a distant rattle of cannon followed by the scream of an aircraft in a fatal never-to-be-recovered-from dive.
‘Gotcha!’ Ginger exclaimed without opening his eyes. ‘Ker-ump! Told you! One of theirs.’
‘Since when did the Hun fly Spits?’ Horner asked him, not for the first time, and Ginger opened his eyes and there were just the two Messerschmidts in the sky and lower down the tip of a column of black oily smoke. That shut him up. Shut the pair of them up. This time tomorrow or maybe the day after, they were both thinking… will we be here or will we be a column of oily smoke and someone trying to gather up what’s left of us?
For the moment, there was no more sign of the Hun. The All Clear sounded before the service was over.
And what a pathetic apology for a service it had been in Cavendish’s estimate. He was sorry he had ever called it. The sermon was an inept mixture of duty and, of all things, the brotherhood of man, a passing reference to Churchill’s ‘an evil thing that we are fighting’ but not a mention of the real villainies of the Hun or fighting the good fight – nothing whatever to get the chaps in the right frame of mind for their first operational Detail tomorrow.