Two

By the time they took off for the fourth time that day, everybody was trying Boumphrey’s method. While the trees round the polo ground hid the Harts and the Audaxes until they were actually lifting into the air, the Oxfords, Gladiators and Gordons were in full view the minute they were on the airfield. So, as Boumphrey had done out of sheer necessity, they all started doing.

They completed their pre-flight checks behind the hangars, and one of the ground crew moved out, hidden by the hangars from the plateau and gave the signal that nothing was on the way in; then, with the engine roaring and the brakes squealing, the aircraft lurched, zigzagging at speed through the gate straight on to the take-off area and, without pausing, increased speed and lifted off in a steep swing away from the ridge of hills. By this time the pom-poms on the plateau were beginning to be difficult so, on the return, they began to fly in very low across the camp to avoid their fire, landed on the taxi strip close to the buildings, swung in at speed through the gate and whipped round the back of the hangars.

Osanna had tried to set up a debriefing system complete with a pile of debriefing forms – time on patrol, time off, that sort of thing, with descriptions of what had been hit – but too much was happening too quickly and in the end he gave it up and left it to the pilots to report any new targets they thought important, with two or three clerks from headquarters to put it down in notebooks resting on the wing of a machine while the engine was still emitting its creaks and clicks as it cooled off.

There was no time for anything else because the casualties were mounting, though it wasn’t considered that a small flesh wound or minor damage to an aircraft was sufficient to stop flying. At midday sandwiches appeared from the mess and they ate while the machines were serviced, refuelled and bombed up. The man who brought them had a story of six Irazhi Gladiators appearing from nowhere to attack the station buildings. ‘Nearly got AHQ,’ he said.

Nobody had noticed them in the excitement but there was considerable joy at his description of senior officers diving under tables and his graphic picture of the row of august backsides sticking out.

‘Like a lot of hippopotamuses wallowing in the mud,’ he said gleefully.

The Irazhi aircraft had done some damage. Where there had been solid buildings and trim verges was now surrounded by smoke, the crackle of flames, dust-shrouded rubble and an acrid smell of burning. Figures were beginning to appear from the wreckage, but the station warrant officer, his face blackened and his moustache askew, was fully in command, his rasping voice rallying men into coherent groups. Fire hoses were being run out, ambulances were racing through the smoke to where men were digging and pulling rubble aside with their bare hands. Near one of the huts an arm, severed at the elbow, lay on the ground and everybody was carefully taking evading action round it, pretending it wasn’t there.

The sound of the fighting, the tremendous roaring of aircraft engines and, above all, the explosions, had terrified Prudence Wood-Withnell. Her helpers had fled at once to the shelters but, feeling somehow that if the water tank were damaged she might have to spend the day filling buckets and baths, she herself had taken refuge under a table in the hospital sluice, where all the containers were emptied. The first bombs to fall near had reduced her to tears but then, realising that she was doing no good at all in tears, she had pulled herself together and gone to help. The first injured man she saw was an airman who had lost a foot and the sight of the pulpy red mess at the end of his stocking turned her stomach over. Then one of the Indian bearers had been brought in with a splinter in the chest and the whole of his white cotton clothing saturated with shining red and she had realised that it was no time to be squeamish. They were already short-handed and every pair of hands was needed. Gulping down her nausea, she had turned to help.

Despite the formidable shelling from the plateau, which seemed to have blown out every wire mesh window in the place, the explosions had not disturbed the pair of nesting storks with their young on the radio mast above Air Headquarters.

‘I bet it gave them a fright though,’ Darling had observed.

Shrapnel still clattered on the iron roofs but neither the water tower nor the power station had been hit, though too many aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. The Audaxes and Harts on the polo ground, however, were effectively screened by the trees, while those machines behind the hangars were suffering only superficial damage. There was only one question in everybody’s mind as aircraft came in and swung into place behind the hangars to be checked for structural damage: could they be patched up enough to go back into the air?

 

As they cruised at 1000 feet, which Boumphrey decided would give them maximum accuracy, they could see the Audaxes dive bombing beneath them. The Harts had been designed for just this purpose and the Audaxes, an improvement on the Harts, were also proving quite adept at it. They were falling out of the sky into the ground fire with their bombs and guns, but everybody had his own method, and others were going in low and screaming across the plateau, making use of every available gulley, to arrive almost unseen over their target and drop their bombs from a mere hundred feet.

The air seemed alive with aeroplanes and by this time the Audaxes from the polo field had developed a technique of hammering the gun positions while the Oxfords, Gladiators and Gordons took off from the main airfield. Flight Sergeant Madoc was taking the armoured cars along the perimeter close to the plateau, well within range of the guns, roaring at full speed backwards and forwards between the shells and the aircraft taking off and landing, using his guns to force the Irazhis to keep their heads down.

It was decided they were becoming so successful, in fact, that they might get more of the women and children away. Contacting Wing Commander Atkin, the station admin. officer, normally a desk-bound officer, who’d been given command of the Audaxes and Harts, Fogarty explained what he intended. ‘We’re sending off the Valentias for the coast,’ he said. ‘So I want everybody you can put into the air to bomb the gun positions to keep heads down while they take off. Let’s make it 1500 hours exactly. Telephone me when you’re ready.’

Cars and lorries began to hurry from the camp complex to the area behind the hangars and stopped alongside the Valentias.

‘It’ll take twenty minutes to get ’em all away,’ Fogarty explained. ‘Can your people keep up a sustained bombing that long?’

‘Yes, they’ll do it.’

‘The armoured cars will emerge at the same moment and head north along the perimeter to draw fire away from the airstrip. While the guns are occupied in that direction, we’ll get the big boys away.’

Promptly at 1450 hours, the Audaxes and Harts lifted off and, climbing to 1000 feet, screamed down to hammer the guns on the plateau. While they were busy replying, the Gladiators took off and joined in, and Madoc’s eighteen old armoured cars emerged from the complex of buildings and began to roar along the perimeter, firing at anything that presented itself. The din was tremendous and a lifting cloud of smoke and dust hung over both the camp and the escarpment.

At the height of the fury, the first Valentia appeared from behind the hangars and headed for the field. By this time the fence had been pulled down to widen the gate, and it roared through at a good thirty miles an hour, lurching on the uneven ground, its huge biplane wings swaying. Facing the airfield, the pilot opened his throttles. Almost immediately a second followed, then a third. The Audaxes went in lower, screaming down almost to ground level.

The firing from the plateau, as the gunners were caught between the bombing of the aircraft and the automatic weapons of the armoured cars, began to grow wild, and Boumphrey decided to join the fun. The last of the Valentias was thundering down the airfield now, trailing its cloud of brown dust, and he saw it lift off. A solitary gun, temporarily unoccupied, sent a few shells after it and he saw them explode beyond the ditch at the end of the take-off area.

As he lined up to drop his bombs, Darling was bouncing about in his seat with excitement. ‘Left, skipper,’ he was yelling. ‘Left a bit more. Right. Jesus, there they go – I mean, bombs gone, sir!’

As they lifted away, the Oxford as usual touchy on the controls and awkward to handle, they heard a crash beneath them somewhere and saw holes appear in the cabin walls.

‘I suspect we’ve been hit, Darling,’ Boumphrey said calmly.

‘You’re telling me, sir!’ Darling’s voice was high-pitched. ‘Hole back there big enough to put your head through.’

‘The undercarriage light’s come on. I think the undercart’s come down. We’d better try it.’

They could get no joy from the undercarriage. There was no sound of it moving and Boumphrey began to suspect that only one wheel was down, which was going to make landing a problem. Clearly something had happened beneath the machine because its notorious instability was more marked than ever and Boumphrey realised they were in difficulties. They were swinging round now over the camp and heading for the landing field and he was hoping to God they could get down safely before the tricky Ox-box dropped a wing and went into a spin. They were turning at the end of the field for their run-in when Darling yelled.

‘Sir, sir! We’re on fire!’

‘Where?’ Boumphrey struggled to keep his voice steady.

‘Starboard wing, sir. I think it’s spreading. It’s coming from the starboard engine.’

Boumphrey’s eyes flickered to his right where the Armstrong Siddeley engine was pounding away. The machine was not fitted with fire extinguishers and he was aware that it was necessary to get it down as quickly as possible and get out and run, because of the Oxford’s tendency to burn fast. It was largely built of plywood and was well known for its ability to become a mass of flames.

His thoughts were racing through his mind like mad mice. How did he get a burning Oxford down safely with a damaged undercarriage? As he glanced about him below, he saw the fire engine racing across the ground towards them. Passing overhead, he saw them turn and one of the crew, riding on the running board, was pointing frantically, gesturing wildly at the aircraft. Boumphrey wasn’t certain what they were trying to indicate but he suspected it wasn’t that the engine was on fire, because the fact that he must have seen it should have been obvious to anyone. So he could only assume that his guess was right and only part of the undercarriage had come down.

His thoughts were still scurrying through his mind when he spotted the small brick huts of the rifle range. There were two of them, one a store where the targets were kept, the other where the target operators sheltered when they weren’t in the orchestra pit indicating hits, and he suddenly realised they might be his salvation. They were about fifteen feet apart – at least he hoped they were fifteen feet apart, though he had never measured them – and he decided to take a chance.

‘Come aft, Darling,’ he said to the cadet. ‘If I put this thing down as she is, you and I are going to be cooked meat because the wheels will collapse and she’ll go up in flames. Make sure you’re properly strapped in and hold your hat on.’

He turned again, the machine behaving awkwardly as it tilted, dangerously close to a stall and a spin. Righting it, he headed for the rifle range. Darling gave him a nervous look and Boumphrey tried to reassure him.

‘See those two buildings, Darling,’ he said. ‘I’m going straight between them. At full speed.’

Darling’s look this time was one of alarm. ‘Between them, sir?’

‘Yes. You’ll see why when we’ve done it – if we do it. Now shut up and let me concentrate. There’s going to be only one try and it’s got to come off.’

The two huts were approaching now, growing larger and larger. Boumphrey held the machine close to the ground and headed for the gap between them. Suddenly, horrifyingly, he felt it might not be big enough, or even that he might not hit it dead centre so that the machine would slew round and plough into one or the other of the buildings. But it was too late now to do anything about it, and he heard Darling draw in his breath and saw him raise his arms to shield his face.

The buildings were huge now, racing towards them, growing in size until they filled the whole of his vision. He held the nose of the Oxford on the centre of the gap and the crash came in a tearing, rending roar. The machine shuddered, but they were going at such a speed the crash ripped the wings clean off in a shower of flying bricks, and the fuselage, containing Boumphrey and Darling, went racing on.

As the wheels touched, the bounding fuselage tilted to starboard and hit the ground with an almighty rending crash. Splinters of wood flew in all directions, then the fuselage slewed round, and came to an abrupt stop. The nose went down and the tail came up, then it rocked back on to its belly.

‘Out!’ Boumphrey yelled.

The overhead hatch was jammed so they tossed off their parachutes and scrambled down the fuselage and over the splintered woodwork round the main spar to the door. The door also seemed to be jammed but by throwing their weight against it, they burst it open and fell out into the sunshine. A machine gun was raising spurts of dust all round the wrecked fuselage and they flung themselves flat. The wings had both fallen off and lay in a splintered wreckage against the huts, the petrol they had contained blazing furiously to send up a coil of black smoke towards the escarpment.

Darling was staring at them with startled eyes as if it had just dawned on him what they had missed.

‘If we’d tried to land on one wheel,’ he said slowly, ‘we’d have gone up like Guy Fawkes night.’

‘That we would, Darling,’ Boumphrey said cheerfully. ‘Are you damaged at all?’

‘Not a scratch, sir. How about you?’

‘Same here. And it looks as though rescue’s on its way.’

Two armoured cars were bounding towards them across the airfield. As they reached them, Flight Sergeant Madoc’s head appeared from the nearest. ‘Round the back!’ he yelled.

The armour-plated door was open and they scrambled aboard. Then, as the car was about to set off from among a forest of small puffs of dust, the driver’s voice came.

‘Flight! We’ll have to hang on! One of the Wimpeys is coming in. It looks as though he’s in trouble.’

The big machine was coming down in an uncertain manner, one propeller windmilling, the engine stopped, flying in a nose-up attitude as the pilot sought to bring it in at the minimum safe speed. He left his landing flare just too late, the wheels hit the ground and the undercarriage legs shortened as the rams were compressed. The aeroplane was projected back into the air and the engines roared as the pilot tried to catch the bounce and soften the next impact. But he was too late and the great machine fell back as if exhausted. The wheels struck the earth in another puff of dust, then the pilot slammed down the tail as fast as possible and they heard the brakes squeal. As it slowed, every gun on the escarpment seemed to spot it and, now that the Audaxes and Harts had disappeared, they swung away from the wreckage of the Oxford and began to drop their shells round the better target presented by the Wellington. They saw the crew running through the smoke and dust.

A tractor was heading out of the gate from the hangar towards the Wellington and Madoc yelled to Boumphrey.

‘Hang on, sir! That chap’s going to need some cover!’

The two armoured cars began to race across the dusty surface of the field to take up positions on either side of the tractor to shield the driver and his mate from the gunfire with their armoured sides. The driver’s face was tense and strained.

As they swung round the stern of the Wellington, the driver’s mate produced a wire rope and started to secure it to the tail wheel but, as he did so, a shell from the escarpment burst close by and they both went on their faces. The driver lifted his head, his face covered with blood, and crossed to his mate, who managed to raise himself one-handed to his knees.

‘Come on, Darling,’ Boumphrey yelled.

Clambering from Madoc’s car, they ran to the men crouched under the tail surface of the Wellington. Shells were still cracking around them as they hoisted them to their feet and stumbled with them to the doors of the armoured cars. Hands reached out and dragged them aboard, then Darling looked at Boumphrey.

‘What about the Wimpey, sir?’ he asked. ‘My old man’s a farmer and I’ve been driving tractors since I was ten.’

Boumphrey managed a grin. ‘Get cracking,’ he said.

They ran to the Wellington and between them managed to secure the wire from the tail wheel of the big bomber to the heavy hook behind the tractor. After a jerk or two, Darling got the tractor going and swung the Wellington round towards the hangars. Immediately the armoured cars moved alongside them, again trying to provide protection from the gunners on the heights. Slowly they began to head across the field.

The shells were still cracking round them and Darling, glancing backwards over Boumphrey where he clung to the back of the tractor, flinched. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I think the bugger’s caught alight!’

Because the wind was carrying the flames away from them, they hadn’t noticed that the Wellington was on fire but now, as they turned towards the hangars away from the wind they could feel the heat searing their flesh, and Boumphrey could see a pom-pom at the bottom of the escarpment only a few yards from the wire perimeter fence hammering away at them.

‘I think it’s time we left,’ he announced.

As the tractor stopped, he slipped to the ground.

‘Back up,’ he screamed, shielding his face from the flames. ‘The wire’s too tight.’

Darling put the tractor into reverse so hard it almost ran over Boumphrey. The wire slackened and Boumphrey struggled to throw it off. But the loop had tightened round the hook and he had to lie on his back to try to kick it off. With the heat scorching his skin, he became aware of another armoured car racing from the hangars towards them. As it reached them, it swung round and slid with locked wheels. A head appeared from the hatch wearing a flying helmet, the jack of the intercom flapping.

‘Get away, you bloody idiots!’ the owner yelled. ‘She’s still got bombs on board! She’ll go up any minute!’

Boumphrey’s eyes met Darling’s, then he gave one final frantic kick. As the wire rope came free he ran to the tractor and jumped aboard.

‘Go!’ he yelled.

As Darling let in the clutch, the tractor hurtled away, the engine roaring, taking them thankfully away from the heat of the flames. They hadn’t gone fifty yards when there was a tremendous iron crash behind them as the bombs went off. It was followed by two more and, turning, they saw the Wellington had been torn apart. One of the Hercules engines landed forty feet away, then pieces of metal and burning scraps of fabric glittering like golden bats fluttered down around them. A wheel landed nearby in a puff of dust that blew into their faces as they raced for the gate leading to the hangars, the armoured cars keeping pace with them to shield them. More fragments of steel came down in a shower among the shell bursts and the blowing smoke, then they hurtled through the gate, narrowly missing an Oxford that was moving across their front, and swung round behind the hangars. Darling stopped the tractor so suddenly, Boumphrey fell off.

Someone picked him up and he found himself staring at the helmeted Jenno who had scrambled from the armoured car that had rescued them.

‘That was a bloody silly thing to do, Ratter,’ he said.

Boumphrey grinned. Then Darling appeared. His face was black and when he laughed his tongue seemed extraordinarily pink.

‘You’ve lost your eyebrows, sir,’ he said.