ONE fine summer day in August, Knickerbocker and I drove along the coast from Dover to Southampton. An air fight had been taking place above our heads for over an hour. Although we could hear the engines, the planes were so high and the sun was so bright we could catch only occasional glimpses of the tiny silver wings, like the quick darting flash of minnows in a clear blue stream. It was still going on when we drove through the quiet town of Hastings—the town where the great battle of 1066 had been fought when the Norman invaders overran England. We thought it would be interesting to visit the battlefield. We saw three men sitting on a fence, their eyes strained towards the sky, and stopped to ask the way.
“The battle of 1066?” one of them repeated. “Never heard of it.”
“Look at ’er!” said the second excitedly. “She’s on his tail now. Ooh! Look at ’em go.”
It was quite obvious no one was interested in the Battle of Hastings, and as we drove on Knick said meditatively: “Do you suppose one day, a thousand years from now, some bright young thing will write a book called 1940 And All That?”
It was a startling thought, but one thing was certain: “All That” would take a good deal of describing. Ever since the eighth of August Germany’s great air armada had been grappling with the fighters of the Royal Air Force in a titanic effort to smash British resistance; then to lay waste to the Island and seal its doom with invasion. The quiet town of Dover, only twenty miles from the nearest German base, had suddenly become the world’s news centre for the fierce and terrible battles taking place above the coast.
Hundreds of journalists and camera men flowed through the lobby of the Grand Hotel—a provincial hotel on the water-front which had formerly done most of its trade from special-rate holiday tourists en route for a week-end in France. I had seen the same journalists in hotels in Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Helsinki and Paris, but this time it was different; this was the last stop. After this, there would be no other hotels to move on to.
Otherwise there was the same atmosphere journalists always seem to bring with them: excitement, confusion, activity. Although many people had been evacuated from the town, and the beach was a long empty sweep protected by wire barricade to keep the pedestrians away, the streets were crowded with soldiers, sailors, balloon-barrage and A.R.P. workers. The roller-skating pavilion in the small square next to the hotel was crowded with customers, the music from the gramophone blaring out gaily along the sea-front just as it did in peace-time.
When the alarms sounded a red flag fluttered from Dover Castle on a hill high above the sea. You saw shop-owners bolting their doors, pedestrians running for cover, air-raid wardens taking their positions along the streets—the same scenes you had seen so often only this time slightly strange because it was England. Then you heard the far-away noise of engines, increasing until the drone was a mighty roar like the thunder of a waterfall, and the battle was on.
Some of us used to climb to the top of Shakespeare Cliff, about a mile from the town, and watch from there. The setting was majestic. In front of you stretched the blue water of the Channel and in the distance you could distinguish the hazy outline of the coast of France. Far below were the village houses glistening in the sun and the small boats and trawlers lying at anchor in the harbour; on the hill on the other side, the mighty turrets of the castle jutting into the sky; and, above all this, twenty or thirty huge grey balloons floating in the blue, flapping a little like whales gasping for breath.
You lay in the tall grass with the wind blowing gently across you and watched the hundreds of silver planes swarming through the heavens like clouds of gnats. All around you, anti-aircraft guns were shuddering and coughing, stabbing the sky with small white bursts. You could see the flash of wings and the long white plumes from the exhausts; you could hear the whine of engines and the rattle of machine-gun bullets. You knew the fate of civilization was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky. You knew it, but even so it was hard to take it in.
Sometimes the planes came lower, twisting, turning, darting and diving with a moaning noise that made your stomach drop; sometimes you saw them falling earthwards, a mass of flames, leaving as their last testament a long black smudge against the sky. Many of them fell into the sea and far below you could see the ‘crash’ boats racing out to the middle of the Channel to pick up the survivors. Often, when the German planes came down, the gunners on the cliffs shouted and cheered. No one had more respect for the fighter pilots than they. “By God,” said one of them, “you have to see those boys to believe how tough they are!”
I had seen them. Only a few weeks before Knickerbocker and I had driven down to the aerodrome where the 601 Squadron was stationed. We stood on the field and watched the Hurricanes shooting off the ground like bullets, until a moment later they were only tiny specks in the distance. They had been sent up to intercept a group of German bombers approaching the coast near Brighton, but this particular occasion turned out to be a false alarm, for the raiders turned back and soon the Hurricanes were sweeping on to the field again.
As they were circling down for a landing, an airman who was conducting us around—a tall, dark, nineteen-year-old boy—asked me if I’d like to talk to one of the pilots in the air. He walked over to a plane near the hangar, connected the radio and told me to ask for X No. 1.
“But what’ll I say?”
“Just say X No. 1, you’re making a lousy landing. Repeat it twice very distinctly.”
Dutifully I did as I was told, then switched over for the reply. It came: “You tell the controller to shut his Goddam face.”
My instructor guffawed with laughter. When X No. 1 came striding across the field, he greeted him warmly, and said: “You must meet this lady. You were just talking to her over the radio.”
“Oh, I say,” mumbled X No. 1. “I had no idea … I do hope …”
He was a painfully shy young man and by this time his face was crimson. He was wearing the D.F.C. and I was told he had shot down eleven planes, but I didn’t have an opportunity to learn any further details, for he promptly vanished and we didn’t see him again for the rest of the afternoon.
The squadron was divided into three shifts: “Readiness”, which could be in the air within a few seconds; “Advanced available”, which had a ten-minute leeway; and “Available”, within call of an hour or two. The “readiness” pilots were billeted in small huts on the edge of the field and the Commanding Officer took us around and introduced us to a number of them. They had bright, keen faces and were wearing decorations they had won at the time of Dunkirk. They were extremely modest about their achievements, and if you had told them how wonderful you thought they were they would have been deeply embarrassed. In fact, when Winston Churchill made his speech, saying: “Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few,” one of them was reported to have commented awkwardly: “I think he must be referring to our mess bills.”
Among the group were two Poles, newcomers to the squadron, who had yet to experience their first combat. As they knew only a few words of English, Knickerbocker addressed them in German, which they spoke fluently. “If you don’t mind,” said one, in a tone of gentle reproach, “we prefer to talk English.” Although the conversation was almost unintelligible, I remembered the Polish pilots I’d seen in Roumania, begging for a chance to have another go at the Germans, and I didn’t have to be told what their feelings were.
Our day ended with tea in a garden at the back of an old farmhouse on the edge of the field. The farmer, frightened at living so near the aerodrome, had moved away and a group of pilots had taken over the house. They were as pleased about it as a lot of children. They made a special effort over tea, hurrying in and out of the kitchen to see if things were being done properly; bringing us platters of cakes and sandwiches and apologizing profusely because we had come down to see them on such a slack day. They had been up only once, whereas they usually went into battle four or five times! I couldn’t get over how young they were—little boys with blonde hair and pink cheeks who looked as though they ought to be in school. I sat staring at them as though they were slightly unreal: these were the men who were saving England. Each time they went up into the air it was a fight to the finish; either they died or the enemy. Just then one of the pilots interrupted my thoughts: “You should visit one of our bomber squadrons one day.” And here his tone grew into one of awe: “Now, those boys are really tough.”
For once I couldn’t think of any comment to make.
* * *
A week or so later Knick and I took his advice and visited a bomber station in Lincolnshire. Although that was nearly a year ago when England was still greatly outnumbered in the air, British bombers were already striking at Germany five times as vigorously as the Germans were hitting back. On August 15th official figures estimated that the Royal Air Force had dropped more than thirty thousand bombs on Germany to the latter’s seven thousand on England. Since the invasion of Holland, three-and-a-half months before, there had only been two nights during which enemy targets had not been attacked.
Knick and I stood on the aerodrome watching six gigantic heavily-loaded bombers taking off in the fading light for the long trip they had come to know so well. The picture was dramatic enough: the engines warming up, the signal lights flashing across the field, and the sudden loud roar as plane after plane swept down the runway and disappeared into the uncertain light. Soon the ground radio operator was talking to the pilots to test the wireless apparatus: “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” And from somewhere in the darkness, miles away, came the reply: “Okay! Okay!”
The bombers were headed for oil refineries in the Ruhr. Each plane carried a crew of six: two pilots, two gunners, a navigator, and a wireless operator who was also a trained gunner. An hour or two before the flight was scheduled the “briefing” took place. The Wing Commander called in his pilots and gave them their objectives: primary objectives, secondary objectives, and, finally, strict instructions to bring their bombs back home with them if they failed to locate their targets.
“Of course,” said the Wing Commander, “if any of you happen to fly over the Skipol aerodrome (Amsterdam) and you still have your bombs with you …” Everyone laughed. The Skipol was an old favourite. For the next ten or fifteen minutes the pilots asked questions and checked up positions on their maps. They were a tough, keen, good-natured bunch of men. This particular squadron had averaged over a hundred trips a month to Germany during the past five months.
As they stood, their heads bent over their maps plotting out their objectives, I was reminded of a story someone had told me about the time Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Air Minister, had visited a bomber squadron during a “briefing”. Sir Archibald was anxious to say a few words to the pilots, so the Commanding Officer led him into the room where, he explained, the men were studying their instructions. He found the pilots bending over a table, roaring with laughter. In the centre was a huge package. When you unwrapped the outer layer there was another beneath it. When you unwrapped that there was still another. In the last package was a dead cat. The men had taken great pains to do it up to look like a strange and formidable bomb. Inside they had scribbled all sorts of ribald jokes and were planning to drop it in Berlin ‘with love and kisses from the Air Force’—hoping of course that some serious-minded German would rush it to a laboratory for a thorough scientific inspection.
Knick and I waited at the aerodrome until the small hours of the morning for our bombers to return. Sitting there, hour after hour, wondering if they would all get back, I began to understand the strain of the long and gruelling trips that had come to be such a matter of routine. I thought of them flying through fog and wind, over miles of sea, and wondered how human endurance stood up to it night after night. The silence of the Operations Room seemed to add to the drama Several men were bending over enormous maps charting speeds and positions; the Wing Commander was working at his desk; the wireless operator was listening for messages. The only noise was the hiss of the tea-kettle which an orderly had set up on an improvised stove.
The pilots were instructed not to communicate with their stations until they were on the homeward lap lest the Germans discover their positions. About two o’clock in the morning there was a message from the first plane; then one by one the signals came in until they were all chalked up on the board. About half an hour later the drone of an engine penetrated through the blackness. We ran outside and saw the air-field lights flash. The plane circled for several minutes and finally came down in a perfect landing.
Five of the bombers arrived within three-quarters of an hour of each other but the sixth was missing. The Wing Commander paced up and down anxiously for the boy’s petrol supply was limited. One hour slipped away, then two and then three. It seemed unlikely that he would ever get back now, but suddenly Headquarters reported that a bomber was not far off the English coast, and about half an hour later we heard the familiar drone of the Wellington engine.
The pilot came into the Operations Room pulling off his helmet and unbuttoning his fur-lined leather jacket. He was red-cheeked and embarrassed. He explained that he had overshot his target and then got lost. Instead of reaching the coast of England he had suddenly discovered he was flying over Holland. His petrol supply had become so low he had been forced to unload his bombs in the sea and had just squeezed home with a quarter of a gallon to spare. The Commander asked him if his navigator had been at fault, but the boy shook his head emphatically: “Oh no, sir, I must assume full responsibility.”
He went off still mumbling apologetically and the Commander said to us: “I think he’s covering up for his navigator. He’s one of my best pilots and we’ve had trouble with the navigator before. But try and make him admit it!”
As each of the crews came in from their flight they were interrogated by an Intelligence Officer whose job it was to establish exactly what results had been obtained and what observations been made. Except for one pilot, forced to turn back because his rear gun had gone out of action, all had bombed their primary target.
They reported heavy anti-aircraft fire. One of the bombers had been struck several times by shells; a wing was torn and the right petrol tank punctured with holes. The pilot was a gay young man, with a large moustache which had won him the name of “Handle-Bar Hank”. He had made over thirty trips to Germany and inspected the damage with the nonchalance of an old-timer. He said he thought he had heard a bit of noise, but he wasn’t quite sure.
When all the questioning was over we went to the mess and had an enormous breakfast of bacon and eggs and baked beans. Everyone was in such high spirits it was difficult to realize they had just returned from an exhausting flight over enemy territory. One of the pilots who had made his first trip only a few days before, told me between mouthfuls of toast that what surprised him the most was the show the Jerries put on for them. He said there were so many bursts from anti-aircraft guns it was almost like Empire Day. “When I realized they were going to all that trouble just for us, I felt as important as Hell,” he grinned.
Now, that was an angle that hadn’t struck me before.
* * *
The Bomber and Fighter Commands were not the only Air Force groups striking at the enemy. Every morning at dawn the Coastal Command’s heavily-armed Sunderland flying-boats slipped out of their quiet harbours and roared into the mists of the Atlantic. Their job was to help the Navy protect the great and vital sea routes of the British Isles. Sometimes their day’s run was only hours of lonely patrol; sometimes it ranged anywhere from signalling the position of enemy ships and attacking submarines to rescuing U-boat victims, protecting incoming vessels and engaging enemy planes in combat.
One week-end I visited a station from which an Australian squadron was operating. During the previous six months, this particular squadron had established the startling record of flying as far as the moon and half-way back again. I asked one of the officers if there was any chance of my going out on a flight with them and by a lucky slip-up somewhere (which caused the Air Ministry no end of indignation) I was signed on as an extra pilot and taken out on a thirteen-hour patrol of nearly seventeen hundred miles.
There were two officers—a pilot and an engineer—and a crew of seven. The officers were tough, experienced men with a long record of flying behind them; they seemed greatly amused at the bewildered looks the crew exchanged when I stepped aboard. “I only hope you won’t be bored,” one of them said anxiously. “A ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland a few hours ago and Jim (one of the other pilots) has gone off to pick up the survivors, so maybe we’ll run into some excitement, too.”
We left at six o’clock in the morning and flew at a speed of about a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Soon we were far out at sea with nothing but a solid blue stretch above and below and the sun sparkling on the waves. Everyone was very busy. The bomb-racks were loaded and the gunners took their positions, scanning the brilliant horizon for enemy submarines. The engineer sat at the dual controls with the pilot; behind them the chief mechanic was sitting at his desk checking engine temperatures and pressures, the navigator was bending over his maps calculating speed and position, and the wireless operator listening for messages.
Our ship was two-decked and built entirely of metal. It carried petrol for two thousand miles and was armed with guns bow and stern, port and starboard. (The pilot said they spit fire from so many angles the Germans had dubbed them the Fliegende Stachelschwein—the flying porcupines.) It was also equipped with cameras for reconnaissance work, parachute flares for night landings, a collapsible rubber boat which expanded when it touched the water, and a cage of carrier pigeons. One of the gunners told me it had been so quiet lately the pigeons had been driven to laying eggs out of sheer boredom. But the most indispensable contrivance on the ship was an automatic pilot known as “George”. George was an invention for long-distance flying; he kept the boat on its course so perfectly the pilot didn’t have to use the controls for hours at a time.
We hadn’t been in the air long before the wireless operator intercepted a message from the flying-boat which had set out to pick up the survivors of the torpedoed ship reporting two enemy aircraft. They evidently weren’t anxious for combat however, for a few minutes later we picked up a second message saying: “Enemy out of sight.” During the next four hours the only object we saw was one small trawler, a Spanish fishing boat. Hundreds of sea-gulls were following in its wake—according to the pilot, the one indisputable way you could tell whether or not it was “on the level”.
At ten-thirty we had breakfast: bacon and eggs, fruit, coffee, toast and jam. The front gunner, also an expert mechanic, had the triple rôle of cook. “You can tell how busy he’s been,” said the pilot, “by how strongly the potatoes taste of petrol.” He was a good-natured, wise-cracking little man, proud of the fact that he’d learned to cook in the Australian bush. He said it was pretty difficult to feed ten people from such a small galley but on the other hand it wasn’t supposed to be the Ritz. I asked him how he liked patrolling the Atlantic and he told me he’d like it better after he’d had “a smack at Jerry”. He said he thought our flying-boat had a jinx, for it was the only one in the squadron which hadn’t yet gone into action.
Shortly after lunch I thought we were going to have some excitement. The engineer was at the controls and the pilot and I were just finishing our tea when the ship suddenly swung off its course. The pilot jumped up and went to the window. We were banking steeply and far below there was a long patch of oil on the water. He muttered “submarine” and scrambled up the ladder to the cockpit.
A second later a noise that sounded like an old-fashioned motor-horn resounded through the boat—the signal to man all guns. From the galley there was the sudden clatter of pots and pans, and the cook made a dash for the forward gun. We were turning slowly like a giant bird circling down to swoop on its prey. Suddenly it was all over. The all-clear sounded, the boat gained altitude and straightened out on its course. The cook came back to his dishes looking like a disappointed child. “Just some old wreckage,” he grumbled. “Thought we were going to unload a few that time.” He wasn’t the only one who was disappointed. The chief mechanic shook his head gloomily. “The trouble is, it’s such a clear day the Jerries can see us for forty miles. It’s always lousy fishing, this weather.”
The engineer apologized for the lack of excitement but said to make up for it he would put me into the rear-gun turret. This proved to be one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had. The turret was a round, glassed-in cubicle which swung out over the sea. I suddenly found myself locked in, with the wind whistling ominously through the gun openings, and below me nothing but a sickening drop into the sea.
“Let me out!” I yelled.
“What’s the matter?” grinned the engineer when I was back in the cabin once more. “We were thinking of signing you up as our permanent rear-gunner.”
This gave the engineer the idea of organizing a little gunnery practice. The crew put on helmets, with wires and microphones attached, enabling them to communicate to each other from all parts of the ship. The engineer then broadcast an enemy attack with frightening realism: “Now they’re on our tail! They’re diving towards the starboard! And here come two more! Port side!” After practising the movement of the guns, targets were thrown out and the gunners fired short bursts.
Soon it was all over, but two of the gunners forgot to disconnect their microphones. The pilot suddenly heard one of them saying: “I wonder how long it’s going to be before we’re allowed to bring one of our lassies up on a hop?”
The pilot said: “I advise whoever is doing the talking to remove his helmet.” There was a sharp click, then silence.
There were no further incidents that afternoon and we patrolled hour after hour with only sea and sky stretching endlessly before us. We landed in the harbour just as it was getting dark.
The sequel to the story is a sad one, for the next morning the little Australian cook who had longed to “get a smack at Jerry” left on a flight for Gibraltar. His ship sighted and attacked a Dornier 18. Although the latter was put to flight, the cook, who played his part as front gunner, was seriously wounded and died a few hours later.
I felt as though I had lost an old friend.