Bombing Run Read online

  Rhys kept groaning in pain from his crushed ribs. He was the strongest of them and insisted on trying to paddle, but after his first five-minute effort he fainted and dropped the paddle overboard. Vachell dived in and recovered it. Fuller was obviously concussed and lay looking vacant, limp and inert. When he moved, his right leg caused him intense pain and when he tried to speak only a few slurred and meaningless sounds emerged. Edkins had broken his arm between wrist and elbow and Vachell had contrived a sling for it with Edkins’s tie and his own. With ties taken from the other three he had bound the arm but was unable to find anything to use as a splint. Edkins was able to use a paddle with one hand for short periods, but if the dinghy rocked violently and unbalanced him, and he hurt his broken arm, the agony was such that he either yelled or lost consciousness. Vachell and Wheldon took over the paddling, after the first two hours, during which the others had tried to help and it had become manifest that they could not. Wheldon had shared out some of the coffee while it was still hot, as soon as the aircraft disappeared under the water.

  ‘We’ll have to assume that we might be adrift for two nights and most of two days,’ he said. ‘I’ll issue the rations three times a day on that basis.’

  ‘You and Tony need more than the rest of us,’ Rhys said. ‘You’re using all your energy. Dhu, I hate to be bloody useless.’

  ‘You’re not useless, Taffy: you’re our navigator. We’ll figure out our speed and track, and you can work out where we are.’

  ‘We’re staying still, just about: paddling into a headwind, and the sea against us as well.’

  ‘The wind should change, and the waves with it.’ Wheldon tried to sound convincing.

  Their bladders and bowels began to trouble them. Nobody said anything until Fuller suddenly mumbled ‘Oh, God… it’s so bloody wet… hard to tell… think I’ve bloody pissed myself.’

  Vachell said ‘I’m bursting. What do we do, Pete?’

  ‘Try to pee over the side. Turn your back to the wind.’

  Vachell tried, but it was not a success. The motion of the dinghy and the width of its gunwales made it impossible.

  It was not long before Edkins said ‘Sorry, Skip, but I want to relieve myself.’

  ‘Don’t be mealy-mouthed, Eddie. D’you mean you need a shit?’

  Edkins looked embarrassed. ‘Yes, Skipper.’

  ‘Well, we’re all going to, sooner or later.’ Wheldon thought for a moment. ‘I tell you what: if anyone has to do it, he’d better take his pants down and sit as far out as possible over the gunwale, and two others will hold his legs. Want to try, Eddie?’

  ‘If I don’t, Skipper, there’s going to be a bloody accident, I can tell you.’

  Rhys shifted around until he could grasp one of Edkins’s legs, while Wheldon painfully held on to the other. Edkins gingerly slid across the smooth wet gunwale while Vachell paddled. There was a disgusting stench and Vachell began to vomit, leaning overboard.

  It was a revolting performance for everyone and they all began to wait in trepidation for the next man who found the demands of his bowels irresistible.

  Wheldon murmured to Vachell ‘I’ve often thought about having to ditch, but I forgot to take into account all these sordid details.’

  ‘I think I’ll stick one of the leak-stoppers in my bum, rather than go through that in public.’

  ‘You’ve still got to empty your bladder, though, sooner or later.’

  ‘We’d better use the flask.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that!’

  ‘Because it’s still got some coffee in it.’

  ‘Let’s drink up then. When we use the flask, we can empty it over the side.’

  They slept, all except whichever of Wheldon or Vachell was paddling. They each paddled for a quarter of an hour, then rested for five minutes, and changed over every hour. All their wrist watches had stopped when immersed in the sea. Fuller had a pocket watch that was still going. It had a luminous dial that they could read despite their salt-sore eyes and the intense darkness. Clouds had started forming some thirty minutes before they ditched, and the stars and moon were hidden.

  Now and then one of the injured men cried out in his sleep as some motion of the dinghy or involuntary movement of his limbs brought a stab of pain.

  Dawn found them all awake and Wheldon issued rations.

  ‘What the hell is pemmican?’ Rhys asked.

  ‘Buffalo meat or venison,’ Vachell said, ‘dried, powdered and mixed with boiling fat. Then it’s set in slabs.’ It was packed in tins the size of sardine cans, and Wheldon cut it into portions with his jackknife.

  They passed the empty flask around. Wheldon was beginning to suffer from stomach ache; but he was determined not to go through the vile and embarrassing business of relieving his bowels. There was a mist and they strained their ears for the sound of aircraft engines, but the only sound was the soughing of the waves and the faint whistle of the wind.

  In mid-morning the mist cleared and they saw that cloud base was about 1,500 ft. They constantly searched the sky. Wheldon’s and Vachell’s stamina began to flag. They paddled more and more slowly and for shorter spells. Again, both Rhys and Edkins tried their hands, and even Fuller, still dazed, insisted on attempting to help.

  It was Vachell who first heard aero engines, shortly before noon. Wheldon was paddling, and stopped to join in looking at the sky for the source of the welcome sound. An Anson came into view, flying towards the coast.

  ‘They must have been looking for us miles out,’ Wheldon said. ‘Fire a flare, Tony.’

  They all watched Vachell impatiently while he stripped the covering from one of the three flares. The Anson was several hundred yards away and not coming directly towards them. In a moment it would be too late for a flare to burst where the crew could see it.

  The signal shone brightly overhead, dazzling against the grey sky.

  The Anson flew on.

  More than an hour passed in glum silence before a Hudson appeared from the west. They watched it change course away from them. The sound of its engines gradually died away.

  ‘They must be doing a creeping line ahead,’ Wheldon said. ‘They’ll be back before long.’

  Two more hours, seeming twice as long, crawled by before their ears picked up the Hudson’s return. This time it was approaching them and only a couple of hundred yards on their beam, flying parallel with their laborious track.

  Again a flare burst high above the dinghy. The Hudson banked and turned, heading straight for the small yellow craft tossing on the grey sea. A croaking cheer rose from five salt-parched throats. The Hudson circled. Its crew waved. It stayed with them for an hour, during which cloud base sank steadily until at last the Hudson was flying at no more than 500 ft.

  An Aldis lamp flashed slowly in Morse: H.S.L. coming. Should be here in an hour.

  The Hudson turned for home and the men in the dinghy began to gaze landward, looking for a high speed launch to loom through the gloom.

  The clouds did not lift that day and a fog settled over the sea. Night fell before any further hope of rescue was offered.

  *

  Group Captain Kirkpatrick sat on one side of the hospital bed and Wing Commander Norton sat on the other. Wheldon, still in pain from his wrenched back, and still running a temperature, noticed them dully.

  From the other side of the small room, Vachell, feverish and restless, paid no attention to the visitors.

  Wheldon could remember every waking moment of the 75 hours they had eventually spent in the dinghy. If he shut his eyes he could still, seven days after their rescue, feel the motion of the sea.

  He wished Groupie and the Wingco would go away. He did not want to be bothered. A tedious explanation for his sudden plunge from 10,000 ft was too much when he felt so rotten.

  He wished they were in a ward, instead of this private room. With several other patients’ curious ears around them, he and Vachell would have been left unmolested. But they had been isolated for t
hat reason: security. Sooner or later they would have to tell their story of the attack. The three other members of his crew, he had learned, were in a similar room with an extra bed crammed into it.

  All five of them had caught pneumonia more or less badly. That was on top of Edkins’s broken arm, which Wheldon recalled hazily a doctor had told him had been well set and would be all right. And in addition to Rhys’s several broken ribs, Fuller’s torn cartilages and tendons, and his own ruptured back muscles and displaced spinal discs.

  The dinghy had drifted far south of their intended landfall and they were taken to a hospital in Great Yarmouth, the nearest town on the coast to where they had been found. The deep cuts on Vachell’s wrist and the back of his hand had caused a painful swelling, but he had done most of the paddling despite this. Fuller had been delirious on the last day and it was only Vachell’s quickness that had prevented him throwing himself overboard. Vachell’s cheerfulness had never flagged and he had cared for his four comrades as assiduously as a nurse.

  ‘How did you get here, sir?’ Wheldon asked the group captain.

  ‘We came in the Magister to Mildenhall, and the station commander kindly lent me a car.’

  ‘Long way, sir… very good of you.’ But I wish he’d go away: I don’t want to talk about it yet… if ever.

  ‘We would have come sooner, but the doctors wouldn’t allow you any visitors.’

  Wheldon turned his head on the pillow to look at Norton.

  ‘When I dived, sir…’ He paused to draw breath and summon the strength for an explanation.

  ‘Yes, I wondered about that.’

  ‘Flak burst right under our tail, sir… pitched us nose-down at about sixty degrees… my harness got hooked up with the stick…’

  ‘Oh!’ The two senior officers exchanged a look. ‘My rear gunner reported the burst close below you. I thought you’d been badly hit.’

  ‘No, sir… just tangled up.’ Wheldon managed a faint wry smile. ‘Vachell and I both hauled on the stick… couldn’t bring the nose up… by the time he disentangled me…’ The long word took an effort and he paused. ‘We were down to about a thousand feet… we were at two hundred when we got the old Wimpey out of its dive.’

  ‘Dicey, Flight. So you decided to stay where you were, to bomb?’

  ‘Climbed a bit, sir, to avoid being caught in our own blast.’

  ‘Well, you hit her. You were the only one who did.’

  ‘Rhys, sir… good aiming.’

  ‘Your whole crew did well.’

  ‘Vachell, sir… bloody marvellous in the dinghy…’

  The two officers looked across at the other bed. Vachell’s face was expressionless. He lay staring up at the ceiling. The group captain spoke to him.

  ‘Sergeant Vachell?’

  ‘Sir?’ Vachell’s voice was faint and he did not turn his head.

  ‘I hear you did very well; in the aircraft and in the dinghy.’

  ‘Don’t remember much, sir.’ Vachell wished as devoutly as his captain that these two well-meaning visitors would leave him alone.

  They returned their attention to Wheldon. ‘Do you feel up to telling us any more about it now, Flight Sergeant?’ The group captain looked hopeful.

  ‘I’ll try, sir.’ Wheldon paused again, then gave a halting summary of their attack and three days and nights adrift. Throughout, Vachell lay inscrutably staring at the ceiling, despite the two listeners turning more than once to look for some reaction from him.

  When they stood up to leave, Norton said, cheerfully, ‘I thought at first that Flak had got you. Then I thought perhaps you’d forgotten your briefing: I didn’t think you would deliberately disobey an order.’

  What is he trying to tell me? Wheldon wondered. Does he mean the opposite: that he thought I had decided to get down to where there was a chance of a hit? Or is he being sarcastic because he reckons I’m over-cautious?

  He said ‘No, sir. Ex-brats’ (apprentices) ‘know better.’ And you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it: I’m not windy, I’ve been trained to go by the book… and not to risk other people’s lives when I’m responsible for them.

  ‘Your whole crew put up a first-class show,’ the group captain said. ‘I hope I can get you some recognition for it.’

  Wheldon raised himself from the pillows and there was sudden strength in his voice and a look of consternation on his face. ‘It was the crew, sir… and Vachell, sir, in the dinghy.’ The effort exhausted him and he flopped back.

  ‘I know,’ the group captain said quietly.

  ‘Squadron Leader Sumner will be along to see you in a day or two, with the I.O.: when you’re fit enough to make a de-briefing report,’ said the wing commander.

  ‘Squadron Leader Sumner’s all right, then, sir?’

  ‘Yes, he’s fine.’ Norton was dismissive.

  Neither of them had volunteered any information about casualties, nor had Wheldon asked. He did not want to know, just yet.

  A short letter from Audrey (Dear Peter… yours sincerely; and not even one cross to convey a kiss) informed him that she was going to use her 24-hour stand-down to visit him.

  It was early evening on a rainy day when she came, smiling hesitantly, into the room. She stood looking down at him for a moment and he wondered if she would kiss him. She told him that he was looking better than she had expected, then went to tell Vachell the same, before sitting down so that she could see them both with a slight turn of her head.

  ‘Did you hitch?’ Wheldon asked.

  ‘Yes. It was no trouble: two lorries, a car, and a bus for the last bit; two buses, actually, into the town and out here.’

  ‘Lot of trouble.’

  ‘Not really.’

  He stretched out his hand and she took it, and did not release it.

  ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘At the Y.W.C.A. in Norwich.’

  ‘How will you get there?’

  ‘Bus. I’ll be out hitching soon after seven tomorrow morning. Don’t worry, I’ll get back in time. I told the Squadron Leader where I was coming, and he says it’s all right if I’m a bit late back. But I don’t think I will be.’

  He was touched by her interest in him. Her liking? Obviously. Her affection? He hoped so.

  ‘It’s wizard of you to go to so much trouble.’

  ‘No trouble: I wanted to see you.’ She lowered her voice and smiled. ‘I miss you, Peter.’

  ‘I’m glad. I’ve been missing you.’

  ‘When will they let you out of here?’

  ‘In another ten days. Then back to Brinstead for a day, and seven days leave.’

  ‘Lucky old you. It’ll be a long time before you’re really back, then. Just in time for Christmas.’

  He looked at her, tightening his grip on her hand, speculating.

  ‘What?’ she prompted him.

  ‘I was wondering…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You couldn’t get a forty-eight?’

  It was her turn to give him a long, speculative look. ‘When?’

  ‘The last two days of my leave. We could meet… London… or anywhere you like.’ He watched, with interest and encouragement, her cheeks grow as pink as they had been when she first arrived, glowing from the cold out of doors.

  ‘I should think… yes… yes, all right. That would be…’

  ‘Super,’ he finished for her, with a smile.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, with an answering smile, ‘super.’

  ‘Wizard. Where, then? The Smoke?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve only been to London four or five times. It seems a long way from Wiltshire.’

  ‘All right, then. I’ll spend five days with my parents, in Watford, and meet you anywhere you like. You’ll come by train?’

  ‘I won’t risk hitching: it might take hours.’

  ‘How about King’s Cross, then?’

  She laughed and he thought he could detect a note of fondness in it. ‘All right. You don’t leave anything to
chance, do you? Always plan well ahead, don’t you? Is that instinct or training?’

  ‘About sixty-forty, I think.’ And that’s one of the reasons why I’m still around, he thought, remembering how many other pilots who had been on his course or the squadron were dead now because they hadn’t taken enough care.

  ‘We can talk about it when you come back to camp before you go on leave.’

  There was a lot to talk about. He did not want to take anything for granted. What a fool he’d look if he booked a double room at the Regent Palace and she refused to share it with him. The prospect of sleeping with her flooded him with excitement. It brought a physical reaction which told him that he was indeed recovering his full health and strength.

  *

  Rhys was the first to be allowed up, and came to see them from his room next door. Presently all of them were allowed out of bed for a while each day and they used to foregather in one room or the other. Time began to pass more quickly. Wheldon wondered when his flight commander and the Intelligence officer would turn up. Their visit foreshadowed no pleasure at all. He wished they would come, and get the ordeal over.

  He was warned one day that they would be arriving on the following morning. They both entered smiling and shook hands. Both said ‘Congratulations’ to him and to Vachell.

  ‘Thank you, sir, we’re fine now.’

  ‘It’s not that. You’ve both been given an immediate award of the D.F.M.,’ said Squadron Leader Sumner. The two sergeants looked at one another.

  ‘Me, sir?’ Vachell sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes, you, Sergeant Vachell.’

  ‘What… what…?’

  ‘What for? For the excellent show you put up in the air and in the dinghy.’

  Vachell was looking embarrassed and confused, as well as astounded. ‘I hadn’t much option, sir, had I? If I hadn’t got the Skipper… er… off the hook, as it were, I’d have pranged with the rest of us.’