Trial By Fire Read online

  “It’s no compliment to anyone who’s put down for fighters and been expecting to get what he wants.”

  “How have you been doing lately?”

  “That’s just it: I’m not quite top of the course, but I’m third.”

  “Damn good. As I said, you’ve obviously been picked out as multi-engine material.”

  “The two types above me aren’t going onto twins.”

  “Well, the Blenheim is a twin-engined fighter as well as a bomber. And one never knows what else there is coming along.” He could not say more on an open telephone line, particularly one which was perhaps being monitored for breaches of security. “Cheer up.”

  “I’m only interested in getting onto a Hurricane or Spit squadron.”

  “I suppose you’ve spoken to your C.F.I. ?” But it was no doubt the Chief Flying Instructor who had made the decision after much consideration.

  “Yes. He said the same as you: I’ve been specially selected.”

  “Then that’s it, I’m afraid. Well, you’ll be one up on me: I’ve never flown a twin.”

  * * *

  On 9th May James thought that at last the war had reached out and embraced him again.

  The squadron was at readiness. Twenty minutes after they had gone on duty, one section was scrambled to investigate a raid approaching from the south-east. It was A Flight’s honour and Addison took his own section, Red, off in response to the order. The other section, Yellow, was that morning being led by James. He had been sitting comfortably in a chair, reading an Everyman edition of Russian short stories, immersed in Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades” when the Ops. telephone rang. Now no book could hold his attention. He wandered up and down outside the crew room, gazing towards the south-east, waiting for the first aircraft of Red Section to return, wondering if they had sighted the enemy and been in action.

  His attention was wrenched back to the crew room by the sound of the telephone ringing again. The door opened violently and Ross appeared at a run.

  “Yellow Section scramble, James.” As he ran past, Ross added “Come on, finger out.”

  With the third member of the section at his side, James pelted after his long-legged friend. As soon as he was in the cockpit he called Ops, on the R/T. The controller gave him a course and height. “Vector two-two-zero, make angels twenty.”

  A raid to the south-west of them? The Germans always came from the eastward. How could a raid have got there, especially at such a height, without being seen? It did not seem likely that the enemy would creep in low from the east and then, when they were well down the Channel, climb to 20,000 ft.

  While he climbed, James asked the controller questions.

  “Where are they, how many, what height and course?”

  “Garter Yellow One, this is Tendril. Bogeys south of Isle of Wight, course zero-four-zero, height twenty thousand. Estimated four of them.”

  “Understand bogeys?”

  James did not hide the disappointment he felt. Bogeys were unidentified aircraft. Bandits were those which had been identified as hostile; and even such plots on the Filter Room table often turned out to be friendly. His anger rose with the conviction that yet again he was going to be thwarted.

  “Yellow One, bogeys turned onto three-six-zero, now friendly. Pancake.”

  This time James gave vent to his irritation.

  “Isn’t there any trade at all, Tendril?”

  “Sorry, Yellow One, nothing. But maintain course if you like, and patrol westward when you reach the coast.”

  “Understand patrol westward when we reach the coast. O.K. Out.”

  Ross, on James’s right, transmitted.

  “Another balls-up.”

  “Sort it out later.”

  James picked out landmarks he had known all his life. Although he could not see his home, he could place its whereabouts in the landscape on which he was looking down. From twenty thousand feet he could see the coastline of Normandy and it brought to his mind the family friends, the Girard family, who lived at St. Pol on the Cherbourg peninsula. St. Pol was a small fishing port with a busy yacht club. The Fentons often sailed over for long weekends and the Girards as often crossed to the Solent to visit them. Monsieur Girard was a marine architect and had designed yachts for Stephen Fenton’s firm. The Girards had a son, Henri, a year older than James, who had joined the French Navy when the war began. But James’s thoughts were more on their pretty daughter, Nicole, who was eighteen the last time he saw her, in June 1939. He had not given much thought to the Girards but he thought about them now as he looked across the Channel from twenty thousand feet and saw on the horizon the stretch of coast on which they lived. He must remember to ask his mother if she had had any news from them. Perhaps he would write a few lines to Nicole and find out what she was doing. Maybe she had joined one of the women’s Services over there. With her slim five feet six inches she would look well in any uniform.

  When they landed, James telephoned the controller to ask what had happened.

  “Sorry, old boy, some stooges from an O.T.U. on a training exercise. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, which threw a spanner in the works.”

  “I hope someone rubs their noses in it. It’s not damn well good enough.” Operational Training Units should know better.

  James knew that his vexation arose as much from anger at another disappointment as from contempt for stupidity and inefficiency.

  He had really thought that, with spring here, it must be a scramble which really meant business. When he took off he had not known Red Section’s scramble had been for a false alarm as well.

  When dawn readiness for the whole station was ordered for the next morning, nobody was amused. They could not even drown their frustration. At first light tomorrow they would have to respond to their early calls alert and wide awake, not hung over.

  On the way up to their rooms after only a couple of pints of beer before and after dinner, James said to Ross “Do you think somebody knows something that we don’t?”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve never had all three squadrons on dawn readiness.”

  “You’ve got a premonition, have you?” Ross sounded mocking.

  “No, but it’s about time something happened.”

  James did have a feeling that they were on the threshold of a climacteric, but it was not in his nature to say, even to as intimate a friend as Tiny Ross, that he was aware of a sixth sense which was warning, elating and alarming him. He lay awake for ten minutes cogitating about the campaign in Norway, the slow progress of the war on the Western Front, the necessity for Hitler to take some dramatic, large-scale action as a follow-up to his lightning strike in Scandinavia and the success it had achieved. Analysing his feelings he found that impatience dominated them. On the declaration of war he had been eager to get into action, because postponing the inevitable was worse than rushing to meet it; and because he had been trained for war and it had its own dreadful exhilaration. There had, naturally, been an undercurrent of nervousness. Four months of uneventful operational flying had not only been a gradual introduction to war but had also heightened his impatience. His one combat had allowed him to find out that he was not a coward and that he did not lose his head. Being shot at was frightening, but it had not terrified him. The succeeding period of uneventful flying had fed his eagerness to get on with the job. This time, Roger’s adventures and the distinction he had won had been a further spur and reassurance. If Roger could do it, so could he: and, logically, with his professional training, he should do even better.

  He woke with an instant prescience that this was to be a day he would remember all his life. But there appeared to be nothing special about it except that there were three squadrons at readiness instead of the usual one. The atmosphere was the familiar one compounded of drowsy resentment about being forced out of a comfortable bed, cynical assumption that it would prove to be a premature disturbance, and a grudging defiance: Jerry might think he could catch them n
apping, but they’d show the bastard how wrong he was.

  The duty batman had taken them cups of tea in bed and there was more hot tea at dispersals, but there was little conversation in the crew room. Most of them tried to doze, a few smoked or read. There was the sound of engines being started and run briefly to warm them. James was not feeling sleepy. He tried to keep his attention on his volume of Russian short stories but it kept wandering and he would look up and stare at the Operations telephone.

  When they had first arrived at dispersals, Squadron Leader Wilson had called Ops. to ask if anything was happening. There was not. An hour later he called again. Everyone was awake and watched his expression for some inkling of what he was being told. When he put the instrument down he turned to face them.

  “Apparently there’s been a hell of a lot of air traffic over Holland and Belgium during the night and...”

  The door was flung open and the squadron Intelligence officer came in looking flushed. Wilson broke off and looked at him.

  “Something up, Spy?”

  “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Jerry’s been bombing Holland since four this morning.” It was then about half-past five. The whole room was wide awake now and in a stroke all lethargy and boredom vanished. Suddenly the pilots were galvanised, expressions alert and interested. Voices began to speculate. The Dutch and Belgian Air Forces were too small to hold out for long against the Luftwaffe: would the R.A.F. have to go to their aid? How much help could the French Armee de l’Air give them? Would the squadron be involved? If they flew to Holland, their endurance would allow them only a very short fighting time over there; a bit more over Belgium. The Intelligence officer disappeared to see what more he could find out.

  At half past seven a lorry arrived with urns of tea and trays of sandwiches from the officers’ and sergeants’ messes and the troops’ cookhouse: their breakfast. Shortly afterwards the duty controller rang through to tell the squadron commander that the enemy had bombed Rotterdam at five-o-clock and three aerodromes around The Hague were now in German hands.

  Presently A Flight was ordered to take off and patrol the coast between Dungeness and the North Foreland at 25000 ft. They ran to their aircraft as though German bombers were already crossing the Channel, so keen were they to be doing something. They took off in formation, in two Vs as usual. Speeding up to patrol height, James told himself that it was just like the old days and doing a practice battle climb; but, with luck, this would turn out to be no mere practice. It was like old times because the six of them in the detail were all pre-war members of the squadron. In the past eight months some familiar fates had gone and new ones arrived: some of the latter as replacements and others to make the squadron up to its increased — wartime —establishment. Of the old stagers, one had killed himself doing a victory roll. One had been killed in an accident during night flying practice. Another had crashed in foul weather when he was coming in to land and been badly injured. Someone else had been posted to a squadron which had been disbanded after the Great War and was now being re-formed. Among the newcomers were officers and sergeants from the V.R. and Supplementary Reserve and regulars who were at flying training school or Cranwell when war broke out. All had been accepted into the squadron on the terms of the existing members: once they proved that they could fly well and fit into the jovial off-duty life of the squadron, they were as much a part of it as anyone else. Just the same, it was good to look around and see Tiny Ross flying tightly tucked in on his right and a veteran flight sergeant on his left who had already been on the squadron when he joined; and, on either side of Walter Addison, who flew directly in front of him, two other old friends, a sergeant and a flying officer.

  The warm feeling of expectancy held while they made their first run from west to east and then north from just beyond Dover to the North Foreland. They looked often towards the clearly seen French coast, expecting to see German bombers at work there. They looked further eastward in the hope of spotting German formations bearing down on England. They turned at the end of their patrol line and flew back to the starting point. By the time they had reached Dover for the second time their enthusiasm had cooled. Another false hope.

  When he switched off his engine outside the dispersal bay, James sat for a moment in gloomy contemplation of the past unproductive hour. He heard his fitter’s voice saying “Sir” and looked up. The man was standing on the port wing root and grinning at him.

  “We’re posted to France, sir.”

  James’s ears were still ringing with the howl of the Merlin engine and muffled by his headphones. He unplugged his R/T lead and oxygen tube and took his helmet off.

  “What?”

  “Squadron’s going to France, sir.”

  So he had heard aright. A current of excitement coursed through him, his scalp tingled, he experienced a sensation of mingled misgiving and relief. But he didn’t show it.

  “Lavatory rumours, Swallow?”

  L.A.C. Swallow’s round Yorkshire face looked indignant.

  “No, sir. Pukka gen from the C.O.”

  “When are we going?”

  “Advance party and all the kites tomorrow, sir.”

  “Good show, then.”

  “Yes, sir.” Swallow beamed.

  When James climbed down from the cockpit he could tell from the demeanour of all his five companions that their ground crews had wasted no time in giving them the news. They gathered talkatively around their flight commander to walk with him to the crew room, animated as they had not been for many weeks.

  The tenth of May 1940 had, after all, fulfilled James Fenton’s prescience of the evening before.

  * * *

  The squadron mustered eighteen Hurricanes. They took off at ten-o’clock on the morning of 11th May with almost everyone on the station watching either out of doors or from windows. Tug Wilson led them in an orbit outside the station boundary and then low across the airfield in a farewell salute. Arms waved. No doubt many tears were shed by the W.A.A.F. The squadron’s departure marked the end of several romances: few of which had meant much to either party or gone any further than what was commonly known as necking. James was leaving no broken heart behind although he had taken half a dozen girls on the station out during the past few months: and one unusually amenable fighter plotter in the Ops. Room, for a couple of overnight visits to London; “stickies” as they were called, derived from “sticky weekend”: the imagery was rather too graphic to be romantic.

  Near the hangars two Bristol Bombay troop-carriers were being loaded with equipment and would depart presently with the remaining four pilots, the Medical, Engineering and Intelligence officers, the adjutant and a few of the ground crews. The remainder would follow a day later.

  The squadron zoomed up from its final scorching dash twenty feet above the heads of its well-wishers and set course for France. Fifty minutes later it was circling a vast meadow which was all that remained of a Great War aerodrome that had been used by the Royal Flying Corps. A working party sent by the R.A.F. Headquarters in France had already erected some tents, the smoke from a field kitchen drifted on the still air and some lorries were parked in a row. The Hurricanes dropped onto the field three at a time and James told himself that, finally, the war had really begun for him.

  In fact it began with an order by the squadron commander that everyone, officers included, must set about digging slit trenches in which to shelter from air raids. Tunics off, shirt sleeves rolled up, they sweated in the sun with spades and pickaxes; and no enthusiasm. Their excavations had gone no deeper than a couple of feet when they rested for a quick lunch in the open air. They had not long resumed when the C.O. emerged from the Operations tent and said that Wing H.Q. wanted them to patrol near the Belgian border, each flight taking a separate area. The twelve pilots who were detailed threw down their picks and spades with delight and derisive mock-sympathy for the others.

  Ten minutes later James was climbing northward, leading Yellow Section, following Red led by Addison. France
looked disappointingly peaceful. Apart from the differences in the scenery beneath them they might have been flying over England. There was military traffic on the roads, just as there was in Surrey, Kent and Sussex. There were occasional columns of marching troops, which they also saw daily at home. They saw distant condensation trails left by other aircraft, and those were familiar sights too. But they could see no gunfire, bomb bursts or burning buildings. Where was the fighting?

  Far away a cluster of small black shapes weaving through a gap in the clouds came in sight. James’s restless eyes found them as he turned his head from side to side, tirelessly searching. He could not identify them. Fairey Battles? Presently he could see that they had two engines, so perhaps they were Blenheims.

  “Red One from Yellow One. Bogeys two-o’clock, above, about five miles.”

  Addison’s reply came after some seconds. “I’ve got ‘em. Let’s have a look.”

  The formation swung to starboard, climbing, the gap between them and the unidentified twin-engined aircraft quickly closing. There were ten of the latter in two Vs of five each. They had long, slender fuselages, and, James could now see, a long tail plane with two fins.

  Addison recognised them at the same instant.

  “They’re Dorniers.”

  The Do 17, the Flying Pencil. Fast, capable of 265 m.p.h. The crew, numbering four and sometimes five, was crammed into a small space forward. It carried six 7.9 mm machine-guns: one fixed to fire forward in the nose, one poking through the starboard windscreen, one in a beam window on each side; and two to guard its rear, in a dorsal blister and ventral hatch.

  The Hurricanes prepared to attack.

  “Echelon starboard, echelon starboard. Go! “

  The two port wing men, the Numbers Three, slid down and to the right to take station on the starboard side of their Numbers Two. Yellow Section dropped back and to the right. James formated to the right of Red Three and astern of him. In an oblique line which slanted to the right from Addison’s place at their head, the six Hurricanes faced their first set-piece engagement of the war.