Summer of No Surrender Read online

  He had come to this war with fewer illusions about the British than his friends had. Four years earlier, when he was eighteen, his swimming club's junior team had toured England, Scotland and Wales for three weeks, competing against school boys. There was always the same contrast in physique. He himself was a hulking, broad shouldered 160 lbs., as were most of his companions. The English, Welsh and Scots (decadent British youth!) were puny by comparison and twenty-five pounds lighter on average. But the Germans lost all but three of their twelve matches: at swimming and diving they were inferior to the scrawny British boys whose pale bodies contrasted so miserably with their own bronzed Aryan hides. Only at water polo, where beef does count, did they win half their games; but even so there was always some wily or invincibly determined young Briton to surprise them with long, devastating shots at goal from fantastic angles, or dogged and impenetrable defence against the most ferocious attacks.

  Early in life Erich Hafner had learned that there is a hidden quality about the British which blunts the rapier thrusts and fends off the sledgehammer blows of the most formidable opponents. He thought it was mere stubbornness and cunning; if he lived to see the end of the war he might become wise enough to recognise it for what it really was: an undefeatable national spirit.

  Respectfully Greiner asked: 'Do you think the Tommies will give you a real fight today, Herr Leutnant?'

  'Their orders are to leave us fighters alone and go for our bombers.' Hafner explained this to his batman almost daily, but the reiteration did not bore him. It made him feel responsible, officer-like, quite paternal 'So we shall have to go after them, as usual.'

  'It will be a fine birthday present if the Führer awards you your Iron Cross in good time. That would please your parents and make them very proud.'

  True, it would make his father proud when he won his first decoration. He knew that his father wished he had been born to look like the pure young Aryan he was, inheriting his own fair Saxon colouring instead of taking after his dark Bavarian mother. With deep brown eyes and hair that was almost black, Hafner could, with his perennially sun-bronzed face, have passed for an Italian; the ultimate insult. But it must give some comfort to that stolid Dusseldorf banker, with his own Iron Cross from the Kaiser's war on display in his library, that his eldest son was an officer in the glorious Luftwaffe which had blasted the Blitzkrieg triumphantly across Poland, the Low Countries and France at breathtaking speed.

  'Yes, it would please my parents, old Greiner. But it would please me even more.' He grinned, dabbing the last few flecks of soap from his face with a fresh towel.

  'It will happen before the end of the month, Herr Leutnant.' It was a confident prediction.

  Suddenly the pilot scowled. He found himself trembling. His airman's superstition responded instantly to such statements. 'Damn you, don't you know better than to tempt providence like that? Are you trying to bring me bad luck, you damned idiot?'

  'F-f-forgive me Herr Leutnant. I d-d-didn't think ...'

  'Then do think in future. Think carefully before you utter idiocies about things of which you know nothing.' Hafner held out his hand. 'Where is it?'

  'In your pocket sir, as always.'

  'Shew it to me. You are careless enough to forget to put it where it belongs.' An unjust accusation.

  The batman was fumbling with a button. 'Here …here it is, s-sir.'

  Hafner snatched the medallion which lay on the palm of Greiner's shaking hand and fingered it for a moment with his eyes shut. He thrust the tawdry souvenir of a childhood visit to the Vatican back into the pocket of his tunic which Greiner held out to him. It was his talisman, his lucky piece, without which he would never fly. His mother had made him promise always to carry it. It was better, he told himself, to be superstitious about a holy medal than about the pagan symbols on which most of his friends relied: silk stockings peeled from the legs of chorus girls, 'lucky' cigarette lighters, scarves, charm bracelets, girls' photographs, seashells or rabbits' feet. Most airmen put their trust in some token or totem or piece of mumbo-jumbo to keep them unscathed.

  He felt sourly upset by Greiner's tactlessness and his own outburst of panicky bad temper. To cover his superstitious fear and his shame of it he asked frozenly 'Where's Wolf?'

  'Outside, Herr Leutnant, enjoying the sun.' Greiner smiled tentatively.

  Hafner went to the window and looked down into the farmyard. His Alsatian dog sprawled in a sheltered corner, basking in the already warm sunlight. When he spent the night with a girl he made the dog sleep downstairs. Now he leaned out and called and instantly the great black and tawny animal bounded up, its ears pricked, and raced for the door. He waited with an expectant smile and braced himself to meet the staggering force of that powerful body as Wolf leaped up to place forepaws on his shoulders and nuzzle him wetly.

  Good humour restored, Hafner swaggered down to breakfast in the villa two hundred metres away which the Staffel Commander, Oberleutnant Werner Richter, had taken for himself, his adjutant and his two most senior officers, one a pilot and the other an engineer.

  It was in this house that all the officers of the Staffel assembled for meals and recreation. They always referred to it as the mess, never the C.O's quarters. Richter liked it that way: it implied a comradeship which did not set him apart from the officers he commanded.

  Hafner knocked on doors as he passed them on his way out of the farmhouse and three other young pilots joined him; a couple more had already left.

  They paused on the steps of the mess and surveyed the sky. At an immense altitude overhead, so high and so small that even they, with their airmen's eyes, could barely make out the glint of reflected light that betrayed it, flew an unidentifiable aircraft.

  'Tommy taking photographs,' someone commented.

  'With luck, they'll come and bomb the airfield,' remarked Hafner. 'That's the only way we'll ever get it levelled out.'

  The others laughed at the witty chap. They all disliked the undulating meadowland which was not a proper aerodrome at all. They were used to good concrete runways in the Fatherland.

  They felt no ill-will towards the Englishman up there in his high flying photographic reconnaissance Spitfire. Sooner or later someone would shoot him down. In the meantime he was doing his job and not harming them directly. War was ruthless but one could be fair, after all. And everything was on their side: they had more aircraft and more pilots than the R.A.F. They had confidence, with victory in continental Europe already theirs. The initiative lay in their hands: they were attacking and forcing Britain to defend herself. To attack meant to be strong. Defence was a position of weakness.

  The only real anxiety of Leutnant Erich Hafner and his comrades was that the British would probably be conquered so swiftly that they would be denied the high Score of victories they all craved.

  Three

  When 172 Squadron came on duty, No. 82, who had been on readiness since dawn, went back to their messes for breakfast. An hour later they would return to readiness. On the far side of the airfield No. 699, an Auxiliary Air Force squadron, could be heard warming up their Hurricanes preparatory to going up on sector reconnaissance: the usual routine for newly arrived pilots, to familiarise themselves with landmarks which would help them to find their way back to base in bad weather or when their compasses or radios were shot away. They had flown in the day before from a quiet airfield in the north and had never yet been in action.

  The pilots of 172 Squadron settled down, with their 'Mae West' life vests on, to sleep, read or merely sit and think; or perhaps try not to. Some found chairs, others stretched out on the grass.

  At any moment, they knew, would come a ring on the telephone which would send them running to their cockpits. Two minutes later they would be on their way to meet the enemy. Within an hour after that they would be back; some of them. Of those who did not return, a few would arrive eventually after being picked up in the Channel or escaping from their wrecked aircraft in a field or on a beach. But many of them
would never be seen again on the squadron; if they were not killed, they would be badly injured. It would be like that all day: three . . . four … even six scrambles; and of the pilots who waited at readiness, not all would surely be there at stand down.

  They tried to relax while remaining alert enough to leap to their feet and break into a run immediately the telephone orderly or whoever happened to be nearest to the telephone shouted 'Scramble!'

  Squadron Leader Maxwell, their C.O., who had gone straight to the squadron hangar when he arrived on camp from his rented house nearby, arrived on the heels of his squadron in his elderly Morris Oxford.

  'A' Flight commander, Flight Lieutenant 'Jumper' Lee, was with him. The R.A.F. likes to bestow nicknames. F. Lee made flea, and fleas jump; hence 'Jumper'.

  Those pilots who had their eyes open said 'Good morning, sir,' to Maxwell. The rest, even if they heard the C.O. arrive, did not show any signs of life. Nobody even pretended to rise: the C.O. had told them that they were not to waste their energy in paying him courtesies which were all very well in normal times but a fatuous charade these days.

  Maxwell was dapper, leisurely and thirty-one. His flight commanders were seven or eight years younger and the rest of the squadron averaged twenty-one. His greatest worry was that if the Germans bombed the aerodrome, his wife and small son would be endangered: their present home was only two miles away. He sometimes became anxious about promotion; he did not want it. Commanding a squadron was the best job in the Air Force. Higher rank took one away from the rare and in­ tensely individual comradeship of the smallest fighting unit and further from the most intimate involvement in battle. Worse than promotion would be a posting to instruct at a flying school or on an operational training unit He dismissed this with one of his wry jokes: teaching new pilots was likely to be more dangerous than fighting the Germans.

  He went into his office at one end of the wooden hut which housed the crew room: on the faded grey-blue door ‘C.O.’ was painted in black. These days one economised in everything, he reflected, even paint. Lee followed him in.

  Tossing his cap on to the table, Maxwell asked 'Where's Spike?'

  Lee paused in the doorway, looked towards the somnolent or preoccupied figures outside and shouted 'Spike! Anyone seen ... ?'

  Somebody called 'He's over by his aircraft, binding his fitter.'

  Two or three of the pilots and several of the ground crew within hearing laughed. Flight Lieutenant 'Spike' Poynter, commanding 'B' Flight, was notorious for his fervid interest in internal combustion engines and the cars and aircraft they propelled. A keen rally driver in peacetime, he spent much time in discussion with his fitter, rigger and flight mechanic. He was somewhere down the dispersal line now, talking about some fancied drop in oil pressure or imagined defect in the magneto of his perfectly sound Hurricane.

  Lee told a nearby aircraft hand to fetch Flight Lieutenant Poynter and the airman doubled off. All the troops doubled when Jumper gave an order; not because he was a martinet, but because he was popular. He had won a D.F.C. over France, shot down nine enemy aircraft, with three probables, could drink eight pints of beer between stand-down and bed-time without turning a hair, and took a different girl to bed every week; so the erks liked, envied and admired him. He was not badly thought of by the other pilots, either.

  Squadron Leader Maxwell's first and last duties of the day were his visits to the squadron hangar. Here, technical tradesmen who were seldom seen out at the dispersal area yet were an essential part of the squadron, toiled long hours and achieved miracles. He went to see them and their work as much to give praise and encouragement, and the reassurance that they be­ longed to a fighting unit which valued their skills highly, as to take an account of how many aircraft he would have for that day or the next.

  The battle had become a matter not only of making the best use of the comparatively few experienced pilots, training the novices, and putting them all into the air so as to be in the right place at the right time, but of finding enough aeroplanes for them to fly and shoot from. He marvelled every day at the transformations he saw: badly mauled Hurricanes, holed, dented, twisted and scorched, restored overnight to flying condition by weary, red-eyed, oil-blackened and cheerfully grousing technicians who often worked twenty-four hours without sleep. He was always astonished that the harder they worked the better humoured they seemed to be.

  He picked up some papers from his desk and read them impatiently, while Lee, with his rolling gait, waist and chest proportioned like a beer barrel, carrying himself always very erect to make the most of his five-feet-eight, padded back and forth between the windows which looked on to different parts of the aerodrome, scanning sky and field critically as the newly arrived 699 Squadron went about their lawful occasions. Now and again he exclaimed 'Kee-rist!' or 'Stap me!' at a bouncy landing or a delayed raising of wheels.

  There was a knock on the door and Spike Poynter came briskly in, his sharp, pink face alert and head thrust forward like an eager sparrow's.' ‘’Morning, sir. Flap on?'

  Maxwell put down the letters and notices in his hand with relief. 'Only normal flap, Spike. Jumper and I've just been to the hangar. We should have two more serviceable by lunch time. Tell your boys to keep their fingers out: there are supposed to be replacements coming in any day, but at this rate we won't be able to keep on putting up twelve serviceable aircraft.'

  'Aircraft state' was the daily bugbear of all commanders. The group captain commanding the station worried about it above all else, for without enough aircraft to fight with, East Malford would be impotent. The squadron commanders, harassed by casualties among their pilots, every one of which struck home to even the least emotional or sentimental of them as though he had lost a brother, were obsessed with the paramount need to patch up and make do, to keep Hurricanes which were veterans of too many battles still in a state to fly. They rode their Squadron Engineer Officers hard and knew that they would pass this necessary persecution down to their flight sergeants.

  Maxwell and his flight commanders discussed the squadron's aircraft state, the pilot strength, the battle training they must give the newly joined pilots; which meant risking the loss of, or damage to, badly needed aircraft as well as human casualties. They talked about the need to provide more rest for the maintenance crews and ways and means of squeezing in a day or two of leave for as many of them as could be filched from the hangar or the dispersal bays, a few at a time, without giving the 'plumber' (the engineer officer) apoplexy.

  They talked about tactics and the weather and the imminence of a German invasion; they telephoned the Operations Room to ask if any enemy raids were plotted; they cursed the momentary inactivity, while counting it a boon that gave them more time to bring their aircraft up to greater strength. Then the Squadron Adjutant arrived on his bicycle from the squadron office in the hangar, with files for the C.O., and Lee and Poynter picked up their caps and went outside to flop out on the grass with the rest.

  They listened to Flight Sergeant Viccar, known naturally as 'The Bishop' or 'Bish', telling indignantly about the cold reception given to N.C.O. pilots who were posted to Auxiliary Air Force squadrons. His wavy, oiled black hair and spiky moustache gave him a piratical, rather than an ecclesiastical, air.

  'This V.R. sergeant on 699 was telling me in the mess last night, they only have commissioned pilots in the Auxiliaries ...'

  'So why would Volunteer Reserve sergeant pilots be posted to an auxiliary squadron?' asked Massey.

  Viccar, the most immaculate dresser on 172, adjusted his trouser creases and the fold of his carefully ironed, brightly coloured, silk square. 'Because there aren't any V.R. squadrons. V.R. pilots are in a kind of pool. They're weekend pilots, like the auxiliaries, but they're not organised the same. When the war started, they had to be posted to squadrons: the lucky ones came to regular squadrons, but the other poor blighters went to auxiliary squadrons. This type was telling me the more flying hours the V.R.s have the more the auxiliaries hate them, like.
He says he'd rather shoot some of them down than a Jerry, any day!

  'And that's been done before now,' observed Knight; not without relish; and a thoughtful glance at Blakeney-Smith.

  He had been dozing comfortably for the past half-hour and now that Flight Sergeant Viccar's critical voice had roused him he opened his eyes and looked round for his dog. Moonshine lay at his feet, ears pricked and watching his face for signs of waking. As soon as his master stirred, Moonshine took a flying leap on to his chest and enthusiastically thrust his wet muzzle into Knight's chin. He was allowed to stay there.

  Knight and Massey played a private game, much enjoyed by the spectators but never intruded in. It was Six-gun's invention, with the alleged purpose of keeping his friend's and his own reactions sharp. Awake now, Knight at once cocked a wary eye for signs of sudden movement from Six-gun. The rules of the game were simple enough; banal, Blakeney-Smith said. Without warning, one of them would throw something at the other, with a shout of 'Catch!' Whoever was the receiver had to look sharp or some solid object was likely to strike him in a tender spot; enamel mugs, cricket balls, books, empty bottles or even an apple or orange were all capable of leaving their mark; and frequently did.

  Stealthily, while apparently absorbed in The Bishop's diatribe, which was (as usual with the rumours and accusations circulated by Other Ranks, compounded of a nucleus of fact smothered by a vast amount of embroidery), Massey had taken from his pocket a large bone he had bribed Tuttle to obtain from the mess kitchen the night before.