Battle of Britain (5 page)

“You know the RAF bombed Berlin again last night,” said Lenny.

“Yes, I know. The Germans started it, though.” Jerry bombers had hit the City of London on 24 August.

“Look, that had to be an accident, those bombs falling on the City,” said Lenny. “If that had been the real target they'd have flattened it. And how many times do you think Hitler is going to put up with us bombing Berlin before he goes off? It's like hitting a hornet's nest with a stick.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe so.”

Then a nurse popped her head round the door and said I ought to be leaving so Lenny could rest.

“I say,” I said when she'd gone. “She's a bit of a stunner.”

“Hands off,” he said with a grin. “I saw her first.”

“You take good care of yourself, my friend,” I said, and reached out to shake his hand.

“And you,” said Lenny. “Don't get stupid up there.”

“I won't. You take care and I'll see you around.” And then I left, walking through those long hospital corridors, in and out of the shadows, and into the waiting sunlight. Neither of us had mentioned Lenny's missing leg.

 

 

It felt like the world was slowing down. I could feel my pulse in my thumb on the stick as it rested next to the red firing button. Tiny wisps of cloud were scudding across the front of my cockpit.

It was magical, like a dream. I didn't feel the harness that strapped me in, or even the cockpit around me. It just felt like I was flying up there, really flying. It was as if I had melted into the Spitfire. As if I had grown wings. I no longer had to think about turning, I just turned as a bird would, swooped as a bird would swoop.

We did our usual dance, the Luftwaffe and ourselves, round and round. Then I saw the Me109 below me, standing out against the mashed-potato clouds, the crippled cross of the swastika standing on its tail. I banked to port and dived down towards it. I could hear nothing but my own breath inside my mask. I could feel my pulse on the trigger.

I willed the German into the gun sight. Just a little more. Just a little more. Don't rush it. Wait. Wait. I could see the pilot in the cage of his cockpit. But he didn't see me.

“This is for Lenny,” I said, but not out loud. Only in my head. “This one is for Lenny,” I said and I pressed the fire button.

 

I spoke to Lenny the next day and told him about the 109. I didn't say it was for him, but he somehow seemed to know. Lenny was funny like that. It was as if he knew what I was thinking.

“Don't get sloppy up there, Harry, will you,” he said. “Don't start getting sloppy.”

“Who me?” I said. “Not a chance.”

“You OK, Harry?” he asked.

“Me?” I said. “I'm fine. Well, maybe a little tired.”

“Listen,” he said, picking up a newspaper. “Have you seen this speech by Hitler? I told you that the Berlin raids would get his goat. Listen to this: ‘
If the British Air Force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150, 250, 300 or 400 thousand kilograms. When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground. We will stop the handiwork of these night air pirates, so help us God! In England they're filled with curiosity and keep asking,
“
Why doesn't he come?
”
Be calm. He's coming. He's coming!
'”

“He's a friendly sort of chap, isn't he?” I said. “What a madman. And mad enough to do it, Lenny,” I said.

“Yes, Harry. He is.”

 

On the 7th we busied ourselves on stand-by once again. Some of the chaps dozed, some read books or magazines, some played chess, or dominoes, or cards. Everyone had different ways of staving off the boredom and the nausea.

One of the chaps was reading
Picture Post
. It had a photo of a smiling RAF pilot on it. It was the issue from 31 August and had a heading “The Men Against Goering.” The pilot on the cover was already dead.

At about 4.30 we were airborne again. It was a sunny autumn day. The afternoon sun was warming up the colours in the trees. As I climbed, I saw a game of cricket being played down below me on a village green. Someone in the crowd waved.

We assumed that Jerry was heading for our bases or maybe the aircraft factories they'd attacked a few days before. I was climbing to patrol height, the sun lighting up my rear-view mirror, when I saw them.

“What the. . .” I said out loud. I heard a string of stronger exclamations coming from others in the flight.

It was a vast swarm of hundreds of Heinkels, Dorniers and Me109s, a formation bigger than anything I'd ever seen – bigger than any of us had ever seen.

“London,” I muttered to myself. “They're heading for London!” I thought of Edith.

I was still climbing as they dropped the bombs. I could see them tumbling towards the docks. We were too late; too late by half. We were spectators and great bursts of white light lit up the scene.

I flew straight at them and I let go with my guns. You couldn't miss really, there were just so many of them. I fired wildly into the mass. I just kept firing, like I was in some kind of trance. There was something overwhelming about the scale of it, something hypnotic.

I looked in my mirror. The Spit playing tail-end Charlie was weaving about at the back of us, checking for enemy fighters. A shadow passed across the cockpit. I looked up but there was nothing there. I looked back in my mirror. The tail-end Charlie was gone.

Me109s. They must have been up at 25,000 feet. All thoughts of attacking the bombers had to be forgotten. This was just about saving our own necks. There were just too many of them. I swung my Spit round and twisted away from them, turning and dodging for all I was worth. At least two stayed on my tail as I shot over Tower Bridge. I turned my Spit as sharply as I could and shook them off. As I turned back, going east past the dome of St Paul's, I saw it all. It was like hell. It was like looking into the mouth of hell.

Hundreds of bottle-shaped incendiary bombs were tumbling down, turning the docks into an inferno; raining down on to streets and houses. The sky was black with smoke and the horizon red with the glow of the fires. Bomb after bomb after bomb. It was unbelievable.

I saw a warehouse collapse in a ball of flame. I saw a roof explode, spraying tiles and bricks up into the air. Ack-ack positions pounded and flak crackled in the air below us. A barrage balloon blew up to my starboard, and sank away, trailing flames.

“Cowards! Dirty cowards!” I shouted, banging my fist on the side of my cockpit in sheer frustration.

We did our best, but it wasn't nearly good enough. I could see Hurricanes and Spits blasting away at the mass of German aircraft and making no impression at all. We were like sparrows pecking a huge flock of crows. I felt useless.

Another Me109 took after me, but gave up pretty soon. They'd done their job and were getting low on fuel. The Germans were heading back. I managed to let rip at a Heinkel but it carried on regardless. And now I was out of ammo. Bitterly, I returned to base.

The place was frantic; ground crew running about like crazy. I gave my report and got ready for the next battle. Meanwhile my Spit was refuelled and rearmed. There was another wave coming in, as big as the first. It was hard to believe really. I just tried to pull myself together and steel myself to do better next time. In 40 minutes I was back up.

Again, we were too late and still climbing when we met them. Even so, I shared in a Heinkel and did some damage to a Dornier. On another day I would have been proud, but that day it felt puny considering what we were up against. The second wave hit London at about 8.30pm and dropped as many bombs as the first.

And of all those hundreds of German planes, we found out later that we had managed to down just 41.
Forty-one!
And on top of that we'd lost 28 of
our
fighters. But at least we did better than the ack-ack guns. They didn't hit any Germans at all!

The papers said that hundreds of civilians and rescue workers were killed and hundreds more were badly injured. Thank God Edith wasn't one of them. She told me later what a time she'd had of it, though. People brought in with hideous injuries, terrible burns. Women. Children.

Edith had seen Churchill touring Silvertown, one of the worst affected areas. He did a little Chaplin-type thing, twirling his hat on the end of his cane. He shouted, “Are we downhearted?” and the answer from the crowd was very firmly, “No!” Morale was high. It needed to be. The very next day the bombers came back. And they came back again and again and again.

 

On Sunday morning, 15 September, I sat in a chair dozing after breakfast. There was a slight breeze blowing over the aerodrome and I closed my eyes. I dreamt I was back in the meadow up near Hunter's Hill, standing in the flowing yellow grass, running my hands back and forth across the grass seeds. I was nine, maybe ten.

Behind me I heard the drone of an engine and I looked round. Over the tops of the beech trees came an aircraft, swooping in low. Not a biplane this time, but a Spitfire. It swooped so low that it sent a ripple across the grass. I ran after it, shouting and whooping.

But then I heard another noise behind me. I stopped running and turned, staring into the sun. I squinted upwards and another aircraft burst from the blinding light. A Messerschmitt 109 shot across the field towards the Spit. I shouted, knowing it was futile. I yelled as the 109's canons erupted into life.

The sirens shrieked out and I was already running as I snapped awake. Then, booming out over the speakers: “Squadrons scramble, London angels 20!”

It was another bright, clear day and we chased our shadows across the grass to our planes. As usual I patted my Spitfire on its flank and whispered a few words of encouragement before I climbed into the cockpit.

Still half-asleep, I strapped myself in and got her going, swinging round into the dazzling sun and taking my place in the formation. Then we bumped over the airfield and up into the air, wood pigeons bursting from the trees. The gilt cockerel on the top of a church spire caught the late morning sun.

“Two hundred bandits crossing Dover flying north at angels 20,” said the voice on the R/T, but at that moment the War seemed far, far away. I felt as though I was soaring above the whole sorry world. My love of flying seemed to flood back into me.

This time we ignored the instructions coming from the ground and headed in an arc to the west, climbing all the while. Height was the thing and we all knew it. You just didn't stand a chance if you caught them as you were still scrabbling for altitude, because you just didn't have the speed. The other thing was to hit the bombers, not the fighters.

But then there they were, like a flock of crows or a swarm of fat black flies: a big rectangular pack of Heinkels with their escorts of Me110s and 109s. Antiaircraft batteries were booming way below and shells were bursting all around.

This time we were early. This time we climbed above them, flying in the same direction, mirroring their formation. We each looked down at our targets. I shrugged my shoulders and took a deep breath. This one had to count.
This one had to count
.

Then we dived. The 110s screamed out to intercept us but they weren't quick enough. I flew towards the flank of a Heinkel, the rear gunner blasting away wildly. I fired a quick burst. The gunner stopped firing.

A Heinkel exploded to starboard and a piece of wing spun wildly towards me, missing my cockpit by inches. I sent out a burst and a Heinkel slumped out of formation with smoke pouring out of its engines.

RAF fighters buzzed the bombers, firing into the pack. All around me I could see our fighters climbing and diving and German planes falling and burning. We were getting through. We were finally getting through.

Edith told me later how she had stood in a crowd and watched the fight, cheering as German planes fell from the skies into the Thames and into the city they had attempted to destroy. All across London people did the same.

The battered German formation retreated back to France and I flew back to base. Fighter Command had lost over 50 planes. But we'd destroyed a quarter of theirs. If they thought we were going to roll over and die, they were wrong.

 

I got a letter from Mum and Dad telling me that they'd had a bit of excitement in the village. A German pilot had parachuted in to the field at the back of the churchyard and the local Home Guard had sent for Dad as the German had been a bit knocked about.

When Dad had got there they'd put a road block up and the Home Guard had asked Dad for his ID. Dad said it was ridiculous because he'd known the men who'd asked for it all their lives. In fact he'd helped to deliver one of them as a baby!

The pilot was being held in the church hall. A couple of old-timers had their guns trained on him, the local bobby was there, and the army was on its way.

He had a shrapnel wound on his elbow from the dogfight that brought him down, and a nasty crack on his forehead courtesy of the Home Guard. I told my dad on the telephone that it was typical – I shot them down and he patched them up.

Not that that pilot would be getting back into a Messerschmitt. He would be shipped off to Canada, double-quick, and he was lucky. At least if we came down we were on home soil – that's if we didn't end up in the drink of course!

Dad had been determined to hate him, but found himself thinking of me as he tended the wounds. He said he had been expecting to find some sort of monocled character in jackboots with a sneer on his lips and a scar down his cheek. Instead there was a young chap not much older than me, trying to look brave when in fact he had no idea what was going to happen next.

“Will I be shot?” the pilot had asked my father, apparently. My father told him that of course he wouldn't be shot and cleaned him up the best he could. The pilot thanked him and Dad told him about me being a fighter pilot.

One of the Home Guard told my dad that he shouldn't be telling Germans that sort of thing, but Dad told him not to talk such nonsense. The pilot asked what I flew.

“Spitfire,” said Dad.

“Ah yes,” said the German. “The famous Spitfire.” Dad smiled proudly. “I shot one down only yesterday,” said the pilot.

My folks also told me they'd taken in an evacuee. A kid called Peter. Edith asked Mum and Dad if they'd have him as his mum worked at the hospital and was frantic with worry. He'd already been evacuated once and had such a horrible time of it, they'd brought him back.

In fact, most of the kids who'd been evacuated at the beginning of the War were back by the following Christmas. No bombs fell, so they all came home. It made it all the worse when Jerry did start bombing, of course.

 

I got a chance to drop in on my folks for a day on the 22nd and the first person I saw when I opened the door was this evacuee of theirs. He was a funny-looking tike, thin as a rake with bony legs sticking out of his shorts. He stared at me from under a flop of blond hair.