Authors: Alan Judd
‘It was less than another minute. They must have heard or seen something because they opened up with rifles, machine-guns and flares, luckily a bit
to our right. I think we all shouted “Now!” Thereafter it was a daze of lights, bangs, tracer, shouts and screams, plus a few crumps as
our Mills bombs got into their trench and a lot of stuff in reply which fortunately went over our heads because we’d got amongst them by
then.
‘Raids are very short-lived, very confusing. Every man comes back with a different story even though they were only feet apart.
Same with your dog-fights, I imagine. Anyway, this was a success. We all got back and we nabbed two Huns. Lucky devils, they’d be
out of it soon. All except me, that is. Every man got back except me.’
‘You were captured? Injured?’
The colonel shook his head. ‘Still in my hole, in a funk. Couldn’t move, you see. I shouted “Now!” with the others and went to get up but my legs wouldn’t move, I just couldn’t
make myself. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel them, as if I was paralysed, I just couldn’t make myself do it. It was all going on around me in
the dark, people running past shouting, flashes and shots, then running back towards our lines, lots of random fire
by then, flares going up, and I just lay there willing myself to move and utterly impotent. No one saw me, they
didn’t know I wasn’t amongst them until they got back.’
‘So how did you get back?’
The colonel held out his hand for the lighter, tamped down his pipe, relit it and sipped his wine. ‘Courage is keeping going, that’s the essence. Not
doing anything special or daring, though it includes acts of valour and self-sacrifice. It’s putting one foot in
front of the other when everything in your body is telling you not to, or when you feel so weak and weary you just want to give up.
Same in civilian life: it takes courage sometimes just to go on with the ordinary. In a sense, it’s easier in war because
it’s more defined. For me, as I suspect for most soldiers, it was waiting to go over the top that really took it out of you.
Once you were up and over you were caught up in the mayhem, like a maul in a rugby match. Ever played rugby?
Well, like British Bulldog, then. Play that in the mess, don’t you?
‘But the worst bit was the waiting, knowing it was going to happen, looking at your watch and counting down to the whistle, feeling empty in your
stomach and not knowing whether your legs would move when ordered. That’s the hardest thing, you see, being in
the front line of the infantry when ordered to advance into fire. It’s the essence of infantry
work, what you have to do to win battles, but nothing in land war is more frightening or more dangerous. Your equivalent of
low-level attacks into flak.’
‘You’ve heard about them, I guess, sir?’
‘Another thing about courage is that it’s finite. Like energy, it gets used up. You only have so much. I was already living on a courage overdraft when
I went to ground that night and somehow, in that little hollow, I reached my overdraft limit. When I went
to get up, there was nothing left.’
There was another silence. The colonel’s pauses made it difficult to tell whether he was waiting to
resume or waiting for a response, or had simply ceased to be aware of his listener. There was still no more
music but in the silence Frank heard Vanessa laugh, a twist of the knife. ‘But you got back?’ he
persisted.
‘Frank got me back. They realised I was missing, of course, didn’t know whether dead or injured but Sergeant
White knew roughly where I’d gone to ground. He offered to go out again but Frank insisted and crawled out himself. It was more dangerous then than when we’d gone out the first time because the enemy was thoroughly alerted. I was still in my funk
hole, didn’t know what to do, hadn’t moved an inch, when I heard movement behind me, realised it must be someone from our
own lines. Strangely, that did it – I found I could move again. I’d just started to slither round when he found
me. We were both lying down, face to face. “You all right?” he whispered.
‘“Fine,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
‘He patted me on the helmet. “Don’t be.”
‘“I funked it. Couldn’t move. I’m so sorry.”
‘“Follow me.”
‘When we got back to our trench I heard him say to Sergeant White, “Concussion. Be OK when he’s had a rest.
I’ll send him back to Battalion HQ with the prisoners, detail two men to go as guards.”
‘When we returned to the dugout I tried to explain to Frank again but he cut me short. “Forget it, these things happen. Main thing now is to get the
prisoners back quickly so they can get them to Brigade for interrogation. No need to hurry back. That’s probably all the action we’re getting for the
night. Get some sleep somewhere.”
‘That was the last I saw of your father. We delivered the two prisoners after the usual mishaps of trench travel at night,
nearly getting shot by our own HQ company sentries. I had a feeling he intended me to stay out of the line and be rested and was perhaps sending a separate message to the CO to that effect, so I didn’t
hang around to hear it but set off back again with the two guards. Not that I wanted to go back, of course,
but I couldn’t bear to feel I’d let Frank down. Especially as I’d married Maud.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Strange thing about guilt is that you can become possessive about it, hoarding it, treasuring it because it makes you feel special. You,
uniquely among all humanity, bear this burden. It’s corrosive, like too much grief, turning you inwards on yourself rather than
outwards towards others. In the end I had no relief until I told Maud everything. She had known and loved him and if she could forgive me, I
reckoned, then I could begin to accept myself. Frank was the love of her life, you see, never me. But I accepted that,
too.’
‘When was he killed, my father?’
‘He was wrong about a quiet rest of the night. They punished us for the raid with a bout of shelling. The company
HQ dugout, where Frank would normally have been, was untouched but he’d remained in the section of trench where
we’d come back and it was that corner that was hit. Him and Sergeant White. I got back to find
myself in charge of the company. Ironic, eh?’
‘So it wasn’t your fault? You didn’t need to feel too guilty?’
‘Chance that he’d stayed there, yes, but he wouldn’t have been there at all if he hadn’t rescued me. His body wasn’t – it
wasn’t a direct hit. The shell landed just behind, collapsing the trench wall even though it was a dud, didn’t go off. Neither
he nor Sergeant White had a mark on them. It must have passed very close and the over-pressure burst their lungs, or the vacuum collapsed them. Better
way to go than most, I guess. I shouldn’t have kept this’ – he touched the lighter with his fingertip, pushing it back
to Frank – ‘but I wanted something to remember him by and doubted his next of kin would have any use for it. Pleased to be
proved wrong after all this time.’ He smiled at Frank as he got up, with obvious effort. ‘Bladder calls. One of the crosses of age. Don’t get old, Frank.’
He shuffled towards the door. He was old, thought Frank, old before his time. He might only be in his fifties but he looked ten years older.
Perhaps it was the wine. Frank remained seated, his fingers curled round his wine glass. Listening to the colonel’s story, he had
neglected to drink and now, listening to the silence from the drawing room across the hall, he neglected the story. Were they choosing
more music, kneeling together on the floor? Were they on the sofa with each other, talking quietly and intimately in
what he imagined to be the preliminary to mutual seduction? He couldn’t bring himself to blame her; Patrick was everything he assumed a woman would want. He didn’t blame Patrick, either. He was jealous of her attention going elsewhere but not
of Patrick himself. They were right for each other. He was envious, that was all, envious that it
happened to others, not to him.
The door opened. ‘Come on, what are you sitting here for? Come and dance.’ She was flushed and smiling, her
outstretched bare arm resting on the door handle.
Patrick appeared behind her. ‘Better not give the Moose ideas. Time we got moving. May have a busy day tomorrow.’
Frank stood, picking up the lighter. ‘Sorry, we’ve been talking.’
She folded her arms. ‘War talk, I suppose?’
‘The last war.’
‘Makes a change. Next time we dance. Promise?’
Pleased, he nodded and smiled. ‘Sure thing.’
The back tyre of Patrick’s bike was flat. They pumped it but it wouldn’t hold air, so they
had to push the bikes back to base. It was almost an hour’s walk and very dark except for the sky to the southeast which was punctured by flashes
accompanied by the crump of bombs and bark of ack-ack.
‘Dover or Folkestone getting a pasting,’ said Patrick. ‘Probably by the Yanks, getting the wrong side of the Channel.’
For a few seconds the memory of Tony walked with them. Frank realised he was forgetting him
already.
‘Seems a nice old boy,’ said Patrick. ‘Knows his wine. Generous with it, too.’
‘He told me he knew my father, my real father, in the last war. He was with him just before he was
killed.’
‘Well, that’s something to write home about. War throws up extraordinary coincidences. I knew a chap who ditched in the North Sea and was
picked up by his own brother, who was in the Navy.’
The flashes and crumps died away, leaving only the sounds of their boots and wheels on the lane.
Patrick was leading, a moving solid patch of dark. Frank was longing to ask him about Vanessa. ‘Have you got any puncture repair
kit?’ he asked instead.
‘No, but someone will. If we can glue planes back together there’ll be something to glue a bike tyre.’
‘Have a good dance?’
‘Very good, yes, ages since I had a dance. Bit odd capering about in boots, but still. Don’t think I damaged her too
badly. You should’ve joined in. She thought perhaps you didn’t like dancing.’
‘Colonel kept me talking.’
No one in the squadron knew the date or precise location of the D-Day landings but everyone knew they
were imminent. Operational tempo increased, with sweeps and sorties over northern France and attacks on trains and marshalling yards.
They escorted Typhoons on tree-top attacks against heavily-defended airfields, grateful that their role involved dog-fights with the Luftwaffe
rather than flying head-on into flak. The Typhoons continued to pay a heavy price and even when every Spitfire in the squadron returned unscathed the
mood was subdued.
They were subdued in advance, however, when ordered to escort 130 Flying Fortresses on an attack on the marshalling
yards of Rouen. Not only because of their recent experience of American trigger-happiness and poor recognition skills but because being close
escort meant flying too slowly to respond quickly to an attack. Their fellow squadron was luckier, escorting from above and behind.
‘Trust us to get the bloody close escort,’ said the Dodger as they left the briefing.
‘Look upon it as an honour,’ said Patrick. ‘And shut up.’
He was unusually tetchy that day, perhaps a symptom of the tiredness that
afflicted them all. Repeated sorties, sometimes several a day, with their inevitable losses – not great but regular
enough – exacted a toll on energy and optimism. When the MO, their gruffly cheerful Scottish
doctor, handed out extra Benzedrine, Frank was one of the first to take some. Despite eating everything that
came his way, he was losing weight and the intermittent nervous tic in his left eyelid had returned. He had not had it since his first operational
week on the squadron. It felt as if it must be obvious to everyone but, as the colonel had said, it usually wasn’t.
Curiously, the occasional trembling in his arms and legs, which reminded him of what the colonel had said about his own involuntary flinching and crouching,
became less frequent as he became more tired. His reflexes were still sharp, he was doing everything he should, but he was doing it
mechanically, without that extra edge of awareness he knew made the difference. He managed each take-off in a state of suspended reality, a
combination of his old familiar, his stomach-tightening fear, and careless, light-headed fatigue. Complacency, disguised as fatalism, was seeping into him. He knew it and did nothing about it, assuming it was the same for everyone.
‘D’you feel honoured?’ asked the Dodger when they were in the Dispersal hut and Patrick was out of earshot.
‘Buggered if I do. Bloody stupid idea if ever I heard one. What does he think we are – boy scouts?’ He had just loaded and holstered
his revolver and was now cramming his pockets with ammunition.
‘What do you want with all that?’ Frank asked. ‘Taking pot-shots at ME110s as they pass us?’
The new German jets were making their presence felt and the Allies, having neglected to develop the British invention, had no
answer to them.
‘In case I’m shot down. Same with any of us. You never know, do you? Not much use with just six in the chamber. Hell of a lot of
Germans over there. I take an extra pistol, too.’
‘How? Where?’
‘Jam it down by my seat.’
It was a bad sign. Pilots who took ever more elaborate precautions against being shot down often were, not long afterwards. Patrick’s theory was that
their minds were no longer wholly on their jobs. ‘Better off keeping sharp on your cannon,’ he
often said. ‘More likely you’ll come back.’
The Dodger ignored him but the exchange helped Frank take his mind off himself. As they lined up three abreast on the runway, waiting for the signal,
engines roaring and props a blur, he decided he wouldn’t take the Dodger to meet the colonel and Vanessa.
The 130 Flying Fortresses were prompt at their rendezvous, filling half the sky with their immaculate defensive boxes. That was all very well but
the big bombers were no wave-topping Typhoons and would cross the Channel smack in the middle of German radar coverage. Patrick led the
squadron carefully alongside them, approaching from far out and keeping rigorously parallel so
that there was no excuse for the Fortress gunners to mistake them for a threat. Even so, one let off a brief stream of tracer towards
the Dodger’s Spitfire, fortunately at the limit of his range and well behind the Dodger. Frank, juggling with engine revs and speed
as he tried to keep one high enough to react and the other low enough to stay with their charges,
did not at first see the lifting of the Dodger’s starboard wing as he began a turn towards the offending Fortress, lining up his
cannon.