Authors: Alan Judd
The only remedy was to make himself focus, make himself do something, anything, one thing at a time, one foot in front of the other, with
no thought of how far there was to go. Clouds were coming in from the west and visibility was worsening. He went back up to 17,000 feet and stayed there,
looking out for tell-tale smoke trails or dark specks against the white and blue. There was pleasure in manipulating the plane. That
was something, enough to focus on and take his mind off the trembling that had returned to his arms. Eventually he saw some dark specks, a couple of
miles ahead on a parallel course to his right and at least 2000 feet below. He ascended to 18,000 feet and moved across until directly behind them, increasing speed. Keeping
a careful eye on the sky around him, he eased the safety catch off. The planes were moving in and out of broken cloud now, making it harder
to count and identify them, but within another minute or so he was confident they were the returning Flying Fortresses. There
were six, keeping close for protection though one lagged behind, leaving a haze in its wake. Above and behind them, to the right and
left, were two Spitfires. With luck, one of them would be Patrick’s, from whom, as wingman, he should not have been separated. Far ahead,
when the clouds permitted, was the hazy outline of the French coast. Not far to go now. He throttled back and began
a shallow dive well to the right of the right-hand Spitfire, making himself easily visible, obviously unthreatening. He put the safety
catch back on and looked about again.
Way out to the left of the gaggle of bombers, at about his own height, he saw a glint of something. At first it was only that,
something through the cloud, no more than a distant mountaineer’s glasses might glint for half a second in the sun as he turns to view. But it was
enough for Frank in one unthinking movement to open his throttle, bring the nose back up and flick off the safety catch. Regaining height, he dipped his
left wing to take him in a wide curve above and ahead of where he thought he saw the glint. After a few seconds, briefly between one
cloud bank and the next, he saw them as they dived towards the Fortresses and their escorts, aiming to take them from their rear left quarter. There were two,
not the usual stubby profiles of FW190s but the more svelte and pointed Messerschmitt 109s, more like Spitfires. As they vanished into the last
cloud bank between them and the Fortresses, Frank opened his throttle farther and extended his curve to
bring him above and behind where they would emerge, putting him in the same position relative to them as they were to their prey.
He still wasn’t close enough to identify the Spitfires but called up Patrick’s call-sign anyway.
‘Hallo Shield One this is Shield Two bandits in cloud seven o’clock break left now over!’
He was still saying it when the ME109s shot out like speeding arrows from the cloud beneath him. The right-hand
Spitfire broke up and left, followed by the other. So it was Patrick. The leading ME109 opened fire as Patrick pulled sharply up,
leaving the other to slip beneath it and line up directly behind the lagging Fortress. Experienced pilots, obviously. Frank
had the leading ME109 in his sights but couldn’t get sufficient deflection as it wheeled left and right to follow Patrick’s desperate evasions. Patrick flew brilliantly, twisting and turning his aircraft to its limit. The Spitfire was more manoeuvrable and could out-turn the 109
but the German was faster and had the advantage of height and surprise. Twice he fired short bursts into Patrick, the second sending small
bits flying off Patrick’s rear fuselage. Patrick went into a steep dive, curving right. The 109 closed on
him, waiting for the perfect position, confident and oblivious.
Frank had the speed and height he needed. A little more pressure on the rudder brought the 109 into his sights, a fraction more
and he had the necessary deflection. He squeezed the firing button at less than 300 yards. There were flashes all along the 109’s fuselage and the pilot hurled his plane into a violent turn. Twin
fingers of flame leapt upwards, then a great outpouring of black smoke through which spurts of flame showed red and yellow. The plane fell away and
Frank was beginning a turn to follow when it exploded in a dazzling flash and ballooning
black cloud. As he pulled up to escape the shower of debris the 109’s engine spun earthwards in a revolving ball of fire. A wing see-sawed slowly down, like a blown leaf.
Frank looked around as he continued his climb, wary of the other 109. He felt no elation at his kill this time. It had
been too clinical, almost too easy. But he felt pride and pleasure at having saved Patrick, making up for his lapse last time. It was mercifully quick, was his other thought.
The pilot would have known his plane was hit and that he was trying to get away, but that was about all.
In the next second he was translated into oblivion, eternal oblivion, just like before he was born. There would be nothing left to bury, not a
hair, not a fingernail of that mother’s son.
Frank looked around. The Fortresses were way off now, strung out towards the coast. They had lost their loose box formation and
their straggler; a column of smoke arose from a large tract of woodland behind them. Patrick’s Spitfire followed them, keeping right and at a
distance, a couple of thousand feet below Frank but flying level and with no sign of smoke. Spasmodic bursts of tracer
arced out from the two rearmost planes at nothing Frank could see until he spotted, way over to their left, another plane approaching
slowly. It was clearly a Spit, even at this distance, but the Fortresses continued their intermittent bursts, hopelessly out of range.
Frank slowly overhauled Patrick, visibly and obviously, as before. The Fortresses has ceased to fire off by the time he caught up with
him, albeit perhaps only because the approaching Spitfire was partially obscured by cloud. It had presumably chased off the other ME109. As
Frank manoeuvred alongside Patrick he could see holes towards the rear of his fuselage but no sign of serious damage. Patrick’s pale face turned
towards him. He raised one hand and grinned as they crossed the French coast. Frank, relaxing, eased away and up a thousand feet, checking his fuel.
There was just about enough to see him home.
The other Spitfire emerged from the cloud base above and ahead of them. Frank saw now that it was Tony. His plane looked
unscathed as it lost height and turned, showing its white underbelly like a fish as it went for a position on the far side of the Fortresses. It was
still turning when the rear and upper gunners of the nearest Fortress opened up on the exposed belly. Frank saw their
tracers ripping into its fuel tank, which immediately billowed black smoke. He shouted into his radio – uselessly because the Fortresses were on
another frequency – and heaved his plane towards Tony’s. But that was just as useless. Tony was already spiralling
and tumbling earthwards in a vortex of smoke and flame. His canopy flew up and away and for an instant his hands and arms reached out of the
cockpit as he tried to heave himself up. But the fuselage turned again and he was engulfed by another sheet of red flame.
The burning carcasses of him and his plane exploded near the beach south of Calais. The Fortresses were well out over the sea.
Frank wheeled once around the pall of smoke then went after the Fortresses, furious and impotent. But not quite impotent. His thumb was on the firing button as he lined up the last Fortress in his sight.
He wouldn’t do it, he knew. He didn’t intend to do it. But if they gave him an excuse, the slightest excuse, a single round of tracer, he would
down them. Then Patrick’s Spitfire eased in from the right, between him and the bombers. Patrick wriggled his wings, indicating that Frank should fall in behind.
Frank backed off, his heart thumping, sweating again despite the cold. They’d be back in the mess for tea.
Later, about two and a half hours after Tony had been a living and breathing presence, and after they had
finished their toast, Patrick got up and nodded to Frank to follow him. Frank was happy to leave
the mess. The Dodger was recounting his two near misses and one probable. Everyone else was quiet, but the Dodger
hadn’t noticed.
It had not been a good mission. True, they had lost only Tony whereas the other squadron had lost two, but the Fortress fleet had been badly mauled,
losing a third of their strength. At the debrief the wing commander had been more than usually crisp and critical, describing the bombing as wilfully and
shamefully inaccurate. Many Fortresses, meeting heavy flak around the airfield, had veered away or climbed above it and dropped their bombs anywhere. At one point the
only planes near the airfield were the covering Spitfire squadrons, with nothing to cover. Then, because of their avoidance of the target, the bombers had failed to form defensive and defendable
formations on the way back. Spreading out over northern France and Belgium, they made easy meat for the Luftwaffe. Our own encounter before
reaching the bombers, the wing commander said, was because the diversionary Typhoon attacks had not worked as intended. That is, they had
worked but only too well, taking the Germans so completely by surprise that by the time they reacted the diversions were over and the real attack
was about to start. Thus, the bombers and escorting fighters had flown into a stirred-up hornets’ nest.
Patrick waited for Frank in the mess entrance, by the table where their letters were laid out. It reminded Frank that he still hadn’t written to his mother.
Patrick picked up a couple of letters.
‘Two for Tony. One from home, by the looks of it, the other –’ he turned it, studying the
postmark – ‘unclear. Feminine hand, wouldn’t you say?’
Frank looked at the neat, well-rounded script.
‘He has – had – a girlfriend,’ said Patrick. ‘We’ll have to send them back with his things.
Wondered if you could give me a hand with that.’
They walked through the huts to Tony’s, which he shared with five others. The cloud had thickened and there was a fretful, inconstant breeze. The windsock alternately stiffened and sagged and the usual airfield activities – planes and all manner of things were endlessly moved, anchored, hidden, worked on, moved again – seemed
piecemeal and subdued.
‘Not something we normally do, I know,’ continued Patrick. ‘Clerks in the station commander’s office see to it. Miserable job. But I know his people,
you see. Wouldn’t want anything to go to them they wouldn’t want, nothing upsetting. Bad enough losing him but then to find – well, you
never know what, something in his stuff they’d rather not have known about – makes it even worse. Affects the way they
remember him.’ He held up a folded canvas bag. ‘Got this from the station office. I have to make a list and you have to witness it, if you wouldn’t mind.
Best get it over with while the others are still in the mess.’
The hut, with its narrow iron bedsteads, plain table, standard lockers, hangers for uniforms and cylindrical coke stove, was identical to Frank’s: clean, efficient, cheerless.
Tony’s bed was at the far end. Gingerly at first, they emptied his bedside drawer, then his locker, then the pockets of his clothes. Next they took
his pyjamas from the bed and stripped it. Everything belonging to the RAF they stacked at one end of the bed, everything personal at the other.
His uniforms and kit would be returned to stores, his possessions sent to his next of kin. They worked slowly,
with none of the impersonal briskness of the clerks, who were used to it. It felt unpardonably intrusive, almost illicit. They separated the personal into two piles, the smaller comprising things they decided not to return, or were
unsure about: non-issue underclothes, an opened packet of contraceptives with one remaining, a magazine of women modelling
underwear, a dozen or so opened letters in the same feminine hand as the one they had, an RAF notebook in
which were pencilled a number of incomplete poems, or perhaps versions of the same poem.
Patrick leafed through it. ‘Didn’t know he wrote poetry. Did you?’
‘No. I didn’t know him well.’
‘His father does, or did. Published, I think. Question is, would he have wanted his parents to see them?’
‘Depends what they’re like, I guess.’
Patrick shook his head over the pages, without looking up. ‘Pretty much the sort of thing most
of us would do if we allowed ourselves to lapse into verse. Sincerely felt, no doubt, but sincerity is never enough, is it?
Sadly.’ He held out the book. ‘Want a look?’
‘I never read poetry.’
‘Don’t like it?’
‘Can’t read slowly enough.’
Patrick closed the book with a smile and put it on the NOK pile, along with photos, pen, cash, address book, wallet, cheque book, ties,
shirts and socks. ‘I think they should see it. They’d probably want to. They may not know he wrote and for them sincerity is probably more than enough,
poor folk. But these are more of a problem.’ He held up the love-letters. ‘Awful thing is, I half want to read them. If I didn’t at all I’d be happy to flick through them and check there’s
nothing too upsetting for his parents. But because I have a prurient interest in seeing what it’s like for other
people, I’m reluctant. Such an intrusion.’ He smiled.
Frank, who had never sent or received a love-letter, was equally reluctant and probably more curious. It touched on his other secret, his virginity.
‘Shouldn’t we just send them back to his girlfriend, along with today’s?’
‘Still have to look inside to get the address. But if that’s all we do, I suppose it’s all right.’ He put them down without opening
any and picked up Tony’s brown wallet, taking out the picture of a smiling blonde girl wearing a roll-necked jersey. ‘Lucky Tony. Or was.’ He put
it back and counted out some pound notes. ‘Three quid here, plus the loose change in that jacket pocket. That makes three pounds seven and
nine. Note and witness it.’ He replaced everything and sat staring at the pile. ‘Hope whoever goes through my stuff when my
number’s up will be as considerate as us.’
Frank was surprised and dismayed. ‘You reckon it’s coming, then?’