Flames over France (13 page)

Behind the sandhills lay the sea, and beyond the sea — England. This seemed incredible and wholly beyond one’s comprehension, but lack of sleep dulls the senses and blunts the ability to comprehend. We lay down where we stood and slept where we lay down; I found I was on the edge of a trench and dropped into it. I awoke in a grey still dawn to the sound of a voice reciting French. Looking over the lip of the trench I saw a French burial party at work a few yards away and realised my trench was a grave. I got out and walked away.

An hour later the order came for us to move down to the beach, and we made our way over the sand hills. It was now quite light, and as we came to the edge of the dunes we saw the beach spread out before us, stretching away on either side. As far as we could see it was black with men. They were in groups, in broken lines and circles; sitting, lying and standing — all of them waiting. Just in front of us someone had tried to build a jetty of lorries. They were placed head to tail, two abreast, and stretched out into the sea. A few men were clambering along them, but otherwise no one seemed to be interested.

We sat down in the sand and waited. Offshore were ships and boats of various shapes and sizes from destroyers downwards; some were moving and others were apparently at anchor. By this time the sun had risen and revealed the clear blue sky of an early summer morning, and with the sun came the Stukas. They approached from behind us, spread out according to their fancy and proceeded to bomb what they liked …

—
An officer of the 68th Field Battery, Royal Artillery, 30 May 1940

We arrived off the beaches and were detailed to proceed to La Panne, bringing off as many soldiers as possible. The scene on the beaches at La Panne at this time was very depressing, with dark groups of soldiers huddled together in small parties. Through the twilight we could see the oil tanks burning in the distance, and occasional flashes of gunfire lit up the horizon. The boats were lowered, each manned by one sailor; they were towed to the beach by a motor launch and filled to capacity, the troops manning the oars and pulling back to the ship.

This process went on all night. Just before dawn a boatload of wounded came in; as soon as the men were taken aboard one of them, an officer of the Durham Light Infantry, came up to our first lieutenant and asked to be put back ashore, as there were more wounded to be looked after. ‘Jimmy’ told him that he was very sorry; the ship had taken on her full quota, with every inch of space occupied above and below, and the sooner she could unload her troops in England the sooner she would be back.

The army officer pleaded, but to no avail. Suddenly, he turned and wandered away, past the 12-pounder which I was manning. He looked all in and utterly dejected. Then, from around the stern, came the putt-putt of a motor boat. The officer hailed it; it came quietly round the stern and he took a flying leap into it from the afterdeck. The boat disappeared into the night and I never saw him again. As he went I looked at the beach, at the burning oil tanks and the flashing of the guns; and I knew that I would not have had the courage to do what he did that night …

—
A Royal Navy gunner on the fleet minesweeper HMS Dundalk, 31 May 1940

And so, in destroyers, minesweepers, cross-Channel ferries, trawlers, stream packets and an armada of small civilian craft manned by gallant volunteers, the thousands came back from Dunkirk and its neighbouring beaches. Overhead, the Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons of RAF Fighter Command, often unseen by the haggard men far below, fought it out with the
Luftwaffe
. But Fighter Command’s sternest test was yet to come, over the harvest fields of southern England.

So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkirk will be spoken with reverence. For in that harbour, in such a hell as never blazed on earth before, at the end of a lost battle, the rags and blemishes that have hidden the soul of Democracy fell away. There, beaten but unconquered in shining splendour she faced the enemy. This shining thing in the souls of free men Hitler cannot command or attain or conquer … It is the greatest tradition of Democracy. It is the future. It is Victory.

— The
New
York
Times
, 1 June 1940

Chapter Nine

One hundred and twenty miles to the south of the embattled beaches of Dunkirk, the Allied fighter pilots — French, Poles, Czechs, a handful of Belgians and at least one Briton — waited for the expected onslaught on Paris. For a while it seemed that Providence was on their side, for during the first two days of June fog and drizzle shrouded almost the whole of France and the Low Countries. It brought a respite from the
Luftwaffe’s
ceaseless attacks on the ships that were taking the last troops from Dunkirk: men of General Fournel de la Laurencie’s French III Corps, who had gallantly held the perimeter, and who now scooped up handfuls of French earth, to be stored reverently in pockets, wallets and handkerchiefs as they filed down to the waiting boats, to remind them of their homeland until the day — and only God knew when that would be — when they would stand on the soil of France again; and it brought relief for the battered French fighter squadrons that were now preparing to defend Paris to the last aircraft and last pilot, if need be.

The bad weather cleared in the early hours of 3 June, and the fighter pilots were called to readiness at dawn. The morning was hot and oppressive, with a hint of thunder in the air. Some of the pilots had started the day wearing their flying overalls; by noon, they were in their shirt sleeves. Armstrong was one of them.

It came as pure relief when, at 1300, the alarm finally sounded. Three massive formations of enemy bombers, with a strong fighter escort, had been sighted over Reims, Saint Quentin and Cambrai. No order to take off was received as yet — it was the task of the fighter squadrons forming the outer defensive screen to engage the enemy first — but faces became grim as reports of the size of the enemy raid began to trickle in. In all, 500 enemy aircraft were heading for Paris. The French fighters were outnumbered five to one.

Armstrong and his fellow pilots sat impatiently in their cockpits, motors ticking over, anxiously watching the needles of their engine temperature gauges climbing remorselessly towards the red zone, waiting for the order to go. Over their radios, which were tuned to a common fighter frequency, they could hear sounds of the battle that was beginning to develop on the northern approaches to the capital.

The progress of the
Luftwaffe
formations was being reported by the crews of some Potez 631s, who shadowed them at a discreet distance and provided a running commentary on the enemy’s course, altitude and so on. This information, together with the order for the fighters to take off, was supposed to be retransmitted to the fighter bases via a radio station that had been set up in the Eiffel Tower, but it was being heavily jammed by the enemy and the messages were so garbled and distorted that they were useless.

In any case, the reports from the Potez ceased abruptly when the Messerschmitts pounced and shot them out of the sky, one after the other.

By 1310, Colonel Villeneuve had had enough. Over the radio, he ordered his group to take off. As they began to taxi, Armstrong saw that Kalinski was of like mind; the angular little Caudron fighters, bearing the red-and-white checkerboard insignia of Poland on their wings, were also starting to move.

Whatever the outcome, Armstrong told himself, there was certain to be one hell of a free-for-all over Paris this afternoon.

They took off in their two flights of three, all that was left of them, Villeneuve leading one and Armstrong the other, and climbed hard over the sprawl of Paris. Armstrong looked across in turn at each of his wingmen, two sergeants named Duval and Morel, and waved reassuringly at them. They knew what they must do in the coming battle; all of them did. With the odds stacked against them, there was no room for textbook tactics.

The French reporting system, without the benefit of radio direction finding, was primitive and ineffectual. RAF fighter squadrons in England, alerted by the probing rays sent out by the RDF masts on the south coast, would have been ‘mixing it’ with the enemy by now. The French, on the other hand, relied on an antiquated telephone network to report the progress of approaching aircraft, or on visual observation from the air.

Still, Armstrong thought with awe and not a little trepidation, it would be hard to miss
that
lot. At 19,000 feet, strung out across the sky over the suburbs of Paris, was the biggest armada of aircraft he had ever seen. The sky was black with them. They were flying in wedges, like skeins of geese, sliding between towering thunderclouds. And above them, silvery crosses in the sunlight, their guardian Messerschmitt formations crossed over one another’s path in a steady tactical rhythm, their pilots watchful.

Villeneuve’s dry, calm voice came over the R/T, its tone setting nerves at ease for the moment.

“Doubtless you can see the enemy,” he said. “Do not fight amongst yourselves over which targets to choose. There are plenty. Line abreast, attack! Tally Ho!”

Armstrong laughed out loud in the cockpit. The ‘tally ho’ was a cry Villeneuve had enthusiastically borrowed from the RAF pilot; the French did not seem to have an equivalent.

The fighter pilots spread out, a couple of hundred yards between each aircraft, each picking a target as the two formations closed with one another at something like 500 miles per hour. It was a closing speed that left very little margin for error.

Throwing a quick glance to either side to make sure that his two wingmen were in position, Armstrong selected a flight of Heinkels that was flying a little lower than the rest and put his Hawk into a shallow dive, building up speed. Concentrating on the centre bomber of the enemy flight, he gripped the control column with both hands, bracing his whole body as the Heinkel’s wingspan expanded rapidly in his gunsight. Smoky tendrils speared out from the Heinkel’s nose, reaching towards him. They dropped away beneath the Hawk as the German gunner, doubtless rattled by the fighter bearing down on him head-on, missed his target.

Armstrong squeezed the triggers and the image of the Heinkel shivered in his windscreen. There was time only for a two-second burst of fire before he was compelled to shove the stick forward hard to avoid the looming bulk of the bomber. His guts rose into his chest as the Hawk plummeted down, missing the Heinkel’s underside by feet.

He pulled back on the stick again, the force of gravity pushing him down in his seat as he zoomed up under a second formation of bombers, loosing off a burst at one of them as he hurtled past, with no visible result. The impetus of his zoom-climb carried him up a couple of thousand feet and he stall-turned the fighter, coming down astern of the bombers. Sinister black eggs were tumbling from their bellies now as they released their bomb loads; the first wave was already turning away as the bombs fell towards factories and power stations, and inevitably the houses that clustered around them, in the Parisian suburbs. Smoke trails, arrowing down towards the haze below, marked the last plunge of two aircraft; whether they were German or French it was impossible to tell.

Armstrong came down hard on the tail of a Heinkel on the lefthand side of the rearmost formation and, bracing every fibre of his body again, held the Hawk steady as he closed in, ignoring the fire that came at him from the bomber’s dorsal gun position. He knew that with the Hawk’s poor armament, the only real chance of success was to get in really close, to punch hard with a couple of well-aimed bursts, inflicting the maximum possible damage, before quickly getting out of danger.

The Heinkel suddenly went into a steep turn to the left. Armstrong followed it, firing a burst into its starboard engine. The effect was startling. Large fragments broke away, whirling back in the slipstream. The Heinkel skidded violently out of its turn and a cloud of white smoke burst from the stricken engine. The bomber’s starboard undercarriage leg dropped from its raised position in the engine nacelle and hung in the slipstream. The smoke thickened, shot with flame now, and the Heinkel went into a spiral dive. Armstrong pulled up above it and steep-turned, looking down on the bomber’s death agony. It left a corkscrew of smoke in the sky as it spiralled down towards the haze that was growing thicker over Paris with every passing minute. Two black dots tumbled from it, trailing bright yellow streamers that blossomed into parachutes. They drifted down behind the bomber as the haze enveloped it.

Armstrong weaved his fighter from side to side, looking round. Only now did he become conscious that the radio was filled with chatter. Drifting clouds of spent anti-aircraft bursts filled the sky, adding to the murk hanging like a veil over the French capital; through it, the broad ribbon of the Seine shone dully.

Armstrong was suddenly frightened. He had been quite calm while engaging the enemy, and surprisingly had experienced no elation at shooting down the Heinkel. Now, as though a giant hand had wiped the sky clear, it was suddenly empty of aircraft. He was isolated, and felt utterly alone and exposed. He found himself shivering in the cockpit. It was as though some sixth sense were prodding at his nervous system. A sixth sense. Frantically, he looked behind.

Jesus! Two aircraft were sitting on his tail, still several hundred yards away but closing rapidly. Short, square-cut wings. Messerschmitt 109s.

Armstrong knew instinctively that if he tried to turn and face them head-on at this range one of them would almost certainly nail him as he turned. The 109s were well spaced out, with a quarter of a mile between them, and were in a position to box him in without difficulty. His only hope was to try to shake them off in the thickening haze, which was becoming really dense a few thousand feet below.

He put the Hawk into a dive and opened the throttle wide, his heart in his mouth. A glance in his rear-view mirror showed that the 109s were following and keeping pace with him. One of the enemy fighters had drawn some distance ahead of its companion. Yellow flashes of gunfire twinkled on its nose.

There was a hollow thud somewhere in the Hawk’s fuselage, followed instantly by a metallic clatter of shrapnel on the armour plating behind Armstrong’s seat. He risked a glance to the rear again, and saw with relief that the outlines of the pursuing fighters were becoming blurred. They must be having real difficulty in seeing him now.

Armstrong held the fighter in its drive, knowing that he still had about 8,000 feet of height in hand before he made a hole in the middle of Paris. At 4,000 feet he gently began to pull back on the stick, using both hands because the controls were stiff with the speed of the dive and praying that nothing vital had been damaged by the Messerschmitt’s fire. The Hawk shuddered but responded magnificently.

Armstrong maintained the backward pressure and pulled the fighter up into the beginning of a loop, hoping that the German fighter pilots had logical Teutonic minds. They would not be expecting him to do that. The logical thing to do in his circumstances would be to level out just above the rooftops of Paris and head flat out for home, hoping the enemy fighters would be drawn into the flak barrage. Instead, Armstrong half-rolled off the top of the loop and headed in the opposite direction, climbing at full throttle. A couple of minutes later he popped out of the layer of haze and drifting smoke, which the wind at altitude had flattened out until it was like the surface of a lake, with stirred-up whorls and eddies breaking it up here and there.

He was just in time to see the two Messerschmitts turning towards the north, half a mile away, flying almost wingtip to wingtip just above the hazy layer. They were not hurrying, and he quickly realised that their pilots had not spotted him. Every nerve tense, Armstrong stalked them, gradually overhauling them. Odd buffeting noises were coming from somewhere in the rear of the Hawk, but he did his best to ignore them.

He was within two hundred yards of the left-hand Messerschmitt. It went into a gentle turn to the right, following its leader; it was now some distance behind the other aircraft. Its pilot must surely see him. Hang on, he told himself. Closer, closer still. At less than a hundred yards he opened fire.

The grey outline of the Messerschmitt wobbled and the shining arc of its propeller broke up, its blades windmilling. Bullet strikes danced and sparkled along the 109’s length from nose to wingtip. Dense white smoke belched back over its wings and it started to go down.

The cockpit canopy flew off and a moment later the dark shape of the pilot emerged, arms and legs spreadeagled, seemingly attached to the falling aircraft. Then the airflow caught him and he fell clear, disappearing under Armstrong’s wing, falling towards the city below.

Armstrong did not look to see whether the German’s parachute had opened. He went after the leading 109, which was flying steadily on, its pilot apparently unaware of what had happened. Armstrong suddenly realised that it was gaining on him, and a quick look at his instruments told him that his fuel state was dangerously low. He also knew that he must be almost out of ammunition. Reluctantly he let the German go and turned away, descending through the haze to get his bearings. A few minutes later he located Le Bourget and circled the airfield before making his approach to land.

The bombers had been there. There were craters everywhere, the hangars were in ruins and the airfield was littered with wrecked aircraft, mostly trainers and transports which had not been involved in the fighting. Armstrong touched down on a patch of undamaged earth and taxied in, threading his way between the craters to a spot near one of the hangars where he could see a couple more Hawks. One of them was Villeneuve’s; the other belonged to his wingman, Duval.