Attack Alarm (17 page)

Clear of the square I passed an Army car with its engine running. There was no one in it. I realised suddenly that we should need something to tow the bomb away. I left Langdon’s bike and commandeered the car.

It took me but a moment to get back to the gun site in it, bumping over the grass of the flying field because the roadway was too full of craters. Langdon grabbed the rope as soon as I pulled up. He did not hesitate-, but ran straight to the bomb, paying the rope out as he ran. We watched, half expecting the thing to go off as he tied the end of the rope round the fins. He did it quickly, but he showed no trace of nerves. It was not the sort of thing you want to think
about beforehand. Yet Langdon had known that he, as detachment commander, was going to do it, all the time I had been away getting the rope.

As he ran back I tied the other end of the rope to the rear bumpers of the car. The rope was about fifty yards long, but even so I did not feel very happy about it as I climbed back into the driving seat. I took the strain slowly in bottom. And as I moved forward with the full weight, I could feel the bump and slither of the bomb at the end of the rope as it followed me like some terrible hobgoblin.

But it was soon over. I left the thing well out on the flying field and, untying the rope, drove back to the site.

“That’s marvellous of you, Barry,” Langdon said as I got out of the car.

I felt myself blushing. Blushing had been an awful bugbear to me in my youth, but I thought I had grown out of it. “It’s nothing to what you did,” I said to hide my embarrassment.

He said: “You’d better return the car now. And at the same time you can take Strang to a first-aid post. His hand is giving him a good deal of pain.”

Strang protested. But he was as white as a sheet and, in spite of a rough-and-ready bandage, blood was dripping quite freely from his hand. They got him into the seat beside me and I drove the big car back along the edge of the field.

As I came into the square the one undamaged Tannoy that I had heard before announced: “Preliminary air-raid warning. All personnel not engaged in urgent work take cover. Preliminary air-raid warning.”

The crowd in the square seemed to thin out like magic and vanish. I drove through the scatter to the nearest ambulance. I attracted the attention of a nurse who was trying to stop the blood of a poor fellow whose leg had been shattered. She seemed
incredibly cool and impersonal. She glanced at Strang’s hand whilst continuing to work on the man’s leg, “You’ll be all right for the moment,” she told Strang. “Just stay around till we’ve patched up some of the worst cases. We’ll soon fix that for you.” She belonged to a Canadian ambulance unit.

I wanted Strang to get immediate attention. But a glance round told me that the staff of every ambulance in sight was equally busy. There was nothing for it but to let him stay and take his turn. An alarm was on and I had to get back to my site. With Thorby in its present disorganised state anything might happen. The great thing was that the guns should be fully manned.

I sat him down on the grass. “They’ll fix you up in no time,” I said. He did not answer. He was dazed with pain and loss of blood. I went back to the car.

I was just on the point of climbing into the driving seat when I noticed a civilian lying on the grass near by. Something about the white leathery skin of his face made me pause. Streaks of blood from a cut on his forehead showed scarlet on the white sweat of his face. His pale-blue eyes were wide and staring and his lips moved as he muttered to himself. His left shoulder and arm appeared to have been badly crushed. His clothes had been cut away from the shoulder and his hurt roughly dressed. It was his boots that brought recognition to my mind. They were clumsy hobnailed boots—a workman’s boots.

I went over to where he lay, groaning and muttering to himself. And as I stared down at him, I knew I was right. He was the workman who must have planted that incriminating diagram in my pay-book. “Well, serve him right,” I thought. And I was just turning away when I heard his lips mumble: “It won’t hurt you if you splash water over it.”

Some childhood memory of playing boats. But because it was spoken in German and not with the slight Scottish accent I had last heard him using, it drew my interest. And I bent down to listen, remembering how Elaine’s sleep babbling could have told me something. But it was partly gibberish, partly childhood memories that he mumbled. It was all in German and occasionally he got a word wrong or mispronounced it. If he were a German, and that seemed probable as he would surely babble his own language in his delirium, it seemed reasonable to suppose that it was a long time since he had been in Germany.

I bent closer. “I’m sorry you won’t be with us for the day.” I spoke in German. It seemed funny to be speaking of
der Tag
in another way. He showed no sign of having heard. I shook him and repeated my statement.

His eyes remained wide, unseeing and expressionless. But apparently my voice made contact with his subconscious, for he murmured: “I’m all right. I shall be there. I’m to drive one of the lorries.” He tried to raise himself, his eyes sightless. “It’ll be all right, won’t it? Say it will be all right.”

“But you won’t remember what day it is,” I suggested, still speaking in German.

“Yes, I will.” He mumbled so that I could scarcely hear him.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “You don’t remember the day now.”

“Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It’s—it’s——” He struggled desperately with his memory. “It’s I pick the stuff up at Cold Harbour on——”

His moment of lucidity seemed suddenly to vanish. The sweat poured down his ashen face with the effort he had made. He relapsed into the uncouth babblings of his delirium. But I scarcely noticed it. My mind had grasped avidly at the vital point. Cold Harbour!
Elaine had talked of a Cold Harbour Farm in her sleep. Cold Harbour was not a very common name.

I was excited. I began trying to draw him again. And when that failed I tried direct questions. But I could get no sense out of him though I shook the poor devil till the sweat turned the blood to water on his face with the pain of it.

In the end I had to give it up. I got back into the car and drove it across to where I had first found it. Langdon’s bike was still there. I was just mounting it when a lance-corporal dashed up and caught me by the arm. “What the devil were you doing with that car?”

I had just started to explain when a brass hat with red tabs all over him came panting up. I saluted. “What’s all this?” he demanded. “My car. You took my car. Why?”

I told him.

“That’s no excuse. Monstrous behaviour! Name and unit? Make a note of it, Corporal.” And with a snort he disappeared inside the car. He was in a hurry to get off.

I rode back to the site. They were all in the pit. Nobody spoke. They were all watching the sky. They looked strained, terribly strained. I realised that my shirt was sticking to me. The air throbbed with the heat. I took my helmet off to wipe the sweat from inside it with my handkerchief. “Where’s Micky?” I asked. Kan was at the firing position.

“He’s not feeling very bright,” Langdon said charitably. “He’s gone to the shelter at the dispersal point over there.”

“Not very bright!” said Bombardier Hood. “He’s scared out of his wits. Can’t take it.”

“Well, we’re none of us feeling very brave,” said Langdon.

Mason suddenly arrived on a bike. He was the only
link with Gun Ops., the telephone having been hit. But I didn’t hear the plot he gave Langdon. I was staring at my steel helmet. There was a scarred dent on the back of it. On the back of it! And I was remembering just where I had been standing and which way I had been facing when that bullet had ricochetted off my helmet. And a cold shiver tingled up my spine as I remembered that I had been facing the field and all the ’planes had passed in front of me or over the pit. None had passed behind me. Yet the dent was on the back of my tin hat. I hadn’t taken it off until this moment, so that I knew I had not had it on back to front. Besides, I remembered how my head had been jerked forward.

Somebody had fired at me from behind! And into my mind came a picture of the surprised look on Vayle’s face as I had passed him in the hangar.

I
WAS SCARED.
More scared than I had ever been in my life. I could stand up to bombing. I knew that now. There was something impersonal about being bombed—about war altogether. My own reaction to bombing was very much that of, “If a bomb has your name on it——” It was not a direct attack. The bomber was not trying for me personally. My life was in the hands of fate—always such a comforting thought. One took one’s chance, and there was nothing one could do about it.

But this! This was totally different. There was nothing impersonal about an attempt to shoot one in the back. It wasn’t just a random shot into the pit by some fanatical fifth columnist, I knew that.
I had been the specific target. This was murder, not war. I could face machine-gun bullets—-again an impersonal attack. But a deliberate attempt on my life made my scalp crawl with fear. I did not take my chance with others. There was no comfortable feeling that my life rested in the hands of a kindly fate. I had to face this alone. I was under sentence of death at Vayle’s orders. And I knew now why surprise had for a moment ousted the grief from his face when, standing beside Elaine’s body, he had looked up to see me in the hangar.

I suppose I must have looked pretty scared, for John Langdon put his hand on my shoulder. “It was nice of you to tow that bomb for me,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it. I had expended what little nerve I had on tying the rope to the bloody thing.”

His remark had the desired effect and, momentarily detached, I watched my ego warm to that kindly praise. It amused me, too, to think that my own fear was a particular and personal one. Every one else in the pit was scared of one thing—a further attack on the ’drome. And I didn’t give a damn about that. I was scared because I was singled out for a murderous personal attack. And because their fear seemed trivial by comparison with mine, I experienced a sudden access of confidence. Their hostility seemed unimportant now, and I felt quite equal to any questioning.

But there was no hostility and no questioning. I had known what was going to happen, but I had stayed on the site. That and the business with the bomb put me right in their eyes. But Westley—poor little man—who had eventually obtained compassionate leave to attend his grandmother’s funeral and had left early in the morning, came in for a good deal of discussion.

The ’planes came back in ones and twos to land as
best they could on the pitted ’drome. The glare of the day wore slowly on. Time lagged in the heat. Exposed though we were, there wasn’t a breath of wind and the drought-baked earth was hot to the touch. Anxiety and impatience combined with fear to hag at my tired mind. Would this interminable alarm never end? I wanted to find out what had happened to Marion—to see that she was all right. And John Nightingale hadn’t come in. The All Clear had gone on the Tannoy quite soon after the alarm. But we had been kept at our posts. They were no doubt windy, as Langdon said.

Ogilvie came round in his car with chocolate, cigarettes and beer scrounged from the ruins of the Naafi. For once quite human, he stayed and chatted, apologising for keeping us standing-to.

Gradually the atmosphere in the pit changed, apprehension giving way to annoyance. Every one seemed to become morose. Kan scarcely raised a smile when, in reply to a question from Oggie, he described the raid as “Too, too utterly shattering, what, sir.” The only bright spot was that his inexhaustible flow of personal supplies from Fortnum and Mason’s saved us from experiencing any serious inconvenience at the loss of our lunch. For a time the sight of Micky slinking back from the shelter of the neighbouring dispersal point gave the pit a topic of conversation.

During the afternoon I got permission from Langdon to go over to the dispersal point and find out what had happened to Nightingale. But they knew no more than I did. He was missing—that was all.

Finally, at three-forty-nine we were allowed to stand-down. By that time I had forgotten my own fears in my anxiety to find out what had happened to Marion. And then, of course, Langdon had to pick on me to do the first air sentry. It was my turn, it was
true. But I could have burst into tears with impatience.

I wasn’t alone for long in the pit, for as soon as they had boiled some water on the primus, Langdon and Blah came out to clean the barrel and do a cursory examination of equipment. Half an hour of my hour’s guard passed very quickly. But after that it began to drag. I had been almost continuously on the pit for six hours. Reaction from the excitement of the action had left me tired and dispirited. Fortunately this had one advantage in that it dulled my sense of fear. I was too weary to think, and so imagination, the source of all fear, was numbed. The glaring heat of the sun seemed undiminished. A mug of tea and some cigarettes were brought out to me.

I didn’t seem hungry, but the tea was very welcome. And when I had finished it, I stood there in the sultry heat and stared at the wreck of Thorby, not consciously recording what my eyes saw. The fires were under control now and only an occasional wisp of smoke drifted up from the ruins. From where I stood there was little to show the fearful nature of the attack. The bulk of the hangars still stood intact, screening the desolation I had seen from the square. People came and went between the camp and the dispersal points, the cars weaving their way in and out among the craters that dotted the edge of the field. Lorry loads of Royal Engineers were brought out to fill up craters on the runways and to deal with D.A. bombs.

A car drew up just beyond the pit. It was an R.A.F. car and someone got out. I took no notice. I was watching a Hurricane, whose tail appeared to be badly damaged and whose undercarriage had failed to work, coming slowly in to a pancake landing.

“Excuse me, could you tell me what hospital Gunner Hanson has been taken to?”