Attack Alarm (8 page)

“The headquarters staff of the station is better able to judge the importance of information than you are. I think it would be wise if you forgot that you’d ever been a journalist and remembered only that you’re a gunner in the British Army.” He turned to Ogilvie. “Whatever you decide, I look to you to see that this sort of thing does not occur again.”

“Very good, sir.” Ogilvie opened the door for him. When he had left, Ogilvie went back to his desk and lit his pipe. “You haven’t made it any easier for me by taking the line you did, Hanson,” he said. “Wing-Commander Winton expressed a desire that I should have you transferred to another troop or even another battery, so long as you did not remain at this camp any longer than necessary. However, I am not prepared to go as far as that.” He took his pipe from his mouth. “You will be confined to your site for twenty-eight days, and you will only leave it to get your meals and to wash. All letters and other communications during that period will be delivered to this office for me to censor. I will instruct Sergeant Langdon accordingly. All right. Dismiss!”

I
THINK
I was very near to tears as I came out of the office. The sense of frustration was strong in me. I felt lonely and dispirited. I was cut off from the outside world. I felt like a prisoner who wants to tell the world he didn’t do it, but can’t. Thorby was a prison and the barbed-wire bars had closed with a vengeance.

Seated on a bench outside the office building were Fuller and Mason. They fell silent as I emerged. I did not speak to them. I felt so remote from them, as they sat there enjoying the pleasant warmth of the gathering dusk, that I could think of nothing to say. I wandered slowly up the road and across the asphalt in front of the hangars. The peace of a late August evening had settled on the place. The revving of engines, symbol of war in a fighter station, was no longer to be heard. All was still. Faintly came the strains of a waltz from the officers’ mess.

It was quiet. Too quiet. To me it seemed like the lull before the storm. To-morrow was Thursday. And Friday was the fateful day. If the proposed raid was to prepare the way for an air landing on the ’drome, any time after Friday might be zero hour. I was in a wretched position. Technically I had done all I could. Yet how could I leave the matter where it stood? Vayle had been a lecturer at a Berlin university. Winton might know him to be sound and my suspicions might be entirely unfounded. Yet the fact that he had been in Berlin at the time the Nazis came into power only served to increase my suspicions. British he might be, but there were Britons who believed
in National Socialism. And there was certainly nothing about him to suggest the Jew.

As I approached our site I knew that somehow I had to go through with it. I had to find out whether or not I was right. But how—how? Easy to make the decision, but what was there I could do, confined to my gun site with all my communications with the outside world censored? And anyhow, wasn’t it far more likely that Winton was right? The headquarters’ staff, as he had said, was far better able to judge the reliability of the pilot’s story than I was. And as regards Vayle, Winton had known him intimately for several years, whereas I knew no more of the man than I had been told. It seemed absurd to proceed, when there was so, little cause.

When I went into the hut, I found most of the other members of our detachment had already returned and were making their beds. It was nearly nine. I felt nervous. I thought every one must know what had happened and would be watching me to see how I took it. I went straight over to my bed and began to make it. Kan looked across at me. “Well, what did the Little Man want?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

He didn’t pursue the matter. At nine we went out to the pit and relieved the others. Fuller hadn’t yet turned up. There were only Kan, Chetwood, Micky and myself. “Where’s Langdon?” I asked. It was unlike him to be late for stand-to.

“He had to go down to the orderly room,” Kan told me.

I was silent, gazing out across the ’drome. The sky was very beautiful in the west—and very clear. Soon the nightly procession would start.

“Got any fags to sell?” Micky demanded of the gun pit at large.

There was a shout of laughter. “Not again,” said
Chetwood despairingly. “Why don’t you buy some once in a while?”

“Once in a while! I like that. I bought ten only this morning.”

“Then you’re smoking too much.”

“You’re right there, mate. Do you know how many I smoke a day? Twenty!”

“Good God!” said Kan. “That means we’re supplying you with seventy a week. Why don’t you buy yourself twenty at a time instead of only ten?”

“I smoke ’em too quick, that’s why.”

“You mean, you don’t smoke enough of ours.”

“Well, as long as you’re mugs enough.” He grinned in his sudden mood of frankness. “I tell you, I wouldn’t starve—not as long as there was a sap left in the world.”

“All right, we’re saps, are we? We’ll remember that, Micky.”

“Well, give us a fag anyway. I ain’t got one—straight I ain’t—an’ I’m just dying for a smoke.”

His request was met by silence. “That wasn’t very well received, was it, Micky?” Chetwood laughed.

“All right, mate.” He produced an old fag end. “Give us a light, someone.”

“Oh, my God, no matches either!”

“Would you like me to smoke it for you?” This from Fuller, who had just arrived in the pit. He tossed Micky a box of matches.

At that moment the sirens began to wail. Micky paused on the point of lighting his cigarette and glanced up at the sky. “The bastards!” he said.

“You want to mind that light.” It was John Langdon, who had just come up on his bike.

“Well, be reasonable, John, it ain’t dark yet.”

“All right, Micky, I was only kidding you.” He propped his bike up against the parapet and vaulted
into the pit. He produced two bottles of beer from beneath his battle blouse. He tossed one to Micky and the other to Chetwood.

“I thought you went to the orderly room,” said Kan.

“I did,” he replied. “But I stopped off at the Naafi on the way back.”

I was conscious that he glanced in my direction as he spoke. He went over to the gun and looked at the safety lever. The other four settled down on the bench, drinking from the bottles. The first ’plane went over high, faintly throbbing. The searchlights wavered uncertainly. Langdon came over to where I stood leaning against the sandbags. “You seem to have got yourself into a spot of trouble, Barry.” He spoke quietly, so that the others should not hear. “You understand that you are confined to the site for the next four weeks, and that all letters and other communications must be handed in to me so that I can pass them on to Mr. Ogilvie to be censored?”

I nodded.

“I don’t want to pry into your affairs,” he added, “but if you care to tell me about it, I’ll see what I can do to get the sentence mitigated. Ogilvie’s no fool. He knows the strain we’re living under.”

I hesitated. “It’s very nice of you,” I said. “I may want to talk it over with you later, but at the moment—well——” I stopped, uncertain how to explain.

“All right.” He patted my arm. “Any time you like. I know how you feel.” I don’t know what he thought I’d done.

It was then I realised that the four on the bench were casting covert glances at me. They were leaning forward listening to Fuller, who was speaking softly. I heard the word “Friday” and I guessed what they were talking about. I remembered that Fuller had
been talking to Mason when I came out of the orderly room. Micky looked up and met my gaze. “Is that true, mate?” he asked.

“Is what true, Micky?” I said.

“Bill here says that that Jerry pilot told you this place was going to be wiped out on Friday.”

“I didn’t say” wiped output in Fuller.

“You said a raid, didn’t you? What’s the difference?” He turned to me again. “You can’t deny you was talking to the feller. I saw you wiv my own eyes. Chattin’ away in German you was like a couple of old cronies. Did ’e really say we was for it on Friday?”

There was no point in pretending he hadn’t. I said, “Yes, that’s what he told me.”

“Did ’e say Friday?”

I nodded.

“Cor blimey, mate, that’s practically to-morrow—an’ I was going to ’ave a haircut on Saturday.”

“Do you think he really knew anything?” asked Kan.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was probably just bravado. He wanted to frighten us.”

“Well, he ain’t succeeded,” put in Micky. “But, blimey—to-morrow! It makes ye think, don’t it? And we got to sit ’ere and just wait for it. Wish I’d joined the ruddy infantry.” His brows suddenly puckered. “Wot you confined to the site for?” he asked.

The directness of the question rather disconcerted me. That was like Micky. One was always being faced with the problem of replying to remarks which other men would never think of making. I made no reply. There was an uncomfortable silence. Langdon broke it by asking about my conversation with the pilot. I told them what he had said. He made no comment. The others were silent too.

“How come you speak German?” Micky asked suddenly.

“I worked in the Berlin office of my paper for some time,” I explained.

He turned that information over in his mind for a moment. Then he muttered, “An’ you got yourself into trouble. Wasn’t anything to do with what you said to that Jerry, was it?”

I said, “No.” Perhaps I denied it a little too quickly, for I sensed a sudden atmosphere of suspicion. I realised that I was not the only one who had been thinking over the fact that someone had attempted to get details of the ground defences of the aerodrome to the enemy. I sensed hostility. Jaded nerves did not make for clear thinking, and a newcomer is never easily absorbed into a community of men who have been working together for a long time. I felt the loneliness of my position acutely. If I was not careful I should be in difficulties with my own detachment as well as with the authorities.

“Ever met the fellow before?” It was Chetwood who asked the question.

Perhaps I read suspicion where none was intended. But as soon as I said, “Which fellow?” I knew I had attempted to be too off-hand.

“The Jerry pilot, of course.”

“No,” I said.

“Why did he talk so freely?” asked Chetwood. And Fuller said, “Are you sure he told you nothing else?” I hesitated. I felt at bay. Kan, with his easy manner, would have turned the questions with a wisecrack. But I was more accustomed to writing than to conversation—it tends to make you slow in repartee. Micky followed up the other questions by asking, “Sure you told him nothink else?”

I felt bewildered. And then quite suddenly the conversation was turned from me by Kan saying,
“Funny that Westley should have asked for special leave on Friday.”

“What for?” asked Micky.

“Oh, it’s his uncle’s funeral or something.”

“His uncle’s funeral!” Micky snorted. “Just because his father’s an orderman in the City he gets given leave. If me muvver ’ad died they wouldn’t give me leave. I tell you, that sort of thing wouldn’t happen in the real army.”

“Well, has he been granted leave?” asked Chetwood.

“Yes, he’s got twelve hours.”

“That should keep him out of danger on the fateful day. It does seem a bit clever, doesn’t it.”

“I bet it was him that gave that information to the enemy.”

“You shouldn’t make statements like that unless you know them to be true, Micky,” Langdon cut in. His voice was patient but quite final.

“Well, you must admit it’s a bit of a coincidence,” said Chetwood.

“Coincidences do happen,” said Langdon. “If you want to discuss the matter, do it in front of him so that he can answer your charges.”

“Oh, I wasn’t making no charge,” muttered Micky. And then added defiantly, “A bloke’s got a right to ’is suspicions, though, ain’t ’e?”

I wondered where Vayle would be on Friday. And whilst my mind was occupied with this the conversation drifted to the arrival of the new squadron. They had come in that afternoon. They replaced 62A squadron, who had gone for a rest. Every one had been sorry to see 62A go. They had put up a grand show. They had been a month at Thorby—and a month at a front-line fighter station at that time was a long while. In that month they had shot down more than seventy enemy ’planes. But they had had a bad
time, and if any one deserved a rest, they did. The relieving squadron was 85B. Like its predecessor, it was equipped with Hurricanes. But we knew nothing about them. Langdon, however, who had been in the sergeant’s mess that evening, said that they had had a good deal of experience in France and had been taking a well-earned rest up in Scotland. “The squadron-leader is apparently one of our crack fighter pilots,” said Langdon. “D.S.O. and bar and nineteen ’planes to his credit. Crazy devil and always sings when he goes into a fight. Funny thing, his name is Nightingale.”

It was an unusual name and took me straight back to my schooldays. “Do you know his Christian name?” I asked.

“No. Why? Do you know him?”

“I don’t know. We had a John Nightingale at school. He was crazy enough. His most spectacular feat was to put two—pieces of crockery, I think they were called—on top of the Naafi marquee at Tidworth Pennings on his last camp. I just wondered whether it was the same fellow. It’s rather an uncommon name, and he took one of those short-term commissions in the R.A.F. when he left school.”

“What sort of a show did the squadron put up in France, do you know?” asked Kan.

“Pretty good, I gather,” replied Langdon. “Anyway, they have a high opinion of themselves.”

“Well, I hope they’re not over-estimating themselves—for their sakes as well as our own,” said Chetwood. “I heard of a relieving squadron over at Mitchet who thought they were pretty good. They had come down from Scotland too. But they hadn’t any experience of dog-fighting their way through big formations. They acted mighty big in the mess their first night. And the next morning they went up and flew straight into a hundred and fifty Messerschmitts
over Folkestone. They lost nearly half the squadron without bringing down a single Jerry. I don’t think they did much crowing after that.”