Piece of Cake (87 page)

Gordon seemed to be fearless. One glorious summer's morning, “B” flight intercepted eight Me-110's on their way back to France. The German fighters had no wish to do battle, which was natural: the myth of the 110's invincibility had long since vanished: it was big and fast and could blow you apart if you were foolish enough to sit in front of it, but it had the agility of a grand piano. Any Hurricane easily out-turned it. Escorts of 110's were beginning to be a joke. When the raid they were escorting got attacked, they usually withdrew and formed a protective circle, guarding each other's tails until the danger had passed.

Mother Cox and the rest of his flight chased this group of eight
for thirty miles. Zabarnowski shot one down, Quirk and Renouf scored hits on two, and Gordon got within sniffing distance of three without ever opening fire.

When they landed, Cox went over to him. “What was the trouble, Flash?” he asked. “Gun stoppages?”

“No trouble, Mother. I just didn't fancy any of them today. They weren't suitable.”

“Don't be so bloody silly, Flash. What d'you mean, not suitable?”

“Well …” Gordon wrinkled his nose. “They weren't what I was looking for.”

Cox was accustomed to Gordon's dottiness, but this was grotesque. They walked in silence to the crewroom. Later, after debriefing, Cox took him aside and asked him what the hell he was up to.

Gordon pursed his lips and thought. “I think I do it to scare myself.”

That made no sense. Cox waited, but Gordon linked his hands on the top of his head and blinked drowsily at the hot sunlight.

“You do it to scare yourself,” Cox said. “Why scare yourself? Aren't you scared to start with? I am. I'm frightened bloody witless.”

“Oh, yes. Still, you can't have too much of a good thing.”

“Don't bet on it. The way you're going, Flash, you'll scare yourself to death soon.”

“So what? You die every night.” Gordon rocked on his heels. His eyes were almost closed. A trick of the light showed up a cluster of very faint freckles that crossed his nose. “Ever thought of that, Mother? Each night, you die. You lie down, you slip away, maybe you never come back. It's not so terrible, is it? I don't worry about it. I reckon I've had so much practice it should come very easily.”

Without discussing it, Cattermole and Steele-Stebbing had reached a sort of truce. They rarely communicated on the ground. In the air, where they formed Yellow Section, they spoke only when they had something disparaging to say.

They were crossing the coast on their way back to base when Cattermole's engine cut out.

“Boring,” Steele-Stebbing said. “You did that yesterday.”

“Don't pick your nose while you're talking to me.”

“Whose nose would you like me to pick?”

“Pay close attention to this advanced method of flying.” Cattermole waggled his wings. “The prop stays still and the plane goes round and round.”

“Very boring. Can't you do something thrilling? Crash into an orphanage.”

The engine coughed and re-started. Cattermole climbed back up. “Something wrong with your undercart,” he said. “I think you've got fowl pest.”

Two minutes later his engine died again. “How dreary,” Steele-Stebbing said. “No imagination.”

“Shocking smell in here. You been pissing in my tank again?”

“I'll go ahead and find you a nice orphanage.”

Again, the Merlin revived and Cattermole took up station. “Not fowl pest,” he said. “Looks more like pox.”

They were circling Bodkin Hazel when Steele-Stebbing discovered that Cattermole was right. His undercarriage refused to go down.

“Nasty,” Cattermole said. “What with all those bunkers and all.” The field had been bombed in their absence: craters pocked the grass.

“You go first,” Steele-Stebbing said. “Let's get the big prang out of the way.”

“Why don't you get out and walk?”

“All right, show me. You're the expert.”

Cattermole landed. Steele-Stebbing circled, using up fuel, while he tried various remedies suggested by the control tower. Eventually he succeeded, by violent rocking, in getting one wheel down. By now Barton was in the tower. “Bale out,” he ordered. “Climb to five or six thou, point the kite at France and bale out.” Steele-Stebbing spiraled up to six thousand, one wheel dangling, and couldn't get his cockpit open. It was jammed solid. Even hammering at it with his revolver butt did nothing. The fuel gauge was nudging zero.

Everyone stopped work to watch him touch down. The single wheel bounced once and raced. The leg stayed firm. Gradually the tail came down, the tail-wheel ran, the other wing lost flying speed and sank. Steele-Stebbing's rigger closed his eyes just before the
wingtip stroked the grass. Then the Hurricane skewed and spun in tight little circles, cracking the wheel-leg, smashing the prop, flinging up a brown-green spray of clods as it skittered along. The fire-truck caught up. Men with axes leaped onto the wing. No smoke, no flame. Everyone went back to work.

When Steele-Stebbing walked into the crewroom, CH3 said: “Nice work. You okay?”

“Fine, fine. Piece of cake.” The bridge of his nose was skinned.

“Grab some tea. Micky's got a spare kite ready for you.”

Black Section got scrambled at six. “A” flight got scrambled at six-thirty. The whole squadron went up at eight. It was dusk before Skull finished the last combat summary. “Busy day,” he told Barton and the flight commander. “Seven scrambles, a total of fifty-three sorties. Bing Macfarlane slightly injured with a fragment of cannonshell in the leg, Quirk probably concussed from a forced landing, Brook with a burned left hand and a bruised back. Four machines written-off: Quirk's in a duckpond, Brook's shot down in flames, Steele-Stebbing's you all saw, and of course Macfarlane baled out again.”

“Oh well,” said Barton. “It could've been worse. It could've been a bloody sight worse.” He rubbed his eyes and remembered flashes and glimpses of the scrap with the 109's. “Christ, we were lucky,” he said. “I thought Brook had bought it for certain, I mean with three Jerrys knocking hell out of him all at once … Christ Almighty.”

“Quirk reckons that duckpond saved him,” Cox said. “He says he set fire to a cornfield and all he could see coming toward him was a socking great barn and all of a sudden there was this lovely duckpond.”

“Sailors,” CH3 said. “They'll find water anywhere.”

“Well,” Barton said to Skull. “That's us. What about them?”

“Two definites, two probables.”

“You're talking about ‘B' flight,” Cox said.

“I'm talking about the whole squadron.”

“
What?
Listen, Fitz and Zab alone told me—”

“Yes, I know what everyone claimed,” Skull said.

“Look, Skull,” CH3 said, “there were kraut kites going down all over the place. I saw—”

“The reports have been completed,” Skull said. “You don't need
to tell me all over again, and frankly I'm getting pretty sick of repeating that just because you saw an enemy aircraft
go down
, that does not justify claiming its destruction.”

“It does when we've hit the buggers,” Cox said.

“No, with respect, it
doesn't
” Skull told him.

“Two and two,” Barton said. “Seven scrambles, fifty-three sorties, and all you'll give us is two definite kills? I saw more than that, and half the time I was looking the wrong bloody way!”

Skull straightened his papers and said nothing.

“The boys are going to love you,” Barton said. “You're going to be their sweetheart, you are.”

“Nobody would be happier than I to raise the score,” Skull said. “All I ask is evidence. Is that unreasonable?”

“The hell with it,” Barton said. “Do what you like, I don't give a damn. I feel sorry for the boys, that's all. They go up and shit themselves seven times a day, and when they finally succeed in blowing a Hun to kingdom come you want to see his death certificate before you … Oh, balls. Let's get a drink.”

“Hey,” CH3 said. “I just thought of something. Cine-guns.”

“No!” Barton snapped. “If he won't take a pilot's word of honor then the whole thing's a farce and I wash my hands of it.”

“Steady on, Fanny,” Cox said. “Maybe cine-guns aren't such a bad idea. I mean, suppose you get some film of a Jerry baling out of a 109, that's pretty definite, isn't it?”

“Might be,” Barton said grudgingly.

“Let's face it, he's never going to climb back inside, is he?”

“All right, if you want cine-guns, let's all have cine-guns.” Barton glowered at Skull. “Let's all have Mickey Mouse and icecream at the intervals too, while we're at it. Do what you like.”

Skull went out.

“Trust you to make life more difficult,” Barton said bitterly to CH3. “As if I haven't got enough trouble with that bloke without you complicating matters.”

“It was your decision. Don't blame me for that. If you thought it was such a bum idea you shouldn't have okayed it.”

“Cine-gun can't do any harm,” Cox said.

“It's a matter of principle. How can I lead this squadron if nobody trusts anybody?”

“Come off it, Fanny,” CH3 said. “Do you believe everyone's claims? I certainly don't.”

“Whose bloody side are you on?”

“We've got twenty minutes before that pub shuts,” Cox said. That ended the argument.

Daybreak in mid-August was about an hour later than it had been in June. This meant that Hornet squadron could sleep until four or four-thirty before flying down to Bodkin Hazel.

The next couple of hours were the worst. Everyone felt weary and hung-over. They dozed in armchairs and woke, stiff and sweaty, when someone slammed a door, or when the fitters fired up a Hurricane. Tempers were brittle. Everyone looked forward to breakfast, but when it came some of them ate little. They had developed a painful sensitivity to certain sounds: the telephone and the Tannoy. Each made a preliminary, introductory noise. The telephone produced a little click before it rang; the Tannoy uttered a gentle buzz. Those feeble noises could make men like Fitz and Cox and Cattermole, and even CH3 and Barton, start as if stung.

It was still before breakfast when Barton came into the crewroom with Micky Marriott. “Okay, pay attention,” Barton said. He pounded a table. Everyone groaned and stirred. “Micky's got something to show you.”

It was a length of metal channel, much dented. “This came off Iron Filings' kite,” he said. “It's the cockpit runner. You can see here why it didn't run: it's been hit by something, probably a bullet.”

“That could happen to anyone,” Barton said. “Now, I'm not laying down any hard-and-fast rules. It's up to you whether you fly with your cockpit open or shut, just as long as you know you've got a choice.”

“Open for me, thank you very much,” Steele-Stebbing said.

“Damn drafty at twenty thou,” Fitzgerald muttered.

“If you're going to have it open,” CH3 said, “for Christ's sake
lock
it open. Otherwise you'll make a belly-landing and the sodding thing'll shoot forward and then you'll be trapped.”

“I thought we were supposed to be getting a quick-release mechanism,” Macfarlane said.

“They've made one,” Marriott said. “Trouble is, it's not all that quick.”

“Yes, but,” Flash Gordon said. “On the other hand it's not very reliable, either, is it? So in the long run that balances things out.”

Haducek said: “You talk out of your ass, Flash.”

“Not at all. I mean, if the silly thing isn't going to work properly, you don't want it to go wrong
quickly
, do you?”

“God strike me pink,” Haducek muttered.

“Dash it all, that's blindingly obvious,” Gordon said. “I must say, Haddy, sometimes I wonder about you.”

“One other thing,” Barton said. “It's going to be bloody hot again out there today, and I know some of you prefer to fly in shoes instead of boots and no gloves and so on. Again, it's up to you, but take a look at Brooky's hand.” Sergeant Brook held it up. Two fingers were bandaged. “If he hadn't been wearing gloves,” Barton said, “you can guess what that hand would look like.”

“Goggles are even more important,” CH3 said. “The more you can cover up, the less there is to get burned.”

“No, that's crazy,” Zabarnowski said. “Wear goggles, you can't see so well, wear gloves and boots you sweat like a pig, no wonder you get jumped. Is crazy.”

“Zabby believes in comfort,” Haducek said.

“Clean silk stockings every day?” Cox said.

“Sure, why not?” Haducek said. “The trouble with you British, you think you got to be uncomfortable or else you're not doing your proper job.”

“You guys don't know how to
enjoy
war,” Zabarnowski said. “Polish peoples know. Polish peoples got lots of practice.”

“I hope you followed all that,” Cattermole said. “What it boils down to is you have a choice between being frozen, stifled, or Polish.”

Each flight got scrambled once before midday. Neither met the enemy. CH3's flight found nothing; Cox's flight got close enough to see con-trails reaching out to France but no closer.

They were sitting down to lunch when the Tannoy made its gentle buzz and Fitzgerald knocked over a glass of water. The scramble sounded and twenty minutes later the squadron was three miles above Tunbridge Wells, searching for a batch of Junkers
88's that were said to have made a mess of Biggin Hill. CH3 saw them, miles away to the west, dots drifting across the hazy forests and fields of Sussex. They caught them just short of the coast and made repeated attacks. The bombers dipped to sea-level, actually flying through the spray thrown up by the fighters' fire. It was very difficult to attack: accurate shooting by the German gunners, turbulent air, the sea just a few feet below. The only man to score was Sergeant Brook, bandaged fingers and all. He got close enough to concentrate his fire on a starboard engine. It bled oil, and Brook danced in to have another go, right into the upper gunner's sights. The Hurricane bucked and reared and dived tail-first into the sea. Barton kept up the chase for another five miles and then quit.