‘Diplock, sir. George Diplock.’
‘Son of Air Commodore Diplock?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I know your father.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ There was something icy in the reply.
‘
And
your mother. In fact, I was married to her sister, which makes you my nephew.’
‘I was aware of that, sir.’
‘Then I hope you’ll have a drink with me when we next meet in the mess.’
The following day Dicken drew young Diplock aside and pushed a half-pint of beer into his hands. The boy had inherited Annys’ good looks rather than his father’s plump pasty features.
‘Why did you join the RAF?’ Dicken asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘It’s the done thing, sir, isn’t it? If your father’s a general, you become a soldier. If he’s an admiral, you become a sailor.’
‘And what about
your
views?’
‘I’d have preferred the navy. I don’t think I’m a very good pilot but, because my father’s an air commodore, nobody argued when I asked for fighters, which most of my group asked for. We all knew about Mannock and Ball and McCudden and Baron von Richthofen, you see, sir. I expect
you
knew them personally.’
He sounded bitter and Dicken hesitated. ‘I could have you transferred, if that’s what you wish,’ he said. ‘To Bomber Command or Coastal Command. Or even Training Command as an instructor.’
Young Diplock shrugged. ‘Under the circumstances, sir, I’ll stay where I am.’
Training started at once, the squadrons flying in the loose formations that the Germans had proved to be far more effective than the tight wedges with which the RAF had entered the Battle of Britain. But there was
too
much
looseness and day after day Dicken assembled his pilots in the hangar to tell them what was wrong with their flying.
When they weren’t flying he had them aiming at targets on the ground or at towed drogues, practising their radio techniques and making mock attacks in pairs on aircraft from training stations, one man the leader, the other to watch his tail.
‘Forget all that nonsense you read in schoolboys’ magazines about aces,’ he said. ‘Air fighting’s teamwork. And this war isn’t basically different from the other one and height is still important, just as attacking out of the sun is. Your guns have been synchronised for 250 yards so fire at that distance. Short bursts and only when your sights are definitely on. Then think of nothing else. Concentrate.’
The faces in front of him seemed incredibly young and innocent, pale and pinched-looking almost.
‘And remember it isn’t all attack. You’re going to have to defend yourselves. So keep a sharp lookout. Remember to keep your height, always turn to face an attack, never fly straight and level in the combat area, and make your decisions quickly. It’s better to act quickly even if what you do isn’t always correct.’
As the aircraft disappeared on their training programmes, Dicken turned to checking his ground staffs. As Hatto had warned, squadron commanders had played the age-old service game of getting rid of people they didn’t want, and there were several outrageous duds, one or two known service criminals who had come from detention, even one or two men called up from civilian life who had done time inside civilian jails. Among the Waafs, he discovered, there were three who were pregnant.
‘Send ’em back,’ he told the adjutant. ‘I’m more interested in the birth of a decent station than the birth of a new generation.’
The first sweep across the Channel was a ragged affair with Dicken sitting up above to watch how it went. The aircraft hit the French coast at Dieppe and flew in a wide circle, firing at anything that moved. A train was stopped and a convoy of lorries shot up, but the pilots, from being nervous, were now overeager. The formation became ragged and as they turned north Dicken saw he had lost several of his machines.
As they landed in England, he was already down and waiting. All the missing machines turned up later, some of them having landed first at other airfields. This time he didn’t criticise their spirit, only their flying discipline.
The second attempt was much better and they shot down a Junkers and a Messerschmitt. It wasn’t much but it was a start and everybody in the mess that night celebrated their first successes. The third sweep was even better and they came back this time with a score of three, one of them shot down by young Diplock.
‘Next time let’s make it four,’ Dicken suggested.
In fact, it turned out to be five. Hatto turned up to see them off and Dicken himself led the sweep this time. When he landed he was surrounded by young men with their arms on their shoulders doing what was a fair imitation of the gloat dance he and Hatto and Foote had been in the habit of doing.
‘Now where the hell,’ Hatto asked, ‘did they learn that?’
The adjutant smiled. ‘They read, sir,’ he said. ‘And it seemed appropriate to adopt it themselves.’
The following day they had their first casualty. There were no gloat dances this time but Dicken was pleased to see there was also no sign of depression. It was a period of excitement but also of sadness as the sweeps brought more deaths. Nobody had any doubts that they were harassing the Germans, but it was hard for Dicken to watch them leave, knowing that one or two would never return. Many of them came from the higher echelons of society but a lot of the NCOs had grown up in depressed areas and had not had easy lives, so that it was amazing how prepared they were to give their lives for a system that had never done much for them. They were all so young, too – like the sons he’d have had if he’d had any – and they made him feel ancient even as they tried to treat him as one of themselves. They weren’t even very different from the men he’d flown with twenty years before. Only their language had changed. Aeroplanes, known then as ‘buses’, had become ‘kites’, and something good was ‘wizard’ instead of ‘hot stuff’. He no longer worried about how they dressed and, for the most part, they gave him no cause to, because they’d realised that to be brave you didn’t have to look brave.
The hard flying was beginning to take its toll by this time and the mess alternated with heavy silences or the chatter of overexcited frightened young men. Occasionally he caught one of them staring into the distance, held by unimaginable terrors that he couldn’t – and didn’t wish to – put into words.
The year advanced, with Dicken leading a sweep whenever he could. Hatto didn’t approve.
‘That wasn’t the idea, old lad,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to tell them what to do, not do it yourself.’
‘I can’t ask men to do what I’m not prepared to do myself.’
‘These chaps are twenty,’ Hatto pointed out. ‘We’re over forty and too old for it. Well,’ he conceded, ‘perhaps
I
am but
you
don’t seem to be, I have to admit. Just take care, though, old lad. Things move faster these days than they did.’
The following day, as Dicken prepared to leave on another sweep over Dieppe, he heard that Cuthbert Orr had just been killed flying a Wellington over Essen as an air vice-marshal. The news left him a little depressed but he snapped out of it quickly and, banking the squadron, began to close them into a wing formation in line astern and set course at 170 degrees. A fourth squadron joined them, tagging on behind, and he found he was leading forty-eight fighters streaking south.
Switching on his gunsight, he roared across the Channel, keeping low to avoid radar detection. It was a bright day with white puffballs of cloud and the sea a slatey blue. As they approached the French coast, his earphones became full of noise as he began to pick up the cries of pilots already involved in a fight.
‘That’s Jimmy going down!’ he heard. ‘Get out while you can!’
Somebody was having a rough time just ahead of them and he tensed, straining his eyes to search the sky in front. The hairs on the backs of his hands began to prickle under his gloves and he felt the strange unwillingness he had always felt before going into a fight. When the fun started, it would vanish quickly enough but it was always a little like plucking up the courage to plunge into a cold bath.
Suddenly, from nowhere, he saw a fighter approaching him head-on, then another lower down, then several more, all heading homewards. He recognised them as Spitfires and Hurricanes. With Dieppe only ten miles away, he began to climb and the machines knifed their way upwards. He could see the town below him now, a column of smoke rising from the port area. The aeroplanes eased into a looser formation, then just ahead he saw wings glinting in the sun and almost at once he heard the voice in his earphones of young Diplock, who was flying as his wing man.
‘Dyton Leader. Large gaggle of Huns eleven o’clock high.’
‘Dyton Leader, I see them.’
The enemy machines, thirty to forty FW 190s and ME 109s, were manoeuvering to dive.
‘Break port!’
The cry in his earphones made him stamp on the rudder and jam the control column over. The Spitfire stood on one wing as he turned into the attacking enemy, and the formation broke up into desperate manoeuvering. More Germans streaked down and the Spitfires separated into sections and pairs. Still climbing, Dicken pulled into a sharp turn and an FW 190 rose up ahead. As he lined up behind it, he realised that the German wasn’t aware of him. The machine was squarely in his sights but farther away than the 250 yards he advocated and he decided to try a long shot. Pulling the stick back to allow for the drop in the trajectory he pressed the button and the Spitfire shook as the 20 millimetre cannons roared. Immediately the Focke-Wulf reared up, trailing a thin stream of smoke and as the range shortened he fired again. The FW’s wheels dropped and the smoke grew thicker, then it rolled over and began to drop towards the sea in its final plunge. Pulling the Spitfire round in a tight turn, he saw more Germans diving to the attack and, as he banked to stay out of their path, he caught sight of a big formation to the east. Diplock’s voice came, calm and unemotional.
‘Dyton Leader. Strong reinforcements coming in. Fifty plus, slightly inland.’
By this time the fighting had scattered all over the sky. Then, as he came out of an S-turn, he saw a lone 109 just ahead. As the enemy grew larger and came within range, he pressed the trigger button. Diplock fired at the same time and the German machine began to lift sharply. At once, Dicken’s windscreen went black with oil leaking from the German and as he wrenched the Spitfire aside, the 109 exploded. He felt the Spitfire shake as something hit it and realised it was no longer under control.
Dropping below the fight, he heard Diplock’s voice. ‘Dyton Leader, are you all right?’
‘I’m all right,’ Dicken replied. ‘Get the hell home. There’s nothing you can do.’
The Spitfire was plunging out of the sky now in a twisting spiral. Eventually, he managed to lift the nose but the machine wasn’t responding properly and he knew he was too low to bale out so he had no alternative but to put the machine down.
The ground below consisted of small fields and high hedges, but then he saw a road and decided to land on that. Throttling back, fighting the machine’s tendency to drop its nose, he swung into his approach as the road straightened out. As he did so, however, a German lorry came round the corner. He managed to hold the machine up and float over it, and the driver gave him a scared look and ran off the road into the ditch. Almost immediately, another lorry appeared. Great Ned, he thought, killed in collision with a lorry! Dog-fighting with German transport! What a bloody epitaph!
Then he saw a cemetery on his right, with, running down the centre, a wide straight road. At least he wouldn’t meet any German lorries there. The quick and the dead, he thought. He was quick enough now, but he might soon be very dead. His wheels touched the gravel but it was deep and soft and as they sank into it the machine’s nose dipped and the tail kicked up. Snatching the stick back and touching the brakes, he felt the machine give a frightful lurch then the port wingtip struck a stone angel which dissolved into several pieces and the machine slewed round and thumped into one of the family vaults that filled the cemetery. It looked like a telephone box and had the words
Famille Dunois
carved across it and, as he slammed into it, his face banged against the front of the cockpit and everything dissolved into lights and shooting stars as he felt the tomb collapse on top of the aeroplane.
Recovering his senses, he saw a Frenchman in a smock and beret running towards him through the tombs. Behind him several German soldiers were climbing the wall of the cemetery. Wearily he climbed from the cockpit and leaned against the fuselage, dazedly eyeing the damage he had done to the
Famille Dunois’
last resting place. One eye was closed and his face was sticky with blood from his nose so that he had to breathe through his mouth. He wanted to be sick and was certain the Germans would shoot him.
They were all round him now, waving their weapons and shouting, and he braced himself for the beating he was expecting.
Then he realised they were laughing, and one of them, a corporal, slapped him on the back. ‘Ein Klavier aus dem fünfsten Stock,’ he said and Dicken recalled Udet’s expression for an aircraft crash – a piano falling from the fifth floor.
The German fished out a cigarette and offered it. ‘You haf landed in a goot place,’ he said in a thick accent, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘Vat a pity you did not be killed. We could haf buried you here.’
Half-blind in one eye and still snuffling the blood from his nose, Dicken was led away. As they reached the huts, one of the Germans sat him on a bed and a middle-aged man wearing a Red Cross brassard bathed his face.
At dusk, he was marched under guard to a nearby village where he was handed over to the German Feldpolizei who noted his name, rank and number and searched him to make sure he was unarmed before locking him in a small dark bitterly cold room on the top floor of an old stone building which he assumed was the Mairie. Flopping on to a low iron bed, he was suddenly caught by an attack of the shakes. His teeth chattered and he couldn’t stop himself shuddering. Eventually a German doctor appeared to staunch the bleeding and give him pills to stop the trembling.