‘Shout out if you see anything happening that shouldn’t happen,’ Dicken said, then swinging into wind he pushed the throttles wide open.
The clunking of the tail wheel grew louder and it began to sound desperately fragile. There was a bang and immediately Dicken thrust the stick forward and they thundered ahead with the tail in the air. Reaching flying speed, he eased back on the controls and felt the rumbling of the wheels cease. As they lifted, they could see the bomb-pitted aerodrome and the crowds of refugees stretching across the countryside, cramming every road. Spirals of smoke seemed to rise from every village and town.
Climbing to a thousand feet, he tried a cautious turn.
‘If anything happens I’ll put her down near a ship or something,’ he said.
They followed the river to St Nazaire. Below them they could see a huge ship lying on her side. All round her there were boats and clusters of black bobbing heads.
After a while, he tried another turn and saw Brittany passing beneath him. The Channel was full of ships, all engaged, he imagined, in rescuing what was left of the BEF. Turning slightly east, he saw the Channel Islands. The engines were making strange noises and one of them was sending out a great deal of blue smoke, so that he expected it to burst into flames at any minute, and it was with some relief that he saw the Isle of Wight passing below. Immediately the naval guns at Portsmouth began to fire at them.
‘Get on the Aldis,’ he said to the wireless operator. ‘Give them “We are friendly.”’
The guns stopped but the wireless operator came back grinning. ‘They replied, “Bugger off,” sir.’
Recalling the losses at Dunkirk and the immortal words of one of the Lords of the Admiralty before the war, engraved on the hearts of all airmen, ‘Their Lordships do not consider that any warship competently handled is in danger from aerial attack,’ Dicken frowned. ‘Give them,’ he suggested. ‘“We’ll meet you here tomorrow with bombs and then we’ll see who buggers off.”’
The airman with the Aldis lamp gave him a startled look and he smiled. ‘Perhaps, after all,’ he said, ‘you’d better not. Co-operation between the services is bad enough already.’
As he swung north-east, he turned to the corporal fitter, ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.
‘London, sir.’
‘Well, since you got the thing going, I reckon we ought to drop you as near home as possible.’
Navigating by railway lines, as they began to descend, their minds still full of the horror that was France, they saw a game of cricket in progress. It seemed unbelievable.
‘Pity we haven’t got a bomb or two to drop on
them
, sir,’ the fitter observed. ‘Just to make ’em realise there’s a war on.’
Dicken nodded. ‘I have a suspicion, corporal,’ he said, ‘that they won’t have long to wait.’
Everybody who could be spared had been brought south to handle the hundreds of bewildered men arriving from France and among the first people Dicken saw was Hatto. He looked tired and had been on his feet without sleep for three days.
‘Madly war, what,’ he said. ‘Dowding’s treating it as a run-up to the battle for Britain and Keith Park’s holding 11 Group in readiness for the first attacks.’ He sighed. ‘At least we no longer have anybody to let us down and we’ve now got Churchill running the show instead of that old Birmingham umbrella manufacturer, Chamberlain.’
Seen in a clear light, it wasn’t a promising prospect nevertheless. Hitler ruled all Western Europe from Tromsö to the Pyrenees, and the threat of invasion was being countered by tearing down all signposts, railway signs and anything else that would indicate to an invading force where it was, while the ringing of church bells was forbidden except as an alarm. Since there were no weapons, there wasn’t much else they
could
do.
Somehow, however, there was a strange confidence that came down from the top. Churchill had no doubts about the outcome and said again and again that Hitler would never defeat England or even land an invasion force and, though RAF reconnaissance planes were already bringing back reports of landing barges gathering in the French Channel ports, everybody believed his powerful rhetoric.
The disaster in France had started up a new uproar over the old question of dive bombers and a bitter argument was going on over the RAF’s interpretation of the army’s close-support requirements. One group was struggling to convince the Air Ministry that its request for such an aircraft was thoroughly justified by recent events and, though the Air Ministry would concede nothing, was urging the design and production in quantity of large numbers of small attack dive bombers to work with the ground forces. The campaign got nowhere.
To his surprise, Dicken found himself appointed with increased rank to command a fighter station at Thornside. Having lost all his kit in France, however, he requested a few days’ leave in London to refit himself and, as he headed into the Grosvenor for a drink after a visit to the tailor’s, he bumped into a familiar figure. It was older and thicker round the middle than when he had last seen it but it had fought alongside him for months in France and Italy in the last war, and he had last seen it in the United States while searching for his erring wife, Zoë.
‘Walt Foote!’ he said.
‘Dicky Boy!’ Foote grabbed him and hugged him. ‘Nearly did a gloat dance,’ he said. ‘Remember how we used to do a ring-a-round-the-roses whenever we shot down a Hun or defeated Percy Diplock.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just back from China. I got to be a judge and the Government sent me out to handle a few things for them. I’ve just been to see your Foreign Office and I’m now on my way home to warn ours.’
‘About the Japanese?’
‘The war in Europe’s not going to be the only one. The Japs are going to take advantage of the fact that the British Empire’s fully occupied in Europe.’
‘Will America let them?’
Foote grinned. ‘America doesn’t give a damn about them grabbing what belongs to you, but they’ll soon start yelling if they lay their hands on anything in our sphere of influence.’
‘And will they?’
‘Brother, I’ve been operating China and Japan for years and I sure as hell think they
will
.’
As they talked, a woman in the uniform of an American Ambulance Corps appeared in the hotel and Foote stood up.
‘I’d like you to meet my niece, Katie,’ he said. ‘She’s just arrived from France.’
The woman laughed. ‘Paris,’ she said, pointing at Dicken. ‘June 7th.’
Foote was staring at them. ‘You’ve met?’
Dicken grinned. ‘You Feete get around.’
Foote remained in London only for one more day before going to Southampton to catch a ship for the States. Katie Foote was to remain in England, doing ambulance work, and she and Dicken agreed to take care of each other. As a free agent since his wife had died, it was something that didn’t fail to appeal because she was a tall attractive woman just getting over the trauma of a broken marriage. They saw Foote off on the train together and exchanged addresses.
‘Let’s meet,’ she said. ‘There should be time.’
Thornside was one of the London fighter stations with a Sector Operations rooms and satellite aerodromes at Beaston and Pewton, and Dicken found himself busy sixteen hours a day seven days a week.
An air fighting development unit was operating there and the aerodrome defences had all been attended to. But the hangars had been camouflaged during the Phoney War with brown and green paint to break up the regularity of the lines and, flying over it, Dicken pointed out that because it was surrounded by houses, it had not been camouflaged at all, simply made more conspicuous.
The experts, who had been trained to believe that camouflage meant trees, not houses, disagreed violently, but after a great deal of argument, the hangars were disguised as more houses with bright red roofs, windows, doors and gardens and the result was so effective that the pilots of the three squadrons stationed there complained they could never find the damn place and the adjutant finally conceded that the idea worked, claiming he’d just seen two swans crash- land as they tried to alight on an artificial stream.
With all three squadrons watching the sea as the Germans stepped up their attacks on Channel shipping, the place was often vulnerable to attack, so a station defence flight was organised, with any pilot – including Dicken – who happened to be available taking off in any aircraft that was handy.
Soon afterwards he was told to report to London to be briefed about a Polish squadron that was due to be attached to Thornside. There were a lot of things to remember – chiefly that the Poles had all reached England through France, Spain and North Africa, and were all a little touchy about their pride. They also had a lot of strange customs and after their defeat considered their honour important, but though they were itching to get at the Germans they were not to be allowed near them until they had learned some English.
The briefing took most of the morning. In the afternoon, Dicken contacted Katie Foote who agreed at once to meet him for a meal. The restaurant was crowded with men in uniform and there was now even a sprinkling of women in them, too. Also, where once all the uniforms would have been those of officers, now there was a mixture of other ranks as the crisis swept everybody into the services. Fathers with red tabs sat alongside sons in plain khaki without a single badge beyond their regimental flash. Like Dicken, Katie Foote was also in uniform and, like all American uniforms, it was perfectly tailored and showed her figure.
She was intelligent with a lively humour and Dicken enjoyed his evening more than he had expected. What had been only a polite gesture to Foote had turned out to be exciting and it was suddenly important to meet her again. As he found her a taxi, she leaned out and kissed him gently.
‘Thank you, Dicken,’ she said. ‘You’re a nice guy.’
‘I’m an
old
guy.’
‘Not that old.’
‘Nearly old enough to be your father.’
She smiled, ignoring the comment. ‘It was a lovely evening.’
‘We’d better repeat it.’
‘Please God.’
Two days later the Poles arrived at Thornside. Wearing their own strangely-shaped wings, they were stiff and wary, feeling they knew far more about the war than their British hosts. Though they had all fought against the Germans in Poland, they were new to Hurricanes, however, and knew nothing of retracting undercarriages and flaps. There were several cases of belly landings or overshooting and their understanding of English was not sufficient for them to be controlled from the Operations Room.
‘But ve haf come here to kill Germans not to learn Anglish,’ their senior officer complained.
Their arrival resulted in another hurried visit to London where the problem of foreign aircrews was being thrashed out. They were arriving now from France, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Denmark, and they all had to be integrated into the RAF. In the evening, Dicken picked up Katie Foote again and they walked together through Hyde Park in the summer evening. In the distance they could hear the mutter of guns and the sky was full of the distant sound of aeroplanes because the raids, though not yet directed at London, were still continuing.
‘I’ve got a flat now, Dicken,’ she said. ‘And having got it, having decided I was going to enjoy it, they’ve told me I’ve got to go home. Some nonsense about London being too dangerous.’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’
‘I’ve nothing to go home for. My marriage’s sunk.’
‘This marriage of yours. Don’t you think you keep it too much to yourself?’
‘Who else is interested?’
‘I’ll listen.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. My husband wasn’t to blame. We got married too soon. I was too eager. More eager than he was. I guess he’d probably rather have played tennis. He was keen on tennis. I think I talked him into it.’
They were silent for a moment, both of them deep in thought, Dicken faintly depressed. All his contacts with pleasant women seemed to end as soon as they started.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘When what?’
‘When do you have to go?’
‘I don’t know yet but they say I’ve got to.’
It was impossible for Dicken to stay long in London because the Poles were itching to get into battle, and they said goodbye at the door of her flat. Standing with his hands on her hips, Dicken kissed her on the lips. As he did so, her arms went impulsively round his neck and she kissed him back urgently.
‘Oh, Dicken,’ she said. ‘Why?’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘It’s this damned war. It makes you feel like a bitch on heat with all the bravery and the dying, yet when you get to the crunch it always gets in the way.’
For a moment they clung to each other before he dragged himself away. ‘Perhaps it’s best you go home, Katie,’ he said.
‘No. Never. Why should it be?’
‘War’s a rotten time to get attached to someone.’
‘I don’t see why you’re so afraid,’ she said bluntly.
‘There are a variety of reasons,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re an American and no part of the fight over here, and you’re also a great deal younger than I am.’
She replied by kissing him again. ‘I see no problem at all,’ she said. ‘Uncle Walt pointed out quietly before you left that you weren’t at all bad-looking – which you’re not – that your wife was dead, and that he thought you looked lonely. The fact that I’m American also has no point because although we
are
no part of your fight, I have a suspicion we shall be before long, and age doesn’t really matter very much because as you get older it seems to level off and the difference eventually becomes negligible. If I stay here long enough–’ she gave him a quick smile ‘–we’ll be the same age. And I would if you wanted me to. I could give up the American Ambulance and join the Red Cross. It wouldn’t be difficult.’
His urge was to say, yes, do it, but at the same time he felt he was asking too much. They hardly knew each other and too many people were snatching at the chance of a little love in the middle of the killing.
He left her in tears, his face set and frowning, and returned to find the Poles being difficult. Though they had started to learn English, they didn’t agree it was important, and he had to have several sessions with their senior officer, trying to explain that they would never defeat the Germans by isolated attacks. The Germans were obviously trying to destroy the RAF so they could invade and they had to avoid committing their machines and pilots in penny numbers. They could only attack when they had a hope of succeeding and isolated attacks without co-ordination could only result in attrition without achieving much.