Pastoral (18 page)

Marshall travelled back to Hartley in the train next day by way of London and Oxford. He travelled with his crew in a third-class compartment; the fact that they might not travel in first-class comfort with him added its quota to his black mood.

They were all short of sleep. They had, in fact, spent the night battling with trouble ever since they had put down at Whitsand. They had dropped out of the fuselage hatch down on to the ground in the black darkness, landing one by one into a bed of stinging-nettles; getting to their feet most of them had fallen again over the telephone lines that lay draped over R for Robert, and the remains of the little short telegraph-pole that they had felled. Stumbling back to the runway to find somebody to fetch an ambulance for Leech, they had come upon the sergeant pilot of the Lancaster, now stopped upon the ring runway a short way behind them. The sergeant pilot was considerably shaken and told Marshall all that lay upon his mind; he did not know that he was speaking to an officer and would not have altered one word if he had known. In the end Marshall had to appeal to the crew of the Lancaster, now gathering in the darkness. “For Christ’s sake put a sock in it,” he had said. “Which of you is the radio operator? You? Well, get back in your machine and call up your control, and tell them I want an ambulance down here at once for my own operator. And look sharp, or I’ll put you on a charge.”

The ambulance came presently, and with it lights and a young medical officer; they got Leech carefully out of the
machine and saw him carried off. A truck materialised out of the night and took them to the control office; Marshall, reporting to the control officer, was received with some coldness and was informed that by his act and deed he had cut off the station from all contact with the outside world except by radio. His comment on a station that was served by overhead lines at the runway’s end did not help the matter.

The three sergeants were taken to the sergeants’ mess, where they were given a meal and camp-beds hastily arranged; Marshall had to wait till four in the morning before traffic on the W/T permitted him to send his message to Hartley stating very briefly what had happened to R for Robert. He had then slept for a few hours on the bed in the control office.

Morning found them gathered at R for Robert, sourly inspecting the damage. The port wing was clearly for the scrap-heap: the geodetic torn and buckled over nearly a third of the surface, the tanks ripped and pierced by cannon-fire. The port cowling and exhaust manifold were obviously U/S; the port propeller had one tip bent forward and ripped fantastically. Until the cowlings were stripped off for inspection it was difficult to say what other damage she had suffered, but clearly the aircraft was in no condition to fly back to Oxfordshire. Marshall went back to the Headquarters office, made his apologies to the Group Captain, and asked for air transport. The weather was poor, so they gave him a railway guide.

All afternoon and evening they sat together in a crowded third-class carriage in a packed train, dozing and shifting restlessly. A mood of the blackest depression had descended on the pilot. After so many operations it was an acute personal grief to him that he had pranged his Wimpey. It was clearly in his mind, far too clearly, that the cause of their misfortune was an error of his own, a gross and unpardonable mistake in navigation. But for the grace of God, he thought, they’d all have been cold meat; a fit and proper end for the incompetent, but bad luck on the chaps that had to crew for him. The fact that they had been so decent to him, with never a word of reproach, only made it worse. Now he would have to tell the Wing Commander all about it, but what to tell, or how to explain their trouble, left him utterly defeated. Moreover, to top everything, they had to travel for ten hours in a slow railway train to get to Oxford just before midnight, and that was eleven miles from Hartley Magna. If he had any sense
at all, he thought, he’d go into the lavatory and cut his throat.

They crossed London in a taxi in the black-out, had a slender meal at the Paddington buffet, and took the train for Oxford. There was transport there to meet them, and they got back to the station shortly after midnight. Marshall got down from the truck and, carrying his parachute and harness, went into the mess.

In the ante-room the lights were on still; he stuck his head in at the door, and there was Pat Johnson sitting by the fire. Mr. Johnson raised his head. “Evening,” he said. “There’s some beer and sandwiches here if you want it.”

Marshall hesitated, a little touched at the thought, and went forward into the room. “Bloody trains,” he said awkwardly. And then he said in explanation: “I had to leave Robert up there.”

Mr. Johnson nodded. “We guessed you would. Bring the boys back with you?”

“All but Leech. Got him into hospital.”

“Bad?”

“Not very.”

He turned to the side table and took a sandwich and poured himself a glass of beer. Pat Johnson said: “What sort of a place is Whitsand?”

“Bloody.”

“Sounds like something out of a limerick. ‘There was a young lady of Whitsand’ …” Mr. Johnson mused for a minute, a coarse rhyme on the threshold of his mind, but it escaped him. “How did you come to get up there?”

They had been friends for a year, and there was no one else in the room. Marshall said bluntly: “I put the wrong course on the mucking compass.”

“Many a better man than you has done that, laddie,” said his comforter. “All be the same in a hundred years.”

“I don’t know what in hell I’m going to tell Winco.”

“I know what I should tell him.”

“What?”

“Tell him you put the wrong course on the mucking compass. So what?” Pat Johnson got up from his chair and yawned. “I’m going up to bed.”

Marshall took a couple of the sandwiches in his hand. “I’m coming too. Did everybody else get back all right?”

Mr. Johnson nodded. “You were the only mutt. It was ‘Where is my wandering boy to-night?’ until we got your
signal. Your young woman got into a proper state, she did.”

Marshall stared at him. “My young woman?”

“The black-haired one, the one you gave the pike to. Fair blubbering her eyes out, she was. I had to muscle in and do a bit of comforting, old boy—as between friends, I mean, I thought you wouldn’t mind.” He dodged hastily and made off upstairs before Marshall, cumbered with his flying-suit and parachute, could come up with him.

There was an element of truth in what he said. At the Group W/T station three miles from the aerodrome Gervase had watched the girls working the bearing upon R for Robert during all three fixes that they had asked for, had seen them transmit to the leading station. She had marked down the first fix on the plot that they kept and had stared at it in dismay; thereafter all her work became a nightmare. She had slipped in the little message of good cheer to them quite irregularly; that was all that she could do. After that she had to go on with her work as if nothing was happening; in her misery her training gave her strength. All the other machines asking for fixes were asking for her help; she did not fail them.

By one in the morning her work at Group W/T was over; she could close down for the night. She rang through to the control at Hartley to enquire for Robert, but no news had come through. She was told that the air/sea rescue routine was being put in hand for them; at dawn the Lysanders and the Walruses would go out flying low over the grey, dirty sea, questing and searching on the line of drift. It was uncertain, she was told, what the chances were; the only station in the vicinity that they might possibly have reached was not taking any signals.

She had gone back to Hartley with the girls in the station transport in the black night. She could not bear to go back to her quarters; she went to the control upon the aerodrome to see if, during the short time that she had been upon the road, there had not been some message. Section Officer Ferguson was still there with a telephonist, trying to make contact with this dumb place, Whitsand. And two of the pilots were there, still in their Sidcot suits, Flight Lieutenants Lines and Johnson.

She had been a little embarrassed, even in her unhappiness. She said: “I just looked in to see if anything had come through about Robert.”

Lines said: “Not yet. I don’t think he’s in the drink.
He’d have sent us his position before going in.”

Mr. Johnson said: “He may have baled out over land, or he may be at this bloody place that won’t answer. I don’t think he’s in the drink.” He offered her a packet. “Cigarette?”

She took one gratefully and sat on with them in silence, waiting, in the bare office with the blackboard, the big shuttered windows, the four telephones. In the next room they heard the intermittent complaints of the telephonist to various exchanges up and down the country, Service and post office, as she tried for Whitsand by way of Hull and Scarborough, Grimsby and Market Weighton. They heard the girls in the next room talking to the lighthouse at Spurn Head, and to the air-raid wardens at a post at Hornsea. They sat on, weary and anxious and cold as the time crawled by.

Once Johnson had said kindly to her: “I should go to bed. We’ll send a message over to you if anything comes through.”

She said: “I can’t. I shouldn’t go to sleep, anyway.”

Lines had gone through into the other room. Mr. Johnson said quietly: “It’s like that, is it?”

Gervase looked up quickly; he was grinning at her. “What do you mean by saying it’s like that?” she asked indignantly. “It’s like nothing of the sort.”

Mr. Johnson wagged his head. “He gave you a bit of fish.”

“I know he did. It was a very nice bit of fish,” she said, colouring. “He gave you a bit, too.”

“Nice bit of fish my foot. It was a bloody awful bit of fish.” He shook his head. “I always said no good would come of that fish.”

She moved away into the telephone-room, anxious to break off the discussion. In the end, at four in the morning, the brief message came through relayed from the Command that Robert was down at Whitsand and damaged; that the radio operator had been removed to hospital. Gervase went back to her quarters sick with relief and utterly exhausted. She took three aspirins, but it was dawn before sleep came.

At eleven o’clock next morning Marshall went into the Wing Commander’s office. Dobbie looked up from his desk. “Morning, Marshall,” he said. “Have a cigarette?” He offered his case. “What’s Robert like?”

The pilot said: “I don’t think she’s too bad, sir. The port wing got shot up, and then I hit it with a stump or something and finished it off.” He sat on the edge of the chair that Dobbie had given him, recounting the damage to the aircraft.
He spoke nervously and with lack of self-assurance. He smoked very quickly as he spoke.

The Wing Commander helped him now and then with a question. Dobbie was thirty-two years old, a regular officer of the R.A.F. who had done two tours of Bomber Command in the early days of the war, followed by a year at Coastal; at Hartley he still flew occasionally on an operation, though he never served as captain of the aircraft. His work was now executive upon the ground. He had to run the station and control the crews; it was natural that the crews should be his first concern. They fluctuated in number between twenty and thirty-five, a hundred or a hundred and fifty flying personnel all told. He knew them all by name, and a great deal about each one of them; he did not know the ground staff nearly so well.

He had among his crews a few old stagers that formed a solid backbone of experience at Hartley. However many raw and callow young men came to him, so long as he had Lines and Johnson and Marshall and Davy, and Sergeant Pilot Nutter and Sergeant Pilot Cope, he felt that the Wing could play its part; the youngsters would learn from these men and absorb their knowledge imperceptibly. The casualties were all among the newcomers from the operational training schools. Nothing, it seemed, could really help these raw young men but to rub shoulders every day with the seasoned veterans of many raids. The loss of one such veteran crew was a very serious matter indeed to Wing Commander Dobbie, to be prevented at all costs. Those men were worth their weight in gold to him.

He heard about the damage to R for Robert. “Doesn’t sound too bad,” he said. “Morrison is speaking to them this morning; they should have finished the inspection by now.”

Marshall said: “I should think she’d take a week or ten days to repair.”

“That means three weeks.” The Wing Commander blew out a long cloud of smoke. “How did you come to land up at Whitsand, anyway?”

Marshall said miserably: “I had a bit of a balls-up with my navigator, sir, and the wrong course got on to the compass. I did it—it was my fault.”

“I did that once,” said Dobbie. “Bloody, isn’t it?”

“I can’t think how I came to do a thing like that,” said Marshall wearily.

“Tell me what happened from the start,” said Dobbie. “What time was it when you reached the target?”

Marshall told him the story of the flight, speaking in little bitter sentences. He took no pride in the fact that he had extricated the machine from a most difficult position over the North Sea and brought it safely back and landed more or less in one piece; his black depression was too great for him to recognise virtue in anything that he had done that night. The Wing Commander had to penetrate the veil of bitterness with which the pilot cloaked his account to see the fine airmanship that had got Robert down at all.

In the end Dobbie laughed. “I bet the pilot of that Lancaster had a fright,” he said boyishly.

“He was bloody rude,” said Marshall. “He was a sergeant.”

“I bet he was bloody rude,” said Dobbie. “I can’t think of anything much worse than to see another aircraft plump down on the runway right in front of you at night.”