Читать книгу Combined Operations - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 3

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“Anything on the notice-board?” inquired Flight-lieutenant Derek Dundas languidly from the depths of a cushioned canvas chair.

Seeing him reclining there, with knees drawn up and arms sprawling with his hands almost touching the ground, no one not acquainted with him would have guessed with any degree of accuracy how tall Derek Dundas stood in his socks.

The most sanguine estimate might be five feet nine inches. On one occasion a newcomer to the squadron was asked what he thought was the height of his new flight-lieutenant. He put it down at “five seven and a half”. He was out—hopelessly; for Derek stood six feet two and a half inches and topped the scale at eleven stone two pounds.

Yet to see him at P.T.I, one would get a totally different and not so misleading an impression. He looked, and was, a trained athlete, the finished product of Royal Air Force traditional efficiency. There he was one of a crowd. In the pilot’s seat of his Halifax bomber he was just one of a crew—a crew that could rightly be described as a highly trained efficient one.

It was a revelation to watch Derek slither into the pilot’s seat. Halifaxes, enormous machines as they are, are not designed to accommodate oversize men, yet Lofty Dundas, as he was known to his fellow airmen, did it with hardly an appreciable effort. Once seated, he would crouch over the controls and concentrate on his job. Nothing else mattered from the time the bomber took off till she “touched down”.

“Nothing that concerns us,” was Pilot-officer David Price’s reply in answer to Derek’s question.

“Glory be!” ejaculated Lofty. “See Holt sculling around by any chance? He promised to lend me a book after lunch, and I’ll bet the blighter’s forgotten all about it.”

David Price was, as might be imagined, a Welshman, a native of Cardiff. He might be described as being the antithesis of Derek Dundas, although the pair were good pals. In height he was five feet eight, sturdily built and mercurial in temperament. What a job the other fellows had to break him of the frequent use of “Look you!” They did it at last, or thought they did. David kept a taut hold on himself in that respect; although in moments of intense excitement, such as when he saw his bombs hitting the target good and proper, he simply just couldn’t refrain from uttering that typically Welsh ejaculation.

Derek, as captain of the aircraft, had had his doubts concerning David’s capabilities as a bomb-aimer. Target practice was one thing, dropping heavy H.E. bombs just when and where they are wanted, and in the face of a superabundance of flak, might be an entirely different proposition. One “op. flight” was sufficient to convince Derek that he had been wrong in his opinion. Since then they had taken part in more than twenty bombing raids over enemy territory, and David’s coolness and precision had become proverbial.

“Here’s Holt!” declared David. “He’s someone with him. I don’t know the merchant; he’s not one of our crush.”

Flying-officer Nigel Holt, otherwise the navigator, came striding along the tarmac, keeping step with the stranger, who wore the uniform of a squadron-leader. It was rather difficult for Holt to keep in step, because the other fellow had a pronounced limp.

Derek, shading his eyes, looked in their direction, wondering whether Holt had remembered to bring along that book. Then suddenly he heaved himself out of his camp chair and strode towards the approaching pair.

“Hazeltyne!” he exclaimed joyously. “This is topping! Don’t say you’re joining our mob!”

Squadron-leader Basil Hazeltyne, D.F.C., shook his head.

“No such luck,” he replied. “I’m grounded. Temporarily, I hope. Had to look in on duty, and heard you were here, and Holt said he knew exactly where you were to be found and brought me along.”

Although Basil Hazeltyne had been in the Royal Air Force for only five years, his promotion had been rapid and his career varied.

He’d started off in a bomber squadron, and during the fairly desultory operations in France in ’39—now slightingly referred to as the “phoney war” with concert parties giving shows close up to the so-called front-line—he’d been shot down over enemy territory but had succeeded in bringing his crew safely back. Then, during the Battle of Britain, when fighters were desperately needed to shoot the Luftwaffe out of the sky—an almost superhuman task most effectively accomplished—Hazeltyne changed over to a fighter.

Shot down four times—on two occasions into the “drink”, otherwise the sea—he had “celebrated” the last occasion by getting his left leg neatly drilled by a machine-gun bullet. It had played up with his calf muscles, with the result that, after being boarded, he was placed on light duties on the “administrative side”. With luck he hoped to be in the air again within three months.

“Let me see,” said Derek, after the customary introductions had been made, “I haven’t set eyes on you since I was turfed out of Stockboro’ Hospital in October ’40.”

“Yes, and they didn’t chuck me out till the following Christmas,” added Hazeltyne. “It wasn’t a bad show as hospitals go.... And I had to thank a rotten Eyetie for that.”

“Oh yes,” continued Derek. “That was when the Italians tried to drop stuff on London, and we scuppered the lot. You were in that do.”

“Tell us about it, sir,” prompted David Price. “I’ve heard about it, of course, but never first-hand information.”

“There’s precious little to tell,” rejoined Hazeltyne. “It was when the Huns were bombing London fairly heavily, and, according to their propaganda, it was practically in ruins and had been almost evacuated. That gave Musso an idea: to deliver another stab in the back when there didn’t seem to him any chance of resistance. But you must have heard this before?”

“Not that part, sir,” replied David, adding almost apologetically: “I was a kid at school then.”

“So Musso respectfully asked his boss, Hitler, to allow the Regia Aeronautica Italiano to have the great honour of accompanying the Luftwaffe on a raid against London,” continued the squadron-leader. “One can almost imagine the crafty Hitler thinking: ‘My Air Force has had a mauling, let his airmen have a cut at it and then they’ll know what we’re up against. The Italian Air Force isn’t much good anyway.’ Evidently the Wop airmen thought they were on a soft job—like Guernica and Abyssinia, where they gloated at bombing and machine-gunning the helpless civilian population—so they dispatched about twenty biplanes—biplanes, mark you!—but without German escort. They got it hot from coastal batteries on both sides of the Thames Estuary, so they bunched up and steered a middle course. It wasn’t even money for jam. They were just cold meat. None reached London, and I don’t think any got back. It was the softest job I was ever on in that line, even though I did cop a packet. I rather fancy a panicky Eyetie fired one burst by accident!”

“Stopping the night?” asked Derek.

“Unfortunately—no,” replied Hazeltyne.

He could have added that he was on important and specialized duty in connexion with impending offensive operations, but he kept silent on that matter. Not to his closest friend would he breathe the slightest inkling of what was being planned to take place in the very near future. A few careless words, a hint, and the whole operation would be rendered not only futile but even disastrous. Many young and valuable lives would be sacrificed in vain.

“It is unfortunate,” agreed Derek. “Since I haven’t run across you for nearly two years, and we’re having a slack time so far as O.P.s are concerned, it would have been——”

The shrill notes of a gong interrupted the flight-lieutenant’s sentence.

It was an insistent warning, not of an impending air attack upon the aerodrome, but to the effect that all air-crews were to proceed at once to the operations room.

This was unusual. Generally the conference took place just before a night operation was to be put into effect. It seemed much too early for that!

Derek’s languid demeanour dropped from him like a shed garment. He was out of his deck chair as if something had stung him.

“See you later!” he exclaimed hurriedly to his visitor.

“Perhaps,” rejoined Hazeltyne. “At any rate, I must breeze off too!”

By this time there was a crowd of officers, N.C.O.s and men comprising the bomber crews, not merely hurrying but running towards the operations room. Some might be going there for the last time....

They crowded round the long table, some sitting, others leaning over the shoulders of their comrades, all keenly alert to hear what was about to be demanded of them.

Derek glanced round to reassure himself that all his crew were present. They were: Sergeant “Mick” O’Hara, the wireless operator, a native of Southern Ireland, who had been a radio officer, albeit a junior one, in one of the leading steamship companies before joining up in the R.A.F. He had been offered a commission, but for some reason best known to himself, he had refused to take it.

Sitting next to him was Sergeant Bob Holroyd, a Yorkshireman, who had been an apprentice and was just out of his time when the lure of the air got him in its toils. He was the engineer responsible for the smooth and efficient running of the four Merlin engines that developed a total of four thousand seven hundred horse-power, which is more than double that required to drive a 530-ton sloop at twenty knots.

Standing behind these two were Tom Tredgold, a New Zealander; Jim Macey, usually known as “Pug”—probably with reference to a former famous prize-fighter with a similar name but without the “y”—and Phil Evershot, otherwise the “Warm-’Un”. These three were respectively front, rear and midship gunners, whose primary duty it was to ward off attacks by Nazi fighters.

Derek’s crew were all there. In fact there were only two absentees amongst all the bomber crews, and they, being on short leave, had been recalled by telegram and were already on their way to the aerodrome.

There was nothing ornamental or imposing about the operations room. It was a plain building with matt-painted walls and artificially lighted. At one end was a large map of Western Europe. Between the blacked-out windows were diagrams and silhouettes of both Allied and Axis aircraft, while at the end opposite to the map was a blank space upon which “movie” films and lantern slides could be projected.

On the table were more maps, aerial photographs, documents and paper on which to make notes. At the head stood the briefing officer, a tall, youthful-looking man in the early thirties.

He was wearing glasses. On the breast of his tunic were ribbons that might well be the envy and admiration of most if not all of his audience. He had to wear glasses after an aerial encounter in which he had been shot down after accounting for three of the five Nazi planes that attacked him. The resulting defect of vision finished his career as a bomber pilot, and from that time he had been on the administrative staff, where his valuable practical experience especially qualified him for his present duties.

If there was one part of his present job that he didn’t like, it was sending men on operational flights in which he himself could not take an active part.

By the squadron he was generally and affectionately referred to as the Old War Horse. There was nothing of the martinet about him. He knew how to lead better than to drive, and although willing to demand risks he never asked the crews to attempt impossibilities.

Glancing at his wrist-watch the Old War Horse tapped the table with the end of his pencil. It wasn’t a particularly loud noise—rather the reverse—but almost in an instant the babel of voices ceased.

“Gentlemen!” he began. “I haven’t brought you here to announce the target for to-night. There isn’t one, so far as this squadron is concerned, but to-morrow in daylight your objective will be”—here he paused for two or three seconds, and then rapped out the name—“Berlin!”