Attack Alarm (29 page)

An officer came to the telephone just beside me. “Gun Ops.? Warn the guns that the two Hurricanes just taking off will be laying a smoke screen about fifty feet above the ’drome. They are only to fire on enemy ’planes landing on the field. They will not open fire at aircraft that crash. Any survivors will be mopped up by ground defences.”

Before he had finished speaking the Tannoy announced: “Attention, please! A smoke screen is being laid over the ’drome by two of our own machines. Hostile troop-carriers may be expected to attempt a landing. Some of these will probably crash. Ground defences will ensure that no hostile troops are allowed
to take offensive action after their ’planes have crashed. Care should be taken to avoid getting in the field of fire of the guns which have instructions to open fire on any hostile ’planes that succeed in landing on the ’drome. Off.”

“Hanson!” It was Winton calling me. “I think you had better report back to your gun site now.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Any points that have not been covered?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Right. Thank you for your help—and good luck.”

“And to you, sir.” I saluted and hurried out of Operations. Bill Trent was outside. “Look after yourself, Barry,” he said. “I’ll want a story out of you when the show is over.”

“You’ll be lucky if you’re allowed to print it,” I said. And jumping on the first bike I saw, I rode up the ramp and out on to the tarmac. I could just make out our gun pit almost on the other side of the ’drome. It stood out against the dull glow of the eastern horizon. The moon had set and the flying field looked pale and flat and cold. Tin hats—blue and khaki—showed above the ramparts of the ground-defence trenches. Soldiers stood waiting, their rifles ready, at the entrance to pill-boxes. There was an unpleasant atmosphere of expectancy.

As I crossed the tarmac in front of the hangars one of the Hurricanes made its first run along the eastern edge of the field. It was just a vague, shadowy thing in the half light, and it flew so low that I felt it must pile itself up on the first dispersal point. And it left behind it a thin line pencilled across the dull grey of the sky. The line spread and grew, a dark, menacing cloud. It ceased at the northern edge of the ’drome. I could just make out the shape of the ’plane as it banked away for the turn.

By the hangar nearest to Station H.Q men were busy
about a balloon that looked like a miniature barrage balloon. Just below it was fixed a red light. As I passed the hangar the balloon rose gently and steadily into the air.

Soon I was cycling down the roadway on the eastern edge of the field. It was getting very dark now. The smoke was overhead, a great billowy cloud that moved slowly south-west over the station. It was so low that I felt I must be able to touch it by putting my hand up. Here and there a stray wisp reached down to the ground, curling gently, and as I rode through them my nostrils filled with the thick, acrid smell of the stuff. As I passed the dispersal point just to the south of our pit the second Hurricane zoomed overhead. It was so close that instinctively I ducked. Yet I could not see it. The darkness increased as its smoke trail merged with the rest, and I almost rode past the gun site.

As I entered the pit my eyes searched the faces that I could barely see: Langdon, Chetwood, Hood, Fuller. But Micky wasn’t there. Nor was Kan. “What’s happened to Micky?” I asked Langdon. “Is he …” I hesitated.

“No,” he said. “He’s got a bullet through the shoulder and another shattered his wrist. It’s a light let-off, considering the risk he took. We got him to the sick bay.”

“What about Kan?” I asked.

“Dead,” Langdon said. The baldness of his statement shocked me. “He leapt up to follow Micky and took it in the stomach.”

He didn’t add any details and I didn’t ask for any. I could well imagine how he had died. I could see him swept into the maelstrom of a fight by his sense of the dramatic. He would have leapt to his feet, a young Raleigh, a Hotspur, a d’Artagnan, imagination cloaking him in the swaggering fineries of the Chivalry.
And then a searing pain in his stomach, making him stagger and collapse as he had so often staggered and collapsed heroically for an audience. Then the sordid reality of blood on hard unyielding earth, of pain and finally of death. Poor Kan.

The silence in the pit that had followed Langdon’s words was shattered by the roar of a Hurricane as it passed just above our heads laying its smoke screen. The wind sang past its wings. It was unpleasantly close, yet we could see no sign of it. Over us was nothing but a dark fog of smoke, and every now and then a wisp curled into the pit, making us cough.

“What the hell is the smoke for?” Bombardier Hood asked me.

I started to explain, but the Tannoy suddenly blared out: “Mass formation attack alarm! Mass formation attack alarm! Two large formations of troop-carriers, escorted by fighters, are approaching the ’drome from the south-east.”

The telephone rang. Langdon answered it. When at length he had put back the receiver, he said: “They’re mostly Ju. 52’s. They’re at eight thousand feet and coming lower. Gun Ops. say that fifty are expected to attempt a landing on the ’drome.”

“Fifty!” said Chetwood. “Good God!”

There was a stunned silence.

Then Hood exclaimed: “How the hell are we expected to fire on them when this blasted smoke screen has made it so dark that we can barely see the hut over there?”

“You don’t need to for the moment,” I replied. “The idea is that they pile themselves up against the hangars.” And I explained about the balloons and how they should mislead the Jerries.

“Yes, but suppose they do manage to land?” Hood insisted.

The ’phone rang. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t
know the answer. That worried me. I hadn’t realised how dark it would be after the smoke screen had been laid over the ’drome.

Langdon put down the receiver. “That’s the answer to your question,” he told Hood. “As soon as they start coming in the searchlight on Station H.Q. will be switched on.”

“Won’t that give the game away?” asked Chetwood.

Langdon hesitated. “I don’t see why it should. After all, suppose this was their own smoke and they were feeling their way in, they would surely expect us to try and pierce the smoke with what lights we had available.”

“Listen!” cried Fuller.

For a second all I could hear was the steady drone of the two Hurricanes. The drone grew to a roar as one of them swept over us. The noise of its engines gradually lessened. Then suddenly behind that noise I thought I heard a steady throb. For a moment I was not sure. The other Hurricane swept over the pit. And when the sound of its engine had dropped to a distant drone, I knew I was right. Faint to the south was a low throb, deep and insistent. My inside seemed to turn to water. The moment had arrived.

The sound grew till it beat upon the air, drowning the engines of the Hurricanes except when they were very close. Like the ripping of calico came the sound of machine-gun fire. Two bursts. The sound of the German ’planes seenied to fill the heavens. I had a horrible sense of claustrophobia. I longed to tear that curtain of smoke away so that I could see what we had to face. More machine-gun fire. Then the high-pitched drone of a ’plane diving to the east of us. It rose to a crescendo of sound like a buzz-saw. And when I thought the noise of it could not rise any higher there was a tremendous crash.

“Attention, please! Attention, please! Troop-carriers are now circling to land. They will come in from north to south. Gi’ ’em a reet gude welcome, lads. Off!”

The throb of their engines had passed right over the ’drome. But the sound had not then gradually faded. It seemed to split up. All round the ’drome was this deep, persistent pulsing. I must admit I felt scared. I think we all did. The menace was unseen. There was only the sound of it. And the sound was all about us.

The gun was laid on the landing field. Chetwood and Red were in the layers’ seats. Two sandbags on the parapet marked the limits of our field of fire. Shells fused at a half and one stood ready in the lockers behind the gun.

One particular engine became noticeable above the general throb that filled the air. It was coming in from the north. “Right. Fuse a half. Load!” Langdon’s voice was clear and calm, and I recognised that boyish note in it that had struck me before.

The searchlight, on Station H.Q. flickered and blazed into life. The great beam produced a queer effect. It was diffused by the smoke so that the landing ground was lit by a sheen of white and not by a beam. It was rather like the moon seen through thin cloud. And above it the banks of rolling smoke looked inky black.

The throb of the approaching ’plane grew nearer. The beat of it was slower now, and I could almost hear the screws ploughing their way through the air. The throb became more and more sluggish. The sound crossed the ’drome in front of us. It seemed as though it was feeling its way through the smoke.

Then suddenly landing wheels and a vague spread of wings showed white through the smoke. The moment of its appearance in the light of the searchlight
seemed an age. It was dropping gently, searching with its wheels for the runway that should have been there. The whole ’plane was visible now, like a huge silvery moth flying into the light of a street lamp on a misty night. There was an iridescent unreality about that great winged thing, so cumbersome, yet so fairy like.

It came out of the smoke flying straight for B hangar. Too late the pilot saw the trap. Poor devil. He was feeling for a landing in thick smoke. Suddenly he had dropped right through the smoke, and in the dazzling light the dark shadow of a hangar loomed up in front of his cockpit.

The sudden frantic revving of the engines made the ’plane buoyant. It lifted slightly. For a moment I thought he would clear the hangar. But his undercarriage caught the edge of the roof, and the great ’plane tipped slowly up on to its nose and then over on to its back. There was a splintering crash and it disappeared from sight as the roof of the hangar collapsed.

The next one was already coming in. Above us the bursts of machine-gun fire were becoming more and more persistent. Somewhere up there in the cold light of the dawn a dog-fight was in progress. The next ’plane was coming in to find its landing now. It was crossing the landing ground, feeling its way as the first one had done. Because I wanted a visual impression of the pit in that moment I glanced round it. All eyes were fixed, fascinated, on the white glare of the searchlight, waiting for the instant when the ’plane would become visible as it dropped gently through the smoke. I imagine the gaze of every one around the landing field was fascinatedly fixed on the bright belly of the smoke above the hangars.

The Tannoy broke in upon our expectancy. “Ground defences south of B hangar to cover exits from the hangar. Cover exits from B hangar. Off.”

I hardly heard it. All my senses were concentrated on watching the ’plane that was coming in. No one in the pit stirred. No one spoke.

One moment there was just the smoke made white by the searchlight. The next, the ’plane was there. It looked just like the other, monstrously big and all silvery. I felt rather than heard the slight gasp as we saw it. It was dropping faster than the other. The pilot never seemed to see the hangar. The great ’plane simply drifted straight into it. The wings crumpled, and as it fell in a shattered wreck to the ground we heard the crash of it. Several figures staggered out. They seemed dazed. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. And then another. The figures crumpled.

I suddenly realised that it was getting lighter. The fog of smoke above our heads was thinning out. The Hurricanes had finished laying the smoke. Another Ju. 52 was coming in. Above our heads the sounds of machine-gun fire had become almost constant, and behind the throb of the circling troop-carriers was the high-pitched drone of fighters diving and twisting and climbing. A pale light filtered into the pit. And in a moment I could see the eastern sky all flushed with the light of the sun, which had not yet risen above the horizon. The edge of the smoke, banked up in dark-brown billows, rolled away from the pit like a curtain, revealing a cold sky tinged with bluish green. To the east of us I could see a dozen or more big Junkers flying round and round in a circle, nose to tail for protection. It was not light enough yet to see the fighters, scrapping high overhead. But I could see one fighter diving on the formation of Junkers, letting rip with his guns and zooming away again.

“Look!” Langdon nudged my arm.

I swung back to the landing field. The breeze had freshened and the bank of smoke was rolling back fast.
But it still covered two-thirds of the field. The light of the searchlight seemed fainter and farther away now that we were standing in daylight. And it showed another troop-carrier below the smoke. It had come through the smoke sooner than the others, and the pilot had time to see the danger. The roar of his engines as he revved seemed to shake the pit. But he scarcely lifted at all. Only his speed increased. He banked and his wing hit the hangar. The whole scene looked unreal. It was like watching a show. The presence of the smoke seemed to put a barrier between ourselves, who were standing in daylight, and the ’plane and the hangars, which were in artificial darkness and lit by artificial light. Rather a similar effect to that of the footlights in a theatre.

The ’plane crumpled up, much as the other had done. But there was a sudden explosion and a great sheet of flame was puffed up into the smoke. In an instant the flames had spread to the hangar. The belly of the smoke glowed red. It was a fantastic sight—the twisted, blazing wreckage and the flames licking up the battered side of the hangar. I thought I heard screams. It may have been my imagination. But I knew men were dying in that inferno, dying a horrible torturing death. The thought sickened me. I had not become sufficiently imbued with the bestiality of war to feel exultant, though I knew they were dying because they had come to destroy us. It was either they or us. I knew that. But it didn’t prevent me from feeling a direct responsibility for their death.

The next ’plane coming in was frightened by that red glow. Its engines revved up and the sound began to come towards us. Suddenly it appeared out of the smoke, its wings balanced at a crazy angle as it banked. It was coming straight for us.