London Dawn (40 page)

“I’m not that cheery. We lost a pilot too as well as three planes. But the long face won’t win us the war, will it?”

“No, sir.”

“I’ll go to the Mess and get my tea. Can you tell me if Squadron Leader Ben Whitecross is on the base?”

“He’s only been down five minutes and he’s going up again if Jerry’s still at Portsmouth.”

“Where is he now? Do you know?”

“Giving his report to the intelligence officer. I expect he’ll drop in on the Mess for a toast and jam before he climbs back into his Spit.”

Sean made his way to the Officers’ Mess. He had hardly stepped in the door before Ben Whitecross got up from a nearby table with a slice of heavily buttered toast in his hand.

“I’ve got to find out what they can tell me about the raid,” he was saying. “B Flight all down, Tommy?”

“Yes, sir,” replied a lanky red-haired man in his flight jacket and Mae West.

“Everyone all right?”

“Tim’s got the burns on his face and hands. But he’s not bad. Doc’s bandaging him up.”

“I’ll look in on him.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Sean remained by the door.

“Excuse me,” Ben said and went to go by Sean before he suddenly stopped. “What’s this? Sean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Never mind the sir.” Ben put an arm around him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the mix-up over Portsmouth. Ran out of fuel.”

“Splendid. This is my nephew Sean, lads. I haven’t seen him in a thousand years. And here he’s a pilot and was in the dogfight over Portsmouth today.”

Several of the men whistled and clapped.

Ben led him to the bar. “What’ll you have?”

“Some tea and toast would be wonderful, Uncle.”

“Tea and toast it is. Now don’t tell me Uxbridge called you into the raid on Portsmouth?”

“They did. Kipp’s my squadron leader.”

“Right.”

“I expect they’re all on their way home now. So was I. But my petrol was low.”

“How’s Kipp?”

“He made it through the day, sir.”

“ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ What about James?”

“Top notch.”

A phone behind the bar rang.

“For you, sir,” said a young corporal holding the receiver.

Ben went behind the bar. “Whitecross. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Very good.”

He hung up the phone. All the pilots in the Mess were looking at him.

“Stand down, lads. Stand down and have your bangers and mash. Jerry’s gone back to France.”

A few men cheered, and the others went back to conversations that immediately became noticeably louder and spiced with more laughter.

“Here’s your toast and tea, sir.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” replied Sean. “What sort of jam is it?”

“Plum, sir. Local people mixed up a batch for us.”

Sean took a bite. “Excellent.”

“I’ll pass that on, sir.”

Ben took Sean’s arm. “Let’s have a sit. You can spare another ten minutes, can’t you?”

“I can. Though Kipp might mother hen it.”

“I’ll ring up Pickering Green once you’re airborne.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“How have Jerry been treating your airfield?”

“They hammer us every second or third day. Always more potholes for ground crew to fill. We lose personnel too. It gets a bit wearisome.”

Ben had a fresh cup of tea. “If you take a look around you can see what a shambles we’re in here.”

“You’ve lost a lot of buildings, that’s pretty clear. And I spotted the Spitfire and Hurricane skeletons from the air.”

“Jerry’s made a hash of the place since July. We’ll keep bearing up. We have to, don’t we? But I agree. It does get wearisome.” He sipped his tea. “Finished your toast? Come on. I want to show you something. A short walk. It’ll do us both good to stretch our legs. The Spit’s a fine plane but the cockpit isn’t designed for comfort, is it?”

“No, sir.”

They made their way off the airfield and into the village. Ben took them to the church Sean had seen from the air. It was white and tidy. Only one wall was torn up by machine-gun fire. Next to the church was a graveyard. Set apart from the older headstones were short rows of white
crosses with names painted on them in black. Two crosses were set apart from these rows.

“Those two crosses off by themselves are
Luftwaffe
pilots. The rest are lads from the four squadrons we have here at King’s Cross.” Ben stopped in front of one. “This is your cousin.”

Sean came and stood with Ben. “Flying Officer Peter Sweet. ‘How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle. Second Samuel one twenty-five.’ ”

“It was the vicar here chose the verse.”

“A good choice, Uncle.”

“And we still have the battle to finish that he couldn’t finish for us.”

“Yes, sir.”

They lingered another half minute.

Ben clapped a hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Let’s get you back to mother hen.”

As Sean lifted off from King’s Cross, the smoke from the bombing raid on Portsmouth covered the western sky behind him. The sun sank into it and turned the color of crimson. Sean headed east for Kent and Pickering Green. Small stars began to light his path like torches on a runway.

Sunday, September 1, 1940

St. Andrew’s Cross, London

“Please rise for the singing of the hymn.”

Lord Preston stood with Lady Preston at his side. To his right were Albrecht and Catherine and ten-year-old Angelika. Their son, Sean, was at RAF Pickering Green. Next in the pew were Victoria and fifteen-year-old Timothy. Her husband, Ben, was at RAF King’s Cross, and her older son, Ramsay, was in flight training with the RAF. Then it was Caroline and ten-year-old Cecilia Printemp. Caroline’s younger son, Matthew, was also in flight training, and her husband, Kipp, was at Pickering Green with Sean. Beside Lady Preston sat her daughter Libby all by herself, her husband, Terry, at sea on the
Hood
and her daughter, Jane, in the plotting room at the bunker in Uxbridge. On Libby’s right was another navy family, her brother Edward’s wife, Charlotte, and her children. Edward was serving on HMS
Rodney.
Sitting with Charlotte was her younger son,
Colm Alexander, eleven, and her older son, Owen, who was in the dark blue uniform of an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy. At his side, grasping his hand as everyone in the pew stood, was Eva von Isenburg, the daughter of Baron von Isenburg in Germany.

Next to her, looking miserable, was Caroline’s oldest son, Charles, who stood with a reluctance that was obvious to those sitting beside or behind him. Emma, whose husband entered the pulpit as the singing began, was at Charles’s shoulder. With Peter dead and James flying with Kipp and Sean at Pickering Green, only Emma’s youngest son, Billy, was at her side, dressed in a morning suit and tie, every inch the noble Cambridge student. The row ended with Robbie, widower and youngest son of Lord and Lady Preston, in the full-dress uniform of a colonel in the British Army, and his daughter, Patricia Claire, twelve and tall for her age, holding the hymn-book for both of them.

In the pew behind were Skitt and his wife, Montgomery, and servants from Kensington Gate, including Tavy, the butler, and Mrs. Longstaff the cook. Montgomery held her two-year-old son, Paul, in her arms. Harrison and his wife Holly remained at Ashton Park along with Lady Grace, Lord Preston’s mother.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless;

Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness.

Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?

I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Jeremy opened the large Bible that lay before him on the pulpit. “My text is from the book of Judges. It is the story of Gideon’s fight against the Midianites. I am certain you are all familiar with the tale. Gideon’s army
is too large, so God reduces it several times, and it is with this small band that the enemy is defeated. The Lord first tells Gideon he must have fewer soldiers in chapter seven, verse two: ‘And the L
ORD
said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.’ Twenty-two thousand are cut from the ranks. But there are still ten thousand ready to do battle with the Midianites. So God tells Gideon in verse four, ‘The people are yet too many.’ And the ranks are thinned again. Now there are only three hundred. It is with this three hundred that the Lord defeats the mighty army of the Midianites and Amalekites and all the children of the East who, we are told in verse twelve, ‘lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude.’ ”

Jeremy removed his round glasses. He looked out from his pulpit high above a congregation that filled every pew. For several moments he didn’t speak.

“The Lord works His miracles. But not without us. Not without His church, not without His people. We are the hands and feet, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the head. We need a miracle as big as Gideon’s, don’t we? Our nation is besieged from the air. The numbers we have to resist the enemy are scarcely more than Gideon had. Our pilots cannot do it alone. Yet they must do what they can. As they do what they can, so God shall intervene and do what only He is able to do.”

Jeremy tapped the Bible.

“We must have a Judges chapter seven story going on in these islands. We must pray for it; we must cry out for it. Our pilots and sailors and soldiers are only flesh and blood. Dunkerque was a miracle we sorely needed for our army. Now we must have another in the air. And I tell you this, and I believe it with all my heart—before all is said and done we shall require yet a third miracle from the Almighty on the high seas. But today it is the miracle in the skies we must have in order for Britain to survive, and not only Britain, but Europe, the cradle of Christian civilization.” He extended his arm and pointed at the ceiling. “Right now, our pilots are fighting. Right now, our pilots are dying. We sing hymns and their burning aircraft sing their death songs. The airfields are bombed, the convoys are bombed, the ports, the factories, even the streets of Bethnal Green in East London. Where will it end?”

Jeremy lifted the heavy Bible up in both his hands.

“What the Germans do will not decide the fate of nations. It is what the Lord does and it is what we do in accordance with His will. So join me in prayer now for our country, join me in prayer for Gideon and his small band in their winged chariots, join me in crying out for our deliverance from the locusts. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen” rippled through the church and along the pew of Lord and Lady Preston and their family. Only Charles sealed his lips. Only Charles refused to bow his head or close his eyes.

Sunday, September 1, 1940, 12:00 noon

RAF Pickering Green, Kent

The phone in the hut at the side of the runway began to ring. It was picked up immediately by a corporal.

James was in the middle of describing a fight with two Me 109s to Prescott, the intelligence officer.

Kipp was biting into a roast beef sandwich.

Sean was coming from the Mess, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and seven or eight cups.

The corporal thrust his head out of the hut window. “Scramble!”

“You must be joking!” Kipp protested. “That’s the third one and it’s just noon!”

“They’re coming for us, sir. Hundred plus Ju 88s and Messerschmitts going like the devil for Pickering Green and Hornchurch and Biggin Hill.”

“A second bombing run against us?”

“They never tell me much, sir, but they did this time. Jerry’s on his way.”

“Get a kite up!” shouted Kipp, eating his sandwich and running at the same time. “They’re hitting our airfield again!”

Swansbury and Evans snatched cups and filled them with tea as Sean stood holding the tray. James scooped up a handful of crumpets and stuffed them in the pockets of his Irvin flying jacket. Patrick took the pot and two cups.

“Fancy having a cuppa with your girl up there, Pat?” shouted Sean as they both sprinted for their planes.

“The other cup’s for my angel. I’d never have lived so long but for my angel.”

Sean was no sooner in his cockpit and tucking a blue polka-dot scarf inside his uniform collar when dirt and stone flew upward in a huge explosion at the end of the runway. Then another. And another. He saw Swansbury take off. Dirt showered the Spitfires taxiing behind and beside him. A stone cracked the front of his windscreen.