Not Flag or Fail (2 page)

We were waiting for the water to boil when ‘Ronny’ Regis came up to the stove carrying a large paper bag.

“What’s that you’ve got?” said Fishy.

“Our Continental breakfast, I acquired it last night” he said smiling, “now give me room to work.” Ronny opened the bag, took out a long French loaf and told Harry to cut it up. He then pulled out a pate of butter, some of which went into a small Billy. He then brought out a second bag containing eggs and proceeded to break two of them into a mug, whisk them up with a fork, poured them into the by now sizzling butter, whisked them around some more and had produced a very passable looking omelette a couple of minutes later. An eager Jack Hampton was more than happy to be the first to try one, ten minutes later we had all sampled the delights of Ronny’s culinary skills.

“So where did you get all that stuff then?” Fishy asked

“Oh it’s not so difficult if you know where to look and who to ask.” Ronny replied affecting his best public school accent.

“You can’t ask anyone bleeding anything in this country, they don’t speak flipping English” said Fishy, using a piece of bread to clean his plate of any remaining egg.

“Oh well that’s where education comes in you see, thanks to Pa’s foresight in sending me to a proper school, I can speak to the natives in their own tongue. While you were learning to gut fish or whatever it is you do, I was being educated.”

“Yeh and a fat lot of good it’s done you. If you were that clever you’d be a flippin’ officer, not stuck out here with us lot eh?”

Ronny smiled “My dear fishcake, has it never occurred to you that I may not wish to be a flipping officer? has it never entered your tiny brain, affected by fish oil as it probably is, that I may see my place in the world as nothing more than the driver of one of Mr Morris’s superb 15cwt velocipedes as we while our way around this Cooke’s Tour of Europe’s low countries, in an effort to stave off the little corporals and his chums eh?”

“You’re a bleeding nutter is what you are” said Fishy “I’m going to get packed up.”

And still laughing at the exchange, that’s what we all did, with ten minutes to spare we were all onboard the truck with gun hitched waiting for the order to move out.

It started to get lighter around 05.30 hours but as we were travelling west we didn’t see the dawn breaking behind us only the change in the light.

I lit two fags up handed one to Ronny who was driving and said, “Come on then how come you haven’t gone off to officer’s training school, you’ve obviously got the education for it?”

Ronny took a long draw on his cigarette and seemed to think for quite a while before answering, then he looked at me and spoke, using my first name.

“Well Alan, I’ll tell you, providing it stays here, I like the rest of the lads well enough but I don’t know that I want what I’m going to tell you made public ok?” He spoke in a quiet voice with no trace of the public school accent that I was by now convinced he only used to get Fishy going.

“Ok sure!” I said; “don’t tell me if it’s personal.”

He took another long drag from his cigarette and then glancing from the road over to me for long enough for me to see he was in earnest, he began to talk.

“Have you ever heard the expression getting a bowler hat? No? I didn’t think you would have. Well it’s one they use in the RAF to describe someone who has failed flight training and is sacked which is just what happened to me.”

He threw his cigarette out of the window, changed down through the gears as we slowed for a check point, then went back up through the box as the column speeded up again.”

I left school a year ago at seventeen and a half and the only thing I wanted to do was fly a fighter. I had done a bit of flying in the air cadets at school, my father used to take me with him to his flying club when I was at home on holiday, so I’d had a few flights and was confident I’d soon be an Ace.

I applied to the RAF and eventually got an interview at the Air Ministry in Whitehall. I passed the selection tests and was sent off to flight training school at a place called Desford in Leicestershire. Here we learnt to fly properly in Tiger Moths; it was so far so good.

Later I was moved to another station Little Rissington in the Cotswolds where we transferred to American Harvard, trainers, they had a reputation as being unforgiving little aeroplanes but I got on with it well from the start. I flew solo without any real problems. Navigation was ok, scored well on all my cross country flying. I was doing just fine and then we moved on to night flying.”

He paused for several minutes staring out the window in front of him, I didn’t speak not wanting to disturb his thoughts he was obviously back there in his mind, simply driving automatically, eventually he continued.

“At first the night flying was ok, the Harvard is a two seater and we had our instructors with us and they were up there telling us what to do. Then it was our time to go solo, I did my first solo flight ok but the following night a chap who I had become close friends with and who was regarded as the star pupil took off and that was the last we saw of him. They found him in his burnt out wreck later that night, he’d hit some pylons that were much lower than the height he was meant to be flying at. It was assumed he’d done what so many do, lost faith in his instruments and thought he knew better.

Well the next night I’m up there again, except that now I can’t stop thinking about his crash. My confidence started to fail me and I’m all over the show, I am having difficulty breathing and I go lower so that I can pull off the oxygen mask and open the canopy. While I’m doing all of this, I stall the aeroplane and without knowing what I’m doing I’m belly landing in a field about a mile away from the airfield.

I suppose I should be grateful, most chaps die doing that manoeuvre.

Anyway the next day I’m in front of the Station Commander. I explain what had happened and ask if I could do another flight with my instructor to get my confidence back. I’m told to wait outside whilst he and the instructors discuss it.

After about half an hour I go back in but it’s no use I’m told I can either go home, or be commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant in the stores. In other words I had got my ‘bowler hat’.

Well I don’t know about you Alan but my idea of getting back at Hitler for what he’s done so far and what we know he’s going to do if he gets the chance, does not include handing out gas masks and chittie’s so I went home and a week later joined the artillery as an ordinary soldier, the rest you know.” With that he fell silent.

Around about midday we stopped for a break outside a town called Denain, here for the first time we saw some bomb damage, there were craters in the road some burnt out cars and half of the town’s buildings seemed to have sustained some damage.

Ronny spoke to the locals and it seemed that earlier in the day several bands of marauding Stuka’s had, had their fun bombing the buildings and shooting up the villagers a lot had been injured and more than twenty had been killed.

What sort of people are we fighting? I wondered as I tucked into a bully beefy and pickle sandwich which had been provided for us along with the ubiquitous mug of tea but this time with the addition of a slice of sponge cake, my but the army looked after us.

Lieutenant Davies came over to see us accompanied by a Captain who he introduced to us as Captain Roberts. He was to be the battery’s new Adjutant. It seemed that our previous adjutant, Captain Harrington had been recalled to Battalion HQ but not in Mons where it was currently situated, but back home in England, in Aldershot.

Captain Roberts gave us the usual pep talk about what he expected; he was a man in his early 40’s and seemed a bit out of his depth. His uniform was well cut but seemed fairly new and after a few minutes I could see the lads starting to lose interest, Fishy coughing to disguise a yawn. Fortunately they moved on to the next crew before anyone actually nodded off. “Bleeding hell, another blooming plumy sod.” said Fishy, as we watched them walk away.

We started away again just after two o’clock and were making good progress on the journey until just outside the village of Bouchain. Everything seemed to go suddenly very wrong. We had changed over drivers after the break, I was still in the passenger seat but now Fishy was driving with Ronny, Harry and Jack all in the back, no doubt playing cards.

Our column was 17 vehicles long and we were seven from the front. The first we knew that something was wrong was when a khaki tailgate flew across our line of vision, followed in rapid succession by a blinding flash, a terrific bang and a hail of debris as the truck in front of us exploded into pieces!

“Shit!” shouted Fishy. “Do it later!” I shouted, grabbing my rifle, “Pull over now.” Fishy didn’t need telling twice; he dropped down a gear and gunned the truck towards the side of the road, heading for a clump of trees about fifteen yards away. We stopped with a jerk as the bumper struck the bottom of one of the trees and the truck stalled.

“Everybody out,” I shouted, “follow me.” I glanced behind and was relieved to see all four of my crew running behind me for the cover of the trees and better still training had done it’s job they had all brought their rifles.

There was a drainage ditch about four feet deep in front of us I jumped down into it, and was followed seconds later by the rest of the crew. We all aimed our rifles out of the ditch and now for the first time felt safe enough to try and see what was happening. The entire column had stopped in various attitudes up and down the road; it looked as if all of them, other than the truck in front of us, were unscathed. There was however little left of the damaged truck. It was burning and it was sickeningly obvious that there was no one left alive inside. In fact there wasn’t an inside, just black smoke and flames licking around the chassis.

“What should we do Bomb?” said Jack Hampton who was the youngest of our crew and probably had the whitest of the five faces peering out over the ditch, although without a mirror I couldn’t see my own.

“Just stay quiet a bit Jack eh, let’s waits to see what we’re up against here?”

To be honest I couldn’t understand what had happened. There were no planes about and surely if the truck had been hit by artillery then there would have been more shells to follow? I looked all around; there were no enemy infantry about.

Slowly the realisation dawned upon me the truck had hit a land mine. Five other trucks had passed the spot with impunity, but fate had decided that Bombardier Willis’s and his crew should be the one to fall foul. So this is what war must really be like, I thought it’s not very fair.

“Stay here.” I said easing myself out of the ditch. Remembering the training sessions back at Aldershot, I did the Indian crawl across to the cover of our truck where from underneath I was able to look up and down the road where nothing stirred? About twenty yards away in the bushes I could see Jock Scott and his crew tucked down behind some bushes. It struck me that if anyone did want to attack us no one was looking behind. All of Jock’s crew seemed to have their rifles and as I didn’t fancy getting shot by any of them I gave a whistle. Eventually one of the crew saw me and waved, I crawled and shuffled across to them.

“What d’ye reckon Alan?” Jock asked as I arrived next to him. “I think maybe they hit a landmine, what do you think?”

“Aye I’m thinking the same my sen, I think we need to be making contact with the other crews though d’ye reckon it’s safe ta stand up?”

I thought for a moment before I replied “I think who ever planted that mine is long gone but whether it’s safe to stand up depends on if any of our own are so keyed up that they want to shoot at anything that moves.”

“You lot stay here and just keep ye heeds down, Alan ye can come with me but for God’s sake stay low!” Jock adopted a crouching run and I followed suit. We ran towards the road and jumped down into another drainage ditch at the side of the road and although only a couple of feet deep we were able to gain some cover. The big advantage of the ditch though was that we were able to follow it along the side of the road and we were soon in contact with various other crews As we looked around, heads began to pop up all about us. Lieutenant Davies appeared with his pistol drawn with the new Adjutant at his side. He looked across at us and shouted to us. “Blue troop over here!” we doubled across to him “What’s happened Sergeant Scott?”

“Well Sir, Bombardier Willis’s truck has been blown up, I’m afraid there’s nay survivors, it looks as though they’ve struck a mine.”“Bloody shit “Lieutenant Davies said his face reflecting genuine pain.”

“Any other damage Sergeant?” said the Adjutant looking around him. “Not that we can see sir.” Jock replied.

“OK then I propose to go down and have a look sir,” said Lieutenant Davies, addressing the Captain, “if you want to get the men grouped together, we’ll report back when we’ve had a good look around. Sergeant Scott, Bombardier Hibert you two come with me.”

“Yes excellent carry on Lieutenant.” mumbled the Adjutant as we walked slowly away.

We walked cautiously towards the burning truck, four charred bodies frozen in deaths tableau. The driver slumped over the wheel, a figure, where the passenger seat should have been, leaning out of the door, the two in the back thrown together by the explosion, to the corner of the truck bed.

As we moved closer to the site, the air smelled of petrol, cordite and a sickly sweet smell that I was later to learn was the smell of roasting flesh.

In front of the truck was a crater about four or five feet across and two to three feet deep. The truck had obviously been lifted and thrown backwards by the force of the explosion. Oddly, the gun, which was being towed by the truck had become unhitched, but looked to be unaffected by the carnage.

We followed the Lieutenant’s lead and got down into the ditch at the side of the road.

“Ok chaps, let’s have a walk down the ditch here, keep your eyes open and see if you can see any signs of any other mines on the road. We should be safe enough, there’s enough people back there watching our arses, or at least I hope they are. Stay alert; the bastards may also have planted some anti personnel devices, even down here in the ditch.”