Once More the Hawks (3 page)

As he thought of his wife, he began to wonder what had happened to Marie-Gabrielle Aubrey. He had met her first in Italy in 1918 when she was nine years old and childishly eager to marry him. At the time he had thought he was in love with her older sister, but the sister had married an American and Marie-Gabrielle, turning up in Rezhanistan where Dicken had been sent to organise the evacuation of a besieged Legation staff, had coolly informed him that she
still
hoped to marry him. Because he was still married to Zoë Toshack, he hadn’t even thought seriously about her suggestion, though he’d not been unaware of her beauty, intelligence and courage. After the siege he’d discovered that the wife who didn’t want him was dead and that the girl who did had vanished, and he had never since been able to track her down.

He tried to brush the thoughts away but they refused to go. He still had a house which he had acquired for Zoë at Lensbury near Northolt. They had lived in it together for a matter of weeks only, then, while he had gone to Iraq, Zoë had disappeared to the States. They had never occupied it again, meeting only in hotels while the house was let to Service couples forced to live the usual gypsy life in other people’s houses, the husband always disappearing to the ends of the earth while his wife was left behind to pack and follow. Pack and follow. It was a motto by which Zoë had never been prepared to live. Determined from the day he first met her to follow her two ambitions – to fly and be independent – she had managed to fly but had never been able to be entirely independent and even when she had fled from Dicken’s side she had always seemed to need his affection.

Since her death, he had refurnished the house, half-hoping that someone would come along to occupy it with him. But, though a few had tried, no one had. At least, he thought dryly, people of his age didn’t rush into marriage just for sex.

There was still no sign of any permission to leave. Udet sent a message to say he was trying to obtain it but while other English tourists in Germany were bolting for the frontiers and the ports, because Dicken’s exit involved an aeroplane, permission had to come from Goering. By afternoon, they were beginning to grow suspicious.

‘Think it might be worth taking off and chancing it?’ Babington suggested.

Climbing into the Lockheed and starting the engines, they taxied to the holding area near the runway. Immediately a red light flashed from the control tower.

‘Think we could do it?’ Dicken asked.

Babington’s eyes were flickering over the field. ‘There are a lot of new planes on this field,’ he said. ‘Fighters by the look of them.’

As they watched, a Luftwaffe machine, two engined and crewed by two or three men, taxied in front of them so they couldn’t move. They studied it carefully, noticing its armament.

‘Daimler-Benz engines,’ Dicken observed. ‘Must be the new Messerschmitt Zerstorer.’ Glancing at the map, he looked about him. ‘The shortest route out of this place,’ he went on, ‘is east to Poland, then north to Sweden. Unfortunately, if the Germans are massing on that frontier, that could be hazardous to say the least.’

‘Could we head for London for a few minutes as a feint, then bolt for Italy?’

Dicken eyed the sky. ‘There’s hardly a cloud about.’ He indicated the fighters. ‘And, fast as this job is, I dare bet that lot are faster. They’d have us in no time. If there’s no permission or any sign of them bringing us back to the hangars by evening we’ll chance it and bolt at ground level for the Netherlands. The sun’ll be low then and in their eyes.’

‘What’ll happen if we don’t manage it?’

‘Internment, I suppose.’

‘And if we do?’

‘Home, of course.’

‘I meant if the war came.

‘Back into uniform. They’ll want everybody they can get. I saw them calling up the reservists in 1914. Boozy old men, a lot of them. They weren’t a scrap of good. The good ones all disappeared at Mons and First Ypres. The others – they slung them out or gave them jobs at base where they started the usual fiddles and made themselves comfortable for the rest of the war.’

‘There’ll be a few like that if it happens again,’ Babington said slowly. ‘What’ll
you
do?’

‘Desk job, I expect. Bit old now for fighting. How about you? Why don’t you go for a commission? If this war comes, it’ll be a big one and on the law of averages could take five or six years. And because we’re about as unprepared as we were in 1914, I reckon they’d be glad of experienced men, and there’s nobody more experienced than you Halton apprentices.’

A car approached them. It was Udet again, in the full panoply of uniform this time. ‘All flying’s banned,’ he explained unhappily. ‘I’m still trying to get permission for you to leave.’ He looked worried and his face was moist with perspiration. ‘But it’s difficult,’ he went on. ‘Everybody’s on edge.’ He lit a cigarette with uncertain fingers. ‘There’s been a hell of a disaster. To the Stukas.’

‘I thought they were unsurpassable.’

Udet shook his head, as if he were dazed. ‘They are. They are. It’s not that.’ He gestured. ‘Wolfram von Richthofen, the Master’s cousin – you’ll remember meeting him – he laid on a demonstration at the Neuhammer training ground for Sperrle and Loerzer. He didn’t like dive bombers but he’s got used to them and wanted to show what they could do. There was to be a mass attack using smoke bombs, by two groups.’ He dragged nervously at the cigarette. ‘They were instructed to approach from about 4000 metres and dive through a cloud layer that had been reported at between 800 and 2000 metres, and release their bombs at 300 metres. But there was ground fog near Cotbus and only one group recognised it for what it was. Gruppe G76 thought it was the cloud and the whole formation tore through it into the earth at full speed. Not one piano from the fifth floor. A whole lot.’ He drew a deep breath before continuing. ‘Only a few realised what had happened and pulled up, but they were hitting the trees and in seconds the ground was littered with debris. They’re trying to push the blame on to me. But it wasn’t my fault. I only supplied the damned machines. Somebody failed to tell them about the fog, but those bastards will try to wriggle out of things in case it loses them prestige with the Party.’

He was obviously badly shaken and Babington, who had bought a bottle of German brandy to take home, opened it and offered it.

Udet took a good swallow. ‘First time I ever thought of conducting a grossstadtbummel inside an aeroplane,’ he said glumly.

He soon disappeared again but his car had hardly vanished from sight when they saw it returning.

‘Made it!’ Udet climbed out, grinning his relief. ‘I got my people to see Bodenschatz personally. You’re all right. And the disaster wasn’t as bad as we thought. It only affected one group and some of them escaped. There were only thirteen. But, hell, that’s bad enough.’ He lit a cigarette and frowned. ‘They’ve accused some controller who failed to warn about the fog. I expect the poor bastard’s for the chop. As for you, you can go. Anti-aircraft batteries have been advised. You’re to fly south at a height of three hundred metres.’

‘So they can hit us if they have to?’

Udet handed over a sheet of paper containing their flight instructions. ‘For the love of God stick to the courses and heights shown,’ he said. ‘I don’t want your death on my hands, Dicko.’

There was a pause, then Udet extended his hand. Dicken took it warmly.

‘Auf Wiedersehen, Erni. Until next time.’

There was a trace of Udet’s old smile. ‘If there is one,’ he said.

‘You’ll never win, Knägges,’ Dicken said earnestly. ‘And it’ll mean the end of Germany and the end of Hitler and the Nazis.’

Udet shrugged. ‘
Besser ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende
,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end.’

They flew south towards Switzerland, the cameras working all the way, and hit the Swiss border north of Zurich. The sky seemed to be empty of fighters but there were a lot of bombers of various types heading east – towards the invasion of Poland, they assumed. Their camouflage was dark and as they passed beneath it was hard to see them against the ground. Crossing into Switzerland, they flew on into France and landed near Dijon for fuel. Heading north-west again, they hit the English coastline at Portsmouth.

‘Wonder if they’ll pick us up on the Sound Locator System,’ Babington said and they smiled because they both knew that the Sound Locator System was the name given to disguise a new radio scheme which worked on a system of bouncing waves from a ground station to identify friendly aircraft from hostiles. Turning east, they landed eventually at Heston.

The Customs Officer greeted them with the usual laconic question. ‘Where from?’

‘Berlin,’ Dicken said.

The Customs man eyed them as if he didn’t believe them. ‘Left it a bit late, haven’t you?’ he said.

To Dicken’s surprise, the German invasion of Poland did not take place. Goering was believed to be sceptical of Ribbentrop’s claim that the British would never go to war over Poland and it even began to look as if Dicken’s talks with Udet had had their effect.

His service career finished, Dicken headed for his house at Lensbury, and for the next two days worked about the garden, wondering what he was going to do now that he was no longer in a position to fly. He was not happy and considered writing letters to everyone he could think of who might be interested in him. There were firms producing instructors who were now turning out pilots for the newly-formed Air Force Reserve, but he didn’t try too hard to attract their attention because, despite the reassurances of the more self-satisfied daily newspapers that there would be no war, he had long since decided there would and found himself thanking God for the short service commission scheme that had been introduced and the eager young pilots who were willing to train at weekends.

The country had been saved by the skin of its teeth. Before the Munich meeting between Hitler and Chamberlain the previous year, the RAF’s front-line fighters had been Fury biplanes, machines with slow twin Vickers whose performance was purely academic, anyway, because everybody knew perfectly well that the aircraft that carried them would never get close enough to the German Heinkels and Dorniers to fire at them. The atmosphere had been heavy with depression and even the Super-Furies and Gladiators, which had four guns and a top speed of 245mph, were Stone Age machines by comparison with what the Germans flew. Of the 750 fighters Fighter Command had possessed only 90 were Hurricane monoplanes.

They had been in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude and only the constant threats from Hitler had stirred things up until the squadrons were at last being re-equipped. Even so, the Hurricanes, intolerant of faulty handling and possessing a Merlin engine that was still giving problems, were far from popular.

Staying up late on the last day of August to listen to the late news on the BBC, Dicken woke at five o’clock the following morning from a deep dream of marching feet to realise the sound came from a heavy knocking on his front door. Sitting bolt upright, he hurried to the window. Below, in the grey morning light he could see the postman standing on the porch with the village policeman.

The policeman looked up. ‘Are you Wing Commander ND Quinney, DSO, MC, DFC, MM?’ he asked solemnly.

‘You know damn well I am, Fred,’ Dicken snorted.

The policeman didn’t even blink. ‘Will you please come down to the door, sir. The postman ’as an important letter for you.’

Putting on his dressing gown, Dicken opened the door. The postman handed him the letter.

‘Since when have you needed an escort to deliver a letter?’ Dicken asked.

The postman gave a sheepish smile, then for the first time the policeman showed signs of being human. His face split in a wide grin. ‘You’ve got to put your uniform back on, sir,’ he said, ‘and go and shoot down some more of them old ’Uns. You’ve been called back.’

Dicken stared at him for a moment, then wrenched at the envelope. The letter instructed him to report to Training Command, Shawbury, Shropshire, as chief signals officer.

‘God damn and blast it to everlasting hell!’ he shouted.

The policeman looked alarmed. ‘Ain’t it that, sir?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Then what’s the trouble? Don’t you want to go?’

Dicken glared. As an under-aged youth wanting to go to sea in 1914 he had become a fully qualified radio operator, though his mother, fearful of him being drowned, had refused to give her consent and he had gone into the RFC instead. But that first class certificate had dogged him throughout his career and at all sorts of odd moments he had found himself in charge of signals stations or groups in which, because he had long since lost this enthusiasm for wireless, he hadn’t the slightest interest. He was still trying to work out some means of avoiding the posting when the telephone rang. It was Willie Hatto.

Like Dicken a veteran of the earlier war, Group Captain William Wymarck Wombwell Hatto had also had his career blighted by Diplock. With an American, Walt Foote, they had formed an anarchical trio that existed chiefly for the derision of pompous or downright bad senior officers, chiefly Diplock and his mentor, St Aubyn. Because his father, Lord Hooe, sat in the House of Lords and he had brothers in the Foreign Office and the Church, Hatto had been harder to hold down but even he had only recently managed to struggle up to group captain.

‘The balloon’s due to go up,’ he said at once. ‘The Germans have gone into Poland. Have you heard?’

‘I guessed. I’ve just received a letter telling me to report to Shawbury. As a bloody signals officer!’

Hatto gave a hoot of laughter. ‘That old wireless certificate of yours!’

‘I’ve been on the telephone to the Air Ministry and asked for a squadron. The bastards informed me that owing to my advanced age and the new techniques of fighting, such a posting’s out of the question and I have to be a good boy and attend to the job they’ve picked out for me.’

Hatto laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The CO at Shawbury’s Cuthbert Orr and he’s all right. And, look, I’m at the Air Ministry at the moment with my own department. I’ll find you a job. We could do with someone with some sense. The place’s in a panic because the bloody politicians are delaying carrying out their promise to declare war and while we’re sitting with our thumbs in our bums the Germans are wiping the floor with the Poles. If they don’t wake up, the Luftwaffe will be first off the mark and bomb us in the first minute after the declaration and the Navy’s worried sick that the German fleet will nip out while we’re still at peace and place its ships across our trade routes.’