Tears of Autumn, The (14 page)

They went back into bed, shivering again until warmth brought sleep.

The day came when he had to return to the squadron. She used the flatiron heated on the hob in the kitchen to press some of his shirts, and pack his brown suitcases.

He carried them out to the car, putting one on the back seat and one on the front, on its end.

He was dressed in his blue RAF greatcoat, which had become heavy in the drizzle that now fell.

‘Well, that’s it, darling. I’d better be off.’

Rosemary looked as miserable as he felt at leaving her. Back in the kitchen he took off his cap.

‘Don’t come out again – I’ll be gone in a flash.’

She was in her white mackintosh, a scarf around her head, its ends passed under her chin and tied at the back. He put his large hands on both sides of her head, and searched her face as she looked back at him. There was nothing further to be said. She had already exhorted him many times to be careful, not to do anything foolish.

He knew he had to go quickly. He kissed her gently.

‘I’ll be back soon enough, darling.’

‘You promise to write – every day?’

He nodded. ‘Every day.’

Biff couldn’t resist another kiss, then turned, bumping clumsily into the door before crunching across the gravel to the car. As he opened its door he turned. Rosemary was in the doorway. He gave a nod, which she acknowledged, then he squeezed his frame into the tight space behind the wheel and slammed the forward-opening door.

The engine burst into noisy, growling life.

In too much of a hurry, eager to cut short the agony, he
managed to crash the gears. He eventually got it into first, dropped the handbrake and turned out of the gate.

He gave a quick wave, but the figure in the doorway didn’t move.

He felt a lump in his throat.

They crossed the channel, flying in formation with another squadron; the view of so many Blenheims was an uplifting sight. After all the anti-shipping and reconnaissance patrols, and the ‘nickelling’ (the dropping of propaganda leaflets), at last they were going as a bomber force in strength.

Biff brought his aircraft down on a grass strip near the Belgian border, and taxied to dispersal. Immediately ground crews scrambled all over the Blenheim. The air of frenzied activity made the blood tingle. Fuel bowsers and Hillman crew-cars criss-crossed the field; groups of ‘erks’ arrived in endless convoys of three-tonners with spares and ammunition, and were already unloading the supplies into tents scattered, like the aircraft, under the cover of trees.

Their mess was a handsome château, with a formal garden and an elegant eighteenth-century dining room.

What would he not have given to hear Dickie’s comments on their splendid billet?

He immediately set pen to paper, writing to Rosemary. Although he couldn’t give any details of their position – the censors would see to that – he did manage to give her the flavour of the rather grand life he was enjoying.

On his first day, with an excited navigator who doubled as wireless operator and bomb-aimer, and the dorsal gunner, they were ordered to patrol the Luxembourg border. Three pairs of
eyes combed the skies and the ground for the enemy, but there was nothing to see.

Surveillance soon settled in a routine, the only convoys and troop movements noted being the BEF or the French on the move.

As January gave way to February a severe period of winter weather put paid to many of their operations.

With nothing happening, the euphoria they’d felt on their arrival began to wane, and the château proved to be an icy palace that was unable to keep any heat. The cooks did a terrific job, he wrote to Rosemary by candlelight, the power having gone off again. Their tented field kitchens in the ornamental gardens turned out decent food, and plenty of it, despite the freezing cold. And everywhere the pipes were solid ice.

At last the arctic weather relinquished its iron grip as they moved into March. Rosemary had spent the majority of the nights in the frozen cottage, going to bed wearing slacks, jumper and a woollen hat and, for a couple of days, her overcoat as well. In the beginning, every time she saw the postman crunching up the path between the piles of snow she had shovelled aside her heart went into her mouth, her first thought being; was it a war office telegram being delivered by the regular postman because of the bad conditions?

But as the weeks passed she grew calmer, reading his letters over and over again, going to sleep at night after rereading the latest one under the blankets by torchlight, kissing the place where his crosses indicated he’d pressed his lips to the paper.

And she began to question her own role in the war. She wondered whether to tell him in her next letter, but kept putting it off, not wanting to give him any concern.

Biff and a couple of others, stood down for three days, hitched a ride in a transport plane to Paris.

They mingled on the cobbled streets with men in the uniforms of many countries, but overwhelmingly of course the French
army and air force.

As they sat outside a café on the Avenue des Champs Elysées near to the Arc de Triomphe, enjoying the first warmish sunlight of the year, passing Parisians gave them welcoming waves.

Biff went to the Louvre, but found most of the exhibits were missing, sent to safer places under the fear of the bomber fleets that might be unleashed on the civilian population, as had happened in Spain. That evening he felt a bit guilty, sitting with his chums, bottles of wine on their table as chorus girls kicked up their long legs and showed them their frilly knickers in a rendition of the cancan: guilty because it seemed that he was deceiving Rosemary, who believed he was suffering on a makeshift airfield facing the German threat, and because it seemed wrong to be excited by the sight of the dancers’ bodies.

He was missing her in more ways than one.

All too soon, though, they were back ‘home’, where the leaves on the trees were beginning to show, the strip becoming greener as the grass began to grow through the surface that was now like a quagmire after being harder than reinforced concrete.

And the tempo of life increased, as news came through at dawn on 9 April that a German invasion fleet had launched an attack on Norway. Denmark was occupied in hours.

The adjutant had broken the news, limping into the mess leaning heavily on his walking stick.

‘Well chaps, the balloon’s gone up.’

They followed the fortunes of the air force, and particularly the Blenheims, deployed from Britain in the defence of Norway; but with round trips of over 1,000 miles over the sea, it was always going to be too little, too late. Blenheim operations over that country ceased on 2 May.

At sunset Biff stood in a doorway of the mess that night, smoking a cigarette and feeling strangely detached from his body, as though he was observing everything around him from some other vantage point. He knew why. He guessed, like everybody else, that their turn was coming, and some part of him
wanted to remember this peaceful corner of France before it was gone for ever.

He came round, the pain in his head and arm making him call out in agony. And he was cold, so cold. His hand was resting on the alarm device around his neck. Had he pressed it? He couldn’t remember but his fingers wouldn’t move as he tried to do so. Was he wounded? He’d been hit as they … as they…. Confused, he couldn’t remember. Still frowning, he lost consciousness again.

It happened with unbelievable, frightening speed, the whole period lasting less than a month.

On 10 May, at breakfast, they were told that German forces had started to attack the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and that the famous Maginot Line had been outflanked by an airborne assault.

They scrambled immediately and under the direction of the headquarters of the Advanced Air Striking Force, they were ordered to bomb airfields, bridges and troop columns to stem the invasion.

As they drove out to the dispersed Blenheims they exchanged cheery exhortations to take care, glad at last to be doing something.

He lined up behind the CO, watching as he booted his engines and roared down the runway. In turn Biff moved forward, turned into the wind.

As the skipper’s plane came unstuck from mother earth and clawed up into the sky he pushed the two Bristol engines to full power and started rolling.

They were on their way: target, German transport aircraft on the ground in Holland.

There were twelve Blenheims in all. As they passed over the rolling French countryside they could see signs of battle off to the right, and the roads appeared to be jammed with huge
columns of people and lorries.

The German-occupied airfield was nearly deserted when they arrived over it. They laid their four 250-pound bombs near some buildings and a Junker 88, watching with satisfaction as explosions and black smoke rose into the air behind them. They were turning for home when about fifty Messerechmitt 109 fighters appeared from the north-east. What followed was carnage. Sweating and terrorstruck, Biff managed to find cloud cover, but saw at least four Blenheims explode or crash in flames. When they got back, only six others landed at varying intervals.

There was no time to agonize over the losses. They were ordered up again – to attack a bridge across which German armour was passing, pursuing the retreating BEF.

Joined by aircraft from another squadron, sixteen in all, they headed for the target. Eight Hurricane fighters rendezvoused with them after ten minutes.

Suddenly the fighter pilots saw the sky fill with German Me 109s – 120 in all.

Despite the fearful odds the Hurricanes turned into the attack as the Blenheims clung to the deck, heading for the target just visible in the distance. Biff heard the gunner shout something over the R/T, and his gun fired, vibrating the aircraft. The
bomb-aimer
climbed into the nose and readied the bombs.

The first Blenheims ahead of him were now attacking the bridge. He saw the lead aircraft release its bombs, hitting one end of the structure. As the aircraft flew over the bridge at barely one hundred feet it was hit by flak and fell a blazing torch into the riverbank, where it exploded.

Biff was concentrating on keeping a steady line for the
bomb-aimer’s
benefit, but he could see in his mirror a Messerschmitt looming up behind. His gunner was blazing away but the enemy opened up with his cannons. As Biff watched he saw the turret hit. It splintered as his crewman collapsed in a welter of blood. He would be next.

‘Bombs away.’

In that split second he yanked the yoke and tramped the rudder bar, putting the plane almost on its side, engines screaming as he crossed over one of the bridge towers. The sky was a mass of tracer streamers and black puffs of shellbursts. He didn’t see or know how it happened, but the Jerry was no longer with him, instead was carrying straight on with smoke trailing behind him. Miraculously Biff had escaped the flak that had hit their own fighter.

Chest thumping, sweat pouring down his face, getting in his eyes, his pants wet with urine, he hedge-hopped for home.

Back on the ground the medics got his turret gunner out – dead – and covered his body with a tarpaulin. Intelligence reported the bridge still standing. Six aircraft failed to return.

As night fell he slumped in the mess, staring unseen at the food. There was masses of it, more than half the chairs were empty at the dining-table.

A few days later it was obvious that the Allied ground and air forces were facing total defeat. Twice they had to abandon their airfield hastily and fly further back. The German advance was relentless: nothing or nobody seemed able to stop it. Everywhere they met resistance they used their Stuka dive-bombers, the menacing gull-winged birds of prey filling the air with their frightening banshee wail as they dived on to their targets. Towering columns of black smoke rising in the air marked the end of resistance. Huge columns of refugees jammed the roads, so that their ground crews were not waiting for them when they got to the latest, hurriedly marked-out strip. Two days passed before they got fuel and rearmed, for what turned out to be one last attempt to stop the invincible German motorized columns.

The Commander of the AASF gambled everything, putting every available aircraft into the air to bomb the Germans at Sedan.

Nine squadrons, or what was left of them, attacked, including Biff’s remaining Blenheims and Fairey Battles.

It was a massacre. Of the seventy-one aircraft that had tried to
destroy the pontoon bridges which were the target, only
thirty-three
returned. The number of crew members who were killed, wounded or taken prisoner was 102, a terrible price as the pontoons remained intact.

Biff got back on one engine, the other had been hit and had caught fire. He’d feathered and extinguished the flames. Half of his plexiglass nose cone was missing, the cockpit was full of blasting cold air. When they’d landed, and he opened the hatch, he’d collapsed on to the wet earth totally exhausted. The ground crew gathered around, looking at the blackened engine and at the fuselage with at least thirty pockmarks from cannon fire.

Only five serviceable aircraft were available for the next day’s operation: another, last attempt, on that damned pontoon bridge. It was ineffectual and only three aircraft returned. Biff wasn’t involved. He was watching the CO approach with his wheels down when a desperate shout went up: ‘One-o-nines’.

The Messerschmitts came in low with the sun behind them, spraying the field with cannonfire even as Biff dived into a slit trench with two others jumping in on top of him. The CO’s plane nosed into the ground and exploded in a ball of flame.

He couldn’t see but he heard the explosions as all their remaining aircraft, including his which had been unserviceable, blew up in flames and billowing smoke. The Me 109s also raked anything else they could see, totally unopposed; there were no fighters, no ack-ack, only a few brave souls with 303 rifles, which were completely ineffectual. Several three-tonners went up, and the cooks’ tent was hit, killing all three men as they worked to make an evening meal for the survivors.

When it was over, and the other two had got off him he stood up and surveyed the scene. Pillars of black oily smoke rose everywhere he looked.

They had been effectively wiped out. It was no surprise to Biff when he heard later that no higher loss in operations of a similar size had ever been suffered by the Royal Air Force.

They started the long march to the coast that night – the safest
time, along with about a million other people. The roads and lanes were jammed with humanity pushing prams loaded with their worldly goods, white-faced children walking beside them, old folk riding on mattresses piled on lorries. Vehicles of the French and British armies, bicycles, donkeys, cars and carts formed the motley procession to the coast.

As soon as the day dawned, so came the diving Stukas with their devilish screams, and fighters, racing straight up the roads, machine-gunning and ripping to shreds those people caught out before they could jump into ditches or flee into the woods and fields. The roaring exploding flames and billowing acrid smoke, the mangled bodies of man and beast, the screaming and crying, failed to stop the columns forming again, with the relentless pressing need to get away, like animals on the move in Africa.

Tired, hungry and dishevelled, Biff and the remains of the squadron were guided to a place called Dunkirk.

When they got there they had to wait, sheltering in the sand dunes as enemy aircraft bombed and strafed at will.

Biff looked up, his face covered in wet sand, to see a destroyer standing off shore, hit by a bomb that went straight down one of its three funnels.

The whole ship lifted almost out of the water as it exploded, then fell back into the sea, a flaming hulk.