The Challenging Heights (12 page)

‘The epicentre was at Zebar,’ they were told. ‘We got away lightly. There must have been an estimated thousand deaths in the town and a lot more in the surrounding towns and villages. They’re desperately in need of help, but there’s no radio contact and we want operators flown in with their sets so they can tell us what’s needed and where. It’ll take the cars days to get there because it’s disputed territory and there’s a lot of hostility, but the aircraft can do it in a matter of hours and be sending messages back at once. We want reports on the situation.’

The aircraft began to take off in the middle of the afternoon, for various points along the fault where the wrecked villages lay; Dicken’s assignment was Jehuddin, a narrow-gutted little town under the hills. As he passed over the ridges, his engine started faltering, but, as he looked down at the forbidding terrain beneath, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do, the engine started firing again and, as he descended on the other side of the ridge, it began to behave itself once more. The air over Jehuddin was yellow with dust up to a height of three hundred feet as if the wrecked town had expired in a great gasp. The narrow landing strip had been damaged and a great jagged crack ran in a zigzag down its entire length. All the buildings had collapsed and the landing area was full of people and carts.

They flew low, waving frantically to the crowd to clear the field, but the Iraqis gave no indication that they were intending to move and Dicken started climbing again to find somewhere else to land. As he reached 6000 feet the engine started faltering once more, then cut abruptly. He tried diving with the propeller windmilling to start it again but it had no effect whatsoever and, turning off-course in the hope of finding a less cluttered area, he spotted a piece of ground just ahead which looked flatter and was at least clear. It was boulder strewn, but with no engine and the rocky side of a mountain the only alternative, he decided to get in quickly. Side-slipping off his remaining height, he stalled the Bristol on to the ground from a height of ten feet, losing all flying speed at once so that the aeroplane dropped under its own weight and stayed more or less where it arrived. The impact came in a crash and a twanging of wires but the aeroplane was down.

They were several miles from the village and had been warned to expect hostility so, for safety, the wireless operator, a leading aircraftman called Babington, unbolted the Lewis gun, pushed to the top of a small knoll which would give a commanding field of fire, and sat down to wait. The silence in the hills was unnerving.

After a while a group of men with donkeys, all armed to the teeth, appeared. Babington worked the cocking handle of the gun but the men said they were the bodyguards of the headman of Jehuddin and were anxious to help. Cigarettes were handed round, and they made an examination of the machine. The tail-skid and several fuselage cross members had been broken.

More men had now appeared and one spoke enough English for them to make him understand what was wanted and, while Babington erected his set and its aerial, Dicken went by donkey into the town. No one showed any hostility to him because they were still dragging half-suffocated victims from the wrecked buildings. There were no doctors and, in no time, he became involved in digging an old woman from what had been her house. Leaving her moaning in the street with two broken legs because there was nothing else he could do until more help arrived, he immediately afterwards found himself crawling under the ruins of another wrecked house where a baby was screaming. Lifting the naked morsel from its dead mother’s arms, he carried it to a nearby tent where the village medicine men were doing their best to set broken limbs and cure wounds with things like chupattis or the skin of freshly-killed chickens and a great deal of reading from the Koran. The water supply had disappeared and all there was came from a few stinking wells, already polluted by putrefying bodies. There was no food and no transport except donkeys and one or two ancient carts.

A second shock occurred even as they worked. Immediately, all the rescuers bolted from the wrecked buildings, and it was some time before they could be persuaded to return. By this time the original naked baby Dicken had rescued had been joined by a dozen more, all of them yelling in the heat and all of them without parents to claim them.

The following day a Vernon arrived packed with tents, blankets, and British and Iraqi medical men and supplies. A second arrived during the afternoon with Iraqi army officers and NCOs to bring order to the shattered town, and the worst of the injured were removed. As the dead were buried and the dangerous houses knocked down, the situation began to improve. More food, blankets and tents arrived by lorry and mule trains from undamaged areas, and as the situation was brought under control, Dicken decided it was time to consider the damaged Bristol.

Despite the smashed tail-skid and the broken cross members, he felt it could be flown again and, coming to the conclusion that it could even be got off the ground where it stood if only the landing area could be increased, he persuaded the headman to allocate helpers, and set about clearing it. The trouble had been caused by the fuel, which must have come from contaminated petrol, doubtless part of the drums Diplock had resurrected and then lost.

During the next two days, he carefully drained and filtered it, then, with the aid of the headman’s carpenters, the leg of a broken chair and a lot of luck, they managed to get the tail end of the Bristol sufficiently patched to risk a take-off. The following day another Vernon arrived with more supplies, more Iraqi soldiers, a relief wireless operator with a spare set, and instructions for Dicken that he was to remain at Jehuddin and await orders.

The problem was to get into the air again and, staring round him from the small saucer-like depression where they had come down, he began to remove all the stowed items from the aircraft, the spare drum of water, the guns, ammunition and tool kit.

‘Think you can do it, sir?’ Babington asked.

‘Just, I reckon.’

‘Then I’d like to come with you, sir.’

Dicken slapped his shoulder, pleased by the show of confidence. ‘Under the circumstances,’ he said, ‘I think you’d better stick around to pick up the pieces if I don’t pull it off.’

The area sloped slightly and, between them and with the help of the local people, they made a last search for dangerous stones. What little breeze there was came down from the hills and was blowing up the slope of the take-off area. As Dicken ran the engine up and checked it, Babington, standing on the wing alongside him, held up his thumb.

‘Good luck, sir.’

Assisted by the headman’s personal bodyguard, huge men armed to the teeth with rifles and swords, their chests draped with ammunition belts, they pushed the Bristol up the slope, then with the aid of an English-speaking Kurd, Dicken explained exactly what he wanted and left it to Babington to give the word when he raised his hand.

Starting the engine, he revved it until he was satisfied then sat for a while in the cockpit, thinking of the down-draughts along the slopes when the wind was coming over the ridges, and the fact that a DH9a had recently flown into a ridge in very similar circumstances while flying to Sulamainiya and Halebja. If he got the aeroplane over and safely back to its base, there’d be a few congratulations and then the incident would be forgotten because it was the sort of thing that was being done every other week. If on the other hand he failed and hit the ridge and was killed, he’d be forgotten equally quickly, but his epitaph would be nothing more than ‘Stupid bugger. He should have dismantled the engine and set fire to the airframe, which is only wood and canvas anyway.’

Before he could depress himself further, he opened the throttle, noticing as he did so that the Kurds had all moved down the slope and were waiting close to the spot where they expected him to hit the hill. Raising his hand, over the roar of the engine he heard Babington shout as he yanked away the chocks and the men holding down the tail in the blast from the propeller, their robes whipped tight against their bodies, released their holds and fell backwards. One of them, slower than the rest, was carried forward as the aeroplane began to move but, ducking under the moving wing, Babington grabbed his leg and yanked him off so that they rolled together in the dust as the machine gathered speed.

The tail lifted at once and the Bristol took up its flying attitude. Its speed rose quickly and, immediately, praying that the petrol wouldn’t let him down, Dicken pulled back the stick and lifted the machine off the ground in a steep climbing turn. The ridge of hills in front approached at alarming speed but, lightened of all its extras, the Bristol soared magnificently and he scraped over the top with only a few feet to spare.

Circling, he slipped down to the landing ground alongside the Vernons and within an hour Babington appeared, riding on a donkey and towing a string of other donkeys carrying the wireless, spare equipment, guns and ammunition.

That afternoon a squadron of armoured cars arrived, bringing spares and a corporal rigger and two men, who started at once to replace the chair-leg tail-skid and the broken fuselage members. By this time, the situation in Jehuddin was under control. Its injured, sick and old were being moved and the town was safe, and the army was on the move again.

By now Dicken and Babington were shaving with borrowed razors and living on a permanent diet of goat. Their stay had done a lot of good because hostile tribesmen had suddenly become friendly and were swearing eternal allegiance to King George. The repairs to the Bristol had just been completed when a wireless message arrived, indicating that the Wahabi had been driven into the town of Suqeiwiya in the north-eastern corner of the country. The army was in a position either to finish them off or drive them over the border into Persia, and Dicken was ordered to fill up with fresh fuel brought by the Vernons and rendezvous with another Bristol south of Katchi. He was in position when the second Bristol arrived and he identified it at once as Hatto’s. As they formed up on each other and headed north-east, the searching column of Feisal’s army was strung across the plain in groups of camels, horses and vehicles.

They found the Wahabi heading down a narrow wadi, hundreds of men filling the narrow gorge in a dense mass of camels, and Hatto left Dicken to keep an eye on them while he returned to the plain to drop a message to the advancing column. The camels, the tassels of their headropes swinging, the riders clutching their rifles, their red and green banners fluttering above them, were moving at a racing trot, half-obscured by a cloud of dust. As Dicken flew over them, he saw the riders lifting their rifles. Most of the firing was wild, but a flag of canvas lifted in the wing to show that some of them were on target.

As the other machine reappeared, Hatto pointed downwards and they dived at the head of the column. Hatto’s bombs exploded in bright flashes that flung up small yellow puffballs like melting cream buns. Camels went down in a crumpling crash, legs flying, long necks flailing, their riders hurled under the feet of the following animals. With the head of the racing column disrupted, the rest wavered and tried to turn back, only to become a more closely-packed target as Dicken arrived. As the bombs exploded, the tribesmen milled around, then broke free and fled towards the open plain where the armoured cars of Feisal’s army were forging ahead. As the machine guns started, more camels went down and the desert was filled with running men and riderless animals.

As they circled over Suqeiwiya well ahead of the army, a strong wind was blowing from the east, sweeping down on the town from a low range of hills that lay behind it, to send the dust flying in clouds with uprooted bushes and bundles of torn grass. Beyond the first range of hills, a second lifted up its peaks, and as they turned over them they hit an area of vicious turbulence.

Hatto’s machine was snatched by the currents to lift two hundred feet then drop again so swiftly it seemed the wings would be torn off. A moment later, Dicken’s machine was flung skywards as if it were no weightier than a moth. The first jolt was not severe but it was enough to make everything on the machine rattle and clatter. The next jolt was harder, then they began to come like the blows of giant fists to press them against their safety belts and plummet them downwards so that the altimeter unwound crazily and the airspeed increased to an unbelievable figure before flinging them upwards again, draining the blood from their brains and making their arms leaden. All the time the plane was shuddering and swinging with an exhaustingly violent motion that put a strain on muscles and nerves and set the wires twanging and humming. Babington was being violently sick over the side of the rear cockpit and there seemed no relief from the torment when, below them, Dicken saw a small open space near the town, which seemed empty of Kerim Fatah Agha’s men. Moving alongside Hatto, he gestured to indicate they should land. Even the chance of meeting a few of Kerim’s followers was preferable to sitting up above the town in the angry sky.

Landing one after the other, they waited at the end of the field, their engines running in case they had to make a hurried take-off, but after a while the motors began to boil and they had to switch off, Babington and the other wireless operator, still green after the circling over the town, staying by the Lewis guns. By this time, a few people had begun to appear and, as they increased in numbers, Hatto flourished his revolver and indicated that they should not approach any nearer.

After a while, five old men arrived. One of them stopped in front of Hatto and began to make a speech. From the few words they had learned, they gathered that Kerim Fatah Agha had vanished and that the old men were anxious to hand over the town. Cigarettes were exchanged and, as someone lit a fire, coffee was produced. When the army arrived half an hour later, they found that the RAF had completed the arrangements and the town was secure.

Hatto glanced at Dicken.

‘I think they ought to give us a gong for this,’ he said. ‘We won the war on our own.’