The Complete Flying Officer X Stories (5 page)

“You came to ask me something,” he says.

“Take no notice, sir. Please. She is upset.”

“You want to know what happened? Isn't that it?”

“Yes, sir. It would help us a little, sir.”

The Wing Commander says very quietly: “Perhaps I can tell you a little. He was always coming to me and asking to go out on operations. Most of them do that. But he used to come and beg to be allowed to go more than most. So more often than not it was a question of stopping him from going rather than making him go. It was a question of holding him back. You see?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And whenever I gave him a trip he was very happy. And the crew were happy. They liked going with him. They liked being together with him, because they liked him so much and they trusted him. There were seven of them and they were all together.”

The woman is listening, slightly lifting her head.

“It isn't easy to tell you what happened on that trip.
But we know that conditions got suddenly very bad and that there was bad cloud for a long way. And we know that they had navigational difficulties and that they got a long way off their course.

“Even that might not have mattered, but as they were coming back the outer port engine went. Then the radio transmitter went and the receiver. Everything went wrong. The wireless operator somehow got the transmitter and the receiver going again, but then they ran short of petrol. You see, everything was against him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They came back the last hundred miles at about a thousand feet. But they trusted him completely, and he must have known they trusted him. A crew gets like that — flying together gives them this tremendous faith in each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They trusted him to get them home, and he got them home. Everything was against him. He feathered the outer starboard engine and then, in spite of everything, got them down on two engines. It was a very good show. A very wonderful show.”

The man is silent, but the woman lifts her head. She looks at the Wing Commander for a moment or two, immobile, very steady, and then says, quite distinctly: “Please tell us the rest.”

“There is not much,” he says. “It was a very wonderful flight, but they were out of luck. They were up against all the bad luck in the world. When they came to land they
couldn't see the flare-path very well, but he got them down. And then, as if they hadn't had enough, they came down slightly off the runway and hit an obstruction. Even then they didn't crash badly. But it must have thrown him and he must have hit his head somewhere with great force, and that was the end.”

“Yes, sir. And the others?” the man says.

“They were all right. Even the second pilot. I wish you could have talked to them. It would have helped if you could have talked to them. They know that he brought them home. They know that they owe everything to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Wing Commander does not speak, and the man very slowly puts the fur over the woman's shoulders. It is like a signal for her to get up, and as she gets to her feet the man stands up too, straightening himself, no longer leaning on the umbrella.

“I haven't been able to tell you much,” the Wing Commander says. “It's just the way it is.”

“It's everything,” the man says.

For a moment the woman still does not speak, but now she stands quite erect. Her eyes are quite clear and her lips, when she does speak at last, are quite calm and firm.

“I know now that we all owe something to him,” she says. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, madam.”

“Good-bye, sir,” the man says.

“You are all right for transport?”

“Yes, sir. We have a taxi.”

“Good. The sergeant will take you back.”

“Good-bye, sir. Thank you.”

“Good-bye,” the woman says.

“Good-bye.”

They go out of the office. The sergeant meets them at the outer door, and the man puts up the umbrella against the rain. They walk away along the wet perimeter, dwarfed once again by the grey-green noses of the Stirlings. They walk steadfastly, almost proudly, and the man holds the umbrella a little higher than before, and the woman, keeping up with him now, lifts her head.

And the Wing Commander, watching them from the window, momentarily holds his face in his hands.

Perhaps the finest pilot I ever knew was Eddington-Green, whom we called E.G. He had no medals.

E.G. was small and compact, with cool, light, devilish, imperturbable eyes. His hands were surprisingly large for so small a man. On each hand the muscle between the thumb and forefinger, on the back of the hand, was very powerful. It stood out like a swelling.

He had made it hard and powerful by ju-jitsu, but he was afraid of practising the ju-jitsu any longer for fear of hurting, perhaps killing, someone. He looked a small man to kill anybody.

Pilots are often interested in nothing but popsies, kites, and beer. E.G. was interested in many things — so many that I never found out about them all. He raced motorcars and collected stamps; he was interested in ships, had served in the Navy, and was a good radiographer. He had surprising tastes in advanced music; he was a good revolver shot and he was fond of flowers.

One of the few things he was not interested in, it seemed, was getting drunk. There were few parties for E.G. He did not stay up for those occasions, after ops., when air-crews relieve their feelings by doing trapeze acts over sofas.

After a long, hard trip he would come into the mess quite quietly; drink a small light ale; warm his hands by the fire and talk for a few minutes; say that the trip was good or bad, in about as many words; and then go to bed.

It was almost a tradition that no one ever came home before him. No one flew a Stirling so fast and no one, except E.G. himself, knew why.

There was once an occasion when a force of Stirlings, owing to some sudden change of weather at base, was recalled from northern Germany. All the kites, except E.G., were but seventy miles short of their target. E.G. was over the target. He was not long over the target, but he remained there long enough to do a circus act with a ring of searchlights, shooting them out one by one before turning for home. This shook even Intelligence. “You've no business to have got so far,” they said.

There is no doubt, of course, that he had been there. He had been there simply because he said so. E.G. never shot a false line, or claimed a target unless he was sure.

The secret of his flying so fast was a trick, but it also had something artistic in it. It was one of those things he was never tired of working out for himself, and which seemed so simple when done. In the same way he used to watch the reactions of himself and other people to living
and flying. He used to note how calm and clear and sure and icy he became in the periods when he did not drink at all. He used to note how shaky and sometimes how shortlived were those who did.

In E.G.'s squadron there was at one time a man named Tusser; a big crude ex-civil pilot, who hated Stirlings. Tusser, heavy and bullying, would be badly whistled six non-operational nights out of seven. E.G., who knew why Tusser was whistled and why he bullied and why he hated Stirlings, said: “I give him six more trips.” Two trips later Tusser did not return.

I don't want to give the impression that E.G. was perfect, but that he was interested not only in flying but also in the things that flying does to men. I shall say nothing about the time he calmly formated with two M.E. 109's, he himself flying solo, in an Anson trainer.

I liked to hear him describe the feelings and the sight of flight: the solo loneliness, the tracer coming up at you slow and orange until the last furious flashing moment, the moon over the miles and miles of cotton cloud, the flak so thick and many-coloured that it hung in the night air like paper streamers at a ball.

I liked to hear him talk of the time when he was coming home from a night trip to France. It was summer and he was flying at about eighteen thousand, watching the sun rising over the sea. In the serene and beautiful air the sun floated upward like an orange behind the rim of the yellow horizon. Below was a solitary ship, which the navigator reported was smoking badly.

E.G., always curious, put the aircraft into a turn, and, going back, went down to about ten thousand in order to look at her. From that height, in the clear summer morning air, he took the ship to be a merchantman of about 9,000 tons and he took her now to be smoking quite naturally, as if she were stoking up. So he turned the aircraft away, keeping the same height, and headed her again towards England.

And then, from that lower altitude, he saw an amazing thing. He saw the sun just trying to float upward over the horizon: rising for the second time on the same day.

If it hadn't been for a sense of great curiosity, a strong independent persistence, E.G. would never have seen this at all. It was as if he was living part of his life twice over. This quality of curiosity and independence, which made him test his reactions to drink and work out devices for flying faster and turn back to look at solitary ships that might be in trouble, made him the kind of pilot he was, and once, when he was flying Stirlings, almost finished him as a pilot altogether. His life would have been so much easier, so much smoother, and so much duller if he had kept to other people's rules instead of making his own.

The weather was not very good when he set out that afternoon to fly into Holland, to attack somewhere inland a target whose name I have forgotten.

It was late December and the weather had been intermittently dirty for several weeks. As E.G. crossed the coast somewhere beyond Scheveningen, the weather suddenly
closed down, dark and rainy, and he knew after a few minutes that the chances of seeing the target had gone. There was only one other aircraft with him, and after he had called it up they decided to turn back to sea. “Keep to the coast,” E.G. said. “We may see a little shipping.”

He lost sight of the other aircraft, but his own peculiar independent curiosity made him turn down towards the Hook of Holland instead of out to the open sea. In a couple of hours, if he had been sensible, he could have been eating lobster paste and Swiss roll, or smiling at the W.A.A.F. waitresses, fresh with their afternoon lipstick, in the mess. Instead, he turned the aircraft south-westward, just beyond sight of the coast, to look for shipping.

It was about ten minutes later that his navigator, a big, husky Canadian, who was never really happy except when fighting, called out over the inter-comm. That he could see a tanker below. E.G. turned and saw her, too; she seemed quite large; he thought perhaps about 12,000 tons.

He saw, too, that she had two other ships with her, and they seemed very small beside her. They seemed so small, indeed, that he took them for tugs that had come out to meet her from the coast. It was a great mistake, as he found out later.

He turned away at once to make his first bombing run. The weather was clearer now. The cloud was higher, with breaks in it. There was no rain. He took his time
and came in level and low, but not too low, dead over the tanker, and the navigator let go about a third of his bombs.

As he came down, the little escort ships, which he had thought were tugs, hit him with a surprising blaze of fire. He knew then what they were: not tugs, but escort flak ships, and they had holed his starboard wing.

From then he could have turned and gone safely home to lobster paste, Swiss roll, and the W.A.A.F.'s in their cool blue uniforms pouring the tea. Instead, he drew away for a second bombing run. He came in level and low again. The flak was heavier than ever now, and when he drew out again the aircraft, rocking badly, was full of smoke. Even then he could have gone home. Instead, he called the navigator.

“How many left, Mac?”

“Seven.”

“O.K.,” he said. “This time.”

He drew away for a third time. He drew away much farther this time and came in much lower, so that the gunners could use their guns. He came in just over the mast of the tanker.

He saw the crew running across the deck. He saw them fall over one another, over the gear lying on the decks, and down the open hatches. He saw the tracer fire swinging up from the flak ships, like a series of violent orange balls thrown by a conjurer, first casual, then very fast, flying all about him as he dived.

He felt everything suddenly dissolve in a tremendous
blast of fire. He felt that his ear-drums had been smashed. He could not see. “This is it,” he thought. “We've had it. This is it.”

He tried to pull the plane out of the dive that had taken them so low that it seemed they must clip off the mast of the ship, but for a few moments she would not come. She went soaring along, rocking violently, just above the dirty surface of the sea.

He strained hard to pull her out, and at last, slowly and heavily, she came out and began to climb. At that moment, too, his hearing came back. He heard a raging confusion of excited voices over the inter-comm. The whole crew seemed to be shouting wildly, and what they were shouting shook him for a moment worse than the flak, the explosion, and the dive had done.

“For God's sake. Fighters!”

He did not realise until that moment what had happened: that the tanker had been steaming steadily into port and that he had been following her in. He suddenly saw below him the flat grey edge of coast; then the dark line of fighters coming up astern from the land. He had just time to see the black smoke of the burning tanker ballooning up below him before he turned out to sea.

He realised at once that the plane would not manoeuvre. He was flying at about three hundred feet, perhaps less, above the sea. The afternoon was already darkening. Heavy cloud was driving in from the land. His speed was down to about a hundred and thirty, and he could neither increase it nor climb.

The plane was dead and heavy and soon the yelling in the inter-comm., which had temporarily ceased, began again. “They're coming bloody close, E.G.,” the navigator said. “Jeez, they're bloody close.”