Hammond Innes - Attack Alarm

‘I see. A sensation-seeking paper and a sensation-seeking man.’ I was conscious of a very unpleasant feeling of loneliness. ‘I regard this matter very seriously.’ His voice was cold, distant. ‘The reasons for your suspicions seem to me quite inadequate. Apart from that, however, your communication with your newshound friend might have had very unfortunate repercussions. Mr Vayle, though of British nationality, was for a number of years lecturer at a Berlin University. Being of Jewish extraction, he was forced to leave in 1934. As I have said, we think very highly of him at this station. Had your wire not been intercepted, I can well imagine what a stunt article your friend would have written.’

He got up abruptly. ‘I leave you to deal with this man, Mr Ogilvie. You know my wishes. I want no repetition of this at my station.’

Ogilvie got to his feet. ‘I’ll see that it does not occur again, sir.’

I hesitated.

But as the C.O. moved to the door, I said: ‘Excuse me, sir.’

He paused with his hand on the door. ‘What is it?’ he said, and his tone was not inviting.

‘In the first place,’ I said, Trent would never have used any information he obtained without my permission. Secondly, because I have joined the Army I have not forfeited my right as a citizen to take any steps I think proper in the interests of my country. My suspicions were flimsy. I knew that. It was out of the question at that stage to raise the matter with anyone in authority. I took the only course open to me to attempt to satisfy those suspicions one way or the other.’

The interests of your country would have been best served by your bringing your suspicions to me, not to a newspaper.’ He still spoke quietly, but there was a tremor of anger in his voice.

I suppose it was foolish of me to pursue the matter. But I said: ‘Had I done that, without first seeing whether there were any grounds for my suspicions, I could hardly expect the matter to be taken any more seriously than my views about the information of a plan for immobilising our fighter ‘dromes given me by the German pilot.’

‘The headquarters staff of the station is better able to judge the importance of information than you are. I think it would be wise if you forgot that you’d ever been a journalist and remembered only that you’re a gunner in the British Army.’ He turned to Ogilvie. ‘Whatever you decide, I look to you to see that this sort of thing does not occur again.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Ogilvie opened the door for him.

When he had left, Ogilvie went back to his desk and lit his pipe. ‘You haven’t made it any easier for me by taking the line you did, Hanson,’ he said. ‘Wing-Commander Winton expressed a desire that I should have you transferred to another troop or even another battery, so long as you did not remain at this camp any longer than necessary. However, I am not prepared to go as far as that.’ He took his pipe from his mouth. ‘You will be confined to your site for twenty-eight days, and you will only leave it to get your meals and to wash. All letters and other communications during that period will be delivered to this office for me to censor. I will instruct Sergeant Langdon accordingly. All right. Dismiss!’

I think I was very near to tears as I came out of the office. The sense of frustration was strong in me. I felt lonely and dispirited. I was cut off from the outside world. I felt like a prisoner who wants to tell the world he didn’t do it, but can’t. Thorby was a prison and the barbed-wire bars had closed with a vengeance.

Seated on a bench outside the office building were Fuller and Mason. They fell silent as I emerged. I did not speak to them. I felt so remote from them, as they sat there enjoying the pleasant warmth of the gathering dusk, that I could think of nothing to say. I wandered slowly up the road and across the asphalt in front of the hangars. The peace of a late August evening had settled on the place. The revving of engines, symbol of war in a fighter station, was no longer to be heard. All was still. Faintly came the strains of a waltz from the officer’s mess.

It was quiet. Too quiet. To me it seemed like the lull before the storm. Tomorrow was Thursday. And Friday was the fateful day. If the proposed raid was to prepare the way for an air landing on the ‘drome, any time after Friday might be zero hour. I was in a wretched position. Technically I had done all I could. Yet how could I leave the matter where it stood? Vayle had been a lecturer at a Berlin university. Winton might know him to be sound and my suspicions might be entirely unfounded. Yet the fact that he had been in Berlin at the time the Nazis came into power only served to increase my suspicions. British he might be, but there were Britons who believed in National Socialism. And there was certainly nothing about him to suggest the Jew.

As I approached our site I knew that somehow I had to go through with it. I had to find out whether or not I was right. But how — how? Easy to make the decision, but what was there I could do, confined to my gun site with all my communications with the outside world censored? And anyhow, wasn’t it far more likely that Winton was right? The headquarters’ staff, as he had said, was far better able to judge the reliability of the pilot’s story than I was. And as regards Vayle, Winton had known him intimately for several years, whereas I knew no more of the man than I had been told. It seemed absurd to proceed, when there was so little cause.

When I went into the hut, I found most of the other members of our detachment had already returned and were making their beds. It was nearly nine. I felt nervous. I thought everyone must know what had happened and would be watching me to see how I took it. I went straight over to my bed and began to make it. Kan looked across at me. ‘Well, what did the Little Man want?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing,‘I said.

He didn’t pursue the matter. At nine we went out to the pit and relieved the others. Fuller hadn’t yet turned up. There was only Kan, Chetwood, Micky and myself. ‘Where’s Langdon?’ I asked. It was unlike him to be late for stand-to.

‘He had to go down to the orderly room,’ Kan told me.

I was silent, gazing out across the ‘drome. The sky was very beautiful in the west — and very clear. Soon the nightly procession would start.

‘Got any fags to sell?’ Micky demanded of the gun pit at large.

There was a shout of laughter. ‘Not again,’ said Chetwood despairingly. ‘Why don’t you buy some once in a while?’

‘Once in a while! I like that. I bought ten only this morning.’

‘Then you’re smoking too much.’

‘You’re right there, mate. Do you know how many I smoke a day? Twenty!’

‘Good God!’ said Kan. That means we’re supplying you with seventy a week. Why don’t you buy yourself twenty at a time instead of only ten!’

‘I smoke ‘em too quick, that’s why.’

‘You mean, you don’t smoke enough of ours.’

‘Well, as long as you’re mugs enough.’ He grinned in his sudden mood of frankness. ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t starve — not as long as there was a sap left in the world.’

‘All right, we’re saps, are we? We’ll remember that, Micky.’

‘Well, give us a fag anyway. I ain’t got one — straight I ain’t — an’ I’m just dying for a smoke.’

His request was met by silence. ‘That wasn’t very well received, was it, Micky?’ Chetwood laughed.

‘All right, mate.’ He produced an old fag end. ‘Give us alight, someone.’

‘Oh, my God, no matches either!’

‘Would you like me to smoke it for you?’ This was Fuller, who had just arrived in the pit. He tossed Micky a box of matches.