Hammond Innes - Attack Alarm

I thought suddenly and sickeningly of Marion. Where had she been during the raid? Had she gone to a shelter? Of course she must have done. Was she in the one that had been hit? Questions passed through my mind unanswered. I knew that she meant something to me. What, my confused mind could not realise. All I knew then was that the memory of her face, those clear eyes, that tilted nose, that straight fair hair, hurt. It was like green grass and the river, like a mountain at sunset, against that chaos of broken brick. It was the glimpse of beauty in the midst of ugliness that hurt — the need for beauty that was out of reach. It was a symbol of the best that was in me, chained to the horrors of man-made catastrophe that was the moment’s reality.

I turned up the road leading to the rearmost hangar. Almost immediately I had to get off my bicycle. The road was full of rubble. This was where the bomber we had brought down had crashed. A whole hangar had collapsed like a pack of cards. The tail of the machine with the swastika on it was sticking up out of the ruins of the collapsed roof. It was a miracle it hadn’t caught fire for the roof had been built of wood.

The hangar I wanted adjoined it on the other side. The road in front of me was blocked by the remains of the Naafi Institute. I left my bike and clatered through the ruins. The north wall was still standing and by keeping close to this the going was quite easy. At the farther end, where it adjoined the next hangar, part of the roof was still intact.

Smothered by the dust and smoke and intent on reaching the store hangar, where I knew I should find the rope I wanted, I did not see Vayle until I was right on top of him.

I looked up, startled. He was hardly recognisable. His clothes were torn and covered with dust and his usually well-groomed hair was dishevelled. There was something about his face that frightened me. Pain and bitterness seemed to mingle in the set of his mouth. And his eyes had lost their cold alertness and were fever bright. He looked at me without recognition.

I was just hastening on when I glanced down and saw the thing at his feet. It was the crumpled body of a girl. The face was drained of all colour, and the blood from the gaping wound in her head was congealing with the dust on her face and clothes. I hesitated. And then I realised that it was Elaine Stuart, and I hurried on. The memory of Vayle’s wild dry eyes lingered with me as I passed into the store hangar.

She was dead, of course. No doubt of that. And she had meant a great deal to him. That wild dry-eyed look! I remembered the photograph. Why had he kept that all these years? And then a thought occurred to me. Suppose she had been his wife?

And in a flash I saw it all. The raiders had gone for personnel, not for the hangars. Vayle had known this. Elaine and he had gone to the hangars and not to the shelters. She, with a woman’s premonition, had been afraid of this and had cried out in her sleep against it. But in the morning he had soothed her fears and now, because we had downed, a bomber with a lucky shot, she lay dead at his feet.

I picked up a big coil of light rope lying beside a pile of flares. I could not help feeling sorry for the man. He had thought the hangars the safest place in the ‘drome. I could imagine how he felt.

I had to go back the same way. The end of the other road I knew was blocked. And because of the piled-up ruin of the roof I had to pass quite close to Vayle. He looked at me. And this time into his dazed eyes came recognition. With it came a look of surprise that I did not quite understand. He seemed somehow shocked at the sight of me. I thought he was going to speak to me and I hurried by him. What was there I could say? The stricken look had never left his face though the expression had changed when he recognised me. For the moment at least the girl meant more to him than all his plans.

I retrieved my bike and rode back to the square, the rope slung over my shoulder. It was heavy and I found it difficult to negotiate the scattered debris. Even in the short time I had been getting the rope, things had changed in the square. There were men everywhere, running to shouts of command. Three proper fire-engines had arrived, and more ambulances andA.F.S. fire-pumps. There were civilian cars too, doctors’ cars mostly. And the dead and wounded were being laid out on the grass at the edge of the square. Hoses were being run out and great jets of water were being poured into the blazing blocks.

Clear of the square I passed an Army car with its engine running. There was no-one in it. I realised suddenly that we should need something to tow the bomb away. I left Langdon’s bike and commandeered the car.

It took me but a moment to get back to the gun site in it, bumping over the grass of the flying field because the roadway was too full of craters. Langdon grabbed the rope as soon as I pulled up. He did not hesitate, but ran straight to the bomb, paying the rope out as he ran. We watched, half expecting the thing to go off as he tied the end of the rope round the fins. He did it quickly, but he showed no trace of nerves. It was not the sort of thing you want to think about beforehand. Yet Langdon had known that he, as detachment commander, was going to do it, all the time I had been away getting the rope.

As he ran back I tied the other end of the rope to the rear bumpers of the car. The rope.was about fifty yards long, but even so I did not feel very happy about it as I climbed back into the driving seat. I took the strain slowly in bottom. And as I moved forward with the full weight, I could feel the bump and slither of the bomb at the end of the rope as it followed me like some terrible hobgoblin.

But it was soon over. I left the thing well out on the flying field and, untying the rope, drove back to the site.

‘That’s marvellous of you, Barry,’ Langdon said as I got out of the car.

I felt myself blushing. Blushing had been an awful bugbear to me in my youth, but I thought I had grown out of it. ‘It’s nothing to what you did,’ I said to hide my embarrassment.

‘You’d better return the car now. And at the same time you can take Strang to the first-aid post. His hand is giving him a good deal of pain.’

Strang protested. But he was as white as a sheet and, in spite of a rough-and-ready bandage, blood was dripping quite freely from his hand. They got him into the seat beside me and I drove the big car back along the edge of the field.

As I came into the square the one undamaged Tannoy that I had heard before announced: ‘Preliminary air-raid warning. All personnel not engaged in urgent work take cover. Preliminary air-raid warning.’

The crowd in the square seemed to thin out like magic and vanish. I drove through the scatter to the nearest ambulance. I attracted the attention of a nurse who was trying to stop the blood of a poor fellow whose leg had been shattered. She seemed incredibly cool and impersonal. She glanced at Strang’s hand whilst continuing to work on the man’s leg, ‘You’ll be all right for the moment,’ she told Strang. ‘Just stay around till we’ve patched up some of the worst cases. We’ll soon fix that for you.’ She belonged to a Canadian ambulance unit.

I wanted Strang to get immediate attention. But a glance round told me that the staff of every ambulance in sight was equally busy. There was nothing for it but to let him stay and take his turn. An alarm was on and I had to get back to my site. With Thorby in its present disorganised state anything might happen. The great thing was that the guns should be fully manned.

I sat him down on the grass. They’ll fix you up in no time,’ I said. He did not answer. He was dazed with pain and loss of blood. I went back to the car.

I was just on the point of climbing into the driving seat when I noticed a civilian lying on the grass near by. Something about the white leathery skin of his face made me pause. Streaks of blood from a cut on his forehead showed scarlet on the white sweat of his face. His pale-blue eyes were wide and staring and his lips moved as he muttered to himself. His left shoulder and arm appeared to have been badly crushed. His clothes had been cut away from the shoulder and his hurt roughly dressed. It was his boots that brought recognition to my mind. They were clumsy hob-nailed boots — a workman’s boots.