Hammond Innes - Attack Alarm

‘I must try and trace that fellow,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, can you find out when her birthday would have been?’

‘I expect so. Somebody is bound to know it. But do you really think — ” She stopped with a slight shrug of her shoulders. ‘I mean, as a deadline it doesn’t seem very satisfactory.’

I was only too conscious of this. ‘But I’ve nothing else to goon.’

‘What are you going to do then?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was thinking of that dent on the back of my tin helmet. ‘Find out where Cold Harbour Farm is.

And if Elaine’s birthday was, in fact, on one of the next few days, I should assume there was some connection.’

‘Yes, but what can you do about it?’

‘God knows!’ I said. ‘Time will tell, I suppose.’

She suddenly took my arm. ‘Don’t do anything foolish, Barry. It’s a matter for the authorities.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I’ve nothing concrete to tell them. You can’t expect them to act on a mixture of conjecture and doubtful coincidence.’

We were nearing the shell of the officers’ mess, and I suddenly saw a familiar figure coming towards us from the direction of the hangars. ‘Oh, good!’ I said. ‘John Nightingale is all right. He was missing.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I don’t know him personally, but he’s got a wonderful reputation in his squadron.’

He recognised me as I saluted him. ‘Glad to see you’re still alive in this shambles,’ he said.

‘And you,’ I said. ‘All I could find out from the lads at your dispersal point was that you were missing. What happened?’

‘Oh, nothing much, except that I was ignominiously brought back by car.’

‘Well, the last I saw of you was diving on top of one of those low flying ‘planes. That was you, wasn’t it? It was a very steep dive to within a few hundred feet.’

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I bagged a couple of ‘em, but the second one put a burst right across me. Got the petrol tank and smashed up the landing gear. Made a bit of a mess of the cockpit too. I just managed to pancake the old girl at Mitchet.’ He shook his head with a grin. ‘Lovely bit of flying,’ he said. ‘They were hedge-hopping all the way from Tunbridge Wells. They were so low as they topped the hill into Thorby that they ploughed through the tops of the trees.’

‘Their losses are going to be pretty heavy today, aren’t they?’ asked Marion.

‘Well over the hundred, I should think,’ he said. ‘My squadron has bagged over thirty for the loss of four machines. You couldn’t miss. We met them just after they had crossed the coast. We came at them out of the sun and swooped straight down on to the bombers. They were massed so thick they seemed to fill the sky in front of us. I got two before the first tier of fighters came down on our tails. Everything was a mix-up after that.’

Understatement. Understatement. Understatement. Yet the scene was vivid in my mind. The huge mass formation of bombers, flying steadily and unbroken even when attacked, the ugly black crosses plain on their silver wings. And above, the tiers of fighters waiting to pounce on any attackers. And the attackers when they came no more than a squadron or two at the most.

‘What brought you down on the tail of our low-flying-attack?’ I asked.

‘We got a radio message through. I could only spare one. We were badly outnumbered. By the way,’ he said, ‘I was in Town last night and I got in touch with your friend. He said he had already received a message from you.’

I told him how Marion had managed to get a message through. Then I said: ‘Have any other fighter stations been attacked today?’

The reply was ‘Yes,’ and he named two of the biggest, both near the coast.

‘What did they go for?’ I asked. ‘The runways and hangars or the billets and ground defences?’

‘Well, from what I hear, they’ve done much the same as they’ve done here — concentrated on the billets. Much the best way of putting a station out of action. They did it at Mitchet just the same and they’re having an awful job to feed and house the men. If this were winter the stations would be practically untenable.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘can you do something for me? I want to get hold of Ordnance Survey maps for southeast England. And I want them in a hurry.’ It was rather an abrupt opening, but I could not think of any way of leading up to it.

‘I’ve got R.A.F. maps. What do you want them for?’

Marion touched my arm. ‘I must get back,’ she said. ‘I’ll try and find out what you want and I’ll come down and see you in the morning.’ She was gone before I could remonstrate, walking quickly and purposefully towards the square.

‘What do you want them for?’ John repeated.

And then I told him the whole story of Vayle and the plan to immobilise the fighter ‘dromes. And this time I left out nothing. Someone might as well know everything that had happened.

When I had finished I said: ‘I expect you think I’m a fool — imagining things and jumping to conclusions. It’s what any sane person would think. But I’m perfectly serious. I know all the weaknesses. And, God knows, the whole structure of my suspicions is flimsy enough. But I can’t convince myself that I’m wrong. And this attempt to shoot me, daft though it seems, is real enough to me. I had to risk your ridicule so that somebody would understand if something happened to me.’

He was silent where I had expected some probing questions about my conjectures. But he made no direct comment. All he said when he broke the silence was: ‘R.A.F. maps won’t be any use to you, they’re mainly physical. I’ll have to try and get Ordnance Survey maps. There’s a Cold Harbour Farm down on Romney Marshes, and I’ve heard of another one somewhere. You may find several. How will you know which to choose, and what are you going to do when you’ve made up your mind which it is?’

‘It’ll be the most central one for the south-eastern fighter stations. But what I’m going to do about it, God only knows.’

‘If you could persuade the authorities to raid it, they might raid it when there was nothing incriminating there.’

‘I know the difficulties,’ I said rather wearily. ‘At the moment I’m just taking the fences as I come to them.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll find you those maps by tomorrow evening, all being well. In the meantime, good luck!’

When I got back to the site Ogilvie was just leaving. Men were wanted to erect huts and marquees. ‘Six men, then, Sergeant Langdon,’ he said. ‘Parade outside what was Troop Headquarters at seven-thirty. That will give them a chance to get a rest first.’

I stood aside for him to pass out. As the door closed behind him Micky, who had been pretending to sleep, said: ‘Cor, give me an ‘arp an’ let me fly away.’

‘Why the hell can’t the R.A.F. do it?’ demanded Chetwood. ‘Damn it, they’ve spent most of the day in the shelters doing nothing.’

‘Well, I’d rather be above ground in this heat,’ said Langdon. ‘Anyway, it’s a case of everybody doing what they can.’

The grumbling did not stop, however, until Hood came back. He had been over to the other site. ‘Well, how did they get on?’ asked Langdon.

‘Oh, they claim our bombers, of course. Actually they had a pretty bad time. The pit is simply surrounded by bomb craters. No casualties at all, though — except young Layton. He’s been taken off to hospital suffering from shell-shock. Simply went to pieces. Just couldn’t take it.’

‘Well, he’s not the only one,’ said Chetwood.

‘Yes, but the others aren’t hospital cases,’ said Hood. And there was no sympathy in his voice. ‘They just know where they’re best off.’