Hammond Innes - Attack Alarm

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ put in Kan. ‘“Imagination doth make cowards of us all,’” he quoted, quite unconsciously giving us the benefit of his profile in the approved Gielgud style. That’s the trouble with Micky. He’s ignorant, and he’s cursed with imagination.’

‘Who’s igorant?’ demanded Micky, sitting up勇n bed. ‘Why don’t you talk about a bloke to his face, instead of waiting till he’s asleep. You ain’t goin’ to talk about me like that,’ he told Kan. ‘I’m as good as you, mate, any day. I bin a foreman wif men under me, see? Just because you got money you think you can say wot you like. I didn’t go to Heton.’ There was a wealth of scorn in the way he said Eton. ‘I had to work for my living. You can grin, but I bloody well did, mate. And I ain’t so igorant. Uncle of mine built Alexandra palace.’

‘And Burne Jones was your stepfather — we know,’ said Chetwood. Micky, for purposes of aggrandisement, regarded all eminent Joneses as close relatives.

‘Why you pick on me when I was trying to stick up for you, I don’t know,’ said Kan in an aggrieved tone.

Micky’s sudden outburst seemed to have exhausted him. He lay back again. ‘Can’t you let a bloke sleep,’ he complained.

‘Well, you can always go back to your funk hole,’ said Hood bluntly.

‘If we was in the bleedin’ infantry I’d show you how to fight. An’ it wouldn’t be you wot was wearin’ the stripes. It’d be me, mate. This ain’t fightin’.’

Langdon changed the conversation by asking Hood whether the hut on the other site was damaged at all. Apparently it was much the same as ours, which had quite a lot of shrapnel through the roof and the north side. I found my blankets littered with glass when I came to make my bed. There were only one or two windows unbroken. And it wasn’t difficult to find souvenirs in the form of jagged pieces of shell casing. They were all over the hut. One fellow found a piece in his kit-bag, and another bit had broken a milk bottle on the table and lay in the bottom of it.

I was one of the six detailed to help pitch tents. We were outside the orderly room by seven-thirty. The whole Station Headquarters was a complete wreck. The burnt-out remains of the troop lorry were strewn across the road. Behind us was the square, littered with broken glass and rubble. And all around it was a shambles of blasted and gutted buildings. But at the far side the flag-pole, its white paint now blackened, still stood, and from the top of it the R.A.F. flag drooped in the still evening air.

The tents were being pitched on the edge of the flying field nearest the camp. Hundreds of men — R.A.F. and Army — were on the job. The ground was hard as iron and the tents stiff with camouflage wash. We worked like niggers till ten o’clock. And in the fading evening light I wandered back to the camp with Kan. Once again, I looked behind me. And suddenly the fear I had felt when I realised that somebody must have deliberately fired at me returned. I don’t know why, except that there was somebody behind me when I looked round. He was a vague shadow in the half light flitting in and out among the bomb craters. It wasn’t that I thought I was being followed. It was just the fact that someone was behind me, I suppose.

We went straight to bed. But it seemed I had barely got to sleep before the sound of running feet woke me. It was a Take Post all right. Before the five of us had got into our clothes the sirens were going. It was just twelve. The alarm was short, however, and by twelve-thirty I was alone in the pit, it being my turn for guard.

I didn’t enjoy the half-hour before the next detachment took over. Strange how dependent one’s nerves are on one’s mood. Up till then night guards hadn’t worried me at all. The site was not an isolated one. It was in a well-guarded camp, and anyone I had seen moving about I had regarded automatically as friendly. Now, because of that dent in the back of my tin hat, I found myself listening, tensed, to every sound. And it was strange how many sounds there were I had never noticed before. And when anyone moved by the Guards’ pill-box or came down the road I found myself gripping my rifle hard.

But nothing happened. It was just that I was tired and my nerves were frayed. The sirens were giving the All Clear as my relief came out.

The next day, Saturday, dawned with a promise of more heat. The air was sultry with it. Shortly after eight-thirty a lorry from Battery brought us dry rations and a big tank of water. We managed to shave, but there was no water for washing. Water is a thing that in England one takes very much for granted. There is something very unpleasant about being so short of it that you can’t wash. I can think of few things so shattering to morale’

Two alarms took up most of the morning. Marion did not show up, and after lunch I wandered down to the square in the hope of seeing a Waaf I knew from whom I could find out what had happened to her. The raid had made my confinement to the site seem such a small matter that I knew Langdon would not object.

But I was out of luck. I saw no Waaf I knew. The camp seemed full of workmen, demolishing the wreckage and piling the rubble into lorries. I could not help thinking that if every station was bringing in civilian labour to clear up the mess after a raid, they must be full of fifth columnists. It was so simple. And I went back to my site feeling very uneasy.

And then occurred something that thoroughly scared me. It may have been just an accident. It had happened before on the ‘drome. But that it should happen so that it nearly caused my death seemed significant.

I was just passing the first dispersal point, about two hundred yards short of the site. There were Hurricanes in it. I remember noticing that because one had its tail badly shot up. I had just taken a cigarette out of my case and I stopped suddenly to light it.

And as I did so there was a rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire and a stream of tracer bullets flashed past me. They were so close that I am certain that if I had put out my hand it would have been shot away.

The noise ceased abruptly as it had begun and I found myself staring at nothing in a dazed kind of way. I was brought to my senses by the match burning my fingers. I dropped it and looked quickly at the dispersal point. Everything was as it had been. There were the two Hurricanes, wing tip to wing tip, and the air shimmering in the heat from the tarmac. Nothing had moved.

Yet that stream of tracer bullets had come from the dispersal point. And suddenly a cold sweat broke over me as I realised that if I had not stopped abruptly to light that cigarette I should be lying in the roadway riddled with bullets.

I had an intense desire to run then. At any moment the chatter of the gun might start again and this time I was a static target. Unwillingly I forced myself to walk into the dispersal point. There was no-one there. There was no-one in either of the ‘planes. I was puzzled. Guns don’t usually go off by themselves, however hot it is.

An A.C.2 suddenly appeared in the exit at the back of the dispersal point. He was rubbing his eyes stupidly. ‘I thought I heard a noise,’ he said vaguely.

I told them what had happened. ‘You ought to report it,’ he remarked and examined the leading edge of the wings of the nearest machine warily. ‘Here we are,’ he said, and showed me the blackened porthole of one of the guns. ‘Can’t understand what made it go off, though. There’s nobody here at the moment but myself and these were all left at safe.’

I never did discover what made that gun go off. But there was no doubt in my own mind that it was deliberate and that it had been meant to kill me.

I was feeling very shaken by the time I got back to the site. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Chetwood. ‘Seen a ghost?’