Hammond Innes: Attack Alarm

By the hangar nearest to Station H.Q. men were busy about a balloon that looked like a miniature barrage balloon. Just below it was fixed a red light. As I passed the hangar the balloon rose gently and steadily into the air.

Soon I was cycling down the roadway on the eastern edge of the field. It was getting very dark now. The smoke was overhead, a great billowy cloud that moved slowly south-west over the station. It was so low that I felt I must be able to touch it by putting my hand up. Here and there a stray wisp reached down to the ground, curling gently, and as I rode through them my nostrils filled with the thick, acrid smell of the stuff. As I passed the dispersal point just to the south of our pit the second Hurricane zoomed overhead. It was so close that instinctively I ducked. Yet I could not see it. The darkness increased as its smoke trail merged with the rest, and I almost rode past the gun site.

As I entered the pit my eyes searched the faces that I could barely see: Langdon, Chetwood, Hood, Fuller. But Micky wasn’t there. Nor was Kan. ‘What’s happened to Micky?’ I asked Langdon. Is he …‘I hesitated.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s got a bullet through the shoulder and another shattered his wrist. It’s a light let-off, considering the risk he took. We got him to the sick bay.’

‘What about Kan?‘I asked.

‘Dead,’ Langdon said. The boldness of his statement shocked me. ‘He leapt up to follow Micky and took it in the stomach.’

He didn’t add any detail and I didn’t ask any. I could well imagine how he had died. I could see him swept into the maelstrom of a fight by his sense of the dramatic. He would have leapt to his feet, a young Raleigh, a Hotspur, a d’Artagnan, imagination cloaking him in the swaggering fineries of the chivalry. And then a searing pain in his stomach, making him stagger and collapse as he had so often staggered and collapsed heroically for an audience. Then the sordid reality of blood on hard unyielding earth, of pain and finally of death. Poor Kan.

The silence in the pit that had followed Langdon’s words was shattered by the roar of a Hurricane as it passed just over our heads laying its smoke screen. The wind sang past its wings. It was unpleasantly close, yet we could see no sign of it. Over us was nothing but a dark fog of smoke, and every now and then a wisp curled into the pit, making us cough.

‘What the hell is the smoke for?’ Bombardier Hood asked me.

I started to explain, but the Tannoy suddenly blared out: ‘Mass formation attack alarm! Mass formation attack alarm! Two large formations of troop-carriers, escorted by fighters, are approaching the ‘drome from the southeast.’

The telephone rang. Langdon answered it. When at length he had put back the receiver, he said: They’re mostly Ju. 52s. They’re at eight thousand feet and coming lower. Gun Ops. say that fifty are expected to attempt a landing on the ‘drome.

‘Fifty!’ said Chetwood. ‘Good God!’

There was stunned silence.

Then Hood exclaimed: ‘How the hell are we expected to fire on them when this blasted smoke screen has made it so dark that we can barely see the hut over there?’

‘You don’t need to for the moment,’ I replied. ‘The idea is that they pile themselves up against the hangars.’ And I explained about the balloons and how they should mislead the Jerries.

‘Yes, but suppose they do manage to land?’ Hood insisted.

The ‘phone rang. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know the answer. That worried me. I hadn’t realised how dark it would be after the smoke screen had been laid over the ‘drome.

Langdon put down the receiver. ‘That’s the answer to your question,’ he told Hood. ‘As soon as they start coming in the searchlight on Station H.Q. will be switched on.’

‘Won’t that give the game away?’ asked Chetwood.

Langdon hesitated. ‘I don’t see why it should. After all, suppose this was their own smoke and they were feeling their way in, they would surely expect us to try and pierce the smoke with what lights we had available.’

‘Listen!’ cried Fuller.

For a second all I could hear was the steady drone of the two Hurricanes. The drone grew to a roar as one of them swept over us. The noise of its engines gradually lessened.

There suddenly behind that noise I thought I heard a steady throb. For a moment I was not sure. The other Hurricane swept over the pit. And when the sound of its engine had dropped to a distant drone, I knew I was right. Faint to the south was a low throb, deep and insistent. My inside seemed to turn to water. The moment had arrived.

The sound grew till it beat upon the air, drowning the engines of the Hurricanes except when they were very close. Like the ripping of calico came the sound of machine gun fire. Two bursts. The sound of the German ‘planes seemed to fill the heavens. I had a horrible sense of claustrophobia. I longed to tear that curtain of smoke away so that I could see what we had to face. More machine gun fire. Then the high-pitched drone of a ‘plane diving to the east of us. It rose to a crescendo of sound like a buzz-saw. And when I thought the noise of it could not rise any higher there was a tremendous crash.

‘Attention, please! Attention, please! Troop-carriers are now circling to land. They will come in from north to south. Gi’ ‘em a reet gude welcome, lads. Off!’

The throb of their engines had passed right over the ‘drome. But the sound had not then gradually faded. It seemed to split up. All round the ‘drome was this deep, persisting pulsing. I must admit I felt scared. I think we all did. The menace was unseen. There was only the sound of it. And the sound was all about us.

The gun was laid on the landing field. Chetwood and Red were in the layers’ seats. Two sandbags on the parapet marked the limits of our field of fire. Shells fused at a half and one stood ready in the lockers behind the gun.

One particular engine became noticeable above the general throb that filled the air. It was coming from the north. ‘Right. Fuse a half. Load!’ Langdon’s voice was clear and calm, and I recognised that boyish note in it that had struck me before.

The searchlight on Station H.Q. flickered and blazed into life. The great beam produced a queer effect. It was diffused by smoke so that the landing ground was lit by a sheen of white and not by a beam. It was rather like the moon seen through thin cloud. And above it the banks of rolling smoke looked inky black.

The throb of the approaching plane drew nearer. The beat of it was slower now, and I could almost hear the screws ploughing their way through the air. The throb became more and more sluggish. The sound crossed the ‘drome in front of us. It seemed as though it was feeling its way through the smoke.

Then suddenly landing wheels and a vague spread of wings showed white through the smoke. The moment of its appearance in the light of the searchlight seemed an age. It was dropping gently, searching with its wheels for the runway that should have been there. The whole ‘plane was visible now, like a huge silvery moth flying into the light of a street lamp on a misty night. There was an iridescent unreality about that great winged thing, so cumbersome yet so fairylike.

It came out of the smoke flying straight for B hangar. Too late the pilot saw the trap. Poor devil. He was feeling for a landing in thick smoke. Suddenly he had dropped right through the smoke, and in the dazzling light the dark shadow of a hangar loomed up in front of his cockpit.

The sudden frantic revving of the engines made the ‘plane buoyant. It lifted slightly. For a moment I thought he would clear the hangar. But his undercarriage caught the edge of the roof, and the great ‘plane tipped slowly up on to its nose and then over on to its back. There was a splintering crash and it disappeared from sight as the roof of the hangar collapsed.