Hammond Innes: Attack Alarm

None of the others understood what he said. I looked quickly round. There was no officer in sight. A crowd of men, mainly soldiers, were pressed round in a circle. ‘Ich fcedavere, es ist noch kein Offizier gekommen,’ I said. I sad spent some months in our Berlin office and knew the language quite well. ‘So it’s an officer he’s wanting, is it?’ said a Scots Guard with a sour, lined face. ‘Ye’ve got a nerve, laddie. Ye had no mercy on the women and children over the other side. Ye had no mercy on us on the beaches of Dunkirk. Yet as soon as you’re down, ye start squawking for an officer.’

The sights those men had seen of the bombing and machine-gunning of terror-stricken refugees in Belgium and France had left their mark.

The German did not flinch in the face of the hostile circle of men. He stood stiffly erect, his face set. He was a tall, well-built man of about thirty. He had well-groomed fair hair, and his most noticeable feature was a very square jaw which gave him a sullen look. He had a row of ribbons on his flying suit.

He looked round the crowd of faces. ‘You’ve shot me down,’ he said, speaking in German. ‘But it won’t be long now. Soon you will collapse like the cowardly French.’

‘You’ll never invade this country successfully,’ I replied, also in German.

He looked at me. I think he was too dazed with shock to realise what he was saying. ‘You English! You are so blind. It is all planned. The day is appointed. And on that day your fighter aeroplanes will be taken from you and you will be left defenceless to face the courageous might of the Luftwaffe.’

I suppose I must have looked at him rather foolishly. But it was so reminiscent of our conversation in the Naafi that evening. Through a gap in the encircling crowd I saw a big R.A.F. car slither to a standstill. The C.O. Thorby and several other men got out, including the ground defence officer. Quickly I said, ‘I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.’

‘Marshall Goering has a plan,’ he said heatedly. ‘We shall succeed with England just as we have succeeded with the other plutocratic nations. You do not understand the cleverness of our leaders. Thorby and your other fighter stations will fall like that.’ He clicked his fingers.

‘You can’t possibly know anything about Goering’s plans,’ I said. ‘You talk like that because you are afraid.’

‘I am not afraid and I am not a liar.’ Two angry spots of colour showed in his white cheeks. ‘You say I know nothing of the Marshal’s plans. I know that on Friday Thorby will be heavily attacked by our dive-bombers. You will not think me a liar on Friday. And when — ‘ He stopped suddenly, and I thought I saw a look of surprise tinged with fear in his blue-grey eyes, though his face remained as wooden as ever.

I turned to find Wing-Commander Win ton just behind me. But it was not on the C.O. that the German pilot’s gaze was fixed, but upon Mr Vayle, the station librarian. The man’s mouth seemed to shut like a clamp and he said no more. The last I saw of him was as he was marched away between two guards to the C.O.‘s car. He seemed suddenly to have become dejected and weary, for he staggered along, his head bent and his every movement betraying a listlessness that I could hardly believe due solely to reaction.

A detachment of Guards had been detailed by Major Comyns, the ground defence officer, to keep people a hundred yards from the burning wreck. No attempt was made to put out the flames. The authorities feared that there might be unexploded bombs. The rest of our detachment moved to the nearest point from which they could watch the spectacle, which was the edge of the roadway that circled the landing field. The blaze seemed to fascinate them. Subconsciously their reaction to it was the same as mine had been — amazement that they were responsible for it. Both Wing-Commander Winton and Major Comyns had spoken to Trevors and Langdon before they left and congratulated them on the detachment’s success.

But though I stood with the rest and watched the flames consuming the mass of twisted steel, I was barely conscious of what I saw. And when a second German was brought to the roadway to wait for a car, I only noticed that he was very young, that his face was covered with Hood from a big cut on his forehead, and that he was crying — great uncontrollable sobs that seemed to shake his small frame. I could not crowd round like the others to gape at him in his boyish misery. My mind was occupied with my own problem.

The navigator must have been trapped in the ‘plane,’ I beard Trevors say as an R.A.F. car took the boy away. ‘Only two were seen to come down.’

‘Perhaps his parachute failed to open,’ said a sergeant of the Guards.

‘Perhaps,’ Trevors agreed. ‘In which case his body will be found in the morning. Poor devil!’

‘What do you mean — poor devil? If you’d seen what I’d seen in France you wouldn’t be saying poor devil!’

I lost the rest of the conversation. I was trying to figure out whether the pilot with whom I had spoken had really known something or whether he was just bluffing when he had talked of a plan. It was so difficult to be sure with a man in his condition. I tried to place myself in his position and consider what I should have felt like, and what I should have done if I had had his training and background.

Obviously he had been bitter at the loss of his ‘plane. A pilot, I felt, must acquire for his machine at least some of the affection that a captain does for his ship. He would want to hit back at the men who had transformed it from a winged thing, full of life and beauty, to a blazing wreck. I remembered the circle of hostile faces showing in the light of the flames. He could only hit back in one way and that was by frightening them. I could speak German and so it was through me that he had had to hit back.

And yet what had made him tell me that they had a plan for getting control of British fighter ‘dromes? What had made him give me such specific information about an attack on Thorby? Was that just bravado?

It seemed hardly credible that a mere pilot would know about a plan to seize our fighter stations. Such a plan would for obvious reasons be kept a closely guarded secret and be known only to the higher officers of the Luftwaffe. But it was of course possible that the rumour that such a plan existed had permeated the messes. Or it might be just a case of wishful thinking. Obviously it was highly desirable that the fighter defences of this country should be immobilized if invasion were to succeed. For this reason, German airmen may have come to the conclusion that their High Command had a plan to achieve this end. Alternatively, he may just have thought that they ought to have such a plan, and in his moment of bitterness had produced it as a fact in the hope that it would assist the state of fear into which he would almost certainly imagine the British had been thrown by the collapse of France.

And yet he had seemed so sure of himself, so definite.

And was he really in a condition to think up the idea of a plan if he was not aware that one existed? It was all very complicated.

His statement that Thorby was to be dive-bombed on Friday was understandable. A pilot might quite easily know the date on which a certain target was to be attacked. And I could well understand his use of that information to add conviction to a statement that was untrue. If I reported the conversation — and I knew that I should have to — the authorities might well regard the idea — of a secret plan with scepticism. But if his prediction of the raid on Thorby turned out to be accurate, it would add considerable weight to his first statement.