Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

He thought hard for a couple of minutes, and decided to cut his losses and get back to Kingsmere. The adjutant, however, was not where he had left him. He asked at the reception desk. Nobody knew anything about Kellaway but there was an urgent message waiting for Squadron Leader Ramsay: call extension 7171 immediately.

The Ram dialed the number and got a group captain called Blakey. “Ramsey, where the hell have you been?” he asked. “You’ve missed two crucial meetings already. See me before you go. I’ll try and brief you. Oh for Christ’s sake shut up” he said as another telephone shrilled.

Inevitably, Blakey was no longer in his office when the Ram got there. The day continued like that. By six o’clock, when he was almost too tired to be angry, he came across Group Captain Matthews again. “You can forget about that Anglo-Polish glossary,” Matthews said wearily. “It’s all been changed. I don’t know what the new plan is yet. If I were you I’d get myself a room in a hotel.”

“I must find Group Captain Blakey first, sir. He said—”

“Blakey? Blakey’s gone to France.”

Matthews hurried off. The Ram leaned against a wall and watched the endless tide of Air Ministry staff and RAF personnel flow past. Quite soon, Flight Lieutenant Kellaway flowed with it, chatting to a young WAAF. “Ah, there you are, sir!” he said. “I’ve been looking all over… These are for you.” He held out a bundle of dun-colored files, tied with green ribbon.

“What’s that?”

“I wasn’t told. The usual bumf, I expect.”

“I’ve seen enough bumf today. Come on, adj, I’m starving. We’re going to find a hotel.”

They found a hotel and had dinner. During coffee a message came from Air Ministry ordering the Ram to report at 11 p.m. to receive a telephone call from Group Captain Blakey. At 11:15 he was sitting in Blakey’s office when the call came through. Blakey was in Paris and the line was bad. The Ram strained to make sense of the cracklings and distortions. The only words he could be sure of came at the very end. “Got all that?” Blakey demanded. “No!” the Ram shouted. Blakey hung up.

The Ram went back to his hotel, went to bed, and awoke at 3 a.m., his brain urgent with anxiety. He considered telephoning Air Ministry for orders. No, no, no: waste of time. He thought of telephoning Kingsmere. But what could they tell him? Or he, them? No, no, no. He walked around the room and saw the bundle of files on the dressing-table. He undid the green ribbon. Reports and records of the squadron’s performance at various summer training camps and exercises: air-to-air gunnery, cross-country navigation, tactics of air fighting, formation flying…

Ten minutes later he went next door and roused the adjutant. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’re going back to Kingsmere.”

He was waiting behind the wheel when Kellaway hurried out of the hotel, unshaven and sticky-eyed. The Ram had the car moving before the door was shut, and he had it up to sixty before they reached the first corner. Kellaway blinked as the intersection hurtled toward them, and he fumbled for the leather grab-strap as the tires hammered over some tramlines. “Is there a flap on?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“Not yet,” the Ram said. “But there soon will be.”

He heaved the bundle of files up from between his feet and dumped it in Kellaway’s lap. “My squadron has degenerated into shit condition, adj,” he said, and clenched his teeth as the car bucked over a stretch of lumpy road repairs. “The Luftwaffe is fighting fit while my lot are fit to drop. They’re all cretins.”

“Surely not all, sir.” Kellaway was struggling to untie the green ribbon.

“No, not all. Some of them are imbeciles, and one or two are mental junkyards. Pilot Officer Cox, for instance. Just look at Cox’s score on that elementary navigation test. Just look at it.”

“Shocking weather that day,” Kellaway said, still picking at a knot. “Wind and rain and—”

“Ah! Goering’s promised not to attack unless it’s nice upstairs, has he?” The Ram bullied the gearbox into submission as he took a sharp bend. “That’s good news for Pilot Officer Cattermole then, because it seems he’s utterly incapable of maintaining formation in anything stronger than a mild breeze.”

“I seem to remember young Cattermole wasn’t terribly well that day, sir,” Kellaway said. “Nasty head-cold.”

“Yes? And what was Flying Officer Stickwell suffering from when he missed the towed target three days in a row? Scarlet fever? Beri-beri? St. Vitus’ Dance? Not that Pilot Officer Miller did any better with the fixed target, did he? Somewhere in that bumf you’ll find a fascinating account of how Miller and his Hurricane slaughtered several innocent sandbanks but mercifully spared the target. What’s Miller’s problem, adj? Can’t he fly and shoot at the same time? Or was his mother frightened by a bunker?”

Kellaway tried to think of an excuse for Miller and couldn’t. “The chaps did do rather well in the aircraft-recognition competition,” he said.

“Yes, they did, didn’t they? Amazingly well. Came fifth out of nine. By their standards that’s bloody brilliant. I expect they all thought they deserved DSO’s for that. They only failed to recognize four aircraft in ten. Quite a triumph. Makes you proud to be British.”

Kellaway gave up: the knot was unpickable. “It’s been rather a difficult summer,” he said.

“Don’t worry, adj, I’ve got some solutions lined up. All those jokers will get the boot. You watch me shake the tree, adj. See the rotten apples fall.”

Even with the Ram’s heavy foot on the accelerator it took them an hour to get clear of London. They made good time up the old Roman road to Colchester and then got stuck behind a succession of milk-trucks and, after them, an army convoy, trundling fieldguns at a sedate thirty miles an hour. The sun was high enough to be dazzling when they turned east at Chelmsford. Now the roads were narrower, with fewer passing-places, and the Ram’s foot jumped repeatedly from accelerator to brake. Kellaway’s arm ached from gripping the grab-strap. His stomach groused loudly about hunger made worse by continuous nervous tension. At last Kingsmere aerodrome came in sight. The RAF policeman saluted and raised the barrier, and the Ram sprayed gravel as he parked outside the officers’ mess. It was just six o’clock.

Kellaway got out, and massaged his numbed backside. The sunshine was pleasantly warm and blessedly silent. “Breakfast,” he said. It sounded like a one-word history of Western civilization.

“Bugger breakfast,” the Ram said. “You take ‘A’ flight, I’ll take ‘B.’ I want them on parade in ten minutes, maximum.” He strode off.

Kellaway had the easier task: only two members of “A” flight were in their rooms, Fanny Barton and Dicky Starr. As the pilots assembled, yawning and doing up tunic buttons, he said: “I’m afraid there’s no sign of Stickwell, Cattermole, Patterson or Cox, sir.”

The Ram stared. His eyes had widened slightly, his nostrils were tight, his whole face seemed stretched. He turned away. “I don’t care a damn if you all get killed tomorrow,” he said.

That woke them up.

“I do care if this squadron fails to play its full part in the air defense of Great Britain,” he said. “I care if these scarce and valuable Hurricane fighters get shot down. I care very much if the German bomber fleets not only destroy these Hurricanes but also proceed to destroy their targets, killing God-knows-how-many civilians who at this very moment are gullible enough to put their pathetic faith in your supposed skill and determination when, if they knew what I know, they’d realize you probably couldn’t hit a Zeppelin even if you could see one, which is unlikely, because according to these reports, nine out of ten of you can’t piss against a wall without filling your left boots to overflowing!”