Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

He climbed like a god and put a burst into somebody’s belly as he sheered through the raid. Still the enemy came, rank upon rank. Fitz stall-turned out of his climb and fell behind a Stuka just as it was entering its dive. The German pilot saw him, flinched away from the tracer, pushed his machine to the vertical and then pushed it beyond. Fitz could not compete with that. He pulled out and broke away. But it seemed that the Stuka was not made to recover from a dive beyond the vertical. Fitz saw this one bury itself in Dover Harbour with an almighty splash, and he rejoiced. Then the 109’s came down and the fun was over.

It took Skull half an hour to get the combat reports sorted out. The racket in the crewroom was continuous; the atmosphere bordered on the hysterical. Nobody could keep still; everyone laughed, shouted across the room, gulped their mugs of tea, waved, grinned, kicked the furniture.

“Knocked the buggers down like flies!” Patterson’s excitement was so intense he was almost stuttering. “What, Mother? Just like fucking flies! Eh?”

“Wizard, Pip, wizard… You! you rotten bastard!” Cox aimed a quivering finger at Steele-Stebbing. “Nearly bloody hit me!” Cox’s eyes were popping with fear and glee.

“You pinched my Hun,” Steele-Stebbing accused. “Balls!” Cox shouted. Macfarlane thrust between them. “Did you see him?” he gabbled. “See him go up? Whoosh ! Did you see him, Pip?” Macfarlane’s hands were carving the air. Patterson nodded. Everyone seemed to be nodding. “ Whoosh! One burst… He just… Whoosh !”

“Mine went bang !” Cattermole told them.

“Crash-wallop!” Brook said. “What a picnic! What a terrific picnic! I mean…” Flash Gordon was standing on a chair and singing: “Our name is Hornet squadron, no bloody good are we…”

“Know what it proves, Fanny?” Fitz said. “They can’t bloody fly without wings!” Barton roared with laughter. He grabbed CH3’s arms and made them flap: tea sprayed everywhere. “They can’t fly without bloody wings, can they, you mad bloody Yank?” Skull shook the drops off his notebook and wiped his face. “You were saying?” he reminded CH3, but Cattermole had claimed him. “Mine went bang !” Cattermole declaimed. “How did yours go?”

“ Ka-pow !” CH3 threw his half-empty mug in the air. “ Zap !” Cattermole caught the mug and threw it at Gordon, who batted it at Cox, and then they all began chucking their mugs at each other and the de-briefing collapsed in a welter of tea-stains and broken china.

In the end Skull managed to get some sort of tally. It came to nine definite Stuka kills and five probables, plus a dozen damaged. The scrap with the 109’s had ended abruptly when everyone ran out of ammunition and two 109’s collided. Generously, Fanny said that Dover ack-ack could claim them. The only casualty was Quirk, who had taken a small shell splinter in the right buttock. “Does it hurt?” Cox asked. “Don’t know,” Quirk said. “Haven’t asked it.” They found that hilarious.

An hour later, reaction had set in.

It took different forms with different men. Weariness overtook Macfarlane, Patterson and Brook. They fell asleep, and not even engine-tests disturbed them. Steele-Stebbing was unable to stop talking; he and Fitzgerald went over the Great Stuka Shoot again and again. The others were incurably restless. They strolled around dispersal, whistling, kicking at dandelion heads, throwing stones at birds.

Skull found Barton and CH3 sitting in the branches of an apple-tree. “What are you doing up there?” he asked.

“What does it look as if we’re doing?” Barton threw an apple at him.

“We’re waiting for the tide to go out,” CH3 said.

Skull looked at his watch. “It hasn’t come in yet.”

“I know that,” Barton said. “But we’ll be first in the queue when it does.”

“Yes, of course. Silly of me… I have a message from Baggy Bletchley. He says good show.”

“That’s jolly nice of him. Tell him it was a piece of cake.”

“There’s also a signal from Group that Nim Renouf has been found.”

“Yes?”

“That’s all it says, but I’m checking. And finally, I’m afraid I’ve had to revise some of the recent claims of enemy aircraft destroyed.”

“What?” Barton swung down from the tree. “You’ve what?”

“Yesterday Moggy claimed a Heinkel 111 definitely destroyed and you, CH3, claimed a Messerschmitt 110 definitely destroyed.”

“That’s right.” CH3 hung by his arms and dropped.

“Well, I’ve been comparing my reports with those of Sector and Group Intelligence, and also with those made by other units in action yesterday. The fact of the matter is that no German aircraft crashed in the area of your interception at the relevant time yesterday.”

“Don’t be bloody silly, Skull,” Barton said.

“Go back and look again,” CH3 told him.

“There were plenty of observers on the ground,” Skull said. “Did you actually see your 110 crash?”

“No, of course not. The scrap was at fifteen thousand feet and I had better things to do. What a dumb question.”

“So they all flew back to Germany, did they?” Barton asked. “I mean to say, we murdered the buggers but they all lived happily ever after. Is that right?”

“Enemy aircraft from that particular raid were destroyed,” Skull said. CH3 said: “You bet your sweet ass they were.” Skull looked at his clipboard and said, “But not at that location, and not necessarily as a consequence of your attacks alone. For example… The raid continued north and a Spitfire squadron from Hornchurch intercepted it. Their claims—”

“They’ve pinched my kill!” CH3 exclaimed. “Those Hornchurch bums have… Jesus! What a swindle.”

“It’s certainly possible that aircraft damaged by you or by Moggy were later finished off by another unit. What seems quite certain is that the initial attack by this squadron did not result in such destruction, and in the light of that evidence the claims of kills must, I’m afraid, be revoked.”

“God speed the plow.” Barton picked up an apple and hurled it with all his strength. “There ain’t no justice. There simply ain’t.”

“It follows that the probables claimed by Fitz and Bing must also be reconsidered.”

“Why don’t you go on leave, Skull?” CH3 said. “This squadron was doing fine until you stuck your oar in.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t finished.” Barton groaned and turned away. “This morning’s patrol by Blue and Green Sections,” Skull went on, “resulted in Fitz and Pip each claiming a Messerschmitt 109 destroyed. Again, no such crash was reported.”

“There was ten-tenths cloud, for Pete’s sake!” CH3 said. “In any case, the whole schemozzle happened out at sea. How the hell—”

“With respect,” Skull said firmly. “The cloud was quite high and observers on the coast with telescopes saw much of the action. The coastguard, for instance, saw a Hurricane fall into the sea, presumably Renouf’s. But they saw no other aircraft crash. What they, and other observers, did see was four Me-109’s heading south.”

“Oh, shut up, Skull,” Barton said. “You make me tired.”

“So we’re all bloody liars, are we?” CH3 asked.

“Look, I don’t do this for my own pleasure,” Skull said sharply. “I’m simply telling you the facts as they’re given to me. I’ll tell you something else. When a 109 is attacked and it dives away leaving a trail of smoke, that does not mean it has been shot down, although in the excitement of the moment the attacking pilot may understandably think so. This is not my opinion. It comes from Fighter Command, and I am asked to draw your attention to it.”