Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

“Six!” Cattermole exclaimed. “Get that into your skull, boy. Six Stukas make nine.”

“Sorry, sir. And please, sir: how d’you know when you’ve shot down a Heinkel, sir?”

“You get a chit from the Jerry pilot, obviously. You are a fool, boy.”

“In triplicate, sir?”

“Of course in triplicate. One for you, one for Berlin, and one for the intelligence officer to wipe his bottom with.”

“And make sure it’s got a twopenny stamp on it,” CH3 muttered. Barton nudged him warningly. CH3 grunted, tipped his cap over his eyes and had a snooze. Six or nine, who cared what the records said as long as the Huns had bought it?

At five to eleven “B” flight got scrambled. They came back forty minutes later, gun-ports fluting as they drifted in to land. There were only five planes: Mother Cox had gone down.

“Absolute shambles,” Fitzgerald reported. “Two dozen Dornier 17’s had a go at those socking great aerials at Beachy Head. By the time we got there it was too late, they’d dropped their load and they were off home, lickety-split. And we were the wrong height.”

“Too low,” Barton said: more a statement than a question.

“Angels five. Should have been seven, or eight! Anyway, we spotted Jerry departing, so we cut the corner and bust a gut and we just about caught him.”

“Not really caught,” Zabarnowski said. “Got close, but…”

“Bloody nippy, those Dorniers,” said Quirk.

“Everybody tore up and blasted away at them,” Fitzgerald said, “and they all blasted away at us, and Mother must have stopped a bullet in the radiator or something because all of a sudden there’s glycol coming out of him like spilled milk. He turned back and headed for home. He told us to keep on chasing, so we did, but I don’t think we hit anything.”

All in all it had been a thoroughly duff interception: scrambled too late, vectored too low, outpaced, and nothing to show for it but the loss of the flight commander, who might be anywhere, in the drink, wrapped around a tree, anywhere. Poor show.

Later, Barton asked Quirk what he thought of his first bit of real action.

Quirk swallowed, and cleared his throat.

“Look,” Barton said, “I don’t want an official statement from the admiralty. Just tell me.”

Quirk took his hands from, his pockets and raised them. The fingers were trembling. “I can’t make them stop,” he said.

“Don’t try. If they want to shake, let ’em shake. After a scrap I usually drink my tea through a straw.”

“The funny thing is, I wasn’t scared during the scrap. I got a bit twitchy when we made the tally-ho, but later on there was too much to do… Anyway it was all over so quickly. Fifteen seconds of ammo soon goes, doesn’t it? I couldn’t hit anything. Couldn’t get near anything. I never realized it was so hard to hit a twinengined bomber. It’s impossible. How does anyone do it?”

“You’ve got to get damn close. A Dornier looks big on the ground. It’s not very big in the sky.”

“Well, I reckon we were two or three hundred yards behind that lot and the nearest one looked to me about the size of that sparrow.” Quirk stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “In any case I was always bucketing about in their slipstream, and they were always bouncing up and down like mad, so I never even got one in my sights.”

“I don’t suppose the others did either. It’s a bit different from firing at the towed target, isn’t it?”

Quirk laughed. “It’s like riding a merry-go-round and trying to swat flies.”

“In a gale,” Barton said, “with a crowd of maniacs shooting at you.”

“And a very wet left leg,” Quirk said.

“Ah. Welcome to the club. Remember: if you see a fighter pilot walking lopsided it’s because one leg has shrunk in the wash.”

When they sat down to lunch there was a huge blow-up of the group photograph pinned to the wall. It was the first picture, the one taken just as the police corporal fired his revolver. Everyone was chest-on to the camera but the heads had swiveled and no faces could be seen. They found it very amusing.

“This proves something I always suspected about the British,” Haducek said. “They certainly have their heads screwed on, but unfortunately they are pointing the wrong way.”

“Personally, I think it’s brilliant,” Macfarlane said. “You can’t tell who’s who, so it’ll never wear out, will it? What we’ve got is the first permanent, everlasting squadron. Brilliant.”

“What was happening here?” Zabarnowski asked.

Flash Gordon began a rambling explanation. CH3 murmured to Barton: “Their English has made a startling improvement, hasn’t it?”

“Not really. I knew they were pretty fluent when they arrived, that’s why they were sent here. They were just being bloody-minded. Now, are you going to reveal what this peculiar snapshot is all about?”

CH3 banged a spoon on the table. “Take a good look,” he said to them. “There’s something special about this picture.”

“Moggy’s flies are undone,” Patterson said. “But then, they usually are.”

“Colossal pressure on them,” Cattermole said. “No wonder the buttons pop.”

“Look at the heads,” CH3 said. “Nearly everybody turned his head to the left. Why?”

“Because the bang was on the left?” Quirk suggested.

“No, the bang was in the middle.” He waited, but nobody else spoke. “The fact is, most people, if they want to look behind them, turn to the left. Maybe it’s because the right-hand neck muscles are stronger or something, I don’t know.”

“Iron Filings turned his head to the right,” Barton pointed out.

“I’m left-handed,” Steele-Stebbing said.

“The point of that picture is this,” CH3 said. “When the average pilot suddenly has to look behind him, it’s ten to one he’ll turn his head to the left. So if you’re lucky enough to get on Jerry’s tail, the best place to be is not slap behind him but slightly to the right.”

“About five degrees to the right is good, I find,” Haducek said.

Barton said: “You give him a squirt, he looks left, doesn’t see you, and that gives you time to give him another squirt. Nice. I like it.”

“There’s something else,” CH3 said, and paused.

They all looked at the blow-up on the wall.

“Suppose it’s the other way around,” CH3 said. “Now all of a sudden he’s on your tail.”

“Ah, yes!” Zabarnowski said. “Break right. Am I correct?”

“It’s up to you, but it’s certainly worth thinking about. Most people, when they’re jumped, break left, for the same reason most people look left, I suppose. So Jerry instinctively expects you to break left too. If you break right, you may just shake him off, or at least it might give you an extra half-second.”

“Very interesting,” Barton said. “Well worth remembering.”

“I happen to know for a fact,” Flash Gordon said, “that all German pilots are left-handed.”

“Bring on the grub,” Barton told a cook.

“The Luftwaffe deliberately chose left-handed pilots in order to baffle us,” Gordon explained. “Cunning buggers… Ah! Fish and chips. Wizard prang.” He smiled genially. “Whatever that means.”

During lunch a signal arrived, releasing “B” flight immediately. They were to return to Brambledown to attend Flip Moran’s funeral. Fanny made Fitz temporary flight commander and they took off as soon as they had shoveled down their fish and chips.

Fitz worried all the way. He had never been in charge of a funeral. Those he had attended had all produced cock-ups of one sort or another. Above all he was nervous of that ceremonial sword-drill. So he was delighted to find Cox standing talking to the adjutant when he taxied to dispersal. “Hello, Mother!” he shouted. “You okay? You can have your flight back now. What happened?” He climbed down.