Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

“Shut up, Flash, for Christ’s sake.”

“Probably not. Still, there’s all of your colon just waiting to be ripped apart. Yards and bloody yards of colon, you’ve got. Say, for the sake of argument, it tunnels its busy way through your colon, and then blows a bloody great hole in your bladder, it still might have just enough go left in it to knock out one of your goolies, mightn’t it?”

“Flash, give it a rest or I’ll kill you.”

“Pity about the kidneys. The trouble is, I don’t see how you can hit the kidneys and the stomach unless you start from the armpit. That might be a better idea. Suppose…”

In the air, Gordon saved his eccentricities for the enemy. The solo head-on attack on a large bomber formation was his favorite. A closing speed of well over five hundred miles an hour left no time to aim, but the sight of a Hurricane streaking past his wingtip or hurtling under his cockpit or even slashing diagonally across his nose was enough to test the nerve of the steadiest Luftwaffe pilot, and many a Dornier or Heinkel went lurching and stumbling out of formation as a result of Gordon’s apparently suicidal charges. Fanny Barton let him get on with them. For one thing, nothing anyone said was likely to stop him; and for another, it was a damn sight easier to attack a shaken and twitchy bunch of bombers struggling to regroup.

Gordon seemed to be fearless. One glorious summer’s morning, “B” flight intercepted eight Me-110’s on their way back to France. The German fighters had no wish to do battle, which was natural: the myth of the 110’s invincibility had long since vanished: it was big and fast and could blow you apart if you were foolish enough to sit in front of it, but it had the agility of a grand piano. Any Hurricane easily out-turned it. Escorts of 110’s were beginning to be a joke. When the raid they were escorting got attacked, they usually withdrew and formed a protective circle, guarding each other’s tails until the danger had passed.

Mother Cox and the rest of his flight chased this group of eight for thirty miles. Zabarnowski shot one down, Quirk and Renouf scored hits on two, and Gordon got within sniffing distance of three without ever opening fire.

When they landed, Cox went over to him. “What was the trouble, Flash?” he asked. “Gun stoppages?”

“No trouble, Mother. I just didn’t fancy any of them today. They weren’t suitable.”

“Don’t be so bloody silly, Flash. What d’you mean, not suitable?”

“Well…” Gordon wrinkled his nose. “They weren’t what I was looking for.”

Cox was accustomed to Gordon’s dottiness, but this was grotesque. They walked in silence to the crewroom. Later, after debriefing, Cox took him aside and asked him what the hell he was up to.

Gordon pursed his lips and thought. “I think I do it to scare myself.”

That made no sense. Cox waited, but Gordon linked his hands on the top of his head and blinked drowsily at the hot sunlight.

“You do it to scare yourself,” Cox said. “Why scare yourself? Aren’t you scared to start with? I am. I’m frightened bloody witless.”

“Oh, yes. Still, you can’t have too much of a good thing.”

“Don’t bet on it. The way you’re going, Flash, you’ll scare yourself to death soon.”

“So what? You die every night.” Gordon rocked on his heels. His eyes were almost closed. A trick of the light showed up a cluster of very faint freckles that crossed his nose. “Ever thought of that, Mother? Each night, you die. You lie down, you slip away, maybe you never come back. It’s not so terrible, is it? I don’t worry about it. I reckon I’ve had so much practice it should come very easily.”

Without discussing it, Cattermole and Steele-Stebbing had reached a sort of truce. They rarely communicated on the ground. In the air, where they formed Yellow Section, they spoke only when they had something disparaging to say.

They were crossing the coast on their way back to base when Cattermole’s engine cut out.

“Boring,” Steele-Stebbing said. “You did that yesterday.”

“Don’t pick your nose while you’re talking to me.”

“Whose nose would you like me to pick?”

“Pay close attention to this advanced method of flying.” Cattermole waggled his wings. “The prop stays still and the plane goes round and round.”

“Very boring. Can’t you do something thrilling? Crash into an orphanage.”

The engine coughed and re-started. Cattermole climbed back up. “Something wrong with your undercart,” he said. “I think you’ve got fowl pest.”

Two minutes later his engine died again. “How dreary,” Steele-Stebbing said. “No imagination.”

“Shocking smell in here. You been pissing in my tank again?”

“I’ll go ahead and find you a nice orphanage.”

Again, the Merlin revived and Cattermole took up station. “Not fowl pest,” he said. “Looks more like pox.”

They were circling Bodkin Hazel when Steele-Stebbing discovered that Cattermole was right. His undercarriage refused to go down.

“Nasty,” Cattermole said. “What with all those bunkers and all.” The field had been bombed in their absence: craters pocked the grass.

“You go first,” Steele-Stebbing said. “Let’s get the big prang out of the way.”

“Why don’t you get out and walk?”

“All right, show me. You’re the expert.”

Cattermole landed. Steele-Stebbing circled, using up fuel, while he tried various remedies suggested by the control tower. Eventually he succeeded, by violent rocking, in getting one wheel down. By now Barton was in the tower. “Bale out,” he ordered. “Climb to five or six thou, point the kite at France and bale out.” Steele-Stebbing spiraled up to six thousand, one wheel dangling, and couldn’t get his cockpit open. It was jammed solid. Even hammering at it with his revolver butt did nothing. The fuel gauge was nudging zero.

Everyone stopped work to watch him touch down. The single wheel bounced once and raced. The leg stayed firm. Gradually the tail came down, the tail-wheel ran, the other wing lost flying speed and sank. Steele-Stebbing’s rigger closed his eyes just before the wingtip stroked the grass. Then the Hurricane skewed and spun in tight little circles, cracking the wheel-leg, smashing the prop, flinging up a brown-green spray of clods as it skittered along. The fire-truck caught up. Men with axes leaped onto the wing. No smoke, no flame. Everyone went back to work.

When Steele-Stebbing walked into the crewroom, CH3 said: “Nice work. You okay?”

“Fine, fine. Piece of cake.” The bridge of his nose was skinned.

“Grab some tea. Micky’s got a spare kite ready for you.”

Black Section got scrambled at six. “A” flight got scrambled at six-thirty. The whole squadron went up at eight. It was dusk before Skull finished the last combat summary. “Busy day,” he told Barton and the flight commander. “Seven scrambles, a total of fifty-three sorties. Bing Macfarlane slightly injured with a fragment of cannonshell in the leg, Quirk probably concussed from a forced landing, Brook with a burned left hand and a bruised back. Four machines written-off: Quirk’s in a duckpond, Brook’s shot down in flames, Steele-Stebbing’s you all saw, and of course Macfarlane baled out again.”

“Oh well,” said Barton. “It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been a bloody sight worse.” He rubbed his eyes and remembered flashes and glimpses of the scrap with the 109’s. “Christ, we were lucky,” he said. “I thought Brook had bought it for certain, I mean with three Jerrys knocking hell out of him all at once… Christ Almighty.”

“Quirk reckons that duckpond saved him,” Cox said. “He says he set fire to a cornfield and all he could see coming toward him was a socking great barn and all of a sudden there was this lovely duckpond.”