Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

By now the land lines had been restored. Skull called Bramble-down and reported that only five aircraft were operational, not counting the Tiger Moth. “Is Baggy Bletchley still there?” the controller asked. Skull organized a search.

“We can’t go on like this,” Fanny Barton said. “I mean, this is getting bloody silly. Just look at it.”

Cox and CH3 looked at it: a scrapyard of smashed and smoking Hurricanes.

Cattermole came over. “Phillips bought it,” he said. “I’m sure it was Phillips.”

“There you are, you see,” Barton said emptily. “I tell you, it’s getting bloody silly. We obviously can’t go on like this.”

Cattermole was squinting and blinking into the hazy distance where a tiny black figure shimmered beside a little black car. He began walking. Twenty minutes later he had found a gap in the perimeter wire and was in the lane.

Mary beamed and waved when she saw him coming. “You shouldn’t have bothered, honestly,” she said. “I’m fine, I’ve got everything I need. Still, it’s lovely to see you again. And the baby says hello, of course, don’t you baby?” She was perched against the back of the car, with her hands touching under her belly.

Cattermole stopped when he was ten feet away. The sweat trickling into his eyes made him blink but his face was untouched by expression. “We want you to go,” he said.

She was puzzled. “Go? It’s too early. I can’t go yet. Would you like some tea? I could—”

“Go away. Leave here, get out. Go, stay away forever.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that, love, not yet.” She glanced at the sky. “There’s nothing to worry about, you know. I’m fine. I suppose it’s natural for you to—”

“Stupid bitch. I don’t give a damn about you. I don’t want to see you watching me every day. None of us does. You’re a jinx, you’re a menace. Fitz is dead, he’s not coming back.” She began to cry, and that made him move forward. “Get away from here,” he shouted, “or by Christ I’ll kill you!” She was still leaning on the car, shaken with sobs, when he hit her, a backhanded swipe across the face which knocked her away. She began pleading, incoherently, the words choking on her sobs. He seized her and dragged her and she screamed with pain. He forced her swollen, trembling body into the driver’s seat, shoving and kicking until she was in. “Go!” he bawled, but her fingers couldn’t turn the ignition key and he had to do it. The car lurched away. He ran alongside it, kicking and swearing, until at last it outpaced him and he was left gasping and stumbling in its dusty wake.

“I can get up and down all right,” Fraser said. “It’s the bit in between I’m not so sure about.”

He was sitting on a wooden box in a trench behind the remains of the crewroom. Bodkin Hazel had been strafed so often and so suddenly that during an alert nobody sat in deckchairs any more. The trenches had been enlarged and furnished with boxes. Steel helmets were compulsory wear.

“The important thing is to keep looking behind you,” CH3 said. “Watch your tail…” Fraser and the other replacements, Donahue and Jolliff, listened carefully. They had been shunted through their Operational Conversion Unit very briskly indeed.

“And watch the sun,” CH3 went on. His voice had an impatient, hard-driving edge to it. “Nine times out of ten, Jerry’s up there in the sun. Never climb away from the sun, that’s fatal.”

“I’m going for a pee,” Gordon said. He got out of the trench and wandered away until he found Micky Marriott climbing over the carcass of a broken Hurricane, seeking bits to cannibalize. “New boys make me sick,” Gordon said. “They smell like a gents’ outfitters. They’re all thirteen years old.” He stretched out on a crumpled wing and closed his eyes. “I don’t like them and I shan’t speak to them.”

“They’re not all thirteen. And some of them are brighter than you are.”

“If I were any brighter I’d glow in the dark.” Gordon liked that idea: he smiled.

“You’re not as bright as Sherriff, I can tell you that.” Marriott poked his head into a hole in the fuselage. “I saw Sherriff make a century for Derbyshire against Essex a year ago. On a very sticky wicket, too. Sherriff’s as bright as they come, believe you me.”

“Sherriff bought it yesterday.”

“Did he?” Marriott pulled his head out. “I haven’t had time to catch up with the squadron state, what with one thing and another… Shouldn’t you be in the dugout?”

“CH3’s making his speech again. Hear him?” They listened for a moment to the insistent voice. “It’s all balls,” Gordon said. “They won’t remember any of it.”

“Shift over, Flash. I want to get at that panel.”

Gordon rolled off the wing and strolled back to the trench. “And for Christ’s sake never dive after a single 109,” CH3 was saying. “If you see one, there’s certainly another not far away, and he’ll have you.”

“Hitler’s invaded,” Gordon said.

“Always check your oxygen before takeoff,” CH3 told them.

“It didn’t work,” Gordon said. “There are hundreds of thousands of German corpses washing about in the sea between Folkestone and Dover. I’ve just been over to have a look.”

“Okay, now let’s consider gunnery,” CH3 said.

“The Channel is red with blood as far as the eye can see,” Gordon said. “Our losses were three Home Guards with hernias from throwing handgrenades.”

“Can it, Flash,” CH3 snapped.

“It’s not a pretty sight. One of the hernias is huge.”

Barton thought that CH3 was going to hit Gordon. He touched the American’s arm and said: “I want to show you something.” They got out of the trench and walked fifty yards. “What d’you think of this?” Barton asked.

“It’s a steamroller. So what?”

“Is it a good steamroller?” Barton kicked a wheel. “How much d’you reckon it’s worth?”

“For Christ’s sake, Fanny. What the hell are we doing talking about machinery?”

“Okay.” Barton sat in the driver’s seat. “What d’you want to talk about? Modern art? Skiing? Naked ladies?”

CH3 went to the front roller and peeled pancakes of earth from it. They came off easily and left dark patches on the metal. “Look, all I’m trying to do is give them a better chance,” he said.

“You’re giving them so much good advice they’re too stuffed to move.”

“There’s a lot to learn.”

“And they haven’t got time.”

“But that’s crazy. When we get scrambled—”

“Of course it’s crazy. That’s what you’ve got to accept. What we’re doing is crazy. We can’t change it so let’s relax and enjoy it. It may be a matter of life and death but is that any reason to be so damn grim?”

“I can’t help the way I am. I’m responsible for half those guys.”

“So what? I’m responsible for all of them. Do I go around looking miserable? If you can’t relax and enjoy being a flight commander I’ll chop you.”

“Oh yeah? And who would you put in my place?”

“Flash Gordon.”

CH3 was staggered: he actually took a pace back. “Flash is nuts,” he said, and his voice was empty, airless. “You’d have to be crazy to do that.”

“Being crazy certainly helps,” Barton said. “Think about it.”

That afternoon, Haducek was killed.

“A” flight had been scrambled. It was not an experienced unit: Donahue at Red Two, Flash Gordon and Jolliff in White Section, Haducek and Fraser in Yellow. CH3’s final advice to the new boys was: “Stick like glue to your leader and do what he does.”

They intercepted about forty Heinkel 111’s as they crossed the coast near Dover. There was also a defensive screen of Me-110’s but Haducek cut through it with a brisk contempt for his or anybody else’s safety that made Fraser’s fingertips prickle. He concentrated on following Haducek and tried to ignore the streaks of tracer, the crisscrossing aircraft, the rushing contrails that crowded his vision. Haducek jinked and Fraser jinked after him. Haducek fired. Fraser felt the clatter of metal on his Hurricane, he saw things bouncing off his windscreen, the threat of terror squeezed his throat and he nearly broke away before he got blown to bits; but then he glimpsed a trail of shining fragments ahead and realized he was flying into Haducek’s spent cartridge cases. He twitched the nose up. Haducek had closed on the Heinkel and Fraser saw him kill the upper gunner: eight Brownings briefly swamped the turret and the single machine-gun jerked to the vertical. Then the entire enemy formation shook and bounced as it ran over a sudden eruption of flak. One burst blew Haducek’s Hurricane out of the picture.