Moon Squadron (11 page)

The heroic efforts of the Polish and British crews of No.1586 Flight is written into the history of the Warsaw rising. Actively, they contributed to the struggle. Passively, they shared the endurance, the anxiety and the final horror of the city's martyrdom.

"Now," writes Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins, "did the Polish nation drink the very bitterest dregs of the cup of despair …"

Not many hours before the purple and white flag of Poland was hoisted in revolt, a shadowy figure was parachuted into the outskirts of Warsaw. Jan Novak, daring and good-looking Lieutenant, had come from Tempsford to Warsaw to play more than one man's part in the rising. A trained, cool and fearless soldier, it seemed to the insurgents that he was always with them. He was ubiquitous. It was he who organised strong points, directed crossfire, planned and led ambushes, rallying, sustaining, giving heart. He was rarely alone. Constantly beside him was dark-eyed pretty Liet Jadwiga, a girl in her late teens, as ardent a patriot as he was himself. Liet was a typical product of her country and of its despair. She slung a rifle as naturally as other young women of her age in other countries carried shoulder bags. Had she indeed a bag, its contents would have been unusual to say the least. For lipstick, compact and comb, read hand-grenade, plastic and detonator; for eyebrow pencil read time-pencil. Jan and Liet fought side by side and it was inevitable that they should fall in love. As the Germans threw more and more troops and tanks into the battle and the Red Army cynically watched, the end was sure. It was during the last days of Warsaw's agony that Jan asked Liet to marry him. Theirs was no ‘quiet wedding’. They were married in a chapel in the front line on which German artillery fire was concentrated. Standing before the riven altar, they plighted their troth to the scream and crunch of shells and the sound of falling masonry. Over the murmurings of the priest rose the moans of the wounded and the dying and their wedding march thundered from the barrels of guns. There was no reception, no wedding breakfast. A quick embrace and man and wife were back in the firing line. As the German barrage increased in intensity, the patriots were driven more and more deeply into the rubble of their city. Warsaw was doomed.

A last meeting of the underground leaders was summoned. Jan Novak was chosen to leave at once for London with papers of vital importance. He had been wounded in the arm and the secret documents were
hidden under the bandages. For his journey, he was given forged papers which stated that he was a skilled, security-screened Polish worker employed by the Germans. He had been wounded in the battle and had orders to proceed to a hospital in the Reich for treatment.

Together he and Liet set out. Their escape route was by way of the only exit from Warsaw
- the sewers. Wading hand-in-hand through foul water and slime and filth that often rose shoulder high, they accomplished the first part of their journey and came out in the clean air outside the stricken city. They got two third class seats in a German train trundling to the West. The train had two functions. It carried its passengers from Poland to Berlin. But it also served as a mobile theatre, stopping to schedule so that the occupants could watch the terrible pantomime of the execution of Polish patriots. With fiercely woven hands, Jan and Liet watched in silence and in prayer.

Some miles outside Berlin, the couple left the train. With only a tiny pocket compass to guide them, they started walking in the direction of the advancing Allied armies. They avoided all towns, making their way stealthily and by night. Time and time again, they were halted, questioned and grudgingly allowed to go on. In all, they covered a distance of more than five hundred miles before they ran into an Allied patrol. From then on, their journey was swift. The bandages, filthy and blood-caked, were taken off Jan's arm
in London and the papers, still intact, were handed over. Then, like a gramophone needle stuck in the groove of a familiar record, came the reiterated plea: "Please, we are wishing to be going again to Poland."

Chapter Ten

TEMPSFORD AND TANGMERE

During I943, one hundred
and fifty seven Lysander pick-up operations were attempted by 6 Squadron. Of these, a hundred and eleven were successful. These are impressive figures and were only achieved by meticulous planning backed up by skill and daring on the part of the pilots. Throughout that year and until the spring of 1944, the Squadron operated from an advance base in Tangmere, Sussex.

This was the normal drill. Some hours before their scheduled take off, the pilots
were briefed with every available scrap of information. They studied most carefully and thoroughly photographs of the field where their wheels would touch down, memorising every detail of the lie of the land, every wrinkle in the surface, every indentation in the grass. The route they would fly was of vital importance and, in plotting it, two conflicting requirements had to be reconciled. The Lysander, modified for special duties, was unarmed and, if attacked, had no means of defending itself. The first requirement, therefore, was that they should keep out of the way of trouble and avoid all known German flak points. At the same time, the one-man crew had to follow his course by landmarks and not by sextant. This course had to be laid over easily identifiable country and it was precisely at these easily identifiable points that German anti-aircraft batteries were concentrated. And, of course, what might be going on at the other end was always unpredictable.

Early in 1943, Flying Officer McCairns took off from Tangmere with two Joes and nine packages. Two miles away from the agreed field, a reception committee lit their torches at the sound of his aircraft's engine. Not only were they in the wrong field but they were giving the wrong code signal. The lette
r agreed upon for the night was ‘O’ (dash-dash-dash). The chaps down there were flashing the letter K (dash-dot-dash). It could be natural excitement, could be the wrong committee, could be the Gestapo- it could be anything. Flying Officer McCairns decided to put her down and have a look. He came in to land on a brilliantly lit flare path and was welcomed with enthusiasm. The wrong field? True - but this was a better field, smoother, tidier, more desirable in every way. The wrong signal? Ah, an error. But one should not worry about trivialities.
Monsieur le pilot
had time for a drink, a little Armagnac or even a mouthful of Marc? No. A pity. Nevertheless, there was one package for London and four passengers.

Four!

Flying Officer McCairns drew a deep breath. The passengers were good hefty chaps, the smallest of them weighing at least twelve stone. Then he looked at the Lysander.

He sighed. He said:
"Right. In you get.
Montez
,
Messieurs
."

Somehow, helped by a providential gust of wind, the little aircraft got itself off the ground. Wiping the sweat off his forehead, McCairns headed for home. The engine hummed with a reassuringly
healthy note for exactly twenty five minutes. Then trouble started. It began to splutter and misfire. After an agonising three minutes, it cut out completely. Side-slipping and gliding, McCairns lost more than a thousand feet in altitude while changing over petrol tanks. The engine fired once again and it seemed that all might yet be well, but, during the crisis, he had not only lost height but his direction. Peering down, he could just make out the foam-fringed silhouette of the French Coast beneath him and he knew that he was west of the Cherbourg peninsula. It was a tricky place to find oneself in - there was only one thing to be done. He set course to fly between Cap de Ia Hague and Alderney. The crews of the shore and shipping batteries
might
be asleep. They were wide awake and salvo after salvo was fired at the heavily laden aircraft. McCairns put her nose down and dived at full power through the curtain of flak, roaring steeply down to sea level. Skimming the waters, he was rapidly out of gu range and returned safely to Tangmere. The joy of his four passengers at finding their feet on the earth was boundless. With even more dexterity than he had shown at avoiding flak, McCairns side-stepped the kisses of these exuberant passengers.

It had not been a piece of cake. Neither was an experience of Wing-Commander Pickard's in the same month. The
adventure might well be called ‘No Target for Tonight’.

Pickard took off and flew without incident to the point where he expected to see the L-shaped group of welcoming torches. But the French countryside, every separate field and furrow deep-etched in the moonlight, might have been a vast cemetery. There was no sign of life or light. For over two vulnerable hours, he flew over and across the agreed position, checking and rechecking the fact that he was dead on course and on time. Not a glimmer came up from the cemetery of France. Only when fuel was dangerously low did he head for home with the bitter knowledge that the mission had been unsuccessful. He landed at Pendannock at half past six in the morning with one last teaspoonful of petrol in his tank. He had spent seven and half hours in the air.

What had gone wrong? The explanation is simple. The reception committee had turned up. They had heard the sound of his engine and, from where they lay hidden, they had seen his aircraft crossing and re-crossing in the moonlight, vainly searching. They had misunderstood the routine, being new to it. They had understood that the aircraft would signal first. As it had failed to do so, they had not revealed their presence. Both they and Pickard had had a dangerous night out for nothing.

My friend Harry R., one-time saboteur and now highly respectable headmaster, was the victim of one of these operations that failed
to come off. He had been parachuted into France months before and had asked Baker Street for an assistant. A young officer, trained and briefed, was allotted to Harry. It was arranged that he would come by Lysander and the operation was laid on to a hair. The Lysander, owing to icing, had had to turn back to Tangmere, and there was no way of letting the reception committee know. Harry and his reception committee cycled to the agreed field and prepared to wait. It was a bitingly cold night with tentacles of frost and the bone was in the ground. Harry had brought a precious bottle of Armagnac as inseparable from these clandestine operations as is Marshall from Snelgrove or claret from saddle of mutton, and he proposed suitably to welcome the newcomer to France. But, as the night deepened and the cold became more intense, the cork was apologetically drawn and the bottle passed round. Sips, not swigs, was an order. When the bottle was returned to Harry, its spirit level, so to speak, had only sunk very slightly. There was plenty left for the one who would come, and the sooner he came the better, for the cold was such as to split the branches of trees. Men blew into their numbed hands and peered upwards into the empty sky where the stars, beyond the bright orbit of the moon, twinkled frostily. They thought with longing of the genial contents of that bottle and strained their eardrums for the sound of the aircraft's approach after which they could go home to bed and thaw their stiff joints. Half an hour passed. Once again, the bottle was circulated. This time the order was swigs but not gulps. As the spirit level descended and the estimated time of the Lysander's arrival was reached and passed at the pace of an
Escargot
with rheumatism, men drank more deeply than they had intended to do. By the time the bottle was returned to Harry's almost rigid fingers, there was little point in saving up what was left. It would be not only discourteous but inhospitable to offer the newcomer a bottle that had been so sadly ravished. Harry finished what was left. Just before dawn, he and his reception committee silently dispersed and made their way to their various homes. It was possible that that last, profligate swallow inspired his coded message to Baker Street: "... boyfriend failed to arrive stop. What do you think we are query bloody polar bears query stop message ends."

Directly and indirectly, the weather remained one of the greatest dangers. It and it alone was the cause of ‘Whippy’ Nesbitt-Dufort's sojourn in Occupied France.

On New Year's Day, 1942, Whippy,
who had by now been promoted to Squadron-Leader, was detailed to take two Joes and their luggage to a point in Occupied France. As always, he studied the route meticulously and, as 138 Squadron's most experienced pilot at this sort of thing, satisfied himself that, barring accidents, he could safely make an appointment to meet me in the Silver Cross for luncheon on January 2nd. We welcomed the two Joes on board with a casual courtesy born of confidence and his Lysander was airborne at 7.15 p.m. It was a perfectly normal easy flight out-the German flak batteries were obviously too busy having New Year celebrations to stand to their guns-and Whippy arrived at his destination to the second of time. The marked, torch-lit runway was as smooth as tarmac. His two passengers hopped out with profuse thanks for an uneventful flight and two new passengers hopped in. They had rather more luggage than Whippy had expected and the weather that had been so fair when they left England was clouding over. Never mind. If the journey home wasn't going to be a piece of cake, it would at least be a slice of bread and butter.

He waved a cheerful farewell to the r
eception committee, wished them and France a Happy New Year and took off successfully. Already a thin rain was falling. As he flew on, the clouds seemed to acquire the texture of an army blanket and the rain became heavy. In a matter of minutes, the weather deteriorated sharply and the downpour was torrential. Whippy tried to use his radio and then realised that it was unserviceable. Not so good. The weather, already bad enough to cause concern, worsened. With ten-tenths cloud at seven hundred feet, Whippy was forced to resort to the sort of flying he knew so well. He began hopping the hedges, flying dangerously low in extremely bumpy and turbulent conditions. Soon a thin coating of glaze-frost formed on his windscreen and he decided that the only thing he could do was to climb once more and get above the cold front. From a direct reckoning position fifty miles south of the Seine, he set course for Beachy Head. He was still in thick, opaque cloud and conditions were severe. Ice had formed on the engine intake and, far more alarming, he saw a good four or five inches of solid ice on the leading edge of the slot. At eight thousand feet, the aircraft, for all practical purposes, became uncontrollable. There was nothing else for it. Whippy turned in the cockpit and yelled to his passengers to bailout. There was a fearful noise going on and it may be that they didn't hear him. In any case, they stayed put and a good thing too! The pilot turned on a reciprocal course and, at a speed of two hundred and forty miles an hour, the battered Lysander broke cloud at a thousand feet. To Whippy's immense relief, the weather was comparatively clear and, on straightening out from that steep dive, he found that the aircraft could still be flown fairly straight and level in spite of the ice coating. But there were less than fifty gallons of fuel left in the tank and, with a packed-up radio, he was unable to get a bearing for his position. It was now a question that Whippy had often asked in other and more genial circumstances in the Inns of the Cotswolds. "Where do we go from here?"

The alternatives were few indeed. The fuel position being what it was, the best thing he could do was to beat back for Unoccupied France and pray to God that he got over the demarcation line befo
re making the inevitable forced landing.

By
nursing his exhausted engine and conserving every teaspoonful of petrol and by superb flying, he made it. At ten minutes past two in the morning, just under nine hours after he had taken off from England, he put the flaps down over a sodden field near Chateroux. He yelled, "Hold your hats on" as he felt his wheels touch the ground. The Lysander skidded wetly then, with a sickening lurch and a bump, hit a sunken ditch. She nosed over, cocking her tail in the air. This is the moment when Whippy and his companions should have been killed. They weren't. They scrambled out of the wrecked aircraft, miraculously unhurt. "Sorry about all this," said Whippy. "My goodness, I could do with one or six drinks . . ."

First things first. The little Lysander that had carried them so
bravely had to be destroyed with nothing but a jack-knife, Whippy hacked open the auxiliary self-sealing petrol tank. Then he exploded the S.F.F., the Secret Identification Friend or Foe device which sent automatic "Friendly" signals to our radar stations). So far, so good. Now for the cremation. Whippy fired a Verey pistol at the aircraft, aiming at where it would catch fire. When it was blazing, they ran to the shelter of an empty, ruined building, and again began to consider the ageless question.

"Where do we go from here?"

The ultimate fate of the Lysander prov
ides a pleasant element of slapstick. It burned for a little while and then the flames, unfed by petrol, flickered and went out. The next morning, the Germans came upon the gaunt, only partially consumed wreck. This was treasure trove indeed. The telephone wires hummed with orders as to how it should be handled. No part of it should be removed or disassembled. The entire unit (or what was left of it) should be hoisted on to a huge truck and conveyed with the greatest care to a place where it could be examined at leisure by German aeronautical experts. These orders were carried out with characteristic efficiency. The half-burned cadaver of the Lysander was lifted by a crane and placed on a truck with the tenderness usually given to a new-born baby. No part was disturbed. It was a masterly operation. Then the truck set off on its slow journey, avoiding the ruts and bumps. It reached the flat road safely and its guardians breathed more freely. Some four kilometres along the road there was a level crossing. It was at this moment that fate threw the custard pie.