Moon Squadron (12 page)

A locomotive, galloping along the rails at eighty kilometres an hour, hit the truck fair and square, smashing it and its precious load to tiny fragments. Of Whippy's Lysander, all that was left might possibly be of interest to a scrap metal merchant. It could be of no interest to anyone else.

In their search for a scapegoat, the Gestapo arrested the worthy
Curé
of Chateroux and charged him with being the R.A.F. pilot. Having themselves brought the use of religious disguises to a fine art, here was an obvious suspect. The good man, however, was able to bring a host of witnesses as to his innocence and, after a few days, he was sourly released. The Germans were confronted with the fact that there was now no aircraft and no pilot.

Having seen, as they believed, their Lysander well on the way to being reduced to ashes, her pilot and passengers left the shelter of the ruined building and started walking. The night was dark, windy, wet and intensely cold. Led by Squadron Leader Whippy Nesbitt-Dufort, they discreetly by-passed St. Florant and trudged on for a further distance of some four miles. Here Whippy called a halt. He apologised for the fact that he was suffering from extreme exhaustion and fatigue, but sleep he must. By the roadside, the trio found a deserted shepherd's hut and within its draughty walls, Whippy lay down and was instantly unconscious. One of his passengers elected to guard him while the other, almost as worn out as was Whippy himself, fought on to Issodun. He was an experienced agent and he had little difficulty in getting into touch with the leader of the local Resistance. To him, he told all. He could not have found a better confidant, for the man was brave and resourceful.

"What you need," he said, "is sleep. For the rest, leave the matter of your friends to me. You will be woken when things have been arranged."

By two o'clock that afternoon, the Resistance leader had achieved the impossible. He had got hold of a car and a driver. Whippy had had more than twelve hours' solid sleep by the time the car arrived to collect him and the old buoyancy was apparent. But, as his French was strictly utilitarian and confined to indicating the most elementary needs of the body, it was decided that he should be tucked away out of sight until such time as a pick-up could be arranged. He was driven to Issodun railway station where he was to hide, beguiling himself with an English-French dictionary for the next month or so. While Whippy languished, forged documents were being prepared and he learned the way to Issodun aerodrome.

Whippy's pick-up operation was planned for the night of March 1st. Meanwhile, to my great personal grief, his name had appeared in the casualty lists as ‘missing’. It is pleasant to think, in retrospect, that while I was bemoaning his loss, Whippy was planning the party he would have when he came home.

March 1st was an anxious day and
when the longed-for B.B.C. code message came through at last it was so faint as to be practically inaudible.

In Whippy's ears
it rang like a carillon of bells for it meant that the operation was on. With three agents and the barest minimum of luggage, the party set out in darkness for the aerodrome. Arrived there safely, they laid out a miniature flare-path at a quarter past midnight, and almost immediately heard a sound which he identified as being that of an Anson. Signals were exchanged and the aircraft landed successfully. Whippy and his three companions were aboard without wasting a split second but with considerable speculation as to the aircraft's chances of getting into the sky with such a load. The Anson lumbered along, staggered into the air and set course for home. Just two months after he had taken off, Squadron-Leader Nesbitt-Dufort was back in England again. His weight had decreased but his French had improved. As he had anticipated, his arrival was the occasion for a notable party.

Pilots flying Hudsons knew all too clearly before they took off of the risks involved. They had a number of very close escapes. These aircraft needed a far larger area in which to land and manoeuvre and because of this, they could not be used as ubiquitously as Lysanders. Their cargo capacity was far greater and they were used whenever it seemed feasible. Between November, 1942, and September, 1944, Hudsons took part in 46 pick-up operations, 36 of which were completely successful. Two of these operations are worth recording in some detail. In each of them, it seemed as if disaster was inevitable. It was only averted by the narrowest of margins by the help and co-operation of local inhabitants, human and animal, two-legged and four!

Piloting a Hudson, Wing-Commander Pickard took off fr
om Tempsford shortly before half past two on a February morning in 1943. He flew in thick fog to a point beneath which he knew was his target - then came the difficult and dangerous job of landing. Round and round he went, completing twenty circuits before a slim rift appeared in the opaque curtain. He was through this before it had time to vanish and was delighted to see a flare-path below. He landed somewhat steeply but safely. The aircraft fled along the flare-path and slowed up and stopped. There was a soft, sucking sound, hideous to hear. Pickard became aware of that sinking feeling, and well he might, for the wheels of the Hudson were every second becoming more and more deeply bogged in glutinous mud. He switched off his engines. Those who were present, the reception committee and his impatient passengers, set to work with a will and began digging with improvised tools. After about half an hour, it looked as if the Hudson were freed. Pickard crossed his fingers, started the engines and tried to taxi out. He moved an inch or two and promptly sank in again. In the next minute or two, he learned several new French words of the existence of which he had hitherto been unaware.

By this time, the noise, excitement and activity had roused the inhabitants of the local village and, first in ones and twos and later in small groups, most of the able-bodied turned out to help. Heaving and sweating and swearing, they literally put their shoulders to the wheel but always, just as success seemed imminent, the bog, with all the male violence of the inanimate, gleefully reclaimed its prey. It was repeatedly a matter of six inches out of the morass and nine inches into it. A brief halt was called for the part
icipants in this Satanic tug of war to get their breaths. Some more French phrases were added to Pickard's dictionary. Re-enforcements arrived from the village and were formed into teams. By a superhuman back-breaking effort, the Hudson was extricated and pushed on to firm ground. All this had taken time and by now the flares had burned out. The scene was like a fairground with crowds milling around and, in the confusion, nobody seemed to know exactly where the flare-path had been. Once again, Pickard crossed his fingers. He embarked his passengers and taxied back as far as he dared. Holding his breath, he gave the engines full boost and thundered off into the darkness. The ground fell away and he was airborne. His starboard wing-tip and leading edge suffered from contact with trees and George, his automatic pilot, was put out of action. But the Hudson continued to fly. He landed at Tempsford at eight in the morning and never in his life enjoyed bacon and eggs so much.

What has happened once can happen twice. In February 1944 - February was a bad month for this sort of thing and lived up to its reputation as "Filldyke"-
Flying Officer Affleck had a similar experience as before. Taking off from Tempsford, he bogged down in a waterlogged field while he taxied back to the end of the flare-path. All hands to the Hudson! The reception committee manhandled the aircraft into the wind and, vastly relieved, Affleck started the engines. The tail wheel, as if resentful of the vibration, subsided gently but firmly into the mud. With considerable difficulty, the reception committee extricated it. By the time it was clear, the landing wheels, with the superb hostile timing of a Buster Keaton film, had themselves sunk in. Seen from the back stalls of a cinema, this see-saw business would have been uproariously funny. When experienced in a French field at some hour after midnight with heavily armed German patrols combing the area, it was wholly without humour.

As in Wing-Commander Pickard's case, reinforcements were called to the rescue. Word went round the village that an R.A.F. aircraft was in trouble. Jerseys and tro
users were pulled on over night-shirts, best Sunday coats were buttoned over nightdresses. The village, man, woman and child, left its shuttered home and, ignoring the curfew, turned up at the field with its sleeves rolled up. Second last to arrive was
Grandmere
. She had a very good explanation - or rather two good explanations - for being late. She was leading a pair of sleepy oxen and, over her spindly arms, ropes were coiled. She was followed by Jean, her sturdy grandson who in turn was followed by three strong horses.

It is claimed by those who were present that the old lady was roundly kissed by Flying Officer Affleck. This is denied by Flying Officer
Affleck. Certain it is that the
Entente
cordiale
was more firmly established than ever.

All this had taken time and the minutes were fleeting.

Affleck had worked out that three a.m. was zero hour. Unless he could get off the ground by three, he would have to destroy the Hudson and take a chance on getting home as best he could. Men, women and even children began to dig two sloping channels in front of the landing wheels. These were strewn with branches, foliage and brushwood, the oxen and the horses were hitched to the aircraft and, with Affleck using his engines, the great concerted heave started, to the cracking of whips and the shouts of the villagers. For a breathless minute, it seemed as if the aircraft was stuck for good. Then, suddenly, with a lurch, it was freed and pulled forward on to firmer ground. Affleck took his passengers aboard and attempted to take off. The attempt failed and he trundled back to the starting point. As he turned into the wind, the aircraft bogged down again. His heart sank with the wheels. Once again, the oxen, the horses and the human company bent their muscles to the task and the Hudson was drawn clear. Shortly after 2 a.m. - fifty short minutes to go - Affleck tried another take-off. He hit a bump near the boundary of the field. The bump was providential for the Hudson bounced into the air like a startled pheasant. Affleck's speed was a bare fifty knots but somehow, he kept the Hudson up. Only when the sound of his engines had faded into the steep incline of the sky and all traces of its visit had been obliterated did the villagers go back to their beds, the oxen to their stall and the horses to their stables.

Affleck and his passengers were back in Tempsford in time for an early breakfast.

These two incidents were exceptional. They had a happy ending. Serious crashes involving loss of life were very rare and, in the vast majority of cases, the pick-up flights worked with the precision and punctuality of a peace-time airline schedule. But not always, for death was never very far away from the pilot's elbow. In November, 1943, his grey fingers touched twice in the same night. Two Lysanders attempted blind landings. They had been warned that the weather had freakishly closed down everywhere and that visibility was nil. But they couldn't keep on flying indefinitely so they put down. Both crashed. Pilots and passengers were instantly killed.

The following night, more aircraft went out. This was the Squadron's interpretation of the old expression pat to the lips of every real
trouper: ‘The Show must go on’. The show went on. Pitifully inadequate in the beginning, gaining strength and the professional touch as the war went on, the Squadron's record is astounding. In all, two hundred and fifty eight Lysander operations were attempted. Of these, one hundred and eighty two were completely successful. Four pilots were killed. One was captured and became a prisoner of war. Four more, who had got into difficulties in Occupied Europe, destroyed their aircraft and escaped.

Aided by the Resistance, passed on from brave hand to brave hand,
they returned safely to England and at once reported for duty. Like their brothers-in-arms, the Poles were “wishing to be flying again to Europe". They thought nothing of leaving the comparative security of England to touch down on fields within arm's reach of acutely hostile enemy forces. At least one pilot took off from his landing ground somewhere in France as a pitched battle broke out on the field he had just left, a battle that was fought to the death between the members of his reception committee and the Nazi
Feldpolizei
.

These pick-up operations made up only a small part of the vast number of sorties undertaken by the Special Duty Squadrons. For every toast-butter-and-marmalade expedition of this sort, there was a score of rounds of bread and margarine. The main business of the Squadrons was the dropping by parachute of agents, arms and supplies to every part of potentially resistant Europe.

The packaging of these supplies presented a considerable problem. The packages would hit the ground with some force and it would be foolish indeed to risk crews and aircraft if there were the slightest chance of their deliveries being wrecked on impact. The experts
were put to work to find a fool-proof method. The normal height at which men jumped and packages were pushed out was about seven hundred feet. Countless experiments were made with containers of various sizes and weights and it seemed as if the problem was solved. Certainly containers with delicate equipment inside were experimentally dropped without jarring the contents. Then another snag cropped up. These containers were too large for the reception committees to handle. With Germans all around them and a very brief space of time at their disposal, they couldn't lug these huge objects to prepared hiding places. The back-room boys thought again and came up with the solution. The large containers remained, but when the outer covering was removed, there were inside a number of smaller and easily portable packages. Really large articles which could not be fitted into containers were covered with special layers either of sorbo rubber or of a latex and horse hair mixture. Nor was the water forgotten; in November and December, 1942, two water jumps had been made and agents deliberately parachuted into lakes in France. Both were successful. If men, why not supplies? Again the backroom boys scratched their heads and found the answer. In early 1945, twelve containers were dropped into Lim Fjord in Denmark. They entered the water with the grace of seals and a few bubbles came up. Then, an hour or two later, something else came up. The packaging had been so devised that the watertight containers stayed in the Fjord's depths until required. The exact spot under which they were submerged was marked by an innocent-looking rusty can which, after a safe interval, wavered upwards to float on the surface of the water.