Moon Squadron (17 page)

“
The situation of the Alsatian will be difficult. It won't be too good for him,” I said. The thin man indicated his companion, one who stood beside him. He said to me, “Oh, that's all right. We are both in the same boat, my Alsatian, my guard, and I. It was only then that I realised that this Alsatian, this guard, and his prisoner were about to mount together into my aircraft . . ."

The determination and physical stamina of the Moon Squadron's crews were qualities at which to marvel. In 1944, one of a Squadron of Wellingtons, on its way to drop supplies to the Partisans in Yugoslavia, ran into trouble. It was high over the mountains when the port engine packed up owing to over-heating and violent vibration. For a while, the pilot feathered the propeller. Then, the starboard engine decided to follow suit and, with both engines dead,
the pilot gave the order for the crew to bail out. The last man to go before the pilot himself was the wireless operator. As he was about to leap into space, his rip-cord caught on something and, with the greatest efficiency, his parachute opened within the aircraft. There was no time to go to the spare-chute stowage and select and put on another one, so gathering the billowing silk in his arms like a man carrying a vast bundle of women's underclothes, he dropped through the hole and then let go. His parachute spread and took the wind and he landed safely. Meanwhile the aircraft had been losing height rapidly and the mountains were perilously near. The pilot jumped at something under four hundred feet. He landed heavily and painfully, but he was alive. He picked himself up, disposed of his parachute and started walking. Though this was not walking along a road - it was scrambling and sweating and climbing and clinging in the darkness of unknown mountains, aware only of a general direction. He saw, in the far distance, the campfires of the Partisans and took the fearful risk of approaching these fierce men whose practice it was to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. But he fell among friends. After a meal of stewed goat and wine, they pondered how best to get him back to the R.A.F. in Italy. It would involve a strenuous journey, strenuous even for these steel-and-whip cord mountaineers. So they set out, and some days later, the pilot reported to his unit.

It was only then that he admitted that he was in a little pain and would like someone to have a look at him. The Medical Officers examined him and looked at each other incredulously. His back was broken.

Even now, this indomitable man chafed at inactivity. The hospital in which he lay encased in plaster was only a matter of a mile or two from his old landing strip and it was galling indeed for him to have to lie in bed and hear aircraft engines warming up and thundering in the sky over his head. He got hold of some clothes. It is better not to ask how, or the identity of the man, who, coming out of his bath, had to spend the rest of the day wrapped up in a towel and when no one was looking, made his way to pay the Squadron a social call. It was with the greatest difficulty that his brother officers dissuaded him from proving that he could still make a Wellington do its stuff, plaster or no plaster.

Stories of these men's endurance are legion. A South African pilot had been shot down in Italy behind the enemy lines - his right leg had been badly smashed up. Three alternatives presented themselves. He could be left where he was in the knowledge that he would be taken prisoner and in the hope that the Italians would immediately whip him into hospital. The second alternative was that they should have a shot at amputating the leg themselves on the spot. With a gruesome vision of penknives and hack-saws, the wounded man put a weak but categoric veto on any amateur surgery. The third alternative was that an attempt should be made to fly him out. On this they settled. An aircraft - an Auster - was stripped and made ready for the patient. It flew to where he lay and landed. He was hoisted aboard and set off for home, flying with his damaged leg in splints resting on the pilot's shoulder. The patient's language during the flight was rich and rare but they landed safely with the proverbial teaspoonful of petrol left in the tank. His leg is still happily attached to his person.

When things went wrong, getting back was usually quite a job. But, on one occasion at least, it had its funny side. Incidents of this sort are uproarious
in retrospect; they are not nearly so funny when they are going on. A Lysander put down in a field to pick up a Joe. It doesn't matter where. What did matter was that the Germans had dug a deep trench diagonally across the field and into this trench one wheel of the Lysander struck, effectively jamming the elevator. When the Lysander took off, it went straight up like a rocket. The pilot had to throttle back to avoid stalling.

Then he zoomed up again. It was, he said, rather like being astride a hiccoughi
ng pheasant - the sort of ghastly nightmare one has on the night before one's first solo. He came home in a sickening series of climbs and dives, one minute shooting up to heaven like a homesick angel, the next descending into hell like Lucifer anxious not to be late for an appointment. It is reported that the opinion of the control tower at Tempsford was that aircraft and pilot were both being impelled by pure alcohol, a grave injustice.

"
Bless
all
the
Sergeants
and
W
.
O
.
ones
..."

Leslie Montgomery was a Warrant Officer Wireless Operator R.A.F. when he was posted to Tempsford in September, 1942 "for Special Duties." He had no idea what
these "Special Duties" might be, nor for some weeks did anyone make any attempt to enlighten him. Then, on October 29th, he found out. He took off in a bomber as the moon rose and flew at about eight hundred feet towards the Hook of Holland .He says:

"The foam-flecked Dutch coast glinted below. The eerie green light that bathed the interior of the bomber turned to red. Somebody stirred in the aircraft's waist, then lumbered towards two doors set in the floor. They swung open, letting in an icy wind. The lumpy, muffled figure crept closer to the hatch, paused for a split second and vanished into the moonlight. I had dropped my first Joe and become a fully-fledged member of the R.A.F.'s most fantastic Squadron."

Leslie Montgomery lives quietly now, not far from Tempsford. He has time to remember many of the extraordinary missions in which he took a part. He was on board one of the Halifaxes that took off, filled to bursting point with arms and explosives for the Maquis of Glieres. The mountains were flickering with the bonfires of the insurgents and the mass drop was completely successful. The Halifax made for home to find another message waiting: "Enemy air craft dive-bombing. Send suitable guns. Urgent." While the exhausted crew gulped coffee, the aircraft was refuelled and loaded with ‘suitable guns’. For the second time that night, they took off for the same plateau in the same mountains, dropping anti-aircraft guns on a pin-point. Arrived back at Tempsford, sodden with weariness, the crew found waiting for them a signal that made the whole crazy night's work worthwhile. The
politesse
of the French, commonly recognised in times of peace, was even manifest in the heat of battle: "Thank you. We have already shot down two."

Montgomery's trips took him to Poland, to Czechoslovakia, to Germany, to Belgium, to Holland. He criss-crossed enemy skies like the lines in a wrinkled hand. One night, his
cargo was sunglasses and hand-grenades, the next night, skis and hand-grenades for the Norwegians. No matter how unlikely the extraneous cargo, one load was constant, a load of things that go bump in the night. Yet, in all the tumultuous months, most vivid of all is the recollection of the postage stamp.

An agent, a Joe, was driven out to M
ontgomery's aircraft. He or she (only those who knew the identity of the figure in the bulky jumping suit could tell) had been searched to the skin. Nothing of a tell-tale nature had been found. Goodbyes were said. This anonymous, sexless figure entered the aircraft and lay down. Montgomery was by the entrance hatch and gave a cheerful word of welcome. It was unanswered. Whoever it was, man or woman, was busy with his or her own thoughts. As the aircraft turned, there was a momentary gleam of light within the cabin, no more than an instantaneous glimmer. It is likely that it saved the agent's life. Sticking to the heel of one jumping boot, Montgomery saw a penny stamp, an English penny stamp. He bent down and scratched it off with his fingernail and handed it to the agent. The agent took it without a word and crumpled it. The aircraft took off. Three hours later, the agent jumped.

On May 10th, 1943, a black-painted Halifax took off from Tempsford and set course for Algiers. After skirting the snowy ramparts of the Pyrenees, it came down on the muddy, pot-holed landing strip at Maison Blanche and was rapidly bundled out of sight into a disused hangar. Unlike at Tempsford, there were a thousand curious eyes to watch and to report on the comings and goings of strange aircraft. A strong guard, with police dogs, was posted and the crew, yawning in the North African sunshine, speculated over its Arak on the next job, had its shoes polished by diminutive Arabs, refused or did not refuse to buy postcards and rejoiced in the unfamiliar bustle. Next morning, on May 11th, they were briefed for their first job. It followed a pattern they all knew. Only the
scene of operations was changed and it was one to daunt the stoutest heart. They had been picked to drop loads of captured German arms and ammunition to the desperate patriots of Corsica and Sardinia.

A glance at the map of Corsica is awe-inspiring. As if clutched and crushed by a mighty hand, the island is squeezed into a corrugation of mountains. Between these

jagged ridges and summits lie precipitous, mist-shrouded valleys, potential death-traps for low-flying aircraft. These were the purely geographical hazards. At the briefing conference, Intelligence produced several more. The island was continuously and effectively patrolled by German fighters based on Sicily and it was possible that the Halifax would be under violent and concentrated attack during the whole of the run-in, for it was pretty certain that enemy radar would pick up and plot the course. On the other hand, it was possible that the very audacity of the operation would hoodwink the Germans. It was possible that they would simply not believe that anyone would be so foolhardy as to send a single Halifax to penetrate lines known to be defended, and especially not on a moonlight night. Frankly, the target area would be hard to find. It lay in a high mountain valley and thick mist was likely. The air currents were treacherous and should be watched. All the patriots had were their pocket torches, the batteries not exactly designed for the job of signalling to aircraft. This, oddly enough, could be an asset. The Germans might try to be clever and lay out a faked dropping zone. The rule was to avoid the invitingly lit places. If the lights were good, it was safe to assume that they were too good to be true.

The mission, if successful, would be of paramount importance. The men who received the weapons would put them to excellent use in
‘softening up’ the Germans on the island before the great Allied advances started, and countless precious lives would be saved.

The black-painted Halifax took off on its first trip in white moonlight. It crossed the long, low, sanded shore, mile after mile after mile, with the dim bulk of Africa to starboard and the warm shimmering sea to port, tideless and unbroken. One who flew on that mission writes of it thus:

"As we sped more and more deeply into the danger area, we expected Palermo-based enemy fighters to come screaming towards us as each minute passed. We were ready to do our best in what would be an unequal fight. But none came. We boomed on, changing course for the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lay flatly beneath us, inky-blue in the moonlight, fingering the innumerable bays and beaches of hostile Sardinia. Tangled up in my thoughts were a number of images, those of my boyhood's imagination dredged up from years ago, Homer's wine-dark sea and the lash on the backs of slaves and the rhythm of the oars of the galleys keeping time with the steady beat of our engines, God knows how many thousand years afterwards, tonight, when, by now, enemy radar must surely be tracking our course through trackless airs and enemy fighters must surely be on the way to seek us out and destroy us, plunging us into the wine-dark sea to swing in the pulse of that sea for ever, among the clean-picked bones of the mariners of the centuries. I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world. I wanted to be where I was, in this Halifax, in this moonlight, on this mission.

“No enemy fighters came. Then, all of a sudden it seemed, Corsica was on our port bow. Black and ugly, it was indeed squeezed out of the sea. We turned for the run-in and, gazing at its mountains, yet another boyhood's image formed, that of my Nanny shaking her head and sayi
ng, “You'll be the death of me!” Please God, they, the mountains, wouldn't. Within these dread hills, men and women waited for what we would bring. These people were prepared to die rather than miss this moonlight rendezvous, and who was I to fail them? We searched and searched for our puny beacons, screwing up our eyes until we seemed to see galaxies of whirling lights where no lights were. Then we saw them, steady lights. They welcomed us, begging us mutely to trust them. They shone from the depths of a valley, a tiny pocket of darkness whose enclosing cliffs fretted the stars. True or false? There was no time to ponder the possibility of fake. The pin-pricks of light summoned us irresistibly. We wheeled steeply and then, with infinite skill, the pilot brought the Halifax down, down, down, until we were completely shut out of the sky by the cliffs. Our engines echoed and re-echoed off their resonant sides in volleys of thunder. Into that abyss of darkness we cast what we had to cast. The Halifax, freed of its burden, bucked like a frightened stallion and then we were up again and clear of the menace of rock and the stars were with us. Once again, we flew over that Stygian gloom. Far below us, the pin-pricks flashed again, on and off, on and off. The men and women of the patriots were saying 'Thank you.'