Moon Squadron (8 page)

"I slept dreamlessly and woke up to a breakfast I hadn't earned. Eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade. Instead of this lavish affair, I ought to have been drinking
Ersatz
coffee, eating black bread and keeping an eye on the door. We drove back to London. Everything was constant and unchanged. I felt as if I hadn't been away. Lucien and I were sent 'on leave.' We dined that night in a Soho restaurant. The proprietor, who knew us well, had not noticed our absence. He thought we had been dining elsewhere for a couple of nights. Lucien and I were sure that a month, a moon period, would have to pass before we could hope to leave again. We began to run our fingers doggedly down the amusement columns of the evening papers, looking for something that we hadn't seen. I hated every moment of it. I detested London and being in London. I ate very little, read a tremendous lot and found life so unspeakably boring that my mouth was filled with ashes. I prayed continuously for those of us who were in France and for the people of France who were on our side.

"Then, much sooner than we had expected, we were
told to report to Baker Street at once. We hurried to this most welcome summons. The car was waiting and again we set off with Vera. When we reached the same country house, I already knew my way to the drawing-room and the blackboard. Lucien's name and mine were already chalked up for that night at 7.30. We were both overjoyed and certain that, this time, we'd make it. Our destination had been changed and we were to be dropped in South-West France - quite near my home as a matter of fact. My mother was living in the vicinity and I knew that one of the hardest of my tasks would be to stop myself from getting into contact with one whom I loved so dearly. But my whole approach to this, my second attempt, was different. I felt gay and relieved and confident. The R.A.F. was going to get me there. After all, I'd spent four years in the W.A.A.F. and I felt that I belonged. I was, so to speak, an honorary member of the Moon Squadron.
En
avant
!

"This time, our aircraft was a Lancaster. It looked enormous after our brave little Hudson-but the floor was just as hard, we were just as cold and the dispatcher was just as friendly and understanding. It was a long, uneventful, resonant trip and we were glad when the hatch, the round hole in the floor of the aircraft, was opened. With our parachutes already hooked to the static line, Lucien and I peered down into the much darker night. Did we imagine it-or did the well-remembered smell of pines and of the sea come to our nostrils? I believe it did. This time Lucien was to jump first. In a confused jabber of sound, I vaguely heard the dispatcher tal
king excitedly on the intercom to the pilot but I don't know what he was saying. What thrilled me and filled me with delight was a row of tiny lights just below, with one flashing the letter L in Morse, answering our signal. They were ready for us.

"The dispatcher gave us the thumbs up sign. I could have kissed him. I'm not at all sure that I didn't. Poised, tense and waiting for the signal to jump, Lucien glanced at

the dispatcher and I got ready to follow him immediately.

“Go!”

"Lucien vanished. Quick as a flash, my legs were through the hole and I hardly had time to swallow before I heard it like a thunderclap.

“Go!”

"England - farewell! France - bonjour."

Chapter Nine

"DO BRONI WARSZAWO!"

The spring and summer months of 1942 were bitter indeed for the Polish crews at Tempsford. Flights to their beloved homeland were suspended because of icing and these ardent men had to endure the tortures of frustration while brief, numbing reports of what was going on under the German occupation came in. Nor could the end be seen. For centuries their land had been engulfed by the tyranny from the East. Freedom had been a matter of a few decades and then, a new and as terrible a tyranny had come from the West to interlock with the old horror with which Poland was painfully familiar. The antidote to the contemplation of tragedy lay in hard and dangerous work and, throughout these months, Polish crews were perpetually used. They flew sorties to Norway, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Demands for arms and for supplies were mounting as new secret radio networks were established. But the defence against these clandestine flights were also being improved and, during a flight to Austria on April 2oth, the new service had its first casualty: a Polish crew was lost.

In September, the sorties to Poland began again. Messages from the Polish Home Army, giving exact details of what was wanted, had been studied and men and material assembled. Also, proof had been received of the effective use the Home Army could make of weapons, ammunition and other supplies which aircraft could deliver. But the flights, if they were to be made, would be undertaken at much greater hazard. The German barrage had been greatly strengthened both in scale and accuracy.

There was another consideration. The inspired and fomented clamour for a Second Front to ease the strain on the Red Armies was mounting and walls were daubed with the exhortations of the strategically uninformed. Hope was raised, however, that an armed, underground Polish army might so harass the Germans in Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland that a diversion could be created. Belief in the good faith of Stalin still persisted then and such an uprising would be a practical encouragement to the Poles in their struggle towards liberation. It was decided to mount the operation.

Care, prayer and enthusiasm were given to two successive flights. S
ixteen Halifaxes took off from ‘Special Duties’ Headquarters. Seven were shot down, either by flak or by fighters. Of these seven, two had Polish crews. The nine that returned to base were so mauled and crippled that they had to be sent for extensive repair. More and more widely did the words "Second Front NOW!" appear on English walls. Tempsford kept her secrets well-but the defenders of the Nazi occupation of Poland had successfully put an end to the Squadron's expeditions to their friends for about two months. While the din increased, the Squadron was left with only two fully serviceable aircraft.

On October 29th
, a Whitley manned by a Polish crew took off for Warsaw. Two alternative targets had been given in the briefing. The first was the headquarters of the Gestapo, an evil wasps' nest eminently worthy of being smoked out. It was on this place of torture and fear that the crew longed to rain their bombs. The other target didn't matter. It was merely an alternative. The pilot came over Warsaw after a nightmare flight. He identified his target and circled low over it. Then, to his horror, it became plain to him that however low he were to go, he could not be sure of bombing the building with such precision that it and it alone should be blasted. It was well known to those in England whose business it was to know such things that the Gestapo, in choosing their headquarters, had foreseen such an aerial visitation and had thickly surrounded themselves with innocent hostages who would be the first to die. The pilot knew .that he would blot out many lives that should be spared to continue the fight. With anger and sorrow, he gave up his first target and, almost as a matter of routine, bombed the alternative given in his briefing. He turned for home for Tempsford. Within sight of the English shore, he ran out of fuel and had to ditch in the sea off Sheringham. The lifeboat crew of the little town, them all stout Norfolk mariners, came breasting to the stricken aircraft and all were saved.

Sheringham. It was that same town where, two years before, groups of half-trained men had guarded the long, low coast washed by the North Sea. I was one of them and I cannot write the words ‘Sheringham’ or ‘Cromer’ without a personal reminiscence. Years before the war, my friend Godfrey Turton had walked a Cleveland fox-hound puppy called ‘Cromer’. The lumbering puppy did unbelievable damage at Kildale and the word was one of ill omen to me. Then I was posted there. We arrived in the deserted town with nothing but rifles, five meagre rounds of 303 ammunition and a Lewis-gun with a broken return-spring. With these weapons, we were to repel the whole impact of an invading army, flushed with victory. So amateur were some of these warriors that I – then an acting, unpaid Lance-Corporal - was approached one forlorn evening of a dusk to dawn Stoney Hill Guard by an earnest seeker after truth who enquired:

"Hi, Corp, I can't make 'ead or tile of this one. Where d'you put the bleedin' caps in?"

Where indeed? Thank God, the Germans never came. But the town, the coast, was alive with rumour of strange happenings and of the Germans' coming. Those with whom I had the honour to soldier will remember this one. The story reached me from no less a dignitary than a sergeant. He hadn't actually seen it himself, not with his own two eyes, but a pal of his had, with
his
own two eyes.

A
Heinkel
had been shot down, a few miles inland from the coast where we stood guard. Miraculously - and improbably - it had landed intact but for the damage that had laid it low. The dead bodies of the crew had escaped mutilation and they were lifted out and laid side by side on the grass of a Norfolk field. When their flying helmets were taken off, torrents of pale golden Nordic hair flowed out over the dead shoulders. They were the dead, soft shoulders of women, blonde girls - Hitler's Valkyries.

It was plain that this wholly untrue and obscene story had been invented and put about by an ingenious Fifth Columnist. It was meant to indicate that the devotion of women to the Nazi cause was so intense that its Leader, like Odin, could send out warrior-maidens to ride the upper airs, hailing destruction on the warm earth. Eva Braun was yet to rise to the level of public consciousness in the lurid glare of a Chancellery illuminated fitfully by the flames of a Soviet-ignited
Gotterdammerung
. But, in very truth, it seemed likely enough that the fanatical passion of women for the bachelor Fuhrer might indeed have become manifest in this sterile and destructive cloud dance of death. Spitfire pilots - men of integrity and their brothers who manned the Ack-ack guns, not in any passion of vengeance but as a protective job that had to be done - still retained their human decencies. They would be loath to shoot down aircraft whose crews, in their belief, were women; those whom instinct, training and tradition impelled them to protect.

So
much for the imaginary Hitler-Mädels of Norfolk. I had a real
Luftwaffe
pilot in my charge. He was a fair, short-haired man, grievously wounded. His aircraft lay like a rotting mechanical whale in the shallows near Cromer's rent pier, the little waves licking slowly away at the ugly, angular Swastika on its dorsal fin. Before I handed him over to those who would tuck him safely away in Canada until the end of the war, he very kindly gave me a
laissez
-
passer
to the Commander-in-Chief of the expected invading force. His wife's name was Elvira, he had two children and I met him years afterwards, skiing in the bowl of the Zugspitz.

The rhythm of the spine-prickling Air Force song ‘
Here's
to
the
next
man
to
die’
swings us back again over time to 1942.

About this time, a Halifax with a Polish crew was on its return flight from its own country (icing had forced it to turn back) when it was fiercely attacked by twin-
engine fighters. The encounter was sharp. The Halifax swooped down, dodging and turning like a trout with a pike on its tail. The sound of bullets thudded and tingled on the metal body of the aircraft, strangely echoing, in the urgency of the moment, the wanton, leisured noise of a boy running a stick along railings. Everything happened so fast that each man could be clear only about his own splinter of experience, about his own spurt of action. The bomber joined battle with the foe in a running fight. In the course of its final struggle to escape, its controls, petrol tanks and wings were damaged. Its aerial was shot away. But it did escape, making for the levels of the North Sea. Over that grey expanse, the port outer engine packed up and the port inner engine began to splutter ominously. As the aircraft began to lose height, Flight-Sergeant Wasilewski, his eyes haggard for lack of sleep, his twelve-hour old beard shadowing his jowl, desperately went on trying to rig up a jury aerial. All the time the sickening sense of losing height, losing height, went on. At last he succeeded in sending out distress signals. He transmitted again and again into the void. The Halifax seemed to skim the sea's breast for an unendurable time. Then the plunge came.

The crew waited an hour, saturated, cold, not knowing whether to hope.

Around them splashed the North Sea waves, cold, dun and indigo like a Dutch painting brought to life; above them, cold sepia clouds moved endlessly along the cold grey sky. Petrol from the doomed aircraft leaked out and spread over the water in mineral rainbows. One man may have thought of a road in evening sunshine after rain with petrol spreading in delicate patterns over the wet tarmac; another of the feathers of starlings, squealing and trilling as they settled to rest on the roofs of churches. There were no roads and no starlings here though - only the increasing cold.

But the signals sent out had not been in vain. Within an hour, a year-long hour, the whole crew had been picked
up by the R.A.F. Air Sea Rescue Service. They returned to the warmth of Tempsford. Months later, coincident with the award of the D.F.M. to Sergeant Wasilewski for his courage and resource, news filtered through of the fate of those who had awaited his coming.

The reception committee had made their way to the appointed place. The temperature that night was about forty below zero. There was no way by which the aircraft could warn those who watched the sky in hope and prayer that icing had forced it to return before reaching the dropping zone. So they waited. In the morning, their bodies were found dead on the ground, lying in the shape of a V for victory. They were all frozen to death and, in dying, had arranged themselves in defiant symbolism.

The range of the Halifax was perilously short and, in October, 1942, three Liberat
ors were assigned to the Squadron for sorties to Poland. These aircraft were welcomed by the Polish crews not only for their increased endurance of sixteen hours but also for their very name. ‘Liberator’ was a sound with a meaning in any language. To Poles, it was alive with special significance. Two successful flights were made at the end of the month, using the dangerous Swedish route. Possible internment and inactivity held greater terrors for these patriots than the worst the Nazis could put up. But the answer was still the same: not enough.

It was the inflexible determination of Polish Air Force Headquarters to step up the help sent to their brothers. Christ
mas came and went. In April 1943, the Polish crews of 38 Squadron were brought up to full strength. They had formed an integral part of the Moon Squadron and had earned the affection and admiration of their comrades in arms. They had fought and endured side by side. Now, at long last, came the parting. From July, they were to be given a separate identity.

No. 301 Polish Flight, under the command of Wing Commander S. Krol came into being. Mighty deeds of arms had turned the tide of war. Italy was invaded from Sicily and this new Polish Flight took off from Tempsford for the last time. Th
ey were to be based on Brindisi, which offered these single-minded men a choice of three routes to the country where they wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world.

From Brindisi, the route chosen depended on many considerations; the location of the reception committee awaiting a particular cargo; the latest information to hand about the placing and strength of the German anti-aircraft defences; the help which geographical and physical features could give as an aid to navigation.

The route by way of Lake Balaton and the Tatra mountains was especially inviting. How many days, in other times, have I sailed and swum in the waters of Lake Balaton and eaten
fogas
on its banks, listening to the dolorous whimpering of gipsy violins and the coveys of partridges in the Tatra get up from under your feet. These were other times. Now German flak and fighters were thick on the ground between Balaton and Budapest, concentrated to meet the Russian advance in the Balkans and Roumania. They were daunting obstacles to the use of this route. But there were others. One way took the aircraft over Hungary by way of Dalmatia, another over Albania and Yugoslavia.

In May
1943, the tortured ghetto of Warsaw had risen against its German masters and had been obliterated. But in spite of this massacre, liberation groups were growing in size and resource. All differences of political opinion were flung into abeyance whilst the people of Warsaw prepared with solidarity to fight the German occupying force. The news sheets from secret presses, printed in ink dropped by parachute, were distributed by children and young girls at the risk of their lives. The efforts of the moon squadrons were beginning to show results on the ground.