Like Father Like Son Ch. 08

Part Eight

December 1939 – The Bore War

The hut was freezing despite the efforts of the pot-bellied stove that glowed cherry red in the darkness. David groaned as he woke and someone snapped on the lights.

"All right you lot, hands off cocks and on with your socks. Let's be having you, gentlemen! Parade outside, working dress, twenty minutes."

The door slammed as Sergeant Rutter crashed his way out and down the path to the next hut where his voice could be heard repeating the same instructions to the inmates, like some absurd echo. David flopped out of bed and stood in his pyjamas, blinking in the harsh light. The others, too, were getting up and they stared at each other with bemused expressions. David grabbed the wash bag and towel from his bedside locker and made his way out to the ablutions. He showered and shaved quickly and hurried back into the main room to dress.

"For crying out loud! D'you know, it's only 4.30! Don't they have any consideration?"

Mark Chapman sounded deeply aggrieved. David had to smile. Typical Mark! All the same, it was unusual. He dressed and started to make up the bed in its 'boxed' blankets. He didn't have to think about it any more, it was a reflex action. Sometimes he would pause and wonder at how quickly he seemed to have been absorbed into this new life but for most of the time he was either too busy or too tired. War had changed everything. The tight discipline had been replaced by a sense of urgency. David and his fellows had found themselves plunged into basic flying training within days of the declaration of war. They had done their initial flying in open-cockpit biplanes, Tiger Moths, that his father would have been totally at home in. They had flown every available hour permitted by the weather and at times the sky had seemed so full of aeroplanes, he'd had the feeling he could have walked across the sky using them as stepping stones.

David had loved every second of his time in the air. Eight of his entry had been 'chopped' already – sent home, unable to make the grade, and the one topic of conversation in the hut each evening was the dread prospect of being thrown out. Aubrey Maitland was definitely struggling. On the ground, he was all easy confidence but he froze once airborne. He confided in David that it wasn't a question of being afraid of flying but that he was terrified of failing. David sympathised; everyone felt the same. Aubrey was convinced he was next for the chop. Now, after forty flying hours, Aubrey was just starting to relax and his instructor had given him the glad tidings that he thought Aubrey 'just might make it after all.'

Mark Chapman, by contrast, had proved himself to be a 'natural' and had been the first to go solo. David was somewhere in the middle, slow to start with but improving rapidly. His instructor encouraged him to fly more gently, not to overpower the aircraft. He had been clumsy at first, his feet had seemed too big for the rudder pedals and his movements were exaggerated. The tiny Tiger Moth had lurched about the sky to accompanying bellows of anguish from the instructor in the rear seat. He had settled down, though, and now felt that he had begun to 'feel' the aeroplane instead of trying to master it. He finished his bed-making and stood back. The others were ready now and they moved outside into the freezing darkness. A mob of cadets was slowly organising itself into a semblance of order and once they had formed up, Sergeant Rutter marched them off to the parade square. A small group of officers waited for them, huddled against the cold. They straightened visibly as the cadets marched on and formed up to their front.

It soon became clear to the cadets that this break with normal routine signalled something momentous. The officers were now holding a hurried conference, sheaves of paper were being consulted and there was much arm waving and urgent whispering. At last, the senior officer, Squadron Leader Bridges, moved forward.

"Good morning, gentlemen. So sorry to have dragged you from your beds at such an ungodly hour but, you see, there is something of a flap on. We have been ordered to send your entry elsewhere for advanced flying training. Some of you will be going to 6 SFTS, Little Rissington and some to 14 SFTS, Kinloss and the remainder to 15 SFTS, Lossiemouth. Transport leaves at 0730. Fall out when your names are called and get your kit packed. I'm going to call the Little Rissington contingent first."

Aubrey Maitland's name was called for Little Rissington and he shrugged as he walked away. David and Mark Chapman were both selected for Lossiemouth in Scotland.

"Harvards," said Mark. "They fly Harvards at Lossiemouth. Little Rissington does too, of course but they also have Ansons. Looks like we're going to be single-seater pilots, David."

"Golly, I hope so! I'd hate to spend the war stooging around in a bomber – far too dangerous!"

Aubrey Maitland looked desolate.

"I can't believe they're splitting us up. I bet I get Ansons."

"They have Harvards at Little Risington, too, you know." David did his best to cheer him up.

"I know, but I'm such a ropey pilot, they're bound to give me the big stuff. Of course, Chapman's the ace of the base. He's bound to be a fighter pilot."

"Jealous are you, Maitland? How unbecoming."

"Leave it out you two. Aubrey, Mark can't help it if he is a natural. I expect that I'll soon get found out and posted to Risington or somewhere to convert to the big stuff, too."

They completed their packing is silence. Mark and Aubrey exchanged glares and David made sure he stood between them whenever possible. The animosity between the two young men had grown worse during their flying training. Aubrey resented Mark's ability. David came to the conclusion that Aubrey was something of a snob and that Mark's humbler origins were seen as an affront to Aubrey's aristocratic ego. As a consequence, David had become less friendly with Aubrey and closer to Mark. Mark never flaunted his superior ability and was always willing to offer encouragement to those for whom flying did not come as naturally. David liked it that Mark never offered advice – that would have been to rub salt in already tender wounds. Instead, he would claim that he was just lucky to have been placed with such a good instructor. It was also noticeable that Mark was no longer getting himself in trouble. Now the serious business had begun, he worked with a will.

The long journey northward took almost two days. The trainee pilots were crammed into a couple of compartments of an ancient railway carriage that seemed to have been added as an afterthought to a slow goods train. They then spent a cold and very uncomfortable six hours on Edinburgh's Waverly Station, waiting for the connecting train to take them to Elgin. At Elgin they were met by transport to take them to No 15 Service Flying Training School. The aerodrome at Lossiemouth and its neighbour at Kinloss had been only been open since the spring of that year and consequently, they were delighted to find the Officers' Mess building was modern, warm and comfortable. David and Mark signed in. Acting Pilot Officers Chapman and Riley 'on posting' and grinned at each other. Now the really serious business could begin.

Back home in Dorset, Peter was experiencing another bout of intense frustration. Since the declaration of war, he had been trying to get back in uniform. He'd hoped that his engineering expertise would now be recognised and that he could be of some service to the RAF. Once more, he found his pleas falling on deaf ears. Someone in the Air Ministry was pathologically opposed to the technology of fuel injection; that was the only conclusion. Pinky Harris hadn't been able to help much. Bomber Command had been in action since the first day and Pinky had been kept busy. In the brief conversation that Peter had managed to have with Pinky, he learned that the politicians were still interfering with the RAF's efforts. No bombs were to be dropped on Germany in case 'private property' was destroyed. Bomber Command was limited to dropping leaflets urging the German people to overthrow Hitler and come to their senses. The only raids of note had been anti-shipping strikes. The Blenheims and Wellingtons had showed themselves to be vulnerable to the German fighter defences and the bomb loads carried were too small to inflict serious damage.

Only the Royal Navy seemed to be taking the war seriously. Already they had experienced both triumph and disaster. The German pocket battleship, Graf Spee, had been run to earth off Montevideo by a Royal Navy Cruiser force and, after a sharp sea-fight, had sought respite in the port. Her captain, mistakenly believing the smaller British ships had been reinforced, had scuttled the ship rather than resume the battle. It was being hailed everywhere as a great victory and welcome news for the first Christmas of the war. Churchill, recalled to the government as First Lord of the Admiralty, was cock-a-hoop. Less pleasing was the loss of the aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous, torpedoed in the Irish Sea by the German submarine, U29, with heavy loss of life.

Worse was to follow. On the night of Friday 13^th October, U47, commanded by Gunther Prien, penetrated the main fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak. Prien had made his getaway as skilfully as his daring attack and returned to a hero's welcome in Germany. Over 830 British sailors had died. It was already clear that the U-Boat menace would be every bit as dangerous in this new war as it had been in the last. In the opening three months of the war, the Royal Navy had managed to destroy seven enemy submarines with a further two being lost to mines. On the debit side, the Royal Navy had lost two capital ships and many, many merchant ships. If nothing very much was happening in France, the Navy already knew this was no 'phoney war.'

Michael's squadron flew standing patrols and continued training hard for the battle to come. There was still much dissatisfaction with the Blenheim F1. It was fast enough to take on unescorted German Bombers but already, in training exercises against the Hurricanes of 56 Squadron, it was shown to be relatively ponderous and no match for a modern true fighter. 56 Squadron had endured troubles of their own. In the infamous 'Battle of Barking Creek' in September, they had lost two aircraft to the Spitfires of 74 Squadron sent to intercept them following a mistake by the radar operators of 'Chain Home.' This led to the invention of an 'Identification Friend or Foe' system. The RAF hurriedly fitted these IFF devices to all its aeroplanes and it was now common to hear a controller instruct an unidentified aircraft to "squawk your parrot."

The pilots were getting used to the battle control system that 'Stuffy' Dowding was rapidly now perfecting. Sir Hugh Dowding may not have been the best squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in Peter's day, but he had come into his own as the Commander of RAF Fighter Command. The command was organised into three Groups numbered 11, 12 and 13. 11 Group covered the whole of the south of England and Wales. 12 Group then covered the Midlands and East Anglia, where most of the bomber bases were situated, and 13 Group was responsible for the north of England and Scotland. Each Group was divided into sectors with a main RAF base designated as the 'sector airfield.' Each sector airfield had a number of fighter airfields under its control.

The key to Dowding's defensive plans was the 'Chain Home' radar system. This had been augmented by a further system called 'Chain Home Low,' which covered the identified gap in the main system. Whilst radar was in its infancy, the Chain Home systems gave the fighters valuable warning and could, in the hands of a skilful operator, provide quite detailed information on numbers of enemy aircraft as well as height and bearing. It was then up to the ground controllers to 'vector' the fighters to intercept an incoming enemy. The system had already proved its worth with successful interceptions of German bombers over Scotland and the east coast of England.

Dowding's real worry was the number of trained pilots. Aeroplanes, particularly the Hawker Hurricanes, were now coming off the production lines at a satisfactory rate. The RAF had expanded rapidly during 1939 but there was a serious shortage of experienced men to fly the new machines. This accounted for David's sudden removal from Cranwell to the North of Scotland. The RAF could no longer afford the luxury of extended training periods. Basic flying courses had been cut back to five weeks and advanced training reduced to twelve weeks from fourteen. A sense of urgency pervaded everywhere but the Air Ministry, where red tape and bureaucratic muddle were still the order of the day. After three stultifying months, Peter finally secured an interview for the 28^th December in London. Bethan was relieved. It had been like living with a ticking time bomb. Now, she hoped, Peter would be satisfied at last.

She dreaded the idea of having all 'her men' involved in the war but was astute enough to know that Peter would never settle for the status of casual observer. Albert was far more philosophical:

"I don't have the Captain's 'ighly developed sense of duty, Missus. If they want me, well, they know where to find me."

Bethan wished that Peter could be similarly relaxed and let things take their course. She had the strong feeling that this war would be over no quicker than the last one. She also sensed that everyone would have a part to play before the end. If someone had questioned her on this, she would have been able to give only the vaguest of answers. The world had changed, was all that she knew. The twenty-one years between the wars had seen seismic shifts in society and technological innovations happening at a frenetic pace. Back in 1914, when she had first volunteered her services, aeroplanes were considered a novelty, radio communication was embryonic and even motorcars were a comparative rarity.

Now, every home in the land seemed to have a radio set, aeroplanes were flying at the phenomenal speed of 400 mph and there were motor vehicles cluttering up the roads wherever one looked. The old social order of squire and villager, master and servant had vanished with an entire generation in the trenches and mud of the Western Front. Britain had even had a socialist government – something utterly unthinkable before the First War, as people were starting to call it. There was a very different mood. The wild, uninformed patriotism of 1914 was no longer evident. No crowds had thronged the London streets on September 3^rd 1939. Instead, there had been a sombre acceptance of the inevitable. To Bethan, this did not signal a lessening of love for one's country in any way. It was more a case of the country having grown up, she felt. The experiences of four terrible years had touched every home in the land. Now it was starting all over again, well, small wonder if there was less enthusiasm than in those far-off days of innocence and ignorance.

She found the change welcome. It accorded with her own mood. She saw Hitler's Germany as something loathsome and evil. The pillaging and destruction of first Czechoslovakia and then, in far more dreadful circumstances, Poland, was an act of barbarism perpetrated by a madman. Much as she hated the idea of war, she accepted its necessity. If we don't stop them, who will? That was the way most people put it. There was no shortage of confidence in the country; that was for sure. At the same time, and possibly as a result of Peter's influence, she could not quite suppress the sinking feeling that perhaps this confidence was somewhat misplaced. In her darker moments she was consumed by doubts and felt the icy touch of fear; fear for her children and her husband. It was all very well for Peter to say he was too old for flying duties. She knew her man and if there was any way he could find to play an active part in the coming struggle, she had no doubt he would be there at the forefront yet again.

Most of all she feared for David. Michael was self-sufficient somehow, a law unto himself. David, on the other hand, she felt was vulnerable. He was such a gentle soul. In many ways he reminded her more of Phillip than anyone else. There was that innate sense of fairness, a willingness to see the other person's point of view. He lacked a little of Peter's steely resolve. Then there was Phillipa. What would become of her? Her heart lurched at the thought of Phillipa having to endure the pain and loss that she had been through when Phillip had died. And yet this was likely. Almost all eligible young men would be in the forces and already there had been casualties from among the families in the village and the Army hadn't even begun to fight! How terribly wasteful it all was.

At other times she was proud of her sons; proud to have two young men in the Air Force, ready to defend their loved ones and their country. It was all so confusing. Peter didn't really understand – couldn't. He saw everything in terms of duty. Duty, the curse of his generation! Duty had led them to hang on the barbed wire, to burn in a fiery comet-tail across the skies of France or to drown in the icy waters of the oceans. She was a harsh mistress, this duty. Where did love and the comfort of family come into it all? Nowhere, that's where! So she kept her counsel and endured in silence, weeping soundlessly in her bed after Peter had gone to sleep, as doubts and fears assailed her.

February 1940 Pieces on the board

David glanced up as he heard the snarl of the Harvard's engine. Someone had ballsed-up their approach and was having to go round again. He could picture the scene perfectly. First there would be the cold voice of the instructor:

"I have control."

The poor student would then have to suffer a blistering tirade enumerating every single mistake made. Then the instructor would hand back control and another attempt, further hampered by shattered confidence, would begin. The attrition rate amongst the student pilots was high. Some were sent to nearby Kinloss to try their luck on the twin-engined Airspeed Oxfords or Avro Ansons. Others, less fortunate, were offered only the option of re-mustering as Equipment Officers or similar. David had already resolved that, if his name was called for the chop, he would not stay with the Air Force but would join the Army instead. What was the point of being in the Air Force if one couldn't fly? He might accept becoming a navigator at a pinch but it wouldn't be the same. His heart was set on being a fighter pilot.

He had learned to respect the North American Harvard advanced trainer. It was a hell of lot more sophisticated than the Tiger Moths he learned to fly on. It had a retractable undercarriage and a variable-pitch propeller as well as five times the horsepower and enough vices to keep a pilot very much on his toes. The Harvard was also fully aerobatic and Peter had learned the joy of throwing a responsive aeroplane around the sky. His instructor had constantly encouraged David to be very accurate in his manoeuvres and had made him repeat the various evolutions over and over until David felt he could do them in his sleep.

Not that there seemed much time for sleep. When there was no flying, there was ground school and many of the students found this the most onerous task of all. David's years of playing with model aircraft stood him in good stead. He already knew much of the theory of aerodynamics and impressed his tutors with his ready grasp of mechanical details. Mark Chapman managed well enough and David was always on hand to help out with any complexities that Mark struggled with. The two of them became inseparable and spent what little free time was afforded to them in each other's rooms, discussing the finer points of the day's lessons, their flying experiences and the general state of the war. David was also able to snatch odd moments in which to write to Johanna. This was the one part of his life that he did not share with anyone. Jo was his one release from the toils of the day. He had even managed to telephone her a few times and he lived for the day he would see her again. Now, over halfway through his course, that day was drawing ever closer.