‘You don’t talk nearly as much as Harry,’ said Marjorie. ‘Is that because you’re the elder brother?’
‘I expect so,’ agreed Brewer.
The horizon was suddenly torn with a brilliant display of coloured lights. There were white flashes reaching up to the sky, and there were sullen red glares that illuminated the faint mist in the distance. Their ears could just catch the jerky rumble of the anti-aircraft guns that were firing at the English bombers.
‘It looks as if they mean business tonight, all right,’ said Marjorie. ‘Of course they always do.’
The last words were added hastily, and it occurred to Brewer that perhaps Marjorie knew something about tomorrow’s stunt. It was very likely that she did, but she certainly would not say a word about it even to him, because for one thing she would not know that he was going to participate in it. To him there was a touch of drama in the situation; that two people as close to each other as he and Marjorie, with a desperate venture before them tomorrow, should not dream of allowing a hint about it to each other, but should confine themselves to discussing trivialities. Air raids, from this point of view, were only trivialities.
‘I suppose Jerry will be coming back at us tonight,’ said Marjorie. ‘I’m going to bed before he does.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ he said, and they began to direct their steps down the lane again.
I was thinking of going to visit Harry tomorrow evening,’ said Marjorie. ‘I was hoping that you could come with me.’
‘I’d like to, but I’ve got a date.’
It was not for him to say what kind of date it was; Marjorie could think what she liked.
‘All right,’ said Marjorie, and she said nothing else. Brewer began to make up his mind that he was going to be fortunate in his sister-in-law.
They had reached the door of her billet now, and Marjorie came to a halt.
‘Goodnight,’ said Brewer, taking her hand. ‘Don’t worry about Harry. He’ll be all right.’
He walked on through the village to his quarters, yawning as he did so. The necessity of being up early for patrol had already grained into him the habit of going to bed at an hour which even in Ohio would be deemed early.
Johnny Coe was already in bed and three-quarters asleep in the room they shared. Brewer was careful only to switch on the bed lamp, so as to rouse him as little as possible. Even so, Johnny turned over restlessly, the freckles on his cheek showing in the faint light. Brewer was hardly into his pyjamas before the bedhead light went out abruptly; someone had pulled the master switch and plunged the station into darkness, which meant German bombers in the vicinity.
He got into bed and pulled the covers over himself just as the first roar of a bomb reached his ears, and he composed himself to sleep while the bombers bumbled overhead and the guns opened up. England was in her nightly uproar. Usually at such times he thought of the things he had seen on his visits to London; the burnt-out streets, the craters in the roads, the mothers in the air-raid shelters, the firemen grappling with their tasks, the guns setting the earth ashake. But tonight, despite the current raid, his thoughts were otherwise directed. There was this business of tomorrow to think about. Somewhere there were plans being made and orders being issued; even a pinprick raid called for the most elaborate timing and cooperation between the services. Already there were parachutists seeking out hiding places in Belgium from which they could emerge on the morrow, and he could picture the other arrangements which were being made.
The old analogy of the boxer occurred to him. From the brain the messages were already coursing down an infinity of nerves, tensing the muscles for a feint with the right, ready for a quick blow with the left. The hard-hit boxer was about to hit back; the soldiers and the sailors, the minesweepers and the anti-aircraft, the night fighters and the bombers - if one could only know all that was involved in tomorrow’s raid, one would have a complete view of the Battle of Britain. And the ramifications were so numerous that, just like counting sheep, thinking about them one fell asleep. At least Brewer did - to awake clearheaded in the morning and to turn over with the delicious knowledge that there was no early patrol for him this morning. At this moment of waking that fact bulked larger in his mind than the fact that in the evening he would be in deadly peril.
It was when night fell that the little port woke into sudden activity; until then there had been nothing happening that might be guessed at by a stray German reconnaissance machine. But with the coming of darkness it was different. The lackadaisical major in command put out his cigarette and got to his feet.
‘Time for us to go,’ he said.
Brewer and Johnny Coe rose with him; theirs were the only RAF uniforms among the khaki and the blue. It was only a step from the hotel bar down to the jetty, and they walked slowly, accustoming their eyes to the sudden transition from the lights within to the darkness without. Down the steep street beside them there wound a strange procession. One could not call it ghostly, because it made far more noise than any ghosts could make - the united muffled roar of a thousand motorcycle engines. Yet there was almost nothing to see, for those motorcyclists had been trained to find their way along any road formation, and yet in darkness, without collision.
‘Brewer, you come with me in the Magpie. Coe’ll go with Captain Brown in the Thrush,’ said the major.
The shadowy forms of the two armoured barges could not be seen against the jetty. There was a broad gangplank leading into each barge, and over each was pouring a steady river of motor-cyclists, up one ramp, down another, and then round and over the flat bottoms of the barges, to come to a halt, tight-packed and yet in order, so that each barge was jammed with silent men sitting on silent machines.
Brewer could guess at the amount of drill and rehearsal necessary to achieve such a result without confusion. The major took him over a narrower gangplank in the bows. Here the darkness was even more complete; Brewer pulled to a standstill just in time to save himself from bumping his nose against a square mass that loomed before him.
‘I’ll get in first, if you’ll excuse me,’ said the major. He opened a door in the armoured car and climbed up with Brewer following him.
‘Sit down, please,’ said the major. ‘If you sit still you won’t bump yourself.’
Brewer found that out immediately by experience. As he settled himself he became abruptly conscious of something like a machine-gun butt at his shoulder; the roof was only just over his head.
‘Damn you, Owen,’ snapped the major. ‘I’ve told you before that you’re not to eat either onions or oranges when we’re going on a stunt.’
Brewer felt the force of the complaint; there were two hard- breathing privates just at his back, and as far as he could tell, one had been eating the one and the other had been eating the other.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Owen, ‘but we didn’t know we was.’
‘Something in that, I suppose,’ said the major. He bent his head to peer at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Twenty-fifteen. Ah!’
‘Cast off, there,’ came a voice from farther forward which Brewer recognized as that of the lieutenant-commander to whom he had been introduced in the hotel.
The barge trembled to the tremendous vibration of the engines, and almost immediately the bows lifted to a wave. They were at sea.
‘Escort’s outside,’ said the major. ‘Not that we’ll see anything of ‘em.’
Sitting in an armoured car in the bowels of an armoured barge on a pitch-dark night, Brewer did not expect to see anything at all.
‘We ought to make the run in an hour and twenty-two minutes,’ went on the major. ‘Bit longer than you’re used to.’
‘A bit,’ said Brewer. His time for crossing the Channel was under four minutes.
‘These damn tides are a hellish nuisance when it comes to operation orders timed to the second,’ went on the major. ‘You can’t ever be sure of anything at sea. Fogs and tides and subs. You always have to leave a margin and when you hav
e to observe complete wireless silence the way we have to, ‘tisn’t always easy.’
‘What about mines?’ asked Brewer. He would far rather be fighting a Messerschmitt at twenty thousand feet than sitting here in such an unfamiliar - to say nothing of such an oniony - atmosphere.
‘We’re too shallow for most of ‘em,’ said the major, ‘For contact mines, that is to say. If we came across any of the other kinds it’d be just too bad, I expect.’
‘I expect so,’ said Brewer.
‘But you won’t be coming back this way, please God,’ said the major. ‘Not after all the trouble we’ve been to about you.’
‘Let’s hope not, anyway,’ said Brewer.
‘We’re more likely to bring it off than not,’ said the major. ‘It’s better than a fifty-fifty chance.’
‘Do or die,’ said Brewer. ‘That’s the motto of everyone in this country.’
‘It isn’t,’ said the major with more animation than he had displayed up to now.
‘You all think it, if you don’t say it.’
‘We don’t think anything of the sort,’ said the major heatedly. ‘We just go on and do what there is to do.’
Brewer decided that it was not the best subject for an argument. But he made a mental note of that ‘we just go on’ phrase. It sounded duller than ‘do or die’ and meant the same thing.
The barge was rolling and pounding a little in ungainly fashion. Outside could be heard the sound of the waves.
‘We can’t help rolling like this,’ said the major. ‘These damn barges are built for quick landings, and they’re not very seaworthy in consequence. Still, you can’t have everything.’
That was a safe point to agree upon, thought Brewer.
‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ said Marjorie’s voice almost in Brewer’s lap making him jump before he realized that it was the radiotelephone speaking. ‘Getaway calling.’
‘G-E-T-A-W-A-Y,’ said the major counting on his fingers. ‘Seven minutes to go.’ He peered at his watch again. ‘Can’t answer ‘em of course,’ he said. ‘Operation’s code name’s Zacharias tonight. The other thing’s useful so as not to tip Jerry off.’
‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ went on Marjorie’s voice. ‘Carlo at 15,000.’
‘That means five thousand tonight,’ explained the major. This is where the balloon goes up,’ he went on a moment later, looking at his watch without remission.
Brewer heard the roar of bombers overhead as he spoke; directly afterwards he heard the explosion of bombs right ahead, and even the dark interior of the barge was faintly lit by the reflection from the sky of the flashes of bombs and antiaircraft guns. The bombers were doing their work of distracting the observers on the shore.
‘Stand by!’ came the loud voice of the lieutenant-commander.
The major’s hands were swiftly at work, as he started his engine and ran it up. From behind came a combined roar as the motor-cycle engines joined in. The bows of the barge seemed to fall away. A moment later the car was moving forward. It lurched up and then down as it climbed a slight ramp and descended a steep one; water boiled, foaming white, around it for a space, and then Brewer was pressed back into his seat with the tremendous acceleration of the vehicle as they ran up the beach.
‘That’s the hard part over,’ said the major. ‘You can never be quite sure what’s waiting for you in the shallows.’
The car leaped and bumped about as it tore forwards and upwards. It was climbing the ruined ramp of the sea wall. The major spun the wheel and slipped into high gear. They were on a road so dark, except for the flash of the artillery, that Brewer could see almost nothing, but the major seemed to have no doubts as they raced along. He suddenly stooped a little more over his wheel and pressed the accelerator farther down. There was a crash, a fantastic leap, and they were through whatever it was that had barred the way.
‘Umph,’ said the major in a tone of satisfaction unusual to him.
They swung right-handed here, and Brewer had hardly recovered his balance when the roadsides suddenly blazed out into flame, the long flashes of the machine guns lighting up everything. Behind him the guns of the car opened up as Owen and his colleagues traversed their guns in a wide circle. But it was only the briefest time that the fight endured; directly afterwards all was dark again and as quiet as it could be in a car going at that speed.
‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ came Marjorie’s voice. ‘Getaway calling.’
’Seven minutes again,’ said the major. He managed to look at his watch while travelling at that speed.
The air seemed to be full of the sound of planes. Brewer knew the note of the engines - German night fighters. This corner of Belgium was in a pretty turmoil. He wondered if the parachutists dropped the night before had done their work of cutting the telephone wires. A dozen wires selectively cut, or a hundred haphazard, would play old Harry with the German communications for the few minutes that were necessary. Yet it was not of vital importance. The German command could not yet guess the objective of the raid, even if it was possible to circulate the news that one had landed.
On their left front the sky was suddenly lit like day as parachute flares slowly descended.
‘That’s the place,’ said the major.
The incredibly long flashes of the anti-aircraft guns darted up towards the sky, which was dotted with the bursting shells like popcorn in the light of the flares. Then there came the white bursts of the bombs; even at the rate at which he was travelling Brewer could make out that they were being methodically dropped in a ring round the objective. The whole affair was deliriously exciting. The medieval border forays of armoured men jogging along on horses were nowhere near as dramatic as this raid of cars and motor-cyclists tearing into a hostile country at sixty miles an hour.
The major spun the wheel to the left so that the car was now heading straight for the volcanic display of the raid on the airfield. They leaped and bumped. Guns spurted fire beside them, and bullets spanged on their armour.
‘Give ‘em the stop signal behind, Owen,’ snapped the major.
The car was drawing to a halt.
‘Now the rocket,’ said the major, as they stopped. Other cars were stopping beside them; roaring motorcycles were dying away into silence on either flank, and Brewer’s dazzled eyes were faintly conscious of shadowy forms running forward under burdens. One or two whistles blew signals. Four sudden pillars of white fire lit up everything ahead, and four stunning explosions shook the earth.
‘That fellow’s a minute behind schedule,’ grumbled the major.
He reached across Brewer and swung open the door for him. ‘Here’s your guide,’ he said. ‘Remember Coe’ll be a hundred yards to your right. Good luck.’
An enormously burly sergeant loomed up beside Brewer as he dismounted; half a dozen shadowy forms were apparent behind him.
‘This way, sir,’ said the sergeant.
They scrambled through the ditch and started over the rough ground. Brewer remembered the maps which he had so carefully studied during the day. Ahead of them, to right and to left, there came a sudden burst of firing from machine guns and rifles. It was not until some seconds later that a searchlight suddenly blazed out into the sky, descended slowly and started to sweep the ground. The delay confirmed Brewer in his suspicion that the attack on the airport was completely a surprise; that the Germans guarding the place had no knowledge up to that moment that there was any British force on the mainland. The parachutists of yesterday had done a good job.
A trench mortar banged off with a jet of fire, followed by a burst of flame close beside the base of the searchlight; another and another followed it and the searchlight went out abruptly. Machine guns began to rave, and were answered not only by British machine guns but by the half-dozen trench mortars. The German airport had been fortified (as had been plain from the photographs) against aerial bombardment, and against a possible attack by a small body of disorganized troops; this well-planned attack by trained men who knew exactly wh
at they had to do was a very different story. The trench mortars were steadily knocking out the emplaced German machine guns in the fashion that their lofty trajectory exactly enabled them to do.
They came to a bomb crater; in the darkness it was impossible to guess what the bomb had hit, but it was very plain indeed that it had hit something; there were things that had been men in that crater. Beyond the farther lip they were on the smoother turf of the airfield, hurrying along, stooping close to the ground. Every advantage was with the British - the advantage of surprise over an enemy dazed by a tremendous bombing, the advantage of preparation, the advantage of a known objective. There was no question of capturing the airfield, but the Germans did not know that. All the British wanted was to push a small body of men unobserved inside the ring for a few minutes, and that objective was practically gained before the battle had really begun.
Brewer kept his head clear and called up before his mind the maps that Intelligence had constructed from the photographs. Over here on the right the map had marked a hangar that camouflage had not managed to conceal from the lens. Coe’s objective was another on the other side. They crept towards it; Brewer suddenly felt the sergeant’s hand grip his arm and hold him back. The sergeant’s eyes were more acute in the dark than were his; it was not until then that he saw the shadowy figures grouped about the door of the hangar. But they were not looking into the field; all their attention was taken up by the heavy firing on the other side. The sergeant thrust Brewer back and crept forward with his men to the little group. There was a sudden cry, not very loud; the muffled sound of blows, some gasps and some groans.
‘Come on, sir,’ said the sergeant.
When Brewer approached, stepping over the things that lay on the ground, the men were already rolling back the doors of the hangar. No one had dreamed of locking hangar doors within a ring fence of machine guns. There was a sudden subdued glow inside the hangar as the sergeant switched on his torch, carefully shaded.