Going Solo Read online

  Breakfast-time came but there was no breakfast. Then we heard the roar of aircraft engines close by and a group of some thirty 109s came whistling very low over the village of Megara, not half a mile away from us. They flew on, heading straight for Elevsis, the place we had left at the crack of dawn. We had got out just in time.

  Only a few minutes later, a bunch of Stuka dive-bombers flew directly over our heads at about 3,000 feet, going straight towards the tanker, and above them a host of protective fighters were swarming like locusts.

  ‘Get down!’ somebody shouted. ‘Hide under the rocks and keep still! Don’t let them see us!’

  But surely, I thought, they would see our planes in the olive grove? They were by no means completely hidden.

  The Stukas came over in line astern and when the leader was directly above the oil tanker he dropped his nose and went into a screaming vertical dive. We lay among the boulders on top of the ridge watching the first Stuka. Faster and faster it went and we could hear the engine note changing from a roar to a scream as the plane dived absolutely vertically down upon the tanker. To me it looked as though the pilot was aiming to dive his plane straight into the funnel of the ship, but he pulled out just in time and then I saw the bomb coming out of the belly of the plane. It was a big black lump of metal and it fell quite slowly right on to the tanker’s forward deck. The Stuka was well away and skimming over the sea as the bomb exploded, and when the great flash came, the whole ship seemed to lift about ten feet out of the water, and already a second Stuka was screaming down followed by a third and a fourth and a fifth.

  Only five Stukas dived on to that tanker. The remainder stayed up high and watched because the ship was already blazing from end to end. We were very close to the whole thing, not more than 500 yards away, and when the tanks blew open, the oil spread out over the surface of the water and turned the ocean into a fiery lake. We could see half a dozen of the crew climbing on to the rails and jumping over the side and we heard their screams as they were roasted alive in the flames.

  Up above us the Stukas which hadn’t dived turned round and headed for home and the escorting fighters went with them. Soon they were all out of sight and the only sounds we heard were the hissing noises of water meeting fire all along the sides of the stricken tanker.

  We had seen plenty of bombings in our time, but we had never seen men jumping into a burning sea to be roasted and boiled alive like that. It shook us all.

  ‘It doesn’t seem as though anybody has any brains around here,’ somebody said. ‘Why didn’t the Greeks tell that tanker Captain to get the hell out?’

  ‘Why doesn’t someone tell us what to do next?’ somebody else said.

  ‘Because they don’t know,’ another voice said.

  ‘Seriously,’ I said, ‘why don’t we all just take off and fly to Crete? We’ve got full tanks.’

  ‘That’s a bloody good idea,’ David Coke said. ‘Then we can refuel and fly to Egypt. They’ve hardly got any Hurricanes at all in the Desert. These seven would be worth their weight in gold.’

  ‘You know what I think,’ a young man called Dowding said, ‘I think someone wants to be able to say that the brave RAF in Greece fought gallantly to the last pilot and the last plane.’

  I figured that Dowding was probably right. It was either that, or our superiors were so muddle-headed and incompetent that they simply didn’t know what to do with us. I kept thinking about what the Corporal had said to me only a week before when I had first landed in Greece. ‘This is a brand new kite,’ he had said, ‘and it’s cost somebody thousands of hours to build it. And now those silly sods behind their desks in Cairo ’ave sent it out ’ere where it ain’t goin’ to last two minutes!’ It had lasted more than that, but I couldn’t see how it was going to last much longer.

  We sat up on our rocky ridge beside the deep blue sea and occasionally we glanced at the burning tanker. No one had got out of her alive, but there were a number of charred corpses floating in the water. Either the current or the tide was bringing the corpses slowly towards the shore and every half hour or so I looked over my shoulder to see how close they were getting. There were about nine of them and by eleven o’clock they were only fifty yards from the rocks below us.

  Somewhere around midday a large black motor-car came creeping on to our landing field. All of us became suddenly very alert. The car crept slowly over the field as though searching for something, then it turned and headed for the olive grove below us where our planes were parked. We could make out a driver at the wheel and a shadowy figure sitting in the back seat, but we couldn’t see who they were or what they were wearing.

  ‘They might be Germans with submachine-guns,’ somebody said. We realized we were totally unarmed. None of us carried even a revolver.

  ‘What make of car is it?’ David asked.

  We could none of us recognize the make. Someone thought it might be a Mercedes-Benz. All eyes were watching the big black motor-car.

  It pulled up beside the olive grove. We sat in a close group up on our rocky ridge, alert and apprehensive. The back door opened and out stepped a formidable figure in RAF uniform. We were close enough to see him quite clearly. He had a pale orange-coloured moustache and a thick body. ‘My God, it’s the Air Commodore!’ Dowding said, and it was. This man, who had his headquarters in Athens, had been, and indeed still was, in command of all the RAF in Greece. A few weeks ago he had directed the activities of three fighter squadrons and several bomber squadrons, but now we were all he had left. I was surprised he had managed to find out where we were.

  ‘Where the hell is everybody?’ the Air Commodore shouted.

  ‘We’re up here, sir!’ we called back.

  He looked up and saw us. ‘Come down at once!’ he shouted.

  We clambered down and straggled up to him. He was standing beside the motor-car and his fierce pale-blue eyes travelled slowly over our little group. He reached into the car and brought out a thick parcel wrapped in white paper and sealed with red sealing-wax. The parcel was about the size of an average Bible, but it was floppy and bent slightly as he held it in his hands.

  ‘This package’, he said, ‘must be delivered back to Elevsis at once. It is of vital importance. It must not be lost and it must not fall into enemy hands. I want a volunteer to fly there with it immediately.’

  Nobody leapt forward, but that wasn’t because we were afraid of returning to Elevsis. None of us was afraid of anything. We were just fed up with being pushed around.

  Finally I said, ‘I’ll take it.’ I am a compulsive volunteer. I’ll say yes to anything.

  ‘Good man,’ said the Air Commodore. ‘When you land, there’ll be somebody waiting for you. His name is Carter. Ask him his name before you give him the package. Is that clear?’

  Someone said, ‘They’ve just been ground-strafing Elevsis again, sir. We saw them go by. One-O-Nines. Masses of them.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped the Air Commodore. ‘It makes no difference. Now you,’ he said, staring at me with his fierce pale-blue eyes, ‘you’re to deliver this package to Carter right away and don’t fail me.’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Carter will be the only person on the place,’ the Air Commodore said. ‘That is if the Germans haven’t got there already. If you see any German planes on the aerodrome, for God’s sake don’t land. Get away at once.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Where shall I go?’

  ‘Back here. Fly straight back here. What’s your name?’

  ‘Pilot Officer Dahl, sir.’

  ‘Very well, Dahl,’ he said, weighing the package up and down in one hand. ‘This is on no account to fall into enemy hands. Guard it with your life. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, feeling important.

  ‘Fly very low all the way,’ the Air Commodore said, ‘then they won’t spot you. Land quickly, find Carter, give this to him and get the hell out.’ He handed me the package. I wanted very much to