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CoverRed Leader Down by Ken Catran

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Reproduced with permission © Ken Catran.

I have been airborne before. But this is special: I am going in harm’s way. I am airborne to war and death, flying in formation with a man who understands and who wants to keep us alive. So I look over again and catch his own goggled gaze. I put up a thumb and get one in return.

No speaking because we have radio silence. Climbing higher, three thousand metres and already my head is beginning to wrench around on my neck till my spine creaks. I’d do 360 degrees if I could, because this controlled eyeball-scan is first warning against enemy strike. Radio silence broken as a thin voice crackles.

Charles Pinkney. He’s got engine-feed problems, maybe a fuel-line, losing power. And to prove it, his Tempest drifts sideways like a straight-winged fish in this vast pale pond.

‘Go for home.’

Jingo’s terse words give no indication of his feelings. We have our feelings too as Pinky’s Tempest peels off and is lost below. Minutes — maybe only one minute — and Nessie, whose brains are as thick as tough mutton, forgets radio silence.

‘Hey, what’s that below?’

We have just a moment to glance down. To fix on the twin-engined bomber, so mottled with green-and-brown as to be a scudding invisible shape. That same moment, Jingo’s voice cutting in, urgent and furious: ‘Bandits, three o’clock
high, break — break!’

And instinct — that split-second of reaction — hauling the stick back into the pit of my stomach, letting that searing awareness scorch me. Yes a bomber below, Jerry’s new Arado jet — and while we are looking, the fighters pounce from on high, right out of the sun.

And having to look up at the sun-dazzle, blinking, those black shapes hurtling down — connecting to us by drifting yellow lines, and the next moment’s a nightmare of bewildered crazy noise, like a jigsaw exploding apart.

Think! This is it — react! And twisting my Tempest around, in full control of this roaring fury, the black shapes rushing up, I press my thick-gloved thumb on the fi ring button —
nothing. Hell, flip the safety. My Tempest shuddering as the wing-cannon roar, then the black shapes are past. A sudden cacophony of voices in my headphones.

‘Nessie — break. He’s on your tail.’

‘Jeeze bloody hell Gus, you’re shooting at me’ — from Jingo.

‘Got two on me —’ Nessie yelling.

‘Break. Break.’

And just like that, a last scudding dark shape out of sight — and it’s over. Ending quickly as it began, and the German fighters — long-nosed Focke-Wulfs — are nowhere to be seen. One downward spiralling trail of smoke — a German fighter in flames. Jingo bawling at us to re-form and head for home.

Even in this first hour of aerial fighting, I can look around. See we are one short too. Not sure who: Jingo keeps us on radio silence as we head back to the airfield. It comes into view, I see the swastikaed tailfin of our Resident Heinkel. I must be shaking because my Tempest jars so hard on landing that the undercarriage nearly collapses.

We taxi into the revetment bays. I’m glued to my seat and shaking, sick and scorching inside. Feeling an awful churning like my guts are being scooped out. Surprised I can make my fumbling numb hands work as I push back the canopy and stiffly — like I’ve been sitting for hours — get out.

I nearly end up in a heap on the ground. I avoid the faces of the ground crew, think I mutter something about ‘first flight’ and clump off to the mess-tent. Like everyone, I’m expecting a red-hot broadside from Jingo.

It wasn’t like that. He was calm, even soothed us. He joked about me shooting at him. A single direct glance at Pinky, whose fuel-feed problems somehow solved themselves. We’re blooded, that was the main thing — he used that word with satisfaction: blooded. Next time we’d do better, now get some coffee and go out and check with the ground crews.

Already I felt better, somehow cleared in my head. This was the first time, there would be a second and third — a lot more. But I could handle it now. I could even think about the
one Tempest missing.

Pilot Officer Lesley Stevens, came in on my intake but I cannot remember his face. He was nineteen, copped it on that first pass and all that was left was a brown crater somewhere, being rapidly whitened by the falling snow. Not even a chance to call him ‘Les’.

And even thinking about him, also thinking — it was him, not me. You had to think that to survive. You couldn’t feel guilty, even about having a good sleep that night.

Grandad’s voice crackles. ‘My first flight. I couldn’t remember a damn thing when it happened. I remember everything now.’

‘Yes, Grandad.’

© Ken Catran

Published April 2006