Flight of Eagles

Some of the pilots wore flying overalls, others ordinary uniform; it was too hot for anything else. On his right shoulder, Harry wore an embroidered insignia that said Finland. Beneath it was a shoulder flash of an American eagle with British and American flags clutched in its claws.

‘Very pretty,’ Hornby said.

‘Got a tailor in Savile Row to run them up for me.’

‘What it is to be rich, my Yankee friend.’ Hornby tapped the jump bag at Harry’s feet. ‘Tarquin in good fettle?’

‘Always. He’s seen it all,’ Harry told him.

‘Wish you’d lend him to me,’ Hornby said, just as they heard a loud roaring noise nearby. ‘Bloody tractor.’

‘That’s no tractor.’ Harry Kelso was on his feet, bag in hand and running for his plane as the Stukas, high in the sky above, banked and dived.

His flight sergeant tossed in his parachute. Kelso climbed into the cockpit, dropped the bag into the bottom, gunned his engine and, roaring away, lifted off as the first bombs hit the runway. A Hurricane exploded to one side, smoke billowing, and he broke through it, banking to port, carnage below, four Hurricanes on fire.

Harry banked again, found a Stuka in his sights and blew it out of the sky. There were four more, but they turned away, obviously considering their work done, and he went after them. One by one he shot them down over the sea – no anger, no rage, just using all his skill, everything calculated.

He returned to Farley Field, a scene of devastation, and managed to land on the one intact runway. He found Hornby lying on a stretcher, his left arm and his face bandaged.

‘Did you get anything?’

Harry gave him a cigarette as an ambulance drew up. ‘Five.’

‘Five?’ Hornby was astonished.

‘Stukas.’ Harry shrugged. ‘Slow and cumbersome. Like shooting fish in a barrel. They won’t last long over here. It’s ME109s we need to watch for.’

There were several bodies on stretchers, covered with blankets. Hornby said, ‘Six pilots dead. Didn’t get off the ground. You were the only one who did. Was it this bad in Finland?’

‘Just the same, only in Finland it snowed.’

The stretcher bearers picked Hornby up. ‘I’ll notify Group and suggest they promote you to flight lieutenant. They’ll get replacements down here fast. Let’s have a look at Tarquin.’

Harry opened the bag and took Tarquin out. Hornby managed to undo a small gilt badge from his bloody shirt and handed it over. ‘Nineteen Squadron. That’s where I started. Let Tarquin wear it.’

‘I sure will.’

Hornby smiled weakly. ‘Those Stukas? Were they over land or the Channel?’

‘One over land.’

‘What a pity. The bastards will never credit you.’

‘Who cares? It’s going to be a long war,’ Harry Kelso told him and closed the ambulance doors.

On the same day, Max and his squadron, flying ME109s, provided cover for Stukas attacking radar stations near Bognor Regis. Attacked by Spitfires, he found himself in an impressive dogfight, during which he downed one and damaged another, but nearly all the Stukas were shot down and three 109s. It was hurried work, with no drop tanks, so that their time over the English mainland was limited, and they had to scramble to get back across the Channel before running out of fuel. He made it in one piece, and was back over Kent again an hour and a half later, part of the sustained attacks on RAF airfields in the coastal areas.

That was the pattern, day after day, a war of attrition, the Luftwaffe strategy to destroy the RAF by making its airfields unusable. Max and his comrades flew in, providing cover to Dornier bombers and Harry and his friends rising to meet them. On both sides, young men died but there was one problem: the Luftwaffe had more pilots. As Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, commander-in-chief of Fighter Command once observed, it would be necessary for the RAF’s young men to shoot the Luftwaffe’s young men at the ratio of four to one to keep any kind of balance and that wasn’t likely.

So it ground on until 30 August, when Biggin Hill, the pride of Fighter Command, was attacked by a large force of Dorniers with great success and Max was one of the escorts. On the return, many Spitfires rose to intercept them and since the 109s needed to protect the bombers, too much time and too much precious fuel were used up over England. By the time Max finally turned out to the Channel, his low fuel warning light was already on.

At that same moment over the sea near Folkestone Harry Kelso shot down two Dornier bombers, but a lucky burst from one of the rear gunners hit him in the engine. He sent out a Mayday and dropped his flaps, aware of a burning smell and calmly wrestled with the canopy. He’d lost an engine over the Isle of Wight the previous week and parachuted in from 2000 feet, landing in the garden of a vicarage where he’d been regaled with tea and biscuits and dry sherry by the vicar’s two sisters.

This was different. That was the Channel down there, already the grave of hundreds of airmen, the English coast ten miles away. He reached for Tarquin in the jump bag. He’d arranged a strap with a special clip that snapped on to his belt against just such an eventuality, stood up and went out head first.

He fell to a thousand feet before opening his chute, then, the sea reasonably calm, he went under, inflated his Mae West and got rid of his parachute. Tarquin floated by him in his waterproof bag. Harry looked up into a cloudless sky. There was no dinghy to inflate – that had gone down with the Hurricane. He wasn’t even sure if his Mayday had got through.

He floated there, thinking about it, remembering comrades who’d gone missing in the past week alone. Is this it? he thought calmly and then a klaxon sounded and he turned to see an RAF crash boat coming up fast. The crew were dressed like sailors, in heavy sweaters, denims and boots. They slowed and dropped a ladder.

The warrant officer in charge looked down. ‘Flight Lieutenant Kelso, is it, sir?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Your luck is good, sir. We were only a mile away when we got your message.’

Two crew members reached down and hauled him up. Harry crouched, oozing sea water. ‘I never thought a deck could feel so good.’

‘You American, sir?’ the warrant officer asked.

‘I surely am.’

‘Well, that’s bloody marvellous. Our first Yank.’

‘No, two actually.’

‘Two, sir?’ The warrant officer was puzzled.

Harry indicated his bag. ‘Take me below, find me a drink and I’ll show you.’

Max, down to 500 feet, raced towards the French coast. On his left knee was a linen bag containing a dye. If you went into the sea, it spread in a huge yellow patch. He’d seen several such patches on his way across and then he saw the coast east of Boulogne. No need to do a crash landing. The tide was out, a huge expanse of sand spread before him. As his engine died, he turned into the wind and dropped down.

He called in his position on the radio, with a brief explanation, pulled back the canopy and got out, lit a cigarette and started to walk towards the sand dunes. When he got there, he sat down, looked out to sea and lit another cigarette.

An hour later, a Luftwaffe recovery crew arrived in two trucks, followed by a yellow Peugeot sports car driven by Adolf Galland. He got out and hurried forward.

‘I thought we’d lost you.’

‘No such luck.’ Galland slapped him on the shoulder and Max added, ‘The plane looks fine. Only needs fuel.’

‘Good. I brought a sergeant pilot. He can fly her back. You and I will drive. Stop off for dinner.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

Galland called to the burly Feldwebel in charge. ‘Get on with it. You know what to do.’

Later, driving towards Le Touquet, he said, ‘Biggin Hill worked out fine. We really plastered them.’

Max said, ‘Oh, sure, but how many fighters did we lose, Dolfo – not bombers, fighters?’

‘All right, it isn’t good, but what’s your point?’

‘Too many mistakes. First, the Stukas – useless against Spitfires and Hurricanes. Second, the bombing policy. Fine – so we destroy their airfields if possible, but fighters are meant to fight, Dolfo, not to spend the whole time protecting the Dorniers. That’s like having a racehorse pulling a milk cart. The strategy is flawed.’

‘Then God help you when we turn against London.’

‘London?’ Max was aghast. ‘All right, I know we’ve raided Liverpool and other places, but London? Dolfo, we must destroy the RAF on the South Coast, fighter to fighter. That’s where we win or lose.’ He shrugged. ‘Unless Goering and the Führer have a death wish.’

‘Saying that to me is one thing, Max, but never to anyone else, do you understand?’

‘That we’re all going down the same road to hell?’ Max nodded. ‘I understand that all right,’ and he leaned back and lit another cigarette.

Harry was delivered back to Farley Field by a naval staff driver from Folkestone. Several pilots and a number of ground crew crowded round.

‘Heard you were in the drink, sir. Good to see you back,’ a pilot officer called Hartley said. ‘There’s a group captain waiting to see you.’

Harry opened the door to his small office and found West of the false leg sitting behind his desk. ‘What a surprise, sir. Congratulations on your promotion.’

‘You’ve done well, Kelso. Anxious couple of hours when we heard where you were, but all’s well that ends well. Congratulations to you too. Your promotion to flight lieutenant has been confirmed. Also, another DFC.’

Harry went to the cupboard, found whisky and two glasses. ‘Shall we toast each other, sir?’

‘Excellent idea.’

Harry poured. ‘Are we winning?’

‘Not at the moment.’ West swallowed his drink. ‘We will in the end. America will have to come in, but we must hang on. I need you for a day or so. I see you’ve only got five Hurricanes operational. Flying Officer Kenny can hold the fort. You’ll be back tomorrow night.’

‘May I ask what this is about, sir?’

‘I remembered from your records that you flew an ME109 in Finland. Well, we’ve got one at Downfield north of London. Pilot had a bad oil leak and decided to land instead of jump. Tried to set fire to the thing, but a Home Guard unit was close by.’

‘That’s quite a catch, sir.’

‘Yes, well, be a good chap. Have a quick shower and change and we’ll be on our way.’

Downfield was another installation that had been a flying club before the war. There was only one landing strip, a control tower, two hangars. The place was surrounded by barbed wire, RAF guards on the gate. The 109 was on the apron outside one of the hangars. Two staff cars were parked nearby and three RAF and two Army officers were examining the plane. A Luftwaffe lieutenant, no more than twenty, stood close by, his uniform crumpled. Two RAF guards with rifles watched him.

Harry walked straight up to the lieutenant and held out his hand. ‘Rotten luck,’ he said in German. ‘Lucky you got down in one piece.’

‘Good God, are you German?’

‘My mother is.’ Harry gave him a cigarette and a light and took one himself.

The older army officer was a brigadier with the red tabs of staff. He had an engagingly ugly face, white hair and wore steel-rimmed spectacles. He looked about sixty-five.

‘Dougal Munro. What excellent German, Flight Lieutenant.’

‘Well, it would be,’ Harry told him.

‘My aide, Jack Carter.’

Carter was a captain in the Green Howards and wore a ribbon for the Military Cross. He leaned on a walking stick, for, as Harry discovered a long time later, he’d left a leg at Dunkirk.

The senior of the three Air Force officers was, like West, a group captain. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on, Teddy,’ he said to West. ‘Who on earth is this officer? I mean, why the delay? Dowding wants an evaluation of this plane as soon as possible.’

‘He’ll get it. Flight Lieutenant Kelso has flown it in combat.’

‘Good God, where?’

‘He flew for the Finns. Gladiators, Hurricanes and 109s.’ West turned to Harry. ‘Give your opinion to Group Captain Green.’

‘Excellent plane, sir. Marginally better than a Hurricane and certainly as good as a Spitfire.’

‘Show them,’ West said. ‘Five minutes only. We don’t want to get you shot down.’

Kelso went up to 3000 feet, banked, looped, beat up the airfield at 300 feet, turned into the wind and landed. He taxied towards them and got out.

‘As I said, sir,’ he told Green. ‘Excellent plane. Mind you, the Hurricane is the best gun platform in the business and, at the end of the day, it usually comes down to the pilot.’

Green turned and said lamely to West, ‘Very interesting, Teddy. I think I’d like a written evaluation from this officer.’

‘Consider it done.’

Green and his two officers went to their staff car and drove away. Munro held out his hand. ‘You’re a very interesting young man.’ He nodded to West. ‘Many thanks, Group Captain.’

He went to his car, Carter limping after him. As they settled in the back, he said, ‘Everything you can find out about him, everything, Jack.’

‘Leave it to me, sir.’

Harry gave the German pilot a packet of cigarettes. ‘Good luck.’

The guards took the boy away and West said, ‘I know a country pub near here where we can get a great black-market meal and you can write that report for me.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ They got in the car and as the driver drove away, Harry lit a cigarette from his spare pack. ‘I asked you were we winning and you said not at the moment. What do we need?’

‘A miracle.’

‘They’re a bit hard to find these days.’

But then it happened. London was accidentally bombed by a single Dornier, the RAF retaliated against Berlin, and from 7 September, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to turn on London. It was the beginning of the Blitz and gave the RAF time to repair its damaged fighter bases in the South of England.

In a café in Le Touquet, Dolfo Galland was playing jazz on the piano and smoking a cigar when Max came in and sat at the end of the bar.

‘That’s it, Dolfo. The rest is just a matter of time. We had the Tommies beaten and our glorious Führer has just thrown it all away. So what happens now?’

‘We get drunk,’ Dolfo Galland told him. ‘And then we go back to work, play the game to the end.’

5

The Blitz on London, the carnage it caused, was so terrible that the red glow in the sky at night could be seen by Luftwaffe planes taking off in France, and by day, the sky seemed full of bombers, the contrails crisscrossing the horizon of hundreds of RAF and Luftwaffe planes fighting it out.

The Knight’s Cross was awarded to those who shot down more than twenty planes. Galland already had it, plus the Oak Leaves for a second award. Max got the Cross on 10 September, although by then he’d taken care of at least thirty planes.

Harry and Hawk Squadron engaged in all the battles, six or seven sorties a day, flying to the point of exhaustion and taking heavy losses. It finally reached a point where he was the only surviving member of the original squadron. And then came the final huge battles of 15 September: 400 Luftwaffe fighters over the South of England and London against 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes.

In a strange way, nobody won. The Channel was still disputed territory and the Blitz on London and other cities continued, although mainly by night. Hitler’s grandiose scheme for the invasion of England, Operation Sealion, had to be scrapped, but Britain was still left standing alone, and the Führer could now turn his attention to Russia.

In Berlin in early November, it was raining hard as Heinrich Himmler got out of his car and entered Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrechtstrasse. A flurry of movement from guards and office staff followed him as he passed through to his office dressed in his black Reichsführer SS dress uniform. He wore his usual silver pince-nez and his face was as enigmatic as ever, as he went up the marble stairs to his suite of offices, where his secretary, a middle-aged woman in the uniform of an SS auxiliary, stood up.

‘Good morning, Reichsführer.’

‘Find Sturmbannführer Hartmann for me.’

‘Certainly, Reichsführer.’

Himmler went into his palatial office, put his briefcase on the desk, opened it, then extracted some papers, sat down and looked them over. There was a knock at the door and it opened.

‘Ah. Hartmann.’

‘Reichsführer.’

Hartmann wore an unusual uniform, consisting of flying blouse and baggy pants Luftwaffe-style, but in field grey. His collar tabs were those of a major in the SS, although he wore the Luftwaffe’s pilot’s badge and sported an Iron Cross First and Second Class. He also wore the German Cross in gold. The silver cuff title on his sleeve said RFSS: Reichsführer SS. This was the cuff title of Himmler’s personal staff. Above it was the SD badge indicating that he was also a member of Sicherheitsdienst, SS Intelligence, a formidable combination.

‘In what way can I be of service, Reichsführer?’

At that time, Hartmann was thirty, almost six feet with a handsome, craggy face, his broken nose – the relic of an air crash – giving him a definite attraction. He wore his hair, more red than brown, in close-cropped Prussian style. A Luftwaffe fighter pilot who had been badly injured in a crash in France before the Battle of Britain, he’d been posted to the Air Courier Service, to transport high-ranking officers in Fieseler Storch spotter planes, when a strange incident had occurred.

Himmler’s visit to Abbeville had been curtailed and, due to bad weather, the Junkers which had been due to pick him up had been unable to get in. As it happened, Hartmann was at the airfield with his Storch, having dropped off a general, and Himmler had commandeered him.

What had happened then was like a bad dream. Rising above low cloud and rain, Hartmann had been bounced by a Spitfire. Bullets shredding his wings, he’d had the courage to go back to the mess below, with the Spitfire in on his tail. A further salvo had shattered his windscreen and rocked the aircraft.

Himmler, incredibly calm, had said, ‘Have we had it?’

‘Not if you like a gamble, Reichsführer.’

‘By all means,’ Himmler told him.

Hartmann had gone down into the mist and rain, 2000, 1000, broken into open country at 500 feet, and hauled back on the control column. Behind him, the Spitfire pilot, losing his nerve, had backed away.

Himmler, a notoriously superstitious man, had always asserted that he believed in God and was immediately convinced that Hartmann was an instrument of divine intervention. Having him thoroughly investigated, he was enchanted to discover that the young man had a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna, and the upshot was that Hartmann was transferred to the SS on Himmler’s personal staff to be his pilot and goodluck charm, but, in view of his legal background, he was also to serve with SS intelligence as the Reichsführer’s personal aide.

Himmler said, ‘The Blitz on London continues. I’ve been with the Führer. We will overcome in the end, of course. Panzers will yet roll up to Buckingham Palace.’

With personal reservations, Hartmann said, ‘Undeniably, Reichsführer.’

‘Yes, well, we let the English stew for the time being and turn to Russia. The Führer has an almost divine inspir-ation here. At most, six weeks should see the Red Menace overcome once and for all.’

Hartmann, in spite of serious doubts, agreed. ‘Of course.’

‘However,’ Himmler said, ‘I’ve spoken to Admiral Canaris about the intelligence situation in England and frankly, it’s not good.’ Canaris headed the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. ‘As far as I can judge, all our Abwehr agents in Britain have been taken.’

‘So it would appear.’

‘And we can do nothing.’ Himmler was angry. ‘It’s disgraceful!’

‘Not quite, Reichsführer,’ Hartmann said. ‘As you know, I’ve taken over Department 13, after Major Klein died of cancer last year. And I’ve discovered that he recruited a few deep cover agents before the war.’

‘Really? Who would these people be?’

‘Irish mostly, disaffected with the British establishment. Even the Abwehr has had dealings with the Irish Republican Army.’

‘Ach, those people are totally unreliable,’ Himmler told him.

‘With respect, not all, Reichsführer. And Klein also recruited to his payrolls various neutrals – some Spanish and Portuguese diplomats.’

Himmler got up and went to the window. He stood, hands behind his back, then turned. ‘You are telling me we have, in the files, deep cover agents the Abwehr doesn’t know about?’

‘Exactly.’

Himmler nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, this is good. I want you to pursue this matter, Hartmann, in addition to your usual duties, of course. Make sure they are still in place and ready when needed. Do you understand me?’

‘At your command, Reichsführer.’

‘You may go.’

Hartmann returned to his own office, where his secretary, Trudi Braun, forty and already a war widow, looked up from her desk. She was devoted to Hartmann – such a hero, and a tragic figure besides, his wife killed in the first RAF raid on Berlin. She was unaware that Hartmann had almost heaved a sigh of relief when it happened; his wife had chased everything in trousers from the start of their marriage.

‘Trouble, Major?’ she asked.

‘You could say that, Trudi. Come in and bring coffee.’

He sat behind his desk and lit a cigarette, and she joined him two minutes later, a cup for her and a cup for him. She sat in the spare chair.

‘So?’

Hartmann took a bottle of brandy from a drawer and poured some in his coffee, mainly because his left leg hurt, another legacy of that plane crash.

‘Trudi, I know our esteemed Reichsführer believes God is on our side, but he now also believes Operation Sealion will still take place.’

‘Really, sir?’ Trudi had no opinion on such matters.

‘So, that list of Klein’s you told me about. You worked for him – give me a full rundown on it, particularly the Spanish or Portuguese that were on his payroll.’

‘They still are, Major.’

‘Well, now it’s pay-up time. Come on, Trudi.’

She said, ‘Well, one of the contacts, a Portuguese man in London named Fernando Rodrigues, has actually passed on low-grade information from time to time. He works at their London embassy.’

‘Really,’ Hartmann said. ‘And who else?’

‘Some woman called Dixon – Sarah Dixon. She’s a clerk at the War Office in London.’

Hartmann sat up straight. ‘Are you serious? We have a clerk in the War Office and she’s still in place?’

‘Well, she was never Abwehr. You see, if I may talk about how things were before your arrival, Major, only the Abwehr were supposed to run agents abroad. Major Klein’s operation for SD was really illegal. So, when the Brits penetrated the Abwehr and lifted all their agents in England, ours were left intact. They were never compromised.’

‘I see.’ Hartmann was excited. ‘Get me the files.’

Fernando Rodrigues was a commercial attaché at the Portuguese London embassy and his brother, Joel, was a commercial attaché at the Berlin embassy. Very convenient. Hartmann read the files and recognized the two of them for what they were: greedy men with their hands out. So be it. At least you knew where you were with people like that and you could always cut the hand off.

Sarah Dixon was different. She was forty-five, the widow of George Dixon, a bank clerk who’d died of war wounds from 1917. Originally Sarah Brown, she’d been born in London of an English father and Irish mother. Her grandfather, an IRA activist in the Easter Rising in Dublin against the British, had been shot.

She lived alone in Bayswater in London, had worked as a clerk at the War Office since 1938. She had originally been recruited as an IRA sympathizer by an IRA activist named Patrick Murphy in 1938 during the bombing campaign in London and Birmingham and Murphy had worked for Klein and the SD. She’d agreed to co-operate and then Murphy had been shot dead in a gun fight with Special Branch policemen.