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