All the time I stood taking in the chaos that was Thorby, Langdon was yelling at me. But I was too dazed to take it in. ‘Go on! Get out of the pit! All of you. Can’t you understand you’re standing by a bomb? Get out!’
Suddenly I grasped it. I glanced at him wonderingly.
Where was the bomb? I couldn’t see one. I looked round the pit. Hood and Fuller were carrying Helson out. Chetwood was helping Strang. Others were standing about, dazed, or following Hood sheep-like out of the pit. Micky was cowering in a corner, sobbing, white-faced and panic-stricken. He had remained at his post throughout the action, calm and unperturbed by the hail of metal that had sung about him. Yet now that it was over, the reaction
made a coward of him. Kan’s face was chalk-white and he staggered slightly as he left the pit. Blah just stood there, dazed and pale.
‘Get out or you’ll be blown up.’ I realised that Langdon was yelling at me. He was pointing a,t the parapet in front of me. Only then did my brain function. The parapet had collapsed because a bomb had hit it — a delayed-action bomb. I turned again to find Langdon struggling with Micky. Between us we got him out of the pit, stumbling over the litter of shell cases. He was shaking like a leaf. Kan and Blah came with us, alive at last to the danger.
We took him into the hut. From there I looked back. Protruding from the broken parapet were the fins of a bomb. The nose was buried in the sand. Dropped from only thirty feet or so, it had not had the impetus to bury itself deeply. A cold chill ran down my spine as I realised what would have happened if it had been a percussion type instead of a delayed action. God! how lucky we had been!
‘We’ve got to get it away from there,’ Langdon said. ‘Must get the gun into action as soon as possible.’
‘There’s rope in the store hangar,’ I said. ‘Can I borrow your bike?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I took it and pedalled off down the roadway, weaving my way in and out between the craters. Anything for action. I was feeling very shaken. The smell of cordite was strong, especially round the craters, and as I neared the hangars the acrid smell of smoke filled my lungs. I passed what was left of the officers’ mess and made for the square. As I did so I heard a single Tannoy loudspeaker ordering all men not servicing aircraft to report to the square for fire-fighting.
The chaos of that square was quite indescribable. It was bounded on three sides by blazing buildings. They had dropped incendiaries as well as H.E. The fire-fighting equipment was quite inadequate for the task. The smoke was blinding. It filled my eyes to choking point and made them run. Men and girls were running everywhere. Some were screaming. The place reeked with pain and nervous exhaustion. I passed a dug-out shelter which had been hit.
They were getting the dead and wounded out. I felt slightly sick and was convinced I could smell the blood.
There was broken glass everywhere and my back tyre was soon flat. Ambulance and A.R.P. fire-pumps were beginning to come in from districts around. I reached the Educational without being knocked down. There was nothing left of it. The station hospital had gone, too. It was just a pile of rubble with one wall standing and the front door, upright in solitary splendour. A girl in a torn Waaf uniform staggered through the ruins and came out by the front door. She closed it carefully behind her. Her face and hair were coated with a thick dust of powdered masonry and her hands were bleeding.
I thought suddenly and sickeningly of Marion. Where had she been during the raid? Had she gone to a shelter? Of course she must have done. Was she in the one that had been hit? Questions passed through my mind unanswered. I knew that she meant something to me. What, my confused mind could not realise. All I knew then was that the memory of her face, those clear eyes, that tilted nose, that straight fair hair, hurt. It was like green grass and the river, like a mountain at sunset, against that chaos of broken brick. It was the glimpse of beauty in the midst of ugliness that hurt — the need for beauty that was out of reach. It was a symbol of the best that was in me, chained to the horrors of man-made catastrophe that was the moment’s reality.
I turned up the road leading to the rearmost hangar. Almost immediately I had to get off my bicycle. The road was full of rubble. This was where the bomber we had brought down had crashed. A whole hangar had collapsed like a pack of cards. The tail of the machine with the swastika on it was sticking up out of the ruins of the collapsed roof. It was a miracle it hadn’t caught fire for the roof had been built of wood.
The hangar I wanted adjoined it on the other side. The road in front of me was blocked by the remains of the Naafi Institute. I left my bike and clatered through the ruins. The north wall was still standing and by keeping close to this the going was quite easy. At the farther end, where it adjoined the next hangar, part of the roof was still intact.
Smothered by the dust and smoke and intent on reaching the store hangar, where I knew I should find the rope I wanted, I did not see Vayle until I was right on top of him.
I looked up, startled. He was hardly recognisable. His clothes were torn and covered with dust and his usually well-groomed hair was dishevelled. There was something about his face that frightened me. Pain and bitterness seemed to mingle in the set of his mouth. And his eyes had lost their cold alertness and were fever bright. He looked at me without recognition.
I was just hastening on when I glanced down and saw the thing at his feet. It was the crumpled body of a girl. The face was drained of all colour, and the blood from the gaping wound in her head was congealing with the dust on her face and clothes. I hesitated. And then I realised that it was Elaine Stuart, and I hurried on. The memory of Vayle’s wild dry eyes lingered with me as I passed into the store hangar.
She was dead, of course. No doubt of that. And she had meant a great deal to him. That wild dry-eyed look! I remembered the photograph. Why had he kept that all these years? And then a thought occurred to me. Suppose she had been his wife?
And in a flash I saw it all. The raiders had gone for personnel, not for the hangars. Vayle had known this. Elaine and he had gone to the hangars and not to the shelters. She, with a woman’s premonition, had been afraid of this and had cried out in her sleep against it. But in the morning he had soothed her fears and now, because we had downed, a bomber with a lucky shot, she lay dead at his feet.
I picked up a big coil of light rope lying beside a pile of flares. I could not help feeling sorry for the man. He had thought the hangars the safest place in the ‘drome. I could imagine how he felt.
I had to go back the same way. The end of the other road I knew was blocked. And because of the piled-up ruin of the roof I had to pass quite close to Vayle. He looked at me. And this time into his dazed eyes came recognition. With it came a look of surprise that I did not quite understand. He seemed somehow shocked at the sight of me. I thought he was going to speak to me and I hurried by him. What was there I could say? The stricken look had never left his face though the expression had changed when he recognised me. For the moment at least the girl meant more to him than all his plans.
I retrieved my bike and rode back to the square, the rope slung over my shoulder. It was heavy and I found it difficult to negotiate the scattered debris. Even in the short time I had been getting the rope, things had changed in the square. There were men everywhere, running to shouts of command. Three proper fire-engines had arrived, and more ambulances andA.F.S. fire-pumps. There were civilian cars too, doctors’ cars mostly. And the dead and wounded were being laid out on the grass at the edge of the square. Hoses were being run out and great jets of water were being poured into the blazing blocks.