That morning their squadron’s controller had held them on the deck until just before ten. Their orders were to supply ground support for the Canadian divisions about to move south. A preposterous notion, Ormsby thought. There were so many Luftwaffe planes overhead, he doubted 46 Squadron would even get to the Canadians, much less provide them cover.
Ormsby had not been out of his uniform jacket in three days. He had dispensed with his Irving suit because it and his harness fouled the cockpit’s wireless leads and oxygen tube. So he flew with the heater on full. He had two kills, a Dornier and, improbably for one as green as Ormsby, an Me 109. His ground crew had not had time to stencil them on the Spitfire.
He was so tired he had begun to see double. The lieutenant blinked repeatedly as, once again, he pushed his hands into his gloves and stepped to his plane. The ground crew pulled back the netting, which had branches intertwined in it. Ormsby climbed onto the wing and reached for the cockpit latch.
Yellow fire burst from the cockpit. Ormsby’s hands reflexively went to his face, and he lurched back on the wing. Another blast of yellow erupted from the far wing, then another. The engine housing suddenly foamed with fire.
Ormsby leaped blindly from the wing, landing hard, his right knee smashing into his chin. His arms still protecting his head, he rolled away from his plane. The burbling of the spheres of yellow fire was abruptly drowned out by his fuel tank exploding. The lieutenant was still rolling when the heat washed over him.
He sat up. The gutted frame of his fighter was sinking to the ground, its landing gear groaning as it twisted with heat and weight. The flattened tires billowed black smoke. His friend Captain Allen Best’s Spit was obscured by sheets of fire rising from its engine. And the captain’s plane was being demolished as Ormsby watched, the yellow orbs of fire breaking out in a trail from the prop to the elevator, tearing away panels of fuselage, ripping away the rudder, then engulfing the craft in flames. A Messerschmitt roared overhead.
A hundred yards north, pocks of earth shot skyward, then raced toward Ormsby as another enemy fighter made its run. The lieutenant pushed himself to his feet and sprinted to a sandbag bunker, then dove over the bags and landed on Allen Best, who was lying on his belly, his head between two bags.
Ormsby breathed deeply until he caught his breath. He said, “Incendiaries.”
Another German fighter swept over them, the whine of its engine abruptly deepening as it passed. Best looked up. His face had been pressed with such force against the ground that twigs and grit were stuck to it. He smiled sheepishly. “Christ, they pop.”
“Those Luftwaffe bastards love them, don’t they?”
All pilots did. The incendiaries’ yellow bursts on impact were a deadly aiming aid. And incendiaries seemed artful, laying a brightly lit pattern of destruction across the landscape.
Best brushed sand from his chin. “Well, we’ve joined the rest of our mates as pilots without planes.”
Ormsby stared at his plane, nothing more than a cylinder of churning fire, feeling the loss. He said sadly, “We’ll be better off on the ground today, I suspect.”
Ormsby and Best were not the only pilots to have just lost their rides. On S-Day, the RAF had 248 serviceable fighters. By the launching of General Clay’s Redwood, the number was down to 102.
With the aid of merciless hindsight, it is easy to see now that without Allied mastery of the air, without Lieutenant Ormsby and his companions blazing a trail for armor and infantry, General Clay’s counterattack was destined to fail.
Fail it did.
I have struggled with the telling of the next few hours more than any other part of this narrative. I was tempted to omit the incident altogether, but Jerry Ness of United Press recently broke the story, accusing General Hargrave and me of trying to cover it up. Now, with the story out, bludgeoning the general’s reputation, I must relate the entire episode, correcting some of Ness’s account, confirming some.
I admit to trying to bury the affair. My loyalty to General Clay, which I feel as strongly now as when I served him, demanded no less. In a telephone conversation with me, Ness countered that history insists on more from me, and he may be right.
General Clay’s conduct should be viewed from the perspective of the moment. He had just suffered four consecutive defeats: the destruction of the Ranger mission the night before S-Day, the collapse of the channel seawall, the breakdown of his islands of resistance defense at Haywards Heath, and the crushing of his counterattack, Redwood. The Germans were pummeling him.
The trouble was first confirmed when General Hargrave asked me where Clay was. By that time, three in the afternoon on May 31, AEFHQ had retreated to Haslemere, midway between Portsmouth and London, about eight miles east of the oncoming Wehrmacht’s front.
I replied meekly that he had gone for a walk.
Hargrave removed his pipe and stared at me. “Clarify that, Colonel.”
I cleared my throat. “He’s walking in the woods behind the caravan, sir.”
“What is he doing there?”
“I’m not sure, General. Thinking, perhaps.”
Hargrave’s small features became brittle. “Those bastard Germans are slamming us left and right and you’re telling me Clay’s out on a nature walk? You go find him and bring him back here.”
AEFHQ was in yet another manor house, this one on land carved out of a beech forest. The house was barely visible through the ivy that climbed to the roof line. The residence and its low-flanking outbuildings were surrounded by a yew hedge that opened at the north end of the property to admit a winding brook and at the south end to let it escape. A lawn edged the creek. Near the creek was a small pergola, empty of the wrought iron table and chairs that undoubtedly had been donated to the war effort. Sentries were posted on the perimeter of the property.
I crossed the lawn, bypassing General Clay’s caravan and the trailered AA gun and the HQ signal company truck that followed headquarters everywhere, and made my way to a gate in the stone wall. The last I had seen of the general, he had walked through this gap in the hedge into the trees.
The trail into the woods was dainty, with nothing rigorous about it. It was a lawn footpath, with borders carefully marked with decorative pebbles. Marble benches were located every fifty feet. The path was lined with hydrangeas and camellias and walls of rhododendrons, which were blooming blood red and dusk purple. The path aimlessly turned left and right for a hundred yards, then the trees opened overhead and the path ended at the bank above a shallow ravine. Below was a narrow pool. Two Canada geese drifted on the flat water. The war could have been a thousand miles away.
A bench overlooked the pond, surrounded by clipped lawn and begonia and lavender. General Clay was sitting there, his hands clasped between his knees. I hesitated, thinking he might be in prayer, as improbable as that was. I had never known the general to give even a passing reference to religion, except in several speeches, “because it makes a good finale,” he had said.
I waited fully two minutes. Finally I called out, “General, do you have a moment?”
He did not move, still staring at his hands.
I walked into the opening. “General Clay?”
He seemed not to hear me. His gaze shifted from his hands to the pool below. He bit his lower lip. Otherwise, nothing.
I walked over to him. “Sir?”
No response. I tapped his shoulder. “General Clay?”
He started, then looked up. “Jack.”