Folks,

With friendly regrets to the magnificent Zerosan2 and his army of chums from up north who cannot abide my scribbling, here is yet another glaring example of why they feel that way and why I have never been asked to write a book. It is an older work from our moldy archives and unfortunately, at least to date, there is no incentive to post more recent offerings as there seems to be no decernable improvement over time. Chapter One of far too many more to come.

A Nasty Surprise, Episode One
By JRT
Original HWH
Page Unknown
7/24/01

It is early morning as we arrive at one of wartime England’s important but less famous airfields. It may not appear exactly as you had expected. There are no paved runways or giant air control towers. You see a large uncultivated field, a hanger or two and a few dark windowed, brick or stone buildings squatting in the bright sunshine.

Bursting, khaki colored sandbags ring serious gun emplacements that dot the perimeter of the large, rutted field. These are manned by helmetless soldiers who lounge in what shade they can find whilst drowsing off the dregs of last night’s leave. The loamy expanse of the landing field is grassy green. Its edges are strewn with fighter aircraft in close orderly rows. A few dozen Spitfires are lined up as if ready for instant departure. We hear the sounds of tools being used as shirtless, sweaty ground crews minister attentively to their great, winged charges. A dozen or two bored pilots in various stages of uniform loll about. Those who love the sun are sitting on small canvas chairs. Some read, others doze. A good many pilots who are perhaps less health or literary oriented types lie about on the shady grass under broad, green wings.

The hot August sun broils down from a limitless sky of perfect blue past scudding, cotton ball like clouds. There is a light breeze that flutters the locks of hair on one moist brow and then another. On it wafts to invisibly brush it’s welcome coolness across sweaty backs bent in earnest labor and on across a drying line of freshly painted black swastikas just below one Spit’s empty cockpit. The drop-down door into the cockpit is lowered. There is a spatter of something red in color running across it and out onto one wing. The wing has several holes through it that are only now receiving patches.

The sweet, stringent smell of wet grass softly scents the warming air mingled with that of the summer hay from a field just out of sight. A number of lazy, green leafed oaks at the far end of the field reach skyward their crusty branches. Animated by a stiff breeze, they begin to slowly shift and sway. This sudden gust of wind begins rolling across the field chasing the shadow of a great cumulus cloud as it ripples over the waving grass toward the random assembly of disinterested men.

The agitated buzz of a little brown bee offers the only recognizable threat to anyone. This goes completely unnoticed. In the narrow shade under what is euphemistically termed the mess hall someone’s Jack Russell terrier begins to dig a long shallow hole in the soft, damp earth. The furry, bright-eyed pet is also fleeing the rising heat as he seeks to make a bed in the cool earth several inches beneath the surface. For the pilots, exhaustion is the rule today after several days of intense combat. This little sapper is the most industrious fellow about save for the ground crews.

Several more bees have joined the chorus now and the drone begins to grow. It grows in volume and pitch until it is finally noticed by one of the more alert members of the working ground crew. As he listens he turns toward the West and his straining eyes pick out several black dots rushing fast against the white cloud base. Dropping his spanner he turns toward the others and screams the alert! Enemy planes coming in fast from the West.

It takes precious seconds for the alert to register and action to be taken. All hell breaks loose. Aircraft are starting, pilots are swearing as they frantically attempt to put on boots, untangle their flying dress and don their parachutes. Crews have cleared tools and debris from wings. Pilots are clambering aboard their planes and many Merlin engines are coughing to life. In the space of seconds we have gone from a scene of blissful quite and summer solitude to a screaming, yelling madhouse of insane movement, curses and horrendous, ear-splitting sounds. The noise is fantastic. It beats mercilessly against our ears as the crews remove wheel chocks and the Spitfires begin to move onto the field. Their prop wash flattens the grass and their wheels bounce along as they gain enough speed to lift them into the air and over the branches of the oaks.

The last Spitfire has just cleared those reaching branches when the first formation of enemy aircraft bores brazenly across the field. Their shells begin to kick up dust toward the huddled little buildings. Our friend the Jack Russell pokes his head out from his newly dug foxhole and barks contemptuously at the oncoming fighters. Shells strike the Mess hall and the brave little fellow disappears in a cloud of dust and a shower of splinters.

Six enemy fighters, BF 109Es with yellow noses, rush across the field tainting it with their ugly shadows of death and destruction. They are met by strong but mostly inaccurate gunfire from the edges of the field. A gunner gets lucky for one of the mottled gray enemy fighters spouts a black, oily trail as they climb out past the hangers and curve back toward the West. They have become dots again above the trees and against the white clouds. Searching the skies for our own fighters, we brace ourselves for the enemies return. It is at this moment that our Spitfires fall mercilessly upon them.

To Be Continued