Malta Victory Read online

  The balcony faced south-east, towards Valletta. There was a moon, and from Yeoman’s relatively high vantage-point the ragged outline of Grand Harbour, with its surrounding clusters of buildings, was clearly visible. The flashes of bombs and guns threw the distant shapes of twin-spired churches into sharp relief. Shell-bursts spewed across the sky, following the direction of probing searchlight beams. Yeoman calculated that Naxxar was a good five miles from Valletta, but even at this distance the noise was terrific, the thunderous drumroll of explosions blotting out the sound of the bombers’ engines.

  Suddenly, something caught Yeoman’s eye and he turned his head, peering into the darkness beyond St. Julian’s Bay. High over the sea, a stream of sparks danced in the night. A few moments later, cutting through the rumble from Valletta, the high-pitched bark of quick-firing cannon reached him.

  He smiled, exulting quietly. One of Malta’s small force of twin-engined Bristol Beaufighter night-fighters must be on the prowl. The sparks flashed again, and this time a pinpoint of white light flickered at the spot where they converged. As Yeoman watched it grew in intensity, like an exploding star. Then it began to fall, slowly at first and then faster. It flared brightly and split into a dozen fragments. They fell like meteors, each one trailing its own small tail of fire, to be abruptly extinguished in the blackness of the Mediterranean. There would be empty spaces at the breakfast table in some German or Italian mess this morning.

  Yeoman continued to watch, scanning the sky, but he saw no further combats. After a while the anti-aircraft barrage from Valletta died away and the searchlights flicked out one by one. The receding throb of engines reached him now as the raiders droned away northwards towards Sicily.

  An aircraft flew overhead, very low, its dark shape fleeting briefly across the stars, its engines strangely muted. One of the Beaufighters was returning to Takali. Idly, he wondered if it was the one whose gunfire he had watched a few minutes earlier.

  He thought suddenly of the enemy aircrew whose lives he had just seen extinguished. The light breeze that blew off the sea was chilly, but that was not the reason a shiver ran through him. He turned and went indoors, wondering what the morning would bring.

  Chapter Four

  Yeoman sat on the sandbags that formed the walls of the blast pen, feeling desperately tired. It seemed as though he had been asleep for only a few minutes before Roger Graham, candle in hand, had shaken him awake. There had been one consolation; the water supply was working, so he had been able to avail himself of a quick cold bath and a shave before leaving for Luqa, together with a dozen other red-eyed pilots.

  It had still been dark when they arrived at the airfield, and Graham had delivered a rapid briefing under the flickering lights of G Shelter. Yeoman had learned then why the enemy had paid so much attention to Valletta during the night. Under cover of darkness a fast minelayer had docked in Grand Harbour, carrying a load of vital anti-aircraft ammunition. Without it, Malta’s guns would have fallen silent within forty-eight hours.

  With the dawn, teams of soldiers, sailors and Maltese workers were still striving to unload the vessel. The enemy had failed to destroy her during the night, so it was certain that the bombers would come again in daylight. At all costs the RAF had to stop them, to break up their formations before they reached Grand Harbour. Every serviceable fighter would be in the air when the alarm went up: that amounted to a dozen Spitfires from Luqa, ten more from Takali and four Hurricanes from Hal Far. It was hoped that several more fighters, damaged during the air attacks of the previous day, would be ready by mid-morning.

  Yeoman had spent the first couple of hours of daylight getting to know his fitter and rigger, Sykes and Tozer, both of them leading aircraftmen. Sykes was in a bad way, and kept reeling round the end of the blast pen to be sick. He had fallen victim to the ‘Malta Dog’, a particularly nasty kind of amoebic dysentery caused by eating the island’s vegetables, which were nurtured in highly fertilized soil. Everyone, Sykes told Yeoman grimly between spasms, got the Dog sooner or later; it usually lasted only a couple of days, but it shattered a man completely. Pilots who contracted the disease were grounded immediately, but ground crews usually worked on and made the best of it.

  This morning’s operations were strictly for experienced pilots only. Those among the newcomers with no combat experience would have to kick their heels on the ground, receiving their baptism of fire in days to come when things were perhaps a little quieter. Even Yeoman, who was far from being a novice, was to fly as Roger Graham’s number two. He could see Graham now, seated like himself on the sandbags of another blast pen seventy yards away. He waved, but the squadron leader was engrossed in a book and appeared not to notice.

  ‘Look, sir,’ Tozer said suddenly, ‘why not come down here and have a bit of a rest?’ He indicated a small tent the two airmen had rigged up as defence against both the heavy early morning dew and the intense heat of the day. ‘This sun’s going to get bloody hot before long.’

  Yeoman looked at his watch. It was already nearly nine o’clock, and amazingly the enemy bombers had not yet put in an appearance.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said, smiling. ‘If I lie down in there I’ll never get up again.’

  He slid down from the sandbags and wandered over to the Spitfire, leaning against one of the cannons. The metal was already warm to the touch. The uncanny silence, after the noise of the previous night, was beginning to get on his nerves. He felt slightly dizzy, and there was an uncomfortable churning sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  He looked at Tozer. ‘How long have you been out here?’ he asked.

  Tozer shrugged ‘About thirteen months, sir,’ he answered. ‘Now old Sykes here’ — he waved a hand towards his pale and shaking colleague — ‘has been here nearly two years.’ He grinned. ‘You’d think he’d be used to it by now, wouldn’t you, sir?’

  Yeoman made no reply. Two years of this hell, he thought. Sykes must have experienced it all, from the very first Italian air raids. He looked at the man with profound admiration.

  Sykes coughed and said weakly, ‘It wasn’t bad at first, sir, when we just had the Italians to contend with. Many of the Eyeties didn’t seem too interested in attacking us at all. I once saw three bombers circle well off the coast, drop their bombs in the sea and head for home. Other blokes have seen the same thing happen. Then Jerry arrived, and it was a different story.’ He spat into the dust. ‘They’re bastards, they are.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tozer said, ‘old Sykes was here during the first big blitz, January to March ’41. I got here in April, when things had died down a bit. Jerry was invading Greece and Crete then, and had pulled most of his bombers out of Sicily. They came back in the autumn, though, and we’ve had it just about non-stop ever since. Still,’ he grinned, ‘can’t let the bastards grind us down, can we, sir?’

  Yeoman shook his head. The unfailing cheerfulness and adaptability of the RAF’S ground crews never ceased to amaze him. These men on Malta lived a troglodyte’s existence in a series of caves cut into the walls of old quarries, stifling burrows thick with the stench of old sump oil that was used for cooking; the caves were roasting by day and freezing by night, and yet their morale was as high as any he had seen anywhere. Higher, perhaps, for on Malta everyone was pretty much in the same boat, and as a result everyone felt himself to be part of a closely-knit team.

  Yeoman looked up at the northern sky and drummed his fingertips impatiently on the metal surface of his Spitfire’s wing. Where the hell were the Huns? This waiting was beginning to get him down. There had already been four false alarms that morning, and after each one the knot in his stomach had got that little bit tighter. He supposed he ought to have been sitting in the cockpit, ready to go, but the heat in that confined space was murderous. As it was, his shirt was already soaked in sweat under his Mae West lifejacket. The rest of his clothing consisted of shorts, socks and desert boots; although it would be bitterly cold at heights of over twenty thousand feet, to wear heavie
r clothing on the ground was to risk heat-stroke.

  Suddenly, his heart leapt into his mouth. In Luqa village, the sirens had begun to wail. Another false alarm? He peered towards G Shelter through the heat haze that danced and shimmered over the airfield.

  Two red lights arc’d up into the hot air, followed by two more an instant later. Scramble!

  Yeoman grabbed his helmet from the Spitfire’s wing, pulling it on as he stepped into the cockpit and settled down on his parachute pack. He strapped himself in quickly, with a semi-automatic reflex born of long practice.

  The Merlin — God bless Rolls-Royce! — choked a couple of times, then started with a bang. Long flames shot briefly from the exhausts. Yeoman reached up and slammed the hood closed. Furnace-like though the cockpit was, to taxi with the hood open was to risk being half choked to death by clouds of swirling dust. One of the airmen, Tozer, had jumped up on the wingroot and was hanging on with one hand, battered by the wind from the propeller, grinning and waving. Yeoman realized that he was wishing him good luck and gave him a thumbs-up; Tozer dropped out of sight.

  Yeoman released the brakes, opened the throttle a little and took the Spitfire out of the blast pen on to the rough track that converged on the runway. Over to the left Roger Graham’s fighter was also, moving forward, dragging the inevitable dust-cloud in its wake. More dust, billowing up from various points around the field, betrayed the whereabouts of other taxiing Spitfires.

  He swung into position behind and to the right of Graham, swinging the Spitfire’s long nose from side to side to ensure that there were no obstacles in his path. Graham’s Spitfire was a grey ghost in its shroud of dust. They turned on to the runway, opening their throttles. Yeoman, from force of habit, gave a quick glance over his shoulder. This was the dangerous time, the time when Messerschmitts might come streaking down, shark-like, to strafe and destroy.

  The sky behind was clear. Out of the corner of his eye Yeoman spotted another pair of Spits, their tails already up, roaring down Luqa’s secondary runway. That must be the other two aircraft in Graham’s section, flown by Gerry Powell and one of the Rhodesian sergeants, McCallum. They were wasting no time, and Yeoman realized that he and Graham would cross the runway intersection only a couple of seconds before the other two fighters.

  Ahead of him, Graham’s fighter lifted into the air, shedding its cloud of dust. Yeoman’s Spitfire, its tail now up, hit a patch of uneven surface and lurched violently. He worked the rudder pedals frantically, striving to keep the aircraft straight, and eased back the stick. The fighter bounced once, then left the uneven surface of the runway. Yeoman kept the nose down for a few seconds, building up speed, then pulled up sharply after Graham, who was turning steeply to the right on a northerly heading.

  As they climbed, Graham’s voice burst over the R/T, calling up Group Captain Douglas at the operations room in Valletta.

  ‘Hello, Douggie, this is Catfish Leader. Any gen?’

  The reply came back immediately, in Douglas’s rich, reassuring tones.

  ‘Catfish Leader, Roger, thirty plus big jobs and twenty plus little jobs approaching Gozo, Angels fifteen to twenty. Grab Angels quickly.’

  Douglas was telling them that thirty bombers, escorted by at least twenty fighters, were on their way to Malta, stacked up between fifteen and twenty thousand feet. Furthermore, he was ordering them to gain altitude as quickly as possible.

  Yeoman, taking his eyes away from Graham’s Spitfire for an instant, glanced over to his left, towards Grand Harbour. The three deep inlets were crowned by a layer of bronze haze, and beneath it, spreading like some foul poison, was a carpet of some strange grey-green substance. Yeoman was reminded for a moment of his father’s stories of gas, creeping over the trenches in the Great War, then he realized that he was looking at a smoke-screen, put up by the harbour defences to conceal the all-important minelayer.

  The Spitfires swept on, climbing all the time, over the pock-marked lunar surface of Takali. Looking down, Yeoman saw long dust-trails as fighters took off; the Spitfires themselves were invisible in the haze.

  Roger Graham’s fighter was two hundred yards ahead and well over to the left. Yeoman turned his head, watching as the other two Spits of the section jockeyed into position half a mile away. This was the classic Malta formation: four fighters, widely spaced, each pilot covering his neighbour.

  Malta was falling away behind them now, a grey blur beneath the curtain of haze. The sea was brassy ahead of them, with the ragged outline of Comino Island and Gozo beyond it.

  ‘Catfish Leader, this is Douggie. Vector-oh-one-oh.’

  The four Spitfires turned gently to the right, on to the new heading the controller had passed to them. Below and behind them, still lost in the haze, Yeoman sensed more fighters climbing hard, and the knowledge that they were not alone was reassuring.

  Automatically, Yeoman checked his instruments as they speared upwards, keeping a constant eye on engine temperatures and pressures. He lowered his seat, which had been raised for take-off to give maximum visibility, so that it was below the level of the armour plating behind him. He found that he was trembling slightly, and willed himself to relax.

  The Spitfires burst out of the haze at eight thousand feet and went on climbing. Yeoman turned his oxygen fully on and looked around. The sky and sea merged into a single cerulean backdrop; it was like flying inside a luminous blue ball and the light was painful to the eyes, even through tinted goggles. Far below, and dropping steadily behind, Malta resembled a splotch of dried cow manure, staining the purity of the sea.

  Fourteen thousand feet, and still no sign of the enemy. Graham began to weave gently from side to side and Yeoman followed him, searching the sky endlessly. Suddenly, ahead of them, four white puffs of smoke appeared like golf balls high over Gozo. They were pointers; the anti-aircraft gunners were showing the fighters the way.

  ‘Catfish Leader, Zebra plus eight. Acknowledge.’

  ‘Roger, Douggie, Zebra plus eight. Got the pointers.’

  From his operations room in Valletta, Group Captain Douglas was telling them that the enemy bombers and fighters were over Gozo at twenty-six thousand feet. The Spitfires hurtled on, climbing hard, throttles wide open, striving to get above the still invisible enemy.

  More flak-bursts blossomed out, below and to the left. Then still more, higher this time, almost level with the Spitfires. Yeoman swore inwardly; the sky seemed empty. The ack-ack must be firing at 109s; the bastards were so small that it was often impossible to pick them out in the glare until they were right on top of you.

  A black shadow fleeted over Yeoman’s cockpit and he looked up, startled, but it was only the other two Spitfires in the section, crossing over himself and Graham, covering them.

  Search, he told himself. Search the sky, and live. Keep your eyes skinned. The turns were made so that the sun was always behind them, and he suddenly knew what Graham was up to; if there were Messerschmitts lurking up there, he was trying to tempt them down, to ‘suck them in’ as the pilots said in their jargon, and keep them occupied while the Takali and Hal Far fighters went for the bombers, wherever they were.

  The roar of the engine became part of his senses. He was enclosed in a strange, unreal silence. Watch it, his brain screamed, don’t drift, keep your mind on the job. Twenty-five thousand feet. Christ, but it was cold. A thin stream of air was entering the cockpit from somewhere, freezing his bare arms.

  Where the hell were they? Searching, searching above, across and behind, forcing his eyeballs to relax. Don’t strain, you see nothing that way. The sun was a great white ball of icy light that seared the eyes but did not warm the flesh.

  Catfish Red Three was calling, his voice garbled and distorted. Yeoman could make out only Gerry Powell’s call-sign. The garbled words took on a higher pitch, then suddenly burst over the radio with stark clarity.

  ‘Snappers, four o’clock high!’

  Yeoman craned his neck, fighting the constriction of his seat harness t
o peer over his right shoulder. He could see nothing. Where, for Jesus’ sake, where were they?

  Then he saw them, a shoal of dark crosses, curving round behind the Spitfires from the right, coming round to seven o’clock and turning in. The Spits were level now, holding a steady course with the sun behind and slightly to the left.

  The Messerschmitts were shadowing them, keeping pace. Graham turned again, as though intent on searching the sky below. Over the R/T Group Captain Douglas’s voice came again, momentarily distracting, warning them of more fighters climbing over Filfla, the small island three miles to the south-west of Malta. The bastards must have come in low under the radar, thought Yeoman. Never mind, they were still some distance away. The immediate concern was for the Messerschmitts above and behind.

  ‘Look out, here they come. Wait for it.’

  Roger Graham’s voice was calm and unruffled. The Spitfires went on turning and the Messerschmitts turned with them, levelling out and arrowing in from astern, using the speed they had built up in their dive to overhaul the British fighters. Yeoman counted ten of them: not too long odds, for Malta.

  Yeoman’s hands were sweaty and slippery on the stick. The leading 109s were growing larger in one corner of his rear-view mirror. God, would Graham never order them to break? The enemy fighters were close, far too close! If the break didn’t come in another second he was going to do it anyway, and to hell with the consequences ...

  ‘Break left!’

  They stood their Spitfires on their wingtips, hauling sticks back into their stomachs. The four fighters came round in a turn that crushed the pilots down in their seats, dragged down the flesh of their cheeks. Yeoman’s mouth sagged open with the brute force of it and he felt suddenly sick. Three 109s flashed overhead, their tracers punching holes in thin air, and Graham reversed his turn, following them. Yeoman clung to the squadron leader’s gyrating Spitfire in desperation and saw Graham open fire, still in the turn, his cannon shells finding their mark in a 109 which suddenly belched white smoke, toppled over and went down vertically. Then Graham reversed his turn yet again, facing the other Messerschmitts, and once more a great fist rammed Yeoman’s body down, punching the air from his struggling lungs.