The Long Night's Walk by Alan White

Author:Alan White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The plane came in to land exactly on time. One minute nowhere, next it was skimming over the hedge top in a once only landing run. The long field was absolutely flat, an ideal landing strip. I couldn’t think why the Germans had not mined it, or ridged it – another of those strange gaps in efficiency I frequently noted throughout the war – the Achilles’ heel of totalitarianism. Take away a man’s initiative and he will be responsible for nothing, creative about nothing – give a man his head and every single act becomes a challenge. The plane must have flown in so low it missed the ack-ack screen and the spotters, since no one opened fire on it. I knew we could not be so lucky getting out. The minute we rose over the skyline they’d throw flaming steel confetti at us from all sides. The plane’s wheels touched the ground at the far end of the field and he started to taxi – he was travelling fast, but the field was long enough to take him at any speed. He had a large tree as a running line, and we waited at his approximate stopping point in the field, ready to manhandle him around for his take off. He landed downwind, would take off into the wind to lift his nose over the hedge.

He had run about two hundred yards ground speed down to about a hundred and ten, I would judge, when his brakes locked on, hard. I heard the rasp of the tortured brake drums, and the plane tipped straight up forwards, and the whirring propellor crashed into the ground. The plane turned completely over. There was a sickening smack as it broke its back and the tail plane fell loose in front of it. I was already about fifty yards towards it, the sergeant running fast behind me. Jonfey and Simon I waved back. There had been enough petrol in that plane to get us home. When we got there, the pilot was dead, his back, like that of the plane, snapped. It was the pilot who had brought us in. We dragged him clear of the wreckage. Simon and Jonfey came over to where we put him on the grass. Simon looked at him, but we didn’t need Simon to tell us he was dead.

‘He’s dead,’ Simon said, ‘let’s get going.’

I shook my head, dully. This man had brought us in, risked his life to be the one to bring us out. Each of these flying missions is a voluntary assignment. How can you just walk away from a man like that?

‘Pavlov’s dogs,’ Simon said, quietly. Only I heard it. Like a puppet I turned on my heel. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I took the lead, heading across the field in a jog-trot. It couldn’t take many minutes for the Germans to find the field and the plane.

‘Oh dear God,’ I remember thinking as I jogged along, ‘Just once, let’s go back, for however short a time, to being human beings.

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