Escapes! (12 page)

Bader banked sharply to the right. The next instant he felt a jolt behind the cockpit. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the tail of a 109 pass behind him.

Then he had the strangest feeling — as if something had grabbed the tail of his plane and pulled it out of his control. The nose of his Spitfire plunged downward. Bader quickly pulled back on the control column to right it. Nothing happened. The stick moved loosely backward in his hand. He looked behind him, and the sight sent his mind reeling.

There was nothing behind the cockpit. The body, the tail of his Spitfire — all gone. The 109 must have hit me, he thought. Sliced me in half with its propeller. But it all seemed so unreal.

Out of habit he glanced at the controls. The altimeter's needle was spinning fast — he had already fallen 4,000 feet. The broken airspeed indicator was still stuck at zero. Never mind that now. Bader was well aware he was hurtling toward the earth in a terrifying spiral.

He forced back a surge of panic. Then, as he plunged earthward, he was amazed at how clear, how detached his mind was. In the seconds that followed, one thought filled his head. He had to get out. Now.

He tore off his oxygen mask. Reaching above his head he pulled the rubber ball suspended there. The transparent hood over the cockpit tore off and flew away.

Bader was in the open now, and the noise was deafening. The wind roared around him as he spiraled downward in the open cockpit, strapped tightly in his harness.

I'm moving too fast... I'm in the wrong position. What if I can't push myself out with only my arms? Bader struggled to focus his mind as the wind howled and buffeted him.

Held fast by his harness, Bader found he could still move his hands. He fumbled with the harness pin and unfastened it.

Right away he felt as if he were being sucked out by a giant vacuum. The wind tore his helmet and goggles off his head. His body began to rise out of the cockpit. Almost out!

And then he stopped.

Something was holding him, he thought wildly, holding onto his right leg. He struggled uselessly. His right foot was caught — hooked under something. What?

The battered Spitfire continued its plunge, pulling Bader with it. As he writhed to free himself, a great pounding noise filled his head. In his right hand he gripped the parachute release ring, and vaguely he remembered that he must hang on.

Time seemed to slow down. The noise and speed made any more thinking impossible as Bader twisted and pulled on his trapped leg.

Then, with a snap, the leather and steel belt that held his metal leg to his body burst under the strain. Bader had the strange feeling of falling upwards. He was free. The hammering noise stopped, and Bader closed his eyes. Then with a jolt his mind focused again.

The parachute release!

Bader pulled the ring. The parachute spread open above him, and now he was floating in the sunlight. Below he could see white clouds. I must be at about 4,000 feet, he thought. Just in time. A Messerschmitt 109 buzzed past, but left him alone.

Bader looked down at his flapping pant leg and saw that his right leg was gone. And suddenly it occurred to him: If my leg had been real I'd have gone down with the plane. For the first time he felt lucky to have detachable legs.

Once he was through the clouds he could see the farms of northern France below. Drifting gently, he watched a man in a cap carrying a yoke on his shoulders, and a woman with a scarf over her head. They were opening a gate between two fields when they looked up and spotted him. They froze and stared.

I must look pretty odd, Bader thought. Floating down with no leg.

A quiet feeling of peace, of freedom crept over him. He knew the calm was an illusion. Later would come the shock of landing, when the ground rushed up at him and he crashed down inside enemy territory.

But for now, after the chaos of the hour he'd survived, he gave himself over to this strange feeling of silently floating toward earth.

Douglas Bader was found by German soldiers who took him to a hospital to recover before continuing on to a prisoner of war camp. He soon learned that the Germans had heard of him, and were amazed that the RAF would let a legless man fly. They were so impressed by his determination that they even let him sit in the cockpit of a Messerschmitt 109! For a few seconds Bader toyed with the idea of taking off, but a German officer kept his pistol aimed squarely at him the whole time. Bader did convince his captors to retrieve his leg from the crash site and mend it, as well as radio England with a request for a new one. He secretly hoped that call would let everyone at home know he was still alive.

At the hospital, a sympathetic nurse smuggled a note to him from the French Resistance — the underground network of men and women working in secret against the Germans who occupied their country. The Resistance would hide Bader if he could find a way out. He escaped out of the hospital window with a rope made from knotted bed sheets, and followed his French contact through the dark to a farmhouse.

A German search party soon banged on the door. Bader slipped out to the barn and hid under the hay, lying still as the soldiers searched the barn. Then, to his horror, he glimpsed the steel of a bayonet piercing through the hay, moving closer with each stroke. When it struck his sleeve, Bader knew there was only one thing he could do. He jumped to his feet before the next stroke could hit home, his arms in the air.

Bader's new leg did arrive — dropped by parachute from an English bomber. But his German captors were so worried he would try another escape on the way to the camp that they took both his legs away for the trip! Bader spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in Germany. But he never stopped trying to escape.

When Douglas Bader returned home after the war, he was asked to lead 300 RAF planes in a special victory fly-past over London, to commemorate the country's triumph in the Battle of Britain. Londoners filled the streets to watch the sky darken once again — not with enemy bombers this time, but with their own beloved Spitfires and Hurricanes.

Under Siege

Oxford, England, 1142

T
HE DISTANT POUNDING STOPPED.
The hail of stones on the castle's curtain wall had slowed and then ended suddenly. The king's great catapults and army of slingers had withdrawn — for the moment at least. Deep within the castle walls, knights and foot soldiers paused at the sudden silence. A sense of relief swept through the garrison. They knew it would not last long, and archers scrambled to prepare for the next assault.

Above them high in the keep, their lady, the Empress Matilda, pulled her robes closer around her and paced the floor to keep warm. The December wind seemed to pierce the stone walls, despite the heavy tapestries that blanketed them, and the fire in the great hearth could not be built up any further. Every piece of wood was precious now.

For nearly three months she and her followers had lived as prisoners within her own castle, surrounded by King Stephen's army, deafened by the battering of his siege engines. Looking around the crowded garrison quarters, she had seen the hunger in her men's gaunt faces, the growing panic in their eyes. And now the castle's great well was nearly dry. Where were her allies? They must come soon to break the blockade. If they didn't...

Matilda pushed the thought from her mind with a defiant toss of her head. Peering sideways through a narrow window, she could see Stephen's flags, the glint of his men's armor in the winter sun.

Anger flared inside her. Who was he to call himself King of England? She had the stronger claim — the only claim — to the throne. She was the daughter of the late King Henry. Stephen was only his nephew. Her father had made all the powerful men of the country swear an oath of loyalty to her, and promise to recognize her as their next queen.

King Henry had still hoped for a male heir — a grandson was his last chance. And so Matilda became a pawn in her father's search for a powerful alliance. At twelve she was married to a German emperor in his thirties. After his death she was betrothed to the thirteen-year-old son of the French Count of Anjou. When at last her father recalled her to England, she had lived away longer than she had ever been at home. As she listened to the barons' oaths, she realized her country had become a land of strangers to her.

And where were those loyal barons now? When her father died, Matilda had been away in France, expecting a child. The barons who had never liked the idea of a woman ruling England jumped upon the chance. At their urging, her young cousin Stephen seized the crown.

And now to be trapped like this! She bristled at the thought.

Then she smiled bitterly — they wouldn't have a woman, but look at the state of the country under Stephen! These were lawless, dangerous times. Barons declared their loyalty to the king, but it was mere words. They raided the countryside, seized lands, took what they liked, and then retreated into their castles.

Stephen may have acted boldly when he snatched the crown, Matilda mused, but he was too mild-mannered, too forgiving to keep the barons in line. When Stephen did not punish them, they smelled weakness.

It had been easy to lure many of the barons back to her side when she sailed to England to challenge Stephen. But she knew they would switch sides again when it suited them. They would be watching for any sign that she or Stephen was gaining the upper hand. No one wanted to be caught on the losing side — and their new leader would be certain to reward their loyalty generously.

Matilda's eyes shone with defiance as she watched the royal troops outside. Whatever happened, she told herself, she must never show weakness.

Beyond the castle's curtain wall, across the wide moat, the king's army was a hive of activity. For weeks, the noise of hammering had filled the air as carpenters built a siege tower to soar into the sky. From it Stephen's men would be able to spy on the garrison inside the castle.

Further back other men were repairing a shed on wheels. Under its cover, miners would crawl close to the walls and dig under the stone, hoping to weaken the wall and bring it crashing down. Here and there assaults were being planned, as teams with crossbows or slingshots prepared to storm the castle walls.

And in the midst of it all sat Stephen, on horseback, watching. His gaze now and then returned to one of the castle walls rising out of a huge mound of stone and earth, and the massive ten-sided stone tower that stretched high before him.

A weary sigh escaped his lips. The castles of England, once built to help the king impose his rule across the land, were now being used against him. The kings before him had laid down two rules — no baron could build a castle without the king's permission, and the castle's keys must be surrendered when asked for in the king's name.

Now Stephen's barons sneered at these rules. Ever since Matilda's ship had brought her back to England's shores, she had given the rebel barons a cause around which to rally. She egged on their treachery, urging them to fortify castles to stand against the royal army.