Spitfire Girl (28 page)

It seemed that my head had barely touched the pillow when the bearer arrived with another cup of tea: ‘Five o’clock, Memsahib. Time to get up.’ I sipped the tea drowsily, aimlessly swotting at the mosquitoes that buzzed petulantly, determined to get their quota of blood before daybreak. Leo knocked heartily on the flimsy partitioning that separated our bedrooms.

‘All right,’ I cried peevishly. ‘I’m up.’ I hated him. I hated everybody at this grisly hour. We ate a melancholy breakfast in the silent empty mess and climbed clumsily into the truck.

The Spitfires were ready, immaculately washed and polished, for the last leg of our journey, Calcutta to Rangoon across the Bay of Bengal. By the time we had completed the Customs and Immigration formalities the sun had caught us up and reduced me to a limp rag. I put on my parachute, climbed into the narrow cockpit, wriggled into the seat, fastened the safety straps, stuffed my unkempt hair into my helmet, fitted the oxygen and radio mask tightly over my mouth, plugged in the radio socket and sat steaming, staring balefully at Leo who, as was his wont, shook hands and said a prolonged good-bye to everyone in sight.

We took off individually from the long narrow runway and formed up over the aerodrome before climbing towards the Bay. The heat was intolerable and shimmered from the engine cowling. I eased open the cockpit hood, poked a few fingers into the slipstream and diverted a little of it on to my face. ‘Phew,’ I croaked over the R/T.

‘What?’ said Leo.

‘Phew,’ I repeated.

‘I don’t understand. Say again.’

‘Phew. Peter-How-Easy-William,’ I replied, determined to make the point though realizing the length of this conversation had now become out of all proportion to the original observation.

‘Phew what?’ shouted Leo querulously.

‘It’s hot.’

‘Christ. Is that all!’ he replied irritably. I subsided into injured silence, mulling over the probability that if either Sonny or Gordon had offered a similar observation Leo would have replied chattily: ‘Yes, isn’t it.’

We cruised steadily at 11,500 feet between two broken layers of cloud that sandwiched us neatly and concealed the forbidding green waters of the bay. I eyed the clouds suspiciously. Even the most innocuous clouds give a message that pilots are foolhardy to disregard.

‘The Met report was rather optimistic,’ observed Sonny suddenly.

‘Yes,’ answered Leo, ‘but I think we should press on. We can alternate to Akyab if necessary.’

With the approach of the Arakan coast and the rich jungled mountains of Burma, the occasional showers forecast by the meteorological officer united into a purple-hued swathe directly in our path. This time last year, I thought wistfully, I was sitting in Maynard’s drinking a genteel cup of coffee.

‘We can’t go above it,’ crackled Leo’s voice over the R/T. ‘We’ll go underneath and follow the coastline south until it clears.’

‘Roger,’ I replied and waited for Sonny’s affirmative.

‘Sonny. Did you hear?’ called Leo. No reply. Only a crackle echoed in our headphones.

‘That’s great,’ said Leo succinctly. ‘Sonny’s radio has packed up.’

Throttling back, we dived through the broken layer of cloud beneath us towards the sea now tossing white-capped waves that seemed to reach up in a wave of welcome that belied the eternity lurking beneath. Our horizon had shrunk to an embracing grey blanket that cocooned us with menace. Like a swarm of angry wasps the monsoon storm stung us with driving horizontal rain as we skimmed over the waves, isolated and lonely like submarines trapped in enemy waters. Even the stupidly confident roar of the engine was lost in the uproar of spray and gusts that thrashed like a whiplash and brought groans of protest from the Spitfires. ‘Occasional showers’ I recalled sourly as the rain seeped through the cockpit hood and dripped steadily on to my lap. I peered towards Leo; he was staring intently ahead, leaning forward, his face almost pressed against the windscreen. Sonny, a faint camouflaged shadow, oscillated violently and showed a brief flash of colour, like a woman’s slip, as his sky-blue underbelly turned nakedly towards us. Anxiously I watched the narrow gap between the low broken scud and the sea. I looked at my hands clenched tightly on the control column, the nails white with pressure. ‘Relax Moggridge. Relax.’ I watched the blood returning as I loosened my grip.

My success was temporary for within a moment I was tense and rigid again. Suddenly to our left a faint shadow loomed and vanished like Hamlet’s ghost. ‘Leo,’ I shouted over the R/T. ‘The coast,’ and turned towards him to head him off. He veered to the right; on the other side Sonny sheered off like a startled fawn as Leo turned towards him.

‘Leo,’ I repeated, ‘the coast’s on our left.’

No reply. I waggled my wings hurriedly and pointed to my helmet. Leo shook his head. My transmitter was not working. The shadow appeared again in the driving rain and Leo caught it, nodding his head violently. It was Ramree Island.

‘We’ll alternate to Akyab,’ shouted Leo turning slowly towards the north. Suddenly a voice crackled deafeningly in my ears. I turned the volume down:

‘Akyab Control... Jet Uncle Baker-XYZ... Transmitting for a Q.D.M. I’m coming in...’

‘Jet UB-XYZ... Akyab Control... Impossible land here. Heavy storms... Visibility and ceiling zero.’

‘Roger,’ answered the Jet easily, probably 30,000 feet above us in clear blue sky. ‘I’ll alternate to Bassein.’

The sands were fast running out on the last lap of our flight. I scanned the maps again, searching for an alternative aerodrome. We had to get down, quickly. On the tip of Ramree Island a tiny blue circle promised a haven. I ignored the ominous word
abandoned
printed tersely underneath, gesticulated to Leo and turned south again. Throttling back I lowered my undercarriage and flashed a glimpse at the others. Leo was nodding indefatigably in agreement as his undercarriage unfolded like the legs of a bird. Sonny was sticking like glue at the end of a lash that swung violently as we twisted and turned through the steaming valleys and flashed across new-born rivers. Floods had made the terrain unrecognizable. The rich green on my maps had become muddy swirling lakes on the ground. I felt a tension almost sexual in my legs as the first pangs of panic gripped me. Miraculously like an oasis of sanity in a lunatic bedlam, a black sliver of runway cutting its way through the tight jungle appeared fleetingly to the left. I cut the throttle and fish-tailed violently towards the runway as Sonny and Leo banked vertically around the perimeter of the aerodrome, their wing-tips flirting with the tree-tops. In less than a minute we had landed, our wheels shooting up a cloud of spray, like the bow-wave of a destroyer at full speed, as they touched down on this sanctuary. I looked again at my nails; they were healthily pink.

We sat in our cockpits, waving foolishly to each other as the full frustrated fury of the monsoon bombarded us in ineffectual malignant anger. We had got down just in time. Like a child safely at a distance I jeered at the theatrical melodrama of rain and wind that bent the trees into hunch-backed caricatures and blotted out all but the gaggle of Spitfires and the threshold of the surrounding jungle.

Silence and peace descended as violently as they had departed and only the drip of water, the glistening runway and the low clouds racing over the tree-tops remained of the tempest that had been defeated by a perilously close margin.

Feeling exhausted and battered I climbed out of the aeroplane and with firm solid ground beneath my feet felt for the first time in my life the urge to smoke a cigarette.

The aerodrome was deserted and abandoned. Built by the Japanese as a base for their bombers and fighters to harass Allied shipping in the Bay of Bengal it was now a memory slipping back into the jungle from which it had been rudely hacked. I looked apprehensively into the whispering trees and mangrove swamps that bordered the runway. The silence was uncanny. Uneasily I walked over to Sonny, robust and solid, standing by his aircraft. I was quite prepared to forego the privileges of emancipation. Suddenly a horrifying thought brought a shout to my lips:

‘Leo. We may be in rebel territory!’

‘Where are we?’ he answered quickly.

‘Kyaukpyu, Ramree Island...’ I answered.

‘Jesus... I don’t know... It may be. Get back. Quickly... . Let’s get out of here!’

We ran for our aircraft but it was too late. A score of figures had appeared silently and, rifles held negligently in their hands, were watching us from the edge of the jungle. As we watched tensely, more figures appeared until we were completely surrounded. In the oppressive silence I heard a jeep approaching; it was still hidden by the dense undergrowth.

‘Leo...’

‘Shut up. Let me do the talking,’ ordered Leo sharply.

The jeep swung into sight, covered in mud and careering recklessly through the deep puddles. Driving it was a tiny elderly woman, dressed spotlessly in white. ‘Good morning,’ she smiled.

‘Is this Government territory?’ rapped out Leo.

‘It is now,’ she answered. ‘It wasn’t a few weeks ago,’ she added dryly. Sitting next to her was another woman, young and pretty. Leo grinned sheepishly. They were the missionary and nurse in sole charge of a tiny church and hospital in the nearby village of Kyaukpyu.

‘These are Burmese Air Force aircraft ma’am. Is there a military unit here?’ asked Leo politely, his eyes straying to the nurse.

‘Yes. But they are out on patrol. Won’t be back until this evening.’

‘Is there anywhere here we can stay the night? I’d like to get our radio repaired before we push on to Rangoon.’

‘I will be happy to accommodate you in my house,’ offered the missionary. ‘And who is this young lady?’ she added, nodding to me.

‘She’s a pilot,’ answered Leo in the sepulchral tone he invariably adopted when introducing me and which made me feel like adding, ‘It’s nothing really.’ She smiled at me, looked at my filthy overalls and said: ‘You look as though you could do with a bath.’

It was a short drive to the magical little village, standing on stilts, that nestled picturesquely in a setting of rich golden pagodas. The entire population had turned out to receive us. The women gay in vivid coloured longyis and tight-fitting white bodices, the men in check longyis, shirts and incongruous brown trilbys that gave them an extraordinarily spiv-like appearance. They were all laughing and waving pungent-smelling cheroots as the children, goggle-eyed, clustered around the visitors from the skies.

We spent the evening in mellow mood, lazing on the veranda with our hosts, the only Europeans on the island. In this remote corner they had found a vocation that brought a remarkable serenity to their eyes and a slow grace to their movements as though time had stopped for them. I felt myself slipping contentedly into the mystical soothing clutches of their world as I listened to tales of myth and war, legend and peace from Burma’s history.

Here was the desert island to which the mind’s eye turns when nerves scream with the tempo of modern life and the heart asks with every beat: ‘Why, why, why?’ Like the drowning man’s, my life flitted through my thoughts in a series of news-reel flashes the peak of which seemed to be worrying about oil pressure at 15,000 feet or a new dress for the annual regimental ball at Bath. I seemed to have spent my life chasing my own tail.

Reluctantly, as the murmur of noise hushed in the village and the twinkling lights were slowly extinguished, I said good-night. In bed, under the silken folds of the mosquito net, God – Buddhist or Catholic – seemed very close.

Early the following morning we awoke to the chatter of monkeys and the melodious tinkling of bells from the village temples. I glanced, mechanically writing a meteorological report, at the sky. It was a beautiful morning. The trees were motionless, smoke rose vertically from the village and wisps of cirrus cloud signed a truce in the sky. Later, Leo, Sonny and I headed a large convoy bound for the aerodrome, where Buddhist monks, striking in saffron-yellow robes, who had left their meditations to bless our departure, listened gravely as their mortal theological enemy, the missionary, translated Leo’s warning on the danger of getting too close to the Spitfires’ propellers.

As we tinkered with the radios, repairing quickly the loose connection in mine, but baffled by Sonny’s, an Argonaut airliner cruised overhead on its way to Calcutta.

‘Perhaps we can get the weather at Rangoon,’ I suggested to Leo.

‘Go ahead,’ agreed Leo. ‘Keep your helmet off,’ he added with a grin, indicating the children gathered around the aircraft.

I winked understanding, turned on my radio to maximum volume and spoke into the microphone: ‘Hello aircraft passing over Ramree Island. This is Uncle Baker 437 calling from Kyaukpyu Aerodrome. Do you read?’

Immediately they answered: ‘Uncle Baker 437. This is Fox Peter How reading you loud and clear. Go ahead.’

The children’s eyes popped out of their heads as the voice from the skies echoed from the head-set. A few ran screaming down the runway. There was a buzz of awe and astonishment as I replied:

‘Morning Peter How. Can you give me Rangoon’s weather?’

‘Delighted,’ answered the unmistakably English voice. ‘Are you the Spitfires?’

‘Yes.’

‘Weather’s fine. Broken cloud at 4,000. Visibility unlimited.’

‘Thank you Peter How. Good morning.’

‘Not at all. They are waiting for you in Rangoon. Good luck.’

I switched off amidst a circle of dumbfounded faces that turned from me to the vanishing speck in the sky and back again. The monks, interpreters of life to the villagers, wore superbly non-committal expressions as their wards appealed for explanation.

We took off violently from the short strip and circled the village in salute before climbing to altitude. Rapidly, as we headed for Rangoon, the village became a speck that lingered on the landscape and then vanished, becoming a memory. Yesterday, visibility had been a few yards. Today, 50 miles of rugged splendour unfolded like a map beneath us. Stark mountains, cousins of Everest, thrust without preamble into the air. Rivers darkly stained with soil, curved like arteries through the impacted jungle. To the west, the limpid waters of the Bay glistened like glass. It was a magnificent canvas, but not a happy one when flying a single-engined aeroplane. I blew my lips in relief when the flat plains of the Irrawaddy delta lent a more hospitable vista.