Battle of Britain by Chris Priestley Page A

nothing to say and so I kept quiet. The German looked away from me and out to sea.
    â€œI flew raids at Dunkirk,” he said suddenly. “We fighters gave protection to the Heinkels bombing the beaches and the waiting ships. On 1 June it was different. We flew in low, guns blasting.”
    It was 1 June when I had shot down the 110. It was odd to think we were all there that day – these fishermen, the German and me.
    â€œAs you came in you could see the men below, the lines of men, run for their lives, running for the cover of the dunes. I saw a man turn, and freeze, like a rabbit. As he turned I saw the light glint on his spectacles. Can you believe that? I was so low I saw that, and I saw the shells bursting in the sand in a line towards him.”
    â€œThe men, they ran for the dunes. But if they stayed in the dunes they could not get off the beach and so they had to come back to their lines and queue for the boats and ships offshore. They came back and so did we. Black smoke rose up everywhere, from burning ships and bombed-out buildings.”
    â€œWe would fly through these columns of smoke, down towards the men, firing our guns into them.” He shook his head. “That was no job for a Luftwaffe pilot. There was no honour in that.”
    I looked at him but he stayed turned away. In the end I turned away too. I felt like he wanted me to say something, to say it was OK. But I couldn’t – no one could. As for honour; was there honour in any of this? And what would I have done in his place? I just didn’t know any more.
    A kittiwake flew alongside me, only a couple of yards away, its face level with mine. It turned and seemed to look straight at me, its head cocked to one side slightly. Its black eyes glinted and then it banked away from me and glided clear of the boat and out of sight.
    I looked back towards the German. At first I thought he was just hanging his head and looking at the deck, but then I realized he was slumped forward. I got up and caught him as he fell and sat him up again. I put my arm around him.
    A pool of deep red blood was sinking into the wooden decking below him and the pale grey blanket was soaked with it. His pale hands were cold. I whispered to him. I asked him his name, but there was no reply. He was dead.
    He was dead and suddenly I wanted to know his name. Suddenly I had the weirdest feeling that I had more in common with this man than with anyone else I knew. His head rested against my shoulder and I put my arm around him to stop him falling.
    And then, in the midst of those staring fishermen, I did something I had never done in the whole course of the war. I began to cry. . .

Epilogue
1941
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    Anyway, my leg was patched up. They pulled a few pieces of shrapnel out and stitched me up, good as new – or almost, anyway – and before I knew it I was back in the cockpit. I ended up with this rather good scar in my calf shaped like the letter “m” or the way little kids draw birds.
    Then one day in April ’41, I was lying on my bunk reading a book Lenny had sent me. One of the orderlies came in and gave me a package that had arrived from my folks. I used a letter from Harriet to keep my place, closed the book and opened it up.
    There was a copy of a pamphlet the Government had brought out. The cover showed vapour trails against a darkening sky and the words The Battle of Britain . Underneath that, across the black silhouette of a building, was written: August–October 1940 .
    The Air Ministry had published it, so it was full of stuff about RAF tactics, with diagrams and the like, and maps covered in arrows. There was a photo of laughing pilots walking across a sunlit aerodrome, hair and scarves blowing in the breeze. I wondered how many of them were still alive.
    The pamphlet made it all seem much less of a shambles than it felt at the time. The dawn scrambles and the rabid dogfights had all been smartened up and dusted