Darkest Hour

'This is Nimbus Leader calling Bulldog Leader,' he said, over his R/T for the third time that minute. 'We're over RV at angels fourteen, over.' But still there was nothing. 'All right, boys,' he said to the others. 'This is Nimbus Leader. Make sure you keep your eyes peeled. Let's go round again. Over.'

He pushed the stick over to port, the horizon swivelling, then pulled back, his stomach lurching as the Hurricane banked and began its turn. Looking round, he was pleased to note both Walker and Nicholls tucked in close behind him. Then he glanced downwards again, hoping to see a sign of the bombers - the familiar outline of the Blenheims, or the sun glinting on a canopy. He cursed. Where the hell were they?

Lyell straightened and began to fly westwards again, the glare making him squint even through his tinted goggles. Looking back over his port wing, he glanced at the vic of Flying Officer Newton's Blue Section, some forty yards behind, and spotted the last man in the formation, Sergeant Baird, peel off and dive out of the formation, smoke trailing. Stunned, he hardly heard Newton's screech over the R/T as he shouted after his friend.

A deafening crack, and despite the tightness of his Sutton harness, Lyell was pushed up out of his seat and smacked his head against the canopy. The choking smell of cordite filled the cockpit, as more cannon shells exploded. Jesus! He'd been hit, but where? Thrusting the stick to one side, he yanked it back into his stomach as a Messerschmitt 109 hurtled past.

'Jesus Christ!' shouted Lyell. His mind froze. Christ, Christ, think! Panic coursed through him, and then his brain cleared. Turning the stick to starboard, he half rolled the aircraft and tried to dive out of the fray, but then a second burst raked his machine. A large chunk of his port wing was punched out and the control column was nearly knocked from his hand. Lyell gasped. Clutching the stick firmly again, he heard the engine splutter, felt the Hurricane lurch, then begin to dive. The engine screamed, the airframe shook and more smoke poured into the cockpit. The altimeter spun anticlockwise. Six thousand feet gone just like that! Grimacing into the rubber of his oxygen mask, Lyell gripped the stick with both hands, pressed hard on the rudder and dragged the stick back into his stomach until - thank God - the Hurricane levelled out.

He pulled back the canopy. As he did so, the smoke rushed out, sucked into the clear air. Frantically, he looked around him. Ahead, away to the west, he could see contrails and tiny dots as aircraft wove and tumbled around the sky - but it seemed no Messerschmitt had chased him down. With cold sweat trickling down his neck, he glanced at the dials in front of him. Oil pressure falling, manifold pressure dropping: confirmation of what he already knew - his aircraft was dying. A deep, grinding sound came from the engine in front of him. It was losing power fast. 'Jesus Christ, oh, Jesus bloody Christ,' he said, despair sweeping over him. He was not sure what to do - try to glide towards home until the engine completely died, or bale out now? But he didn't want to bale out. The idea of leaping from his stricken aircraft terrified him. What to do?

Lyell glanced in his mirror and jolted. A 109, like a giant hornet, flashed through his line of vision and, a second later, more bullets ripped through his fuselage, through the floor, between his legs, into the control panel and the underside of the engine cowling. With a loud crack, the engine gusted a new burst of black smoke and seized, the propeller whirring to a limp turn.

'Oh, my God!' he cried. For a moment his mind was blank. He couldn't think what he was supposed to do. Ahead, the Messerschmitt was banking, circling again. His heart was thudding, his whole body trembling. He looked below to the never-ending patchwork of fields, woods and snaking silver rivers, and thought how far away they looked. I don't want to jump out, he thought, to plunge head first into an unknown sky.

The aircraft was dropping. I haven't long, he thought, and glanced at his altimeter. Six thousand feet. He had to do it - he had to do it now. Trembling fingers. Radio leads, oxygen plugs, the clip on his Sutton harness. He closed his eyes, pushed the stick over and felt himself lift out of the seat, but as he began to slide out of the aircraft something caught and his head smashed against the gun- sight. Now the Hurricane was diving, falling almost vertically. Frantically, Lyell felt behind him, heard something tear and then he was tumbling free, the ground hurtling towards him. The ripcord, the ripcord. He grabbed it with his gloved hand and yanked. Please, he prayed. The wind was knocked out of him and his arms almost pulled from their sockets as the parachute opened. Thank God, he thought. Thank bloody God. He could see his Hurricane plunging towards the ground, impossibly small already. Any moment now, he thought, and there it was - a burst of bright orange light and the dull crump of an explosion. His face was wet - why? - and the ground was rushing towards him now. There was a river, and he wondered whether he would fall into the water. But, no, he was drifting on the far side of it, to fields that rose towards a wood. Lyell braced himself for the impact.

The men of D Company, the King's Own Yorkshire Rangers, had watched the dogfight in the skies above them. Sergeant Tanner, sitting beside Corporal Sykes's freshly dug two-man slit trench, had looked up as soon as he had picked up the faint hum of aero-engines. Then, when he had heard the distant chatter of machine-guns and cannons, he had delved into his respirator bag and pulled out his binoculars, a pair of Zeiss brass Dienstglas 6x30, which he had taken from a German officer in Norway; it was about his only souvenir of that campaign. Admittedly they were a bit scratched, but he didn't mind too much about that; at least he no longer had to use his Aldis scope for this purpose.

Although the platoon had dug in behind a line of thick bushes between the canal, a narrow brook and the railway, the view above was clear enough. Tanner had been watching the sky carefully for most of the day. 'That morning he had seen a number of enemy aircraft, mostly lone twin-engine machines he had recognized as aerial reconnaissance. They were, he knew, the harbingers of a forthcoming attack; it would not be long before German ground forces appeared over the crest of the hill facing them. And the enemy would want the skies cleared - no wonder they were trying to drive off the Allied planes now flying overhead.

'Come on, get out . . . get out,' he muttered, as he followed a Hurricane spiralling from the sky. Nearby some spent cartridge cases tinkled as they fell into the trees behind them.

'I reckon he's a croaker, Sarge,' said Sykes.

'Well, he's certainly not going to get out now,' said Tanner. They lost sight of the Hurricane but a few moments later they heard the crash - a sharp crack followed by a dull boom. 'I tell you, I'm bloody glad I'm not flying around in those,' he added.

He had then shifted his gaze back to the swirl of aircraft, and spotted another Hurricane diving out of the fray with a Messerschmitt swooping down on it from behind. 'Watch out, you dozy sod,' Tanner said. Then he heard the Hurricane's engine splutter and die and saw the aircraft begin to fall. 'Not another one - Jesus.' He trained his binoculars and fixed a bead as the Hurricane curved out of the sky. When the stricken aircraft was at no more than three or four thousand feet, he started. 'I remember those squadron markings.'

'What are they?' Sykes asked.

'LO. LO-Z.' He handed his binoculars to Sykes. 'Here, have a dekko.'

Lieutenant Peploe joined them, shielding his eyes as he gazed up at the Hurricane. 'That's 632 Squadron.'