I took off the next day from the bleak and sandy airfield of Abu Suweir, and after a couple of hours I was over Crete and beginning to get severe cramp in both legs. My main fuel tank was nearly empty so I pressed the little button that worked the pump to the extra tanks. The pump worked. The main tank filled up again exactly as it was meant to and on I went.
After four hours and forty minutes in the air, I landed at last on Elevsis aerodrome, near Athens, but by then I was so knotted up with terrible excruciating cramp in the legs I had to be lifted out of the cockpit by two strong men. But I had come home to my squadron at last.
First Encounter with a Bandit
So this was Greece. And what a different place from the hot and sandy Egypt I had left behind me some five hours before. Over here it was springtime and the sky a milky-blue and the air just pleasantly warm. A gentle breeze was blowing in from the sea beyond Piraeus and when I turned my head and looked inland I saw only a couple of miles away a range of massive craggy mountains as bare as bones. The aerodrome I had landed on was no more than a grassy field and wild flowers were blossoming blue and yellow and red in their millions all around me.
The two airmen who had helped to lift my cramped body out of the cockpit of the Hurricane had been most sympathetic. I leant against the wing of the plane and waited for the cramp to go out of my legs.
‘A bit scrunched up in there, were you?’ one of the airmen said.
‘A bit,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘You oughtn’t to be flyin’ fighters a chap of your height,’ he said. ‘What you want is a ruddy great bomber where you can stretch your legs out.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’
This airman was a Corporal. He had taken my parachute out of the cockpit and now he brought it over and placed it on the ground beside me. He stayed with me and it was clear that he wanted to do some more talking. ‘I don’t see the point of it,’ he went on. ‘You bring a brand-new kite, an absolutely spanking brand-new kite straight from the factory and you bring it all the way from ruddy Egypt to this godforsaken place and what’s goin’ to ’appen to it?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s come even further than from Egypt!’ he cried. ‘It’s come all the way from England, that’s where it’s come from! It’s come all the way from England to Egypt and then all the way across the Med to this soddin’ country and all for what? What’s goin’ to ’appen to it?’
‘What is going to happen to it?’ I asked him. I was a bit taken aback by this sudden outburst.
‘I’ll tell you what’s goin’ to ’appen to it,’ the Corporal said, working himself up. ‘Crash bang wallop! Shot down in flames! Explodin’ in the air! Ground-strafed by the One-O-Nines right ’ere where we’re standin’ this very moment! Why, this kite won’t last one week in this place! None of ’em do!’
‘Don’t say that,’ I told him.
‘I ’as to say it,’ he said, ‘because it’s the truth.’
‘But why such prophecies of doom?’ I asked him. ‘Who is going to do this to us?’
‘The Krauts, of course!’ he cried. ‘Krauts is pourin’ in ’ere like ruddy ants! They’ve got one thousand planes just the other side of those mountains there and what’ve we got?’
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘What have we got?’ I was interested to find out.
‘It’s pitiful what we’ve got,’ the Corporal said.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘What we’ve got is exactly what you can see on this ruddy field!’ he said. ‘Fourteen ’urricanes! No it isn’t. It’s gone up to fifteen now you’ve brought this one out!’
I refused to believe him. Surely it wasn’t possible that fifteen Hurricanes were all we had left in the whole of Greece.
‘Are you absolutely sure of this?’ I asked him, aghast.
‘Am I lyin’?’ he said, turning to the second airman. ‘Please tell this officer whether I am lyin’ or whether it’s the truth.’
‘It’s the gospel truth,’ the second airman said.
‘What about bombers?’ I said.
‘There’s about four clapped-out Blenheims over there at Menidi,’ the Corporal said, ‘and that’s the lot. Four Blenheims and fifteen ’urricanes is the entire ruddy RAF in the ’ole of Greece.’
‘Good Lord,’ I said.
‘Give it another week,’ he went on, ‘and every one of us’ll be pushed into the sea and swimmin’ for ’ome!’