‘I think so, too,’ I said.
Then the Duty Officer was running between the tents and shouting, ‘All pilots to their aircraft! All aircraft to scramble at once! Hurry up there! Get a move on!’ He ra
n past David and me shouting, ‘Get your clothes on, you two! Get out there at the double and get your planes in the air!’
It was common practice for a second wave of ground-strafers to come in and attack soon after the first, and the CO rightly wanted our planes in the air before they arrived. David and I flung on shirts and shorts and shoes and dashed towards our Hurricanes, and as I ran I was wondering whether my own plane was even capable of taking off again so soon after the last battle. Less than one hour had gone by since I had landed. When I reached the Hurricane, there were three airmen fussing around the fuselage, including our Flight-Sergeant rigger.
‘Have you repaired the rudder?’ I shouted at him.
‘We’ve put a new wire in,’ the Flight-Sergeant said. ‘It was cut clean through.’
‘Is she refuelled and rearmed?’
‘All ready for you,’ the Flight-Sergeant said.
I gave the plane a quick once over. It was remarkable what they had managed to do in so little time. Bullet holes had been stopped up and torn metal had been flattened out and cracks had been filled and there were little patches of red canvas over all eight of the gun ports on the leading edges of the wings, showing that the guns had been serviced and rearmed. I climbed into the cockpit and the Flight-Sergeant came up on to the wing to help me strap in. ‘You want to be careful out there now,’ he said. ‘They’re swarming like gnats all over the sky.’
‘You’d better be careful yourself,’ I said. ‘I’d rather be in the air than down here next time they come in.’
He gave me a friendly pat on the back and then slid the hood closed over my head.
It was astonishing that the ground-strafers had not hit a single one of our Hurricanes, and all seven of us got safely up into the air and circled the flying field for about an hour. We were hoping now that they would come back again then we could swoop on them from above and the whole thing would have been a piece of cake. They did not return and down we went once more and landed.
But the twentieth of April was still not over.
I went up twice more during that afternoon, both times to tangle with the clouds of Ju 88s that were bombing the shipping over Piraeus, and by the time evening came I was a very tired young man.
That night we were told (and by we I mean the seven remaining pilots in the squadron) that at first light the next morning we were to take off and fly to a very secret small landing field about thirty miles along the coast. It was clear that if we stayed another day at Elevsis we would be wiped out, planes and all. We crowded around a table in the mess tent and by the light of a paraffin lamp someone, I think it was the squadron Adjutant, tried to show us where this secret landing field was. ‘It’s right on the edge of the coast,’ he said, ‘beside a little village called Megara. You can’t miss it. It’s the only flat bit of land around.’
‘Are we going to operate from there?’ someone asked.
‘God knows,’ the Adjutant said.
‘But what do we do after we’ve landed?’ we asked him. ‘Will there be anybody there except us?’
‘Just get the hell out of here at dawn tomorrow and go there,’ the wretched man said.
‘But what’s the point of it all?’ someone said. ‘Right at this moment we have seven quite decent Hurricanes and if we hang around with them here in this crazy country they are certain to be destroyed on the ground or shot down in the air in the next couple of days. So why don’t we fly them all to Crete tomorrow morning and save them for better things? We’d be there in an hour and a half. And from Crete we could fly them to Egypt. I’ll bet they could use seven extra Hurricanes in the Western Desert.’
‘Just do as you’re told,’ the Adjutant said. ‘Our job is to keep these seven planes going so that we can give air cover to the army which is about to be evacuated off the coast by the navy.’
‘With seven machines!’ a young pilot said. ‘And flying out of a little field along the coast with no fitters and no riggers and no refuelling wagons! It’s ridiculous!’
The Adjutant looked at the young pilot and said simply, ‘It’s not my idea. I’m only passing on orders.’
David Coke said, ‘Will anyone be at this place Megara when we arrive at dawn tomorrow?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the Adjutant said.
‘So what are we supposed to do? Just sit around on the grass?’
‘Look,’ the poor Adjutant said, ‘if I knew any more, I’d tell you.’ He was about forty, a volunteer, too old for flying, and he had been a seller of agricultural implements before the war. He was a good man, but he was as much in the dark as we were. ‘They’re going to come over here and shoot this place to pieces tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘All of us, ground-crews included, are pulling out tonight. By the time you get up tomorrow morning the place will be empty. So make sure you all get away the moment there’s enough daylight for a take-off. Don’t hang about.’
‘Where are you all going to?’ somebody asked him. ‘Are you joining us at our secret little landing ground?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re not. We’re going farther along the coast. I don’t even know myself where it is.’
‘Is it another secret landing field?’