Free Once More the Hawks by Max Hennessy

south to Poitiers where they knew of an airfield where there might be aircraft going to England. Aircraft were moving all right but they were all packed to suffocation and, beginning to grow angry, Dicken found an abandoned Bristol Bombay. It was an old-fashioned high-winged twin-engined bomber which had been relegated to the status of a transport. It had a broken tail wheel and rudder but, with the aid of a corporal fitter, they got to work on it.
    ‘Will it hold up?’ Dicken asked.
    ‘I reckon so, sir. Just.’
    Cotton and his team arrived soon afterwards with his Lockheed and an abandoned Fairey Battle they had found.
    He greeted Dicken warmly. ‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘It’s all finished here. Just as I’m finished in England. I’ve heard the Air Ministry’s going to sack me. Feller called St Aubyn. How are you off for transport home?’
    ‘We’ve got an old Bombay and you look pretty full already.’
    Cotton grinned. ‘Even an English secretary and her dog.’
    The service policemen had managed to find a place on another aeroplane by now but there were plenty of ground crew who crowded aboard the Bombay and in the end Dicken found he had a group of twenty-one. Five more turned up just as the corporal fitter started the engines.
    There were no maps and Dicken had never flown a Bombay but he put it to his passengers and found they were all willing to take a chance. Taxiing to the end of the field, he swung into wind with the tail wheel rattling and clunking as they rolled over the ruts. The fitter was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes glued to the dials.
    ‘Shout out if you see anything happening that shouldn’t happen,’ Dicken said, then swinging into wind he pushed the throttles wide open.
    The clunking of the tail wheel grew louder and it began to sound desperately fragile. There was a bang and immediately Dicken thrust the stick forward and they thundered ahead with the tail in the air. Reaching flying speed, he eased back on the controls and felt the rumbling of the wheels cease. As they lifted, they could see the bomb-pitted aerodrome and the crowds of refugees stretching across the countryside, cramming every road. Spirals of smoke seemed to rise from every village and town.
    Climbing to a thousand feet, he tried a cautious turn.
    ‘If anything happens I’ll put her down near a ship or something,’ he said.
    They followed the river to St Nazaire. Below them they could see a huge ship lying on her side. All round her there were boats and clusters of black bobbing heads.
    After a while, he tried another turn and saw Brittany passing beneath him. The Channel was full of ships, all engaged, he imagined, in rescuing what was left of the BEF. Turning slightly east, he saw the Channel Islands. The engines were making strange noises and one of them was sending out a great deal of blue smoke, so that he expected it to burst into flames at any minute, and it was with some relief that he saw the Isle of Wight passing below. Immediately the naval guns at Portsmouth began to fire at them.
    ‘Get on the Aldis,’ he said to the wireless operator. ‘Give them “We are friendly.”’
    The guns stopped but the wireless operator came back grinning. ‘They replied, “Bugger off,” sir.’
    Recalling the losses at Dunkirk and the immortal words of one of the Lords of the Admiralty before the war, engraved on the hearts of all airmen, ‘Their Lordships do not consider that any warship competently handled is in danger from aerial attack,’ Dicken frowned. ‘Give them,’ he suggested. ‘“We’ll meet you here tomorrow with bombs and then we’ll see who buggers off.”’
    The airman with the Aldis lamp gave him a startled look and he smiled. ‘Perhaps, after all,’ he said, ‘you’d better not. Co-operation between the services is bad enough already.’
    As he swung north-east, he turned to the corporal fitter, ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.
    ‘London, sir.’
    ‘Well, since you