Free Once More the Hawks by Max Hennessy Page A

got the thing going, I reckon we ought to drop you as near home as possible.’
    Navigating by railway lines, as they began to descend, their minds still full of the horror that was France, they saw a game of cricket in progress. It seemed unbelievable.
    ‘Pity we haven’t got a bomb or two to drop on them , sir,’ the fitter observed. ‘Just to make ’em realise there’s a war on.’
    Dicken nodded. ‘I have a suspicion, corporal,’ he said, ‘that they won’t have long to wait.’

 
     
Six
    Everybody who could be spared had been brought south to handle the hundreds of bewildered men arriving from France and among the first people Dicken saw was Hatto. He looked tired and had been on his feet without sleep for three days.
    ‘Madly war, what,’ he said. ‘Dowding’s treating it as a run-up to the battle for Britain and Keith Park’s holding 11 Group in readiness for the first attacks.’ He sighed. ‘At least we no longer have anybody to let us down and we’ve now got Churchill running the show instead of that old Birmingham umbrella manufacturer, Chamberlain.’
    Seen in a clear light, it wasn’t a promising prospect nevertheless. Hitler ruled all Western Europe from Tromsö to the Pyrenees, and the threat of invasion was being countered by tearing down all signposts, railway signs and anything else that would indicate to an invading force where it was, while the ringing of church bells was forbidden except as an alarm. Since there were no weapons, there wasn’t much else they could do.
    Somehow, however, there was a strange confidence that came down from the top. Churchill had no doubts about the outcome and said again and again that Hitler would never defeat England or even land an invasion force and, though RAF reconnaissance planes were already bringing back reports of landing barges gathering in the French Channel ports, everybody believed his powerful rhetoric.
    The disaster in France had started up a new uproar over the old question of dive bombers and a bitter argument was going on over the RAF’s interpretation of the army’s close-support requirements. One group was struggling to convince the Air Ministry that its request for such an aircraft was thoroughly justified by recent events and, though the Air Ministry would concede nothing, was urging the design and production in quantity of large numbers of small attack dive bombers to work with the ground forces. The campaign got nowhere.
    To his surprise, Dicken found himself appointed with increased rank to command a fighter station at Thornside. Having lost all his kit in France, however, he requested a few days’ leave in London to refit himself and, as he headed into the Grosvenor for a drink after a visit to the tailor’s, he bumped into a familiar figure. It was older and thicker round the middle than when he had last seen it but it had fought alongside him for months in France and Italy in the last war, and he had last seen it in the United States while searching for his erring wife, Zoë.
    ‘Walt Foote!’ he said.
    ‘Dicky Boy!’ Foote grabbed him and hugged him. ‘Nearly did a gloat dance,’ he said. ‘Remember how we used to do a ring-a-round-the-roses whenever we shot down a Hun or defeated Percy Diplock.’
    ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘Just back from China. I got to be a judge and the Government sent me out to handle a few things for them. I’ve just been to see your Foreign Office and I’m now on my way home to warn ours.’
    ‘About the Japanese?’
    ‘The war in Europe’s not going to be the only one. The Japs are going to take advantage of the fact that the British Empire’s fully occupied in Europe.’
    ‘Will America let them?’
    Foote grinned. ‘America doesn’t give a damn about them grabbing what belongs to you, but they’ll soon start yelling if they lay their hands on anything in our sphere of influence.’
    ‘And will they?’
    ‘Brother, I’ve been operating China and Japan for years and I