Flight of Eagles. Jack Higgins

of Valour.’

      Harry took a small leather box from his pocket and opened it. The squadron leader, who had a Military Cross from the First War, said, ‘Nice piece of tin.’

      ‘Aren’t they all?’ Harry told him.

      The other man pushed a form across. ‘All right. Fill this in. Country of origin, America. I suppose you must have returned to Finland to defend your ancestral home against the Russians?’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘Ah, well, that makes you a Finn and that’s what we’ll put on your records.’ The squadron leader smiled. ‘Damn clerks. Always making mistakes.’

      Operational Training Unit was a damp and miserable place on the edge of an Essex marsh. The CO was a wing commander called West with a wooden leg from 1918. He examined Pilot Officer Kelso’s documents and looked up, noticing the medal ribbon under the wings.

      ‘And what would that be?’

      Harry told him.

      ‘How many did you get over there?’

      ‘Twenty-eight.’

      ‘It says here you’ve had considerable experience with Hurricanes?’

      ‘Yes, the Finns got hold of a few during the last couple of months of the war.’

      ‘All right, let’s see what you can do.’

      West pressed a bell and the station warrant officer entered. ‘I’m going for a spin with this pilot officer, Mr Quigley. Set up my plane and one of the other Hurricanes. Twenty minutes.’

      The warrant officer, without a flicker of emotion, said, ‘Right away, sir.’

      West got up and reached for his walking stick. ‘Don’t let my leg put you out. I know a man called Douglas Bader who lost both in a crash and still flies.’ He paused, opening the door. ‘I got twenty-two myself in the old flying Corps before the final crash so don’t mess about. Let’s see if you can take me.’

      Those in the curious crowd which assembled to stare up through the rain were never to forget it. At 5000 feet, West chased Harry Kelso. They climbed, banked, so close that some in the crowd gasped in horror but Harry evaded West, looped and settled on his tail.

      ‘Very nice,’ West called over the radio, then banked to port and rolled and Harry, overshooting and finding him once again on his tail, dropped his flaps and slowed with shuddering force.

      ‘Christ Almighty,’ West cried, heaved back on the control column and narrowly missed him.

      Harry, on his tail again, called, ‘Bang, you’re dead.’ Then, as West tried to get away, Harry pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top of the Immelmann turn and roared back over West’s head at fifty feet. ‘And bang, you’re dead again, sir.’

      The ground crews actually applauded as the two of them walked back. Quigley took West’s parachute and gave him his walking stick, then gestured towards Kelso.

      ‘Who in the hell is he, sir?’

      ‘Oh, a lot of men I knew in the Flying Corps all rolled into one,’ West said.

      In his office, West sat down, reached for a form and quickly filled it in. ‘I’m posting you immediately to 607 Squadron in France. They’ve been converted from Gladiators to Hurricanes. They should be able to use you.’

      ‘I flew Gladiators in Finland, sir. Damn cold, those open cockpits in the snow.’

      West took a bottle of brandy from a drawer and two glasses. As he poured, he said, ‘Kelso – an unusual name, and you’re no Finn. I knew a Yank in the Flying Corps called Kelso.’

      ‘My father, sir.’

      ‘Good God. How is he?’

      ‘Dead. Killed in a motor accident years ago.’

      ‘That fits. Didn’t he use to fly with a bear?’

      ‘That’s right, sir. Tarquin.’ Harry picked up the bag that he’d carried out to his plane and back, took Tarquin out and sat him on the desk.

      West’s face softened. ‘Well, hello, old lad. Nice to see you again.’ He raised his glass. ‘To your father and you and brave pilots everywhere.’

      ‘And my twin brother, sir.’

      West frowned. ‘He’s a pilot?’

      ‘Oberleutnant in the Luftwaffe, sir.’

      ‘Is he now? Then all I can say is that you’re in for a very interesting war, Pilot Officer,’ and West drank his brandy.

      607 Squadron was only half-way through its conversion programme when the Blitzkrieg broke on the Western Front on 10 May. In the savage and confused air war that followed, it was badly mauled and took many casualties, the old Gladiator biplanes being particularly vulnerable.

      Harry, flying a Hurricane, put down two ME109s above Abbeville at 15,000 feet and although neither of them was aware of it, his brother shot down a Hurricane and a Spitfire on the same day.

      The squadron was pulled back, what was left of it, to England and Dunkirk followed. Harry, awarded a DFC and promoted to Flying Officer, was posted to a special pursuit squadron code-named Hawk, near Chichester in West Sussex, only there was nothing to pursue. The sun shone, the sky was incredibly blue and everyone was bored to death.

      On the other side of the English Channel, Max and his comrades sat in similar airfields on the same deck-chairs and were just as bored.

      And then, starting in July, came attacks on British convoys in the Channel: dive-bombing by Stukas, heavier stuff from the Dorniers and Junkers, protected by the finest fighter planes the Luftwaffe could supply. The object of the exercise was to close down the English Channel and the RAF went up to meet it.

      So Harry Kelso and his brother, the Black Baron, went to war.

      The air battles over the Channel lasted through July and then came the true Battle of Britain, starting on Eagle Day, 12 August.

      Hawk Squadron was based at a pre-war flying club called Farley Field in West Sussex – grass runways, Nissen huts, only four hangars – and it was hot, very hot as Harry and the other pilots lounged in deck-chairs, smoking, chatting or reading books and magazines. Two weeks of boredom, no action, had introduced a certain apathy and even the ground crews working on the dispersed Hurricanes seemed jaded.

      The squadron leader, a man called Hornby, dropped down beside Harry. ‘Personally, I think the buggers aren’t coming.’

      ‘They’ll come,’ Harry said and offered him a cigarette.

      Some of the pilots wore flying overalls, others ordinary uniform; it was too hot for anything else. On his right shoulder, Harry wore an embroidered insignia that said Finland. Beneath it was a shoulder flash of an American eagle with British and American flags clutched in its claws.

      ‘Very pretty,’ Hornby said.

      ‘Got a tailor in Savile Row to run them up for me.’

      ‘What it is to be rich, my Yankee friend.’ Hornby tapped the jump bag at Harry’s feet. ‘Tarquin in good fettle?’

      ‘Always. He’s seen it all,’ Harry told him.

      ‘Wish you’d lend him to me,’ Hornby said, just as they heard a loud roaring noise nearby. ‘Bloody tractor.’

      ‘That’s no tractor.’ Harry Kelso was on his feet, bag in hand and running for his plane as the Stukas, high in the sky above, banked and dived.

      His flight sergeant tossed in his parachute. Kelso climbed into the cockpit, dropped the bag into the bottom, gunned his engine and, roaring away, lifted off as the first bombs hit the runway. A Hurricane exploded to one side, smoke billowing, and he broke through it, banking to port, carnage below, four Hurricanes on fire.