Sunday, 1 September 1940
Hillingdon House
No. 11 Group, RAF Headquarters
Bunny didn’t like Sundays. What he liked even less than Sundays was being summoned from his flat and dragged out to the middle of nowhere. But when Churchill sent a driver to pick you up, you didn’t ask questions. Which was how he found himself in Uxbridge, descending sixty feet into the bowels of the earth, wishing he’d brought his hip-flask.
Churchill and Clemmie were already in situ, front-row seats in the dress circle – a balcony above the Group Operations Room. Below them, in a circular space, twenty highly trained men and women worked silently, pushing markers across a large map of south-east England. At the edge of the room, assistants stood with telephone receivers to their ears, gathering intelligence from secret stations across the region. Bunny had been inside some of those secret stations. People had died in those secret stations.
Bunny took his seat diagonally behind Churchill. The right hand of the father. The Prime Minister gave Bunny a disapproving scowl before turning his attention back to the action below.
‘You’re late,’ Churchill said.
Bunny didn’t reply. He’d learnt not to when the old man was in one of his moods. He settled in to watch the performance. Would there be lunch? Tea, surely, at the very least.
Covering the opposite wall, where the theatre curtain would have been, a gigantic blackboard was divided into six columns, one for each of the fighter groups tasked with defending the country. Within each column were sets of lights for each squadron. The lowest row of lights, when lit, showed the squadron was ‘Standing By’. Above that, the next light indicated ‘Ready’. Above that – ‘Available’. Above that were two more rows – ‘Enemy Sighted’, and finally, red lights that signified ‘Engaged With Enemy’.
To the left of all this, a glassed-in theatre box held five air-force officers, monitoring additional information from the many thousands of volunteer observers out in the field – men and women watching the skies with binoculars and calling in their observations.
‘Expecting much of a show today?’ Bunny murmured to the man sitting next to him. Air Vice-Marshal Park shook his head.
‘We’re hoping for a quiet one,’ Park said. ‘Not sure we can take another big push.’
Yesterday had been a disaster, Hitler throwing everything he had at the Royal Air Force, focusing his attention on airfields and landing strips across the country. If he wanted to invade, he had to break the RAF. The Germans knew it. The British knew it. Every man on the street knew it, watching anxiously as the battle played out in vapour trails high in the blue summer sky. And everyone knew how it would end. Not a matter of if, but when.
Hitler had more fighters, more bombers, and more pilots.
It was only a matter of time.
Bunny sat quietly for half an hour that felt like a week, checking his pocket watch every twenty seconds. It looked like Park might get his wish. Perhaps the Germans had awarded themselves a lazy Sunday.
The first sign of activity came from a young woman directly below. Her telephone operator approached her, whispered calmly in her ear, and retreated. The young woman, a plotter, marked up a wooden sign and placed it on the vast map. Her sign read ‘Forty-plus’, and she placed it on the other side of the Channel – over Calais. Forty enemy aircraft, identified by the top-secret new technology they were calling radar.
In quick succession, more markers were placed on the board, and the bottom row of lights on the far wall started to glow, as squadron after squadron was brought to readiness. All of this proceeded in the hushed tones of a reading room at a library. None of the plotters or telephone operators exhibited any emotion, but Bunny wasn’t born yesterday – he could feel the tension rising.
Still, the young men and women in the pit moved quietly, whispering commands to each other, pushing their markers across the table.
Soon, markers littered the map. ‘Forty-plus’, ‘Sixty-plus’, and in one instance, somewhere above Sussex, ‘Eighty-plus’. Every minute the plotters pushed their markers further inland, the paths of the invading aircraft becoming clear – they were coming for the airfields. Those airfields had been hit every day and were on their last legs.
Now, glowing red bulbs topped every column of lights – every squadron in action. Bunny had his eye on a man walking calmly around the edge of the room. One of Bunny’s recruits – picked him up from Oxford only a few months earlier. Lord Willoughby de Broke, solid chap, steward at the Jockey Club. Lord Willoughby looked up and made eye contact with Bunny. He was a fine poker player, Bunny knew from first-hand experience, but today his poker face was cracking. As they locked eyes, Willoughby gave the minutest shake of his head.
Bunny felt a cold chill shoot through his body.
Next to Bunny, Air Vice-Marshal Park made his apologies and rose to make a call. When he returned, he explained his absence.
‘I’ve asked Dowding at Stanmore to lend us a hand. He’s sending three more squadrons from reserve.’
Churchill nodded approvingly.
About time, too, Bunny thought.
Three new columns of lights were illuminated in swift succession – the reinforcements joining the fray. Now, every column was headed by a red light – every squadron engaged.
‘Do you think he’ll launch tonight?’ Bunny asked, under his breath. Hitler had a fleet of ships standing by across the Channel. The thin strip of sea the only thing standing between Britain and the largest, most mechanised army the world had ever seen.
‘Would you?’ Churchill asked, turning to Bunny.
‘Whether I would, or not, is the wrong question,’ Bunny replied. ‘The question is – what will Hitler do? Which I’m finding increasingly difficult to answer, because I’m not a raving lunatic. What wouldyoudo?’ Bunny asked Churchill.
