Through War & Adversity - Chapter 1

FARRIER

1.

1940

DUNKIRK

The burly man lying face down in the sand may have well been dead.

He might have been a victim of a German U-boat attack, and washed ashore by the tide, or killed when tossed out of the Spitfire as it screeched to its final standstill.  He may have even been gunned down on the beach during the evacuation: one of the thousands of British Expeditionary troops killed in the firefight, or perhaps one of the many who had tried to swim back home and drowned.  There was no blood around him, but his clothes were sodden with seawater.  If he had been in the plane crash, he may have well survived it, tumbling down from the Spitfire’s cockpit only to drown in the small pool of water his nose and mouth were both submerged in.  The devastation was basked in the full moon’s eerie glow – it was more effective, brighter, than any floodlights the Germans could have shone.  Nothing escaped it and it gave enemy snipers the perfect advantage.

Despite the cover of pitch darkness, even the white, long, sand dunes could be made out from afar.  The tufts of grass that peppered them, like the hair on a balding man’s head, glistened in the moonlight.  The hills themselves permitted only a foot of shadow – a foot of cover – and no more.  If one were to stand by the wreckage, the pink and red-bricked guesthouses in the portside town of Dunkerque, could be made out with a squint.  The plane after screeching some meters across the belly of sand had come to rest by a grass verge that led from the seafront up to them.  The Spitfire was silent now – her powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engine defeated – what little noise there was, came from the incoming tide crashing against the two beached corpses. 

Next to the man’s lifeless form was what one would infer to be his personal effects and from them, you’d gather that he was very rich.  There was a half-empty pack of Player cigarettes, a water-damaged leather-bound notebook, a mechanical wristwatch, a Longines of Saint-Imier, Switzerland, with a one-inch black leather band.  This came in addition to a four-inch white pencil and a 26.5mm Very pistol.  The flare it took had already been loaded.   

In the man’s notebook, going by the name written on its second cover, he was Roger Farrier of Number 77 Victoria Road, Kensington.  He was of medium height, around five-feet nine inches, and very muscular, women certainly found him handsome-looking.  With messy auburn hair covering his face, his countenance looked hard and disturbed.  From the colour in it, one could even deduce that he wasn’t quite dead, but compartmentalizing: rationalising and processing his thoughts, forming his next move when he returned to consciousness.

Meanwhile, specks of red and orange flames licked at the sky from the Spitfire’s aluminium fuselage.  His extraordinary mechanical skills still wouldn’t be enough to save her.  Years ago, Roger had moved from the Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith to the Regent Street Polytechnic.  Leaving in 1922 with first-class grades in all subjects except classics.  His curiosity of engineering started with motorcycles and concluded with aviation.  When War was declared on the third of September 1939, Farrier had enlisted as a pilot in the No. 92 Squadron of the RAF.  His final mission was Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of four-hundred-thousand Allied troops from the harbour and nearby beaches of Dunkirk. 

During the skirmish his Squadron leader, a man also called Roger, was shot down over the English Channel.  Two Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 87s, often known as Stuka dive bombers, had engaged them in a dogfight at 34,000 feet. Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett was the first to go.  His closest friend and colleague, Flying Officer Jack Collins – a strapping lad from Essex – was the second and missing too. A part of Farrier was confident that Collins had survived the crash unscathed, as for Bartlett, he wasn’t so sure.  

By the time Farrier reached the harbour of Dunkirk, he had used up his sixty gallons of fuel.  After taking out a German Heinkel He 111 bomber and another Stuka, the Rolls Royce engine cut out and his plane crash landed a few miles beyond the Allied Perimeter.  He had managed to manually deploy the landing mechanism in time before the Spitfire touched down, but the damage received in the dogfight had killed her.  Feeling faint and anticipating it to explode, he toppled out of the cockpit landing headfirst and rendering himself unconscious on the beach floor.

Roger kissed his sweetheart good-bye on the corner of Fitzrovia’s Whitfield and Scala Street on a cold evening, the month before in May.

The sky was stormy with rain and tense with the threat of conflict.  His supercharged four-and-a-half-litre Bentley was parked beside them, its boorish motor huffing.  It was a 1929 two-seater model, made with the Thrupp & Maberly coachwork.

They had drawn up near the grey department stores of Tottenham Court Road, on the other side of Whitfield Gardens, a small public park which was once the Little Sea (a large pond) back in the day.  From where they were standing, the significant presence of the main road was lost on them.  The buildings along that strip of road were tall, a memory to the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s and the late great Queen Victoria.  Each of them was Grade II listed and looked like the exterior of Selfridges of Oxford Street.

The buildings here were no way near as innovative, Farrier thought to himself.  When he finished his cigarette, he dropped it into the road and peeled his eyes away from the windowfront of Benjamin Pollock’s Toy Shop.  He turned and looked back at his girlfriend, a beautiful young woman with brown hair named Sophie Moss.

‘When’ll you be back?’ she said.

That afternoon they’d gone for a jaunt into the city, dining on a small riverboat by the Thames and taking an after-dinner stroll through St. James’ Park, feeding the ducks and re-enacting their very first date.  Before Britain declared war, they had planned to settle down in the area, a house in Fitzrovia not five minutes from the very corner they stood at saying their final good-byes.  Unlike the first time they’d come here, Farrier wasn’t looking to the future.  The day he dropped Sophie off (so she could catch a train from Goodge Street Station) he could only look to the past.

‘I don’t know,’ he simply replied.

‘I don’t know isn’t an answer, Roger.’

‘It’s the best I have,’

She looked at him both disappointed and proudly. Sophie Moss was indeed a beautiful girl, at first glance appearing to look more Mediterranean than English, with brown lip rouge that complemented the shade in her eyes.  That evening she wore her favourite brown raincoat, tied at the waist, with a purple hat and bow.

The two had met at an informal dinner date at Scott’s two years previously.  Their mutual friend Roma had introduced them.  If Roger had remembered correctly, refusing to adhere to the forgetful nature that plagues all men, she ordered the halibut with sea greens and risotto. He had ordered the lemon sole with romesco sauce and sautéed octopus.  The food was expensive, and he’d heard it was delicious, but he let it go cold during the conversation the two had enjoyed.  After dinner, Roma’s party went back to her place off King’s Road.  They didn’t want to leave each other alone and decided to take Roma’s dog for a late-night walk.  The two of them had kissed in front of a family home in Chelsea.  Roma’s dog, a scruffy West Highland Terrier called Hubert, unbeknownst to them, was barking after their cat.  It was only when the man of the house, who’d been enjoying the evening radio, heard the commotion and stormed outside after them, did they stop, apologise profusely and run back to the party laughing.

The spark was still there, but Roger found himself saying something he had never expected to say.  He thought his good-byes would come as an old man, the two of them having lived a full life together, after building a business, she being a published writer, with their grandchildren playing downstairs, him upstairs in bed.  But he had thought wrong, Sophie too, the War had cut that dream short and now he was leaving her alone on a street corner.

‘They’ll let me know, Soph.’ he replied eventually.

She let go of his hand and stepped away from him.  He drank her in, memorising the details of her face as though his absolute last time of seeing it.  He took her by the hand and they kissed with an almost animalistic magnetism. It was the same as their first, but their lips trembled with the ferocity of an emotion they hadn’t yet experienced, genuine heartbreak.  

Then, Roger backed away, his eyes refusing to leave hers, he fumbled with the Bentley’s handle, got inside, put the gear lever into first and floored the clutch and gas pedal.  When her strong eyes started to wilt he lifted his left foot and the motorcar shot away.  Farrier was in fourth gear before the corner, handbraking left and skidding onto Cleveland Street.  Her image remained in his mind’s eye.  He took the next corner on in third, roaring past Goodge Street Station and away.  At the junction of Euston Road, he removed an engagement ring from his jacket pocket and locked it away in the glovebox, biting down on his knuckle.

A month later, on the fourth of June, from the other side of the English Channel, Sophie’s face still stirring in his dreams, Roger Farrier woke with a start.

He swallowed in some sea water and spat it back out, cursing.  He peeled his face free from the puddle and licked his lips, at once recognising the salt and the coppery taste prevalent in one’s own blood.  He hadn’t bit his fist like he had in the dream, set in the memory of their departure, but had bit his bottom lip instead.  

Farrier wiped it and rolled over onto his back, panting through clenched teeth.  He looked up at the night sky, watching the scattered stars overhead seeing if they’d do anything.  The moon was full, and it crossed his mind that he was in a very vulnerable position.  But he lay still for a moment, doing nothing about it.  He remained there until searchlights started to loom out from behind the outlines of the guesthouses.  When the sound of rumbling engines found him, Roger got to his feet and gathered his things. 

He stopped for a moment listening intently and realised what he needed to do.  He moved with conviction.

Clambering up the wing – the two of them together spanned over thirty-six feet – and could be seen from miles away on land.  He pointed the Very pistol inside the cockpit and fired.  It erupted into flame, the upholstery went first with a lick of blue sparks and smoke, the controls went after.  He threw the gun inside and it clattered to the floor.

He jumped off the wing.  He padded round the plane, walking up to the tide.  Producing a gunmetal cigarette lighter from his pocket, he burned his copy of a map that showed where the remaining French and British Expeditionary Forces were to be lifted from, at the harbour further back along the beach. 

The flames swallowed the paper up.  The growing wind blew the smouldering flakes out over the water, heading out to sea.  He slipped a Player’s between his lips and watched the German trucks appear on the verge, their KAR-98 rifles peering over the headlamps. 

He took his time, enjoying the cigarette.  The soldiers charged down the hill after him, yelling obscenities and orders in German.  By the time they made it down, tripping over the reeds, Farrier had finished his cigarette and his Spitfire was completely aflame, burning thick black smoke into the evening sky.

Three of them surrounded him, their bolt-action rifles trained on his back.  One of them handcuffed him while the others watched.  The oldest of the trio pressed his gun into Farrier’s spine with one hand, grabbing him with the other.  They carted him off across the sand, furious. There was nothing left of the British plane to salvage and Farrier smiled to himself.

Mother had always said he’d been a handful as a little boy, but the Jerrys hadn’t seen anything yet.