"You're quite sure it isn't the _lines_?"
"Oh no! I'm sure! Throttle down a bit and glide that way!"
As we draw nearer I suddenly see the two piers of Dunkerque and the
docks materialise in the mist, and on the other side the dull glow of
landing flares from an aerodrome.
"No! It's _not_ Ostend! It's all right, old man! There's St Pol! I'll
fire another white!"
I fire for the last time, and scarcely has my ball of light died out
before the answering signal soars up from the ground.
The engines are throttled, and we drift downwards on our whistling
planes over the long basins of the Dunkerque docks. When we are about a
hundred feet off the ground I press a small brass stud in front of me. A
white glare of light bursts out under our right wing tip and throws a
quivering radiance on the dyke round the aerodrome, on the hangars, and
on the landing field itself, at the end of which are two or three red
lights. We sweep gently on the surface of the ground, and before we have
stopped rolling forwards, a little figure runs towards us flashing a
light, and we hear its voice call--
"Turn to the left soon. The ground is full of bomb-holes ... where those
red lights are!"
Guided by the figure on the ground we "taxi" up to the hangars and stop
our engines. In a second I am on the ground.
"Didn't you see our Very lights?" I asked almost rudely. "Didn't you see
us flashing signals? I signalled Rockets--rockets--rockets--till my hand
ached! We got lost. We were going to land on the beach. Why didn't you
help us?"
"We _wondered_ what you were doing. We saw you firing lights on the
other side of Dunkerque! But, I say, things have been humming here since
you left!"
I can find no admiring audience for the experiences of the raid. Every
one is eager to describe the German attack.
"By Jove! you were lucky to be away to-night!" says one. "They've been
bombing us ever since you left. They must have dropped a couple of
hundred during the night. No damage was done. The C.O. nearly got hit.
He lay flat and one burst on either side of him. All the time you were
bombing them they were bombing us!"
No one wants to hear our adventures. It is human nature all over again.
They want to tell us what happened to them.
"Off Ostend we saw one of their patrols. It had a whacking big----"
"But you should have heard them whistling. Bob and I were talking
outside the mess, when suddenly we heard----"
"We got over the clouds coming back. You ought to have seen the----"
"You've _missed_ something, ... and I reckon you're lucky! The noise was
terrible!"
And so on, and so on goes the one-sided conversation of the two
self-centred groups!
So ended a raid which is to my mind very unsatisfactory. I realise that
we have to learn by experience, and I feel that to-night I have been
taught a great deal. I am determined to have the bomb-sight and
bomb-handle fitted in the front cockpit, so that with a splendid field
of vision I can steer the pilot by the direct wave of my hand, by means
of which I will be able to show emphasis or the reverse. The personal
touch is essential. I will also be able to watch the enemy's defences
and to counter them as much as possible.
In my next chapter I hope to show how this worked out in practice, and
what it was like to attack a volcano such as Bruges.