Tumult in the Clouds Read online

  James A. Goodson

  * * *

  TUMULT IN THE CLOUDS

  Contents

  I The King’s Enemies

  II The Pole

  III The Boss

  IV The Playboy

  V The Swede

  VI The Kid

  VII Millie

  VIII The Battle of Germany

  IX Borrowed Time

  Postscript

  Illustrations

  Appendix:

  Aces of the Fourth Fighter Group

  Pilots of the Eagle Squadrons in September 1942

  Top Scorers of Other Eighth Air Force Fighter Groups

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  TUMULT IN THE CLOUDS

  James Goodson was born in America to British parents and brought up in Toronto. He was educated at Toronto University, the Sorbonne in Paris and Harvard Business School. When the Second World War broke out he joined the RAF, before transferring to the USAAF in 1942 and becoming one of their leading ‘aces’. James Goodson now lives in Kent.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the Happy Warriors: those of the RAF who were the inspiration; those of the Eagle Squadrons who led the way; and those of the Fourth Fighter Group, who wore the wings of two great Air Forces with pride and honour.

  An Irish Airman Foresees his Death (1917)

  I know that I shall meet my fate

  Somewhere among the clouds above;

  Those that I fight I do not hate

  Those that I guard I do not love;

  My country is Kiltartan Cross

  My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor

  No likely end could bring them loss

  Or leave them happier than before.

  Nor law, nor duty bade me fight

  Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

  A lonely impulse of delight

  Drove to this tumult in the clouds

  I balanced all, brought all to mind,

  The years to come seemed waste of breath

  A waste of breath the years behind

  In balance with this life, this death.

  W.B. YEATS

  (By kind permission of M.B. Yeats, Anne Yeats, and MacMillan London Limited.)

  CHAPTER ONE

  The King’s Enemies

  ‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

  ‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany …

  ‘Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution – and against them I am certain that right will prevail.’

  The voice sounded clipped and pedantic, even politely bored.

  There was silence in the Third Class Lounge. Finally I said: ‘This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper!’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘T.S. Eliot.’

  ‘Well, we’re well out of it!’ That was the feeling of most of the passengers. We had left old Europe only hours before she slid into the abyss. It was 3rd September 1939. The ship was the SS Athenia.

  The loudspeaker announced the lifeboat drill. I dutifully went back to my cabin to pick up my life-jacket and made my way to the deck and lifeboat station. The boat was large, and I calculated that there would perhaps be just enough space for us all, but it would be crowded. The normal capacity of the ship was about 1,000, but with returning American and Canadian tourists, English, Scottish and Irish emigrants and Eastern European refugees, there were at least 1,300 passengers.

  In the lounge, there was laughter and singing. It may have been because they’d had more to drink, but the English-speaking nationalities were leading the entertainments. The young Americans launched into a sing-song, accompanied by a piano, and by the Canadians, English, Scots, Irish and Welsh. There was ‘Home on the Range’, ‘Shenandoah’. ‘My Old Kentucky Home’, ‘Mammy’, and the rest of them. The English came up with ‘Ilkley Moor Baht ’at’, ‘Knees up Mother Brown’, and of course ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. From the Irish, we had ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ and ‘Danny Boy’; from the Welsh, ‘Men of Harlech’, ‘We’ll keep a Welcome in the Hillsides’ and ‘Land of my Fathers’ sung beautifully by bass, tenor, contralto, and soprano voices, with descant thrown in; from the Scots, we had ‘Scotland The Brave’, ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ ’ and ‘I belong to Glasgow’.

  Then a young boy was persuaded to sing solo. He was about seventeen, like me, but he seemed younger, with dark hair, but blue eyes. He was small and slight and almost feminine. His voice was a beautiful high tenor and every note was as true as a bell. He held his audience completely. There was no sound from them. The beer was left untouched. He sang ‘Oh where, tell me where has my highland laddie gone’, ‘The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’ and ‘The Road to the Isles’, and each of the well-known songs was given a new pathos and yearning, reflecting his own sadness and touching the homesickness of all those who were leaving home and family, probably never to see them again. There were tears in their eyes, and in the blue eyes of the singer, and even in the eyes of the Canadians and Americans as they shared the great sense of nostalgia for old places and beloved faces. That was the mood of the Athenia on the last full day of her life.

  By the evening we were off the Hebrides. The strong west wind was cold, the sky cloudy, and the ship was pitching and rolling slightly on the ocean swells.

  I had just mounted the staircase and was moving forward to the dining room when it struck. It was a powerful explosion quickly followed by a loud crack and whistle. The ship shuddered under the blow. The lights went out. There were women’s screams. The movement of the ship changed strangely as she slewed to a stop. People were running in all directions, calling desperately to one another.

  We all knew the ship was mortally stricken; she was beginning to list.

  The emergency lights were turned on. I went back to the companionway I had just come up. I gazed down at a sort of Dante’s Inferno; a gaping hole at the bottom of which was a churning mass of water on which there were broken bits of wooden stairway, flooring and furniture. Terrified people were clinging to this flotsam, and to the wreckage of the rest of the stairway which was cascading down the side of the gaping hole. The blast must have come up through here from the engine room below, past the cabin decks, and the third class restaurant and galley. I clambered and slithered down to the level of the restaurant. I started by reaching for the outstretched arms and pulling the weeping shaking, frightened women to safety; but I soon saw that the most urgent danger was to those who were floundering in the water, or clinging to the wreckage lower down. Many were screaming that they couldn’t swim. Some were already close to drowning.

  I slithered down the shattered stairway, slipped off my jacket and shoes, and plunged into the surging water. One by one, I dragged them to the foot of the broken companionway, and left them to clamber up to the other rescuers above.

  When there were no more bodies floundering in the water, I turned to those who were cowering in the openings of the corridors which led from the cabins to what had been the landing at the foot of the stairs and which was now a seething, lurching mass of water. Most of them were women, many were children and some were men. I went first to the children. They left their mothers, put their small arms around my neck and clung to me. They clung as we slipped into the water; they clung as I swam to the foot of the d
angling steps; they clung as I climbed the slippery wreckage; and they clung as I prised their little arms from around me and passed them to those at the top. These were members of the crew. A few stewards and stewardesses, and even some seamen. The Athenia was a Glasgow ship and so was her crew. They knew their jobs, they rose to the challenge, and above all, they kept their heads. One seaman had climbed halfway down to take the women and children from me and pass them on to those waiting above. With a strong Glasgow accent, he soothed and comforted the mothers and children, and shouted praise and encouragement to me.

  ‘Bloody guid, mon! Keep ’em coming!’

  I looked up out of the water.

  ‘I could do with some help down here.’

  The seaman shook his head sadly.

  ‘Ah wish the hell ah cuid, but ah canna swum!’

  I looked up at the others. They shook their heads too. It had never occurred to me that members of a ship’s crew would not be able to swim. Finally there were no more left either in the water, or waiting at the openings of the corridors. I was at the base of the broken stairs. For the first time, I was able to pause and look around. By now, the ship had listed much more. The water had slopped into the corridors on the down side until it was waist-high. The corridors on the upper side were out of the water. Two seamen were crawling down to help.

  ‘We’ve got to make sure there’s no one left in the cabins. We’ll take this upper passageway. Can you swim to the lower one? There’s not many of them. The emergency watertight doors have been closed at the next bulkhead, so we just have to check the ones in this section.’

  I pushed off into the lurching water and swam to the opening of one of the half-flooded gangways. I was able to swim right to it, get to my feet and splash my way into darkness, walking half on the floor and half on the bulkheads. The water in most of the cabins was too deep and the light was too dim to conduct any kind of a search. What was worse as I stumbled through the water and darkness, there was a movement of the ship as it listed further. The water sloshed higher, and there were deep rumblings in the bowels of the sinking ship.

  I yelled out through the dark, ghostly gangways and cabins. ‘Anyone there? Anyone there?’

  There wasn’t. The feeling grew in me that this deck was already at the bottom of the sea, as it would be for hundreds of years.

  As I felt my way through the flooded, dark cabins and gangways, I stumbled across mysterious objects moving under the shifting water. I stumbled into what seemed to be a half-submerged bundle of clothing. It seemed to follow me as I returned towards the open shaft. In the dim light, I turned it over. Then I saw the innocent face, gashed and bloodied, and the dark, curly hair, and the blue eyes, which would never weep again for the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. Now other lips would be asking where their highland laddie had gone.

  I realised it was useless to search any longer. I struggled back to the light, and left the lower decks to the dead, the darkness and the sea.

  The crew members were waiting to help me up the wreckage, up past the smashed dining-rooms to the upper decks.

  ‘Thanks!’ I said when we got to the top. I shook both seamen by the hand.

  The ship was listing quite a bit now. We headed up the sloping deck to the higher side. We found them launching one of the last lifeboats. It was crowded. Members of the crew were holding back those for whom there was no more room and telling them to go to another boat. Meanwhile, the two seamen fore and aft in the boat were desperately trying to lower it. But as the heavy boat lurched unevenly down as the ropes slid through the pulleys of the davits, a problem arose which was apparently not foreseen by the designers of lifeboat launching systems. Because of the listing of the ship, when the lifeboat was lowered from its davits, and, as it swayed with the slight rolling, it fouled the side. Although the seamen were playing out their ropes as evenly as possible, the forward part got caught against the side of the ship. The seaman continued to play out his rope. Suddenly it slid free and dropped. But the after rope hadn’t played out as much as the one forward. The front of the boat dropped, but the rear was caught by its rope. Soon the boat was hanging by the after rope. The screaming passengers were tumbling out of the boat like rag dolls, and falling down to the surface of the sea far below.

  There was nothing we could do. I helped the crew to shepherd the remaining group of passengers to the other side of the ship.

  We made our way to what seemed to be the last lifeboat, at least on that deck. Here there was another problem caused by the same list and the same swell; the boat was hanging on its davits, but swinging in and out. On its outer swing, there was a yawning gap between the lifeboat and the ship. Most of the passengers were women or elderly, or both. The responsible crew members were trying to persuade them to make their leap into the boat when it was close to the ship, but many of them waited too long, and the boat swung out again.

  We pushed our way through the waiting crowd to help. As I reached the boat, the seaman in the bow shouted to an elderly lady: ‘Jump! Now!’

  But she hesitated. Perhaps she was pushed and the push badly timed. As the boat swung away, she lurched out towards it, the gap was already too wide. Her arms reached the gunwale, but her body fell through the space between lifeboat and ship, wrenching her arms away from the boat and those who were trying to drag her into it. I gazed after the falling body, dazed and speechless, until it hit the waves far below.

  Finally the lifeboat could take no more passengers, and was lowered away, leaving a small group of us on the deserted, sloping deck. One of the ship’s officers took command.

  ‘That was the last of the boats, but the Captain’s launch will be back for us soon; it’s distributing the passengers evenly between the boats. Some of the ones that got away weren’t quite full!’

  ‘Aye, but how much time do we have before she goes?’

  ‘There’s no immediate danger. There was only one torpedo which hit midships and blew up through that compartment. The watertight doors were closed before other compartments were flooded, so they should keep her afloat awhile.’

  Now that there was nothing to do, I felt depressed. Suddenly I thought of my money and papers I’d left with the Purser. I ran back to the companionway, and made my way to the Purser’s office. There was the large safe still firmly locked shut. The state of the papers on the desk indicated a hurried departure. I tried in vain to open the safe, then turned and clambered back to the upper deck. Somehow I didn’t feel like waiting for the Captain’s launch; I wanted to be doing something, anything.

  I went to the higher side of the ship and looked down the sloping side to the dark, rolling sea. There, just about 100 yards from the ship, I saw a lifeboat. Hanging from the davits, and making down the steel side of the ship were the ropes which had launched the boats.

  In the dark, I couldn’t see if they reached all the way to the sea, but they went far enough for me. Soon I was going down a rope hand over hand, fending myself off the side with my feet as the ship rolled. It was further than I had thought. Halfway down, my arms were aching. Long before I reached the bottom, I couldn’t hold on any longer. As the rope slipped through my hands, I kicked away from the side and fell. It seemed a long time before I hit the water. I went in feet first. I started to struggle to the surface right away, but it seemed to take a long time. I thought I was a good under-water swimmer, but soon I desperately needed to breathe. In the darkness, there was no sign of the surface. For the first time I wished I’d been able to get to my life-jacket. If I passed out, it would at least have brought me to the surface. Just as I felt I could hold out no longer, I got to the surface. I gasped for breath. The sea was choppy, and I got a mouthful of water. It was colder, rougher and more brutal than I had expected. I looked for the lifeboat I had seen from the deck. I could only see it when I was lifted by a wave, and it looked much further away now.

  I struck out in the direction of the boat, but it was a struggle. At times I felt I was making no headway at all. Eventually I go
t close enough to see one of the reasons. They had a few oars out, and were trying to row away from the ship. I knew that was in line with instructions, because of the danger of being sucked down with the ship when she sank; but, as I struggled to keep going, I did feel they could at least stop rowing until I caught up with them.

  Fortunately, their efforts were badly co-ordinated and I finally reached them, and grabbed the gunwale, I tried to pull myself up, expecting helping hands to life me into the boat; instead a dark young man, screaming in a foreign language put his hand in my face to push me away. A frantic middle-aged woman was prising my fingers off the side of the boat and banging on my knuckles. Dimly I realised they were panicking because they felt the boat was already over-crowded. I heard the voices of the seaman in charge down in the stern yelling to them to stop, but help came from another direction, and it was much more effective. The diminutive figure of a girl appeared. In a flash, she had landed a sharp right to the face of the young man, and sent him sprawling back off his seat. In the next second, my other tormentor was hauled away, and the strong young arms were reaching down to me. Other hands helped to haul me over the gunwale.

  I collapsed in a wet heap on the bottom of the boat and gasped my thanks to my rescuers.

  Amid peals of young female laughter I heard: ‘Hey! You’re an American!’

  ‘So are you!’ I mumbled in surprise.

  ‘My God! You’re half-drowned and freezing cold! Here!’

  A blanket was being wrapped around my shoulders. I struggled to sit up, and opened my eyes to look at my guardian angel. She was a small, slim brunette, about nineteen or twenty, with an elfin face, full of life and humour. She was wearing a bra and pants and nothing else. I realised she had been wrapped in the blanket she was now trying to put around me.

  ‘No! No! You need it more than I do,’ and I took it off my shoulders and put it around hers.