A Big Wing put all one's resources in one place. When that place had been on the ground, refueling, a second huge wave of the Luftwaffe's limitless attackers had destroyed much of our Big Wing on the ground.
Did not hindsight make any man appear brilliant?
In what was surely the most bald stroke of impudence, he called Douglas Bader a truly heroic young man of unquestioned courage and ardent patriotism with a faulty grasp of tactics and none of strategy. A junior officer given too much credence.
Trafford snarled at the page: Douglas Bader died in defense of his country. How generous of you not to question his courage.
In parting, this mother hen complained bitterly of the RAF's sending up untrained pilots. Did he think he could have told the Hun to wait while we got enough air under our pilots' bums to qualify? The battle would have been lost by the time Dowding let them fight!
Turned the last page. The end, none too soon. The anger stayed. Felt like telling the Reichsmarschall to shoot him.
They should have put Stuffy out to pasture long ago. The unmitigated conceit of this old man that he could be one of those rare souls upon whom events of the world pivot.
Dowding returned to the jeweler's shop. Like the tongue that probes a chipped tooth again and again, making sure that nothing changed in the instant between visits, he could not stay away. He stood, helpless, before the gutted, blackened wound.
Sensed someone pass behind him on the pavement. Glanced after passerby.
A young man kitted up like a Pilot Officer at dispersal, complete with yellow Mae West over his wool jersey. No swastika on his arm. He wore his second-best blue trousers and fleece-lined boots.
Wondered if the young man knew he was dead.
Dowding had never before seen a ghost, but knew one when he saw him. A little startled that he was not more alarmed.
Followed the young man into a church. Took off his cap. Slid into the pew beside him. "Are you lost, son?"
The Pilot Officer nodded, gaze far away. "I was looking for heaven, actually. It should be here."
"Here?" Dowding asked.
The Pilot Officer nodded again. "Here. This. ThisEngland." Depth of feeling in the name. "But it's not here."
"No," Dowding said sadly. "It is not." Eyes to the cross, "How could He let this happen?"
"How could you?"
Dowding floundered. "How couldI?"
The Pilot Officer looked at him at last. "It is your fault."
Deeper and deeper under water Dowding floundered. "How is this my fault?"
"You weren't here for us."
"I–I was retired." How very puny and unacceptable that sounded to his own ears.
And deeper. "Are you sure you did not ask for it?"
Dowding coughed, surprised. "I never! Would never!"
"Did you not?" said the youth, then, in a voice not his, " 'Almighty Father, anything but this. I cannot bear it. Let this cup pass away from me. Did you not? As the bombs fell and we flew to our deaths, with only you piloting this ship through the worst storm of its existence. Did you not let go the tiller, leave your heavy burden to someone else, and go merrily to attend your pretty daughter's wedding and sleep in your warm wife's bed?"
"How dare-" Stopped himself. This boy had died for England. And he, he was preparing his pretty daughter's wedding.
"Are you sure you did not ask to get out of what needed to be done? Did not say 'It is too much for me? »
A searching moment. A croaking groan, "No. I didn't. I wouldn't. I would give anything for my country. Anything."
"Would you, Abraham?"
"My name is not-oh. Oh my." Gave him pause. Felt the quiver in his chin. The sacrifice of Abraham. "My family are dearer to me than life."
"Your life is not what hung in the balance."
"But… my son!"
"Your son. Your wife. Your daughter. Your happiness. Your sanity."
"Why them? Why my wife? Why my-" Could not talk. Was dangerously near to weeping again.
The Pilot Officer produced a sheaf of papers from his boot. Dowding recognized his manuscript. Part of it. "You say you should have devoted more effort to organizing communications and to developing the capabilities of the RDF. You should have. But it was not the task for a happy man to be wholly focused on the RDF, the links between the spotter corps and Ops and dispersal and the pilots in the air." He bounced the pages. "This calls for a strict taskmaster. Detailed. Blunt. Undistracted."
A man with a loving family was not so disagreeable and difficult as the time demanded.
"You weren't there, Hugh Dowding. And you were needed. And now youdare say you could have made a difference." He presentedTwelve Legions of Angels.
"I never had the chance! I feel there is no one else who could fight as I do!"
"To make the hardest decisions ever demanded of a man, when God Himself is silent? To stay the course without knowing for sure that all would be well in the end? With only the conviction of your own rightness and trust in what you cannot see?"
"I would have. By God, I would have. Inever asked to be relieved! I neverwould ask, had I the chance."
"Your children will never have been born."
Too many thoughts ramming together. Dizzy between hope and crashing despair. Drew breath with difficulty. "You're saying it can be done again!"
"It can be done the way you decided. Whatdid you decide?"
Would have jumped at the answer, but for the cost. "What of the souls of my children? If they are never born, do I condemn them to the outer darkness?"
"None of us has the power to damn any soul but our own."
Sat silent, gazing at the stained glass windows.
The Pilot Officer stood up. "Be here Saturday at eleven o'clock if you did not ask to be spared."
"Then what will happen?"
"Then you did not ask to be spared."
"My daughter's wedding is at eleven o'clock."
Met the Pilot Officer's silent stare. Not a surprised stare. Rather disparaging.
"I can't!" Dowding blurted.
"Then don't." The Pilot Officer stalked out of the church.
Dowding ran out to the street after him, but of course he was not there.
When Dick Trafford had his report ready for delivery, the Reichsmarschall was to be found at a hunt club.
The German airman who admitted the British air attache to the hall found his name amusing-Dick.Dick was German forfat. Dick Trafford, a slight man, was notdick.
"Our Hermann isdick!" The German laughed, ushered Dick to the Presence.
The girth and breadth of Hermann Goering were encased in a foxhunter's bright red habit, complete with black helmet and riding crop. A pack of cheerfully subservient English foxhounds fawned about his black boots.
Surely he did not mean to inflict that bulk upon some unhappy steed!
But no. The Reichsmarschall stood regally still, posing for an artist with two full tubes of red oils in his arsenal. In the adjoining chamber, exuberant young Luftwaffe pilots drank liberated brandy and talked with their hands under a cloud of aromatic cigar smoke.
Without breaking pose, Hermann's little eyes slid Dick's way. "So, Fat Trafford. Tell me about Herr Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. Would anyone take his stupid book seriously? You are hesitating. That means yes."
"Not precisely," Trafford found his tongue. "No one with any knowledge of the facts would. But to a layman- Who knows? He bandies about technical terms and numbers with such authority, someone might take him at his word. What with his rank."