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Spitfire Pilot
Flying Through
Ashes
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12-2005
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Bringing up the rear!!!
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MODIFIED STORY
I've been promising you all this for ages and I've finally got of by big butt and brought the Floppy Disk from home to share the "re-written" story with you. As always, I much appreciate complaints (sorry......critisism.........ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!). Anyway, enough babble.......here goes........ENJOY!!!!!!!
Title: One of the Few
Author: Mark Bufton
Rating: 18+
Disclaimer: Contains some violence related content and swear words
One of The Few
Mark Bufton
It was a beautiful summer’s morning in 1940. The sky was clear and the sun’s golden glow lit up the whole airfield and made my spitfire glisten.
The maintenance crew had been busy working through the night to patch up the many battle scars that she had picked up the day before. Now she looked as good as new, not a bullet hole in sight as she sat silently in the sun, awaiting the time that she would be needed once again.
I made my way into the mess hall and slowly ate my breakfast. So slowly, in fact, that it was stone cold by the time that I had finished it. It wasn’t the best breakfast I had ever tasted but what else could one ask for with the extent that the government had gone to with food rationing. You were always so hungry that you didn’t care how it tasted. As long as it was edible, you simply didn’t care.
After sitting down, I looked around me. There seemed to be barely a soul in sight. The mess hall looked almost completely empty. The fighting over the previous weeks had left its mark on our squadrons. We had lost a number of good pilots and also many of their replacements.
Yesterday, two inexperienced pilots, or ‘new blood’ as we called them arrived to replace two experienced pilots shot down over France the day before. They were both dead within the hour. I don’t even know their names.
We try not to make friends any more because within a week, one of you would probably be dead. It’s amazing how being so close to death can quickly change your whole view on life. Now, when I see another pilot shot down and killed, I’m just glad it wasn’t me. I’m glad it was him, not me.
“Flight Lieutenant Bufton”, called a voice, “Flight Lieutenant Bufton”. It was my commanding officer, Wing Commander Herbert Watkins, whom everyone called “Herby”. “My office”, he yelled and walked out of the mess.
He wasn’t yelling because I had done something wrong, it was just the way that he spoke naturally. He had a very deep voice and always looked immaculate. He was always on time for anything. You could set your watch by him.
Still half asleep, I got up and walked out of the mess and over to the Wing Co’s office. Herby quite often called me in to his office to get my opinion on an operation or a sortie because I was the most experienced pilot in the squadron. I knocked on the door.
“Enter”, called the Wing Co. I opened the door and he looked up. “Oh, Flight Lieutenant, it’s you. Please sit down”. His regular rough, almost groan of a voice had gone and instead there was a soft, sensual even sympathetic tone to his voice. It was a sound that I had never heard from him before. Something wasn’t right. In fact, I was certain that something was terribly wrong.
“What is it, Sir?” I asked. He just looked at me and handed me a letter. “I received it this morning”, he said. I cautiously opened it and my heart sank. It read:
Flight Lieutenant M Bufton
RAF Duxford
It is with great regret that the Royal Air Force informs you that your brother, Flying Officer P A Bufton was confirmed Killed In Action on 14 July 1940. His personal effects have been returned to your mother.
Squadron Leader B Peters
RAF Uxbridge
The letter fell from my hand and landed on the floor. It felt as though my heart had been ripped from my body and shredded before my eyes, a war of emotions raging deep within my soul.
I had known that my brother was missing but had never given up the hope that he had been taken prisoner or had been picked up by a fishing boat and was on his way home. Now he was gone and he wasn’t coming back.
“Look”, said the Wing Co, sympathetically, “Your brother was aware of the risks when he joined up and he accepted them, as have you”. I just stared blindly at him and there was a short pause, a pause that seemed to go on for hours.
“Why don’t you take the weekend off and get away from all this?” he asked, “You look like you could use the rest and you’re not doing anyone any favours by being here in the state that you’re in right now.”
“But Sir, how are we going to fight the Luftwaffe if I’m not here?” I asked, rather stupidly. The Wing Co laughed. “I think we can manage a few days with one less pilot, don’t you?” he replied, “Now go home. That’s an order”.
“But Sir”
“Go Home Flight Lieutenant, now”
“Yes Sir”, I replied solemnly. Then I picked up the letter, stood up and saluted him before marching out of the office.
I caught the train home that afternoon. My wife was both pleased and surprised to see me. I didn’t show her the letter though. I just locked myself in the spare bedroom and cried all weekend. My father had always told me that men don’t cry and I must have let him down that weekend because I cried like a baby much to my wife’s dismay.
I arrived back at Duxford on Monday morning. I had calmed down slightly but was still in shock from the content of that letter. Two more pilots were missing. They had both bailed out over France. One of them returned to England a few weeks later after contacting the French resistance who then smuggled him into Spain.
The other wasn’t so lucky. He managed to evade capture for almost two weeks before being discovered by a German patrol just short of the Spanish border. He had been given some civilian clothes by a French family and was shot as a spy by a Gestapo firing squad.
None of us minded dying for ‘King and Country’ as they say. Most of us had come to accept being killed. Still, as a young fighter pilot, you always thought that it would never happen to you. It would always be the poor bloody chap next to you, but it would never be you.
What really scared us was being taken prisoner or being burned. Quite a few pilots were being burned. Many made it back to their airfields only to burn to death when they crash-landed on the runway. Being burned was always at the back of our minds. If we were to die, we would rather die instantly.
I had barely been back half an hour before the call to scramble came once again and the whole airfield seemed to transform from a quiet, peaceful atmosphere to unorganised chaos as pilots and ground crew scrambled to the waiting spitfires.
The thought of my younger brother, who was only 19, was still playing heavily on my mind. This dogfight would be different. This time I wasn’t just doing my duty. I wasn’t just shooting down German aircraft. This time I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill as many Germans as I could. Mow them all down like dogs. They were going to pay for what they had done to my brother so without hesitating I grabbed by flight kit and ran for my aircraft.
My ground crew barely escaped with their lives as I impatiently started up my mighty merlin engine and screamed down the runway at full power before lifting off the ground, free from the bounds of earth.
“Red Leader, this is Duxford Control. Please fly heading 135 and ascend to flight level 1550, over.”
“Roger Duxford Control. All sections fly heading 135 and ascend flight level 1550, over.”
“Red Leader, enemy numbers estimated at 250. Maintain current heading and altitude, over.”
“Roger Duxford Control, maintaining current heading and altitude. Please confirm number of squadrons on route, over”.
“Red Leader, 4 more squadrons are on route, over.”
“Roger Duxford Control, Out.”
There was a short pause.
“Hey Peter, did you hear that”, I called over the radio.
“Yeah, I heard it. 250 right?”
“Right”, I said, “5 squadrons. That’s 12 aircraft per squadron. We have 60 and they have 250, maybe more.”
“Jesus Christ”, replied Peter, “how the hell are we supposed to drown that many in the drink.”
There was another pause. Pilots referred to the English Channel as ‘the drink’ so when we said that someone had landed in the drink we meant that they had crashed into the channel.
“OK. Here’s what we are going to do”, I said, “Red and Blue sections will escort Green and Yellow sections in to attack the bombers. When the fighter escorts come down to attack Green and Yellow, Red and Blue will shoot them out of the sky.”
“We are approaching the coast”, I said, “Keep an eye out for the bombers.”
After a few seconds, we could see a grey haze straight ahead. It looked a bit like a distant rain cloud getting ready to pounce on the English coast and play havoc. In fact, it was the massive formations of enemy bombers forever flying onwards regardless of how many were lost.
As they got nearer, we couldn’t see the fighter escorts. They usually flew higher than the bombers so that at a moments notice they could come screaming out of the clouds and shoot down their unsuspecting prey with a deadly spray of machine gun and cannon fire. Fortunately for us we had wised up to their tricks and always kept an eye out for them.
“OK, let’s fly under them before swinging around and hitting them from behind”, I said, “Green and Yellow sections will break off first and Red and Blue sections will follow to cover them from fighters”.
So we flew under the enemy bombers and as soon as the last row of bombers went over my head I ordered Green and Yellow sections to break away and Red and Blue sections followed a few seconds later.
As I had anticipated the Messerschmitt BF109’s came screaming out of the clouds and started to shoot at the two sections attacking the bombers. One spitfire, piloted by Flight Lieutenant Richard Matthews was shot out of the sky and another two, piloted by Flying Officer Peter Smith and Pilot Officer David McDonald were damaged and started streaming black smoke.
Flying Officer Smith bailed out and landed in the drink but Pilot Officer McDonald stayed in his aircraft and shot down two enemy bombers before having to crash land on a beach. I later found out that he had been knocked unconscious by the force of the impact and was burned alive in the ****pit.
Before this however, Red and Blue sections had caught up with the fighters and were firing on them. I saw an ME 109 in my sights and immediately opened fire. The 109 started to stream a thin haze of black smoke and that’s when the pilot realised that I was behind him. Generally speaking, the only time you knew you were being attacked was when you were in your parachute.
He started twisting and turning all over the sky and I had to fight hard to stay on his tail, seizing opportunity after opportunity to fire another quick burst at him. Eventually I got the better of him and he caught fire. The pilot bailed out and hung helplessly in his parachute while his aircraft spiralled into the drink.
At that moment time seemed to stand still. The anger and the hatred I felt from my brothers death overpowered and possessed me. Blinded by hate and hell bent on revenge I turned my spitfire around and set the pilots body in my sights.
I waited until I could see the sheer terror in his face and the tears pouring down his cheeks before I pressed the trigger button on my control column and ripped his body to shreds. I glanced into the rear view mirror located just above my head and saw his body go limp. “That showed you, you son of a b*tch”, I said, rather cold-heartedly.
Suddenly, I saw two ME 109’s in my mirror. They had just seen what I had done to their friend and were quite intent on doing the same to me. “Oh ****”, I said before putting my spitfire into a tight turn.
The spitfire could turn tighter that the 109 so I soon came up behind them and opened fire. I hit one and then they split up so I went after the one that I had just hit while the other one came after me.
I fired a second burst straight at the damaged 109 and he started to stream thick black smoke. I then broke off the attack and went into another tight turn to try and out manoeuvre the other one, which I did without too much hassle.
He then flew behind the damaged 109 and they split up once more. Again I followed the damaged aircraft and letting out one final burst of fire I shot him out of the sky. The pilot tried to bail out but one of the rounds from my machine guns had hit the canopy of his Messerschmitt and bent it out of shape, meaning that he couldn't open it. He went into the drink at over 400mph and was killed instantly.
Unfortunately, as I was busy watching the ME109 go down the other pilot had manoeuvred his aircraft around and was now on my tail, blasting away quite happily with his guns and cannons.
The first I knew that I was under attack was when one of his rounds went straight through my spitfires canopy slide and cracked the armoured windscreen in front of me, missing my head by inches. “****”, I cried and I immediately started to bank to the right and went into a tight turn but now my engine started to stream thick, black smoke and began to make spluttering sounds.
My spitfire then started to bank sharply to the left and I had to struggle to keep the wings level. The German was still firing away like crazy and one of my oil lines ruptured, smearing my left leg in oil.
I wasn’t able to bail out because I was only at 760 ft, my parachute would never open in time and I couldn’t gain altitude because my damaged engine was barely producing enough power to keep me airborne never mind gaining height. In fact, far from gaining height, I was loosing it, rapidly.
By this time I was back over the coast again, so I singled out a field about 2 miles away that looked like a good enough place to crash land and headed in that direction. I fought hard to maintain a reasonable altitude and stay on course for the field but somehow I managed to do it.
I will never forget what happened next as it was the most amazing and dramatic, yet frightening experience of my life. I tried to lower my landing gear but it wouldn’t lower. It had been damaged by the trigger happy German who was still blasting away at me, although he was no longer hitting anything, not that there was much left of my spitfire for him to hit.
I had to land the aircraft on its belly, which was a pretty damned suicidal act in a completely new aircraft, never mind in one that looked more like a bathroom sponge than an aircraft. I swear at the moment of impact my life seemed to flash before my eyes and I thought of all the things that I would miss in life, and all those that would miss me. I thought that this time, I genuinely wasn’t going to make it back home.
As my plane bounced along the field, I could see a ditch straight ahead of me with an embankment at the other side and a rather rugged fence sitting on top of it. Seconds later I hit it head on.
Fortunately for me, the belly of the spitfire’s fuselage is very much like a toboggan and curves upwards at the front. This meant that when I hit the embankment, rather than stopping instantly, and rather painfully, it seemed to rise over the embankment, crash through the fence and grind slowly to a halt in the next field, leaving behind it a trail of devastation to the poor farmers freshly planted crops.
The ****pit started to fill with smoke so I decided that it was high time I got out of there. I pulled back the canopy slide and punched at my harness buckle before opening the little hatch to my left hand side and jumping out of the ****pit. I started running as far back as I could before collapsing from exhaustion and falling asleep.
I awoke to find a rather surprised and bemused farmer standing over me, pale with shock and tightly grasping a pitchfork. “Are you English or German?” he asked cautiously. “English of course”, I replied, staring blankly at the sharpened pitchfork just inches from my face.
“Oh sorry”, said the farmer, suddenly noticing the petrified look on my face and, much to my relief, lowering the pitchfork. “You can’t be too careful these days”, he said, “bloody Nazi’s dropping like flies around here, thanks to you lot”.
“So, what happened?” he asked curiously, “Did you have to parachute out of your plane or what?”
“No Sir”, I replied, staring at the ground, “actually I crash landed in your potato field”. I pointed at my spitfire lying in the field with a trail of destruction behind it. “I did cause a bit of damage, I’m sorry Sir”.
The farmer just smiled gently. “Don’t be”, he said, “Potatoes can be re-grown fairly easily. Fighter pilots however, probably can’t”.
Post Edited By Spitfire Pilot, Dec/4/2006, 4:20 pm
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"The trouble with artists such as myself is that all too many can see the world for the beautiful place that it should be but we cannot see ourselves for who we truly are".
- Mark A Bufton, 17 March 2009
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Oct/19/2006, 4:17 pm
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