Part 1

_WINGS OVER ENGLAND_

BY ROY J. SNELL

_Eight Full Page Illustrations By GLEN SHEFFER_

THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO NEW YORK

_Copyright 1941, by M. A. Donohue & Company_ _Printed in the United States of America_

Contents

I. Cherry 1 II. Catbirds and Hawk 11 III. Dolls and Nazis 17 IV. Hans Schlitz 25 V. The young Lord 34 VI. Lady Spies 44 VII. Enemy Sighted 57 VIII. Roll Out the Barrel 67 IX. The Hideout 80 X. First Blood 91 XI. Cobbler or Spy? 105 XII. “The House Is Gone” 113 XIII. Lull Before the Storm 123 XIV. A Dungeon Night 131 XV. Until the Very End 144 XVI. Fiddlin’ Johnny 152 XVII. Playing War 166 XVIII. Dave’s Strange Craft 175 XIX. Thrilling Sky Drama 182 XX. Dave Comes Marching Home 188 XXI. The Lark Defends His Home Town 194 XXII. Roll Out the Barrel 203 XXIII. Victory 213 XXIV. Searchers of the Sea 218 XXV. The Rescue 229

Illustrations

That Was a Capital Stroke, Dave _Frontispiece_ We Do Have a Spy 49 Everybody Sing 77 Tat-tat-tat—Down Goes Hun 99 Only Three Walls Remained 117 The Dog Had Found the Fugitive 135 Shots Tore Into His Right Wing 161 Alice—Alice—I Know Your Voice 233

_Chapter_ I Cherry

It was one of those rare autumn days in England. The sky was blue as blue. The trees cast dark shadows across the hillside. The sheep wandered contentedly along the slope. To Cherry Ramsey, for one full moment it seemed that nothing could possibly be wrong with the world.

Then with a sudden light spring she shot from her sunny corner to scan the sky and to exclaim softly to the collie at her feet:

“Flash old boy, it’s an airplane. Perhaps it’s a bomb-bomber.” That last word always choked her. How she hated those Nazi marauders! No, all was not right with the world! Perhaps it never would be again for a long, long time!

“But Flash old boy,” there was hot fire in her voice, “we must all do our best and trust God. That’s what mother always says, and she’s nearly always right.”

Flash, the splendid golden collie, stood up, appeared to listen, then whined as if he had truly understood. And who will say he did not?

For one more full moment the scene remained just as it had been. In the foreground were low hills and sheep feeding. Beyond that lay a level field where two grown youths in their late teens bent over their task of harvesting Brussels sprouts. Beyond all this were trees and barns—a farm home,—Cherry’s own home.

As she stood there, lips parted, ears straining in their attempt to build up a mental picture of the rapidly approaching airplane, she saw the two boys straighten up, then gaze skyward.

“Ah! They hear it!” she whispered. Then she tried with a sudden flash of the imagination to picture the thoughts running through the minds at that moment of those strangely different boys. The plane proved to be a German bomber.

Then suddenly her heart stood still. The plane had come zooming out from behind the nearby hills, and in a flash she had caught sight of the hated cross on the right of the plane, the swastika on its tail.

At that same instant the taller of the two boys turned to his companion to say:

“I suppose that’s what you call a bomber?” His was the sharp, brisk accent of a Midwest American.

“Not precisely that,” was the slow drawling reply of his typically English companion. “It’s a Messerschmitt 110, I’d say. They do use them for daylight bombing. But that plane is really a fighter. The best the Jerries have. If our boys go after one of them when it flies over to do a little bombing, it lays eggs and puts off at a fearful rate, or turns in for a scrap.

“And I say!” his voice rose, “There’ll be a scrap! There’s a Spitfire after her. Good old Spitfire! Go after ’em, old boy! Here we are, with a ringside seat!” He dropped back to take his place on a bag of Brussels sprouts. The tall, dark, curly-haired American youth stood where he was, watching the two planes. His eyes were wide with excitement and wonder. This was but his third day in England. Until this moment he had seen nothing of the war. Even now, with the peace of open country all about him, it did not seem possible that those two silver ships up there in the sky would really fight an air duel, that men might come hurtling down from out the sky to a terrible crushing death.

An exclamation from his companion brought him back to reality.

“Oh! I say!” came in sharp, rising tones. “There’s another of our fighters! Now there’ll surely be a scrap! That Messerschmitt can’t escape both of them! That,” he said with a sudden intake of breath, “is one of your American fighters. It’s called a Tomahawk.”

“Are they good?” Dave asked, his eyes still on the sky.

“Good!” Brand exploded, “Of course they’re good! Air cooled engine. Do 350 per hour. And can they climb! Practically straight up! It’s going to be grand!” he exclaimed, his eyes glued upon the spot where the three planes were circling. “They’ll do that old Messerschmitt in before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“They should. Two to one,” Dave Barnes, the other boy spoke slowly, no sarcasm in his voice, only cool appraisal. He was an American. This was not his war. For him this was but a ringside seat to something rather big.

The lips of the English boy, Brandon Ramsey, drew into a tense white line. This _was_ his war. Perhaps he knew the men in those one-seated fighters. He could not be sure of that, but there was an airbase for fighters not three miles from his home. He knew nearly all the fliers. As for the enemy plane, why was it here? To drop bombs on defenseless villagers, or to spy out targets for some other plane that carried tons of explosives. Who could say?

“Two to one.” His was not a happy laugh. “There are three men in that Messerschmitt. They’re in an armored cabin. Our boys are right out there in the open.” There was a touch of anger in his voice.

“I—I’m sorry,” Dave murmured, brushing a hand before his eyes. “I’ve been in England for so short a time. Guess I don’t see things your way just yet.”

“That’s all right,” was the prompt and generous response. Brand gave Dave’s knee a slap. “You’ll pick it up fast. That is,” he added, “if that Messerschmitt isn’t still carrying its bombs and if he doesn’t land one of them right on us.”

“Why would he do that?” The American boy’s eyes opened wide.

“Lighten his load. Besides, a bullet might strike a bomb. Then whew! He’d fly into a thousand pieces. He—”

The English boy stopped suddenly, for at that instant there came a sput—sput—sput from the sky.

“They’re at it!” Dave’s voice was low and tense.

The burst of fire which was short and sharp had come from the Spitfire.

“Short, broadside,” Brand explained. “You can’t do much with a broadside. Other plane’s going too fast. They’re out of range, just like that. They—

“Look!” he exclaimed in a voice tense with emotion. “The Tomahawk is going after that plane from behind! He—

“Nope.” He let loose a low hiss of disgust.

“He’s gone into a power dive.”

It was true. All the planes had been high, perhaps up 15,000 feet. Now the Messerschmitt slipped into a dive that took it half the distance to earth. The American boy was ready to dodge and run for it when just as suddenly as it had gone into the dive the Nazi plane came out of it to level off just above the farm home.

“Look!” Brand gripped his companion’s arm hard. “He’s dropped a bomb!”

Terror stricken, fascinated, white-hot with anger, the English boy watched a silver spot against the dark blue sky go down—down—down.

And on the hillside, far above her home, tall, slender, beautiful twenty-year old Cherry Ramsey, with the color gone from her cheeks, also watched the terrifying missile speed from the sky.

“Where will it strike?” Her alert mind registered the question her lips did not speak, while her eyes took in the house, the barn, the out-buildings, the orchard—every spot dear to her childhood.

And then the silence of the countryside was torn by a sudden burst of sound that made the very hills tremble.

For one full moment while the trio on the hillside kept their places, breathless, expectant, a cloud of dust and smoke obscured the view.

During this moment Cherry became conscious of the dog that lay whining at her feet. Bending low, she patted his sleek head. “Yes, I know it’s terrible,” she soothed. “You don’t like it. We don’t either. But we all must endure it for England’s sake.”

As if he understood, the dog nestled silently at her feet.

The smoke cleared. The girl sighed with relief. The bomb had fallen in the orchard. A single apple tree, one of the early pippins, had been uprooted. A slight loss. The tree was quite old.

And then with a shock it came to her that everything—the house, the barn, the dovecotes,—all about the place was old, old and very dear.

Then again her lips parted in sudden fright, for a second silver spot, larger than the first, had appeared against the sky. Watching its swift descent, she grabbed at her painfully beating heart. At first it seemed that it must fall upon the house. “Alice is there,” her reeling brain registered the thought. Then came a sense of relief. The house would be spared. Then it was to be the barn where two fine colts were housed that would receive the full force of the blow.

“No,” she sighed. “Farther up the hill.”

The bomb fell not ten feet from a small square building. Like a tree, uprooted by the blast, this tiny house leapt high in air, then collapsing, crashed to earth. At the same instant dust and smoke concealed all.

As if struck a blow from behind, the girl leapt forward, stood there tense, motionless for a period of seconds, then disregarding the loyal collie whining at her heels, went dashing down the hill.

The apparently insignificant building had once been a smoke-house. Perhaps that had been fifty years before. When Cherry was a child it had been converted into a playhouse. There, hours on end, she and her sister Alice had played with their dolls and at keeping house. They, to be sure had abandoned both dolls and playhouse long ago. But from time to time other children had come to live on the Ramsey Farm. Both playhouse and dolls had been theirs. At this moment two cute children, Tillie and Peggy, from the London slums, were staying at the Ramsey Farm. This old smoke-house was their favorite haunt. As Cherry sped down the hill allowing herself not one glance at the brightening sky, she dared not ask the question that haunted her terror-stricken mind. “Oh, God!” she whispered, “It can’t be true!”

_Chapter_ II Catbirds and Hawk

From the spot where Dave and Brand stood the ancient playhouse could not be seen. That tragedy might have befallen some member of their household they did not so much as dream. Enough that by some miracle the house and barns had been spared and that the hated enemy plane, having delivered its load, was now speeding away.

But not so fast. The speedy British Spitfire had made a broad circle and was prepared to meet the enemy head on.

As Brand Ramsey stood stiffly at attention, watching every move of those fighting planes, his fingers clenched and unclenched nervously. Not so his American companion. Standing at ease, smiling a little, his lips parted, he might have been at a tennis match.

How often, during his early days on an American farm this boy, Dave Barnes, had watched a fight between two catbirds and a hawk. How insignificant the catbirds had appeared, how terrifying, with curved beak and needle-like claws, the hawk. And yet how often, quite disheartened, the gray intruder had soared away. In the fight being fought above them now he saw the battle of catbirds and hawk. Which would win? His sympathies had ever been with the catbirds. It was so now. And yet he whispered to himself, “It’s not my war.”

His war or no, he followed every move of those birdlike things that whirling, zooming, dipping, soaring, appeared at any moment ready to crash head on and burst into flames.

Now the Spitfire was beneath the enemy, coming up. Now! Oh! Now! The boy drew a deep breath. Now the Spitfire was on the Messerschmitt’s tail. “Now!” he breathed.

Once more a sharp exclamation escaped his lips, for banking sharply, the enemy slid out of the trap. At that instant, with tail to the enemy, the Tomahawk was doing a broad circle to re-enter the scrap.

“Oh! Oh! Watch out!” Brand, the English boy shouted, as if he could call a warning to the pilot in the American plane. The Messerschmitt had turned the tables and was at the Tomahawk’s back. Brand wanted to stop his ears from the rat—tat—tat that he knew must come. Instead, he stood there mute, staring with all his might.

And then it came, a ripping, tearing burst of sound, as if the very sky was being torn to shreds.

“He—he got him!” Brand’s lips went white as the Tomahawk, after banking so sharply it seemed to stand on its right wing, went into a spin.

Only then did the American boy realize to the full that this was a battle, not a show affair that these were men and planes, not birds, and that the brave fellow in that spinning airplane was apparently about to be beaten to a pulp on the cruel earth of the hillside. Instinctively he closed his eyes and began to count,—“One—two—three.” Thirty seconds, he thought, then all will be over.

He had counted only to fifteen when a sharp cry—“Hooray!” sent his eyes wide open again.

“He—he came out of it!” Brand exulted with a wild wave of his arms.

It was true. The apparently doomed pilot had somehow pulled his plane out of that fateful spin. What was more, he was not leaving the field. Instead, he was once again climbing rapidly.

“Look!” Brand exclaimed. “That Messerschmitt has had enough! She’s climbing! She’s afraid of that Tomahawk. Thinks she can outclimb him. The Tomahawk’s motor is not so good at dizzy heights. But, boy! How they can climb! Half a mile a minute!”

They were climbing now, all three planes. The enemy plane had the lead by many hundreds of feet. First after her came the Spitfire. Then the Tomahawk.

It was an all but perpendicular race, a glorious thing to see. Slowly, surely, the game little Spitfire, seeming only a nighthawk at that distance, closed in upon the enemy. Behind her, closing in faster, faster, ever faster, was the Tomahawk.

“See! What did I tell you!” Brand’s voice rose with enthusiasm. “That Tomahawk is a climber! You Americans should be proud of that ship!”

“I suppose we are.” Dave scarcely heard. A born mathematician, he was trying by some occult system to determine the outcome of this strange race.

“In twenty seconds,” he pulled out a thin gold watch, “the Tomahawk will pass the Spitfire. Forty seconds more and—well—you’ll see.” His lips trembled as his words trailed off.

Hardly had he finished speaking when the small planes were abreast. Brand even imagined he saw the Tomahawk’s pilot wave to the other as he passed.

Forty tense seconds and then there came a ripping of the sky, longer, more terrifying than any they had yet heard. Half below, and half on the Messerschmitt’s tail, the Tomahawk was finding sweet revenge.

“That’s enough. No ship can take that and keep on flying!” the English boy breathed. At the same instant the attacking Tomahawk slipped away in a graceful spiral glide.

“What a ship!” the American boy breathed. “It can take it, and dish it out!”

The Messerschmitt had had more than enough. Black bits of wreckage began dropping from the mortally wounded plane. Among these were three larger spots, darker than the rest. Presently above these three white mushrooms blossomed against the sky. “Parachutes!” Brand exclaimed. “They’re coming down! Land somewhere up the slope. Come on! We’ve got to get them!”

Gone from Dave’s mind was the thought that this was not his war, as he sped after his companion. Two facts were registered on his mind as he raced ahead—a one-legged man using a crutch had stopped his plow-team in the field and was racing toward the slope—a large collie dog was scooting across a low meadow. The dog appeared intent upon joining the one-legged man.

_Chapter_ III Dolls and Nazis

In the meantime, quite ignoring the battle in the sky, two streaks of red and gold—Cherry the girl, and Flash the dog—had gone racing down the slope. In her golden sweater and red plaid skirt the girl seemed little more than a sprite. The collie might well have been her golden shadow. That she was quite a real person she herself knew full well. Her painfully beating heart told her that.

Even as she raced on, her eyes were searching the ruins that had once been the playhouse of her childhood. They were looking for some trace of red or blue calico,—shocking proof that her fears had been well founded and that two small girls had been in the playhouse at the time the bomb fell.

It was only after she had reached the top of the stile leading from the field to the house that she caught a loud: “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo, Cherry!”

One look, and she crumpled down on the stile steps to burst into a flood of tears, tears of pure joy.

All gay in red and blue calico Tillie and Peggy stood in the farmhouse doorway. A moment more and they had left the house to come racing toward Cherry.

In the meantime the fighting planes had gone beyond the hill, quite out of her sight. Soon she was hugging two tumble-haired young sprites to her bosom, and exclaiming: “Tillie! Peggy! You are safe! I was, Oh! So afraid!”

“But the playhouse is all blowed up.” Tillie dabbed at her eyes.

“Yes!” exclaimed Peggy, dancing a jig. “But were we bombed! And was it exciting! Just like fireworks! Only bigger! Much louder! There was smoke, and then Oops! Up went everything!”

In vast astonishment Cherry stared at this small bit of humanity from the slums of London. Her eyes were on the child for a full minute. Then, mustering up her courage she managed a low chuckle. Then, springing to her feet, she cried: “Come on! Let’s go see! We’ll make it a race!” And so the four of them, three girls and a dog, went racing away.

When at last they stood by the ruins of what had once been a grand playhouse, almost a living thing to her, Cherry was ready to weep.

How very much that playhouse had meant to her! It was only an abandoned smoke-house, with the pleasant odor of burning wood and smoking meat still clinging to it, but she had made of it a sort of second home. What grand times she and Alice had known there! And of late, how Tillie and Peggy had gloried in it! They had called it “Home of our Dolls.”

“The dolls!” Cherry exclaimed as she recalled it all. “Where are they?”

As if in answer to her appeal, the dog, Flash, went racing about to return almost at once with the remains of a doll held lightly between his teeth.

“Oh! Poor Wilhelmina!” Peggy cried. “She has lost her head!”

“Yes,” said a sober voice behind her. “And if those terrible Nazis had succeeded as they hoped to, in dropping a bomb on our house you and I would have been minus our heads too.” It was a tall, strongly built girl in her late teens who spoke. She wore a blue calico apron. Her hands were white with flour.

“Alice!” Cherry demanded, as a look of terror came into her eyes. “Do you really think they meant to bomb the house?”

“Of course they did!”

“Why? What have we done?”

“They did it because we belong to England. They hate all of England. They will destroy every bit of England if they can!” The girl’s voice rose. “But they can’t! They shall not. There will always be an England!”

At that moment the plain, strongly built girl with flour on her hands appeared transformed. No Joan of Arc could have looked stronger, more daring, than she.

Cherry looked at the headless doll and was silent.

In the meantime, racing breathlessly, the two boys watched the drifting of the white enemy parachutes across the sky. It had seemed at first that they would land not so far from the spot where they had stood. But a brisk wind carried them farther and farther away.

“It’s going to be a race,” Brand panted, “but we’ve just got to make it. They may—may be spies. They—they must not escape!”

After climbing the sloping pasture they came to a place of scattered shrubs and trees. At last the parachute nearest them vanished behind a broad beech-tree.

“Come on!” Dave spurted ahead. “It’s now or never!”

At last, bursting out from behind a clump of trees they came upon a silken bag lying on the ground. At the same time a dark shadow vanished into a clump of low shrubs. Without a word the boys separated, one going right, the other left. The clump was small. One or the other would come upon the man. And then—

It was Brand’s luck to meet the man face to face. He was young,—not more than two years Brand’s senior. There was a savage, haunted look on his face.

“All right!” he growled, showing his teeth like an angry dog, “You asked for it. You get it!” All this in guttural English. An automatic gleamed in his hand. The English boy did not move.

The automatic rose, jerkily but steadily. Now it was aimed at the boy’s feet,—now at his thigh—his belt—and now—

At that instant something with the force of an avalanche struck the Nazi flier across the knees. As he went crashing to earth the automatic exploded harmlessly, then fell into the tall grass. Ten seconds later both Brand and Dave were holding the man down, as Brand panted:

“Tha—that was a capital stroke, Dave! I sup—suppose you’d call that a tackle!”

“Right,” Dave agreed. “It’s really quite old stuff. They do it in the movies. I guess you’d call it a part of our American way of living.” He laughed softly.

Brand went over the Nazi flier for weapons. Finding none, he searched in the grass, found the automatic, then turning about, said:

“You may get up.”

The reply was an ugly snarl. But the man, who wore a pilot’s insignia, stood up.

“Mind leading the way?” Brand said to Dave.

“Certainly not.” Turning his back on the prisoner Dave started toward the farmhouse.

“All right, you. March!” Brand snapped. The prisoner followed Dave.

With Brand bringing up the rear, they had not gone a dozen paces when from somewhere, not far distant, there came a most astounding roar.

Starting in sudden shock, Brand all but dropped his weapon.