The Hornet's Sting (15 page)

This was just the type of crisis for which the broomstick and giant white towel had been designed. It wasn’t for nothing that they had suffered the effects of the pierced cockpit roof all the way across the North Sea. Sneum looked up to check that their symbol of goodwill was still fluttering above them. To his consternation, though, the huge towel had been reduced to the size of a handkerchief—and a ragged, dirty one at that. To British eyes, there would be nothing to distinguish them from the enemy. ‘That wasn’t a good moment,’ Tommy remembered later with considerable understatement.

As they wondered what they could do to avoid being blasted out of the sky, they flew over a small harbor and found themselves just above the rooftops of the town. But something wasn’t right about the scene below them. ‘Strange, I can’t see a soul down there,’ observed Kjeld.

Then Sneum realized what was happening. ‘They take cover in an air-raid.’ Pedersen still looked confused. ‘It’s because o us.’

The Spitfires came down for a closer look, presumably trying to decide whether to blow the Hornet Moth to pieces. If they hadn’t been crossing the town, that might have happened already. Tommy recalled: ‘We waved to them and they signalled to us, but we knew we were still in trouble.’ One Spitfire pilot responded by pointing downwards. ‘Land or we’ll open fire’ appeared to be the message. As Sneum headed for gently rising fields behind the town, the Spitfires and Hurricanes climbed high above the mystery intruder, though they remained in a perfect position to strike. Then a commotion on the ground caused the Danes to look down again. The Hornet couldn’t have been more than thirty meters in the air as the latest threat showed itself below them. Sneum explained: ‘I saw some soldiers running into huts and running out again with rifles. I got scared. Some trigger-happy idiot was going to try to shoot us down just for the honor of being able to boast for the rest of his life: “I shot down a plane during the war with nothing more than a rifle.” At such close range, any good shot could not only have hit the plane and ignited all the loose fuel; they could have hit our bodies, too.’ Fortunately for Tommy and Kjeld, however, this makeshift British firing squad didn’t seem able to shoot straight. And Tommy wasn’t going to give them any time to practise: ‘I dived down so they couldn’t see me any more and hopped over hedges.’

By the time he climbed again, he was already out of range, though the Spitfires and Hurricanes responded to the manoeuvre with fresh menace. All Sneum wanted to do was land the plane without starting a fire, and then explain himself to the British personally. In the morning haze, he spotted a suitable field and told Kjeld to brace himself. As he eased down the nose, however, there was panic below: ‘The field came alive and I realized the smoothlooking surface I had identified was covered in sheep.’ Then, looking ahead, the Danes saw that their epic flight was about to end just as it had begun, with Sneum struggling to avoid potentially lethal wires (this time strung from telephone poles). Pedersen could hardly bear to watch, but once again his friend’s reflexes saved them with only meters to spare. One more road, one more hedgerow and then they were over a field of ankle-high corn. If Sneum could just drop the Moth gently down it would all be over.

The first brush with land was a magical moment, though they should have known better than to think it had guaranteed their safety. The Hornet rumbled on noisily, the whole plane vibrating as if she were about to disintegrate in protest at what she had been forced to endure. Pedersen expressed his fear that the speed alone might do them both serious damage if Sneum couldn’t bring the machine under control. A country road lay ahead, at a right angle to their approach. Fighting a final battle with a plane that had performed miracles, Tommy slowed her just in time. The Hornet Moth came to a stop just meters from the hedge that marked the edge of the field.

They had done it, and they sat for a moment in silence. Sneum glanced at his watch. It was 5.30 a.m. on 22 June 1941. The crossing had been six hours and five minutes of continuous flight in a single-engine aircraft; nearly eight hundred kilometers, almost entirely over water. They had achieved the impossible. Had they known it, they could have celebrated an unofficial aviation world record. ‘We didn’t know anything about that at the time. We were just happy to be alive,’ admitted Sneum.

With rubbery legs and stiff backs, the Danish pilots climbed down and collapsed briefly into each other’s arms. Then they remembered that there ppearances to be maintained. Tommy revealed: ‘We had fresh white shirts and uniform jackets folded behind our seats, and in our jacket pocket we each had a tie, which we proceeded to put on. We wanted to be presentable, so that we would be treated like gentlemen.’

Once they considered themselves sufficiently smart, they locked the aircraft and took a short stroll to help their circulation. For a few surreal minutes, it was as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Then they spotted a farm laborer walking down the road, apparently on his way to work. He didn’t look very different from the men at Elseminde. When they called him over, however, he seemed startled.

Sneum spoke first. ‘Can you please tell us where we are?’

‘No,’ came the reply. It was a simple word, but the worker pronounced it in a way that didn’t sound English to Tommy. And the context seemed even more bizarre.

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you know where we are?’ asked Pedersen.

‘Of course I do. I’m not stupid, man.’

‘Then why won’t you tell us?’ asked Sneum.

‘I’m not prepared to give that kind of information to strangers,’ said the farm worker. ‘Don’t you know? There’s a war on.’

‘
Y
ES, WE KNOW there’s a war on,’ Tommy said patiently. ‘But we’d still like to know where we are.’

‘I can’t tell you,’ replied the farm laborer, eyeing the new arrivals suspiciously.

Partly because the Danish pilots were so happy to be alive after all they had been through, they weren’t slow to see the funny side of this exchange.

Pedersen tried his luck. ‘Please just tell us if we’re in England or Scotland,’ he asked gently.

There was a moment’s silence, as though the laborer were searching for a path between treason and rudeness. ‘England,’ came the resentful answer at last. ‘That’s all I’m saying. You’ll make me late for work.’

As the local hurried away, Tommy and Kjeld couldn’t help but share a smile. And they were no less amused by the sight of an elderly Home Guard officer, a rifle on his back, racing towards them on a bicycle. He saluted, dismounted, looked more closely at their uniforms—and promptly pointed his rifle at them. ‘Where the bloody hell have you two come from?’ he demanded.

‘Denmark,’ said Pedersen.

‘Rubbish! Don’t give me that,’ replied the Home Guard officer, and quickly called for reinforcements on his field telephone.

No one seemed to know quite what to do while they all waited for more men to arrive; so for a few strangely silent minutes, Sneum and Pedersen playealong with the idea that they had been captured single-handedly by their grey-haired adversary.

Tommy had landed in a cornfield belonging to Bullock Hall Farm, which wasn’t far from RAF Acklington. Two Land Rovers appeared from the air base, an RAF officer and his driver in each one. Sneum thought it better to keep his pistol concealed under his jacket, just in case relations took a sudden turn for the worse.

‘Identify yourselves,’ demanded the first officer to reach them. It was as though they had landed from another planet.

‘Flight Lieutenants Sneum and Pedersen, Danish Fleet Air Arm, at your service,’ said Tommy, offering his hand. ‘We’re here to help you fight Hitler. We’ve just flown across the North Sea.’

‘In that?’ The second officer looked incredulous as he studied the flimsy-looking Hornet Moth. ‘Not a chance.’ He had already drawn his pistol.

Tommy and Kjeld weren’t smiling any more, though they managed to remain composed. ‘That’s exactly what we did,’ explained Sneum patiently. ‘We’ve come all the way from Denmark, and we’ve brought some important film of German installations in our country.’ He waited for the British officer’s expression to change. It didn’t.

‘Are you armed?’ The first English officer had clearly decided to treat the intruders as enemy spies until they proved otherwise.

Reluctantly, Tommy handed over his weapon. ‘Look, if you don’t want us, we’ll carry on to America and to hell with you,’ he said.

Later, Sneum revealed: ‘I was bloody angry and disgusted with their attitude. Christ Almighty, we had just risked our lives in so many different ways to get there, and now we were being treated like Nazis.’

Tommy pointed the British officers in the direction of the precious undeveloped film and the intelligence files, which were still tucked away in the cockpit. Everything was loaded into the Land Rovers before the crestfallen pilots were driven away. They didn’t know it, but neither man would ever see their precious Hornet Moth again. Within half an hour they were in the mess at RAF Acklington, facing a full English breakfast and plenty of pointing and staring from groups of intrigued local pilots. Some spoke in an uneasy whisper, and Tommy thought he heard at least one refer to them as ‘German bastards.’ But he couldn’t fully trust his ears after a night of being pounded by the elements and deafened by the Hornet’s tiny but noisy engine.

Finally a tall, dashing pilot marched confidently over to their table. He said he was Canadian, and had flown one of the Spitfires which had intercepted them. He had been nominated to ask a question, he explained. ‘Some of the guys are wondering ... you see we’ve taken a good look at your, err, plane.’ The derisive tone annoyed Tommy intensely. ‘What we can’t work out is this: where, exactly, have you guys come from?’

‘Denmark,’ repeated Sneum.

The Canadian laughed. ‘Impossible.’

The two exhausted Danes watched the Spitfire pilot return to his cronies and relay the details of their brief exchange. Then a voice from the huddle rang across the canteen. ‘Well, if you ask me, they’re German spies.’

The room fell silent. Sneum was seething. He and Kjeld had been in England barely an hour, yet already they had been shot at and accused of treachery.

Despite the insults, their hosts weren’t without compassion: the Danes were shown to beds in the sick bay, and invited to sleep until lunchtime. The fresh linen felt luxurious, though they didn’t stay awake long enough to savour it.

Back in Denmark, Lieutenant Poul Andersen called the police and reported that his plane had been stolen. The farmer was interrogated later that day by policemen from Odense. Their superiors from Copenhagen, and even the Germans, were informed. The authorities correctly suspected that Andersen had cooperated with the ‘thieves’, but he was a hard man and a capable actor—he managed to summon passable anger when required to express his feelings for whoever had made off with the Hornet Moth, his pride and joy. Since neither the Danish police nor the Germans had any concrete proof that Andersen had been involved, they had little choice but to accept his story and let him go about his business.

Andersen’s consolation for his interrogation came that evening, when he tuned in to the BBC: ‘Two Danes have arrived in England this morning,’ the broadcaster announced. He didn’t elaborate. For Andersen, though, the brief message confirmed that the risks they had all taken to defy the Nazi occupation had been worthwhile. He was confident he knew precisely who those ‘two Danes’ were; and that meant his Hornet Moth had made it in one piece, too. Perhaps he allowed himself to believe that he would get the plane back at the end of the war. At that moment in 1941, however, the recovery of his property wasn’t important. He had done something to undermine the Germans, and he could allow his granite features to crack into a smile of satisfaction. His stubborn little sports plane had defied the odds, and helped to make the dreams of two brave if slightly crazy young men come true.