The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

a French area of operations. In fact orders were sent recalling them back to
north-west France on the night of the 9th, but were then cancelled.
So it was that at 5 a.m. the pilots of 87 Squadron awoke at Senon to the
sound of ack-ack guns and then, more menacingly, the intense crump of
bombs exploding, which shook the ground and tents in which the pilots had
been sleeping. Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont, nineteen years old, had already had
an interrupted night as he had been feeling increasingly unwell, and had
only just got to sleep when the explosions began.
‘Ack-ack–’ell!’ shouted his tent partner, Johnny Cock, as more
explosions sent the lamp in the middle of their tent swinging. A moment
later, Johnny had disappeared outside. Clutching his stomach, Bee
followed, to find a group of pyjama-clad pilots standing in a clearing in the
trees beside the airfield, gazing up at the sky as a formation of German
bombers thundered overhead.
Minutes later, the pilots were scrambled, hastily putting on flying gear
over their pyjamas and running for their Hurricanes as the groundcrew
started up their machines. There could be no flying for Bee, however, who,
wracked by dysentery, was forced to return groaning to his camp bed; it was
not the first time he or other pilots had suffered because of the poor
standard of conditions at their airfields in France.
Bee may have been prostrate in his tent, but before 6 a.m., the rest of
the 87 Squadron pilots were already engaged in fighting over Thionville
near the Luxembourg border. ‘The boys got four Huns before breakfast,’
noted Bee, ‘and Voase Jeff was attacked by an Me 109 2 while force-landing
with a damaged radiator, but he got away with it.’ Voase Jeff had been hit
earlier by return fire from a Dornier 17.
To the west, at airfields spread through northern France behind the BEF,
the main part of the RAF Air Component was also now hastily preparing to
carry out its duty in support of the BEF. At Méharicourt to the south-east of
Amiens in the Somme Valley, 18 Squadron of twin-engine Blenheims were
slightly slower off the mark, however. Pilot Officer Arthur Hughes, a tall,
lean-faced 24-year-old, was only woken at 7 a.m. when the wireless in his
room was switched on. Still half asleep, he listened drowsily to the news
until realizing that the announcer was talking about the invasion of Holland
and Belgium. Jumping out of bed, he hurriedly dressed wondering whether
it would be the last time he performed such a routine.