The Challenging Heights by Max Hennessy

had bought up the old Avro trainers after the war and were putting on shows about the country, risking their necks because they’d been doing it for so long they had no qualms about continuing todo so and could see it only as a means of earning a living with the skills they’d acquired. As the fun went out of Ruffsedge’s job, it grew monotonous, and Dicken began again to feel that restlessness which had driven him out of the RAF. He wasn’t depressed, but he was perplexed and seemed to be suffering from a hangover from the fighting. The war had been a new kind of war with new methods of waging it and there had been an astonishing distrust between the military and political minds and an astonishing state of muddle and confusion. But more importantly, as Hatto had warned, the way in which life as they had known it before the war had disintegrated left him in a void of bewilderment.
    He was in a state of mind he couldn’t fully understand. Conditions were different from what he’d expected them to be and it was hard to adjust. Some men clearly hadn’t. Griffiths had also left the RAF but Archard and Almonde and Tom Howarth had decided to stay in, and of the four who’d debated the subject in hospital on Armistice Night, Coetzee had gone back to South Africa all right but he’d been unable to put flying behind him after all and had killed himself flying into Table Mountain; Noble’s civil flying job had not materialised because he hadn’t had enough experience to command one and he had gone back to his old job and was now already beginning to climb the ladder in a finance house in the City of London; while Charley Wright had bought two old Avros from surplus wartime stock and was among those touring the country putting on displays. Williams had done nothing. On his first venture from hospital he had been attacked by the Spanish flu which had been raging throughout Europe and had returned to die with all his hopes unfulfilled.
    For so many men things hadn’t turned out as they’d expected and when the long-awaited list of RAF officers to whom permanent commissions were to be granted finally appeared it was baffling. First class men with distinguished fighting careers had been left out while men with little or no active service had been included. Men who had been captains during the war were senior to men who’d been majors, while lieutenants were senior to captains. Diplock’s name on the list made Dicken shudder.
     
    The Berlin hotel where he was staying provided plenty of comfort but he was bored with it and, feeling the need to take his mind off his problems, he telephoned a girl he’d got to know by the name of Janzi Lechner, who lived at Spandau and worked at the American Embassy. She was petite, dark-haired and spoke excellent English and they decided they’d try The Pinguin, a night club she knew. But as they pushed into the smoky atmosphere they found the place in an uproar. A man wearing a flying helmet and leather jacket was riding a motor cycle round the tables and women were standing on their chairs, screaming, while the men were shouting with laughter.
    ‘Oh, Gott,’ Janzi said. ‘That’s Erni!’
    ‘Who’s Erni?’
    ‘He’s a flier. He calls it dogfighting on the ground.’
    The manager, his assistant and the waiters finally cornered the motor cyclist and persuaded him to let them have the machine, but, far from subdued, he picked up a pile of plates from the nearest table and began to juggle with them.
    Janzi began to laugh again. ‘They say that during the war he once sprayed petrol under the tail of the dog of a general who was inspecting them. He caused as much uproar at the inspection as he does nowadays in night clubs and at airfields. The girl with him’s Lo Zink, his wife. During the war he used to have her name painted on the side of his machine.’
    Dicken’s ears pricked at an old memory. ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘Udet. Erni Udet. He was second only to Richthofen at shooting