Biggles and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

“Biggles! Put down that cat!” Group Captain Wilkinson stormed into the officer’s mess with a looked that could curdle ennui.

“It may be a spy!” Biggles stared closely into the cat’s eyes as it struggled to escape. “I caught it listening to me!”

      “Put it down, I have a mission for you,” Wilkinson threw a briefcase on the table and sat down with a thump.

“Can I take the cat? Could be a double agent?”

“No,” snapped Wilkinson, “now sit down before I shoot you and the cat.”

The cat flew out the window the instant it was let go. “There see!” Biggles pointed. “Escaping custody proves it is guilty.”

“Shut up Biggles, this is important.”

“So, am I - I’m the famous Biggles!”

“Which is why I’m risking you and not someone I might miss.” Wilkinson slid a map across the desk and drew a circle around the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran on the Persian Gulf. “You are to be equipped with only a Yakovlev UT-2 monoplane and a Russian camera. We need you to fly over Iran and take photos and destroy the nuclear plant. Either way, the plant will be destroyed.”

Biggles looked quizzically at the ceiling.

“Bother,” he whistled, “but blow me down with a bunch of trifoliate gorse berries, but how am I supposed to destroy a nuclear plant with just a camera.”

“This is part of the plan, since the town of Bushehr has over 100,000 troops stationed around it, armed with Russian ground to air missiles, state of the art phase array radar and a terrain so rugged camels commit ritual suicide rather than traverse it. You will almost certainly fail.”

Biggles rolled his eyes and looked wistfully at the window the cat had left through.

“Still not following you, old strumpet.”

“You are to be equipped with a Russian Lubitel 166 Universal single reflex camera. In advent of your certain capture or death, the spy mission will be blamed on the Russians and almost certainly start a small war between our good friends the Russians and our not so good enemies the Iranians. In the ensuing fog of war we are allowing our extremely good friends the Israelis to fly in and bomb the crap out the place and the world will be saved.”

“Saved?”

“Saved by Biggles, I mean,” smirked the Group Captain.

“I’ll do it!” Biggles jumped up, “after all saving the world is what I do! Hang on, didn’t I do this two chapters ago?”

“Yes, which is why the Iranians will not expect us to try the same plot twice!”

The Yakovlev UT-2 turned out to be an open two-seater, cockpit trainer left over from the Great Patriotic War, with all the handling characteristics of an Abyssinian goat in a windstorm. Biggles had tied the cat into the passenger seat and decided to call it ‘Copilot Biggles’ after himself; rationalizing if you are going to call a cat something - Biggles is as good a name as any.

“Pilot Biggles to Copilot Biggles, do you read copilot?” Biggles said into the mouthpiece once they had reached 10,000 feet.

“Meow!” the cat shrieked in terror as it struggled to free itself from the complex of webbing Biggles had used to tie it in.

“Meow it is, old bean,” Biggles smoked a pipe and flew the airplane with his feet. He wasn’t the famous Biggles for nothing. “What’s our E.T.A.?”

“Meooow!”

“That soon, still time enough for a spot of tea, do you want Irish Breakfast or Earl Grey? I expect you’ll want milk.”

The cup of tea blew straight out of the cup and covered the moggy in Irish Breakfast. The sound of the aircraft, the rush of the wind, and the presence of captain James Bigglesworth was too much for it and it relieved itself at every opportunity. The ground crew was going to have a fit when they saw the cockpit.

They soon flew into a sandstorm that not only filled the intake valves, it also covered the instruments and swamped the cockpit with sand up to the ankles. Under any other pilot, the plane would have gone down faster than an archdeacon on the under-fifteen rugby team, but Biggles managed to achieve the impossible by redirecting the exhaust pipe to the front of the intake and blew all the sand out - quicker than the above mentioned archdeacon discovering the Parents and Friends Association was due in the Gym in five minutes.

Meanwhile the cat had wriggled itself free and was climbing out on the wing, to get as far away as possible from the madman in the cockpit. Biggles was having none of this, put the plane on autopilot, an instrument the plane didn’t possess and joined the cat on the wing for a spot of catch-the-frenzied-moggy, before finally dragging it back to the cockpit and tying it back in again. Just in time to stop the plane nose-diving into the side of a mountain.

Three minutes later the Ack-Ack over Bushehr opened up with all the fury of Madeline College all girls hockey team, as 100,000 Iranian troops let fire with enough ground to air missiles to bring down a category nine hurricane.

“I say Copilot Biggles!” Biggles whistled through his moustache, “the blighters are expecting us.” As he ducked and weaved through the maelstrom of gyrating missiles with all the aplomb of Bradman discovering a dozen Bengal tigers hurtling down the pitch.

That Biggles was able to avoid be hit while flying a fifty year old plane, says as much about the inadequate training the Iranians gave their troops as it did about how amazing was the famous Biggles. It couldn’t last long, and it didn’t, as the plane suddenly gave up the ghost and pointed directly to the ground; a move the Iranian guards were not expecting as the plane came screaming towards them, accompanied by the caterwauling of both Biggles and his co-pilot. At the last moment, Biggles pulled a 90 degree turn out of the exhaust pipe and landed on the roof of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.

It was the sort of move that only a Biggles could have achieved.

Instantly the anti-aircraft fire ceased as dozens of senior Iranian commanders stared anxiously at a plane perilously sitting on the Iranian nuclear power plant.

Biggles pulled the goggles onto his leather helmet and looked about to size up the situation. He was sitting on a giant concrete egg, the primary reactor of the power station and beneath him two megawatt thermonuclear reactors were slumbering. In every direction 100,000 Iranian soldiers were equipped with their Khaybar KH2002 assault rifles, or Saegheh 40 mm anti-personnel rockets, or most importantly Mersad Surface-to-air missiles and all were pointing them back at him. He also noticed that any move on his part meant the plane creaked ominously.

It was at this point the cat meowed.

“No Copilot Biggles!” Biggles yelled, “Now is not the time for kitty-litter!”

A bullhorn came sounding up the side of the dome.

“Who is that? Is this war?” the Iranian general yelled.

“I’m pilot Biggles and this is copilot Biggles.”

“Wait - which Biggles is the Biggles?”

“Both Biggles is the Biggles!”

“There is only one Biggles!”

“That’s me!” yelled Biggles getting irate.

“Then who is the other Biggles?”

“The copilot!”

A subdued whispering could be heard over the loudspeaker, until after some shoving and fierce punching, another general grabbed the handset. “Who is flying the plane?”

“I am! The famous Biggles!”

“And who’s the copilot?”

“The not so famous Biggles, well not yet, but after today who knows.”

“Is this an invasion?”

“Is this Iran?”

“Yes.”

Biggles peeked over the side of the plane. “Then no not yet, but if you want to, you can surrender.”

Again there was fierce muttering from behind the bullhorn, followed by a squawk as someone pushed the wrong button.

“We are holding you hostage, until the West surrenders.”

“Righty-ho!”

Biggles stared furiously at the control avionics. “Fine pickle we’re in here Co-pilot Biggles.” He pursed his lips. “Speaking of food, time for a spot of tiffin. Do you have the marmalade?”

The cat continued rolling its eyes in fear and bit at the harness. Biggles searched around the cockpit for anything that resembled a tin of marmalade, then on reflection remembered he had no muffins to consume it with. He leaned over the side of the plane and yelled once more at his captors.

“I didn’t bring the muffins, have you got any?” he whistled through his moustache.

Once more there was a jostling around the tannoy and each general fought for supremacy over the only functional bit of kit in the Iranian army.

“If you surrender, we have a lot for muffins down here, and cucumber sandwiches as well.”

“Toasted or with crusts?” Biggles grinned.

“Both!”

“Ha! You’ll need to get up early than that to fool the famous Biggles. Cucumber sandwiches are neither toasted nor crusted. Show me your muffins!”

This oddly translated into Iranian as an inexcusable insult and one of the generals would have ordered the Bofors 40mm antiaircraft guns to open fire on Biggles on the nuclear reactor if the other generals had not wrestled him to the ground.

It was a classic Biggles Impossible Situation, the sort of unattainable adventure that only a Biggles could get himself into and then get himself out of without ending up in a box, and in this case there were two Biggles. The cat once more worked itself into a frenzy and escaped from its complex of webbings and dried cat vomit. Then it leaped out of the passengers seat and raced out to the wing where it hissed angrily and defecated over the side.

“That’s it copilot Biggles,” Biggles grinned, “you show them.” Then he shrieked as the plane started tipping ever so slightly under the weight of the cat. “Stop showing them old bean! I can’t trim the airspeed! Oh wait there is no airspeed!”

The ancient plane slowly inclined on top of the enormous dome, and everyone held their breath, until the cat –like all cats– ran up to the highest point around which was the other wing. Immediately the plane started tipping in the other direction.

All the Iranian commandos oohed and aahed as the plane seesawed back and forth, they all started leaning from one side to the other matching the cadence of the craft.

The cat started slipping on the fabric of the plane and accordingly leapt onto the only thing with any purchase, which turned out to be the leather helmet on Biggles’s head.

“Waaaaaaaah!” he screamed as needle sharp claws bit into his scalp. Biggles threw out his hands in sharp pain; one of them collided with the start button just as the plane started slipping down the side of dome.

“Waaaaaaaah!” screamed 100,000 Iranians as the screech of the airframe dragged itself down the concrete like the world’s largest nails on the world’s largest blackboard.

The engine started just as the plane slipped off the side of the nuclear plant and it picked up just enough airspeed to avoid smacking to the ground like a dollop of strawberry jam.

“Gory! Gory! What a terrible way to die!” Biggles grinned manically he raced above the heads of the Iranian generals.

“Hit the deck!” came the sole voice of the leading general as the plane’s propeller missed him by inches. Unfortunately, this was not only broadcast over the tannoy but also radioed to every platoon within a hundred miles, this had the overwhelming result that everyone was too busy spitting out sand to open fire, and Biggles had slipped across the Persian Gulf before anyone had the good sense to shoot him down.

Biggles was court-martialed for failing the mission and the cat was awarded the King George Cross for gallantry in the face of overwhelming stupidity.

Copyright reserved by Jim O’Brien © 

Biggles and the Undersand Railway

Biggles eventually escaped from the Iranian Secret police by standing outside his hotel and catching the nine o’clock bus to Teheran. He found himself sitting at the back of the bus, between a flock of goats and an enormous woman who ate nothing but fried chicken. To Biggles consternation, all of the busses occupants’ -including the driver- spent the entire journey turned around in their seats, asking him about British soap operas, and most importantly the difference between Coronation and Ramsay Streets.

“But how can you people even have heard of Coronation Street?” Biggles shifted uncomfortably as chicken-fat dripped on one shoulder and goats peed on the other.

“Coronation Street is the greatest art form that is exported to the Middle East,” one learned bearded old woman explained.

“It is?” Biggles said more in amazement than inquiry. “Haven’t you heard of Shakespeare?”

“Oh yes,” she wheezed, “but only in Coronation Street are ugly old women portrayed in a noble way. Shakespeare makes them all in to …well ugly crones. Here in Iran, old women are now seen as interesting complex personalities. This is all due to Coronation Street.”

“I never saw that one coming.”

“Great art does that,” she agreed.

Every few kilometers the bus driver would suddenly remember he was a bus driver, and wildly drag the steering wheel around to avoid hit the oncoming traffic, potholes, dead camels, low flying cruise missiles, and because it kept the bus going in a forward direction. This had the effect of turning the inside of the bus into the interior of a space ship reentering orbit as chickens, goats and Biggles flew about in glorious abandon.

“Does he always drive like this?” Biggles grabbed an overhanging strap to stop being catapulted through the front window.

“How else could he drive?” came a hyperbolic reply.

“But isn’t it dangerous?”

“More dangerous than if he didn’t avoid crashing?”

They stopped for a lunch break and fixed the axle, which had just fallen off. Biggles looked about the mountains that soared around him and wondered if this was near Kent.

“Cigarettes?” a voice floated at his elbow.

He looked down and to his surprise a man shuffling about on a cardboard mat, holding up a box of cigarettes. Both of his legs were missing and his face was horribly scarred from phosphorus burns, he looked like the victim of a napalm attack.

“What on Earth happened to you?” Biggles almost shrieked.

“War.”

“You fought in the War?”

“No, I was late for work and got run over by a tank,” the victim said sarcastically, “of course it was the War. Want to buy some cigarettes?”

“Which War?”

“Who cares which war, they’re all the same.”

“No, they’re not,” Biggles, insisted, “a war can be just, or unjust, moral or immoral. And there are the wars I fight on, the good ones.”

“Look,” the poor wretch wearily explained. “In war there four sides.”

“Don’t you mean two?”

“If you’d shut up, buy some cigarettes and let me explain.”

“Oh right, um, lets say a pound?” Biggles handed over some of the counterfeit Iranian Rials he had once dropped on a bombing round.

“In war,” the victim explained, “there are four sides. The winners, the losers, the greedy blood sucking merchants and the victims, now guess which group I belong to?”

“Greedy blood sucking merchants?” Biggles erred on the side of caution as he lit up a Chesterfield.

“Do I look like a greedy blood sucking war merchant?” the cripple asked in amazement.

“Do cigarettes cause cancer?”

“Well, yes.”

“Are you the result of a war?”

“Obviously.”

“And did you just make a profit?”

“Only a tiny one,” the veteran stared up with an angry look, “I have to eat and feed my wife and children.”

“Ergo, you are a merchant of war,” grinned Biggles and ran off before the cripple could bite his ankles.

“You feckin’ English bastard!” was all the poor fellow could come up with, as he tried to drag himself after Biggles.

The bus journey had started again, once Biggles commandeered the bus driver’s seat, by pointing out that as an Ace pilot he could fly anything even a runaway bus, as he kicked the driver out the door, and tore off down the road with passengers and the driver in hot pursuit.

“It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go.” Biggles merrily sang, “It's a long way to Tipperary. To the sweetest girl I know!” then he paused as he mentally calculated the distance to Tipperary.

“Hey,” he said to himself. “It really is a long way to Tipperary.”

Swerved the bus round and headed back towards Iraq and the officer’s mess in Baghdad.

“Sorry” he called out as he roared past the passengers. “I’m late for snooker night.”

Before disappearing in a storm of dust over the horizon. It all would have been another splendid escape - if he hadn’t run out of diesel at the very hotel he had escaped from the day before.

Copyright reserved by Jim O’Brien ©

Biggles Escapes!

For three days Biggles had wandered across the desert looking for rescue or at least a bus. It had gotten to the point where he wanted to be captured again. He had escaped from the Iranian secret police three nights before, by simply going outside for a cigarette, while they were watching some obscure Egyptian soap opera. The show was so incomprehensible it featured a young woman wearing nothing but a towel, who seemed to spend her entire life singing about a boy who had run off with a camel driver. Biggles had gotten bored waiting for her to take off the towel. Since he could make neither head nor tail out of, he went for a walk, and after trudging over a sand dune to see what was on the other side; he had become completely and utterly lost. So out of sheer force of habit, he escaped and now he wanted to be caught again as that was his best chance to making it back to old Blighty.

At this moment, he was lying at the top of a sand dune watching a herd of sheep, and he was getting fed up with waiting to be captured. More to the point he wanted a good cup of tea, which was harder to find in this country than a man who wasn’t wearing a dress.

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” Biggles gave up and ran down the sand dune to the sheepherder waving his arms in the air and shouting hallo. The herdsman took one look at the stranger and began shooting at him. Biggles ran straight back up the dune and hid behind a rock. “I say,” he said to himself, “what happened to the Geneva Convention?”

At the bottom of the hill, the sheepherder also hid behind a rock and for several minutes they cautiously watched each other. The herdsman was taking no chances, since over the last two weeks, strange planes had been coming out of nowhere strafing and bombing his herd and he was in no mood for idle conversation with foreigners.

“I say!” Biggles finally called out, “do you know the way to Piccadilly?”

The sharp retort of the rifle coincided with Biggles’ flying cap being knocked off.

“I take it that’s a no,” Biggles picked up his cap and put it back on, to his annoyance he discovered the bullet had knocked off his Snoopy badge. He called out again from behind the rock. “By the way, I’m Biggles, so pleased to meet you.”

The herdsman felt some confusion, as normally people always shot back at this point. A stranger stopping in the middle of the desert just for a conversation, either meant he was a cousin - and Biggles certainly didn’t look like a cousin - or he was an enemy, and Biggles seemed too incompetent for either.

Maybe was he a rug salesman and a good rug salesman was hard to find.

“Hallo, foreigner!” he called out. “Have you carpets to sell?”

“Sorry Mister Abdullah,” Biggles called back jokingly, “I left them in the pickup truck back in Sussex.”

The herdsman, whose incredibly name really was Abdullah, stood up and looked with surprise up the hill. He wondered how on earth the foreigner knew his name, and more to the point where was Sussex. Before too long Biggles was invited down to the camp for tea and sheep’s eyeballs.

Biggles held one of the eyeballs up to his face.

“It’s staring at me.”

“That mean’s it is happy to see you,” laughed Abdullah.

“What about the sheep?” Biggles was nervous.

“The sheep is not happy to see you,” and Abdullah clapped his hands at the absurdity of foreigners.

Biggles put it in his mouth and slowly bit down on it. It popped like a squishy sea polyp and burst open. He shuddered as he swallowed it.

“Rather tasty,” he managed gasping, “I don’t suppose you know where I could find a plane.”

Abdullah looked at him with some anger.

“There have been planes attacking my sheep,” he picked up his old carbine, “do you know anything about this? I only have all these eyeballs, because I took them from the fly blown carcasses of all the dead ones.”

Biggles gagged on the next eyeball.

“No, not a bit,” he lied between retches, as he felt his taste buds turn into maggots “do you have any salt?”

 

The next day Abdullah showed him how to ride camels and lead him across the desert. The Sun poured down upon the desert with such a villainous heat that at one point Biggles, in delirium thought he was playing County Cricket for Sheffield and would have taken the field to bat if Abdullah hadn’t kept dragging him back on the saddle. Crows circled in the sky cawing incessantly until Abdullah shot one and gave it to Biggles for lunch.

“Aren’t you having any?” asked Biggles as he poked at his fried crow.

“It is forbidden,” grinned Abdullah, “but it is not forbidden to serve it to unbelievers.”

“Pretty sure they wouldn’t serve this at Maxim’s. It could do with a bottle of Chablis.”

“Have you a wife, Biggles of the air?” asked Abdullah.

“Yes, I call her Mrs. Biggles, I seem to have forgot her original name years ago.”

“Is she as beautiful as a falcon soaring above an oasis?”

“More of a vulture hovering over a gasworks.”

“These are things I know not of,” muttered Abdullah. “Is your country a great country?”

“Only when we beat the Australians at cricket,” Biggles crunched down on a wing, “the rest of the time we have to explain the whole Empire thingy, and how the sun never sets - although of course it has, and continues to set with unfailing regularity.”

“Strange is your world.”

“Even stranger is your cooking.”

“There is a hotel near here, where I am told there is good cooking.”

“As long as the television doesn’t show endless reruns of Egyptian soaps.”

Which of course it did, being the same hotel he had absconded from four days beforehand. Oddly the Secret Police never noticed he was missing and were still watching the same obscure Egyptian soap opera - even odder still the girl was wearing the same towel and singing the same song about the camel driver’s boy.

Copyright reserved by Jim O’Brien ©

In which Biggles is captured – yet again

Biggle’s plane came in too low; so low he accidentally landed on soccer field in the middle of a game, and was promptly arrested by the Iranian umpire for being offside. 

“Can you tell me your name, please,” the Iranian police captain sighed after Biggles had been arrested and held at the local station.

“Shan’t,” said Biggles folding his arms across his chest defiantly.

The captain rubbed his forehead with both his hands, and sighed again.

“You’re at least supposed to tell us your name, rank and serial number.” He wearily explained for the ninth time. “As put down in the Geneva Convention on …”

“Shan’t,” Biggles poked out his tongue. “You jolly Abdullahs shot me down again.”

The captain asked over his shoulder to another guard, “Is he talking about Afghanistan's foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah?” but the other guard shrugged his shoulders and continued drinking his tea.

“Look my name isn’t Abdullah,” the captain began doodling on the paper, “my name is Captain Arash. I don’t even know anyone called Abdullah. I’m a Persian. Now for the love of God, can you please tell me your name?”

“What about the bally holes in my plane?” Biggles jabbed with his index finger on the table, “you can’t get them fixed down the local bike shop you know!”

“You invade Iranian airspace, attack a field of sheep, and land in the middle of the quarter-final match between Iran and Kazakhstan of the Asia-Cup. Why shouldn’t we shoot at your plane?”

“What about my cup of tea?” Biggles became petulant.

“It’s right there in front of you, with milk even.”

“Smell’s like camel,” Biggles poked his tongue at it.

“Yes,” the captain rested his head on his hands and sighed with infinite patience “well, we couldn’t get any milk from a Jersey cow as you requested, so we did the best we could and milked a donkey. It’s perfectly good, although we do prefer only sugar with our tea.”

“Any biscuits?”

The captain opened a box of Ferrero Rocher Chocolates.

“Will these do?”

“Ooh Ferrero-Rocher,” Biggles grinned as he peeled one open.

“Look, someone from Savama,” the captain almost pleaded with Biggles, “which is the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security will soon be here, and they torture people, so you’re much better off telling me who you are or they might just tear it out of you.”

“You cads!” shrieked Biggles, “I’ve been tortured by Russians, Italian waiters, French taxi drivers and even the occasional German High command - and trust me when it comes to being tortured the Huns know or two. Nobody tortures Biggles, …oh bugger.”

“Biggles,” Captain Arash wrote this down, “with one or two ‘g’?”

“Ahem - two.”

“Rhymes with giggles?”

“You know, I’ve never noticed that before.”

The captain looked at Biggles studiously for several minutes, trying to recall something, as Biggles face became more and more covered with chocolate.

“You’re not the same Biggles we shot down a month ago, are you? The one who attacked a donkey and a field of sunflowers? The one who blew up Persepolis - one of our most treasured monuments, considered one of the great archaeological sites.  The one who escaped by wearing a Burqa, after we had already handed him back to the British, so we had to hand him back twice? Not, that Biggles?”

Biggles’ face went bright red and he looked awkwardly at the ceiling fan.

“No, that name is just a coincidence,” Biggles lied unconvincingly. “You’re thinking of Rupert Biggles, I on the other hand am James Bigglesworth, different chap altogether.”

“James Bigglesworth,” the Captain wrote down meticulously.

“Oh bother!”

“And can you tell me why you invaded Iranian airspace?”

“Is this Iran?” Biggles looked startled. “I thought it was Egypt.”

“Well, can you tell me why you invaded Egyptian airspace?”

“I thought it was on the way to Syria.”

“And have you any reason for invading Syrian airspace.”

“I was meeting a chap about a dog.”

“So, let me get this straight, you were flying to Syria using a British Royal Airforce Harrier II jumpjet,” the captain looked skeptical, “armed with Air to Surface missles and Paveway IV airburst bombs. Just to meet a man about a dog?”

“How on earth did you know all that?”

“Your logbook says,” the Captain opened up a small notebook, “and I quote, ‘fly Harrier II jump jet to Iran, and attack sheep with Air to Surface missiles and Paveway IV airburst bombs. Mister Abdullah won’t know what hit him. Be back in time for snooker with Algy and Ginger. I’m so spiffing. Biggles.’.”

“If you bally well knew all this,” Biggles looked annoyed, “why in blazes are you asking me?”

“When dealing with madmen, it pays to check your facts.” The Captained smiled. “You’re going to put into a hotel until such time as your government can explain why you are attacking all the sheep in my country.”

“What about those jolly Savamas, the secret police chaps,” Biggles quizzed worriedly, “the ones you said were going to torture me?”

“I just did,” Captain Arash, grinned, “I actually am in the Savama. You see, Captain Biggles we’re not idiots, my culture is over four thousand years old, it is comparable to Egypt, India and the ancient Greece. The Persian Empire was, and perhaps one day will be again, as complicated and vast as you could imagine. We are as sophisticated a people as you are ever likely to meet, and while the American press may seek to demonize us, a lot of us simply are not the monsters that we have been portrayed as, and though this may come as surprising to you – we do hold by the Geneva Convention, and you will in time be handed back to the British. We really couldn’t do that, if you were in many pieces, now then could we?”

“Er, bally well say not.” Biggles blew his cheeks out repeatedly.

“Except for one tiny little thing.”

“Yes?”

“The chocolates were really laxatives. Good day.”

Copyright reserved by Jim O’Brien ©