IV

Just over the hedge on his right Mason passed the next machine – ‘J for Johnnie’. The bomb doors were open and the bombs were being hauled up. A thousand pounder and some five hundreds. One mechanic was chalking something on the thousand pounder and the others were laughing – something rude about Hitler, no doubt.

Mason couldn’t see his own machine; it was over on the far side. ‘G for George’. He’d never done a trip in her, only a flying test, and wondered if the fact that he didn’t like the machine was really a premonition. Would somebody be saying tomorrow, ‘Funny, you know, old Mason seemed to have a feeling he wasn’t coming back last night. He was fussing like hell about his aircraft.’ He knew perfectly well why he didn’t like the machine. It was a small point, he told himself, but it had been working on him all day, ever since he had been told this morning that ‘G for George’ was to be his aircraft for tonight. He’d watched her land a couple of days ago and noticed she had a Glycol leak. The whole of one side was covered with this evil-smelling cooling liquid. It was not flammable, Mason kept telling himself, and didn’t mean a thing. But it was not right and if that was wrong there might be other things wrong – little things as though somebody was trying to warn you. He didn’t really believe in this psychic business, but he wished he wasn’t going in ‘G for George’.

The aircraft needed a splash or two of paint too. This afternoon after landing from the flying test he’d walked round her – she was still leaking Glycol, though not so badly perhaps – and noticed a number of spots where the black anti-flash paint had chipped off from the belly. The gleaming silver metal was shining through. He wondered at the time if it would be sufficient to pick up the glare of searchlights and lead fighters and flak onto him. He wanted to tell the ground crew to patch it, but they might have laughed behind his back and related the story in their billets.

Mason had a feeling that others were beginning to notice that he was scared. The Sergeant parachute-packer had looked at him in a peculiar way this morning when he’d taken his ’chute in for re-packing. It had been done only a week before and the order said once a month. But he’d been sitting on it and that might have creased the silk or tangled the cords, somehow. Anyway, he’d lent it to Simpson yesterday when he couldn’t find the key of his locker and didn’t want to force the door. Simpson could have played football with it for all he knew.

Most people seemed not to bother about their ’chutes, even when they were squashed quite flat. Some would leave them lying around the crew-room for anybody to use as a cushion or foot-rest, and never bothered about getting them re-packed until they were told to. Rather odd, that; they were such important things and it took very little effort to walk along to the Parachute Section. Mason didn’t believe in taking any chances, no matter how small. That small chance might make all the difference one day.

Only once had he taken a chance and that had taught him a lesson. At the time the fact that the air-speed indicator wasn’t working properly didn’t seem important, on a routine flight in cloudless weather. Just as he was getting into the aircraft he remembered not having reported the defect after the last flight, and after a moment’s hesitation decided he was being fussy, and took off. It was a cold day, but beautiful, with the sun sparkling on the snow-covered countryside, and everything was going fine, except for the air-speed indicator, which was wavering about a bit when it should have been constant. After a while it appeared to be getting worse, and a little later he could see that it definitely was worse. By the time they got back over the aerodrome it was useless, the needle floating from one side of the dial to the other.

Mason had landed a machine without that indicator, and crossing the perimeter, near enough to the ground to get perspective, knew that he was coming in much too fast. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wood turn from the window and look at him, then at the instrument panel, and back to him again. He gave Wood what he hoped was a reassuring nod, trying to incorporate in that nod an indication that he was going to land, and not go round again. Better to risk a fast landing than a stall, by pulling the nose up without an A.S.I. It was too late now anyway. When he closed the throttles, a few feet off the ground, Mason could see he was too far over the field to avoid running across the perimeter track onto the rough ground beyond. The snow was crisp and the brakes were more of a danger than a help. The wheels touched, crunching the snow, and the machine reared up, while he fought to hold her steady, waiting for the next bounce. The undercarriage thudded once more and she lifted a little, touched again, bumpily, and settled, running fast. Wood shouted something, pointing ahead, but Mason had already seen it. The long, low wall of frozen snow from the cleared perimeter track was about two feet high and they were going to hit it. There was just time to yell ‘Brace yourselves’ to the crew, who were probably already doing that anyway, before the wheels hit the mound of hard snow and the aircraft leapt into the air, wallowing crazily. Control of the aircraft had gone and there was nothing to do but wait for it. Wood sat on the floor, bracing his legs and back, and Long, who had left his radio desk when they first touched down, thinking they were now safe, quickly did the same.

She landed beautifully. Heavily, but fair and square on the undercarriage, on reasonably even ground, and came to rest a few yards from the boundary hedge.

Nobody moved, and after a moment or two Mason revved the engines, closed the throttles and switched off. His forehead felt clammy and uncomfortable and he took his helmet off as the props whistled to a stop. Wood and Long got to their feet, taking their helmets off. Long said ‘Jesus!’ and grinned at Pepper who had emerged from the front turret. It was Pepper’s first flight on the squadron – he’d arrived a couple of days before and had taken Plover’s place as second pilot when Plover had been made captain. ‘Is the initiation ceremony over?’ he grinned. ‘If so, can I get out?’

There was the usual ragging for several days, from the Squadron Leader downwards, but that was all because there had been no damage. But there could have been. It might have been fatal – for all of them – and the blame would have been directly his. All through taking a chance, and a small one at that.

That was way back last year, though, and Mason had learnt a lot since then. The longer you lasted, the fewer chances you could afford to take because of the law of averages. He’d kept going for a long time now – anyway, longer than anybody on the station, so he couldn’t afford to take any at all.

All the same, he couldn’t stand being laughed at over it. Surely it was no laughing matter to take all the precautions you possibly could?

Of course, the main trouble with these chaps who laughed at his fussiness was that they didn’t realise they were, in all probability, going to get killed. It was the others, they thought, not them, who would be killed. They didn’t seem to understand that it was only the lucky ones, who had also taken no chances, who had a hope of getting through. They didn’t know anything about Wright, Pepper, Trewsom, Barclay, Mills, Dwyer, Coleman, Pope, Marples and all the others who had gone. To them they weren’t even names. To Mason they were people, each name recalling vivid memories of episodes, experiences, small incidents – some pleasant, some unpleasant, but to him all seeming very real, still. Before their time. They only knew of the few who went for a burton before they themselves went down. They hadn’t been, for nine months, watching one after the other go, sometimes so soon after arriving on the station that he didn’t get to know their names. They didn’t know of the chap whose kit was sent off to his next of kin, still unpacked, the day after he’d arrived. They didn’t know about Smith, who had come up to Mason in the mess one day, two days after joining the squadron, pulled up a chair, and said, ‘You on tonight?’

‘Yes’, he’d answered. ‘Are you?’ Although Mason could see that he was.

‘My first trip’, Smith said, one hand scratching an ear and the other fiddling with his belt-buckle, grinning, embarrassed.

Mason knew Smith was going to ask him what it was like. How he hated that. What could you tell these first-trippers? That it was bloody awful, frightening, sickeningly so, and more often fatal? That each trip got worse? That each time you got back you could hardly believe it? That the ground seemed so solid and firm and friendly and you were just about to feel happy when you realised that it only meant you were alive to go again, and again, and then again, until God knows when? That if you lasted long enough you became lonely because all your friends had gone? That you got into such a state that you had to suppress all your emotions, like anger, sentimentality, soft-heartedness, even gratitude and kindness, and certainly fear, because it made your lip quiver and you wanted to cry?

‘What’s it like?’ Smith said.

‘Oh, not so bad. A bit shaky sometimes. Some are worse than others.’

Smith relaxed a little. It was just the belt-buckle now. ‘Have you done Berlin before?’ he asked.

‘No, I haven’t. It’ll be my first trip there too.’ Mason wished Smith would stop, but felt sorry for him because he was excited and nervous and being a stranger had no one to talk to. Trying to veer off the subject, he asked Smith, ‘Who are you flying with tonight?’

‘Pepper. I’m going second pilot, of course.’

Pepper had only done a few trips himself – couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks on the squadron. ‘Oh, Pepper, he’s all right. He did his first trip with me. Care for a drink?’

But Smith’s mind was on the first trip tonight and he brought the subject back with, ‘They tell me that once you get over the first three you don’t mind it’.

‘Yes, I’ve heard them say that. Of course, people react in different ways. Let’s get over to the bar.’

They rose, and on the way to the bar Smith continued, ‘What were your first three like?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Mason didn’t mean to sound offhand, just wanted to change the subject. ‘My first two or three were fairly easy, I think. What will you have?’

A week later Smith was dead. His third trip. Came down in the sea on the way back, they heard.

It was Bill Bailey who told him. ‘Not bad, eh, for three trips?’, said Bill. ‘Crashed on the first, baled out on the second and killed on the third.’

Then Mason told Bill about that conversation, and said, ‘I wonder what he thought as he was going down?’

‘Oh’, Bill had remarked, with his hard intolerant smile, ‘he probably thought, “Thank Christ for that – I’ll be used to it after this”.’

No, these men didn’t know about chaps like Smith.

Nor, for that matter, chaps like Bill Bailey. Bitter, cynical Bill, an intellectual, an atheist, who, on hearing that Trewsom, of the huge ginger moustache, had been seen to go down with his aircraft a mass of flames, had merely grunted and said, ‘I bet that singed his whiskers’.

Mason would have liked to see old Bill again. They’d had some good times together in the old days. Getting on all right apparently in Training Command, according to his last letter. ‘Dear Cock’, he wrote, ‘shocking machines we’ve got here. Mine caught fire in the air the other day. I was the cool instructor until we landed and then I ran like buggery. The pupils loved it, bless their little hearts.’

Bill never did understand why he’d been posted after only 21 trips, and thought it was because of his eyes. Quite likely it was, but it might have been because he was by far the finest, coolest pilot on the squadron and good pilots were valuable, particularly as instructors. Bill never left anything to chance. He used to attend every lecture going, and would quite often baffle the lecturer – remorselessly. He had no time for incompetence. In fact he would be very useful in Training Command.