VI

Everything Mason needed for tonight was there. There was nothing to do now but kill time in the mess until about ten.

Closing the locker door he walked out, but instead of making for the mess he turned left through the main doors onto the tarmac and stood looking out across the aerodrome. It was deserted now. All the aircraft were ready and the ground staff had gone off for supper. They would be back about ten too.

It was a lovely evening and war was a long way off. Everything was so quiet. So innocently peaceful. Looking across the green fields, the still trees, to the purple tinge of the Pennine hills in the distance, listening to the sounds of the countryside that only a listener could hear, the distant shout of a cowman, the lowing of his herd, the bark of his dog, Mason began to wonder, all over again, what it was all about. Why was he leaving this scene in a few hours’ time to challenge man’s defences with man’s weapons, to destroy or be destroyed? Was defeat more bitter than death, was death sweeter than defeat? He supposed so, but he didn’t at this moment really understand it, because death could be achieved any time, in dozens of ways – if defeat was so bad – without taking the lives of others. Living was the difficulty, not dying. Anyway, what was victory without life? A stone memorial, one name amongst many, read occasionally by a casual stroller or somebody waiting for a bus?

Mason pushed these thoughts away and brought his mind back to material facts. The aircraft dispersed all round the airfield were ready for tonight. He still couldn’t see ‘G for George’. The field dipped in that corner.

He wished he still had his bike – he would have gone over, just to have a look round. You could examine things more closely when there was nobody about.

Confound Wood. If it hadn’t been for him he would still have his bike. Wood hadn’t asked if he could borrow the thing either. Not that there was anything unusual in that, in the ordinary way, but he must have realised on that occasion that anybody with a bike there would have used it. Whenever an aircraft had a mishap of any kind it was natural for everybody to go over and have a look, or to give a hand if necessary. Those with bikes would obviously want them. And of all the damn silly things to do – resting the bike against the undercarriage wheel, after a landing like that. You could see from the hangar by the way the machine was lying, half in and half out of the gun emplacement, that the undercarriage was going to collapse sideways any minute.

Because Mason was balancing on top of a ladder fixing the radio aerial when Simpson yelled through the door, ‘Wright’s in a bunker’, he was a long way behind the others as they rushed out of the crew-room. When he found his bike missing he guessed somebody had borrowed it, and walked over. By the time he got there the undercarriage had collapsed and everybody was shouting advice. The ambulance, which with the fire tender had been first on the scene, was speeding towards the sick bay.

It was a hot day, and partly because he was so hot and sticky and partly because he’d missed the actual collapse, Mason had been decidedly bad-tempered.

‘Who the hell’s pinched my bloody bike?’ he yelled as soon as he was within shouting distance.

Wood walked towards him. ‘I’m sorry, old boy, I didn’t know it was yours’, he said, as though that made it all right.

‘Well it is mine. And ask another time.’ (Stupid really, because if Wood had asked, he wouldn’t have lent it to him, obviously.) ‘Where is it now?’

Wood started to mutter something as they reached the wrecked machine but stopped as everybody began to titter and giggle. Then Wood began to snigger. That should have made Mason really angry, but Wood was a likeable fool and was laughing against his will, like a schoolboy guilty of a prank gone wrong and smothering his own mirth to avoid capitulation. Glaring from Wood round to the others, Mason said something like, ‘What’s so funny about a bloke having his bike pinched?’ Then a suspicion began to dawn on him that there was something funny about it, and turning back to Wood he said, ‘Well, come on – where is it?’ Wood waved vaguely at the aircraft. Mason still couldn’t see it. ‘I can’t see the bloody thing. Where …’ Then he did see it – just. It was lying under one of the engines, crushed, broken, and completely useless.

There were a few facetious remarks but in general the joke had passed.

‘You bastard’, said Mason, and Wood mumbled something about ‘getting him another one’.

‘You’d better.’

But in the mess that night, his annoyance gone, Mason told Wood not to be a fool – he didn’t want another one.

‘Drinks on Wood all round’, somebody shouted, and Wood ordered up cheerfully.

It had been tough luck on Plover, who had been in the nose of the aircraft and the only one hurt. His injuries had not been considered serious and they were all surprised to learn two days later that he’d died, and all because, apparently, he hadn’t urinated before he landed. The Doc the next day gave them a lecture and explained how Plover had had a clout in the guts, but would have been all right if his bladder hadn’t burst. From then on they were all ordered to land with empty bladders, and somebody asked if it was advisable to take precautions against a clout in the back, and Simpson said he always did take those precautions anyway – usually in the target area. Altogether it had been a very amusing lecture. Mason remembered how the room had been silent only when Plover’s name was mentioned. If you didn’t mention names it was just some vague person who had been killed, sort of remote and nowhere near you. If you mentioned names it made you realise it could have been you.

That must be the reason why nobody mentioned fellows who had gone. Mason had been aware for a long time that he didn’t like talking about them, and had noticed that there were others, older hands, who apparently felt the same. That was why, of course.

‘You know’, Bailey had once said in his quick, intense way, one night in The Unicorn, ‘I read in a book once that it’s just as though they’ve stepped behind a mirror. I think it’s a perfect description, don’t you?’

Actually he didn’t, but Mason agreed with Bill, because it was near enough. Ken had been there too but at the time was busy trying to get a girl sitting in the corner to show some signs of encouragement.

‘Don’t you think so, Ken?’ Bill asked, and seeing the look of concentration on Ken’s face followed his eyes to the corner. ‘I say, that’s rather nice.’

They all three stared at the poor girl, muttering and grunting their approval, just in time to receive a furious glare from the fellow who had suddenly returned to her, an aggressive-looking Army major with a brushed-up moustache.

‘Ah, yes, mirrors’, Ken said elaborately, turning back to the bar. ‘What about them?’ But the conversation was over, and Bill made him buy a drink out of turn for nearly getting them all into trouble.

Neither Bill nor Ken had been at that lecture about Plover, though. Not that it would have helped Ken, and Bill probably wouldn’t have learnt anything from it anyway.

The silence out there on the tarmac, and his thoughts, were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming round the corner, so Mason started walking in the opposite direction, turning his head as he went. It was the Flight Sergeant Mechanic, probably just going off duty, having seen that everything was ready for tonight. He was glad he hadn’t waited because he didn’t like the chap. Never had done since he’d heard him talking to another fellow about the crash that had killed Ken. Apparently it had been most inconvenient to have been dragged out of bed at four in the morning, all because somebody couldn’t fly an aircraft properly. Also the smell caused by the three who had been burnt to death had upset his stomach – made him feel quite sick and he couldn’t eat his breakfast. Horrible it was, what with the cold and everything. The other fellow had been most sympathetic because he’d had a similar experience and knew what it was like. A shocking smell, couldn’t get it out of your clothes.

Sitting in the mess, overhearing that conversation, Mason had felt a terrific surge of anger, but managed to control himself sufficiently to stand up and speak to them.

‘You two want to get your feet off the ground, then somebody else will have to put up with the smell.’ They stared at him in surprise as he turned and stalked away.

Thinking it over outside, when he’d cooled down a little, it wasn’t a particularly good remark he’d made and he could think of many things far more biting. That had made him angry again, and he’d gone back into the mess intending to re-open the conversation but they had both gone. Couldn’t remember who the other fellow had been now – never seen him before, or since. Somebody just passing through, perhaps. Mason had only spoken to the Flight Sergeant once since then and he’d made him angry again. It had been more or less for the same reason, but this time he’d been just plain angry, without the additional agitation because it wasn’t Ken he was talking about.

Reporting back from hospital, Mason had gone to the Squadron Leader’s office and found, instead, this Flight Sergeant sitting there. He thought that was a cheek, to start with.

‘Where’s Squadron Leader Barry?’

The Flight Sergeant had looked at him in genuine surprise for a moment before resuming his irritating superior manner.

‘Oh, he went for a burton.’ As he said it, he sort of waved his hand in a kind of dismissal, and continued to read a paper in front of him. Whether the Flight Sergeant was trying to dismiss him or just dismissing the fact that Barry and four others had been wiped out, Mason didn’t know, but whatever it was, that sudden white-hot anger, which he didn’t remember having before the war, rushed through his chest to his head. It was difficult to keep to the subject.

‘When was this? I’ve been in hospital since that crash three weeks ago. Remember?’ Mason tried to make that ‘remember’ sound as nasty as possible, and could see that the Flight Sergeant realised it. It was gratifying to recall that he looked decidedly uncomfortable as he shuffled some papers about, because a faulty engine had been partly to blame.

‘A week or so ago.’

‘Who’s commanding now?’

‘A new chap – Squadron Leader Bantock.’

Mason walked out of the office, deliberately leaving the door open, and went to the mess, where he saw Barrett.

Barrett was sitting in an armchair reading a magazine, and he sat next to him. ‘Hello’, Barrett said, laying the magazine on his lap, politely pleasant. ‘Are you all right now?’

‘Yes, thanks. It was nothing much.’ It was nice of Barrett, but he wanted to know about Barry. ‘What happened to Barry?’

‘Emden, about a week ago. We went there two nights running and he got it the second night.’

‘Any chance, do you think?’

Barrett didn’t like talking about blokes not coming back but was being understandingly tolerant. ‘No’, he said, ‘no chance at all. A Blenheim went down that night too, and according to reports it looks as though they collided.’

‘Whose reports?’ (Mason couldn’t help it – he wanted to know about Barry.)

‘Well, we had four on that night and took over from the Blenheims. Milsom was just arriving when he and his crew saw an explosion and what looked like two machines going down on fire. Milsom took off number two, following Barry. The Blenheim boys reported one missing and one of their chaps said the same thing.’

It was clear that Barrett considered he had now given all the information possible. Anyway, this was old stuff, and a lot had happened since then.

‘Well’, Mason said to Barrett, as he saw his eyes wander to the magazine on his lap, ‘thanks for the gen. I’d better go and get the chickens out of my room.’

He remembered going to his room and sitting on the bed. Going to his room during the daytime was not a thing Mason normally did, but on this occasion there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. He was shaken about Barry. He really had thought that Barry stood a greater chance than most of getting through. He had been the take-no-chance type, always telling the blokes to pay attention at briefing, study the target map, report any defect in the aircraft, because the object was to get there and back.

They’d been quite friendly, in a way. As friendly as a Sergeant and a Squadron Leader could be anyway. Mason had got to know him pretty well when they’d both gone to fetch that new aircraft.

The aircraft hadn’t been ready and they spent three days waiting for it, in a hotel in the town because it was a civilian aerodrome and had no accommodation. Most of the time they spent drinking and soon found they had a lot in common. Barry was scared too, and consequently took his operation flying seriously.

They had discussed the business of finding some reason for putting off doing ops, even when you knew you were getting out of nothing – you still had to do them afterwards. It was only playing for time. You wanted to get on with your ops, they both agreed, as quickly as possible so that you could find out if you were going to get through. In fact you wanted to speed up the war – ops every day, every night, one after the other – finish the war quickly, so there’d be no more to do.

But at the same time, when an opportunity of missing a trip or two presented itself, you grabbed it with both hands. No doubt, they decided, it was because if you missed a trip you were sure of at least one more day, whereas that one trip might have been your last. Not that you could really enjoy that day, even by being blind drunk. It was just clinging to life.

It had been on the last evening that they reached that stage. They had both been pretty drunk and had dreadful hangovers the next day, only to find on reporting to the airfield that the aircraft was ready. It was a wild, gusty day, and the aircraft was going to bump a lot.

‘Christ’, Barry said, ‘I’ll be as sick as a dog.’

‘So will I’, Mason told Barry, ‘so don’t hog the Elsan pan or there’ll be a nice mess in this beautiful new aircraft.’

Barry hadn’t been sick, though – but Mason had. When they landed, Barry found him lying beside the Elsan pan. ‘Who’s hogging the Elsan pan?’, he said, his almost green face nearly cracking under the strain of forced jocularity.

Barry had gone. It just showed you – you could do everything possible, try all you could, and something just stepped in and made all your efforts seem pathetic. Or humiliating.

At the end of the hangar Mason stopped and lit a cigarette, and stood there trying to decide whether to turn left and keep to the pathway, or go the long way round across the waste ground.

He’d go the long way, it was only 8.30. It was certainly keeping light these days. Then he remembered that tomorrow would be the longest day. That meant the shortest night. Not that there would be any appreciable difference between tonight and tomorrow night. There would be about four and a half hours of darkness up there. The trip should take six and a half to seven hours. That meant two and a half to three hours of daylight to contend with. The North Sea crossing would have to be done in daylight, and they should reach the Dutch coast about 11.30 or so. It wouldn’t be really dark by then, not with a moon and this sky.

It was funny how the take-off times got later and later as the weeks went by and you didn’t realise it until a night like this, when take-off time couldn’t be any later. Then it got earlier and earlier until there was a margin of darkness to play with.

What a difference between tonight and the night of the crash, for instance. Take-off had been just after 4.00 that day and it was pitch dark, even without the snowstorm.

‘It’ll clear before you get back’, the Met. Officer had said.

It was the last trip with Mason’s original crew.

The take-off itself had been a nightmare, let alone the events that followed. The snow was falling so heavily it was only possible to see from one flare-path light to the other, and no way of knowing whether each one that came into sight was the end of the runway or not. Fifty feet up, the airfield was blotted out – too bad if you had a failure and wanted to get down again.

Mason didn’t like that ice piling up on the leading edges either, and was anxious to get above the snow before it became too much for the de-icers to cope with. They broke through the cloud top into cold clear air, the stars mostly hidden from them by more clouds higher up. It was dark, beautifully dark.

The first thing to go wrong was the radio, half an hour after take-off.

Long said, ‘Hello, captain. Wireless op here.’ (Long always worked by the book.)

‘Yes?’

‘The set’s u/s. Can’t get a squeak out of it.’

Oh, hell.

‘Definitely u/s? You’ve done all you can?’

‘Everything. It was all right this afternoon, too.’

Well, that was that. If only they had found the fault before take-off. They’d have to go on without it. No excuse really to turn back now. The radio wasn’t essential, not vital, but Mason hated things to be wrong. Things that had been put there for a purpose and not as an ornament. It was one chance less.

‘All right’, he told Long, ‘but keep working on it.’

It was no use blaming Long, he was normally very conscientious, but Mason couldn’t help feeling irritated. Mainly because he couldn’t stop thinking about the useless radio.

About fifteen minutes later, though, he had something else to think about. At first it was just a sensation that something wasn’t quite right. It was almost like the feeling of having left something behind, and Mason put it down to the fact that the radio incident had put him slightly off-datum, as it were. A little later he realised what it was and hurriedly scanned the instrument panel. The starboard engine was running a bit rough. There was no indication on the instruments but he could feel it, and he kept his eye on the dials, hoping against hope that it was imagination. Was the oil pressure needle dropping or wasn’t it? He compared it with the port engine gauge, and tried to persuade himself it was the way he was sitting. Five minutes later there was no doubt about it and he cursed himself for pretending there had been. The pressure was obviously dropping, any fool could see that. There was no question of turning back yet – these things had a habit of righting themselves – much as he would have liked to.

He nudged Wood and pointed to the gauge. Wood leant over and peered at it, and by comparing it with the other dial, realised the trouble. He tapped it hopefully with his finger, then sat back with a shrug.

Far from righting itself the pressure dropped even more, then the engine revs began to fall. That was enough. There was no option. It would be madness to go on. ‘We’re turning back’, Mason told the crew. ‘An engine’s gone sour.’

He asked Wood, ‘The weather should have cleared by now, shouldn’t it?’

Wood looked at the clock. ‘Just about. By the time we get there.’ Wood only took a moment to work out and write down the new course, and held the pad out.

Mason set the compass and headed for base, nursing the faulty engine, which as time went on grew slowly worse.

Ten minutes from base they began to drop through the cloud and met the snow again. It had eased off a lot but still cut down visibility.

‘How are we going to let them know it’s us and that we want to land?’ asked Wood, thinking of the radio.

Mason had thought of that, and was a little worried about it. The flare-path would be out and nobody would be expecting them back. That wouldn’t be so bad, because all they had to do was to fly around until somebody realised they wanted to come in, but they had to find the aerodrome first. It all depended on Wood. If his calculations were right they should pass close enough to pick it out.

‘They’ll know all right, once we find the ’drome.’

At five hundred feet he realised they would have to come much lower to pick out the airfield, and continued losing height. It was safe enough in this area, the only high ground being the Pennines, away over on their left, parallel with them. Should be. At three hundred feet Wood said, ‘We should be there now’, peering out a trifle anxiously.

‘Can’t see a bloody thing yet.’ That was Plover from the front turret. It was the first time he’d spoken, except to say, ‘Oh, pity’, when they turned back.

Unless they passed clean over the airfield they wouldn’t be able to see it even from this height, and Mason dropped lower. If they were going to find the aerodrome, it should be there now – somewhere underneath them. According to the clock and Wood’s reckoning.

‘Daren’t go any lower’, Mason said to everybody in general. ‘We’re down to two hundred feet. Can anybody see anything at all?’ Drake from the tail: ‘I thought I saw the main road just then. Not sure, though.’

Mason knew the road Drake meant and hoped he was right. They were near. After a moment or two of silence Wood said quietly, soberly, ‘I’m sorry. I think we must have passed it.’

‘All right. We’ll do a search.’ Couldn’t blame Wood – a degree or two out would be enough in this weather, and it would be a good navigator, and a lucky one, to get nearer than that.

Mason put the machine into a shallow turn to begin the outer ring of the search area. The snow seemed to be half rain now as it dashed itself against the windscreen and got blown off. Looking down through the depth of the snow and rain it was only possible to see the area directly beneath them.

He left the searching to the others. They were too low to take chances against things looming up ahead. There wouldn’t be much time to avoid anything with this visibility, it was true, but more time than there would be if he wasn’t looking. Not that anything should loom up ahead, not in this vicinity, but there were such things as faulty compasses, and navigational bloomers.

Wood was kneeling on the floor, his face pressed to the window, his arms round his head to keep out all distracting light. Plover, Mason knew, would be lying on the floor of the turret doing the same. Drake in the tail would be scanning the outer areas in the hope of seeing a light the others might have missed through looking down. Long was the only one who could do nothing. It must have been worst for him, just sitting there, waiting for someone to get him down safely, feeling naturally but unnecessarily guilty at not being able to get them a bearing. It was half-way round the first circle that it happened. There was no time to warn anybody. Within a split second of seeing it, before Mason even realised what it was, he yanked the stick back hard into his stomach. The ground came rushing up at them as the nose lifted, and flashed by a few feet below. The nose still up and the ground still below, the aircraft was almost on stalling point when the ground slipped away and disappeared. The high ground, whatever it was, had gone and Mason quickly pushed the stick forward to get air-speed. Before he had time to collect himself it was there again, the ground rushing at them. As he pulled the stick back he knew they wouldn’t make it this time. The engines hadn’t regained their power, the starboard engine hardly answered at all, and this hill was higher. The nose went up, but over it he saw the hill-top for a fraction of a second, and then it was on them. There was a grinding tearing noise, a great shower of sparks from the engine on his left, the aircraft bucked and slewed – sparks, smoke, noise, a mighty jolt and he was thrown forward, and everything went vague and distant.

What seemed like hours afterwards but turned out to be only minutes, things became clearer and Mason was aware of Long standing over him. Wood was climbing out of the well, holding his shoulder. After him Plover crawled into the well from the front turret, dragging a leg.

‘Christ’, Long said, ‘we’re all alive.’

‘Where’s Drake?’

‘He’s all right. He’s just getting the first-aid kit.’

Thank God there was no fire. They still had the bombs on board. Very lucky there.

When they’d all recovered sufficiently, and Mason had gone outside to make sure that the engines weren’t going to catch fire after all, they got into the fuselage to examine their personal injuries. The lights were still working. Plover came off worst: he had a nasty gash on his leg, and Long and Drake bound it for him. Wood had been thrown into the well and hurt his shoulder, but didn’t think anything was broken. Drake had a cut over his eye. Mason a clout on the head, and a pain in his chest. Long came off best without a scratch – all that happened to him was that his Thermos flask fell on his head long after the aircraft had come to a stop.

When they had sorted themselves out, drunk all the surviving coffee, and discussed their position, there was nothing to do but settle down for the long wait until daylight. There was nothing they could do that night. The snow had turned to rain, a fine misty drizzle cutting visibility down to a few hundred yards, and they didn’t know where they were, except that it was somewhere in the foothills of the Pennines. It was a cold wait, and the lights failed somewhere around midnight.

They started out at first light but it was nearly midday before they got to a farmhouse. The going was bad, soft and slushy, and a thin wet fog lay upon the moors. Plover could do little more than hop, and had to be half carried by two of them. Long supported Drake, who hadn’t realised the night before that he’d bruised his ankle. Before starting they had discussed the question of somebody going ahead to send a rescue party back, but the fog made it too risky, particularly as they didn’t know exactly where they were. As long as they kept going they knew they would eventually reach help, and even Plover’s pace quickened when, at last, the shape of the farmhouse appeared through the mist. Soon after, they were drinking cups of hot tea, eating cold lamb and boiled potatoes, their outer clothes drying in front of the range, the farmer’s wife bustling about amongst them while the farmer went somewhere to phone. It was like waking from a nightmare. Sometime in the afternoon an ambulance arrived and took them to hospital.