I had three books.
One was a thrice-read Western by Zane Grey, one was an Edgar Wallace, and the third was a book of erotic poems by John Wilmot, Lord Rochester – given to me by Conners before my old aircrew split. I missed the old gang more than you could imagine. Grease, our Canadian pilot, had returned to the prairies, and the rest were up north in cushy training berths well out of the way of the war, except for Fergal, who had run away to be a priest. Part of me was glad of that. The other part damned the lot of them for being the jammy sods that they were.
I had given a bomber squadron at Bawne airfield, near Cambridge, twenty-eight trips, and when I drove away from it I took most of the clothes I had arrived in, a little Singer open four-seater I had inherited, and Piotr’s big radio. Piotr was Pete, our rear gunner. Being dead since our last trip, he wouldn’t need either for the time being. I was given two weeks off for good behaviour so I drove north to see my dad, who had evacuated to Glasgow. It wasn’t a city I fell in love with instantly: people seemed to evacuate all over it every Saturday night – mostly from bladder, bowel or stomach – and a girl I had met at St Enoch’s for ten bob put me out of action for a fortnight afterwards. It may seem stupid but I reported for duty at my new station three days before I was due. I couldn’t settle with the civvies.
I didn’t fly: I had done my trips, and was being rested, or screened in a training job. Still on a bloody squadron though. That was unusual, although not completely unknown. It figured because it was an unusual bloody squadron. From Tempsford they flew all over unfriendly Europe in some of the oldest, slowest aircraft the service could find. My job was to house-train their radio operators if they arrived on the squadrons untrained or unwilling, and sort out their kit. I was supposed to deliver W/Ops briefings before their trips if a special briefing was called for. It never was. Anyway; that was the theory of it. They say you live and learn. A lot of the buggers I’d last flown with never learned, and didn’t live that long. QED.
Frohlich walked in while Cab Calloway was singing away, ‘. . . a kiss ain’t a kiss, unless there’s a kick in it’, on Pete’s radio in the room they had given me. That was in a small farm servant’s cottage down the dirt track from Waterloo Farm, which was one of the other names for Tempsford airfield. I was sitting in the armchair with my blankets wrapped around me because the previous night I had used up my coal ration for the week trying to keep the place thawed out. I wasn’t going back into those sodding books, so was open to offers when he stuck his head round the door and called pub.
‘Fancy a pint, Charlie?’
‘Do you think they’ll have a fire on?’
‘Must do; weather like this.’
‘I’m in then.’
‘Good. We can take your car. Ours is running on hope and petrol vapour.’
‘Steal some. Everyone else does.’
He gave me the sad look. He was OK with a pint in his hand, but he didn’t like thieves. Bible basher. Jewish bible. I drove us all up Warden Hill to the Thornton in Everton village: me and Frohlich and his mixed-ranks crew. Tempsford being the funny place that it was, the officers and NCOs spent more off-duty time together than on other squadrons. The bosses looked the other way. Frohlich was a Sergeant Pilot. His Navigator, Klein, was a Flying Officer, and his Radio Operator was a Pilot Officer named Albert Grost. Both outranked him on the ground, but they called him Skip in the air. In my opinion Grost was cack-handed, so I rode him hard over his pathetic Morse signature. The first time I told him to practise he complained to the CO that I was anti-Semitic. Goldie pointed out that the whole of the rest of Frohlich’s crew was from the promised land, and didn’t seem to have a problem with me. I held him back as we all left the bar to hog the small fire in the snug.
I asked him, ‘Look, can I call you Albert, or Al, while we’re here in the pub? I know I’m not part of your team.’
He looked momentarily disconcerted, then, ‘Of course. Albie. You’re Charlie?’
‘Right. I knew another Albie once.’
‘Another radio man? Radio men should stick together.’ Turd. The other Albie was an American tank commander. As soon as I met him I knew he was on the way to shake hands with Dr Death.
‘Right. We got off on the wrong foot. I’m supposed to be the expert, and make sure you’re up to scratch. Not much point if I don’t tell you the truth.’
It had been a bit like fencing, and my last few words had been a definite touch. Touché. He gave me a rueful grin as a reward. He can’t have been more than nineteen.
‘OK. I know my Morse isn’t much good.’
‘I could help.’
‘OK.’ He gave himself a gulp of the hoppy beer. ‘I’ll come to see you tomorrow, all right?’
‘Fine.’ Then I told him. ‘You were right though; I am prejudiced.’
‘I thought so. I’m used to it.’
‘Not this, you’re not. I just hate fucking officers.’
He had that uncertain sort of laugh as we joined the others at the fire.
I slipped out for ten minutes between drink two and drink three, to visit Black Francie where he lay in the churchyard of St Mary’s church behind the pub. He had been an air gunner cut into three pieces by unsociable Germans. We had buried him here about two months earlier. There was a small posy of fresh flowers on his grave. The rich earth on the grave seemed higher somehow, and there was a distinct crack in it at one side. I wondered if it was being lifted by his decomposition gases and moodily pressed it down flat with my foot. Sometimes I said a word or two to him, but on this occasion just being there was enough. The light was fading. Someone had switched on the flare-path lights of the airfield in the valley below us, and I heard the heavy growl of four Hercules radial engines throwing an aircraft into the sky. That would probably be a Hallibag. I felt stupid, a bit lost, and exceptionally lonely. I hated my new squadron, and decided to go and get crocked. The lights flicked off again.
My hangover the next morning was like a deep depression rolling in from south-east Iceland. I vowed abstinence for the rest of my life if God would take it away and give it to Hitler. God didn’t listen to me.
The CO called me up at about 0900. The NCOs all called him ‘Goldie’ because of the colour of his hair and moustache. The officers called him Squadron Leader, knelt, crossed themselves, and wiped their tongues with toilet paper afterwards. That probably explained the toilet-paper crisis: there had been none on the station for weeks apparently. Each bog was hung with wads of cut squares of newspaper, neatly threaded on looped string. I used to look for the crosswords and the cartoons, but someone was always there before me, and nicked the drawings of Jane.
He asked me to sit down, which was never a good sign.
‘Settled in, Sergeant?’
‘Any problems?’
‘It’s been a little difficult sorting my duties out, sir. There’s nothing on paper, and I didn’t meet the man I replaced.’
‘Seen the squadron Radio Officer?’
‘Not yet, sir. He hasn’t been here since I arrived. No one seems to know where he is.’
‘We can be a bit like that sometimes.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘I don’t think that you do, but you will, if you stick around long enough.’
Attack being the best defence and all that, I pressed on.
‘Shall I just carry on then, sir? At present I liaise between the ground staff and the aircraft, and check new men who haven’t flown with you before.’
‘Sounds spot-on, Sergeant. Initiative.’
‘It can be a bit difficult because I don’t actually know what they do on these sorties, sir. I was thinking of hitching a lift on one of them. Bat myself in, so to speak.’
‘Good idea, Sergeant. I shouldn’t be surprised if your predecessors didn’t do the same. Anything else?’
One of us was being a twerp. I wasn’t sure which one.
‘When I left Bawne, sir, my old CO put me up for canonization. They wanted me to continue as an officer. I think that it was a reward for living long enough.’
‘Yes; I’ve read your papers. Nothing’s come down from Wing yet. Worried?’
‘Only the principle of it, sir. If they think I’m worth more, they should pay me more.’
He gave me a fiver from his desk drawer as if it was a tip. It probably made him feel good.
‘Don’t ask me where it comes from; my clerk gives me more whenever I ask. It seems that the War House thinks we need more filth than most outfits.’
I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t need it, once I’d opened my mouth: I would have to talk to Frohlich, I thought. I buttoned it into my right top pocket, saluted and about-turned; I felt a party coming on. Or maybe I should speak to the American Master Sergeant guy I knew at Thurleigh Field, and make him an offer for a box of toilet paper.
Tommo Thomsett from Thurleigh told me that the Kraut and his U-boats had deliberately targeted vessels carrying toilet paper, and torpedoed them in the Atlantic. This had led to what he described as ‘a little supply side difficulty’. I got a box of flat packets for three quid, which was extortionate. Then he told me he was glad I was back. He didn’t like to lose an old customer.
Later that week I shared a breakfast table with Frohlich. He gave me his bacon, and asked me, ‘Have you noticed that some beggar is stealing all of the Jane cartoons from the arse paper?’
‘Yes. I saw that.’
‘Wonder who?’
‘Some spy, I should think.’
‘I should have thought of that,’ he told me.
They operated the need to know system at Tempsford, so naturally nobody ever knew anything. The squadrons didn’t consider that I needed to know much at all. I was surprised to find it rather suited me. My mum used to say that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you. The flue from her kitchen stove had leaked, and she didn’t know about that. It killed her and my kid sister. I suppose you can’t be right about everything.
There were two resident squadrons, 138 and 161, who clandestinely flew people and materials to the parts of Europe that Adolf was still in love with. They also brought people out again. The aircraft they operated varied from small Lysanders and twin-engined Hudsons, which actually landed over there, to the big Halifax and Stirling bombers: four-engined jobs like the Lanc I flew on my tour.
A week or so after my arrival I had stood at the WVS canteen lorry behind the converted parachute store in which they kitted out the passengers, who they called Joes, and watched a Hallibag limbering up its engines for a trip across the Channel somewhere. It looked very old, and huffed and puffed a bit. It made a lot of smoke. There was a scruffy Flight Lieutenant with a full set of wings alongside me, blowing on his tea. He was probably fifteen years older than me, and his uniform, although clean, hadn’t seen an iron since it had been issued to him – it gave him a curious boneless look. He’d borrowed his moustache from Douglas Fairbanks, but it didn’t give him the edge he’d hoped for, and he wore his Irvine flying jacket over his shoulders like a cape. I thought that he’d seen The Dawn Patrol at his local fleapit too often at Saturday morning pictures, but he was the only one left to talk to. I asked him how long they would be out. Stupid question: my speciality.
‘As long as a string of bangers, old son. Could be going to the bloody moon and back, couldn’t they?’
‘Sorry. I’m new here.’
‘I guessed. It’s bad form to ask about a trip on this station, but I won’t tell on you. I’m David Clifford. Most people call me Cliff.’
‘I’m Charlie Bassett. I was sent here as a radio instructor, but I can’t find anyone to instruct.’
‘Don’t knock it. Let them come to you.’
‘I’ll remember that. I can’t seem to find my boss either; he’s the Station Radio Officer. Stan somebody.’
‘He went out on a trip to Never Never Never Land three weeks ago, and he’s walking back.’
‘What’s Never Never Never Land?’
‘Never ask. Never go there. Never land there if you do.’
He took a thick gulp of tea: he must have had an asbestos throat.
‘Do you really know that he’s alive and walking back?’
‘Yes, we do, actually, old son. You’ll learn the form quick enough.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I call myself the odd-job man, but the Group Captain calls me an Intelligence Officer. But I can fly a bit as well: it’s what we like here – sort of jack-of-all-trades. Someone must have picked you out for the job.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘You’d be surprised.’ Then he spun the chamber on me. ‘Fancy a bevvy? They won’t be back until tomorrow. There’s a good bar at Blunham, just down the road, that I’d be pleased to introduce you to – and I understand you’ve got a flash little car at your disposal. If I’d been running your security checks, the first thing I would have asked was how a humble Sergeant could afford that.’
‘It was inherited. From a good rear gunner who ran out of luck.’
‘Ah. One of those. It’s an ill wind, and all that.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’ I think that that was the first time I really believed that Pete the Pink Pole was dead, and wasn’t about to turn up from another irregular couple of days’ leave in London, with a new bird on his arm.
I didn’t tell him that I already knew the bar at Blunham: it was where I had first met Albie Grost. When he got drunk he recited reams of beautiful poetry, and the whole bar fell silent to listen to him. That’s why I kept on leaning on him, and that’s how I ended up teaching him how to palm Morse code when your fingers stopped working. What goes around, comes around.
There was still no sign of my missing officer a few days later. I badgered Cliff, but eventually he pulled rank and told me to bog off for pay parade. Everything comes to him who waits, he told me. Then, ‘What’s the hurry, old son?’
‘This doesn’t feel like fighting a war.’
‘I told you before: don’t knock it. The old man will call for you when he’s ready.’
‘The one with the scythe and the long grey beard.’
I asked Frohlich if I could fly with his crew, using the excuse of checking Albie out after I retrained him.
‘No.’ Just like that.
‘No. Just like that? Why?’
‘We like you, Charlie. You fixed up Albie just right.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But your trips have run out. Maybe your luck has. We think that you should stay on the ground until you’ve earned more karma. Maybe you used up all you had, going to Germany last month. Leave it out.’
‘What’s karma?’
‘It’s like directed luck; only you have to earn it, it doesn’t come free.’
‘How do you earn it?’
‘By being good.’
‘I am being good.’
‘Be good for a bit longer. Then we’ll take you.’
‘Is that Jewish. That karma?’
‘No, it’s universal. It’s Buddhist.’
‘But you’re not a Buddhist.’
‘How do you know? Perhaps everyone is Buddhist.’
‘They can’t be. We’re fighting a world war: several of them. Buddhists don’t kill people.’
We were in the recreation room at Hazells Hall, which was our HQ building: it had a nice little bar. Frohlich was thrashing me at billiards. The rest of his crew were sprawled in and over comfortable old leather armchairs with books and magazines. He extended his left arm, and moved it around to include them all.
‘Neither do we,’ he said.
His navigator looked up from his book and smiled at me. He’d heard it all before.
The next pilot I asked was a small guy, like me. A dark Taffy named Tippett. He said, ‘Good idea. Tomorrow night if the light’s all right?’
‘Thanks, sir.’ He was an officer type, and I was doing the asking, after all. ‘This will really help me.’
‘And then you’ll be more help to us. That’s the idea.’
I thought that I could put up with him for six hours. Just.
Frohlich’s crew touched me by coming to see me off. Then Frohlich said, ‘This is a mistake, Charlie.’ In that preacher’s tone I’d come to recognize.
‘That’s what my dad always said I was.’
In the timber-clad parachute shed disguised as a barn, they put us crew through the same routine as the two Joes with the one-way tickets. We had to prove that our clothes bore no labels, and that our pockets were empty of anything except escape gear. I was left with just my old fibre ID tags, and my pay-book, to say who I was. Then we had to wait for the Joes, because the packers had already loaded stores containers into the aircraft. The two Joes, a scared-looking man and a woman, were taken behind canvas screens for the business. I was surprised to hear them both being offered the option of walking away from it. I heard the man say, ‘No. It’s fine,’ too loudly. I didn’t hear the woman.
The telephone rang in the shed whilst they were being checked, and I was called over. It was Goldie, the CO.
‘Sorry to butt in, Bassett, but I thought you’d want to know your papers have come through. We’ll get them ticked up, and you’ll be an officer by the time you get back. Party tomorrow night. Congrats.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll have to spend all that money you gave me.’
‘. . . and the rest of it. Good luck tonight.’
I said Thank you, and put the receiver down. I suddenly tasted bile in my mouth: that was the fear. On my last squadron no one would have dreamed of wishing you good luck, for fear of bringing down the other thing on you.
We trudged to a bloody old Stirling which was more patches than aeroplane. The pilot was cheerful: I’d picked a cretin for my first operational sortie from Tempsford. The pretty WAAF had given me a peck on the cheek and had said adieu: no one had done that to me before, either. I trooped out to the heap with the two Joes and the crew, which included a wisecracking Dispatcher. Nerves. I was last to board and turned instinctively to dog the door shut behind me. Their rear gunner, who hadn’t said a word to me so far, nodded, and double-checked the door. I liked that: always go to war with a cautious man alongside you, not a fucking hero. The Joes were strapped into side-by-side seats against the fuselage skin. I had to sit on the floor of the blanked-off bomb-bay with the Dispatcher, our backs to a bulkhead.
The pilot started and ran up the four Hercules engines one after the other. The last one fired up rough. He shut them down, and then tried again. This time they ran perfectly. I could sense that the Dispatcher was tense. He leaned towards me and shouted, ‘It’s the mag for the starboard outer. Always was a shit. No worries.’ Aussie.
I think I must have nodded. I felt the aircraft begin to move – away from its hard-standing, and around the peri-track. This part of the trip had always seemed the longest to me: I was all right once I was in the air. Through the small square window to my right I got occasional flashes of the full moon over the trees towards Tempsford village. At the end of the huge strip the pilot ran the engines up again, against the brakes, and then there was the sensation of launch: the jerk and the slow thrust forward against the bumps, and the grumbles of the Stirling, as it prepared to throw itself at the sky.
The Aussie leaned forward, and pushed my loose radio connection into a small jack on the bulkhead behind me. I could suddenly hear the pilot’s mumbled monologue above the howl of the motors. The sense of movement ceased, and was followed by the staggered thumps of the main under-carriage wheels into their spaces under the inner engines. At that moment I think that I heard two things separately but together: one of the engines screaming faster and louder than the others, and also the pilot’s unhurried voice.
‘Pilot to crew, take . . .’
Then there was a huge concussion, and my world became yellow and red – I saw the woman Joe, her head on fire. Finally it was black. All over.
For the time being.