Our airfield was somewhere near the German–French border, we got there in one of those Anson transport jobs. Easy to see why the pilot wasn’t in bombers or fighters, landing like a bloody brick sandwich, flaps on much too much. Nearly ended up on our nose.

I suppose he was nervous but so were we. This was a forward fighter base and nobody believed all that crap about the Luftwaffe being shot out of the skies and Germany near collapse. Hell, fighting on their home ground, they were worse than ever.

So the Anson skidded around a bomb crater, stopping, the pilot shouting for us to get out. I grabbed my kit, jammed in the door with another pilot and booted him out first. Onto the runway, the grass slippery with mud and rain, the others piling out behind me, everyone in a heap.

The Anson pilot wasn’t wasting any time. Moment we were out, the engine roars and he’s taking the kite around for take-off.

Someone in grubby white overalls shouting to us. I glimpsed olive-green tents, some guns, a lot of forest. The ‘forest’ being camouflage and me seeing those big-mouthed Tempests with their four propeller-blades like huge jutting fangs. A bigger canvas-roofed building under more netting and some trees.

Behind us, the Anson revving loudly for take-off.

We six replacement pilots heading for that bloke in white overalls. Me looking around, because I had that habit, and seeing those two Martin Marauders shove their blunt noses out of the low cloud, coming in to land.

‘Marauders,’ I said, showing off my knowledge.

I liked them, big two-engined ground-attack models with cannon and bombs — I nearly went to bombers. I watched them coming in low, and I frowned: too low and too fast —

A voice roared in my ear and a hand slammed me down. I hit the ground smack across my kitbag, nearly winding me. At the same time, came a sudden tac-tac-tac and the grass puckered savagely. Over this an ear-shattering scream and loud explosion, a black shadow and engine-roar fleets overhead.

I rolled off my kitbag onto the wet ground. Heavy flight-boots thudding around my face, splashing up mud. The same voice shouting to take cover.

‘In the slit trenches, you lazy ladies!’

Me, raising my face, rubbing the mud from my eyes, rolling to my knees. A petrol tanker shattered and burning, raising a black mushroom of cloud. Near us, an anti-aircraft gun, twin barrels drooping, the sandbags stitched with holes. One gunner hanging over the side, the other not in sight.

Me getting pulled up by the guy in white overalls, tripping over my kitbag, being shoved at the gun emplacement.

‘Move laddy, they’ll be round again. Ain’t manners to leave on one pass.’

The gun emplacement had been hit by a blast of cannon-shells. I could see the second gunner now, sprawled over and most of his head missing. The voice roaring: ‘20mm Bofors, know them? Ammo drums there — look sharp — fun’s about to start again!’

I did know this gun. Hefting one ammo drum and clipping it on, the white-overalled man swinging the twin barrels back up — tall, black-haired, a long black moustache, twenties maybe. Authority in his booming shout.

‘Hustle, here comes brother Heinie. Told you so!’

The heavy cold drums were slippery with rain, clipping on a second, and Black-moustache was already swinging the Bofors around, squinting up at the low cloud, tracking the overhead engine-snarl. Muttering, a sidelong glint at me.

‘Damn ground-gunners — understand not a damned thing about deflection — ah, would you!’

The last words gasped out as that engine-growl thundered and the first perspex-nosed bomber — Junkers 88, I must have been mad to think it was a Marauder — came out of the murk. At once, a loud tac-tac-tac beside me.

Seconds only to sight and shoot, but this guy knew how. Hunched over, teeth bared under the moustache and orange golf-balls seeming to float up at the bomber — its own cannon sparking, seeming to jerk and shudder, then banking hard and away over the trees.

The second coming in. But Black-moustache had their speed and height — roaring at me to clip on another of the big drums, my feet nearly skidding from under as I did. Around us, a full chorus of other guns wakening, but it was his on target.

The orange golf-balls — seeming to drift so lazily — smashing into the perspex nose. A machine-gun corkscrewing out, the explosions stitching along the mottled green-and-brown fuselage and the bomber lurching, losing height. One wingtip skidding along the muddy ground then the whole aircraft cartwheeling over. A wing broken loose, an engine torn away and everything collapsing into ruin, the metal buckling with a tortured scream.

‘That’ll teach them to fart in church,’ muttered Black-moustache and looked at me. ‘Laddie, what did you think they were?’

‘Marauders,’ I replied. ‘Ah, in fact JU-88s?’

He snorted. ‘Right. Jerry’s workhorse and a damned good one. Brush up on your aircraft ID laddie or we’ll be scraping you out of a bomb crater.’

Around us, the airfield was rapidly returning to normal. Anti-aircraft guns being reloaded, shouts for medical orderlies. The gunners’ bodies being loaded onto stretchers. And seeing, with a sick little lurch, that our Anson was blazing in a heap at the end of the runway.

The other new pilots were picking themselves up. Pinkney had made it as far as a slit trench and climbed out now, covered in mud. Black-moustache broke into a loud unkind laugh. ‘Poor wretched Orphan Annies. Come on, let’s have a drink.’

‘Shouldn’t we report to the station commander?’ asked Nesbitt.

Black-moustache just grinned, showing strong white teeth. ‘You’re looking at him. Jack Brook, and if you’re very well-behaved I’ll let you call me Jingo.’

That was my first meeting with Jingo Brook.

‘The Luftwaffe is finished. No gas, trainee pilots with less flying time than it takes to pee. US Air Force reckons to have shot them out of the sky, twice over — and they’ve got the gongs to prove it.’

‘Yeah and down to their last fifty kites? Y’all heard that one? Well, funny, but those last fifty kites still keep coming back. Jerry has a core of good aces — and they are flying damn good planes. Jets — heard about them?’

We were in the mess-hall briefing. Well, what passed for a mess. A big stretch of canvas overhead and trestle-tables. Opening out from an old farmhouse that sometime had taken a direct hit. The insides shattered, the brickwork crumbling, and the doors long gone. A stink of sewage, dirty bodies and dead meat — just outside, a horse half-buried in a bomb crater, all four rotting legs still sticking straight up.

Rainwater ran off the overhead canvas, slurping into deep pools outside. All us new pilots summoned to briefing; clutching mugs of warm tea. All of us looking at the great Jingo Brook.

Well, it was hero worship. Jack ‘Jingo’ Brook, joined up at seventeen, straight into France, then the Battle of Britain. Chalking up four kills before his eighteenth birthday. Eight more at the Battle of Britain, then a year in hospital after a near-fatal crash. Since then another fourteen kills, so he was up there with the top Aces.

I liked him first-off. A tall man but still a boy somehow with that cheerful grin under the big handlebar moustache. He was grey-eyed, with long black hair slicked back off his forehead. Long-fingered, sensitive hands, like those of a pianist, always restless. A direct you-be-damned way of speaking.

‘And what else did Base tell you? About how we’ve beaten Jerry out of the skies — what kites he has, can’t fly for lack of juice? So we have air mastery. Feel better?’

He stalked up and down, hitched his flying jacket and thumped the map. It was pinned to the wall with two forks and a bayonet.

‘Well don’t. Jerry’s got better kites than us — super-kites. An evil little thing called the Komet, climbs to nine thousand metres in two minutes. Fast — six hundred k’s.’

He gulped coffee noisily and slapped the cup down. His hands encased in thick leather flying gauntlets; even so, they did seem to shake slightly.

‘What about the new jets, sir?’ This from a pale, ginger-haired guy — Pinkney, his name was — sitting on a rickety chair and trying to sound natural. ‘Are they much of a bother?’

Jingo’s gaze fell on him and he stopped rocking.

‘Only about two hundred k’s faster, my son, also four 30mm cannon. You may find them quite a bother if they get up your arse. What’s your name — Pinky?’

So Charles Pinkney became ‘Pinky.’

Jingo always slapped on nicknames and I had yet to learn mine. He was pouring more coffee, then slurping it loudly. ‘So laddies, never mind that new crap, just not enough of it. First flight tomorrow morning, up by four-thirty a.m. —’

He stopped because I had my hand up. His own leather-gloved hand gripped the coffee cup and he nodded: I could speak.

My voice piped, surprisingly thin, and I shifted position because a bullet-rent in the canvas overhead was pouring cold rainwater upon me. I was embarrassed to hell, interrupting him.

‘Sir, if that rocket Komet and the jet 262 don’t get us, what should we look out for?’

I’ve told you about Jingo’s jerky way of speaking — like the empty breech-blocks of my wing-cannon rattling. Now he clasped his coffee cup tightly and blew a long startled whistle.

‘Name?’ he clunked like the rattling empty breech-blocks.

‘Flight Lieutenant Guthrie Tucker, sir.’

Now the grey eyes were as cold as dark snow. ‘Well Guthrie Tucker, that is the only intelligent bloody question I’ve heard from all you cheepers.’

He paused, taking off his gauntlets and putting forefinger and thumb to mouth, pulling a scrap of food from his teeth. Jingo Brook was into theatre. He burped and gave that cold hard grin.

‘Your worst enemy? It ain’t a fast-flying jet. It’s just about as fast — or slow — as our kites. Our size and weight, our flight ceiling, just about the same guns and bomb-load. Long-nosed to tell it from its earlier short-nosed cousin. The Focke-Wulf 190.’

He gave us a moment to let that sink in and belched again.

‘Latest model of a damn good fighter and will get up your arse every chance you give it. It has scored a few so-called Aces in this squadron and will very likely score you.’

Silence. That was exactly the effect he wanted. The rain found its way into more bullet-holes and a cold wind made the canvas flap. Jingo slapped the map once more and grinned again.

‘Alright. No flying today. Even for us, the cloud’s a bit low. Get some grub, get some sleep. Avoid the spam sandwiches, they’re Hitler’s real secret weapon.’

A grim barking laugh and he strode through us. Chairs clattered and some overturned as we hastily stood. Jingo paused by me. Close up, his grey eyes were not only cold but strained as though the iron flickered with red fire.

‘Thanks for helping on that Bofors. Took quick wits.’ I noticed his fingernails were badly bitten. ‘Now get some rest because I’ll be bloody annoyed if you get shot down too soon. You wouldn’t want to annoy me, would you, Guthrie — Gus?’

So just like that, I was ‘Gus’.

And just like that, I was at the sharp end.

Dead tomorrow?

‘Well, you were okay Grandad,’ I muttered. ‘Anyway, I can’t imagine you scared of anything.’

No answer, so I raised my head. It seemed to take forever, as though everything in my body was switched off. Like I was waking out of a very deep sleep. And when I did look up, the chair opposite was empty.

I was aching again and that neck-wrench was back. It was break fast time, but I wasn’t hungry. I showered: there were hand-holds and a rubber mat, maybe to stop him falling over. Months and months since I’d last seen him, always with the best of excuses. I didn’t know about the rubber mat or the hand-holds.

The dreaming was starting to bother me. But this morning, I had something else to bother me first.

Blocky Hoyt.