There was a young bloke, a batman, looking after Nessie, Pinky and me. Showed me to my billet in the farmhouse, muttered something about the guy before me, last week. That otherwise I’d be under canvas.

The bedroom had a cracked window, nailed over with boards. A zig-zag crack in the ceiling that drifted white specks of plaster down whenever the door shut. A wobbly table and narrow bed that was just a mattress and blankets. From outside came the crump-crump of guns. From somewhere nearby, the unexpected cooing of a dove.

I dropped the kitbag and more white specks fell. I sat on the sagging bed, suddenly as scared as hell. I bent over to pull off my boots and my fingers touched another. I pulled the boot out from under the bed; inside the top lining was a name, R. WEEKS. So it hit me.

The guy before me, last week. No, the last guy before me was named ‘Weeks’. They’d forgotten these when they’d cleaned out his personal effects. Had a ‘long-nosed job’ got him?

Get some sleep, Jingo had said. Well I took off my boots, jacket and shirt, leaving on everything else because it was bloody cold. I rolled up my flight jacket as a pillow, lay down and drew the blankets around me. They were clammy, somehow damp, but that wasn’t what made me shiver.

The batman woke me up the next morning with a cup of hot tea. I washed and shaved, bacon and eggs on toast for breakfast and good hot coffee. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The way a war movie makes violence look exciting.

Well I woke up, dirty and itchy, my toes sticking out from under the blanket and damn near frozen. The tea was sugarless, milkless and luke-warm. The shaving water was cold and my razor scraped painfully. I told myself that it was because the blade was blunt, not because my hands were shaking, and I cut myself.

In an hour or two, I’d be up in that grey murk, maybe dead before lunch. Oddly enough, the thought of being killed didn’t scare me. It was the thought of not being good enough — letting the others down — that was really frightening.

And breakfast? Well, the bacon was sliced so thin you could use it for cigarette paper, and the ‘eggs’ were powdered muck. ‘Like dog-vomit,’ muttered Nessie beside me, stirring the pale yellow mess with his fork. So I didn’t eat the eggs.

The toast was dark bread, charcoal at the edges; the coffee okay, black without sugar. I’ve had it that way ever since.

Nobody said much. Knives and forks clinked, a few muttered undertones, one new boy ducked outside and we heard him vomiting. Jingo was seated at the trestle-table near me. He ate noisily and quickly, wiped the powdered egg off his moustache and belched noisily.

‘Well if that’s breakfast, I’ve had it.’ He stood up, looking outside. ‘Weather-boys reckon this cloud’ll go. If it doesn’t, I’ll bloody shoot them. Briefing in ten minutes.’

He stalked out. Most of the senior pilots followed, us of the new intake at the same table. I swallowed a last mouthful of gritty bacon and charcoaled bread and sipped my coffee. The last of it slopped over my freshly cut chin. Beside me, Pinky spilled his coffee. Nessie just chewed stolidly, farmer’s boy: I’ve met logs of wood with more imagination.

So, outside and a cold blast of winter morning hitting us. A pale low ceiling of cloud, and ice clinking in the puddles we splashed through. The snarl of tractors as our big Tempest fighters were dragged out of their camouflaged bays, water streaming off the wavy stripes of brown and green. A time when enemy fighters lived to strike, so the long barrels of our anti-aircraft guns quested upward like alert insect antennae.

At the end of the airfield, off among some stunted broken pines, was an aircraft. Perspex-nosed, lumpy thick lines, oddly familiar. A big tail and markings …? A hand thumped my back and Jingo Brook followed my eyeline.

‘Our “Resident Heinkel”. Last kite leaving, shot it down myself when we came in.’ As the others were turning back, he grabbed my arm, those iron-grey eyes cold with intent. ‘Gus, you’re feeling like someone’s scooping out your insides, right? Well, old son, just follow me and take a hold of everything that comes your way.’

‘Hawker Tempest Mk Two. Bloody big Centaurus V-18 cylinder radial engine. She’ll give you a ceiling of eleven thousand metres, max speed of seven hundred k’s.’

We were at one of the sandbagged revetments. The drooping roof of camouflage-netting scarcely concealed the massive lines and fell like a veil around the massive underslung snout; those four big-bladed propellers like a motionless snarl of power. Jingo patted the yellow-painted propeller-boss as you would a dog.

‘One-piece sliding canopy, good all-round vision, the glass’ll just about stop a bullet — if it doesn’t and your brains get blown out, complain to the manufacturers.’ He gave that short barking laugh as he moved to one thick straight-edged wing, another slap at the two projecting cannon-muzzles.

‘Four of these, 20mm, hell of a wallop. Yes, I know you’ve heard all this but you’re hearing it again. Eight rockets or bombs, total punch some 900kg.’ He slapped the boss again. ‘Bit of a pig on the turn, and the best news — outgunned by the new Jerry jets and two hundred k’s slower.’

He let all that sink in. He looked at us, grey eyes assessing us, keen as they would the enemy. ‘But you had better love this kite, pilgrims, and handle it well — and it will keep you alive.’

Beside me, Pinky shuffled his boots nervously as Nessie asked about tight turns, stalling speed, etc. Jingo answered briefly then looked up at the pale murk. It was already thinning.

‘We’ll be up in half an hour. If you want to pee, do it now. Saves on the underwear.’

Another short barking laugh. Briefing over.

Actually one hour. I was sitting in the cockpit, fully kitted and sweating like hell under the heavy leather gear. I had climbed in clumsily enough, nearly slipped. You’re supposed to know your ground crew, first names, treat them like best mates, but they were just a blur to me.

The cockpit closing like a coffin lid clicking shut.

I fumble for the switch, ignition, the sudden roar of the engine making me jump. Suddenly I feel cold inside. Those big propeller-blades turning slowly, then fast, then with blinding invisible speed and the aircraft shudders with sudden unsettling — nearly uncontrolled — power.

The roar of the engine deafens. My leather-gloved hands are thick and clumsy on the controls, but somehow the Tempest is rolling forward, the windscreen spattered with tiny dark dots of mud. My Tempest shuddering and roaring with that unsettling power as I follow Jingo Brook’s Tempest out onto the runway.

Already speeding because we cannot waste a moment in this most exposed and vulnerable moment; ahead, Jingo’s Tempest is lifting up with a final tearing splatter of mud. So it is my turn, pulling the joystick back — odd name that — and the Tempest snarling to further impossible power as those invisible-spinning blades suck air into the radial engine and I lift — lift — a queer empty moment, but Jingo is ahead and I follow.

I catch up and settle on his wing. His helmeted goggled head turns and he lifts a gloved finger. I lift one back and we climb higher and higher because in height there is some safety.

The other Tempests are climbing behind us. Six for this patrol — ‘safe as changing nappies’ Jingo has joked. I look over at his helmeted head, now staring forward. I feel a queer rush of affection, comradeship; a mix of awful emotion at the thought of being found wanting.

Up and up. I had experienced this magic feeling on my first flight — an old bi-plane Tiger Moth, fragile as a butterfly against this storming power-ridden creature. I am directed upward, following Jingo, the Pied Piper of war, which makes this magic lifting moment more intense.

I have been airborne before. But this is special: I am going in harm’s way. I am airborne to war and death, flying in formation with a man who understands and who wants to keep us alive. So I look over again and catch his own goggled gaze. I put up a thumb and get one in return.

No speaking because we have radio silence. Climbing higher, three thousand metres and already my head is beginning to wrench around on my neck till my spine creaks. I’d do 360 degrees if I could, because this controlled eyeball-scan is first-warning against enemy strike. Radio silence broken as a thin voice crackles.

Charles Pinkney. He’s got engine-feed problems, maybe a fuel-line, losing power. And to prove it, his Tempest drifts sideways like a straight-winged fish in this vast pale pond.

‘Go for home.’

Jingo’s terse words give no indication of his feelings. We have our feelings too as Pinky’s Tempest peels off and is lost below. Minutes — maybe only one minute — and Nessie, whose brains are as thick as tough mutton, forgets radio silence.

‘Hey, what’s that below?’

We have just a moment to glance down. To fix on the twin-engined bomber, so mottled with green-and-brown as to be a scudding invisible shape. That same moment, Jingo’s voice cutting in, urgent and furious: ‘Bandits, three o’clock high, break — break!’

And instinct — that split-second of reaction — hauling the stick back into the pit of my stomach, letting that searing awareness scorch me. Yes a bomber below, Jerry’s new Arado jet — and while we are looking, the fighters pounce from on high, right out of the sun.

And having to look up at the sun-dazzle, blinking, those black shapes hurtling down — connecting to us by drifting yellow lines, and the next moment’s a nightmare of bewildered crazy noise, like a jigsaw exploding apart.

Think! This is it — react! And twisting my Tempest around, in full control of this roaring fury, the black shapes rushing up, I press my thick-gloved thumb on the firing button — nothing. Hell, flip the safety. My Tempest shuddering as the wing-cannon roar, then the black shapes are past. A sudden cacophony of voices in my headphones.

‘Nessie — break. He’s on your tail.’

‘Jeeze bloody hell Gus, you’re shooting at me’ — from Jingo.

‘Got two on me —’ Nessie yelling.

‘Break. Break.’

And just like that, a last scudding dark shape out of sight — and it’s over. Ending quickly as it began, and the German fighters — long-nosed Focke-Wulfs — are nowhere to be seen. One downward spiralling trail of smoke — a German fighter in flames. Jingo bawling at us to re-form and head for home.

Even in this first hour of aerial fighting, I can look around. See we are one short too. Not sure who: Jingo keeps us on radio silence as we head back to the airfield. It comes into view, I see the swastikaed tailfin of our Resident Heinkel. I must be shaking because my Tempest jars so hard on landing that the undercarriage nearly collapses.

We taxi into the revetment bays. I’m glued to my seat and shaking, sick and scorching inside. Feeling an awful churning like my guts are being scooped out. Surprised I can make my fumbling numb hands work as I push back the canopy and stiffly — like I’ve been sitting for hours — get out.

I nearly end up in a heap on the ground. I avoid the faces of the ground crew, think I mutter something about ‘first flight’ and clump off to the mess-tent. Like everyone, I’m expecting a red-hot broadside from Jingo.

It wasn’t like that. He was calm, even soothed us. He joked about me shooting at him. A single direct glance at Pinky, whose fuel-feed problems somehow solved themselves. We’re blooded, that was the main thing — he used that word with satisfaction: blooded. Next time we’d do better, now get some coffee and go out and check with the ground crews.

Already I felt better, somehow cleared in my head. This was the first time, there would be a second and third — a lot more. But I could handle it now. I could even think about the one Tempest missing.

Pilot Officer Lesley Stevens, came in on my intake but I cannot remember his face. He was nineteen, copped it on that first pass and all that was left was a brown crater somewhere, being rapidly whitened by the falling snow. Not even a chance to call him ‘Les’.

And even thinking about him, also thinking — it was him, not me. You had to think that to survive. You couldn’t feel guilty, even about having a good sleep that night.

Jerking awake as my cellphone shrilled, looking at my watch as I clicked the phone open. Nine a.m. Morning. The weirdest feeling that my own hands were encased in thick leather gauntlets.

Mum on the phone, was I okay? Sure Mum, I slept in a chair and have aches in my back and neck to prove it. And I’m having incredible, unreal dreams about Grandad, who was sitting in the now-empty chair opposite. Of course I didn’t say that, I just made the right noises and said goodbye.

I had a headache and made coffee. I didn’t want to eat, but I opened a can of sliced peaches and spiked them out with a fork. And thinking, thinking, all of this had to be going somewhere. There were things I needed to know — and then it hit me. I checked the local directory for the car-yard and reached for my cellphone. Blocky answered in his unmistakable way.

‘Yeah?’

‘Blocky, Matt here. Listen, two guys were in town for Grandad’s funeral, one called Nesbitt. How many motels are there here? I need his home address.’

‘Okay.’ Blocky hung up.

I finished the peaches and made some more coffee. About three minutes later, the phone rang again. Blocky has Nesbitt’s address: luckily he lives only about two hours north of here. Blocky said if I was taking Grandad’s old Toyota, I’d better take a good mechanic along too. I said thanks — and thanks for the address.

He chuckled, the first time I’d heard this. I shouldn’t thank him, thank the cleaning maid who owes me one. And needed very little persuasion to look up the motel register.

Josie.