There were fewer German fighters in the sky now, and we were not imagining it. Word was that the fuel shortage was really cutting, new pilots getting about twelve hours’ flight training. Just enough time, said Jingo, to teach them how to crash.

At briefing, he passed around a recon photo. A German ME-262 jet being towed out of shelter by two oxen — yes, oxen. The fuel shortage so acute that aircraft were towed to take-off, unlike us with aircraft taxi-ing out, engines cheerfully roaring. So, even oxen were a target now.

Later that morning, we were on a ground-strike mission, seeking a German column. We were low, Blue Section running top-cover. No sign of the column, but they always went to cover in daylight. Jingo, though, had an uncanny eye for camouflage.

‘Ahead,’ came his intercom-voice. ‘Roadside, left bank of the canal, all that bloody shrubbery’s just too good to be real.’

We were low and the words were scarcely out of his mouth before we were in line for the strike. His cannon-shells were already stitching a sharp exploding line up the left-bank roadside. Branches scattered and flew upward, then his underwing rockets flame flamed at point-blank range into a haystack.

The ‘haystack’ exploded — at least the two half-tracks it was covering exploded — and dark figures scattered into the white fields. I was following Jingo and triggered my cannon at another thick clump of foliage ahead. My wings jolted as the rockets arched away, driven by their searing white tails. Two overstruck, two hit the ‘foliage’, ripping apart a tangle of camouflage netting. An explosion, bits of truck and human bodies also flew up.

Men just like us — like that quantity surveyor from Heidelberg — were being torn apart down there, but you shut off your mind to that. The Yanks called this a ‘turkey-shoot’, and all the flight followed, blasting away at those so-natural clumps of foliage. Pinky whooped as he banked to strafe the running men.

Without emotion, Jingo directed us to follow. Killing them was our job, so eight thundering cannon stitched their death-seams, tossing away the dark figures like puppets. Some reached the shadow-fringe of forest but, even so, we blasted the trees.

Then Jingo called us back to another target.

With the branches and netting blown away, there were lines of horses. They had been hobbled to stop them straying and so could not run. So — those still alive — could only jerk and strain against their impending death. Half the German army was horse-drawn by that time, so, like the oxen, horses were targets to be hit.

I like horses.

We re-formed and lined up on them. The wing-cannons thundered at the standing lines and the horses jerked, twisting in the unnatural brutal poses of death. Some were still alive and threshed frantically. I could imagine their screaming agony, but we were low on ammunition. So we left that bloody dark untidy line behind us.

I had killed men horribly, maybe even women and children, and just shut it out. But somehow I could not shut out the memory of that twisting untidy shambles. Back at base, I went to my room and kicked off my flying-boots. I was shaken, somehow raging with myself — as though killing horses was worse than killing people. It was all killing and maybe it was getting to me.

Shooting horses shouldn’t have been different from shooting people. Different from shooting people — I could not believe I had thought that. As though killing did not matter anymore.

A few weeks later, I was out looking for a truck-load of spares that had gone missing and chance took me past that field. The burned-out vehicles, netting-tangles and collapsed foliage were all glistening white. So were the bodies, one grotesquely jack-knifed to a seated position, the snow like cake-icing.

The horses were still there too. Their bellies had swollen before even corruption was stopped by the cold. Legs, or blasted stumps, sticking into the air; contorted in the hobble lines that had held them like executioner’s bonds for the strike. All covered with the same white frosting of snow.

But by then I could look at them, and even smile when one guy made a crack about frozen meat on the hoof.

My new ground crewman was Alfie, a Newcastle ‘Geordie’ whose accent practically needed translation. For example, it never rained with Alfie, it ‘fluted’. He was good, though, winked at me when he slid the canopy shut.

New pilots too. Piotr, a Polish Ukrainian, Jako a Czech — and Gavin Boyd from Medicine Hat, Canada. He was twenty, dark-haired and still shy around the ladies. Dead keen and ‘pleased as Punch’ to be over here, in the fighting. We all joked about ‘medicine hats’ and he took it with a smile.

For some reason, he attached himself to me, bit like a stray dog finding its place. After his first mission, I found him vomiting behind the farmhouse. He was shaking, white-faced and ashamed of himself, but I soon put him straight. I’d been right where he was.

So he’d hung around me a bit, shown me photos of ‘the folks’, even told me what he was writing home. He was Pinky’s wingman, and for some reason Pinky was annoyed that Gavin liked me. I suppose that since nobody liked Pinky, he took it personally. The skids would soon be under Pinky and he knew it.

The night before Gavin’s fourth mission, he was less strained, starting to joke a bit. That was always a good sign: the lad would come right. We sortied the next dawn, the big four-bladed propellers clawing thunderous life into our engines. I muttered my catchphrase and felt that familiar jolt in my stomach as Red Section went up into that uncertain blue arena of battle.

This should have been an ordinary mission — as ordinary as it got — patrolling the lines, looking out for a troublesome ground-strafing jet. And sometimes it was so calm, so peaceful, that a feeling of wonderment relaxed you; it was all just too serene and death only happened to other people. And relaxing — even for a moment — was when it happened.

This day, when the Focke-Wulf 190s jumped us out of nowhere and the serene blue was suddenly torn apart with loud hammering cannon and fleeting black shapes. When my heart suddenly burst into my mouth and I pulled Tearing Kea around, spitting out cannon-stars.

A moment. Dogfights never last long, this one shorter than most. A glimpse of the Focke-Wulfs as they streaked for home and Jingo roaring as he swung our section around to chase them. He was mad — they had ambushed him — and minutes before he had done a flight-check. We had lost one fighter.

Pinky’s wingman, Gavin Boyd, had just disappeared out of the blue sky. Pinky swore he had not seen Boyd fall — so there was a hope that he might have just become separated. That he’d stooge around and find somewhere to land.

We told ourselves that — at least for twenty-four hours — then told ourselves he was a prisoner-of-war. That was good for a few days, until the first letter from his parents arrived.

Tony and Muriel Boyd wanted to know what had happened to their son — their only son. They wanted to know how it happened, what we had been doing. And following this, a telegram from their local Member of Parliament. That was when I heard an explosive oath, passing the radio tent that also served Jingo as an office. He pulled me inside.

‘Look at this crap — all because that silly sod Pinky couldn’t keep his eyes open. Too busy looking after his own precious arse as usual.’

Jingo felt the loss of any pilot personally, but getting letters and a telegram like this put him in an even blacker mood. He uttered more loud swear words and the station cat, curled up under his desk, wisely uncurled and fled. Jingo kicked the desk hard.

‘Pinky!’ He collapsed in his chair. ‘Gus, he came in with you — know him well?’

I didn’t know him that well. New Zealander like me, near the top of his class in flying skills, was top in navigation. Jingo just grunted, okay that qualified him to fly delivery aircraft across the Atlantic or drive a bus (fly a bomber), but a fighter pilot needed more — hell, even more than aiming straight.

‘He needs not only to get up there, but to get stuck in, forget about getting shot up, burned or even rammed, even like Pussy. That takes more than finding your artificial horizon or kicking out of a spin. It needs a special kind of guts and either you’ve got it — or you haven’t.’ He breathed heavily and spat. ‘I should have moved on Pinky long ago.’

I knew what ‘moved’ meant. A fitness report. Pinky would be declared ‘unfit for flying duties, due to lack of moral fibre.’ L.M.F. stamped in big red letters at the bottom. They would stay on Pinky’s file like scar tissue. For the rest of his time in the Air Force, he would get the shit jobs — literally — like latrine duty. Perhaps even broken in rank, down to sergeant or corporal.

I knew Pinky. He was sensitive, he thought too much. The reverse to Jingo, whose dark fires would have consumed Pinky. And the war was nearly over — hell it took guts just to lift your Tempest up from the runway each day, twice a day. So I decided to do Pinky a favour, and that was the worst mistake I ever made. Because, as things worked out, I was doing him little favour — and myself none at all.

‘Give him a chance Jingo. Hell, one of us saw Gavin go — chances he’s in the bag. If the Red Cross find him in a German camp and Pinky asks for a court martial …’

Jingo’s eyes were the colour of steel and sometimes went just as cold. His voice was low, even innocent, but just as cold. ‘Are you threatening me, old son?’

‘Give him one more chance, Jingo. None of us want those bloody big red letters.’

I had him there. Jingo was bravest of the brave, but even the best fear that moment of weakness. All of us fear those big red letters, as much because they were created by people who knew nothing of what we went through. Or how men would push themselves too far — to their own deaths and others — to avoid them. The Americans would let their flyers cry quits if they’d truly had enough — but in the British Air Force, the price of getting out was lasting shame.

‘Alright, Gus, one more chance. And he doesn’t bloody deserve it.’

He slouched in his chair, not looking up as I saluted and left.

I left Jingo and went for a walk. It was near dusk and I needed the cold air in my lungs. Getting very close to spring and soon the snow would be melting. The winter was holding us up more than the Germans, and things would end when spring set in — things must end.

I did a circuit of the airfield, sucking in the air, kicking my feet and waving to the anti-aircraft gunners. Told myself there was still a chance for Gavin, even though his gear was rolled up in a neat package ready to be sent home. Then I noticed a dark figure standing in the shadow of our Resident Heinkel. It was Pinky and I went over to him.

‘It could happen to anyone,’ I said awkwardly.

He gave me a bitter look. ‘But it happened to me, Pinky the Walker. I know what they bloody well say. Screw them and screw you, Tucker.’

‘Pinky, none of us like it. I talked to Jingo —’

He interrupted, almost spitting with a bitter hate. ‘Don’t do me any good turns, just keep out of it, okay? I didn’t see Boyd being bounced. And we’re not all cosy mates with our dashing commander, are we?’ He clenched his hands, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Hard enough looking after yourself, wondering when — You think I’m gutless, but I’m not. I just —’

He broke off and, ducking under the wing of the Heinkel, walked off into the trees. I think that ‘just’ would have ended with ‘can’t take it, guts or not’, and I knew what he felt. Now I know I should have gone after him — or not even had the conversation. But then, I just shrugged and went back to the mess-tent. Pinky did not appear for dinner.

Gavin Boyd stayed missing. The letters from his parents stopped.