The loss of the five crews had a devastating effect on squadron morale. The usual remedy after a bad loss was for an RAF squadron to have a party in the bar and drink and sing bawdy songs through the night.
Not this time. The crews were too young and green, and they hardly knew the words of the songs anyway. With Slade gone, MacGregor did his best. But the alcohol merely made the youngsters morose, and one by one they sidled off to bed.
MacGregor and Cavendish would have welcomed another operation as a means of getting them in the saddle again. But instead, Group gave them three days’ stand-off to recuperate, which was a bad mistake.
Then a week of fog and rain kept them on the ground. Finally, the next op, which MacGregor was to lead, was announced.
And in the morning he woke to hear the howling of the dog.
But worse followed. Sitting down in the dining-room for breakfast beside Lennox, an ex-policeman, who was slightly older and more sensible than the others, Lennox told him he’d just heard that P/O Bates was reporting sick.
The rot was setting in. MacGregor hoped to high heaven that Luscious Lesley would have the gumption to send Bates packing, otherwise the squadron would fall apart.
Flying Officer Stamford was halfway through her morning’s sick parade when P/O Bates reported. A suspicion, similar to MacGregor’s, briefly crossed her mind, but not for long. Bates was one of the youngsters whom she knew quite well. She was on good terms with most of the squadron. They were so like her young brother that she felt a real affection for them, had been on the occasional pub crawl with them, and she was always urged to come and sit at the aircrew table when going in to the Mess for lunch or dinner, a fact which caused Cavendish to make his long face longer still.
She had somewhat cut him down to manageable size, too. The week after she arrived she had carefully read through the Wing Commander’s personal file, and after that she understood him better.
As she had guessed, he had been born with the proverbial silver spoon. Home was Gayton Hall, his father the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire. Eton and Oxford continued what Gayton Hall had begun. Then the Auxiliary Air Force. Naturally he got Exceptional assessments for flying skills and rapid promotion. The daring young man on the flying trapeze was all set for the highest echelons of RAF power. But as the squadron was moved to France, the daring young man was proved all too human after all. He was hospitalised for glandular fever. No wonder he detested sickness, and detested anyone who pretended sickness even more. Left behind in Blighty while his chums went on to death or glory in the Battle of Britain, he was given, when he recovered, a stooge job at Bomber Command Headquarters until some string-pulling, well-heeled fairy godmother waved her wand and gave him 13 Squadron at Marshfield.
‘Come in, Bill! Sit down,’ she said to Bates as he came into the surgery. ‘Did the pud get you after all?’
She had sat beside him yesterday at lunch and they had all groaned about the leaden weight of the lemon sponge pudding. Bates was a red-faced rugger-playing smiley Liverpudlian. He had dropped a lump of the pudding on his plate and sworn it had cracked it.
‘No, doc, no. Take more than that. It’s my throat.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘Feels like I’ve swallowed a couple of razor blades.’
‘Any other symptoms?’
‘A bit dizzy.’
‘Headache?’
‘A bit. Like as if the lid of my head flaps up as I walk.’ He smiled again. ‘I wonder if you could give me something. I want to be on the top line for the op.’
Flying Officer Stamford pulled the angle-poise light closer, lifted a spatula and looked down his throat. His tonsils and uvula were reddened, but not excessively so.
‘Do you tend to suffer from tonsillitis, Bill?’
‘No. I’m fit as a flea. Never suffer from anything, really.’
She probed around. He had a badly decayed wisdom tooth with the gum inflamed all round it, and she wondered if that might be the source of the trouble. She felt his glands and they were only slightly swollen.
She was aware of his eyes on her face. She had the impression that now he wished he hadn’t come. He looked impatiently at his watch.
She shoved a thermometer in his mouth and thought carefully. To ground or not to ground, that was the question. He wasn’t really ill enough. And she’d heard a rumour that this operation was going to be an easy one, a real trip around the bay. She tried to examine her own integrity. If she did ground him, wasn’t some part of her wanting to cock a snook at Cavendish? Showing him she wasn’t his man?
She smiled vaguely at Bates as she waited for the thermometer to cook. She decided she would ground Bates if his temperature was at all raised.
It wasn’t.
‘I think you’ll be OK,’ she said and he brightened visibly. ‘I’ll give you a couple of pills to take now and some gargle, and that should do the trick.’
‘Thanks, doc,’ he said jumping up. ‘You’re a wizard!’ He planted a brotherly kiss on her cheek. ‘Like I said, I want to be on the top line! Thanks.’
‘And if it isn’t better in two or three days, let me have another look at you.’
In two or three days. Christ, how stupid could she get!
A now smiling Bill Bates watched as she wrote in the Disposal column of the sick parade daily record, M and D standing for Medicine and Duty, and gave him a chit to collect the gargle and the pills from the dispensary.
‘Thanks,’ he said again at the door. ‘The others would have killed me if I’d had to scrub.’
The others would have killed him – the words haunted her.
Who killed whom?
I killed them.
I said the sparrow with my bow and arrow.
I killed them all.
None of MacGregor’s anxieties showed on his face as he sauntered down to Operations at noon with Ryan, his trusted air-gunner who had been through France with him, and Lyttle, his new navigator on his first op. MacGregor exuded confidence, bursting with get-up-and-go spirit.
Coming in to the briefing room, he was relieved to see Bates and his crew sitting in the front row. Good for Luscious Lesley!
Plumping himself down next to Bates in front of the platform on which stood a big blackboard with a curtain across it, he joked with the six crews he would be leading.
Behind them the swing doors opened. The Station Warrant Officer barked, ‘A-tenshun!’
Led by MacGregor, they all stood up.
In came the Group Captain and Wing Commander Cavendish who mounted the platform and stood beside the Intelligence Officer and the Met man.
The CO addressed them. ‘Gentlemen, you may smoke.’
Hurst and Cavendish sat down beside the blackboard.
There were six seconds of agonised suspense as Pringle walked slowly towards it and drew back the curtain.
Pinned with brass drawing-pins on the map below was a white ribbon running north-east from Marshfield up the Channel till it crooked to the right at the beginning of the Scheldt Estuary.
The same target over which those five crews had disappeared.
There was a massed indrawn breath. Then total silence.
‘Barges again, chaps,’ MacGregor called out. ‘Jerry’s just about given up on those barges. It’ll be a piece of cake!’
‘Yes,’ Pringle said. ‘It is the barges again. Not so many this time. They’ve really had a mauling. And—’ He pointed his billiard cue to three malevolent red blobs around Flushing. ‘You’ll be glad to know that those three batteries of 4-inch AA have been moved inland. Furthermore, this time there’s going to be a simultaneous high-level mass attack on Le Havre, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk by three squadrons of Wellingtons. The strategy is to get Jerry to scatter his fighters to protect the remaining barges in the south. Then in comes 13 Squadron suddenly snaking in on the deck below the radar up the Scheldt and into the Walcheren Channel. You will drop your bombs in formation on the barges. Then continue up the Channel, turning left at the north end of Walcheren, back into the Channel and home. In and out again before Jerry realises he’s been attacked!’
Now Flying Officer Flanagan, the Met Officer, took Pringle’s place.
‘More good news now, boys—’
Flying Officer Flanagan was renowned for his duff met reports, and an ironic cheer echoed round the room.
‘Cloud cover! Honest! Stratus five hundred feet above you, but visibility three miles at sea level.’ He paused. ‘And Base is going to be CAVU. Lovely for landing.’
Next, the Signals Officer handed out the frequencies and the cartridges for the Colours of the Day – two greens.
Now Cavendish got to his feet. ‘Did my damnedest to lead you all today. But the AOC wouldn’t budge. As you know, Blenheim COs are still barred from operational flying. But I’ll be up there with you in spirit I know you’re going to put up a tremendous show. And we’ll have a hell of party when you’re all back home!’
Group Captain Hurst finished the briefing with, ‘Jerry has no idea of the present 13 Squadron has got for him. Good hunting… and the best of luck, chaps!’
As the crews streamed out to the waiting lorries, MacGregor said, ‘Money for old rope! Go for it!’
On their way to the aircraft, he had a final word with Maddox, whom he had put next to him on the port side of the formation so that he could keep an eye on him.
‘Don’t get too enthusiastic, Peter. Hang on to my wing. Do what I do. Don’t go out on your own. And for God’s sake, don’t get lost again!’
Caught up with the excitement of the op, the nervousness had left the young faces. ‘Money for old rope!’ they kept repeating. MacGregor’s mind was calm now, too full to think of anything but the job in hand as he got out of the lorry and began walking to F-Freddie with his crew, feeling that something of the old 13 Squadron spirit had been injected into them all.
He signed the 700, got into the aircraft and began to settle himself down on the cushion of his parachute that fitted into the metal container of the pilot’s seat.
It was too far forward as usual after the Waaf fitter had done the DI.
‘Women!’ he grumbled as he adjusted it two slots back. ‘All suffer from ducks’ disease.’
He moved his body backwards and forwards, checking the seat’s steadiness. A friend of his with short legs had had the seat propelled right back by the take-off. Couldn’t reached the controls. Crashed. Urquhart was his name.
That first action of his pre-flight check completed, and the engines started, methodically and in the same name-linked way he went on to the next one, his hands gripping each lever and touching each switch.
Hydraulic selector down. Trim neutral – Fanshawe had the rudder tabs fully starboard and ended up ninety degrees to the right of where he started.
Mixture normal – Yates had it in weak and stalled back onto the runway. Revs fully fine – poor Chalmers earthbound in Coarse. Flaps twenty degrees – nobody but that Prune Parkes would have tried to take off with them fully down. Gills closed – Riley had them open at OTU and couldn’t get over the hedge at the far end.
Then he swung the spectacles of the control column, ailerons fully left, then fully right. Red-haired Travers had tried to take off with the locks on and crashed. Then he pushed the stick full forward. If Noakes had tried them that dark night in France, he’d have found he couldn’t move them.
With each action he did came the unfortunate face to fit in. A good memory and a good imagination were an asset there, not so good elsewhere.
Then he opened up the throttles to +9 boost before throttling back to test each magneto in turn – all well below 100 drop.
Up in the nose, Lyttle checked the bomb panel and reported it OK.
Now at the rear in the turret, Ryan had tested the W/T and was adjusting the belts of the .303s of the twin Brownings to guard against a stoppage.
‘Guns OK, Skipper!’
MacGregor waved away the chocks. Then he inched both throttles forward.
Gently F-Freddie started to roll. Followed by the other six Blenheims, sedately he led the procession to the western end of the field and wheeled into wind.
Slowly he opened the engines to +9 boost, curbing the torque that swung the aircraft right. Gathering speed, the Blenheim raced over the grass.
At 80 mph he began easing back on the stick.
Gently, almost imperceptibly, the aircraft left the ground.
‘Undercarriage up!’ he said aloud to himself, slamming up the lever. Then he lifted the flaps.
A cacophony of sound enveloped Marshfield as the Blenheim engines roared up to full power. Up rose a startled grey cloud of peewits from the marsh, immediately followed by a screaming flock of seagulls as one by one the seven Blenheims pounded over the grass.
Out of the corner of his left eye, MacGregor saw a blue bunch of cheering Waafs as, like horses in a steeplechase, the seven Blenheims leapt over the hedge and roared up into the crystal-clear sky.
Seconds later, with weak mixture, plus one and a half boost and 2400 rpm selected, they were scudding over the barbed wire defences and the heavily mined beach, over the white fringe of foam to within inches of the brown waters of the Channel, on a course of 089 degrees.
Glancing to port, MacGregor saw the grinning face of Maddox tucked in so close he could see his baby-blue eyes and the smile on his pink lips.
He frowned, and gestured him to keep away. The last thing he wanted was to end up in a tangle with Maddox. Of all the sprog crews he had had to deal with, he’d had to take the most trouble with Maddox after seeing some of his circus act take-offs and landings. The man’s navigator, Horner, had been a damned nuisance, pestering him to ground the boy. But MacGregor couldn’t do anything about it, because in some extraordinary way, after getting himself and his aeroplane into a situation that even the most skilful pilot would be hard pressed to recover from, something always seemed to come from somewhere to save him.
The sea remained flat calm. From the turret, Ryan reported heavy firing to the south.
Glancing to starboard, MacGregor saw the blue sky crayonned over with grey puffs threaded through with silver and red.
He picked up his microphone. ‘The Wellingtons doing their stuff!’
‘Good old Wimpies!’ Lyttle said. ‘Keep it up, boys!’
Ten miles to starboard now, up over the horizon came the beaches of Dunkirk. Little movement there, but the formation was moving ever closer to land. Buildings could clearly be seen now, and even as they watched, the sky above them erupted in a thunderstorm of yellow explosions.
A stream of fire with a smoking tail was zooming vertically downwards.
‘Wimpy going down!’ reported Ryan from the turret. ‘And another! Poor buggers!’
Over on the right, white waves were breaking on a corn-coloured beach. Up came the grey stone entrance to Ostend harbour. People running on the breakwater. Flashes of gunfire and, high above them, the Wellingtons now being pestered by fighters.
Zeebrugge flashed past. Still hugging the water, MacGregor swung slowly to the right. As one huge bird with left wing outstretched, the formation entered the Scheldt.
Everything was quiet. A fishing-boat drawn up against a wooden landing quay. Cars travelling along the road moving east. A field full of cabbages, wilting in frost.
Then suddenly, to port, MacGregor saw the narrow mouth of the Walcheren Channel filled with row upon row of brown barges.
Immediately the whole formation wheeled to the left, straightened up. With throttles hard against the stops, inches above the water, bomb doors open, at 230 miles an hour, the seven Blenheims hurtled towards them.
Now they had been spotted. Streams of glittering white cannon fire mixed with brown blobs of four-inch ack-ack were spouting around them. F-Freddie’s cockpit filled with gun-smoke as Ryan began firing the twin Brownings in the turret.
Two hundred yards away now… one hundred… fifty.
MacGregor pressed the pilot release tit on the stick.
‘Bombs gone!’
In the corner of his left eye, he glimpsed the 250lb eleven second-delay bombs lazily falling from the bomb bays of S, K and L. Seconds later, above the noise of the engines and the rattle of gunfire, he could hear them exploding on the wooden decks of the barges.
‘Christ!’ Ryan shouted. ‘Bang on, Skipper! Fire, smoke, planks of wood… that’ll teach ’em to crack nuts in church!’
Port wing vertical just above the dirty harbour water, MacGregor wheeled F-Freddie round for Lyttle to photograph the flaming red and yellow debris. The whole inlet now was a mass of fire punctuated with streams of flak. Half-suffocated by smoke, three times MacGregor circled the boiling cauldron.
‘Thanks, Skipper,’ Lyttle said as he returned to his desk with the B24 camera. ‘Got some good ones.’
Ryan was still firing as MacGregor straightened up and began zigzagging north-west along the Walcheren Channel.
‘See any of the others, Ryan?’
‘Not a sign, sir.’
‘They’ll be halfway home by now,’ said Lyttle as they hurtled out of the Channel and began turning a hundred and fifty degrees to go home.
‘Watch out for fighters!’ MacGregor called.
‘Can’t see any,’ said Ryan.
But the visibility was dropping all the time. The blue sky had turned grey. Damp mist, no longer smoke, filled the Channel.
And coming out of it, MacGregor saw a huge ghostly shape hugging the coast and steering south-west.
A ship – ten thousand tons at least. A strange-shaped ship – neither tanker nor merchant vessel but midway between both. One thick funnel. A high, sharp bow. A blunt cruiser stern to which clung wraiths of mist like grey seaweed.
He swung the Blenheim to port for a better look.
Immediately the air exploded with yellow stars of flak. Seconds later, silver cannon fire streamed just above the Blenheim canopy. An Me 109 flashed immediately above MacGregor’s head. Then another came right at him from the front. He had to wrench the Blenheim into a ninety-degree right bank to avoid collision.
‘Christalmighty!’ He slammed the throttles against the stops.
Immediately a dew of fine water drops smudged the windscreen. Within seconds, F-Freddie was swallowed into the belly of a cloud.
‘Three cheers for the Irish!’ With a relieved smile MacGregor climbed away from fighters and flak into denser and denser cloud. ‘Saved by a duff Flanagan forecast.’
Lyttle came forward and laid a neat message slip on the throttle box – ‘Course for home, 254 degrees. ETA Marshfield 15.59’.
The next moment they were caught in a huge band of warm, moist air that had swept up from the Bay of Biscay to the cold waters of the English Channel. Blindfold in a grey prison at a safety height of 2,500 feet, MacGregor grimaced at Lyttle. ‘This bloody stuffs going on for ever!’
Coming as low as he dared risk descending, he had a go at trying to get in to Shoreham, Tangmere and Thorney Island – each time seeing houses and trees just in time to pull back and roar up into the overcast.
Nowhere appeared open. Ryan reported the W/T jammed with static and call-signs of returning Wellingtons seeking homes.
On the point of running out of fuel, MacGregor suddenly saw a mist-streaked end of a runway perched on the edge of a cliff.
As soon as Flying Officer Stamford stepped out of Sick Quarters, she smelled the mist rolling in from the sea. Romney Marsh mist holds its own special eeriness. She felt its clammy cold touch on her face and neck as she walked briskly to the Airwomen’s Mess to carry out her afternoon inspection. Even before the logistics of getting the seven aircraft safely on the ground had dawned on her, she had felt uneasy.
She was glad to get into the steamy heat of the WAAF kitchens. Apprised of her coming, everything was spruce and hygienic. The cooks had their hair covered, their nails spotless, there was nothing decaying in the larder. Even the vat of usually greasy water, where the airwomen dunked their irons, their individual knives, forks and spoons, was clear and piping hot. The only fault, as she put her head out of the rear door to look at the vegetable store, was a bowl of sodden meat and gravy.
‘What’s that doing, Sergeant?’
‘Oh, sorry, ma’am. One of the cooks says there’s a stray dog around. We put it out for him.’
‘Well it doesn’t look as if he wants it, does it? I should take it in. It’ll attract rats.’ She smiled to show she wasn’t going to snag them for that, and sighed gratefully as the sergeant uncovered a tray of tea and scones for the final sweetener.
She was drinking her tea by the warmth of the ovens when an airwoman’s head appeared at the hatch connecting the kitchens with the Mess hall.
The sergeant frowned at the airwoman. ‘Are you off shift already?’
‘Not off altogether. I gotta go back. There’s a flap on at Control. His Nibs is doing his nut. Panic stations all round. Marshfield is clampers.’
In the preceding hour the mist had thickened and an early darkness fallen. Already one of the ACHs (aircrafthand) had gone round putting up the black-outs at the windows, so they couldn’t see out and the weather had sneaked up on them unawares.
‘Ten-tenths, his Nibs said.’ The airwoman was relishing the drama. ‘He told me to grab a wad and a hot drink and get my proper tea later. The kites are all up there somewhere. There’s one clot trying to get in here, but the rest are putting down where they can.’
‘Sooner them than me!’ The sergeant looked towards the ceiling and shuddered.
Faintly, they could hear the sound of engines.
By the time Flying Officer Stamford got to the door, the engines were thundering overhead. She stepped through the black-out trap and into the suffocating fog.
She screwed up her eyes, trying to look up into the black overcast, but there was nothing to be seen. She could hardly see the corner of the Mess building. She couldn’t get Bates out of her mind and for some stupid reason she prayed that it wasn’t Bates up there.
In fact those engines belonged to S-Sugar, milling round in thick cloud for the last hour, trying to get into Marshfield.
Twice Horner had had a glimpse of the village. Twice Maddox had nearly hit the church tower on a crazy blind descent. Throughout his blind-flying aerobatics he had been shouting at Ginger to get him an alternate, and Ginger had been shouting back that every frequency, even the emergency one, was taken up with Wellingtons demanding the same thing.
‘Position, then, Horner! Get me a a position!’
‘Anywhere between Land’s End and John o’ Groats, sir.’
‘Haven’t you been plotting our course?’
‘You’ve been flying every course on the compass, sir.’
S-Sugar continued to toss this way that way, up down and sideways.
Horner turned his head, looked back at Ginger and raised his eyebrows to heaven. ‘Round and round the mulberry bush!’
‘What’s he going to do?’
Horner shrugged. ‘Search me!’
In the cockpit now, total silence. Outside the propellers churned a thick mixture, grey as gruel.
And then, suddenly, Maddox leaned right forward and jammed his forehead against the windscreen.
Abruptly S-Sugar stopped weaving. Maddox settled on a course of 070 degrees.
And now of all things, he began pulling back the throttles.
The needle on the altimeter began to unwind.
‘What’s he up to, Jack?’
‘God only knows, Ginger.’
The altimeter was registering 700 feet and the needle was still unwinding. Horner leaned across and began desperately to push the throttles forward.
Maddox screamed at him, ‘What did you do that for?’
‘We’ll hit a hill in a minute!’
‘Nonsense!’ Maddox pointed ahead out of the windscreen. ‘That aircraft! Can’t you see him, man? He’s leading us in! He’s taking us back to Marshfield.’
Maddox pulled the throttles back again even farther. Horner peered into the gloom.
‘What aircraft?’
‘That big biplane!’
‘I can’t see him.’
‘Two-seater. Gun in the rear cockpit.’ Maddox began jumping up and down in his seat with excitement. ‘There he is! To port! Going down fast now!’
From the back Ginger called nervously, ‘What’s happening?’
‘Says a biplane’s leading us in.’
‘Can’t see nothing.’
‘You and me both, mate!’
Maddox suddenly reached out his arm and banged the undercarriage down.
‘What the hell?’ Horner roared. ‘Are you trying to kill us, man?’
‘Didn’t you see him waggle his wings? We’re on the approach.’
Ginger had come up to stand behind the navigator. ‘What’s got into him, Jack?’
‘Mad! He’s off his head! Get right to the back!’ Horner pointed to the altimeter needle slipping past two hundred feet. ‘We’ll hit the ground in a minute.’
Johnson hurriedly departed aft. Horner slid his seat right back, put a parachute in front of his face and braced himself.
Then suddenly out of the gloom ahead – a fuzzy light.
The sounds of the engines died away. Horner felt a slight jar – the flaps going down.
Another light. Then a muzzy glow to starboard – the Chance Light.
Another light.
He felt the nose lift – then heard the slightest whisper of tyres.
S-Sugar began slowing up. There was a shriek of brakes. Then all forward movement stopped.
Ginger rushed up from the back and began to open the emergency escape hatch. ‘Quick, Jack! Let’s get out before she burns!’
‘Hang on, Ginger! We haven’t crashed.’
‘What’s happened then, Jack?’
‘We’ve arrived.’
‘Where, Jack? For God’s sake, where?’
‘Not in heaven, Ginger. Not yet anyway. This is Marshfield – where we get off.’
When Flying Officer Stamford left Sick Quarters the fog was still dense. She had been relieved to hear from her sergeant that the aircraft in the circuit had been Maddox’s and was safely landed. She didn’t feel like eating a meal and headed straight for her room. She passed the bar where Maddox was celebrating his skill in landing with anyone who was willing to let him buy a drink. In her room, she took off her jacket and was about to run a bath when the Mess tannoy broadcast, ‘Flying Officer Stamford, phone call. Upper corridor.’
The upper corridor was where the WAAF officers were accommodated in the Mess and the telephone box was halfway down between the Queen Bee’s room and the bathrooms.
She slipped her uniform jacket back on, walked down and lifted the receiver.
Cavendish’s taut voice twanged over the line. ‘I want you down at Sick Quarters,’ he ordered without preamble. ‘Now.’
‘Is someone ill?’
‘No.’
‘Has something happened?’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause while he cleared his throat Then he announced starkly, ‘One of our aircraft has crashed. They’ve found it. You will be required to receive the bodies.’
Then he hung up.
A doctor, she told herself, should be used to that sort of thing, especially an RAF doctor, especially one on an operational station. At the same time she felt the necessity to steady herself by holding onto the telephone cradle as if it were a lifeline. The corridor spun. Crackling laughter came through the Queen Bee’s door as her radio belted out ITMA.
It was a nightmare. She would soon wake up.
Then she took hold of herself. She went back to her room, combed her hair, dabbed some rouge on her pallid cheeks, put on her cap and burberry, slung her respirator and marched herself down to Sick Quarters.
Cavendish’s car was outside. Cavendish was inside. He awaited her arrival, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes narrowed, studying her face for signs of weakness.
Sergeant Tillotson was standing beside him. He smiled faintly at her. ‘Several of the aircraft are still missing, doc,’ he told her. ‘But the army rescue laddies have found B-Baker.’
‘Did anyone survive?’ Her eyes travelled from Sergeant Tillotson’s face to the cold, pale mask of Cavendish’s.
‘Hardly,’ Cavendish answered. ‘They went straight into the hill west of Marshfield church. We’re lucky to have found them so quickly. They’re bringing them here by military ambulance.’
‘Which crew was it?’ she asked, feeling that she already knew the answer.
‘Bates,’ Cavendish said. ‘Good lad. Good pilot. Pity.’ And then with a shrug, as if that was the end of his tribute, ‘They should be here within the hour.’
It was the longest and the shortest hour of her life. They sat in the MO’s consulting room which had two comfortable chairs. There was one Sick Quarters orderly on duty as well as the medical NCO, and she made them a cup of Camp coffee thick with Nestle’s milk.
Cavendish paced angrily up and down in unbearable frustration. Flying Officer Stamford would have liked to do the same but her legs felt too wobbly. So she retreated to the safety of her swivel chair behind her desk and the appurtenances of authority and medical knowledge.
‘The aircraft is a write-off,’ Cavendish paused in his pacing to tell her. ‘Cat 3. Stores will have to send a Queen Mary.’
She had the feeling that Bates and his crew no longer existed. They’d been, like the aircraft, written off. The crew was dead. Long live the crew. But for herself, Flying Officer Stamford doubted she would ever lose them.
She had slipped hours backward in time. Staring across her desk, she could see Bates, his apologetic smile as real as Sergeant Tillotson’s anxious one, as he glanced from her to Cavendish. In the glass pot of disinfectant on her desk was the treacherous thermometer. The arbiter of life and death. Why the hell hadn’t it registered a temperature? Why the hell had she made it so important? Why the hell had she let them go?
Eventually she heard the sound of a heavy vehicle snarling into the Sick Quarters compound.
This was it!
‘I’ll tell the driver to take them direct to the mortuary,’ Sergeant Tillotson suggested and hurried to the door.
Cavendish turned to Flying Officer Stamford. ‘You’ll need to do a brief examination of each one. Or of what remains of each one.’
Courtly as always, he held the door open for her, allowed her to precede him down the corridor which led to the small block used as a mortuary.
The ambulance was drawn up outside, and the big side door of the mortuary was open in front of the black-out screen. Two army corporals were unloading three body bags.
‘That’s it, sir!’ The corporals addressed Cavendish. ‘We’ll be on our way. Trouble all over tonight.’
He thanked them politely, helped her up the step and closed the door behind them, eyeing her keenly.
It was icy cold inside the mortuary, the lights glaring. Sergeant Tillotson was already masked and gloved and had the first – she couldn’t designate it a body, shattered, bloodstained bits of a doll – on the table.
Numbly, she slipped on the gown and the gloves he held out for her.
It was Bates. The near faceless one was Bates. Half of his head had been stoved in by the impact, the smiley mouth torn apart. A section of his broken jaw hung loose, and in it she saw that decayed wisdom tooth. That’s how she knew the body was his.
Nothing at medical school had prepared her for this. Her stomach rose. The room tilted, danced round her. She retched, covered her face with her hand and blundered out. She knew she couldn’t examine him. Couldn’t examine the others. Nor would she try.
Cavendish followed her swiftly into the corridor. He caught her arm. Then he put his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t dig his fingers in or shake her or slap her face or offer any violence. And yet his whole attitude, his whole being was full of a personal violence towards her. He seemed to be deliberately overpowering her and everything she was.
‘Get back in!’ he hissed. ‘Do what you have to do! If you don’t you’re not worth that much here!’ he snapped his fingers. ‘You’re not worthy of the Squadron or the uniform you wear!’
And that was it. Back in she went.
And did what she had to do.