And what a day for Marshfield and 13 Squadron! The beginning of Unlucky 13!
Early that morning, Group Captain Hurst received a telephone call from the police informing him that a red MG sports car belonging to F/Lt Phillips, the Station Medical Officer, had mysteriously collided with a tree, wrapped itself round it in fact, and that F/Lt Phillips was now in Canterbury Hospital awaiting surgery for various fractures.
F/Lt Phillips had been an amenable and co-operative medical officer with an unfortunate penchant for the bottle and fast cars. So his regrettable accident was less of a mystery to his commanding officer than it was to the police. He had been returning from a conference with the Group Medical Officer, and was clearly feeling no pain. A call to Canterbury Hospital revealed that he was unlikely to return to duty for the next few months, which left Marshfield without a medical officer just when the squadron was trying to get airborne and operational and casualties were unavoidable.
‘Which leaves us,’ Group Captain Hurst told the SAdO (Station Administrative Officer) ‘up shit creek without a paddle. I’ve been on to Group. They gave me the usual bull about all our doctors being out in the Middle East, or been topped in France. But they’ve promised a replacement as soon as possible.’
‘Give them forty-eight hours, sir. If no medic is forthcoming, then we halt the programme. That’ll make them get their finger out.’
Getting fingers out was the order of the day as far as Cavendish was concerned. He brushed aside MacGregor’s warning that he was still of the opinion none of the pilots was as yet ready for a cross-country, especially given the low cloud and the Hun activity.
‘One cancels out the other,’ Cavendish said with the certainty of an operational virgin. ‘They can get into cloud in the unlikely event of a Hun straying onto their route.’
MacGregor gave Butterworth and crew a careful briefing. He had to drum into them every possible safety precaution he could think of.
‘This is your route.’ He traced the track drawn on the Mercator chart in front of them. ‘This takes you well clear of balloons, prohibited areas and gun positions. You’re inland, away from intruders. But you must watch out for the odd bandit.’
He paused and looked at the three faces now in deep concentration, with Butterworth industriously taking notes. ‘First course 295 degrees magnetic to ten miles east of Bristol. Then turn south to the Quantocks.’ He tapped his pencil on the map. ‘Turn port to 110 degrees back to Marshfield.’
He suddenly became irritated by Butterworth’s writing down everything he said. He pointed to Butterworth’s head. ‘There! I want it in there!’
Butterworth’s face went a nervous juvenile pink as he dropped his pencil as though it was red hot.
‘Fly at four thousand feet. That’s well above all high ground. If the ceiling falls below that, return to base immediately. Report at every turning point. And if you have the slightest mechanical trouble, you’re to land at the nearest airfield.’
The route would take them west as far as the Quantocks, then turning, skirting Portsmouth, a favourite target these days for the Hun.
Butterworth was an eager lad of nineteen with, thank God, an older navigator and gunner who had done a half-tour each in France. They listened attentively, noted the required heights, the presence of barrage balloons, obstructions and friendly but trigger-happy ack-ack which might mistake them for the enemy.
The cloud was broken and the sun shining when they took off, watched by Cavendish and MacGregor. Butterworth bumped a little over the spongy grass, held the aircraft down and then with a quick, controlled burst of power took off smoothly and competently.
Cavendish turned to MacGregor and remarked with a slight sneer as if to ask what the hell were you worrying about, ‘Bloody good take-off.’
The same could not be said of the next Blenheim to become, but only by the grace of God, reluctantly airborne.
Maddox of course. Doing circuits and bumps, and missing death by inches.
The two officers watched narrow-eyed and with bated breath as S-Sugar seemed to fight the squelchy grassland every step of the way taxiing to the hedge, where it turned into wind. Brakes released, the Blenheim began zig-zagging uncertainly before swinging to the left on take-off. For a moment, MacGregor thought they’d had it, and remembered Bronwen and the howling dog and shivered.
But no, thank God, clumsy, incompetent airmen must have their own guardian angel. They were airborne and away as Maddox corrected and hauled back heftily on the stick, and Horner and Johnson let out their breath in a concerted sigh.
‘Did that deliberately,’ Maddox said airily. ‘Good practice.’
‘You clipped the hedge,’ Horner scowled. ‘Did you do that deliberately?’
‘We didn’t clip the hedge.’ Maddox flushed angrily.
‘We did.’
‘Don’t argue, Horner. Get me a course for Maidstone.’ Horner did as he was told and didn’t argue. But when they had landed, after a couple of bounces needless to say, and had taxied to Dispersal, he made a point of inspecting S-Sugar’s undercarriage. And what did he find tucked up in the joints of her oleo legs, but a sizeable branch of thorn.
He thrust it gleefully into Maddox’s face in the crew room, but Maddox simply refused to believe him. ‘You’ve been over to the hedge and picked off a piece! You’re doing this deliberately! You’re sending me up!’ He lowered his voice, ‘I warn you, Horner, you are being insubordinate.’
Horner hadn’t much better luck with young Pip.
‘What’s this?’ she asked suspiciously when he presented the thorn branch to her. ‘A crown of thorns?’
‘Could be. My crown of thorns.’
‘Get away,’ she laughed. ‘You’re no Jesus Christ.’
‘I’m a martyr.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I am. I’m a martyr to Maddox’s flying. You saw it, didn’t you?’
Her eyes clouded.
‘It wasn’t brilliant.’
‘Jeez, that’s the understatement of the year! It was bloody dangerous.’
‘He has to learn.’
‘But will he learn in time? I ask myself.’
‘Anyway, what is this all about?’ She waved the branch. ‘It isn’t a bouquet of red roses.’
‘It’s what Maddox clipped off the hedge on take-off.’
‘Oh!’
‘You might well say “Oh”.’
‘I thought he was a bit low,’ she conceded. ‘But he’ll improve, He just needs confidence.’
‘How about my confidence?’
‘You’ve got bags of it.’
‘No I haven’t.’ Horner smiled slyly, tiring of trying to convince her about Maddox and perceiving a possible advantage. ‘If I had bags of confidence, I’d ask you to come out this evening.’
‘Really.’
‘What would you say to that?’
‘I’d say you’d be dead unlucky.’
He looked crestfallen.
She took pity on him. ‘Because tonight is Domestic Evening. For Waafs to make do and mend. Confined to camp.’
He brightened. ‘So supposing I had the confidence to ask… maybe another evening?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
At six o’clock she was just finishing her usual meticulous check of S-Sugar when Chiefie called to her from the doorway of the Flight offices. ‘I’d like a word, hinny, soon as you’ve finished.’
He was standing by his table in the shabby little office, drinking a mug of tea. He handed her one already poured. Without preamble he said, ‘Looks like A-Able’s bought it.’
Her eyes widened. She felt a sick hollowness in her stomach. ‘Butterworth?’
‘Aye.’ He drained his mug noisily and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Might have landed somewhere else?’
‘Might. Might not.’
‘Did he make any contact?’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘Did he report any trouble?’
‘Nope. Just flew off into the sunset. Or into the ground.’
‘They haven’t found any wreckage?’
‘Not yet.’
‘And he was one of the good ones!’ she exclaimed bitterly.
‘You can say that again! Makings of a good pilot. Nice little bugger.’
And that, she thought, scrubbing her oil-stained hands and sluicing her face in the tiny so-called rest room at Flights, was the epitaph of Butterworth and his crew.
She got a lift as far as the Station guardroom in a Stores van. The RAF corporal driver had heard about Butterworth being missing. Bad news travels fast on an RAF station. ‘He’ll just be the first of the many,’ he said, parodying Winston Churchill’s recent speech in the House of Commons paying tribute to the Few. ‘It isn’t so much the aircraft we’re short of as the poor sods to fly ’em. Once Jerry’s got rid of the RAF he’ll just step over the pond. My Equipment Officer has put in a big indent for coffins, wooden, airmen for the use of.’
At the guardroom she thanked him grittily for an enjoyable ride and slammed the door. He wished her good night and, this being Domestic Evening, ‘Good darning!’
After that she was glad of the half-mile walk alone in the cool darkness. The wind had risen, sweeping the sky. The waxing moon rode clear of the drifting swathes of rain cloud. There was the sound of gunfire far away, but no fires, no air raid warning. Just peaceful country sounds. A cow lowing, an owl hooting. And country smells, the swampy scent of the marsh mingling with crushed grass and some sage-like herb, the smell of wet leaves and dung. She tried not to think about Butterworth and his crew or how for Butterworth you could much more easily and likely substitute Maddox.
By the time she reached Hut 7 on the Waaf site, after swallowing a few mouthfuls of battered cheese sandwich, a gruesome indigestible but filling concoction, in the Waaf Mess, all the girls had heard about A-Able. One of them, Doreen, had made a date with Butterworth’s navigator, but it was for tomorrow so now it would never happen. As she sat on her iron bed, polishing her buttons, the tears dripped onto her buttonstick.
Pip busied herself with her own bed, stacking the three biscuits that comprised the mattress, making a sandwich of hairy brown blankets and coarse sheets, then rolling the sandwich as required in another blanket like a liquorice allsort. After that she cleaned her cap badge, the buttons on her tunic and on her greatcoat, and polished her shoes.
All kit had to be laid out for inspection. Pip quite enjoyed that bit. She had never had so many clothes in her whole life, and she took care of them religiously. She even wore the blue and white striped winceyette pyjamas which everyone else despised. She was good with a needle. She darned a hole in her grey lisle stockings, sewed a button on her shirt, gave her bed space a brisk polish and then, unable to shut her ears to the muffled weeping, went over and put her arms round Doreen.
‘She’ll get over it.’ Pam came breezing in half an hour later, with her lipstick all smudged. ‘Ginger Johnson walked me down from the Parachute Section,’ she whispered excitedly.
‘Was there any news?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Butterworth and crew have handed in their ’chutes.’ She looked heavenwards. ‘Up there.’
At nine o’clock a deep and terrible voice boomed, ‘A… a… tenshun!’ as the door of the hut was flung open. In stamped Flight Sergeant Judson, the Waaf Admin NCO who, rumour had it, was an ex-Governor of Sing-Sing. She was smoothing the way for the Queen Bee, Flight Officer Fortescue, who now entered to inspect the hut and the airwomen’s kit. She was a deceivingly jolly-looking little tyrant, with round shiny cheeks, round currant eyes, a round body, and brown hair scraped up into a round bun on top of her round head.
But those currant eyes were as sharp as razors. Usually she could spot yards away an undarned hole or a missing item of kit, or a lock of hair on a collar. But tonight she had other things on her mind.
Without comment she walked down the two rows of girls standing to attention by their beds, then told F/Sgt Judson to stand them at ease. Then, drawing a deep, wheezy breath, she announced, ‘I have an important directive to read. From no less than their Lordships of the War Cabinet.’
She paused, hoping for a sycophantic indrawn breath. When none came she continued. ‘The subject of that directive, Operation Sea Lion, so called. The Nazi (like Churchill she pronounced the word “Nazzzi”) threat of invasion.’
She then read out a list of do’s and don’ts. Report any lights, any suspicious strangers, any parachutes seen dangling in trees or descending either singly or in numbers. Refuse lifts to strangers, refuse drinks from strangers, refuse to give directions or any sort of information to strangers. MT drivers of course knew it was a chargeable offence not to immobilise their vehicles every time they left them, and this precaution could not be overemphasised. Careless talk was now more than ever to be avoided. Should the landing take place, Winston Churchill had already given his pledge that, she read aloud in ringing tones, ‘We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing fields, we will fight in the streets. We will never surrender.’
At the door, she turned. ‘And be particularly careful of your clothing. Never leave any item in the ablutions block or anywhere else. Enemy infiltrators have been known in the unhappy countries the Nazzzies have invaded to don female clothes.’
‘Kinky bastards,’ Pam whispered, trying to make Pip laugh.
‘So never part with any item of apparel.’
When she had departed in an orgy of stamping and barked orders from Judson, Pam said, ‘Ginger must be an infiltrator. They had a hairy trip with P/O Maddox. So he asked me tonight if he could have a pair of my knickers for luck.’
Which at least made everyone laugh.
‘Lucky for who?’ Pip asked.
‘For all of them. Him and his navigator don’t trust Peter Maddox. So Ginger wants my knickers as a mascot You know what superstitious bods aircrew are.’
Doreen told them lugubriously that her might-have-been boyfriend had asked her for her cap badge but she hadn’t dared to give it before kit inspection. Now she wished she had. And everyone began thinking about Butterworth and his crew again.
They brightened briefly when they got the stove alight. Bunty who worked in Stores had filled her pockets with coke from the fuel compound. This was eventually ignited with smears of margarine liberated by Alice who cooked in the Sergeants’ Mess, therefore with access to all sorts of goodies. She had also brought along a package of tea, some sugar and a tin of Nestle’s milk.
But as they all sat round the now tomato-red stove, sipping their hot, strong, sticky brew, the mood was sombre, not for the invasion, for who could really believe in that? The feeling throughout Britain was that certainly they were alone, but frankly they were better off without the Frogs and other unreliable foreign bastards.
It had all been said succinctly by King George himself: ‘Personally I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper.’
Throughout Britain Dunkirk had taken on the glory of a victory not a defeat. Dowding and his chicks were knocking hell out of the German eagle, and as a famous historian wrote of the British, ‘They were instinctively stubborn and strategically ignorant.’
And ignorance, invasionwise, was bliss. On the other hand, Butterworth and his crew were immediate and known.
‘I knew it was going to happen.’ Bronwen cupped her tin mug in her hands. ‘I knew it this very morning. And do you know for why?’
‘No,’ Pip said crossly. ‘But you’re going to tell us.’
Bronwen pursed her lips in the way she did when she was offended and said nothing.
‘You were reading the teacups again,’ Pam suggested pacifically.
‘No. Didn’t have to. If I had, I’d have known it twice over.’ Bronwen drew a deep breath. ‘I got it from one of my gentlemen in the Mess. F/Lt MacGregor.’
‘So how could he know?’ Pip demanded.
‘He heard a dog howl.’
‘So?’
‘So that always means a death.’
‘Rubbish,’ Pip said.
‘It isn’t rubbish. Dogs know. Dogs smell death.’
‘Lamp-posts, more like.’
‘No, she’s right,’ Alice joined in. ‘Our ration lorry driver, who’s a regular boozer at the Stars and Stripes, he told me the airfield used to be haunted by a howling dog. It used to be here in the First World War.’
‘That’s a load of crap!’ Pam and the others, except Bronwen, told her, shivering a little nevertheless.
‘It isn’t crap,’ Bronwen said. ‘You won’t be told! Just like F/Lt MacGregor wouldn’t be told. But I bet he’s laughing now on the other side of his face!’
Angus MacGregor was not laughing on either side of his face. He waited in Flying Control until 22.00 hours and then walked over to the Intelligence Section on the off-chance of finding Mark Pringle, the Intelligence Officer, still at his desk. Mark was a lonely man. An ex-university scientist. Rumour was that his wife had left him for another man, and he was still reeling from the blow. He was a cultured, polite, distant misogynist. And he was still there.
‘Come in, Angus. Sit yourself down. No,’ he answered without MacGregor asking, ‘no news of A-Able.’
‘Group’s been notified they’re missing?’
‘Yes.’
He poured Angus a slug of rum from the demijohn used for crew debriefing refreshments and handed it to him silently.
‘I shouldnae have let him go,’ MacGregor said, cupping the drink in his hands and staring into it.
‘Come, come. We none of us should let any of them go.’
‘We’re rushing them through too fast.’
‘Who is to say? And what is the alternative? Anyway, it was up to Cavendish. He’s the one that cracks the whip.’
‘Och aye, Cavendish!’ Angus MacGregor sighed deeply. ‘He’s no doubt batting the bods’ ears in the Mess about morale and the press-on spirit.’
‘To give him his due,’ Mark Pringle said, ‘he does battle it out with Group as well. On the squadron’s behalf.’
MacGregor blew a raspberry. ‘Like over what?’
‘Over getting in better-trained pilots.’
‘And have we had a single one? No, sir!’
‘More aircraft.’
‘Another resounding duck.’
‘He’s threatened to suspend flying training until we get our replacement MO.’
‘He’d never do that!’
‘If the necessity arose, he might well.’
But it didn’t.
At least on that score, Group in its wisdom moved quickly to fulfil Marshfield’s need. A signal was delivered to the SAdO the following morning that Marshfield’s replacement medical officer was proceeding forthwith on a temporary posting. Flying Officer Stamford would be with them that afternoon.
‘I am glad we were firm,’ Group Captain Hurst remarked to Wing Commander Cavendish when he telephoned him with the good news. ‘It proves we can sometimes stick our heels in with Group and make them sit up and take notice.’
Cavendish winced at the Group Captain’s mixed metaphors and agreed that on occasion firmness paid off with Group.
‘Don’t like the sound of him overmuch, though. Only a flying officer. Must be a real sprog.’
‘They’re scraping the medical barrel,’ Group Captain Hurst agreed. ‘But some of these youngsters are a good deal more clued up than the older types. Got all the new ideas.’
‘Perhaps,’ Wing Commander Cavendish agreed reluctantly. ‘And perhaps more malleable. Anyway, when are you expecting him?’
‘This pip emma,’ Hurst said, showing his WW1 origins.
‘Send him down to my office, will you, when you’ve had a word?’
‘I shall be delighted to.’
And indeed he was, when the time came.
Group Captain Hurst neither greatly respected nor greatly cared for his Squadron Wing Commander. He found him arrogant, high-handed and inexperienced. An unhappy combination, and a thorn in his own flesh. He himself might be regarded by the young as something of a dinosaur, a WW1 pilot who knew nothing of modern warfare, but at least he’d operated over enemy lines, in a DH 4, had seen the gossamer-thin wings of aircraft fold, had watched bodies of his comrades falling without parachutes, had twice returned with a dead gunner in the rear cockpit He also knew the legend of the only squadron which had occupied Marshfield before 13 – the American Air Force 96th Bombardment Group. In between the wars he had been the manager of a small electronics firm. He was reasonably good with people, which the Wing Commander was not, but he always felt the Wing Commander was trying to usurp his position, making himself the real commander of Marshfield.
So when the transport from the station duly arrived and disgorged Flying Officer Lesley Stamford, his first thought was, This’ll be a turn-up for the book. But serve Cavendish right.
At twenty-five, Flying Officer Stamford was a smart, good-looking woman with large blue eyes, straight black brows and a smile that the Group Captain found quite winning. He couldn’t see her hair because, apart from a tiny roll, it was all tucked decorously under her very new-looking cap.
She saluted punctiliously, and sat down at his invitation for a brief chat. He could see, as he peered over his desk, that she had neat feet and ankles.
The Group Captain discovered that her father was a naval surgeon, that she had been in the RAF for only six months, was at the WAAF depot at Innsworth when this immediate posting had come through. She was delighted to be for the first time on an operational station and the poor girl was clearly very wet behind the ears.
After their chat, he sent her on her way to meet Group Captain Cavendish and waited, with his hands over his ears metaphorically speaking, for the inevitable explosion.
It was immediate.
As Lesley Stamford pushed open Wing Commander Cavendish’s door he squinted down his thin nose while first incomprehension, then a massive cloud of disbelief, crossed his young/old face.
She saw a tall slim man in his mid-twenties possessed in his expensively cut uniform of a certain elegant foppishness, whom she instinctively disliked. She couldn’t decide which she disliked more – that taut uncompromising face with its high cheekbones and tight-lipped mouth under that small black suitably Hitler-like moustache, or the fact that he could well have been a model for one of those Kensitas cartoons of the quintessential upper-class Englishman.
He watched her salute. He didn’t invite her to sit down. ‘Yes?’ he asked sharply.
‘Group Captain Hurst said you wanted to see me, sir.’
‘To see you?’ He was a man hiding in disbelief, fighting his destiny. ‘Why on earth should I want to see you?’
‘I’m Lesley Stamford, sir.’
Wrung out of him, shattering the composure of that well-bred face, ‘I don’t believe it! I just don’t believe it! Even Group can’t do this!’
Most women would have been intimidated. But her father had taught her to get used to intimidating men. So instead she asked quietly, ‘Do what, sir?’
‘Send you! Send you! You’re a woman!’
‘I did know that, sir,’ she replied, still in that studiedly neutral, damnably disconcerting tone. ‘So did Group.’
‘How can they send a woman to a bomber station?’
‘They already have, sir. Masses of them. Maybe you haven’t noticed.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that! The women here are Waafs.’
‘So? They’re still women. They’re doing useful jobs. Some of them doing dangerous jobs. Medicine isn’t dangerous.’
‘To your patients it is!’
‘I resent that, sir!’
‘Resent away, Flying Officer! And why are you a Flying Officer. Why not a Waaf Section Officer?’
‘Because women medical officers take RAF ranks.’
‘Really? Just to confuse us? To sell us a pig in a poke! And no,’ he held up a well-shaped hand, ‘you don’t have to resent that too. I apologise. I withdraw that remark and the other. All the same, I can’t be having you.’
And he stretched out his hand, lifted the receiver of the telephone to Group, and began yelling that he wasn’t accepting the medical officer just posted in to Marshfield.
He was pale with anger. After a moment, he covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with his hand, and told her airily, ‘Nothing personal, you understand, Flying Officer.’
‘I understand perfectly, sir. I am a doctor, sir.’
He wasn’t sure how to take that remark, but decided not to pursue clarification. Instead, ‘Why do you call yourself Lesley?’ he demanded, and before she answered, snapped into the telephone, ‘Well, get him! Get him, man! I want to speak to the Group Medical Officer. I’ll wait.’
‘Because that’s what I was christened, sir!’
‘You could call yourself something else.’
‘I don’t wish to!’
‘Well, sit down, woman, sit down! Don’t stand there looking like—’ he seemed to look at her for the first time. ‘Well, looking like that. I am not personally objecting to you. I am objecting to your gender.’
‘They are inseparable, sir,’ she replied coolly.
But by that time he was connected to some medical officer at Group and was blasting away on all cylinders. ‘I’m not putting up with her! Did you know she was a woman? Well, didn’t you realise that would cause trouble? I don’t agree! In fact, I couldn’t disagree more! I do not want a woman. She won’t be as competent as a male…’
He waved a hand, and called to her over his shoulder, ‘All right I withdraw that remark!’
Then he went on into the telephone mouthpiece. ‘She’ll be bad for morale. The crews won’t accept her. I don’t give a damn about your staffing problems. I know all about your losses in France. And yes, I know all about your Middle East demands. But you can’t let all your competent medicos go there. We can’t be left with the women! And I’m not having this one! Especially not this one! She’s too wet behind the ears! She’s too young…’
He suddenly turned and threw at her, ‘How old are you?’
‘Ninety-five.’
‘She’s pert and insubordinate… and…’ He drew a deep breath and looked over his shoulder at her again. Then he produced what he thought was the ace of trumps, ‘She’s… too… pretty.’
Flying Officer Stamford had never been regarded as pretty. A more susceptible woman might have ben flattered. But she wasn’t. The Wing Commander’s attitude was too like that of her father who had, so her mother said, greeted the birth of a daughter with angry dismay. Only the birth of her brother two years later had mollified him. But her brother too had a mind of his own. He had refused medicine as a career, disliked the thought of the Navy, and had volunteered for aircrew. He had been killed a year ago.
Flying Officer Stamford sat with her eyes decorously lowered while the Wing Commander ranted on. In the end, faced with the ultimatum that it was her or no MO for the next month, he struck a bargain with Group. He would put up with her for a month on detachment. After that, Group promised a male RAF medical officer, and as soon as possible after that a male Squadron doctor as well.
‘I think we can cope with you for one month,’ he said.
‘Would it not be for the Group Captain to decide that, sir?’
‘Listen to me, Flying Officer, I don’t like argumentative women.’
‘And I don’t like rude men.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you like,’ he began, and then as if the remark had just penetrated, he exclaimed indignantly, ‘Me? Rude? Good grief! What will you say next?’
‘Bad tempered, sir? Overbearing, sir?’
‘That’s enough, Flying Officer!’ He shoved his chair back and stood up. ‘I’ll take you to SHQ.’
‘I’ve already been.’
‘And no one objected?’
‘To my being a woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why should they? The Group Captain was very welcoming.’
‘Oh, the Group Captain!’ he exclaimed scornfully. ‘He doesn’t have to run the squadron. A squadron that’s had all hell knocked out of it. Dead men’s shoes filled by schoolboys. No real discipline. No esprit de corps. Well, if you’ve done SHQ, I’ll introduce you to the Mess. Make sure you get a decent room.’
‘With a small barred window?’ she asked him and he smiled cautiously as if that hurt his face muscles.
As they walked briskly past Flights towards the Officers’ Mess, he expounded on how to run a successful squadron. The key words, as she might have guessed, were discipline and morale. Morale was where a serious and dedicated medical officer could make a valuable contribution. He was about to enlighten her on exactly how, when ducking out from under the wing of a parked Blenheim emerged two flight sergeants, two, Cavendish recognised, of the several bolshie ones.
They saluted Cavendish, and eyed his companion with wolfish interest.
As they got past, from a safe distance but just within earshot, Ginger Johnson let out a low wolf whistle.
‘There you are!’ Cavendish turned to the girl indignantly. ‘Did you hear that? Whistling at you! And you an RAF officer! A holder of the King’s commission! That proves my point! They’re not going to see you as a medical officer. They’re going to see you as a floozie.’
For the moment he was right.
Ginger and Horner stared after them bemused, momentarily forgetting that they were about to go on their first cross-country with Maddox. ‘Not bad, not bad!’ Ginger said, pawing the ground with his right leg in the well-known sign of masculine interest. ‘Good under-pinning too. Mind, not a patch on Pam. What d’you reckon? New Waaf officer?’
‘No, you clot! Didn’t you see the snakes on her lapel? She’s the MO.’
‘Jesus! I don’t believe it! Unlucky Marshfield’s got lucky at last! Cavendish won’t like it, though.’
‘No! He didn’t look as if he’d won the Christmas raffle, did he? Bet he’s spitting blood.’
The subject of the new MO engaged their conversation till they reached the crew room where they spread the good news about a new MO who was female and easy on the eye. Then they collected their helmets, received from Angus MacGregor a run-down on route hazards between Marshfield and Peterborough, the farthest point of their cross-country, and their minds returned to the sober business of how they were going to cope with young Maddox.
The crew room was less noisy than usual. After Butterworth’s disappearance all the aircrew were pretty edgy for today’s Detail. Mascots were much in evidence. One navigator was tying his girlfriend’s stocking scarfwise round his neck, a gunner had a miniature teddy bear dangling beside his aircrew whistle, a young pilot officer had nipped out to do his superstitious libation of peeing on the tail of his aircraft.
Suddenly P/O Bates began anxiously slapping his pockets. ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve left my lighter in the billet. Can’t fly without that.’
He bolted off to retrieve his mascot, while Horner remarked dourly, ‘What a load of crap! This mascot business.’
‘Oh, I dunno.’
‘Well I do. Stands to reason! What difference could a mascot make, you clot?’
‘Might.’
‘Might not.’
‘Well, none of us can prove it, can we?’
‘Yes we can! Butterworth had his mascot, didn’t he? That bent penny, remember? Wouldn’t fly anywhere without it. Fat lot of good that did him.’
‘Well, I reckon it’s worth a try. In the situation we’re in anything’s worth a try. I’m organising myself a mascot.’
‘Organising? A mascot? What on earth is it, Ginger?’
‘That’s a secret A gift from Pam. I’ll show you when I get them!’
‘Them? Them? Oh, Jeez! I can guess. You’re a bastard, Ginger! A sex-mad bastard! I hope she slapped your face.’
‘Well,’ Ginger replied as they opened the door and went outside, ‘she didn’t. So there! She was keen to do anything to help us aircrew. Some girls are very keen on aircrew.’
He repeated that last sentence loudly as they came up to S-Sugar and they caught a glimpse of Pip at the top of the steps up to the wing. Her hair was tousled, her hands were covered in oil and she looked flustered.
‘Where’s Pilot Officer Maddox?’ she called to them.
‘Dunno! Why?’ Jack turned, hearing steps. ‘Oh, here he comes.’
‘I’m not late,’ he said, puffing up from behind them. ‘I was just having a last word with MacGregor. I want us to give this cross-country everything we’ve got!’
‘I hope not everything,’ Horner murmured under his breath. ‘Maybe we could hang on to certain things,’ he lowered his voice and winked at Ginger, ‘like life.’
‘MacGregor seems to think…’ Maddox was beginning importantly, when Pip called down, ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, sir.’ She came clattering down the steps. She held in one hand the 700, the aircraft maintenance form. ‘There’s a mag drop on Number One.’
Maddox, whose supercilious smile had collapsed at the words ‘Bad news’, now got his smile together again.
‘A mag drop,’ he repeated. Johnson and Horner exchanged glances as if to say, he doesn’t know what a mag is, never mind a mag drop.
‘How much?’ Horner asked.
‘Hundred and fifty.’
Horner raised his brows.
‘That’s all right,’ Maddox assured Pip airily.
‘No, sir, it’s not all right.’ She thrust out her chin. ‘It needs work. The plugs need to be looked at. Maybe the magneto. I can’t take the responsibility.’
Maddox was outraged. ‘I shall be taking the responsibility,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full meagre height.
‘No, you won’t, sir,’ she told him quite politely, ‘because I’m not going to sign the 700.’
That really threw the cat among the pigeons. Maddox flushed with anger and embarrassment to the roots of his yellow hair. As Ginger remarked afterwards, not a pretty sight.
‘I am the skipper of the aircraft…’ he began pompously, but she said, ‘It isn’t just you, sir. I’m also thinking of your crew.’
Which offered him a tactful way out of the argument. He looked from Horner to Johnson, nodded as if he was giving in gracefully purely for them and marched off in search of MacGregor.
‘Thanks,’ Horner smiled at Pip.
‘For what?’
‘For not signing the 700.’
‘You don’t reckon I did that for you, do you?’
‘Well, let’s say it benefited Ginger and me.’
‘Well I didn’t do it for you, lad. I did it for me. For my work and what I think of it. I don’t sign out a kite unless it’s bang on. Even if Maddox had been the King of England I wouldn’t have signed. So don’t flatter yourself!’
Horner sighed heavily. ‘There it goes again! Now I’ve lost it.’ He began looking round the tarmac exaggeratedly searching for something.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘What’ve you lost?’
‘My confidence.’ He put his hand to his head. ‘I was just going to suggest a walk seeing you won’t let us fly. If you’re off this afternoon, that is.’
‘I’m not. I’m on duty.’ She paused. ‘But how about coming to Flights and giving me a hand?’