14 ‘Three of our
   aircraft are missing’

Four welcome days of stand-down followed the Duisburg raids and Jig was given a thorough cleaning and overhaul. David commented, ‘It is remarkable what a mess rain can make.’ Equipment became wet and the damp affected engines, made radar sets and intercoms u/s, and electrical equipment, with over 400 valves, could be damaged. He was glad Jig was in good trim when the next battle order was posted. It was to be their deepest penetration yet into Germany, to Stuttgart. On the fourth night after Duisburg they took off, again part of the second wave in a total force of 565 Lancasters and eighteen Mosquitoes.

At briefing they had been warned to expect fighter resistance and heavy searchlight concentrations on the devious route across southern Germany, especially in the vicinity of major cities like Frankfurt, Mainz, Karlsruhe and Mannheim. But

An opening from David’s flying logbook

not long after take-off they had a more immediate problem. While they were climbing through cloud, snow leaked into the front turret, dripping into the intercom plug, rendering the system practically u/s for the remainder of the trip, so most of the time they had to fall back on using signal lights. But the intercom still emitted shrieks and squeals which added to the stress. To make matters worse, icing caused the air-speed indicator to cease functioning and David had to judge speed by other instruments, the artificial horizon and engine revs. It was exhausting.

Nevertheless, they arrived over the target on schedule to see a good healthy glow through the heavy cloud cover and they carried out their part in yet another of Butch Harris’s strategic raids, dropping their twelve 1000-pounders and four 500-pounders on the Bosch factory, whose spark plugs were a vital component in every engine. It was a long, cold, tiring trip back. As it was a seven-hour flight, they had taken ‘wakey-wakey’ pills for the first time, to keep them alert. It was the last time too. ‘Never again!’ they all declared on return. The bitter caffeine left a most unpleasant taste, and had made Birdy sick and Cyril and Boz sleepy!

The next op was back to Happy Valley, in yet another massive attack on the industrial city of Essen by 1055 aircraft of Bomber Command. Jig was one of the nineteen from Kelstern among the 561 Lancasters in the heaviest raid on Essen so far. David wrote, Many a good crew has ‘gone’ here and losses have been heavy. He had just learned that Peter had gone missing in that area on his first op six weeks earlier and he was desolate. One more friend to avenge.

Now promoted to Flying Officer, David was acting Flight Commander at the battle conference prior to the briefing. The target was the Krupps armament works, and they were taking one 4000-pounder, five 1000s and eight 500s. It proved to be an exceptionally gruelling trip. The Met briefing that there would be a high front to negotiate both going and coming proved only too accurate. They struck it on reaching France, flying into cloud at 19 000 feet, keenly aware of the danger in cumulonimbus formations with their deadly anvil tops. If caught in one of these the aircraft could be flung out of control or even disintegrate. Small wonder Butch Harris conceded that Bomber Command was fighting the weather as well as the enemy. David pushed Jig hard and they topped the frontal cloud at 23 000 feet. Quite an achievement with a full bomb load for an aircraft whose ceiling was nominally 22 000 feet. Outside, the temperature was below minus 50 degrees Celsius. Inside the nose it was minus 22 degrees Celsius. David was relieved that although it was so cold the aircraft suffered minimal icing.

Because of the weather, no fighters were about when they reached Essen. But the flak was accurate and they were glad to see the cookie and high explosives go without hang-ups, and to turn away, leaving the smoke to rise to 10 000 feet. Homeward bound, they had to fly high again to avoid the front. This time, bombs gone, they reached 24 000 feet without so much effort, but not without incident. Drew left his compartment to go to the nav table, but did not take his portable oxygen bottle, thinking he could make the short distance without it. But he did not. He sprawled over on top of Murga. Cyril grabbed the oxygen tube and plugged him in to the main supply. It was ten minutes before he came round and then he was horribly drowsy for the rest of the trip. Lucky it happened on the way back. It would have been bad if the b/a was u/s over the target, David wrote. It was a salutary experience for them all. In an unpressurised aircraft oxygen was vital.

While they were still at a considerable height they were fascinated to see St Elmo’s fire for the first time. A form of static electricity, it played around the prop tips and on the metal framework of the cockpit canopy. When David reached out his hand the blue light jumped from the metal to his fingers. ‘We always knew we had a wizard skipper,’ Pop quipped.

Back at Kelstern, they learned that three of the squadron’s aircraft had failed to return. They were shocked. They had always expected that one or more might go missing, but this was the first op on which it had happened since David had joined the squadron.

In his hut with Murga, David looked at the six empty beds. ‘They’re all pukka pilots,’ he declared. ‘They could still make it back on a wing and a prayer.’

They fell thankfully into their beds, but although he was desperately weary, David stayed awake. His body still jangling with vibrations. His head still throbbing from the rumble of engines. Hoping, listening for the sound of returning aircraft. But there was only silence. At last he fell into the heavy sleep of exhaustion.

When he woke in the morning he was thrilled to see the beds occupied. But only for a moment. Six strangers lay there. Aircraft from another squadron had been forced to land at Kelstern during the night. Quietly David left the hut, devastated.

After breakfast he was stopped outside the Mess by a pilot from another station.

‘I’m looking for Flying Officer Morshead. Can you tell me where I’m likely to find him?’

‘Ollie?’ David exclaimed. ‘He went missing last night.’

The pilot struggled to keep his composure. ‘He’s my brother,’ he explained himself.

David wished he had thought more before he had spoken. Blurting out his own pain like that. Too late now to take the words back. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘He was a good bloke. He joined the squadron five days after me. We shared the same hut. I’ll show you to the Adjutant’s office. It’s a rotten war.’

Two aircraft had gone missing days before David had arrived at Kelstern. And that had brought keenly home to him what he had been observing and mulling over for months. It seemed as if some chaps formed romantic attachments, determined to experience while they could all there was to life. Others, he suspected, found in the arms of a girl a way of forgetting the horrors they saw and relief from the fear they felt on ops. But for him that was not the way to go. Because of the work he had to do, he had already brought about pain and suffering for more than enough women on the other side. For them he was faceless, nameless, just ein verdammter Englander (a damned Englishman), to be feared and hated.

But here on the station it was different. The WAAF who smiled at him as she handed him his mail from home. The WAAF who prayed for him as she folded his parachute or checked his name on the pre-flight meal list. The WAAF who issued his escape aids or drove the tender to dispersals before take off, farewelling them with a heartfelt ‘Godspeed!’ The WAAF who did not go to bed on op nights, who stood waving at the end of the runway at take-off, then waited for all the hours it took, straining her eyes in the darkness for the returning Lancasters, biting her lips as names were checked off the blackboard. He had seen the disappointment when an airman who had become special was posted to another station. He had observed the drawn face, the dark-ringed eyes, the forced smile when someone to whom a WAAF had given her heart did not return. The scarcely concealed anguish when he was posted MISSING. The grief when he was listed KILLED IN ACTION. He must not inflict that on anyone. Drew, who always commented on a good-looking WAAF, teased him about being impervious to their charms. ‘You old woman hater, Dave!’ But to do his job he had to stay focused on it. He had to concentrate on his crew, and his crew only. Give them all his energy and his care. England and flying must remain his only loves. Afterwards perhaps…if there was to be an afterwards…

Life on the station was going on as normal. It had to. Sixteen crews had just been posted out to form the nucleus of a new squadron. Replacement crews had come in. And another op was scheduled. David wondered how the rest of his crew was coping, how they were handling the wiping out of twenty-one good blokes. He always made it his business to be available to listen to their gripes, their problems, their worries.

Murga and Drew both tended to get edgy when the long-awaited letters from their wives still did not arrive. ‘Don’t worry,’ David would try to reassure each of them. ‘She’s probably writing to you every day. You know what the mails are like. You’ll get five or six letters in a batch soon.’

Pop fretted about his mother, a heavy chain-smoker. ‘I’m worried she’ll fall asleep with a fag in her hand one night, and the place will burn down around her,’ he confided in David.

Boz had just become engaged to Ann, a feisty ATS girl, in charge of an anti-aircraft gun crew on the East Anglian coast. Separated from his fiancée, he had the mood swings of someone in love. And he worried about her, knowing the danger she faced on the battery, target for enemy raiders.

Birdy was still a high-spirited youth, liable to break out with pranks which could have undesirable consequences, such as the time at Coltishall when he wanted to nab the camera from a fighter.

It was important, too, to ensure that Cyril, the last to join and the only non-Australian, felt included in the team.

Although trying not to show it, they were hard hit, as David was, by the tragedy which had befallen their mates. But everyone focused now on the next op. Briefing and run-up completed, they were sitting in Jig awaiting the green

Aldis signal to move out of dispersal. A red Very light showed from the control tower, the air was blue. ‘We’re not a bunch of happy chappies!’ The op was off. What a let-down when they had screwed themselves up to it!

To defuse the tension, David suggested they all went off the station for a break, meeting in Louth for dinner. ‘See you at the King’s Head at six,’ he told them. He himself felt sorely in need of time out to deal with his own feelings and there was nowhere on the station he could find privacy and a quiet space. So he put the last letter from Peter and the one from his parents which had come yesterday in his greatcoat pocket and caught the bus to Louth. In St James’ church he would be alone.

The first snow of the season had blanketed the wolds in glistening white. It seemed like another world, so pure and unmarred by ugly human intrusion. He rested his tired eyes on it as the bus rattled slowly down to the plain. In St James’ it was cold, icy cold. David tugged his scarf, knitted by loving hands half a world away, high up round his neck and wriggled his fingers gratefully in the warm lined gloves his aunt had sent to replace those he had lost, and he gave thanks for all the love which had surrounded him all his life. He gave thanks too for the healing silence and stillness which enfolded him in his pain, this piercing pain for Peter, and for the shaft of late sunlight striking the west window, sending a rainbow down into the encroaching darkness.

Settling where he had sat on his last visit, he pulled out the letters which had first plunged him into this grief, this aching void. He was glad that he hadn’t answered Peter’s last one. If he had it would have been destroyed by now. There just wasn’t room in his trunk to keep all the letters he had received. Addressed in Peter’s neat sharp hand, so different from his own open rounded writing, it had been posted in York six weeks earlier. Dear Dave, Peter had written, Just at the moment I am feeling pretty cheesed with life. His bomb aimer had been sick for three weeks and was not likely to be fit for duty for another two, so Peter and his crew were still waiting to go to their squadron.

But you were alive, Peter. You were alive. And now you are missing. Although they haven’t put the rider to it yet. Killed in Action. The terrible certainty that destroys all hope, every last vestige to which family and friends cling through the terrible uncertainty. Perhaps you are still alive, hiding out in a wood somewhere, or in a barn, or in the attic of a friendly farmhouse. Or in a POW camp. Perhaps you got out of your burning kite. Perhaps you made a good landing in a field. Or even if it was in a tree, you are still alive. Perhaps you hid your chute, like they told us, and cut the tops off your flying boots with that knife. Hope your station issued your bacon and eggs as a pre-flight, not a post-flight, meal. Hope you’re not injured. Alive. Hope you’re not incinerated in the wreckage of your kite. Hope they find you soon. Hope they don’t have to rely on an identity disc among bits of a charred and blackened airframe.

Remember those days back at school, Peter? It seems like another life now, doesn’t it? Those early mornings on the river, the mist still rising. You were a better rower than me. It wasn’t fair that you got appendicitis just before the Head of the River and that I took your place. It wasn’t fair. But lots of things in life aren’t fair, are they? This war, this hideous war isn’t fair. Why should innocent people lose their lives? So violently. So horribly.

But then, although we were always mates, we probably wouldn’t have become such good friends if it hadn’t been for the war. Funny that. You would have gone your way and I would have gone mine. But the war brought us together again at Somers. Do you remember that sergeant, and the voice on him? ‘Sounds like a saw,’ you said. Just as well he didn’t hear you! And it was great to meet up with you at the pre-embarkation depot at Ascot Vale in Melbourne, and that train trip to Adelaide. Remember? ‘Sardines,’ I said, and you replied, ‘Where’s the oil?’ And that route march they made us do up the hills. You said, ‘Whoever ordered this march must be the bastard son of the Grand Old Duke of York.’

We had some fun on the Umgeni, didn’t we? You were good at the deck games. And those snow fights in New Zealand. And crossing the line. The music in Colon and the dancers, and the view from the top of the Empire State Building in New York. The Caribbean and the Atlantic were pretty breezy though, weren’t they? Wouldn’t care to do that again, would you? Brighton was all right. Our first taste of Olde England. Remember that little church we found, and that old priest who gave us a blessing? I’m glad he did that. And if you are in one of those rooms now in Our Father’s mansions, I know that your place has been prepared for you and that He is looking after you. Always will.

David looked towards the altar where the brass cross gleamed in the growing gloom, and the anthem he and Peter used to sing at school sounded in his mind. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ He got down on his knees and committed Peter, who had signed himself Your old friend Peter, into His gracious keeping. Peter, twenty years old. Peter who would always be twenty years young now.

Sliding back onto the seat, he unfolded the airletter from his parents, the first half in his mother’s deliberate square hand, the second in his father’s strong pointed script, both smaller than usual, to fit as much as possible into the limited space. Even so, even in this fading light, he could read the words on the dingy yellow page. They had seared themselves into his brain on first reading. Darling Viddy, his mother had begun. You may not yet have heard about Peter, so we thought we should tell you how we learned the sad news that he is missing. David knew that his mother and Peter’s mother had developed the habit of phoning each other, when either had a letter from her son and reading between the lines, he could hear them now. His mother had been in the middle of sewing up a parcel for him - This is number 47, she wrote - when the telephone rang.

It was Peter’s mother.

‘How is David, Mrs Mattingley?’ she asked first.

‘He was well, thank you, the last we heard a week ago,’ David’s mother replied, asking in turn, ‘And how is Peter, Mrs Lord?’

There seemed to be a slight pause, very slight, before Peter’s mother answered, ‘He’s well. He’s very well. And how are Max and Brian?’

‘They’re well, too,’ his mother replied.

‘I’m glad for you. I’m very glad,’ Mrs Lord said.

‘I’m just sewing up a parcel for David now,’ Mrs Mattingley said. ‘It’s quite a task, isn’t it? But the boys do appreciate some home comforts, don’t they?’

‘Yes. I sent the last one off to Peter a week ago,’ Mrs

Lord responded, ‘and I’d just started collecting things for the next one.’

‘That takes some doing, doesn’t it?’ David’s mother said.

‘Yes,’ Peter’s mother agreed, ‘and I mustn’t keep you from it.’

She hung up.

David’s father took over the account. His mother was still stitching at the calico - it was an awkward job - when the phone rang again. ‘I’ll go,’ he called and his footsteps sounded down the long passage. David could hear his voice as he answered. His footsteps seemed slower, heavier, as they came back to the cosy little sitting room where his mother sat at the table. David could see the room now, big cedar book-case along one wall, glass-fronted cabinet with family treasures beside the fireplace, framed photos of Max and Brian and himself as boys on the wall.

‘Who was it?’ his mother asked, not pausing in her task. ‘What did they want?’

His father came and stood beside her. His face was grave and his voice was serious. ‘It was Peter’s father. His mother couldn’t bring himself to say it to you. Peter is missing. They got the telegram late yesterday.’

The sharp curved needle slipped in his mother’s grasp, pricking her finger. She did not notice. ‘Peter?’ she murmured. ‘Not Peter. He is their only son. Missing? Then there may still be hope for him.’

‘Yes,’ his father concurred. ‘There may be. We can only hope and pray. I’d drive you to Devonport to see his mother,’ he went on. ‘But we don’t have enough coupons for the petrol. This war…’ he groaned almost to himself.

David’s mother put down her needle and pushed aside her work. ‘Then I must write,’ she said, ‘to her and to Viddy.’ She picked up paper and her pen and started at once.

David could see a tiny fleck of blood on the airletter by Peter’s name. He thought back to Peter’s letter. He had mentioned one of their school friends, Jim Brock, who had at that time just gone missing, flying a Beaufighter in Coastal Command. It is jolly bad luck and makes things very hard for his mother, he had written. Now it was his mother for whom life would never be the same. Hoping, praying for the news that her son was still alive somewhere. Waiting, always waiting, looking for the letter that would not come to gladden her heart again.

Would his parents get a telegram too? Or two telegrams? Or even three? He could see a telegraph boy walking up the slope to the house. He could hear the sound of the doorbell echoing across the tiled hall down the long passage. See his mother coming to the door. No, not his mother, please. Let it be his father. He stopped himself. These thoughts were no good.

And somehow he must switch off the words of Rupert Brooke’s poem which had been running through his mind ever since he heard about Peter. He had won a prize at school for his recitation of it, and he could still see Peter, smiling encouragement at him from the audience as he walked out onto the stage, glad of his long trousers to hide his shaking knees. If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England …And Australia, Peter. A dust whom Australia bore, shaped, made aware… I’ll never forget you, Peter, he promised.

But now he must be with people again. And his boys were waiting for him. He got up from the hard cold pew and walked slowly into the blacked-out street.

In the cosy fug of the King’s Head his boys were gathered by the bar. ‘You all right, Skip?’ they asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Never better,’ David lied to them. ‘And the only ghosts around here are the smell of the long departed soles.’

His crew laughed in relief. This was their Skip, who could never resist a pun.

David looked at them, reading the concern in their faces, hearing it in their voices. His boys, his team, his crew. ‘The first round’s on me,’ he said, putting a pound note on the bar and downing his first half pint of warm ale in one go. ‘Your shout, Murga.’ But before Pop’s turn he said, ‘No good drinking on an empty stomach. Let’s eat.’

Always hungry, they agreed and were soon tucking into a typical English wartime meal - spuds, cabbage and sausages almost 100 per cent grey austerity bread.

‘Now it’s your shout, Pop,’ David said. Better a sore head in the morning than a sore heart tonight. But the sore heart would be with him for a long time.