On Tuesday we went to Neumunster and made such a hash of it that we knew in our hearts that we’d have to come back again, even as Grease dived away from our bombs gone.
He dived to starboard this time. Two leading Pathfinders had been shot down close to each other in fields maybe five miles from the city – and most of the sheep in front of us bombed on their burning target indicators and corpses. They were probably the best bombed corpses in Germany that night. Conners was adamant that they were in the wrong place, and put us over the centre of the darkened city, where Marty thought he acquired the target and toggled our bombs – which were the curate’s egg: a 4,000 pound cookie for main course, with a speckling of 500s for afters. The black city seemed to swallow our bombs, belch, and forget them. Marty reported no fires on the ground. We saw one or two bombers over the target – but they were Halifaxes: from 4 Group most like, and the Toff called out for a fighter, and pulled his triggers, as we left the Fatherland between Husum and Heide. We had been warned of Ju 88 night fighters haunting this stretch of coast.
Over the North Sea, as the sweat was beginning to cool in our suits, Grease clicked and said, ‘There weren’t many of us over your target, Conners.’
Marty chipped in. ‘Don’t worry, Skip: Conners got it right. That was the target – or near enough anyway. Those other two or three hundred were bombing shit out of some pig farm in the Kraut wilderness.’
‘Rear gunner to pilot.’
‘Yes, Pete?’
‘You’ll soon know about it in the morning, Skip; if we got it wrong the Boss will put you on the carpet first thing. I bet you.’
‘Thanks for that.’
Half an hour later as we were letting down over the Wash he did it again.
‘Rear gunner to pilot.’
‘What is it, Pete?’
‘A Mosquito has been trailing us for half a minute. I’m sure he’s friendly: I saw him before he saw us.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘400 yards behind us and level. He’s playing silly buggers. Probably calibrating his radar.’
‘Fire off the colours of the day please, Sparks, just in case.’
That was for me. It was one of the jobs I hated. You could identify yourself to friends by banging off a couple of agreed coloured flares down the flare chute. The colour combinations varied at the whim of some cog in the high command’s squeaking wheel. I hated the feeling of exposure I experienced as I left those glowing colours hanging in the air. But Piotr saved me that time. He called Grease.
‘I give them the colours, Skip!’ and must have pressed his tits immediately. His four .303 machine guns rattled for a good two seconds before Grease screamed him down.
Even the Toff grumbled. ‘For Christ’s sake, Pete!’
‘He’s gone,’ said our Pole, and, ‘Chicken!’
That was a word he must have picked up from the Americans. The first controller I picked up was 1 Group, as we approached the coast close to Mabelthorpe. It was the temporary station, and was using the call sign Hardbottle. He sounded like a laid-back recycled RFC type, gave us the friendly ‘Heigh-ho’ then said, ‘Some night fighter training squadron’s complaining about one of theirs being fired on by one of ours. Specifically a big black job like you. Wouldn’t be you by any chance, old boy?’
‘Negative, Hardbottle. We saw off an 88 over the Wash. Nothing friendly has shown us the COD.’
‘Roger, Yoke. I’m sure I understand that. Your people have been informed.’
‘Informed of what?’ muttered Grease over the intercom, ‘That we’re on our way back, or that we tried to shoot down one of our neighbours?’ then he went all skipperish on us again, and said, ‘Keep your eyes peeled lads, the Kraut’s still out there, even if we’re nearly home.’ He was right of course. Through the astrodome I scanned the yellow streaks in the early morning sky. Unless you were looking for where death was hiding, it could be beautiful, but death was almost always there, inside your head. Grease had used a word that I liked, though: he had said ‘home’.
Late morning, when we were showing again, the ground crew chief passed word for Grease. Fergal and I went with him out of curiosity. When we climbed out of the little Singer, which we parked out of the standard Bawne drizzle under Tuesday’s great port wing, Chiefy said, ‘Where the fuck were you last night?’
‘Place called Neumunster we think, why?’ That was Fergal. No point in Grease taking all the flak.
‘You seen the belly, and the bomb doors?’
We hadn’t, but we did now. From just under the pilot’s office, to six feet short of the tail, it was pitted with flak, and paint scrapes. What was remarkable, then, and forever after, was that not one of the seven of us could remember it happening, even though it had probably made a hell of a bloody noise at the time. Oddly, although the skin surface was bent and scarred, there were no perforations – the flak must have exploded at just beyond its effective range.
Grease did the tugging at his upper lip thing again; perhaps it was the beginning of a twitch. He said, ‘Mother Germany reached up last night, and gave us a kiss. God bless Mother Germany. When’s she going to be ready again, Chiefy?’
‘Tomorrow. We’ll press the dents out from the inside, and give her a lick of paint.’
Just then Pete roared up on the Red Indian. ‘I told you,’ he said to Grease, ‘the CO wants you for a bollocking. I’ll give you a ride over there.’
Grease tells it like this.
After the argument Bushes asks him, ‘Where the fuck were you last night?’
His desk is covered in large target photographs, and he doesn’t look a happy man. Situation normal, but the twitch is back.
Grease says, ‘Dropping high explosives all over the good folk of Neumunster, previous to our visit a jewel in the crown of the Reich, now a little bit second hand . . . sir.’
‘And the silly bloody thing about it is that you were, too.’ He waves our bombing pattern photograph at Grease. ‘Only a dozen aircraft even found the right city last night; and you and your team of morons were in one of them. What the hell am I going to do with you?’
‘Gongs and caviar all round, sir?’
‘That’s the problem, you dumb Canuk: if you reward twelve crews for finding a target the size of Leicester, then you might as well phone up the Mirror and confess that the other 300 didn’t! That would be bloody wonderful for civvy morale, wouldn’t it?’
‘No gongs and presentation leave yet then, sir?’
‘Sod off, McKenzie, and stop spoiling my days.’
Grease said that the odd thing was by the end of the conversation he was getting quite fond of the old stick. The argument which preceded that had been about Sergeant Quelch’s failure to get airborne for the same operation.
The Quelch crew were a set of beginners. Neumunster was to be their second or third op together. At the last minute they couldn’t get their bomb doors shut, and cancelled their booking. Bushes had been calling off Quelch for a coward before Grease arrived, and threatened him and his crew with a grade-A posting to latrine duties. Looking more depressed by Bushes than the enemy, Quelch had slunk out as Grease arrived. Grease said that the poor little sod looked like a fourteen-year-old caught playing truant.
Grease thought this unreasonable, and told Bushes this as soon as he was stood easy. He said that he wouldn’t have flown all the way to Germany and back with the bomb doors open either.