OK. So we were supposed to go to Big City again. Nobody gets it right every time. Not unless your name’s Cheshire or Gibson or Reid. Frau Berlin was never the same place twice anyway, so you didn’t get bored with the experience of rogering her. This time Grease went blind, and stayed that way for about ten hours. He said he’d never been blinders and sober at the same time before.
We filed in for the briefing early, because we were carrying non-standard bomb loads to drop on non-standard TIs, and they wanted to get in a detailed brief to the bomb aimers afterwards. I found myself sitting on the end of our crew line, with a wizened Welsh mid-upper from another crew alongside me. He was called the Goat, and not because of his success with women. His personal aroma occupied a space about three feet around him, like an aura. He must have caught my instinctive movement, because he whispered, ‘Sorry. It’s my feet you see. Terrible bad smell.’
‘You wash them?’
‘All the time: doesn’t seem to help. My wife told me not to bother to come home until I get them fixed.’
‘See the MO.’
‘He refuses to see me. Says that my feet smell too bad; anyway, where’s your Pole? I haven’t seen him for a week. Our skipper says that he murdered Fat Guts, scarpered, and that all those new cops are looking for him.’
‘Silly bloody rumour. Pete’s in the shitter. He gets the squitters something terrible before each op these days.’
‘He got me two cigars for my Da’s birthday: we hadn’t seen any in years. Bloody good bloke.’
‘We think so, too.’
‘THOSE MEN THERE!’ Samson yelled. I looked up. He was jabbing a pointed finger directly at the Goat and me. ‘Take their names and put them on a charge. Failing to pay attention during an operational briefing.’ The buzz in the rest of the hut dropped to a murmur.
The Goat stood up: rather smartly, I thought. ‘I didn’t know we had started, sir,’ he said.
‘. . . and insubordination, and for smelling so bloody horrible.’ The murmur swelled to a sniggering laugh, but I knew that it wouldn’t alter anything: I was still on a charge and liable to get my pay docked. It didn’t occur to me that I was rich, and that the charge didn’t matter because I could pay a fine out of my pocket money these days.
Samson ploughed on. ‘I’m going over the Big City tonight, chaps. Who wants to come with me?’ He guffawed.
Brookman was sitting in the front row. Even with only a view of the back of his head I knew he was grinning: he was flying as a spare dick with someone. The group captain, who was the ranker on the station, had put in one of his irregular appearances, and it was him who said primly, from one of the dining-room chairs on the stage, ‘For heaven’s sake, sit down, Conny, we haven’t got to that bit yet!’
He was right, of course: they hadn’t even pulled back the sheet over the route map, and already the groaning was suppressing the laughter. The Boss did exactly what I had seen Brookman do the night before. He trailed the left wing of his arse as he sat down, and demonstrated the first and second laws of gravity. As he sat on his backside on the stage, grinning foolishly, I realized that he was drunk.
The group captain stood up and smiled thinly. ‘We’ve told you the punchline before the joke, gentlemen. Very bad form. Can we get down to business now?’
Fiver swung the Morris past the storm door of the Pit, and Grace scrambled in, out of Fiver’s line of sight: I thought that Grace looked a bit pale, but she was cracking jokes right and left, and on great form. I wasn’t sure whether Fiver knew exactly what we were doing, or whether she still thought we were smuggling Pete on to Tuesday each trip. The way she positioned the vehicle for Grace’s pick-up made me think that she didn’t want to know; which was for the best if you think about it.
We had two 1,000-pounders and two cookies. Marty scampered over and started to caress the four bombs, but the rest of us engaged the ground crew in one-to-ones, which enabled Grace to slip past them with her head down.
I shared a fag with Dobbo, who told me, ‘Your gang have got a lot more chatty lately, you know that?’
‘It’s getting the wind up that does it.’
‘Nah. It’s not that.’
‘I could get all sloppy, and say that it feels as if we’re all in the same team.’
‘Nah. Don’t do that. I know what you mean, though.’
‘How’s the hand?’
‘No problem. The doc has given me some blue bombers that take the pain away: two a day. I have to be careful because they have me away with the fairies for a while after I’ve taken them. Where we going tonight, then?’
I was not supposed to tell him, but he could guess from the fuel load, and anyway I liked the ‘we’ he’d used.
‘The Big City. Adolf-und-Eva-ville.’
‘Drop one on him for me, will you? Personal.’
‘Sure thing, Dobbo.’
Grease was still angry because the Boss had asked him if he wouldn’t mind flying the same trip as the rest of them this time. I know that it was on the tip of Grease’s tongue to reply that we felt much safer further away from them; but he held back. He had carried a large cardboard box, bound up with string, on to the Morris with him. Now he took it to Chiefy Bryan who was with Marty in the bomb bay.
‘What’s that?’ Chiefy asked.
‘Propaganda leaflets. They asked us to poke them out down the flare chute, but that would take too long, and be too fucking dangerous. I want Charlie looking out for night fighters, not pushing out yards of paper. The Kraut will only use it to wipe his arse with anyway: there’s no point dying for that.’
‘The brass do come up with doolally ideas from time to time, Mac. Do you want us to get rid of it for you?’
‘No. I thought I’d rope the box to one of the bombs. Whether it falls off on the way down, or blows up on the ground, the same thing will happen. Bits of fresh bog paper spread all over Berlin.’
‘Is that where you’re going tonight?’
‘You didn’t know that?’
Chiefy pulled his lower right eyelid down with a fat finger, then let it click up again. ‘Course not. I’ll get some string for you.’ He noticed Marty stroking his bombs, and crooning Benny Goodman’s ‘Flyin’ Home’ to them, and added, ‘I wish he wouldn’t do that.’
We all settled into our places in Tuesday, and I put an RT call through, and the ground WT checks. Grease seemed in no hurry to get started, and when he did he said to Fergal, ‘The prayers will be conducted in silence tonight. Just tap the gauges and only call out if anything’s fucked.’
‘Roger, Skip.’
It was oddly peaceful. You thought you could feel Tuesday shift on her legs as we moved about: apart from that, all that came from Grease and Fergal were a series of grunts and taps and scraping sounds. I missed the usual litany, but paid far greater attention to what was happening: which had been Grease’s purpose all along, of course. Then one engine burst into life, and another, and another, and another, and Tuesday was trembling around us like a dog fresh from the village pond, shaking the water from its coat. All twelve of the squadron Lancs waddled on to the perimeter track to queue for the main runway. Then they held us there for five minutes, and then it was switches off. What is it that the poem says? Not tho the soldier knew, someone had blundered. Chiefy came round in a light Bedford petrol tanker, and topped up Tuesday and the new Mother, who was in the line behind us. From Samson’s kite, Papa the message. No loose chat. Walls have ears twinkled back down the line. He was frightened of the German listening stations. About time.
The Toff called down to me, ‘What was that?’
I told him, and he snarled back, ‘Walls! What walls? We’re in the middle of a fucking airfield! There are no walls for fucking miles! Fucking twat!’
He was twitched. Grease leaned back and told us. ‘Cut it out, you guys. Calm down. Toff – walk back and see that Pete’s all right, and knows what’s going on. They could scrub the raid.’
It was just to give him something to do.
Scrub it? Yes, mein herr, and I’m a Dutchman. Half an hour later we started up all over again, and again Grease did it without words. He had told us that he’d met a submariner on the leave he had in Pompey, and that submarines had this thing they called the silent routine. Grease was never one to be outdone: now we had one too. Samson was leading: we were number five on the track because we’d been slow getting out: we’d close up on him later. Again he was held back at the threshold, but just when we thought it was a scrub he got an orange flare followed by a green, and gunned it along the runway, weaving slightly under full power. We all got off. I asked Grease if I could ride up behind him for the off. He said, ‘Why not. If they don’t want us to use the fucking radio there’s fuck all else for you to do until listening watch.’
In front of us was F-Freddy: its crew called it Foxy and had painted an outrageous bit of bint on the nose behind the front turret. The Goat flew as its top gunner, and I noticed that it weaved violently under acceleration – even more than Samson had done. I leaned forward to listen to Grease, who said, ‘I think that it’s these funny bomb loads. They’ve affected the c of g.’
When we got the light from the caravan Grease and Fergal pushed the throttles up to the gate, and were rewarded by Tuesday giving an almighty lurch to the left. Grease heaved her back, and she crabbed over to the right.
‘Fucking hell!’ he said.
Marty, lying full stretch on the bomb aimer’s rest at the front called back, ‘Right, right, left a bit,’ in a parody of the flying instructions he gave over target.
‘Shut up, Marty!’
‘Right a bit.’
‘I said SHUT UP, Marty.’
‘Then fly the cow in a straight line, Skipper; you’re giving me the shits.’
We were lucky. Tuesday had good engines, and the closer to flying speed she made, the less she yawed. We were going in a straight line by the time her wheels lifted from the runway. Grease sulked; he barked, ‘Silent routine; silent running,’ at us.
Nobody replied. I’m not sure if that is what he meant. We lost contact with the main squadron within five minutes, and Grease asked, ‘Course please, Nav.’ Naturally Conners didn’t answer. Grease tried again. ‘Course please, Conners.’
After a suitable pause, Conroy replied.
‘Permission to secure from silent running, Skipper?’
You could have heard Grease’s sigh back in the caravan at Bawne.
Conners followed up with, ‘Steer 030, Skipper. That should cross the circle and put us up behind Samson in about ten minutes.’
‘Thank you Nav. Anyone seen Quelch?’
Grace answered him from the rear turret. ‘Yes; he’s about six feet away.’ She sounded under strain.
It was a wonderful night for taking those romantic moody aircraft photographs that the aeroplane manufacturers love: above a rolling flat brown cloud layer we bathed in half moonlight. I hated it, and also Conners’s calm call of, ‘Enemy coast, Skipper.’
All my friend Fritz had to do was lurk in the fringes of the cloud, and wait for us to cross over him. The squadron was flying in a loose flat diamond spread out over a large patch of sky. It hadn’t been planned that way, it just shook out as we set course for Krautland. I don’t think Samson was even aware that we had been missing during the climb in. He was flying at the point. There were about eight squadrons up in front of us, and maybe double that number behind us. Some of those would be stacked above us too.
‘Charlie. Keep your lamp to hand, please,’ Grease told me.
Fucking Grease was up to something again. If I hadn’t been wearing a canvas helmet my hair would have stood on end. He pushed the throttles up out of cruise, and we swam up to Samson’s kite. Like the rest of us he was rising and falling gently on the disturbed air left by the aircraft which had preceded us. His sparks twinkled us.
‘He wants to know who we are.’
Grease said, ‘Tell him, and remind him that he asked me to stay close.’
When he twinkled back, Grease asked, ‘What did he say?’
‘I’m not telling you, Skipper. But maybe we’d be better off pulling back to a safe distance.’
‘I hate indecisive officers,’ he said, and nudged Tuesday in so that our wing tips appeared to overlap. Papa lurched suddenly to the left to avoid us, and of course, everyone else, loosely flying on Samson, did the same.
‘That was good,’ Grease said, and did it again. A dozen aircraft twitched to port like a laboratory frog wired up to a car battery.
I clicked. ‘For God’s sake, Skipper.’ There was a rapid stuttering burst of Morse obscenities from our leader. I guess that Grease had made his point.
‘OK,’ Grease said. ‘Just for you, Charlie.’
Grease dropped us back and down away until we were skimming in and out of the cloud tops: Foxy, and the Goat’s bad feet, were ahead of us and roughly about 150 feet up. Quelch was diving in and out of the cloud behind us like a mad porpoise following a boat.
‘Listening watch, please, Sparks. I’ll call you forward when I need you,’ Grease said. I gave him the thumbs up, and moved back to strap in: Dobbo had attached a decent webbing harness to my seat after I complained about falling out of it so often. He’d won it from a Mosquito that someone had wrapped around a tree a year ago. I heard them immediately: Kraut fighters and their controllers. So many of them that it was as if we had disturbed a swarm of wasps which was homing on us.
‘Skipper, this is Charlie.’
‘OK, Charlie.’
‘There are dozens of the little bastards out there. So many that I can’t pick them out.’
‘OK, people. You heard what the man said. Watch the skies.’
Twenty minutes later life became a little more tricky . . . as Alec Guinness would have said. Deep inside Tuesday, behind and below Grease and Fergal, and behind even Conners, the interior was suddenly illuminated by a brilliant yellow light, followed by the sound of a distant thunderclap. There was a shock wave we lurched through, and a pattering sound as Tuesday flew through something. Marty and Fergal shouted out together, but it was sounds, not words, and Tuesday was crabbing a bit, with cold air whistling through her – although not too much of it. After the flare of light Grease was the first to use real words.
‘Pilot. I’m blind,’ he said.
He had been looking directly at Foxy when it blew up. Just a quick glance to check his station keeping when it vaporized just ahead of him.
Fergal clicked. ‘I’ve got her.’ Then, ‘I may need some help up here.’
The cockpit was a bit of a mess. Grease was sitting with his hands over his eyes, and Fergal was crouched alongside him. The steering column gave the occasional small twitch: George the invisible autopilot had us in hand for the time being. None of the perspex windows had actually shattered but those to the front and above had crazed over, with one or two small holes through which cold air was spearing. Here and there they were streaked with thin threads of oil.
‘I’m OK,’ Grease said, ‘except I can’t see anything. Total blackness. I’ll be OK in a couple of ticks.’
But he wasn’t, and after a couple of minutes someone touched my back. I thought it was Conners, but it wasn’t.
‘Get out of the way Charlie, and get Grease out of the seat will you, Fergal?’ Grace said.
It was obvious really. I don’t know why nobody thought of it. We sat Grease on the floor of his office. He was worried that we had an empty tail turret, but I told him that Quelchy was still out there, which seemed to help. With his help we worked out the best switch. The Toff took the tail turret, and I was to climb into his whenever my radio skills weren’t needed. Marty had also hurt his eyes, but the sight came back in five: he had been looking away from the explosion. Once the Toff crawled into the tail-arse turret, and gave Quelch’s bomb aimer the thumbs up, our consort sheared off. When he came up alongside Fergal stood up and blocked his view of Grace, gave him the OK sign, and then a circular motion with the right hand. We were for the dark, and then home. There was a problem with that because we hadn’t dragged Tuesday this far in order to lose the trip completely. In crude terms that meant not abandoning until after we were over the Black One’s homeland.
Not shy of fuel now, Grace climbed us hard in wide circles until the altimeter was reading a questionable 29,000 feet. That can’t have been right, but Tuesday’s engines were gasping for breath every now and again, so you never know. The rim of each circle took us a little further into the Reich, and although we were high in exposed sky at least we would have the luxury of actually being able to see the Kraut climbing towards us. 10,000 beneath us the shadow forms of four-engined bombers streamed towards Berlin. We called it the Big City, but it wasn’t as big now as it had been on the day a year or so ago when we started on it.
At 29,200 feet Tuesday said ‘no’. Grace held her straight for long enough for Marty to say grace – if you’ll forgive the pun. God knows what he was bombing: some Kraut chicken runs no doubt. All we cared about was that the bombs fell directly into Germany, and we got another trip out of it: so much for Dobbo’s personal message to Adolf Hitler. Tuesday immediately gave us another couple of hundred, but we didn’t need them: Grace half rolled us over in a gentle dive towards the cloud in the direction of south-east England, taking a chance on her damaged screens by letting the speed build up to 320-plus knots. She flew with goggles on. By then we’d guided Grease back to the rest station, which was a canvas stretcher on to which you could strap a body. I offered him mother morphine, but he turned it down, insisting that he wasn’t in pain, that he just couldn’t see.
We saw one Kraut night fighter climb to offer us battle over the Dutch coast, but he got nowhere near us, because we were close to the end of the long dive across Holland. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as he tried to explain to his controller how a Lanc pissed past him at nearly 400 knots. To make matters worse the Toff gave him a quick burst from the tail turret in passing, and laid a few bullets on him. It was good to be first home for a change.
Grace made a long flat approach, and I gave the Bawne caravan all the right challenges and responses. Sometimes a bomber coming in to the circuit was like a stranger coming in to a Lodge meeting. An old Defiant night fighter had picked us up over Woodbridge of all places, and flew an escort above and behind us all the way. I had the chance for one or two scans out of the window. Although relatively undamaged Tuesday still looked in a bit of a state. Great areas of paintwork on her wings had been scoured clean, and one wing tip glistened for six feet or so with some of Foxy’s oil: about twenty feet of what I thought was parachute tape was caught across the other wing, and trailed out behind it.
We got Grease up to the office again for the approach because, as Conners pointed out, someone was going to be up for a gong for this, and if we made Grace the hero someone was going to ask what the fuck she was doing up there with us in the first place. Then they’d ask where Pete was. When the medics came to collect him, Grease had to be sitting in the gaffer’s seat again. You won’t be surprised to learn that Grace gave Tuesday the sweetest, gentlest contact with the runway.
As for the switch: it shouldn’t have been easy, but it was. The big man with the stethoscope slid swiftly through Tuesday, and moved Grease around as gently as he would have done a child. There were tears streaming from beneath Grease’s fingers as they led him away.
I led the debriefing, which was a novel experience for me. Harriet coached me through it, but was very rigid as I described what had happened to Grease. She would have to worry for a few more hours yet because she wouldn’t be leaving her seat until the rest were back. I improvised like blazes, and told them that Grease’s vision had been impaired by the flash of the explosion in front of him, but not entirely lost: that happened on the approach, and then Fergal crouched beside him talking him down flying blind: quite literally. Grease was the genuine all-Canadian hero.
Because there was no one else back, the IO with the Zapata moustache, who we favoured, came over and sat in on the debrief. He made me go over again what had happened to Foxy. I told him again that I didn’t know. He was pressing about night fighters when Marty said, ‘They hadn’t reached us yet, although Charlie was tracking them in. I reckoned they would have got into the stream about five or ten minutes later. Foxy blew up: one of her own fucking bombs simply blew up.’
There was an uncomfortable pause, which I concluded by telling them that the Toff had laid a few bullets on a night fighter on our way home. I had to transpose him back into his top turret for the story of course, otherwise it wouldn’t have worked. This was getting too bloody complicated. Then Harriet took us back to what we’d bombed. Marty insisted that it was a small airfield, but how he saw it from 29 thou God only knew. Conners said that it was just over the Kraut border on the way to Meppen: even with her attachment to us I could see that Harriet didn’t believe us. We’d dropped off Grace at the Pit, of course, after a quick motorized recce to make sure the Blues weren’t waiting in ambush. Either they hadn’t yet worked out that Pete was signed on for trip after trip, but couldn’t be found between them, or they didn’t give a toss. Perhaps they really were here just for the body in the bog.
The other four sloped off to be first at the breakfast table. I didn’t; I sat on a chair by the door and waited for some of the others to get in. I don’t know how it had happened, but it was obvious from everyone’s attitude that with Grease down, I was the number one man. It wasn’t rehearsed, and it made me nervous about the war, and very tired.
I must have fallen asleep, and when I awoke Brookman’s face was close to mine. He was squatting down in full flying gear, facing me with a hand on my shoulder. His grimy face was as kind as my father’s.
‘OK, Charlie?’ he said.
‘Yes. Sorry; nodded off.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Grease hurt his eyes when Foxy blew up. They’re trying to say it was a night fighter, but it was her own bombs.’ Then something occurred to me, ‘Have you got a new crew?’
‘No. I was flying with the Boss as a spare dickie. Batting myself back in again.’
My mind wandered. ‘Grease thinks that it’s like cricket, too,’ I told him.
‘Why don’t you get some kip Charlie, you’re beat.’
‘OK. Where’s Quelch?’
‘He’s not in yet.’
‘OK.’
I should have looked in on Grease, but was too whacked, so I borrowed a station bike without permission and weaved slowly to the Pit. For the first time since Grease had laid down the rule I trudged into the hut in all my clothes. One of Grace’s candles was flickering somewhere. I lay on my back on my bed like a spent fish, and was asleep again in seconds.
I had just finished shaving the next morning when an airman cycled up with the usual ticket. This time it said that the squadron leader would appreciate a few minutes of my time, although that’s not how they put it in the RAF.
‘When? Now?’
‘No. He didn’t seem too concerned.’
‘He going soft?’
The airman smirked: he knew something.
There was a fresh face in Samson’s outer office, a new corporal. We were in trouble if he’d got himself a clerk who actually knew what he was doing. Brookman was also there, staring out of the window, looking taller than I remembered. He was smoking a straight pipe like mine.
‘Hello, Charlie. Thanks for coming over. Take a pew,’ he said.
This was new. I sat and waited.
The corporal came in as if on cue with a couple of mugs of tea.
‘How’s Mac?’
‘I don’t know yet, sir. I was going to go on to see the MO after coming here. Where’s the squadron leader?’
‘Afraid you’re looking at him, old boy, temporarily of course. Mr Delve had a bad turn last night. He might be back, but he might not. I understand the doc’s sent him on to Ely.’ There was a hospital at Ely which specialized in RAF cases. He seemed a little lost for what to say next. Then there was his hooting laugh again. It was quieter this time and self-mocking.
‘Now that I know your lot, it seems very strange to be “Gerry” in the pub, and “sir” here. You can laugh at me if you like, Charlie, but although I know I can do the rest of the job, I’m worried about that.’
It was time to bring this conversation back on track.
‘Needs must, sir,’ I said firmly.
‘Thank you, Charlie.’
‘Was there anything else, sir?’
‘Yes; ’fraid so, and I’m only discussing this with you because your skipper’s laid up. Comprenez?’
‘Absolutement.’
‘Don’t take the piss yet, Charlie, it’s not fair. Do you want a waxer in the tea? The new bloke I’ve got out there is a bloody wonderful clerk, but his tea is as strong as pig piss!’
I nodded. Probably grinned too. The waxer came from a flat pint bottle of bourbon in the top drawer of his desk. Then it came out of the blue: ‘Quelch never came in last night. We’ll need a new number three for A Flight, and because I’ve been away I’ve lost touch with the squadron, so I don’t know who to pick. I would have asked Mac’s advice, but he’s not here either.’
‘There’s that guy Whittaker . . .’
‘He’s gone too, Charlie; several trips back, last week some time – you must have forgotten.’
‘Yes. I must have.’ I tried to concentrate, but although unconnected names and faces swam into view I couldn’t decide whether they were alive or dead. ‘It’s difficult. I think that Grease would have told you to take whichever replacement crew arrives next.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a confident sort of thing to do; everyone will look up to you . . . and if we find ourselves nursing them for their first couple of trips, we’ll probably be looking out for ourselves at the same time. That won’t be a bad thing.’
‘You should be an officer, Charlie.’
‘No. I couldn’t be arsed.’
‘Did you know that the Boss has put Mac up for a commission?’
‘Did he ask him first?’
We both grinned, I think.
‘Think about it?’ he said.
‘Is that a direct order, sir?’
‘Yes, one of my first, in this job.’
‘How does it feel?’
‘Distinctly odd.’
Then I realized what we had almost stopped talking about.
‘What happened to Mother?’
‘I don’t know. You climbed up out of the stream, and circled to the north? Out towards Meppen and the Stadskanal?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘He turned south. I think that the nearest fighters were gathering south of the stream: he turned and offered them battle. Bloody insane. No one knows what happened next. There are no reports. I’ve asked all the right questions of all the right people. Nothing yet.’
‘Quelchy’ll be back. I shouldn’t start sending the telegrams yet, if I was you sir.’
I started to sweat. It was time to get out of the seat. I never liked long conversations with officers: you always felt as if you were getting sucked into something. Anyway, he waved me down, and pushed a couple of photographs across the desk at me. One was a target photo.
‘That’s yours from last night. Congrats.’
‘What for? What is it?’
‘Luthersberg. I think they pronounce it “Lootersburg”: it’s a Jerry airfield near Meppen, just like Martin Weir said. You can just make it out. Usually we hit their airfields with small-scale stuff, and rockets, but you flung a couple of cookies at them! They must have wondered what the hell they did to deserve that. The other one is a nice recce photo taken by a low-level Spit this morning. Be careful; it’s still damp.’
It showed the usual small airfield configuration of a main runway crossed obliquely by a secondary, ringed by a peri-track. The Kraut didn’t have too many concrete airstrips, so he was particularly fond of them. There was a massive black splodgy figure-of-eight shape obscuring the area where the runways crossed. It was big enough to launch a destroyer into.
‘Was that our cookies? What a bloody fluke.’
‘Yes. Well done. They won’t fly off there for a week. The bosses are very chuffed.’
‘What about the 1,000-pounders?’
‘There’s a field alongside with several dead cows in it.’
‘Probably Nazis. That’s what Pete says about German animals. He was there before the war.’
‘There’s more. One of their night fighters fell near the Dutch coast, just about where and when you crossed it last night. One of the new Dutch radio stations reported it. We’ve claimed it for you. Congrats again. That was your mid-upper gunner, wasn’t it? The one you call the Toff?’
‘Yes. That was the Toff’s.’
‘Care to tell me what he was doing in the tail turret then? The guns in the mid-upper were hardly fired. Only enough for a gun test. But you got off a full ten-second burst from the tail. I went out to see your kite this morning I’m afraid.’
Ah.
I visited Grease in the medical block. The others were already there.
‘I think that Brookie is going to be brighter than Samson,’ I told Grease later, ‘at least for the time being.’
‘Will that be a problem?’
‘It might be. He could be a blighter.’
Grease was sitting up in bed wearing a set of those sepia-glazed goggles they use to train people to night-fly during the day. His sight was mostly back, but the doc was taking no chances. He was wearing sky blue silk pyjamas, and had filched a Brown Job’s tin helmet from somewhere. It crossed my mind that he was working his ticket with the doolally trick.
‘He’s Welsh,’ Grease said.
‘Who is?’
‘Old Doc is. . . . and drinks like it’s going out of fashion. He says that there are three teetotal Welshmen for every one that drinks: it’s the Chapel, you see. That lays a great responsibility on the drinkers to keep up the national batting average. We got stocious last night. Good bloke.’
‘I think he’s a sweetie,’ Grace said.
I hadn’t missed her last night, but she had changed into ordinaries before I got back, and had jogged over to the small ward that Grease was sharing with an Erk who had broken his leg, and an Australian flight sergeant with bad burns. He’d spilt a bottle of bootleg hooch on himself, and fired it up by accident with his cigarette. What is it the Kraut was supposed to say? For him, the war was over. They would move him to Ely soon. Grace had pushed an empty bed alongside Grease’s and spent the night on it, holding his hand as he slept. He said he realized his eyes were almost working again when she was the first thing he saw when he woke up. Grace told him that that was hardly a unique experience.
Grease peeped out from under the goggles: his eyes looked very bloodshot. He put the goggles back in place. ‘Does he know about the agreement you came to with Samson, about Pete continuing to fly as long as he doesn’t have to parade, or show his face outside Tuesday?’
‘He knows about it, but he doesn’t believe in fairies either.’
‘So why are you looking so worried, young Charlie?’
‘Because he didn’t push the point. He saw I couldn’t answer him, and left it at that. He’ll come to visit you today with a bottle in his pocket like the one I’ve got in mine. Make sure you’re bloody careful about what you say.’
‘How did the conversation end then?’
‘A little strangely. As I was leaving I turned and asked him how Samson’s missus had taken it.’
‘And?’
‘He looked at the desk, and said, “Very well. Relieved he’s off flying I think. She’s gone to Ely in the car with them. I don’t think that she’ll be so . . . restless, now,” and when he looked up I swear he was blushing.’
‘You’ve got a dirty mind, Charlie,’ Grace said.
‘I wonder who I got that from?’ We all laughed together, for all the world like brothers and a sister.
‘Where’s that bottle, Charlie? I’m gagging for it,’ Grease asked.
The bottle I produced, and its twin, were flat pints of bourbon from Tommo. Grace and I got the Erk into an old wheelchair with wooden wheels, and brought him over to party with us. The Australian was covered in bandages and tied to the bed. He groaned piteously when he worked out what we were doing, so we did the kind thing . . . and left him where he was.
Eventually the MO reappeared and kicked us out. Grease tried to bribe him with Grace’s body, and I was glad when that failed. He was worried about Tuesday, and extracted a promise from me to find out what she was like. Grace and I walked back to the Pit. I left her there, and trundled the Indian up the hill to where Chiefy Bryan had Tuesday on the hardstanding outside the T2 hangar. They were scrubbing down both upper wing surfaces, and replacing the cockpit glaze.
‘She was in a hell of a bleeding mess when you finished with her last night,’ he said accusingly.
‘She’s been worse. All the engines were still there. The bomb doors were there. Any holes were small ones.’
‘Ah’m talking about the mess, sonny. You should have told us about that. It weren’t fair.’
‘Chiefy, you’re losing me. All I know is that the new squadron leader sloped out here this morning, and you let him examine the guns without warning me about it first.’
‘That weren’t why he came out, Charlie. He came out to look at the mess, and then he cleared it up himself.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Chiefy? What mess? We flew through a Lancaster which had blown herself up. We got covered in her unburnt oil, and the explosion burnt off our pretty paint. All we came back with was bits of parachute webbing that some poor sod didn’t have time to use. Don’t tell me what she was like: I was out there with her!’
He turned away from me, took a couple of paces, then turned and came back.
‘They weren’t his bits of parachute webbing, Charlie, they were parts of the poor sod who didn’t have time to use it. You flew back with five or six yards of guts over the wing. The CO came here after the lads didn’t want to move it this morning, and the MO was away in Ely. Brookman took it down, and washed off where it had been . . . and I’m sorry about the guns. We didn’t know there was a problem.’
It was my turn. I touched his arm with my hand and said, ‘OK, I’m sorry. There’s no problem about the guns. Nothing I can’t deal with.’
Grease was let out that night and had 20/20, which he proved by getting out of his brains and driving us back from the Fox on the Huntingdon road. It was the pub of choice for Grease; he swore by the Wells and Winch’s Biggleswade beer, and not many aircrew used the place. I liked it because you stepped straight off the road into one of the bars: there was nothing drink-time-wasteful like a garden or car park in-between.
Late on, Chiefy Bryan slouched in. He looked frazzled and dirty. I called him up a pint immediately. He nodded at me when I placed it in his huge mitt and said, ‘She’s ready,’ then turned his back on me and joined a noisy group of ground engineer types who had taken over one corner. Grace sat on everyone’s lap in turn, and sang with us – ‘Roll Out The barrel’, ‘Don’t Dilly Dally’, that sort of thing. Then she sat alongside me and held my hand while we let the others sing. Trying to remember that night now, all I can recall them doing is, ‘We’re seven little lambs, who’ve lost our way . . .’
Squashed in the back of the Austin with the Toff and Marty, Grace said, ‘I had a signal today. They want me back. Sometime next week they want me to pick up a Beaufighter at Twinwood and take it up to Ringway.’
It put a bit of a dampener on our mood.
It seems hard to credit now, but I was actually keen to get back in the air. We hadn’t got many left and I wanted to get them flown. Then I wanted to get away from bloody Germany, and not go back there for a good few months. On the other hand there was also the break-up of the crew coming in a couple of weeks, and I wasn’t sure that I could cope with that. I sloped over to the ops block, and hung around there until Brookie chased me away.
Back in the Pit I gave them the news. ‘We’re going bloody nowhere. It’s because of what happened to Foxy. They’re emptying the bomb dump, and taking all the bombs back to the shop where they buy them. Then they’re bringing us brand new ones. It will take at least a day; maybe two.’ Then I remembered something, and told Grease, ‘There’s a note on the letter board for you, says there’s a parcel for you to collect. I asked for it at the squadron office, but they say you have to collect it in person.’
‘It’ll be a Red Cross parcel from your folks. They don’t think we’re feeding their little boy enough,’ Fergal said.
Grease flung a pillow at him. I flung one at Grease, and then we all started in. Grace sat by the stove with a face like Queen Victoria, and ignored us. It was scary to be in love with a girl who could be easily satisfied with a mug of tea and a newspaper.
When Grease came back he didn’t say anything, so we had to pump him. He was curiously uncomfortable. Then he pulled a small, flat, expensive-looking box out of his pocket.
‘Did you know that Brookie’s going to put me up for a gong for the Berlin fiasco?’ he said.
‘Congrats. Someone had to get one for it, and we couldn’t tell him Grace had flown the trip – they would court martial the lot of us.’
‘Well, the thing is . . . I don’t need one any more. Someone’s just sent me one; out of the blue. A mad sod called Braddock, from Leeming or wogga-wogga land up north. Somewhere the Yorkshire people hide. His name’s on the back of it, with his number.’
He opened the box and showed us a pristine DFM, and the scrap of ribbon which went with it. Braddock had stuck a note in. All you have to do is collect ten gollies from the jamjars, and they send you one of these by return. I’ve got dozens, and I heard what you did – so I’m passing this on. Pretend I picked your name out of the hat! Braddock.
I said, too casually, ‘Who’s Braddock? Maybe he has heard of you . . .’
‘Yeah. That’s what I’m scared of.’
‘Anyway. You can take us all to the pub tonight to wet it.’
Grease looked mortified; still thinking like a working man. ‘I can’t: I’m a bit short.’
‘We could always go to the bank,’ the Toff said.
Grease started to spring the slow-on-the-uptake smile he was developing. Finally he remembered. ‘Yeah. Why not?’ He was definitely command material.
The party was in full swing in the Wellington the night they took our bombs away. Marty sulked: he told us he felt impotent without a live bomb within cycling distance. The pub was packed to bursting point, the blackout was being ignored and uniformed customers had spilt on to the pavement, the road and into surrounding gardens. There was a familiar girl heavy-petting a guy as small as me in US uniform. They were on a love seat on the rectory lawn.
When she looked over his shoulder and caught my eye she laughed, and waved. ‘Hi, Charlie!’
‘Hi yourself, Susan.’
Grease tut-tutted, and said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’
I looked nervously around for Grace, but remembered she was in a scrum in the snug. The American disentangled himself, glared, and then grinned. He said, ‘Hi,’ and wandered over. ‘Is that your girl?’
‘No. My girl’s inside.’
He held out his hand. ‘Joe Stalin.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ I said.
‘That’s what everyone says. But I am Joe Stalin. People call me . . .’
‘. . . Uncle,’ said Susan.
‘Susan made me a cup of tea on a bad afternoon. That’s how I know her,’ I said.
She picked up the drift, ruffled his hair, and said, ‘He’s just my Joe. He’s a genuine four-O Yank.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked deliberately.
‘You know: overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here.’
Yeah, I thought, and I know a field not far from here, where 3,000 of the poor sods are lying six feet under the grass. But I didn’t say that. Joe and I exchanged grins like winces, but let her off with it. You could detect the edge of something under her gaiety.
Joe said, ‘My Sue is like all of your Limey women. Never there when you want them, and too quiet when you want to hear the old hello sailor. A genuine four-U British broad.’ He gave her a hug to take the sting out of it, but I came in on cue.
‘What’s that?’
‘Unseen, unheard, undernourished and under us.’
Too far. Susan burst into tears, and slapped ineffectually at Joe’s face. He put his mitts up like a boxer covering himself and crouched and weaved, laughing all the time. Then she said, ‘Bastards!’ and ran into the pub.
‘Broads!’ the Yank said. It was that kind of a party.
I asked him where he was from.
‘The repple depple. Some place called Bovingdon. I was only there a week.’
‘Repple depple?’
‘Replacement depot. They sent me to replace some bonehead of a major who got snake bit. You knew him?’
‘No.’ I shook my head, and apologized to Peter Wynn inside it. Then some of his old crew, Sandy Lyon and David Kovaks, the Jew, wandered out. ‘Hi, Charlie. Your team here tonight?’ Sandy said.
I nodded.
‘You know this guy?’ Joe Stalin asked.
‘Hell, yes. We been promising to beat hell out of his crew at darts for a month. I guess tonight could be that night.’
Stalin gave me the look, but didn’t pick up on the lie I told him. If he lasted a month maybe he would understand. It wasn’t a case of not speaking ill of the dead. It was one of not speaking of them at all. Period.
Grace pushed out. She had a fresh pint for me in her hand. Nothing is lovelier than the woman you desire, walking towards you, carrying your beer.
‘This is Joe Stalin,’ I said.
Grace didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Was that your girl who just rushed in crying?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Then go straight after her and make it up. Life’s too short.’
I thought that he was going to protest, but he straightened up, and repeated, “Life’s too short”,’ as if the concept had just occurred to him. Then he said ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and dived into the bar after Susan.
‘What was all that about?’ said Grace.
‘Lovers’ tiff. Our new cap doesn’t waste much time,’ said Sandy.
‘Who’s got time?’ the Jew asked.
None of us had an answer. It was the nearest we got to saying anything about Peter Wynn all evening.
Grace said to me, ‘You don’t know that girl. She’s from the Crifton post office. She just heard that her husband died in some prisoner of war camp in Germany.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Why should you? Someone told me that she held out long after all the other war widows around here had taken up with servicemen. Have you heard of the domino theory?’
‘No.’
‘Never mind, Charlie.’ She pushed my quiff out of my eyes, and made me feel loved. There was something brittle about Grace too, tonight.
Wynn’s old crew had a new B-17 G. It was called Remember the Alamo, was an unpainted shiny silver, and had a picture of a naked broad, they said, wearing a coonskin cap whose tail stretched down to tickle her arse. We were stumbling drunk by the time I had rounded up the others in front of the dartboard, and besides, there were ten of them to seven of us, including Grace . . . so they whipped us. Their little ball-turret gunner was so drunk he had to be held upright, but even so if you called out a spot on the dartboard he could stick an arrow in it. They said he’d been credited with four German fighter kills.
Later I sat squashed in a corner with Grace and a group of unhappy-looking Brown Jobs of mixed rank. They were as outnumbered as Custer’s command had been at Little Big Horn. Their fat major had a raft of stained medal ribbons on an old battledress jacket: old Braddock would have loved him. I asked him where they were based.
‘Here; for a couple of days. Living upstairs with my legion of the lost. We heard the racket, and thought we’d join in rather than try to sleep through it. What do you do?’
‘Fly radios about over Germany. How about you, sir?’
‘Take bloody bombs to pieces. Usually theirs, but we heard you had a problem with some of yours, and were posted up to make the blighters safe before you moved them.’
‘I couldn’t do that: much too nervy,’ Grace said.
‘It’s all right. Whenever I get scared I think of something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a horse race when I picked up a packet. I rerun the race in my head.’
‘Does that steady your hands?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t got a clue, old boy. I just do it so that the last thought in my mind is going to be a happy one. I say, I was hoping to meet an old pal of mine here tonight, but he hasn’t turned up. Conny Delve? He’s a squadron commander or something. Know him?’
‘No, sir.’ Grace gave me her sharp look, then glanced away. I added, ‘Maybe the RAF sent him away. It does sometimes. Secret squadrons and all that.’
‘He was an odd cove. My fag at school, you know: God knows how he got to be a ranker.’
‘In the RAF they give you the rank if you live long enough.’
‘In my lot they give you it first, because you never do.’ He slurped and spilled his beer. His hand shook from time to time.
‘I’m sure he’ll be sad to have missed you, sir,’ I said.
‘Maybe, Sergeant. I’m here for a couple of days anyway, I suppose.’
‘I’ll tell him, if I meet him.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. Good beer.’
I wondered what the hell he had been drinking all his life, if he thought so.
First Susan, then Peter Wynn and then old Samson. I had denied knowing all three in the course of a couple of hours: St Peter would have a thing or two to say to me, when we got face to face. Grace must have read my mind: she put her head on my shoulder and said the words again.
‘Life’s too short.’