It was always gloomy in the Officers’ Mess. They called it that, as if it was a bar in some flash London club. But it was just a wooden hut like all the others, except with a stash of bottles on a shelf in one corner and a pile of last month’s newspapers on the table. A couple of busted propeller blades hung on the wall, alongside a German bayonet, shell fragments dug out of one of our planes, and bits of junk people had picked up in the village or by the side of the road: a French circus poster, a clock that chimed at random hours, and a teddy bear with one eye.

Planes droned overhead and always, off to the east, was the sound of the guns. I wished I was in the workshop with Len and the boys, chatting quietly while we worked, making broken things whole again, setting things right. But I’d been told to wait in the Mess for orders. Hours ago. Everyone who wasn’t already in the air was there, waiting to fly or just back from a job. There was more waiting than flying. It was like that most days.

Charlie stretched out on a sofa, nicked from a nearby chateau, staring at the wall. He had a book in his hand— The Man with Two Left Feet, which usually made him laugh out loud—but he wasn’t reading and he certainly wasn’t laughing.

In the corner, three chaps from C Flight argued over a game of darts. Somebody’s dog scratched and snuffled. The gramophone played the same record, over and over.

If you were the only girl in the world,
And I was the only boy …

Some of the new arrivals sang along.

‘Shut up, will you?’ Charlie snapped.

They fell silent.

‘Go easy on them, mate,’ I said.

‘You’re on active service now,’ he shouted across the room. ‘You have to learn how we do things around here.’

‘Speaking of which,’ I said, waving a postcard in front of his face, ‘I heard from some of our boys in 3 Squadron.’

‘We should have stayed in England with them,’ said Charlie.

‘You couldn’t wait to get over here,’ I reminded him.

‘I was an idiot.’

‘Well, they’re all here now,’ I said. ‘At an airfield just outside Arras. I thought we might borrow a car and drive over to visit them one day soon. Hear some voices from home. Catch up on the news. And we could teach them a few tricks, maybe. Help them out. Remember what it was like when we arrived?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Charlie threw the book into the corner. ‘I barely remember yesterday.’

‘What d’you reckon?’ I said. ‘The boys’d like to say cheerio.’

‘Look at them,’ he said. He pointed at the noticeboard where, alongside official memos and the odd silly cartoon cut out of a newspaper, were photos of rows of men, posing with their aircraft or in front of the hangar. Me and Charlie, in those first few days, grinning in our spotless new uniforms. Burke, with his hair hanging down over his forehead, smiling into the camera. Jimmy Grady fooling around with the Squadron’s pet goat. Three days before, Grady had managed to land his aircraft in spite of two bullets in his legs. He got carted off to hospital. We hadn’t heard if he was still alive.

Dozens of men, all gone.

‘I don’t remember their names,’ said Charlie. ‘Any of them.’

‘You can’t have forgotten Jimmy,’ I said.

‘I do remember him.’ Charlie’s voice sounded as if he was miles away. ‘He got shot.’

‘Got you back here safely, though, didn’t he?’ I said. ‘And there’s good old Burke.’

‘Who?’

I didn’t say much more. Instead I went to the CO and asked for a few days off for both of us, to go visit our Australian mates.

‘Sorry, lad,’ he said. ‘There’s a big Push planned. It’s all hands to the wheel for the next few weeks. Maybe after that.’

I nodded miserably. Another big Push. Another few weeks. I hoped Charlie lasted that long.

September, 1917

7 Squadron,

Royal Flying Corps

Proven, Belgium

It’s time I told you what it’s really like, Maggie. Enough of the stiff upper lip. Odd things happen to a man here. I’ve seen it over and over. It’s happening to Charlie now. Perhaps it has been for months and I never noticed, never realised. We fly together now—me as pilot and Charlie in the back as observer. So maybe it’s just that now I can see how he is in the air as well as on the ground.

He’s twitchy. Shy. Shell-shocked, they call it, but in our case it isn’t shells that do the damage. Not usually.

It’s the waiting to die.

Those poor beggars in the trenches sit under shell fire for days on end. Then they have to charge out of their holes as if they mean it, and I suppose they do. They get mowed down like grass by machine gun fire. Or if they’re lucky they get to take another man’s life. Some luck.

They see things—we all do—that have never been seen before on this earth. Things that nobody should ever see. They crouch in a wasteland of mud and wire, and they quiver and wait to die.

We do the same. We sit about on the airfield where, most of the time at least, we’re relatively safe. But then the call goes out, and they chalk the sectors up on the board and off we go. And every day we think: will it be me this time? Will it be flames or plummeting or a quick bullet? Or if not me, then who? My best mate? My Wing Commander? That boy who just arrived this morning? (Probably him.)

It changes us. It has to. We try not to let it happen, but there’s no way out. Some fellows pray, some have little rituals they follow for luck, some go out all the time and try to forget, some dwell on it and talk about it all the time. It doesn’t matter what we do. We all get nervy, forgetful, angry. We unravel.

It’s not cowardice, although I hate to think how many men have been charged with cowardice when they should be sent to a hospital, or just home. Some of the twitchiest fellows we ever see are the bravest, because they get foolhardy, you see. They stop caring. They just want to get it over with, as if death is an enemy who will one day, inevitably, beat you. They want to bring it on. They become cruel and perhaps careless, because it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Charlie doesn’t have anybody like you to talk to. His brothers are both in Palestine with the Light Horse, and his father sends letters that sound like they’ve been dictated by General Haig—do your best, boy, and don’t disgrace us. He throws them straight into the fire and asks if he can read your letters instead.

So write to me, as fast as you can, and tell me it will be all right. Tell me it will all be over soon, and then I can come home.

Please. I can’t ask anyone else, can’t tell anyone but you, Mags. Tell me—this time it won’t be me.

Alex