Читать книгу Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton - Страница 15

When choosing a site for an airfield it doesn’t matter that the ground is not flat, for it can easily be levelled. The deciding factor is drainage. The inhabitants of Little Warley had always known that the potato fields to the east of the village drained into Witch Fen. The land between there and the line of ash trees at The Warrens is hard, fertile and as black as coal. Its subsoil is firm enough to take the weight of a bombing plane. So it was no surprise when, as war began, Air Ministry teams surveyed the place and pronounced it suitable for a Bomber Command airfield. After that came earth-moving machinery, concrete mixers and asphalt pourers. A tarmac cross was drawn across Warley’s countryside and around it went a road complete with a circular pan for each aeroplane. Men dug sewers and drains, laid water pipes and strung power lines. Telex and phone cables crossed the fields. Corrugated-iron Nissen huts appeared as if by magic, huddled together like wrinkled grey elephants sheltering from the cold East Anglian winds. There were hangars too: black cathedrals higher than the church steeple and wider than the graveyard. Finally out of the clouds came the sound of an aeroplane and ten minutes later Warley Fen was truly an airfield.

The box-like Control Tower stood alone, commanding a view as far as Witch Fen. Behind it dozens of buildings provided the complex necessities of Service life from A to Z. Armoury, Butchery, Cinema, Dental Surgery, Equipment Store, Flying Control, Gunnery Range, Hairdresser, Instrument Section, Jail, Kitchens, Link Trainer Room, Meteorological Section, Navigators’ Briefing Room, Operations Block, Photographic Section, Quarters for Married Officers, Radar Building, Sick Quarters, Teleprinter Section, Uniform Store, Vehicle Repair Yard, Water Tower, X-ray Department, YMCA Hut, and a zebra-striped Aerodrome Control Post. Later there were also added a large vegetable garden and extensive pig pens.

A sign was painted – RAF Station Warley Fen – and erected at the entrance. The wooden shed there was painted red and white and adorned with a notice: ALL VISITORS MUST REPORT HERE. In no time at all it seemed as though the village had always known the bustle of one thousand and eighty-three noisy airmen: bicycles were stacked outside the Bell every evening and Mrs Jenkins had had to write NO CIGARETTES on her window in whitewash in order to save a few smokes for her regulars. There were girl airmen too, to the villagers’ dismay. They flaunted painted lips and waved hair and worked as hard as the men. Sometimes they were heard to swear as hard as the men, too. They set an awesome example to the village girls. Some said the whole aerodrome was a ‘black Satan’s nest’ and hurried past it after dark, especially if the roar of aircraft was rattling the village windowpanes like a thousand furies.

Dispersed all round the aerodrome were the Squadron’s bombers sitting on their tarmac circles. The six-foot-high fence that surrounded the airfield was little more than a boundary mark, for human logic had torn great holes in it where it had blocked the paths that led from the dispersals to the Bell. Even the armed sentries who stood all night at the main gate would, their duty finished, wander off through gaps in the fence to save themselves a hundred extra yards walk along the perimeter track. It was through one of these gaps that the Bedford lorry bumped and caused them all to lose their balance. Digby and Battersby hit their heads against the metal uprights. ‘Hold on!’ shouted Flight Lieutenant Sweet from his seat in the cab.

‘Now he tells us,’ said Digby as the lorry pulled up in front of B Flight offices. The tailflap crashed open and Sweet took Mrs Lambert by the waist and floated her down in a movement that would have done credit to the Sadlers Wells ballet company. Still holding her by the waist, Sweet gave her a decorous kiss. ‘Droit du Seigneur, Lambert,’ he called. ‘The driver will take you to the Ops Block, Mrs Lambert; it looks like there’s something on for us. It’s a good thing that I decided to look in here first.’

The Lancaster bombers were alive with airmen. Engine mechanics, riggers, electricians, instrument fitters and radio mechanics swarmed all over the great four-motor aircraft. The newcomers automatically looked across to the north corner of the airfield. There a group of hillocks looked like prehistoric burial mounds with a concrete entrance to each. It was all surrounded with blast walls and laced with pulleys and tackle. Inside that was the bomb store. Around it were queues of bomb-trains. Armourers bent low over fuses and fins, and patted the bombs into place on the trolleys. There were general purpose bombs and high-capacity bombs and target indicators and canisters packed with ninety shiny 4-lb incendiaries. No one was painting ‘Hello Hitler’ on them; that was something the Press photographers did. For armourers there was nothing humorous about a bomb.

‘Looks like we’re on the battle order, chaps,’ said Sweet. ‘There’s a bit of luck. I’ll enjoy putting some HE amongst the squareheads.’

‘Bombs or mines?’ said Digby.

‘Can’t see,’ said Cohen.

The Flight offices were a complex of tin huts which rattled as one by one the engines were tested up to full revs. The Sergeant clerk saluted as Sweet entered the shabby little room marked B Flight Office. Eric, the airman clerk, stopped typing and stood up at attention. It was a dismal place. There were two filing boxes, two tables and two chairs. In the corner there was a sink with chipped railway cups and a brown metal teapot upside down to drain. A notice board on the wall was crammed with ancient announcements and memos. The blackboard was marked to show the serviceability of B Flight’s Lancasters. Above it Sweet had had the lettering bod write ‘B Flight Bombs Best’ in Saxon lettering. There was a dirty smudge under it where another opinion on the subject had been clumsily erased.

‘Good morning Percy, good morning Eric,’ said Sweet. ‘Are we on?’

‘Yes, sir; maximum effort,’ said the Sergeant.

‘I hear you’re making a book on the Squadron cricket match on Saturday, Eric. Put me down for five bob.’

‘On us, sir?’ said Eric.

‘You cheeky sod,’ said Sweet. ‘Aren’t I the best batsman in the Group?’

‘That’s it, sir.’ Sweet smiled appreciatively and patted Eric’s shoulder.

Sweet picked up a tin of pennies and shook it. A hand-lettered label said ‘Village Children’s Xmas Party’. Last year and the one before that, the clerk Eric Sedge and LAC Gilbert, the Squadron artist, had arranged it, but this year Sweet had put the full force of his persuasive personality behind it. Smilingly he demanded contributions from all ranks and insisted that any raffles or sweepstakes held among the lads of B Flight must pay ten per cent ‘tax’ to the Christmas party.

‘How much more since Friday, Eric?’ Sweet rattled the tin again.

‘A few pennies, sir.’

‘Get the names in the book?’

‘I don’t put down less than sixpence.’

‘Get them all in the book, Eric. It’s only fair. Then at Christmas we’ll see which section has contributed most.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And put the teapot on, Eric.’ Sweet walked through the door marked ‘B Flight Commander’. It was very hot inside and a wasp was buzzing hysterically. Sweet hit the wasp with a rolled-up copy of Picture Post and then opened the window. He scooped up the wasp and put it outside. He leaned out far enough to see Lambert talking to his wife. Sweet inhaled the perfume of freshly cut grass and looked long enough at two airmen on fatigues for them to go back to work. Sweet sat down at his desk. Over it a poster with the slogan ‘Bread is a munition of war, don’t waste it’ had a Johnny Walker label obscuring the first word. The office was equipped from many sources. There were pub ashtrays, a cinema seat, a Victorian wardrobe containing Sweet’s working uniform and some spare flying kit. There were also a small stove with a home-made chimney, a threadbare piece of antique carpet and a suitcase full of gramophone records (including a course in spoken German). Through the window were the Lancasters he commanded, standing on the skyline like a frieze.

Sweet’s own plane was S for Sugar, although by now he had persuaded almost everyone on the Squadron to call it S Sweet. It was the newest aeroplane on B Flight. Its Perspex was bright and clear and its interior shiny bright. It had one bomb painted on its nose.

Lambert’s aeroplane – O Orange – on the other hand, was an ancient machine, with line after line of yellow bombs totalling sixty-two. From outside it looked the same as the other bombers, covered for the most part in black matt paint with dull green and brown on the upper surfaces. But if you went inside and looked at the bright alloy formers in its nose and wondered why the port side of the interior had dulled and tarnished while the starboard interior was gleaming fresh silver metal, you might guess that it had not escaped unharmed from its sixty-two trips. She had been back to Servicing Flight for major surgery. She’d had a new tail section, the port flaps were new, and the nose and port wing had several riveted plates where flak had holed her. Bomb-doors were the most vulnerable part and this plane had used up eight of those.

When Lambert’s crew had first got her fifteen trips ago they had looked with silent awe upon the battle-scarred machine until Micky Murphy the Flight Engineer said, ‘A creaking door hangs the longest.’ Digby christened her ‘Creaking Door’. The machine seemed to revel in the name and although she flew like a bird, the tail section did creak a little, especially over the target. Or so swore Flight Sergeant Digby.

If one hadn’t known what a cynical unimaginative type Digby was, it would be easy to accuse him of sentimentality about Creaking Door. It had cost him many pints of beer to hear its life story from Flight Sergeant Worthington. For bombers belonged to the ground crew; aircrew only borrowed them.

Creaking Door was one of the very first Lancasters ever built. The factory was producing a disastrous two-motor aeroplane and as an emergency measure the designers asked if they could try putting two extra motors on it. The Air Ministry experts said no, the factory ignored them and begged, borrowed and stole bits and pieces in order to try it anyway.

‘That’s how the best bombing plane of the war was designed. What a typical pommy fiasco.’

‘I told my father that it was a fine example of British engineering genius,’ said Battersby.

‘An accident, sport. But she’s a beaut, a real vintage beaut.’

‘What remarkable luck,’ said Binty Jones, the mid-upper gunner, looking up from his comic book. ‘We’ll sell her to one of those museum places when we have finished with the clapped-out old wreck.’

‘Money, that’s all you dills think about,’ said Digby. ‘I’m talking about art. I’m talking about history. Yes, planes like this will be in museums when the war is over, preserved as a masterpiece of twentieth-century taste and culture and beauty.’

‘We all will,’ said Lambert.

‘I should have known better than trying to talk seriously to you mob,’ said Digby.

Next in line along the dispersal was L Love, which was having a new name and symbol painted to surmount the fifteen yellow bombs on its nose: ‘Joe for King’ was now its name. Sergeant Tommy Carter flew ‘Joe for King’. He was a handsome red-haired orphan from Newcastle. After the orphanage he’d become a messenger boy and then a Newcastle policeman until his inspector found him reading Das Kapital.

‘What the devil are you doing with that damned rubbish, Constable Carter?’

‘It’s for my evening classes, sir. I’ve got Mein Kampf here in my other pocket.’

‘Don’t bring that poison into my police station, Constable. Do you understand?’

‘I do, Inspector.’

Two months later he joined the RAF. He had a huge ginger moustache that had originated as a disguise for a scarred lip. He’d encouraged it into the slightly clownish handlebar shape that was fashionable among many aircrew. Tommy Carter thought the RAF was the most marvellous thing that had happened to him, and Joe for King, he said, was the finest Lancaster ever manufactured. The machine was fifteen trips old; Tommy’s crew had done eight of those with the exception of Collins. He was their bomb aimer. Only survivor of a crash landing in February, he’d completed twenty-nine trips. Tonight would be his last before going for a rest.

The next Lancaster bomber was Z Zebra. It was almost out of sight behind the ash trees of The Warrens, where even in daylight wild rabbits ran across the tarmac pans. Under the shade of Zebra’s wingtips, in the damp-smelling black soil, there were now puff-ball mushrooms for frying and in the autumn delicious blewits in fairy rings and red fly agaric that men said could kill.

‘The Volkswagen’, they called Z Zebra. Its skipper was Pilot Officer Cornelius Fleming; newly commissioned, with three hundred and fifty flying hours at training schools, he was a soft-spoken introvert from York, an ex-student of medicine. He had done his elementary flying training in Alberta. Canada’s bright lights and informality were a startling change after blacked-out wartime Britain, and the ease with which he’d got lost flying over the prairie had been a fearful lesson in its dimensions. Three times a week he wrote to Tracy Rybakowski, a girl in Edmonton. After the war he was going back there to marry her and make his fortune, but so far he’d not told his parents. His brief time in medical school had now faded so far into his memories that he couldn’t believe that less than two years ago his ambition was to be only a doctor.

It came as no surprise to Fleming and his crew to find that as newcomers they’d been assigned to one of the shabbiest aircraft on the Flight. When they’d first climbed into it the interior was littered with old newspapers and oily rags and the Elsan lavatory had not been properly emptied. There was a faint but pervasive smell of sweat, excrement and rotting meat. Fleming had conscripted his whole crew for the cleaning job. Now the plane smelled of fresh oil, metal polish and disinfectant. As Fleming had remarked, now it smelled ‘as clean as a hospital’, but he’d regretted the comparison as soon as he’d made it. Naming the plane ‘The Volkswagen’ had been part of Fleming’s desire to give the dirty old Z Zebra a new image.

Fleming’s bomb aimer and rear gunner were also officers. All three of them were standing around Fleming’s Austin Seven watching one of the electricians fix into it a length of Air Ministry wiring. The car was undergoing a major overhaul at the expense of His Majesty. The three officers had come to B Flight, with the rest of Zebra’s crew, six weeks ago, but so far they had not flown on an operation. They spent most of their time together and felt estranged from everyone else, for, as Fleming had remarked to Sweet, most of the other flyers of B Flight – including four of Fleming’s own crew – shared the Sergeants’ Mess with their ground-crew counterparts. It sounded like a provincial working man’s club. ‘Think yourself lucky not to be a member of it,’ Sweet had said smiling; ‘the only conversation is speculation, intoxication and fornication. Wait until you go to a Sergeants’ Mess dance, then you’ll get an insight into the great unwashed.’

Sweet, however, had no time for anything more than passing affability and they seldom saw him. They drifted around B Flight aimlessly. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the sergeants called them. They were creedless bishops, lost in a chapter of rough-tongued Jesuits. They knew that the first three operations by a new crew risked five times the normal casualty rate. They exchanged the litany of technical gen and letters from home and awaited their baptism. It would come tonight.

A mile or more away across the airfield Sweet could see the nearest of the other Flight’s aircraft, and to the right of it, beyond the bump, the Control Tower. On its roof a Meteorology WAAF officer was reading the instruments in the louvred box. At the south end of the runway there was the Aerodrome Control Post, and behind that the steeple of the thirteenth-century church in Little Warley village. He had a good view from here. He looked back to where the lorry that had brought them back from their weekend was turning round before going back along the main road past the village and entering the main gate empty, with Form 658 correctly signed just as Sweet had fiddled it with the Transport Officer. Near the gap in the fence Flight Sergeant Lambert was saying goodbye to his wife, who was getting a lift to the Safety Equipment Section where she worked.

‘Be a good chap, Eric,’ said Sweet. ‘Tell Lambert that I want a word with him. And on second thoughts I think the Bedford had better go back to the MT section straightaway. Can’t be too careful.’

‘I’ll tell the driver,’ said Eric.

‘And apologize to Mrs Lambert. She’ll have to walk. I really am sorry, tell her.’ When the airman left, Sweet closely examined his face in a wall mirror. He wondered why his skin went red and mottled in the sun instead of bronzed and handsome.

‘Take my bike, Ruth,’ said Lambert.

‘I can’t ride a bicycle, Sam. Not in this uniform skirt. I’ll walk.’

‘You’ll be all right?’

‘It’s only a mile. It will do me good.’

‘Mr Sweet would like a word with you, Chiefie,’ said the clerk.

Lambert kissed his wife goodbye. ‘You’ll know where we are going tonight before I shall.’

‘Look after yourself, Sam.’

‘I love you, Ruth. I’ll pop in and see you before we go.’ As he walked back to the Flight office, airmen were forming a line to await the arrival of the NAAFI van with morning tea and cakes. Lambert looked at his watch; it was ten to eleven.

Inside the Flight office, Flight Lieutenant Sweet was finishing a story as Lambert entered. ‘“… stop doing that, Sergeant,” she says, “I hold the King’s commission.”’ The two clerks and Sweet laughed.

He was still smiling as he turned to Lambert. ‘Well, the flap’s on, Sambo. Looks like everyone else around here has stolen a march on us. You’d better get your crew together and get your NFT done as early as possible. Captains and navigators at 3.30 this afternoon, main briefing at 5.0 pm.’

‘Can I change out of best blue into working uniform?’

‘That would mean you all going back to the Sergeants’ Mess, and by the time you shower, shave, shampoo and scrounge some coffee it’ll be lunchtime.’ Sweet smiled knowingly. ‘No, get cracking right away. Borrow parachutes and helmets from Tommy Carter’s bods or Mr Fleming’s crew.’

‘Any buzz on the target?’

‘Even if I did have, I’d not be able to tell the chaps.’ He moved some papers on his desk. ‘Oh, and by the by there’s a bit of a crew reshuffle. From tomorrow, young Cohen will be navigator S Sweet. Digby will be with me too. My chaps – Teddy and Speke – will be coming to you. You’re damned lucky to get them, Sambo, they’re damned good blokes.’

‘Transfer?’ said Lambert in amazement.

‘I know it’s damned rotten for you, Sambo. It’s just the sort of thing we all hate happening when chaps are crewed-up and happy, but Cohen is a raw kid, I’m going to have to nurse him a little.’ Sweet found a packet of cigarettes locked in a desk drawer. He rarely smoked but now was an exception. He offered them; Lambert declined. Sweet exhaled the smoke urgently. ‘Look, I know what you are thinking, Sambo, but this is the last thing I wanted, I can tell you.’ He found a packet of peppermints in the drawer and offered one of those to Lambert but he shook his head.

‘Your navigator stinks, and that bomb aimer Speke is what’s keeping you at the bottom of the photo ladder,’ said Lambert. ‘I don’t want to fly with them. You took Micky Murphy, my engineer, last month, after we’d had fifteen trips together. Isn’t that enough for you?’

‘Ah! So that’s it,’ said Sweet. ‘It’s just because you think it’s a bad swop. Had it been Grimm, that duff wireless operator of yours, you wouldn’t have minded. Well, I don’t run my fights like that, my friend.’

‘Of course I would have minded. Jimmy Grimm is one of my crew. I don’t want any of them shuffled around like nuts and bolts. They rely on me to look after them. All of them.’

Sweet put his cigarette down and came round his desk. He put a consolatory arm around Lambert’s shoulder. ‘Now, now, Sambo, you’re upset. Don’t say something you might regret. I hate unpleasantness, any sort of unpleasantness. You know that.’

Yes, thought Lambert, providing you can get your own way without it.

‘Look, old chap,’ said Sweet. ‘The new arrangement won’t take effect until tomorrow. It’s not my idea, you have my word on that. Some bloody chairborne wonder in the Ops Block. Take it easy. We may all have gone for a Burton by tomorrow, eh?’ Sweet smiled in an effort to cheer Lambert up, but failed to do so.

‘If that’s all, sir, I’ll get started.’

‘Good show, Sambo.’ He squeezed Lambert’s arm affectionately. ‘Look, about this damned business, tomorrow I’ll get the CO in a corner of the Officers’ Mess and threaten that you and me will do a low-level attack on Air Ministry if he doesn’t let you keep your crew intact.’

‘I want to speak to him myself,’ said Lambert.

‘You’ve no idea what a blimp he is. Old buffers like him are a menace to all of us. It’s no good you even asking for an interview, you’ll just have to trust me. If I can’t squeeze it out of the old man when he’s got a couple of nips inside him after dinner, there’s no chance of you doing it in the cold light of dawn in the Squadron office.’ Sweet laughed reflectively, then he asked, ‘You’ve not reconsidered the cricket team? We’re playing Besteridge at the weekend. They’ve got a strong side.’

‘I’m committed next weekend, sir,’ said Lambert.

‘Pity. It might have made all the difference to the old man’s attitude.’

Lambert said nothing. Sweet said, ‘Think it over, Sambo; a couple of cricket victories – especially inter-Command victories – could put you well in with the old man. And with me.’ He smiled to show he was joking. ‘Not that I won’t do all I can for you anyway, you know that.’

There was a knock at the door. It was Flight Sergeant Micky Murphy, the engineer who had recently been transferred from Lambert’s to Sweet’s crew. He was a huge Irishman with a white complexion, a square protruding jaw and a gap-toothed smile that he used between sentences as regularly as he breathed. He glanced at Lambert and smiled.

‘Well,’ said Sweet. ‘Did you find the trouble with the under-carriage?’

‘That we didn’t find,’ said Murphy. ‘We’ve bled her out and she’s as nice as ninepence, but we found no fault unless it was the microswitch playing false.’

‘It wasn’t the switch,’ said Sweet.

‘Did you try the lever a few times?’ asked Murphy.

But Sweet threw the questioning back at his engineer. ‘Are you sure you switched the indicators over to their reserve, Paddy?’

‘First thing I did, sir.’

‘Call me Skipper, for God’s sake, Paddy,’ Sweet insisted. ‘It’s that hydraulic fluid; I told you I wanted only Intava 675.’

‘At this time of year it can make no difference,’ said Murphy. ‘I still think there was nothing wrong. All the undercarts stick sometimes. Lowering the lever a couple of times will often do the trick. No need for the emergency compressed air. It’s a big job once the compressed air is in the system.’

‘I’ll decide when there’s a need to use the compressed air, thank you, Chiefie. How soon will she be ready?’

‘She’s still on the jacks and the boys will be wanting to work the undercarriage a few more times to be on the safe side; it’s a fine test for the whole system. After that we reinflate the emergency air bottle, top up the reservoir, sign the 700 and off we go.’ Flight Sergeant Murphy smiled nervously.

‘For God’s sake stop grinning, Paddy,’ said Sweet. ‘S Sweet has got a date over Hunland tonight and I don’t intend to miss it, so get mobile. And this time don’t mix the hydraulic fluids when you top up.’

Murphy was about to explain what the handbook said about hydraulic fluids but finally nodded.

‘These engineers just want to blind us with science,’ said Sweet to Lambert after the man had left.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lambert unenthusiastically.

‘That’s the spirit, Sambo, all any of us want is to make B Flight the best damned bomb-delivery service in East Anglia, eh?’

Lambert didn’t answer. Sweet gave Lambert an encouraging smile, for he didn’t want him to feel annoyed about losing men of his crew. It was Sweet’s especial pride that he was one of the most democratic officers on the camp. He might almost say the most democratic. It had become a standard joke now that at the Sergeants’ Mess dances Sweet would turn up wearing a sergeant’s uniform. Sometimes he could be persuaded to sing Tea for Two close to the microphone. The sergeants appreciated an officer who knew how to be one of the boys. It would need only one miserable bastard like Lambert to spoil the whole atmosphere.

Eric the clerk looked round the door. ‘Will you be wanting transport to the Officers’ Mess for lunch, sir?’

‘Affirmative,’ said Sweet. It was only a quarter of a mile by the short cut, but the path was always muddy. Last week he’d felt a perfect fool when some ass in the Mess had pointed to his shoes and said, ‘Been running B Flight through the assault course, Sweetie? Nothing like it for working up an appetite.’

Even Munro, the Squadron commander, had joined in the laughter. Good thing the Group Captain hadn’t been there at the time. The Groupie was a real old Sandhurst blimp: fussy as hell about officers’ appearance; no flying gear in the Mess, not even roll-neck sweaters, and him leading the officers in to meals like some old dowager duchess saying, ‘I’m employed to kill Huns,’ as though he’d actually seen one through a gunsight. Still, the buzz was that Munro was getting a station of his own. They might decide to give a flight lieutenant his scraper-ring and a chance at the job.

‘Righto, Sambo my lad, off you go on a night-flying test.’ And then, ‘Oh, by the by, Lambert.’

Lambert turned.

‘The armourers have removed a panel from your rear turret. You authorize that?’

‘I did.’

Lambert’s attitude made Sweet think that perhaps a higher authority had ordered it. He trod warily. ‘What’s the idea?’

‘To see better.’

‘Than through clear polished Perspex?’

‘You opened this window just now to see what I was doing.’

Sweet smiled.

Lambert said, ‘Anyway, the Perspex was badly marked, the Sergeant armourer was about to change it. I decided it was worth a go.’

Again Sweet smiled. ‘It’s just a matter of good manners, Flight. As your Flight commander it would be nice to be informed.’

‘Written memo. On your desk last Thursday. It came back signed, so we went ahead.’

‘Yes, quite. I meant keep me informed how it works out. A good idea of yours, Lambert.’

‘Sergeant Gordon’s idea, sir. If it works he deserves the credit.’

‘OK, Lambert. Off you go, and don’t forget the Christmas Party tin on your way out, laddie.’

Lambert, who was four years older and six inches taller than Sweet, saluted and left.

When Corporal Ruth Lambert had walked a little way along the road she overtook the Bedford lorry that Sweet had sent away. It was waiting for her.

‘Jump in, Mrs Lambert,’ said the driver.

‘Thanks,’ said Ruth.

‘Bloody officers,’ said the driver.

As the lorry passed near to where Creaking Door was parked, one of its engines started. Four birds, frightened by the noise, flew out of the hedge in front of the lorry. The driver braked in time for the birds to climb steeply into the sky.

‘Crows,’ said the driver. “Where I come from they say, “One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth”.’ He glanced at Ruth and grinned. ‘Four for a birth,’ he repeated.

‘Three of those were rooks,’ said Ruth.

‘Oh well,’ said the driver, ‘I don’t believe any of that stuff anyway.’

Other motors started, until the noise was shattering. Flight Sergeant Worthington waited for Lambert. They walked without speaking to the aeroplane. Flight Sergeant Worthington had been in the RAF twenty-eight years. His overalls were pressed and starched, and his tie was knotted tight against his collar. His face was red and highly polished and he could climb inside a greasy engine and emerge without a hair out of place. He regarded all airmen who had joined the RAF after war began as nothing better than amateurs. ‘Which war, laddie?’ The way in which aircrews were automatically given sergeant’s rank and membership of the Mess he saw as a terrible heresy. Some evenings when the weather was bad he’d sit at the bar, with pints of beer arriving automatically at his elbow, while he told his fellow men of his peacetime Odyssey to this Ithaca. He’d tell of Bloody April 1917, the rigours of the Khyber Pass, the boredom of Habbaniyah and the cruelties of Uxbridge depot. Whether or not he noticed that the young aircrew were the most dedicated part of his audience and kept the beer pots coming was not certain, but lately his tirades were more jocular than venomous.

Lambert had joined the Regular RAF in 1938. In Worthington’s eyes he was one of the few ‘real airmen’ on the camp.

It was January 1936 when Lambert became a part-time airman. He’d had great difficulty in getting six whole weeks off from his job in the garage, but the new manager thought it would be rather smart to boast of a qualified pilot on the staff and let him go, without pay, of course. Lambert went to an airfield in Scotland and was the first of the Volunteer Reserve sergeants to be trained under the new scheme. At the end of his course he had soloed and from then on every weekend, wet or fine, was devoted to training. He flew Hawker Harts and sometimes, as a special treat, a Fury. To be nearer the aeroplanes he got a job as an aero-engine fitter at the flying club that shared the field with the RAF reservists. Now and again the club would let him air test a light plane, or even instruct.

‘Take him up for a spot of dual, a few flick rolls and a loop. No spins and for the Lord’s sake don’t let the silly little bastard try a landing.’

‘Thanks, I’d like to do that.’

‘There’s no one else here, Lambert, and I can’t leave the office.’

In 1938 the RAF offered any VR pilot with more than two hundred and fifty flying hours a chance of six weeks with a Regular RAF squadron. Lambert volunteered immediately and after six weeks flying Hurricanes he joined the Regular Air Force. He was disappointed to be assigned to twins, especially when war broke out and his old VR squadron was given Hurricanes. However, twin-motor aircraft proved to be a new sort of complication and he liked the challenge. When after a tour on Wellingtons and a DFM he first got his hands on a Stirling his envy of fighter pilots disappeared never to return. The four-motor planes made him happy and if he had to be in the RAF in order to get hold of one of them then he would put up with it.

Worthington put his spectacles on and studied the snag book before looking at Creaking Door to compare it with the initials of the men who cared for it. For Worthington also felt possessive about these aeroplanes. As he saw it, the Air Ministry had wisely put this aeroplane into his good keeping. Without regarding the bomber as his own personal property he was a little disquieted when Lambert – and Lambert’s amateur crew – took it away overnight and subjected it to indignities and aerobatics and corkscrewing. Sometimes they brought it back damaged by chunks of enemy metal.

Worthington ushered Lambert through its entrance. Like a lecherous medico with a young girl, Worthington stroked and caressed each grip and bulkhead as they passed through the aeroplane. Her walkways and handholds gleamed like fine silver where so many other men had done the same. It was dark and confined in the slim belly, no wider anywhere than the smallest of today’s motor-cars. They had to crouch as they moved forward, but Worthington continued to speak. His voice was resonant and to punctuate his words he tapped with his knuckles and the metal sang a note of anxiety and affection like a nervous patient under the scrutiny of a specialist.

‘She’s a game old bitch, Sam,’ said Worthington, ‘but she’s not getting any younger.’ He allowed Lambert to fit himself into the narrow pilot’s seat and took a quick glance out of the window to be sure that his fitters were hard at work on the starboard inner engine.

‘That starboard generator was giving us half a volt this morning on the run-up. We found a wiring fault but I’m still suspicious of the genny. It’s reading high. Your engineer is going to watch the readings on the air test.’ Worthington allowed himself a smile. ‘I’ve given the poor kid a good drilling about it because the accumulators will explode if he lets a big overcharge build up: oxygen and hydrogen, see?’

‘Yes, I had heard, Worthy.’ Lambert touched the control column and rested his feet upon the rudder bar.

‘Yes, well, one of these days you’ll be glad I’m a bit of an old woman.’ He discovered a mark on the Perspex and cleaned it with his newly laundered white handkerchief.

‘Is that the only thing, the genny?’

‘Apart from that, she’s bang-on. The Squadron average oil consumption is 13.2 pints an hour. All of Creaking Door’s motors are better than that: 11.5, 12.8, 10.5, 12.4. A good bus. In fact, a bloody good bus.’

Worthington gave Lambert the snag book.

‘NFT right away, Chief. Could you ask the Sergeants’ Mess to save seven lunches?’

‘Meat pie,’ said Worthington, ‘or what they call a meat pie. Horrible stuff. Does Mr Sweet know what the target is?’

‘If he does, he’s not saying. With a full moon perhaps we’ll be gardening.’

Worthington shook his head. ‘Bombs, lots of high capacity, incendiaries galore; it’s a town. Target indicators too. We are on number two tanks: six hundred and fifty gallons of juice, at a gallon a mile. Plus ten per cent for stooging around … three hundred miles away?’

‘We can’t go far on these short summer nights,’ said Lambert, still avoiding the unavoidable.

‘The Ruhr,’ said Worthington.

‘Happy Valley,’ said Lambert dolefully. ‘That will cheer the boys up.’

‘If that bloody genny plays up bring her back. Don’t try to press on, OK?’

‘OK,’ said Lambert. He wondered if Worthington said things like that to give him an alibi for survival, for he wasn’t the sort of man to libel Door’s machinery gratuitously.

‘Spam,’ pronounced Worthington dolefully. ‘That’s what gives that meat pie a funny taste.’

They both looked across to Joe for King.

Lambert said, ‘It’s funny, Chief, the way they paint the number of raids the machine does. None of the bomb-scores on our aeroplanes coincides with the number of raids the crew has done, it’s just the number of raids the machine has done. It’s as though the plane goes to bomb Germany of its own predatory volition, as though it takes us along just for the ride.’

Worthington decided that it was a little flutter of nervousness. ‘Old planes are lucky planes, Sam.’

‘Sometimes I think it’s just the machines of Germany fighting the machines of Britain.’

Worthington looked at Lambert’s dark-rimmed eyes. ‘You’re not on the booze are you, son?’ he asked quietly. Lambert shook his head.

‘Sleeping all right?’

‘I wake up a lot,’ Lambert admitted. ‘I have a funny dream about a kid’s birthday party. He’s there with this cake and on it there’s half a dozen candles. When he goes to blow them out his head melts like wax. Funny dream, eh? I mean, considering I’ve got no kids.’

‘Seen the quack?’

‘He thinks the Air Force is divided into officers and malingerers. Can you imagine me reporting sick with a dream?’

‘Yes, he’s no help with my bunions either. Still, perhaps you won’t dream it again now you’ve told someone.’

‘It’s that bloody Mess food,’ said Lambert laughing, and wondered how Worthington knew that he’d never spoken of his dream before.

‘You don’t want to think about it all too much.’ Worthington changed the subject. ‘Not playing in the cricket match, Sam? I’d like to see some of those slow bowls again.’

‘I’m taking the missus up to London.’

Worthington self-consciously dabbed a finger of spittle at a corner of Perspex that the cleaning rag had missed. ‘They’ll keep on at you, Sam. I’ve seen it happen before. Why don’t you play a couple of games, get the bastards off your back?’

‘I ask myself that every day, Chiefie.’

Worthington finished his tiny cleaning task and looked at Lambert. ‘It’s the sensible thing, son. You can’t fight the Luftwaffe and the RAF too. It’s the sensible way, the comfortable way, the logical way.’

‘That must be the reason, then,’ said Lambert. Worthington looked at his friend. He’d had too much: too much combat, lost too many pals, took too much responsibility for his crew. Lambert had had it, Worthington decided. He’d seen them go like this before. He shook his head sadly and changed the subject. ‘Great God, look at all this stuff.’

All round Warley Fen airfield the Squadron’s Lancasters were being bombed up. Girl tractor drivers backed the bombtrains under the open bomb-doors. The dark-green bombs came in all shapes and sizes although most were 500-lb general-purpose or 500-lb medium-capacity bombs: heavy steel cases with relatively small explosive charges inside them. They were the most widely used, and most notoriously ineffective, bombs the RAF dropped. For every ten successfully delivered by Bomber Command six failed to explode.

When the war began Bomber Command’s missiles were small and its instruction books advised using a 40-lb GP against a house (only if occupied by troops, of course). For a fuel plant a 250-lb GP was recommended. The ineffectiveness of the old bombs and the new style of war demanded simpler weapons. Huge 8,000-lb canisters – little more than steel dustbins – without nose or tail fin were crammed full of explosive and named high-capacity bombs. They were designed for use against housing and just one of them could destroy a street.

Curiously shaped containers were packed with ninety 4-lb sticks of magnesium, each of which would burn with spluttering white flame and ignite almost anything it touched.

Because they were acting as a pathfinder squadron there were marker bombs too. They exploded with pretty colours: red, yellow and green, each colour denoting the authority and experience of the crew that dropped it. Few markers were prettier to see than the ‘Pink Pansies’: 4,000-lb medium-capacity bombcases stuffed full of benzol, rubber and phosphorus that ignited on impact with a great pink flash of fire easily spotted for miles.

Pretty and not so pretty bombs were winched slowly up into the bombers’ black bellies. Calculations had determined their positions in the bay and the fuse-setting control link had been adjusted so that a touch of the bomb aimer’s button could release the great weight without upsetting the aeroplane’s centre of gravity. The bombs’ fins had been straightened and their casings washed so that no patch of mud would spoil their balance as they dropped through the air.

The armourers worked carefully, remembering perhaps the accident at Scampton the previous March, when a 4,000-lb bomb – a cookie – fell out of a bomber during bombing up. It had exploded. The blast of it had completely destroyed six Lancasters and badly damaged five.

The first victim of the Krefeld raid died at 12.49 hours Double British Summer Time at B Flight, but it wasn’t due to carelessness. Tommy Carter’s aeroplane was the one involved. The carriers had been lowered from its bomb-bay and the bombs winched up into it. Its bombing up had been completed and Aircraftwoman Jenkins had driven the bombtrain clear of the aircraft’s belly. Aircraftman Grigson, an electrician, was sitting just inside the rear gun turret, from where he could see B Flight office and was far enough away from the aircraft’s door to be able to spring into life checking the wiring if an NCO should enter the aeroplane. It was a well-chosen place to hide while smoking a forbidden cigarette.

Aircraftman McDonald, armourer, had been fitting fuses all the morning and now he was crouched under the bomb-bay checking each bomb container. He noticed that one jaw had two shiny cuts in it and guessed that they had been made by shapnel during a previous operation. He grasped the metal jaw and tugged it. A part of it broke off in his hand. ‘Christ,’ said McDonald as the 1,000-lb medium-capacity bomb wrenched itself free and fell upon him. The bomb did not explode but as it hit the tarmac the ground shook. Inside the bomber Aircraftman Grigson, halfway through his cigarette, knew immediately what had happened. He scrambled out and ran to the tractor and moved the remaining bombs away from the aircraft. He then disconnected the loaded bomb-trolley and returned on the tractor to report to the Sergeant armourer who was the only person at Warley who ran towards the mishap. Grigson quite forgot the cigarette in his mouth and when the Sergeant saw him smoking he screamed with a terrible rage and put him on a charge. He was sentenced to extra fire picket for seven days.

No one felt the vibration more than LAC Henry Gilbert, a forty-three-year-old rigger from Lewes. A Sunday painter before the war, he had made a reputation as an artist at Warley Fen airfield. His ladder was on the hard-standing at the nose when the bomb tumbled on to McDonald less than four yards away. The ladder shook and LAC Gilbert paused in mid brush-stroke. He had completed his fine portrait of Joseph Stalin wearing a crown and was halfway through writing ‘Joe for King’ under it. Later, much later, he continued work, but the last part of the lettering was very shaky.

Everyone on B Flight was now looking fearfully at Joe for King.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Micky Murphy, who had been retracting the undercarriage of Sweet’s Lancaster for the fourth time when he felt the ground tremble. Together with two fitters and Battersby he was full-length in a pool of oil waiting for the bang. ‘… And in my bloody best bloody blue.’

‘L Love,’ said Worthington to Lambert when they stopped running and looked back.

‘You dropped your false teeth, Bert?’ shouted Door’s electrician to his pal who was helping him to set up snares along the rabbit warrens behind B Flight. They had dropped into a ditch.

‘My oath. Someone will be put on the pegs for that,’ predicted Digby, looking across the airfield to where Joe for King was parked.

‘Mind your toes,’ muttered Corporal Hancock, armourer, who was winching an identical bomb into The Volkswagen. He stopped work and crouched low on the tarmac. Fleming and the other two officers of his crew, who had been watching Corporal Hancock’s work, didn’t flinch. They looked at each other but said nothing.

It took forty-five minutes to fit a new jaw in Joe for King. By that time the bomb, the inside of the starboard bomb-door and the tarmac had been hosed down by the duty crew. The ambulance had come and gone and so had Groupie, the Adjutant and the Squadron medical officer. Two firemen in new white asbestos suits had spent thirty minutes wearing looks of bleak disappointment. McDonald’s mangled remains had been put into the storage shed at the back of the Medical Section – sometimes called the mortuary – and a Sergeant clerk in the Orderly Room had sent a priority telegram informing McDonald’s father in Dundee.

Two Sergeant armourers winched another bomb into the bomb-bay. The one that had fallen was taken to the far side of the airfield to await the Bomb Disposal Team. Within an hour of the accident the aeroplane was pronounced bombed up and fully operational, but Tommy Carter, ex-police constable from Newcastle, who was flying her that night complained that it was a bad omen.