Читать книгу Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton - Страница 23

The teleprinters in the Operations Block had been clattering since lunchtime. The message from HQ Bomber Command had gone to the Group HQs and from there the messages reached the airfields including Warley Fen.

CONFIRMING TELEPHONED ORDERS FOLLOWING ARE EXECUTIVE ORDERS FOR THE NIGHT OF JUNE 31ST, 1943

There followed a gibberish of abbreviations and code words that defined the nature of the attack. Flare colours, air and ground marking, cascade heights and times, turning-points, assembly areas, bombing heights and times, bomb-loads and Met forecasts giving the predicted winds at the bombing heights and conditions at base airfields at the time of return.

Hurriedly the technical officers began to build the plan into lectures and diagrams that would constitute the afternoon briefing. Flight Lieutenant Giles, the Bombing Leader; Flight Lieutenant Ludlow, the Navigation Leader; and John Munro, the Squadron commander, conferred. The Meteorological expert expressed the doubts that forecasters always have about other men’s predictions.

The executive orders were as yet communicated only to those who had to know. As an added security precaution, the guardroom had been told to close the main gate and forbid personnel to leave the airfield except with the written permission of the Station Adjutant. In spite of the gaping holes in the perimeter fence the embargo was observed by everyone – partly because there was so much work to do that no one could find an opportunity to get away for a lunchtime beer in the Bell.

Deprived of the noise and movement of the airmen, the village became as quiet as the airfield was busy. When an attack was being prepared even the public bar of the Bell maintained a decorous sobriety.

Cynthia Radlett, the barmaid, had wiped the tables, rinsed and polished the glasses, fetched more bottled stout from the cellar and swept the floor. She looked enviously at the four farmers who had been drinking and gossiping ever since lunchtime. Now it was almost opening time again. Those who complained of women chattering could never have listened to farmers’ talk. It was a good thing that the village policeman was busy out on the green facing Mr Wate’s spin bowling, or he’d be complaining about them drinking after closing time. At last one of the men came to the bottom of his glass. He put it down with a sigh and wiped his lips.

‘Beans I told him, put in beans. Anything else and the wire-worm will eat them.’ The three men nodded and stole a glance at Ben Thorpe.

Old Ben’s voice was rasping and slow. ‘Ten Acre was always full of wireworm.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to walk up to Parson’s Meadow, Ben?’

‘Nah,’ said the old man and blew his nose loudly. They could not tell how upset he was, for an old man’s eyes are always wet.

‘After the war you’ll never know the difference.’

‘Nah,’ snorted Ben. ‘It’s the finest piece of grazing for a hundred mile. My dad weeded it and dunged it himself for nigh on fifty years and his dad afore.’ The old man was crying now, there could be no doubt of it. ‘I shan’t watch them plough her up and sow their damned ’taters there. I’ll not live to see her back to grazing again.’

‘Weorf’ is the old English word for draught animal. Warley meant a place where such animals could graze. Now the War Agricultural Committees had given grazing to the plough and one of the few patches of grassland left was the lower end of Trimmer’s Meadow that the village used as its cricket field. Today it was only a knockabout match, but towards opening time a small crowd of airmen and villagers gathered outside the Bell. They applauded the batsmen, advised the bowlers and dozed in the afternoon sun.

No previous cricket season could equal this one: Royal Engineers Norwich Depot versus RAF Warley, A Flight versus the village; teams from all over East Anglia came to play cricket on the green, shove-ha’penny and darts in the public bar and drink the Bell’s warm bitter. The cricket pitch was smooth and flat, although since it was slightly below sea level it was muddy in wet weather. The RAF had sent carpenters to rebuild the old scoreboard and the Station artist – LAC Gilbert – had supervised its repainting. Sammy Thatcher’s shed had been moved and rebuilt. Although it could only hold one team at a time, there were no smiles when it was referred to as the pavilion.

Today Bill Beacham, village policeman and domino champion, was the last man batting for the scratch team the village had put up. He hadn’t scored for nearly a quarter of an hour but none of Mr Wate’s spinners daunted him and he stonewalled with grim determination. The war had brought Police Constable Beacham promotion to sergeant and when the RAF moved in he had been officially told to ‘cooperate with the RAF police in matters affecting Service discipline and national security’. There was even talk of him having a police constable to help him. ‘Help him home from here on a Saturday night,’ said Cynthia, and everyone laughed because like most good jokes it wasn’t a joke at all.

The Group Captain proudly boasted of an unbroken record of friendship between his airmen and the people of the village. Like most official thinking, the Group Captain’s was purely negative. He meant that there were no instances on paper of physical, social or legal hostilities. On the other hand there was no great affection either. When a villager announced the arrival of a lorryful of airmen outside the Bell with the remark, ‘Here come the Wehrmacht,’ this too was a joke that wasn’t a joke.

There was still another half-hour before the Bell was officially open, but Cynthia took a pint of bitter outside to where Sam Thatcher was working at the base of the ancient oak tree that marked the boundary line.

‘How is it going?’ asked Cynthia.

Sam took the head off his pint before answering. ‘Same as that tree behind Percy’s house. It’s rotten inside.’

‘What a shame.’ She wiped her wet hands on her apron.

‘It’s getting old, Cynthia. It’s probably stood here for a hundred and fifty years or more.’ Sam had been drilling deep into the tree and pushing bonemeal mixtures into it to feed the wood. He put down his glass and finished plugging up a hole.

‘Will that save it?’

‘It will give her another fifty years, Cynthia.’

‘You’d better do my guv’nor after you’ve finished this tree.’

‘Now, now,’ said Sam Thatcher, ‘don’t start.’ He had no wish to be drawn into the feud between Cynthia and her employer. He looked across the pitch to where Police Sergeant Beacham was still blocking the frantic bowling, and beyond him to the airfield. ‘They’re off again tonight.’

‘Looks like.’

‘And that old wind’s going to change,’ said Sam.

‘Rain?’

‘No, not yet awhile, or my feet would tell me. But during the night that wind will swing round and they’ll be coming in right over our heads just about the time I’m turning over.’

‘Don’t say that, Mr Thatcher. I can’t get back to sleep when they wake me.’

There was a flutter of applause as Bill Beacham was clean bowled.

‘What I don’t understand’, said Cynthia Radlett, ‘is what they do all day. I mean, they don’t go raiding until after we close at night. I know they have to test their aeroplanes in the morning but what do they do there all day?’

‘They have to work out their navigation and decide where to drop their bombs. They do a lot of talking up there at the aerodrome.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Cynthia Radlett, ‘but it’s terrible for our business when they go off raiding.’ It was five-thirty. She walked back to the Bell and started serving drinks.

The most literary and sophisticated officer at Warley Fen was, by common consent, Flying Officer Longfellow. He was, appropriately enough, the Intelligence Officer. A tall blue-eyed man of thirty-eight, in his youth he had been an amateur boxer of some repute at Cambridge where he studied classics. After Cambridge he had worked on a small newspaper in the Midlands and graduated from that to a national daily. He had never excelled at news-gathering but had always been able to provide, at short notice, a couple of thousand words on the College of Cardinals (at the death of a Pope), helium (airship disaster), or surrealism (record price at Sotheby’s). Nor was Longfellow too proud to cover a wedding or review a film. In 1936 he left the newspaper’s full-time staff and went to live in Cornwall. He became the science correspondent. A few thousand words a month earned enough money to keep himself, his young wife and two kids in a small cottage with a view of the sea while he laboured on a book. It was a murder mystery, set in a Cornish tin mine, and although he modestly referred to it as a whodunit he had inserted the description ‘a psychological study in depth of the mind of the criminally insane’ into the publisher’s blurb. The Scotsman found it promising, The Observer thought it had grip, but a left-wing weekly said that ‘hand-made, and thus readily identified, cigarette ends have become a careless vice among the sort of villains who people this year’s mediocre detective fiction’. He was stuck halfway through a sequel about a carefully organized bank robbery when the war began. Longfellow volunteered.

An Intelligence Officer’s special responsibility was the Briefing Room. At Warley Fen it was a large wooden hut that could seat one hundred and fifty aircrew on benches. There was a stage at one end and behind it a map of Europe that stretched the width of the hut. Covering the map there was a red curtain that swept aside at the pull of a string. It had become usual for the Station commander to pull the string.

Along each side of the hut there were windows. They should have been shuttered at briefing time but lately the weather had been so fine and warm that they’d been left open. There were the usual ‘Careless talk costs lives’ posters and a notice board with Intelligence memos fastened to it with bright red pins. Specially arranged by Flying Officer Longfellow were the ‘This is your enemy’ displays: photos and three-view drawings of Bf110 and Junkers 88 night fighters as well as some speculative Air Ministry diagrams of what the newer German fighter planes might look like.

From the ceiling hung models of both enemy and Allied aircraft, each one clearly marked with its designation and wing span. Then there was the Accident Board with photos of aeroplanes drunkenly askew after sliding off the runway or with a prop blade eating up a tailplane after a taxiing collision. At one side of the stage there was the easel standing ready for the Met Department’s Cloud Board (icing cloud in red, non-icing cloud in blue, all stacked to show altitudes). On the other side of the stage, reaching to the ceiling, there was the Photo Ladder. This didn’t denote a proficiency in photography but showed the accuracy of the bombing, bomb explosions being plotted from the flashlight photo that each bomber took as its bomb-load landed. Lambert’s crew were in the top quarter of the ladder but Flight Lieutenant Sweet’s crew were well down.

Longfellow was proud of this Briefing Room upon which he and his clerks had spent so much time and energy. It embodied all the freshness and appeal of a commercial display or a newspaper layout. It was kept up to date every day and on the notice board there were a world map and a bulletin with a first-class summary of the war on all fronts, as well as a note on yellow paper in which Longfellow attempted to predict the strategic aspirations of the fighting powers. This supposition was clearly headed ‘Intelligence Guesswork’. Often during the day aircrew would wander into the Briefing Room, looking at the new displays or leafing through newspapers or copies of Flight, Aeroplane Spotter, Tee Em or one of the other technical magazines. Longfellow often claimed, ‘There’s not another Briefing Room in the whole of Bomber Command where the crews pop in and look round when there’s no briefing. Even if most of them only want to see Jane in the Daily Mirror, doze for half an hour and scrounge a coffee, by the time they wander out again they could have seen something that will save their lives.’

Cosily full of bacon, beans and fried eggs – a rare luxury – none of them now dozed. The room was full with the crews of all sixteen bombers. The men, sitting stiffly upright and white-faced with tension, were waiting for permission to smoke. As the time of danger approached men grew lonely and the flyers were dividing into their assigned crews. They exchanged comments and smiles with men they didn’t like and had only briefly seen since the previous operational flight four days earlier. For now men were drawing close, not to their friends but to six men who for the next few hours would share their good or fatal fortune.

Lambert’s two gunners for instance, Binty Jones and Flash Gordon, had a deadly feud dating from over two months before, but now they were exchanging jokes just as they’d done in the old days. They had met at the gunnery school and promised each other that they would insist on being in the same crew. They were thickset young men chosen, like most air gunners, for the short stature that enabled them to fit into the power-operated turrets. Flash was a dark-complexioned, gap-toothed Nottingham miner, a real pitman who’d worked at the coalface on the trickiest seam. His hair was very long and with the aid of generous amounts of hair cream he arranged it in long shiny arabesques. For fear of disturbing its patterns he would avoid wearing a uniform cap. His liking for gold-plated identity chains, skull-and-crossbone rings and white silk scarves and his unmilitary bearing had given him his nickname. He shared it with a strip-cartoon hero of the same patronymic. His wide mouth smiled easily. Digby had said, ‘He hasn’t got a mouth but a small hinge on the back of his neck.’ He was, in fact, proud of his white teeth. In spite of being exempt from military service he’d volunteered on his twenty-first birthday. He hated the pit; his only ambition was to survive the war and get an office job with a local tobacco factory. He was a cheerful boy with lots of energy and endless questions. He always wanted to know what his fellow airmen did in civvy street and he was not too shy to ask how much they earned doing it. Flash Gordon manned the rear gun turret.

Binty, a Welsh milkman – Jones the Milk – was also twenty-one. He usually manned the mid-upper turret, although a few times when Flash had a head-cold they swapped. Flash often got head-colds because, he said, the rear turret heater didn’t work properly.

Binty had joined the RAF when he was seventeen, which made him a peacetime airman by a few weeks. He believed that the superiority of the peacetime recruit was manifested by his very short hair, shiny boots and buttons, and razor pleats that he made by treating the inside of each crease with a layer of soap. His smartness was thus virtually unique among the aircrew NCOs. He was not beyond reprimanding airmen and even corporals for minor faults like having a pocket unbuttoned. This made him very unpopular.

He affected the old soldier’s vocabulary, sprinkled with mispronounced Arabic and adapted Hindi. Bint was his word for young girl and he used it frequently, for in spite of an unappealing face he was a womanizer of renown. He had quick eyes and a brain which he described as shrewd but which the rest of his crew knew was cunning. However, none of them would allow an outsider to describe Binty Jones as cunning and they all appreciated that his cleanliness and efficiency extended not only to his sex-life and motorbike but also to his Browning machine guns. Artfully he had laid a claim to the upper turret for which there were only two guns.

Binty and Flash had flown fifteen operations, all with Lambert. They had been close pals for nearly a year; drinking, whoring, fighting, and sharing girlfriends, gunnery exam answers, cigarettes and a 350-cc BSA motorcyle, until they had met a woman named Rose in a pub in Peterborough. Her husband was a corporal in the Eighth Army fighting in the desert. Flash Gordon said they shouldn’t see her any more but Binty said she was a sure thing and now spent more nights at her apartment than he did on the base. ‘No one can have their wives within forty miles of their base,’ said Binty, ‘but Station Standing Orders don’t say you can’t have someone else’s wife.’ The two gunners hated each other but now you would never have guessed it. Binty sat reading a tightly wadded Beano comic and nodding while Flash told him about a motorcycle that an electrician on A Flight wanted to sell for fifteen pounds. Flash admired Binty’s knowledge of motorcycles.

A fat fly buzzed and settled on Digby’s hand. Even a finger prodded at it failed to move it. ‘Lazy old bugger,’ said Digby.

‘Put him out the window,’ said Lambert. ‘He’s probably just finishing his second tour.’ But Digby tipped it on to the floor and Jimmy Grimm put his boot on it.

The briefing was running late. It was already 17.05 hours by the big clock but half of the chairs on the platform were still empty. The Assistant Adjutant, Jammy Giles, was there, of course, tipping back in his chair until it nearly fell over, laughing noisily and joking with a group of flyers in the front row. The Intelligence Officer, Longfellow, was also there. He always arrived early to be sure that his precious charts and diagrams were set up and to check that the route was correctly taped on the big map and the curtains closed upon it. He stood behind Jammy and steadied the chair each time it teetered too far back. But Jammy never toppled over. ‘Jammy’ was another word for easy or lucky and Flight Lieutenant Giles was lucky.

Outside in the corridors of the Operations Block there was the clatter of a relex machine as more orders arrived from Group. There was a pungent smell of floor polish and sweet tea and the clerks were hurrying with last-minute orders and modifications for the briefing officers. Standing in the corner of an empty office in the same block was Wing Commander John Munro, the commanding officer of the Squadron. While the Group Captain had control of the entire airfield from Dental Surgery to Smithy, John Munro commanded the bombers and their crews. Not that either of them would be likely to get into an argument about how things should be done. Air Ministry had carefully delineated their respective areas of responsibility.

If there was one man who had stamped this Squadron with his personality it was John Munro. Its faults were his and its virtues were his and its skills were his too. Now Munro was tired. There was no need for him to fly on so many raids, but he felt that he must. He flew and he kept his desk-top clear and tidy. He was not among the most popular officers on the Station. He knew that but he was unconcerned. Airmen brought before him knew that they could expect just punishment but little sympathy. He knew that the men called him Himmler but he was perceptive enough to know that there was a paradoxical element of respect and affection in the nickname. Munro’s most celebrated virtue was that he spoke to the men coming before him for judgement with exactly the same tone of voice and listened to them with the same degree of attention that he gave the AOC. As one of his gunners had said after they had been badly shot up over Duisburg, ‘He’s not as cool as a cucumber, he’s as cold as a bloody iceberg.’ One night in the Mess Jammy Giles, full of thin beer and hoarse from singing, had pronounced loudly, ‘Munro is a gentleman and gentlemen are now obsolete. This is the age of the technician.’

‘The age of violence,’ PO Cornelius Fleming had argued.

‘Then we should be all right, old cock,’ said Jammy. ‘Seeing as we are the technicians of violence.’

‘But Munro’s a good type, isn’t he?’ asked Fleming.

Jammy suddenly sobered up. ‘He’s all right, Fleming my boy. Men don’t come straighter than that tall, thin, humourless, toffee-nosed old sod.’

Now Munro was in the vacated office leaning on his walking-stick and puffing at his pipe. Around him there were the Engineering Officer and three senior ground staff NCOs including Flight Sergeant Worthington.

There was a problem. Carter’s aeroplane – Joe for King – which had dropped the bomb that afternoon had developed an electrical fault and would not be serviceable in time for the raid.

‘Our only reserve is the one that came in this afternoon,’ said Worthington.

‘Could do, Mr Sanderson?’ the CO asked the Engineer Officer, who in turn raised a quizzical eyebrow at the three NCOs.

‘She’ll have to go without an air test,’ said Worthington.

‘Get your best chaps on it and keep me in the picture, would you?’ Sandy nodded assent.

‘We’ll be putting the new flame traps on the exhausts. Permission to bomb her up in the hangar while we work?’

Munro looked at his watch. ‘No choice, Mr Worthington. And rip as much of that armour plate out of her as you can manage.’

‘It’s a long job, sir,’ said Worthington.

‘Group’s boffins say we get an extra foot of altitude for every pound of weight we lose.’

‘We’ll leave the armour behind the pilot, sir?’

‘I don’t think any one of the crew will want you to take that out, Mr Worthington,’ said Munro with a smile.

Worthington saluted and hurried away to round up his bods and break the bad news that they would be working frantically through their mealtime and on through the evening.

‘Carter to take the new kite, John?’

Munro raked a match into his pipe and spoke with it still in his mouth. ‘Seven trips, or is it eight? Average pilot; what’s his flight engineer like, Sandy?’

‘Ten trips actually, sir. His engineer is Gallacher. Apprentice toolmaker, argumentative, thin on theory but practical enough. They’ll be all right.’

‘That’s settled, then.’

‘Shall I tell him?’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said Munro. ‘He’ll probably be a bit needled.’

Munro’s own ground-crew chiefie was still standing nearby. ‘What is it, Chief?’

The old NCO saluted gravely. ‘What time will you be doing your air test, sir?’

Oh Lord, he had quite forgotten that he still had his own NFT to do. His poor crew, they had been hanging around all day, and now they would probably have to fly while the rest of the Squadron were enjoying the evening meal. ‘Immediately after briefing, say 18.15 hours.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Munro reached into his pocket and looked at the list he had written on the envelope of the letter from his wife. He’d forgotten to put the NFT on it. If he’d seen another officer behaving as he had done over the past two months he would have grounded him without argument. But a commanding officer can’t ground himself, in spite of those little talks the quack had given him. There were the lads in the crew, of course, but then they might have been flying with some chap straight from an Operational Training Unit, which would have endangered them even more. It was a problem that would solve itself; tonight would be his last operation. Next week he was to hand over to a new CO.

By the time Munro reached the Briefing Room everyone was there and the Groupie was hovering at the door waiting for the crews to come to attention. Munro walked to the platform and waited until the room was silent. ‘Gentlemen, Station commander,’ he called.

The crews got to their feet as the Groupie’s footsteps clicked smartly down the centre aisle. He sprang agilely up on to the stage and tossed his gold-encrusted cap into a chair. He smiled, smoothed his white hair and looked at the great crowd of men as though wondering why they should be standing at attention.

‘OK, chaps,’ he called breezily. ‘Sit down and light up.’

Near the front he saw Tommy Carter’s bomb aimer who had completed twenty-nine trips. Tonight would be his last, for if he returned safely he would be screened to some safe job for a few months. He was nineteen.

‘Collins, have one of mine,’ said the Groupie and flung him a packet of cigarettes.

Collins caught the packet, took a cigarette and passed them along the line to Carter and the rest of the crew of Joe for King.

‘Thank you, sir. I’m passing them down the line.’

‘You saucy bastard,’ said the Groupie. ‘No wonder they call you Tapper.’ The Sergeant gave a shy smile.

There was a roar of delight from the crews, for Collins had earned his nickname from his constant pleas to borrow a few shillings until payday. The Groupie smiled. Napoleon, he knew, had used the same simple device to endear himself to his soldiers. And this brilliant fellow in Africa gave away cigarettes by the cartload, so it was said. Not that the Group Captain was a cynical man. On the contrary, he was imbued with a simple desire to have his aircrews like and respect him with the same intense feeling that he had for them. He would have given almost anything to fly with them to bomb Germany. Twice he had flown unofficially as an extra crew member, but the AOC had heard of it and warned him against doing it again. The Groupie described himself as a Hun-killer. The crews mostly thought of him as a harmless eccentric. In fact he was a lonely man desperately trying to believe that the company of youth would offset the approach of old age. He swept the laughter away with a movement of his hand. The crews sat silent, waiting to hear the name of the target.

In the few moments before the curtain rises at the opera there is a sound, a presence, an indefinable and unique mood. The audience are hushed and expectant, their throats are tight and even the nervous coughs are shrill and have an overtone of hysteria. Imagine then the mood that would prevail if – like these crews – it was the audience that were about to mount the stage: mouthing their dialogue lest they forget it, noting their cues, worrying about lights and timings and fussed over by a dozen stage managers who will take the blame should the performance become a disaster. It was a complex theatrical drama that this audience were about to stage and one mistake would bring them, not a boo or a jeer or a poor review but a sudden, nasty, fiery death.

The Group Captain tugged the cord and the curtains parted with a squeak of metal rollers.

‘The target for tonight,’ said the Group Captain, ‘is Krefeld in the Ruhr.’

The captains and navigators had already been briefed, so it was no surprise to them. Many of the engineers had guessed from the fuel-loads and some of the remainder had heard by now, but there were still enough wireless operators and gunners to greet the news with a soft sincere groan. There had been rumours and bets that it would be a pushover target. Krefeld was no pushover. Happy Valley was Happy Valley: the best-defended target zone in Europe.

Lambert, Cohen and Micky Murphy had arrived together from the previous briefings upstairs. Seated behind them were Flash and Binty, the two gunners, and Digby, who was smoking a small cigar. Cohen had his notebook open in front of him. The raid was detailed there in neat handwriting with times in large numbers down one side. Lambert had some notes on the back of an envelope but he knew he would never refer to it. The routes and details that seemed so baffling to the newcomers were second nature to him; he had seen the techniques grow from the days when they had little more briefing than the name of the target and time of take-off.

On the stage the technical officers were seated in a line, with the Groupie standing like a vicar opening a church fête. Beside him, on a table covered with a grey blanket, there was a carafe of water and a glass. He moved it aside as he always did and turned to the map. Beribboned gaily with red-and-white tapes, the route to and from the target made a squat diamond shape centred upon the North Sea. The enemy coastline was defaced with ugly red blotches of flak around the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, while the right-hand tip of the diamond poked into the biggest red patch of all, the heavily defended heart of Germany’s heavy industry – the Ruhr.

‘Krefeld, heavy industry, textiles, light industry, communications,’ reeled off the Groupie. ‘It’s a big show tonight: over seven hundred Bomber Command aircraft operating, with leaflet-dropping by Operational Training Units. Zero 01.30 hours. Take-off 24.20.’ The Group Captain eyed the five journalists and Flight Lieutenant from Air Ministry Press Office who had seated themselves quietly at the rear of the room. He spoke to them rather than to the aircrews, who had heard it all before. He spoke slowly and deliberately and avoided jargon, as much as one can avoid it when dealing with a series of new techniques that have been named as they were invented.

‘Any target in the Ruhr is difficult to identify. Even though the Met man tells me there will be little or no cloud and a full moon, there will be industrial haze lying over the target area; there always is. Take no chances, chaps. No guesswork. Tonight we are flying as part of the pathfinder element and it’s important that we put up a good show. Don’t bomb or mark out of sequence. One plane can spoil the entire raid and that means they’ll send us back to do the job properly next week. So let’s get there and mark it accurately so that the Main Force can hit it once and hit it bloody hard.’ The Groupie sat down while a ripple of agreement ran round the room. No one wanted to go back next week.

Flight Lieutenant Ludlow, the Navigation Leader, stood up. The shy ex-bank clerk from Guildford had become an actuarial curiosity. He was now on his third tour. Only two per cent of airmen survived three tours. Some called him ‘the immortal Lud’. He had briefed the navigators upstairs an hour before but now he outlined the route for the sake of the others. As usual he mumbled so quietly that the crews at the very back couldn’t hear properly, but the ones who chose to sit at the very back usually didn’t care. ‘Assemble over Southwold on the coast. You’ll need little or no change of course until the turning-point at Noordwijk on the Dutch coast. There will be yellow markers at the turning-point but don’t come back and complain that you didn’t see them. They are for the Main Force boys and as pathfinders you’re now expected to pinpoint places like that without the markers. Met says there will be no cloud, but if he’s wrong there will be sky markers above, the cloud.

‘From there it’s straight run down to the target. I’ll be placing a yellow fifteen miles from the target and you must go in to bomb over that yellow datum-line marker. If you don’t you’ll be crossing the bomber stream. By the time you reach the datum marker navigators must have their ground-speed calculated so that captains and bomb aimers have an exact time to the aiming-point. That’s all. Anyone with queries can see me afterwards.’

Some of the new boys were scribbling away furiously. Cohen could see PO Fleming and his officer navigator checking and rechecking every word of the briefing. The rest of Fleming’s crew sat close and watched approvingly as he prepared the spell that would bring them safe through the night. Not all of the crews were together. Sweet always sat at the front with a group of officers. His engineer – Micky Murphy – sat next to Lambert just as he had always done. On the other side of Lambert sat Battersby, studying the oil and grease on his hands. He noted with pride that they were fast becoming real engineer’s hands like Murphy’s.

Digby leaned forward to Murphy and Lambert. ‘Faith, Hope and Charity are writing their memoirs,’ he whispered.

‘Yes, I remember what it was like on my first trip,’ said Lambert. ‘I was more frightened of making a mistake on my log than of tangling with a night fighter.’

All of the new crews had arrived in the Briefing Room at least five minutes early. For fear of taking some veteran’s allotted seat they had all stayed close together near the back of the room. Like new boys at school they were anxious not to attract attention, but when Jammy Giles stood up it was to this part of the Briefing Room audience that he addressed himself.

Flight Lieutenant Giles was the Squadron’s Assistant Adjutant and also its Bombing Leader. Thirty-three years old, he had joined the RAF during the Munich Crisis. He had first flown as a gunner, when any erk standing around at take-off could become an air gunner without training or brevet or sergeant’s rank. At that time he had been an LAC, almost the lowest form of Air Force life. Later, when his job had been made official and he’d got three stripes, he had delighted in swapping jobs with other aircrew. He had flown as gunner, as wireless operator, and even as second pilot. He had proved particularly skilled at bomb-aiming; so much so that at the end of his first tour he had got the DFM and a job as instructor. The discipline at the training school had been so irksome that he had applied for a commission and to his surprise got one. Now that the importance of his job had been recognized by the creation of the air-bomber category, Jammy had become an important man at Warley.

The eleven men in the room who had already completed a tour of operations were quieter and more introspective than the newer crews. Jammy was a notable exception. He was noisy, balding and inclined to plumpness; all due, he boasted, to the vast amounts of alcohol he consumed. Amid a less stringently selected group of men Jammy’s physique would have gone unremarked. Amongst these aircrews, however, his slight paunch was Falstaffian, his pate Pickwickian and his cheerful nose Cyrano-like.

This was emphasized by the build of his pilot, Roddy Peterson, a tall thin doleful Canadian. He had a dry, savage brand of humour that Jammy had taken to immediately and now excelled in. Laurel and Hardy they were often called. Before joining up Jammy Giles had lived with his mother in a three-room basement in the London suburb of Morden and worked as a clerk for a building contractor. Now he was a bemedalled officer; a Flight Lieutenant. It was a transformation beyond his wildest dreams and he refused to think of what he would do when the war was over. In any case he didn’t expect to survive it.

‘All right. Belt up there and listen,’ said Jammy. ‘I don’t care how many times you’ve heard it before.’ Several times in the past Jammy had brought some inattentive crew member up on to the stage and asked him to repeat the briefing. Jammy knew how to make such a man feel like an infant; the crews became quiet and attentive.

‘First the PFF Mosquito aircraft will mark the target with red markers. Their gear is much more accurate than anything we have, so their reds are what the Finders must look for. The Finders will put long sticks of flares over the reds. Mixed in with the Finder aircraft there are Supporters – and these are mostly crews on their first couple of trips – who are carrying only high-explosive bombs. That’s because incendiaries could be mistaken for red markers. Remember, all you Supporter crews, it’s your job to shake up the defences with your HE. Aim at the reds; if you don’t see them I’d rather you brought your loads back here than made a mistake. And don’t go round again, save that for the experienced crews. All right. Next over the target are the Illuminators – they will be dropping short sticks of flares right on the aiming-point which they will identify from the light of the Finders’ flares. Lastly, the Primary Markers will arrive and put yellow markers down upon the aiming-point which will be lit by the Illuminators’ flares, Aircraft with Y equipment will check by radar and visual means because the whole main bombing force will be looking for those yellows. It’s been carefully planned, lads, so it’s up to you to check and double-check before you mark. We don’t want any more Pilsens and there won’t be if you all pull a finger out.’

On April 16th, 1943, a mistake by the pathfinders resulted in an attack being centred on a huge Czechoslovak lunatic asylum at Dobrany instead of the Skoda arms factory at Pilsen. The horror was compounded by the loss of thirty-six RAF aeroplanes and Pathfinder Force was still smarting from the shame of it.

There was a flurry of coughs and affirmative grunts. Lambert passed his cigarettes amongst his crew. Micky Murphy took a cigarette. ‘What do you think, Sam?’ he asked.

‘It sounds carefully planned,’ said Lambert guardedly.

‘That’s what they say about contraception,’ said Micky, and smiled to reveal his gap-teeth. He smiled at Battersby too. The boy grinned back, pleased to be included in the joke.

Upon the stage Jammy continued, ‘All right. The last wave are Backers Up. You are carrying green TIs. First look for any remaining reds because they are from the Mosquitoes. If there are no red TIs look for yellow ones from the Primary Markers. I’ll be there watching you with my beady little eyes and if any of you mess up my pretty pattern of coloured lights I’ll have your guts for garters. All right?’ The crews laughed and Jammy gave a brief guffaw. He always said that at the end of his briefing. A new joke would have worried them; at this time they preferred things that were old and familiar.

‘All right, one more thing,’ said Jammy. ‘Jettisoning of bombs. In recent months there’s been a greater tonnage of bombs dropped on Britain by us and the Yanks than by the whole bloody Luftwaffe.’ There was a pandemonium of whistling and catcalling. Jammy waved it down. ‘Yeah, it’s a real laugh at briefing, but when you are holding up a main-line train service or asking the poor buggers at Bomb Disposal to clear up your mess, it’s not so funny. If you must jettison I want exact times, map reference and fusing details immediately after landing. It’s easy to get away with it by saying nothing,’ he smiled, ‘and that’s why I’ll press for disciplinary action against the whole crew that doesn’t report jettisoning.’

They were all in a good mood now. ‘That’s it Jammy, give ’em hell,’ shouted someone. Again Jammy gave one of his sneeze-like laughs.

As the Intelligence Officer got up it was quiet enough to notice the sounds of the countryside: outside the window a chestnut tree moved abrasively, swifts called, a blackbird sang and thrushes were learning how to fly, the scent of newly cut hay came on the warm breeze. It was hard to believe that here in this pastoral backwater plans were being made to destroy a town.

Longfellow had been watching and listening to the briefing with the close attention of a journalist. The drama of the scene moved him. This was history being made. Last week he had sent these men out to destroy Cologne. Cologne, why it was beyond belief, a thousand years of history shattered into fragments in less than two hours by these young kids. Like a chapter he’d written for his second book: his criminals had sat around in easy chairs drinking brandy and discussing in matter-of-fact tones their plan to rob a bank. He’d rewrite that chapter, because now he knew that it hadn’t been matter-of-fact enough! This was how it really should be: young fellows, some still in their teens, offering each other cigarettes and making notes about how many tons of high explosive they would plant in a city centre.

Longfellow got to his feet slowly to make sure he had their attention. He ran his hand through his thick black hair. ‘Can you see me at the back?’ he called. There was an affirmative murmur. ‘I’m surprised to hear it, I can’t see you through this damned fug.’ There was some polite laughter. The room was blue with tobacco smoke and the yellow lights, he noticed, glowed through the swirling fumes like distant igneous planets. He made a note of ‘distant igneous planets’. That would do for the book. Longfellow’s clerk pinned up a bombing-pattern diagram headlined CREEPBACK. It was a long blob of bomb-hits extending to meet an arrow marked ‘Bomber Stream, Line of Flight’. Longfellow put on his spectacles and stared at the diagram. This made his whole audience look at it.

‘Tonight,’ pronounced Longfellow slowly and clearly, ‘we are attacking Krefeld. The heavy industry …’ He was unable to continue because of the noise, which was getting louder. There was a shrill laugh from Kit Pepper – one of Sweet’s gunners – and a sudden handclap from Roddy Peterson next to him. Longfellow held up his hand and then loudly corrected his error. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, you are attacking Krefeld.’ There was another sort of noise now; quieter and mollified. He decided to skip the build-up description of the target and go on to the matter of his real concern. The one that the Intelligence people at Group were complaining of so bitterly; in a word: creepback.

‘Now, you Backer-Up crews,’ said Longfellow, turning back to them. ‘It’s your job to drop your new flares into the centre of the existing flares. I’ve said this a thousand times but I will repeat it once again. When you see the marker pattern on your approach you are seeing it in perspective. That foreshortening is an optical illusion, so don’t drop short of centre. Creepback is this tendency to fall short and then shorter still. So don’t do it.’ He paused long enough to give importance to his next few words. ‘Now you chaps know as well as I do: there is another reason for creepback. One that people are reluctant to mention.’ He paused again. ‘Plain old-fashioned cold feet.’

The room was silent; no one coughed or murmured. Longfellow had their fearful attention. The Groupie looked towards the journalists but the smoke was too dense for him to see their reaction. Longfellow continued, ‘When the flak is coming up hard and heavy, you get itchy fingers. What you want to do is to get rid of your bombs and get the hell out of there. Of course you do but if you are going to drop your bomb-load in a field of potatoes then what the hell are you going all the way to Germany for? That last few hundred yards to your aiming-point, gentlemen, is the difference between tearing the Hun’s guts out and throwing in the towel.’ He took off his horn-rimmed spectacles and replaced them in a theatrical gesture.

Longfellow had theories about briefings. The cold accusation of cowardice, followed by a manly understanding tone, a logical argument and the final sporting allusion, was calculated to shock, stimulate and reinforce the determination of his audience.

‘Rule Britannia!’ shouted someone at the back.

‘These armchair warriors,’ murmured Digby, ‘they’ll fight to the last drop of our blood.’ Battersby giggled nervously.

Impulsively Flight Sergeant Lambert stood up. It was the first time he’d ever asked a question at a briefing.

‘What are the guts of Krefeld?’ asked Lambert. ‘What are we aiming at in that city centre?’ He had a target map in his hand; he waved it.

This wasn’t so good, thought Longfellow. He ran his fingers down the back of his hand like a man adjusting the fit of a pair of chamois gloves. He peered forward to decide what sort of man this was. He tried to see his eyes but the ceiling lights threw the fellow’s eye-sockets into darkness and masked his expression as efficiently as a pair of dark glasses. He smiled nervously at Lambert and remembered the standard answer he’d prepared for this sort of question. Sometimes the crews got fidgety about dropping their bombs right into the centre of crowded towns. It was natural that they occasionally needed bolstering up a little. Longfellow held up a target map of Krefeld and tapped the centre of it. ‘A Gestapo headquarters and a poison-gas factory, that’s your aiming-point. All right?’

He felt the mood of the room change as he said it; there was a suppressed muttering and a heightened excitement. The element of anger that a moment ago had been directed so unjustly at him was now turned upon the real enemy: Krefeld.

The Group Captain preferred not to wear his spectacles except in the privacy of his office. He didn’t look at Lambert directly, he closed his eyes and nodded wisely, as though he had known about that city centre too.

Other technical officers continued the briefing. Sandy Sanderson, Squadron Engineer, was wearing an expensive blue lambswool roll-neck and as he spoke of the fuel-loads he kept peering to see if there were any women among the journalists. The Gunnery Leader said that Lancasters were still coming back with damage by .303-inch bullets. ‘British bullets. That means trigger-happy gunners firing at shadows. Keep awake, keep alert and keep the turrets moving so that the oil stays warm and thin, but remember that there are two-motor bombers with us tonight, so don’t open fire until you positively identify the night fighter.’

The Signals Leader gave details of the splasher frequencies – a rapid change of frequencies for bearings from beacons – and then the Met man gave them an outline of the weather situation. His curving line of cold front was in places two hundred miles in error and his prediction of its midnight frontal positions was even more inaccurate, but it would make no difference to these crews, who were going only as far as the Ruhr. There they would find anti-cyclonic weather as predicted.

‘Moon full, rising 00.30 hours at target: one hour before zero. Sunrise is 05.46 hours, so you won’t have to worry about sun-up. Now the cloud: along the enemy coast there’ll be some well-broken layer cloud. The residual thundercloud will have followed the cold front and won’t affect you. Over the target area you’ll have a very thin layer of medium cloud between 1,000 and 20,000 feet. Sorry I can’t be more precise than that, but it will probably have cleared by 01.00 hours.’

‘Jesus!’ said Digby without lowering his voice. ‘We’re going to be dancing naked in the full moon and he consoles us that we needn’t worry about sun-up.’ Loudly he said, ‘Anyone want to buy my wristwatch?’ There were a few laughs.

Even if the Met man didn’t hear Digby’s exact words he interpreted the sentiment without difficulty. Hurriedly he added, ‘You’ll have enough stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet to give you some cover; visibility moderate. The bases will be the same: stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet; visibility moderate. You’ve had your winds, navigators. Northwest wind over target, remember. See me afterwards if there’s anything else.’

The last man on his feet was Wing Commander Munro, the Squadron CO. Young ‘Tapper’ Collins wasn’t the only man who was completing his tour of operations that night. John Munro was also embarking on his final trip of the tour, with the difference that this was Munro’s second tour; tonight was his sixtieth bombing raid.

Munro spoke in the carefully modulated tones of the British upper class. ‘Not much to say tonight, gentlemen. Flak concentrations: the map speaks for itself. You are routed to by-pass these unfriendly regions, so don’t wander off or invent some new route that you believe to be better. Keep in the stream and you’ll avoid most of these red patches.’

Sweet called out, ‘What about a route that avoids that big red patch?’ The big red patch was the Ruhr, so everyone laughed. The Wing Commander smiled as broadly as he knew how to. ‘Keep in the stream, chaps, and watch your bombing heights. The only collision danger is over the target and if you keep to your height band it is almost eliminated. Don’t run across the target except from the north-west where the datum marker is. It’s rather like driving a car in traffic: keep on your side of the street and you are perfectly safe, but drive across the traffic stream and the chances of colliding are considerable.’ His audience, few of whom had ever driven a car, nodded knowingly.

‘And no evasive action over target. There’ll be no night fighters there when the flak is firing. Once you’re clear, keep to the return route and timing. This is a well-planned show, chaps. It’s a big raid – about seven hundred aircraft – with Lancasters, Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Stirlings.’

‘Hooray,’ shouted a dozen old-timers from the back of the room. Munro looked up and smiled. On recent raids 12.9 per cent of the Stirlings had been lost compared to only 5.4 per cent of the Lancs. If it comforted them to know the poor old Stirlings would be with them, lumbering slowly along at their feeble ceiling and drawing the brunt of the flak, why should he spoil it? But his young brother was piloting a Stirling this night, and the smile was a mask.

When the briefing ended there was a clatter of boots and a buzz of conversation as the flyers shuffled out through the door and into the golden world of the afternoon sun where the air smelled of newly cut grass. Munro buttonholed Flight Lieutenant Sweet near the door. ‘A word to the wise, Mr Sweet. These crew reshuffles: bad biz. If any of them want to change crews tell them to come and see me.’

‘You mean Cohen and Digby?’

‘I mean Cohen and Digby.’

Sweet smiled winningly. ‘They were requests. Digby asked if …’

‘Before you go on, old chap, let me tell you that this afternoon I had Flight Sergeant Digby, Royal Australian Air Force, on my neck, flushed with the exertion of hard-pedalling around the peri track, flatly refusing to leave Lambert’s crew. These chaps get superstitious, you know.’

‘We can’t win a war on superstition.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that. Old Hitler’s been using it pretty strenuously and gaining quite a bit of ground. The old torchlight processions and secret signs, eh? No, if these chaps get comfort from their toy bears and lucky lingerie hanging by the windscreen, let them have it, I say. That goes for crewing too.’

‘But that’s mutiny, isn’t it? Surely Flight Sergeant Digby should have come to me in the usual way if he thinks he’s running B Flight.’

‘I can see you haven’t had much experience of our Australian allies, Mr Sweet. I’m damned lucky he demeaned himself to mention it to me. There are quite a few of his countrymen who would have been on the blower to Australia House and done it via their Prime Minister and ours if they thought they were being victimized.’

‘You’re joking, sir.’

‘I wish I were. Don’t know how, in fact. My trouble, I suppose. Anyway, Mr Sweet, forget Digby going to your crew even if he is the best bomb aimer in the Squadron. And even if your bomb aimer is by far the worst …’

Sweet smiled again. ‘Oh, it wasn’t for that reason, sir …’ Sweet touched Munro’s arm in a gesture of reassurance. Munro shrank away. He had a horror of men patting his shoulder or grasping his arm.

‘Whatever reason, Mr Sweet, forget it,’ he said coldly.

‘Take Cohen, forget Digby?’

‘Take Cohen, forget Digby, that’s the spirit.’

Ashamed of his reaction to Sweet’s gesture, Munro leaned a little closer to him. ‘Perhaps your idea is to pile all the B Flight duds into one crew in order to get them reassessed as unsuitable for pathfinders and transferred. But why, Sweet, why in the name of God, choose Lambert’s crew? Lambert’s one of the best pilots on the Squadron.’

Sweet smiled at Munro. He felt sure that he would be able to convincingly refute this unfair suggestion. ‘All I’m interested in, sir, is flying maximum ops with maximum bomb-loads and killing maximum Huns.’

‘Really?’ said Munro.

‘I just want to get the war over,’ said Sweet.

‘Quite a few of us feel like that,’ said Munro and before Sweet could reply added, ‘Another question, Sweet. Has Lambert had a portrait of Stalin painted on his aircraft?’

‘Stalin, sir?’

‘Stalin, that’s it.’

‘No sir, that’s Sergeant Carter’s aircraft: L Love.’

‘Umm, that’s what I thought. Group Captain came your way this PM to see the aircraft with the bomb-release malfunction. He saw the Comrade’s portrait on it … he’s fretting.’

‘I’ll have the riggers paint it out.’

‘And have one of your chaps write to the Daily Mirror about it? No, I wouldn’t advise that. As you know, it’s unserviceable tonight. Do nothing until the Group Captain mentions it to you directly. Then you will have a problem.’

‘I’ll think of a way to deal with it, sir.’ Sweet smiled.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Munro coldly. Who could say that youth was rebellious. Why, chaps like Sweet would do anything to avoid a harsh word. Munro sighed. After the war, he felt, the world might be full of Sweets, selling their vacuum cleaners, parrying political questions and entertaining millions on television. Eventually everyone in the world would become expert at the modest words, kind smiles and bland assurance that gloved the iron hand of ambition.

Man, frightened that machines might dominate him and overawed by mechanical performance, was becoming mechanical in his emotions and reactions, thought Munro. His gestures, jokes and obedience were robot-like. Lambert’s foolish and provocative question, much as Munro deplored such behaviour, was at least human by the very nature of its error. That smiling little Flight Lieutenant Sweet would never do such a thing.

Sweet wasn’t the only person to be buttonholed. All over the room men were giving last-minute warnings, greetings, advice and information to friends and strangers.

The chaplain was a member of the Socialist Party and secretly regarded himself as a rather dangerous reformer. In his opinion this was why his bishop had been so keen to get rid of him into the Air Force. Compulsory church parades, some articulate atheists in the Officers’ Mess and an inherited stutter had made his task harder than he’d expected. Still, it was his duty to seek out the troubled and he found the man with the lined eyes who’d almost spoiled the whole briefing by disquieting his comrades.

‘Are you troubled, Flight Sergeant?’ he asked Lambert.

‘Why doesn’t the Church stop the war, Padre?’

The young chaplain had listened carefully to his archbishop, so, like the Intelligence Officer, he had the answer ready. ‘The war is due to the sin of mankind, including our own. And so we have got to do it and be penitent while we do it.’

‘So I’m the right hand of God, am I, Padre? I wonder if the Germans have padres telling them they are.’

For one moment the padre’s resentment and anxiety almost betrayed him into praying that he would not stutter. He did stutter: ‘I … I … I … hold the King’s commission, Sergeant, and I’ll ask you to treat me with the respect my u … u … u … uniform deserves.’

‘Come on, Skip,’ called Digby loudly. ‘We’ve got some killing to do.’ The padre glared at them both. Why should these men insult me, he thought; they know I can’t stop the war?

‘Pay no attention to them, Padre,’ said Longfellow. ‘They couldn’t care less about decent people’s feelings.’ He wondered whether it was either of those two who had laughed at him when he made that slip of the tongue at the start of the briefing. Once Longfellow had hero-worshipped the young aircrew, but that was long ago during the Battle of Britain. That was before he encountered the arrogance that constant danger granted the young. ‘Intrepid birdmen,’ he said scornfully after all the birdmen were out of earshot.