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The NAAFI closed at ten o’clock but the Salvation Army canteen was open until ten-thirty. By leaving the Station cinema early and sprinting across the parade ground it was possible to get a cup of tea before bedtime. Mrs Andrews who served in the Sally-Ann judged the films by the number of hot drinks she sold last thing at night. ‘It’s not a very good film; fourteen teas Monday and I had to make a second pot on Tuesday night.’

The previous week there had been a flying film. The hero made love with a sober intensity and flew with drunken abandon (the complete reversal of the activities of the RAF boys). A cowardly pilot ran amok, was ostracized and finally flew sobbing into an enemy plane. The CO ruled with his fists and cried glycerine tears each time one of his boys failed to return. The RAF greeted this film with jeers and catcalls. The projectionist had phoned the Orderly Officer about it.

‘Shouting at the film, are they? And you want me to come over there so they can shout at me? Not Pygmalion likely. I saw it last night. It’s about time you got some good films.’

They had no contact with this film or its makers. RAF selection boards had ensured that none of them ever experienced such extreme emotions. No one at Warley had ever publicly sworn vengeance upon the Germans (unless you counted the CO). No one here endured a crash so light-heartedly, took off into thick fog or swigged whisky round the Mess table, toasted absent friends with song and threw their glasses into the fireplace. Here grief was measured by what was paid for the auctioned, worthless personal effects of the casualties. Tears were for actors. Here cowardice was their common conceit and all had their own favourite acts of cowardice of which to boast. The flyers of Warley were men of even temperament who, for better or worse, did not react profoundly to the work they did.

Tonight there were no crews in the crowded cinema. No one left early nor did they make a noise. It was an old Charles Laughton film – Rembrandt – and so many turned up that they had been forced to get folding seats from the Operations Block and sit latecomers along the aisles.

The Music Circle meeting in the Education Hut had assembled nineteen assorted ranks to listen to Georg Kulenkampff and the Berlin Philharmonic play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The performance was virtually faultless and their pleasure was marred only slightly by having to turn the records every few minutes. The Education Officer had the irritating habit of conducting, but when the music had finished and he produced a few bottles of beer all was forgiven. They were there until almost midnight talking about music. There were very few places on the aerodrome where all ranks could meet on a completely equal footing, let alone drink and smoke together.

The Station dance band had been in existence for six weeks but there had been only two rehearsals with every member present. Two of the band were working tonight. Sergeant Tommy Carter, a keen amateur saxophone player, was flying Joe for King, and a corporal who could play the piano relatively well was on duty in Flying Control. This night the fellow on the piano could only play from the singer’s line and the trumpet player was all over the place. It wasn’t his fault, for although he had studied music for two years, his instrument was the violin. The seven musicians practised together at the far end of the NAAFI, but when the canteen began to fill up they stopped playing and sat around drinking tea. The leader, an LAC clerk from Southampton, said that if they couldn’t do better than this they should tell the dance committee to bring in a civilian band for the Sergeants’ Mess dance next month. By the time the NAAFI closed they were all a little depressed.

Musically, however, Warley Fen was dominated that summer by a simple but subtle melody. Erks whistled it as they bicycled to dispersals. Fitters hummed it as they replaced the sparking plugs on the Merlins and a big-breasted blonde NAAFI girl named Veronica played it on the piano with lots of improvised vamping. A slim-hipped MT corporal with a thin moustache impersonated Al Bowlly and sang it wordperfect with every inflection of that singer’s voice. In the Officers’ Mess there was a gramophone record of it that someone had brought back from London.

Every lunchtime of that hot summer the cadences floated across the even, bright green lawns of Warley Manor and made the tea-roses tremble. The Sergeants’ Mess had the same record and it had become the custom for returning aircrew NCOs to call into the Mess for one last nightcap after leaving the tension and excitement of the debriefing. That record was always near the gramophone and usually the first arrivals would put it on. Sometimes after a grim night when there were a few missing faces they would play it repeatedly until dawn shone.

Easy come, easy go. That’s the way, if love must have its day, then as it came let it go.

No remorse, no regrets. We should part, exactly as we met; just easy come, easy go.

We never dreamt of romantic dangers

But now as it ends, let’s be friends and not two strangers.

Easy come, easy go, here we are, so darling au revoir, easy come, easy go.

A quarter of a century later, men who knew Warley Fen that summer when the bombers went out night after night remembered nothing more clearly than that little melody. It needed only the opening trumpet notes, the wire brushes and guitar to transport them back there again.

Not all spare-time occupations were musical. Flight Sergeant Bishop, the Station blacksmith, was Sergeant of the guard. He was sitting in the guardroom assembling a large picture of a galleon in full sail from sweet-wrappers and coloured paper. It was a painstaking hobby and the portrait of Joe Louis on the wall in his quarters represented nearly three hundred manhours of tearing, cutting and pasting. People who saw the pictures wondered that the clumsy muscular hands of the blacksmith could work in such meticulous detail.

Aircraftman First Class Albert Singleton, an Officers’ Mess waiter, did that evening, with the help of Aircraftwoman Janet Marsden, motor-transport driver, steal from the aforesaid Mess one seven-pound tin of butter, three seven-pound tins of marmalade, eighteen pounds of bacon and twenty-eight eggs. These stores, the property of His Majesty King George the Sixth, were taken to Peterborough in an RAF Hillman van, also the property of His Majesty. The foodstuffs were delivered to a restaurant owner against payment of seven pounds ten shillings. By ten-thirty Singleton and Marsden had visited several public-houses and consumed a considerable amount of alcohol.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when they came down the blacked-out country lane from Ramsey and parked near the perimeter fence. It was warm in the front seat of the RAF van and the windows grew misty with their breath as they kissed and cuddled in the dark. After a few minutes one of the lorries carrying aircrew came past them along the peri track. They paused to watch it.

‘It’s a new driver we’ve got,’ said ACW Marsden, nodding towards the crew bus. ‘She’s straight from the training school, talk about keen.’

‘Not like you,’ said Bert Singleton.

‘I’m keen sometimes,’ said the girl, and they kissed again. As the crew lorry got to the far corner they heard the crews shouting remarks about blackout to some house in the village but they didn’t stop kissing.

Binty Jones folded up his comic and began speaking in his mock-American accent. ‘Eleven o’clock, guys,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this little old show on the road. I’ve got me some heavy petting in Peterborough before sun-up.’

Digby zipped his flying boots and looking up in surprise said, ‘Are you still sleeping in Peterborough, you mad bastard?’

It had become fashionable among some of the crews to have their names written across the front of their flying helmets. A bottle of light-pink nail-varnish was going the rounds. Cohen was writing ‘Kosher’ on his.

‘That I am, feller,’ said Binty. ‘A quarter of an hour from billet to bedroom. That’s all it takes me on the motorbike.’

‘Quarter of an hour,’ said Lambert. ‘I’d rather fly the operation twice than go that last ten miles on your banger.’

‘Fifteen miles,’ corrected Binty. ‘Ah well, I’m a professional, you see.’

‘Professional crumpet-chaser?’ said Digby.

‘Milkmen all are,’ said Cohen, ‘aren’t they, Binty?’

‘Some of them,’ he grinned proudly. In spite of his carefully pressed clothes and shirt starched like card he was not much to look at: cropped hair, bad teeth, short stature and pockmarked face. None of which was an impediment to his frantic motorized sex-life, in pursuit of which he journeyed constantly across East Anglia. ‘It’s the bike that gets them, man, the rhythm, you see. They hear that in the middle of the night and they quiver like a jelly.’

‘You still with that married sheila?’ asked Digby. He knew the answer but he wanted to draw Flash Gordon into the discussion. He liked to hear them argue.

‘She’s a smashing piece of crackling, man.’

‘Why don’t you find yourself some piece of single skirt?’ said Flash.

‘You know why, man. All the best single crumpet in Peterborough has been taken over by the Yanks.’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s right. Her old man fighting in the desert. I just don’t think it’s right.’

‘I’m just keeping it warm for him, man.’

‘I hope he comes back and knocks the daylights out of you.’

‘No danger, I’ve seen his photo, a tiny fellow he is.’

‘A judo instructor.’

‘Sheet-metal worker with a REME unit in Alex.’

‘He’ll come back and clobber you,’ warned Flash.

The conversation had taken the same lines that it always took and after it they were silent as they always were. Binty opened his comic again. ‘What’s the time now?’ asked Digby.

‘Three minutes later than the last time you asked,’ said Cohen. Again he checked the contents of his green canvas bag: torch, rice-paper message pad, radio notes, protractor, dividers, coloured pencils, course and speed calculator, log book, target map, star tables and ruler. It was all there.

‘That’s quite a watch you’ve got there, sport,’ said Digby.

‘My uncle’s. My ma gave it to me this morning.’

Cohen returned the nail-varnish to Digby who put it on the shelf of his locker and padlocked the door. ‘Come on, Maisie,’ said Digby quietly. They looked across to the far side of the room where a line of aircrew were waiting for Maisie Holroyd to issue them with flying rations. Batters was next.

‘Four Bovrils, three coffees.’

‘Four Bovrils, three coffees,’ she said, and the clerk gave Batters the required vacuum flasks of hot drinks as well as seven packets of sandwiches, chewing-gum, boiled sweets and chocolate.

Sergeant Jimmy Grimm, the wireless operator and standby gunner, was a cheerful beardless man of twenty-three. He would have been acutely embarrassed to know that among Warley’s WAAFs he was known as ‘the blond bombshell’ for although he was married with a two-year-old child he was absurdly shy in the presence of women and was easily shocked by the sort of jokes that the crews related with such proud maturity. Sometimes, balanced over his radio, he’d write long, long letters to his wife Mollie in large looping handwriting and always in green ink.

An average wireless operator, Grimm was a dedicated amateur photographer and the billet that he shared with Digby and Cohen was a disordered muddle of enamel trays, film tins and parts of his home-made enlarger. Often both bathrooms were full of prints, with others in the washbasins. Once one had jammed in the drain and flooded four rooms.

These were group portraits of the whole crew that he was passing round. He had a little clockwork device that enabled him to rush and join them after starting the shutter. Handsome lads they all were. Relaxed and smiling like any one of a million young men. Looking at those prints now, it would be easy to say that it was the work of an amateur or that the materials were inferior or unsuitable because they were stolen from Air Ministry supplies. That wouldn’t be true. The fact is that the boys were all like that: their faces were not out of focus or over-exposed, they were bland and smooth and as yet unformed. Those grinning cherubs awkwardly placed in that wartime snapshot are a high-definition portrait of the men who that night climbed into their flying boots, adjusted their parachute harness, borrowed clean shirts, reread old letters, lost a quick hand of cards, wrote IOUs for half a crown and watched the clock so carefully. And so often.

‘Bloody good snap that, Jimmy.’

‘Us with the old Door behind.’

‘What a handsome group!’

‘Enlarge it yourself, Jimmy? Bloody good shows.’

‘Look at Dig, scowling. He’s a card.’

‘Pockets undone as usual, Kosh.’

‘Good of the Skipper.’

‘Too serious.’

‘Well, he is more serious nowadays.’

‘It’s that bloody Sweet giving him the needle.’

‘Sweet’s all right. One of the boys. He’s got a good sense of humour.’

‘Sense of flipping arse-crawling, you mean.’

‘Any more photos, Jim? Is that your garden?’

‘Can I keep this, Jimmy?’

‘Cost you one and threepence.’

‘Bloody robber.’

‘Here you are. I’ll send it to my mum,’ said Battersby.

‘Me too,’ said Binty. ‘Four I’d better have. No, make it five.’

‘Who’s that bird with the pram?’

‘What a smashing piece of crumble.’

‘Shut up, you berk, it’s Jimmy’s missus.’

Crews were still arriving. There was an endless clang of locker doors, with occasional arguments when someone discovered their helmet missing or their boots borrowed and returned muddy. Flying gear was worn piecemeal according to personal taste and crew position. Usually the Lanc’s heating system blew warm upon the wireless operator, roasted the bomb aimer and left the navigator to freeze. So most of the navigators were wearing the whole gear, from leather Irvin jackets to silk undersocks. So were the rear gunners. Most WOpAGs on the other hand had only the mandatory helmet, boots and Mae West over the same working blue and white rollneck sweater that they had worn at supper. Some flyers had brightly coloured silk scarves and even civilian shirts. Sandy Sanderson wore a fine leather jacket that he’d had made in Cairo.

It was a warm evening and now the blackout shutters were closed the changing-room became smelly as the crews crowded into it. Some of the early comers were playing cards for money while the late arrivals were grabbing their flying boots and filling their shoes with loose change, farewell letters and dirty pictures before pushing them into the back of their lockers. Few were pessimistic enough to leave a spare key behind and all the tin lockers bore scarred paintwork from being forced open many times.

Wing Commander Munro edged his way across the room.

‘Mr Lambert.’

‘Sir?’

‘Last month after the cricket match you paid for both lots of beer. Will one pound ten see me out of debt?’

‘It’s only a pound, sir.’

‘Here you are then, old chap.’ He smiled, gave Lambert the money and was gone.

‘Until now he’s just paid alternately. That’s the way we’ve done it since the season started,’ said Kosher.

‘He just wants to be out of debt,’ said Lambert. Thoughtfully Kosher looked again at the Wing Commander, who was on the far side of the room giving an encouraging word to Fleming.

Fleming’s crew felt that they were being scrutinized and they were careful to display no sign of excitement or nerves. Fleming had bent and dirtied his peaked cap to make it resemble those that had done a few thousand flying miles tucked behind a pilot’s seat. Now he was wearing it at a rakish angle as he finished reading a copy of Routine Orders. He folded the paper up carefully to make a paper aeroplane.

‘What’s that, Mr Fleming, a Lanc Mark IV?’ said Munro in an attempt to make a joke.

‘That’s it, sir,’ agreed Fleming. He launched the paper wing. Everyone watched as it flew straight and level the length of the room. When it reached the tea urns, where the catering WAAFs were dispensing flasks of hot drinks, it hit a thermal. It nosed up until it stalled and fell like a dead bird to the floor.

‘Back to the drawing-board,’ shouted Binty Jones. Fleming smiled shyly.

Batters returned with a vacuum flask and a packet for each of them. Then complicated exchanges began. Binty liked gum – it was part of his Yank posture – so Digby exchanged his gum for Binty’s barley sugar. Then Flash Gordon gave his gum to Binty for chocolate. Then Digby passed his extra barley sugar to Flash who took this, and a contribution from most of the crew, back to his brothers and sisters. There were nine of them. A few months before, Binty had taken him home on the motorbike. After returning he’d hinted that the spare rations from the boys would be the only treats those Gordon kids were likely to see.

All exchanges finished, Lambert gave them each a sealed escape kit containing a compass, counterfeit money, a silk map of Germany and some compressed dried fruit. Then they shuffled along the covered walkway to the next building. The parachute section was always clean and shiny, brightly lit and smelling of floor polish like a hospital for machines. Two bored WAAFs tugged parachutes and harnesses from the shelves behind them and threw them on to the counter with a clatter. Pilots’ chutes had their parcel of silk fixed to the harness so that it formed a seat. The other crew members carried their silk canopies as a separate brown-canvas parcel which before use had to be fixed to their chests by metal clips. Until they returned, each crewman would carry the chute with him wherever he moved. The pilots didn’t have to remember the life-saving parcel, but, on the other hand, moving about within the aeroplane’s cramped interior with a pilot-style chute strapped behind one’s thighs was difficult. So there were comparatively few bomber pilots in POW camps.

Joe for King’s engineer, Ben Gallacher, was having a noisy argument with one of the WAAFs.

‘So why wasn’t it done while I was on leave?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said the girl. ‘Your chute isn’t repacked yet. You’ll have to take this one instead.’

‘I told your chiefie that I was going on leave.’

The LAC shrugged her shoulders indifferently. ‘I just work here.’

‘I want my own parachute. I’ve always flown with the same one. It’s lucky. Don’t you understand?’ First he had lost his own reliable air-tested L Love and now they wanted to give him a strange chute.

‘I don’t know what you are making such a fuss about. This one is just as good as your one and it’s just been checked and repacked.’ Glad of a pause in her strenuous work, she patted her hair into place. ‘You’re holding up the whole queue, you know.’

‘Get stuffed,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll go without.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Ben,’ said Lambert. ‘Take it.’ Lambert had been one of Gallacher’s instructors at his Conversion Unit.

‘Aw,’ said Ben, walking away.

‘Someone will notice,’ said Lambert. ‘How will you feel if you abort the trip for your whole crew?’

The boy made a rude noise and then took the parachute. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Chiefie,’ he admitted. A line had formed by now and someone shouted, ‘What’s up?’

‘Someone’s brought one back,’ replied Digby loudly. ‘Says it didn’t bloody work.’

Everyone smiled at the joke they had heard so many times. The line moved forward again and the two girls pushed the harnesses and packs across the counter with a mechanical indifference interrupted only when they saw some crewman they knew. Then there would be an exchange of smiles and a hurried ‘Good luck’.

From the other room Ruth came and stood in the doorway watching her husband as he took his parachute.

At the door there was another holdup: two of the lorries were late. Some of the boys went outside and watched the last glimmer of daylight. It was cold and some of them took a drink from their vacuum flasks or bit into the chocolate ration. Almost every crew had a mascot of some sort and teddy bears and rag dolls were cradled in their arms or stuffed into their webbing harness and silk stockings were worn as scarfs.

A muffled cheer went up as the missing lorries arrived. ‘B Flight here,’ called the WAAF driver. There was a sudden flurry of activity as some of the flyers punched each other playfully and vaulted up into the lorry. Lambert looked back and gave Ruth a brief thumbs-up sign. She nodded. He only just had time to climb aboard as the lorry lurched forward. The tailboard rattled loudly. The girl driver followed the blue lights that marked the peri track while twenty-eight crew in the back complained loudly about the slow journey and whistled. They bumped over the runway’s edge and went across the black smears of rubber where the bombers’ wheels first touched the runway on landing. The lights of Warley village were visible to the left. ‘Blackout,’ screamed the crews, ‘pull a finger.’ ‘Put that light out.’ There was little chance of their voices carrying all that way to the village even on a still summer’s night but this was their chance to let off steam that had been building up since they had first read their names on the Battle Order that morning.

The lorry turned off the peri track on to the double pan where two aeroplanes were silhouetted against the dark sky.

‘O for Orange and L for Love,’ she shouted.

‘Good luck, Skip,’ whispered Micky Murphy.

‘Good luck, Micky,’ said Lambert. Lambert’s crew and Carter’s crew tumbled out of the back of the lorry, swearing and complaining as helmets were dropped and harness snagged on the tailboard. They waddled away to the two aircraft, the harness constricting their movements.

The eighteen-year-old WAAF driver had been a flutter of nerves since she had arrived late at the crewroom and faced a chorus of whistles and complaints. Now she leaned out of the cab and peered into the darkness. ‘Is that Z Zebra?’ she asked Digby.

‘Sorry, luv,’ said the uncaring Digby. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’

‘What’s up, miss?’ said Battersby in his squeaky voice.

‘It’s the first time I’ve done this job. Is the next aeroplane Z Zebra?’

‘After you are back on the peri track again, Zebra – The Volkswagen we call it – is on the left-hand pan. Sugar is on the right-hand one, near the hangar and B Flight office.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said the girl. She hesitated for a moment. ‘And good luck, Sergeant.’

‘Ted Battersby; Batters they call me.’

There was a thunder of stamping from the impatient crews inside the lorry followed by loud whistles.

‘Good luck, Batters,’ said the WAAF, blowing him a kiss. She let in the clutch and the lorry jerked forward, throwing its passengers off balance. The girl shouted her name back at Battersby but there was so much noise from the crews that he couldn’t hear it.

The ground staff of each aeroplane were standing quietly under the wing. One or two of them had special friends among the aircrews and sometimes a conversation would be taken up right from the point at which it had been interrupted.

‘Do you ever have trouble with the ears?’ asked Binty as he checked the mid-upper turret.

‘No, mine have all been very good so far. But I never let them mix with the other dogs in the kennels. That’s where all the troubles start.’ The Corporal armourer and Binty went on discussing their whippets. Binty didn’t have his own dogs but he had a financial stake in his uncle’s and on the basis of his conversations with Corporal Hughes he was now able to return home with many suggestions and criticisms. ‘You tell your bloody Air Force mate to stick his advice,’ Binty’s uncle had told him on his last leave, ‘or I’ll come down there and help him with his bleeding aeroplanes.’

‘Sternberg did The Blue Angel,’ said Cohen, ‘but The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was directed by someone I’ve never heard of named Wiene.’

‘I could have sworn it was Sternberg. Funny how the memory can play tricks. The Last Command was Sternberg?’

‘Oh sure. You don’t make many mistakes, Mike. I remember seeing that. It was almost a remake of The Last Laugh with Jannings.’

‘A lot of those films were remakes of earlier European ones.’

‘Ever see The Salvation Hunters?’ asked Cohen.

‘That was early Sternberg. They thought it was a masterpiece at the time. At my last station the Film Society got hold of a sixteen-millimetre print.’

‘Pretty terrible, I thought,’ said Cohen.

‘It’s a long time ago,’ said the fitter. ‘A lot has happened since then.’

‘Yes,’ said Cohen, who had seen the film in Vienna when he was a child. ‘You’re right.’

Flight Sergeant Worthington started another conversation without preamble. ‘Two fuses and four wiring faults. We’ll have to strip the wiring right out of it and renew every inch of it.’

‘So Carter’s taking a reserve kite?’

‘It only arrived this afternoon, it’s been a struggle to get it ready. Carter’s furious and so is Gallacher. It’s not my fault, Sam.’ He kicked one of the tyres.

‘Everyone knows that, Worthy.’

‘Carter was bloody rude. There’s no need to be rude.’

‘Nerves, Worthy.’

‘I suppose so. But we all worked our guts out on Joe for King. No one could have got it ready in time.’

‘Forget it, Worthy. He’ll be apologizing and buying you pints lunchtime tomorrow. You know old Tommy Carter; he flares up but he doesn’t mean it.’ Worthington slapped Lambert’s arm gently with the canvas pitot-head cover. He always did that to show it was removed. Lambert scribbled his signature on the RAF Form No 700. Creaking Door was now Lambert’s.

‘Your new kid knows his way around a wiring diagram, I must say,’ said Worthington.

‘Battersby?’

‘Yes, he’s a demon on theory. He worked out the position of the short circuit on paper, but it was enough to make a strong man weep, watching him trying to fix it: gentleman’s fingers.’

‘As the actress said to the bishop,’ said Digby. The bomb-doors were open and now he came round to the front, where Lambert and Worthington were standing, to inspect the bombs. He jabbed a finger at each, murmuring to himself as he counted them, pulling each bomb trying to shift it within the jaws of the grip. He clasped a 2,000-lb bomb and lifted his feet off the ground so that the jaws took his weight too.

‘I wish you’d come out and do that before we get here,’ complained Lambert.

‘Have a little faith,’ said Digby.

Automatically Lambert took his wallet from his battledress blouse and folded into it the gold fountain pen that had been his twenty-first birthday present from his parents. It was an unspoken arrangement that if anything happened to him the wallet with all his letters and documents, and a last letter that he’d rewritten from time to time, should go to Ruth. The fountain pen was for Worthington to keep and the money was for drinks all round in the Sergeants’ Mess. Worthington nodded and looked at Lambert with concern. It seemed to him a bloody awful sort of war. He’d seen a seemingly endless progression of young kids go to war and eventually not come back. Carefully he put the wallet into his inner pocket.

Lambert was just going to climb aboard to start the motors when he saw the Group Captain’s Humber coming round the peri track. It stopped beside the plane.

‘O for Orange; Flight Sergeant Lambert,’ murmured Flying Officer Griffith, the Admin Officer, into the Groupie’s ear. Griffith ticked his piece of paper.

‘Bloody cold, Lambert, what?’ said the Groupie stamping the ground energetically.

‘Yes, sir, freezing,’ said Lambert. He pushed his battered rag doll into his tunic.

Lambert and the Group Captain looked at each other without knowing what to say and yet both were reluctant to turn away.

‘Your lucky doll?’

‘Yes,’ said Lambert. Self-consciously he produced the rag doll: a cross-eyed figure in a black velvet suit.

‘She’s getting pretty old now,’ said the Groupie.

‘Yes, sir, it’s the altitude,’ joked Lambert.

‘Really?’ said the Groupie. At one time the aircrew were bright middle-class boys with style and a sense of fun. Now they were working-class lads with no proper schooling and accents he could scarcely understand. What did Lambert mean about the altitude? So many of these young scoundrels had got their sergeant’s rank too easily and the result was a familiarity of manner that he didn’t readily take to.

‘Not the first trip you’ve done to the Ruhr, eh, Flight Sergeant?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

Usually the Group Captain listened to the BBC news broadcast at nine o’clock. That gave him something to talk about as he visited the planes.

‘I missed the news tonight,’ said the Groupie.

‘I heard it,’ said Lambert. ‘An American fortress raid on the Channel ports. And there’s a big new German attack upon Rokossovsky around Kursk from Orel and Byelgorod. In the first day’s fighting alone the Red Army destroyed five hundred German tanks and over two hundred aircraft.’

‘Splendid,’ said the Groupie and turned on his heel and hurried back to his car. He wound up the window against the cold night air.

‘Bloody Bolshie,’ said the Group Captain.

‘Pardon, sir,’ said the Admin Officer who hadn’t heard the conversation.

‘Lambert, a bloody Bolshie I say.’

‘Lambert, sir?’

‘Why else would he have “Stalin for King” written on his aeroplane?’

‘I don’t think it’s there now,’ said the Admin Officer tactfully. He knew it was Carter’s aeroplane to which the Groupie referred.

‘I know it isn’t there now,’ said the Groupie sarcastically. ‘He’s had a fresh aircraft given to him today.’

The Admin Officer was about to correct the Group Captain but it seemed such a small matter to argue about. He’d be with the Groupie for most of the night. Why put him in a bad mood.

‘I see, sir,’ he said. He watched the red sparks fly as the Group Captain lit his pipe and puffed at it angrily.

‘Just gave me a lecture about his glorious Red Army.’

‘Really, sir?’

‘Well, of course I’m not going to put up with that sort of thing. Take me to see that young officer who’s on his first trip tonight.’

‘Pilot Officer Fleming, sir. Z for Zebra. Parked near the trees, driver.’

The car turned and crossed the peri track. The Groupie seemed not to have heard. ‘I’ll get rid of him, Griffith.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Young Sweet was on about him only today.’

‘Was he, sir?’

‘Hinted that he was a Red.’ The Groupie gave a short humourless laugh. ‘Only I was too damned stupid to see what young Sweet was driving at.’

‘He said that Lambert was a Red?’ asked Pilot Officer Griffith in amazement.

‘No, he didn’t. Too loyal to his flight, too damned fine a young officer to even suspect a senior NCO of such a thing. No, Sweet just reported a piece of Lambert’s bloody propagandizing Communist bilge in the Mess. As I say, young Sweet was so hesitant that it’s not until I had the full force of it myself that I’ve tumbled to what’s going on. What say you to that, Griffith?’

‘Remarkable, sir.’

‘Bloody remarkable, Griffith. If the AOC had got wind of it I’d have been remarkable on my bloody earhole, Griffith.’ No sooner had the Group Captain got his pipe alight than he rapped it against the metal ashtray to empty it.

‘Indeed you would, sir.’

‘Who did you say this next one was?’

‘Z for Zebra, sir. Three officers in the crew. The captain is Pilot Officer Fleming. His first operation.’ The car stopped and Griffith ticked his list of names.

‘Bloody cold, eh, Fleming?’ boomed the Groupie striding across the tarmac. The Admin Officer prodded the smouldering tobacco to be sure it was quite extinguished. With all this petrol about smoking was strictly forbidden.

Voices carry a long way on an airfield, especially at night. Battersby had heard the WAAF driver stop at S Sweet on the far pan.

‘All change,’ she called. There were laughs and shouts and then he heard her say, ‘Good luck, sir,’ and knew she was talking to Sweet. Battersby felt a stab of jealousy. After all, she had blown him a kiss. He walked around, checking the exterior of his aircraft. Officers always got the pretty ones.

A Corporal rigger poured hot sweet tea for all of them. The enamel cups were chipped and smelled faintly of oil but it was hot and welcome. Digby was still leaning against the wheel and dreaming when he heard the distant voices of Joe for King’s crew. They were standing around the door of their aeroplane arguing.

Their aeroplane smelled new and strange and the ladder still had protective grease on it.

‘Why can’t we have Joe?’ Ben Gallacher said.

‘Ask Himmler,’ said Carter. ‘You’ve asked me ten times. It’s not the fuses, they can’t trace the fault.’

‘What am I, then?’ said Gallacher. ‘Am I the bloody Flight Engineer or the tea-boy? Why aren’t I consulted?’

‘Can’t you get it into your thick head? The kite’s duff. For Christ’s sake stop binding, you’re making me jumpy.’

‘I want to fly in Joe for King,’ said Gallacher.

Collins, the bomb aimer on his last operation, reached into the inside pocket of his battledress blouse and found a piece of chalk. He climbed up two rungs of the ladder and, leaning to one side, he wrote ‘Joe for King’ across the squadron letter. Under that he scribbled just a huge curling moustache.

‘Now you are flying in Joe for King,’ said Tommy Carter, ‘get in and bloody well belt up.’ Gallacher swung round and aimed a punch at his captain. The punch sounded very loud and it was followed by a shocked silence. Tommy didn’t respond at all; he’d taken the blow on his thick harness and it hurt Gallacher’s hand more than Tommy’s chest.

Joe for King’s navigator was Roland Pembroke, a public-school-educated twenty-year-old from Edinburgh. Watching the two men growling at each other he was filled with a despairing horror. The engineer and pilot had never got on well together; Gallacher had failed the pilot’s course and was still jealous of the ones that hadn’t. Tommy, on the other hand, had that exasperating calm rectitude that only policemen display. Roland Pembroke had done everything he could think of to bring the two men closer. He turned to the Corporal rigger and asked in a whisper, ‘Did you get it?’

‘It will be waiting; that bird Cynthia in the Bell is saving me a bottle.’

‘And cups,’ said Roland Pembroke in his soft lowland accent.

‘Glasses,’ said the Corporal. ‘She’s promised to wangle me some glasses.’

‘Great,’ said Roland.

‘And I’ve got sausage rolls too.’

Roland pushed his navigational gear into the door of the plane and heaved a sigh of relief. Tomorrow was Sergeant Carter’s twenty-first birthday and the completion of ‘Tapper’ Collins’ final operation. Roland Pembroke had planned a surprise party right there on the pan so that the ground-staff boys and the crew could celebrate. It had started badly.

‘Ten trips done, twenty to go,’ said Pembroke as he disappeared into the aeroplane, crossing his fingers to stave off danger as he always did.

There are many ways in which the life history of an aircrew can be charted. There would be a simple graph of the odds that an insurance company would offer. The chances on this one began low – the first three trips were five times as dangerous as the average. But as skills and experience mounted so the chances of survival for each trip became better. Another graph, thirty trips with a five-per-cent casualty rate, would be a simple straight line: a mathematical proposition in which each trip held equal danger and the line ended at trip number twenty. There was yet another graph that could be drawn, a morale line charted by psychiatrists. Its curves recorded the effect of stress as men were asked to face repeatedly the mathematical probability of death. This graph – unlike the others – began at the highest point. Granted courage by ignorance and the inhibitory effect that curiosity has upon fear their morale was high for the first five operations, after which the line descended until a crack-up point was reached by the eleventh or twelfth trip. Perhaps it was the relief of surviving the thirteenth operation that made the graph turn upwards after it. Men had seen death at close quarters and were shocked to discover their own fear of it. But recognizing the same shameful fears in the eyes of their friends helped their morale, and after a slight recovery it remained constant until about the twenty-second trip, after which it sloped downwards without recovery.

The eleventh trip was not marked by crews asking to be taken off flying, getting drunk or running sobbing through the Mess. In fact few men asked to be grounded, and their reluctance was fortified by the RAF authorities who would stamp the words ‘lack of moral fibre’ across the man’s documents, strip him of rank and brevet and send him away in disgrace with the bright unfaded blue patch of tunic proclaiming him an officially recognized coward.

No, the eleventh trip was marked by more subtle defensive changes in the crew: a fatalism, a brutalizing, a callousness about the deaths of friends and a marked change in demeanour. Noisy men became quiet and reflective while the shy ones often became clamorous. This was the time at which the case histories of ulcers, deafness, and other stress-induced nervous diseases that were to follow the survivors through their later years, actually began. The crew of Joe for King were on their eleventh trip.

The crew of The Volkswagen, on the other hand, were about to do their first trip. Like a young man with his first sports car they were keen and raring to go. They weren’t tired in the way that Lambert was tired, their reflexes were sharp, their eyesight keen, and their hands itched to prove themselves. Lambert was like a weary old businessman climbing into his family saloon to do a trip that he had done all his working life. He was tired, dulled, slow of reflex, and frightened. And yet, as any insurance company will tell you, it’s the old men in family saloons who pay the least insurance and the kids in new sports cars who die.

Pilot Officer Cornelius Fleming sat at the controls of The Volkswagen and tried to hide his pleasure and excitement. He heard the boys making nervous jokes but he was determined to put on a show of bored indifference for the ground crew. One of the riggers, a gruff-spoken cockney, came into the cockpit with a tin can.

‘Here’s your tin, sir,’ he said.

‘What’s that for?’ said Fleming. He closed his eyes in a mannerism that at medical school had affected concentration.

‘To take a leak,’ said the rigger.

Fleming suspected he was being made the butt of a joke and looked at the man suspiciously.

The rigger grinned. ‘Do you want to put it under the seat?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Fleming and sighed.

‘Suit yourself, guv,’ said the rigger and walked back through the plane. He climbed down on to the ground and threw the can away under the ash trees. That was the trouble with officers, you could never tell them anything. That pansy-faced sprog officer had looked at him like he was offering dirty postcards to a bishop. The only crew here with three officers in it, and he had to be assigned to them. No matter, they wouldn’t last long, the poor sods. Zebra was a real duff kite and no matter about cleaning it up and calling it some foreign name, it was just a matter of time before it fell apart at the seams.

Fleming knew that he’d upset the fellow and he cursed himself for his handling of the business, even if it had been a legpull. Becoming a good skipper was the most difficult thing in the world, and the most desirable. At one time all he’d sought of God was a pilot’s brevet. Then he’d fastened his desire upon a commission. But it was all so difficult; a good skipper must be an expert pilot, a classless gentleman, a democratic commander and, most impossible of all, an intrepid leader who kept his men safe. Always there was this damned class business. That chap would merely have grinned if an NCO had called his bluff about the tin. It was all right for Lambert; these chaps with a gong and a tour behind them could do no wrong in the eyes of their crew.

‘Bertie!’ Fleming called his young Flight Engineer who before meeting Fleming had always been Bert.

‘Sir?’ The boy’s flying gear was too large, so that he looked like a child dressed in his father’s clothes.

‘All OK?’

‘Yeah, all okey dokey, sir.’

‘We’ll follow Lambert out, Bertie.’ The engineer nodded. Okey dokey, thought Fleming, what strange things they say.

Lambert was the first of B Flight to start up. He slid open his window. ‘Clear for starting, Worthy?’ Twenty feet below him the trolley-ac was plugged in and ready.

‘Clear.’

Lambert put his hand out of the window, pointed a finger at the port inner and then turned his thumb upwards. From the tarmac Worthy pointed his left hand at the same engine and revolved his right index finger as though to move the prop with it. Lambert pressed the starter button. There was the pitter-patter of the booster pump and a chuffing noise. Then came the opening bangs of the Merlin, an affront to the still countryside. It caught, and roared. Then the next one started, and the next, until the sound of thirty-two engines echoed back from the trees of The Warrens and the black tin side of the hangar, like a million frantic drummers marching off to war.

Sam Thatcher was awakened by it. He looked at the clock; it was 11.23 PM.

‘They’re off again,’ said his wife.

‘Third time this week,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll have to get some sleeping pills or something.’

But there was an hour before take-off time and as suddenly as they had started the motors cut. Soon the night was quiet except for the muttered curses of men working by the light of torches and the murmured conversation of the crews.

Flash Gordon, the little Nottingham miner, his pockets bulging with confectionery for his brothers and sisters, was looking at his turret. He waited until the last engine cut and the silence was broken only by a few planes of A Flight from the far side of the airfield.

‘You’ve done a good job there,’ said Flash. The Sergeant armourer deserved the praise; it had been more difficult than it looked to remove a section of Perspex from the vision panel of the turret. ‘I won’t be firing at any more oil dribbles and thinking they are Junkers 88s,’ said Flash, and he laughed.

‘Did you ever do that, Flash?’ asked the armourer.

‘Never saw one,’ said Flash. ‘Fifteen trips I’ve done and I’ve never seen a night fighter.’

Binty Jones, the mid-upper gunner, walked past. The armourer called after him. ‘I’ll do your turret next, Binty.’

‘Like bleeding hell, you will. I check my Perspex every day. There’s not a speck or spot anywhere. And if there was, I wouldn’t be such a bloody fool as to fire at it, man.’

‘It was oil dribbles giving the trouble,’ said Flash angrily, ‘not scratches.’

‘I don’t care what it was, you won’t get me in that rear turret again, so don’t come asking me to swap when you get another one of your bloody head-colds, right?’

‘Right,’ Flash shouted after him, ‘I won’t, don’t you worry.’

‘You’ll freeze if your electric suit goes u/s,’ warned the armourer.

‘I’m practically freezing now,’ said Flash.

‘It’s cold tonight,’ the armourer agreed and buttoned his Service overcoat up to the neck and wrapped his home-knitted scarf high around his ears. The motors of the A Flight planes had warmed and been switched off. The airfield was silent. There was nothing to do but wait.

In the aeroplanes men were making secret promises to God, performing superstitious rituals or finding excuses to say heartfelt truths. A fly buzzed drowsily on Tommy Carter’s windscreen.

‘Go home and get some sleep, you stupid bastard,’ said Tommy. ‘You don’t know when you’re well off.’

Lambert placed the doll named Flanagan behind his seat.

‘He won’t see anything from there,’ said Digby. ‘Throw him down here, I’ll put him in the front turret.’

‘He’s seen it all before,’ said Lambert. ‘And he wouldn’t find it hard to break the habit.’

Wing Commander Munro opened the side window to inhale the air. Then he placed his walking-stick under his seat. As his crew had already guessed, that stick was the CO’s lucky charm, although wild horses would never drag the admission from him. Munro looked at the sky and breathed deeply. He noticed that cloud had eaten a piece of the Great Bear and was sniffing at Scorpio. From the trees at Witch Fen an owl hooted loudly.

‘Hear that, sir?’ said Jock Hamilton his navigator.

‘Yes indeed. It’s good luck,’ he added hurriedly. Jock looked at him unconvinced. There was a silence then until he heard a train puffing and rattling northwards. Soon that train would be in Scotland near to his wife and the boy. He would be in Germany. Munro looked at the sky; it still wasn’t quite dark. To the north it was a purplish colour, almost green.

The low that had caused the thunderstorms across Europe turned north as it neared the Swedish coast. The air pressure in the low was equalizing and soon it would die. The Met men were rubbing its Chinagraph image from their maps and marking in the progress of the high that had come marching behind it from the west. This mountain of air already pressed down upon England. Its outer layer slid towards Ireland and Biscay and Norway, where the pressure was less. The descending air became warmer and any clouds in its way evaporated. As it got closer to ground level this descending air brushed against the rotating earth and was deflected clockwise so as to form a gently whirling air mass that measured hundreds of miles across – an anticyclone.

It had brought the light-blue sky and diffused sunset that promised another fine day. But this starry night was cold, for with few clouds to trap the rising heat the ground became chilly underfoot and the airmen slapped their hands against their sides and complained of the long wait.

It was fifteen minutes past midnight, BDST, when the first of the Lancasters moved. Last-minute urination took place before the crews were buttoned into their clothes and settled into the seats they would occupy for several hours. A full bladder, or even worse, wind, could cause pain at high altitudes. Quickly gobbled beans on toast could have a man writhing with pain at a moment when he was most needed. Ponderously the bombers rumbled round the peri track. Some were in a hurry to beat the queue that would form at the southern end of the runway.

As soon as Lambert’s Creaking Door moved, The Volkswagen followed. Fleming kept its tail in view as the planes crawled past the dim blue perimeter lights. What greater disaster could strike them now than that he should put a wheel into the soft-going beyond the lights and hold up the whole Squadron? He touched the brakes as they came to the corner by the Ramsey road. A Hillman van had parked there with its headlights on or else Fleming might well have turned too wide and clipped his wingtip against the fence. Lambert’s tail-light moved again. Some of the other bomb aimers were shining a signalling lamp from the nose to help light the way but Lambert preferred to have his eyes accustomed to the darkness. Each Lancaster announced its arrival at the runway by flashing its code letter to Control. At the answering green light the take-off run commenced and the next plane crawled into position.

Lambert glanced towards the crowd of ground crew that were waving from the edge of the runway. Old hands, young girls, and even the NAAFI women were there. Even when it was raining they came to see the bombers away. Lambert felt grateful to them.

‘Big crowd tonight,’ said Binty.

‘Your harem,’ said Kosh.

‘Ah,’ said Binty.

John Munro had detailed the take-off pattern. Moving from their pans on to the peri track the bombers lined up on both sides of the runway’s end. No sooner had one plane got a green than the next one was signalling its code letter. A bored officer in Flying Control logged each take-off and phoned them to the Operations Room where, on a wall-size blackboard divided into rectangles, was entered each pilot’s name, code letter, take-off time, and time of return. There was also a space for remarks.

Each of the bombers was loaded far beyond peacetime safety limits and getting them into the air was no easy matter. Lambert drove up an invisible ramp as steady as a rock and as perfect as a theorem. Then came Fleming, a slight swerve before unsticking, for this was the first time he’d flown with a full bomb-load.

You could recognize any of Tommy Carter’s take-offs: too much throttle, stick back too early, and undercarriage retracted before he was over Witch Fen. This night he swung badly too. Angry, and new to this factory-fresh aeroplane, he’d applied too much rudder. Halfway down the runway he was already askew, pointing at the Control Tower and travelling too fast to stop before the main road. He knew he was going off the hard runway only when its white marker lights came racing under him like tracer shells. Beyond that there was earth, damned soft earth after last night’s rain. He heaved desperately on the stick with one hand and tried to push the starboard outer’s throttle forward to correct the swing. He felt one wheel plop off the sharp edge of tarmac. Gallacher braced himself against the bulkhead and cursed.

Tommy wasn’t flying the aircraft any longer, he was fighting it.

‘Panic boost,’ he shouted. They might have been his last words except that the propellers hung upon the cold air like fingertips to a crevice. For long seconds he gained no altitude but skimmed the grass with only inches clearing his tyres. Then slowly and dutifully Joe for King the Second sniffed the air.

In the Control Tower the Duty Officer, the Group Captain, and a Flying Control WAAF stood transfixed at the sight of a complex alloy parcel packed with high explosive, phosphorus, fuel, and magnesium being steered directly towards them at a hundred miles an hour. No one moved until the aeroplane roared across the top of the tower, clearing the railing by inches, shaking its foundations and taking an aerial with it.

Tapper Collins always stayed in the nose for take-offs and landings, even though it was against regulations.

‘I saw the bloody bomb aimer,’ whispered the Group Captain, scarcely able to believe it. ‘I saw the bloody bomb aimer’s face.’

And Tapper had seen them too: white petrified staring blobs flashing past not more than thirty feet under him.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Tapper. ‘I thought you’d left something behind.’

‘Bit of a swing,’ explained Tommy.

‘Bit of a swing?’ said Tapper. ‘We’ve got the bleeding Groupie’s hairpiece tangled in the undercart.’

‘You don’t have to bloody sit there,’ snapped Tommy. ‘It was your idea.’

‘I could have touched him,’ said Tapper. ‘Could have reached out and tweaked the silly old blighter’s hooter.’

One after another the giant planes climbed into the darkness and disappeared. The coloured wingtip lights thundered over the misty, alcohol-laden Hillman that Singleton and his girlfriend had borrowed for the evening. They stopped cuddling until the last plane – Munro’s own D for Dog – took off. As the sound of it faded away the countryside became silent.

‘It’s funny when the planes are away. It’s sort of lonely,’ said the girl.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. You get used to those big planes everywhere you look. Last month when they were all diverted to Yorkshire because of the fog it seemed funny to see the aerodrome in daylight all empty. And there was hardly anyone around in the sections either.’

‘I wouldn’t mind them being diverted for a few days. It’d make my life a bit easier, I’ll tell you,’ said Singleton.

‘I wonder if they’ll all come back,’ said the girl.

‘It’s a gamble, isn’t it?’

‘They’ve been lucky lately.’

‘Able bought it last week, U Uncle the week before, and that Flight Sergeant Lambert brought back a dead navigator three trips ago.’

‘I’m glad you ain’t in one of ’em, Bert.’

‘I could have been a gunner, but my feet let me down.’

‘I couldn’t bear it, Bert. Give me another kiss.’

They kissed for a few minutes then Singleton said, ‘Were you frightened tonight?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Go on, you were.’

‘A bit.’

‘It’s exciting, isn’t it, knowing you might get nicked. But I spend it too easy, that’s my trouble.’

The girl laughed.

‘You know what I’d like to do one night. Now this might surprise you, Beryl. I’d like to get hold of some tyres or petrol. That’s where the real money is.’

‘Or booze,’ said the girl.

‘You would think that, because you have no experience of crime,’ said the Mess waiter. ‘Booze is locked up and counted. Only a mug goes after booze.’

‘Whatever you say, Bert.’

‘I told you I was a villain, didn’t I?’ he warned. ‘Don’t keep giggling, Beryl.’

The girl was tempted to tell him how many times she had been in trouble with the law and of the final house-breaking escapade that had sent her to Borstal, but wisely she smiled and said nothing.

Lambert knew the way from Warley to the coastal assembly points as he did the one from his billet to the Mess. Usually he flew straight to the assembly point using a course based upon the Met man’s estimate of the wind. Cohen then faked in the Gee fixes from that point back to Warley. From there onwards Cohen did real Gee fixes. Tonight Lambert knew the wind was wrong from the moment he was airborne and he steered well to the south, allowing the wind to push him on to the track he required. ‘Southwold,’ announced Digby. He was lying in the nose of the plane looking down through the transparent bowl.

‘OK,’ said Cohen, who knew he was talking to him. This was the way they always did it.

Cohen took a fix from the Gee radar and marked the time at Southwold on his plotting map. ‘There’s quite a wind, Skipper,’ he said.

‘We’ll see,’ said Lambert. ‘When we’ve got a bit of height we’ll have a better idea. The high winds may be different.’

‘Permission to test guns?’ asked Binty.

‘Yes, both of you,’ said Lambert, knowing that Flash would ask immediately after. Digby tested his nose guns too. The sound of the guns rattled along the metal fuselage and from Digby’s turret at the front there was a smell of cordite and scorching oil. Tracer sprayed in a gentle curve and splashed down into the sea.

Today’s pressurized, high-speed, high-altitude, jet-propelled traveller might find it hard to imagine the very different experience that flying was to these men. The whole aeroplane rattled and vibrated with the power of the piston engines. The instruments shuddered and the figures on them blurred. Oxygen masks were mandatory and they needed microphones and earphones to even converse. At these altitudes their power-weight ratios made these planes very vulnerable to the condition of the air through which they flew. Although now, in the cool of night, the aircraft was steadier than it had been in the heated turbulence of afternoon, the air was still full of surprises. They hit hard walls of it and dropped sickeningly into deep pockets. They bucketed, rolled, and yawed constantly. Their degree of stability depended as much upon the pilot’s strength as upon his skill, for the controls were not power-assisted and it required all of a man’s energy to heave the control surfaces into the airstream. And all the time there was the vibration that hammered the temples, shook the teeth and played a tattoo upon the spine, so that even after an uneventful flight the crew were whipped into a condition of advanced fatigue.

Digby sat down next to Cohen. He had his own gadget, the H2S radar set, to operate. It looked down at the world below and gave an X-ray picture which distinguished between woodland, water, and houses. Often the set went wrong and even at its best the picture bore only a messy resemblance to a map. Cohen had warmed the set and they both watched the dull green screen.

‘What do you know? It works,’ said Digby.

Cohen pushed his map case to the back of the plotting-table and stood it on end. That obscured the neat metal patch. Flight Sergeant Worthington’s riggers had riveted it over the jagged shrapnel hole. Through that had come the splinter that had entered a navigator’s lung and killed him in this very seat four trips ago.

‘Don’t do that, sport,’ said Digby. He pushed the map case aside. The little adjustable desk lamp hit the new metal at an angle that made it shine like a glass eye. ‘I like to see that,’ said Digby. ‘I figure that lightning don’t strike twice. You and me have got the safest seat in the kite here.’

Cohen looked at the metal plate and felt better about it.

‘Is everybody happy?’ asked Lambert.

To the tune of Abdul the Bulbul-Amir Flash Gordon in the rear turret sang tunelessly:

‘Just an old-fashioned Avro with old-fashioned wings

And a fabric all tattered and torn

She’s got old-fashioned Merlins all tied up with strings

And a heater that never gets warm.

But she’s quite safe and sound, ’cos it won’t leave the ground

And the crew are afraid of the chop.

One day we will try to see if she’ll fly

While Mother looks after the shop.’

Flash waited for a word of appreciation or applause, but none came. Binty said, ‘Man, is yo’ jes’ crazy wid rhythm.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Flash.

‘When you’ve all finished singing and chatting,’ said Lambert, ‘perhaps I could say a word.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Digby. ‘It’s my proud pleasure to introduce to you the captain of our aircraft, your genial host and raconteur, who has given up his eighty-first birthday to be with us here tonight. Gentlemen, your friend and mine, Flight Sergeant Samuel Lambert, DFM.’

‘Now let’s get ourselves organized,’ said Lambert.

‘For a change,’ said Jimmy Grimm.

‘For a change,’ agreed Lambert.

Jimmy Grimm tuned his radio carefully. ‘They’ve given us new winds, Skip. Do you want them?’

‘Give them to Kosh,’ said Lambert.

They flew higher and higher and for every thousand feet they gained the temperature dropped two and a half degrees centigrade. The crew buttoned themselves into their suits or moved closer to the hot-air blowers. At 8,000 feet they began to breathe the oxygen that they had brought with them. Lambert continued to climb. They entered a cloud bank. There is as yet no way to discover if ice awaits you in a cloud, except to fly into it with your fingers crossed. This cloud seemed unending. The cold chilled the aeroplane to its marrow and slowed its circulation. Door’s port outer coughed not once but twice and then didn’t fully recover.

‘Fuel flow?’

‘OK,’ said Battersby.

‘Give it some fully rich.’

‘I have already.’

‘Good boy.’

The motor, appreciative of its luxury diet, roared into full power.

‘Carburettor icing.’

‘Temperature looks OK now.’

‘We’ll be out of it in a moment.’ Lambert put the aircraft into a steeper climb and Battersby adjusted the engines to give him more power.

‘I hate cloud,’ confided Lambert.

It pressed against the windows and made the cabin even darker than before. Battersby fussed over his instruments and was anxious to prove his expertise to Lambert. The engines had only just begun to unsynchronize when Battersby reported, ‘Pressures and temperatures look all right.’ The motor began a weary drone.

‘Do you know why it’s doing that?’

‘Oil getting too cold and stiffening the pitch control?’

Lambert nodded and said, ‘Can you synch them again?’

Battersby waggled his fingertips upon the levers. After choosing the wrong motor and then overcorrecting he finally had the engines back into their regular harmonized roar.

‘Bang on,’ said Lambert. ‘Micky just can’t get the hang of that.’ Battersby had never felt so proud of himself.

One by one the stars pricked the roof of the cabin and they were above the cloud. Lambert’s controls had become slack and mushy now, for Creaking Door had reached its normal ceiling and no amount of pulling on the stick would make it climb higher. This was the stage of the journey where Lambert employed a technique that an old-timer had told him about, way back when he was flying Whitleys. By suddenly lowering the flaps fifteen degrees while flying at cruising speed, Lambert and Battersby caused the aeroplane to hit a wall of air. It shuddered with the impact and the whole aeroplane leaped 200 feet higher. Each time it did this it held its new altitude. By this method Lambert could add over 1,000 feet of height to his ceiling. The first of a series of spine-jarring thumps ran through the aircraft. ‘We’re going up the steps,’ said Lambert. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

Flight Lieutenant Sweet stared out into the night. Beneath him he saw a tiny rectangle of flare path and guessed there was another squadron climbing to join the stream. He had above-average night vision and usually saw pinpoints before the bomb aimer saw them. There were no other aeroplanes in sight. It was odd that no matter what methods of timing were used to pack the bomber stream as tight as possible, the sky was still so immense that he sometimes did a whole trip without catching sight of another aeroplane. He supposed that fellows with below-average night vision went whole tours without seeing anything.

Ahead of him the front turret moved gently from left to right.

‘Bomb aimer. Don’t keep fidgeting about with that turret.’

‘I’m searching, sir. That’s orders.’

‘Then swivel your neck.’ Sweet’s voice rose a tone.

‘I’m keeping the hydraulic fluid warm, sir.’

‘Must you always argue, Spekey?’ Sweet made it into a joke; placatingly he added, ‘Keep still, there’s a good chap.’

‘Pip’ Speke, an eighteen-year-old with a big black moustache and a reputation as a lucky gambler, ducked out of the turret and got down on the floor behind his bomb-sight. Most crews had Sergeant pilots and some crews stuck together. Some went off boozing as a crew. Some had decent officers even. The easiest way for any of those lucky ones to make Sergeant Speke lose his temper was to tell him how fortunate he was to fly with such a fun-loving good sort as that modest Flight Lieutenant Sweet, DFC.

‘Navigator,’ said Sweet, ‘how many miles to the coast?’

‘About ten,’ said the navigator.

‘Let’s not have too many “abouts” tonight, eh, Billy-boy,’ said Sweet. ‘Bomb aimer, let me know when you see the coastline.’

‘OK.’

Sweet looked down. The countryside was dark but in spite of the blackout the faint shape of towns could be discerned. ‘Navigator,’ said Sweet, ‘I can see Lowestoft below us. We’re off course.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’

‘Am I sure, sir? Yes, I am sure, sir. Beyond it I can see a bit of a glim from Yarmouth. We’re at least ten miles north of our track.’

There was a short silence while the navigator calculated their position on the Gee. ‘Steer 120 degrees,’ said the navigator. ‘The winds are wonky.’

‘That’s just a correction. I want to join the stream at the assembly area over Southwold.’

‘In that case, sir, turn almost due south, let’s say 160 degrees.’

‘That’s more like it, old son.’ Sweet realized he had upset the navigator and upsetting people was a luxury he seldom indulged in. ‘This is the Flight commander’s aeroplane, chaps. We must do things by the book. It’s stupid, I know, but if we start cutting corners the other crews will do it.’

Sweet flew south humming to himself. Suddenly he said, ‘Did I tell you the story about the WAAF officer and the sergeant? …’

‘English coastline coming up, sir,’ said Pip Speke. Now it was possible to see how good Britain’s blackout was, for beyond the coast the world below them was truly dark.