Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  5

  “As it’s your birthday,” Tom Stuart said, “we’ve decided to let you bomb Germany.”

  “It’s not my birthday, sir,” Langham said.

  “Oh dear. Air Chief-Marshal Ludlow-Hewitt, C-in-C Bomber Command, has blundered again. Whatever shall we do?”

  “My mistake, sir. Of course it’s my birthday.”

  “Hallelujah. The Hun has had the gall to bomb British soil. You may have read about it while you were looking for Jane in the Daily Mirror. Attacked our ships in Scapa Flow, missed, blew holes in the Orkney Islands. Also, unfortunately, in one civilian, now dead. The Roosevelt Rules are suspended while we visit the island of Sylt, which is the closest German equivalent to Scapa, and destroy the seaplane base at Hornum, which has no civilians. This will teach the Hun a lesson while showing the Yanks what decent chaps we are. Full bombload—incendiaries and HE—and before you ask, the answer is no, there will be no Long Delay pistols on the HE.”

  Langham nodded gratefully. “I know he’s gone to wherever it is that armorers go,” he said, “but I miss the bastard. Silly, isn’t it?”

  Stuart led a mixed formation from “A” and “B” Flights. They couldn’t fail to find Sylt: it was the last German island before Denmark. No blackout in Denmark. In any case, thirty Whitley bombers had been given first crack at Hornum, followed by twenty Hampdens, so the place was very excited. A score of searchlights carved up the night, flak erupted all around, colored tracer spiraled and bent, incendiaries twinkled on the ground, HE went off like little flashbulbs. Yet, apart from an occasional dull bok-bok, the only sound was the engines. Interesting.

  The Air Ministry told the BBC and the BBC told the world that, in the biggest operation of the war so far, Bomber Command had knocked seven bells out of Hornum. The following day, Germany’s Propaganda Ministry flew a bunch of American journalists to Sylt, and they reported that Hornum was largely intact. Germany Calling, the English-language radio channel, made the most of this.

  “Showed the Yanks the wrong island!” Rafferty scoffed. “That neck of the woods is stiff with Hun islands. Damn-fool reporters got bamboozled.”

  “We dropped twenty tons of high explosive and twelve hundred incendiaries,” Bins said. “They can’t all have missed.”

  “Pity it wasn’t Berlin,” the Wingco said, “I’d like to see Mr. Goebbels get out of that.”

  “At least he knows the eagle has teeth,” Rafferty growled.

  The MO opened his mouth and then closed it. The group captain noticed. “Yes?” he said.

  “Oh … I just wanted to mention the gunner in P-Peter, sir. LAC Davis. He took some shrapnel in the face. Lost an eye, I’m afraid.”

  For a long moment Rafferty didn’t move, didn’t blink, stared at the MO but pictured instead the gunner searching the night sky over Sylt until the last image one eye would ever see was the shellburst that destroyed it. How horrible. What courage. “Take me to him,” he said.

  6

  Immediately after the Hornum raid, 409 was again placed on standby, with all aircraft fueled and bombed up. This kind of flap was becoming very common. “It’s spring,” Bins explained to Jonty Brown. “Lambs gambol and warriors gamble. That’s a play on words. You wouldn’t understand, being a Rhodesian.”

  “It’s not spring in Rhodesia. It’s autumn. You wouldn’t understand, being a penguin.” A penguin was anyone with wings who didn’t fly.

  The flap lasted twenty-four hours. It was afternoon when 409 was stood down and Langham drove home. Zoë had read what the newspapers said about Hornum. “Did you go on this beano?” she asked. “How thrilling. What was it really like?”

  “Hard to say, dear. Couldn’t see much, because the searchlights were rather blinding. Then we dropped some parachute flares and they made it even worse. Dazzling.”

  “The Daily Express says you delivered a knockout blow.”

  “Do they? Awfully sweet of them.” He yawned. “Sorry. I’ve been up all night. Can we go to bed, d’you think?”

  “And Mr. Chamberlain says that Hitler has missed the bus.”

  “So I heard. I can’t honestly see the Fuehrer traveling by bus, can you? Not his style.”

  “But if there’s a sort of ceasefire or something, you could get transferred, darling, couldn’t you? Lots of aerodromes are on the edge of London and—”

  “Let’s talk about it later. Bed calls.” He made for the stairs, and stopped. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Sleep, darling, sleep. Get your strength back.” That had never happened before.

  It was night when he woke. Below, people were talking. Zoë laughed. He pulled on trousers and a sweater and clumped downstairs, feeling thick in the head and sticky in the mouth. “What’s up?” he said.

  She was playing cards with a man who looked thoroughly at home. He had more curly sandy hair than the RAF would allow, sky-blue eyes, freckled forehead, generous lower lip. Aged under thirty. No jacket. Checked shirt open at the neck, revealing more curly sandy hair. Shoulders like a wrestler. Hands like pianist. Smile like a villain. Was that Shakespeare? Sounded like him.

  “Darling, this is Flemming Vansittart. He’s teaching me bridge.”

  They shook hands. The man had a grip like a blacksmith. So much for the pianist idea. “She shows great promise,” Vansittart said.

  “Promise, promise. Sit down, please. Promise. Yes, I remember. She promised me something once.” Langham warmed his backside at the fire. “Probably forgotten it by now.” He wasn’t making much sense and he didn’t care. It was his house, he could say what he bloody well liked.

  “You need a drink, my sweet. Flemming’s from Holland.”

  “Dutch! Your lot keep trying to kill me. With shells. Sodding great anti-aircraft shells. Not very nice, is it?”

  Vansittart spread his arms in apology. “I live here now. This part of England is similar to Holland, so I advise landowners. I’m an expert on reclamation.”

  “I bet you are,” Langham said vigorously. “Moment I laid eyes on you, I said to myself, look out, there’s a bloke doing a bit of reclamation.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling.” She gave him a large gin. “Drink up your nice medicine and you won’t be so grouchy.”

  “We’re going out to dinner,” he told Vansittart. “Soon as I get some shoes on. Pity you can’t come, but you can’t.”

  “No we’re not. Flemming brought some lovely steaks, so he’s staying for supper.”

  “You’d better cook ’em too,” Langham told him. “She’s a disaster in the kitchen and I’m too pissed. Good cook, are you?”

  “How else could I survive in this country?” he said happily. Langham began to feel defeated. “This gin is flat,” he complained, and drank more. “Flat as bloody Holland.”

  Vansittart turned out to be a very good cook. He was also amusing and interesting about his travels in exotic parts. Langham reacted by addressing him formally. “Look here, Mr. Vansittart,” he began.

  “Please: call me Flemming.”

  “If you insist. Got a better idea. Call you Flem, for short. Okay, Flem? Good old Anglo-Saxon word, Flem.” After that he said Flem every time he spoke. The Dutchman did not seem offended. Nothing upset him. Nothing disturbed his flow of conversation. He had a habit, when he wished to make a point, of reaching toward Zoë as if to gently tap her arm, yet never quite touching her. Once he turned to Langham and did briefly squeeze his wrist, for emphasis. The wrist tingled long after.

  Vansittart embraced Zoë when he said goodbye. Langham escorted him to his car. “A most enjoyable evening,” Vansittart said. “Thanks for the steaks,” Langham said, “and stay away from my wife or I’ll break your neck.”

  Even that didn’t disturb him. “I think you have misread the situation,” he said. “Your charming wife has absolutely no sexual interest in me nor I in her. You, however, are a different cup of tea.” He got into his car. “You appeal to me enormously.” The same half-moon that shone on Sylt now shone on his s
mile. Langham’s pulse leaped twenty points. He slammed the car door. As the car pulled away he kicked the rear wing.

  Zoë was in the bathroom. “You rather overdid the Flem joke, darling. I mean to say, it’s not a very pleasant word, is it?” She began brushing her teeth.

  “He’s as queer as a coot. Did you know that?”

  She didn’t hurry. Brushed every tooth. Rinsed the basin.

  “Of course I did. Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me. How could you tell?”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Come to bed, darling.”

  “No, I think I’ll read the papers. You get your sleep, dear. Get your strength back.” He went downstairs, telling himself: Two can play at that game, missy.

  They didn’t talk about it next day. They lunched at Bardney Castle and drove to Lincoln and did some shopping. She bought him a pair of dark glasses, silver frames, very lightweight, to baffle the German searchlights. He bought her a little porcelain boxer dog, its muzzle on its paws, half-asleep. It delighted her; she had never had a pet, she said. They went to the pictures: Errol Flynn and Flora Robson in The Sea Hawk; ate a quick supper in a restaurant; drove home and went straight to bed. This time there was no need for invitations.

  “Goodness,” she said. “That should be enough for one small baby. I thought you would never stop.” He smirked in the darkness. Normal service had resumed.

  DUTY, GENTLEMEN!

  1

  April 1940 was a busy month at Kindrick.

  It began with a Tannoy message that crackled and droned throughout the camp as men walked to breakfast. “Attention. All code-letters for aircraft have been changed in order to improve communications with the French Air Force. With immediate effect, A-Able is changed to A-Ingénieux and B-Baker to B-Boulanger. C-Charlie has been deleted. D-Dog is now D-Chien. E-Easy is E-Facile, et cetera. A full list is being circulated. Anyone requiring assistance with French pronunciation, report to the Orderly Room.”

  It was the first of April. The adjutant was only mildly amused. “Dafter things than that are going to happen before this war is over,” he told Bins as they sat down to porridge and kippers.

  “You can’t stop progress,” Bins said. He had no time for practical jokes. He was more interested in the Times crossword.

  The adjutant considered trying to find out who the joker was and decided he had better things to do. There was the problem of Black Mac’s Bentley. McHarg had left no will, and he had no next of kin. The safe thing would be to hand it over to some gloomy department of the Air Ministry. Rafferty disagreed. “They don’t know it exists. What they don’t know can’t harm them. Raffle the beast.”

  “Risky, sir. Suppose some bolshy erk wins it? One minute he’s sweeping out the hangars, next minute he’s driving to the Naafi and half the camp’s saluting him.”

  “Good point. Officers only, then.”

  Rafferty won the raffle. “Bugger,” he said and donated the Bentley to 409, to replace the crew wagon. Silk refused to use the Bentley. “It brought me nothing but trouble,” he said, “and look what happened to Black Mac. I’d sooner walk.”

  “Superstition,” Langham said. “You surprise me, Silko, an educated twerp like you. That Bentley’s perfectly safe, as long as you remember to walk nine times around it backward and spit on the tires.”

  “It’s bad luck,” Silk insisted.

  The first two crews to be taken to their Hampdens by Bentley were on Nickel ops. The Met man’s predictions turned sour, and fog covered much of Europe. One crew made a forced landing in Holland, thinking it was Kent, and got interned. The other crew, short of fuel, bailed out over a mountainous corner of Lorraine and were lucky to end up in a French hospital. “Double bugger,” Rafferty said. It didn’t make him feel any better, and it didn’t solve the problems of navigation over Europe in foul weather.

  On the other hand, losses were good for promotion. Rafferty and Hunt recognized leadership when they saw it. Before long, Pug Duff was a flight lieutenant.

  2

  The Phoney War seemed to be over on April 9, 1940, when Germany overran Denmark and captured the main Norwegian ports and airfields, including Oslo. Allied forces hurried across the North Sea to fight for Norway. 409 Squadron rejoiced. It had been a long winter: months of training, and then the grind of Nickels, stooging around Germany for the doubtful pleasure of bombarding the enemy with paper. Now he had replied with high explosive, so at last there was the prospect of Bomber Command being turned loose to do the job it was designed for, and actually bombing something on land, anything, just as long as it blew up and hurt the Hun. 409 couldn’t wait to do its stuff.

  And then Bins told them that the Phoney War was not entirely dead, except in Norway. Elsewhere in Europe, the Roosevelt Rules still applied. No bombs on the enemy mainland, where civilians might get hurt.

  However, the German army was shipping men and supplies from Kiel to Oslo as fast as it could. That part of the Baltic, Bins pointed out, is rather cramped. Ships had to pass through narrow channels between the large islands of Denmark. So 409 would drop magnetic mines in those channels.

  As usual, the group captain ended the briefing with words of encouragement. “Minelaying has been codenamed Gardening. Mines are Vegetables, very special weapons, very secret. Hitler must not get his sweaty hands on a Vegetable. If you can’t drop it, or fly home with it, then crash the kite. No half-measures. Point your bomber at the nearest mountain, open the throttles, bale out, and wait for an extremely large explosion as you float down. Duty, gentlemen! Duty.”

  At first, Gardening was a pleasant eight-hour trip. Sometimes a crew would go to the pictures in Lincoln, get fish and chips, return to Kindrick, take off before midnight and be back with the dawn for a good breakfast. After a week, Bins had good news: four German troopships had struck mines and sunk with devastating loss of life. 409 liked that. However, nothing is static in war, and German flak ships appeared in the Channels. Bins constantly stressed the importance of accuracy when Gardening. First the pilot must find a landmark and make a long, straight, timed run, quite slowly, letting the airplane sink gently to about two hundred feet, the navigator counting down the seconds to the precise spot. The mines fall and make silent splashes, white on black. The navigator makes a note in his log. The pilot opens the throttles and begins to climb. That was the standard procedure and that was what Happy Hall did. A flak ship blinded him with searchlights and boxed him with shellfire and sprayed him with tracer and turned the Hampden into blazing scrap in ten seconds. In twenty seconds the Baltic had received the remains and quenched the fire. The searchlight died.

  At first the bomber was overdue; then missing. “Sitting in their dinghy, I expect,” Pixie Hunt said. “Who knows?” Germany Calling claimed to know. The announcer—already famous as Lord Haw-Haw—stated in his bogus upper-class drawl that the German navy had destroyed a Hampden bomber. “Easily said,” Hunt grunted. Later, Lord Haw-Haw gave the serial number of the bomber, found on wreckage floating in the Baltic. “Gentlemen of the RAF stationed at Kindrick in Lincolnshire should not trespass in German waters,” he added. Hunt had nothing to say about that.

  The next day, Langham drove home through a perfect, placid, warm English spring morning. The top of the Frazer-Nash was down. Healthy country smells blew in and out of the car. His backside still ached, his eyes itched and wouldn’t stop blinking, his mouth remembered the taste of oxygen, and he was happy to be alive. A rabbit fled ahead, and he touched the brakes until it found safety in a hole in the hedge. Well done, bunny.

  Zoë came out to meet him. “Look,” she said. Their apple tree was in blossom.

  “What a clever girl you are.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders and examined his face. The impressions left by his helmet and oxygen mask were very faint but she knew where to look. “Did you have a good night at the office, darling?”

  “Usual routine, sweetie. Took off, stooged about, landed.”

  It was what th
ey always said.

  He sat at the garden table and ate an enormous breakfast: eggs, bacon, mushrooms, fried potatoes, pork sausagemeat, racks of toast, coffee in a half-pint tankard. She snacked from his plate and told him the local gossip. He smiled and nodded. Part of his mind was still five hundred miles away, near the Danish port of Middelfart, good for a laugh at briefing but no joke when D-Dog broke cloud at six hundred feet and the rain was so heavy that Jonty Brown couldn’t tell if they were over land or water. The flak batteries didn’t hesitate. They splattered the night with red and yellow shellbursts. Jonty saw gun-flashes reflected in water. “There’s the channel!” he shouted. “Not bloody likely,” Langham said. His right hand opened the throttles as his left hand hauled back the stick. D-Dog raised her nose and climbed through the scattered fragments of a dying shellburst. The turmoil of air rocked the wings and shrapnel punched ragged holes in the cockpit Perspex. Rain howled past observer and pilot. Then D-Dog was back in the clouds. Eventually Jonty found an unguarded stretch of channel, they dropped their mines and flew home, sometimes in drenching rain, sometimes above the weather where the air was arctic and ice formed inside the cockpit. Always Langham was sitting in a raging gale.

  And now here he was, drowsy in the sunlight, tossing bits of toast for sparrows brave enough to swoop on the table, and admiring his wife’s splendid legs while he wished his left arm would stop twitching. He put his left hand in his pocket and told it to behave. Zoë was talking about a clever seamstress who was making her some heavenly tweed slacks for the country.

  “What’s wrong with your jodhpurs?”

  “Everyone’s wearing jodhpurs, darling. And they don’t suit everyone. Haven’t you noticed?”

  His fingers found a spiky lump of metal in his pocket and he took it out. “I thought you might like to have this. Sort of keepsake.” She fingered it and made a face. “Just shrapnel,” he said. “Found it on the floor of the cockpit when we landed.”