Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  At Coney Garth, D-Dog was the last Wimpy to return. Bins asked the usual questions and was relieved when Silk seemed to agree that they had bombed Bremen. “Did you definitely hit the target?” he asked. Silk said: “We did better than that. We hit two breweries and the naval officers’ brothel.” Everyone laughed. Even Bins smiled as he wrote: Target definitely hit. “Damned good show,” Rafferty said.

  He waited up until it was impossible for Q-Queenie to be in the air. No distress signal. No reports from other airfields. Nothing from the Observer Corps. “Let’s turn in.” he said to Bellamy.

  “Yes, sir. Just as well Mr. Blazer didn’t go with Lomas, isn’t it? The chaps are becoming a bit leery of this film business. They think Blazer’s turning into a Jonah.”

  “Superstition,” Rafferty said. “It’s as bad as fact.” He went to bed.

  5

  Kate slept poorly, worried about Rollo. She wasted her anxiety. Late in the morning she got a message: Rollo was awake and insisting on seeing her. She found him sitting up in bed, eating scrambled white of egg and drinking sweet tea from a pint mug. “What have I missed?” he asked.

  “My God, you look awful. You look as if you’ve risen from the grave on a wet Wednesday in Stepney”

  “Do I? Well, I’ve risen, that’s the main thing.” There was nothing in his voice but faint impatience. “Come on, what have I missed?”

  “Not a damn thing. The squadron got the day off today, so the crews are out playing cricket, and I’ve washed my hair.” She said nothing about the Bremen raid. No point in upsetting him.

  “Q-Queenie,” he said. “Got the chop, didn’t she?” His flat voice made it sound even worse.

  “For God’s sake.” Kate was angry, and she walked away from him. “You knew what you missed, so why ask?”

  “Skull told me.”

  “Of course he did. Intelligence knows everything.”

  “The MO told Skull.”

  “All in a day’s work,” she said. “Just another crew gone west. I’m beginning to hate this job.”

  Rollo was eating steadily, and watching her. “Can’t quit now,” he said. “Think of the première.”

  “Yeah. Rollo’s not dead, so it’s all very funny” She went out.

  “Be ready tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll be in action.”

  He was wrong. He recovered his strength remarkably quickly, but the MO made him stay in Sick Quarters for another day. Even so, he didn’t miss anything. In the morning, 409 was on standby for Gardening at Rotterdam; then the target was changed to Brest; and at four p.m. the whole operation was scrubbed. Much waiting; no trade. There were many days like that.

  Silk went to his room and wrote a note to Zoë which turned into a very long letter. He re-read the pages and despaired. What a lot of cock. The jokes were obvious, the emotions were cheap, and self-pity leaked between the lines. It was lust disguised as sentimentality. He tore the letter into small pieces, threw them into a waste basket, distrusted his batman and flushed the bits down the toilet.

  He slept for an hour and took a shower. The evening looked beautiful. He saw vast, unlimited quantities of clean air and a honey-colored sky getting ready to perform its grand finale, the stunning sunset. He skipped dinner and went for a walk with his golf club around the perimeter track. He reached the dispersal bays and he was halfway through his usual game, which involved chipping the ball over each Wimpy in turn, when Pug Duff drove by and stopped. “Get in!” he shouted.

  Silk played his shot and walked over to the car. “British Museum, cabby,” he said, “and drive like the wind.” He got in.

  They went to the furthest corner of the field. “Finest mushrooms in Suffolk,” Duff said. The grass was thickly dotted with them, as white as plates. “You’re lucky I got enough bacon for two.”

  He had also brought a Primus stove, a frying pan, six sausages, half a loaf, and four bottles of beer. They cooked the bacon and sausages, and fried the mushrooms in the fat. By now it was dusk. Swallows zigzagged overhead, making flying look easy. Duff dragged the back seat from the car and they sat and ate out of the frying pan.

  “Do you often do this?” Silk asked.

  “Only when I can’t stand the sight of the bloody squadron any longer.”

  “I never expected you to make Wingco, Pug. Not with those puny little legs of yours. How can you kick people up the ass?”

  “I take a running jump. And since we’re opening our hearts, I never thought I’d find you in the awkward squad. Everybody’s out of step except our Silko, isn’t that right?”

  Silk drank some beer, and wiped his lips.

  “You make life bloody difficult for me,” Duff said. “It’s hellish hard work trying to boost morale when you come back and tell everyone the squadron just bombed Zurich.”

  “I would never say that. I might say we missed Zurich.”

  “Morale is crucial. And you keep chipping away at it.”

  “Listen …” Silk eased his backside. “Night after night, op after op, crews tell Bins and Skull, yes, they found the target and yes, they hit the target. You know that’s not always true.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And the crews know it. They know who the bullshit-merchants are. How many Wimpys completely miss the target? Ten percent? Twenty? Thirty?”

  “No, no,” Duff said. “That’s incompatible with good morale. If my crews start to think their efforts are wasted, they’ll stop trying. Confidence and efficiency go hand in hand. Determination is half the battle.”

  “Jesus,” Silk said. “You sound like Henry the Fifth on Benzedrine.”

  “Never mind what I sound like. These chaps have got to believe in success before they can succeed. Don’t you see that?”

  “You’ve got a lousy job, Pug.” Silk ate the last fried mushroom. “It’s got so you wouldn’t know the truth if it took its clothes off and got into bed with you. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “I dreamt about Sergeant Felicity Parks last night,” Duff said. “What a stunner. D’you think she’d marry me?”

  “I dreamt about her, too. After what she and I got up to, I don’t think you’d want her, Pug.”

  They talked until darkness. As they drove back to their quarters, a fog was beginning to creep across the field. That explained the scrub. Sometimes Group got things right.

  BLAST WAVES

  1

  The MO told Rollo he was discharged, and gave him a small packet of pills. “Benzedrine,” he said. “Only if you go on ops, and then don’t take more than one. Are you familiar with this stuff?”

  “Vaguely.”

  The MO smiled: a rare sight. “Vague is not the word I’d choose. Benzedrine will make you so alert that you will amaze yourself with your sheer, staggering brilliance. Don’t take Benzedrine lightly. Or vaguely.”

  Rollo emerged into the beginnings of a full-scale flap. After days of stand-downs and scrubs, ops were on again. Group wanted 409 to make a maximum effort. An attack by an entire squadron was rare. The Wingco decided to go on this one. Gilchrist was on leave, so he took over C-Charlie. Then his phone rang for the fiftieth time and he learned that Mr. Blazer was now fit to fly. Duff was pleased: a full squadron op, led by the CO! Just the occasion to be preserved on film for a grateful posterity. Always assuming any posterity would be left when this noisy carnage was over. He called Bellamy. “Find a kite for Blazer,” he said. “You know the drill. No plug-uglies, no stutterers, no maniacs.”

  Bellamy had plenty of more important things to do. He ran through the list of pilots and eliminated most. He went to the remainder and tried to find a volunteer. He didn’t expect any great enthusiasm and he didn’t get any. As soon as a pilot said, “Personally, I’ve got nothing against the chap …” Bellamy knew what was coming: the other crew members thought Blazer would jinx the trip. Look what had happened to Polly Lomas. Bellamy was running out of names and hope when he saw Silk. “My crew all think he’s a Jonah,” Silk said, “but I don’t gi
ve a toss what they think. I’ll take him.”

  “Good. Fine.” Bellamy looked him in the eyes and saw a kind of battered tranquility that worried him. “No tricks, Silko. No jokes.”

  “I was never more serious in my life,” Silk told him. “As they say in the films.”

  They found Rollo in the Mess, ordering a beer. “Forget that,” Bellamy said. “No alcohol before ops. I’ve got you a place in D-Dog tonight.”

  Rollo’s stomach muscles clenched. “Lucky me,” he said. He had persuaded himself that he was brave, but now they were rushing him into it and he knew he was frightened of flying. His mouth seemed to be full of saliva. Even his body was betraying him.

  “Grab your hat,” Silk said. “We’re doing an NFT.”

  “Haven’t got a hat.” Rollo looked around for rescue.

  “Night-Flying Test,” Bellamy said.

  “I know what it means.” They outnumbered him.

  “D’you want a parachute?” Silk asked. “If it doesn’t work, you take it back and they give you another.” He gently steered Rollo out of the room. “Very old joke, that. Past its best.”

  Half an hour later, Rollo was sitting behind the main spar, sweating inside his flying clobber, looking at D-Dog shaking as if it was as frightened as he was. The front gunner was sitting beside him, reading a paperback western. Half its cover had been torn off. All that Rollo could see of the title was Gulch. It was like the inside of this Wimpy: slapdash, disorderly, cluttered. Everywhere he looked, bits of equipment were fixed to the sides and the roof. Behind them ran cables, tubes, wires. Even ropes. What were ropes doing in a bomber? The engines went from a roar to a howl. Rollo went from a sitting to a fetal position, hugged his parachute, closed his eyes. He knew D-Dog was moving. By closing his eyes really tightly and curling his toes, he was helping to keep the airplane in one piece. Forget it. Wasted effort. D-Dog was too heavy to take off. He opened his eyes. The bumps got harder. The gunner turned a page. Rollo started counting the seconds. He was going to die, so he was entitled to know exactly how long he’d lived. Then the awful thumping bouncing stopped, the engine note sweetened, and he realized that, for the first time in his life, he was flying.

  Soon, the gunner stuffed his book in a pocket and went forward.

  Rollo felt proud and ashamed at the same time: proud because he had conquered flight, and ashamed because he knew he should have done it long ago. Kate was right. This was the guts of the film. The rest was just trimmings. D-Dog was the hero. It was up to him to capture the courage.

  He climbed over the main spar and stood behind the pilots. The noise was appalling.

  After a while, the second pilot, Mallaby, noticed him and showed him where to plug in his intercom lead. At once the awful roar receded to a noise like surf. Then he heard Silk say: “Welcome to the office. That’s Newmarket below.” His voice was thin.

  Rollo glanced down. Ah yes. Pretty little toytown. Piece of cake. “I never thought the noise would be such a problem,” he said. Mallaby reached up and turned the intercom switch on Rollo’s oxygen mask. “Bloody noisy, isn’t it?” Rollo said.

  “The Pegasus-eighteen engine delivers nine hundred and twenty-five horsepower, and we have two of them, each about six feet from the cockpit. But really, the worst noise comes from the prop tips.” Silk pointed to the shimmering disc just to the left of his head. “They’re about two feet from my ear, at their closest. Spinning awfully fast, too.” He waved at the instrument panel. “One of these dials tells us how fast, I forget which. Second pilot probably knows.”

  “Oh, fearfully fast,” Mallaby said.

  “But we’re quite safe,” Silk said. “The props hardly ever break. Anyway, Dog’s covered in cloth, so that will protect us.”

  Rollo was only half-listening. He was more interested in the way Silk used one hand to hold his oxygen mask over his mouth, in order to speak into his microphone. “I can’t see your lips when you do that,” he said.

  “You won’t hear my voice if I don’t.”

  “The point is, I don’t see how I can film any chat between you two if half your mouth is covered up.”

  “The cockpit’s not a chatty place,” Mallaby said. The intercom accentuated his Australian accent. “And when we go on oxygen you won’t see anything except the eyes.”

  “He has wonderfully expressive eyes,” Silk said. “They speak volumes.”

  Rollo decided to leave the chat problem until later. “Is it all right if I take a look around the kite?”

  Mallaby unstrapped himself and led the way. It was a short tour. Forward, and below the cockpit level, was the bomb aimer’s position, looking down through a window in the floor. Good close-up possibilities here, Rollo thought, provided the scene could be lit. But the front gunner’s position was out of sight, sealed off by a metal bulkhead. Mallaby opened it. The gunner and his guns filled the space, and a gale whistled through slots in the Perspex where the barrels poked out. Poor show. They went back, down the cluttered fuselage, past the navigator at his desk and the wireless op at his set. Essential jobs, but not exciting. The rear gunner was also invisible behind a steel bulkhead. And that was that. There was a bed to sit on. Mallaby returned to his office. Rollo sat on the bed and worried. Sometimes D-Dog flexed slightly, or twisted a little. Normally that would have frightened him. He ignored it. He had all the anxiety he could handle.

  2

  Rollo held a post mortem in Squadron Leader Bellamy’s office. Kate and Silk were there; also the Engineer Officer.

  Rollo said the difficulties of filming inside D-Dog made it impossible to follow his draft script, or indeed anybody’s script. Dialogue in the cockpit was out of the question. Further back, the nav and the wireless op could make themselves heard, but only if they shouted, and you couldn’t have people shouting all through a film.

  “There must be a solution,” Kate said. She was no longer angry with Rollo. He’d been ill, fevered, confused. They were a team again; it was time to behave professionally. “I’ve seen flying films where they have dialogue in the cockpit. Some guy comes in and tells the pilot the radio’s bust and the pilot says do your best. They talk all the time.”

  “Not in a Wimpy,” Silk said.

  “I couldn’t hear myself speak,” Rollo said. “Those engines just beat your voice to death.”

  “Well, that’s what the intercom’s for,” the Engineer Officer said.

  “Everybody sounds thin on the intercom,” Rollo complained. “Can’t you make them deeper? More masculine?”

  Bellamy had an idea. “Why don’t you forget the voices? Film the op, and then employ a commentator to describe what’s happening.”

  Rollo scowled. “Might as well have captions, for Christ’s sake.” Bellamy was offended. He remembered some urgent business, and left.

  Kate pointed out that it was intercom dialogue or nothing. Rollo pointed out that he couldn’t shoot film and record sound off the intercom. “Then I’ll do the sound,” she said. “That’s what I’m here for.” They both looked at Silk.

  “Suits me,” Silk said. “If that’s what you want.” Now they all looked at the Engineer Officer. “Leave me out of this!” he said. “It’s illegal, it’s dangerous, and I’m going to have a pee.”

  While he was out of the room, they made the decision. She wouldn’t be the first woman to go on an op, Silk said. Many a Waaf had been smuggled into a Wimpy by her boyfriend. Everyone knew it happened. As long as nothing went wrong, nobody kicked up a fuss.

  The Engineer Officer came back. “We decided against it,” Silk said.

  “I knew you would.”

  “Next item,” Rollo said. “Oxygen masks.” But there was to be no answer to that problem. The mike was in the mouthpiece of the mask, for obvious reasons. There was nothing to be done about the cramped shape of the cockpit, either, or the impossibility of getting a camera inside the gun turrets. Rollo hated abandoning the guns; they were his only chance of capturing real, close-up, explosive action. “Couldn�
�t I shoot over the gunner’s shoulder as he lets fly at something?” he pleaded.

  “All you’ll get is a lot of dazzle. The turret’s pitch-black.”

  “We could fix up a little interior light.”

  “No fear. I’m not illuminating my turrets for the benefit of a Jerry night fighter.”

  Rollo had intended to ask for brighter lights inside the fuselage, and some tiny spotlights on the pilots’ faces, but he knew when to quit. “I guess I’ll just have to grab whatever I can get,” he said.

  “Look on the bright side,” Silk said.

  Rollo tried, and failed. “What bright side?”

  “Port or starboard, take your pick, over the target. They chuck fireworks up, we chuck fireworks down, and nobody gets a wink of sleep.”

  “You might find this useful,” the Engineer Officer said. He gave Kate an empty paint tin. “It’s a long trip.”

  “Ah. How kind.”

  “Not at all. When necessary, it can be emptied down the flare chute.”

  “If you put out our incendiaries,” Silk said, “the crew will never forgive you.”

  3

  David Butt’s handwriting was neat and legible. His draft report was quite short. Constance Babington Smith read it; then re-read it.

  “If Bomber Command sees this,” she said thoughtfully, “they’ll shoot you.”

  He fingered the lobe of his left ear, and did not seem alarmed.

  “And they’ll miss you by a mile, if what you claim is true,” she said.

  “Fact is fact,” he said.

  “Yes, I agree. However, this report is a cookie, isn’t it? And I’m trying to imagine what happens when you drop a cookie on the C-in-C, Bomber Command.”

  “Good point. What do you think the response will be?”