The Forgotten War

by David Fiddimore

  She blushed and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. Welcome back.’ It was obvious that too many people had read Pete’s book already. I smiled. I hoped that I didn’t leer. I used to get the two mixed up when I was younger. I wondered if she had a boyfriend. She made a decent cuppa, too.

  Watson blew on his tea to cool it; like an Epsom bookie. ‘So what do you need to know?’ he asked me.

  The word need was interesting, wasn’t it?

  ‘How about what I’m doing here, sir? As far as I can make out, the RAF has confirmed that I’m still in the service, and likely to remain so for a few months until demob, and you’ve revalidated my radio-operator ticket. Apart from that, I keep walking into perfect strangers who are very pleased to meet me, and no one will tell me what I’m supposed to do. It feels like Tempsford all over again.’

  ‘Bravo, Charlie.’ I suppose the words just seemed to fit together. ‘You’ve rumbled us. Why didn’t you ask me with whom we are at war, when I mentioned it a few minutes ago?’

  ‘I was trying to ignore it, sir. I was considering coming over all conchie if you’re serious.’

  ‘I am, and you won’t.’ Watson’s voice had a sudden bleak edge. It was the first direct order I’d been given since my resurrection; the old RAF was back. That horrible fat personal file, bearing the title Bassett C and my number, was on his desk and between his hands. It seemed even bigger than the last time I had seen it. He leafed through it in silence. Eventually he said, ‘You even knew some conchies at Tempsford, didn’t you? It’s all in here.’

  ‘Yes, sir. They were an operational aircrew. When they stole their aircraft and buggered off, someone tried to blame me. Have you any idea what a Short Stirling costs?’

  ‘No. Frightful lot, I expect . . . never worth the money, were they? Ever wonder what happened to that lot?’

  ‘Occasionally. They nearly did for me, after all.’

  ‘They filled the belly up with overflow tanks, and took her all the way to Palestine as a gift to the Jewish resistance. She’s still there.’

  ‘As long as no one’s blaming me for it any more, sir.’

  ‘No, they’re not, Charlie. You’ve been officially rehabilitated for whatever piece of nonsense you got up to in Europe last year. The Air Lords must have been feeling particularly forgiving this month . . .’

  ‘Either that, sir, or you have a nice round hole, and no round peg except me to bung into it.’

  ‘And your file does say that you’re an insubordinate little sod, did you know that?’

  I shrugged – it didn’t surprise me. ‘I prefer a bit of a joker,’ I told him.

  ‘That too. Maybe you’ll cheer us up, and live a bit longer than the last two.’

  Ah.

  We passed the time until lunch filling out more forms: it was the new way of going to war. He outlined my duties to me as we left the building. He did that quickly, as if he was embarrassed to be telling me what the RAF expected of me.

  ‘Officially we’re 12 Flight: but that’s only for stores chitties. Actually it’s a different number, which adds up to twelve. If things hot up we’ll be a squadron one day. I called us the Listening Flight last night. Did you pick up on that up?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did.’

  Sooner or later someone would tell me who we were supposed to be listening to. I suspected that it might have something to do with some silly buggers in London.

  ‘And this morning I said something like “now we are at war again”, and you didn’t turn a hair. Who do you suppose that we are at war with?’

  I could read the newspapers, couldn’t I? And that preacher’s sermon at Pont Street had upset me. I replied, ‘I guess we’re not getting on too well with the Reds any more . . .’

  ‘You guess right, of course, Charlie, and your section’s task is to listen to some of their radio traffic: couldn’t be simpler . . . as long as you tell no one else about it. If you do you’ll end up in the Tower.’

  ‘Is that an official caution, sir?’

  ‘No. The official caution is when I say “Let’s stop piss-balling about.” That was taught me by my old boss, and I’ve liked it ever since. We call it the Scriven Caution, after him. When I say those words, you write in your notebook official caution received, and date and sign it.’

  ‘I haven’t got a notebook.’

  ‘Then I should issue you with an official caution for that.’ Funny bastard.

  ‘Can we actually hear much Russian traffic from over here?’

  ‘A fair bit. Mainly their German and Polish stuff. Then there’s what we get from the weather flights, of course.’

  ‘Weather flights, sir?’

  ‘Yes: weather reconnaissance flights. They get closer to the borders. Occasionally you’ll be asked to go up on a weather flight, and sniff around in Ivan’s backyard.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be what happened to my predecessors, sir? Just asking.’

  Watson looked away and slightly upward, with a pained expression on his face that said my question had offended him. He ignored it.

  ‘Open the gate, Charlie. There’s a good chap.’ He’d issued me with a key to the compound that I was supposed to wear on a chain at my belt at all times. It was on a ring containing keys to the two huts under my care. If I lost the keys, you guessed it: I’d end up in the Tower. This mob’s punishment scale was clearly not imaginative.

  The food that we ate was as unimaginative as their punishments, and we consumed it in a small brick block behind the guardroom. Watson nodded to the civvies’ canteen as we walked past. The rain had stopped, the sun shone and the lawns steamed appreciatively.

  ‘They tote our food over from there. Most of our people can’t be bothered, and eat in their huts. We don’t eat or drink with the civvies. If you forget that . . .’

  ‘. . . You’ll end up in the Tower?’

  ‘Glad you caught on.’

  ‘Crowded, is it, sir? The Tower?’

  ‘They were bloody right about you, Charlie, weren’t they?’

  They had given me five girls, and two huts. Dead and gone to Heaven, but not enough to send you power-mad. I met them all that afternoon. Each of the huts had two fair-sized radio rooms, a small kitchen and washroom area, and a small office, all off a short corridor. The small office in 7A was mine. The small office in 7B belonged to my number two, an equally small and vivacious WREN Third Officer named Gloria Miller. I met her there. I knew that she was a WREN from the uniform on a hanger on a peg on her office wall. She wore a dark civvy two-piece, greyer than her eyes. The skirt was short, and hugged her hips under a tailored jacket. I noticed the small bumps on her thighs where her suspender clips would have pulled her stockings out of shape. You may not remember it now, but you notice that sort of thing when you’re in your twenties. I smiled when we were introduced and that prompted her to ask, ‘Is there anything the matter, sir?’

  ‘No; nothing. Just one of those coincidences. I’ll tell you another time.’

  Watson sloped off, saying, ‘Leave you to it, then,’ and as he turned to leave he touched his brow, curiously like a salute, and said, ‘Afternoon, Mrs Miller’ to Gloria. Once he was out of earshot she said to me, ‘The Commander’s full of old-fashioned courtesy, have you noticed that, sir? We like that in a man.’ We? Was that ‘we’ as in women, or ‘we’ as in Hut 7?

  ‘I’d rather call you Gloria, Officer . . . and you can call me Charlie, if that’s OK with you?’

  She gave me a shrewd up-and-down look. I don’t think that she was particularly struck by what she saw: it only takes a glance for a woman to be able to value the clothes a man has hanging on him to the nearest ten bob. Remember that everything I wore that morning was borrowed or knocked off. Anyway, eventually she smiled. It was half a smile – she had a small mouth – and it was a long time coming. It nearly knocked me over.

  ‘OK, Charlie. That will be fine, when we’re not with the others. All right?’

  ‘Fine.’ I’d have to stop picking up on words that
others had just used.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject of the Commander, you’d better know that he doesn’t actually understand a damned thing about what goes on in here, despite what he thinks. If it’s guidance we need – technical, operational or moral – we’re on our own.’

  ‘Moral?’

  ‘You’ll find that sometimes you’re called upon to make decisions not covered by King’s Regs, sir . . .’

  ‘Charlie . . .’

  ‘Charlie.’ She tried to smile again. I was going to enjoy making her smile.

  She introduced me to the two operators in 7B. Each had their room and their own radio rig. A fussy civvy, who sat with her hair up in a scarf, disapproved of me before I opened my mouth. It was written all over her face. She must have been thirty, and was wartime-thin: she might have been beautiful once. Her name was Weronka – or Ronka – Karska, another Pole. If Pete showed up again I’d get him to jolly her up. The woman in the other room looked like Jane from the Daily Mirror strip, except when she opened her mouth: then she was as Manchester as faggots. She was introduced as a junior WAAF. She’d be OK if she could do her job. When I asked her name she said, ‘Jane. Just Jane.’ Served me right. Just Jane would make a good name for an aircraft.

  This lot were going to be bloody hard going.

  When I let myself into the other hut and walked past the rooms containing my other operators they kept their backs to me, and didn’t turn to look. Ming was in my new office, sweeping items from the desk into a large cardboard box. He froze as he saw me in the doorway, and straightened. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Carry on, Ming. Don’t mind me.’

  He continued clearing things away. He was collecting my predecessor’s personal belongings. I’d seen this ritual too often on the squadron to mistake it for anything else. The card written in ink and pinned to the door read Fl. Lt. Timperley. I removed it carefully and handed it to Ming. Wherever Timperley had gone he wouldn’t need his things again. I asked Ming, ‘What happens to his stuff? When I was on a squadron we used to auction it.’

  ‘Not these days, sir. The CO will vet it, and we’ll send what we can back to his family.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to him?’

  Ming looked away. ‘Sorry, sir, but I couldn’t tell you if I did. As it happens, no . . . I don’t know. You might be able to ask the CO yourself.’

  Somehow I thought that Gloria Miller would be a better bet.

  I turned away, and as I did so I jumped at the voice directly behind and below me. It said cheerfully, ‘Hello, I’m Elizabeth. One of your operators.’

  ‘Hello, Elizabeth: Charlie Bassett.’ I gave her my right hand. Hers was small and brown with a pink palm. She was even smaller than me. She was also the first coloured girl I’d ever been that close to. I don’t know what perfume she wore, but I’d guess that it was newly applied. Late-summer flowers, and a wide dark chocolate smile to match.

  ‘Pilot or Flying Officer, Bassett?’

  ‘Pilot Officer, I think. I haven’t been to pay parade lately. How did you know?’

  ‘Two-syllable surname, Charlie. Two syllables for a pilot or flying officer, three syllables means flight lieutenant and above. It’s the way you English order things.’

  ‘You’re not English?’

  ‘Do I look it? I’m from Falmouth; the Hampden estate.’

  That meant nothing to me. ‘The last time I looked, Falmouth was still in England,’ I said.

  Elizabeth had a nice laugh. ‘Not the one that grows sugar cane: Falmouth, Jamaica – land of my fathers. I’m a civvy now, if you haven’t already guessed. We don’t do “sir” and “madam” in the Jamaican Civil Service, and if you don’t like that you can always fire me.’

  ‘How about if I just said “Pleased to meet you, Elizabeth”?’

  She smiled and nodded. I pressed on. ‘Can you use that radio?’

  A grin again. ‘Better than you can – and I’d better get back to it.’ Then she was gone. I felt I’d been sideswiped by a brown tornado. Hello, Elizabeth.

  Ming turned, and nodded as he let himself out. He locked the hut door behind him. My new job was going to be all about locks and keys, which was a pity because I’ve never been terribly good with them.

  After that, meeting Mrs Boulder was easy. Mrs Boulder, the last member of my team, hadn’t come out to meet me; she’d waited at her radio. It was a modified American AR 88 Receiver, connected to an old Chain Home aerial mast above the site. When I asked her about its range she said, ‘I don’t know, sir. All I know is that it’s wide enough for our purposes – although that depends on the signal strength over the other side.’

  Mrs Boulder was in her late thirties, and had the most direct stare I’d ever seen. When she answered a question she never lost eye contact and rarely smiled: an interrogator’s nightmare. She was another civvy, and could have passed for Gloria Miller’s elder sister: same grey eyes, but her hair was a light mousy brown against Miller’s fine blonde. When I asked her what she’d like me to call her when we worked together, she delayed her reply for a three-beat, and then said, ‘How about “Mrs Boulder”, sir?’ One of those people who score points: I had an aunt like that. Her headphones were around her neck, and her radio was playing that old sweet song of static.

  ‘Can you get music on that thing?’ I asked.

  First smile – point to me – and she flicked a toggle. She must have preset the frequencies. It was the Light Programme and Al Bowlly was singing ‘Close Your Eyes’ with the Ray Noble Orchestra.

  The music followed me to my own office. I sensed that Mrs Boulder actively disliked me already. That was a bit of a record, even for me.

  Miller came in at about eighteen hundred hours to tell me that they were jacking it in for the day. She was ‘Miller’ immediately, I’d decided, despite our earlier conversation on the subject; not Mrs Miller, Third Officer Miller, or Gloria. I don’t know why, but it suited both of us; probably because there was usually a grin on my face when I said it.

  ‘Got a few minutes, Miller?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’ She went back and closed the office door before she sat down. Once she had done so the room seemed very small. Even with each of us on opposite sides of the desk, she seemed to be very close to me.

  ‘Are you going to tell me how to do my job now, Miller?’

  The pause was only a few seconds, but it seemed to go on for ever. Then she said, ‘If you like.’ She fussed around taking off her jacket and draping it over the back of her chair. When she crossed her legs and leaned back, I could see her knees. They were pretty ordinary knees; so why couldn’t I take my eyes off them? She said, ‘I don’t really smoke, but I fancy a cigarette. Do you have any?’

  I shook my head, so she told me, ‘The Commander will have told you that our duties are reasonably undemanding.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  She smiled. I began to realize that she didn’t smile all the time; only when she meant it.

  ‘And I disloyally told you that he knew damn all about it, really?’

  ‘Something like that.’ I grinned, which was a mistake.

  ‘I must warn you never to laugh at me, Charlie: it doesn’t work with most women, and it won’t work with me.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, Miller . . .’ I used her surname again because it gave me pleasure to do so. ‘But that means we’re going to have a hard time, because I laugh at a lot of people. Defence mechanism.’

  She smiled again: she didn’t seem to mind. ‘The Commander had it more or less right: but it depends on what you mean by reasonably, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Start with the operators. What do they do?’

  ‘They weren’t recruited for their skills as radio operators, but as stenos. That is stenographers . . . their ability to write down accurately what they hear, and then transcribe it to signal pads without making errors. They’re all exceptional,’ she assured me.

  ‘So they listen to foreign signals, and record them?’r />
  ‘Exactly; but not necessarily always foreign.’ That was interesting.

  ‘Why are we all knocking off tonight? Surely you’ll leave someone on a listening watch?’

  ‘They wouldn’t know where to listen, would they? We get our instructions from Eastcote – which isn’t RAF any more, in case you hadn’t already worked that out.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Joint services, I think. They give the orders. You’ll see the batting order on the ops board in my office. I get a weekly order. What wavebands to listen in to, when and for how long – never more than four at a time: just what we can handle. There’s nothing on the board for tonight.’ I didn’t interrupt. I nodded, and Miller moved on: ‘The girls transcribe the signals, most of which are encrypted, so they usually mean nothing to us. At the end of each shift I collect the transcript flimsies up, put them in the pouch and drop them off at the guardroom on my way home. A dispatch rider collects them during the night and takes them to London. It doesn’t always work out like that; sometimes we get urgent band or frequency changes during the day. You can work all night then . . . and then there are big flaps or operations when we’re here around the clock.’

  ‘Do you get more people in then?’

  She shook her head. Her hair bobbed, coloured by a red sunset pushing into the office. ‘No, we work shifts; you and me too. We lock the station down, and everybody sleeps over. The two huts behind the Commander’s office are rigged for accommodation: ten tiny cabins in each.’

  ‘One boys; one girls?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Same old RAF,’ I said

  ‘Not any more. I told you – it would be best to remember that.’

  ‘OK. What do you do?’

  ‘I supervise your operators . . . collect up the flimsies. Do all the day-to-day admin, and listen to their moans: yours, too. Report to you.’

  ‘And what do I do?’

  ‘Make the decisions I won’t, and make sure that I do my job, countersign the reports I write from time to time, and the requisitions; pitch in when things get difficult . . . and fly, of course.’