African Sky

by Tony Park

  ‘No good,’ Paul replied. ‘Must have been bleeding out since the flak burst. It’s been all right up until now. Bomb aimer, check the bomb bay and make sure we at least got rid of everything.’

  ‘Roger, skip.’

  The smoke had cleared inside now, blown out through the scores of holes drilled by the shrapnel and, while he waited for the bomb aimer’s report, he said: ‘Let’s hear it. Everybody all right?’

  One by one all the crew reported in. Thank God, Paul mouthed, the crew were all alive as well. All he had to do was get them back in one piece.

  ‘Um, skip, bad news,’ the bomb aimer said.

  ‘How bad?’ Bryant asked into his intercom.

  ‘Could be better. We’ve got a cluster of incendiaries still on board.’

  ‘Shit,’ Bryant said. ‘We’ll try to drop them over the water.’

  ‘Roger, skip.’

  The crew stayed silent as they crossed into occupied Holland, still searching the starlit skies for black night-fighters. Bryant skirted some light flak and soon they were over the coast. They weren’t out of trouble yet, though, not by a long shot.

  Once over the water, Bryant told the bomb aimer to try to drop the incendiaries.

  ‘No go, skip,’ Mac said.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of landing with a cluster of bloody fire bombs on board, but there’s nothing else we can do,’ Paul said.

  Unable to operate the flaps because of the lack of hydraulic pressure, he kept the Lancaster at the same altitude until, at last, they crossed the English coast.

  ‘All right, Will, give me some air.’

  In front and to the left of Will’s panel was a knob that operated an emergency supply of compressed air, contained in two bottles. If the hydraulics were inoperable, as was the case now, the bottled air was blasted through lines in order to perform the same operations. This would automatically force the landing gear down, and supply enough pressure through the lines to operate the flaps. Will pulled the knob, and they felt the Lancaster’s speed drop. ‘Done, skip.’

  ‘Check the landing gear, Will,’ Bryant said.

  ‘Shit, it’s not our night, skip. One down, one half down – not locked. The flak must have damaged the struts as well as the hydraulics.’

  Paul heard the note of fear in his friend’s voice, and felt his heart pound in his chest. He took a moment to consider the situation. The landing gear was inoperable, and they had a cluster of fire bombs stuck on board. He gave his orders. ‘All right, here’s the drill. We’re going to Woodbridge.’

  They all knew the place, as did every crew in bomber command. Woodbridge was a three-mile-long strip of cleared ground on the Sussex coast, lit by a continuous line of parallel petrol-fuelled burners, designed to provide an all-weather emergency landing ground which, through the heat its burners gave off, would also dissipate heavy fog. The system was named after the group that set it up, the Fog Investigation Dispersal Organisation, or FIDO.

  Woodbridge was a graveyard of bombers. Because of its length, aircraft too shot-up to land safely were also diverted there to take their chances. There was silence on board P-Popsy.

  Paul continued his orders. ‘I’ll radio Woodbridge on approach and take us to two thousand feet. When I give the order, every man will bail out. And that’s an order. Once you’re all accounted for, I’ll bring the kite down. We’ll meet on the ground and then it’s my shout at the first pub we can find.’

  Again, there was silence as each of the six crewmen contemplated his fate. While none of them relished the thought of a night parachute jump, they all knew that the skipper was giving them the best chance they had at survival, and that the odds were not good that Bryant would survive a crash landing.

  ‘Point her at the sea and jump out as well, skip,’ Will suggested.

  ‘I thought about that, Will,’ he said over the intercom, for all of them to hear. ‘I’d have to put her in a steep dive, otherwise the old girl might carry on until she ran dry or, worse still, maybe hit one of our ships. I don’t want to bail out in a dive – I’d end up getting caught on the tail plane.’ His fear was valid. It was a fault with the otherwise well-designed bomber that the only quick way out of the cockpit was through a removable Perspex panel over the pilot’s head. Too many pilots had thought they were jumping to safety, only to be killed by a collision with the vertical tail fins when they bailed out. ‘I’m taking her down.’

  Bryant radioed Woodbridge as they closed on the field. He overflew the twin lines of flaming markers below and put the Lancaster into a slow turn. ‘All right, fellas. Places, everyone. Sound off!’

  One by one they confirmed their readiness to jump. Mac, the bomb aimer, said, ‘Skip, why don’t you think again about bailing out and—’

  ‘Enough, Mac. I couldn’t live with myself if old Popsy took out a fishing boat or veered off and landed on a farmhouse. I’ll see you in the pub, mate.’

  Paul turned and glanced at Will. Something was wrong. He held his oxygen mask aside, so the others wouldn’t hear, and yelled, above the engine noise, ‘Where the fuck is your parachute?’

  ‘I’m staying with you,’ Will called, grinning wildly.

  ‘No, you bloody well are not. Get your parachute on. Now!’

  ‘No!’

  Bryant shook his head. ‘I don’t need you here in the cockpit.’

  ‘I know, Paul,’ Will yelled, laying a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. ‘Truth is I’m pissing myself at the thought of jumping. I’d rather take my chances on a pancake landing, with you.’

  Bryant looked into Will’s face and saw that it was deathly white. He hadn’t expected the depth of his friend’s fear of parachuting. ‘Jump, Will. That’s an order!’

  ‘With respect, stick your order up your arse, sir.’

  He brought the Lancaster out of its turn and headed straight and level at two thousand feet towards the start of Woodbridge’s seemingly endless runway. ‘Right-o, everyone . . . ten seconds. Now! Bail out! Bail out.’

  ‘There they go,’ Will said. ‘I count three, four; no, five chutes, Paul, they’re all away safe.’

  Paul radioed Woodbridge and told him all of his crew, minus the flight engineer and himself, had exited the aircraft.

  ‘Roger P-Peter,’ an anonymous English female voice replied, using the Lancaster’s proper designation, rather than the crew’s unofficial name for their Lancaster. ‘Crash wagons will pick them up and once they’re all accounted for we’ll give clearance to land.’

  ‘Roger,’ he said.

  A short while later the WAAF radioed him, confirming all five members of the crew were safe and on board a truck. ‘They’ll see you on the ground. Good luck, P-Peter, and God speed.’

  Despite his fear and the adrenaline that now coursed through his veins at the thought of the dangerous landing, the simple blessing touched him. ‘Maybe I’ll see you, too,’ he said.

  There was a pause, and she replied: ‘Please stick with official wireless procedure, P-Peter. But in answer to your last . . . yes, that would be nice.’

  Will punched him on the arm and gave him a thumbs-up. ‘Two to go after this one, Paul,’ he yelled into his ear.

  Paul knew his chances of walking away from a belly landing in a Lancaster were not good. Coming in with incendiaries on board reduced the odds to something in the vicinity of a million to one, he reckoned. ‘When we land, you go out first, Will, through the cockpit roof.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d have to climb over you and put my foot in your lap to get out. The hatch is above your head. You get out and I’ll be on your tail so close you’ll think I’ve turned queer,’ Will replied over the intercom.

  Will was right. ‘All right, but remember, we’ll only have a few seconds if those incendiaries decide to cook off.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me.’

  ‘Strap in and brace yourself. Here goes nothing.’

  Will clapped him on the shoulder then returned to his seat, behind Bryant.


  Bryant mentally went through the checks for an emergency landing. He tugged on the restraint straps holding him into his seat until they were so tight it was hard for him to breathe.

  He brought the kite down and pulled back on the throttle levers, cutting the power and airspeed to a hundred and thirty miles per hour. The gas burners that illuminated the emergency runway gave off enough heat to create an artificial thermal and the Lancaster, as heavy as she was, rode the hot air for a while, as if reluctant to come back to earth.

  When he was about twenty feet off the runway, Paul pulled back on the stick, bringing the nose up. The airspeed dropped and the big aircraft started to stall, just as the tail wheel touched. The Lancaster settled and, for a heartbeat, rested on her one locked undercarriage wheel. However, once the massive weight settled on the damaged right wheel, Paul felt the wing sink towards the concrete.

  He held his breath and prepared for impact. A shower of sparks fan-tailed up as the wingtip touched the runway. ‘Brace!’ he yelled. As the forces of friction started to take hold, the Lancaster began swinging to the right. The forward speed increased the severity of the turn, and Paul and Will were flung violently in the opposite direction as the Lancaster slewed to the right, off the wide runway.

  The sparks and sickening sound of tearing metal gave way to the thuds of propeller blades tearing into mud and turf as the big aeroplane bounced and skidded on and on.

  Paul pulled the fire extinguisher switches as the aircraft finally half rolled, half skidded to a halt. They should, hopefully, control any blaze in the engine bays, but the real danger was from the incendiaries in the belly of the stricken aircraft. He was vaguely aware of a flashing light beside him as the crash wagons chased him along the edge of the runway.

  And then it was over. The silence came as a shock to him, and he shook his head to try to clear the fog of fear, relief, confusion and adrenaline.

  ‘Paul! Paul! Get up, man. Get going,’ Will called from behind him.

  Paul tried to move, then remembered his restraint straps. He released the buckle and opened the emergency hatch above him. He smelled smoke and fuel somewhere, and heard the ping-pinging of tortured hot metal contracting.

  All right, mate?’ he asked, turning to check on Will. Will’s face looked even whiter than before.

  ‘I’m fine, now get the bloody hell out of here. I’m right behind you.’

  Bryant grabbed the metal frame of the cockpit and heaved himself out. The damp English air had never smelled better. He slid down the side of the cockpit and onto the wing. He looked over his shoulder and saw Will, kneeling in the pilot’s seat, and waving. ‘Run! Run, Paul, I’m coming!’

  He needed no further urging, now that he was sure Will was all right. He slid off the wing and ran towards the flashing red lights. He covered about seventy yards and then slowed and glanced back, fully expecting to see Will Freeman gaining on him.

  An ambulance pulled up beside him. ‘Where’s the other man?’ an airman yelled at him.

  ‘I don’t –’

  His words were obliterated by a boom that shook the boggy ground beneath him and a shock wave that knocked Bryant and the medical orderly to the ground. He rolled painfully over onto his side. Radiant heat and the blinding brightness of burning incendiaries from the flames engulfing the rear half of the Lancaster seared his cheek, and his leg was afire with pain. Above the fire and the blare of an ambulance klaxon, he heard screaming.

  Two airmen in bulky fire-retardant suits were running towards the cockpit. Paul dragged himself to his knees, but fell when he tried to stand. Blood oozed from several holes in his trousers, made by pieces of flying metal blasted loose from Popsy’s skin.

  The firefighters raised arms to the hoods protecting their faces. The blaze had spread quickly to the nose of the Lancaster. Bryant heard a final scream and saw something moving and burning inside the cockpit. The noise finally died.

  He heard voices and looked up to see the other members of the crew standing around him.

  ‘Well done, skip,’ one of them said. He thought he heard irony, even bitterness, in the empty compliment.

  ‘Shame about old Will, though.’

  Pip rolled onto one elbow on the rock and looked into his eyes. She saw the raw pain still there, the self-loathing, the emptiness where the dogged fighting spirit of a bomber pilot had once been.

  ‘Funny thing is, they gave me a gong for that. A medal. Distinguished Flying Cross.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault that Will died, Paul,’ she said.

  Deep down, he knew she was right. He’d replayed the scene a thousand times in his mind and his nightmares, sober and drunk, and usually came to the same conclusion. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. ‘That’s not the point, though, is it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He died and I lived. Where’s the fairness in that? I was the pilot, the skipper. I should have forced him to jump, should have pushed him out of the plane before me, but I didn’t. I found blood on the shoulder of my flying jacket later. Not mine – I’d been wounded in the leg. I realised then that it was Will’s. His face had been so white, but I thought he was just scared, like I was. He must have been too badly hit to make it to his jump station. It probably happened when the flak hit us. I suppose he thought that the medics would get to him eventually.’

  ‘Look at me,’ she ordered him as he turned his face away. She grabbed his chin between two fingers, realising as she did that it was the first time they had touched, and that some invisible line had been crossed. She brought his face back around to hers and fixed him with her gaze. ‘Will would have known that you would have stayed with him if you knew he was wounded. That’s why he didn’t say anything.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It’s true, you know it. He said nothing so that you’d have a chance at living.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that many times.’

  ‘You saved the lives of five other men, too, Paul. Don’t forget that. You deserved your medal.’

  ‘Bullshit. I deserved what I got. A chit from the medical officer that kept me off flying duties, even when my leg healed up, and a posting to the middle of fucking nowhere to see out the war. They wanted me out of sight where I wouldn’t be bad for morale and the butt of conversations about the cowardly pilot who left a wounded man to die in a burning kite.’

  ‘They – whoever they are – probably realised that you’d done your bit and needed a break.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way, Pip. You see, the MO knew that I didn’t want to go back, that I couldn’t finish my tour. I was spent. He did me a favour by not stamping LMF on my file and kicking me out.’

  ‘LMF?’ she asked.

  He shook his head as he spoke. ‘Lack of Moral Fibre. Jesus, how I despised the men who went absent without leave, who just disappeared because they couldn’t take it any more. I thought them weak, disgusting, and there was I, in the end no better.’

  ‘I saw the way you put down that riot the other day, Paul. I saw you stand up to those men, and I saw the way they respected you. There was nothing lacking out there in the street. That took courage, and it required the respect of a bunch of men who had turned into an unruly mob. You probably saved some lives that day too.’

  ‘It’s getting late,’ he said, gesturing to the waning African sun, the long shadows on the plain below them. ‘I should get you home.’

  ‘Have you ever talked to anyone about your last mission?’ she asked as she gathered up the food bag and the empty beer bottles.

  ‘No. You’re the first.’

  ‘Then we’ve both shared our deepest secrets. I can’t forget my husband, Paul, for all the wrong reasons. He was a part of my life, but I’m free now. As terrible as it sounds, his death has given me a second chance. Will Freeman is gone, and you must remember him, for the right reasons.’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Every day of my life.’

  And he gave you a second chance, Paul. It’s up to us what we do w
ith the rest of our time from now on,’ she said as she turned away from him and walked down the face of the granite rock, which glowed a soft, warm pink in the sun’s late rays.

  It was nearly dark by the time they got back to her farm.

  ‘Now, how about that cup of tea,’ she said as she climbed stiffly off the Triumph’s pillion seat.

  ‘I should be getting back to the base,’ he said, still straddling the bike.

  She thought he’d come so far that day, opening up to her as she had to him. She remembered the feel of his bristly jawline in her fingers, the hard muscles of his stomach as she’d clung to him through the twists and turns of the road there and back. She thought again of the erotic trysts he’d been involved in. She wondered what it would be like to be Catherine De Beers – to make love to whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted. The drink had worn off and her head was clearer, and she felt that to say goodbye to this handsome stranger, for that was still what he really was, would leave an emptiness, a hunger in her. ‘Nonsense, come in for a cup. We don’t want you falling asleep on the way back to base.’

  ‘All right then.’ He put the bike on its stand and followed her in.

  She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, arms folded, looking at him. Not smiling, not frowning. A little confused, as if she had forgotten what it was that she had to do.

  It was dark and warm inside the farmhouse, like a cocoon. ‘Tea?’ he said, standing, facing her, not more than two feet away.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ she began.

  ‘Later . . .’

  He stepped to her, crossing the barrier and pulled her to him. She fancied she could feel the heat from her cheeks reflected off his face. They kissed, greedy for each other. He put his hands under her bottom and lifted her off the ground.