But they came back. Came back late, made a very wobbly landing, but came back without a scratch. There were a lot of us waiting for them outside the debriefing hut, waiting to break out a bottle of whisky some cheerful type had bought either to drink with them or to their memory. All of us wanted to slap them on the back . . . only, the first bloke who tried it got a punch in the teeth that laid him flat on his face. We left them alone after that.
They answered debriefing in monosyllables. Piece of cake, they said, no fighters, no flak, found the target, easy. But they looked far worse than before they went; more destined for the chop than ever. And as their skipper rose to go, he spat out at the wireless officer, ‘Get that bloody intercom seen to!’
Next raid, they had their own plane back, but even that made no difference. They walked out to the truck that took them to the dispersals like – I can’t get my tongue round it – like walking corpses. And that time they didn’t come back. Oh, and the wireless officer had S-Sugar’s intercom checked. It worked perfectly.
Groupie sent out another crew in her. Exactly the same thing happened, with knobs on. Came back in S-Sugar without a mark on them, and crashed their own crate on take-off the following op.
By this time the whole flaming squadron was going down the drain. Groupie had Dadda in for a private talk in his office. I’ll say one thing for Dadda; he made a condition with Groupie: he volunteered himself to fly Blackham’s Wimpey, he didn’t volunteer us. He left us free. Asked for a scratch-crew from round the squadron. Nobody volunteered. Not a single soul, and I don’t blame them. So Dadda said he would go on his lonesome.
Matt said he would go with him. Then Mad Paul said you had to die sometime and he’d rather die with Dadda than anybody else. In the end, even I said I would go. The idea of them buying it and me starting all over again with a new crew was unthinkable. Human beings are sheep in the end, aren’t they?
It was our twenty-third op.
We get the wink from the control-tower, and Dadda takes off a bit savagely; a tight rein on a strange horse. Is his voice a shade sharper, or is it just the strange intercom? I fiddle with the dials a bit, making no difference, and settle down next to Kit in the black windy tube that’s the whole, noisy world.
Only tonight it’s the wrong tube; it creaks and flutters in the wrong places. Piercing draughts sneak in from the wrong angles. I stick the nozzle of the heating-hose down my right flying-boot, and it’s a marvellous comfort; it’s the only thing that’s giving me anything; it’s the only thing that loves me. I champ my way through a bar of chocolate, before we reach eight thousand feet and we put on oxygen masks. I am glad I can see Kit’s face through a gap in his navigator’s curtain. It looks calm and thoughtful, as he scribbles steadily on his maps. I love that face more than I love any girl’s or filmstar’s. It’s always there. I could never tell him how I feel, but sometimes he punches me, when we’ve landed, and I punch him back, and that’s it. Still, he’ll punch anybody he even vaguely likes. Does he really not give a damn? Does he really think it’s all a giggle still, on the twenty-third time? Don’t think like that; I need to think he’s like that.
As if he senses my stare, even through all his gear, he turns and bats his eyebrows at me, mocking. Behind his mask, I know he’s grinning.
‘Have you heard the one about the constipated navigator?’ He’s only three feet away, but his voice on the intercom sounds as far away as the backside of the moon. ‘He had to work it out with a pencil.’
Snort from Mad Paul in the front turret.
‘Oh ha, ha,’ groans Billy.
‘Shut up, Kit.’ But even Dadda is sniggering.
After the war Kit’s going to Oxford, and I’m going back to the True Form shoe shop in Clitheroe. Maybe he’ll ask me down for a weekend . . . if there is an after the war.
‘Keep that RT down,’ says Dadda; his voice is sharper, edgier. I fiddle with the knobs. Yes, the glowing dials are a comfort, too; a little glowing city where ants live. Ant palaces, ant cinemas . . .
Blackham’s Wimpey is newer than C-Charlie; the wireless-op’s seat seems harder-edged and colder than my own. Every crate they send, there’s some new modification.
Yes, Kit’s jumpy too; makes two course corrections on the way to our wave rendezvous over Cromer. Celebrates too noisily the fact that he’s pin-pointed Cromer Pier.
‘Shut up, Kit!’ snarls Dadda. Normally Kit does us a lot of good on the run-in, but tonight his comedy act’s not working. The engine note keeps changing, too; Matt’s making heavy weather getting the engines synchronized. And out over the sea, Billy tests his guns; but so often, we think he’s seen a night-fighter.
‘What the hell . . . ?’
‘Sorry, Skip. It’s this turret. I’ve got to get used to it.’ Blackham, and Blackham alone, blast him, managed to get a four-gun Frazer-Nash turret fitted to his Wimpey. Like the Lancs and Halley-bags have. What did he do? Blackmail the gunnery officer? Sleep with the gunnery officer’s missus? Wouldn’t put anything past Blackham. The rest of us had to put up with two-gun rear-turrets. I think of Blackham, still flying his Wimpey, sitting up in a straight, hard chair in the asylum. They say he pulls all the right invisible levers, and sometimes his flights take twelve hours, from breakfast to supper, then he starts all over again – unless they shoot some drug into him. If they try to stop him flying, he cries. Otherwise, his eyes are like shiny black marbles, they say, staring out of the ward window. Even when he cries.
Stop thinking . . .
I stick the heating-hose down my other boot, readjust the RT. What else is there to do? Kit pushes past me, on his way to the cockpit; big as an elephant in his flying-gear. The sheepskin brushes the back of my head; then I feel lonely. Another quick, nervous burst from Billy. Blackham’s guns. The guns that did for Gehlen. I remember them all laughing at Gehlen. Now they’ve gone where Gehlen went . . . God, I’m shaking more than I usually do over the target, and we haven’t reached the Belgian coast yet.
Suddenly, light-flak tracer is Morse-coding past the windows. And then rods of pure white light, leaking in through every chink in the fabric. We’re caught in a searchlight. Then a throbbing through the Wimpey’s frame; a light, rhythmic throbbing: our front guns firing.
Blackness and onwards. Paul’s voice saying, ‘Well, that’ll cost him his weekend’s pocket money for a new bulb and battery.’ He’s hit the searchlight, which you can do at three thousand seven hundred feet. Wild cheers all round.
‘It was a flak-ship,’ says Dadda. ‘Converted trawler.’
‘Let him go back to catching kippers,’ says Billy. Having the last word is a rear-gunner’s privilege.
We all feel a lot better.
‘Enemy coast ahead,’ says Kit. Somehow, it’s good to be back in the thick of it.
We’d just crossed the Rhine, spot on course and with a lot of premature rejoicing from Kit, when I began to get a vibration on the RT. You know when you’ve got your wireless at home tuned in to the Home Service and Reginald Foort is belting away on the theatre organ, and he hits a big note and your set can’t take it and gives a kind of blurting rattle? Well, my RT was acting just like that, but much softer at first.
‘Tune the RT properly, Gary. Get rid of that mush.’ Dadda’s voice was suddenly harsh again. I didn’t blame him. We were all as twitchy as hell about the intercom, and this noise in it was like a fat fly buzzing inside your head. I moved the tuning-knob, dutifully but without hope. I am never off station.
‘Fault in the set, Dadda. Hope it’s not going on the blink.’
‘I’ll strangle that RT mechanic . . .’
‘Reaper grumbled about this RT,’ said Kit, thoughtfully. So had the other crew that bought it. That was all either of them had said, before they got the chop; get the intercom fixed. There was a nasty silence. Everybody was remembering. Nobody had anything to say.
The buzz faded, to the edge of hope, then got slightly louder. I tell you,
it was hypnotic; I couldn’t pay attention to anything else. Inside, I was praying, pleading with it to go away. I had never heard anything quite like it before. And if the set really went on the blink, we would each of us be alone and helpless, in a howling blizzard of engine noise. Please go away. Please go away. Just for tonight. I was talking to the bloody thing; stroking the dials gently, as if the RT was an angry cat that needed placating.
The noise got louder. And not just louder – it was developing a definite rhythm. A bit like a human voice. Like somebody very tiny, shouting to be let out, somewhere deep inside the set. A voice that couldn’t yet get out.
‘Turn coming up, Dadda,’ said Kit. ‘Steer one-o-five . . . now.’ His voice was too loud, making us jump. God, that infernal buzz was like a human voice. If it got any clearer, I’d be able to tell what it was saying . . .
Get a grip, Gary. Or they’ll be writing you off as LMF. You’ll end up in a bin, like Blackham. Or cleaning the bogs, like the poor ex-gunner who thinks he’s a Dornier 217.
‘Fifteen minutes to target,’ said Kit. ‘Hope the PFs aren’t pissed again. I get tired of setting the Black Forest on fire.’
For once, nobody laughed at that good old joke.
‘Oh frigg off, you miserable lot,’ said Kit. ‘Where’s the flaming funeral?’
He shouldn’t have said that. In the stony silence that followed, the idea of a funeral wouldn’t go away. Aircrew bodies fished out of burning crates have shrunk so much, they hardly need coffins bigger than shoe boxes.
‘Watch the sky,’ said Dadda. ‘You won’t be shot down by a buzz on the intercom.’
‘Right,’ said Mad Paul.
‘Right,’ said Billy, a long time after. Billy’s reactions were usually as quick as greased lightning. Hell, this whole crew was falling apart.
There wasn’t one tiny voice talking inside my RT now; there were two, talking to each other. Oh, electronic mush on the air . . . it was always happening. But not when your RT was properly tuned. I played with the knobs again, pointlessly.
‘Five minutes to target,’ said Kit. A dim red light was stealing down the black tube of the Wimpey’s fuselage from the cockpit windows. We began to bounce under the impact of flak and the slipstream of the other bombers. Berlin coming up.
As I played with the knobs, the voices suddenly became audible, just barely audible.
‘Steer two-seven-five. The Kurier is five kilometres ahead of you and five hundred metres above.’ The voices were talking in German. A night-fighter was being homed-in on its courier, or target.
‘Some bugger nattering in German,’ said Kit loudly.
‘Well, he’s not after us,’ said Dadda soothingly. ‘We’re steering one-o-five. Now keep your mind on the run-up.’
So Kit started the old left-left, steady, right-a-bit routine, and for the next five minutes he swamped the German voices. We had other things to worry about.
The darkness after the target is the most beautiful darkness in the world. Dadda checked us one by one. Nobody hurt; no damage as far as we knew. The twin Bristol Hercules droned on blissfully. Take us home, Hercules, great god of antiquity.
But the German voices inside my RT set were still there, louder, quite clear now. If we could hear them, could they hear us? Radio’s a funny thing.
‘Can you see the Kurier yet? He should be a kilometre ahead and fifty metres above you. Still steering two-seven-five. You should see him against the clouds . . .’
‘How dense are the clouds, Kit?’ I asked.
‘What frigging clouds?’ said Kit, his head in the astrodome. ‘Haven’t seen no frigging clouds.’
‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ said Dadda. ‘We’re steering three-hundred.’
‘I’ll just test him out on Monica.’ Monica is another little bag of tricks that Dadda acquired for me. It has a bulb that lights up when a fighter’s tracking you on radar. I switched Monica on, and off again quickly. Monica, lovely girl, said there was nobody on our tail.
But the noise in the RT grew steadily.
‘Can you see the Kurier yet?’
‘Yes, I can see his exhausts. A twin-motored aircraft.’
That made me jump. Wimpeys are the only twin-motors left in the skies over Germany, and there were only thirty or so on this raid.
‘He is about half a kilometre ahead, and fifty metres above me. He has not seen me. I will come up under him and give him a tune on my Schrage Musik.’
‘Some poor soul’s for the chop,’ said Dadda. The Schrage Musik can tear the guts out of a Wimpey before the Wimpey even knows it’s being followed.
‘Nothing behind us,’ said Billy. ‘It’s as clear as day.’
The German voice was now as loud as Billy’s own on the intercom. If anything, louder. It might have been inside the plane with us.
‘I am a hundred metres behind him now, and twenty metres beneath. My guns are cocked.’
‘Anything?’ said Dadda.
‘Nothing,’ said Billy. ‘Not a dicky bird behind us.’ But the voice had infected us all. I tried Monica again, though I knew it was pointless.
Nothing.
Even Dadda banked the crate left and right, to get a look underneath.
Nothing. But we all shuddered, waiting for the death of the unknown Wimpey. Was it one of our lot? Probably we should never know.
And then a new voice broke in, loud, a shout, full of fear.
‘Blackham – corkscrew port – fighter below you!’
‘For God’s sake, stop shouting, Gary!’ said Dadda abruptly. I didn’t answer. It was my voice; but I hadn’t opened my mouth. It was my voice, a month old, coming out of the dark, out of the past. Calling to Blackham, who at this moment was lying in a bed in Colchester mental hospital. And no wonder the night-fighter’s voice seemed familiar. It wasn’t just a German voice. It was Gehlen’s voice. Burnt Gehlen, who we had seen blown in pieces all over Germany.
Then another voice, exultant. ‘I got the bastard! I got him!’ Geranium, dead a month, with a hole in his chest.
‘You sure?’ Blackham, very Yorkshire-tyke.
‘Sure I’m sure. See him burn!’ Geranium.
Wild cheers. From Coade, Spann, Brennan and Beales. Dead in a turnip field near Chelmsford.
‘Bullfinch Three to Bullfinch. Abandoning aircraft. Port wing on fire. Get the hatch open, Meissner . . .’ Gehlen. Dead, burnt Gehlen.
‘Shut the bloody RT off, Gary!’ Only slowly, I realized it was Dadda talking to me, in the present day. But it was Kit who reached over and turned off the intercom, plunging us into the blessed silence of the engine’s roar. When he looked at me, his blue eyes above the oxygen mask were showing white all round. I was shaking from head to foot. My hand shook so much I couldn’t undo my mask. Then I was sick, and the spew built up inside it and cascaded over the top. At least it was real and warm and alive.
The next thing I knew, and that, too, came to me very slowly, as in a dream, was that Dadda had put the Wimpey into a hell of a dive. Either that, or we’d been mortally hit. Frankly, I didn’t care. I just hung on like a drowning man to a lifebelt. But we pulled out, and I could tell from the movement of the crate that Dadda was ground-hopping. What else could he do to stay alive, with the intercom gone and all his crew, gunners and all, sitting in a paralysed funk? Any night-fighter could have come up behind and stolen our braces and we wouldn’t have noticed.
Kit recovered first, as he always did. Bundled past me with a new course for Dadda to fly. That kid was incredible. I sat huddled, cold and still shaking, over the end of the heating-hose; I held it up my jacket, against my crotch. It was a help. I watched the odd trail of tracer flying past the triangular windows, with the innocent wonder of a small child on a railway journey. Nothing came very near. Dadda was giving Jerry very little chance, as usual. Kit came bundling back to his navigator’s table and settled to a problem, face very serious. As usual, it was a comfort to watch him. How did people get to
have guts like him and Dadda? I must have been at the back of the queue when they were handing out guts.
It was then that I noticed that my RT dials were starting to glow up again. Had I knocked the switch back on, without knowing what I was doing? I reached to switch it off again.
It was switched off.
But the dials continued to glow up. I gave a noiseless moan, as sound filtered into my earphones. Faint cheers.
‘Burn, you bastard, burn!’
An incoherent scream from Gehlen. Kit shoved me aside and reached for the off-switch. It was still off. His eyes creased up over his mask. He tried the switch the other way, and the sound of Gehlen’s screams grew louder. He turned it to the off position again. Back and forwards he twisted it, back and forwards, faster and faster. But still the voice of Gehlen grew.
‘Mutti, mutti.’
Kit went berserk then. He grabbed the heavy-duty cables that led to the radio set from the crate’s main batteries. Tore them out of their housings on the airframe. Tried to pull them out of the radio with brute force. Then he reached for a pair of rescue shears.
God, he would go up in a blue light! We’d all go up in a blue light, if the naked ends of the cut wires touched the airframe. Frantically, I tried to wrestle the shears away from him. We were still fighting like maniacs when Dadda separated us. We stood in a triangle, mouthing soundless screams at each other.
Dadda took a rescue hammer and smashed the shut-off RT set. The sparks flew, I can tell you; lucky the hammer had a rubber handle. Silence. The soundless noise of the engines once again closed like a fleecy blanket over our ears. Dadda went back to the cockpit. Kit and I sat and stared at each other. I don’t think either of us expected the world to make sense any more. We had got accustomed to living in a nightmare. Kit even produced a flask of coffee and offered me a cup. Coffee in a nightmare. But it still tasted like real coffee – as real as wartime coffee ever is.
We looked at our watches. Kit mimed, ‘Half an hour to the Dutch coast.’ Then he turned his head to look at a section of the airframe, puzzled. It was vibrating oddly, under our backsides, under our ungloved hands. Had we been hit? Had the engines developed trouble, or gone out of synch?
Spectral Shadows Page 4
