Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  Anyway, there was old Caterpillar caterpillaring in when another Wimpey comes in to land straight over the top of him. Its slipstream knocked Caterpillar all over the shop, though luckily he was nearly stopped by then. Then the other Wimpey lands right in front of him, neatly enough, but totally blocking Caterpillar’s way to the dispersals. It was S-Sugar. Typical bloody Blackham. He’d even cut his engines. Caterpillar leapt out, apparently, and ran up to S-Sugar like he was going to give Blackham the hiding of his life.

  But Groupie in his jeep beats him to it. Just as well. Because there’s something funny about S-Sugar. Something odd. The escape-hatches are open and missing, though there’s not a speck of damage anywhere on her. Groupie sent Caterpillar away, straight off. Groupie’s been flying thirty years; he’s got a nose for trouble. So somebody fires a flare to summon the ambulance. Then Groupie goes inside. And the first thing he finds is one dead rear-gunner with a hole in his chest. Poor old Geranium. And there’s a thirty-eight service revolver lying just beside him, with one cartridge fired. And not a single bullet-hole in the fuselage . . .

  Blackham was one of the few men I knew who carried a revolver on raids, to help his escape if he got shot down.

  Of Coade, the front-gunner, Spann, the wireless op, Brennan, the navigator, and Beales, the co-pilot, there was no sign. Groupie umphed a bit at that. They thought Blackham was dead, too, at first. But he wasn’t. Just rigid; hands still on the wheel, feet still on the rudder-bar. Staring ahead of him, as if he was still flying. He wouldn’t answer when they spoke to him, wouldn’t turn his head to look at them. In the end they had to prise his hands off the controls and carry him out on a stretcher. Catatonic schizophrenia, they said later, when he went on sitting and flying S-Sugar in the hospital ward. He’s never said a word to anybody from that day to this. And late in the afternoon they phoned to say they’d found the four missing aircrew, buried in a large turnip field near Chelmsford. It seems they’d jumped from too low a height; their parachutes had had no time to open.

  Nobody was ever going to know exactly what happened to S-Sugar on the journey home. Her bombs were gone, every single part of her worked to perfection, there wasn’t a bullet-hole or a scratch on her. No reason in this world for baling out. So they serviced her and put her back in her pan. Groupie said she could serve as a spare aircraft for any crew whose crate was undergoing repair.

  What they should have done was to throw her on to the scrapheap, as we had once thrown away that Messerschmitt propeller-blade. But no one – not even Butcher Harris himself – has the clout to write off a fairly new, totally undamaged plane. And people flew quite regularly – if not cheerfully; never cheerfully – in crates where men had died, where men had been scraped off the seats. But at least we knew what happened to them. Nobody knew what had happened in Blackham’s Wimpey.

  After that, S-Sugar began to dominate the whole station, as the prop-blade had dominated our barrack-room. Nobody went near her. Shadows seemed to gather inside her cockpit and turrets. She grew to twice the size of any Wimpey on the field. It was the time of the autumn spiders; they spun webs all over her, as they spun them in the hedgerows, as they spun them on the other Wimpeys. Except that flight and servicing and polishing scrubbed the other Wimpeys clean every day. The cobwebs just grew thicker on S-Sugar. The ground-crew sergeant had a strip torn off him by Groupie about it; he swore he cleaned Blackham’s Wimpey daily, but nobody believed him. Erks cycling past the pan at night were seen to steer away from it, in a half circle. There were all sorts of rumours in the erks’ mess too. Voices had been heard inside it, when there was no one about; crackly intercom voices. Then the WAAFs got hold of the story. Had anybody noticed, they asked, that no birds ever perched on Blackham’s Wimpey? Actually, very few birds perched on anybody’s Wimpey; they don’t make desirable perches, not with so many trees around – but that was the kind of stupid rumour that went around. Not that the aircrews were any better, though they never mentioned it. Aircrew are more superstitious than sailors. They all have mascots: teddy bears, old raggy dolls, umbrellas; won’t fly without them, or without peeing on the tail-wheel before they go and after they come back. So it came out afterwards that people had gone to extraordinary lengths not to fly in Blackham’s crate. Pilots with defective crates didn’t report them, just slipped their ground-crew fivers to work overtime on their personal planes, until they were fit to fly again. More than once there were unexplained fights between crews over job priorities.

  Finally, the scandal reached Groupie’s ears, and he put his foot down. With all the lack of sympathy that scrambled-egg wallahs are capable of, he picked Reaper to fly S-Sugar on the next op to Tallinn. Reaper’s crew immediately put themselves on the chop list. They sat in a tight little group at ops tea, silent, sweating, eyes down, not touching a scrap of their grub. They had spent two days writing letter after letter to say goodbye to their folks back home, giving away their tennis rackets and golf clubs and altering their wills. Nobody could bear to look at them. Most people expected them to crash on take-off, and they damned nearly did.

  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 wirelessop’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 Lanes 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.’