The Crew

by Margaret Mayhew

  Stew came over for a match – as usual his lighter had gone u/s. His Irvin jacket collar was turned up round his ears and under it he wore a heavy wool sweater up to his chin; thick white seamen’s socks showed above his flying boots. His face was wet with rain, the cigarette in his mouth soggy.

  ‘Sodding weather! If they cut the barrage balloon cables, the whole bloody country’d sink. Jesus, I don’t know why I ever came here.’

  Harry sucked at his empty pipe. ‘To show us you could stand the right way up.’

  ‘Yeah . . . that was it.’

  It took three matches to get Stew’s cigarette alight. Unlucky, that, Harry thought uneasily.

  The lorries were arriving, the crews starting to collect up their gear and make their way over towards them. He picked up his ’chute pack and the pigeon’s box. His stomach felt like a cement-mixer as he waited his turn to clamber up into the back of a lorry, giving Charlie a hand-up ahead of him, passing up his stuff. Not much chance of a scrub now.

  Tubby Green’s crew were in there and it was their last op. They were swapping a few jokes about it and what they’d do when it was over, but he could tell they were afraid of tempting fate. He caught the eye of their wireless op and gave him a nod and a thumbs-up. If all went well they’d be finished and done in a few hours. Lucky devils.

  He looked further down the bench to where Charlie was sitting, twice his real size in his padded suit. The lad had got a bad cold and shouldn’t really be flying. He’d tried to talk him into seeing the MO for a chit, but he wouldn’t hear of being left behind. He ought to have got the skipper to stop him. He’d promised Dorothy he’d look after him, and a fat lot of good he was proving to be at it.

  They were the third lot to get off round the peri track. U-Uncle loomed up at them out of grey mist and drizzle, and Harry’s hopes of a scrub rose again. Ops had been cancelled in much better weather.

  He went up the ladder first, as always, so he could hang Sam up in his place for the rest to touch. Charlie was last and he waited to help him with his ’chute pack over the tail spar. ‘There you go, lad. All right?’

  Charlie croaked an answer; he sounded proper poorly.

  While the skipper and Jock warmed up the engines he sorted himself out in his compartment so everything was neat and tidy. He liked it all just so: log book in place, sharpened pencils lined up, Thermos flask and sandwiches out of the way – he wouldn’t touch those until they were well on the way home. Never did. With all the activity, he was already forgetting about the jim-jams when a message came through from control that take-off had been delayed for one hour. They were to stand by.

  Out they got again, lumbering along like polar bears in all their heavy gear. They took shelter in the ground crew’s hut where there was a good old fug-up from the coke stove. They were warm and dry, but the jitters had come back again.

  Harry got out his pipe and started to fill it for something to do. Stew had joined the ground crew, playing cards on an upturned tool box; Van and Jock were talking engines; Piers was staring out of the window; Bert had his nose to some pin-up girl picture on the wall; Charlie was coughing away in the corner.

  ‘Here, Charlie, there’s room over here.’ Harry urged him closer to the stove.

  ‘Thanks, Harry, but I’m too hot already.’

  There were beads of sweat on the lad’s forehead. Running a temperature, he thought worriedly. He ought to be back in bed in the hut. He’d go and get pneumonia, or something. Come to that, he shouldn’t be doing this at all. It was a job for men, not boys.

  Stew had won a pile of cigarettes by the time a sergeant came into the hut with another message from Control to taxi out for take-off. Harry watched the fitters managing grins as he scooped them all up. Probably because they weren’t going too.

  It was dark when they moved out of dispersal. Stew was lying in the nose, shining the Aldis lamp down on the skipper’s side of the peri track, guiding him along, and Harry stood in the astrodome, keeping a good look-out. When they got to the take-off marshalling point he was ready to flash their aircraft number. He could hear Van and Jock going through their final checks and kept his eye on the control cabin, waiting for the signal back.

  ‘It’s green, skipper.’

  ‘Roger, Harry.’

  U-Uncle surged forward down a runway that looked like a black river. They took off and climbed upwards through the clouds. As soon as the skipper gave him the OK, he left the astrodome. When he’d wound out the trailing aerial and tuned the W/T receiver, he switched on the IFF and began his listening watch. The frequency kept drifting and he had to keep re-tuning the receiver, concentrating hard. The route could be changed, or they could be recalled and one of his worst nightmares was of missing a vital message.

  Twice, Piers asked him to check the DR Compass and twice he clambered aft over the main spar, shining his torch ahead as he ducked and crouched his way down the fuselage to the compass housing forward of the entrance door. He wondered how Charlie was doing behind the turret doors.

  On the way back he had to grab at handholds to steady himself against a lot of turbulence. U-Uncle was doing a right fandango. He wished it was D-Dog; he always felt better when they flew in her. U-Uncle was brand new, straight out of the factory, and maybe with teething troubles.

  They cleared the cloud soon after crossing the enemy coast, and the constant flickering of gun muzzle flashes lit the sky ahead as they approached the target. The Jerries were ready for them. This was the time he dreaded most. The time when the jim-jams were worst: when they were weaving and dodging and dicing with death. No matter how hard he tried to control himself, his insides turned to jelly. He’d seen exactly what happened to a bomber copped by flak and it wasn’t a pleasant way to go. And if they escaped that fate, there was another possibility just as horrible: of colliding with another bomber converging on the target. He’d seen that, too.

  He flinched and ducked as another burst of shellfire rocked U-Uncle, and shrapnel struck the fuselage above him. Good job nobody else could see him. The skipper had stopped the jinking to port and starboard. Now they had to fly straight and level on their bombing run. Into the open jaws of death – that’s how he thought of it. Jaws that could snap shut any moment.

  The only voices on the intercom were Stew’s and the skipper’s; everybody else kept their mouths tightly closed.

  ‘Open bomb doors, skip.’ Stew, cool as ice.

  ‘Bomb doors open.’

  ‘Bombs fused and selected.’

  Harry clenched his fists and held his breath. Five tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs exposed to a hail of red-hot metal from below.

  ‘Right – right. Steady, steady . . .’

  Harry wiped his forehead.

  ‘Left, left. Steady . . . steady . . .’

  He wiped it once more.

  ‘Bombs gone, skip. Bomb doors closed.’

  ‘Bomb doors closed.’

  He unclenched his hands slowly and breathed again. U-Uncle’s nose was hard down, diving away from the target. Going home.

  Then Stew’s voice came on again suddenly. ‘Shit! We’ve got a hang-up, skip. The cookie. Must’ve got bloody stuck somehow.’

  ‘Pilot to wireless operator. Check it out, Harry, will you?’

  Harry grabbed his portable oxygen bottle, torch and screwdriver, climbed back over the main spar once again and unscrewed the inspection panel above the bomb bay. He aimed the torch downwards. Christ, there it was! The cylinder-shaped casing of the four-thousand pounder glinted as he played the beam. He shone the torch round the rest of the bomb bay.

  ‘Wireless operator to skipper. All the five-hundred pounders have gone but it looks like the cookie’s got itself caught up.’

  ‘I’ll open the doors again and try the manual. Let me know if that works, Harry.’

  The skipper had a jettison control on the starboard side of his instrument panel. That might do the trick. As the bomb doors swung open a blast of freezing air rushed in. Harry
kept his torch trained on the cookie.

  ‘Still there, skipper.’

  ‘OK, Harry. Stand by, crew. I’m going to see if we can shake her loose.’

  Harry clung on as the Lane started see-sawing from side to side and then plunging up and down. The bomb was fused, but he knew bombs were quite safe until the fall from the aircraft automatically armed them. He also knew they tended to go off on impact or with any heavy deceleration.

  Van levelled out.

  ‘How’re we doing, Harry?’

  He collected himself and shone the torch. ‘Still there. Hasn’t budged at all.’

  ‘I’ll give it another go.’

  He staggered and lost his balance as the bomber leaped about again. The torch flew out of his hand.

  ‘Any luck this time, Harry?’

  He fumbled for his mike switch as he crawled about the roof of the bomb bay. ‘Sorry, skipper, I dropped the torch. Just a moment.’ Clumsy fool, he thought, scrabbling desperately about in the darkness. Letting them all down. If they didn’t get rid of the bomb somehow it’d mean landing with it on board. If the skipper did a smooth landing it could be OK, but if he didn’t . . . or if something went wrong with the undercarriage and they had to belly land . . . Don’t be so pathetic, he told himself. No point starting to think about things like that. Looking for more trouble. Just find the bloody torch. His groping fingers finally located it where it had rolled away aft. Thank God, it was working. He hauled himself back to the inspection panel.

  ‘It’s still there, skipper.’

  ‘Can you try releasing it manually, Harry?’

  He went back to get the stick kept in his tool kit. He’d never used the blessed thing before – had no occasion to – but the hooked wire at its end was supposed to be able to release the shackle holding a bomb, if you could reach it. He shoved his arm down into the bay, stretching as far as he could towards the cookie, probing desperately with the stick.

  ‘Sorry, skipper – can’t seem to do it.’

  Jock’s voice came over. ‘If we have to carry that lot back, we’ll have dry tanks before we cross the English coast. An’ I wouldna fancy ditching with the extra weight.’

  Nor would Harry. The cookie would take them straight down. He angled the torch along the underside of the bomb-bay roof.

  ‘Wireless operator to pilot. How about if I try making another hole nearer with the fire axe? It might be easier.’

  Stew clicked on his mike switch. ‘I’ll give him a hand, skip. Reckon two of us’d have a better chance.’

  ‘OK, Stew. Mid-upper and rear gunner, keep watching out for enemy fighters. They’ll be around.’

  That’d be all they needed. Harry started hacking at the aluminium roofing over the bay and then Stew appeared carrying another fire axe. Together they chopped away furiously until they’d opened up a hole large enough for a man to lean down into the bomb bay. With the doors wide open, the slipstream was a howling gale, the cold bitter.

  Stew motioned that he’d be the one to have a go. Well, fair enough, it was his bomb, so to speak. He knew all about them. Harry handed him the hooked stick. He grabbed hold of Stew’s parachute harness as he lowered his head and shoulders through the jagged hole and hoped to God his hands wouldn’t be too numb to hold on if Stew fell through the whole way. The harness wouldn’t do him much good without the parachute.

  ‘How’re you guys doing back there?’

  Harry dared not let go to turn on his mike switch and answer the skipper. Stew had inched even further through – almost as far as his waist.

  ‘Pilot to navigator. Go take a look, Piers.’

  ‘Right, skipper.’

  Harry turned his head as Piers came crouching across the bomb bay roofing towards him, eyes widening above his mask at all that was visible of Stew. He nodded back as though everything was going all right. Piers disappeared again and a moment later he heard his report.

  ‘Navigator to pilot. I think Stew’s reached it through the hole. Harry couldn’t answer you because he’s holding on to him.’

  ‘Thanks, Piers. Harry, let me know what’s happening soon as you can. Gunners keep a good look-out.’

  He went on kneeling there, gripping the straps with his frozen fingers, unable to see what was happening. If an enemy fighter turned up the skipper would have to corkscrew fast, and he couldn’t see how Stew’d get back out of the hole quick enough, or how he’d be able to go on holding on to him when they dived. Stew would have had it – if he wasn’t already dead from the cold.

  Then U-Uncle gave a sudden lurch and Stew started to wriggle backwards out of the hole. He stuck up his thumb and flicked his mike switch.

  ‘She’s gone, skip. Managed to free her. You can close the doors.’

  ‘Well done, bomb aimer. They ought to give you a gong for that.’

  A few moments later Charlie spoke up croakily from the tail. ‘Rear gunner to skipper. Big explosion directly below. Must’ve been our cookie. Hope it hit something.’

  ‘I felt bad about that hang-up,’ Stew told Harry afterwards. ‘Thought at first it could’ve been all my fault. But the bomb blokes told me it was a ball-bearing got gummed up with paint in the factory. Got stuck in its socket and cocked up the circuit. The bastard that did that could’ve got us all killed.’

  It wasn’t that he begrudged Stew the glory. It’d been right brave of him to do what he did, but Harry couldn’t help wishing he’d had the chance of being the hero. Charlie might have told his mother about it and, well, she might’ve seen him in a different sort of light. When it came down to it, though – down to the nuts and bolts, as you might say – it was Stew who’d looked after Charlie, and not him at all.

  ‘Looks proper dodgy this morning, sir. I don’t think you’ll be bothered tonight.’

  The WAAF batwoman handed Piers his cup of tea and went over to take down the blackout from the window. ‘Nice ’n nasty it is. Heavy rain and low cloud – set in till tomorrow at least, I’d say.’ She turned round and beamed at him. ‘Just what the doctor ordered.’

  She had spoken in a loud whisper. Van groaned in the other bed and dragged the covers over his head.

  ‘He won’t be wanting a cup, will he, sir?’

  ‘No, he won’t, thanks all the same.’

  She was always hoping against hope that Van would change his mind. ‘He ought to have something hot first thing, but still, I suppose they’re different Over There. Takes all sorts to make the world go round, that’s what I say. Live and let live. Except the Germans, of course, and those Japanese.’

  Her name was Mabel and she came from Huddersfield. She was older than most of the WAAFs and fussed like a mother hen. He’d seen her crying when chaps bought it. Van wouldn’t let her fuss over him too much but Piers rather enjoyed it. She reminded him of Matron at prep school who used to bring them cocoa at bedtime and tuck them in and be decent to new boys when they were homesick.

  Mabel stopped by the end of his bed and made a hospital corner with the covers. She patted the blanket. ‘You get a nice bit of rest, sir. Take my word for it, nobody’s going flying anywhere today.’

  She was usually right about the weather. In fact, she was a better forecaster than most of the met lot. Sometimes he thought they ought to get Mabel to do the ops briefings.

  She watched him drink his tea. ‘I put an extra bit of sugar in for you this morning, sir.’

  ‘Oh, thanks awfully.’

  ‘Well, it gives you energy, doesn’t it? You young gentlemen ought to have as much as you like.’ She gave a final pat to the blanket and tiptoed out of the room on the toes of her heavy lace-ups, making more noise than if she’d walked normally.

  Van groaned again.

  When he’d finished the tea, Piers lay back and shut his eyes, listening happily to the rain drumming on the hut roof. Bliss to think of not having to worry about ops. No sinking feeling as he biked over to see if they were on the Battle Order pinned up in the Flight Commander’s office. No flying test. No
ghastly jitters hanging around. No worrying about which target. And today was Wednesday – Peggy’s day off. Since he’d been back from leave there hadn’t been a Wednesday when he’d been able to get away from the station, but it looked as though he might manage it today. He could drive over and take her out. Hang on, supposing she’d changed her mind? No, she wouldn’t do that. Not when she’d pretty well promised.

  He’d thought about her all the time during his leave – could hardly think of anything else. Mama had noticed, of course, and told Papa to give him that lecture. God, as though that sort of thing mattered any more! Everything was different now. The war was changing all that class rot, and a good thing too. Everybody mixed with everybody. He’d jolly nearly said so, only he hadn’t really had the chance.

  It wasn’t easy standing up to the parents but he’d somehow stuck to his guns over joining the RAF. Made a bit of a stand over it, for once. Just as well. If he’d gone into the Army he’d probably have been killed already in France, or a POW at least. Not that he’d got much chance of surviving his tour. Chaps were going down like ninepins. You got hardened to it. Jolly well had to. Did you hear old Dusty went for a Burton over Cologne? Bad show. Can you pass the marmalade, please?

  He wondered if Mama would cry, like Mabel. He’d never seen her cry and couldn’t imagine it. He could imagine Peggy crying, though. See her blue eyes filling with tears if she were very sad about something. He pictured her hearing the news of him getting the old chop and weeping buckets.

  Mabel was quite right about the weather and the stand-down. In the afternoon Piers gave Stew and five chaps from another crew a lift into Lincoln, all squashed into the Wolseley, and when he’d dropped them off he drove out on the Skellingthorpe road, following the route he remembered to Peggy’s home. It was still pouring buckets and the windscreen wiper wasn’t doing too good a job, so he almost missed the row of cottages. He hadn’t seen them properly in the dark last time and in the light of day, he was dismayed that Peggy should have to live in such a rundown place. The tenants’ cottages at home were much better kept.