Operation Thunderflash

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Moakes was not by nature a restless man, but he was feeling restless this summer. For the first two years of the war there had been no recognised length of tour for flying crews. You just kept on flying until someone decided you should have a rest. Sometimes it was a Squadron Commander or the squadron MO who discerned signs of tiredness and strain. Sometimes it was a staff officer who came across your file and thought it was time you had a change. In that way, he had served successively on two squadrons, flying one rough op. after another, lucky to get away with many of them, until his brief rest on instructing. Then on again with the next tour: defined, this time, as 30 trips. Those years had covered the worst period in Britain’s fortunes. But now the Allies were scoring victories: in North Africa, Sicily and Russia. The tide of war was turning. Moakes felt they were on the verge of momentous events and was impatient to get on with it.

  His eagerness and uneasiness led him to make constant visits to camp when he was supposed to be resting. For the first time in their married life, and the long courtship that had preceded it, begun even before he was sent off to India, Ivy was finding her husband irritable.

  She knew nothing about his feud with his Squadron Commander. Moakes was not a man to air his grievances anywhere, not even at home. What he privately felt about Leatham was entirely his affair; a man’s affair, too, in any event, and not something to be disclosed to any woman. It affected the honour of the squadron — whatever squadron they were on — and the Service. He didn’t go in for muck-raking in front of anyone. In his eyes, Leatham was a coward and vindictive. He was not the only one who thought one or the other, or both: but, if they were wise, nobody broached the topic with Moakes; not even when he was an NCO, let alone now he was a senior officer.

  If the squadron was about to endure a severely testing time, he felt no confidence in the way in which their CO would face up to it.

  He drove into camp wondering just what lay in store for them all and making a mental roll-call of his old friends who were now in staff appointments at Group and Command HQs and Air Ministry, and asking himself from whom, and how, he could get some inkling of the way things were going to break for the squadron. “His” squadron, he felt: for he was the senior Flight Commander; and, anyway, Leatham wasn’t a real professional, a regular, he was a mere amateur co-opted for the duration. A weekend pilot before the war.

  If anything befell Leatham to remove him from the scene, he, Jim Moakes, Donk to his friends — and, with a scornful inflection implying that he really was a donkey, to Leatham — would surely be given the command and promotion.

  If, that was, the blots on his record implied by Leatham, first as his Flight Commander and then at the time of his accident, had not ruined his chances of ever being promoted. As he suspected, in his heart of hearts, that they had. To be honest with himself, he more than suspected that he would never be promoted, however long he served.

  Many of his old cronies who were in the know had warned him: “Leatham is no friend of yours, Donk, old man.” And then clammed up when he had asked them to enlarge: even old cronies did not reveal the contents of confidential reports. And confidential reports on officers or airmen were what made or broke them, not what was said overtly. Those and innuendo shaped one’s career.

  Moakes walked from his car to his flight office with the heavy tread of a man who knows that, however cordially he is treated by his group captain and wing commander, however untarnished his name among his immediate comrades, he is under a shadow which he can never dispel. He hated Leatham with an intensity that had led many men to the gallows.

  *

  Wg. Cdr. Leatham was sitting in a deck chair in the sunshine on one of the lawns behind his house when Bracken arrived.

  The elderly butler led the visitor creakily to a French window and, with a palsied and arthritic finger, more or less pointed out his master.

  “Thanks,” said Bracken, “I’ll go over to the wing commander. Don’t bother to announce me.” He’d never make it all the 30 yards, poor old blighter, Bracken was thinking.

  The CO looked comfortable, in his short-sleeved cream silk shirt and blue riviera shorts, and sandals, Bracken thought enviously. He felt like a trespasser. He was sure the CO’s “open house” did not extend to all hours of the day; he must have wanted some privacy in his home.

  Bracken walked soundlessly across the grass and hesitated by the chair.

  Sensing his presence, Leatham looked up. “Hello, Bill. What brings you here? Not that you aren’t perfectly welcome.”

  “I met Mrs Leatham in the village, sir, and she kindly asked me to lunch.”

  “Good show. You’ll find chairs in the summer house; fetch yourself one. What would you like to drink?” Leatham reached for a silver bell on the wrought-iron table against which he was resting a copy of The Times.

  “I’d like a beer, thank you, sir.” Bracken heard the bell tinkling as he walked to the summer house.

  A maid came to attend to their wants, and Leatham said “Seen The Times this morning, Bill?”

  “Not yet, sir. I read the Daily Mail quickly at brekker.”

  “Things are going well: we’ll be landing in Italy soon.”

  “Any chance of the squadron doing any ops. over Italy, sir?”

  Leatham looked amused. “That appeals to you?”

  “From what I’ve heard, the Italian flak and fighters aren’t as hot as Jerry’s, sir.” Bracken made a joke of it.

  “I suspect you’re a romantic, Bill. You see yourself soaring over the Alps by moonlight and seeing beautiful Italy from the air.”

  “Not really, sir. I like mountains, but I’d rather see them some other way! But a long trip like that would be interesting; and good exercise for my navigator!”

  “Bloody cold for your air gunners; have you thought of that? How we don’t lose more of them from frostbite, I’ll never know. Lousy, thankless job. Air gunners are the real heroes of this war. If you’d seen as many as I have scraped out of their turrets, you’d know what I mean.” He laughed and took a pull at his silver tankard. “Don’t tell your gunners I said so.”

  Bracken thought this was a strangely demoralising speech for a Squadron Commander to make. “I expect they’ll find out pretty soon for themselves about the cold and the cramp, sir, when we make some really long sorties.”

  I wonder if that blighter Emery has been gossiping, Leatham mused. Worse if he and Moakes have been reminiscing. But I’m damned sure Moakes wouldn’t do anything so undignified. He asked, “How d’you find Emery? Is he making a good fist of being flight engineer?”

  “Yes, sir.” Bracken sounded surprised. “As you said, he’s a good man. And,” he added with a grin, “he’s been keeping very sober. But I daresay he’ll fall from grace tonight.”

  “Party on?”

  “Bit of a crew thrash in Nottingham, to celebrate our first op.”

  Leatham frowned. “I’ve got two things to say about that. Firstly, remember careless talk; and don’t let any of your crew get tight and start line-shooting. And secondly, you might do well to wait until you’ve got a few real ops. under your belt before you start celebrating. Last night’s show was only a doddle; a piece of cake.”

  Chastened, embarrassed and depressed, Bracken found himself wishing that Margaret would show up soon.

  “I think we’re all aware of that, sir, from what some of the other types on the squadron have told us.”

  Leatham made no comment, and instead asked, “Has Emery been shooting a line about the bad old days on Whitleys? Not that he ever flew on ops. in them.”

  “No, sir, he never talks about his old squadrons.”

  “Doesn’t want to think about all the years he spent safely ground-gripping before he took a deep breath and decided to come dicing with the rest of us.”

  Another touch of the uncharitable that surprised Bracken. “I’m sure he’s not at all ashamed of being a flight mechanic, sir. It’s an essential job, and he probably had a struggle to get out of it.
”

  “As I told you, he’s a good mechanic...or engineer, and a pleasant enough type. But he has blotted his copybook a bit.”

  “He’s given me no trouble so far, sir.”

  “Good.” Abrupt change of subject: “D’you play tennis?”

  Surprised: “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring some togs next time and we’ll have a few sets. We’ve managed to keep the court in pretty good shape.”

  “I’d like that, thanks.”

  Leatham gave Bracken a speculative stare. “Margaret plays a very fair game; for a woman. You can warm up with her before you take me on. She likes mountains, too, so you’ll have a lot to talk about. So do I, come to that: love ski-ing. We spent our honeymoon in the Alps, as a matter of fact. We were married at the first Christmas of the war, and I wangled a liaison visit to the French Air Force for a fortnight: flew over with Margaret, in an old Anson — another wangle — and we ski-ed our legs off for two glorious weeks.” He sighed. “God knows when I’ll next get a chance. Pity we didn’t do better in Norway in 1940: we’d have had an excuse to go and do some ski-ing if we had been able to keep Jerry out of there.” He smiled and suddenly Bracken found himself liking his CO enormously once again.

  *

  Margaret Leatham had to force herself to concentrate on her patients’ recitals that morning, for her mind was much occupied by Bill Bracken. He’s an attractive child, she kept telling herself, but it’s perfectly safe, because he’s young enough...almost young enough...to treat like a nephew. I can’t take him seriously; and he certainly must not take me seriously. He’s very attractive, with those candid tawny eyes and his curly dark brown hair and that lovely voice. He’s a strange mixture of shyness and authority. But the voice! So deep for such a boy and such a glorious pitch and tone. I wonder if he sings? We’ll have to see...

  This is going to be fun, she decided. I’m going to have a companion and I’m going to enjoy teaching him about music. And I think he can teach me about books. She shied from the word “literature” as sounding too pompous and academic. He’s a gentle young man...and she found her fanciful thoughts drifting off again while she tried to listen to an elderly man’s account of his ailments and symptoms.

  Gentle. There had not been much gentleness in her life for more than three years. Young man: yes, Bill was a man, not a boy. She would have to keep her wits about her or they would both be hurt. Goodness me, she was thirty-two and could handle a little matter like that...a friendship...albeit a flirtatious one, if things developed that way...without harm to anyone.

  “Yes,” she said with increasing impatience to some dotard, and “yes” again and again in acknowledgment of some crone’s complaints about her bodily functions; and she metaphorically put the shutters up as quickly as she could and raced off in her gay buttercup yellow Morris Eight to where her husband and her new friend awaited her.

  Seven - Bill Bracken

  Our second operational sortie was not as placid as our maiden one.

  One thing was still the same: I hadn’t broken my duck in Nottingham that night we went to beat up the town in celebration of having lost our operational virginity. After having spent part of the morning and most of the afternoon in Margaret’s company, the local girls did not appeal to me as they would otherwise have.

  Eddie Hill and Keith Gray struck lucky and disappeared to some local park with their ladies. Dan Feldman stayed the night with his and returned to camp next morning by taxi. Bruce Donaldson and Ron Emery became drunk, but happily so, and Ron didn’t put his fists up to anyone: probably because there was no one over six feet four inches and sixteen stone for him to knock down. Nick Compton and I got a bit tight and Nick made a few half-hearted passes at a giggly girl or two, but couldn’t find one who anywhere nearly approximated to the débutantes and starlets who had been his usual fodder since, at a precocious 16, he had been introduced by his elder sister to the delights of her fashionable circle.

  We did the usual routine flying exercises for two days, and then were on the ops. list again.

  The target was Cambrai, in northern France. This was 80 miles inland from Calais; even less from the point, south of Le Touquet, where we crossed the French coast.

  Cambrai was a name redolent with great events of the Great War. Two battles had been named after it, in one of which tanks had gone into action in great numbers for the first time in history.

  There were also marshalling yards there.

  “Wizard,” Bruce remarked, rolling the “R” with satisfaction when we saw for how short a distance the red ribbon penetrated enemy territory.

  Our Squadron Commander said, “As this one is such a short job, I’m leaving you types in the good hands of Squadron Leader Moakes.” That made me feel that it was going to be a piece of cake, and I said so in a discreet aside to Nick.

  When we told the rest of the crew where we were bound for, Eddie crowed, “Wizard. We’ll be in and out in two flicks of a chick’s prick, Bill.”

  Dan Feldman, who was not noted for recklessness or over-optimism, remarked, “Another marshalling yard should be OK. But if this keeps on, it’s going to get monotonous.”

  From behind his pipe, Keith rumbled something that, on translation by Eddie, who was getting a fair grasp of the Geordie dialect, proved to be “Hardly worth the trouble of kitting up. It’s a penny bus-ride.”

  We were to bomb at low level: 2,000 ft.; so there certainly was no call for electrically heated clothing or even a full Irvine suit. We donned Irvine jackets and flying boots and went off almost scornfully.

  We had been briefed to expect heavy flak, but reasoned —or my inexperienced crew did, at least — that at such a modest altitude we would pass through the cone of fire of each flak site too quickly to incur much risk.

  We were disabused of this notion at the French coast. The anti-aircraft fire was terrifying. There were more colours in the tracer ammunition than I remembered from the previous time: then it had been red, green and yellow. Tonight there were blue and white as well. And a lot more of it than we had anticipated.

  Within a minute of crossing the coast there was a vivid eruption close ahead and a tidal wave of air slammed into us. U — Uncles staggered and dipped its port wingtip. I felt the same way: and in my mind I tried to work out whose aircraft that could have been. Not Donk Moakes’s, I hoped fervently.

  At Hesdin there was another fearful outbreak of light and heavy flak.

  Eddie, sounding subdued, reported, “Rear gunner to captain: two down behind us.”

  I had seen the sky light up and a ghastly whiteness wash right over and past us.

  At 2,000 ft. there was no room to bale out if one were hit so badly that the aeroplane lost altitude at once and rapidly. Those explosions were probably from aircraft hitting the ground, not blowing up in the air. Sweat began to run all over my body and down my face and neck.

  Between Ervilliers and Bapaume we ran the gauntlet between two clusters of flak, and Keith Gray got his report in first.

  “Mid-upper to captain: Lanc. hit at three-o’clock...in flames.”

  It was by no means cheerful hearing. But when we got to Cambrai we wished we were back where we had just been, for there seemed to be no single ten-yard square of sky, from 500 ft. to 3,000 ft., that was free of incessantly bursting shells.

  “Bomb-aimer from captain: get it right first time, Bruce.”

  “Do my best, Skip.”

  We were beginning to depart from our former pedantically observed intercom procedure, I noticed; and understandably so.

  The Lancaster was jerking around and my hands and feet were constantly on the go. There was a din like a thousand dustbins rolling down a long flight of concrete steps, and a flash of red immediately on my port side. I jerked my head round and saw, in the beam of a searchlight just below, that a hole had been blasted in my port wingtip.

  Superfluously, and somewhat primly, Keith said, precisely: “Mid-upper to captain: hole in port wing.”

  “Than
k you, mid-upper. I know!”

  There was a streak of light in the corner of my eye and a ripple of tracer tore past my port window.

  From astern I heard a bang, muffled by the engine noise, and Uncle slid its tail skittishly starboard to port and back again.

  Keith informed me, “Mid-upper, Skip...hole in the tail plane.”

  “Thanks, Keith.”

  We settled to our bombing run and Bruce, sounding edgy, began his, “Right...right... left-left...bit more...too much...right again...steady...left-left a bit...steady...bombs gone.”

  The blinding light of our magnesium flare added itself briefly to the bomb bursts and flames beneath and the wicked red flashes all round us. We worked the camera.

  “Diving,” I called to the crew and shoved the column forward; straight into the path of a swath of tracer that rattled against the fuselage and punched holes just behind my head. Low over the rooftops and trees, I levelled off.

  “Report in,” I said.

  “Bomb-aimer. OK here. Looked like a good run.”

  “Engineer OK, Skip. Everything working OK.”

  “Navigator. All serene, but you’ve got some fancy perforations above your head.”

  “I can feel the draught. Mid-upper?”

  “Mid-upper to captain: that last burst of tracer through here singed my pants, Skipper.”

  “Clothing parade for you, then. Rear gunner?”

  “Rear gunner to skipper: I’m fine, Skip, but can I have a go with me guns at the next searchlights...or a flak site?”

  “Fire at will, Eddie. You too, Bruce...and you, Keith, if you get a shot.”

  By that date in the war we did not man the front turret all the time, especially at night, because fighters hardly ever attacked from head-on. Their favourite tactics were either the classical fighter attack, generated in the Great War, of a dive from a stern quarter; or, a newer one, from a quarter again, but underneath: thus they could approach from where we could see worst, and fire on us from a position in which none of our guns could retaliate. If I wanted the front guns manned, Dan Feldman, who was a professional air gunner as well as wireless operator, could go for’ard; or, if Bruce was already there, he could man the turret.