We'll Meet Again

by Patricia Burns

  The boys and I went down to the Red Lion yesterday evening for a drink and a game of darts. The beer was so weak a baby could have drunk it but the landlord said it was either that or go without so we had to lump it. On the way back Nev said all that feeble stuff made him feel sick and he needed a drink of milk to settle his stomach. Nev’s the new boy, sent to replace Jimmy. He’s from a farm, like you, and so he knows how to milk a cow. The next field we came to that had cows in it, he climbed over the gate, went up to the nearest cow and sort of talked to it a bit, then he put his tin hat on the ground under it and milked the cow right into it! Some of the boys wouldn’t drink it, but I had a go—it tasted sort of funny but that might have been the taste of Nev’s hat.

  Nev was all right. He’d fitted into the team and now Tom wasn’t the new boy any longer. He understood now the reserve he’d experienced from the rest of the crew at first. You remembered how the last man had died—Jimmy’s brains had splattered all over the remains of the rear gun turret—and you weren’t sure how reliable the new man was going to be. Once he’d proved himself with the first sortie, then it was OK, as the Yanks would say. You had to know that when it came to the crunch, everyone could count on everyone else doing their job and more. Nev had done that, just as Tom had managed to play his part on that first terrifying trip to Hamburg. They were both now part of the gang.

  We had a concert party come and perform in the canteen last Tuesday. All the camp went to see them, and a right mixed bunch they were. They were from ENSA, who are supposed to have all the big names playing for them, but I think they get sent to more important places than ours, because this lot were more like the end of the pier show. There was a pianist, a male and a female vocalist, a comedian and three dancers. When we heard there were going to be dancing girls we thought we were going to get something like the Tillers, but these were doing all this folk stuff. And they weren’t exactly girls. More my mam’s age, I’d say. Anyway, the vocalists weren’t bad. They did all the old favourites and everyone joined in the choruses and the comedian was quite funny in places. We all had a good evening, anyway.

  Anything was useful to take your mind off what you might have to face the next time you flew. Of all the personnel gathered in the canteen that evening, it had been the air crew who’d whistled and clapped and cheered and booed the loudest. You didn’t think ahead. You just enjoyed each moment as it came. After straining to get into the RAF, always having a goal ahead of him, it had taken Tom a while to adjust to this new way of looking at life, but with six sorties notched up now, he was finding that he too was just living for the day.

  We’re lucky on our crew, because we’ve got Mike. He’s our bomb-aimer and he’s been on more sorties than anyone else here. He says he’s safe as long as he takes his lucky button with him and we know we’re safe as long as he’s with us, so we’re all right.

  They were all right, Tom repeated to himself. Even though he’d overheard someone from one of the other crews saying that Mike had survived so long that his number must be up and so he was unlucky for his crew. But that was just superstitious rubbish, and neither Tom nor any of the rest of his lot were going to believe that.

  He glanced across the hut to where his best pal Alan was whistling as he polished his boots to a mirror shine. Alan caught his eye and grinned.

  ‘Which one are you writing to this time, Romeo?’

  ‘My mam,’ Tom lied.

  Alan laughed in disbelief. ‘Oh, yeah? Pull the other one, mate. I know that look on your face.’

  ‘Go stuff yourself,’ Tom told him.

  Alan just smiled and waved two fingers at him.

  Tom concentrated on his letter.

  I hope things are going well on the farm. It can’t be much fun out in the fields in this weather. I thought of you the other day when it rained all day long and hoped you weren’t out in it, but I expect you were. Have you seen anything of …

  He was just about to write the dreaded Beryl, but thought better of it. Annie was so dead set against the girl. Well, not surprising really, she was pretty awful, and her mother—! Tom shuddered to think of Mrs Sutton and her domineering ways. He had nearly fallen out with Annie permanently over that time he had been forced to go to tea with them. So no mentioning Beryl. At least he didn’t feel guilty about Beryl, whereas Moira—under no circumstances must Annie ever know about Moira.

  For Moira was writing to him as regularly as Annie. Worryingly, there was a possessive tone to her letters. Just because he had taken her with him to meet his friends on his last leave, and they had all met up practically every day, she appeared to think she was his girlfriend. He should never have kissed her like that on the last evening. He had to admit that it had been very nice at the time, but it had given Moira quite the wrong idea. She seemed to be taking it for granted that he was going to go out with her on his next leave, which she assumed he would be spending at Noresley. On top of that, his mother and the rest of his family expected him to go home too.

  His mother was as good a correspondent as either of the girls, telling him in minute detail everything that had been going on at home. Since the Butterworths had moved in, there was always a lot about them. She and Mrs Butterworth were now best friends and both of them were delighted that Tom and Moira had hit it off so well. Every letter brought some praise of Moira—what a lovely girl she was, so helpful to her mother, so kind to her younger sisters, what a splendid cook and housekeeper she was, how everyone at the office she worked at valued her. It was obvious which way his mother’s mind was working.

  Tom sighed and looked back at the letter he was writing. Annie expected him to go to Wittlesham on his next leave. What was more, he had promised her that he would. And he did want to see her again. There was something about Annie—something different, special. Nobody was quite like Annie. But it was such a long time now since he had last seen her that the clear image that he had once had of her in his mind was fading a little. Did she even still look the same as he remembered? He knew he had changed a lot. He certainly felt a hundred years older than the boy who had thought of nothing but joining up. So presumably she must have changed as well. What if they didn’t recognise each other when they next met? But that was stupid. He would always be able to recognise Annie …

  He was jolted out of his reverie by the wail of the siren.

  ‘Raid!’ Alan yelped as he, Tom and the others in the hut pulled on boots, grabbed coats and tin hats and made a dash for the door.

  Outside in the damp night the station was alive with hurrying figures. Over their heads, the siren was still screaming as some personnel made for the shelters whilst others ran towards the planes. Already the searchlights were stabbing the sky and out by the hangars the first throaty roar of engines could be heard as crews raced to get the precious aircraft into the sky before they became sitting ducks. Pounding across wet concrete and weaving round other scurrying figures, Tom arrived to see the first plane already rolling out on to the runway while others were starting their engines. The air throbbed with noise and stank of aviation fuel and exhaust fumes. Tom raced to V-Victor and hauled himself on board just as the fourth engine fired.

  ‘What kept you, Romeo?’

  ‘Sure you can spare the time to join us?’

  Other members of the crew were grinning at him.

  ‘Hold tight, we’re off!’ the skipper shouted back to them.

  ‘Where’s Mike?’ Tom asked as the plane started to roll forward.

  ‘Sick bay.’

  Tom felt slightly sick himself. He knew it was not like a sortie. They were only moving the planes out of the way and they didn’t need a full crew. But all the same he felt exposed without bullet-proof Mike and his lucky button on board. The plane began to vibrate as it taxied towards the runway.

  We had a bit of drama here since I started this letter. We got an air raid warning and had to scramble all the planes, but in the end it was a false alarm. The Jerry bombers must have been heading for the midlands. It wa
s a good thing because we hardly had any fuel on board and we couldn’t have stayed up for long. I was worried because Mike wasn’t with us, but we got down again all right.

  Tom tapped the pen against his teeth. It looked so bare on the page. We got down again all right. But how could he tell her about the lads who hadn’t got down all right, about the plane that had unaccountably swerved on landing, clipped a storage building and burst into flames? The fire had been big enough to light half of Lincolnshire. It had lit the way for their landing wonderfully. If he told Annie about that, she’d be worried all the time. He knew how much she worried anyway, because she’d told him so enough times. What was more, he knew what it felt like, because he worried about her, stuck in that bleak farmhouse with that father of hers. Neither of them could do anything to help the other, except write these letters.

  Don’t go working yourself to death on that farm. I always think of it being summer in Wittlesham, but the wind must cut across your land like it does across the airfield here. Give my regards to Gwen and thank her for being such a good postlady. I’ll try to get to see Blood and Sand when it gets up this way and then that will be something we’ve both done.

  Your friend,

  Tom.

  XXX

  Annie sighed and gently folded the letter, slid it into its envelope and put it under her pillow. Tom was all right. He was safe. In fact, he didn’t seem to be doing much flying at all. Visits to the pub, concert parties—it was all just one big round of fun. And to think that she had been imagining him up there over Germany. She smiled again at the story about the cow and the helmet. How puzzled the farmer must have been that one of his cows had suddenly produced less one morning. Lucky Tom. She was glad he was managing to enjoy himself, of course. But still she wondered what he was not telling her about. Was there a girlfriend at the airfield? Some WAAF who had caught his eye, or a girl in the village? He certainly wouldn’t tell her if there was someone. If only they could get to see each other again, everything would be all right. She would know, the moment she saw him, if there was something he was trying to cover up. All she wanted was to hear that he had some leave and was coming to spend it here, with her, at Silver Sands.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘YOU got it, Mike?’ Tom asked above the hubbub of conversation in the locker room.

  Mike nodded and patted his breast pocket.

  ‘Would I forget?’

  ‘‘Course not, mate. I know I can rely on you,’ Tom said.

  But he felt reassured, nonetheless. They all carried mascots, even tough nuts like Mac, the top gunner, a wiry Glaswegian who kept a small toy rabbit knitted in Rangers colours in his trouser pocket. But of all of them, Mike’s lucky button was legendary. Tom checked his socks, though he knew that they were inside out, and therefore all right, and made sure that his old school prefect’s badge was securely pinned inside his flying jacket. Now he was ready.

  All around him, men were struggling into their flying gear. Tom was sweating as he did up the zips and pulled on the bulky Mae West. It was warm in the locker room amongst the tight pack of men, but later on they would all be glad of the layers of clothing. He and Squiff, the radio operator, checked each other’s parachute harness and lined up with the others to get the sandwiches and flasks of coffee, slabs of chocolate and barley sugar sweets that would keep them going for the long cold journey. Already the buses were arriving, and a corporal by the open door was shouting out the aircraft letters.

  Out on the dispersal pans, the ground crew were making their final checks, while the air crew took a last leak before climbing on board.

  ‘Make sure you zip it up safely, Romeo,’ someone told Tom. ‘You’ll need it for all those girls of yours.’

  Tom glanced up at V-Victor, to where the hand in a v-for-victory sign was painted on her nose alongside their tally of bombings.

  ‘That’s the girl I’m relying on tonight,’ he said.

  Mike reached up and slapped the Halifax’s belly. ‘She’ll get us there and back all right. She’s a tough old tart.’

  There was the usual underlying tension as the engines were fired up and the plane taxied out to join the queue for take-off. Tom outlined the flight plan and climb instructions over the intercom. He breathed in the queasy smell of the aircraft as the vibration juddered through him, and unwrapped one of the barley sugars. Above the noise of their own engines, he could hear the roar of other planes taking off.

  There was the usual hanging about, then Chip the skipper’s voice crackled in his ears. ‘Here we go, chaps!’

  The engines powered up as Chip opened the throttles against the brakes, and then they were off, accelerating down the runway with Chip holding the nose down for as long as possible before finally hauling the big plane and its heavy load into the air. Tom felt himself relax a little as the motion smoothed and they began the slow climb into the night sky. The first hurdle was over. They were flying.

  ‘Bearing, Romeo?’

  Tom gave the course for the assembly point, picturing as he did the planes from other airfields setting out as they were now, all heading for the same point. Then it was navigation lights out and the flock of deadly birds made for Cromer. Even cooped up as he was in his curtained-off section, Tom could sense the other aircraft close around him in the skies. There was safety in the stream—the safety of the herd—but there was always the slightly uncomfortable feeling that someone else could get too close. Even now he could feel the disturbance in the air as another plane flew right over them.

  As they crossed the coast, Tom tuned his new GEE set to a sharp picture while next to him in the cramped compartment, Squiff received messages and passed on information to him about wind speed and direction. Tom adjusted his calculations. A heavy head wind meant it was going to take longer to get to their target.

  ‘Enemy coast ahead.’

  That was Mike, up in the nose.

  ‘Switch on oxygen.’

  Tom threw in another barley sugar before covering his mouth and nose with the claustrophobic rubbery smell of the mask. The first lot of flak would be coming up now to welcome them to enemy territory. He sensed rather than heard it.

  He gave Chip the course for the target and the new ETA, and then it was the long haul over Belgium and Germany, with the GEE becoming less accurate with distance. Tom backed it up with old-fashioned maps, bearings and calculations, just to make sure. Somewhere ahead of them the Pathfinders would be already on their way, ready to pinpoint the target. Over the intercom a game of ‘get Nev’ developed, a welcome antidote to the boredom and underlying fear. They all teased him over his alleged marathon session with twin sisters last weekend.

  ‘Bet you wish you had them out there with you now, Nev. Keep you warmer than a Taylorsuit.’

  ‘How did you manage with your little tart’s hands, Nev? Did you use your feet as well?’

  ‘It’s easy for him—he’s had all that practice servicing cows. Two girls at a time is nothing.’

  Nev was laughing back at them. ‘Don’t you wish you had my stamina? All you can do is talk about it. Not the same as doing it. All night. Every way up.’

  Which brought on a round of competitive boasting.

  On across Germany they droned, an hour turning into two. Tom could feel the tension building inside him, bracing his jaw, locking his shoulders. It was all too quiet. They had steered clear of most of the possible anti-aircraft fire, but they should have been harried by night-fighters by now. He could only conclude that the enemy was saving up something nasty to throw at them.

  Then Mac’s voice came over the intercom warning of bandits, and the clatter of airgun fire rattled through the plane as the gunners tried to pick off the raiders. Tom could hear the scream of a single engine plane diving. He tried to concentrate on his maps. Beside him Squiff was listening to what was going on in the rest of the fleet. At times like this, he was grateful to be stuck in here, even if he couldn’t see what was going on. At least he had Squiff for company. Mac and N
ev were all alone, sitting ducks in their perspex turrets.

  Above the steady growl and vibration of the plane, the sound of the higher pitched fighters and the clatter of gunfire circled round them. V-Victor held steady in the stream. With a bit of luck, they wouldn’t be singled out. There were nearly four hundred others to choose from.

  Tom took a new ETA. Just fifteen minutes to target. The reception committee was hotting up.

  ‘Flak starboard,’ came Mike’s voice.

  ‘D-Dog’s caught it. Port engine alight. He’s pulling out,’ Squiff reported.

  ‘Yow! Hole in one!’ Nev yelled. ‘Someone got the bandit!’

  ‘Z-Zombie’s claiming it,’ Squiff reported.

  ‘Nice one!’ Tom said. Z-Zombie was Alan’s plane.

  The triumph was only seconds long.

  ‘More bandits,’ came Mac’s warning. ‘Corkscrew port, go!’

  The whole crew braced themselves as Chip took evasive action, banking the heavy aircraft steeply to port, pulling the nose up, banking again, levelling out, heaving the unwieldy bomber around the sky so as not to be a steady target for the pursuing night-fighters. The airguns clattered and Nev’s voice could be heard screaming, ‘Take that, you bastards!’ Tom felt rather than heard the rip of bullets through their starboard wing while in his ear Chip was talking to the plane.

  ‘Come back, you cow, come back, that’s it, good girl—’

  He held his breath. Like all the Halifaxes, V-Victor had a rudder lock-over problem that could send her into a fatal deep stall. He hung on to his small table, jamming his back against the back of his seat. The plane was responding. Chip had not pushed her too far. More bullets slammed into the fuselage just above his head. Instinctively, he ducked and Squiff yelped just as Nev’s voice came crowing down the intercom.