by Cecil Beaton
BOMBERS
Mildenhall
These dark grey weeks spent at a bomber station have given me an appalling sense of guilt. Not only am I a stranger and one who is incapable of sharing the dangers of this terrifying life, but I am an interloper prying into the private existences of these airmen.
Of course I am ‘chaperoned’ wherever I go, and there are certain activities too secret for me to witness (I am seldom allowed to be at the briefing when the crews are given their targets for the night), and, of course, my pictures are submitted to the most rigorous examination by the censor who indicates which maps, diagrams, log book or paper must be ‘airbrushed out’ from my prints before they are sent to propaganda bureaux throughout the Empire. Yet, in spite of my being the tweed-clad civilian in their midst, I am treated with the solicitude of an honoured guest. At Cambridge the idea of taking my seat at the dining-table in Hall, and ‘making my number’ with my fellow colleagues, was an anathema that I avoided whenever possible. Now, I enjoy the friendliness (and the food is better than to be found in most war-time restaurants), and this in spite of the innate reluctance of the whole Service to participate in anything so indiscreet, and even vulgar, as propaganda.
Napoleon called it ‘the 2 o’clock in the morning unprepared courage’, the cold-blooded kind, that is needed to pilot a heavy bomber on long flights over well-fortified enemy country. For what bomber can enjoy finding himself, in an Arctic temperature, flying through the enemy’s searchlight belt while every piece of metal melted down from all the statues, railings, pots and pans in the neighbourhood, is hurled up at him? Yet, for the bomber with his poor manoeuvrability, ‘flak’ holds less dangers than interception by patrolling night-fighters. Unless he has sufficient height to dive low, thereby gaining speed — but temporarily becoming more vulnerable to the ground defences — he knows his chances are desperate. Some pilots have said that their sternest moment is when the target for which they are making is ‘thirty minutes ahead’, already illuminated by the gunfire loosed at the ‘early take-offs’ who have already arrived. Once in the centre of this bombardment they are less conscious of their peril. The tracers flying past, the orange lights of the ‘flak’, the bursts of cannon that from the air look similar to bomb-bursts, the green explosions from the blazing factories below, and the coloured ‘flaming onions’, create an effect that would be ‘very pretty’, they say, ‘if you had time to admire it’.
Hugh Francis suggested that a picture ‘feature’ — hackneyed enough in idea, but, none the less, one to be approached with sincerity and freshness — would be to show ‘a day in the life of a bomber pilot’. Initially to find the right type was hard enough, but then to assuage his natural aversion to being picked out for prominence from his fellows created a tougher problem. However, when the CO suggested we should use Robert Tring as our star — he was handsome, nineteen year old and had brought back his crew and aircraft, B for Bobby, from twenty-nine bombing trips over Berlin — Bobby could not demur with impunity.
B for Bobby was, in fact, an excellent choice with his photogenic, cat-like features, rather wild, dark eyes, and black silken curls. But to see him, as I did for the first time, sitting bolt upright in his cell-like room, legs folded, with Tarka the Otter held in his slender, feminine hands, you would never suspect that he had enough strength of muscle to take up, and bring down, a heavy Stirling bomber. Yet Bobby is one of the most steady and reliable pilots of the squadron. The son of a clergyman from the Cotswolds, his is the dark quiet voice of the scholar. He is the perfect antithesis of the brutish type our enemy produces.
At first Bobby suggested several other ‘buddies’ whom he thought better for the job of being popped at by camera flashes as a change from enemy guns but, being an amenable type, acquiesced to being a guinea pig.
Slowly he went to the basin, washed his hands, and brushed smoother his hair. He looked abashed that this action should seem worth recording. Again, before lunch in the mess, when he drank from a pewter tankard, he seemed surprised that this conviviality should warrant more pictures.
After lunch Bobby and all the crews on tonight’s raid were given their preliminary briefing. Every available inch of wall is covered with large scale maps and photograph mosaics: the balloon barrages, the known ground defences and hostile fighter bases are indicated by blobs of purple ink; threads are stretched over the route the bombers are to take. Seventy-five per cent of the bomber’s work must be done before he leaves the ground, so he must be of a patient, persevering disposition, ready to take infinite pains over his preparations.
So great is Bobby’s absorption that he has now become quite oblivious to the camera’s presence. No lecturer ever had a more attentive audience than the senior intelligence officer. Heads crowd close together around him, intent, earnest, solemn; they are surely those of mere schoolboys. Their faces and hands are smooth and pale without any suggestion of down upon them. Rows of cats’ eyes peer up at a blind which is suddenly pulled down on which the details of tonight’s target — the Ruhr — are flashed by the vast epidiascope. The navigators are given their special conundrums and immediately start to make their calculations, and to copy the various codes and cyphers to be used. They must recognize the fake German towns — and not release their valuable load on dummy targets.
These youths are quite objective about their task: they do not feel hatred for the individual German. How can he hate someone he does not know? Bobby asks. Yet he will have no mercy for the enemy, knowing he will show none for them. Incentive for revenge is given when a submarine sinks a ship without warning, or a friend is shot down on his parachute; but in most cases the assault is an impersonal one.
The crew ask few questions. They show little interest in why this certain target has been selected: they just get on with whatever they have to do and make every effort to ensure good results. Thus the explosion from an effective hit causes them satisfaction, for a technical feat has been accomplished. But they do not like to think too much about the punishment they inflict.
The weather is rough again — perhaps too rough for tonight’s sortie: nothing to do but wait for further reports to come in. This tension of anticipation has a frustrating effect to which no pilot becomes totally inured, however hard he tries to accustom himself. Sometimes a pilot will remain keyed-up for weeks before it is possible for him to play his part.
By now Bobby is showing distinct signs of becoming tired of me. In fact, by the way he chain-smokes and casts a slightly haunted look out of his stag’s eyes, I wonder if he is not showing signs of over-fatigue and nervous stress. But, one more trip, and Bobby will be leaving this station. He wishes to be sent ‘out’ East, but it’s more likely that he will be posted to a training school to become a flying instructor.
The wind has blown away some fog. The Met people now seem to think conditions are becoming more favourable.
‘We’ll be on tonight,’ says Baker, who puts his head around the door, then is gone. Baker is Bobby Tring’s second pilot, the heavy Etruscan type, with a shock of black silk fringe falling to his jet-black eyes. Sitting by Bobby’s side in his heavy leather suit, he has been a monolith of strength throughout the perils of the past twenty-nine trips.
The Met people were right and the ‘big trip’ is on: those valued and terrible jewels of destruction, the enormous torpedo-shaped bombs, have been taken from the prison-like vaults where, in the silence of the tomb, they lie in row upon row, rack upon rack, and are now placed in readiness in the under-belly of the aircraft.
All sorts and sizes, all characters are here in their crumpled, weather-cracked harness. There is Miles, a born leader of men, who worked in the gas industry before the war. He is wearing a long, thick, grey sweater that reaches almost to the knees. There is a blond Yorkshireman — the wire-haired variety, with small seed-pearl teeth and a voice like a razor. There is the dark Cornish boy, heavy, with high cheekbones and a slow regard. An overgrown gangling youth, with an enormous Adam’s apple and a voice
from the depths of a well, he has just missed being an Adonis, and this failure makes him slightly ridiculous. And there is Hardy, the typical English school hero, coarsened a bit, with bull neck. His colouring is still vivid, with rosy cheeks and the azure eyes which associate him with country-house tennis, followed by a quick dip and vast quantities of lemonade and strawberries for tea.
The crew-room is crowded and full of smoke for the final briefing. The weather expert gives his latest information and last words of advice. The navigators put maps, dividers, and protractors into their satchels. The crews stand about, fastening the clasps or pulling at the straps of their parachute harness, buckling on the life preservers, or adjusting the electric tubes of their ‘hot suits’. They are laughing and in high spirits.
The provisions for the trip are handed out, carefully selected Christmas packages: energy pastilles, chewing-gum, raisins, chocolate slabs. The scene is as light-hearted as that of the locker-room before a preparatory school football game.
‘What’s happened to my gloves?’ asks Bobby’s gunner, a tough-looking little runt from Lancashire with a face that screws up like rubber when he smiles. The missing gloves are found. Then a pair of white silk ones (one had forgotten that sort since the days of juvenile dancing classes) is put on; over these he wears the leather gloves, and on top the fur. A ten-foot scarf is coiled around neck and shoulders. Bobby, serious and somewhat aloof, still wears his service cap, for he does not wish to be photographed in a helmet and will only put it on when once in the cockpit.
Outside they lie about on the ground, looking suddenly like strange Bank Holiday-makers, waiting for the lorry to come back to take another load to the dispersal points. Bobby is taking a light from Baker, their last cigarette for an unconscionable time.
‘Wonder how much we’ll see tonight?’
‘From the look of it we’ll be lucky if we see the Rhine.’
I now realise that in any further photograph I take it would be tactful to make Bobby’s presence only incidental.
The lorry’s here. In their cumbersome harness the young men clamber up and are jostled together, laughing, jerking up their thumbs and generally behaving as if they were getting a lift as far as the local Odeon, instead of for a journey of 1,100 hazardous miles.
Arrival at the aircraft seems as vague and casual as if no definite time were set for the take-off. But there is no hitch or delay. The ground crew have put their final touch to the vast machine that towers, like some prehistoric beast, against the grey-blue sky streaked with apricot-coloured islands. Daylight is waning, but the decline is gradual, and you are barely aware of it before semidarkness envelops you.
Two of the crew are standing rather stiffly against the hedge, with their backs to us; then they come towards us and burrow into the bowels of the aircraft.
Aloft in the cockpit, at a height where the top windows of a tall house would be, Bobby at last straps on his helmet. The navigator is laying out his chart, adjusting his astrograph, arranging his sextant and numerous papers and bundles into position. The wireless operator is tuning up his set; the second pilot testing his RT, while the engineer checks his instruments. In his protruding glass ‘blister’, the rear-gunner, with barrels depressed to their fullest extent, takes a careful look to see that no one is ‘in line’, and fires a burst of fiery sparks to make sure his guns are working correctly.
‘He’s taking no chances,’ an officer standing by explains.
‘Don’t blame him either,’ smiles another.
As the airscrews jerk and, one after the other, the four engines roar, the wall of noise becomes deafening. The wind of their power flattens the grass and drives away stray leaves, twigs, dust, and some old canvas covers in the slipstream. The ground crew, their flapping trousers flattened to one side of their legs as the engines rev up ever more furiously, are standing on the side lines and, like comic people in an early cinema farce, are quivering paralytically, their hair on end. The vast chocks are pulled aside. The prehistoric beast is navigated into position for the take-off. From the control tower the instructions are given to stand by. The first monster crawls forward, gathers speed, rushes to the boundary of the airfield, and rises with a roar. Another has taken up its position and starts its run, along, now off. One by one the ‘giants with stings in their tails’ have circled the pale night and float like a slow moving frieze against the sky.
Those of us who are left behind can only guess what the experience must be for those who undertake this awful journey. We see the men who come back and receive their travellers’ tales: we hear them discussing amongst themselves the excitements and terrors of that nine or twelve hours’ ordeal. Time itself becomes a black eternity as the aircraft, without even giving its passengers the comforting sensation that they are in motion, bores its way through the night. (‘Will there really be a morning — is there such a thing as day?’) We know that the heating apparatus often ‘packs up’, and in an attempt to relieve with some counterpain the agonies of frostbite and lack of oxygen these boys have butted their young heads on the metallic floors of the aircraft.
Meanwhile, in the control room, situated at the top of a sort of land lighthouse, the signals and reports come in. To avoid being located by their radio, the bombers seldom break wireless silence on the outward journey, but they must send a message when their mission is completed. To this polished, rather empty operation theatre of a room, the dramas of the raid are relayed. Tonight as ever, the lights burn stale and yellow and a loud crackle is heard, a crash of static from the dark world outside, and a hollow voice comes over the air a few minutes after the aircraft have left. One of them is in difficulties. There is a commotion as various officers and men run to their telephones to give special instructions. ‘C for Charlie is returning,’ through the mouthpiece the voice recites in a cold, almost Chinese, sing-song. ‘Hallo, Talisman here. Hallo, Rabbit. C for Charlie. Talisman answering you. Are you receiving me?’
At his desk in front of an elaborate series of coloured lights, one of the engineers, a rather wizened little man in plimsolls, looking like a boxer’s second, barks into the mouthpiece: ‘Is the ambulance warmed up?’ ‘Beacon!’ an officer’s voice orders, and an aircraftsman presses a button.
Someone else is instructing, ‘Yes, you may land. Circle prior to landing. Circle prior to landing.’
Another strident, disembodied voice calls that the flarepath shall be lit. From the terrace of the control room the men stand watching the skies and listening. The night is quiet. A young owl squawks into the night, or a rabbit screams, caught in a snare. The radio gives out a heavy slumbrous sound. Distant gunfire may be heard; a newspaper crackles; a shrill bell rings. Presently a distant buzzing drone is heard. ‘That’s him, C for Charlie.’ The buzz becomes an intermittent hum, and at length a slowly moving star is seen. The star makes a semicircle above the perimeter of the aerodrome. More requests and acceptances by radio transmission — permission is given for C for Charlie to land.
The beacon light shows a red welcome. On the flarepath the coloured glow-worms somehow remind one of the far-distant days when fairy-lights betokened a gala. But how can we digress at the very moment that C for Charlie is turning into wind, about to land laden with her full load of bombs? Everyone watches. Lower, lower, the light descends. She turns on her own headlamps. The purring sound is heard when her engines are throttled back; a soft bump. There is a moment’s pause, and someone turns, ‘Perfect landing that.’
Meanwhile, the other businesses of the night must continue. The commanding officer is being shown the photographs, straight from the drier, of the damage done in today’s daylight sweep. The interpreters have marked with arrows on the negatives the latest results. The CO, a trained spotter of damage, gauges the crater holes which show where the bombers have dislocated traffic at railway junctions and marshalling yards, or have fallen wide with the result that the civilian population suffer the terrible degradation we well know at home.
In Shakespeare’s
wars night was quiet for men and animals, and the birds slept. This war knows no such night; the crepitations of darkness are shattered by the bestial shriek of enemy bombs, or, as we now hear, the magnificent roar of returning friends — the giant Stirlings circling above.
How long must we wait until they are all back? This is the zero hour of suspense; soon the vigil will be over; we will hear of their achievements and of the price that has been paid.
Up on a vast board the arrivals are chalked; there are still half a dozen to return, but already the lorries will have brought back from the dispersal points the first crews who, peeling off layers of gloves, jackets and scarves, explode into the guard room. Accustomed to being buffeted by various vibrations in their cramped confines, they tell you how wonderful is the moment when the engines are switched off, the noise is over, and they can drop out and pull deeply at a cigarette. With hair awry, these boys are still part of the nightmare that has engulfed them. After the hours of inspissated darkness, interrupted only by blinding flashes of deadly light, they screw up their eyes on coming into the unshielded lights, and appear as if waking from a deep sleep. Here they are — yes, the same men whom (secretly) you prayed for at their outset at sundown. But the interim has told its tale and every one of them has aged by several years.
However, soon their tongues are loosened, and they tell one another, with an exuberant relish, of their adventures. For the time they quite forget that ‘brave men hide or make excuses for their deeds’.
‘We gave the Hun a pasting all right — took him by surprise — must have had too good a dinner, for it was some time before he started any “flak”.’
