Damned Good Show (31 page)

“I'm not taking the bombs back. And Woody goes all huffy if he doesn't get his way.”

“It's Bremen, all right,” Woodman said. “I can see the bridge. Smoke's worse.”

“Bomb doors open.” The Wellington vibrated as the slipstream snatched at the bomb doors.

“Left, left, steady. Left. Good. Steady at that.” The cloud was
thinner now. “Coming up … Coming up … Bombs gone.” The bomber reacted with a bounce. “Steer three four eight. Goodbye, Bremen.”

“Three four eight,” Silk said. “Next time we do this, the kite will have a camera, and the bomb run will go on and on …” He counted to fifteen. “See anything, Chubby?”

“Yes! Spot on target! Lovely grub.”

Woodman climbed out of the nose and went to his navigator's table. He worked on his charts and gave Silk a new bearing. “Eleven minutes to the coast,” he said.

“That's nice. They told me you died in your sleep, Badge.”

“Correct, skip.” Badger was the front gunner: the coldest, bleakest place in the aircraft, with nothing to look at but the onrushing night and maybe, one day, just the briefest glimpse of a night fighter. Hour after hour of searching until the eyes ached for rest, just a few seconds, ample time for a black Messerschmitt to sidle up and blow D-Dog apart. Badger's eyes never rested. Silk never nagged. If he spoke, it was only to check that the intercom worked.

A light mist coated Coney Garth and they were over the flare-path before the glim-lights were visible but Silk put Dog on the grass without trouble. When he climbed down the ladder from the hatch in the nose, the night air smelled sweetly of aviation fuel and crushed clover. Five hours and a bit.

The truck came to take them to interrogation. Badger banged his knee on the tailgate and swore. “You want to take more care, Badge,” Silk said. “It's bloody dangerous, this bombing lark.”

Bins wrote fast. It was one of the things that made him popular with the crews. When four Wellingtons landed within minutes of each other, they knew they could depend on him to whiz through his questions and let the chaps get to their bacon and eggs without delay. He didn't need Skull. Skull was with Pug Duff and Colonel Kemp, ready to answer any questions the American might have.

“Thank you,” Bins said to the crew of K-King.

“Damned good show,” the group captain said. Six pairs of flying boots thudded to the door. Bins saw Flight Lieutenant Pearson and crew, wrote “B-Beer” on a fresh form and said. “Did you reach Bremen all right?”

“Certainly did.”

“Find the target?”

“Yep.”

“Hit the target?”

“Bull's-eye,” Pearson's navigator said.

“Direct hit,” the rear gunner said. “I saw the bombs go in. Spot-on.”

Bins ran through some routine questions about defenses. “Nothing special,” Pearson said. “Usual stuff. The cloud helped us. No fighters.”

“Thank you,” Bins said. “Damned good show,” Rafferty told them. Another crew lumbered forward: Pilot Officer Chester's Q-Queenie. “Reach Bremen?” Bins asked.

“Just put ‘same again,' Bins,” Chester said. “Found it, bombed it, left it in flames, came home.” He smiled happily. “Just another day on the night shift.”

“So you definitely hit the target? The U-boat yards?”

“Straddled ‘em,” Chester's rear gunner said. “Made one hell of a mess. They won't be building any subs for a long time.”

“Anything special about the defenses? No? See any aircraft attacked, coned, in trouble? No?” The crew stood silent, eager for food. “Jolly good. Thank you.”

“Damned good show.”

Bins took care of U-Uncle, sent them away, and saw Flying Officer Silk waiting. This time he refilled his fountain-pen, took off his glasses and polished them, wrote “D-Dog” on a form and had a sudden longing for a whisky and water. He could taste it, almost smell it. “Now,” he said, “tell me your news.”

Silk was scratching the inside of his right ear with a match, and simultaneously trying to catch a small white moth with his left hand. He wasn't even looking at Bins.

“Cloud was a bit of a nuisance,” Woodman said. “We went round twice and I found the target second time, next to the river. Couldn't miss it, really.”

“I saw them go in,” Chubb said. “Spot on target. Lovely grub.”

“Wasn't smoke a problem? You were one of the last to bomb.”

“Must have got blown away,” Woodman said

“Strong winds,” Mallaby added.

“Anything else of interest?”

“Plenty of flak, and all in the wrong place,” Badger said. He was half-turned, ready to go.

“No night fighters?”

“That's right,” Silk said. “And we didn't bomb Bremen, either.” The moth had got away. He switched the match to the other ear.

Bins leaned back, hands linked behind his head. The wireless op, Campbell, found a chair and sat down, heavily. “Should I cross all this out?” Bins asked. An air-extractor stopped whirring and the atmosphere seemed flat. Dead.

“Please yourself,” Silk said. “I've been to Bremen umpteen times. I know what it's like. It's got German navy gunners. They bang like rabbits. Very hot, very accurate, very fast. Not like tonight. Tonight's gunners couldn't piss down their right legs in a flat calm.” He spoke mildly.

“If not Bremen,” Bins said, “then where?”

“Oldenburg, I expect.” Silk strolled over to a wall map of northern Germany. “Thirty miles west of Bremen. On a river.”

“Bremen's four times the size of Oldenburg.” Bins wasn't arguing; just giving the facts. “Oldenburg hasn't got any U-boat yards. No docks, to speak of. It's like Bath Spa.”

“Explains the feeble flak,” Silk said.

The Wingco cleared his throat. “The target was burning when you got there?” he asked. Silk nodded. By now all his crew were sprawled on chairs, bored, resigned, impatient, hungry. “So here's the question,” Duff said. “We sent six Wellingtons, and four crews say they clobbered Bremen, so how come you're so sure you bombed Oldenburg?”

“I reckon the forecast winds were wrong. The Met man predicted thirty miles an hour from the east, but the actual winds at ten thou were sixty or seventy. Ten-tenths cloud over the Dutch coast, so nobody got a pinpoint when we crossed. We never reached Bremen. Blame the wind.”

“I saw docks,” Woodman said, “and I bombed docks.” The rear gunner nodded vigorously.

Rafferty decided this had lasted long enough. “Well,” he said, “if Oldenburg ever had any docks, they've gone for a Burton now.” It was a joke.

“Doubt it,” Silk said. “With those winds, at that height, we probably
hit the suburbs.” He had stopped scratching his ear. He struck the match and everyone watched it burn. He licked his fingertips and there was a soft sizzle when he held the match by its blackened head and let the flames eat up the stem.

“Thank you,” Bins said. The crew were at the door when Rafferty called, “Damned good show.”

It was three in the morning. Rafferty and Duff took Colonel Kemp to the Mess for a nightcap or two. 409 had a tradition that the bar never closed until the op was finished and all crews were accounted for, one way or the other.

“Cheers,” Rafferty said. They clinked glasses. “Death to all tyrants, hands across the sea, et cetera.”

“Another damn good raid,” Duff said.

“I have a question, if I may,” Kemp said. Rafferty gestured, urging him on. “About Wellington S-Sugar. The reserve plane.” Not all American voices twang like guitars. Kemp's had the husky warmth of a cello. “How often does that sort of thing happen?”

“Boomerangs,” Duff said. “They fly off, and all too soon they fly back. Known as ‘early returns' on some squadrons. Here, they're boomerangs and the chaps know I won't tolerate them.”

“Infectious,” Rafferty said. “One crew turns back, next time it's two, then four.”

“I jump on it with both feet,” Duff said.

“I've visited squadrons where they talk about ‘hangar queens,'” Kemp said. “Aircraft that are always unreliable. Cure one fault, here comes another.”

“Our servicing is second to none,” Duff said. “No kite is perfect, of course. A captain can always find a reason to turn back if he looks hard enough. 409 teaches him to find several reasons to press on.”

“Pug's a press-on type,” Rafferty said

“Success breeds success,” Duff said. “I don't know what boomerangs breed.”

“Twitch,” Rafferty said.

“Something else puzzles me,” Kemp said. “That pilot who insisted he bombed Oldenburg. You didn't ask him
why.
I mean, if he knew Bremen was thirty miles away …”

“Ah, well.” Rafferty chuckled. “That's Silk.”

“He's the joker in the pack,” Duff said. “Most experienced pilot on the squadron, flew Hampdens before we got Wimpys, now he's halfway through his second tour of ops, scruffy as hell, should be a squadron leader but he doesn't give a damn for anything or anyone. I don't argue with Silk. Waste of breath.”

“But if he doesn't care,” Kemp said, “why does he carry on flying?”

“No option,” Rafferty explained. “He volunteered to fly. He finished his first tour. Now he's got to finish his second.”

“Silk's a pain in the ass,” Duff said, “but the boys like him. He's 409's mascot. As long as he hits the target, I don't care if he talks balls.”

Ten minutes later, Silk walked in and Kemp went over and introduced himself. He had never seen such old eyes in such a young face.

Silk's conversational style managed to sound brisk and pessimistic at the same time. “You don't look like an American,” he said. “Have you met Hedy Lemarr? Dorothy Lamour? Veronica Lake? Lana Turner? The one in the swimsuit?”

“Esther Williams. No. May I buy you a drink?”

“Nobody's met Hedy Lemarr. Makes a chap wonder why we went to war. You can't buy drinks, you're not a member. Two pints of embalming fluid,” he told a Mess waiter. “And a plate of stale whelks. I can't eat fresh whelks,” he told Kemp. “They're too volatile. I expect you're the same.”

“I'm afraid I've never eaten a whelk.”

“Neither have I. Cancel the whelks,” he told a different waiter.

Kemp waited. Silk seemed to have reached an end. “I was at the debriefing,” Kemp said. “You had a different slant on tonight's raid, compared with the others.”

“Oh well… Six kites. Wasn't much of a raid, was it? Does it make any difference whether we miss Bremen, or Oldenburg? Half the bombs are duds, anyway.”

Two beers arrived. “Whelks won't be stale till tomorrow, Mr. Silk,” the waiter said woodenly, and went away.

“Help me out here,” Kemp said. “Bremen's very heavily defended, and it's not far from Oldenburg. Couldn't you see its searchlights? The Germans knew you were in the area.”

“What searchlights? Jerry doesn't show us where he is unless we bother him. Why should he? Makes more sense for him to hide in his lovely blackout and let us stooge overhead and go on our way. Lost.”

Kemp rubbed his jaw. “Now I know you're joking.”

“Colonel, if I took this job seriously I'd be as barmy as Pug Duff. Let me give you a potted history of the bombing war. To begin with we flew low, five or six thousand feet. At night, in decent weather, full moon, we could map-read our way across Germany. Not much flak. But Jerry machine guns became a nuisance. So we flew higher. Can't map-read so well now. Then, heavy tracer. Five hundred rounds per gun per minute, reaching eight thousand and going off bang. So, we flew higher still. Now, we can't pick out anything except big landmarks. Lakes, rivers, erupting volcanoes. Jerry chucks in light flak. His 3.7-caliber stuff can fire a shell every three seconds. Up we go again, ten thousand, twelve, more, because Jerry's also got an 88-millimeter weapon, very nasty, and now we're so high the navigator can't find a pinpoint on the ground, can't check the predicted winds, can't take a star-shot through cloud, and all his dead-reckoning calculations are up the spout because the stupid pilot keeps changing course when the flak gets so close he can smell it. So where are we?”

They drank their beer.

“One bloke got so lost he bombed Yorkshire,” Silk said.

“But many German cities
have
been bombed,” Kemp said. “The Germans themselves admit that. You even bombed Berlin.”

“They say Yorkshire looks a lot better for it.”

“Well…” Kemp stood up. “I appreciate your help, flight lieutenant.”

“Don't believe anything Pug Duff tells you. He lies like a rug.”

Kemp went back to Rafferty and the Wingco. “I bet he told you nothing works,” Duff said. “Ops are a nonsense. Am I right?”

“Pretty close.”

“Silk enjoys being bloody-minded. After flying, it's what he does best.”

Kemp got four hours' sleep. At eight-thirty, as he was going into the Mess for breakfast, he met Skull coming out. “My stars!” he said. “You fellows work long hours.”

“Actually I'm rather late. The others are at their desks by now. The squadron may be on ops again tonight, and our planning starts early”

“Seems to pay off. Washington is very impressed with the way you fellows keep pounding the Nazis. Bomber Command is a bright light in a gloomy world.”

“It's a big battle. There's plenty of room for two.”

Kemp nodded. They both knew he couldn't discuss America's neutrality. “Explain something to me, would you? Last night, before the party broke up, didn't somebody say the reserve plane, S-Sugar, was a total loss?”

“Yes. Flak damage over the German coast. She came down in a field in Essex and caught fire. The crew got out. Some casualties, I believe.”

“I see.” Kemp didn't sound convinced. “The reason I ask is I caught the BBC news just now. They say a force of Wellingtons hit the U-boat docks at Bremen and, quote, none of our aircraft was lost, unquote.”