Damned Good Show (43 page)

“In the Blitz,” Rollo said. “We helped out, sometimes.”

Campbell's right buttock had a long, deep cut. Blood was pulsing out of it. She ripped open a dressing and plugged the wound. “Press the edges together,” she told Mallaby. She cut strips of adhesive tape, wiped most of the blood off the buttock, and taped the wound shut.
She covered it with a bigger dressing and taped that too. “Does it hurt much?” she asked Campbell.

He nodded once, slowly. His face had no color and his eyes were almost closed. She found the morphine and whacked it into his thigh. “Done,” she said. They covered him with blankets, put his oxygen mask in place, made sure he was breathing steadily.

Mallaby went back to the cockpit. “He'll live,” he said.

“Any serious damage to the kite?”

“None that I could see, but I couldn't see much. This torch is on its last legs. It's black as your hat down the fuselage.”

“Tough old bird, the Wimpy.”

The second crossing of the North Sea was far worse than the first. Flak damage let the slipstream penetrate the fuselage and it bumped its icy blast into every corner. Campbell shivered, even though he seemed asleep. Kate lay alongside him, a barrier against the wind. Rollo sat on the floor. All his joints ached, except his feet. He had no sensation below the ankles. This must be what hell's waiting room is like, he thought. Nothing to do and total freezing blackness to do it in. His brain was so dull that he altogether forgot the flasks of coffee, until the flashlight roused him and Woodman gave him a steaming mug. The coffee trickled down his gullet and promised better times ahead. Five minutes later his stomach felt as cold as stone again. He remembered the Benzedrine. He swallowed one tablet. It did nothing for his stomach. His feet were still numb.

Silk reckoned they were about halfway across the sea, when the compass developed a nervous tic. “Look,” he said to Mallaby. “I think it's trying to tell us something.”

The tic became a wild flutter. “Looks like an earthquake, skip,” Mallaby said. “Either that or it's desperate for a pee.”

The navigator's master compass was just as bad. “Forget it,” Silk said. “The cloud's not bad. I can see the North Star now and then. We can't miss England.” Vibration from the bomb doors put a tremor in his voice that made him sound frail and elderly. But he was right. Silk steered by the North Star and forty minutes later, Badger saw the coast ahead. “Looks like Harwich, skip,” he said. “Bloody great estuary. Yes, Harwich. And there's Felixstowe.”

“Defended area. Lots of balloons and bad-tempered sailors.” Silk swung the Wimpy to the right and flew parallel to the coast, losing height all the time.

“Orfordness coming up, skip.” Badger's voice still shook with the vibration, but now it had the confidence of homecoming. “Lighthouse two miles ahead.”

“You should see this, Rollo,” Silk said. “Get it on film. 409 returns in glory. How we navigate to beat the band.”

Rollo got his camera and went forward. His brain was working briskly. All his senses were alert and alive. Benzedrine was doing its stuff.

“We turn left at the lighthouse,” Silk said. “Clever, eh?”

“Too dark for me, I'm afraid.”

“What a shame.” Silk wheeled Dog around the lighthouse and headed inland. “Now, then. In a moment you'll see the big chimney of the cement factory.” Dog was down to six hundred feet and Rollo felt warmer. “There it is. Smell the smoke? I'd know it anywhere. Here we go … Over the chimney and dead ahead is the sugar beet factory in Bury St. Edmunds. One of my favorite landmarks. Or pinpoints, to be correct. Another delicious smell.” He chatted easily, pointing out church towers and windmills, scarcely visible in the dark, as Suffolk raced beneath. “At the sugar beet factory we find the railway, which forks left for Newmarket.” Silk flew alongside the line. “Nice shiny rails,” he said. “Who needs maps? Now, watch out for the lamps on the railway signals. At the third set of lamps we turn sharp left, and Coney Garth is just beyond a pub called the Lamb and Flag. You can't miss it.”

“Brilliant,” Rollo said. “Superb.”

“Thanks. You'd better go to your landing position now.”

Rollo sat with his back to the main spar. Kate and Woodman sat beside him. Campbell was strapped to the bed, mask off, face down. The note of the engines changed subtly as Silk entered the landing circuit. That was when Rollo realized that he was not going to die tonight. He had begun to suspect it when he drank the coffee. Benzedrine confirmed it. Now he could relax and enjoy survival.

The nearer Dog got to landing, the less Rollo saw himself as a passenger, mere civilian baggage, and the more he became his true self: a cameraman, a guy who shot movies. This movie was approaching its happy ending. Campbell was wounded, nothing serious, enough to remind the audience that war had its price, just as Rollo had scripted it. Soon this Wimpy would taxi to a halt, the crew would climb down from the nose, weary but triumphant in the usual understated
RAF way, and Campbell would be stretchered to a waiting ambulance. He might give a thumbs-up. At the very least he would smile bravely. It would be a hell of a scene. An absolutely crucial, rewarding, clinching moment. Rollo knew he had to have it. Otherwise, everything else was so much preparation without conclusion.

He would have to work fast. No chance of rehearsal. Right first time, or never. But Rollo was good at this, he'd grabbed moments of drama just like it, all through the Blitz. The kind of thing that made other cameramen ask, “Jesus, Rollo, how the hell did you do
that?”
The kind of shot that got your name in books on the history of the cinema. The big problem was how to leave the airplane before the others did. That was the trick.

There would be lights out there, the headlights of the crew truck, and an ambulance, maybe more. They would have to be aimed at the nose hatch. What about sound? He abandoned sound. Dub in any dialogue later. Maybe cover everything with music. He didn't need Kate for this, he could move faster alone.

But how to get out before the others? The cockpit area would be blocked by crew members. Rollo stared at the blackness of the fuselage and saw the answer: the rear gunner's turret. It had a quick exit. When it was swung to the right, it exposed a door on the left. That was how the gunner baled out. Rollo had seen it in daylight when the rear turret was being tested. He wasn't sure of the details but he knew the idea was right. Tell Chubby to rotate his turret. When Dog stopped, Rollo would dive out through that hole.

As soon as he felt the double bump of Dog's wheels hitting the flare-path, he took the torch from Woodman's hands and stood up. Kate shouted. He set off down the fuselage, onto the catwalk that led to the rear turret. The batteries were weak, the beam was dim, and the bulb had worked itself loose. He had to keep shaking the torch to revive it, but even with a healthy torch he was so eager that he probably wouldn't have seen the hole that flak had blown in the floor. One leg plunged into it and dragged down the rest of his body. The last image his eyes saw was the blurred gleam of flare-path lamps, before his head struck the grass at seventy miles an hour. The impact broke his neck. The tail wheel smashed into his body. Silk felt the small jolt and thought he'd hit a badger, or maybe a big fox. They had been known to wander across the airfield at night.

When he taxied to his place at dispersal, and he completed the after-landing routine, and he led the others down the short wooden ladder from the nose hatch, he asked Kate where Rollo was. She said she assumed he was in the rear turret, filming Chubb by the light of the torch; or something. Already, Dog's groundcrew had found the hole in the fuselage floor. Soon, they saw strips of flying clothing wrapped around the tail-wheel unit, and that started the search.

The crew followed their familiar routine. Climbed into the truck, drove to interrogation. Clumped into the room and blinked at the light. Drank the coffee with the shot of rum in it. Nobody said anything about Rollo. They were very tired, very glad to be home and alive, and besides, what was there to say? It had been such a freak way to die, you couldn't really blame the war, it was more like a road accident. Getting the chop in the air over Germany was something everyone was prepared for, even if they never talked about it. Poor old Mac Campbell's wound wasn't glorious, but at least his rear end did battle with a chunk of Jerry flak, and now he was in Sick Quarters getting stitched up. Tomorrow they'd all go and visit him and make a lot of bad jokes. But Rollo was in the station mortuary. Nobody would visit him. By all reports, he looked a mess.

Bins asked the usual questions, and Silk let the rest of the crew answer them. Bins wrote fast: good pinpoint at Borkum, night fighter attack, evasion, cu-nim, electrical storm, compass trouble, intercom failed, pinpoint Hamelin, found Hanover. Dog wouldn't climb, thick smoke over target, estimated the AP, bombed it, bomb doors failed to retract. Campbell mended the intercom, compass mended itself. Reached the coastal belt, got blown ass over teakettle by a near-miss, flew home somehow, God knew how.

“The Wimpy knows how,” Mallaby said. “Tough old kite.”

“And you definitely bombed the target,” Bins said.

“Cookie
and
incendiaries,” Woodman said. “Definitely.”

“We hit it right on the nose,” Chubb said. “Lovely grub.”

“Well done. Off to your bacon and eggs, chaps.”

“Damned good show,” the group captain said.

They left. Silk remained. He felt grimy, and the rum had not killed the rubbery taste of his oxygen mask. There was a high buzzing in his ears that changed pitch without warning, and then went back to the old note. It was caused by hours of the howl of the propeller tips. None of this was new; it happened after every op. He stayed because the Wingco was there, straddling a chair, chewing on a cold pipe; and Silk felt that someone should say something about Rollo Blazer. He couldn't think of anything that wasn't stupidly obvious.

“Hanover took a pasting,” Rafferty said. “Group are very pleased.”

“I don't suppose Crown Films will be,” Silk said.

“Sod ‘em,” Duff said. “What did they expect?”

“Not our fault,” Bins said. “Bound to be an inquiry, though.”

“Let 'em piss in their hats,” Duff said. “They knew ops were dangerous. That's why they came here. Inquiry be buggered.”

“You sound as if you enjoyed your trip,” Silk said. “Sir.”

“Compass trouble, like you. All that bloody electricity. Nav got lost, never found Hanover, went to Hamburg instead. Gunners swore it was Bremen, but I knew better. Come on. If we don't get to the grub soon, some bastard will steal our eggs.”

They walked from the Ops Block. In the east the sky was a soft gray. Birds were waking up and being noisy about it.

“Why can't they wait for daylight?” Silk said. “What's so special about flying at night?”

“You didn't have much to say in there,” Duff said.

“You want to know if our cookie hit the railway station, don't you? Well, the answer is, God alone knows. God and the station-master. Make a bomb like a dustbin and it's liable to land anywhere. Same with incendiaries. They fall like confetti.”

“I don't care. Nobody cares any more. If we keep on bombing the city, then sooner or later we're bound to hit something valuable.”

“I said that months ago, Pug. It's nice to know you've been paying attention. Langham always reckoned you were my greatest fan.”

“Load of balls.”

“Smallest fan, then. That was his joke. I miss Langham. I don't miss any other stupid bastard who got the chop. I probably wouldn't miss you, if you bought it tomorrow. But Langham … what a waste.”

“You're driveling,” Duff said. “Step it out. I'm hungry.”

Professor Lindemann knew all about Long Delay Pistols and their fickle behavior. When he presented the Butt Report to the Prime Minister and the War Cabinet, he privately awarded the bombshell a Long Delay Pistol of twelve hours before it exploded at Bomber Command HQ.

In fact a full day passed. Even then, the bang was muted: more like the detonation of an underground mine than a bomb-burst on the surface. But the shock-waves traveled all the further. Within a week, most station and squadron commanders had heard of the Butt Report and decided that it was all tosh.

Pug Duff was determined to stamp on it before it leaked to the crews. He called a meeting of the flight commanders and Intelligence Officers, and invited Rafferty too. He asked the adjutant to take notes. Total security was paramount.

“We'll start with the facts,” Duff said. “This so-called report seems to have been cobbled together by a junior civil servant who's never flown over Chipping Sodbury in his life, let alone over Wilhelmshaven, and he did it with the doubtful help of a gaggle of Waafs who claim magical powers when shown target photographs. Have I forgotten anything?”

“No, sir,” Bins said. “One thing puzzles me. Nobody disputes the colossal amount of flak that the Hun keeps chucking at our chaps. Would he go to all that trouble and expense if they were nowhere near the target? As has been alleged?”

“He might,” Skull said. “We did, in the Blitz. There were ack-ack batteries all along the South Coast.”

“Stick to the point, man,” Duff said. “What our ack-ack did is neither here nor there.”

“Jerry flak is both here
and
there,” Hazard said. “My Flight's got the scars to prove it. So we must be doing something right.”

“Looking at the big picture,” Rafferty said, “I see the Admiralty constantly turning to Bomber Command and asking us to knock out Hitler's U-boat bases,
and
the docks at Bremen and so on where they build the U-boats,
and
the factories that make the diesels. Surely a vote of confidence.”