The Crew (7 page)

With the arrival of the Station Commander and Squadron Commander, the crews lurched to their feet, chair legs screeching. The Group Captain made his way between the rows towards his armchair below the platform. ‘Be seated, gentlemen.'

More screeching and scraping and another, quieter, buzz of talk, dying away to an anxious silence. Men waiting to hear their sentence, Van thought. Prisoners in the dock, trying to disguise their dread. The curtain covering the wall map was tugged back to show the long piece of red tape pinned across it from England to Germany. Muttering from all round the room and some groans.

The Senior Intelligence Officer took the stage, pointer in hand. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, you will be making history. The RAF is sending the largest number of bombers ever assembled to Germany.' The pointer tapped the map briskly. ‘More than a thousand aircraft will converge on the city of Cologne to inflict the maximum possible damage to the enemy . . .'

Stew chucked down his pencil. ‘Stone the bloody crows! Told you so, skip.'

‘Are you for the flying meal, sir?'

‘Oh, yes, rather. Thanks.'

The WAAF waitress smiled at Piers as she set the
plate of egg, sausages and chips before him. He didn't think he had the appetite to eat it, which would be a most frightful waste.

A thousand bombers! Lanes, Wimpeys, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Hamdens, Manchesters. It would be a miracle if they didn't collide with one of them, and no hope of taking the Huns by surprise. Navigation had given them a route to keep them well clear of the main flak barrage on the run-in. He'd written everything down, concentrating like fury, but if he got it wrong this time . . .

‘Tea, sir?'

‘Thanks awfully.'

They were always nice to you at flying suppers because they knew it might be your last meal ever, and he smiled back to show he wasn't a bit worried. He gulped down a mouthful of gristly sausage and drank some of the strong tea.

Two-Ton-Tessie drove them out to dispersal. Charlie was squashed up at one end of the bench in the back of the Bedford. They took up a lot of room in their bulky flying clothes, with their parachute packs and satchels. Next to him, Harry took up more than most, being so big, and with the pigeon in its yellow carrier on his knee as well. The pigeon was poking its head out of the hole, having a good look round. Just as well it didn't know where it was going.

Charlie was sweating uncomfortably in his thick suit, though that wouldn't last long once they'd taken off. As usual, he'd got the butterflies. To his way of thinking, this was the worst bit: just before you went, when you started to think about everything being the last time for something. Your last meal; your last
cigarette – he'd got used to smoking now, and he'd almost got used to drinking beer too; your last view of England.

‘Gum, Charlie, lad?' Harry was offering a piece of Wrigleys. Sam was tucked inside his Mae West, head sticking out like the pigeon.

‘Thanks.' He chewed away as they swayed round the peri track. Like a cow chewing cud. Chomp, chomp, chomp. But somehow it calmed you down. He had his own gum, together with his bar of chocolate and his tin of orange juice and his barley sugar, as well as a flask of hot coffee and a sandwich, though last time the bread had gone so dry and curled up, he'd fed it to somebody's dog when he'd got back.

The Bedford came to a halt by the dispersal pan.

‘All change for Cologne,' Bert sang out, as though he were a bus conductor. Nothing seemed to worry Bert.

Charlie jumped down out of the back of the truck, hauling his gear with him. D-Dog was waiting for them on the concrete pan, her bomb doors hanging open. Two fitters up on a gantry were still doing last-minute work on her starboard inner. Seen like this, from down on the ground, a Lane always looked enormous. It still amazed him to think that she was going to soar up into the skies and carry them all the way to Germany and back – if they were lucky, that is.

He didn't know if he really believed in luck, but a lot of them did. When they'd been in the locker room Bert had nudged him and shown him a silk stocking he was wearing round his neck that Emerald, one of the WAAFS in Parachute Section, had given him for luck, and Stew always carried his Zippo lighter on ops. He'd seen other crews carrying all kinds of mascots –
charms and rabbits' feet and toys – and wearing funny things like cowboy boots, lucky scarves, even a top hat. They spat on the tail wheel and peed on it, touched or didn't touch things, got into the kite in a certain order, and one rear gunner had told him he always turned round three times before he went into the turret.

Harry, who had taken charge of Sam, was going to hang him up just inside the rear door. The idea, he had explained very seriously, was that everybody touched him in turn as they got in, which meant that Harry always had to get in first.

Charlie picked up his parachute pack, about to follow the others, when Two-Ton-Tessie leaned out of the truck window and called to him, beckoning. She wouldn't get out, he knew, because that was another superstitious thing. The crews didn't like the WAAFS on the dispersal pans – it was unlucky. He went over to the truck, but reluctantly, because he knew he'd be teased about it.

She smiled at him, but it was a motherly smile. Not the sort that Bert's Emerald gave. ‘Thought this might help, Charlie. Make it a bit more comfortable for you.' She was offering him a cushion made of some flowered material with a frill all round the edge. He tried to refuse but she thrust it at him out of the window. From its squashed look he realized she must have been sitting on it when she was driving.

He said awkwardly, ‘Thanks. I'll give it back.'

‘No, keep it – till the end of your tour.' She stuck up her thumb with another smile, but she wouldn't actually wish him good luck in so many words because that was unlucky, too.

The fitters had come down and wheeled the gantry
away and Bert was waiting for him by the crew door, crushing his last fag out under his flying boot – one of Charlie's fags, in fact. Bert seemed to have more of them than he did. They weren't supposed to smoke near the aircraft, but Bert never took much notice of rules like that.

He looked at the cushion, grinning his monkey grin. ‘Told you she fancies you, Charlie.' He prodded the cushion. ‘Cor, you know where
that's
been, don't you? Still warm, an' all.'

He climbed up the short metal ladder after Bert, glad of the fading light that helped to hide his red face. D-Dog had been standing in the sun all day since the air test in the morning and it was still warm inside the fuselage. She smelled of glycol and petrol – the smell of all Lancasters, but her own particular one. Each aircraft, he'd found, smelled a bit different. You could almost tell D-Dog, say, from S-Sugar or R-Robert with your eyes shut, just by your nose.

Sam was hanging there by the crew door and he touched him on his one ear before he clambered his way aft in the darkness of the fuselage, past the Elsan, up over the tail spar and through the flimsy doors to the tail turret entry. He parked his chute and his Thermos flask and sandwiches outside the open turret doors and put the flowered cushion in place on the seat. Then he grasped the two handgrips in the fuselage roof to hoist his legs up and into the turret, ducking his head as the rest of him followed. With the steel doors shut behind him, he felt quite snug, sitting on the soft cushion.

After a while, he heard the engines firing, one after another, and the plane shook and shivered as they roared into life. He unlocked the turret and rotated
it, twisting the handgrips to raise and lower the guns and sight. Everything OK.

The skipper's voice came over, checking the intercom. ‘Rear gunner OK,' he answered smartly in his turn. As they joined the procession of Lanes trundling along the perimeter track, he swivelled the turret and its loaded guns away from the aircraft behind them. Near the start of the main runway they stopped, waiting in the queue to take off – the part that always scared him most. The tail would unstick when they'd got going full-tilt so he'd be airborne before anybody else, so to speak. But he couldn't tell when they'd really left the ground, he just had to sit there and say his prayers.

D-Dog rolled forward and swung round to face the runway.

‘Pilot to rear gunner. All clear behind?'

‘All clear, skipper.'

He settled himself and waited.

Jock kept his left hand close to the skipper's hand on the throttles, ready to take them. They were running straight and approaching flying speed.

‘Full power, Jock.'

‘Full power.'

Timed exactly right, he slid his hand smoothly under the skipper's and took over the throttles, pushing them to the gate and clamping them. Van had both hands on the control wheel now, easing it back, and the Lane was off the ground, the concrete runway falling away.

‘Undercart up.'

‘Undercart up.'

At eight hundred feet, flaps up and trimmed, D-Dog
was climbing smoothly and steadily. No problems on this one. Not a moment's worry. The skipper was improving, he had to admit that. Maybe one day he'd even manage a decent landing.

Stew was down in the bomb aimer's compartment in the nose, through the opening by Jock's feet. Officially, he was supposed to stand behind them for take-off and landing, but Van turned a blind eye. If he'd been skipper, Jock would have insisted on it but the Yanks were slacker about things, he reckoned, not so disciplined. For himself, he preferred to stick to all the rules – everything to be done exactly by the book. There was usually good reason for it.

As each bomber took off, Dorothy waved a piece of white cloth torn from an old sheet. There were so many planes going that she was sure Charlie must be in one of them, and there was just a chance that he might be able to see it. Maybe she ought to have tied it to the end of a stick, but it was too late now. They were taking off so quickly, one straight after the other, that there wasn't time. The noise went on and on until she could bear it no longer and had to stop waving the cloth and put her hands over her ears.

She stayed by the garden gate long after the last bomber had gone, listening to the silence and watching the empty sky darken. Sleep would be impossible. She must stay awake to be sure to hear the first one returning so she would know if they'd all got back safely. It was only later on that she realized that, with all the noise, she had completely forgotten to count them.

Stew had seen the flutter of white below as the Lane clambered skywards. The Perspex blister in the nose gave him a bonza view and he thought he had the best bloody place on the kite. And the take-off was the best bloody bit of all. It gave him a real thrill to be right out in front when they went roaring down the runway. Got to him every time, deep in his guts: the surge, the speed, the power, the climb, the earth falling away . . .

He watched Lincolnshire recede and finally disappear. His control panel was right beside him and the front turret with the two Browning guns immediately above. He could stand up and grab the triggers in two shakes if any bastard Jerry fighter showed up.

Charlie's voice came over the intercom: ‘Rear gunner to skipper. There's another Lane right behind us.'

‘Roger, Charlie. Watch him, will you. Let me know if he gets any closer. Pilot to crew: keep a good look-out, guys. There's a hell of a lot of kites about.'

Too bloody right, Stew thought. And over the target it's going to be fucking murder with them
and
the Jerries to worry about. On top of that, he'd be worrying about not screwing up his part again.

It was almost dark when they crossed the English coast; the North Sea looked like shiny grey metal. It seemed flat calm from this height, but you couldn't tell and he wasn't keen to find out. The way the skipper kept cocking up on dry land, they wouldn't have a hope ditching.

D-Dog droned on and he kept a sharp watch through his Perspex window.

‘Bomb aimer to navigator. Enemy coast ahead.'

Piers' voice answered him, ‘Thanks awfully, bomb aimer.'

Strewth, Stew thought, I wish we'd got a nav who spoke like a normal bloke. Come to that, I wish we'd got a nav who could bloody navigate.

Piers checked and re-checked his calculations. If he'd got everything absolutely right he'd be taking them between two coastal flak batteries, slipping in unnoticed. And if he went on getting things right they'd make their bombing run away from the Cologne barrage. In his cramped cubicle behind the blackout curtain, the little Anglepoise lamp illuminating his charts, he felt secure for the moment. It wouldn't last, of course. When they got near the target, if not before, that would all change. The enemy would know they were coming, and night fighters were probably already up and searching for them. And over the target it was bound to be dicey. He needn't actually see anything of it, if he didn't want to – some navigators never came out from behind their curtain – but he felt he ought to see what was going on this time. It was like being compelled to look at something horrible, even though you knew it would appal you.

Harry passed him a scrap of paper with his latest radio fix. Piers went over everything again.

‘Navigator to pilot. ETA on target is o three forty-five.'

‘Roger, nav.'

In less than half an hour, he realized, it would be his birthday.

Sitting on his canvas sling seat, head and shoulders in the Perspex dome of the mid-upper turret with the rest of him, feet in stirrups, down in the draughty fuselage, Bert was thinking about Emerald and fancying his chances. She was a smashing bit of skirt, the best-looking bint he'd ever taken out. They'd had a
good old snog in the back row at the flicks, and look how she'd given him the silk stocking – to bring him luck, she'd said, with one of her sidelong smiles – and if that wasn't a come-on he didn't know what was. He fingered it round his neck, grinning to himself. Next time he took her out . . .