Damned Good Show (29 page)

“But you got back all right,” Kate said.

“Some of us did. The rear gunner bought it. Lump of shell cut his head off.”

He was followed by a sergeant pilot with the ribbon of a DFM. “Short and sweet. We were doing an NFT. Night-Flying Test,” he said before they could ask. “The port prop fell off. Whole airscrew just flew away, still spinning. Quite pretty. The manufacturers tell you a Wellington can fly with one dead engine but unfortunately nobody had told that airplane and she flew like a brick. Thank God the rear gunner saw an airfield, about the size of a cricket pitch. A small cricket pitch. I managed to put her down first time, just as well, because there wasn't going to be a second. Hit a Tiger Moth, flattened it. Wiped out the undercarriage on a wall. Carried on at speed across a plowed field. Starboard wingtip just missed a farmer on a tractor. Matter of inches. Finally stopped. We all jumped out quick, and when I looked back he was still plowing!” He shook his head. “I dream about that farmer sometimes. Silly sod.”

He was replaced by a rear gunner with an untidy scar which
wandered from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. The rest of his face was handsome.

“I'd better explain about the doors.” He had a soft Irish accent. “When you get into the rear turret, you shut the doors behind you. They're like those bat-wing doors you see in westerns, only they're steel and they fill the space altogether. It's to stop any cannon shells flying up the fuselage, if a night fighter catches us. Anyway, we'd bombed Kiel, we were always bombing Kiel in them days, and on our way home, crossing Holland, the flak got us and knocked the bejesus out of us and damaged the doors so they wouldn't open. Now I'm trapped. My parachute's in a container on the other side of the doors, there's no room for it in the turret. Intercom's dead. For all I know the rest of the crew are dead too, and George is flying the kite. The autopilot?” They nodded; they'd heard of George. “Nobody was dead,” he said. “The wireless op got the fire ax and chopped the door down. Took him an hour. Now we're over England. The Wimpy's shaking like a wet dog. The pilot says bale out, so we jump. Never jumped before. It's as black as sin. Rough landing, but it didn't kill me, unlike some. Then I'm captured by a Home Guard who wants to shoot me for being a Jerry, or a member of the IRA, he doesn't care which. I got taken to a railway station, put on a train to London, crossed London by Tube, took two trains to get here, and everywhere—
everywhere
—the RTOs, that's Rail Transport Officers, wanted to see my travel warrant. One long argument. No warrant, no travel, they said. And when I got here the Equipment Officer said I'd have to pay for losing my parachute.”

They waited. “And did you?” Rollo asked.

“I told him I'd kill him first, and he seemed to lose interest.”

Men came and went for the rest of the morning. A pilot described a near head-on collision with a Ju 88 over the North Sea: a quarter of a million cubic miles of air to play with, and two machines chose the same spot. “Just think,” he said. “If we'd hit, nobody would ever have known. Except us, of course.” A navigator spoke of what he called “the unspeakable”: ditching in the sea. There was a ditching drill but pilots never discussed it; obviously they couldn't practice it, and it would never happen to them. Same with the dinghy drill. Crews weren't interested. The RAF had an air-sea rescue system but first of all they had to find you. While they were looking, you were sitting in your little rubber dinghy, and if the kite had been shot-up,
chances were the dinghy had holes in it. If you weren't found soon, you wouldn't last long. “Soaked to the skin, freezing cold, scared stiff,” he said. “The North Sea just sucks the life out of you.”

“You've done it,” Rollo said: “You know.”

He nodded. “No fuel, both engines quit together. Stroke of luck: the moon came out, so the pilot could see the waves. You've got to ditch
toward
the waves, tail-down, or you sink like a stone. We got into the dinghy okay. Fifty miles off-shore, I reckoned. The predicted winds were all to cock, as usual. We were only five miles from England. By dawn we were on the beach, got blown there. Minefields everywhere, but we didn't know, we walked past them. God looks after idiots and aircrew. Well, sometimes.”

A wireless op had a story about Pranging Irons. These were bits of scrap metal that crews dropped on Germany. He personally dismantled an old motorbike and dropped it, piece by piece. Also two bricks and a rusty chamber-pot. “A jerry for the Jerries,” he explained.

“D'you think they got the point?” Kate asked.

“Hope so. It had ‘Made in England' on it.”

When he left, Rollo said, “Maybe we can use that. Nice bit of light relief.”

“It's pathetic. He's like a schoolboy blowing a raspberry.”

“Well, most of them
were
schoolboys not so long ago.”

“He's dropped the jerry. It's gone. What are you going to do? Buy another?”

“I might.”

“Yeah? What happened to truth? Not changing anything?”

“This is the truth. We'd just be underlining it.”

A pilot came in and talked about low flying: strictly forbidden and everyone did it, often on NFTs. If he came back from Germany and got diverted to another field because of fog, he always returned to Coney Garth next day at treetop level. Hedgetop level. He had a wireless op who'd got chopped from the pilots course. Mouthy. Cocky. Pain in the ass. “I put him in the front gunner's position, in the nose.” The pilot said. “Then I flew really low. Flew
below
the trees. Flew into a damned great quarry. He saw the rock face coming straight at him. Then—throttles open, stick back, up and away. I'm told his underpants were not a pretty sight.”

Rollo thanked him, and saw him to the door.

“You could use that,” Kate suggested. “Very dramatic”

“He's totally mad,” Rollo said. “What's your excuse?”

There were more experiences: the sergeant pilot who ate a dodgy pre-op meal of savory mince and had the squits all the way to Hanover and back, along with his crew; the rear gunner who fired off all his ammunition at a twisting, dodging night fighter until he realized it was the Wimpy's moon-shadow on cloud; the wireless op who had been posted to 409 from a squadron where two bombers had been shot down by RAF night fighters; and others. The last man to appear was Flight Lieutenant Silk.

They were impressed by the age of his uniform and his genial attitude. “I bet you know Hedy Lemarr,” he said.

“Never had the pleasure,” Rollo said.

“Damn. I bet someone five bob you did.”

“I suppose I could lie.”

“Tell you what. You lie for me and I'll lie for you. I'll tell you about a pilot called Sam Blackett who reckoned that it was safest to fly where the flak was thickest.”

“Was he right?” Freddy asked.

“Apparently not. Damn! That was supposed to be a lie.” Silk hooked a spare chair with a foot, dragged it nearer, and rested his feet on it. “I've got Cary Grant's autograph, you know.”

“This has been a strange morning,” Rollo said. “I don't know what to believe.”

“Oh, believe it all. I'm sure it's true. Why should these chaps invent anything?” Silk was serious. “The facts are horrible enough.”

“But we can't use them. My notes are a catalog of disaster. This can't be the story of Bomber Command, can it?”

“It's just Pug Duff's little joke. I trained with Pug, we got our wings together, he's a bit tight-assed since they gave him a squadron but he means well. He doesn't want you to turn 409 into a bunch of farts with handlebar mustaches. Types who say ‘Wizard prang' and give a chivalrous salute to the dying Hun as his Messerschmitt goes down in flames. Pug can't stand horseshit. Bullshit is different, there's always bullshit in the RAF, but horseshit is waste, it's killing crews for nothing. We pick up these dreadful terms from visiting Yanks.”

“Yanks?” Kate asked.

“American air force officers. They attend briefings from time to time, in civvies of course. Awfully decent types. Never chew tobacco.
We've got a Jamaican gunner in ‘B' Flight and so far the Yanks haven't tried to lynch him at all.
Awfully
decent.”

“Look, Mr. Silk,” Rollo said, “I don't know what the hell's going on here, and I don't see how I can make a film about 409. It's too big, too complicated, too technical. Have you any advice?”

“Get in a kite,” Silk said. “Go on an op.” He shook hands with them and strolled out.

“Why are you looking like that?” Kate said. “It's the obvious thing to do. It's been obvious to me ever since we got here.”

“Hey, just wait a damn minute. Blake Gunnery never said anything about going on an op. Harry Frobisher never told me—”

“You don't like flying, do you?”

“It's just not …” Rollo searched for the right phrase, and failed to find it. “It's not my cup of tea,” he said. That sounded feeble.

“Well, how the hell did you expect to get shots of these Wimpys bombing Germany?” Kate demanded.

“There are ways and means.” That sounded even more feeble. “For a start, I could easily show one of the crew how to use the camera. It's not difficult. And they can't be busy all the time. It would just take them a couple of minutes and—”

“Cobblers! That really is horseshit.” They glared at each other.

“All right,” Rollo said. He was pink with rage. “If that's what you want, if that's what'll make you bloody happy, then I'll fly on a goddam op. I'll film the lousy raid. Try and stop me.”

“Don't make me responsible,” she told him. “You took on this job, not me. If you think you can film 409 without flying, then do it. But don't blame me if it's a turkey”

“I just don't see the point in getting killed, that's all.”

She let him have the last word; they both knew it was only noise. They said little until they were on their way to the Ladies' Room for lunch, and they paused to watch a Wellington take off. “Someone told me that thing weighs fifteen tons,” Rollo said. “God never meant fifteen tons to fly.” The Wellington came unstuck and climbed and tucked its wheels away. “It's like making Big Ben fly,” he said. “It's not natural.”

Late that afternoon, when all the NFTs had been done and the crews had been briefed and the Wimpys bombed up, the op was scrubbed. It left a sour taste of anticlimax. Poor show.

Rafferty used his authority and got Mr. and Mrs. Blazer out of the Ladies' Room and into the Officers' Mess. He headed off any objections by declaring Kate to be an honorary man. They were also permitted to attend briefings.

Rollo said nothing to anyone about taking part in an op. He decided to sleep on it, and reach a definite decision next day. He slept badly and woke up, hot and sweaty, at four in the morning. Once, when he was a small boy, he had tried to walk along the top rail of a wooden fence, and slipped, and fallen astride the narrow plank. The agony had so drenched his body that for a while he gave up hope of life. Now he felt the same despair.

At breakfast, Kate found a place among some pilots. Rollo sat opposite Skull. “I'm thinking of going on an op,” he said. “First time, for me. Never flown in a plane. I expect you've been up dozens of times.”

“Once,” Skull said. “Frightful experience.”

“Ah.” Rollo waited, but Skull had nothing to add. “I thought I ought to find out what it's like,” he said. “After all, it's the reason we're all here.”

“Not all of us,” Skull said. “You're free to leave. You can go back to London any time you like.”

Briefly, their eyes met; then Rollo looked away. He was comparing the hell of going up in a Wellington with the purgatory of going back to share a flat with Miriam. Not much to choose between them.

He was still undecided when he tried to see the Wingco and was told he'd have to wait. Urgent meeting in progress. “Is the squadron on ops tonight?” he asked, and got a polite smile in return. Bloody silly question.

Duff had called a meeting with his Flight Commanders, the Engineer Officer and the Intelligence Officers. Rafferty attended too.

Duff began speaking quietly, but his left shoulder was hunched in a way that everyone recognized. Somebody had pulled the Wingco's chain.

Air Ministry, he said, had ordered—and Command had confirmed—that, as soon as possible, cameras must be installed in all bomber
aircraft to record the strike of bombs. Hitherto only a very few Wimpys had carried cameras: the ones with the best crews. That was acceptable. Now every kite had to bring back pictures. “They don't trust us,” he said. “They're happy to send us hundreds of miles over Germany through flak as thick as pigshit, but they don't trust us to report the results. They think they know better. They sit in their fat fucking offices, drinking sweet tea, and pass judgment on my crews, based on a lot of fuzzy
snaps
.” He gave himself the luxury of hammering that word.

“The boys won't like it,” Hazard said. “They'll think they're being spied on.”

“Of course they're being spied on,” Pratten said. “Why install a camera unless you don't trust the crew?”

Group Captain Rafferty belched softly and pressed his stomach. “Let's get all our ducks in a row before we start shooting.” He slipped a peppermint into his mouth. “I take it you have no objection to reconnaissance photographs of the target being taken next day”

“No objection, sir, and no faith in the outcome,” Duff said. “The pilot's too high and his camera's too small.”

“They got some very clear pictures of invasion barges in the Channel ports a year ago,” Skull said.

“Easy. A blind man with a box Brownie could've done it,” Duff sneered. “But send the buggers to a hot spot like Hamburg or Cologne or Dortmund …” He shook his head.