***
For all of their preparations, the night passed uneventfully. Fighter Command sent Spitfires to intercept the handful of Ju 88s before they reached British airspace, and a new day dawned, still raining, but perceptibly brighter than the one that had preceded it.
Every day, news came of another country joining the war against Germany and Japan, the Western Allies advancing further, Jerry in retreat. Germany was under attack from all sides, and still Hitler refused to surrender. V-2 rockets continued to hit the south of England, killing indiscriminately and without warning. Arty wrote to Sissy, imploring her to leave Signor Adessi’s house; she remained resolute.
As March drew to a close, the group captain called Arty and the other NCOs to his office to prep them for the next batch of new recruits, due to arrive in a few days’ time. High Command had decided that Minton would no longer train air crew, and the captain’s dismay was palpable as he explained that from there on, the base would provide technical training only.
“What that means, men,” Captain Taylor said stiffly as he rose from his chair, “is that all those of you who are not ground technicians and engineers will be transferred by the end of the week, which leaves us with you lot.” The captain peered down his nose at Arty, Charlie and the other NCOs who were ground crew. He exhaled sharply. “But never fear, the Yanks are here.”
Arty’s heart was a leap ahead of his thoughts, and he gasped before he had a chance to check himself. The captain returned to his desk and sat down. Charlie glanced sideways at Arty and back at their captain.
“Yanks, sir?” Charlie enquired.
“Hm? What was that, Tomkins?”
“We’ll be working with the Americans, sir?”
“Is there a problem, Tomkins?”
“No, sir.”
“We’re on the same side.”
“I am aware of that, sir.”
“And I believe you’re already acquainted with the chaps from 383 Squadron?”
“From Gaskell, sir?”
“Indeed, Tomkins.”
“Smashing,” Charlie grumbled under his breath. Arty’s neck hairs bristled.
“They’ll be bringing their B-17s with them, so you’ll need to work out the logistics of where we put the blighters. That’s all for now. Dismissed.”
The NCOs departed. Not a word passed between Arty and Charlie as they walked back together, barely acknowledging each other when they parted ways to return to work: Charlie in his garage and Arty in the hangar next to it, seething in silence but powerless to do a thing about it. Next to Jean, Charlie was his closest friend, and it pained him that Charlie disliked Jim so intensely, particularly as it was born of jealousy. Arty had seen it a year ago, on the night of the ball to welcome the Americans. It didn’t matter to Charlie that they were all on the same side; Jim was competition, and not just because he and Arty were evenly matched on the dance floor. Even back then, Charlie had been well on his way to falling in love with Jean, and now it seemed she had rejected him in favour of Jim.
As far as everyone on the base was concerned, Jean and Jim were together. They wrote to each other, they met up whenever they could, with Arty playing ‘chaperone’, of course. When Jim had let slip his intention to remain in England after the war, he stole Charlie’s one last hope of winning Jean’s heart. Never had Arty faced such a great dilemma. He loved Charlie as if he were his own brother, trusted him with his life. He wanted Charlie to have his chance at happiness, and telling him the truth would give him that, although there was no guarantee that Jean would accept his advances. She didn’t want a husband, after all. Nevertheless, Arty had a feeling she liked Charlie, but her supposed engagement to Jim was stopping her from doing anything about it.
So on the one hand, Arty could not reconcile his future happiness being at the cost of Charlie’s, while on the other, there was his fear, and the tremendous risk associated with telling Charlie the truth. It was the sort of revelation that could destroy their friendship in seconds, taking his and Jim’s liberty with it. Perhaps, then, it would be better to discuss it with Jim first, given that it involved them both and they were partners. Relieved to have a reason to delay acting, Arty got back to work on the Wellington he’d been prepping for a training exercise before the meeting with the captain. He collected his tools and slid underneath the plane to access the front wheel assembly.
“Don’t suppose I could borrow that spanner again?”
Arty briefly peered up at Charlie’s solemn expression. “In the toolbox,” he said. He continued with what he was doing, listening to his friend searching through the spanners, each clang of steel on steel further heightening the tension between them.
After a few minutes, Charlie came back over and sat on the floor, leaning against the plane’s front wheel. “I know you and him are friends…” he said.
Arty waited for more, but there didn’t seem to be any. “But?” he prompted.
“There isn’t one. No doubt Jimmy Johnson’s a marvellous fellow. He knows his job, that’s for sure. I just wish I could be a man about this. Mind, I don’t have any choice, do I? Seeing as he’s my oppo.”
“True enough,” Arty agreed. “I think if you give him a chance you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“And find it in my heart to forgive him for stealing my woman?”
Arty laughed. “Best not let Jean hear you say that. She belongs to no one, Charlie.”
“Figure of speech, Art. That’s one of the things I like about her. She’s got gall, has Jean. Real fight. And she’s a great little mover.”
“Why don’t you talk to her about it?” Arty suggested, thinking on his feet, so to speak, as he was still lying on his back under the Wellington’s fuselage and keeping his eyes on the task rather than Charlie.
“Are you suggesting I try and take her from Jimmy?”
“Not as such. Just…I have a feeling that things are not quite as they seem.”
“Where there’s smoke, Art…”
“Yes, but perhaps Jim’s fire burns elsewhere?”
“What, you mean he’s got a girl back home?”
“That wasn’t quite—”
“So what’s all this talk about staying over here then? If he’s spinning our Jean a yarn, I’ll knock his ruddy block off.”
Arty quickly recanted. “I’m not saying he has, Charlie. I’m merely suggesting that the gossip may have got a little out of hand.”
Charlie huffed and puffed in anger, and Arty wished he’d stayed quiet instead of trying to find a workaround, because it was backfiring horribly.
After several minutes of Arty pretending he was still occupied, whilst his friend snarled, Charlie muttered, “Well, according to Betty the Yanks’ll be here the day after tomorrow, so I might just ask Jimbo myself.”
“Good idea,” Arty agreed. With any luck he’d have been able to talk to Jim by then, although Charlie was gunning for him so he’d have to get in there quickly.
“Right.” Charlie got to his feet and waved the spanner at Arty. “I’ll bring this back in a bit.” He stomped out of the hangar, leaving Arty to wonder if cowardice meant he’d just let the perfect opportunity pass him by.
“Oh well, no point worrying about it now.” Arty slid out from under the Wellington and patted it with affection. There weren’t so many flying as there had been before the four-engine bombers came into service, but they were handy for training the lads in the basics. Most wanted to be flight mechanics rather than ground crew, lured by Bomber Harris’s promises of glory and the prospect of returning home a hero. If Arty had ever doubted it, Jean’s stories of the crews she had loved and lost were confirmation that those young men who sacrificed their lives to the defeat of evil were heroes. But he had never understood their way of thinking. Perhaps he was just a lowly coward; if not, then why couldn’t he tell Charlie the truth?
“I’ve done the props, Sarge. Is there anything else?”
Arty turned and smiled at the eager young AC2 standing behind h
im: one of his six lads who would be training in the tethered Wellington.
“That should be everything,” he confirmed. The AC2 nodded, and went to join the others loitering outside the hangar, awaiting further instruction. It would be the last time Arty oversaw tethered training, and the last time he listened to young men lamenting the absence of Lancasters, which was what they were doing now, and what they always did. He fully appreciated how disappointing it was to be stuck with an out-of-service Vickers Wellington with its piddly two engines, when they wanted to be marauding the skies in an Avro Lancaster powered by four Rolls Royce engines. Who could fail to be impressed by those mighty machines of war?
But what Arty was going to miss most of all was the crewing up. He’d seen so many groups of lads through their training, and whilst they were under his instruction they were his crew. Some were easier to let go than others, but his current group had been there through the emergency landings and they were outstanding. They’d pulled together, looked out for each other, and they’d worked until they were fit for nothing, all without a single complaint. Every day they turned up and got on with the job, occasionally chancing a remark about when they were air crew instead of ‘planks like Sarge’, to which Arty would give them the usual ribbing about chasing glory and forgetting where the real work happened. It had become a constant source of tormenting on both sides, yet all the while they’d be grafting away, as efficient as the machines they tended.
It was this lot of lads, more than any other, with whom Arty felt the bond air crews talked about. In a few days’ time they’d be crewed up, and it was going to be tough to hand them over to their flight sergeants, but Arty knew he’d done all he could to prepare them, so he wasn’t sad. There was something rather wonderful about watching those hopeful yet bewildered young men stare like frightened rabbits as the hangar doors closed with them on the inside. They’d enter as individuals—brave, lone adventurers at the start of their voyage—and leave as brothers, for those bonds were as good as blood and would serve them well through the ordeal that lay ahead of them.
Quite why Arty was feeling so morose he couldn’t say. By the end of the week he and Jim would be reunited, and for more than just a few stolen moments. They’d be working side by side, eating and drinking together, and he should have been overjoyed. But the reorganisation wasn’t all good news: a change of tactics, another bombing campaign—if bombing could win a war, then why was it not yet won? What else was to be done?
Arty yearned for more than just Jim’s presence at his side; he needed the sanctuary of knowing Jim was safe. So this it would seem, was love, where one’s very survival depended on that of another. Everything Arty had ever believed, every feeling, every thought, every breath he had taken, was meaningless without Jim. He was meaningless without Jim, and his conviction that war was wrong waned in the realisation that he would take to the skies himself to stop Hitler if that was what it took to keep Jim safe.
With his spirit replenished, Arty strode to the front of the hangar and shouted, “Right, lads. Let’s get this war won!”
The young heroes-in-the-making answered Arty’s call to action with a resounding cheer, and as they walked the Wellington out into the open they started to sing, to the tune of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory:
I took a Flying Fortress up to thirty thousand fe—
(How far?)
I took a Flying Fortress up to twenty thousand fe—
(How far?)
I took a Flying Fortress up to seven thousand feet but I only had a tiny little bomb.
Arty didn’t join in, but he did laugh heartily at their mocking of the USAAF airmen. There was nothing ‘tiny little’ about Jim’s bomb; he could personally vouch for that.
“Is that right, Sarge?” one of the AC2s asked, making Arty splutter with contained laughter, for the question had followed directly his less-than-pure thought. “The Yanks are taking over Minton?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Sergeant Tomkins, Sarge.”
“Oh, right.” Arty glanced back at the garage, where Charlie stood, watching them tow the Wellington. Even from a distance, Arty saw the grin on his smarmy friend’s face. Charlie waved his spanner-bearing hand in the air. Arty chuckled and turned back to the junior airman. “Did he teach you the song as well, perchance?”
The AC2’s face glowed crimson, and he quickly rejoined the singing, which had now become We’re flying Vickers Wellingtons at zero zero feet, but their spirits were soaring high. Arty walked up ahead to check their position, and all was well, but as he turned back he heard the drone of engines, flying low and close by. He glanced to his left, along the runway: a Lancaster was coming in fast, and the Wellington was still straddling the asphalt.
“Right, lads. Quick as you can now. Let’s get her onto the grass.”
Arty dashed to the rear of the plane and joined the effort to push the Wellington clear, the Lancaster’s engines now a deafening roar, although it was only running on two and it wasn’t decelerating. There was no time to do anything other than bellow, “Run for it!” and follow his own instruction.
“Bradley’s down, Sarge!” one of the junior airmen shouted. Arty glanced over his shoulder and saw the AC2 scrabbling frantically to get to his feet. The Lancaster was less than fifty yards from the Wellington. Arty ran back, grabbed the lad by the hand and hauled him upright, yelling, “Run, damn it!” but he couldn’t even hear himself. As he shoved Bradley forward and down onto the grass, there was a deafening crash as the Lancaster collided with the rear of the Wellington and sent it spinning around like a top. A tail fin hit Arty in the side of the head and he dropped and rolled. The last thing he saw was the Wellington’s front wheel sliding his way; he closed his eyes and waited for impact.
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When Skies Have Fallen Page 18