by Mercy Levy
As he suspected, it didn’t take long for Crimmens to lead his sheepish men back into the bunk, where they faced the nonplussed Captain Ross and the table covered from edge to edge with pink and white and cream envelopes.
“So,” Malcolm began, pacing in front of his men. “I have reached the understanding that you men simply do not have enough to do to fill your time with worthwhile endeavours.” He growled. Abercrombie flinched, but Crimmens, Stillwell and Knox stood firm, (although Knox had a devil of a time not smiling). “As such,” their leader continued, “you will be tasked with answering each of these letters individually, with…my…regrets.” He finished drily. The four men surrounded the table with chairs and began opening envelopes.
Soon their work was punctuated by laughter as the men shared the words of hopeful women from not only Great Britain, but the US and France as well. Malcolm couldn’t help but inch closer to hear what the men were saying, without being noticed. Soon enough his curiosity got the best of him and he pulled up a chair of his own to help open and read the letters.
“I must say, lads. That had to have been some letter you wrote to garner me all these responses.” He pronounced drily, one eyebrow arched as a Frenchwoman offered herself to him on site, at his expense, of course. Malcolm sifted through the envelopes, wondering how much of this pile was due to the war. Lovers lost, killed in action, the loneliness of losing one’s whole family. That was a pain he understood. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it wouldn’t hurt to answer one person. Give one person a friend in a time of fear and sacrifice.
He picked up a simple white envelope that hadn’t been open. With careful fingers, he gently broke the seal to preserve the return address. The handwriting was tidy and concise, and the note was almost regrettably short. He pushed back from the table and read:
“Dear Sir. I happened upon your advertisement in the matrimonial column, and I felt impressed to respond. Please understand, firstly, that I am not looking for a mate. However, if it please you, I would be happy to write to you as a fellow bibliophile and one who has also been taken from her home because of the war. I look forward to correspondence, if the idea is agreeable to you. Very truly your friend, Stella”
Malcom considered the letter for a moment, then quietly folded it and slipped it into his pocket. As he watched his men serve their punishment for the prank they’d played, he noticed that a few more letters went missing from the pile, stowed away by the other crew members. As their campaigns grew in number and the war waged on around them, letters from girlfriends and even family back home began to thin and arrive less and less frequently. It was good to have each other, but there was an emptiness to living and fighting so far away from home and friends and family that you knew before the fighting began. The more time they spent in the air and in the trenches, the more difficult it was to recall a spring day at home, or the exact fragrance of the water and trees that were once so familiar you hardly noticed them.
The captain ignored the few letters that disappeared into waist pockets and sent his men to the mess hall for lunch. While they were gone, he sat at his desk and responded to the letter from Stella. In halting words, he accepted her offer of a pen pal and snuck the sealed envelope into the officers’ outgoing mail. No notion of romance intrigued him, but it would be nice to talk to someone who knew a love of books and could possibly even aid him in acquiring new reading material, as books were scarce here at the front, and one could only reread F. Scott Fitzgerald so many times before it lost its flavour.
Their next few campaigns were quick hits that seemed almost too easy to feel right. The weather had held up longer than expected, and the commanding officers took every opportunity to push back against the encroaching enemy and gain more ground into the interior of France. A couple of weeks passed and as far as the base at Calais was concerned, the letters were long forgotten, and the men too busy to wonder if they’d ever hear from the women they had courted.
As reports of imminent weather change came in, the Gruesome Crewsome and her crew took one last short hop over inland, scouting for a missing plane and possible marks in the same trip. The convoy was one of the first in a long time that all came home, and they were able to give coordinates for the fallen plane to command for retrieval as well. Upon landing back at Calais, Captain Ross gave all the men a day of leave. He could smell rain on the breeze and knew there was as much chance of being grounded for a week, as there was for another flight before the storm finally hit.
Smiling to himself, Malcolm headed over to the officer’s club for a drink and a few feminine bodies to observe, still too introverted to come right out and flirt with them. He downed a pint by himself in the corner, and then another that Crimmens purchased when he found the pilot in the corner nursing the dregs of his stout. Two more followed that, bought by friends of the affable Crimmens, and soon, Captain Ross found himself in a most outgoing mood, laughing and talking with the other officers more than he had since arriving at Calais.
When he and Crimmens finally staggered back to their bunk, Abercrombie delivered sobering news. In two days’ time, they’d be completing a bomb run over the enemy controlled town of Boulogne, in an effort to divert a Panzer attack that intelligence reported would be heading their way. Malcolm nodded at the report and, spinning on his heel without another word, headed down to the command centre for briefing.
There was an air of sombreness over the work of the next day. The plane was readied and examined for any issues that could cause failure in-flight. The Gruesome Crewsome was found to be in top shape, but the men watched the sky with concern. According to reports, black, angry clouds moved steadily toward them, and if the weather turned sour, they might not be able to complete their mission. The only good new to that, was if the weather really became that stormy, no Panzer attack would be viable either.
By lights out, the stars were completely hidden by the storm clouds that had reached the shores of France. All night, the men listened to the rain and thunder, punctuated by flashes of bright lightning on the walls of their quarters. The thunder and lightning had let up by midday, but the rain carried on into the night again, causing reports of massive flooding and roads being washed out all along the path to the interior, and the approaching enemy. Two days turned into nearly two weeks of inclement weather, with the men growing more and more bored and hungry for a mission.
Finally, intelligence informed them that all tank attacks were delayed by the boggy roads, so marshy that even the treaded vehicles couldn’t stay in motion, and the infantry had been slowed to a crawl. As soon as the rain allowed, the commanding officers reported, The Gruesome Crewsome and her men would be in the sky again, to hunt and bomb the panzers where they stood. Malcolm had trouble shaking the feeling in the pit of his stomach that their luck had run out. Not wanting to worry anyone else, he kept the gnawing fear to himself and prepped for the mission ahead.
Malcolm slipped away from the bustle of mechanics and crewmen touching up paint on their birds and busying themselves with last minute repairs and instrument checks. He slipped back to his desk and took out a creamy piece of blank paper he’d wheedled from the commander’s clerk. He stared at the paper for what seemed like an eternity, while he chewed the end of his pencil and thought. He realized he didn’t want to tell her about the war, or the missions, or the death he was surrounded by. He pulled the pencil out of his mouth and looked at the tooth marks in chagrin. With a sigh, he put pencil to paper and began to write about Leeds before the war.
He wrote for an hour without stopping, describing his home in the rows near Middleton Park. He described his childhood and early years of schooling and rugby, including the time he played with a broken wrist, only to turn around and break his ankle too. When his men returned to the bunk after supper, they saw their captain smiling to himself as he wrote, a faraway look in his eyes. Wisely, they left him to his daydreams and made for the pub, where the stout flowed like ambrosia from the gods, and the women chased away the fears of the ne
xt mission.
At 5 am, the sky had the particular quality of darkness that covers the earth when the moon has set, but the sun has yet to rise. Captain Ross handed a milky white envelope to one of the mechanics on the field and asked him to have it mailed for him. It was one of many such letters handed off that morning, just like before every other high-stakes mission. The remaining clouds hid the stars and Abercrombie was tasked to triple check the instruments, as they would be flying blind without them. Malcolm took Crimmens aside to speak to him as their B-17 was fuelled and the slightly hung over crew gathered for their instructions before take-off.
“Crimmie.” The pilot growled in a low tone. “I don’t love the look of that sky. The clouds are too low, and there’s still electricity in them, you can feel it.” Crimmens looked above him and even in the sketchy glow of the buzzing torch above them, Malcolm could see him pale in recognition. “Don’t borrow trouble, Crimmie. Just pay attention to the instruments, and if anything goes wrong with the electrical system, get us the hell out of there and follow the radio home. Do you understand?” The lieutenant stood at attention and gave Malcolm a salute. Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder and they joined the men gathered next to the bomber.
Their commanding officer reiterated the details of the map and coordinates for the bomb drop, and with brisk salutes all around, the men were dismissed to their mission and the Colonel left the field. Take-off and climb were rough and Malcom felt his heart leap into his throat as the plane dipped and dived. He laid a firm hand to the controls and managed to pull her up and steady her as they reached their cruising altitude of 22,000 feet.
“Well, Captain, I think we’ll get a little more done if we don’t break up before we get to the enemy.” Stillwell called up to the cockpit from his position in Nav. Malcolm chuckled and laughed louder at Crimmens scathing reply. With the banter, the tense feeling in the plane lightened for a moment. Stillwell grinned, then got to business and began to call out target coordinates to Knox as they neared a burned out town that Malcolm couldn’t remember the name of.
The pilot of one of the spitfires escorting them suddenly called out a warning. German planes were in the distance and closing fast. Knox shouted at Stillwell to hurry up as he calmly repeated his numbers again. Two spitfires broke away from the bombing convoy and advanced to meet the enemy head on. With the final calculations in place, Knox dropped his payload and reported to the Captain that they’d all dropped on schedule.
Crimmens radioed the successful drop, and was closely echoed by the two other bombers in the convoy. The remaining spitfires fell into an active defensive formation as the bombers banked and turned back, with the Gruesome Crewsome in the lead. Malcom hissed in near physical pain as the planes that had engaged the enemy to protect them were shot down around them as he turned his bomber back toward Calais. The radio erupted into chaos as they were engaged by several attack aircraft. Stillwell, Knox, and the new kid, Bixby, took their places at the machine guns and countered as best they could as the smaller, more agile planes attacked mercilessly.
Captain Ross and his co-pilot ran the length of the convoy and readied themselves for a full frontal attack, but the Germans suddenly turned tail as the Spitfire escort managed to drop several of the German fighters. Amidst congratulations for a job well done, came orders from command for all planes to return to the base at Calais directly. Ross was so relieved to have made it through another fight, that he didn’t immediately notice the rapid pressure drop in their fuel tanks. Crimmens called out the fuel loss and Malcolm took immediate action, dropping well below their ceiling and ordering a shortest-route navigation from Stillwell, while Knox radioed their position and heading.
Two Spitfires flanked them and guided them toward the rough second landing strip just off the Calais base. Radio communications promised them medics were on their way, and transmissions ceased just as the Gruesome Crewsome attempted to drop her landing gear. It refused to lock, and as they hit the ground, the wheels buckled and the bomber bottomed out on the grassy field. Malcolm was thrown forward and blacked out to the sounds of his crew screaming around him.
It was so pitch dark when Malcolm opened his eyes that he automatically reached up for his face. With movement, the pain that had seemed distant and dull lashed through him, wrenching a scream from his throat and making him writhe in his bed. Strong hands held him in place on his cot while voices shouted at him, from far behind the agony, to hold still, to calm down. He barely felt the prick of the needle as it entered his arm, before he sank into sedated oblivion.
When he next awoke, it was as the triage nurse removed the bandages from his eyes. Her cool, efficient hands deftly unwound the gauze from his head, and Malcolm’s vision slowly grew brighter with each layer. When she reached the circular eye pads, he slowly reached up to remove them. He felt long slender fingers gently grip his hands and she set them on his chest with a pat.
“Close your eyes, Captain.” The feminine voice commanded him. “The light might be bright, after being bandaged so long.” She gave him a moment and then slowly peeled the pad off of his left eye, while she covered it with her cupped palm. “Okay, now keep your eyes closed while I get the other side.” She lifted the pad off, and placed her palms over his eyes again. “Now. Open.” She directed. He opened his eyes and stared at the thin lines on the palms of her hands, light bleeding in at the edges and between her fingers. She directed him again, to slide his own hands under hers, and when he did so, she removed her hands and busied herself cleaning up the gauze and bandages from the wounds she had cleaned and changed.
“Where am I?” He croaked past the desert that was his vocal cords. “Where are my men? Did the G.C. make it?” He tried to sit up with his hands over his eyes and she stopped him again and pushed him carefully back to the triage cot.
“Captain, when you think you can stand the light, you may remove your hands.” She began. “To answer your questions, you are still in Calais, though you will be transferred to London in a few days.” She sighed and patted him on the shoulder, which seemed, the longer he was awake, to be the only part of his body that wasn’t screaming at him in agony. “Your men have already been treated and are back to regular duty. You, however, had the bad form to let a tree in through your side of the cockpit window, and were actually rather badly broken up. Had a good portion of your face nearly scrape off too.” She declared in a brusque tone. “You’re lucky you still have both eyes, let alone that you’re still rather nice to look at.”
Malcolm glanced up at the older woman and she winked at him and patted his shoulder again. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment, the colonel and the chief medical officer appeared from behind the curtain on rounds.
“Captain Ross!” The Colonel exclaimed with a stern look. “You’re finally up. Been sleeping on the Queen’s time, eh?” He frowned, but it quickly turned into a look of sincere concern. “I’m glad to see you doing better, Ross.” He added gravely. “You had us worried there for a minute. I’ll let your men know that their leader and lifesaver has revived.” He saluted Ross, who painfully tried to return it. The Doctor made a tsk-ing sound of disapproval and placed his hands back on the clean white sheet that covered his body.
“Captain Ross, I’m Dr. Sheffield.” He introduced himself. “I’m sure you are feeling the need to be up and around, but you need to understand that you’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for two weeks now. The full extent of the injury to your head is still uncertain, so I need you to stay as still as possible while we get a better idea of how you’re really doing.” Malcolm started to nod, but stopped himself and settled for a quiet “Yes, sir.”
“Good work, Captain, by the way.” The doctor added as he was checking Malcolm’s vitals and the range of motion of extremities.
“Thanks,” Malcom replied. “Though I don’t really know what I did.” He closed his eyes, already weary and ready for the return of oblivion. When he opened his eyes, the Doctor had left, and the nurse
had returned to his side.
“Rest up a bit more, Captain.” She told him. “You’ll be in London in a few days, your transfer came in days ago, and we were just waiting on you to wake up.” She nodded at him and left, opening the curtain that had separated him from the rest of the wounded and dying men retrieved from the battlefield. He shut his eyes, wishing that he was still blind not only to his own circumstances, but the pain and despair around him. Sleep came quickly, thankfully, as the morphine kicked in again, and granted him temporary escape.
Morning brought visitors, welcome and unwelcome, as first, his crew found him amongst the wounded castoffs of war. They filled him in on the part of the crash landing he’d missed when he lost consciousness. Knox was still on light duty while his shoulder finished healing, and Crimmens had been promoted in Malcolm’s absence. The men had all survived unscathed, more or less, and Malcolm felt tears of gratitude sting his eyes as he looked up at them from his hospital bed. Knox had also brought him a couple of wartime paperbacks to read, that the men had traded for a couple of drinks with an American soldier, and a letter in a slim white envelope, from London.
Before the men left, the Doctor also made a stop at his bed, to give him his travel papers and a final examination before he was to be loaded onto a boat bound for England, to be treated at the Red Cross Harvard Field Hospital set up there. The men made their goodbyes, and Malcolm gave them a weak, but determined salute before they left his side.
When he was finally alone, he opened the letter Knox had given him. It was from his non-matrimonial friend, the lady called Stella. He read it slowly and methodically, and let her words take him away from the triage field hospital of Calais to the fields and forests of Yorkshire. City born and raised, he delighted in the tales she shared of life on her parents’ farm, and her adventures with her two best friends, her gelding, Pumpernickel, and a young woman of low nobility the lady Pemberley. He lay in his bed envisioning tall, flowing green grasses and hilly farmland until sleep found him and he dreamed of an unknown young woman waiting for him on a green hill, her back to a lush, fairy-tale forest.