Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  Charlie’s War

  In September 2004 Richard & Judy’s Executive Producer, Amanda Ross, approached Pan Macmillan: her production company, Cactus TV, wanted to launch a major writing competition, ‘How to Get Published’, on the Channel 4 show. Unpublished authors would be invited to send in the first chapter and a synopsis of their novel and would have the chance of winning a publishing contract.

  Five months, 46,000 entries and a lot of reading later, the five shortlisted authors appeared live on the show and the winner was announced. But there was a surprise in store for the other four finalists.

  On air Richard Madeley said, ‘The standard of the finalists is staggeringly high. All are more than worthy of a publishing contract.’ Pan Macmillan agreed and published all five.

  The winning books were The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz, Tuesday’s War by David Fiddimore, Journeys in the Dead Season by Spencer Jordan, Housewife Down by Alison Penton Harper, and Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok.

  DAVID FIDDIMORE was born in 1944 in Yorkshire and is married with two children. He worked for five years at the Royal Veterinary College before joining HM Customs and Excise, where his work included postings to the investigation and intelligence divisions. Charlie’s War is the second in the Charlie Bassett trilogy.

  Also by David Fiddimore

  TUESDAY’S WAR

  DAVID FIDDIMORE

  Charlie’s War

  PAN BOOKS

  First published 2006 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-54140-4 EPUB

  Copyright © David Fiddimore 2006

  The right of David Fiddimore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you're always first to hear about our new releases

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright page

  Dedication page

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Three

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Four

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Five

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  For

  CHAS McDEVITT & NANCY WHISKEY,

  and the generation who rode the last train

  to San Fernando

  Charlie can’t let this book pass without thanking the four people he consults as he commits his memoir to paper:

  Marion, Andrea and Gwen,

  who all live with his stories on a daily basis,

  and Sarah Turner, his editor and guide. Bless you.

  PART ONE

  England: November 1944

  One

  I had three books.

  One was a thrice-read Western by Zane Grey, one was an Edgar Wallace, and the third was a book of erotic poems by John Wilmot, Lord Rochester – given to me by Conners before my old aircrew split. I missed the old gang more than you could imagine. Grease, our Canadian pilot, had returned to the prairies, and the rest were up north in cushy training berths well out of the way of the war, except for Fergal, who had run away to be a priest. Part of me was glad of that. The other part damned the lot of them for being the jammy sods that they were.

  I had given a bomber squadron at Bawne airfield, near Cambridge, twenty-eight trips, and when I drove away from it I took most of the clothes I had arrived in, a little Singer open four-seater I had inherited, and Piotr’s big radio. Piotr was Pete, our rear gunner. Being dead since our last trip, he wouldn’t need either for the time being. I was given two weeks off for good behaviour so I drove north to see my dad, who had evacuated to Glasgow. It wasn’t a city I fell in love with instantly: people seemed to evacuate all over it every Saturday night – mostly from bladder, bowel or stomach – and a girl I had met at St Enoch’s for ten bob put me out of action for a fortnight afterwards. It may seem stupid but I reported for duty at my new station three days before I was due. I couldn’t settle with the civvies.

  I didn’t fly: I had done my trips, and was being rested, or screened in a training job. Still on a bloody squadron though. That was unusual, although not completely unknown. It figured because it was an unusual bloody squadron. From Tempsford they flew all over unfriendly Europe in some of the oldest, slowest aircraft the service could find. My job was to house-train their radio operators if they arrived on the squadrons untrained or unwilling, and sort out their kit. I was supposed to deliver W/Ops briefings before their trips if a special briefing was called for. It never was. Anyway; that was the theory of it. They say you live and learn. A lot of the buggers I’d last flown with never learned, and didn’t live that long. QED.

  Frohlich walked in while Cab Calloway was singing away, ‘. . . a kiss ain’t a kiss, unless there’s a kick in it’, on Pete’s radio in the room they had given me. That was in a small farm servant’s cottage down the dirt track from Waterloo Farm, which was one of the other names for Tempsford airfield. I was sitting in the armchair with my blankets wrapped around me because the previous night I had used up my coal ration for the week trying to keep the place thawed out. I wasn’t going back into those sodding books, so was open to offers when he stuck his head round the door and called pub.

  ‘Fancy a pint, Charlie?’

  ‘Do you think they’ll have a fire on?’

  ‘Must do; weather like this.’

  ‘I’m in then.’

  ‘Good. We can take your car. Ours is running on hope and petrol vapour.’

  ‘Steal some. Everyone else does.’

  He gave me the sad look. He was OK with a pint in his hand, but he didn’t like thieves. Bible basher. Jewish bible. I drove us all up Warden Hill to the Thornton in Everton village: me and Frohlich and his mixed-ranks crew. Tempsford being the funny place that it was, the officers and NCOs spent more off-duty time together than on other squadrons. The bosses looked the other way. Frohlich was a
Sergeant Pilot. His Navigator, Klein, was a Flying Officer, and his Radio Operator was a Pilot Officer named Albert Grost. Both outranked him on the ground, but they called him Skip in the air. In my opinion Grost was cack-handed, so I rode him hard over his pathetic Morse signature. The first time I told him to practise he complained to the CO that I was anti-Semitic. Goldie pointed out that the whole of the rest of Frohlich’s crew was from the promised land, and didn’t seem to have a problem with me. I held him back as we all left the bar to hog the small fire in the snug.

  I asked him, ‘Look, can I call you Albert, or Al, while we’re here in the pub? I know I’m not part of your team.’

  He looked momentarily disconcerted, then, ‘Of course. Albie. You’re Charlie?’

  ‘Right. I knew another Albie once.’

  ‘Another radio man? Radio men should stick together.’ Turd. The other Albie was an American tank commander. As soon as I met him I knew he was on the way to shake hands with Dr Death.

  ‘Right. We got off on the wrong foot. I’m supposed to be the expert, and make sure you’re up to scratch. Not much point if I don’t tell you the truth.’

  It had been a bit like fencing, and my last few words had been a definite touch. Touché. He gave me a rueful grin as a reward. He can’t have been more than nineteen.

  ‘OK. I know my Morse isn’t much good.’

  ‘I could help.’

  ‘OK.’ He gave himself a gulp of the hoppy beer. ‘I’ll come to see you tomorrow, all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ Then I told him. ‘You were right though; I am prejudiced.’

  ‘I thought so. I’m used to it.’

  ‘Not this, you’re not. I just hate fucking officers.’

  He had that uncertain sort of laugh as we joined the others at the fire.

  I slipped out for ten minutes between drink two and drink three, to visit Black Francie where he lay in the churchyard of St Mary’s church behind the pub. He had been an air gunner cut into three pieces by unsociable Germans. We had buried him here about two months earlier. There was a small posy of fresh flowers on his grave. The rich earth on the grave seemed higher somehow, and there was a distinct crack in it at one side. I wondered if it was being lifted by his decomposition gases and moodily pressed it down flat with my foot. Sometimes I said a word or two to him, but on this occasion just being there was enough. The light was fading. Someone had switched on the flare-path lights of the airfield in the valley below us, and I heard the heavy growl of four Hercules radial engines throwing an aircraft into the sky. That would probably be a Hallibag. I felt stupid, a bit lost, and exceptionally lonely. I hated my new squadron, and decided to go and get crocked. The lights flicked off again.

  My hangover the next morning was like a deep depression rolling in from south-east Iceland. I vowed abstinence for the rest of my life if God would take it away and give it to Hitler. God didn’t listen to me.

  The CO called me up at about 0900. The NCOs all called him ‘Goldie’ because of the colour of his hair and moustache. The officers called him Squadron Leader, knelt, crossed themselves, and wiped their tongues with toilet paper afterwards. That probably explained the toilet-paper crisis: there had been none on the station for weeks apparently. Each bog was hung with wads of cut squares of newspaper, neatly threaded on looped string. I used to look for the crosswords and the cartoons, but someone was always there before me, and nicked the drawings of Jane.

  He asked me to sit down, which was never a good sign.

  ‘Settled in, Sergeant?’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Any problems?’

  ‘It’s been a little difficult sorting my duties out, sir. There’s nothing on paper, and I didn’t meet the man I replaced.’

  ‘Seen the squadron Radio Officer?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. He hasn’t been here since I arrived. No one seems to know where he is.’

  ‘We can be a bit like that sometimes.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think that you do, but you will, if you stick around long enough.’

  Attack being the best defence and all that, I pressed on.

  ‘Shall I just carry on then, sir? At present I liaise between the ground staff and the aircraft, and check new men who haven’t flown with you before.’

  ‘Sounds spot-on, Sergeant. Initiative.’

  ‘It can be a bit difficult because I don’t actually know what they do on these sorties, sir. I was thinking of hitching a lift on one of them. Bat myself in, so to speak.’

  ‘Good idea, Sergeant. I shouldn’t be surprised if your predecessors didn’t do the same. Anything else?’

  One of us was being a twerp. I wasn’t sure which one.

  ‘When I left Bawne, sir, my old CO put me up for canonization. They wanted me to continue as an officer. I think that it was a reward for living long enough.’

  ‘Yes; I’ve read your papers. Nothing’s come down from Wing yet. Worried?’

  ‘Only the principle of it, sir. If they think I’m worth more, they should pay me more.’

  He gave me a fiver from his desk drawer as if it was a tip. It probably made him feel good.

  ‘Don’t ask me where it comes from; my clerk gives me more whenever I ask. It seems that the War House thinks we need more filth than most outfits.’

  I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t need it, once I’d opened my mouth: I would have to talk to Frohlich, I thought. I buttoned it into my right top pocket, saluted and about-turned; I felt a party coming on. Or maybe I should speak to the American Master Sergeant guy I knew at Thurleigh Field, and make him an offer for a box of toilet paper.

  Tommo Thomsett from Thurleigh told me that the Kraut and his U-boats had deliberately targeted vessels carrying toilet paper, and torpedoed them in the Atlantic. This had led to what he described as ‘a little supply side difficulty’. I got a box of flat packets for three quid, which was extortionate. Then he told me he was glad I was back. He didn’t like to lose an old customer.

  Later that week I shared a breakfast table with Frohlich. He gave me his bacon, and asked me, ‘Have you noticed that some beggar is stealing all of the Jane cartoons from the arse paper?’

  ‘Yes. I saw that.’

  ‘Wonder who?’

  ‘Some spy, I should think.’

  ‘I should have thought of that,’ he told me.

  They operated the need to know system at Tempsford, so naturally nobody ever knew anything. The squadrons didn’t consider that I needed to know much at all. I was surprised to find it rather suited me. My mum used to say that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you. The flue from her kitchen stove had leaked, and she didn’t know about that. It killed her and my kid sister. I suppose you can’t be right about everything.

  There were two resident squadrons, 138 and 161, who clandestinely flew people and materials to the parts of Europe that Adolf was still in love with. They also brought people out again. The aircraft they operated varied from small Lysanders and twin-engined Hudsons, which actually landed over there, to the big Halifax and Stirling bombers: four-engined jobs like the Lanc I flew on my tour.

  A week or so after my arrival I had stood at the WVS canteen lorry behind the converted parachute store in which they kitted out the passengers, who they called Joes, and watched a Hallibag limbering up its engines for a trip across the Channel somewhere. It looked very old, and huffed and puffed a bit. It made a lot of smoke. There was a scruffy Flight Lieutenant with a full set of wings alongside me, blowing on his tea. He was probably fifteen years older than me, and his uniform, although clean, hadn’t seen an iron since it had been issued to him – it gave him a curious boneless look. He’d borrowed his moustache from Douglas Fairbanks, but it didn’t give him the edge he’d hoped for, and he wore his Irvine flying jacket over his shoulders like a cape. I thought that he’d seen The Dawn Patrol at his local fleapit too often at Saturday morning pictures, but he was the only one left to talk to. I asked him how long they would be
out. Stupid question: my speciality.

  ‘As long as a string of bangers, old son. Could be going to the bloody moon and back, couldn’t they?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m new here.’

  ‘I guessed. It’s bad form to ask about a trip on this station, but I won’t tell on you. I’m David Clifford. Most people call me Cliff.’

  ‘I’m Charlie Bassett. I was sent here as a radio instructor, but I can’t find anyone to instruct.’

  ‘Don’t knock it. Let them come to you.’

  ‘I’ll remember that. I can’t seem to find my boss either; he’s the Station Radio Officer. Stan somebody.’

  ‘He went out on a trip to Never Never Never Land three weeks ago, and he’s walking back.’

  ‘What’s Never Never Never Land?’

  ‘Never ask. Never go there. Never land there if you do.’

  He took a thick gulp of tea: he must have had an asbestos throat.

  ‘Do you really know that he’s alive and walking back?’

  ‘Yes, we do, actually, old son. You’ll learn the form quick enough.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I call myself the odd-job man, but the Group Captain calls me an Intelligence Officer. But I can fly a bit as well: it’s what we like here – sort of jack-of-all-trades. Someone must have picked you out for the job.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ Then he spun the chamber on me. ‘Fancy a bevvy? They won’t be back until tomorrow. There’s a good bar at Blunham, just down the road, that I’d be pleased to introduce you to – and I understand you’ve got a flash little car at your disposal. If I’d been running your security checks, the first thing I would have asked was how a humble Sergeant could afford that.’

  ‘It was inherited. From a good rear gunner who ran out of luck.’

  ‘Ah. One of those. It’s an ill wind, and all that.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’ I think that that was the first time I really believed that Pete the Pink Pole was dead, and wasn’t about to turn up from another irregular couple of days’ leave in London, with a new bird on his arm.