Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Thank you. How do we pay for these? Is there a slate?’

  ‘Doesn’t work like that in the Corps. Need to know and all that. You don’t need to know where the stuff comes from, nor who pays for it, as long as we don’t. OK?’

  ‘Fine. What happens to the place when you’re away?’

  ‘If Willy’s not here then one of Les’s brothers keeps an eye on it – he’s dozens of them: there’s always one back on leave from somewhere, and they all look hideously alike. One’s even a Brylcreem boy, like you.’

  ‘Cliff told me that they were lending me to you as your driver. It was also a way of getting me over to Europe to do . . . something else.’

  ‘A little private enterprise I hazard?’

  ‘Something between that and public duty. It’s not my private enterprise, anyway.’

  ‘Anyway, young Charlie . . .’

  ‘Do you know that no one calls you young Charlie if you’re six feet tall?’

  ‘Point taken. Anyway, Charlie. Change of plan. You’re not really a good enough driver to get me out of the trouble I sometimes get myself into, are you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Take my word for it.’

  ‘OK. What next?’

  ‘So become my passenger. Fellow traveller. Help Raffles out when and where you can, and toddle off about your own nefarious bit of business when you have to. Sound OK?’

  ‘Yes, James. Yes it does. It beats bombing the hell out of the poor buggers. Do you want another?’

  ‘No. Lights out. I want to be on the road by 0530.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Nothing I tell you to do ever will be, old boy. You mustn’t worry.’

  I didn’t like the word tell. No one ever does.

  *

  We were driven that morning by a WAAF driver with a big RAF Austin staff car: each of us had a half-empty kitbag in its boot. The pick-up was at Croydon airfield. Nobody told me, but I recognized it from a visit I had paid with my father before the war. We had watched the old silver Imperial Airways biplane airliners flying the England–France route. My mother had told me that she and the old man knew that the war was definitely on a month before they announced it, because from the top deck of a passing bus one Sunday they had spotted a dozen little brown and green aircraft partially under tarps near one of the boundary fences: it was the first time they’d seen a Spitfire. We passed a big corner pub named The Propeller on the way to the main gate – the last time I had seen it I was too young to drink there.

  I sat in the front with the WAAF, and fell in love with her, watching the way her calf muscles tensed and relaxed each time she changed gear. It took more than an hour to get across London, and she was smiling by the time we got to our destination. Just before we slowed for the main gate and the guardhouse, I sensed Raffles and the Major settle down in their seats, and pull their collars up to obscure their faces. I copied them instinctively.

  ‘No telling who’s watching these days, Charlie,’ the Major told me, and, ‘No point Jerry knowing I’m coming over if he doesn’t need to.’

  The girl drove us to a smallish blister hangar a long way from the main buildings. She seemed to know the form: I was glad somebody did. When we stepped out of the car and stretched, I walked around the car to the driver’s side, and bent down so that my head was level with hers. I said my thanks, and then asked, ‘Can I see you after I get back?’

  She smiled, and after the significant pause, said, ‘I don’t see why not. My name’s Wayne. That’s Dolly Wayne. Section Officer. I’m at the Central Car Pool at Whitehall.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I offered her my hand to shake through the opened car window. ‘Charlie Bassett. Pilot Officer, but I used to be a Sergeant.’

  She gave my fingers a little squeeze before she let them go.

  ‘So did I. Happy landings, Charlie Bassett.’

  After she drove away Raffles stretched again, and said, ‘You don’t waste much time, do you, sir?’

  ‘I don’t have much time to waste, Private. What about you?’

  ‘Married man, sir. Three nippers – the last was born at Christmas.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘All human beings, as far as I know, sir.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Sometimes I can’t resist it.’

  ‘I know what you mean: once I couldn’t stand officers either.’

  ‘What did you do, sir, if you don’t mind my asking, that was so bad that they punished you by making you be an officer?’

  ‘I lived. I survived. I made it. This is the RAF’s revenge.’

  ‘Ah. There you go, sir. They wouldn’t like that, would they?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘And my kids are all boys. Three elevenths of my own football team. Thank you for asking.’

  We were standing on the tarmac with our kitbags at our feet. England was staring out across the airfield at England, if you see what I mean; distracted. I don’t think he was even aware of us.

  ‘What next?’ I asked Raffles.

  ‘You stay here, and take care of the Major for me, sir. Make sure no harm comes to him while we’re waiting for our aeroplane. I’ll pop inside, and rustle you up some decent clobber.’

  ‘Say that again?’

  ‘I’m not driving you over any border in those clothes. It may not have occurred to you, sir, but men in RAF blues aren’t exactly greeted with open arms by a citizenry you’ve been bombing shit out of for the last five years.’ Clobber: brown-job speak for walking-out dress, apparently.

  It suddenly dawned on me that if there was only one person running this operation, then maybe it was neither me nor the brave Major. Inside my memory my dead friend Black Francie smiled at me. About ten minutes later Raffles called to me from a small office stuck on the side of the blister hangar, and waved me over. Inside it was like a second-hand clothes shop. He picked me out a couple of smallish pairs of battledress trousers, one khaki and one navy, and an oversized khaki bum-freezer jacket. I was joining the Army.

  ‘Put these on, sir, and stick yours in your bag: they still might come in useful, despite what I said earlier. Keep your boots, it’ll save you wearing gaiters, and wear your old flying jacket over the lot. A lot of us have got them; filched of course, but bloody good against the cold.’ When I paused, he added for effect, ‘If you could get a move on, sir? The plane’s due any min.’ Then he glanced out of the open door and said, ‘Sod it! Where’s the Major got to?’

  I followed his gaze. Our kitbags sat on the tarmac like three small sheep, grazing. Where was the fucking shepherd? A comedian could have said that England was everywhere, but nowhere within sight. Raffles said, ‘Jildi – get a move on!’ to me as he trotted out, and, ‘You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I told him, and began to move. Force of habit, I suppose.

  When I walked out in my new kit, Raffles was standing by our sad bags of luggage, hands on hips, radiating impatience. There was a small gold cross in each lapel of my new battledress jacket. My new regimental shoulder flash said Seaforth Highlanders. It had been thoroughly spruced up, and the two holes I noted in its back panel, and one above the breast pocket, had been neatly mended. Not only a brown job, but a dead brown job, a fucking Jock, and a fucking parson to boot. Then I remembered that a Chaplain had a Captain’s rank in the Army: I’d been promoted again. I told him, ‘I’ll need a Bible and a prayer book if we’re going to carry this off.’

  He swung on me, and Private to Captain or not, I would have got the rough edge of his tongue if James England hadn’t ambled around the other side of the small humped building buttoning up, and said, ‘Sorry about that. Got took short. Weren’t worried, were you? Would that be our transport just bounding down the airfield now?’

  Bloody Tempsford. They always had to get in on the act. It was a 158 Squadron Hudson, and it turned out David Clif
ford was driving the bloody thing. Flying would have been a more appropriate description of what he was doing with it: I wondered if he had flown the type before. He was still laughing as he climbed down from the small fuselage door.

  ‘Did you see that, Charlie?’ he asked me. ‘Bounced like a fucking kangaroo! I hope I haven’t upset it, or stuffed the oleo legs.’

  I said, ‘Hello, Cliff. Yes, I saw that. It really gives me bags of confidence.’

  ‘Don’t be such a dismal little sod. I’m much better with the heavies. How’s your head?’

  ‘Less burned, thank you. But I still have a trace of the hangover I brought from Crifton.’

  ‘Great people, aren’t they?’

  ‘No, Cliff; they’re turds. They’re exceptionally rich turds, and they might get me killed.’

  ‘Said it before. Dismal little sod.’

  ‘This is Major James England, and Private Finnigan or Raffles.’

  ‘I know. I knew them before you did. What ho Beginagin.’

  ‘Hello, sir,’ said Raffles, and gave him a salute that was like touching his forelock.

  ‘Hello, Cliff,’ said England. ‘Shall we get going then?’

  There were eight forward-facing seats in pairs in the accommodation of the Hudson. Raffles stretched himself across two and went to sleep. England strapped in three rows back, and began to study rows of figures in his small notebook. Cliff pushed me into the seat alongside his own.

  ‘Don’t touch anything unless you know how to fly.’

  ‘I know a bit.’

  ‘What bit do you know – getting up into the sky, or getting back down on the ground?’

  ‘Neither. The bit in between.’

  ‘In that case don’t even think about it.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘No, I’m not, but you don’t need to know who is.’

  I think that the problem was that the Hudson was so much lighter and more sensitive than the Stirling he had shown me he was good at. All of his actions seemed heavy-handed. I think we were flying sideways as we actually unstuck. He told me, ‘That was fucking horrible.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to mention it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Grace’s dad said I’d get a briefing before I went over.’

  ‘This is it, and there’s damn-all to tell. Just a couple of hints. After that you’re on your own. Well, not quite on your own. You’ve got ITMA back there, for backup.’

  ‘I got the impression that it was the other way round. Don’t they expect me to help them out? Look out!’ Cliff had turned to me as he spoke, trying to gauge the impact his words made. That meant that he wasn’t looking at the Waddon Gas Works chimney coming towards us at about 180 knots. He hauled us round it with a girlish giggle which didn’t suit him. The Major called forward, ‘Everything OK up there?’

  ‘Grand, Major. I’m just teaching old Charlie the rudiments of flying.’

  ‘Do it from a bit further up, old chap.’

  Cliff laughed, and pulled us into a steep circling climb. He didn’t speak again until there was eight thou on the clock.

  ‘What do you really know about Grace?’ I asked him.

  ‘I know she’s jumped ship. You knew that she was a civvy pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary: a ferry pilot?’

  ‘Yes, of course I knew that. I’m her intimate. That’s how I got into this mess.’

  ‘Somehow the ATA Command found out that she was pregnant, and grounded her until after the happy event.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have liked that. I wonder who told them.’ I looked away: it had been me.

  ‘Understatement. She threw a bleeding Dodo: tried to skewer her boss with his own walking stick. OK: grab the wheel now – both hands – and be gentle with her . . .’

  ‘Like you are . . .?’

  ‘Feet on the pedals, please; no sarcasm. OK: you’ve got her.’ He held his hands up to show me that I was flying. ‘Watch your artificial horizon – that job, there.’ He rapped one of the dials. ‘Keep the floating white line horizontal, and along the line on the face of it. Then you’ll be flying level.’

  ‘What did she do afterwards?’

  ‘Took some old war-weary Spit without permission, and thrashed it down to Great Gransden, beating up three RAF airfields in the process, abandoned it there, and went home to Mummy and Daddy in a huff, leaving the ATA and the RAF to argue what the charges should be.’

  ‘Good for her. Interesting though: I never her saw her lose control.’

  ‘Look, fly the bloody thing straight can’t you? It can’t be all that difficult.’

  ‘Sorry. Good for Grace, though.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, until Sir Peter called his markers in.’

  ‘When did it all start to go wrong?’

  ‘Lady Baker says that Grace seemed to settle back home quite quickly. She thought that she’d decided to have the baby. Actually I think that Mummy and Daddy were quite chuffed at the idea. Then Grace went to London, and you’ve been told about that, and something happened because she pissed off with some American cavalrymen, and the near Continent got its first bona fide English tourist since the start of the war.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘Obviously something to do with that bombed school, wasn’t it? Any other ideas?’

  ‘You know that Grace flew half a dozen trips to Germany with us, as rear gunner?’

  Cliff said, ‘Christ!’ and grabbed the aircraft back from me. We immediately lost about fifty feet in a great lurch. Raffles shouted, ‘Oi!’ from the back, and Cliff shouted back, ‘Sorry!’

  Then he asked me, ‘Does her old man know?’

  ‘Maybe. He won’t make a fuss about it as long as I’m around.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He was rogering her before the rest of us got there. I know, and now you know too. He won’t want to take a chance on that getting out. For all we know her baby could even be his.’

  ‘When was she due?’

  ‘About now. Maybe. I lost track of time a bit after the accident.’

  ‘It makes some sense to me now,’ Cliff told me. ‘One of the people she stayed with in London said that after that rocket nearly killed her she talked about putting it all right again, and told them she had pals in the American Red Cross in Paris who could do with a hand. They were the hints I mentioned earlier. Seven months pregnant, having recently helped you bomb Germany, she wanders into a bombed primary school in pieces, full of children also in pieces. Poor cow.’

  ‘You’re being glib, Cliff. She’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘Makes sense to me, too.’ That was James England. He could move stealthily when he chose: he had moved up to stand behind the seats we were in. ‘I can get you into Paris, Charlie, never fear.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How long now?’ England asked us.

  I could see the South Coast swimming towards us ten thou beneath. Cliff said, ‘We’ll be on the ground in an hour.’

  ‘Good; I’ll take a snooze then. Fly smoothly.’

  ‘Jawohl Herr Major,’ I told him. If he noticed he didn’t show it. He said, ‘Jolly good. Carry on then.’

  I thought that I ought to bottom it out with Cliff while I still had the chance.

  ‘So I’ll start at the Red Cross offices in Paris. That’s your idea?’

  ‘Can’t think of anything better, can you?’

  ‘How do I report back?’

  ‘Don’t. Find Grace; get her to come back with you.’

  ‘Why is that important?’

  ‘Winston says so.’

  ‘I don’t like Winston.’

  ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘Explain please.’

  ‘Charlie. Elections cost money to fight and the first one after this war’s not that far away. Winston has no money at all, and few friends. You produce Grace, and a grateful Baker Small Arms Company bankrolls his next election campaign. It’s the only chance he has of beating Clem Attlee fo
r the top job.’

  ‘So I’m over here to get the next Conservative government elected?’

  ‘That’s the ticket. You’re quite sharp when you try.’

  ‘But I can’t stand the bastards.’

  ‘So what old chap? Take this; whilst no one’s looking.’

  He pulled a bulky envelope from inside his beat-up flying jacket, and pushed it into my hands. I made sure it was stowed down in a pocket.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Spending money. Some dollars and pounds: they’ll get you anywhere. There are loads of invasion francs and deutschmarks, but don’t depend on them, they’re forgeries. About three and a half grand in all. That should get you through.’

  ‘How do I get back?’

  ‘Initiative. Hallmark of the officer class.’

  I probably sulked. Then I asked him about Major England, and Raffles.

  ‘Darby and Joan. He’s not really an Intelligence Officer; he’s some sort of food and drink wallah. Les looks after everything else.’

  ‘He told me about being a food expert. I didn’t quite see what he meant.’

  ‘His job is to be just behind the point of the Army’s advance all the time, make an assessment of what food and rations it needs. It sounds safe, and it is unless Jerry decides to come back at us with a counter-attack, as he has a few times already. Then he can find he’s the wrong side of the lines, or in the middle of the shooting war. He’s been wounded twice, and Raffles three times. They’re bloody inseparable.’

  ‘I suppose that to do their job safely he’d have to be an ace navigator.’

  ‘What? Sure. An ace. Why?’

  I don’t think that he realized why that worried me. I’d seen the Major studying a map before we set out. He had been holding it upside down. I heard Raffles stir in his sleep, and snort.

  Cliff asked me just one more thing before we started the let-down over Abbeville. ‘That thing you just said – about Grace flying some trips with you. How come?’

  ‘The rear gunner – the one you were interested in – you remember I told you how he killed those policemen? Then he went over the hill. Pissed off. Grace had become attached to us earlier. She was billeting with us between delivery flights: they were sending us a lot of new Lancasters down from Ringway. She just stepped in, and took his place. No one noticed the difference. You have no idea how stupidly easy it was.’