The naval officer was a bundle of energy despite being up all night. He had wanted to fly on the raid and nearly got his way until Bomber Command HQ said a firm no. He had to content himself with waiting in the Ops Room and listening to the occasional snatch of radio communication or morse like everyone else.
Carter sat down in front of Kent. He slumped in the wooden folding seat, his body as limp and disinterested in the process as he was. Carter and his crew automatically munched on sandwiches and drank the cups of hot tea, letting their first food in hours do its work. Cigarettes were being used hard and the air was tinged blue with smoke.
Kent was not inured to the mood of the men, he had seen the way the other crews were. Clearly the raid had been no picnic. He kept it mercifully short while Carter described their bombing runs.
“Did the smoke screen cause any problems?” he asked.
“Not this time,” Woods interjected. “It was the bloody searchlights. I could pick things out fine until they caught us.”
Kent kept a count down the side of his sheet. About half the squadron reckoned they had bombed the targets for sure. Three others were maybes, Not bad.
When all the crews had been seen, Kent and the naval officer retired to his hut to tally the results. A blonde WAAF volunteered to assist, to no avail. This was secret work and he was all business. A preliminary report was rung through to the Admiralty but they would have to wait for the PRU Spits to get back later in the day. By sunrise the naval Lieutenant was on his way back to London in a staff car.
The Squadron lost two. There were the usual phone calls around the stations but no one had any stray Manchesters belonging to 363. Past the point their fuel would have run out, Dickinson and Slattery’s names were wiped from the Ops board.
Ailing, with the wheels down and a sick engine, Dickinson had given up any hope of making it back home. Over the channel at perilously low altitude, he had run east and ditched not far from the Channel Islands. In the morning a partially inflated, bright yellow RAF dinghy washed up in a Guernsey cove but Dickinson and his crew were never seen again.
Slattery and his crew had been another of the old hands who had been on the squadron since the beginning. A rowing blue from Oxford, Slattery was also a good miler and could often be seen having a run around the airfield. His end was less ambiguous than Dickinson’s. After making two runs over the harbour, the exhortations from Dickinson and Black Jack ringing in his ears, he made a third run to press home his attack when a chain of light flak guns had nailed him.
The port engine was smashed and his Manchester dropped like a stone. Slattery had shouted at them to bail out but only the Navigator managed to slither out of the nose hatch before they went in.
30 - Best Laid Plans And All That
The squadron had a party that night, part wake, part celebration. A remembrance for Asher and Dickinson and Slattery and all the others who were gone and a joyous salute to life. Etheridge bumped Church to acting CO until Group decided what to do and the laconic Everett was made 'A' Flight Commander to fill in the gap.
Carter slid out of the officers Mess and made a call from the telephone in the hall. It was answered on the third ring with a peremptory snap. Right at that moment there was a huge cheer from the main bar that echoed down the corridor into the hall and Carter winced. He could almost hear the disapproving silence oozing down the phone. Georgette came to the phone, her voice light and cheery.
“Darling, where are you?” she asked him. “It sounds like a zoo.”
“I’m in the Mess. We’re having a thrash. We earned it after last night.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
That remark sobered him for a moment. He forgot that Georgette saw the interrogation reports up at Group.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he told her honestly.
“Did you?” she asked, genuinely pleased. He could hear her smiling, the way her voice lifted along with the curl of her lips, the way her eyes crinkled in good humour.
There was another roar from the bar and some bodies crashed through the double doors behind him, pillows flying after them. Carter scowled and jammed a finger in his other ear, struggling to hear what else she was saying.
“Sorry, darling, what was that?”
“I said I got a letter from my sister.”
“Wonderful. Which one?”
She laughed.
“Julie.”
Carter’s mind whirled with the list of names of Georgette’s sisters. He had difficulty keeping them straight in his head.
“Which one’s that?”
“She’s a WAAF like me, but she’s down south.”
He was about to ask her what the news was, when the pillow fight came barreling down the corridor. Archer was running full tilt to get away from Woods who was pounding him with a pillow. Not looking where they were going, they crashed into Carter and took his legs out from under him.
Life at Amber Hill continued. Aircraft went up for air tests. Every few days, some of them went out to do a bit of gardening. Occasionally, one might not make it back. That was the luck of the game. The one truism with service life was that nobody was irreplaceable. People came and went and that included commanding officers but losing two in three days was a bit unusual.
Squadrons dealt with loss in their own way. When casualties were heavy, the survivors would drink to remember, drink to forget and drink to thank their lucky stars that they had survived. When a leader went and got the chop that was different. A CO set the tone and guided everyone else along.
Asher had led 363 since the beginning. Church and Dickinson had led the flights, moulding each of them to their own character but it had been Asher’s hand on the tiller.
Now that Church was CO things changed perceptibly. The strong silent type, Church led from the front but he was not one to make inspiring speeches or tell the men to pull their socks up. They were adults, they had to deal with it as far as he was concerned, there was no need to wrap them in cotton wool.
The weather worsened and some people got sent on leave. Archer left with a crash of gears and a spray of gravel, his yellow car rocketing through the gates.
Cold flurries and gusts descended on Amber Hill. A cold penetrating wind hunted out every nook and cranny and the crews huddled in their billets. The skies went as dark as lead and threatened snow as the temperature dropped further. Walsh shuddered, remembering the last time it had snowed.
Church laid on some lectures to keep the men busy. He brought a gen type from Group to talk about escape and evasion. They were told about double frontiers and fake border crossings. They got lectures on how to live off the land, what berries were safe to east and whatnot. They got told about pneumonia and hypothermia and what they could do about it.
Some made notes. Some took the chance to have a snooze in a warm darkened room. A few let it run in one ear and out the other. It was all informative stuff, but the veterans knew it was of little use. Falling out of the sky, in the dark, fighting g-forces as you tried to jump out of a dying aircraft, it was an even money chance for most of them to even bail out let alone worry about what to do once you got on the ground.
Murphy brooded on that very point in the dark of the lecture room as another slide of red berries was put up. He had started thinking about Joan, the feel of her lean body, her breasts pressed against his chest while her hips rocked back and forth against his pelvis. The image morphed into a vision of Muriel, her eyes flashing at him from under her blonde curls as she smiled at him. He imagined her arms holding him close, wrapping tightly around him and not letting him go and he found his thoughts inextricably staying to his new turret.
He’d been over the moon when he found their new Manchester had a mid upper turret. That fascination had lasted one op. The FN7 Botha turret might have seemed roomy on the outside but it was a different story once you got in it. A strange elongated teardrop design, it was tall but not very roomy inside. There was plenty of room for his legs to dangle
in the fuselage which was good, but there wasn’t a lot of room for his shoulders. He found he had to hunch up over the guns to give himself space but it was still uncomfortable.
The lecture mercifully finished and the lights came up. Murphy blinked the spots from his eyes and yawned as he stretched. Some rubbed their faces to wake up. They adjourned for dinner. Murphy bent his thoughts towards the evenings activities. He perked up when he realised Muriel was working tonight, so he could glide over, see her for a bit at the pub and then see Joan afterwards for some fun.
Walsh rushed into his room and closed the door as cold air whooshed in behind him. He stamped his feet and then began unbuttoning his greatcoat. He started as he turned round and saw Carter in bed, under a pile of clothes, his own coat draped over everything.
“Jesus, you gave me a shock.”
He put his pyjamas over some long johns and left his socks on, it was too cold to go without socks. He got under the covers and copied Carter, pulling his greatcoat over everything.
“How come you missed the show?” he asked his room mate. Carter shrugged.
“It’s no secret. I was out at dispersal talking repairs on my kite.”
He watched as Walsh riffled through the limited selection of records for the gramophone and make his choice. He pulled a record from the sleeve and put it on the turntable. He wound up the player and the room was filled with Vera Lynn’s voice.
They listened for a while, Carter reading a letter from White as the music played in the background. He looked at the envelope and saw it had come from Norwich.
The writing was big and loopy and very feminine. Carter discovered the reason why when he read down the first page. White’s hands were still bandaged so he had sweet talked a nurse into writing for him. White asked how the boys were and said little about his crash, or being burned. He mentioned that Elaine had come to see him. She had taken the train to Norwich and stayed overnight, spending as much time with him on the ward as she was allowed.
He moaned about the hospital but said the food was reasonable and the nurses were pretty. Carter tried to conjure up a smile but it was difficult. White would be a good sport in hospital, the staff would like him, but he grimaced at the thought of having your day reduced to considerations about food and being prodded by doctors while they stared at you like some specimen. The tone was upbeat but Carter could read between the lines easily enough. It had taken White a lot of guts to write a letter so soon when the future was bleak and unknown.
Carter put the letter back in its envelope when he finished and shoved it in the top drawer of his bedside cabinet. He pulled out a half bottle of whisky and two glasses. He clinked the glasses together and Walsh brightened.
“That’ll help take the cold off,” he said.
Carter poured.
They fluffed up their pillows and tried to relax as the music played.
“How many runs did you make?” Carter asked, his voice a murmur, his eyes closed, the glass cradled on his chest.
“Too bloody many,” Walsh replied. “Five? Six? I lost count.”
He shuddered again at the memory of going back and forth across the harbour, the flak guns filling the sky with lead. What stuck in his mind the most was the dull thud of shells that went off near him. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them, hear them, that bass shiver through his seat as his bomber rode the maelstrom.
“Do you think we got them?”
“We bloody should have,” muttered Carter, sitting up. Some whisky slopped over the edge of the glass and he sucked his hand, tasting the bite at the back of his throat. “We’ve thrown enough bombs at the beasts. It’s a coconut shy,” he announced, trying to make light of it all. “Roll up, roll up, every one’s a winner.”
“I didn’t get a teddy bear,” Walsh complained.
Todd used his knife to cut a piece of cardboard to shape. It looked about right so he offered it up to the window. It was a snug fit so he shoved it into place, wedging it into the frame. Cold air still got around it but it was better than nothing. He turned back to the room and sat on his bed, letting the heat from the stove wash over him. He didn’t have much energy to go anywhere this evening. The cold had sucked the motivation out of him and he was content to sit in the warm.
He stared at the fire flickering in the grate of the stove as he cast his mind back to the raid on Brest. Sitting at the back had been murder while they went around again and again. Sparks flurried past his turret and all he could do was sit and take what was thrown at them, jolting up and down as they ploughed through turbulence and the fury of the defences.
A piece of shrapnel had gone through his turret, left to right and out the other side. One moment they had been flying along, then a wicked piece of steel had whizzed in front of his eyes. The suddenness of it had shocked him.
He joined the poker game. Money seemed less important for once. He played carelessly, bet big and came out ahead. Some would have said it was beginners luck but he knew the real reason why he won. When nothing scared you any more, you took the chances you might normally hesitate over.
On the 4th February, Carter was briefed to lay mines off the Frisian islands. The weather was foul and they took off into leaden skies. They kept low over the water while Woods prayed to the navigation gods and hoped the forecast winds were right.
They got recalled halfway there and Carter was grateful that sanity prevailed. The weather had worsened over the North Sea, the cloud base dropping with every mile so that they had ended up at a mere two hundred feet. The tips of their props had been teasing the undersides of the clouds and Carter had his hands full, working the controls in the roiled air to stay level. They were so low, they were getting turbulence from the undulating waves. Their canopy had been hosed with spray as the wind snatched drops from the tops of the waves and threw them at them as they pressed on.
They turned for home and dumped the mines at the designated spot off The Wash and then stooged around for a while to burn off enough fuel so they could land. They defrosted during interrogation, their hands like claws as they gripped hot mugs of tea. The final kick in the pants was being told that the trip wouldn’t count. They’d never made the enemy coast so there was no credit for it.
Of course, Group were never ones to let a perfectly good bit of operational planning go to waste. On the 6th, Carter and two other crews were sent back to the Frisians to give it another go. The catch was they would be going in daylight.
It was with some trepidation that Carter drew his parachute from stores and got ready to fly. He did his walkaround with his usual thoroughness, having a deep conversation with Latimer about the engines. They had a quick flight test in the morning and then they were ready to go.
The weather had marginally improved over the last two days but it was still bumpy and cold. Carter was very aware there was a good chance of icing in such cold weather which would rob him of positive control and airspeed. They went up to ten thousand but the clouds were a solid mass of fluffy grey, very uninviting and very dangerous.
He discussed the forecast with Woods. They had been briefed for clear skies above five thousand with light winds carrying them along. That was clearly wrong as they were fighting a stiff headwind and the clouds kept on going up as far as the eye could see. Carter wanted sharp navigation to get them bang on target with no faffing around. Spooning around off the enemy coast like some moron would attract attention. He wanted to deal with fighters like he wanted a hole in the head and in daylight, even in such bad weather, that was a very real possibility.
“Balls to that,” Carter announced. He throttled back slightly and dipped the nose, taking L-London down. He watched the altimeter unwind and bottomed out at three thousand feet, a clear thousand or more below the clouds.
He was on edge the entire time there and back. When it came time to drop the mines, he found himself straining in his seat, leaning forwards against the straps wanting to be away from there. Every second on the run felt like an age. He was r
elieved when they left Terschelling behind and headed for home.
Wilkinson got the phone call at four. All aircraft dispatched returned. He had been against gardening in daylight but Bomber Command HQ had insisted upon it. He glanced out of his office window and saw a figure he recognised walking across the grounds towards the greenhouses. Grabbing his cap and coat from their stand, he went out.
He found her sat on a bench at the far end of the grounds. She was a forlorn little figure, hands in her lap, head down. His feet crunched on the ground and she looked up sharply when she heard him approach. She quickly got to her feet and was halfway through a salute before he could stop her.
“No need for that Georgette. No one else around.”
He motioned for her to sit and then plonked down next to her. He looked around the clearing.
“Do you know, in all the months I’ve been at Group I never knew this existed.”
She did her best to smile but it never reached her eyes. Her hands tied a hanky into knots. Wilkinson did his best to studiously ignore her obvious anxiety.
“I’ve never thanked you for looking after Helen,” he told her.
“It was nothing, sir. I was glad to spend time with her.”
“Even so, you have my thanks. It’s not easy for her being stuck at that hotel when her family are miles away in Lincoln. I know she goes back when she can but even so.” His voice trailed off. He shrugged. “Anyway, there it is.”
Georgette nodded, not saying a word.
The bare trees rustled with the stiff breeze. Wilkinson clapped his hands together, regretting not bringing his gloves with him.
“Lovely day. Bit crisp, but I suppose we take what we can get at the moment.”
“There is a war on you know,” she said with a laugh.
Wilkinson was impressed that she could make a joke even when she was upset. He knew what was bothering her.
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