“Charming,” Todd said in mock outrage. “Anyway. I said no.” He took a long pull on his pint and smacked his lips. They looked at him intently; they knew he hadn’t finished his story yet. He dropped the surprise. “Then they offered me a commission.”
Their faces were suitably shocked.
“I know right? Me, an officer?”
“You’re too scruffy by half,” quipped Flynn. He got to his feet and clicked his heels together, putting his hands on his hips. “Just look at you man,” he said in a plummy voice, rolling his vowels. He gestured at Todd’s tunic. “Your top buttons undone. There’s no polish on your shoes. Disgraceful.”
Todd ran a hand through his unkempt hair and shoved his forage cap back on his head.
“Exactly. I said I was happy as I was and I just wanted to do my job. The main thing is we get to finish our tour together; as a crew.”
“You got that right anyway,” commented Murphy. He raised his glass in salute and they all followed suit.
51 - Monkey And The Grinder
While most of the squadron went out to enjoy themselves, the squadron were called upon to send out four aircraft to attack the Tirpitz which was skulking in a Norwegian fjord. Always one to lead from the front, Church picked three other crews and took off heavily loaded with petrol and the big 2,000lb armour piercing bombs. All four aircraft returned after a marathon nine hours plus in the air.
It was another raid trumpeted in the press although the exact damage to the Tirpitz was subtly not alluded to. The rhetoric was strong and uncompromising. With more of the new four engine heavies coming into service, the RAF could range all over Germany. Nowhere would be safe from attack.
Carter saw the article in the Mess a few days later. He wasn’t so keen about the range at will bit. The German nightfighters would certainly have something to say about that. The tone of the article sanitised the bombing, giving a heroic slant to something that was far more deadly and violent. The rest of the page had a large photograph of smoke billowing from a factory with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The inside pages boasted about a large raid by one hundred aircraft on the Gnome aero engine factory outside of Paris.
He took the front page off the paper, rolled it into a ball and lofted it at the bin in the corner. It missed and Woods stooped down to pick it up. He smoothed out the paper and saw the headline, a particular phrase caught his eye, “the sword and the shield,” he murmured.
“Bumpf,” muttered Carter darkly.
Woods rolled up the page and put it in the bin slowly. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
“The CO wants to see you. Looks like we’re on for tonight.”
Carters face twisted, lacking enthusiasm. He levered himself up out of his chair and stretched.
“Let’s see what’s going on shall we?”
The gods were obviously not content. After giving 363 a few days off, Bomber Command HQ had decided that the Germans were having things too easy and ordered minelaying on a massive scale along the coast of occupied Europe. The skies would be crowded tonight. Aircraft from both 3 and 5 Group would be going out to range from Brittany all the way round to Germany. 363 were given a short stretch of coast off Cuxhaven covering the approach to the Elbe.
It wasn’t the Frisians but not much further. Church asked Carter to pick five crews from his flight to go out. Carter picked four of the new boys including Harding and told Latimer to get his Lanc on the line. He was damned if he was going to send them out on their own. The other replacement crew could go and drop bundles of leaflets over the French countryside.
He found Vos and Woods in the Mess. Vos carried on drinking, oblivious, but Woods picked up on the glint in Carter’s eye, the set of his shoulders and he just knew.
“We’re on,” Carter announced quietly. Woods nodded. He had a feeling something like this was going to happen. He started to steel himself for the night ahead.
At interrogation, Carter anxiously paced up and down waiting for the last crew to come in. They were late. Kent sat at his small table, the clipboard in front of him, his fingers drumming on the table. Etheridge tried to make himself inconspicuous and stood looking at an aircraft identification chart filled with silhouettes of German aircraft.
When it was past time, Wheeler updated the board in Ops for T-Tommy; FAILED TO RETURN. He rang Group to give them the report for the evenings operations; five aircraft dispatched, four returned. Carter would have gone back to his office to sulk, but Etheridge came alongside him and murmured, “let’s take a walk, shall we?”
The Group Captain struck out in a random direction and Carter followed along behind. He kicked at the heads of some daffodils, his hands jammed into the pockets of his greatcoat as he went along.
“It’s going to be a long war, Carter,” Etheridge murmured. “Try not to spend so much of yourself at once,” he cautioned.
“I just hoped they would have lasted more than one trip.”
Etheridge nodded, hearing the ache behind the words. He’d heard Asher, Dickinson, Salmon and Church say similar things before.
“You know the odds as well as anyone.”
“Yes, sir.”
Etheridge looked sidelong after him, seeing the war going on in inside. Carter tried a grin, but it just ended up looking like a grimace.
Losing crews was nothing new. Life on a bomber squadron was like that, a constant merry go round of replacements, filling in the holes left by those who had gone before. During his first tour he’d seen a lot of crews go west. Others had died at his OTU in the Scottish highlands flying clapped out aircraft but this had been the first loss on ops of men under his command. What unsettled Carter the most was that he couldn’t picture Bartholomew’s face.
“Chin up, Carter,” Etheridge pointed off to the eastern side of the aerodrome. “It’s a new day.”
They turned in as the first streaks of dawn lit the sky.
There was the usual thrash in the Mess to celebrate the honoured dead and thank the gods for another day of life. Carter put in an appearance, had two drinks to be sociable and then returned to his office.
He dug out the personnel folders of Bartholomew and his crew and thumbed through them. When he was finished he put them on the desk of one of the squadron clerks and vowed to never do it again. Ghoulishly looking through service records of the missing was tantamount to self flagellation.
He threw himself into his work with renewed determination and pushed his flight hard. He went over to Group and had Georgette pull the target photo’s of his aircraft and he spent the afternoon looking at aiming points. He went back to 363 and had his flight assemble in the briefing hut and laid down the rules.
He wanted them to get better at identifying their targets before dropping their bombs. Some of the photo’s had shown some crews were dropping miles off the target. A few had dropped on completely open countryside. There was no point risking their necks to drag tons of bomb across occupied Europe if they were going to just drop them on nothing. From now on, he wanted his crews to press home the attack. He sent them to Wainfleet on some rotten days. Bombing in good weather was easy. He wanted them to be able to hit the target when there was a crosswind blowing and cloud cover made sighting difficult.
Never one to ask people do something he could not, Carter dragged his own crew up on a particularly miserable day. The rain was almost going sideways when they got down from the truck. Flying into the teeth of a headwind, Flynn moaned as they were jostled in the turbulent air.
“It’ll be good practice for you,” Carter told him. “Just imagine it’s flak bouncing us around.”
Results were mixed. Carter sent them all to do it again. He went up with each crew, not just the rookies, to see how the crews operated. Some of them treated the Lanc like a delicate flower. He repeated what he had told Harding, when it was your life on the line, you flew as far to the limit as you could go and take nothing for granted. There were the usual grumbles in the Mess, but they knew he was right.
> In the air, he was his usual crisp self. On the ground, he withdrew into his shell. When the crew went to town, he didn’t go as often and Woods became one of the few companions he would have a drink with. He lived for the hours when he could get off the station to see Georgette. A quick call to find out when she was off duty and he was out the gate, making the drive to Grantham.
One evening, Vos sat in the armchair by the fire in their room. The radio was playing some dance music in the background. Denise sat on a cushion in front of him, leaning against his legs, her head tilted back as he brushed her hair.
Her stomach was bigger and she was talking about needing to go shopping for new clothes. Vos nodded absently as he looked around the room. It was a nice room. It had served them well all these months, but it suddenly occurred to him they were going to need some place bigger. Vos frowned as he thought about what to do. Mrs Peck had been good to them; very good to Denise. She had treated her almost as a daughter all this time; he didn’t want to upset her. This would need some delicate handling and he bent some thought on what to do.
52 - Joyride
Carter was buried under a load of work in his office. The ‘to do’ pile was on the right, those completed on the left. Once a month, each flight commander had to sign up the crews log books for the hours flown, each page being initialled and at the conclusion of a months entries, the page was stamped and signed by him. He’d just signed the bottoms of Todd’s book with a flourish when his office door burst open and the formidable figure of the senior WAAF strode in.
“What the devil?” Carter asked. The WAAF Sergeant clerk scampered in wringing her hands.
“I’m awfully sorry, sir. I had said you were busy-”
“It’s quite all right, Sergeant,” Carter said, reassuring her. “Shut the door.”
The terrified WAAF retreated, closing the door behind her. He swallowed hard and sipped his cold cup of tea as he gestured to the chair in front of his desk.
In the movies, WAAF’s were pretty and dashing and went all starry eyed at the sight of a pair of wings on a chest of blue. In reality, many of them were plain and the uniform did them no favours whatsoever. The enlisted womens uniform was adapted from the mens pattern and unless you were very tall, it made a girl look like a sack of spuds. The hats were atrocious and known as the pie crust. Officers were luckier, they could afford to have their uniforms tailored.
Squadron Officer Mildred Hakes was the proverbial battleaxe. She was as wide as she was tall, a great barge of a woman and she went at a problem like a bull at a gate. God help anyone who crossed her and woe betide if someone transgressed against her girls; then the whole arsenal came out to play. She lowered herself onto the offered chair, steam coming out of her ears.
“What can I do for you, Squadron Officer?”
“I want something doing about your animal aircrew, Squadron Leader.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“My girls are not whores!” she raged. Carter blinked, a little taken aback at the language.
“I never said they were.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she snapped at him. “I never said you did. What a ridiculous thing to say.”
Carter clicked his tongue, then stopped as Hakes fixed him with what he could only imagine was her death stare. Her ice blue eyes slitted up and her mouth pulled into a thin line of disapproval. Georgette had looked at him like that once. He sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and waited for Hakes to continue.
“Two of your men tried to break into the WAAFery last night. They scared the devil out of my girls when they saw one of them at the window.”
Carter groaned. WAAF’s and aircrew mixed, WAAF’s and ground staff mixed; it was a fact of life. There were numerous rules about fraternisation but blind eyes were turned to most of them. The one line never crossed was going to the WAAFery. Anyone stupid enough to go over there was asking for trouble.
“I’ll have the SP’s make some enquiries although I’m not sure how easy it’ll be for them to find out who it was.”
“Those idiots,” Hake sniffed dismissively. “They couldn’t find a polar bear in a penguin enclosure.”
“I’m not sure what else I can suggest, Squadron Officer. I’m not a private detective,” he snapped his fingers. “I can’t spirit up two guilty men and have them confess.” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “With something so serious, shouldn’t you be talking to, Wing Commander Church about this?”
“I did,” she said shortly. “He said I should talk to you. I’ve already tried to talk to that little weasel, Saunderson. He’s been giving me the run around for days.” Carter groaned. Hakes misinterpreted that. “I am serious, Squadron Leader. I want something done about it.”
“And it will be,” he said firmly.
“Then get a pen,” she told him.
She rattled off a list of transgressions. Two WAAFs had gotten pregnant and she provided the names of the alleged fathers, meticulously spelling the names and giving their rank and dates of birth. One girl had been caught in a compromising position with a Corporal in the armoury. Hakes had already posted the transgressor to Oban in Scotland. She wanted the Corporal hanging up by his thumbs. Failing that, she wanted him posting, preferably somewhere remote.
“Is that it?” Carter asked thinly, his tone glacial.
“Not quite.”
Carter shot her a look. He could almost guess what was coming.
“Joyrides,” she said. “I want them to stop.”
It was not unknown for erks to get taken up for flips in the kites but never on ops. He himself had done it for Archers erk in return for borrowing his car. He personally knew Walsh had done it as well on at least two occasions. WAAF’s being given joyrides was a much rarer event. On his last squadron he knew of just one instance when a navigator took up his WAAF girlfriend for a quick trip to the heavens.
It wasn’t always fun of course. There had been an accident when an idiot had run his Hampden into a hill with two WAAF’s on board. The fallout from that had been huge and the CO had absolutely banned the practice after that. It still went on, you just had to be discrete about it otherwise your flying career was over.
Carter was surprised that Hakes had mentioned this. There had been no hint about it happening on 363, not even whispers in the Mess.
“Is that just gossip or do you have anything specific to tell me?”
“Oh, I know,” said Hakes, warming to her theme. She had Carters attention now and she was not going to stop until she had satisfaction that her complaints were going to be dealt with. “Sneaking around, flying, making a spectacle of themselves. Disgusting.”
Hakes had ended up bending his ear for over half an hour, reeling off a litany of woes against her girls. When she finally left his office he had slumped in his chair, drained of energy like a balloon deflating from a slow leak. During her harangue he had considered saying, “don’t you know there’s a war on?” but couldn’t be bothered.
Head buzzing from the demands of the senior WAAF, he decided to bolster his strength with some lunch. He found Everett in the Mess tucking into sponge and custard and went over to him.
“Where have you been?” Carter asked.
“Group,” Everett said round a mouthful of custard.
“Mind if I join you?” Everett waved to the empty chair across the table.
“Feel free, old man.”
Carter sat down. One of the white jacketed stewards came over and asked him what he wanted. Carter pointed to Everett’s plate.
“Same please.”
Everett saw the weary look on Carter’s face.
“How goes the war?”
“With who?” Carter asked. “The Germans or the senior WAAF?”
Everett grinned.
“I’d heard she was on the prowl. What did she want?”
“A litany of crimes. The usual moans and to cap it all,” Carter threw up his hands, “a complaint about joyriding
.”
Everett grunted. He ran the spoon around the bowl, gathering up custard.
“Not on this station.”
“I know. I’ve not heard a dickybird either.”
“What did you tell her?” Everett asked.
“That I’d look into it.” Carter leaned forward on the table, resting his chin on his forearms.
“Why do you think I disappeared to Group?” Everett said.
Carter’s eyes opened wide, his mouth forming a silent, ‘oh’. Clearly there were a few administrative tricks he needed to learn a bit faster.
“What are you going to do?”
Carter shrugged.
“I figured I’d sit on it for a few days till things calm down.”
Everett licked his spoon. Finished, he stood up. He leaned on the back of his chair as he slid it against the table.
“That’s one way of dealing with it,” he admitted. “There is another way of course…” his voice trailed off. Carter bit.
“Which is?”
“The Germans might settle the matter for us. See you later.”
Carter just stared and watched Everett walk away as the steward brought him a bowl and set it down in front of him.
Afterwards; he went along to Ops and was going through some admin when the teletype started chattering away. Stuttgart would be the target for tonight. Nestled in among a group of valleys, the city was nowhere near any rivers or lakes or other specific feature that would provide a good navigational pinpoint. The lead elements would use Gee to help locate the target and the main force would follow them in ten minutes later. Even allowing for the industrial smog which was persistent over the factory towns, Stuttgart was not an easy target to find.
This time, 363 was going for something specific. At the north end of the city surrounded by woodland was the Bosch factory which made pumps, magnetos and other engine parts, a bottleneck of the German war machine. Carter poured over the target maps. As Stuttgart was at the bottom end of Happy Valley, rather than fly all the way over the flak, they were routed to go beyond the Ruhr and then turn south, coming in from the north east. Once they bombed they were to run west, out over France towards home.
Maximum Effort Page 58