Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  She was too hungry to argue, so she did the next best thing and gave a smile of childish innocence. “How did you know?”

  “Absence of stretch marks.”

  “Clever Silko. Not so slow, after all.”

  “And I doubt if your mother’s in Dublin.”

  “No. In Kentucky. For the racing.”

  “And all that junk about charity funds and the special constable and being a jinx popsy was all junk.”

  “No. I had a fling with a couple of pilots, both killed in action. Anyway, nothing really mattered after I lost Tony. Mummy did a bunk to America to escape the Blitz. Maybe I should have gone too. Everyone else was being frightfully patriotic and I honestly didn’t give a damn. There you are, Silko: a bit of your foul honesty at last.” She got out of the car and stood with her face turned away from him. “Why don’t you ask me what I’m really doing here? I came looking for Tony, and don’t tell me it was very foolish. I told myself that a hundred times. I honestly didn’t expect to find you. You were a big surprise.”

  “So you adopted me as a sort of substitute Tony. Is that the truth?”

  No answer.

  “I still don’t see why you had to lie so much. You’re such a fraud, Zoë.”

  “And you’re such a prig, Silko.”

  That hurt. That drew blood. “I don’t mind being fucked about,” he said, “but I can’t stand being buggered about.” He checked his watch. “Look: I’m on duty soon.”

  He drove her to Bury St. Edmunds railway station. Neither of them spoke until it was time to say goodbye. “Has the squadron still got that lovely boxer dog?” she asked. “Handyman? I gave him to 409 as a mascot.”

  “Got knocked down in the road,” Silk said. “Dead.”

  Zoë looked him in the eyes. “You couldn’t even lie about that, could you?” she said sadly. “You’re hopeless, Silko.” She kissed him on the lips and walked away, leaving him feeling that he had found the truth and it wasn’t worth the price he had paid, so he should have stuck with the lies.

  Too late now. He got back to Coney Garth just in time to hear that he was on ops. Bloody Bremen again. Good. When all else failed, there was always bombing.

  A WHOLE NEW SLANT

  1

  Rafferty always found time to visit wounded aircrew, but Skull wasn’t aircrew and he had no serious injuries, so Rafferty asked the Ops Officer, Bellamy, to pop in and see the chap.

  Skull was in bed, eating porridge. He was unshaven and the spoon seemed heavy. There was a small cut on his nose. Bellamy asked how he was feeling.

  “Somewhat sluggish. The brain feels like …” He gazed at the porridge, and finally shook his head.

  “You’re probably still a bit doped.”

  “Sometimes I can smell flak. It smells strange. Pungent.” Speaking was like laying bricks: every word had to be found and placed. “Flak is close when …” He aimed his spoon at nothing. “When you can smell it.”

  “Still, you got back, didn’t you? Takes a lot to stop a Wimpy.”

  Skull licked the spoon and thought. “Cold treacle,” he said carefully. “Brain feels like …” He yawned hugely. “Feels like … Damn. Forgotten again.”

  “Treacle. Doesn’t matter.” Bellamy took the porridge bowl from Skull’s hand before he spilled it. “You should get some sleep.”

  “Flak. Horrible. We were lost, Bellamy. Stooged about, looking for … um… Essen. Half an hour, in the flak, over the Ruhr. Big mistake.” Skull clutched Bellamy’s sleeve. “I know a better way.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose you’d better tell me, so I can tell the Wingco.”

  “Forget the damn target. Forget bloody Krupp’s. Bomb Essen. Then—go.”

  “Bomb the city? I honestly don’t think that’s on the cards, old boy”

  “The kites have to fly round and round. In all that flak.”

  Bellamy took Skull’s hand from his sleeve. “Right, I’ve got the message. You get some rest.”

  “A Wimpy blew up.” To Bellamy’s horror there were tears on Skull’s face. “And we never even bombed Essen. We never even found Essen.”

  Bellamy reported to Rafferty that Skull was exhausted and not making much sense. The sight of flak seemed to have unbalanced him. “Kept babbling about making the city the target, the whole city. At least I think that’s what he meant.”

  “That’s what happens when you put a Cambridge don in uniform,” Rafferty said. “I don’t want our tame Yank going anywhere near him. See to it, would you?”

  Colonel Kemp was found in a hangar, watching a Wellington get an engine change. He knew of Skull’s Essen op, and was impressed by it. He hoped the wound wasn’t serious.

  “Concussion,” Bellamy said. “They’re taking X-rays. Meanwhile, absolute quiet. No visitors, I’m afraid. Poor chap’s incoherent at times.”

  “Good Lord. What hit him? A shell splinter?”

  “Nothing hit him. He tripped over the main spar and landed on his head. We warned him beforehand, but you know what these academic types are like. They live in a world of their own.”

  Colonel Kemp nodded, and made a mental note: beware the main spar. He was determined to go on an op, and soon.

  2

  At Coney Garth, the group captain was king. Just the sight of four rings on a sleeve was enough to make a corporal square his shoulders and look alert. It was enough to make an AC2 scuttle out of sight. But at High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, group captains were small change.

  High Wycombe was the headquarters of Bomber Command. Its C-in-C, Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, had flown with the Royal Naval Air Service in World War One and gone on to build a solid career in the RAF. He knew very well that, having been given Bomber Command, he had to defend it. Whispers had reached him that the Prime Minister might be having second thoughts about strategic bombing, whatever that meant. Downing Street had asked for certain files and photographs to be sent to a civil servant, name of Butt, and that was bad enough, but this Butt was an economist by training, a youngster of twenty-seven, not long down from Cambridge. It was known that Butt had visited the PRU at Danesfield, several times, and not to ogle the delightful Constance Babington Smith, either. What the devil was going on? The chief of Bomber Command—an air marshal and a knight of the realm—couldn’t very well ask young Butt what he was up to. However, there was no reason why Champion, not much older than Butt and also a Cambridge man, shouldn’t continue the friendship begun at King’s and invite Butt to lunch at his club.

  The Sheldrake was a blackened ruin. They went to the Army and Navy Club, and ate in a private room.

  “Security,” Champion explained. “I’m just a dogsbody in operational planning, but you live and work in the throbbing heart of the war … Look, I’ve got us a salmon, which has the great virtue of being off-ration, as does the salad. Not desperately exciting but… is that all right?” Butt assured him it was more than all right. “And this white Burgundy is quite sturdy,” Champion remarked, “which is more than can be said of the French performance last year … Oh dear. How horribly indiscreet of me. I never spoke.”

  “Didn’t you? I never heard.”

  “Splendid. That makes us quits.”

  Lunch was good, and Champion was not so clumsy as to spoil it by talking shop. It was only when they got to the coffee that he said, “This reminds me of Skull. What a brain! Yet capable of such naiveté. You remember how concerned he was to give words their precise meaning? To him, a target is a target. Either you hit it or you miss it. If a raid doesn’t succeed, it fails. Well, as you know better than I, strategic bombing isn’t that simple.”

  “Some raids are partially successful, you mean.”

  “And some are doubly successful.” Champion sipped his coffee. He cocked an eyebrow at Butt, who was looking politely baffled. “What Skull couldn’t fathom,” Champion said, “because he’s not a pilot, because he doesn’t look beyond the words, is that Bomber Command aims to hit two targets with one bomb.”

 
Butt blinked a couple of times. “We’re talking about area bombing.”

  “Exactly”

  “Perhaps we should say ‘approximately.’”

  Champion smiled. “Or even ‘allegedly.’ My lords and masters at Command are no fools. They’ve never believed that every bomber hits every specific target, no matter what the crew may claim. Flak, cloud, smoke, different winds at different heights, an enemy searchlight smack in the bomb-aimer’s face—a dozen factors might spoil the attack. The difference is, this time last year pilots were told that if they couldn’t find a specific target, they must bring their bombs back. Not any more. Now they always bomb a target, because the target is enemy morale, and they can’t miss that.”

  “Assuming that the target area is big enough.”

  “It always is. For many months now, every military target we attack is in a German town. If we hit that specific target, hooray. If we miss it and hit the built-up area, three cheers for that, too. German factories are no good without German workers.”

  “What do the bomber crews think of this?” Butt asked.

  “The subject doesn’t arise. We always give them a specific target.”

  “I see. Perhaps you don’t want to damage their morale.”

  “What’s important is we can’t afford to upset the Americans. They still think we should bomb by daylight, to spare the civilians.” Champion looked inside the coffee pot. “Idealism runs riot in America as long as it’s not their aircraft getting shot down.” He topped up their cups. “So when our crews are being briefed for an op, we use the phrase ‘industrial center.’ It sounds like a factory but it covers the whole town.”

  “And what you’re saying is that not a bomb is wasted?”

  Champion was pleased. Butt had grasped the concept very quickly. “We have a motto in Bomber Command,” he said. “‘Profitable target, in profitable surroundings.’ We’re turning it into a fine art.”

  “My goodness,” Butt said. “That puts a whole new slant on things.”

  “It puts the fear of death into German civilians,” Champion said. “Morale is a very fragile commodity when Fritz hears the scream of a four-thousand-pound high-capacity blast bomb.”

  “A fearsome weapon,” Butt agreed.

  “The Prime Minister takes the credit. ‘Devastate the Nazi homeland.’ Isn’t that what he said a year ago?” When Butt gave an inscrutable smile, Champion made an apologetic gesture. “Or so I’m told. That statement was highly confidential. Officially, I know nothing. Of course you mustn’t comment, and I should never have mentioned it. All the same, we’re doing just what he wanted, aren’t we? There I go again. Pay no attention, David.”

  “Thank you for lunch, Ralph,” Butt said. “I’m learning all the time.”

  3

  After the Essen raid, Gilchrist and his crew got to bed at dawn. The Wingco never even considered sending C-Charlie to Bremen. If Rollo Blazer wanted to film this op, it would be in another Wimpy, and by good luck Flying Officer Polly Lomas was fit again. His cracked wrist had healed; he would fly Q-Queenie. He was twenty-one but looked nineteen, had a bright smile and spoke good Home Counties English. Duff and Rafferty agreed that Lomas would take Blazer.

  Rollo found Lomas standing next to Queenie at dispersal.

  “Hard though I try, I cannot love this airplane,” Lomas said. “Admire and respect, yes. But look at her: she’s podgy. She resembles a pregnant sofa, doesn’t she?”

  “Never seen one,” Rollo said.

  “She’s a tough old cow, I don’t dispute that. She’s brought me home with scads and scads of fabric shot away and the wind whistling through her bones. Are you superstitious?”

  “Um … depends.”

  “This is the third Queenie the squadron’s had in three months. Some crews think the letter Q must be bad luck. Doesn’t bother me. I’ll tell you what does make me wonder. Wimpys have this famous geodesic design, this basketweave framework, and everyone says that’s what makes the kite so amazingly strong. So why won’t she spin? Nobody’s ever spun a Wimpy. And survived, that is.”

  Rollo looked at the pregnant sofa and imagined it spinning, and looked away. “Who would want to spin her?” he asked.

  “Me for one. Over Hamburg, we got coned. I tried every stunt I knew. Couldn’t escape the cone. Spinning would probably have made matters worse, but what the hell, if intelligence doesn’t work, try stupidity.”

  “So how did you get away?”

  “Luck. And Mackenzie.” Lomas took a little wooden figure of a kilted highlander from his pocket. “I never fly without Mackenzie.”

  “I thought you weren’t superstitious.”

  “Mackenzie’s an each-way bet. Can’t do any harm.”

  Rollo should have gained strength from Lomas’s breezy optimism. Instead, he trudged away, feeling suddenly drained of energy. He intended to walk back to his married quarters, but he soon knew it was too far. He changed direction, heading for the Mess, and stumbled as he turned. His legs were unreliable. His knees seemed to wish to fold the wrong way. His muscles were made of string. He didn’t feel his face hit the ground, and so didn’t know how lucky he was that it was grass and not tarmac.

  The Tannoy summoned Mrs. Blazer to the MO’s office.

  “He’s not going to die. Not today, anyway,” the MO told her. “But he’s semiconscious at best, so he can’t answer my questions. Has he ever fainted before?”

  “Only once, that I know of,” Kate said. “During the Blitz. We were filming a big fire and a cloud of smoke came down on us and he passed out. Not for long, just a minute or so. I think he choked on the smoke.”

  “Well, there was no smoke today. Has he ever mentioned diabetes? Vertigo? Low blood sugar?”

  “No. None of those. Look: you examined him a couple of days ago. Didn’t he tell you everything?”

  “Men lie,” the MO said.

  “Oh.” She felt helpless. Since they came to Coney Garth she had prepared herself to meet injury, bloodshed, men lost in action. But Rollo had simply collapsed in the open air. “Haven’t you got some idea what’s wrong?” she asked. “What are his …?” She couldn’t find the word. “You know.”

  “Symptoms. His temperature’s high, he’s got abdominal pain, there are shivering fits and some other signs that might indicate food poisoning. But…”

  “Toast and coffee. That’s all he had for breakfast.”

  “Yes. I checked with the Mess. And nobody else has gone down with food poisoning. There’s another possibility. I can’t prove it, but I suspect the dental extraction is behind all this.”

  “That damn tooth,” Kate said.

  “Not the tooth itself. However, there might have been an abscess in the tissues near the tooth. Maybe the extraction exposed the abscess. If it burst, and some of the pus escaped into the stomach …” The MO shrugged.

  “It would be like food poisoning?”

  “Rather worse, I imagine.”

  “Can you do anything for him?”

  “The best solution is for his digestive system to pass this revolting matter in the normal fashion, as soon as possible. So we’ll purge his bowels. By this time tomorrow his innards should be empty and the patient well on the way to recovery.”

  “What if that doesn’t work?”

  “I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t you pop down the corridor and have a chat with Skull? He’s getting bored. I think he’ll be fit for duty soon.”

  Kate went off to see Skull. The MO telephoned Group Captain Rafferty. “Mr. Blazer is in a stable condition, sir,” he reported.

  “Good. When I heard about him, my first thought was he’d got a bad case of twitch. He was due to go on ops tonight, with Q-Queenie. Wouldn’t be the first chap to develop galloping cold feet, would he?”

  “True, sir. But Mr. Blazer is genuinely sick.”

  “I see. Well, keep me informed.”

  In the evening, Skull was wandering about Sick Quarters in search of company and conversation, when he stoppe
d at an open door. Rollo Blazer was in bed. “Hello,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  Rollo whispered: “Wrath of God.”

  Skull went closer and saw that Rollo’s face was as white as paper. “I say … Did you go on ops?”

  “Did I?” Only Rollo’s lips moved. “No. Not me.”

  Skull took the temperature chart from the bed-rail and examined it. “You’ve been up and down like a kangaroo.” He replaced the chart. “Not that I have any experience of kangaroos.”

  He had nothing more to say, but it seemed discourteous to leave. He sat on the only chair. Rollo lay as still as a stone. Once, his eyes flickered toward Skull, but the effort was too much and they stopped trying. “You went on ops,” he whispered.

  “Yes, that’s true. I did.” Skull realized that he was speaking strongly, as if it made up for Rollo’s feeble voice. “We went to Essen. Not a nice place. Other than that, I can’t seem to remember anything of interest. Dreadfully cold, Germany, I do remember that. People said it would be hot, but my recollection is of extreme cold.” By now, Rollo’s eyelids were almost closed. “Well, I mustn’t trespass on your hospitality any further,” Skull said. He left, treading softly.

  4

  By 1941 all Wellingtons had self-sealing fuel tanks. If a bullet holed a tank, escaping petrol reacted with an inner layer of rubber compound that lined the tank, the compound rapidly expanded, the hole was plugged. But nothing could seal a hole the size of a pumpkin.

  Over Bremen, Q-Queenie got bracketed by heavy flak that tossed her about like a boy in a blanket. All the wing tanks were ripped open and the undercarriage came down. Soon the engines were coughing, and with the added drag of the wheels, Polly Lomas had to descend. He caught sight of moonlight glistening on concrete and was sure it was a stretch of autobahn. He made an excellent landing on what turned out to be a runway in a Luftwaffe airfield. The crew set Queenie on fire, as orders required, and the blaze brought German guards at high speed. Within minutes, Lomas and his men were in the bag.