“Absolutely, sir. Splendid news.”
“What a hypocritical young thug you are, Fanny. You don’t give a tiny toss for Takoradi, do you?”
Barton wiped froth from his chops. “I’d sooner be near the action, sir.”
“Somebody gave me a definition of strafing, the other day,” Bletchley said. “Russian roulette at three hundred miles an hour and zero feet, he said it was.” He finished his beer. “Quite exhilarating, if you like that sort of thing.”
* * *
Captain Hooper came from a base in the Delta which had hot and cold showers, a pool, laundry, dry cleaners, barbershop, and an eager twenty-four-hour service of Arab shoe-shine boys. He knew that life in the desert wasn’t going to be like that, but he was startled to discover just how dirty everyone in Hornet Squadron was. Dirty and smelly.
Kellaway had put him in Tiny Lush’s tent. Lush was six foot three and fourteen stone. He wore Arab sandals, dirty shorts and a dirty shirt. He hadn’t shaved for a month; above his short, red beard was a big mustache. His hair was a tangle of curls that reached his collar. Parts of his body seemed more sunburned than others, but Hooper soon recognized these as old oil stains. Lush gave off a soft, ripe smell, like a farm horse at the end of a hard day.
“Life is very simple here,” Tiny Lush told him. “We get up with the sun and have breakfast, which is always porridge, jam and tea. In the morning some of us patrol the skies and usually find a lot of nothing. Lunch is at twelve. It’s always biscuit, tinned sausage and tea. In the afternoon some of us patrol the skies and find what’s left of the morning’s nothing. At six we eat supper, which is always bully-beef stew. By seven the sun has long since set and we stooge off to bed. Very, very simple.”
“No shaving?” Hooper said. “I thought the RAF didn’t permit beards.”
“This is five o’clock shadow,” Lush said. “The water ration here is one pint per man per day, not counting what the cookhouse uses. You shave if you like. Wash your socks too, if you’re really fussy. Most of us just let nature take its course. Anything else I can tell you?”
Hooper thought. “The guy who had this bed before me. What happened to him?”
“You don’t want to know that. Might put you off your supper. Shall we wander over to the mess?”
The mess was a large canvas roof over some trestle tables and benches. Half a dozen pilots were already there and more came ambling across from their tents. Hooper was wearing his everyday uniform of slacks and tunic, somewhat crumpled after the trip in the Anson, but amongst this crowd he felt dressed for a parade. They were in uniform in the sense that they looked alike, but it was a uniform of motley. A few wore battledress tops, unbuttoned, but most preferred cardigans in varying shades of khaki, or sleeveless pullovers, or sweaters tied loosely around the neck. Their khaki shorts or corduroy trousers were baggy and creased like concertinas. Most wore calf-length mosquito boots; a few were in sandals or shoes. Hardly anyone was wearing RAF headgear, but Hooper saw several Luftwaffe caps, one Australian slouch hat and an Arab fez. Everybody’s clothes looked stained and scruffy. Several pilots had shaved within the past week and one or two actually looked clean-shaven; however at least half were on the way to having recognizable beards and more than half had grown mustaches. Hooper saw no mustache that was neat and tidy, like his. All their mustaches seemed to be reaching for their ears.
Squadron Leader Barton and Air Commodore Bletchley joined them for supper. Lush was right. It was bully-beef stew. Hooper got introduced to everyone and soon forgot nearly all their names, but that didn’t matter because nothing seemed to matter. It was all relaxed and cheerful. Once, in England, Hooper had visited a fighter wing based at a pre-war aerodrome where there were lots of large brick buildings and an officers’ mess with white pillars flanking the entrance. What he remembered most clearly from that visit was his host’s warning not to stand in front of the fire. There was, he explained, a strict pecking-order about who might warm his backside first at the anteroom fire on that (and many similar) RAF stations. LG 181 was a million miles from there.
Before the meal was over Hooper had been given a nickname. Someone—inevitably—said he had a cousin in New York. Hooper said he had never been to New York, which surprised them. “I’ve been to Manhattan,” he said. “Manhattan, Kansas, that is.”
“I met James Cagney once,” Bletchley said. “Awfully nice fellow.”
“It’s a big country,” Hooper said. “Me, I’m just a hick from the sticks.” They liked the phrase. From then on he was Hick Hooper.
The sun went down with its usual sudden rush at six-thirty. By seven the night was as black as the inside of a coal sack. Lush took Hooper to their tent; he found it by walking from Tomahawk to Tomahawk, counting until they reached the fourth, D-Dog; their tent was fifty paces further on. Hooper stumbled on a guy-rope. “If you have to get up in the night,” Lush said, “don’t go far. People have been known to wander off for a wee-wee and never find their way back.”
“Thanks. I’ll stay right here.”
Nevertheless, after they got into their bedrolls and the candle was put out, Hooper found the atmosphere heavy with the smell of Lush and Lush’s clothes. He tried to ignore it, but the enclosed space seemed to trap and concentrate the aroma. After fifteen minutes Hooper found himself breathing through his mouth and he decided to take action. “Look,” he said, “d’you mind if I sleep outside?”
“Not a bit,” Lush said. “Most thoughtful. You do stink a bit. Like Harrods’ soap department. Not to worry, old chap. After a couple of days you’ll smell quite normal.”
* * *
Next day began at six, prompt.
Dawn in the desert was like a slow-motion explosion in a paint factory. Beautiful floods of color washed across the sky and by touching the desert transformed it into a glorious field of delight. Tiny Lush crawled out of his tent and saw Hick Hooper watching it. “Wasted on the wogs, isn’t it?” Lush said. “Sleep all right?”
“Yeah. I thought I heard a rooster.”
“That’s Geraldo. Bloke called Moffatt bought it from an Arab, didn’t have the heart to kill’it. Then Moffatt got the chop over Tobruk. Now Geraldo’s the squadron mascot.” Lush scratched and yawned. “Thank Christ, here comes tea.”
The tea-wagon was a former Italian army van, much bullet-holed. The driver gave them each a mug of tea and a mug of water. “Bloody awful weather,” Lush said.
“Might get a bit of sun later,” the airman said. He drove on.
“We’ve been saying that to each other every morning for three months,” Lush said. “Very reassuring. A fortress in these fickle times.”
“I notice he didn’t call you ‘sir.’”
Lush sipped his tea and sighed with pleasure. “We save the sir-stuff for big occasions. Coronations, state funerals, deliveries of beer.”
“Didn’t realize you guys were so democratic.”
“Democratic?” Lush took another swig and found sand in his tea; he collected the grains on his tongue and spat them out. “We’re not democratic, Hick. Fanny’s king here.”
“I guess I say ‘sir’ to Fanny.”
“Everyone says ‘sir’ to the CO first thing in the morning and last thing at night. In between . . .” Lush shrugged. “Play it by ear and watch his eyebrows.”
“Yeah? For what?”
“For when they meet in the middle. That means Fanny’s hopping mad, so stand clear.”
“What is he? Australian?”
“New Zealander. Came halfway round the world to fight. Very keen. We’ve also got a Greek and a Pole. Mick O’Hare’s Irish. Fido Doggart was born in Kenya or Uganda or Shangri-La or some bloody place. The rest of us are normal. More or less.”
They finished their tea. Hooper looked at his mug of water. “This is really all I get until tomorrow?”
“Enough to clean your teeth.”
A hundred yards away, a Tomahawk coughed and its propeller jerked stiffly through a half-circle. A serge
ant fitter shouted something to the airman in the cockpit. His voice was instantly eaten up and swallowed by the immensity of the desert. The Tomahawk coughed again, repeatedly, more deeply and fruitily until greasy black smoke jumped from the exhaust vents and the engine roared. The sergeant fitter stood with hands on hips, his head tilted, listening as the revs slowly built and the fighter trembled against its chocks. He had the air of a lion-tamer, watching the animal sit because it had been ordered to sit and not because it liked the position. All around the landing-ground, engines were kicking and jerking into noisy life. Much dust was being thrown up. Dawn had ceased its extravagance and the sky was a hard, hot blue again.
On their way to the mess, Tiny Lush said: “If you desperately want a bath, you can always save up your ration, you know.”
“How long would that take?” Hooper asked.
“Dunno. Six months, probably. It’ll be raining by then.”
“It rains in the desert?”
“In winter. Tips down. You wake up swimming.”
Breakfast was porridge, biscuit, margarine and plum jam, with more tea. The biscuit was like ship’s biscuit, thick and hard and perforated. The cock Geraldo strutted around the table, grabbing fallen fragments.
Pip Patterson, at another table, said hello to Hooper, but otherwise nobody paid him much attention; after all, this was his second day on the squadron, so by now he was part of the furniture; people got used to a lot of comings and goings in the Desert Air Force. A dozen conversations were competing with each other. “How’s old Schofers?” asked a flying officer called Fido Doggart. “Any news?” He got no answer. Doggart’s shaggy mustache was stained the several colors of bully-beef stew. For someone who was only twenty-two his face looked battered and grubby; but the eyes were eager. The eyes were those of the head boy who is blackmailing the school matron for fornication and is taking his payment in kind.
“Bloody biscuit again,” Tiny Lush complained. “Boring bloody biscuit.”
“Give the grease a shove,” someone said. The tin of margarine slid along the table.
“Pay attention, Uncle,” Doggart said to the adjutant. Kellaway looked up from his clipboard, still mentally adding columns of figures. “Carry nine, carry nine,” he muttered. “What’s wrong, blast you?” he asked.
“Bread,” Lush demanded. “When are we going to get bread?” He banged a biscuit on the table, hard, so that crumbs flew.
“Stuff your bread,” Doggart said, “What about Schofield? Has he bought it, or what? I need to know.”
“How can you stuff bread?” Kit Carson said. “You can’t stuff bread.”
Kellaway shut his eyes. “Carry nine,” he told himself.
“I bet they get bread at Wing,” Pinky Dalgleish said.
“Bread’s what you stuff stuff with,” Carson said.
“Stuff-Stuff?” Kellaway opened his eyes. He looked baffled. “What d’you mean, stuff-stuff?” But by now Carson had his mouth full.
“Schofield owes me forty ackers,” Doggart said. “He bet me five to two Geraldo couldn’t fly, silly man.”
Kit swallowed hard and gestured with his mug. “When I said stuff-stuff, I meant like stuffing birds, Uncle,” he explained. Kellaway still looked blank. “You know, like Geraldo,” Kit said.
“Nobody stuffs Geraldo,” said a Greek pilot called George. He had just sat down. “Geraldo is my friend. You want to stuff Geraldo, you have to stuff me first.”
“Queue forms on the left,” said Doggart.
“Schofield’s in hospital, that’s all,” Kellaway told him irritably. “It’s only gyppy tummy, for God’s sake. Nothing to get worked up about.”
“Not like bread,” Dalgleish said. “I get very worked up about bread, especially since we never get any.”
“Geraldo’s not your friend,” Kit Carson told Greek George. “He bit you the other day. How can—”
“I forgive!” George said. “All Greeks forgive and love everyone.”
“You love Huns?” Tiny Lush asked.
“We love dead Huns very much, yes.”
“Oh, bugger,” Kellaway grumbled. “Now I’ve gone and forgotten the bloody number I was carrying.”
“Seven,” Doggart said firmly. Kellaway frowned at him, unbelieving. “Or possibly twelve,” Doggart said.
“Fido, you’re a berk,” Kellaway said crossly. He had drunk too much of Baggy Bletchley’s whisky last night. He really didn’t like whisky, but when the air commodore offers you whisky you drink the stuff. That was part of the adjutant’s job: keeping the CO company on a whisky-binge. Fanny liked whisky too much and sometimes he liked too much whisky. That wasn’t good for the squadron. A hundred yards away, a mobile generator started throbbing. Kellaway’s head throbbed too, but not in synch with the generator. That annoyed him. The whisky had left him thirsty, so he made himself drink tea. It tasted like paint. Warm, sweet paint. What he wanted was milk, chilled milk, pints and pints of lovely chilled milk, so wonderfully white and wet and cold that it would wash him clean and quench his thirst forever and ever . . . He shook his head, hard, to get rid of this torturing image. Sweat dribbled into his eyes and stung them.
Tiny Lush leaned across the table and showed Hooper a biscuit. “See these holes?” he said. “Know what they’re for?”
“Beats me.”
“To let the weevils out. You have weevils in America?”
“Sure. The best.” Hooper rapped the biscuit with a spoon. “Any weevils in there?”
“No. Little bastards deserted when they heard we were going up the blue.”
Dalgleish said: “The weevil has a tiny brain, but he uses it all the time. That’s the main difference between your average weevil and Kit Carson.”
“Which one is Kit?” Hooper asked Dalgleish. “I’ve forgotten.”
“The one with jam on his chin.”
“I’m writing a book,” Kit told Hooper. “It’s going to make everyone here famous. You wait and see.”
“I knew someone died from gyppy tummy,” Greek George said. “He was running to the latrine and he tripped and broke his bloody neck.”
“Pilot?” asked Doggart.
“Air-gunner.”
“No loss, then. He wouldn’t have hit the bog anyway.”
Tiny Lush stood and stretched. “What a dump,” he said. “Half a million square miles of sod-all. I don’t know what you did to get sent here,” he told Hooper, “but let this be a lesson to you.”
“I came here to learn air combat,” Hooper said. “So far it’s the only thing nobody talks about.”
“What’s there to tell?” Lush said. “Try really hard and you might die of boredom.”
“No action?”
“Kit wet the bed last week,” Doggart said. “That was pretty exciting.”
* * *
Barton had briefed his flight commanders the night before. He had called them to his truck and shown them a map of the sector of the desert within range of LG 181. “Fun and games tomorrow,” he said. “Ground attack! Nothing but ground attack. What a treat, eh?” He was smiling like a boy who’d been promised an air-gun for his birthday; Pip Patterson thought he could even see a sparkle in Barton’s eyes, though it might have been the glint from the oil lamp. “No more climbing and stooging about and finding nothing upstairs,” Barton said. “This is guaranteed action! We’ll fly in pairs. Six pairs, six targets.” He waved at the map. Six crosses were widely scattered. “Take your pick, except for this one.” He pointed to the most northerly cross. “That’s mine. Lovely juicy battalion of kraut infantry under canvas. Yum-yum.”
“What are these others?” Dalgleish asked.
“Troops, supply depots, fuel dumps, transport parks, the usual rubbish. All on this list.”
They studied the list. “Take off at 0800 hours?” Patterson said. “This is all a bit sudden, isn’t it, Fanny? I haven’t met half my Flight yet.”
“Brief them after breakfast. They’re all old sweats, they’ll know what to do. Do
n’t worry about the kites, they’ll be ready. I’ve given the ground crews their orders.” His smile broadened until he burst into laughter. “I do enjoy a good strafe. The little buggers run like rabbits until bingo! They all fall down, rows and rows of them.” He drummed his fists on the table in a rapid tattoo. “Wizard sport. Wizard!”
“Why eight o’clock?” Dalgleish asked. “I thought dawn was the best time.”
“They’re all in bed at dawn. I want them on their feet with their bellies full of breakfast.”
“Breakfast,” Patterson said flatly.
“Yes. See, most blokes feel like death when they get up, so you don’t want to kill them then, do you? They wouldn’t notice the difference. But prang ’em when they’ve begun to come alive and it’s a much bigger disappointment. See?”
“No,” Patterson said.
“Well, you never did have any imagination, Pip. What was it Moggy Cattermole used to call you?”
“For Christ’s sake . . .” Patterson hunched his shoulders. “Bloody Moggy. Why d’you have to bring him up?”
“Pathetic Scotch dwarf,” Barton said, delightedly. “That was it.”
“Charming,” Dalgleish said.
“It was the way he said it,” Barton told him. “Like . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Like a dog shitting on the carpet,” Patterson said. “Moggy was the squadron shit.”
“You must be at least six foot,” Dalgleish said.
“Forget it. Forget Moggy.”
“He was a character,” said Barton.
“He was a shit and he got the shittiest chop you can get,” Patterson told Dalgleish. “Clobbered by a Spit. When would that have been?” Barton shrugged. “September ’40, probably,” Patterson said. “Toward the end of the Battle, anyway.”
Barton folded the map and gave it to Dalgleish. “Maybe it wasn’t a Spit,” he said. “I mean, that was just a rumor.”
“I heard Moggy yelling blue murder at the other kite on the RT,” Patterson said, “and the Observer Corps said they saw a Spitfire attack a Hurricane. When the post mortem opened him up they found enough three-oh-three ammo to fill a two-pound jam jar.”
A Good Clean Fight Page 14