101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  Then suddenly they all stared at each other.

  Could it be?

  Were they the last?

  The engines leader and the Squadron Commander were talking gravely in one corner. The intelligence officers were chatting together, trying to appear gay while they waited for another twenty-one crews.

  They waited another half an hour. Then, at a word from the CO, they packed up and went to bed.

  Twenty-eight had gone out. Seven had come back. The theory put forward in explanation was simple. If a bomber was attacked by fighters in daylight, it was destroyed. Those who had been attacked were lost; those who returned had been lucky enough not to encounter a fighter. Of 101 Squadron’s aircrew strength of 244 men, 168 were lost in eighteen hours. They remembered again the hazards of breaking radio silence.

  We attract fighters on to ourselves.15

  ‘That means you’re champ again, mate,’ Joe said to Vincent, sadly.

  ‘It seems you did fix a jinx when you arranged that title match.’

  ‘Nonsense! he was flying on an unlucky trip and there was every likelihood of his being killed. Nürnberg and D-Day—you can’t call those ordinary ops …’

  ‘Jinx or no jinx,’ said Vincent, ‘I don’t like it. Even I’m getting scared of this championship now.’

  The squadron had been stood down. With less than one flight left they could not fly as a squadron. Two hundred new aircrew had to be posted and trained, including two flight commanders and two section leaders.

  Vincent was summoned by the Squadron Commander. He could not imagine why and entered with some misgivings.

  ‘Farlow,’ said the Squadron Commander, ‘do you think you could handle the job of nav leader?’

  Vincent was surprised but answered quickly, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Base nav officer suggested you. It’ll be worth your commission. Indeed, you’ll probably do a quick jump from flight sergeant to flight lieutenant.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘You have to apply. Here are the forms. Fill them in and I’ll give you your first interview now. Can’t see your Flight Commander because you haven’t got one. Don’t worry about the job but have a good crack at it. If you can’t make it we’ll leave you assistant nav leader and I think you’ve won your commission anyway.’

  Within a hundred seconds Vincent was outside again, dazed but elated.

  The new aircrew started arriving. Walking into the mess was like going into a strange club. The faces were all new and the atmosphere did not feel natural or relaxed. The fifty-odd veterans of the old 101 were outnumbered and engulfed. It had become a squadron of sprogs.

  These new chaps did not know the squadron traditions and there were too few veterans for the old order to prevail. Vincent even saw one crew shoo Raff from the mess. His blood boiled; Raff had become an institution, these new bods did not even know his name and now they tried to exclude him from the mess …

  Settling down to the tasks of nav leader was doubly, trebly difficult, too. Because of the sudden rush of new crews, vast training programmes had to be flown. New crews generally learn much during their off-hours just speaking to the experienced crews. But now the experienced crews were few, and they tended to stick together, like an oppressed minority. None of this off-duty learning was being done. The squadron had turned into another Training Comand station with pupils and instructors, complete with the gulf that goes between.

  In addition, Vincent’s commission was not through and would not come through until the red tape unwound itself. He wore flight sergeant rank and had to tell officers what to do. His experience and his status as nav leader put him correctly above his own section, but still his position was delicate.

  It was almost a month before the squadron flew on ops again. And when they did they flew to a changed war.16

  They took off in daylight, bombed just across the Channel in the dusk and hurried home to land within four hours. No losses.

  It was anti-climactic in the extreme.

  Next trip was another daylight trip; to an airfield in Holland. Four hours thirty. Again no losses; but one clot pranged on landing and his bomb aimer broke his ankle.

  Many of these sprogs did not fly well. Indeed, flying accidents became the major hazard. One attempted economy was changed, by this indifferent flying, into an expensive loss. Poor target visibility often frustrated close-support attacks and returning bombers would dump their bomb-loads in the Channel.17

  Upset by this waste, Command ordered one force returning from Le Havre to land with bombs. The load was all 1,000 pounders, very stable bombs, and should have caused no anxiety.

  The first pilot returning to Ludford, however, forgot to allow for the extra 16,000 pounds when landing. He touched down half-way along the runway. Normally this would have been safe but, with an extra eight tons to hold, the Lancaster’s brakes could not counteract this bad flying.

  The bomber was still doing 50 mph when it ran out of runway, went through the fence, over a road and into a ditch and crashed.

  Nothing exploded and nobody was hurt.

  That crew had scarcely climbed from the wreck when another bomb-filled Lancaster repeated the stupidity.

  The second bomber, with another 16,000 pounds of bombs, crashed onto the wreckage of the first.

  Nothing exploded and nobody was hurt.

  Sheer luck had outweighed sheer folly. Had these crews died as they richly deserved to, Le Havre would have been 101’s costliest raid since D-Day. Thus had flying changed.

  For every one trip after the old, hard style, there were six or eight ‘trifling little daylights’. Men who had previously not flown one operational hour were, within a month, almost tour-expired veterans swanking about full of bravado.

  ‘Full of piss and wind, more like it,’ said Joe, and he spoke for all the old lags to whom this new war in the air was stranger than it appeared to the novices.

  ‘Cop this crew,’ Joe said one day. ‘Twenty-six ops in thirty-five days—another four and they’ll have finished a tour inside six weeks, whereas las year it would’ve taken nine months. And they haven’t flown one real trip at all.’

  ‘They’re winning the war,’ Vincent pointed out. ‘Look at Europe.’

  ‘Nonsense! We won that war … in the months before D-Day!’

  ‘Remember I said that once? Some more facts came to light the other day. Sir John Baldwin announced in the House that there were more casualties—killed and missing—in the RAF from D-Day to D-Day plus 3, than the total combined casualties of the British and land forces in Normandy.’18

  ‘Is that fair dinkum?’

  ‘Dead accurate. His very words. Europe was invaded from the air. Not only before D-Day but on D-Day itself.’

  Occasionally there came a long night trip. ‘Almost a good old-fashioned op,’ the old lags would say with morbid relish. It could never be quite the same again because France was gone and German defences disrupted. They would fly and meet comparatively light opposition, and then the new crews would return, pale and shaken, saying, ‘We see what you mean.’

  But they had seen only half; ops were getting easy.

  ‘Now watch the chairborne troops from rear hindquarters come running on to ops,’ Magnetic said. ‘Those poor devils who’ll tell you they’ve been struggling to get a release from the Ministry since 1939. Watch ’em now it’s easy. They’ll all suddenly get those releases and come rushing in now they think it’s safe, all squabbling like hell to wangle themselves a DFC so they can prove it wasn’t the civvies who won the war.’

  ‘I say let them come,’ said Vincent. ‘They’ll also wangle us their fancy afternoon teas a la Whitehall.’

  PART TWO

  CHILTERN

  — 1 —

  Acting Squadron Leader Matthew Thomas A’Becket Chiltern arrived as the new B Flight Commander during September, 1944.1 He had been commissioned in 1937 soon after leaving Grammar School. During his seven years in the RAF he had flown practically every aircraft type kno
wn, was recognised as a clever pilot and thorough administrator with sound knowledge of regulations and service etiquette.

  He had flown on goodwill missions to India, Australia and the United States and behaved impeccably. His log-book, written in fine backhand, showed that he had a total of 2,472 flying hours to his credit and he had never aimed bomb or bullet in anger.

  The Ministry and Training Command, when their turn came, had both been sorry to lose him. He had fitted in there so well. Squadron Leader Matthew Chiltern was a stern man but fair and his superiors said he had courage. Moreover, he was a good man: he said his prayers every night.

  He stopped the staff car in the village of Ludford Magna and sat, tight-lipped, while a sergeant struggled to remove a large steel trunk from the back seat. When his struggles had succeeded and the sergeant stood, panting but at attention beside the car, the Squadron Leader said; ‘Find the B Flight officers’ quarters and leave that trunk with the NCO i/c, and impress upon him that it is mine.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said the sergeant, and saluted.

  ‘Oh, and sergeant!’, the Squadron Leader called as the lad turned away carrying the heavy trunk.

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘After that, report to me at my flight office. I might want you for something. It’s this way, I believe, about a mile if you walk over the fields.’

  The sergeant said, ‘Yessir’, and saluted again, then trudged off unhappily as the staff car drove away.

  Joe, who had seen and heard the whole incident from where he stood at the bus stop, wandered over and said to the sergeant, ‘Would you like a hand with the trunk, mate?’

  The sergeant looked fearfully at the crown on Joe’s arm and said, ‘No, thank-you, flight.’

  ‘Come off it,’ said Joe. ‘That’s too heavy for one. And I can show you where B Flight is.’

  The sergeant thanked him with embarrassment, then Joe broached the topic that had prompted his interference.

  ‘Who’s the la-de-dah dandy?’

  ‘Squadron Leader Chiltern, the new B Flight Comander.’

  ‘How come he orders you around like a batman?’

  ‘I suppose he’s entitled to. He’s my skipper.’

  Joe dropped his end of the trunk. ‘He’s your what?’

  ‘My skipper.’

  ‘But he called you ‘sergeant’, and you called him ‘sir’ and flung salutes like you was mountin’ guard.’2

  ‘Oh, always! He insists. He’s very proper. A great disciplinarian.’

  ‘You praise him, but do you like him?’

  ‘Well … No, not really. But he’s a fine officer.’

  ‘Balls! Fine officers are liked by their men. He seems to think this is the Lord Mayor’s Show.3 Has anybody told him there’s a war on?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he knows. Squadron Leader Chiltern tells me he’s been terribly conscious of the war ever since it started. He’s tried again and again to get on to ops, he says.’

  ‘You mean all that—and a sprog, too?’

  The sergeant looked shocked. ‘A sprog? Well … Yes, in the strictest sense I suppose Squadron Leader Chiltern is a sprog.’

  ‘And that’s our new flight commander?’

  ‘He says so.’

  ‘Then gord help us,’ said Joe, and picked up the trunk again.

  Vincent’s first contact with Squadron Leader Chiltern was through his navigator, Sergeant Wall. Wall’s navigation on their first training flight had been indifferent at best. One obvious mistake Vincent mentioned.

  ‘You were told to climb to height between points B and D, yet you reached height before C. Why?’

  ‘Squadron Leader Chiltern always tends to climb quickly. He was instructing on fighters for years; probably he got the habit there.’

  ‘But you must tell him what rate to climb.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You mean you told him one rate and he flew another?’

  ‘Yes. He insists on prerogative.’

  ‘You are in charge of navigation, Wall. Tell your pilot what to do and make sure he does it.’

  Wall looked hesitant. ‘All right. I’ll tell him.’

  Wall was not the only member of Chiltern’s crew who displeased his section-leader. The engineer failed to follow squadron method and excused himself by saying he had done his job the way his skipper had insisted he do it. The bomb aimer’s figures showed wide misses and he mentioned respectfully that his directions were not always followed promptly enough.

  The whole crew, with the exception of the pilot, seemed under-confident and ill-trained. Flight Lieutenant Marshall, the sigs leader, said to Vincent, ‘It is as though they had come straight off course, without operational training at all. They reek of Training Command.’4

  Every crew has to undergo further training on posting to a squadron; each crew member is assessed individually, then the worth of the crew as a whole is considered and their probable worth and reliability discussed by flight commanders and section leaders in conference with the Squadron Commander.

  Squadron Leader Chiltern therefore suffered the embarrassment of being present to hear his own crew left off the Battle Order for weeks on end. Then they were shifted off the ‘In Preparation’ list and put into the ‘Unsatisfactory standard attained. Require special training’ category. Squadron Leader Chiltern was livid.

  Squadron Leader Chiltern felt victimised but he was too proper to say so. The standard of his own flying was obviously very high so he felt let down by his crew. Every pilot on the squadron agreed that Chiltern’s flying looked excellent; his landings were a picture straight from the text-book gallery. He repeatedly requested permission to start flying operations without further training but was as often refused.

  ‘I fully appreciate your anxiety to get on to ops,’ the Squadron Commander would say. ‘But if you crew flew over Germany as they have been flying over England you would all be killed. And you aren’t much use to me dead.’

  Following further intensive training which achieved nothing, the Squadron Commander gave much time at the next conference to discussing the future of the Chiltern crew.

  ‘Normally, Mr Chiltern,’ he said, ‘you would be sent on ops and almost certainly killed. Believe me, I am doing you a favour. But I like crews to start right. More so in your case, since flight commanders may have to lead formations in the near future now we’re flying so much in daylight.5 But as you yourself are obviously up to scratch, and since you are already functionally established here as a flight commander, I am returning your crew to OTU. A predecessor of yours, Squadron Leader Parke, has left a crew here and I’ll arrange for you to have them. They aren’t strictly ready for a second tour but in fact they’ve had a long rest and should welcome some more ops by now.’

  He turned to Vincent. ‘What do you feel about that, Mr Farlow?’

  Vincent’s heart had leapt as the suggestion was made. He had disliked Chiltern even before he had met him and actual contact had strengthened the opinions he had gained through Wall. Chiltern obviously resented Vincent’s rank, too; he had noticed Chiltern’s eyebrows pucker just now when the Squadron Commander had called him ‘Mister Farlow’ out of deference to his position instead of simply ‘Farlow’ as his flight sergeant rank demanded.

  Nobody welcomed a return to ops but this aspect of the move worried Vincent less than the dislike he felt for Chiltern himself. There was little, however, that he could say. He had not the right to refuse to fly at all, and to agree to fly but not with Chiltern would be to insult the Squadron Leader sorely.

  ‘I can’t speak for the whole crew, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’m quite agreeable.’

  After the conference the Squadron Commander had a private word with Vincent. ‘I’m sorry about this, but your Commission papers have been returned. I explained there was no flight commander to interview you at the time but evidently that won’t do. Squadron Leader Chiltern is your flight commander now. Have him fill these out and I’ll try to rush it through.’

  Vincent h
ad not expected Squadron Leader Chiltern to be particularly pleasant but he had not been prepared for the antagonism he encountered when what should have been the pure formality of the commissioning interview took place.

  ‘Why are they promoting, or thinking of promoting, a flight sergeant to a flight lieutenant, Farlow? Isn’t there a flight lieutenant navigator recently arrived on the squadron?’

  ‘Yessir, there is.’

  ‘Why not give him the job?’

  Vincent was about to explode that the man was a sprog, but thought better of it and said, instead, ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You paused, Farlow. Were you about to say it is because he lacks experience?’

  ‘Yessir, I was.’

  ‘Then you would also say I lack experience?’

  ‘Of operations, yessir.’

  ‘I see why you have been so long an NCO, Farlow, if you always tell your interviewing officers you consider them unfit for the positions they fill.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, sir.’

  ‘Don’t imagine, Farlow, that in these interviews we analyse the actual answers; we try to get to the root of the man himself.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘This flight lieutenant navigator has been instructing in Canada for three years. He probably taught you to fly. Does the pupil now know more than the master?’

  ‘It is possible that the pupil will know more of actual operations, sir, just as the instructor would know more of instructing.’

  ‘So the teacher knows only how to teach?’

  ‘I said it was possible, sir.’

  ‘But I ask is it possible?’

  ‘Of the world’s many male obstetricians, sir, not one could have a baby.’

  ‘You reveal your level admirably, Farlow. I don’t think we need continue this interview.’

  Vincent paused, then decided to stick to his guns.

  ‘But surely this interview has been most irregular, sir. All you asked me was why another man should not be put into a post that the Squadron Commander has given me.’

  ‘He has told me it is on condition that you make the grade.’

  ‘Yessir. But at the job itself. This commission business is a prerequisite. He suggested it.’