101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  ‘How on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I have twice been refused for a commission. Not only refused but curtly and bluntly sent away. All we Specials are receiving a dirty deal. We fly only the hard trips. We do not fly to Le Havre or Caen. We attack only the big cities.’

  ‘But it’s pointless your flying in daylight. What use is radio-jamming when fighters can see us?’

  ‘Oh, I understand that. But still we fly only the dangerous missions. And now we are suspected. What they said is true.’

  ‘If it is true you have only yourself to blame,’ snapped Chiltern. ‘Distinguished service will win you promotion, and surely you will not be suspected if nothing suspicious happens, and surely you must expect to fly where you are sent. You are perfectly well treated, and let me hear nothing more to the contrary.’

  And Squadron Leader Chiltern walked away.

  Schydt stood, trailing his toe backwards and forwards through a shiny black puddle. ‘But I told them,’ he said softly. ‘I told them there would always be a way out …’

  Their target was Dortmund. They were to bomb from the south-west, then go out north to clear the Ruhr before turning for home. This route took them near Munster. Tonight, again, Schydt would be close to his birthplace.

  They were told at briefing that many transient German army units were stuck in Dortmund. Withdrawn from the eastern front they were now stranded by chaotic transport within Germany. It was a good chance for the RAF to hit Dortmund and the army reserves at the same time. They had been warned, however, to expect opposition from the army as well as Dortmund’s normally formidable ground defences.

  The first sight of the target strengthened their fears. Vincent had just handed over to Snow for the bombing run. Snow’s first action on receiving command was to observe: ‘Jesus-Christ-all-bloody-mighty! Look at that firkin flak!’

  A silence so intense and all-consuming followed this remarkable outburst that it filled N-Nuts more completely than would a great explosion. Every man except Snow strained to hear the click as a microphone switched on and the precise reprimand that would follow. But not a word was said; not a sound came out.

  ‘A firkin forest of bloody flak, it is,’ said the blissfully unaware Snow, then added, ‘Left ten, skipper.’

  Perhaps the profanity had frozen Chiltern to the controls, or perhaps he was simply taking his usual time thinking about the order. Whatever the cause, his delay displeased Snow.

  ‘Left bloody ten, sport!’ snapped Snow, ‘Get your greasy finger out.’2

  This time N-Nuts swung left and Snow had nothing more to say for a few seconds except to toss in the lighthearted remark; ‘If you bloody-well let the wheels down we’d land the bastard on this firkin flak.’

  Then, again, Snow added a direction. ‘Left, left.’

  The next instant their eardrums were shattered with a roar.

  ‘If you don’t bloody-well fly the bloody aircraft where I tell you I can’t bomb the bloody target you bloody fool!’

  And then it shouted even louder; ‘Turn the bastard left!’

  As N-Nuts came quickly on to course, Snow added a little more quietly; ‘And bloody listen and smarten up or you’ll root this bombing run.’

  There was silence a while, then; ‘Right a bit. Bit more! That’s nice, skip. Hold the bastard. Fraction left. Oh, bloody lovely! We’re smack centre. Bombs gone! Bloody good work, skip. Christ! I thought you’d rooted it for a bloody moment, though. Now let’s piss off out of this bloody flak.’3

  Vincent gave the new course and Chiltern turned port. Still they waited for his reprimand but still it did not come. Chiltern had realised that Snow, if chided, would laugh him to scorn. They flew in silence. This was the short leg of the Ruhr—up towards Munster.

  They were surprised to hear Krink’s voice on the intercom.

  ‘W/op to mid upper. What’s the Special doing, Yarpi?’

  ‘I can’t see. Just a minute, man.’

  There was a short pause; from the mid upper turret it was necessary to bend double to see inside the aircraft.

  ‘Christ! He’s baling out! He’s cutting the door open!’

  Fuselage doors in the Lancaster have handles on the outside only. To release the latch from inside, the catch must be cut away with a small axe kept near the door.

  ‘Stop him,’ ordered Chiltern crisply. He had grasped the situation instantly.

  ‘Mid upper, stop him! Quickly!’

  Schydt had almost cut through the latch when he saw Yarpi climbing out of his turret. Guessing that he had been discovered, Schydt lunged harder and faster at the door.

  ‘Skipper to rear gunner,’ said Chiltern urgently. ‘If Schydt gets out, shoot him. Do you hear? That Hun must not reach Germany alive.’

  Smiff did not answer.

  ‘Do you hear me, rear gunner?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Shoot Schydt if he escapes. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Smiff, indecision and disbelief muffling his voice.

  Yarpi scrambled from his turret and rushed at Schydt. He caught the hand holding the axe and pinned Schydt against the stringers of the fuselage. But Schydt was the stronger man. He pressed the axe under Yarpi’s chin.

  ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ Schydt said. ‘But I will if I must.’

  With an effort he flung Yarpi from him. Yarpi fell backwards, sprawled over the Elsan and saw Schydt hurl himself against the door.

  The latch gave.

  Schydt forced himself out against the slipstream with his shoulder. At the same moment Yarpi rushed to stop him, clutching at Schydt’s disappearing body.

  Gripping his fingers into Schydt’s parachute harness, the weight of Schydt’s flying body immediately pulled him from Yarpi’s grasp.

  Yarpi was left holding the metal D-ring. He had pulled the rip-cord; he had only succeeded in opening Schydt’s parachute for him.

  Smiff sat stunned by Chiltern’s order. He was to shoot one of his own crewmates. He could not believe that this was why he had been set to air gunnery school. To shoot his own crew!

  He decided that he could not do it. If Schydt got out he would fire a burst away from him and say he thought it had got him. Chiltern would never know. He could not bring himself to shoot a man he knew; not even a German deserting the squadron. He decided not to announce Schydt’s fall from N-Nuts but to wait a second, then fire a long burst, and say he thought he had got him.

  When Schydt’s body whipped past him under the tailplane, an involuntary cry betrayed Smiff’s intentions.

  ‘There he goes!’, cried Smiff.

  ‘Shoot him,’ snapped Chiltern.

  For an instant the guns were silent and again Chiltern ordered; ‘Shoot him!’

  Then Smiff fired; away from the falling body still clearly visible behind. Smiff looked again. Why was Schydt still in sight? He should fall behind at three miles a minute, yet he was still there.

  Then Smiff saw.

  ‘Sir! He’s caught! His parachute is caught in the fin.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chiltern. ‘I can feel the drag. Now take your time, aim carefully and shoot him off.’

  ‘But, sir …’

  ‘Shoot him off, Smith.’

  Schydt’s parachute was firmly caught in the tailplane of N-Nuts. Schydt, at the end of the strong silken parachute cords, was flapping wildly up and down as the 200 mph wind lashed his clothes and body. His flying boots had been torn from his feet as the slack cords tightened and jolted him behind the plane. The harness had cut into his crutch and pain stabbed through his abdomen.

  Still Smiff delayed. Now he would have to shoot his crewmate. He thought he could catch glimpses of Schydt’s face in the darkness and it seemed misshapen, grotesque with fear.

  ‘Why don’t you fire, Smith?’

  There was no way out now. Nothing could save Schydt. If he tore free, his parachute would be so damaged he could never descend safely. If he did not fall free he would be dragged for four hundred miles
behind N-Nuts to die of cold, or suffocate from lack of oxygen or, if he survived all these, to be battered to pieces behind them when they landed.

  It would be a kindness to shoot him.

  ‘Yes,’ thought Smiff, ‘I would thank a man for killing me if I were dying in agony. To shoot him now would be kindness.’

  ‘Why don’t you fire, Smith?’ said Chiltern again, impatiently. ‘Shoot him off before he blows off.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Smiff.

  Determinedly Smiff ground his teeth. He would make himself do it. He turned his guns on the hurtling, spinning body in space. It flapped up and down and around his sights. He could not get a bead on it. The sustained effort was snapping Smiff’s nerves. He decided not to try to follow Schydt’s crazy orbits with his guns. He aimed at the middle of the parachute’s swaying, swooping path, grit his teeth till the gums hurt, then fired.

  Schydt saw the rear guns firing.

  But nothing hit him.

  He was still flapping stupidly up and down and spinning crazily around in this maddening rush of freezing wind. One instant his face caught the slipstream full force and dragged his mouth open, blowing his cheeks out and driving the breath from his lungs. Wind caught under his eyelids and he thought his eyes would be blown from their sockets. And still he flapped insanely up and down and spun round and round, tortured by hurricanes of cold and held in his silken web.

  Smiff fired a long burst.

  Then he stared behind. The body was still there, still flapping and spinning. He thought he saw Schydt’s wide eyes staring at him.

  He fired again; fired so that the blinding tracer would obliterate the hideous scene which dragged itself behind them.

  ‘That will be enough, Smith,’ said Chiltern.

  ‘He’s still there, sir.’

  ‘I know. I can feel it.’

  Smiff started. Squadron Leader Chiltern had said ‘it’. And now that was all it was. It was not a man any more. It was not his crewmate Schydt. It was an ‘it’. A dead, mangled, bloody, horrid thing they were dragging along behind them, still waving up and down and spinning like a scarlet-feathered fly over rapid waters; carrion bait for the flying-fish of war.

  ‘I had hoped the bullets would knock him off,’ said Chiltern calmly. ‘It might damage the plane, dragging that around. I hope we lose it before we land.’

  Chiltern’s hopes were vain. All the way to Ludford Magna the grotesque mass of flapping, spinning flesh and wildly waving limbs followed them.

  ‘I’ll land well down the runway,’ said Chiltern to Magnetic as they approached. ‘I don’t want this thing catching around wires or fouling a fence.’

  As they touched down, Smiff hid his face in his hands.

  Still the shuddering, bouncing jolts against the tailplane reached his senses and in his mind he saw the body bouncing shapelessly behind them.

  They stopped at the end of the runway and jumped down from the battered door. Magnetic and Yarpi were first to reach the body. They looked at it and turned it over. The fascination of the thing was too strong for Smiff. As he approached them Yarpi looked up and said; ‘You missed! There isn’t a bullet hole in him!’

  ‘Poor devil,’ said Magnetic. ‘I wonder how long he lived.’

  Smiff had instantly wondered the same thing. Perhaps he had been killed as they landed? He went to touch the body.

  But he dared not. It might still be warm.

  Squadron Leader Chiltern was inspecting the damaged tailplane and lamenting Schydt’s parting gesture on behalf of his fatherland when Smiff came back and told him Schydt was dead but had not been shot.

  Chiltern did not reply.

  Chiltern did not speak a word in the crew bus. At debriefing he spoke only to the interrogation officer and then his words were few and toneless. As they drove back to the mess where a meal awaited anyone with the stomach to eat it, he was still silent.

  They arrived at the sergeant’s mess and the NCO’s got out.

  When they were gone, Chiltern turned to Krink and Vincent.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I was seriously thinking of baling out rather than remain with such iniquity.’

  For a moment Vincent was puzzled.

  Then he realised and his mind staggered.

  ‘After all that has happened tonight,’ he thought, ‘what upsets Chiltern is the memory of Snow swearing.’4

  — 4 —

  Paps was one of those girls who make excellent tea. In fact, the most enjoyable cup of tea on the squadron was to be had in the met office when Paps was on duty. Vincent, Magnetic, Joe and a few others called regularly at met for morning tea and it was the boys who brought the food: biscuits and cakes, mostly. Joe’s food parcels from Australia had provided many excellent feasts. It was the crumbs of these feasts that brought the mice.

  A few mice had been caught in mouse-traps. Still fewer had been tempted with poison baits. Those surviving mice now carefully avoided traps and poison alike and seemed to be teaching their fast-multiplying progeny the tricks of survival. Mice seemed destined to gain the upper hand throughout the flying control block.

  Then Vincent thought of catching them in kerosene tins. He would balance a piece of paper across the top of an empty kerosene tin and place some bait in the middle. The paper was folded so that it would support the weight of the bait and just a little more, but when a mouse walked out along it, it would collapse and down would come paper, bait, mouse and all. This not only worked successfully, but it continued to work nightly with each of four kerosene tins.

  ‘So unless the mice can breed at a rate of five a day, we must obliterate them,’ said Vincent triumphantly.

  There arose, however, the problem of disposing of the live mouse that would be jumping up and down in the bottom of the tin the next morning. This seemingly simple job had led to riotous scenes in the met office the first time it had to be done.

  Joe tried to kill the mouse by hitting it with a broom handle, but a wildly jumping mouse proved too small a target even to a hawk-eyed gunner at a range of one yard.

  So Joe decided to put his foot into the tin and crush the mouse with his steel-encrusted heel. This, it was thought, would be effective if bloody, and caused Paps to exclaim; ‘Oh, the poor little mousie!’

  Paps had called the mouse a name when it had eaten a hole in an all-too-hard-to-get cream biscuit and that name was far less ladylike than ‘poor little mousie’.

  Undaunted, however, Joe stamped his foot into the tin.

  Either Joe’s hawk-eye aim was off that morning or the mouse saw the steel heel descending upon it and dodged. Whichever the case, Joe missed.

  The mouse, quick to grasp its opportunity of escape, ran straight up Joe’s leg. Joe instantly yelled a word that sounded vaguely like a Canadian lumberjack’s cry of ‘Timber!’, and started kicking his leg in the air.

  The mouse was flung from Joe’s trousers and landed in the middle of the met office floor. The girls leapt up screaming, and ran around and around the room, the mouse chased them or so it seemed, and the sergeants, emitting lusty war-cries, chased the mouse.

  Two of the other kerosene tins were upset, releasing another two mice, and pandemonium reigned until the last mouse had escaped through cracks in the skirting.

  The met officer observed that things had come to a pretty pass when a station of nearly two thousand people of war, with bombs enough to blow up half Lincolnshire was thrown into confusion by a mouse which was then able to escape unscathed.

  Magnetic had later thought of an effective mouse-disposal method. It was vaguely vulgar but simple and effective. He simply took the tin, emptied the contents—bait, mouse and all—into the lavatory block and pulled the chain. It became each morning’s first job. This, however, was kept secret from the tender-hearted Waafs.

  One day while Vincent and Magnetic were sipping morning tea and eating cakes sent by Mrs Marlborough-Jones, there came a scream from outside and Paps rushed in, pale-faced and clutching her pants.

 
‘There’s a Thing!’ she screamed, pointing behind her as if a dragon came on her heels. ‘All wet and jumping! I was sitting and it jumped up and touched me!’

  Magnetic guessed the trouble. He looked in and there, swimming manfully, was the mouse. It had survived the first deluge.

  Magnetic flushed the pan again and this time the mouse did not resurface.

  ‘What was it, Saint George?’ asked Wendy when Magnetic returned. Paps was incapable of speaking.

  ‘I didn’t see a thing,’ lied Magnetic, eager to avoid so delicate an explanation.

  That was the morning they had watched Hyde, officially returned to the squadron as the B Flight second-in-command, flying familiarisation circuits in Queenie.

  It was painful to see. Time and again Hyde could not settle her down but came in too high and too fast and had to overshoot and go around again. Even that manoeuvre proved almost too much for him on one occasion when he throttled forward but was so slow in taking up flap that he sogged down to within a few feet of the runway.

  When he did land, poor old Queenie bounced and shuddered so much that the onlookers expected her tyres to burst or her wings to shake off.

  ‘Has Hyde lost his nerve, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe his hands aren’t sensitive enough.’

  ‘Nonsense. He hasn’t flown for ages. He’ll be okay after some practice.’

  Hyde mentioned his floppy landings to Vincent while they drank a pre-lunch beer in the mess. Hyde walked over to Vincent in company with the still-in-plaster and still grounded Lieutenant Cahill. They both looked so sad and serious that Vincent, in an effort to lighten their mood, greeted them with, ‘Ha! It’s Doctor Jackal and Mr Hyde!’

  ‘Jekyll and Hyde I might well be,’ said Hyde. ‘One me knows how to fly as automatically as I know how to breathe. But the other me just won’t relax; won’t do what my mind orders.’

  ‘We’ll try again this afternoon,’ said Jackal. ‘Have a drink now and try and relax.’

  ‘Were you flying screen?’ Vincent asked Jackal, surprised.