Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  I took out my mobile phone to give me an excuse to speak. I pretended to dial and put it to my ear. ‘So are you saying you killed the one using the disc cutter and shot up the caravan?’

  ‘No. Well, not personally, anyway.’

  ‘So who did?’

  He paused and for the first time since we had sat down, turned his pale blue gaze from mine. ‘Let’s just say there’s a lot of anger about what’s going on at Leckonby. The building, the new houses, all the upheaval. People are upset, bloody livid to be honest. It’s not what they wanted, not what they expected you see.’

  ‘Who? The Lags?’

  The Mona Lisa smile again. ‘No, not them. Some of the men you met in the Snakepit the other day. I saw you come in, by the way. I don’t think you noticed me.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, the place was packed…’ I stopped myself. This was ridiculous. Was I really discussing drinking a pint in a bar conjured up by my own damaged mind with someone who claimed to have been there too? ‘Are you trying to frighten me?’

  ‘No. Well, not directly. You’d be frightened enough if you realised what you’ve got yourself caught up in. It’s not too late though. Just take my advice. Keep away from RAF Leckonby.’

  ‘And since you insist on calling me Tommy, what am I supposed to call you?’ I asked.

  For a moment he looked puzzled. ‘I’d assumed you’d worked that out from the photo in the Rose and Crown.’

  The penny dropped. Putting down my phone I took my notebook out from my inside pocket and thumbed through the pages. I found the list of names I had copied down. L-R: Jones, McIntyre, Bailey, Skipper, Armstrong, Foster, self. ‘Of course. It was your photograph. But all it says is “self”… but hang on, that picture must’ve been taken in 1944.’

  ‘December 1943 to be precise. I used to keep it in my log book.’

  I did a swift calculation. ‘Which makes you over ninety years old. Come off it.’

  ‘Let’s just say that some people stopped counting in March 1944. I’m not a hallucination, Tommy, this isn’t something you control. If you see me again, it may be too late.’ I tried to remonstrate with him but he got up, turned away and without another word, walked straight through the solid door of the coffee shop and out into the street. From their lack of reaction, none of the other customers saw him go.

  I left my coffee and hurried outside but there was no sign of him. This time as I walked back to the bookshop, nobody stared, nobody accosted me – the normality was overpowering. I went in and browsed the military history section, half expecting someone to start calling me Tommy once more. Nothing. I bought another book and wandered home.

  It didn’t take long online to find the name and the fate of the pale young man. Lancaster LL984, CD-F for Freddy, 362 Squadron RAF Leckonby, captain Wg Cdr Geoffrey Preston, failed to return from operations against Brunswick on the night of 29-30 March 1944 (crew on 25th operation of first tour).

  I read on. Among the crew was Flying Officer Keith Harrison (410434) aged twenty-one – my sometimes visible companion. Seven lives snuffed out, promise unfulfilled, seven sets of hopes and dreams extinguished without trace. But why Harrison and why me? What had brought us into this contact between real and unreal?

  Real or imagined and in spite of his warnings, I was desperate to see him again and to find out more. I had to know.

  At the public enquiry into the Leckonby development tempers frayed, the heron’s feathers were ruffled and worse. Harsh words and even blows were exchanged. To the horror of the anti-development lobby, the Secretary of State supported the planning application, and despite a ruinously expensive appeal to the High Court the builders won their case and building work continued.

  Despite the process of law having run its course, it was obvious to me that someone didn’t accept the decision. Almost from the first day that the surveyors started measuring up and the diggers opened their first trenches, trouble began – sand and water tipped into fuel tanks, hydraulic lines cut, windscreens broken, and on one occasion, what looked worryingly like a bullet hole through a workmen’s hut. On several mornings, the police were called but each time the culprits were long gone. Local residents reported having seen lights on the airfield. In the end, the developers moved all their machinery into a fenced compound near one of the old hangars and the night-time security patrols were reinforced.

  For a few nights there was no more trouble, then it started again. One foggy December evening the security patrol received a phone call reporting lights and movement on the airfield. Grimes phoned and gave me the tip-off.

  Rather than go back and risk getting the beating I’d been threatened with during my last visit, I tried a different tack. This time I got the story first-hand from one of the guards, and my intention was to turn it into an article for the Lincoln Post.

  We met at a pub near the city centre and his hands were shaking as he recounted the tale. The way he told it, the lights seemed to be coming from the area around the old control tower and, if I followed his description correctly, there were also lights in what had been the operations block. He was one of two guards on shift that night and they set off from the security compound, padlocking the gate behind them before driving over to investigate.

  He wasn’t a particularly impressive specimen – early thirties, running to fat, with a shaven head and a tattoo of a spider on his neck. His clothes smelled like they could do with a wash. ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ he said, slurping the pint of bitter I had just bought him. ‘I wasn’t happy. There should’ve been three of us on shift that night with one staying in the compound at all times. But one of the lads phoned in sick, asked us to cover for him and sign his timesheet to make it look like he’d been there all along. You know how it is?’ I nodded and he continued. ‘Anyway, the fog was so thick in places you could only see a few yards, and it wasn’t till afterwards, like, that I wondered how anyone could’ve seen the lights to report them. We could only see them when we got right up close.’

  ‘And there definitely were lights in the control tower?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, and in the big building next to it, you know, the one with no roof.’

  ‘That used to be the operations block.’ I decided against telling him about my experiences at the airfield.

  ‘Well, whatever you call it, there was lights there too. At first, we could see people moving about through the windows – quite a few of them, seven or eight at least.’ He cracked his knuckles – I caught a glimpse of the word “HATE” tattooed over them. ‘I don’t mind a ruck now an’ then, but, well, two against eight ain’t my sort of odds, so I was all for getting back in the van and calling the Old Bill. That’s when it happened…’ His voice trailed away.

  Looking up from my notes I saw his face had turned deathly pale. ‘When what happened?’ I asked.

  As he took another drink I noticed beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. ‘All the bloody lights went out, didn’t they? I thought they’d seen us and were coming to have a go, so we jumped back in the van, started the engine and I turned so’s the headlights were dead on the building – y’know, the operations block. We called the police, told ‘em what we’d seen but they didn’t believe a word. I know what I saw, I know what we both saw, but the bastards wouldn’t believe us. Said we was making it up to cover for our mate dodging his shift.’

  I spoke softly, trying to calm the fear I saw in his eyes. ‘You still haven’t told me what you saw.’

  ‘There weren’t seven or eight of them, nearer a hundred more like.’ He must have read the disbelief on my face. ‘If I never move off this spot, so help me, there were at least a hundred blokes, all sitting there in rows. Just staring up in the same direction, like they was watching a film or something.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘What do you bloody think? We got the fuck out. Never driven so fast in all my born days.’

  ‘But what about the lights?’ I asked. ‘Were they still on?’

  �
�No, and that’s what’s really weird. There were all these blokes, just sitting there in the pitch dark, looking at nothing.’

  I made another couple of notes before asking my next question. ‘And that’s when you called the police?’

  ‘Well, yes and no.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He finished his pint in a single gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘When we got back, we unlocked the gates, right? The padlock hadn’t been touched, no holes in the fence – it’s got razor wire on the top, so they couldn’t have got in that way.’

  ‘Who couldn’t?’

  ‘Whoever trashed the diggers. They’d all been torched.’

  ‘And you reckon this had something to do with the people you saw in the ops block?’

  ‘Must’ve done,’ he replied, anger now replacing the earlier fear in his voice. ‘Couldn’t have been anybody else, could it?’

  ‘The police don’t seem to agree with you.’

  ‘How do you know?’ A group of drinkers at another table turned round at the sound of his raised voice.

  ‘No need to shout,’ I said motioning him to calm down. ‘I’m a journalist, remember. I talk to the police all the time. It’s what I do.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said, cursing the police under his breath. ‘The Old Bill reckoned we bunked off for the night and then made up the story about the lights and everything. That’s why I got the bloody sack.’

  This didn’t make sense. I checked my notes once more. ‘Hold on. Just now you said the police phoned to say someone had reported lights at the control tower.’

  He shook his head and looked downcast. ‘Someone’s playing silly buggers. Fucking coppers did call us but now they’re denying it. Bastards.’

  The solution seemed pretty obvious to me. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the police who called. You were lured away so that someone could destroy the diggers. They probably had accomplices in the control tower and the ops block mucking around with torches and things to try and frighten you. You know, night-time, foggy, creepy old disused airfield – that’s enough to make anyone nervous.’

  ‘Doesn’t explain all those blokes we saw. My mate saw them and all, don’t forget.’

  ‘No it doesn’t, does it?’ I got up to buy him another pint. Whoever was sabotaging the building works had gone to a lot of time and effort to cover their traces.

  There was only one thing to do. After the warning I had received from the pale shade of Flying Officer Harrison, the thought of it was terrifying, but Leckonby drew me like a moth to a flame.

  Work had restarted on the site and the developers were making up for lost time. Sections of taxiway and runway had been dug up for aggregate and the remaining hangars demolished. New roads and foundations had sprung up near the shooting butts where the travellers’ caravan had been destroyed. Parking at my usual spot on the opposite side of the airfield, I put my torch and a spare set of batteries into my coat pocket, pulled on my boots and set off across the grass. Unseen, in the darkness of the woods bordering the perimeter track, a vixen screamed and I suppressed a nervous shiver, doing my best not to think of my encounter with Colonel Cavendish and his familiar. Tonight I seemed to have the place to myself and so I pushed on along the perimeter track, past the control tower and the operations block into the overgrown complex of huts that had once formed RAF Leckonby’s accommodation and administrative site.

  The weather was mild for once and the wind had swung round to the south west with a promise of rain. A gust, stronger than the others brought the sound to my ears. At first I thought it must be coming from the village, but no, it was louder now, quite distinct and coming from the opposite direction – male voices singing tunelessly, accompanied by a piano. A stand of birch trees that had grown up around the old foundations blocked my line of sight and I forced my way through, cursing at the brambles that tore and snatched at my clothes. Finally, I managed to get clear and follow the sound. I was close now – banging, crashing, drunken voices and the tinny rattle of a piano coming from a series of Nissen huts linked together into the shape of a capital H, their dark outlines just visible against the light of the full moon. Light shone round the frame of a doorway. The noise was almost deafening – I would need to move quickly before it attracted the attention of the security guards. So, with my pulse racing and sweat trickling down my neck I opened it a crack and peered inside to find a small entrance lobby formed by blackout material blocking my view. I slipped in, shut the door behind me and pushed the curtains aside. The sight that met my eyes left me open-mouthed with amazement.

  The party was in full swing. In an atmosphere of beer fumes and cigarette smoke that I could have cut into cubes, a group of thirty or so young men in RAF uniform was packed into the makeshift bar, dimly lit by a row of dirty bulbs under green metal shades. Nerves jangling, fearing a repeat of the episode at the Saracen’s head, I turned to go. As I did so, a baby-faced individual whose battledress jacket bore the single thin stripe of a Pilot Officer, walked unsteadily towards me. ‘Gotta have a piss,’ he said to no one in particular and thumped his pint glass down on the table next to me, adding yet more beer slops to the puddle on its surface. Ignoring me completely, he pushed the blackout curtain aside, opened the door and stood on the top step to relieve himself. Shouts of, ‘Put that bloody light out,’ and, ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ came from round the room and a tall, dark-haired officer walked past me, seemingly oblivious to the existence of a civilian in their midst, pushed the Pilot Officer down the steps and shut the door. As he came back into the bar, he noticed the almost full glass on the table and, as he reached for it his arm would have touched mine had I not jumped out of the way. Then it dawned. I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. Fighting back the adrenalin urging me to run for my life, I forced myself to stay and watch.

  Centre stage was held by an upright piano. Next to it, on a trestle table which seemed sure to collapse at any moment, swayed two men. The first, dressed in an off-white bathrobe wore a white bandana around his head on which was drawn a red Japanese rising sun. Arm in arm with him was a second, shorter figure in pantomime drag sporting rouged cheeks and a gash of red lipstick for a mouth. A call for silence went up.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ shouted the pianist once the sound of voices had dropped enough for him to be heard. ‘For your delectation, entertainment – and for those of you what weren’t brought up proper, your education – the 362 Squadron Sod’s Opera Company, fresh from their sell-out tour of Essen, Hamburg and Berlin, is proud to perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Moon and I.’ With a crash of chords for introduction, the pair of drunks on the table launched into the aria from The Mikado. To my surprise, they sang in tune and an appreciative, almost maudlin silence descended on the party. As the last notes faded away and the performers took a bow, for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, nobody spoke, nobody moved. Then, as though in sudden realisation that they were supposed to be enjoying themselves, with a single voice they cheered the performers, whistled, stamped and shouted for more. To me, the silence had spoken far more loudly than the yells of beery masculinity.

  ‘All right, you bastards, pipe down,’ shouted the male half of the duet in a broad Aussie accent. ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘Blue Moon! Blue Moon!’ they yelled.

  ‘Now there’s a surprise,’ he shouted back with a grin. This time, as the pianist struck up the tune there was no reverential silence and the entire room, including the white-jacketed barman, took up the refrain.

  Next was It’s only a Paper Moon, followed by Shine on, Harvest Moon. Even I could see the theme. Edging around the corrugated iron walls which were running with condensation, I took advantage of a beer break for the singers and tried to make my way closer to the centre of the party. Gaining in confidence, I was only a few feet away from the piano when my blood froze. A hand gripped my arm and I heard a familiar voice. Spinning round, I came face to face with my companion from Lincoln High Street. It was Harrison
. ‘You didn’t get the message, did you, Tommy? I warned you to keep away,’ he said, brushing the dark fringe away from his eyes.

  ‘But what is this?’

  ‘A party. What does it look like? And anyway, this is the officers’ mess. You shouldn’t be here. You’re a Sergeant, remember, Tommy?’

  I pulled my arm free of his grasp. I’ve never liked men who touch too much. ‘Listen, I’m Bill Price, not Tommy Handley. And I’m not a Sergeant.’

  ‘Bill Price? Not here you’re not,’ he replied. ‘Listen, Tommy. Go home, stay away from here. There’s still time.’

  The noise started up again as the pianist began his next introduction. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because if you don’t your life will be in danger.’

  ‘Oh, come off it. What harm can you do me?’

  My question seemed to perplex him and he hesitated for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Harm you? Why would I do that? You really don’t understand, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t even understand why we’re having a party.’

  ‘Something to do with the moon?’ I ventured.

  ‘Everything to do with the moon. It means we stay alive another week. No ops for the eight days either side of the full moon, Tommy. That’s our kind of bombers’ moon, the one that lets us sleep in our beds rather than burn to death over Berlin. If that’s not worth a party, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘I understand that, but how does it affect me?’

  He shook his head as though in despair at my stupidity. ‘If you keep away, it won’t. You’ve still time,’ he said.

  ‘And if I don’t I’m in danger?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of danger?’

  ‘What kind of danger? All right, Tommy, if you really want to know, be at Leckonby Junction in time to meet the seven minutes past ten from Lincoln next Tuesday night. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Once you start, there’s no going back, nowhere to hide, no going LMF.’