Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  Then disaster struck. My path was blocked by an RAF Police corporal. ‘Oi, where do you think you’re going, Sergeant?’ he spat the word ‘Sergeant’ with an ironic sneer – the old sweat’s contempt for aircrew with stripes on their shoulders that most regulars took ten years to achieve.

  ‘Just nipping down to the village,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Nipping down to the village? Christ almighty, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Operations tonight, all personnel confined to camp. Didn’t no one tell yer?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, yes. Completely forgot. How silly of me.’ Turning the bicycle around I pedalled off and as I looked back over my shoulder in the hope no one else had spotted my faux pas, saw the policeman staring after me in disbelief like a man who had just survived an encounter with an escaped lunatic. Time for plan B.

  After cycling back across the domestic site with only a couple of wrong turnings I reached the access road that ran round the airfield outside the perimeter track but inside the fence. On one of the dispersal points on the opposite side of the runway an aircraft was running up and I hoped that anyone watching from the control tower would be looking in that direction rather than mine. None the less I felt extremely conspicuous and progress on the heavy old bike with its half flat tyres was agonisingly slow. Near the point where I usually leave my car I found what I was looking for, a hole in the fence. By the look of the path worn in the grass I wasn’t the first to use it either. Once in the lane I pedalled as fast as I could towards Leckonby Junction and, I hoped, reality. But as I turned the last corner and the station came into view my heart sank. Instead of the ruined shell with its potholed car park I saw that the buildings were intact, with a thin column of smoke rising from the waiting room chimney. On the other side of the Hobbs Bank Drain was a building I had never seen before. An ornately painted sign above the door proclaimed it to be the Ferry Boat Inn. Parked at the side of the pub was a flat-bed lorry bearing the words “Bateman’s Fine Ales” and emblazoned with the brewer’s windmill trademark. A man dressed in a white apron, whom I took to be the landlord, was helping the drayman unload wooden casks which they then rolled down a ramp into the cellar. From the far bank protruded a small wooden jetty to which was moored a rowing boat, covered against the elements by a faded green tarpaulin. With no bridge in sight to either horizon, the boat was the only way to and from the pub from this side of the water. At a loss for what to do next I climbed up on to the dyke to get a better view of the landscape. Apart from the absence of high tension pylons it looked identical to the one I knew from the twenty-first century – a monotonous flatland of ploughed fields, criss-crossed by lines of reed and willow which marked the watercourses that drained into the river Witham. I was stuck. What the hell was I going to do now?

  I picked the bike up and cycled back the way I’d come. A Lancaster was flying training circuits and I timed my ungainly dash along the access road to coincide with the aircraft turning cross-wind, in the hope that any watchful eyes would be trained in the opposite direction.

  At last I replaced the bike from where I had taken it, hoping that it hadn’t been missed and that the owner wouldn’t notice the mud splatters from its brief journey off-road. Returning to the hut I nodded a greeting to the two other inhabitants. Both were strangers from the other crew and each sat hunched over his locker, pen in hand, clearly deep in concentration. I kicked off my boots and lay on the scratchy grey blanket with my hands behind my head, looking up at the corrugated metal above me and hoping for inspiration. With a sigh, one of the men stood up, folded the piece of notepaper and slid it into an envelope. On it he had written in large capitals, “To be opened in the event of my death.” He opened the door of his wardrobe and propped it on the top shelf against a tin of brass polish. That was the point at which I realised the seriousness of my predicament. This shadow world, whatever its true nature, was solid, tangible and, worse still, I was part of it. It had food, drink, warmth, running water and bicycles and, presumably, the capacity to do me harm. Harrison’s words came tumbling back into my head – that was it, Harrison, why hadn’t I thought of it before? He obviously knew how to get me into this and clearly, since I had seen him several times in the present day, he must know the way out too. I had to find him.

  Grabbing my hat and pulling on my boots I almost ran the short distance separating the hut from the sergeants’ mess. It was as I had hoped – the full listing of all thirteen crews taking part in tonight’s operation was pinned to the main notice board. At the top of the list was Wing Commander Preston’s name and, flying as his navigator, with a takeoff time of 2003 in aircraft CD-A for Apple was Flying Officer Harrison, K. Now all I had to do was find him, so I hurried over to the operations block, a building I knew from my previous visits to be a roofless shell. Now, all was spotless, freshly painted and the interior gave off a strong smell of floor polish. The first door I came to was marked “Station Intelligence Officer”. It had been left ajar and I just caught the end of a telephone conversation and the sound of the receiver being replaced in its cradle. Deep breath, here goes. I tapped on the door and the voice bade me enter. Behind a desk sat a Flight Lieutenant, his tunic devoid of brevet and medal ribbons. Overweight and bald, his shiny features looked as though they had been polished by the same person who had done the lino in the corridor. He looked up and I saluted. ‘Yes, what is it?’ he asked in a tone that suggested that my presence was already boring him.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m trying to find Flying Officer Harrison, the CO’s navigator.’

  He looked at me with undisguised scorn. ‘How the bloody hell would I know where he is? I’m not clairvoyant you know.’ He paused and then shouted, ‘Margaret! Come in here will you.’

  A slightly dumpy WAAF corporal appeared in the doorway. ‘No need to shout, I’m only next door, Hector, I mean, sir,’ she hastily corrected herself upon spotting me. ‘Hullo, Tommy. You trying to borrow money again?’

  ‘We haven’t got to that yet, thank God,’ said the Flight Lieutenant. He obviously considered me incapable of intelligent speech too because before I could open my mouth, he said, ‘Says he’s looking for the CO’s nav. Any ideas?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied. ‘A-Apple took off about half an hour ago. The CO’s checking out a new pilot before sending him on tonight’s op. They’re not due to land until just before first briefing.’

  This was cutting things incredibly tight. If I didn’t get off this madman’s roundabout, I could well end up airborne over Germany. As an excuse for not coming to work, I didn’t think it was one my editor would swallow easily. I made my excuses, saluted once more and left. It was only a short walk along the front of the hangars to the flight offices. The B Flight crew room was blue with cigarette smoke. There I found Unwin, sprawled in an armchair reading a copy of Tee Emm, the RAF’s flight safety magazine. The rest of the crew were present as well: the two officers, pilot Charlie Brownlow and navigator Arthur Prentice; Sgt Gilroy, the Australian mid-upper gunner; the sergeant wireless operator, a rather bovine youth whose name I had yet to catch; and finally, our flight engineer, Flt Sgt Arnold Greaves. At thirty-five, Greaves was the old man of the crew and had been a merchant seaman before joining the RAF. His claim to fame was that he had initiated the squadron into the rules of Uckers, a maritime form of Ludo, complete with its own arcane vocabulary, most of it profane. Along with three others he was hunched over the Uckers board and casting obscure spells on the dice to deliver him a six by shouting “chest!” at the top of his voice.

  In the admin office next door a telephone rang and the room fell silent as the duty ops clerk answered. Thirty silent prayers for the magic words “operations cancelled, all crews stand down” went up. They remained unanswered. He stuck his head round the door and called out, ‘S for sugar unserviceable. Air-test delayed one hour.’ S-Sugar’s pilot stood up, swore and announced that he was going back to the mess. His all-NCO crew followed him out of the door. Our crew had been allotted Z-Zebra wit
h a takeoff time of 1200 for a mission recorded in the squadron authorisation sheets as “air test, navigation and general handling.”

  The hands of the crew-room clock seemed to have frozen. The effort of moving up the second half of the dial against the force of gravity seemed too much for them. I was expecting the pilot to call the crew together for briefing, but at twenty-five to twelve, he looked at his watch and announced, ‘All right blokes, let’s get cracking.’ He led the way down another highly-polished corridor and through a door marked “Flying Clothing. Authorised Personnel Only”. Holding back a little in order to watch the others I found my locker and followed Gilroy’s lead in my choice of clothing. The bulky thermal suit made movement almost impossible. I knew that on operations rear gunners wore an electrically heated suit over several layers of warm underclothes and on top of that a waterproof flotation suit. Last came the issue of parachutes and we trooped out to the Bedford van waiting to take us out to the dispersal where Z-Zebra would be waiting for us. The driver followed the same route I had used as a shortcut to Leckonby junction and I craned my neck as we drove past, desperate for any hint of encroaching normality. All I saw was a thin tendril of smoke rising from behind the trees which hid the station from view.

  Compared to the pristine Lancaster I had flown with the BBMF, Z-Zebra was a sorry affair. Soot streaks from its exhausts stained the top surface of the wings and a series of metal patches, riveted into place along the fuselage and hurriedly brush-painted showed where damage had been repaired. Flak? Night fighters? I shuddered at the thought.

  Brownlow, as captain, went to the ground engineers’ hut to sign the Form 700, Z-Zebra’s servicing record, while the rest of us clambered aboard. One thing remained unchanged – that unmistakable Lancaster smell – for a brief moment my anxiety left me and I felt at home. Having flown in the rear turret on a couple of occasions I was at least able to avoid making my inexperience too obvious. Using the lid of the Elsan chemical toilet as a footstep I climbed over the tailplane spar. Then I slotted my parachute pack into its stowage on the side of the fuselage and wriggled into the confines of the turret. Once I had slid the doors behind me closed, I fastened my lap belt and plugged into the intercom and the oxygen supply.

  Over the background whine of the intercom I heard Brownlow checking the crew one by one and answered, ‘Rear gunner ready, skip,’ trying to sound as nonchalant as I could. The start-up sequence seemed to go smoothly and soon I felt the aircraft roll forward a few feet and then stop once more as the pilot checked the brakes before continuing down the taxiway to the holding point. Just before the runway threshold stood a caravan painted in a bold red and white checkerboard pattern and as we drew alongside it, pointing down the runway, the controller flashed us a steady green light.

  ‘All clear above and behind,’ I called over the intercom and felt the aircraft shake as Greaves the flight engineer advanced the throttles to zero boost. It’s funny how sometimes the mind retains minute details of long ago events but then skips the big things. I had simply forgotten how deafeningly loud it is inside a Lancaster at anything above idling RPM – the earphones in my 1940s headset did next to nothing to blot out the bellow of the four Merlin engines. As Brownlow released the brakes and Greaves pushed the throttles forward to full power, I noticed from the windsock atop the runway caravan that we had quite a strong crosswind from the left, something that would exacerbate the Lanc’s tendency to swing to port during the early phase of the takeoff run. From my backwards-facing eyrie I had a grandstand view of our skipper’s late appreciation of our predicament. First, he applied about half right rudder, nowhere near enough and it was only when we were almost on the grass that he fed in full rudder and I felt a couple of grabs of differential brake. Next to me, touching distance away I saw the trailing edge of the elevator controls dip down and the aircraft’s tail came up in response, unmasking the rudders and giving us just enough control authority to stay on the concrete. Moments later, with a rather agricultural heave, he pulled the bomber off the runway and we were airborne. Christ knows what’ll happen when he tries that in the dark with a full bomb load, I thought, shuddering at the prospect that if I didn’t find Flying Officer Harrison, my chances of getting back to reality were slim.

  As we climbed away from Leckonby and turned onto a northerly heading I saw the unmistakeable shape of Lincoln cathedral towering over the flatlands surrounding the city. At first glance, the countryside looked no different from the one I had flown over so many times myself. Lincoln itself was certainly smaller, with far less of the sprawl than it has today. Then I stopped myself. Today. Which “today”? What if I was stuck here in December 1943? What if this “today” was reality and my twenty-first century life lay over seventy years out of reach? Doing my best to put such thoughts out of my mind I occupied myself by trying to find familiar landmarks. In the distance, to the south of the city I could see RAF Waddington. To the north lay Scampton, but the biggest shock was the sheer number of airfields that I had only seen before as ghostly outlines in farmers’ fields – barely visible crop marks, pale as skeletons under the plough. I ticked off the familiar names as we headed north; Bardney, Fiskerton, Faldingworth, Hemswell and Ludford Magna, all of them busy, bombers parked on almost every dispersal point, others flying circuits. The other difference was the smoke, every building seemed to have a chimney, all of them streaming smoke, surrounding each town we passed with a sickly yellow halo.

  As we turned right to cross the coast between Grimsby and Hull, I made my first attempts at turning the turret. To my surprise it was remarkably easy. The lightest pressure on the downward sloping control levers, configured much like a racing motorbike’s handlebars, was enough to swing the turret from side to side, causing the cooling slots around the barrels to howl in the slipstream. As I did so I was aware that each swing of the turret into the airflow was causing the aircraft to yaw in response. Either the pilot was used to it or had a poor feel for the controls because at no time did he attempt to correct the movement.

  Once safely over the sea, we settled into the cruise at about 2,000 feet and Brownlow gave the order to test the guns. From behind me, I felt rather than heard the rattle of Gilroy firing a long burst from the mid-upper turret and so, releasing the safety catch, I tried to do the same. Silence: the armourers must have forgotten to cock the guns. Gilroy came on the intercom, ‘You asleep already, Tommy, you dozy bastard?’

  ‘Nah, just looking for something to shoot at. A seagull at three hundred yards maybe. By the way, I reckon you missed the planet just then,’ I replied. This got a laugh from the rest of the crew and seemed to break the tension long enough for me to find the cocking handles, depress the guns and send a long squirt of tracer arcing down towards the grey surface of the North Sea. Even above the roar of the engines and the slipstream, the noise was deafening and the turret filled with the smell of cordite. In a few hours I could be doing this for real, I thought, and then with embarrassment realised that I had forgotten to turn on the turret’s gyroscopic gunsight. A ham-fisted pilot and a clueless rear gunner were not good portents of survival for any crew.

  The rest of the flight passed uneventfully and we returned to Leckonby, where Brownlow once again either didn’t notice or simply misjudged the crosswind so that Z-Zebra arrived on the runway drifting to starboard at such a rate I feared it would break the undercarriage. Luckily it held, and after fishtailing to a halt we taxied back to the dispersal we had left just over an hour earlier. While we waited for Brownlow to sign the aircraft back in, I overheard Greaves the flight engineer discussing the fuel load with one of the groundcrew. ‘Only 1650 gallons,’ Greaves said. ‘Can’t be Berlin then. Thank fuck for that.’ He jumped up onto the tailboard of the lorry and announced the good news to the rest of us. ‘Not Berlin tonight, lads. That’s enough fuel for Hanover, but my money’s on Happy Valley.’

  Gilroy made a thumbs-up sign. Happy Valley – the Ruhr – it showed me how much crews feared the Big City if a mission to one
of the most heavily defended regions of the Reich could be seen as a relief. Buoyed by the relative good news, the mood in the lorry that came to take us back to the flight office was jovial to start with, but after we reached our destination and handed back our parachutes, a collective realisation that the next time would be for real, stilled the chatter as each man retreated within his shell.

  The atmosphere of artificial normality resumed when we returned to the flight office. Greaves rounded up a foursome to play Uckers, others sat and read. Perhaps, like me they were pretending to read – anything to banish the reality that waited for the unlucky few in the skies over occupied Europe.

  Half past three. Surely A-Apple should be back by now, but there was no sign. Then, at twenty to four I heard a Lancaster overhead – it had to be Preston and his crew. If they landed straight away I might just get a chance to grab Harrison before the four o’clock navigators’ and captains’ briefing. I pretended to stifle a yawn, stretched, got up and ambled to the door with what I hoped was the nonchalant air of a man in search of nothing more than a breath of fresh air. Outside, it was already starting to get dark and the western skyline was tinged with pink. However, A-Apple didn’t land. I watched the aircraft do a flapless circuit and, as expected, the young pilot got way too tight downwind, overshot the runway centreline and went round again. His second attempt was far better and the next circuit was done on three engines, with one prop feathered to simulate battle damage. This time, the execution was faultless and on the next approach A-Apple landed and taxied in. The same driver who had collected us from our dispersal delivered Preston’s crew and, to my horror I only counted five men walking back towards the flying clothing section. One of the remaining two pulled off his flying helmet to display an unruly black mop of a fringe, handed his parachute pack and harness to one of the others and sprinted over to the operations block by the control tower. Harrison. The shorter, more burly figure trotting in his wake with a seat type parachute pack slung over his shoulder had to be Preston. My last chance had gone.