Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  The evening passed in a blur for me. I had forgotten what little I knew of the etiquette of ballroom dancing and the arcane rules of how a dance card worked, but it seemed that within a matter of minutes of arriving, the Frank Dey orchestra was playing out with a waltz and, as my good luck would have it, I was the last man on Betty’s card. The floor was packed and our attempts to dance were reduced to a slow-moving shuffle in the press of bodies orbiting anti-clockwise under the glitter ball high above us.

  Betty fixed me with her pale blue eyes and I felt the awakening of long-forgotten desires. ‘I’ve had a lovely time this evening,’ she said. ‘Thanks so much for coming along at such short…’ As she spoke we collided with another couple, forcing the two of us into an intimate proximity which would have left her in no doubt about my state of arousal. Rather than pulling away, she stayed pressed against me and then slowly ground her hips against me before resuming the usual arm’s length respectability of the waltz. The message was unmistakeable but her features displayed barely a flicker that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Just the trace of a smile told me she was enjoying the effect she was having on me.

  We ran back to the station, feet splashing through the puddles on the pavements, and made the last train to Leckonby Junction with seconds to spare. Panting and laughing, we caught our breath as it clanked and wheezed into the blackout. Not for the first time I caught that cocktail of smells that was wartime Britain; cigarette smoke, polish, the camphor-based insecticide used to treat military uniforms, and the sour tang of sweat.

  At Leckonby a sea of blue uniforms spilled out onto the platform. Still buzzing with the party atmosphere, everyone seemed to be speaking at once as we trooped down the steps to the buses waiting to take us back to reality. I barely had time to exchange more than a couple of words with Betty before she disappeared to round up some of her straggling WAAF charges who had clearly had one cherry brandy too many and whose virtue she considered under threat from an equally boisterous group of NCO aircrew who were trying to persuade them to board their bus instead of the one marked “WAAF Personnel Only”.

  ***

  The weather remained dismal and overcast. Christmas 1943 was mud-coloured rather than white, but at least it gave the crews of Bomber Command a respite and, for some, a few more precious days of life. Our reprieve was short-lived, however, and on the night of the 29th we set off once more to Berlin. We ran into icing over the Baltic which forced us down to below 10,000 feet. The target itself was covered by cloud and only a handful of scattered target markers showed where the Pathfinder squadrons had done their best to find the aiming point. There was no sign of intense fires below us, a sure sign that we were either in the wrong place or that the bombing had been so sporadic that no serious damage had been done. We bombed on what Hudson considered the most likely position of the city and then turned for home. By the time we reached a dank and dripping Leckonby, we had been airborne over 9 hours. We were so weary that even the prospect of the all-ranks dance on New Year’s Eve could not fire us with any enthusiasm, and I wandered back to my room through the pre-dawn drizzle, careless of my own discomfort.

  By default I had recently acquired a new room-mate, a talkative Canadian pilot from Winnipeg, fresh out of training – to my eternal shame I forgot his name as soon as he had told me it. Tonight’s raid had been his first operation and I noticed with not too much concern that he wasn’t back yet. When I awoke several hours later his bed was still untouched and a now familiar arrangement of wax seals and string across his locker door told me all I needed to know. I had been so deeply asleep that the effects team had been able to let themselves in to the room and done their job without waking me.

  Around mid-morning, night gave way imperceptibly to a lighter shade of gloom and, unable to sleep any more, I got up and splashed my way through the drizzle to the mess. I had only been there five minutes, reading an out-of-date magazine and sipping at a mug of stewed tea, when a tannoy broadcast broke the news that operations were cancelled for that night. Once more, time hung heavy on my hands and I realised the truth of the saying that war is made up of long periods of boredom punctuated by short intervals of sheer terror. That said, despite my current overcast of ennui, I felt deeply and wonderfully alive in a way that I had completely forgotten. Like the onset of winter, the fires of youth dampen so slowly that the victim never feels a thing – time’s anaesthesia had neutered the old Bill Price, but now I felt like a young tomcat, ready to take on all-comers.

  New Year’s Eve dawned every bit as gloomy as the previous days, ending any speculation that the all ranks’ dance might be interrupted by the war. The enforced idleness was frustrating, but at the same time it allowed the Lancaster crews of RAF Leckonby another respite.

  Those of us not on duty helped put up decorations and by the end of the afternoon, a drab concrete mess hut had been turned into a passable imitation of a dance hall. Some resourceful soul had ‘liberated’ two Christmas trees which were now festooned with strings of cockpit instrument lights and garlands made from the aluminium strips of ‘window’ cut into patterns. A glitter ball had been made from papier mâché and milk bottle tops, and garlands of coloured paper streamers criss-crossed the metal roof trusses.

  The festivities started at eight but my hopes of getting a dance with Betty were thwarted by the sheer weight of numbers. Men outnumbered women on bomber bases by over ten to one and the competition was too great, so I retreated to the bar where I bought drinks for my crew. Sgt Boyle, my flight engineer, was clearly no stranger to dance halls and he somehow managed to find a partner for almost every number. Peters, the bomb aimer, seemed to come out of his shell a little after a couple of beers, as did Wells the wireless operator who succeeded in monopolising the attention of a plump little WAAF corporal who barely came up to his chest. Neither of them could dance a step but that didn’t seem to bother them as they tottered round in ungainly circles, clinging to one another like survivors from a shipwreck. Hudson, drank one half of shandy, made his excuses and left. Sgt Grey, my Glaswegian mid-upper gunner, emboldened by drink made innumerable attempts to find a dance partner but without success. And as for ‘Charlie’ Chester, our rear gunner, he was content to spend the evening drinking and watching proceedings with cynical detachment. My hopes of getting the crew to bond seemed as remote as ever.

  Just before midnight I got dragged into a conga line which snaked its way drunkenly around a dance floor that was by now sticky with spilt beer. The air inside the hut had become almost unbreathable, a cocktail of cigarette smoke, beer fumes and stale sweat that caught in the back of the throat. Then came the obligatory tuneless bellowing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and the countdown to midnight. I had tried to enjoy the evening but had failed – this wasn’t my party, I shouldn’t even have been there and I desperately wanted to be anywhere else but here. I made to leave, but a woman’s voice, raised in anger, made me stop. I couldn’t catch what she was saying against the background hubbub of yelling and cheering, but something didn’t seem right. I pushed my way through the crowd and a few feet away came across Betty in a clinch with the pilot whose cheek I had pinched in the mess bar a few days earlier. He was trying to kiss her but she kept pushing him away.

  Her voice was slurred. ‘Look, just stop it, will you. I’ve had a lovely time but I want to go to bed.’

  He pulled her towards him again with a leer, ‘Sounds like the best offer I’ve had all evening. Just give me a kiss first.’ He was none too sober either.

  She put up a hand to fend him off and accidently caught him across the face.

  ‘Prick-teasing little tart,’ he spat, wiping a trace of blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  I had heard enough and pulled him round by the shoulder. ‘Listen, old son, Section Officer Clark has said she wants to go to bed and it’s clear you’re not invited.’

  He made to throw a punch but given that I was much taller than him, he thought better of it and instead, stumbled unst
eadily to the door mumbling threats of what he would do the next time he saw me.

  Betty’s eyes were glazed and she shifted unsteadily from one foot to another. ‘D’you know…? D’you know? I think that horrible little man was trying to get me tight,’ she said.

  ‘Looks like he did a pretty good job. Are you all right?’

  This was clearly a difficult question and it took her a long time to answer. ‘I think so, but I do feel a bit funny.’

  ‘I’ll see you home.’

  On the way out Betty tripped on the steps and would have fallen had I not caught her. She seemed to find this hilarious, but after only a few paces she turned aside and threw up into a flower bed. Luckily, the blackout saved her the embarrassment of being identified in this state and eventually, after two more stops to be sick and then her loudly stated decision that she couldn’t walk any further and would spend the night on the grass, I managed to get her back to the WAAF officers’ block. After much fumbling, Betty found her room key, located the light switch at the third attempt and allowed me to steer her towards the bed. As she sat down, she suddenly put her arms around my neck and pulled me down on top of her.

  ‘Do you know?’ she slurred, her face pressed close against mine. ‘I really liked it the other night when we were dancing and you got all hard.’ She giggled. ‘Are you all hard now?’ She tugged at the waistband of my trousers.

  ‘Betty, I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ I said, disentangling myself and standing up.

  A pout and arms reaching out to me again. ‘Don’t you like me?’ Then she frowned. ‘You’re not a pansy, are you?’

  ‘I like you just fine,’ I replied. ‘And no, I’m not a pansy, but you are very drunk.’ I closed the door behind me and crept out of the door, keeping to the shadows until well clear of the WAAF accommodation. The penalties for being caught there were biblical in their severity, even for a good-ish Samaritan who had come very close to yielding to temptation.

  ***

  New Year’s Day brought a break in the weather and those whose hangovers still clung to them had now to face the prospect of a night over Berlin. In clear skies, the Luftwaffe’s night fighters cut bloody swathes through the ranks of the heavies and the following morning, two empty dispersals at Leckonby marked the loss of another fourteen men from 362 Squadron.

  To everyone’s dismay, we were ‘on’ again the following night – Berlin once more. The route to the target was trouble free and the gunners called only a single loss. However, over the target, not only was the marking sporadic, meaning that the RAF crews were unable to concentrate their bombing, causing bombs to fall in open countryside, but the night fighters fell upon us in droves. I lost count of the number of ‘corkscrews’ that the gunners called and all around us, greasy orange fireballs marked the pyres of crew after crew.

  During January 1944 362 Squadron made seven more trips to Berlin at the cost of ten crews. It didn’t take much to work out that the chances of a crew surviving a tour of thirty trips was now less than one in four. To my shame, I now revelled in the excitement of doing this job, safe in the knowledge that I was, literally, fireproof. One small piece of good came from my deception – at long last, my crew began to bond. Little, by little they started to show unmistakeable signs of confidence in their own ability.

  It was over a week before I caught up with Betty again. We were in the officers’ mess just before lunch. She pretended not to see me, turned away and found something absolutely riveting in a month-old magazine on the ante-room table. I looked over her shoulder to see an article on Land Army girls hay-making. ‘Something I said?’ I asked.

  ‘You must hate me,’ she said, blushing and turning away.

  ‘Not a bit of it. You got tight, that’s all – not that I can remember much, I wasn’t exactly sober myself.’

  For the first time in our exchange she made eye contact. ‘That’s very kind of you to say so. I’m terribly ashamed at getting so drunk. And…’ she hesitated and then stopped.

  ‘And what?’

  She flushed bright red once more and lowered her eyes. ‘And, well… you know. Thanks for being so decent. There are lots of chaps who would’ve taken advantage of me.’

  ‘All in good time,’ I said with a conspiratorial wink. This seemed to break the ice and we chatted away amiably until the subject of tonight’s op came up. Then the conversation clouded over. ‘I take it you’ve seen the signals from Command and you know where we’re going?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘And you’re not allowed to tell us of course.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I forced a smile. ‘Full fuel load, has to be Berlin again, doesn’t it?’

  She looked away. ‘I… I’m not allowed to say.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We all know it’s Berlin. What we don’t know for sure is who’s coming home tomorrow morning and who isn’t.’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘Please make sure you come safe home, won’t you, Bill?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’ Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. Sailing under false colours has never been my strong point. What’s more, to add to my feelings of guilt and shame, it was pretty obvious, even to one as tone-deaf to these matters as I am, that Betty was becoming fond of me.

  Serious relationships between WAAF and RAF personnel were strictly forbidden and we both risked being posted away to other stations if it became too obvious we were a couple.

  ***

  A particularly hair-raising slog to Berlin was followed the next day by a planned raid on Essen. To everyone’s great relief, bad weather meant the operation was cancelled at midday, and as luck would have it, Betty was off shift too. We caught the bus to Boston and spent the evening dancing at the Gliderdrome. According to Betty, my dancing had improved from dreadful to merely bad, but that evening something between us finally clicked into place and as we walked arm-in-arm back to the bus stop it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her.

  ‘I thought I was going to die waiting for you to do that,’ she said when at last we surfaced for air. ‘Talk about Time’s wingèd chariot, Bill.’

  I finished the quotation. ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. Isn’t that how it goes?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said in a way that made me stop and look into her face. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. ‘I worry about you, Bill. You know, when you’re on ops.’

  I thought for a moment as we stood, sheltering in the lee of a hedge while the last of the evening traffic splashed by along the road towards the Town Bridge. This talk of death and the folly of not seizing the moment made my decision for me. I had to tell her, the need to share the knowledge of my plight with someone was overwhelming. I took a deep breath. ‘Do you believe in premonitions?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. No premonitions, no God, no ghosts. All stuff and nonsense.’

  This wasn’t going to be easy. I tried another tack. ‘What about the blokes who know they’re for the chop? We’ve both seen that often enough.’

  A tone of anger entered her voice. ‘Self-fulfilling rubbish. They give up, stop trying, that’s why they get killed – nothing’s pre-ordained. If you’re trying to tell me you think you’re for the chop, you can forget it. You and your crew are going to finish your thirty ops or I’ll kill you myself!’

  I raised my hands in surrender. I had tried to explain, but I’d funked it. Then, as the conversation continued I gradually awoke to the reality that Betty and I ending up in a clinch had been engineered by her alone.

  ***

  The next night saw us out mine-laying – “gardening” as it was known – in the waters of the Kattegat. Down at low altitude we were buffeted by gales and driving sleet – a four hour trip with the ever-present risk that the slightest navigation error might take us right over a flak battery on the coast of occupied Denmark, our black mood made worse by the knowledge that “gardening” missions only c
ounted as half an op towards the thirty that made up a tour.

  It was our last trip for a week. The moon period intervened to give 362 Squadron’s crews a welcome respite. The moon parties were still held but sadly, the pianist and the members of the “Sod’s Opera” had all been killed, so we contented ourselves with drinking too much and tuneless bellowing of rude songs. Someone fetched a rugby ball and we cleared away the mess furniture and divided ourselves into two teams. Early in the fray I tried to tackle a Canadian wireless operator twice my size and as he mowed me down my ankle turned over. Even with the anaesthetising effect of the alcohol in my system, the pain was sickening. I hobbled to the sidelines and sat down to inspect the damage. Already, my ankle had swollen to what seemed like twice its normal size and any attempt to put weight on it send vivid jags of pain up my leg.

  Hung-over and sheepish, I reported to the Medical Officer the next day. He prodded and poked at my ankle, pronounced it sprained rather than broken, told me not to fly for a week, strapped me up with adhesive bandage halfway to my knee and sent me to collect a walking stick from the dispensary. I had no intention of opening myself up to an inevitable tide of banter and ridicule by hobbling around, propped up on a walking stick, but after a few agonising steps down the corridor leading away from the MO’s consulting room, I realised that I desperately needed the bloody thing.

  I skulked behind a newspaper in a corner of the mess ante room for the rest of the morning, my invalid’s stick hidden next to my armchair. I was on the point of dozing off when a familiar voice shook me out of my reverie.

  ‘What are you doing hiding in here?’ It was Betty. She looked down to where I was trying to hide my bandaged leg under the table in front of me. She spotted the carpet slipper on my swollen foot and stifled a giggle. ‘Did you drop your beer glass on it?’ she asked.