The Seventh Link

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Did you get hit?’

  ‘They clipped us a few times, but we got away with it. The Lancaster’s an amazing plane, you know. Some of them made it home on two engines and with more holes than a kitchen colander. Others weren’t so lucky.’

  It was a casual comment but the Colonel had been used to those during his time in the army. Phrases like rather tricky, a spot of bother, a bit of a problem, were used. In his personal experience, no soldier had ever overdramatized a situation, or ever expressed the sheer terror that he may well have felt. No doubt airmen were much the same. He had heard about the rare cases of LMF among the bomber crews – lack of moral fibre as it had been termed. Cowardice, by a less forgiving name. The men in question had been swiftly removed before they demoralized others and been demoted to menial tasks and lifelong disgrace. Fortunately, such traumas were better understood today and dealt with more mercifully.

  The ex-skipper went on, with bitter irony. ‘At the end of the briefing, the CO used to stand up to give us his pep talk. Maximum effort is expected, gentlemen! I’m counting on all crews to do their utmost! Hit the Hun hard tonight! Knock Berlin flat! All very well for him; he didn’t have to go there. He was tucked up safe and warm in his bed while we were out busy bombing munition factories, steelworks, industrial areas, railway yards … Tearing the black heart out of Germany was how Bomber Harris put it. We thought a lot of Harris, you know. He knew what war was about and we respected him. Killing the enemy or dying yourself.’

  That just about summed up the situation, the Colonel thought. Kill or be killed.

  He said, ‘Well, you did an extraordinary job.’

  ‘We did our best, that’s all.’

  ‘As pilot, you would have had the hardest job. The greatest responsibility.’

  He shook his head. ‘I depended on them, just as much as they depended on me. We understudied for each other. If one of us was put out of action, someone else had to be able to take over, at least well enough to get us home. I trained Bob, our flight engineer to fly the Lanc straight and level and to put her down on the ground in an emergency. We were all in it together.’

  ‘Life must have seemed rather boring afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, no. I was just very glad to be alive. Excuse me, Colonel. I ought to join them.’

  He watched the skipper walk over to his former crew to stand at the very spot where they had waited many times to learn their fate: an ice cream op or a bastard. As it happened, they had formed a symbolic circle: the seven links in that unbreakable chain. Grim-faced. Remembering.

  Remembering was what such reunions were all about, the Colonel thought. Remembering not only old comrades but also one’s youth. Recapturing, for a while, what it had been like to be young and fit, fighting for something worth fighting for. Unlike other conflicts, the Second World War had been a clear case of Good versus Evil. A simple, straightforward choice. For many men the experience must have been the most intense and thrilling part of their lives. Something to be quietly proud of: a satisfaction of duty done in the face of extreme danger. Nobody and nothing could ever take that away from the Bomber Command crews. The fighter pilots may have had the glamour and the glitz and the glory, but the steadfast, unassuming bomber boys had done more than their share for victory. They had nothing to apologize for. Nothing to doubt. Nothing to regret, except for the sad loss of those of their number who had missed out on life.

  There was such a thing, he knew, as survivors’ guilt. Some men found it hard to come to terms with living when so many comrades had died. Why had they been the lucky one? What had they done to merit it? There was no easy answer.

  After the briefing room, the group toured what was left of other old buildings – the flight office, parachute store, photographic block, workshops … all in a similar state of near-ruin.

  ‘I can’t recognize anything any more,’ Roger Wilks kept saying. ‘Everything’s changed.’ He looked upset.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to try to go back, the Colonel thought. As had been so accurately observed, the past was a foreign country where things were done differently. It could be remembered, but it could never be brought back, or relived, or changed.

  They climbed back into the coach to drive round to the control tower which, at least, was recognizable and no such disappointment. Up in the control room, the Australian stood by the Colonel at one of the big windows overlooking the runway.

  ‘Weird to see it so quiet now,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that in our day. On ops nights we’d be queued up all round the peri track, making a hell of a racket. When it was our turn to take off they’d give us the green light and we’d roar down that runway over there, loaded with bombs and fuel and wondering if we were going to get airborne or finish up in a fireball, like we’d seen happen to some poor blokes. There were always some WAAFs and penguins from admin waving to us from the sidelines and they’d turn out in all weathers. I used to think it was a pretty nice thing to do. Them all waving away at us as we went by and the worse the target, the harder they waved. Sometimes they’d smile, too. Mind you, they’d got something to smile about … they weren’t going with us. I remember it all like yesterday, clear as anything. You don’t forget your war, do you? What you made of it, and what it made of you. I’ve never forgotten, see, because I’ve plenty to remember. And none of it too good.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve never been back until now?’

  ‘You could say that. Bad memories, and no money.’

  ‘But you were very lucky with your crew.’

  ‘Without them, I wouldn’t be standing here today. And that’s a fact. We were still kids, you know. Ben was eighteen, I was nineteen, Roger and Jack were twenty, Bill and Jim were both twenty-one and Bob was an old, old man of twenty-three.’

  Bob, the Colonel remembered, was the only one who had got everything right from the first. A serious-looking man, as befitted his senior years. The flight engineer had to be reliable. He sat next to the one and only pilot and understood the engines. He could fly the Lancaster straight and level and, at a pinch, he could land her.

  ‘You were all very young.’

  ‘We weren’t foolish, though. Do you know how RAF crews got together in those days?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘They put you all in a hangar – pilots, flight engineers, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless ops – so you were milling around like a lot of sheep at market. Then this officer gets up on a chair and tells us to ‘sort yourselves out, chaps’. And he gets down and leaves us to get on with it. You just went for whichever blokes looked like a good bet and hoped you didn’t pick any duds.’

  The Colonel smiled. ‘That sounds as good a way as any.’

  ‘Yeah … Birds of a feather, you could say. And our little lot flocked nicely together.’

  Bill Steed wandered over. ‘Shooting a line, as usual, Don?’

  ‘No, skip. Matter of fact, I was just telling the Colonel how we crewed up. You and me first, wasn’t it? Like picking partners for a waltz. Then we ran into Jack and Jim who’d already got together. And, after that, Roger came up. That was when we were still on Wellingtons, though. Later on, Bob and Ben joined us when we converted to the heavies. So, finally, we had ourselves a Lancaster crew. We got it all worked out just the way we wanted. Isn’t that right?’

  The skipper nodded. ‘Yes, Don. That’s right.’

  ‘You and Jim were officers, the rest of us sergeants, but we were all equal, weren’t we?’

  ‘Indeed, we were.’

  ‘No saluting, was there? First names from the start. And we all went off to the pubs together. Remember the time that new barmaid wouldn’t serve us sergeants in the lounge bar? Officers only, she said. You can’t drink in here. So, you and Jim put down your beers and walked out with us.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘The landlord came and apologized when you’d had a word in his ear. Free drinks all round after that.’

  They had stood by each other,
off duty as well as on. The Australian had talked about it before, the Colonel remembered. They’d gone out together and drunk together and played crazy games together in the pub, like the glass boot game. And they would willingly have died together, if luck had not been on their side.

  The rear gunner, Ben Dickson, was standing alone at the next window. The youngest and the smallest. Eighteen was no age to have been doing that grim job. The rear cockpit was generally considered, so the Colonel had heard, to have been the worst place in the Lancaster. Lonely and cramped and cold, and the rear turret would have been an easy target for enemy fighters. The chances of crawling out of the cockpit and back into the fuselage to reach an escape hatch can’t have been too good.

  He walked over to have a word, but was ready to retreat at once if the man preferred to be left alone with his thoughts. The rear gunner turned, though, and nodded to him. He pointed.

  ‘The main runway’s just over there, where you can see the break in the crops.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve walked down it. A remarkable sight.’

  Ben Dickson said drily, ‘I know it backwards. Facing the other way, see. I was the first of the crew to be airborne as the tail went up, and when we came back I was the last to land – unless the skipper did a greaser.’

  ‘A greaser?’

  ‘All three wheels touching down at once, including the one under the rear cockpit. It didn’t happen too often.’

  The Colonel said, ‘Not a very comfortable place to be in any case.’

  ‘That’s an understatement. The cold was bad enough to start with and then they went and took out the centre Perspex panel so we could see without all the misting and icing-up, and it got even worse. We had heated flying suits but they were always conking out. I can tell you it wasn’t much fun. Hours and hours of freezing cold on the long ops and I used to get terrible cramp, too.’ The rear gunner shrugged. ‘Of course, us crews were just what you in the army used to call cannon fodder. The ones in charge didn’t care much about us because if we got killed, there were plenty of others to take our place.’

  That might have been true in the First World War trenches, the Colonel agreed, but he didn’t believe it had been so in the Second. It had been expected that men would have to die but they had not, so far as he was aware, ever been considered expendable.

  He noticed that there had been the same bitterness in the gunner’s tone as there had been in Roger Wilks’s at being a dogsbody and in their skipper’s over the station CO’s blustering briefing pep talks. Perhaps they also all resented the shabby way the bomber crews had been treated, post war, in terms of official recognition. Nobody could blame them for that. They must have felt bitter for themselves and for the thousands who had died.

  He said, ‘It’s good to see that you are being properly appreciated now.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve been changing their tune lately. But it’s too late for most of us, isn’t it?’

  SIX

  The coach brought them back round the perimeter track to the gate that led to The Grange. As they climbed out again a bagpiper in full Highland dress, standing at the foot of the steps, began to play. He led the veterans in a slow procession to the barn where the lunch was being held and their route was lined with people from the village clapping them. The Colonel, who had detached himself from the group, joined in the applause. He saw that a number of the veterans had tears in their eyes.

  The barn had been decorated with RAF and Union Jack flags and trestle tables had been covered with white cloths, name cards at each place. Somewhat to his embarrassment, the Colonel discovered that he had been put at the top table between a retired Air Vice-Marshal and a parish councillor. The Air Vice-Marshal had served post war at Buckby and had fond memories of the station.

  ‘Cold as hell in the winter, uncomfortable, inconvenient, ankle-deep mud … but I was very sad when it was finally closed down. It played a big part in the war, as I expect you already know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m a complete stranger to Buckby. I’m here under entirely false pretences.’

  ‘Well, so am I, come to that. I didn’t get here till the sixties. We had it easy compared with what these wartime chaps had to go through. It’s good to see them getting some proper recognition at last. They deserve every bit of it. Brave men. They did what they were asked to do. Got on with a ghastly job without any fuss. Hats off to them, I say.’

  The parish councillor on the Colonel’s other side was about the same age as the Air Vice-Marshal but had no Service memories of his own. He had lived in Buckby for most of his life and remembered it vividly as a child in wartime.

  ‘Our cottage was on the other side of the aerodrome and my brother and I used to watch the bombers whenever we could. And if we saw a whole lot of them going out on to the perimeter track we knew it was going to be a big raid. We’d count them out and we’d count them back. When they took off their engines roared like lions but when they came back, free of the heavy load, they sounded quite different – singing, not roaring. If there was a moon shining we’d leave the bedroom curtains open and when we saw a shadow move across the wall we knew it was another Lancaster coming in to land, safe home again.’

  The councillor was a member of Geoffrey Cheetham’s group of enthusiasts who had put in many hours of work on the control tower.

  ‘We’re glad to do it. Otherwise there’d soon be almost nothing left of RAF Buckby, which would be a great pity. People are interested, you know. Kids today want to know what grandad did in the war. More and more of the old war birds are being restored and flown at air shows in front of big crowds. And it’s not just about the fighters, people want to see the bombers too. Thank God, we’ve still got the control tower here to show them and now we’ll have our memorial window and remembrance book in the church as well. It’s the least we can do.’

  The Colonel looked down the two long tables. He could see Bill Steed’s crew sitting together at the end of one of them. The Australian gunner was draining his glass of beer and held it out for a refill. By the look of him, it was far from the first time.

  At the end of the lunch, Geoffrey stood up to make a short speech of welcome. He finished with thanks.

  ‘To all you who served at RAF Buckby during the Second World War, we would like to express our gratitude, and to remember those of your comrades who sacrificed their lives in the cause of the freedom that we enjoy today.’

  There was prolonged applause. Some of the village boys had sneaked into the barn and were going round the tables, collecting autographs.

  Not from footballers, for once, the Colonel thought. Nor from tennis players, or athletes, or cricketers, or actors, or TV celebrities. From old men with unknown names and unknown faces but whose courageous deeds were finally being properly understood and appreciated. The Australian, Don Wilson, was signing his autograph with a grand flourish, the rest of his crew rather more modestly but he could see that they were all gratified by the admiration and the attention.

  The lunch over, the veterans were driven off in the coach and the locals dispersed to their homes. Bill Steed and his crew squashed themselves into the dinghy and took it out on The Grange lake. The Colonel and Geoffrey Cheetham watched them from the bank.

  ‘They may have been able to fly a bomber,’ Geoffrey said. ‘But they haven’t a clue how to row a boat.’

  The Australian had grabbed the oars and jammed them in the rowlocks. He was sitting facing the bows and when he realized his mistake he stood up to turn round the other way and the dinghy rocked and rolled, shipping water. Eventually, the navigator, Jim Harper, wrested the oars away from him and the gunner was dumped, protesting loudly, in the stern.

  Geoffrey frowned, ‘I hope they can all swim.’

  ‘Is it deep?’

  ‘About ten or twelve feet in the middle. Deep enough to drown. Still, the boat’s a pretty safe old thing. Very hard to capsize.’

  They watched the dinghy’s progress across the lake. The navigator was getting the hang of ro
wing and seemed to know where he was going – as, indeed, he should have done. The rest of them had redistributed their weight to balance the boat while the Aussie, fortunately, stayed slumped in the stern.

  ‘We’d better make sure they get back all right, Hugh.’

  They sat down on a bench and went on watching while the seven elderly men went round and round the small lake, like children having innocent fun. The Colonel thought it was a rather poignant sight.

  At last they came back to the wooden jetty and the mooring post.

  More rocking and rolling as they clambered out while Geoffrey and the Colonel held the boat steady. Don Wilson had fallen asleep in the stern and had to be woken and levered with care on to the jetty. The pilot and the bomb aimer supported him between them, one on each side.

  Bill Steed said, ‘We’ll take him upstairs to get some shut-eye before the dinner tonight.’

  ‘Need some help?’

  ‘No thank you, Colonel. We’re used to it. Don could never hold his drink.’

  They went off across the lawn, their mid-upper gunner dragged along between them. As they neared the house, Miss Warner appeared and stood open-mouthed as they passed her.

  Geoffrey groaned, ‘Oh God, she’s coming our way.’

  ‘We could always take the boat out again.’

  ‘Good idea, Hugh. Hop in quick.’

  They pushed off, Geoffrey seizing the oars, and rowed fast towards the centre of the lake. By the time Miss Warner had reached the bank, they were safely out of earshot.

  SEVEN

  The reunion dinner was to be held that evening in a banqueting room at a hotel in Lincoln. Don Wilson had sobered up enough for his comrades to take him along with them in one of their two cars while the Colonel drove Geoffrey and Heather Cheetham in his Riley.

  The three towers of the cathedral stood out clearly on the hilltop as they approached the city. A very useful landmark for any aircraft trying to find its way home at dawn in bad weather, the Colonel thought. And God only knew how they had managed it at night. Hallo Darky, he knew, had been the wartime emergency call sign of a bomber in trouble.