Ghosts of the Empire

by Justin Sheedy

  The noise of the Anson fully swamped them as they drew up to its wing, prop-wash buffeting, only hand signals now possible. A flight-kitted Sergeant appearing in the open hatchway of the craft’s rear fuselage, Bolton heaved Mick’s duffle bag up to the man, then directed the LACs to pass up the trunk, the Sergeant then disappearing inside the aircraft. Mick took a last look back, and out across the field: nothing. He faced Bolton and the LACs: They were smiling at him, saluted as one, he returned it. In the sea of noise, Bolton mouthed it: Good luck. Mick nodded, turned back to the hatchway, climbed up into it, Bolton leaning in, pulling the hatch shut from outside.

  Inside, Mick looked forward towards the cockpit: Evidently the Sergeant was the pilot, Mick the lone passenger. Making his way forward, as the pilot noticed him Mick motioned to the co-pilot’s seat, the pilot shrugged. Mick got seated, strapped himself in, the pilot indicating to a leather flying helmet for Mick. Removing his cap, he pulled the helmet on, plugged in its radio cord, in its headphones now the sound of the pilot radioing the 1BAGS control tower for take-off clearance. Instantly received, the pilot hand-signalled, ground crew pulling the wheel chocks away, and he edged the twin throttles forward. After a few moments taxiing they were pointed north along the field, he drove the throttles full forward and they were accelerating down it. Faster. Faster, the tail lifting, nose of the aircraft lowering, the heavy scrub of the airfield perimeter ahead now visible through the windshield – and getting closer. At full throttle, to Mick it seemed the aircraft would shake itself apart any second, and still the main wheels hadn’t come unstuck. He eyed the pilot sideways as the perimeter tree-line drew closer, then peered ahead again – Christ, they’d hit the trees – just as the wheels left the ground, and everything became smooth.

  ‘Undercarriage,’ came an alarmingly neutral voice in Mick’s headphones. He obeyed the order very smartly indeed and pulled the lever labelled UNDERCARRIAGE full up, his eyes on the instrument panel’s undercarriage indicator lights: 3 green – all down, 1 red – 1 up, 3 red – all up just as the tree-tops flashed under.

  Mick swore if the wheels hadn’t retracted in that instant they’d have ripped off branches. The beach and ocean out to the right, the pilot still kept it flat and low – a student of Tony Curran, clearly. Jesus, where the HELL was Curran? As the pilot wrenched them into a broad curving climb inland, Mick was pressed very firmly down in his seat. Reefing out of the turn, levelling, straightening to the south, ahead settled blue ocean, beaches, green coastal plains and rolling hills to the southern horizon, the sun beaming hot into the cockpit.

  For the next two hours, the pilot said not another word.

  *

  ‘Undercarriage…’

  On approach to Mascot, Mick heard the word very distinctly in his headphones. Peering sideways at the pilot, he saw the bloke’s attention remained fixed forward, and knew at once it was an instruction. He also knew that, on the Avro Anson, the undercarriage came down by being pumped down – He’d seen it done on his transit flights to Essendon and Evans Head. Looking between his and the pilot’s seats, there it was, a lever like an automobile jack. He placed a tentative hand on it, checking sideways again – no adverse reaction from the pilot – and began to pump.

  He pumped it.

  And he pumped it…

  After a good few minutes – as fit as he might be, his right arm fully aching – the lever motion ground to a hard stop. Deeply grateful it had, Mick rubbed his arm, settled back in his seat, adjusted his straps. Glancing at the pilot, he saw on the young man’s face, focused on his instrument panel, an expression of the gravest concern.

  Mick flicked his intercom switch. ‘What?’ he put, eyes to the panel. Immediately he saw it: the undercarriage indicator lights, still red when they should be green. Feeling an abject fool for not having checked them directly after operating the lever – yes, he’d been distracted by having to pump the damn thing for so long – but this was the kind of mistake he himself would have scrubbed a student for on the spot. He’d never had a student make this classic boob, and here was, Mick O’Regan – Instructor, having just made it himself.

  The pilot tapped the lights. Red they remained. Which, Mick knew full-well, meant the undercarriage may not have locked down properly, ‘may not’ being the operative words: Seeming locked down, they could buckle on landing. Which meant a ‘belly landing’…

  Mick used the intercom again. ‘I’ve never had them stuck red before. You?’

  ‘No,’ returned the pilot. ‘But I saw some poor buggers who did one time… It’s not as bad as it could be: No passengers, no cargo, so we’re light.’ The Sergeant paused a moment, then spoke again. ‘The trunk.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘Where?!’

  ‘Out the fucking door. Now. Push it out.’

  As an officer, Mick outranked the Sergeant, though only on the ground: As pilot the Sergeant was ‘captain’ of the aeroplane and held command. Mick reached to unplug his radio cord when the Sergeant’s gloved hand stayed him. ‘I’ll get us out over the ocean. Wait till we are, open the hatch and shove. And whatever you do,’ he added, ‘ don’t lean into the open hatchway.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to,’ Mick managed.

  ‘’Cause if y’ do the pressure differential between outside and inside will SUCK YOU OUT.’

  Taking a last look forward, Mick saw they were crossing Sydney Harbour, down it to the right, the Bridge. He nodded to the pilot, unplugged and unclipped, and moved back down the aircraft. Immediately he staggered, nearly falling to the right between empty passenger seats as the pilot banked them through a turn to port, yet the floor surely re-levelled, Mick had kept his footing, and made it to the back end of the fuselage, where the pilot had secured the trunk. Freeing it, Mick dragged it level with the hatch, held onto a spar, and peered out a window. Below he saw beaches, lines of breaking surf in the late-morning light, now passing behind.

  The time was now.

  Mick gripped the handle on the fuselage hatch, and turned it.

  He held tight onto the handle, the starboard engine rising to a hellish blast with every inch that he prised the hatch open. His whole body chilled with fear at the sight now before him: mere inches away from him, a lethal infinity of open space, a few thousand feet straight down to the surface of the ocean, the rush of the slipstream past the open hatchway like a thousand unending screams. Drawing carefully back from it, he sat on the floor of the Anson on the inward side of the trunk, braced his feet up against it so as to push it out, and shoved. It slid well enough across the metal floor of the Anson, until it hit the metal lip of the hatchway. Over which it would not budge. Nothing else for it: It would have to be lifted out. Still on his bottom, Mick edged back to the open hatchway, grabbed a spar very firmly in his left hand, lifted himself to a crouch, clasped a handle of the trunk in his right hand, and heaved.

  Mere inches into the hatchway the trunk was ripped from his grasp, its 2-man weight torn away like a leaf in a gust. He didn’t see it tumble and wasn’t about to stick his head out for a look; as he’d heaved the trunk the slipstream had tried to pull his right arm clean off. Still, now braced safely back from the hatchway, his vision did linger on the ocean surface for a moment; it was terrifyingly beautiful: a vast rippled plain as if frozen still, numberless white-caps dotting – clearly a bitch of a wind at sea-level. Carefully now, Mick closed the hatch, turned the handle, and moved forward towards the cockpit once again.

  Reaching it, he got seated, clipped up, donned his leather helmet and mask, plugged in.

  ‘Alright?’ said the pilot.

  ‘Alright,’ said Mick.

  The pilot peered to starboard, and drew the throttles back. The Anson’s engine tone dropped as he eased the control column forward, Mick losing his stomach as the aircraft sank into a shallow dive to starboard. Levelling out, straightening southwards, the pilot now flicked a switch and spoke into his mask.

  ‘Mascot T
ower, Anson Alpha Kilo Zebra, over.’

  After a few seconds a voice came back through the headphones.

  ‘Go ahead, Zebra, over.’

  ‘Mascot Tower, Zebra. On finals five miles east of you. Request emergency landing clearance. Landing gear not, repeat, not locked down, over.’

  ‘We see you, Zebra. Clearance granted. Will have emergency vehicles on standby. Surface wind nor-nor-west, gusting heavy. Make your approach from the south, over.’

  ‘Roger wilco, Mascot. Zebra, out.’

  The pilot now banked them into a long, shallow-diving curve again to starboard, bringing their south heading round through sou-west to west, nor-west to north and straightening. They’d be landing more or less into the wind, Mick assured himself. More or less… They were still over water, land ahead and on each side though, this had to be Botany Bay…

  The pilot now eased the twin throttles further back in the descent, glancing sideways to ensure Mick was buckled up, and fixed his eyes firmly forward. ‘ Flaps,’ he said.

  Mick found the lever in an instant, set it to DOWN, the aircraft lifting momentarily, the pilot pressing the control column forward, seat straps squeezing Mick’s chest as they slowed. Coming up on the shore now, he could make out the grassy flatness of Mascot ahead. Yep, dead ahead: a beach, scrub, the airfield, about a mile away and closing fast.

  The pilot drew the throttles back to Idle, set propeller pitch port and starboard to Fine, Mick’s chest once again feeling the squeeze. The engines howled, died, and howled again, the pilot’s limbs in non-stop movement as he wrestled the Anson down through a cross-wind – They were coming in ‘yawed’: angled left into the nor-nor-wester, the beach, the scrub now whipping under.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ came the pilot’s voice.

  Mick braced. One arm forward on a spar, one firmly behind his seat. The airfield loomed large in the windshield, to the far right parked aircraft, hangars.

  The Anson shuddered as it skimmed the perimeter tree-line, a nasty little gust yawing it to the right as airfield grass planed beneath, yet the pilot gunned one engine, got them straight and true. Just a few feet to touch-down now, nose up slightly, Mick glimpsed the face beside him: It was completely calm.

  The main wheels touched grass, then gently did the tail.

  It was the sweetest touchdown Mick had ever felt.

  Yet his admiration was brief. For that old reassuring tyre rumble, every rattle, every bump was now just an alarm: The landing gear could buckle any moment, then a spark, fire, explosion…

  The pilot curved them as quickly, as tightly as he dared off to the left – out of the way of anything that might be landing behind them. He straightened, touched the brake pedals, slowed them, firmer on the brakes now, slower still, then fairly stood on the brakes till they’d stopped. Switches quickly OFF, one word to Mick.

  ‘Go.’

  Mick ripped off the flying helmet without unplugging, unbuckled, scrambled back through the fuselage, clutched his duffle bag and made for the hatchway. The pilot, already there, sprung it open, stepped off the lip and walked evenly away. And without the slightest look back at the whole thing noticed Mick as he laboured along behind him. Duffle bag shouldered, he simply kept on the heels in front until they made it inside a hangar of which Mick sensed little except being out of the filthy wind. He dropped the duffle bag, paused for breath, the pilot peering back outside through vast sliding doors narrowly ajar.

  Mick angled to the pilot. ‘Hey,’ he gasped, ‘…thanks. …That was a tough landing…’

  The pilot’s eyes met Mick’s properly for the first time since take-off. They held Mick with a look that was unmistakable.

  A look of You must be kidding.

  *

  Patrick and Bernadette O’Regan hadn’t been able to conceive after their first. Not for nine years. After which Saint Jude answered Bernie’s prayers and they couldn’t stop. Of husband and wife, Bernie had been the religious one – always joking she had faith for two – and had named each blessing as it arrived: Joseph – now Pat’s second-eldest at 13, then Geraldine, Mary, Sean, Bridie and finally Peter with whom, despite her faith, Bernie had three years ago died in childbirth.

  ‘Why can’t we see Michael?!’ demanded Bridie.

  Her father could naught but accept that, at the tender age of 5, Bridie had Irish fire for the rest of them put together. She didn’t have tantrums, exactly: She had rages. But only against injustice as she saw it: ‘If he’s DONE nuffing wrong and he’s NOT in jail then WHY can’t we see him?! It’s not FAIR.’

  Pat hugged her, and though it never worked tried to soothe her, her poor little face all red, tears like the falls. Pat knew – Mick knew, he’d said it himself – that of the whole brood, Bridie was the one given to anger. She also laughed the loudest. And loved the most fiercely. Pat knew that his eldest, having had to be a bit of a second ‘father figure’ at times, had done his bloody level best not to have favourites amongst the children. But it was no good: For Mick, it was Bridie.

  ‘It’s for the best, little darlin’,’ Pat hummed to her. ‘It’s to keep him safe, safe on his ship when it sets sail. If they hide Michael now, that’ll keep it all good and secret, and that’ll keep him safe, now won’t it.’

  Her face, her eyes, her voice were shifting now from sorrow to venom: ‘NO. Michael would never hide. He wouldn’t never. Somefing’s wrong… Somefing’s wrong, I know it.’

  How Pat wished her anger would melt back to tears; her tears that helped him hold back his own. His boy had been safe… Now he was heading towards the same meat-grinder for which Pat had once volunteered. And they couldn’t even let him say goodbye. Not a word, not a peep, not a single, solitary last look at his so fine and beloved son.

  Pat wholeheartedly agreed with his five-year-old.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Pat O’Regan wanted to scream.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The departure of Mick’s ship – date, time, place, vessel name – was to be ‘Top Secret’. As with anything out of Sydney Harbour: From news reports Mick had read since the beginning of the war, from week one the German Navy had been attacking and sinking civilian cargo ships steaming to Britain from all corners of the Empire. To Mick the ‘U-boats’ seemed the worst: the dark and deadly scourge of the Allied convoys bringing the cargoes to Britain that, being an island, it relied on for simple survival. From Australia went wool, beef, grain, iron ore, coal…

  Human cargoes too.

  Any way Mick looked at it, that’s what he was. Just like his father before him, he had become an Australian export. Right now, a pretty bloody-well scared export: Back at Evans Head he’d read – with heaven-sent relief that he’d never be part of their number – about the convoy losses getting worse. So it was hardly kicking and screaming that Mick had entered into his week of ‘security quarantine’ at the Bradfield Park Embarkation Depot, a collection of wooden barracks and other buildings attached to Number 2 Initial Training School at Lindfield on Sydney’s mid-North Shore. The ITS, Mick noticed, was a compound – like the one he’d been through in Brisbane – that just about anybody could walk into or out of without too much trouble. The adjacent embarkation depot, however, was an altogether different kettle of fish: Seeing from inside it on his first morning there that his new temporary accommodation was enclosed by a barbed wire fence under 24-hour armed guard, it hit Mick like a smack in the mouth: He really was going to war. And somebody was dead serious about getting him there. And no visitors, mail or phone-calls meant no contact with his father, his brothers and sisters before he went… Yes, all completely necessary but it hurt. It hurt badly. Though, Mick knew, it’d damn near kill his father. And little Bridie, she’d go bananas…

  Christ. So much had changed in the space of a single, lousy day. And now he had little to do but sit and stew on it. Quarantined. Certainly no word from Evans Head… If only he could put through a call to the Pioneer Hotel, he’d probably catch all three of them, Curran, Finney
and Doherty, propping up the bloody bar…

  Meagre distraction, but the depot allowed newspapers: Russian army being clobbered by the Germans – all the way across Russia, by the look of things. Alright, the German commander, Rommel, seemed up against it in North Africa but then, just a week ago, the British Royal Navy ship HMS Ark Royal – a great bloody aircraft carrier – had been torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in the Mediterranean Sea! On reading this Mick realised it: He would gladly draw the new service revolver he’d just been issued with on anyone at Bradfield Park who even thought about sneaking out. It was indeed a strange feeling to hold in his own hands an object with which you could actually kill a fellow human being… Mick had never seen let alone held a pistol before; the gangs of Sydney’s inner-city used razors – of which Mick had seen a few…

  In any case, they seemed a good bunch in the quarantine barracks, about twenty of them, and some nice blokes too, Mick thought, all new pilots and all pretty excited: Like Mick, no one had been outside Australia before. Each night before lights-out they enthused about the likely route to England. San Francisco! Then it was supposed to be a wonderful overland journey by train, plenty of leave across the United States and north up to Canada – finish flying training there, most likely. Then from a place called Halifax you crossed the North Atlantic to Scotland. And Spitfires! Funny, but one of the lads couldn’t stop going on about how the Japanese had been spoiling to join the German side for ages and when – when, not if – they did, then nobody at Bradfield Park’d be going any where. A prospect which, just quietly, suited Mick fine.