He laughed. ‘I’m not harbouring petrol coupons. I'll call for you any time you like, if you'll tell me where to come.'
They parted in the entrance hall and he saw her again only at the far end of the room, while he sat with a bunch of the squadron and she in a group of her friends. Shop talk washed over him. It was not that he was watching her, but his mind was occupied with contemplating the next few hours. It was unlike him to act impulsively. He had never before asked a girl out on so short an acquaintance. If it turned out that they bored each other, the whole evening would be agonising for both of them. He took all his responsibilities seriously, including those of host to a guest for whose enjoyment he felt all the more responsible because he felt he had sprung his invitation on her in such a way that she could not have refused without implying rudeness and a rebuff.
'Wake up, Derek.'
'What?'
He found Squadron Leader Hanbury and the others looking at him with strange fixity.
'Sorry, sir... didn't hear what you said.'
'If you have to fly B for Beer, watch out for its inherent 'port-wing-low attitude... and its tendency to crab if you give it more than a touch of rudder… unless you happen to be in a steepish bank: in which case it'll promptly side-slip and, if you don't correct promptly, it'll stall.'
'Oh? Thanks, sir.'
Hanbury looked around with affected amazement, as though profoundly impressed by some rare phenomenon. 'He doesn't care! Did you hear the way he said it? I never suspected we had a totally dauntless birdman in our midst. Here are the rest of us, terrified, losing sleep in case we get lumbered with the dreaded B-Beer; and here's one F.O. Alden who just doesn't care!'
Alden's confusion brought a rare grin to his face. 'It's not that, sir... I was just being dozy, that's all... bit of a fug in here...'
'Balls. All right, if you're so dozy, I'll wake you up. I've got the court at six. Give you a game.'
'I'd like to, sir, but I'm afraid I can't.'
'Defiance, insubordination, now, is it?'
'No, sir ... I've already arranged to go out.'
'Ho! Ho! You were too dozy to pay any attention at all, or you'd have heard us agree to eat early and go and see the Ginger Rogers flick. We assumed you'd give half a dozen chaps a lift.'
His friends would think nothing of packing seven into a car built for four.
'I'm afraid I'm dining out, sir.'
An appealing look from the flight commander at this outrage embraced the whole group. 'We've lost him. Who is the charmer, Derek?'
Alden shook his head. 'Does it have to be a girl, sir, to lure me to eat out?'
'Yes!'
They were a statement and a question to evade. 'I'll see you for a pint before bedtime, sir.'
He was subjected to further aspersions before they all went their ways. It was an evening of easy talk and, for Alden, steadily growing pleasure in Elizabeth's companionship. Fragments flitted through his thoughts as he drove back to camp after seeing her to her front door.
'You must have joined the W.A.A.F. pretty early on.'
'I joined in June, when the W.A.A.F. were resuscitated from the Women's Royal Flying Corps, which was disbanded in nineteen-twenty.'
'But they were only part-time, until the war. Were you doing anything else?'
'I'd spent a year on an archaeological dig in Greece.'
'Professionally?'
'Yes. I read archaeology at Oxford...'
'Really? Where? I was at B.N.C.'
'That's interesting. Lady Margaret Hall... then I did a post-graduate year.'
'Doctor Waring… I presume?'
She grinned, and it was a grin, too, not just a smile. Her wide and inviting lips stretched in a chuckle of sheer enjoyment and dimpled her cheeks. 'Not yet. What did you read?'
'Law.' He told her that he had gone up late, and why. She made sympathetic comments.
'And you're sure your eyes aren't going to let you down again?'
'Absolutely. Unless I have another stupid prang.'
She gave him a worried look. 'You'd better be right.'
She was thinking about the Beaufort and he knew it.
They talked about music and wrangled amiably over Shostakovitch and Jerome Kern; Jascha Heifetz, Rubintein and Benny Goodman; the London Philharmonic and Glen Miller.
They said little about their families. Alden learned only that her father was a consultant surgeon in Bath. On the way to her billet he asked, 'Are you free tomorrow?'
'On watch, I'm afraid.'
'The day after?'
'I'm already going out.'
'The day after that?'
She laughed lightly and briefly. 'Same again, I'm afraid.'
'When can I see you, then?'
'I'll be on stand-down four days from now.'
'And uncommitted?' There was an involuntary tartness in the way he spoke.
She chose to ignore it. 'So far.'
'Will you come out with me?'
'Are you sure you won't be night flying?'
'Not for a couple of weeks yet.'
'All right ... thank you.'
'If I don't have a chance to speak to you before, may I leave a note in the mess letter rack?'
She laughed again, more merrily. 'I'm sure you'll have a chance to speak to me in the mess.'
He let it pass. He was tempted to say that, going on past form, it was unlikely.
Two rows behind them at the cinema, B Flight's officer pilots had not failed to observe their entry. He was prepared for scurrilous accusations when he met them in mess.
He was passing the Guard Room when a lurid glow leaped from somewhere in the nearby countryside and the roar of an explosion reached his ears.
The mess steps were thronged with pilots speculating who had been the unlucky pupil and whether he was solo or had taken an instructor into eternity with him.
At least, thought Alden, they'll have something else to think about than pulling my leg.
The cynicism of his reflection shocked him a few seconds later and he regretted it. The war hadn't been going long, he mused, and already there were changes in him
which exceeded any that had occurred in the previous five years.
Four
The aerial war was not being prosecuted briskly, but when there was an offensive operation against Germany the results were less than encouraging to the ninety-nine per cent of the R.A.F. who were still awaiting their first experience.
Leaflet raids and reconnaissance were scarcely more frequent: three of the former and four of the latter in September; four and three respectively in October.
After the bombing of enemy ships on the second day of the war, when seven out of twenty-nine aircraft were lost, the next was on 29th September, while Tregear's squadron and its East Crondal sister squadron were at Thorney Island.
Alden, corning into the mess at lunch time on the 30th, saw his squadron commander in a huddle with the two flight commanders. All three looked grave and there was a suggestion of furtiveness about them. When the small assembly split up, Squadron Leader Hanbury approached Courtney, who was reading a newspaper in a chair a few yards away from Alden, bent over and addressed him. From the look on Courtney's face it was clear that he had not welcomed whatever it was that Hanbury had said.
Presently there were several murmuring pairs and small groups about the ante-room and eventually Courtney came to talk to Alden.
'The Hampdens were out yesterday, Derek. The gen isn't good. Eleven went out and five got the chop.'
'Poor chaps.' It was as inadequate a commiseration as it would have been for twenty men executed for a crime they did not commit. What the twenty men in the Hampden crews had suffered was the equivalent of a miscarriage of justice. 'Daylight, of course?' Alden asked after a moment's compassionate consideration of the tragedy.
'Of course.'
'Flak or fighters?'
'Both. Which, as you once said, makes nonsense of the theory about mutual protective fire.'
'And
the Hampdens have got twin Vickers K guns in the upper and lower rear turrets, haven't they? Four rear guns?'
'Yes. But only just recently. They used to have one Lewis gun in each.'
'Incredible. Not that even four K guns are much good, what with the constant reloading.'
'As long as Cabinet Ministers and the Air Staff don't have to fly on ops, nobody's going to do much about improving the armament in Bomber or Coastal and nobody's going to veto daylights, either.'
Perhaps this apparent callousness would not make a great deal of difference to the squadron, thought Alden. The Beaufort's engines might save Jerry a lot of trouble and ammunition. The squadron was about to start night flying and there had been three accidents already caused by engine failure; two of them fatal. The other squadron had fared no better.
He had taken Elizabeth out only twice. She was going out also with the handsome squadron leader, the lounge lizard flight lieutenant and a Canadian pilot officer. The second outing had been, for him, even more enjoyable than the first: not only because any awkwardness between them had worn off and the more he saw of her the better he liked her, but also because it pleased him to cut out three rivals; if only for one evening. He had not been able to make another appointment with her, because he was uncertain of the night flying programme. After hearing the fate of the Hampdens, he wished he did have an evening in her company to look forward to. It would have helped to take his mind off gloomily dwelling on the avoidable sacrifice of lives and contemplating the daylight torpedo attacks which awaited his squadron.
His first night flight in a Beaufort, accompanied again by his encouraging Canadian instructor, disoriented him as badly as his early night flights in the Avro and Hart. In the two-year interim between being grounded and resuming flying on the Tutor, the confidence of extreme youth seemed to have deserted him. He had done no night flying in the University Air Squadron or during his two widely spaced short periods of Reserve training.
Being airborne by night was inherently intimidating. Once the flarepath was switched off, one had no point of reference; and no guarantee either that one would ever find the aerodrome again. In peacetime there had been a plethora of lights. Towns, villages, isolated houses, trains and cars had all given him a cheerful reassurance that the normal life of the earthbound was going on as usual, and that even if he lost sight of his base he could still see abundant signs of human activity. In wartime, the blackout robbed him of this palliative for man's natural fear of the dark.
There were many snares when flying on instruments and these were even more potent when on instruments at night. The temptation to trust one's physical sensations and instincts rather than the evidence of one's eyes was immense. Alden was thankful that he had long ago learned never to succumb to that seduction. However out of practice in general he might be, he was no novice and his innate discipline had always been a safeguard. He knew very well that if his instruments showed he was climbing and on an even keel, but his senses told him he was diving and turning, he really was in a climb and his aircraft was laterally level. There were other contradictory sensations also and he recognised them all and mistrusted every one unless his instruments confirmed it.
After two weeks of night flying and no further opportunity to ask Elizabeth to go out with him, the squadron was sent to Scotland to learn to make torpedo attacks at 140 knots from a height of eighty feet. On their last evening in the mess, Alden managed to secure Elizabeth's company for five minutes before dinner. Even if she were not going out or on duty, he had to stay in: there was going to be a boisterous and hard drinking celebration by the survivors of the course, both squadrons together.
The few words for which they had time came easily, but suddenly she dropped her eyes, looked away, and said hesitantly, 'You will let me know how things go, won't you? I mean... just a postcard from Aryshire to say you're enjoying yourself…'
She took him by surprise. 'I'll do better than that, Elizabeth. I'll write you a letter.'
He took the thought with him to the frosty North and wrote to her at the end of his first week. A week later he received her reply. He wrote to her again when he was back at East Crondal and again her response came within a few days.
They exchanged Christmas cards and he wondered whether the squadron leader, the flight lieutenant, or, if he were still around, the pilot officer would try - and succeed in - any hanky panky with her under the mess mistletoe.
But East Crondal had its own W.A.A .F. now and he was seized unawares and from astern by a robust and busty section officer, his peer in rank, on Christmas Day, and heartily bussed under the mistletoe himself. Her horn-rimmed glasses were steamed over and the kiss intended for his mouth landed on his chin. Even so, he received a blast of her gin - and nicotine-laden breath and decided that that was quite enough sexuality for the whole festive season, including New Year's Eve.
The war was still in bottom gear, but Bomber Command Wellingtons had been in action three times off the German coast. On the second mission, five out of twelve were lost. On the third, of twenty-two Wellingtons, twelve were shot down and three so badly damaged that they had to forced-land when they returned to England.
But the East Crondal squadrons were not yet ready to launch torpedoes against the enemy. They had to carry out many more hours of practice. They also practised bombing, a skill that was slightly more easy to acquire.
Alden had a week's leave in February. Elizabeth was also due for leave and she broke her journey from Hampshire to Bath, in London. He met her at The Berkeley, gave her lunch and took her to the theatre: a matinee of a delightfully frivolous revue. He saw her off at Paddington and wondered whether she would offer him at least her cheek for a goodbye kiss, if nothing more intimate. She gave him her hand and his only intimacy was to hold it longer than was necessary for a comradely clasp. She leaned out of the carriage window for a few last words. He wondered whether she had been expecting him to take the initiative and kiss her. It was too late now.
There were several new faces in the mess and strange sergeant and aircraftmen aircrew in the pilots' room, now the crew room. A Beaufort carried a crew of four. A recent Air Ministry Order had decreed that all air gunners were to be made up to sergeant at least. This would take months to put into effect. Alden had secured Fussell as his permanent wireless operator/air gunner and Fussell, in view of his five years' service, had been promoted to corporal. There had been a dearth of specialist observers in peacetime and this continued in the first year of the war. On the Beaufort squadrons, the navigation was being done by the second pilot. Alden did not yet have a regular one or a regular air gunner for the dorsal turret.
When he went into the ante-room on his return from leave, he found Courtney and another pilot in conversation with two newcomers. One of these was as conspicuous as a spotlight among thirty-watt bulbs. He stood some five feet ten inches, his chest looked as though it must measure at least forty-four inches, and the sleeves of his tunic gave the impression that they were barely wide enough to contain his bulky arms. He must weigh a good fourteen stone. He had short curly hair, jet black. His features were blunt. His skin was the colour of ripe chestnuts. He was holding a pint tankard and his hand almost concealed it from view.
Courtney was evidently looking out for Alden's return. He beckoned. He introduced the hefty dark stranger, who, Alden now saw, wore a pilot's wings. There had not been time to train any pilots or observers who had joined since the outbreak of war, so this chap was not one of those. He wore neither the A of the Auxiliary Air Force nor the V.R. of the Volunteer Reserve on his lapels. So he must have joined on a short service commission before the war.
Courtney wore an expression which Alden reluctantly classified as sly: he had never seen any sign of slyness in his old friend before.
'Hello, Derek. Good leave? Good show. This is Lalabalava. He's from Fiji.'
Pilot Officer Lalabalava held out a hand which looked as though it could comfortably squeeze a rugger ball flat. He showed large te
eth in a friendly smile. 'How d'you do. I'm your second pilot.'
My God! Alden thought, I wouldn't like to be adrift in a dinghy with him: if we ran out of rations, he'd start making a meal of the rest of the crew. He said, forcing a smile of sorts, 'How d'you do. I'm glad you're joining the crew.'
'Don't worry,' Lalabalava was still exhibiting a huge smile, 'I won't eat you.' He laughed. 'My grandfather probably would have, though.'
Alden knew he was reddening, as though his new second dicky had read his thoughts. It made him feel a fool.
In the crew room next morning he read, on a crew list, that he had been allocated his second air gunner: Lac Dymond-Forbes. He saw Fussell talking to a short, fair haired, pink-cheeked air gunner with a V.R. badge on the shoulder of each sleeve and the leading aircraftman's badge. He walked across. Fussell and the other airman jumped up. Fussell stood relaxed and at ease, the other at rigid attention. He looked as though he should still be in school.
'Are you Dymond-Forbes?'
'Yes, sir.' It was a beautifully polished drawl.
'You're a straight A.G., I see, not a jeep... a wop.'
'That's right, sir.' Oh yes, very polished and perfectly genuine.
Alden had never had occasion to shake hands with an airman before, but he did so now. His new gunner had a firm grip despite his small hands.
'Are you called Dymond or Forbes?'
'Both sir... I mean, if you think it's going to be too long for the intercom, sir... Forbes, I suppose.'
Fussell, who no longer treated his pilot with awe, grinned. 'We call him Brackets, sir.'
'Brackets, Fussell?'
'Well, look, sir.' Fussell's eyes surveyed DymondForbes's legs. They were distinctly bowed.
'I see what you mean,' said Alden. 'Put on a horse before you could walk, were you?'
Dymond-Forbes looked pleased. 'Yes, sir.'
'Well, Forbes will do for now.' Alden turned to Lalabalava, who had been doing some circuits and bumps and local flying with the two air gunners for the past three days. 'We'd better get airborne.' They had been put down on the programme for a navigation exercise.
Torpedo Attack Page 6