Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  She had avoided looking at any more faces. The trick was not to think about it at all. To join in the game of make-believe that everybody on the station played – that brave young men were not dying almost nightly and that all of them would be there for breakfast when the new day dawned.

  The Group Captain, better known as Sunshine because of the complete lack of any such thing in his nature, had started off the performance up on the stage in his customarily chilling manner.

  ‘Primary industrial target . . . a blow at the very vitals of the enemy . . . steel works and armaments . . . striking at the morale of both the enemy civilian populations and the industrial workers . . . all the might of aerial bombardment . . . bringing them to their knees . . . maximum effort expected from all crews . . .’

  When he had finished his harangue, the squadron COs had had their little say, followed by Navigation, Bombing, Signals, Intelligence and Met. Any questions had been asked and answered. Then the crews had synchronized their watches and collected their rice paper flimsies, to be eaten if there was any danger of the information they contained falling into enemy hands. To add to the illusion of some Boys’ Own adventure, they were issued with escape kits containing foreign banknotes, a silk scarf that was also a map of northern Europe and a brass RAF button that was a compass in disguise. They had handed in their personal papers and snapshots, and anything that might give help to enemy intelligence if they were to fall into their hands, dead or alive, and had been doled out their cans of orange juice, barley sugar, Wrigleys chewing gum and two keep-awake pills. Then they had gone off to have their flying supper – the Last Supper some of the cynics among them called it.

  Later, when they had been ferried out to dispersal, she had gone to stand by the beginning of the runway together with a little group of ground crew, WAAFS and other personnel, to see them off. It was an unfailing ritual, whatever the weather – the waving Godspeed, the thumbs-up, the station’s display of solidarity and encouragement.

  The twenty Wellingtons had taken off at two-minute intervals, beginning their lumbering run at the green signal from the Watch Office. The group had waved to each one as it roared past them, loaded with petrol, incendiaries, explosives and ammunition, to clamber slowly up into the sky, the red and green wing tip lights gradually fading away, together with the howl of the Bristol engines. When the last one had gone and silence had fallen, the waiting had begun – catnapping on a bed and listening all the while, even in her sleep, for the distant drone that heralded the bombers’ home-coming.

  There had been one Early Return: B-Baker had turned back over the North Sea with engine trouble. The rest of them had returned safely from Essen, except for A-Apple and C-Charlie. They had circled noisily above the station while they waited to land, rattling the windows. Then the crews had arrived in the trucks from dispersal for their de-briefing. The sprog crew had made it back all right in their ropey kite; she saw their young pilot looking dazedly euphoric, as though he could scarcely believe it.

  After the de-briefing Anne wrote up her reports for teleprinting through to Group. When she had finished she went outside. Dawn had come up on the new day and there was still no news of Digger and A-Apple, or C-Charlie, the crew with the spare bod. She looked up at an empty sky. The weather seemed set fair, as though it was going to be a nice March day with a good hint of spring. Don’t think about the two missing crews, or whether they would ever see it. They come and they go, one of the older WAAFS had said to her when she had arrived. You have to get used to it. She could see the bombers standing out at dispersal in the distance, and the midget figures of the ground crews moving about. A Wimpey was progressing majestically round the perimeter track towards the hangars, displaying the stout-bellied outline that had given the aircraft its nickname after Popeye’s hamburger-eating friend, J. Wellington Wimpey. Someone was cycling along behind the bomber, weaving from side to side in its wake. Station life was going on as usual.

  She had met Digger at a mess party a few weeks before. The tall Australian, in his royal blue uniform, had walked up to her on his hands, upside down.

  ‘I’m from Down Under. Care for a dance?’

  He had an Aussie accent she could have cut with a knife and he was one of the craziest people she had ever met. And one of the worst dancers. But he had made up for the bad dancing by making her laugh more than she’d laughed for months and months.

  She found out that he had volunteered for the Air Force at the very beginning of war, even though he lived on the other side of the world. Like so many of them. When she had asked him why, he had grinned.

  ‘When people ask me that I always say I had to come and help the Old Country in her hour of need, didn’t I? That makes it sound good. If I told the truth it’d be more like it seemed like it might be a hell’ve a good party and I didn’t want to miss it.’

  He had talked about his home in Mosman, Sydney where his parents had a house near the water.

  ‘It’s a bonza place. You’d love it. Sun, sailing, swimming . . .’

  ‘Sharks?’

  ‘You’ve got to watch for them, but they don’t come in very often.’

  ‘Once would be enough. I don’t know anything much about Australia, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, you know we walk about upside down, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I realize that. And you have koala bears, kangaroos, gum trees and Sydney Harbour Bridge. That’s about all I can think of.’

  He had laughed. ‘Oh, my word! We’ll have to change all that.’

  Soon after he had taken her up for her first flight, smuggling her on board his Wellington for a cross-country. She had sat beside him in the cockpit and been thrilled by the sudden charge down the runway for take-off, by the exhilarating feeling of speed as the ground rushed past in a blur, and then the sudden, extraordinary lightness as the heavy bomber lifted clear of the concrete and began its climb up into the sky. Digger had grinned as she had clutched at the sides of her seat and given a reassuring thumbs-up sign. The earth had become a hazy, patchwork place far, far below and the clouds, so near, like outsize puffs of cottonwool. The noise of the engines had been deafening, and the aircraft, for all its size, seemed cramped and uncomfortable. She had tried to imagine what it must be like to fly in it on ops for hours on end.

  She went on staring up into the empty sky and thinking about Digger for quite a while before she went back into the Ops Room.

  News had just come in from Signals of A-Apple. The Wellington had made an emergency landing at an aerodrome on the south coast, on one engine, but all the crew were safe. She breathed a huge sigh of relief. There was no news of C-Charlie and they were posted missing. The sick gunner must have been thanking his lucky stars.

  Later on, Anne biked over to the WAAF site. It was half a mile away from the main buildings and housed a growing contingent of WAAFS from a variety of trades – Code and Cypher, Meteorology, Radio and Instrument Mechanics, Photography, Maps . . . the list had expanded still further. Sometimes she thought back, wryly, to the early days when they had been allowed to do so little.

  Like RAF Colston, Denton had been a pre-war base that had grown rapidly as the war progressed. The main station buildings were brick-built and comfortable, the outlying ones, including the Waafery, prefabricated huts put up in haste. She had survived another winter in a bedroom heated by a temperamental coke stove. The WAAF officers had breakfast on their site but messed with the RAF for other meals, and not without resentment from some of the men. When she had first arrived and walked into the ante-room she had overheard one grumble to another: ‘This is getting to be a hell of a place . . . all these bloody women in the Mess.’

  She had quickly got used to eating with the men, but was still sometimes amazed at being saluted by airmen as well as by airwomen, and at being addressed as ma’am. It was still strange to be giving orders and reprimands, instead of always receiving them.

  She had learned her job in Ops Intelligence more or less as she went along. Th
ere were two other WAAF officers besides herself and two WAAF sergeants. They worked in three watches, alternating the longest fourteen-hour stretch from early evening until nine the next morning, so that she now had twenty-eight hours off to recover until she was due back on duty. The next watch had taken over and in Operations Intelligence their day would begin with Group phoning through with the gen on the target for the coming night, if ops were on. They would be given the name of the target, the number of aircraft needed, the bomb load, routes, diversionary attacks, call signs and flashing beacon letters of the day, and any other vital information. Instructions would be typed up ready for the briefing later in the day and the room prepared and locked. And so it would begin all over again . . . the loaded Wellingtons taking off with their crews, the waving Godspeed and safe return, the waiting for them to come back. Sometimes an op was scrubbed, even at the last moment, and usually because of the weather, but with it looking so clear it was unlikely today.

  From dropping leaflets, Bomber Command had gone on to dropping bombs on German cities – civilian and industrial targets alike. She knew that in the darkness and over invariably obscured targets, the crews rarely knew where their bombs actually fell – whether on a steel works or armaments factory, or on a children’s home or hospital. If any of them felt squeamish about it, they never said so; any more than they ever talked about feeling afraid. She knew that they were afraid – most of them. She had seen them mooching about the station during the daytime before ops, trying to kill the waiting time. Back in the summer, when she had first arrived, she had watched them playing cricket, or lounging around on the grass, smoking and talking. Sometimes they tried to sleep. At briefings she had seen the nervous twitches, the shaking hand lighting yet another cigarette, and heard them being sick in the lavatories afterwards if the target was a tough one. Once, the MO had taken her aside and asked her to sit with a tail gunner who had collapsed on landing back from his first op. He had been a Lancashire lad, small and thin, like most of those who had to squash themselves into the lonely confines of the rear turret, far from the rest of the crew, without even the comfort of a parachute as a forlorn hope, and with an open panel in front of them onto the bitter cold of the night skies. The gunner had been stiff, not only with cold, but with terror. They had carried him to a bunk where he lay as rigid as a plank of wood, unable to move or speak. She had sat beside him, holding his hand, and it had been like holding a block of ice. Very slowly and gradually she had felt him relax, muscle by muscle, and return to normal. He had even managed to smile as he had thanked her. A few days later he had been posted missing with the rest of his crew on a raid over Wilhelmshaven.

  Some never betrayed any fear, but nearly all were openly superstitious. Spare bods, certain aircraft, unlucky beds, WAAFS going too near the bomber before an op, drinking their thermos coffee before the target . . . there were all kinds of jinxes. One pilot always touched her right shoulder as he left the briefing room, and she knew of a navigator who had to turn round three times and touch his Wimpey’s tail before he would climb in. Others carried special scarves, lucky cigarette lighters, lucky coins or mascot toys. Some of the fighter pilots at Colston had done that but Johnnie had been right when he had said that the bomber boys were different. There was no room for individual swashbuckling and, except for the ones like Digger, they were mostly quieter, though not necessarily any more sober. The crews drank together, never mind their different ranks, and went out on the town together. Their war was different. When they went to fight it was a long drawn-out ordeal of hours, not a matter of minutes. It asked, she came to understand, for different qualities and a different kind of courage.

  A new crew arrived to replace the one that had gone missing with C-Charlie. When the pilot came into the Officers’ Mess, she recognized him at once. The last time she had seen him he had been wearing a top hat and tails. The uniform was different now and the spots that had afflicted him then had gone, but it was undoubtedly Latimer. And he blushed when he saw her, just as much as he had blushed on that summer’s day in June at Eton . . . so long ago.

  ‘Good lord,’ he stammered. ‘I knew you were in the WAAF, but I never imagined you’d be here! I say, that’s absolutely marvellous! Simply wonderful!’

  ‘Kit told me you were with bombers but I never expected to run across you either.’

  ‘How is Kit? I haven’t heard anything of him for ages.’

  ‘He’s been sent to North Africa – I’m not sure quite where exactly. When I last heard he was all right.’ This place is nothing but sand, twin. I should have brought my bucket and spade. ‘Did you hear that Villiers was killed in France?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Jolly bad luck. Frightful shame. Parker-Smiley bought it too, you know. He was flying Stirlings. His kite got shot down over France, apparently.’ Latimer gestured helplessly, his soft spaniel’s eyes sad. ‘Rotten show.’

  Little Parker-Smiley who had been afraid of the dark, flying on a night bombing raid. She said with the determined brightness that she had acquired in recent months: ‘Do you know, I’ve never known your Christian name. I’ve only ever heard you called Latimer.’

  ‘Oh.’ He blushed again and smiled. ‘It’s Henry.’

  She smiled back at him, but with a heavy heart. He had thirty trips ahead of him in order to do his tour and she would be waving him off now with the others, and wondering whether he was going to come back.

  He had been on five ops over Germany when he summoned up the courage to ask her to go out to dinner in King’s Lynn. She accepted but against her better judgement. The look in his eyes and the way he followed her with them told her that he was still what Kit would have called smitten, but she hadn’t the heart to refuse.

  He drove an Alvis, a cut above and in considerably better condition than most of the pilots’ cars.

  ‘A twenty-first birthday present from my parents,’ he told her on the way. ‘Awfully decent of them. I manage to scrounge the odd bit of petrol now and then.’

  ‘A lot of the chaps pinch the aviation stuff.’

  ‘I know. I expect I’ll end up doing that.’ He clashed the gears as he changed down. ‘Sorry about that . . . it’s funny, but I could fly before I could drive. Only just learned.’

  ‘I’ve come across several pilots like that. They know how to drive huge bombers all over the skies, but not cars on the ground. Is that your mascot?’

  She nodded at the small toy rabbit dangling above the dashboard, dressed in a green waistcoat and wearing a spotted bow tie.

  ‘Yes. Meet Hannibal. My sister gave him to me. He comes on ops with us.’

  ‘How brave of him!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it – considering the pilot. I scraped through training. Always thought I’d be washed out. Hannibal likes a front seat. I hang him up in the cockpit so that he can see what’s going on.’

  She had a pretty good idea now of what sort of thing the rabbit would have seen ‘going on’ – not so much from things she had been told at the official de-briefings as from listening to the crews talking at other times. Hannibal’s little black button eyes would have widened in fright to see the flak coming up at him – shells exploding like fireworks in starry bursts of yellow and white and orange-red. He would have been dazzled and scared by searchlights slithering over the cockpit, groping for him like blind men’s fingers. He would have peered down in awe at the fires blazing away in the city below and been horrified to catch sight of a Wimpey silhouetted blackly against those flames as it spiralled downwards. He would have craned to count the parachutes mushrooming forth – one, two, three . . . and then turned his head, appalled, to see another Wimpey trapped in the tips of those long, white fingers and ringed by murderous flak. He would have watched it helplessly and in horror as the bomber blossomed suddenly into a bright fireball that blew apart and fell to earth like red rain. Away from the target area and the starry flak, he would have been shocked again to see a dark shadow appear below the wing, spurting yellow blobs and streams of silve
r tracer. The night sky would have see-sawed about him as the bomber corkscrewed frantically to get away from the enemy fighter. He would have shut his eyes and opened them later in relief to see the glimmer of white wave caps and the blessed sight of the English coasdine . . . the succession of flashing red beacons marking the homeward track . . . and, at last, the flarepath at Denton winking its welcome in the dark.

  ‘What are your crew like?’ she asked.

  ‘The very best,’ he said and there was a great pride in his voice. ‘I’ve never met such marvellous chaps. I was lucky to team up with them. You know, they put you in a big room at OTU and let you all sort of mill about and choose each other. Amazing how well it works, really. My navigator just walked up to me and said: “I’m looking for a skipper who can fly a Wimpey without making me throw up . . .” Then the others somehow joined us. We’re a pretty mixed bag – Welsh, Scots, Lancashire, my family’s from the West Country and our tail gunner’s a real East End cockney, so we’re from all over. As a matter of fact, I was a bit worried to begin with as I’m the only one who’s been to public school. I was afraid they might think I was toffee-nosed, or something . . . the way I spoke. But it hasn’t been like that at all. They rag me a bit, sometimes, but we all get along terribly well.’

  Eton going to war on equal terms with the Council schools, Anne thought. The playing fields joining forces with the asphalt and the city streets. Perhaps some good will come out of it in the end. It wasn’t just a question of different schools and backgrounds, though. They were such different types – from the crazy, tough extroverts like Digger to the shy, sensitive, thoughtful ones like Latimer. She wondered how he felt about dropping bombs on civilians, as well as military targets, and whether it worried him. When she asked him he thought for a moment as he was driving along, and then said seriously: