Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘I was in London during the Blitz once, when I was on leave. I walked around all over the place, looking at all the bomb damage . . . all the ruins of wonderful old buildings, and the homes smashed to rubble. Then, when I travelled on the Tube I saw all those poor people sheltering down there – sleeping on the platforms, on the stairs, everywhere . . . huddled together in those awful conditions, driven down there like animals. I think the homeless were actually living there. I had to step over them, there were so many and so close together, and I nearly trod on an old woman by mistake – she was all in black and looked like a pile of rags. When I apologized she smiled up at me – no teeth and her hair in curlers, a hideous old thing really – and she said: “Good old RAF! Give it to ’em back for us. Let ’em ’ave a taste of their own medicine.” And then everyone round her started calling out the same sort of thing to me . . . So, I promised them I would.’

  She could picture the scene well – the shy young RAF pilot standing there, probably blushing like mad, and the bloody but unbowed Londoners, all urging him on.

  ‘Actually,’ Latimer went on with a dry smile. ‘When I started on ops I found I was much too frightened to think about anything at all except pulling the plug and getting away as fast as possible. I don’t think many of us have room for noble thoughts, one way or the other.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. I’d be scared stiff,’ she said, with feeling.

  ‘One thing I’ll never quite get used to,’ he continued, ‘is the contrast between being here in the English countryside during the day and then that same night finding myself in the middle of all that hell and horror over Germany . . . then you come back again and it’s all so normal and peaceful – as though what had happened over there was just some ghastly nightmare. It’s very strange.’

  ‘It must be.’ She remembered the dazed look on the sprog skipper’s face; as though he were waking up from a bad dream.

  Latimer said earnestly, ‘You can’t imagine how much it means to us to see you there when we get back – you’re always smiling, always just the same, always behaving as though everything were perfectly all right . . .’

  They had dinner at a restaurant in King’s Lynn. Taking a peek at the menu prices, she hoped that Latimer did not have to rely exclusively on his RAF pay. Kit had spoken once of his family – an ancient one with large estates somewhere down in Dorset. She tried to recall the brief encounter with his parents at the Fourth, but could only dredge up a vague impression of a tall, Edwardian-looking man and a rather pretty woman in something pale grey, with a large hat to match. There had been a small girl, too, hanging shyly back behind them – presumably the sister who had presented Hannibal and made his smart outfit. She wondered whether Latimer, like most other bomber crews, had already written them a ‘last letter’ and left it ready and obvious in his drawer.

  ‘How are your parents?’ Latimer asked politely, during the course of the meal.

  She shrugged. ‘Fine, as far as I know. I haven’t actually seen them since Christmas.’

  She had gone home on leave then – but reluctantly. Even though time had passed, she found that her resentment towards them, and especially her mother, had not. She had brought up Michal’s name many times, deliberately. Michal was given a posthumous medal, you know . . . Michal had one of the highest scores in his squadron . . . Michal always said that . . . Michal and I . . . On Boxing Day people had come for drinks and her mother had carefully invited the army officer son of near neighbours who had happened to be on leave too – Harrow, Sandhurst, good regiment, the right background, the right everything. She had taken a bitter satisfaction in ignoring him completely. And she had worn Michal’s ring and pinned the Polish eagle brooch to her dress. In uniform, she always wore his ring hidden on a thin chain round her neck and the brooch pinned inside her tunic above the RAF wings she had taken from his best blue and sewn to the lining. Wear it inside your tunic where no-one can see. Next to your heart.

  She looked up to see Latimer’s eyes on her.

  ‘I heard that you were engaged and that your fiancé was killed in action,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘I can’t seem to get over it,’ she said, and tears were threatening yet again, suddenly and without warning. She managed to swallow them down.

  ‘What will you do after the war, Henry?’

  He smiled quietly. ‘That’s a long way ahead. I don’t know really. Go up to Cambridge and read law, I suppose, like I was supposed to do – if they’ll still have me. Then join my uncle’s firm in London, perhaps. It’s going to seem jolly dull, after all this.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose it will.’

  Driving back, in the darkness of the car, he said suddenly:

  ‘The thing is I’ve had this feeling lately . . . well, it’s more than a feeling really, it’s like a certainty – that I’m for the chop. So, I don’t think much about what’s going to happen after the war.’

  She said urgently: ‘You mustn’t think like that. You’ll get through it all right. You’ve got a wonderful crew, and that means everything.’

  ‘I know. But it’s really a matter of luck, isn’t it? I’ve come to that conclusion. So there’s not much you can do about it. And statistically, an awful lot of us are dead men. I’m fairly sure that I’m going to be one of them – sooner or later. At first I used to believe that it would always be the other chap – the one you saw blown up, or falling out of the sky, or crashing in flames, and felt guiltily glad that it wasn’t you . . . But lately I’ve known it would be my turn eventually. It’s a bit frightening not knowing where, or when, or how, but I seem to have accepted it more or less now.’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ve heard other aircrew talk like this, Henry, and it hasn’t happened to them. They’ve all finished their tour.’ Not true. Not true. None of them had.

  When he stopped the car later he said hesitantly: ‘Would you mind terribly if I kissed you – just this once?’

  ‘Of course not.’ How can I possibly say ‘No’?

  He was wryly apologetic afterwards.

  ‘Sorry – I’m not much good at it. To be honest, it’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a girl. I hope it won’t be the last.’

  ‘Ayers Rock,’ Digger said. ‘Alice Springs. Heard of those?’

  Anne shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stone the crows! What a sheila! Come on now, you can do better than that. What have you heard of?’

  She thought hard for a moment. ‘The Great Barrier Reef.’

  ‘OK. That’s better. What else?’

  There was another Mess party in full swing; another thrash to help blot out the very thought of ops – all scrubbed that night because of bad weather. Digger had come in search of her and they were standing drinking and talking.

  She closed her eyes. ‘Wait a mo . . . Botany Bay. Convicts.’

  ‘Sore point there. What about Ned Kelly?’

  ‘I think I’ve heard of him. He was a horse-thief, wasn’t he? They hanged him.’

  ‘A dinkum Aussie!’ Digger’s piercing blue eyes crinkled at the corners as though he was still looking into the Australian sun. ‘What else?’

  ‘Aboriginals.’

  ‘Another sore point. Think of something different.’

  ‘Captain Cook.’

  ‘He was a bloody Pom!’

  ‘Didn’t he discover you?’

  ‘That’s no excuse. What else?’

  There was a long pause while Anne racked her brains. The pilot watched her, eyes narrowed, cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘The duck-billed platypus.’

  Digger roared with laughter. ‘That’s bonza! Good on you, Annie!’

  She laughed too and caught Henry Latimer’s eye across the room. He smiled and lifted his hand. She thought he looked quite cheerful. Four more ops done. So far, so good.

  Some New Zealanders had started a sort of Maori war dance, all in a line, whooping and stamping their feet.
They whooped and stamped faster and faster until they finally ended up in a tangled heap on the floor.

  ‘Drunken Kiwi savages,’ Digger said good-humouredly, aiming a kick at the squirming mass. The music started up again with a catchy quickstep number. He stuck out a hand towards Anne. ‘Come on, you Pommy popsie. Let’s dance.’

  Winnie was sent to the RAF flight mechanic training school at Hednesford in Staffordshire. The train journey from Suffolk, crawling north-west in stages across England, took all day. She had to change three times and missed her connection once so that she had to wait more than two hours for the next train. The trains were all crowded, unheated and dirty. There were no empty seats and she had to stand in the corridor all the way. On the final leg of her journey, when she was sitting wearily on her kitbag, a soldier came to stand near her and tried to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Goin’ on leave, then?’

  She shook her head. He offered a cigarette, which she refused, and leaned his shoulders back against the window, heavy army boots braced against the rocking and swaying of the train. He lit his cigarette.

  ‘Posted then?’

  She gave in and told him. There was no harm in it, after all, and he looked friendly and nice. She wasn’t sorry to have someone to talk to.

  ‘Could you tell me when we get to Brindley Heath, please? I can’t always hear the station when they call it out.’

  He nodded. ‘Stupid idea takin’ all the names down, if you ask me. Jerry can read a map, same as anyone else. ’e won’t need flippin’ station signs to tell ’im where ’e ’is. Just makes it flippin’ ’ard for us lot. ’alf the time you can’t ’ear ’em sing out, the other ’alf you can’t understand what the locals are sayin’ anyway . . . What sort’ve WAAF are you, then? What d’you do?’

  ‘I used to be a clerk, but I’ve just re-mustered. I’m going to train as a flight mechanic.’

  He stared. ‘A what?’

  ‘A flight mechanic.’

  ‘You mean, servicin’ the ’planes an’ all that?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re not ’avin’ me on?’ He was half-laughing, half-incredulous.

  ‘No. They’re short of men, you see. So they’re trainin’ us.’

  He whistled and shook his head. ‘Blimey! Don’t say we’ve come to that. I flippin’ ’ope ’itler don’t get to ’ear of this or ’e’ll know we’re on our flippin’ uppers.’

  She forgave him because he meant no offence. And because he was so cheerful and funny the rest of the journey passed quickly. At Brindley Heath he carried her heavy kitbag off the train for her.

  ‘Strewth, what you got ’in ’ere, darlin’? The kitchen stove’n all?’ He set it down on the wooden platform. ‘There you are, sunshine. Sorry I can’t carry it all the way. Best of luck, an’ if I ever go in one of your ’planes you make sure you tighten all them nuts.’ He chucked her under the chin. ‘Keep smilin’.’

  He waved to her from the window and gave her a thumbs-up and a cheery grin as the train drew away.

  She swung the kitbag up, staggering under its weight, and went to ask a porter for directions to the camp. She could barely understand a word he said, but set off up a steep hill in the direction of his pointing finger, burdened like a mule with her kitbag over her shoulder, her respirator slung across her chest and her helmet and folded gas cape on her back. It was very cold and getting dark and halfway up the hill, just as she was beginning to wonder if she would manage to make it to the top, a farmer came by with a horsedrawn cartload of potatoes and stopped to give her a lift. She clambered up thankfully beside him. When she told him, too, that she was going to train as a flight mechanic on aircraft engines he laughed even more than the soldier on the train.

  ‘That’s a good one! I’ll come’n be a pilot!’

  He set her down near the camp entrance and she could hear him still chuckling to himself as the grey horse clip-clopped off down the road.

  RAF Hednesford was on high ground – a bleak and windswept place surrounded by a high wire fence that made it look like a prison. There were rows and rows of camouflaged Nissen huts, curved like hen coops. The WAAF huts were a mile from the main gates. There were thirty girls to each hut with a corporal in the small room at the end, and most of the Nissens leaked whenever it rained. The walls and windows streamed constantly with condensation. There were linoleum floors, tortoise stoves giving off a meagre heat, and double bunk beds without ladders. Winnie, allotted a top bunk, had to scramble up and jump down and when she was lying in her bunk her head came unpleasantly close to the curving tin roof. The only comforting thought was that it was the end, and not the beginning of winter.

  She was given another embarrassing medical examination and an undignified Free From Infection inspection for fleas, lice, scabies or any other catching diseases. Then she was issued with trousers, a battle dress top, RAF overalls and a black beret, like the one that she had worn before there were WAAF caps. The trousers, she soon discovered, itched horribly.

  Most of the other girls in her intake had come straight from initial training and had been in all kinds of civilian jobs before joining up. A few, like herself, had re-mustered from other trades. The girl in the bunk immediately below hers was called Hilda. She came from Lancashire and had just completed her initial training at Morecambe.

  ‘It was hell,’ she told Winnie cheerfully. ‘Square bashing up and down the sea front in a force ten gale, with everyone looking on and criticizing us. Then PT in our blackouts with half the old men in Morecambe leering at us. And the landlady at our billet was evil! She’d had the RAF before, you see, so she didn’t want us. We weren’t like her nice boys. “I don’t want you, but I’ve got to have you,” she told us. “So you’ll behave yourselves.” She had a great long list of rules pinned up on the wall: wipe your feet when you come in, no noise, no singing, in bed by 10.00 p.m., windows open whatever the weather, bedrooms left spotless in the morning . . . Oooh, she did make our life a misery! Some of the girls cried every night. We had to pay her five shillings a week and she half-starved us! Three tinned plums on a plate for our tea and two slices of bread and butter. That’s all we had. The kitchen was down in the basement and the food would come up in one of those little lifts. Rattle, rattle, rattle it went and the tinned plums would appear and we’d all groan . . . We had to go down and do the washing up afterwards too. Insult to injury.’

  ‘It sounds dreadful,’ Winnie said.

  ‘We were all miserable. Mind you, one or two of the girls deserved a bit of chasing. I never knew people could be so dirty. Filthy habits some of them had. They never washed or changed their clothes, dirty STs left about . . . And they didn’t know how to eat at table. One girl broke her bread into her soup and ate it with a knife and fork. It takes all sorts, I suppose. You’re Engines, not Airframes, aren’t you? Like me. That’s good.’

  Apart from the WAAFS, there was a large intake of RAF trainees, including some Poles and Czechs, and a large contingent from the Fleet Air Arm. Most of the men seemed amused by the presence of the WAAFS. A few were dead against them. None expected the girls to reach the same standard as themselves, or to be capable of the same workload.

  To begin with the Engine and Airframe mechanics attended classes together. They learned about metals, how to file and make simple joints, how to handle tools and to identify all the different types of screw heads, bolts, hammers, hack-saws, chisels and files. They were introduced to precision instruments and taught the basics of riveting and simple carpentry. Then they separated. The Airframe trainees went away to learn about the complicated structure of modern aircraft, while the mysteries of the internal combustion engine were explained to the Engine mechanics, starting with a simple motor cycle engine.

  ‘Right now, who can tell me what this is?’

  The RAF sergeant instructor pointed with his stick at a part of the section of motor cycle engine on the bench in front of him.

  Winnie put up her hand. ‘It’s a cylind
er.’

  ‘Correct.’ The stick moved on. ‘And this?’

  ‘A piston.’

  ‘Correct again. Well done. A cylinder and a piston. Both very important parts of the internal combustion engine, as I am about to show you.’ The instructor tapped with his stick again. ‘If you introduce a mixture of petrol vapour and air into this cylinder in the ratio fifteen parts of air to one part of petrol, compress it and ignite it with an electric spark then the temperature and pressure rises and the piston is forced down the cylinder. I want you to learn and remember four magic words: Induction, Compression, Power and Exhaust.’

  He went on talking about revs and strokes and conrods; about the combustion chamber, crankshafts, inlets and outlets; about swept volume and clearance volume, mixture, magnetos, Top Dead Centre and Bottom Dead Centre, valve lag and valve lead, compression ratios . . . The technical words, strange to most of the trainees, were already familiar to Winnie from everything that Taffy had taught her.

  Her first sight of a Merlin engine out on a workbench thrilled her. At last she was going to be allowed, not only to touch it, but dismantle parts of it and reassemble them back into their places.

  The class instructor, watching her working away happily in her beret and outsize RAF overalls, with grease streaks on her face and dirt under her fingernails, put her down as a natural. It was rare in women in his experience so far and he was still trying to get used to the idea of having them in his class. They were painstaking and conscientious, he had discovered, and very thorough, and they had some advantages over the men, like small hands and lots of patience, but they did not usually have that inborn feeling for engines that was far more than mere competence. He smiled at Winnie and she smiled back. Pretty with it, he thought drily. Even rarer.