by Mercy Levy
It was a small wonder he hadn’t been conscripted into the Medical Corps, with all his surgical skill. But the thought of dealing with human blood bothered him far more than patching up hurt animals, or at least he prized his animal patients so much he was willing to deal with the ugliness of surgery when it was necessary to save them. At lights out, he made his obligatory rounds of the bunks and counted heads, then turned in for the short four hours or so that they got to sleep. The morning exercise was just routine, but night flying was dangerous, and they all needed practice, especially Abercrombie. The gunner was one of the best Malcolm had seen, and he had only turned nineteen one week ago. It had become his imperative to keep his small crew alive long enough to see the end of this bloodshed and carnage and return to their homes and families.
Malcolm brushed his fingers through his thick black hair. Almost an afterthought, he noticed it was getting long and jotted a note for himself, to remember to get it cut to regulation tomorrow. He dressed down and climbed into his bottom bunk, and fell asleep with one hand around the small paperback under the pillow.
At precisely four o’clock in the morning, the bugle sounded, immediately followed by groans of dismay from men all over the compound. Captain Ross rousted his men and within minutes, they were standing at attention under the floodlights as their aircraft was inspected one last time. Malcolm was so intent on getting the flight underway, he didn’t notice Crimmens and Badger approach one of the mechanics and, after a short conversation, exchange a small envelope. The mechanic saluted Flight Lieutenant Crimmens and strode off the field quickly, while the two crew members joined their pilot, gunner, and navigator aboard the “Gruesome Crewsome” B-17. Ross initiated the instrument check and his men settled down to business without a single word of sarcasm or light-minded joke.
On the ground, Ross’ crew was known for their antics and lightening the mood for everyone around them, in the sky, the were known for getting the job done, cutting swathes through the path of the enemy. As Malcom expected, the flight went off without a hitch, aside from the bumpy ride of a turbulent morning. Abercrombie marked his targets and according to calculations, hit each one dead on, even accounting for the high winds. Malcolm couldn’t have been more proud if they’d been his own marks.
Once they were given the clear to land, Ross and Crimmens fought the wind to set their bomber down on the narrow field that served as their landing strip. Once they had her powered down and the men were safely on solid ground once again, the captain found himself subjected to more than a couple jokes at the expense of his flying prowess. To rid himself of them, he gave them the rest of the day to be on-call, with a check in at the ten o’clock hour, in the event that their commanding officers had other plans for them.
With whoops of joy that rivalled any schoolboy on the first day of summer, Crimmens and company jumped into one of the parked Austin 8 military staff cars and drove the short distance to town. With a sigh that was at least half relief, Ross made his way back to the offices to complete and file the training exercise paperwork before the officer’s mess was opened for breakfast.
The next two weeks passed quietly enough that the men actually started to worry about their chances for survival. Each mission they flew, they lost more allied planes. Miraculously, it seemed, they kept narrowly escaping the missiles that downed their friends. But, the B-17 was riddled with holes from the last firefight, and Badgers had taken a hit to his shoulder that had him going home, his right arm hanging useless and numb from the elbow down.
While the crew waited for their new member to show up, they patched up the Gruesome Crewsome and added three more tally points to her tail. The men had long since forgotten the letter they’d smuggled past their captain, and the story had even gone cold among the gossips. The stress and unease of the advancing Germans had taken even the smallest pleasures from the entrenched British air force. Then, one morning at mail call, the bewildered Ross was presented with a large, bag of mail, bursting at the seams with floral scented envelopes of every imaginable colour and size
There was an instant of silence, then raucous cheers broke out amongst the ranks. Word spread like wildfire that the moment of fruition had arrived. Mechanics and radio operators left their duties to watch the Captain stride past with his perfumed bundle, as he hurried toward the relative privacy of his deserted bunkhouse, followed by a few stragglers. He shoved the door closed in the face of one persistent private and proceeded to open the bag.
Much to his dismay, he quickly realized why the men were so boisterous about his abnormally large mail call. He opened letter after letter, some obviously scented with perfume, all written by feminine hands. He laid the letters out on the table, stacked neatly, but in no particular order, and left them there unopened, while he waited for his crew to return.
As he suspected, it didn’t take long for Crimmens to lead his sheepish men back into the bunk, where they faced the nonplussed Captain Ross and the table covered from edge to edge with pink and white and cream envelopes.
“So,” Malcolm began, pacing in front of his men. “I have reached the understanding that you men simply do not have enough to do to fill your time with worthwhile endeavours.” He growled. Abercrombie flinched, but Crimmens, Stillwell and Knox stood firm, (although Knox had a devil of a time not smiling). “As such,” their leader continued, “you will be tasked with answering each of these letters individually, with…my…regrets.” He finished drily. The four men surrounded the table with chairs and began opening envelopes.
Soon their work was punctuated by laughter as the men shared the words of hopeful women from not only Great Britain, but the US and France as well. Malcolm couldn’t help but inch closer to hear what the men were saying, without being noticed. Soon enough his curiosity got the best of him and he pulled up a chair of his own to help open and read the letters.
“I must say, lads. That had to have been some letter you wrote to garner me all these responses.” He pronounced drily, one eyebrow arched as a Frenchwoman offered herself to him on site, at his expense, of course. Malcolm sifted through the envelopes, wondering how much of this pile was due to the war. Lovers lost, killed in action, the loneliness of losing one’s whole family. That was a pain he understood. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it wouldn’t hurt to answer one person. Give one person a friend in a time of fear and sacrifice.
He picked up a simple white envelope that hadn’t been open. With careful fingers, he gently broke the seal to preserve the return address. The handwriting was tidy and concise, and the note was almost regrettably short. He pushed back from the table and read:
“Dear Sir. I happened upon your advertisement in the matrimonial column, and I felt impressed to respond. Please understand, firstly, that I am not looking for a mate. However, if it please you, I would be happy to write to you as a fellow bibliophile and one who has also been taken from her home because of the war. I look forward to correspondence, if the idea is agreeable to you. Very truly your friend, Stella”
Malcom considered the letter for a moment, then quietly folded it and slipped it into his pocket. As he watched his men serve their punishment for the prank they’d played, he noticed that a few more letters went missing from the pile, stowed away by the other crew members. As their campaigns grew in number and the war waged on around them, letters from girlfriends and even family back home began to thin and arrive less and less frequently. It was good to have each other, but there was an emptiness to living and fighting so far away from home and friends and family that you knew before the fighting began. The more time they spent in the air and in the trenches, the more difficult it was to recall a spring day at home, or the exact fragrance of the water and trees that were once so familiar you hardly noticed them.
The captain ignored the few letters that disappeared into waist pockets and sent his men to the mess hall for lunch. While they were gone, he sat at his desk and responded to the letter from Stella. In halting words, he accepted her offer of a pen pal
and snuck the sealed envelope into the officers’ outgoing mail. No notion of romance intrigued him, but it would be nice to talk to someone who knew a love of books and could possibly even aid him in acquiring new reading material, as books were scarce here at the front, and one could only reread F. Scott Fitzgerald so many times before it lost its flavour.
Their next few campaigns were quick hits that seemed almost too easy to feel right. The weather had held up longer than expected, and the commanding officers took every opportunity to push back against the encroaching enemy and gain more ground into the interior of France. A couple of weeks passed and as far as the base at Calais was concerned, the letters were long forgotten, and the men too busy to wonder if they’d ever hear from the women they had courted.
As reports of imminent weather change came in, the Gruesome Crewsome and her crew took one last short hop over inland, scouting for a missing plane and possible marks in the same trip. The convoy was one of the first in a long time that all came home, and they were able to give coordinates for the fallen plane to command for retrieval as well. Upon landing back at Calais, Captain Ross gave all the men a day of leave. He could smell rain on the breeze and knew there was as much chance of being grounded for a week, as there was for another flight before the storm finally hit.
Smiling to himself, Malcolm headed over to the officer’s club for a drink and a few feminine bodies to observe, still too introverted to come right out and flirt with them. He downed a pint by himself in the corner, and then another that Crimmens purchased when he found the pilot in the corner nursing the dregs of his stout. Two more followed that, bought by friends of the affable Crimmens, and soon, Captain Ross found himself in a most outgoing mood, laughing and talking with the other officers more than he had since arriving at Calais.
When he and Crimmens finally staggered back to their bunk, Abercrombie delivered sobering news. In two days’ time, they’d be completing a bomb run over the enemy controlled town of Boulogne, in an effort to divert a Panzer attack that intelligence reported would be heading their way. Malcolm nodded at the report and, spinning on his heel without another word, headed down to the command centre for briefing.
There was an air of sombreness over the work of the next day. The plane was readied and examined for any issues that could cause failure in-flight. The Gruesome Crewsome was found to be in top shape, but the men watched the sky with concern. According to reports, black, angry clouds moved steadily toward them, and if the weather turned sour, they might not be able to complete their mission. The only good new to that, was if the weather really became that stormy, no Panzer attack would be viable either.
By lights out, the stars were completely hidden by the storm clouds that had reached the shores of France. All night, the men listened to the rain and thunder, punctuated by flashes of bright lightning on the walls of their quarters. The thunder and lightning had let up by midday, but the rain carried on into the night again, causing reports of massive flooding and roads being washed out all along the path to the interior, and the approaching enemy. Two days turned into nearly two weeks of inclement weather, with the men growing more and more bored and hungry for a mission.
Finally, intelligence informed them that all tank attacks were delayed by the boggy roads, so marshy that even the treaded vehicles couldn’t stay in motion, and the infantry had been slowed to a crawl. As soon as the rain allowed, the commanding officers reported, The Gruesome Crewsome and her men would be in the sky again, to hunt and bomb the panzers where they stood. Malcolm had trouble shaking the feeling in the pit of his stomach that their luck had run out. Not wanting to worry anyone else, he kept the gnawing fear to himself and prepped for the mission ahead.
Malcolm slipped away from the bustle of mechanics and crewmen touching up paint on their birds and busying themselves with last minute repairs and instrument checks. He slipped back to his desk and took out a creamy piece of blank paper he’d wheedled from the commander’s clerk. He stared at the paper for what seemed like an eternity, while he chewed the end of his pencil and thought. He realized he didn’t want to tell her about the war, or the missions, or the death he was surrounded by. He pulled the pencil out of his mouth and looked at the tooth marks in chagrin. With a sigh, he put pencil to paper and began to write about Leeds before the war.
He wrote for an hour without stopping, describing his home in the rows near Middleton Park. He described his childhood and early years of schooling and rugby, including the time he played with a broken wrist, only to turn around and break his ankle too. When his men returned to the bunk after supper, they saw their captain smiling to himself as he wrote, a faraway look in his eyes. Wisely, they left him to his daydreams and made for the pub, where the stout flowed like ambrosia from the gods, and the women chased away the fears of the next mission.
At 5 am, the sky had the particular quality of darkness that covers the earth when the moon has set, but the sun has yet to rise. Captain Ross handed a milky white envelope to one of the mechanics on the field and asked him to have it mailed for him. It was one of many such letters handed off that morning, just like before every other high-stakes mission. The remaining clouds hid the stars and Abercrombie was tasked to triple check the instruments, as they would be flying blind without them. Malcolm took Crimmens aside to speak to him as their B-17 was fuelled and the slightly hung over crew gathered for their instructions before take-off.
“Crimmie.” The pilot growled in a low tone. “I don’t love the look of that sky. The clouds are too low, and there’s still electricity in them, you can feel it.” Crimmens looked above him and even in the sketchy glow of the buzzing torch above them, Malcolm could see him pale in recognition. “Don’t borrow trouble, Crimmie. Just pay attention to the instruments, and if anything goes wrong with the electrical system, get us the hell out of there and follow the radio home. Do you understand?” The lieutenant stood at attention and gave Malcolm a salute. Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder and they joined the men gathered next to the bomber.
Their commanding officer reiterated the details of the map and coordinates for the bomb drop, and with brisk salutes all around, the men were dismissed to their mission and the Colonel left the field. Take-off and climb were rough and Malcom felt his heart leap into his throat as the plane dipped and dived. He laid a firm hand to the controls and managed to pull her up and steady her as they reached their cruising altitude of 22,000 feet.
“Well, Captain, I think we’ll get a little more done if we don’t break up before we get to the enemy.” Stillwell called up to the cockpit from his position in Nav. Malcolm chuckled and laughed louder at Crimmens scathing reply. With the banter, the tense feeling in the plane lightened for a moment. Stillwell grinned, then got to business and began to call out target coordinates to Knox as they neared a burned out town that Malcolm couldn’t remember the name of.
The pilot of one of the spitfires escorting them suddenly called out a warning. German planes were in the distance and closing fast. Knox shouted at Stillwell to hurry up as he calmly repeated his numbers again. Two spitfires broke away from the bombing convoy and advanced to meet the enemy head on. With the final calculations in place, Knox dropped his payload and reported to the Captain that they’d all dropped on schedule.
Crimmens radioed the successful drop, and was closely echoed by the two other bombers in the convoy. The remaining spitfires fell into an active defensive formation as the bombers banked and turned back, with the Gruesome Crewsome in the lead. Malcom hissed in near physical pain as the planes that had engaged the enemy to protect them were shot down around them as he turned his bomber back toward Calais. The radio erupted into chaos as they were engaged by several attack aircraft. Stillwell, Knox, and the new kid, Bixby, took their places at the machine guns and countered as best they could as the smaller, more agile planes attacked mercilessly.
Captain Ross and his co-pilot ran the length of the convoy and readied themselves for a full frontal attack, but the Germans sudden
ly turned tail as the Spitfire escort managed to drop several of the German fighters. Amidst congratulations for a job well done, came orders from command for all planes to return to the base at Calais directly. Ross was so relieved to have made it through another fight, that he didn’t immediately notice the rapid pressure drop in their fuel tanks. Crimmens called out the fuel loss and Malcolm took immediate action, dropping well below their ceiling and ordering a shortest-route navigation from Stillwell, while Knox radioed their position and heading.
Two Spitfires flanked them and guided them toward the rough second landing strip just off the Calais base. Radio communications promised them medics were on their way, and transmissions ceased just as the Gruesome Crewsome attempted to drop her landing gear. It refused to lock, and as they hit the ground, the wheels buckled and the bomber bottomed out on the grassy field. Malcolm was thrown forward and blacked out to the sounds of his crew screaming around him.
It was so pitch dark when Malcolm opened his eyes, that he automatically reached up for his face. With movement, the pain that had seemed distant and dull lashed through him, wrenching a scream from his throat and making him writhe in his bed. Strong hands held him in place on his cot while voices shouted at him, from far behind the agony, to hold still, to calm down. He barely felt the prick of the needle as it entered his arm, before he sank into sedated oblivion.
When he next awoke, it was as the triage nurse removed the bandages from his eyes. Her cool, efficient hands deftly unwound the gauze from his head, and Malcolm’s vision slowly grew brighter with each layer. When she reached the circular eye pads, he slowly reached up to remove them. He felt long slender fingers gently grip his hands and she set them on his chest with a pat.
“Close your eyes, Captain.” The feminine voice commanded him. “The light might be bright, after being bandaged so long.” She gave him a moment and then slowly peeled the pad off of his left eye, while she covered it with her cupped palm. “Okay, now keep your eyes closed while I get the other side.” She lifted the pad off, and placed her palms over his eyes again. “Now. Open.” She directed. He opened his eyes and stared at the thin lines on the palms of her hands, light bleeding in at the edges and between her fingers. She directed him again, to slide his own hands under hers, and when he did so, she removed her hands and busied herself cleaning up the gauze and bandages from the wounds she had cleaned and changed.