by Thomas Wood
The controls became second nature to us, the Horsas our best friends, our passengers became accustomed.
We were ready.
5
A small pin prick of brilliant white light poked its way through the darkness that shrouded the cockpit. The torch was masked with tape, allowing the most minute bit of light out, the rest trying desperately to force its way out, making the tape glow menacingly. I had appreciated his efforts to keep his light concealed in the best way he could, not because I believed we could be spotted by that stream of light, but because the burst of light, when the tape was not around it, was enough to make me squint and cause a decent headache.
I watched him as he worked, the stream of light gliding its way over the map in front of him before changing course over towards the face of his stopwatch. The map had all sorts of scribbles and pencil markings all over it, most of which I could not make out in the darkness. I could see though, where our flight path had been plotted, a solid pencil line, that had been run over itself many times, signalling the exact points where my co-pilot would issue instructions to me.
The moonlight was good, but not quite good enough for my co-pilot, but not many things were up to his standard apparently, including me. We had struggled to get on at first, both of us making it quite clear what we thought about the other and that it was only because we had to fly together that we were even talking to each other.
I tried not to get too attached to my co-pilot, as we had been instructed, and at first it seemed easy enough for me to keep my distance. But spending that much time with one person tends to have the opposite effect to what our superiors wanted.
I knew why they wanted us to remain distant, in case one of us was killed, or worse, binned off the course, and out of the regiment altogether. We couldn’t afford to have pilots moping around because their best mate had been returned to his unit. We needed to be able to lose someone in the morning and have wiped them from our memories by the evening. However, over time I had got to know my co-pilot, it was inevitable, we began seeking each other out in the mess before plonking our behinds down next to each other and tucking into another string-filled casserole.
He adored the food that we were served, whereas I found it was something that I would only eat for the simple reason that I had to. It made me wonder about what sort of impoverished lifestyle he had come from before, which meant that he thought he was dining at the Ritz. He had an almighty appetite, often eating everything on his plate as well as anything left over on anyone else’s. He was a frequent visitor to the NAAFI, even offering to go for other people in return for a small cut of the goods that he picked up for them. It was a business venture that never fully took off, but he was often seen around the base tucking in to some exotic food he had traded with the Yanks.
I often teased him that we would have to be careful on operations as we would need to account for his weight, and I was glad when the notice for this operation came through when it did, as news had just reached us that the NAAFI had taken a consignment of American chocolate bars. If we were leaving a day or two later, it would have allowed him a lot more time to stock up on what he liked to call the ‘Nectar of the Allies.’
His pockets were stuffed almost immediately, and I was quite sure that if he turned out his pockets now, more than one bar would be residing in them, probably all half eaten.
John ‘Johnny’ Chambers was a Cockney, a proper rough, East End lad, and he was proud of it. He was a good friend to have, never taking rubbish from anyone and although he loved American delicacies, he wasn’t too keen on the Americans themselves, being known on more than one occasion to throw a solid fist towards the nose of one of our cousins. His run ins with the Americans was an issue that I never had and had found that they were a perfect compliment to the British Army, with their sense of humour and courage. Maybe that’s why Johnny hadn’t liked them, he saw them as competition, as a threat.
Johnny wasn’t scared of anyone though, or it seemed anything, always acting in the calmest way possible, which was strange for a nineteen-year-old boy. I did begin to ponder how he would feel as the tow rope was detached on our first operational mission. As the days had ticked by and the hours counted down to take off, he had slowly drawn into himself, not his usual outlandish, loud self. I just hoped that whatever was going through his mind right now, wouldn’t affect his abilities to guide us in towards our target.
Generally, he was a light-hearted soul, which had made his protests against his nickname far more amusing to us than it should have been. He hadn’t liked the pet name of ‘baby face’ one bit, but his objections to it made it stick all the more and so that is how he was affectionately known.
I looked at his face in the silvery light of the moon and the orange glow of torchlight and marvelled at how smooth his skin really was, it really did make his nickname seem all the more appropriate, especially the longer I looked at him. It was like a desert, no real features of major importance but still something that seemed remarkable.
Not a single hair ever protruded from his chin, either a sign of incredible personal hygiene and discipline, or a true indicator of how young these boys really were.
I wasn’t much older than Johnny, but I was still coined ‘Grandad’ as I was the oldest glider pilot on base. I didn’t mind too much, in fact I felt quite honoured to even be considered worthy of a nickname, I’d never really got close enough to anyone before to be labelled with one.
His eyes were trained intently on the focus of the torchlight, never blinking, his vision reserved solely for his stopwatch. I fought with all the urges in my body, trying to take my eyes away from him for a moment, it wasn’t my job to be looking at the stopwatch and I knew I could trust Johnny to make sure that our final run-in was at exactly the right time.
I watched as the second hand ticked round silently, John making a mental note of how long we had been released for. I knew to not interrupt him when we were on this stage, if I made him get it wrong, I didn’t just kill myself, but I would also kill the thirty odd elite soldiers in the back. He was in his zone, he was completely focused. If you were to see him outside of a glider, you wouldn’t have thought it was capable for a boy like him to sit still for so long, or for him to be able to stare at a map and stopwatch in the dark as intently as he was.
All that training, would be for nothing.
I loosened my grip on the wooden controls before gripping them tightly again, making sure the blood supply to my hands was still good, and they didn’t cramp up at the most crucial moment, the slightest thing, the simplest, would be all it took for me to lose control of the Horsa and end up killing us all.
My hands were cold, as was my whole body, but a film of sweat had settled over every inch of my palms, making them feel like the controls could slip out of my grasp at any moment.
My stomach churned violently and gurgled as the seconds began to tick by slower on John’s stopwatch. He still hadn’t blinked.
I scratched at my ear, trying to flick out any dirt that may be laying there, so that I could hear everything that was going on. I tilted my head slightly so that I didn’t miss the shout from my co-pilot.
I knew I wouldn’t miss it, John had one of the loudest, clearest and most recognisable voices in the entire regiment. It was one of those voices that had the capability of landing him in hot water, even if he was just saying ‘Good morning’ to one of the Lieutenants. It wasn’t that he wasn’t liked by his superiors, but they just didn’t like lads like him. He was working class, a Cockney and he was brilliant at his job. Just like Johnny saw the Americans as a bit of a friendly threat, so too did the officers when they realised how good at his role John Chambers truly was.
Normally he wouldn’t shut up, right now though, he wasn’t saying a word.
I waited for his signal.
6
I was the oldest in our group of pilots, not by much, eighteen months at the most, but I was still the least confident and went into myself at most oppor
tunities. Although I tried my hardest to be like all of the others, it was difficult for me, like I had some sort of physical barrier that was stopping me from just stepping over that boundary and being properly accepted. John seemed to be the only one who was truly prepared to leap over that boundary for me.
Our first night of leave after completing our training was spent near to base as we’d all agreed to go out to a dance together before our next phase of training began. It was a welcome bit of downtime, something that we had been lusting after for weeks now. It wasn’t just breaking the cycle of training flights and fitness work, but it meant that it would be the first time that we headed out together, off base, like a group of normal young lads should.
I ended up sitting with John, nursing a half pint and rolling the glass around the table, I had never been much of a drinker and found it difficult to stomach the taste of the stuff that they served in that hall. My opposition to the taste and my tendency not to drink however, didn’t mean that John and I hadn’t ended up in a few funny situations together as a result of alcohol, but it was something I could neither remember or want to be reminded of. John didn’t much like going to these dances, he already had a girlfriend back home and didn’t like the idea of even looking at another girl, so spent much of his night looking down the bottom of his glass.
Circling like vultures as soon as we had stepped through the door, the others had muttered to one another about who they would like to claim for the evening, and the ground rules for if one of them took a fancy to someone else. They had spotted their prey almost immediately, and had moved in shortly afterwards, leaving the girls, some more petrified than a small field mouse, with little choice but to pair off with them for the night.
I did not care for such barbarity when it came to searching for a mate, it did not suit me, nor did I want to find a partner in that way. I very often ended up leaving the dance with John, who drunkenly hummed or screamed songs at the top of his voice as we headed back to base, with nothing more than a dull headache after listening to the incessant music at the table.
John nudged me and nodded his head in the direction of the door and we headed outside together to gain a brief respite from the music.
He whipped out his cigarette holder and twizzled one in between his fingers before sticking it in his mouth. He then turned the open box to me, the mirrored gold reflecting the moonlight onto my face.
He knew I didn’t smoke, but he always offered me one, whether it was some kind of joke to him I didn’t know, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself.
We stood in silence as the smoke spiralled its way into the night sky, intertwining with other streams of smoke from around us. I’d never understood the fascination with constantly having to have a cigarette, it meant having to stand around waiting for someone to finish puffing away before being able to have a decent conversation with them. It also meant that a good deal of your pay was already earmarked for the purpose before you’d even seen a shilling of it, I could never get my head around it. Still, it didn’t stop me from dutifully following John outside so that I could suck in some of the relatively fresh air, while he took in his smoke-filled oxygen.
The sun had just dipped behind the trees that marked the horizon, the landscape around us basking in the vibrant orange of a setting sun, as if it had set fire to the fields in the distance as a last, fleeting action for the day.
“We’ll be up there soon, mate,” he said longingly.
“Your old man was in the first one, wasn’t he?” John broke the silence again, deeming the conversation far too unimportant to take his eyes from the cigarette that he was rolling around in between his fingers. I couldn’t quite bring myself to answer straight away, it was like something was holding me back, almost as if I had forgotten who my Dad was, and I was trying to rack my brain to remember.
The village hall was quite a nice one here, untouched by German bombs, the hall opened out onto the village green, where a small pond had been added to commemorate the loss of life in the first war.
The water was stagnant and had a thick layer of mildew on it, the fish, who I was told used to live in there, had died years ago. In that moment, I found myself longing to have been in this village before the war began, so that I could take in the fish serenely slithering through the water, with no care in the world.
“Yeah, lied about his age too.” Our conversation ended abruptly, as we let the slow beat from the music infiltrate our ears once more, beckoning us in, as it did with a large crowd who were also standing out on the green with us.
He flicked his cigarette across the green, almost reaching the pond and we both took that as the signal to take a slow walk back into the hall, I noticed that a few others had started to do the same. Obviously, the music was drawing to its finale and no one wanted to miss their last opportunity to find someone to couple off with.
As we shuffled in reluctantly, I took a look around, catching the gaze of a girl. I did a double take as I found myself in utter shock that someone had been looking at me, especially in the way that she had.
We looked at each other briefly, a sweet smile flicked across her face which I returned, but I quickly found my face burning up and turning a bright shade of red. I held her gaze a moment longer before trotting to catch up with John, not wanting to risk the only real friendship I had for a random girl.
She was quite small, probably only coming up to my chest if we stood side by side but had something about her where I knew her presence regardless of her size. She looked around the same age as me, maybe a year younger at twenty or twenty-one, at least I desperately hoped that she was. It seemed like we had something immediately, there was a mutual attraction as we kept our gaze fixed upon one another.
She had wildly green eyes, which I seemed to lose myself in completely in that brief moment that I shared with her. They had a seriousness about them, a fieriness that I longed to know more about, but they were also kind, loving eyes, the kind that immediately set you at ease, like a mother’s.
In those eyes, I could see everything I’d ever dreamed of, an entire future of two people who would never meet again.
Her skin was soft and smooth, her cheeks a brighter shade of pink to the rest of her, making her smile seem warmer and more inviting somehow. She continued to draw me in, more than the music had ever done and I felt myself having to resist walking after John, just so that I could keep my eyes on her for a few moments more.
She wore a pale pink, floral dress that flapped around her shins as she stood in the gentle breeze of the English countryside, a pair of faded green gloves and small handbag completing her outfit.
I’d never before taken this much notice of what a girl was wearing.
I’d only looked at her for a short time, maybe two seconds, but she was ingrained in my mind, I couldn’t shake her. She was like a fly in my brain that night, buzzing around in my head, refusing to leave. My mind was shaken, like someone had given it a jolly good battering and one that prevented all other thoughts from entering my consciousness. I was aware John was talking to me, but what he was saying was muffled, indecipherable to me as I became intoxicated on my memory of the girl.
I saw the back of her as she left the dance early, I’d missed my chance.
Soon after, I made my excuse to Johnny and, obligingly, he came back with me to the base.
“You’re quiet tonight mate,” he said in between anecdotal stories of childhood stealing and bust ups.
I had nothing to say, I felt miserable that the only girl I’d ever felt a connection with had left, I’d never see her again. I’d never get that future with her and all we’d got was a momentary look at each other.
7
Like a mischievous teenager sneaking in stinking of booze, the Captain snuck up on us silently. The first we knew of his presence was when he spoke. He had an almost brilliant knack of coming up to talk to us at the exact moment that we needed to focus our entire attention on the Horsa, never when we were being towed a
nd had a slightly less strenuous task on our hands.
His accent was rounded and he spoke well, enunciating every letter. His voice was normally soft and calm, raising his voice only when he needed to, but tonight it was strained, tense.
"How much longer, gents?"
It was so strained in fact, that it sounded like he was a little child, bursting to use the nearest toilet but knowing that there wouldn’t be one available for a considerable amount of time.
He knew exactly how much longer it was, he'd been on all the training missions that we'd done a hundred times before. To be fair to him, I don’t think it was just him that had the worst timing possible, it had seemed that all the officers we had taken with us during training, had all possessed the innate ability to want to distract us at the most crucial time possible. I don’t think they had a sense of danger, or a sense of their own mortality, as they seemed to care little for ours and that of their men each time they distracted us.
His breath was still clean, he hadn't thrown up so far tonight. But there was still time for him to let his nerves get the better of him. It was unfortunate that he had been fairly consistent in showing us his breakfast on all our previous flights, especially as he was an officer and that the lads in the back were particularly brutal. His unofficial nickname had become ‘Captain Sicknote’ or simply ‘CapSick.’
He had no reason for asking, he was just a terrible passenger, he needed to be in control at all times. A few of the non-commissioned lads were the same, but they weren’t able to get up and walk around, trying to examine the situation and exert some control, as they were hollered at as soon as they moved so much as a bum cheek.
"Sit down!" I barked, not thinking of the possible consequences.
I could sense John smirking as I did it, he felt exactly the same as me. He would know soon enough how long it was, as long as he was sitting down in his safe position rather than standing up when we hit the deck. If he was, he would shoot in between John and me, and straight out of the cockpit window. It felt good, two lowly staff sergeants being in charge of an officer, being able to shout orders to a Captain, especially one who was about twenty years our senior.