LITMIR.BIZ

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and looking up in surprise said, ‘Are you still sleeping in Peterborough, you mad bastard?’

      It had become fashionable among some of the crews to have their names written across the front of their flying helmets. A bottle of light-pink nail-varnish was going the rounds. Cohen was writing ‘Kosher’ on his.

      ‘That I am, feller,’ said Binty. ‘A quarter of an hour from billet to bedroom. That’s all it takes me on the motorbike.’

      ‘Quarter of an hour,’ said Lambert. ‘I’d rather fly the operation twice than go that last ten miles on your banger.’

      ‘Fifteen miles,’ corrected Binty. ‘Ah well, I’m a professional, you see.’

      ‘Professional crumpet-chaser?’ said Digby.

      ‘Milkmen all are,’ said Cohen, ‘aren’t they, Binty?’

      ‘Some of them,’ he grinned proudly. In spite of his carefully pressed clothes and shirt starched like card he was not much to look at: cropped hair, bad teeth, short stature and pockmarked face. None of which was an impediment to his frantic motorized sex-life, in pursuit of which he journeyed constantly across East Anglia. ‘It’s the bike that gets them, man, the rhythm, you see. They hear that in the middle of the night and they quiver like a jelly.’

      ‘You still with that married sheila?’ asked Digby. He knew the answer but he wanted to draw Flash Gordon into the discussion. He liked to hear them argue.

      ‘She’s a smashing piece of crackling, man.’

      ‘Why don’t you find yourself some piece of single skirt?’ said Flash.

      ‘You know why, man. All the best single crumpet in Peterborough has been taken over by the Yanks.’

      ‘Well, I don’t think it’s right. Her old man fighting in the desert. I just don’t think it’s right.’

      ‘I’m just keeping it warm for him, man.’

      ‘I hope he comes back and knocks the daylights out of you.’

      ‘No danger, I’ve seen his photo, a tiny fellow he is.’

      ‘A judo instructor.’

      ‘Sheet-metal worker with a REME unit in Alex.’

      ‘He’ll come back and clobber you,’ warned Flash.

      The conversation had taken the same lines that it always took and after it they were silent as they always were. Binty opened his comic again. ‘What’s the time now?’ asked Digby.

      ‘Three minutes later than the last time you asked,’ said Cohen. Again he checked the contents of his green canvas bag: torch, rice-paper message pad, radio notes, protractor, dividers, coloured pencils, course and speed calculator, log book, target map, star tables and ruler. It was all there.

      ‘That’s quite a watch you’ve got there, sport,’ said Digby.

      ‘My uncle’s. My ma gave it to me this morning.’

      Cohen returned the nail-varnish to Digby who put it on the shelf of his locker and padlocked the door. ‘Come on, Maisie,’ said Digby quietly. They looked across to the far side of the room where a line of aircrew were waiting for Maisie Holroyd to issue them with flying rations. Batters was next.

      ‘Four Bovrils, three coffees.’

      ‘Four Bovrils, three coffees,’ she said, and the clerk gave Batters the required vacuum flasks of hot drinks as well as seven packets of sandwiches, chewing-gum, boiled sweets and chocolate.

      Sergeant Jimmy Grimm, the wireless operator and standby gunner, was a cheerful beardless man of twenty-three. He would have been acutely embarrassed to know that among Warley’s WAAFs he was known as ‘the blond bombshell’ for although he was married with a two-year-old child he was absurdly shy in the presence of women and was easily shocked by the sort of jokes that the crews related with such proud maturity. Sometimes, balanced over his radio, he’d write long, long letters to his wife Mollie in large looping handwriting and always in green ink.

      An average wireless operator, Grimm was a dedicated amateur photographer and the billet that he shared with Digby and Cohen was a disordered muddle of enamel trays, film tins and parts of his home-made enlarger. Often both bathrooms were full of prints, with others in the washbasins. Once one had jammed in the drain and flooded four rooms.

      These were group portraits of the whole crew that he was passing round. He had a little clockwork device that enabled him to rush and join them after starting the shutter. Handsome lads they all were. Relaxed and smiling like any one of a million young men. Looking at those prints now, it would be easy to say that it was the work of an amateur or that the materials were inferior or unsuitable because they were stolen from Air Ministry supplies. That wouldn’t be true. The fact is that the boys were all like that: their faces were not out of focus or over-exposed, they were bland and smooth and as yet unformed. Those grinning cherubs awkwardly placed in that wartime snapshot are a high-definition portrait of the men who that night climbed into their flying boots, adjusted their parachute harness, borrowed clean shirts, reread old letters, lost a quick hand of cards, wrote IOUs for half a crown and watched the clock so carefully. And so often.

      ‘Bloody good snap that, Jimmy.’

      ‘Us with the old Door behind.’

      ‘What a handsome group!’

      ‘Enlarge it yourself, Jimmy? Bloody good shows.’

      ‘Look at Dig, scowling. He’s a card.’

      ‘Pockets undone as usual, Kosh.’

      ‘Good of the Skipper.’

      ‘Too serious.’

      ‘Well, he is more serious nowadays.’

      ‘It’s that bloody Sweet giving him the needle.’

      ‘Sweet’s all right. One of the boys. He’s got a good sense of humour.’

      ‘Sense of flipping arse-crawling, you mean.’

      ‘Any more photos, Jim? Is that your garden?’

      ‘Can I keep this, Jimmy?’

      ‘Cost you one and threepence.’

      ‘Bloody robber.’

      ‘Here you are. I’ll send it to my mum,’ said Battersby.

      ‘Me too,’ said Binty. ‘Four I’d better have. No, make it five.’

      ‘Who’s that bird with the pram?’

      ‘What a smashing piece of crumble.’

      ‘Shut up, you berk, it’s Jimmy’s missus.’

      Crews were still arriving. There was an endless clang of locker doors, with occasional arguments when someone discovered their helmet missing or their boots borrowed and returned muddy. Flying gear was worn piecemeal according to personal taste and crew position. Usually the Lanc’s heating system blew warm upon the wireless operator, roasted the bomb aimer and left the navigator to freeze. So most of the navigators were wearing the whole gear, from leather Irvin jackets to silk undersocks. So were the rear gunners. Most WOpAGs on the other hand had only the mandatory helmet, boots and Mae West over the same working blue and white rollneck sweater that they had worn at supper. Some flyers had brightly coloured silk scarves and even civilian shirts. Sandy Sanderson wore a fine leather jacket that he’d had made in Cairo.

      It was a warm evening and now the blackout shutters were closed the changing-room became smelly as the crews crowded into it. Some of the early comers were playing cards for money while the late arrivals were grabbing their flying boots and filling their shoes with loose change, farewell letters and dirty pictures before pushing them into the back of their lockers. Few were pessimistic enough to leave a spare key behind and all the tin lockers bore scarred paintwork from being forced open many times.

      Wing

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