LITMIR.BIZ

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up with that sort of thing. Take me to see that young officer who’s on his first trip tonight.’

      ‘Pilot Officer Fleming, sir. Z for Zebra. Parked near the trees, driver.’

      The car turned and crossed the peri track. The Groupie seemed not to have heard. ‘I’ll get rid of him, Griffith.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Young Sweet was on about him only today.’

      ‘Was he, sir?’

      ‘Hinted that he was a Red.’ The Groupie gave a short humourless laugh. ‘Only I was too damned stupid to see what young Sweet was driving at.’

      ‘He said that Lambert was a Red?’ asked Pilot Officer Griffith in amazement.

      ‘No, he didn’t. Too loyal to his flight, too damned fine a young officer to even suspect a senior NCO of such a thing. No, Sweet just reported a piece of Lambert’s bloody propagandizing Communist bilge in the Mess. As I say, young Sweet was so hesitant that it’s not until I had the full force of it myself that I’ve tumbled to what’s going on. What say you to that, Griffith?’

      ‘Remarkable, sir.’

      ‘Bloody remarkable, Griffith. If the AOC had got wind of it I’d have been remarkable on my bloody earhole, Griffith.’ No sooner had the Group Captain got his pipe alight than he rapped it against the metal ashtray to empty it.

      ‘Indeed you would, sir.’

      ‘Who did you say this next one was?’

      ‘Z for Zebra, sir. Three officers in the crew. The captain is Pilot Officer Fleming. His first operation.’ The car stopped and Griffith ticked his list of names.

      ‘Bloody cold, eh, Fleming?’ boomed the Groupie striding across the tarmac. The Admin Officer prodded the smouldering tobacco to be sure it was quite extinguished. With all this petrol about smoking was strictly forbidden.

      Voices carry a long way on an airfield, especially at night. Battersby had heard the WAAF driver stop at S Sweet on the far pan.

      ‘All change,’ she called. There were laughs and shouts and then he heard her say, ‘Good luck, sir,’ and knew she was talking to Sweet. Battersby felt a stab of jealousy. After all, she had blown him a kiss. He walked around, checking the exterior of his aircraft. Officers always got the pretty ones.

      A Corporal rigger poured hot sweet tea for all of them. The enamel cups were chipped and smelled faintly of oil but it was hot and welcome. Digby was still leaning against the wheel and dreaming when he heard the distant voices of Joe for King’s crew. They were standing around the door of their aeroplane arguing.

      Their aeroplane smelled new and strange and the ladder still had protective grease on it.

      ‘Why can’t we have Joe?’ Ben Gallacher said.

      ‘Ask Himmler,’ said Carter. ‘You’ve asked me ten times. It’s not the fuses, they can’t trace the fault.’

      ‘What am I, then?’ said Gallacher. ‘Am I the bloody Flight Engineer or the tea-boy? Why aren’t I consulted?’

      ‘Can’t you get it into your thick head? The kite’s duff. For Christ’s sake stop binding, you’re making me jumpy.’

      ‘I want to fly in Joe for King,’ said Gallacher.

      Collins, the bomb aimer on his last operation, reached into the inside pocket of his battledress blouse and found a piece of chalk. He climbed up two rungs of the ladder and, leaning to one side, he wrote ‘Joe for King’ across the squadron letter. Under that he scribbled just a huge curling moustache.

      ‘Now you are flying in Joe for King,’ said Tommy Carter, ‘get in and bloody well belt up.’ Gallacher swung round and aimed a punch at his captain. The punch sounded very loud and it was followed by a shocked silence. Tommy didn’t respond at all; he’d taken the blow on his thick harness and it hurt Gallacher’s hand more than Tommy’s chest.

      Joe for King’s navigator was Roland Pembroke, a public-school-educated twenty-year-old from Edinburgh. Watching the two men growling at each other he was filled with a despairing horror. The engineer and pilot had never got on well together; Gallacher had failed the pilot’s course and was still jealous of the ones that hadn’t. Tommy, on the other hand, had that exasperating calm rectitude that only policemen display. Roland Pembroke had done everything he could think of to bring the two men closer. He turned to the Corporal rigger and asked in a whisper, ‘Did you get it?’

      ‘It will be waiting; that bird Cynthia in the Bell is saving me a bottle.’

      ‘And cups,’ said Roland Pembroke in his soft lowland accent.

      ‘Glasses,’ said the Corporal. ‘She’s promised to wangle me some glasses.’

      ‘Great,’ said Roland.

      ‘And I’ve got sausage rolls too.’

      Roland pushed his navigational gear into the door of the plane and heaved a sigh of relief. Tomorrow was Sergeant Carter’s twenty-first birthday and the completion of ‘Tapper’ Collins’ final operation. Roland Pembroke had planned a surprise party right there on the pan so that the ground-staff boys and the crew could celebrate. It had started badly.

      ‘Ten trips done, twenty to go,’ said Pembroke as he disappeared into the aeroplane, crossing his fingers to stave off danger as he always did.

      There are many ways in which the life history of an aircrew can be charted. There would be a simple graph of the odds that an insurance company would offer. The chances on this one began low – the first three trips were five times as dangerous as the average. But as skills and experience mounted so the chances of survival for each trip became better. Another graph, thirty trips with a five-per-cent casualty rate, would be a simple straight line: a mathematical proposition in which each trip held equal danger and the line ended at trip number twenty. There was yet another graph that could be drawn, a morale line charted by psychiatrists. Its curves recorded the effect of stress as men were asked to face repeatedly the mathematical probability of death. This graph – unlike the others – began at the highest point. Granted courage by ignorance and the inhibitory effect that curiosity has upon fear their morale was high for the first five operations, after which the line descended until a crack-up point was reached by the eleventh or twelfth trip. Perhaps it was the relief of surviving the thirteenth operation that made the graph turn upwards after it. Men had seen death at close quarters and were shocked to discover their own fear of it. But recognizing the same shameful fears in the eyes of their friends helped their morale, and after a slight recovery it remained constant until about the twenty-second trip, after which it sloped downwards without recovery.

      The eleventh trip was not marked by crews asking to be taken off flying, getting drunk or running sobbing through the Mess. In fact few men asked to be grounded, and their reluctance was fortified by the RAF authorities who would stamp the words ‘lack of moral fibre’ across the man’s documents, strip him of rank and brevet and send him away in disgrace with the bright unfaded blue patch of tunic proclaiming him an officially recognized coward.

      No, the eleventh trip was marked by more subtle defensive changes in the crew: a fatalism, a brutalizing, a callousness about the deaths of friends and a marked change in demeanour. Noisy men became quiet and reflective while the shy ones often became clamorous. This was the time at which the case histories of ulcers, deafness, and other stress-induced nervous diseases that were to follow the survivors through their later years, actually began. The crew of Joe for King were on their eleventh trip.

      The crew of The Volkswagen, on the other hand, were about to do their first trip. Like a young man with his first sports car they were keen and raring to go. They weren’t tired in the way that Lambert was tired, their reflexes were sharp, their eyesight keen, and their hands itched to prove themselves. Lambert was like a weary old businessman climbing into his family saloon to do a trip that he had done all his working life. He was tired, dulled, slow of reflex, and frightened. And yet, as any

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