The Crew (2 page)

Jesus Christ, Charlie, what's this?
Poems?
The bomb aimer had read a bit aloud in his Aussie accent.

He'd handed the book back, shaking his head. ‘Strewth, if you're going to be beholding bloody rainbows, kid, we'll all be dying with you.'

Charlie took another small sip of beer. Harry's mug was nearly empty now. How on earth could he get it down so quickly? Must be all the practice. He was really old, Harry. More than thirty –
years
older than the rest of them. Bert was nineteen, Jock twenty, Stew twenty-one. He wasn't sure about Piers and the skipper, but they'd be somewhere around that. He was easily the youngest himself, as well as the smallest, which was handy as it was a bit of a squash in the rear turret.

Bert tipped up his mug and drained it. ‘Time for another.'

‘Your shout, Bert,' Harry said firmly.

‘OK, OK. Get it down, Charlie, and give us your glass.'

‘Not quite ready, thanks.'

‘Blimey, come
on
 . . . you won't grow up to be a big strong man like 'arry if you don't drink up your beer like a good boy.'

He couldn't. He just couldn't. Luckily Harry saved him.

‘Leave him be, Bert. The lad's takin' his time, but I don't mind if I do.'

Up the other end of the bar, the bomb aimer, Stew, was buying a beer for himself and a lemonade for Jock. He handed over the glass of lemonade to the flight engineer with a grimace. ‘Don't know how you can drink that muck, sport.'

‘Och, it's no so bad.'

‘Have a fag?'

‘No, thanks.'

Strewth, the bloke didn't booze and didn't smoke, and didn't chase sheilas either. What the hell sort of a life was that? No flaming fun at all. Stew stuck a cigarette in his mouth and flicked the wheel of his lighter with his thumb. As usual the bloody thing was playing up. If it hadn't been his lucky mascot he'd have chucked it away long ago. He went on flicking the wheel harder and harder.

‘What d'you reckon our chances with our Yank driver, then, Jock?'

‘Not too good.'

‘He was fair enough when we were on Wimpeys, but seems to me he just doesn't get it with the heavies.'

‘Aye, you could say that.'

‘Think he'll get any better?'

‘I certainly hope so.'

The lighter suddenly burst into flame and Stew bent his head to it. He took a drag at the cigarette and blew smoke upwards.

‘Anyway, far as I can see, it's not going to make a blind bit of difference. It's odds-on we won't be
coming back to land at all. We're the favourites for the chop, did you know that?'

‘I'd heard something of the kind.'

Jock didn't look like he gave a bugger. He was a cool customer and no mistake. Must have ice in his veins instead of blood, Stew thought. Maybe it was the climate in Scotland that made them like that. Most Aussies, himself included, thought themselves pretty tough blokes, but he wasn't sure the Scots hadn't got the edge. He'd come across one or two others like Jock: steel eyes, voices like glass breaking, made of cast iron. They could generally drink you under the table as well, which made it even weirder that Jock never touched a drop. Didn't swear either, which was the weirdest bloody thing of all.

You couldn't tell so easily about the English lot. They hid it. Put up a smokescreen. They might have a streak of yellow a mile wide or be brave as hell for all he knew. He hadn't a clue how their four would turn out when it came to the real thing – when the chips were down. Harry and Bert were probably OK. Harry had one foot in the grave but he was one of those solid north country types, and if he ever learned to work the radio set properly he might do all right, and Bert was a wiry little cockney bastard who told some good blue jokes, even if he wasn't Dead-Eye-Dick. But Charlie was a worry, same as the skipper. For a start, seventeen was too bloody young for this caper; they ought to have rumbled him at the recruiting office. And any kid who read poetry about rainbows wasn't exactly going to be the killer type. He'd be dreaming away and gazing at the flaming stars, or something, and they'd go and get their arse shot off. The only thing he'd be any use for
would be to keep the tail down on landing.

Stew took another drag at his cigarette. As for that drongo, Piers, getting them lost all the time . . . well, they might as well take up a ball of string next time. When it was time to go home, Charlie could wind it in from the rear turret and they could fly down backwards so the skipper could try landing that way for a change. How the hell Piers had got to be an officer he'd never know, unless it was the toff talk that had swung it. Or his posh family had pulled some strings.

He frowned. Not that he'd any right to throw stones when it came to cocking-up. He'd gone and failed that bloody exam at the Heavy Conversion Unit, hadn't he? No excuses, but it had been a snap test, after all, with no time to bone up for it, no chance to get all the facts on the new bombsight and fuses and detonators properly fixed in his memory, like he'd done with all the previous exams he'd passed OK. They'd sprung it on them and it had been a bastard. There'd been more blanks on his paper than answers, and when the chief bombing instructor had hauled him in and chewed him into confetti, he'd thought they were going to throw him out of the Unit then and there. Like a condemned man, he'd pleaded for another chance and they'd let him do a special two-day course to catch up. Now, he wasn't so sure he should have been so flaming keen. If he'd kept his mouth shut they'd've replaced him and he'd've ended up with another crew, not this lot. Still, too late now. Too bloody bad, sport!

Christ, what a way to crew-up! They stuck you in a hangar with a hundred or more other blokes you didn't know from Adam – pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, gunners – all milling about,
and told you to sort yourselves out, chaps! You were expected to pick your partners like you were at a bloody dance. Only you weren't choosing partners for an evening's hoofing; you were trying to pick the men you were going to have to trust with your own sweet life.

He'd wandered about the hangar, not knowing what the hell to do for the best, and when he'd stopped for a fag his lighter had gone u/s on him. A bloke standing nearby with pilot's wings and a Canada shoulder flash had given him a light and it had seemed a good idea to join up with another colonial, not being too sure about the Poms, so they'd shaken hands on it. Later, of course, he'd discovered that Van was really a Yank in disguise. Pretty soon Harry had come by with the kid Charlie in tow, like a minnow on a line. They'd still needed a navigator, until Piers had come up, stammering and blushing like a sheila, and asked if they'd mind
awfully
if he butted in. If they'd known then that he couldn't find his way out of a paper bag, they'd've minded quite a lot. Bert had teamed up with them as mid-upper gunner when they'd gone on from Wellingtons to Lanes, and their flight engineer had been assigned whether he liked it or not. Poor old Jock, he'd had lousy luck to get stuck with them. Well, they were all stuck with each other and all you could do was bloody pray.

It was a frightful scrum in the Officers' Mess. Piers waited his turn patiently to order a sherry and stand his skipper a beer – the least he could do after the mess he'd made of navigating. ‘I'm terribly sorry about making such a hash of things again today, Van.'

‘Forget it. I'm just as sorry about that landing.'

‘Gosh, that's all right. It can happen to anyone, I expect.'

‘Not to most guys. Maybe we'll both improve, in time. Cigarette?'

‘Thanks awfully. I rather like your American ones.'

He took one of Van's Chesterfields. The smoke felt good going into his lungs; so did the sherry going down his throat. They both made him feel better. After all, he wasn't the only one who'd messed up; that landing
had
been bloody awful. He'd really thought they were going to cartwheel, in which case that would probably have been that. He'd seen a Halifax do it: stand on one wingtip and flip right over like an acrobat before it had gone up in a mighty whoomph. No-one had got out. And he couldn't see them getting out of a Lanc quickly, either. If anything happened in the air, they were all supposed to bail out by the nose escape hatch so they didn't go and smash into the tail. On the ground, in flames, God knows if they'd be able to get to
any
exit in time. They'd probably be caught like rats in a trap. He tried not to think about that. Not much point. In fact, absolutely no point at all.

Just the same, he'd no regrets about volunteering. The parents would have preferred him to go into the Army, following family tradition, but he'd always liked the idea of flying. If he hadn't failed the course, he'd have been a pilot, but navigator wasn't a bad alternative. And it wasn't as though he didn't know his stuff – you couldn't get through the training unless you did – but when it had come to the real thing, he kept getting into a complete panic and losing his head; forgetting everything he'd learned.

The thought of letting the rest of them down – maybe getting them all killed, not just lost on a
training exercise like today – filled him with a sickening horror. To get oneself killed was one thing, to be responsible for six other deaths along with your own, quite another. Of course, it was the same for each of them. Their lives depended on the other chaps doing their jobs properly. They were bound to each other like links in a chain – and a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. He hoped to God that link wasn't himself.

In a couple of weeks they'd be posted to an operational station somewhere and doing their first sortie. The first of the thirty. The chances of getting through the tour weren't terribly good, he knew, but he tried not to think about that either. After all, they could be one of the lucky ones. Survive your first five, he'd heard somebody chant, and double your chances of staying alive.

He wondered why Van had volunteered to fight in a war that hadn't been his country's problem. The skipper never talked about it – hardly talked about himself at all – but he must have joined up long before the Japanese had attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. From the little he knew of America, mostly from films, they seemed to live pretty comfortably over there. Certainly a lot better than wartime England. Plenty of food and everything, and no bombs. Mad to come here.

‘Think anyone'd mind if I played that piano?' Van said, nodding towards the beer-stained upright in the corner of the Mess.

‘Golly, I shouldn't think so.' He watched his skipper make his way across the room, park his beer and cigarette and sit down at the keys. He played a few bars of a song that Piers recognized vaguely but
couldn't put a title to. After a while he realized that Van was rather good. A lot of the chaps had stopped talking and were listening, and some of them gathered round the piano. Piers drank his sherry and smoked his American cigarette and listened. He felt a lot better now. With any luck they'd be posted somewhere decent – one of the pre-war aerodromes with proper buildings, not tin huts. And before that, there'd be some leave so he could get home for a few days. He was looking forward to that.

Two

IN THE FADING
light, the bombers were emerging from their dispersal pans and lumbering after each other round the perimeter track, like elephants in a circus ring.

Assistant Section Officer Catherine Herbert stood with the small group of station personnel beside the runway, watching the Lancasters and waiting to wave them off. Whatever the weather, every kite was seen off on every op, and every time she wondered which ones they were waving goodbye to for ever.

Although it was May, there was a cold wind blowing hard from the Wolds and she had to hang on to her cap. The hedgerows and a huddle of bent trees along the eastern edge of the aerodrome were the only protection on the piece of flat Lincolnshire farm land that had been turned hurriedly into a wartime bomber station. The ancient farm buildings lay at the northern perimeter and a raw group of Nissen huts and wooden shacks had sprung up among the trees to the east. Drab brown and green camouflage, ugly corrugated iron and asbestos, concrete paths linked across oozing mud, gigantic steel hangars, barbed wire, the deafening roar of heavy bombers, a ceaseless wind. That was RAF Beningby.

She had hated it at first, and then gradually got used to it. There was a war on, after all, which meant
getting used to everything – including men dying.

The big four-engined bombers had only been with the squadron a few weeks, and they were an impressive sight. And an impressive sound. Mingled with the steady roar of the engines, the WAAF could hear the short extra bursts of power and the sharp squeal of brakes as the pilots steered along the narrow, winding track between the blue and amber lights. Once or twice she'd seen a bomber run off the concrete edge and bog down in the mud, which meant a long delay for everyone behind while the aircraft was hauled out. It was usually a sprog crew and there was one on this op. She'd spotted them at the briefing, as easy to pick out as new boys in a school class: not knowing where to sit or what to do, taking industrious notes, making neat little diagrams of flak and searchlight batteries, and paying more attention than all the rest of the old hands put together. All too often she never saw sprog crews more than once or twice: the first five ops were known to be the trickiest for them. But if they got through those, they had a fair chance of surviving the remainder.

The target for tonight was St Nazaire, and they were off to lay mines in enemy waters. Gardening, the crews called it, and the mines were vegetables. Nobody called anything unpleasant or dangerous by the proper word. You didn't get killed, you ‘bought it', and you didn't bomb the enemy, you ‘clobbered' him. The atmosphere in the briefing room had been almost light-hearted. Not Hamburg, or Cologne or Stuttgart . . . just a milk-run. Piece of cake.