The Crew (27 page)

Dorothy had found the place by chance. Biking along the road round the drome one day, she'd passed a bit of the station boundary where there was a thick patch of bushes as well as the barbed wire and hedge. She'd hidden the bike in the ditch and wriggled her way into the middle of the bushes so she could watch what was going on without being seen. It didn't do to hang about the perimeter openly, or they might think she was a spy and arrest her.

A bomber had been standing a few yards away from the boundary and men in overalls had been perched high up on scaffolding, working on one of its engines. She'd heard the clatter of tools, the high whine of an electric drill and their voices talking to each other. It was a Lancaster – she could tell that from the four engines and the shape of the tail.

In spite of the cold she'd stayed there for a long time. The bomber had awed and fascinated her. It looked gigantic on the ground; the men like pygmies. Maybe it was Charlie's bomber. Or one of the ones he flew in. Maybe it was D-Dog – the one his crew liked so much.

The next day, after dark, when she heard them
starting up at the drome, she got the bike out of the shed and rode round to the patch of bushes. The bomber was there again, standing in the moonlight. It looked even bigger: like some great black beast. Dorothy squeezed her way quietly into the bushes.

She could see a faint glimmer of light in the cockpit and another in the turret at the front, and torch beams flashing about on the ground. She waited and after a while there was a whining sound followed by popping noises like small explosions, and then an angry snarl that turned into a great roar. One engine was going, the propeller blades blurring into a dark circle. Soon the next started up. When all four of them were roaring she had to stop her ears. The earth was vibrating, her body with it. The roaring settled to a steady beat and the bomber rolled forward and swung round, the tail end skewing towards her. She tried to see if it was Charlie in the rear turret but a hail of dust and dirt blew in her face. In any case, it would have been too dark to tell for sure.

She watched the Lancaster turn onto the lighted pathway and rumble off into the distance.

Other bombers were starting up all over the drome. Other great beasts stirring and setting forth from their lairs. She listened to them bellowing their way into battle.

‘Full power, Jock.'

‘Full power, skipper.'

D-Dog, weighed down by her load of high explosives and incendiaries, guns and men and fuel, rose gallantly into the air.

‘Undercart up.'

Jock's hand was there at the ready. Van would have
staked his life on it.
Did
stake his life on it. All their lives. They were a great double act now, he and Jock. Minimum talk, maximum efficiency. Clipped commands and responses. Perfectly attuned. It made him feel like a hell of a good pilot sometimes, until he reminded himself that Jock was a hell of a good flight engineer and that it took two to get a Lane safely off the ground. And safely down again.

Van turned the bomber onto Piers' course. The Merlins droned away sonorously in his ears and that was the way he liked it: to hear them all functioning loud and clear. Singing to him. Once, coming back from over Norway on a long, straight, ass-numbing course, he'd fallen asleep for a few seconds and woken up in a shit panic thinking the engines had all stopped – until he'd realized he'd only stopped hearing them.

D-Dog went on climbing steadily. Jock, a bulky form in leather and sheepskin beside him, went on keeping a sharp eye for other aircraft. The only illumination in their confined, cockpit world came from the greenish flickering of the gauges before him and the eerie blue glimmer from the inner exhaust stubs outside.

After thirty minutes Piers gave him a course alteration. The target was Hamburg and the attack was to be from the north-east. They would cross the Danish coast north of Heide towards Kiel and then head south-east for Lübeck and finally Hamburg.

They always made it sound a cinch at briefing. A jolly old piece of cake.
Pop over the North Sea to Denmark, chaps. Bear right and breeze on down to Lübeck and on to Hamburg
 . . . That sort of thing.
We're keeping you well away from the Jerries' beastly old guns, taking the home team by surprise, so no problems until you get to the target, where
it could get a bit noisy.
Bitter comments from all over the briefing room.
Once you've pulled the plug, push off smartly and nip back across the coast here between Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven.
Casual tap, tap with the pointer.
Home again in time for your eggs and bacon.
Encouraging smile all round.
Good show. Any questions?

He'd caught Catherine's eye but she hadn't been smiling. She knew the score too well. As the crews had left the briefing room he'd detoured so he passed close to her. She'd been talking to one of the Intelligence guys but she'd mouthed the words
good luck
at him. That was about as far as he could get with her. Friendly words. Polite conversation. Distance kept. Very British. Come on, with her guy a POW, what the hell else did he expect from a girl like her?

There'd been the usual send-off group by the runway – amorphous figures gathered in the darkness. Impossible to see more as D-Dog had roared past, but he'd had the feeling that she was there, watching and waving.

He snapped on his mike switch. ‘Pilot to crew. Intercom check. Bomb aimer?'

‘OK, skip.' Stew's voice came back instantly. No flies on him.

He called up the rest of the crew. All OK. Nobody'd blacked out with a faulty oxygen supply, or got shot up or fallen out without anyone noticing.

The dark indented mass of the Danish peninsula showed up clearly ahead under the moon. As they crossed the coastline, Piers gave him the course for Kiel. So far, so good. No gun flashes from below. No night fighter trails across the sky, or none that could be seen.

‘Pilot to crew. Keep a sharp look-out for fighters.'

No need to remind them but it was his job to nag.

At Kiel they altered course again for Lübeck and then nosed south-west for Hamburg. As they approached the city a Brock's benefit awaited them: searchlights and flak and flames and flares lighting up the sky.

‘Busy tonight,' was Jock's laconic comment.

Pretty soon, D-Dog was getting tossed about and the fun began. They went straight into the hellfire and Stew started his bit. The effort of holding D-Dog steady made the sweat pour on Van. A searchlight beam swept over one wing, wavered and tracked back.
Come on, Stew, for Chrissake. Those guys are onto us.

‘Bombs gone, skip. Bomb doors closed.'

Van yanked at the bomb door lever and dived the Lancaster away from the target, away from that searing white beam of light. They headed east for the German coast. He swiped his gloved hand across his forehead. It sure didn't get any easier.

He'd just made a course correction from Piers when they were hit. D-Dog staggered and reared and lurched crazily. He wrenched at the control wheel.
What the hell?
A dark shape twisting away to port below gave him the answer. An enemy fighter had attacked them from beneath. A JU88 trick. Sneak under the belly where nobody can spot you and fire upwards with the roof-mounted gun. Go for the jugular. Sonofabitch!

‘Pilot to gunners. Enemy fighter rolling low to port. JU88. He got our wing. Watch for him coming back.'

‘I can see him, skip.' Stew's guns fired in murderous bursts from the front turret. ‘Out of range now, skip. He's pissing off.'

‘OK, keep watching. He may be fooling. Pilot to crew, report any damage.'

There was no damage aft. The port outer had taken the hit. He could see the broken prop blades, whirling uselessly. Jock shut the engine down. ‘He must have holed the port tanks badly, skipper. Got us right along the wing. We're losing fuel fast.'

‘What about the auto seal?'

‘I reckon the holes are too big.'

‘How's the port inner?'

‘Seems OK. And the starboard tanks are secure. We should be able to keep all three engines running if we cross-feed the starboards from the damaged tanks with the booster pumps and use up what's left there first. Then cross-feed the port.'

‘OK, Jock. Let's try it. Pilot to gunners. Any sign of that guy?'

‘Bomb aimer here, skip. Can't see the fucking bastard anywhere.'

‘Mid-upper to pilot. Can't see him neither.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Dead sure.' Bert sounded offended.

‘Charlie?'

‘Nothing back here, skipper. Very sorry I didn't spot him before.'

‘You'd no chance, Charlie. None of us did. He came up beneath us. I'm going to tip the wings; try and see what's happening underneath. Take a good look.'

D-Dog responded obediently but there was no sign of the JU88.

‘Must've gone home for breakfast,' Bert said.

Maybe that's just what he'd done. Maybe he was out of ammo, or short of fuel. Otherwise the guy would have made another run to be sure of finishing them off. Unless he thought he'd done that already . . .

He looked down at the moonlit landscape of
northern Germany – no lights to be seen, just the silver ribbon of a river far below, winding towards the sea. Going their way. But the enemy coast was still seventy miles distant and England three hundred miles across an icy and very unfriendly North Sea.

They flew on.

‘Port inner's starting to over-heat, skipper.' Jock rapped the gauge with his knuckles.

Holy shit!
Come on D-Dog. Give us a break.
Maybe she didn't hear him. Maybe she hurt too much to care. The gauge needle went on climbing through the roof.

‘We'll have to shut it down, skipper. No choice.'

D-Dog suddenly stopped being docile and acted like she was a tired and stubborn old lady with the ague who'd had a lot too much to drink. She staggered along lopsidedly, shaking all over, and it took all Van's strength, using full rudder and aileron trim, to keep the port wing up. The two remaining starboard engines kept tugging her round, and if he wasn't bloody careful they'd be flying in circles going up their own ass. He had to keep his right foot pressed hard on the rudder pedal to stop her turning. Pretty soon his legs and arms were aching and though he was managing to keep D-Dog more or less straight and level, they were losing height steadily. The land below was looking a whole lot closer now; he could make out the shape of fields and a line of pinpricks of light that probably belonged to an enemy army convoy on the move.

‘Pilot to navigator. How far to the coast, Piers?'

‘Eighteen miles, skipper.'

And after that, the sea.

‘Do you reckon we can make it across, Jock?'

‘Fuel's not going to last. Not at the rate we're having
to use it to keep her in the air. We lost too much from those damaged tanks. I'd say we might get three-quarters of the way – if we're lucky.'

OK, so it was a simple decision: hit the silk now or ditch later. He snapped on his mike.

‘Pilot to crew. Looks like we're not going to make it back. Not all the way. You guys have two straight choices. Bale out now, while we're still over land, or we can ditch as close to England as I can take her and hope we get picked up by Air Sea Rescue.'

‘Bomb aimer here. I'm not fucking spending the rest of the war behind the fucking wire, skip. Let's head for home and take our chance at getting picked up by our own blokes, not the fucking Jerries.' Spoken like a true-blue Aussie.

‘I'm coming too, skip.' That was Bert.

‘I absolutely agree.' Piers, of course.

‘Aye, me too.' Harry.

‘Charlie? What do you want to do?'

‘Stay with the rest of you, skipper.'

Good kid. All alone back there. Probably shit scared.

‘What do you say, Jock?'

‘Same as the others.' Steady as a rock beside him. Eyes glued to the gauges.

‘OK. If that's the way you all want it, we'll go for it. Get as far across as we can and I'll try and get her down in one piece. Harry, start sending a Mayday. Tell them we'll be ditching and we'll give them our exact position.'

He was soaked in sweat now and his legs and arms hurt like hell. Jesus, in another hour, or whatever time they'd got left in the air, he'd have run out of the strength to get her down any way at all. They'd had crew ditching drills at the conversion course, climbing
in and out of a rubber dinghy in the local swimming baths. Nothing like the real thing. And landing a bomber on the open sea in mid-winter wasn't something you could rehearse. No circuits. No runways. Nobody helping from the ground. He could screw up so badly they none of them had a chance. And these guys were counting on him. If he'd've been them he'd have got out right now.

As they approached the German coast, a bright arc of tracer curved upwards at them. Some Hun coastal battery had a bead on them and at this height and speed they were a sitting duck. Nothing to be done but keep a-going. He hauled the bomber back to level flight yet again and they flew on through the barrage. The Jerry gunners must have been lousy shots, though, because they missed every time and D-Dog escaped out over the North Sea.