Bomber

‘You’ve no idea what a blimp he is. Old buffers like him are a menace to all of us. It’s no good you even asking for an interview, you’ll just have to trust me. If I can’t squeeze it out of the old man when he’s got a couple of nips inside him after dinner, there’s no chance of you doing it in the cold light of dawn in the Squadron office.’ Sweet laughed reflectively, then he asked, ‘You’ve not reconsidered the cricket team? We’re playing Besteridge at the weekend. They’ve got a strong side.’

‘I’m committed next weekend, sir,’ said Lambert.

‘Pity. It might have made all the difference to the old man’s attitude.’

Lambert said nothing. Sweet said, ‘Think it over, Sambo; a couple of cricket victories – especially inter-Command victories – could put you well in with the old man. And with me.’ He smiled to show he was joking. ‘Not that I won’t do all I can for you anyway, you know that.’

There was a knock at the door. It was Flight Sergeant Micky Murphy, the engineer who had recently been transferred from Lambert’s to Sweet’s crew. He was a huge Irishman with a white complexion, a square protruding jaw and a gap-toothed smile that he used between sentences as regularly as he breathed. He glanced at Lambert and smiled.

‘Well,’ said Sweet. ‘Did you find the trouble with the under-carriage?’

‘That we didn’t find,’ said Murphy. ‘We’ve bled her out and she’s as nice as ninepence, but we found no fault unless it was the microswitch playing false.’

‘It wasn’t the switch,’ said Sweet.

‘Did you try the lever a few times?’ asked Murphy.

But Sweet threw the questioning back at his engineer. ‘Are you sure you switched the indicators over to their reserve, Paddy?’

‘First thing I did, sir.’

‘Call me Skipper, for God’s sake, Paddy,’ Sweet insisted. ‘It’s that hydraulic fluid; I told you I wanted only Intava 675.’

‘At this time of year it can make no difference,’ said Murphy. ‘I still think there was nothing wrong. All the undercarts stick sometimes. Lowering the lever a couple of times will often do the trick. No need for the emergency compressed air. It’s a big job once the compressed air is in the system.’

‘I’ll decide when there’s a need to use the compressed air, thank you, Chiefie. How soon will she be ready?’

‘She’s still on the jacks and the boys will be wanting to work the undercarriage a few more times to be on the safe side; it’s a fine test for the whole system. After that we reinflate the emergency air bottle, top up the reservoir, sign the 700 and off we go.’ Flight Sergeant Murphy smiled nervously.

‘For God’s sake stop grinning, Paddy,’ said Sweet. ‘S Sweet has got a date over Hunland tonight and I don’t intend to miss it, so get mobile. And this time don’t mix the hydraulic fluids when you top up.’

Murphy was about to explain what the handbook said about hydraulic fluids but finally nodded.

‘These engineers just want to blind us with science,’ said Sweet to Lambert after the man had left.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lambert unenthusiastically.

‘That’s the spirit, Sambo, all any of us want is to make B Flight the best damned bomb-delivery service in East Anglia, eh?’

Lambert didn’t answer. Sweet gave Lambert an encouraging smile, for he didn’t want him to feel annoyed about losing men of his crew. It was Sweet’s especial pride that he was one of the most democratic officers on the camp. He might almost say the most democratic. It had become a standard joke now that at the Sergeants’ Mess dances Sweet would turn up wearing a sergeant’s uniform. Sometimes he could be persuaded to sing Tea for Two close to the microphone. The sergeants appreciated an officer who knew how to be one of the boys. It would need only one miserable bastard like Lambert to spoil the whole atmosphere.

Eric the clerk looked round the door. ‘Will you be wanting transport to the Officers’ Mess for lunch, sir?’

‘Affirmative,’ said Sweet. It was only a quarter of a mile by the short cut, but the path was always muddy. Last week he’d felt a perfect fool when some ass in the Mess had pointed to his shoes and said, ‘Been running B Flight through the assault course, Sweetie? Nothing like it for working up an appetite.’

Even Munro, the Squadron commander, had joined in the laughter. Good thing the Group Captain hadn’t been there at the time. The Groupie was a real old Sandhurst blimp: fussy as hell about officers’ appearance; no flying gear in the Mess, not even roll-neck sweaters, and him leading the officers in to meals like some old dowager duchess saying, ‘I’m employed to kill Huns,’ as though he’d actually seen one through a gunsight. Still, the buzz was that Munro was getting a station of his own. They might decide to give a flight lieutenant his scraper-ring and a chance at the job.

‘Righto, Sambo my lad, off you go on a night-flying test.’ And then, ‘Oh, by the by, Lambert.’

Lambert turned.

‘The armourers have removed a panel from your rear turret. You authorize that?’

‘I did.’

Lambert’s attitude made Sweet think that perhaps a higher authority had ordered it. He trod warily. ‘What’s the idea?’

‘To see better.’

‘Than through clear polished Perspex?’

‘You opened this window just now to see what I was doing.’

Sweet smiled.

Lambert said, ‘Anyway, the Perspex was badly marked, the Sergeant armourer was about to change it. I decided it was worth a go.’

Again Sweet smiled. ‘It’s just a matter of good manners, Flight. As your Flight commander it would be nice to be informed.’

‘Written memo. On your desk last Thursday. It came back signed, so we went ahead.’

‘Yes, quite. I meant keep me informed how it works out. A good idea of yours, Lambert.’

‘Sergeant Gordon’s idea, sir. If it works he deserves the credit.’

‘OK, Lambert. Off you go, and don’t forget the Christmas Party tin on your way out, laddie.’

Lambert, who was four years older and six inches taller than Sweet, saluted and left.

When Corporal Ruth Lambert had walked a little way along the road she overtook the Bedford lorry that Sweet had sent away. It was waiting for her.

‘Jump in, Mrs Lambert,’ said the driver.

‘Thanks,’ said Ruth.

‘Bloody officers,’ said the driver.

As the lorry passed near to where Creaking Door was parked, one of its engines started. Four birds, frightened by the noise, flew out of the hedge in front of the lorry. The driver braked in time for the birds to climb steeply into the sky.

‘Crows,’ said the driver. “Where I come from they say, “One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth”.’ He glanced at Ruth and grinned. ‘Four for a birth,’ he repeated.

‘Three of those were rooks,’ said Ruth.

‘Oh well,’ said the driver, ‘I don’t believe any of that stuff anyway.’

Other motors started, until the noise was shattering. Flight Sergeant Worthington waited for Lambert. They walked without speaking to the aeroplane. Flight Sergeant Worthington had been in the RAF twenty-eight years. His overalls were pressed and starched, and his tie was knotted tight against his collar. His face was red and highly polished and he could climb inside a greasy engine and emerge without a hair out of place. He regarded all airmen who had joined the RAF after war began as nothing better than amateurs. ‘Which war, laddie?’ The way in which aircrews were automatically given sergeant’s rank and membership of the Mess he saw as a terrible heresy. Some evenings when the weather was bad he’d sit at the bar, with pints of beer arriving automatically at his elbow, while he told his fellow men of his peacetime Odyssey to this Ithaca. He’d tell of Bloody April 1917, the rigours of the Khyber Pass, the boredom of Habbaniyah and the cruelties of Uxbridge depot. Whether or not he noticed that the young aircrew were the most dedicated part of his audience and kept the beer pots coming was not certain, but lately his tirades were more jocular than venomous.

Lambert had joined the Regular RAF in 1938. In Worthington’s eyes he was one of the few ‘real airmen’ on the camp.