Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse

‘Put him out the window,’ said Lambert. ‘He’s probably just finishing his second tour.’ But Digby tipped it on to the floor and Jimmy Grimm put his boot on it.

The briefing was running late. It was already 17.05 hours by the big clock but half of the chairs on the platform were still empty. The Assistant Adjutant, Jammy Giles, was there, of course, tipping back in his chair until it nearly fell over, laughing noisily and joking with a group of flyers in the front row. The Intelligence Officer, Longfellow, was also there. He always arrived early to be sure that his precious charts and diagrams were set up and to check that the route was correctly taped on the big map and the curtains closed upon it. He stood behind Jammy and steadied the chair each time it teetered too far back. But Jammy never toppled over. ‘Jammy’ was another word for easy or lucky and Flight Lieutenant Giles was lucky.

Outside in the corridors of the Operations Block there was the clatter of a relex machine as more orders arrived from Group. There was a pungent smell of floor polish and sweet tea and the clerks were hurrying with last-minute orders and modifications for the briefing officers. Standing in the corner of an empty office in the same block was Wing Commander John Munro, the commanding officer of the Squadron. While the Group Captain had control of the entire airfield from Dental Surgery to Smithy, John Munro commanded the bombers and their crews. Not that either of them would be likely to get into an argument about how things should be done. Air Ministry had carefully delineated their respective areas of responsibility.

If there was one man who had stamped this Squadron with his personality it was John Munro. Its faults were his and its virtues were his and its skills were his too. Now Munro was tired. There was no need for him to fly on so many raids, but he felt that he must. He flew and he kept his desk-top clear and tidy. He was not among the most popular officers on the Station. He knew that but he was unconcerned. Airmen brought before him knew that they could expect just punishment but little sympathy. He knew that the men called him Himmler but he was perceptive enough to know that there was a paradoxical element of respect and affection in the nickname. Munro’s most celebrated virtue was that he spoke to the men coming before him for judgement with exactly the same tone of voice and listened to them with the same degree of attention that he gave the AOC. As one of his gunners had said after they had been badly shot up over Duisburg, ‘He’s not as cool as a cucumber, he’s as cold as a bloody iceberg.’ One night in the Mess Jammy Giles, full of thin beer and hoarse from singing, had pronounced loudly, ‘Munro is a gentleman and gentlemen are now obsolete. This is the age of the technician.’

‘The age of violence,’ PO Cornelius Fleming had argued.

‘Then we should be all right, old cock,’ said Jammy. ‘Seeing as we are the technicians of violence.’

‘But Munro’s a good type, isn’t he?’ asked Fleming.

Jammy suddenly sobered up. ‘He’s all right, Fleming my boy. Men don’t come straighter than that tall, thin, humourless, toffee-nosed old sod.’

Now Munro was in the vacated office leaning on his walking-stick and puffing at his pipe. Around him there were the Engineering Officer and three senior ground staff NCOs including Flight Sergeant Worthington.

There was a problem. Carter’s aeroplane – Joe for King – which had dropped the bomb that afternoon had developed an electrical fault and would not be serviceable in time for the raid.

‘Our only reserve is the one that came in this afternoon,’ said Worthington.

‘Could do, Mr Sanderson?’ the CO asked the Engineer Officer, who in turn raised a quizzical eyebrow at the three NCOs.

‘She’ll have to go without an air test,’ said Worthington.

‘Get your best chaps on it and keep me in the picture, would you?’ Sandy nodded assent.

‘We’ll be putting the new flame traps on the exhausts. Permission to bomb her up in the hangar while we work?’

Munro looked at his watch. ‘No choice, Mr Worthington. And rip as much of that armour plate out of her as you can manage.’

‘It’s a long job, sir,’ said Worthington.

‘Group’s boffins say we get an extra foot of altitude for every pound of weight we lose.’

‘We’ll leave the armour behind the pilot, sir?’

‘I don’t think any one of the crew will want you to take that out, Mr Worthington,’ said Munro with a smile.

Worthington saluted and hurried away to round up his bods and break the bad news that they would be working frantically through their mealtime and on through the evening.

‘Carter to take the new kite, John?’

Munro raked a match into his pipe and spoke with it still in his mouth. ‘Seven trips, or is it eight? Average pilot; what’s his flight engineer like, Sandy?’

‘Ten trips actually, sir. His engineer is Gallacher. Apprentice toolmaker, argumentative, thin on theory but practical enough. They’ll be all right.’

‘That’s settled, then.’

‘Shall I tell him?’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said Munro. ‘He’ll probably be a bit needled.’

Munro’s own ground-crew chiefie was still standing nearby. ‘What is it, Chief?’

The old NCO saluted gravely. ‘What time will you be doing your air test, sir?’

Oh Lord, he had quite forgotten that he still had his own NFT to do. His poor crew, they had been hanging around all day, and now they would probably have to fly while the rest of the Squadron were enjoying the evening meal. ‘Immediately after briefing, say 18.15 hours.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Munro reached into his pocket and looked at the list he had written on the envelope of the letter from his wife. He’d forgotten to put the NFT on it. If he’d seen another officer behaving as he had done over the past two months he would have grounded him without argument. But a commanding officer can’t ground himself, in spite of those little talks the quack had given him. There were the lads in the crew, of course, but then they might have been flying with some chap straight from an Operational Training Unit, which would have endangered them even more. It was a problem that would solve itself; tonight would be his last operation. Next week he was to hand over to a new CO.

By the time Munro reached the Briefing Room everyone was there and the Groupie was hovering at the door waiting for the crews to come to attention. Munro walked to the platform and waited until the room was silent. ‘Gentlemen, Station commander,’ he called.

The crews got to their feet as the Groupie’s footsteps clicked smartly down the centre aisle. He sprang agilely up on to the stage and tossed his gold-encrusted cap into a chair. He smiled, smoothed his white hair and looked at the great crowd of men as though wondering why they should be standing at attention.

‘OK, chaps,’ he called breezily. ‘Sit down and light up.’

Near the front he saw Tommy Carter’s bomb aimer who had completed twenty-nine trips. Tonight would be his last, for if he returned safely he would be screened to some safe job for a few months. He was nineteen.

‘Collins, have one of mine,’ said the Groupie and flung him a packet of cigarettes.

Collins caught the packet, took a cigarette and passed them along the line to Carter and the rest of the crew of Joe for King.

‘Thank you, sir. I’m passing them down the line.’

‘You saucy bastard,’ said the Groupie. ‘No wonder they call you Tapper.’ The Sergeant gave a shy smile.

There was a roar of delight from the crews, for Collins had earned his nickname from his constant pleas to borrow a few shillings until payday. The Groupie smiled. Napoleon, he knew, had used the same simple device to endear himself to his soldiers. And this brilliant fellow in Africa gave away cigarettes by the cartload, so it was said. Not that the Group Captain was a cynical man. On the contrary, he was imbued with a simple desire to have his aircrews like and respect him with the same intense feeling that he had for them. He would have given almost anything to fly with them to bomb Germany. Twice he had flown unofficially as an extra crew member, but the AOC had heard of it and warned him against doing it again. The Groupie described himself as a Hun-killer. The crews mostly thought of him as a harmless eccentric. In fact he was a lonely man desperately trying to believe that the company of youth would offset the approach of old age. He swept the laughter away with a movement of his hand. The crews sat silent, waiting to hear the name of the target.

In the few moments before the curtain rises at the opera there is a sound, a presence, an indefinable and unique mood. The audience are hushed and expectant, their throats are tight and even the nervous coughs are shrill and have an overtone of hysteria. Imagine then the mood that would prevail if – like these crews – it was the audience that were about to mount the stage: mouthing their dialogue lest they forget it, noting their cues, worrying about lights and timings and fussed over by a dozen stage managers who will take the blame should the performance become a disaster. It was a complex theatrical drama that this audience were about to stage and one mistake would bring them, not a boo or a jeer or a poor review but a sudden, nasty, fiery death.

The Group Captain tugged the cord and the curtains parted with a squeak of metal rollers.

‘The target for tonight,’ said the Group Captain, ‘is Krefeld in the Ruhr.’

The captains and navigators had already been briefed, so it was no surprise to them. Many of the engineers had guessed from the fuel-loads and some of the remainder had heard by now, but there were still enough wireless operators and gunners to greet the news with a soft sincere groan. There had been rumours and bets that it would be a pushover target. Krefeld was no pushover. Happy Valley was Happy Valley: the best-defended target zone in Europe.

Lambert, Cohen and Micky Murphy had arrived together from the previous briefings upstairs. Seated behind them were Flash and Binty, the two gunners, and Digby, who was smoking a small cigar. Cohen had his notebook open in front of him. The raid was detailed there in neat handwriting with times in large numbers down one side. Lambert had some notes on the back of an envelope but he knew he would never refer to it. The routes and details that seemed so baffling to the newcomers were second nature to him; he had seen the techniques grow from the days when they had little more briefing than the name of the target and time of take-off.

On the stage the technical officers were seated in a line, with the Groupie standing like a vicar opening a church fête. Beside him, on a table covered with a grey blanket, there was a carafe of water and a glass. He moved it aside as he always did and turned to the map. Beribboned gaily with red-and-white tapes, the route to and from the target made a squat diamond shape centred upon the North Sea. The enemy coastline was defaced with ugly red blotches of flak around the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, while the right-hand tip of the diamond poked into the biggest red patch of all, the heavily defended heart of Germany’s heavy industry – the Ruhr.

‘Krefeld, heavy industry, textiles, light industry, communications,’ reeled off the Groupie. ‘It’s a big show tonight: over seven hundred Bomber Command aircraft operating, with leaflet-dropping by Operational Training Units. Zero 01.30 hours. Take-off 24.20.’ The Group Captain eyed the five journalists and Flight Lieutenant from Air Ministry Press Office who had seated themselves quietly at the rear of the room. He spoke to them rather than to the aircrews, who had heard it all before. He spoke slowly and deliberately and avoided jargon, as much as one can avoid it when dealing with a series of new techniques that have been named as they were invented.

‘Any target in the Ruhr is difficult to identify. Even though the Met man tells me there will be little or no cloud and a full moon, there will be industrial haze lying over the target area; there always is. Take no chances, chaps. No guesswork. Tonight we are flying as part of the pathfinder element and it’s important that we put up a good show. Don’t bomb or mark out of sequence. One plane can spoil the entire raid and that means they’ll send us back to do the job properly next week. So let’s get there and mark it accurately so that the Main Force can hit it once and hit it bloody hard.’ The Groupie sat down while a ripple of agreement ran round the room. No one wanted to go back next week.

Flight Lieutenant Ludlow, the Navigation Leader, stood up. The shy ex-bank clerk from Guildford had become an actuarial curiosity. He was now on his third tour. Only two per cent of airmen survived three tours. Some called him ‘the immortal Lud’. He had briefed the navigators upstairs an hour before but now he outlined the route for the sake of the others. As usual he mumbled so quietly that the crews at the very back couldn’t hear properly, but the ones who chose to sit at the very back usually didn’t care. ‘Assemble over Southwold on the coast. You’ll need little or no change of course until the turning-point at Noordwijk on the Dutch coast. There will be yellow markers at the turning-point but don’t come back and complain that you didn’t see them. They are for the Main Force boys and as pathfinders you’re now expected to pinpoint places like that without the markers. Met says there will be no cloud, but if he’s wrong there will be sky markers above, the cloud.