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

‘O for Orange and L for Love,’ she shouted.

‘Good luck, Skip,’ whispered Micky Murphy.

‘Good luck, Micky,’ said Lambert. Lambert’s crew and Carter’s crew tumbled out of the back of the lorry, swearing and complaining as helmets were dropped and harness snagged on the tailboard. They waddled away to the two aircraft, the harness constricting their movements.

The eighteen-year-old WAAF driver had been a flutter of nerves since she had arrived late at the crewroom and faced a chorus of whistles and complaints. Now she leaned out of the cab and peered into the darkness. ‘Is that Z Zebra?’ she asked Digby.

‘Sorry, luv,’ said the uncaring Digby. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’

‘What’s up, miss?’ said Battersby in his squeaky voice.

‘It’s the first time I’ve done this job. Is the next aeroplane Z Zebra?’

‘After you are back on the peri track again, Zebra – The Volkswagen we call it – is on the left-hand pan. Sugar is on the right-hand one, near the hangar and B Flight office.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said the girl. She hesitated for a moment. ‘And good luck, Sergeant.’

‘Ted Battersby; Batters they call me.’

There was a thunder of stamping from the impatient crews inside the lorry followed by loud whistles.

‘Good luck, Batters,’ said the WAAF, blowing him a kiss. She let in the clutch and the lorry jerked forward, throwing its passengers off balance. The girl shouted her name back at Battersby but there was so much noise from the crews that he couldn’t hear it.

The ground staff of each aeroplane were standing quietly under the wing. One or two of them had special friends among the aircrews and sometimes a conversation would be taken up right from the point at which it had been interrupted.

‘Do you ever have trouble with the ears?’ asked Binty as he checked the mid-upper turret.

‘No, mine have all been very good so far. But I never let them mix with the other dogs in the kennels. That’s where all the troubles start.’ The Corporal armourer and Binty went on discussing their whippets. Binty didn’t have his own dogs but he had a financial stake in his uncle’s and on the basis of his conversations with Corporal Hughes he was now able to return home with many suggestions and criticisms. ‘You tell your bloody Air Force mate to stick his advice,’ Binty’s uncle had told him on his last leave, ‘or I’ll come down there and help him with his bleeding aeroplanes.’

‘Sternberg did The Blue Angel,’ said Cohen, ‘but The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was directed by someone I’ve never heard of named Wiene.’

‘I could have sworn it was Sternberg. Funny how the memory can play tricks. The Last Command was Sternberg?’

‘Oh sure. You don’t make many mistakes, Mike. I remember seeing that. It was almost a remake of The Last Laugh with Jannings.’

‘A lot of those films were remakes of earlier European ones.’

‘Ever see The Salvation Hunters?’ asked Cohen.

‘That was early Sternberg. They thought it was a masterpiece at the time. At my last station the Film Society got hold of a sixteen-millimetre print.’

‘Pretty terrible, I thought,’ said Cohen.

‘It’s a long time ago,’ said the fitter. ‘A lot has happened since then.’

‘Yes,’ said Cohen, who had seen the film in Vienna when he was a child. ‘You’re right.’

Flight Sergeant Worthington started another conversation without preamble. ‘Two fuses and four wiring faults. We’ll have to strip the wiring right out of it and renew every inch of it.’

‘So Carter’s taking a reserve kite?’

‘It only arrived this afternoon, it’s been a struggle to get it ready. Carter’s furious and so is Gallacher. It’s not my fault, Sam.’ He kicked one of the tyres.

‘Everyone knows that, Worthy.’

‘Carter was bloody rude. There’s no need to be rude.’

‘Nerves, Worthy.’

‘I suppose so. But we all worked our guts out on Joe for King. No one could have got it ready in time.’

‘Forget it, Worthy. He’ll be apologizing and buying you pints lunchtime tomorrow. You know old Tommy Carter; he flares up but he doesn’t mean it.’ Worthington slapped Lambert’s arm gently with the canvas pitot-head cover. He always did that to show it was removed. Lambert scribbled his signature on the RAF Form No 700. Creaking Door was now Lambert’s.

‘Your new kid knows his way around a wiring diagram, I must say,’ said Worthington.

‘Battersby?’

‘Yes, he’s a demon on theory. He worked out the position of the short circuit on paper, but it was enough to make a strong man weep, watching him trying to fix it: gentleman’s fingers.’

‘As the actress said to the bishop,’ said Digby. The bomb-doors were open and now he came round to the front, where Lambert and Worthington were standing, to inspect the bombs. He jabbed a finger at each, murmuring to himself as he counted them, pulling each bomb trying to shift it within the jaws of the grip. He clasped a 2,000-lb bomb and lifted his feet off the ground so that the jaws took his weight too.

‘I wish you’d come out and do that before we get here,’ complained Lambert.

‘Have a little faith,’ said Digby.

Automatically Lambert took his wallet from his battledress blouse and folded into it the gold fountain pen that had been his twenty-first birthday present from his parents. It was an unspoken arrangement that if anything happened to him the wallet with all his letters and documents, and a last letter that he’d rewritten from time to time, should go to Ruth. The fountain pen was for Worthington to keep and the money was for drinks all round in the Sergeants’ Mess. Worthington nodded and looked at Lambert with concern. It seemed to him a bloody awful sort of war. He’d seen a seemingly endless progression of young kids go to war and eventually not come back. Carefully he put the wallet into his inner pocket.

Lambert was just going to climb aboard to start the motors when he saw the Group Captain’s Humber coming round the peri track. It stopped beside the plane.

‘O for Orange; Flight Sergeant Lambert,’ murmured Flying Officer Griffith, the Admin Officer, into the Groupie’s ear. Griffith ticked his piece of paper.

‘Bloody cold, Lambert, what?’ said the Groupie stamping the ground energetically.

‘Yes, sir, freezing,’ said Lambert. He pushed his battered rag doll into his tunic.

Lambert and the Group Captain looked at each other without knowing what to say and yet both were reluctant to turn away.

‘Your lucky doll?’

‘Yes,’ said Lambert. Self-consciously he produced the rag doll: a cross-eyed figure in a black velvet suit.

‘She’s getting pretty old now,’ said the Groupie.

‘Yes, sir, it’s the altitude,’ joked Lambert.

‘Really?’ said the Groupie. At one time the aircrew were bright middle-class boys with style and a sense of fun. Now they were working-class lads with no proper schooling and accents he could scarcely understand. What did Lambert mean about the altitude? So many of these young scoundrels had got their sergeant’s rank too easily and the result was a familiarity of manner that he didn’t readily take to.

‘Not the first trip you’ve done to the Ruhr, eh, Flight Sergeant?’