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

There are many ways in which the life history of an aircrew can be charted. There would be a simple graph of the odds that an insurance company would offer. The chances on this one began low – the first three trips were five times as dangerous as the average. But as skills and experience mounted so the chances of survival for each trip became better. Another graph, thirty trips with a five-per-cent casualty rate, would be a simple straight line: a mathematical proposition in which each trip held equal danger and the line ended at trip number twenty. There was yet another graph that could be drawn, a morale line charted by psychiatrists. Its curves recorded the effect of stress as men were asked to face repeatedly the mathematical probability of death. This graph – unlike the others – began at the highest point. Granted courage by ignorance and the inhibitory effect that curiosity has upon fear their morale was high for the first five operations, after which the line descended until a crack-up point was reached by the eleventh or twelfth trip. Perhaps it was the relief of surviving the thirteenth operation that made the graph turn upwards after it. Men had seen death at close quarters and were shocked to discover their own fear of it. But recognizing the same shameful fears in the eyes of their friends helped their morale, and after a slight recovery it remained constant until about the twenty-second trip, after which it sloped downwards without recovery.

The eleventh trip was not marked by crews asking to be taken off flying, getting drunk or running sobbing through the Mess. In fact few men asked to be grounded, and their reluctance was fortified by the RAF authorities who would stamp the words ‘lack of moral fibre’ across the man’s documents, strip him of rank and brevet and send him away in disgrace with the bright unfaded blue patch of tunic proclaiming him an officially recognized coward.

No, the eleventh trip was marked by more subtle defensive changes in the crew: a fatalism, a brutalizing, a callousness about the deaths of friends and a marked change in demeanour. Noisy men became quiet and reflective while the shy ones often became clamorous. This was the time at which the case histories of ulcers, deafness, and other stress-induced nervous diseases that were to follow the survivors through their later years, actually began. The crew of Joe for King were on their eleventh trip.

The crew of The Volkswagen, on the other hand, were about to do their first trip. Like a young man with his first sports car they were keen and raring to go. They weren’t tired in the way that Lambert was tired, their reflexes were sharp, their eyesight keen, and their hands itched to prove themselves. Lambert was like a weary old businessman climbing into his family saloon to do a trip that he had done all his working life. He was tired, dulled, slow of reflex, and frightened. And yet, as any insurance company will tell you, it’s the old men in family saloons who pay the least insurance and the kids in new sports cars who die.

Pilot Officer Cornelius Fleming sat at the controls of The Volkswagen and tried to hide his pleasure and excitement. He heard the boys making nervous jokes but he was determined to put on a show of bored indifference for the ground crew. One of the riggers, a gruff-spoken cockney, came into the cockpit with a tin can.

‘Here’s your tin, sir,’ he said.

‘What’s that for?’ said Fleming. He closed his eyes in a mannerism that at medical school had affected concentration.

‘To take a leak,’ said the rigger.

Fleming suspected he was being made the butt of a joke and looked at the man suspiciously.

The rigger grinned. ‘Do you want to put it under the seat?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Fleming and sighed.

‘Suit yourself, guv,’ said the rigger and walked back through the plane. He climbed down on to the ground and threw the can away under the ash trees. That was the trouble with officers, you could never tell them anything. That pansy-faced sprog officer had looked at him like he was offering dirty postcards to a bishop. The only crew here with three officers in it, and he had to be assigned to them. No matter, they wouldn’t last long, the poor sods. Zebra was a real duff kite and no matter about cleaning it up and calling it some foreign name, it was just a matter of time before it fell apart at the seams.

Fleming knew that he’d upset the fellow and he cursed himself for his handling of the business, even if it had been a legpull. Becoming a good skipper was the most difficult thing in the world, and the most desirable. At one time all he’d sought of God was a pilot’s brevet. Then he’d fastened his desire upon a commission. But it was all so difficult; a good skipper must be an expert pilot, a classless gentleman, a democratic commander and, most impossible of all, an intrepid leader who kept his men safe. Always there was this damned class business. That chap would merely have grinned if an NCO had called his bluff about the tin. It was all right for Lambert; these chaps with a gong and a tour behind them could do no wrong in the eyes of their crew.

‘Bertie!’ Fleming called his young Flight Engineer who before meeting Fleming had always been Bert.

‘Sir?’ The boy’s flying gear was too large, so that he looked like a child dressed in his father’s clothes.

‘All OK?’

‘Yeah, all okey dokey, sir.’

‘We’ll follow Lambert out, Bertie.’ The engineer nodded. Okey dokey, thought Fleming, what strange things they say.

Lambert was the first of B Flight to start up. He slid open his window. ‘Clear for starting, Worthy?’ Twenty feet below him the trolley-ac was plugged in and ready.

‘Clear.’

Lambert put his hand out of the window, pointed a finger at the port inner and then turned his thumb upwards. From the tarmac Worthy pointed his left hand at the same engine and revolved his right index finger as though to move the prop with it. Lambert pressed the starter button. There was the pitter-patter of the booster pump and a chuffing noise. Then came the opening bangs of the Merlin, an affront to the still countryside. It caught, and roared. Then the next one started, and the next, until the sound of thirty-two engines echoed back from the trees of The Warrens and the black tin side of the hangar, like a million frantic drummers marching off to war.

Sam Thatcher was awakened by it. He looked at the clock; it was 11.23 PM.

‘They’re off again,’ said his wife.

‘Third time this week,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll have to get some sleeping pills or something.’

But there was an hour before take-off time and as suddenly as they had started the motors cut. Soon the night was quiet except for the muttered curses of men working by the light of torches and the murmured conversation of the crews.

Flash Gordon, the little Nottingham miner, his pockets bulging with confectionery for his brothers and sisters, was looking at his turret. He waited until the last engine cut and the silence was broken only by a few planes of A Flight from the far side of the airfield.

‘You’ve done a good job there,’ said Flash. The Sergeant armourer deserved the praise; it had been more difficult than it looked to remove a section of Perspex from the vision panel of the turret. ‘I won’t be firing at any more oil dribbles and thinking they are Junkers 88s,’ said Flash, and he laughed.

‘Did you ever do that, Flash?’ asked the armourer.

‘Never saw one,’ said Flash. ‘Fifteen trips I’ve done and I’ve never seen a night fighter.’

Binty Jones, the mid-upper gunner, walked past. The armourer called after him. ‘I’ll do your turret next, Binty.’

‘Like bleeding hell, you will. I check my Perspex every day. There’s not a speck or spot anywhere. And if there was, I wouldn’t be such a bloody fool as to fire at it, man.’

‘It was oil dribbles giving the trouble,’ said Flash angrily, ‘not scratches.’

‘I don’t care what it was, you won’t get me in that rear turret again, so don’t come asking me to swap when you get another one of your bloody head-colds, right?’

‘Right,’ Flash shouted after him, ‘I won’t, don’t you worry.’

‘You’ll freeze if your electric suit goes u/s,’ warned the armourer.

‘I’m practically freezing now,’ said Flash.

‘It’s cold tonight,’ the armourer agreed and buttoned his Service overcoat up to the neck and wrapped his home-knitted scarf high around his ears. The motors of the A Flight planes had warmed and been switched off. The airfield was silent. There was nothing to do but wait.

In the aeroplanes men were making secret promises to God, performing superstitious rituals or finding excuses to say heartfelt truths. A fly buzzed drowsily on Tommy Carter’s windscreen.

‘Go home and get some sleep, you stupid bastard,’ said Tommy. ‘You don’t know when you’re well off.’

Lambert placed the doll named Flanagan behind his seat.

‘He won’t see anything from there,’ said Digby. ‘Throw him down here, I’ll put him in the front turret.’

‘He’s seen it all before,’ said Lambert. ‘And he wouldn’t find it hard to break the habit.’

Wing Commander Munro opened the side window to inhale the air. Then he placed his walking-stick under his seat. As his crew had already guessed, that stick was the CO’s lucky charm, although wild horses would never drag the admission from him. Munro looked at the sky and breathed deeply. He noticed that cloud had eaten a piece of the Great Bear and was sniffing at Scorpio. From the trees at Witch Fen an owl hooted loudly.

‘Hear that, sir?’ said Jock Hamilton his navigator.

‘Yes indeed. It’s good luck,’ he added hurriedly. Jock looked at him unconvinced. There was a silence then until he heard a train puffing and rattling northwards. Soon that train would be in Scotland near to his wife and the boy. He would be in Germany. Munro looked at the sky; it still wasn’t quite dark. To the north it was a purplish colour, almost green.

The low that had caused the thunderstorms across Europe turned north as it neared the Swedish coast. The air pressure in the low was equalizing and soon it would die. The Met men were rubbing its Chinagraph image from their maps and marking in the progress of the high that had come marching behind it from the west. This mountain of air already pressed down upon England. Its outer layer slid towards Ireland and Biscay and Norway, where the pressure was less. The descending air became warmer and any clouds in its way evaporated. As it got closer to ground level this descending air brushed against the rotating earth and was deflected clockwise so as to form a gently whirling air mass that measured hundreds of miles across – an anticyclone.

It had brought the light-blue sky and diffused sunset that promised another fine day. But this starry night was cold, for with few clouds to trap the rising heat the ground became chilly underfoot and the airmen slapped their hands against their sides and complained of the long wait.

It was fifteen minutes past midnight, BDST, when the first of the Lancasters moved. Last-minute urination took place before the crews were buttoned into their clothes and settled into the seats they would occupy for several hours. A full bladder, or even worse, wind, could cause pain at high altitudes. Quickly gobbled beans on toast could have a man writhing with pain at a moment when he was most needed. Ponderously the bombers rumbled round the peri track. Some were in a hurry to beat the queue that would form at the southern end of the runway.

As soon as Lambert’s Creaking Door moved, The Volkswagen followed. Fleming kept its tail in view as the planes crawled past the dim blue perimeter lights. What greater disaster could strike them now than that he should put a wheel into the soft-going beyond the lights and hold up the whole Squadron? He touched the brakes as they came to the corner by the Ramsey road. A Hillman van had parked there with its headlights on or else Fleming might well have turned too wide and clipped his wingtip against the fence. Lambert’s tail-light moved again. Some of the other bomb aimers were shining a signalling lamp from the nose to help light the way but Lambert preferred to have his eyes accustomed to the darkness. Each Lancaster announced its arrival at the runway by flashing its code letter to Control. At the answering green light the take-off run commenced and the next plane crawled into position.

Lambert glanced towards the crowd of ground crew that were waving from the edge of the runway. Old hands, young girls, and even the NAAFI women were there. Even when it was raining they came to see the bombers away. Lambert felt grateful to them.