CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lambert had seen six bombers since leaving Warley but he’d only had a glimpse of them. So far the trip had been uneventful. Sometimes he’d returned from trips to find other crews describing all manner of pyrotechnics and mayhem while he had seen little or nothing the whole trip. Other sorties had proved to be the very reverse.

‘Changing tanks,’ said Battersby.

‘OK,’ said Lambert.

The Flight Engineer let the tank drain to the final empty cough before changing over. That was the most efficient way to log the fuel consumption and avoid airlocks.

‘Look to port,’ said Binty. ‘The searchlights have coned some poor bastard and the flak is coming up like confetti.’

Instinctively Lambert touched the rudder to steer away from the flak.

Digby was still in the nose. The target was full of coloured lights flickering and winking as the heat rose. There was smoke too. The flares and fires under it made it glow and the heat and blast made it ripple and bubble like milk boiling out of a saucepan. There was black smoke too from where the TENOs’ diesel tank had been hit. Once Digby saw a shockwave expand across the brightest fire and wobble it like a redcurrant jelly. ‘I’d like to bomb those flak bastards. What say, Skip, that I save a couple of thousand-pounders for the flak? We could…’

‘Fighter, fighter, port beam,’ said Flash Gordon. His four machine guns were joined an instant later by the upper turret’s two guns.

‘He’s attacking someone else,’ said Binty. Just a couple of hundred yards to port the thin line of incendiary shells turned like the sweep second hand of a clock as the night fighter closed upon his victim changing his angle of attack and then climbed away into the dark.

‘Bomb-doors open.’

It had begun. They were fixed on the tramline course that would take them across the centre of the target’s fires and into its flak. It looked like a child’s birthday cake, half a dozen yellow candles flickering in a darkened room. A kid’s birthday cake. Left, left. Steady.

The plane ahead was on fire. Its propeller blades slowed as they feathered, but the flames were getting brighter by the second. Steady. Right, hold that, nicely, nicely, hold that steady. The night fighter would come in again as sure as God made little apples and when he did Creaking Door would be brightly illuminated by those damned flames. Brighter still. Its cowling is breaking apart. Steady, left, left. Please God make him go down! He doesn’t have to crash, if he’ll just go down. Please God, just a thousand feet! Right. Steady. Five hundred, then.

A crash of flak made the wing lift. There was a patter of shrapnel. ‘Come in,’ said Jimmy.

You’re veering, Skip. Left, left quite a bit. Even if it’s Micky Murphy. Make him go down! That night fighter must be behind us at this very moment. Steady. Even if it’s my mother. The light from the burning Lancaster was worse. They’ll never save it now. Jesus Christ, that’s another pass! That’s the night fighter’s cannon shells punching those pieces out of him. Get out. Jump, Jump, Jump. You bloody fools. The rear turret is hanging in shreds like a bundle of bent wire. So where are the parachutes? She’s leaping about like a punch-drunk boxer. The propeller blades must have broken on the other side. Left, left. Smoke everywhere, Skipper, I can’t bloody see. OK, hold her like that.

The pilot in the burning plane was throttling back. The distance between them narrowed and the tips of the flames seemed to be trying to get into their own airstream. Closer. So don’t look. Look at the instruments and look at your engineer. Battersby was staring at him in horror. Lambert nodded encouragingly and Battersby turned back to his panel. He thinks I can save him. They all do. Why the hell should they pick on me? Steady, left just a fraction. Steady. That’s good. ‘She’s well alight,’ said Digby calmly. He was only speaking of the target. Target; I’d forgotten the target. They’re having trouble to hold that blazing coffin and in a moment it’s going to stall and we’ll fly into it. Steady. God, it’s coming closer still!

‘Drop the bastard bombs,’ someone shouted. It was a high-pitched anxious voice, not recognizable as any one of the crew until the cry was repeated and Digby identified it.

‘Here she comes, Skip. Keep your hair on,’ Digby told him calmly.

Is he so glued to that bombsight that he can’t see that the whole sky is ablaze with this bloody great dying Lancaster almost touching our wingtip? Make it go down. Shoot it down. Anything but just darkness, please. Just darkness. Nothing should hold on like that, it’s obscene. Perhaps they’re all dead in there and it’s on auto pilot and it will fly in the stream on auto pilot all the way to England with us. Who says you’ll get that far, Lambert? Perhaps this is it, goodnight, Nurse. Blow out the candles.

‘Bombs gone,’ said Digby. His voice was completely relaxed, until he too saw the bomber losing height alongside them. ‘My flaming oath.’

The other Lancaster’s fuel was atomizing as it left the trailing edge of the wing and burning like a gas flame. A flare caught fire as it fell out of its flare chute. So white it seemed almost blue in a world coloured yellow and pink and red.

‘Hold her steady, Skip, for the photo,’ said Digby.

Lambert saw green-and-red pistol flares make a string of brightly coloured beads as they were jettisoned, already alight. He looked at Battersby who was occupied at his panel. The cockpit was golden with the light of the flames while thirty of the longest seconds in the history of the world ticked past.

‘You cow. Flare chute’s bent, Skip. The bloody flash is jammed in it.’ Jimmy’s voice.

‘Kick it out,’ said Lambert. ‘I’m not holding this for ever.’

‘It won’t budge.’

‘Make it bloody budge,’ said Lambert. All that and they hadn’t even got a picture for the Photo Ladder. He sighed as he banked the bomber over and slid into the darkness, away from the fiery aeroplane that Murphy and Sweet were trying to coax back to earth.

‘That aged me ten years,’ said Jimmy Grimm, who had been watching the burning bomber.

‘Any luck with the flash, Jimmy?’

‘Still trying, Skip.’

Grimm had echoed his thoughts but captains just don’t say that kind of thing. That would be the second time this month he’d come back without a photo. On the Intelligence Officer’s board the three rows of target photos arranged in chronological order would include one print that was merely a shiny blank card. Nor would there be caption detail either. It would be as if Creaking Door and its crew and its bomb-load did not exist.

‘Watch for night fighters, everyone,’ warned Lambert.

‘ ’Kay, Skip,’ the gunners acknowledged dutifully, although they had not ceased searching the sky for one instant.

Lambert tasted the stink of rubber in his oxygen mask and knew that he had broken into a flush-sweat of fear. He unclipped his mask and wiped his face. His jaw was stiff and his chin was stubbly.

‘Only one HE. All the rest were incendiaries and phosphorus tonight,’ said Digby.

‘Glad I didn’t know that on the run in,’ said Battersby.

‘Concentrate, chaps,’ said Lambert. Here was the moment of maximum peril. The tension of the target was suddenly replaced with a relaxed relief and a surprise at being still alive on the far side of the flak. Now came a terrible tiredness and with it a lack of fear, an inability to concentrate and an almost overwhelming desire for sleep. Men had returned to tell stories of crewmen—even pilots—who fell completely asleep on the return journey. Other crews did not return to tell the same story.

‘Concentrate,’ repeated Lambert. ‘There are fifty million dedicated Germans trying to kill us. Concentrate.’

Lambert always said that or something similar. Jimmy Grimm nodded over his radio set and to help him stay awake he poured a cup of coffee from his Thermos flask and sipped it. It was scalding hot. From his rear turret Flash watched the target burning: a scattering of pink blobs. Suddenly one blob swelled and went white for a moment. It was the roof of the Liebefrau collapsing.

Lambert’s head ached. He slipped an aspirin into his mouth. Binty took his Benzedrine. Battersby entered up the fuel change in his log book. In his navigator’s log Kosher wrote ‘Unidentified four-motor aircraft on fire over target’.

By now the moon was high. It wasn’t the golden orb that dust particles colour for men on the ground. From here they saw it as it really was: a cold blue cipher in the sky. The landscape was blue and black and it was possible to distinguish dark patches that were towns and the edges of fields and trees. He saw the River Maas glint in the moonlight and then on the river a dark patch that was Venlo winked as its flak opened fire. The ground was often obscured by greyish-blue patches of cloud that drifted past only 500 feet below.

‘Steer 271,’ said Kosher. ‘That will take us a shade south of the stream, with Eindhoven to port and Tilburg and Breda to starboard. That OK?’

‘If Eindhoven turns nasty, you must steer me farther north of it.’

‘Wilco, Skip. I’ll come up and watch if I may.’

‘Bring a friend.’

Eindhoven—a notorious flak concentration—was quiet as they flew across the outskirts. It wasn’t until they neared Tilburg that they saw intense flak again.

‘The coloured-light stuff is Gilze-Rijn airfield. Breda beyond it. Fifty miles to the Dutch coast…with this wind, say sixteen minutes.’

‘I’m going to start losing height,’ said Lambert. ‘We’ll put on a bit of speed if we put our nose down.’

North of Breda the flak was concentrating upon one section of sky while the searchlights moved busily through the flashes. Suddenly there was a reddish flash. Larger than the others, it stayed bright longer too. ‘Scarecrow shell,’ said Digby. Everyone in Bomber Command knew about scarecrow shells; they were designed by a German flak expert to look like an aircraft exploding in mid-air. Still today survivors swear they could tell the difference between them and the real thing. But there were no scarecrow shells, only exploding planes.

‘Yes, scarecrow shell,’ said Lambert.

Satisfied with his identification of Breda, Kosher went back to his navigator’s table behind the curtain. Battersby watched Lambert’s hands as he kept the compass steady. Battersby had been trained to hold a Lancaster upon an even course, although landing one had actually been one of his recurring nightmares while he was training. The controls were tremendously heavy to move and yet Lambert seemed to use only his fingertips. Now he watched him ease the controls forward.

‘Beginning descent, Skip?’ asked Battersby.

‘I want the cloud on my belly,’ said Lambert.

Battersby nodded blankly. Lambert said, ‘Nothing can get under our backside then.’

‘What about radar?’ asked Battersby.

‘No, they need a final visual,’ said Lambert. ‘All OK, gunners?’

‘Sure thing, boss,’ said Binty.

‘This clear-vision panel is fantastic, Skip,’ said Flash.

‘Good boys,’ said Lambert. They were all good boys; Lambert was lucky. He let the Lancaster settle gently until it hit the greyish-blue bank of cumulus. Shreds of it poured across the wings and tufts made the windscreen opaque. He let the aeroplane wallow in the cloud, churning it up and sliding under it like a child hiding in bedclothes. Make the most of it, thought Lambert, ahead there was the Dutch coast. There this ragged cloud, like the land below it, ended. A vast plain of inert black treacle stretched below them glinting in the moonlight. That was the North Sea.