The Crew Read Free Page B

with the steady roar of the engines, the WAAF could hear the short extra bursts of power and the sharp squeal of brakes as the pilots steered along the narrow, winding track between the blue and amber lights. Once or twice she’d seen a bomber run off the concrete edge and bog down in the mud, which meant a long delay for everyone behind while the aircraft was hauled out. It was usually a sprog crew and there was one on this op. She’d spotted them at the briefing, as easy to pick out as new boys in a school class: not knowing where to sit or what to do, taking industrious notes, making neat little diagrams of flak and searchlight batteries, and paying more attention than all the rest of the old hands put together. All too often she never saw sprog crews more than once or twice: the first five ops were known to be the trickiest for them. But if they got through those, they had a fair chance of surviving the remainder.
    The target for tonight was St Nazaire, and they were off to lay mines in enemy waters. Gardening, the crews called it, and the mines were vegetables. Nobody called anything unpleasant or dangerous by the proper word. You didn’t get killed, you ‘bought it’, and you didn’t bomb the enemy, you ‘clobbered’ him. The atmosphere in the briefing room had been almost light-hearted. Not Hamburg, or Cologne or Stuttgart . . . just a milk-run. Piece of cake.
    The leading bomber had reached the end of the peri track. When the red light from the controller’s caravan winked to green, it rolled forward onto thestart of the main runway and swung round into the wind to face the flarepath lights. The engines howled and faded and the Lancaster hovered for a moment before she leaped forward with a mighty roar. She passed the waving group, engines bellowing. The tail lifted and further on down the runway the elephant rose slowly and majestically into the air, to become an eagle.
    Catherine watched the first one climb away, red and green wingtip lights fading into the distance, and then turned back to the second, already in position at the end of the runway. One aircraft would take off every ninety seconds.
    The sprog crew’s rear gunner waved back as he went by. They were in S-Sugar, the ropey kite. She hoped they’d make it.
    Charlie had seen the people waving to him and he’d held up his gloved hand awkwardly in reply, wondering if that was the right thing to do. They were distant shapes now, grey blobs getting smaller by the second as the bomber raced on, carrying him down the runway. The tail was already off the ground and he could feel it swinging; he prayed the skipper would keep her straight. They’d got six fifteen-hundred pound sea mines on board, and that morning one of the ground crew had told him a horror story about another new crew who’d gone careering off the runway when they were trying to take off, all loaded-up for their first – and last – op. The Lanc always wanted to go left, apparently, and once you got a bad swing with a heavy load, you’d more or less had it.
    So far as he could tell, though, the lights flashing past looked at the proper angle to the tail. He kepthis eyes fixed on them until, suddenly, they dropped away beneath and he knew they were airborne. The dark roof and chimneys of the farmhouse at the edge of the drome went by below, and he and his Brownings were pointing downwards to earth as they climbed. The flarepath became little pinpricks of light and RAF Beningby disappeared from view. He wriggled around on the seat pad to get more comfortable. It was a bit like being packed in a glass suitcase. The metal doors behind him formed a back rest, the control column, with hand grips and triggers, was between his legs. If he stooped his head a little, the gun sight lay immediately in front of his face. With the illumination switched on, he could see the red circle with a dot in the middle superimposed on the dark