The Crew Read online

  About the Book

  There were seven in the crew – seven very young and very inexperienced airmen who, nearly every night, flew their heavily-laden Lancaster bomber into the exploding skies over enemy Germany.

  On almost their first flight Piers, the navigator, managed to get them lost and Van, the pilot, nearly crashed the plane on landing. Charlie, the rear gunner, who was only seventeen but who had lied about his age, spent his time reading poetry and trying not to spew his guts out on every flight. They were from mixed backgrounds and nationalities but somehow, heroically, they welded together into a courageous fighting unit, helping each other and desperately hoping they would survive their thirty bombing raids.

  And on the ground were the women who waited. Assistant Section Officer Catherine Herbert, in love with Van but already committed to another man. And Peggy, the little waitress who found herself being ardently wooed by the aristocratic Piers. There was Ruth, the land-girl, falling in love in spite of herself. And Charlie's young and pretty widowed mother, living right on the edge of the airfield, praying every night that her son would come back.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part II

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part III

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part IV

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Mayhew

  Copyright

  THE CREW

  Margaret Mayhew

  For Mary and Keith

  And in memory of Jack

  Acknowledgements

  I am greatly indebted to the late Squadron Leader Jack Currie, DFC, the author and Lancaster bomber pilot, for all his kind and generous help and advice.

  Also, to my editor, Diane Pearson, for her invaluable encouragement and guidance. And to my husband, Philip Kaplan, for his constant support.

  Finally, to the very young crews of World War Two Bomber Command whose courage and self-sacrifice in the cause of our freedom remain an inspiration to us all.

  Foreword

  A lancaster bomber required a crew of seven men: pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, flight engineer, wireless operator, mid-upper gunner and rear gunner.

  During the Second World War, the average age of a crew was twenty-four and, at the height of RAF Bomber Command’s strategic offensive against Germany, their chance of surviving a tour of thirty operations only one in three. By the end of the war 55,573 men in aircrews had died and the casualty rate in Bomber Command was the heaviest of any British Service.

  In the words of Winston Churchill: They never flinched or failed. It is to their devotion that in no small measure we owe our victory. Let us give them our salute.

  This novel tells the story of seven such men. And their women.

  PART I

  One

  THEY WERE LOST. Again. Christ only knew where Piers had got them to this time, because he sure as hell didn’t. Even if the whole damn countryside hadn’t been covered in cloud, he wouldn’t have known without some obvious landmark. The crazy jumble of fields and woods and villages all looked the same to him – when you could see it at all, which wasn’t often.

  Jesus, the weather they had over here! Cloud, rain, fog, sleet, snow, more rain, and still more rain, and still more cloud. And it was supposed to be spring. Bad enough on the ground. Up here, bloody murder.

  By now they should have landed safely back at base, be stripping off their flying gear, lighting up, cracking jokes, acting the confident, close-knit crew – the jolly old comrades they were supposed to have become. Instead, they were still wandering hopelessly about the skies. Van peered downwards, trying to see something – anything. About fifteen minutes ago, when there’d been a gap in the clouds, he’d caught sight of the sea, which meant they were very likely heading in the general direction of Holland. Any moment now some Jerry fighter was probably going to appear and make it the end of a perfect day. The end of everything.

  He flicked the mike switch on his mask and tried to keep the worry and irritation out of his voice. ‘Pilot to navigator. What’s our position, please?’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry, skipper. I’m not absolutely sure. Can you possibly hang on a moment?’

  God help us, he thought. We’re lost and Piers is frightfully sorry. At the moment, all we’re doing is stooging around in broad daylight. When we stop playing games and have to go and drop bombs on the enemy in the dark, the Jerries won’t need to waste shells bringing us down, we’ll do the job ourselves.

  He could sense his flight engineer’s seething impatience beside him. Jock must be cursing his luck at being assigned to them – which Van had a strong suspicion had been done in the hopes of improving their performance. Tough deal, Jock! Top of his course and stuck with a Yank pilot who had yet to show he could make a halfway decent landing, a navigator who didn’t seem to know north from south, an Aussie bomb aimer who’d flunked the new bomb sight exam, a mid-upper gunner who evidently couldn’t hit a rat in a barrel, a wireless operator older than God and a kid rear gunner who read poetry. When some guy had told him in friendly fashion over a beer in the Mess that they were odds-on favourites to be the first crew to get the chop on ops, if not before, he hadn’t been a bit surprised.

  Nothing from Piers. What the hell was he doing back there? It wasn’t that difficult, for Christ’s sake. He was about to press the mike switch again when the clouds suddenly parted and he saw Lincoln Cathedral down below the Lancaster’s port wing, its three big towers sticking up cheerily from the city hilltop: a landmark he knew and was learning to love the hard way. Not even Piers could get lost – they were only twenty miles from base.

  Now it could be his turn to screw up. He brought the Lancaster bomber down steadily, praying he’d manage a passable landing this time and not give them all something else to worry about. The runway lay ahead, a mile-long, straight concrete scar across that mishmash of English fields. All he had to do was get her down onto it in one piece. All twenty-five tons of her.

  At a thousand feet, Flying Control gave him permission to join the circuit downwind.

  ‘Undercart down, please, engineer.’

  Jock acknowledged curtly. ‘Undercart down.’ His hand reached for the lever. After a few seconds the green lights came on. ‘And locked.’

  He made all his landing checks and turned cross wind.

  ‘Flaps twenty, please, Jock.’

  ‘Flaps, twenty.’

  He was driving eight thousand horses. Under the thick flying clothes, his body felt clammy with sweat, his muscles rigid. Six lives in his hands, besides his own. He could take advice from the rest of the crew, but he was the guy who had to make the final decisions. And they’d better be the right ones.

  Control crackled again in his ears. ‘You’re clear to land, G-George.’

  ‘Thank you. Pilot to crew. Stand by for landing.’

  He turned on finals at seven hundred feet, pointing the Lane’s nose straight at the runway. The heavy bomber roared over the Lincolnshire farm land, sinking gradually. All tickety-boo, as the RAF said.

  The airfield boundary was coming close.

>   ‘Full flap, Jock.’

  ‘Full flap.’

  They were over the boundary hedge and the rubber-streaked runway rushed up at them. Too fast. The Lane’s port wheel hit it first – hard and with a loud squeal. She bounced high, lurched, and bounced and lurched again as the starboard wheel crunched down next, the wing dipping horrifyingly close to the ground. There were two more bounces and a thud-thud as her tailwheel slammed down. The nose reared and yawed in front of him. Shit, shit, shit!

  They were halfway down the runway before she’d settled and he had full control. He should have given her the gun and gone around again. Wrong decision. Total screw-up. Nobody said anything. Not a word. They were probably too bloody frightened to speak. Or too disgusted, like Jock who was wagging his head slowly from side to side.

  At dispersal, when the Merlins had died, Van unfastened his harness, pulled off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The others were clattering and clanging about in the metal fuselage behind him, making their way aft. He didn’t blame them for being keen to get out. When he joined them outside nobody said anything to him then either. They were huddled in a foot-stamping, arm-swinging group at the edge of the tarmac, faces turned into the teeth of the wind away from him, looking for the crew bus – Jock, Piers, Stew, Harry, Bert and Charlie.

  Van fumbled for his cigarettes and lighter. His hands were still shaking, and he had trouble getting flame and cigarette tip together in the lee of his Irvin jacket. When he lifted his head he saw the Bedford coming along, speeding round the peri track towards them, a WAAF driver at the wheel. It had started to rain again.

  ‘Reckon he’ll kill us all, if Jerry don’t first,’ the wireless operator, Harry, said in his flat Yorkshire. ‘We could have gone off the runway and gone arse over tit, Bert. Blown oop in bloody flames.’ He stood by the bar in the Sergeants’ Mess, a pint of beer clutched in one large hand, his pipe in the other. He was a big fair-haired man – built like a brick shit-house, Bert always told him affably. The mid-upper gunner, dark and with a wide grin like a monkey, barely reached his shoulder. Side by side, they looked and sounded like a music hall act.

  ‘Be fair, mate, you don’t do such a good job twiddlin’ the old knobs neither. Blimey, you got that dance music once, remember? I was doin’ a quick-quick-slow up in the turret. Let’s face it, we’re none of us so bloomin’ marvellous.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Aye, that’s true enough. How you got through gunnery school with your eyesight, I’ll never know.’

  ‘Luck an’ bluff, cock. That’s ’ow,’ Bert said chirpily.

  ‘And what ’appens when you’re supposed to shoot down a Jerry fighter for us? I’ll tell you what’s goin’ to ’appen, Bert, you’re goin’ to miss ’im.’

  The gunner grinned. ‘We’ll ’ave to find Germany first and that’s not goin’ to be so easy with our nav.’

  ‘Aye, we’ll end up in Timbuctu, more like. You’d think with all the education he must ’ave ’ad that he could do a better job.’ Harry took a swig at his beer. ‘Oh, well. No good worryin’, I s’pose. There’s nowt we can do about it. Can’t change horses in midstream.’

  ‘Mid-air, you mean, mate.’

  Charlie, the rear gunner, who was even smaller than Bert, sipped his beer, listening to them. With every sip he tried to hide his shudder at the taste. Everyone in the Mess seemed to be downing pints of the stuff. He watched Harry take another swallow and the level in his mug sink rapidly. It would soon be time for the next round and they’d wonder why he hadn’t half-finished his first one yet. He took another desperate gulp. He was still feeling a bit sick from the flight, which didn’t help either, and the smoke from Harry’s pipe and Bert’s cigarette was making things even worse. He’d bought some Woodbines himself, hoping he’d look older if he smoked, but every time he lit up it made him feel dizzy.

  He hadn’t said anything, but he was just as worried about the skipper. There was a lump on his head where it had hit the turret roof on that dicey landing. He’d thought they’d had it for a moment. Going to do a ground loop and not much chance of him getting out. None at all if the doors behind him went and jammed. The rear turret wasn’t the safest place to be. Someone had told him that Tail-End Charlies were the ones most likely to cop it. There were always blokes who liked to put the wind up you. Got a kick out of it most probably.

  He hadn’t exactly chosen to be a rear gunner. ‘With a name like yours,’ they’d said to him at gunnery school, ‘you haven’t got much option, have you lad?’ But he was very proud of his AG badge with its one wing, and of his three stripes, and he didn’t much mind being all on his own in the tail, being dragged backwards in his fish bowl through the skies. It gave you a lot to look at and a chance to think about things. And sometimes he recited poems to himself. They’d teased him about his book of poetry, of course. It had fallen out of his pocket once and Stew had picked it up and turned the pages over, as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Jesus Christ, Charlie, what’s this? Poems? The bomb aimer had read a bit aloud in his Aussie accent.

  My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky

  So was it when my life began;

  So is it now I am a man;

  So be it when I shall grow old,

  Or let me die!

  He’d handed the book back, shaking his head. ‘Strewth, if you’re going to be beholding bloody rainbows, kid, we’ll all be dying with you.’

  Charlie took another small sip of beer. Harry’s mug was nearly empty now. How on earth could he get it down so quickly? Must be all the practice. He was really old, Harry. More than thirty – years older than the rest of them. Bert was nineteen, Jock twenty, Stew twenty-one. He wasn’t sure about Piers and the skipper, but they’d be somewhere around that. He was easily the youngest himself, as well as the smallest, which was handy as it was a bit of a squash in the rear turret.

  Bert tipped up his mug and drained it. ‘Time for another.’

  ‘Your shout, Bert,’ Harry said firmly.

  ‘OK, OK. Get it down, Charlie, and give us your glass.’

  ‘Not quite ready, thanks.’

  ‘Blimey, come on . . . you won’t grow up to be a big strong man like ’arry if you don’t drink up your beer like a good boy.’

  He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Luckily Harry saved him.

  ‘Leave him be, Bert. The lad’s takin’ his time, but I don’t mind if I do.’

  Up the other end of the bar, the bomb aimer, Stew, was buying a beer for himself and a lemonade for Jock. He handed over the glass of lemonade to the flight engineer with a grimace. ‘Don’t know how you can drink that muck, sport.’

  ‘Och, it’s no so bad.’

  ‘Have a fag?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Strewth, the bloke didn’t booze and didn’t smoke, and didn’t chase sheilas either. What the hell sort of a life was that? No flaming fun at all. Stew stuck a cigarette in his mouth and flicked the wheel of his lighter with his thumb. As usual the bloody thing was playing up. If it hadn’t been his lucky mascot he’d have chucked it away long ago. He went on flicking the wheel harder and harder.

  ‘What d’you reckon our chances with our Yank driver, then, Jock?’

  ‘Not too good.’

  ‘He was fair enough when we were on Wimpeys, but seems to me he just doesn’t get it with the heavies.’

  ‘Aye, you could say that.’

  ‘Think he’ll get any better?’

  ‘I certainly hope so.’

  The lighter suddenly burst into flame and Stew bent his head to it. He took a drag at the cigarette and blew smoke upwards.

  ‘Anyway, far as I can see, it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference. It’s odds-on we won’t be coming back to land at all. We’re the favourites for the chop, did you know that?’

  ‘I’d heard something of the kind.’

  Jock didn’t look like he gave a bugger. He was a cool customer and no mistake. Must have ice in his veins inst
ead of blood, Stew thought. Maybe it was the climate in Scotland that made them like that. Most Aussies, himself included, thought themselves pretty tough blokes, but he wasn’t sure the Scots hadn’t got the edge. He’d come across one or two others like Jock: steel eyes, voices like glass breaking, made of cast iron. They could generally drink you under the table as well, which made it even weirder that Jock never touched a drop. Didn’t swear either, which was the weirdest bloody thing of all.

  You couldn’t tell so easily about the English lot. They hid it. Put up a smokescreen. They might have a streak of yellow a mile wide or be brave as hell for all he knew. He hadn’t a clue how their four would turn out when it came to the real thing – when the chips were down. Harry and Bert were probably OK. Harry had one foot in the grave but he was one of those solid north country types, and if he ever learned to work the radio set properly he might do all right, and Bert was a wiry little cockney bastard who told some good blue jokes, even if he wasn’t Dead-Eye-Dick. But Charlie was a worry, same as the skipper. For a start, seventeen was too bloody young for this caper; they ought to have rumbled him at the recruiting office. And any kid who read poetry about rainbows wasn’t exactly going to be the killer type. He’d be dreaming away and gazing at the flaming stars, or something, and they’d go and get their arse shot off. The only thing he’d be any use for would be to keep the tail down on landing.

  Stew took another drag at his cigarette. As for that drongo, Piers, getting them lost all the time . . . well, they might as well take up a ball of string next time. When it was time to go home, Charlie could wind it in from the rear turret and they could fly down backwards so the skipper could try landing that way for a change. How the hell Piers had got to be an officer he’d never know, unless it was the toff talk that had swung it. Or his posh family had pulled some strings.

  He frowned. Not that he’d any right to throw stones when it came to cocking-up. He’d gone and failed that bloody exam at the Heavy Conversion Unit, hadn’t he? No excuses, but it had been a snap test, after all, with no time to bone up for it, no chance to get all the facts on the new bombsight and fuses and detonators properly fixed in his memory, like he’d done with all the previous exams he’d passed OK. They’d sprung it on them and it had been a bastard. There’d been more blanks on his paper than answers, and when the chief bombing instructor had hauled him in and chewed him into confetti, he’d thought they were going to throw him out of the Unit then and there. Like a condemned man, he’d pleaded for another chance and they’d let him do a special two-day course to catch up. Now, he wasn’t so sure he should have been so flaming keen. If he’d kept his mouth shut they’d’ve replaced him and he’d’ve ended up with another crew, not this lot. Still, too late now. Too bloody bad, sport!