The Crew by Margaret Mayhew Page B

on either face. If Piers got the chop, theupper lips would stay stiff without any embarrassing emotional outpourings from their son. He couldn’t imagine Stew writing one either:
what the hell d’you take me for skip?
Or Jock, who never spoke of his family at all. Or Harry, whose wife had flown the coop. Or Bert, who’d never been seen writing any kind of letter to anyone. The only one who might have done was the kid, Charlie, to his mother; maybe with one of his poems.
    He wandered out later to watch some guys playing cricket out on the Flight Line. Somebody had once tried to explain the rules to him, but he was none the wiser. Football was his game, but American football, not the kind they played over here. Watching the slow progress of the cricket match, he felt an outsider witnessing some unfathomable native ritual, beyond him to appreciate. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt like that.
    He biked over to the ops block for the briefing. The crews were already filing in through the double doors, and as he propped the bike against the wall, Stew came freewheeling up to park his with a crash.
    â€˜Got a nasty feeling about this one, skip.’
    â€˜Yeah . . . so’ve I.’
    The rest of the crew were already sitting in what had now become their place. The curtain covered the map on the wall, concealing the target, and there was the usual guessing game taking place: Hamburg? Cologne? Rostock? Kiel? Beside him, Stew, cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth, started doodling in his notebook with his pencil, crude female outlines all down the margin.
    They smoked and they waited. The Nissen hut buzzed with chat, and tobacco smoke thickenedoverhead like a London fog. The atmosphere was getting more tense by the minute. Towards the front, Van caught sight of the WAAF intelligence officer he’d noticed at de-briefing: not a hair out of place, not a sign of feeling. She was talking to the senior IO and he could guess how her voice would sound – a female version of Piers.
    With the arrival of the Station Commander and Squadron Commander, the crews lurched to their feet, chair legs screeching. The Group Captain made his way between the rows towards his armchair below the platform. ‘Be seated, gentlemen.’
    More screeching and scraping and another, quieter, buzz of talk, dying away to an anxious silence. Men waiting to hear their sentence, Van thought. Prisoners in the dock, trying to disguise their dread. The curtain covering the wall map was tugged back to show the long piece of red tape pinned across it from England to Germany. Muttering from all round the room and some groans.
    The Senior Intelligence Officer took the stage, pointer in hand. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, you will be making history. The RAF is sending the largest number of bombers ever assembled to Germany.’ The pointer tapped the map briskly. ‘More than a thousand aircraft will converge on the city of Cologne to inflict the maximum possible damage to the enemy . . .’
    Stew chucked down his pencil. ‘Stone the bloody crows! Told you so, skip.’
    â€˜Are you for the flying meal, sir?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, rather. Thanks.’
    The WAAF waitress smiled at Piers as she set theplate of egg, sausages and chips before him. He didn’t think he had the appetite to eat it, which would be a most frightful waste.
    A thousand bombers! Lanes, Wimpeys, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Hamdens, Manchesters. It would be a miracle if they didn’t collide with one of them, and no hope of taking the Huns by surprise. Navigation had given them a route to keep them well clear of the main flak barrage on the run-in. He’d written everything down, concentrating like fury, but if he got it wrong this time . . .
    â€˜Tea, sir?’
    â€˜Thanks awfully.’
    They were always nice to you at flying suppers because they knew it might be your last meal ever, and he smiled back to show