‘Fancy a pint, Charlie?’
‘Do you think they’ll have a fire on?’
‘Must do; weather like this.’
‘I’m in then.’
‘Good. We can take your car. Ours is running on hope and petrol vapour.’
‘Steal some. Everyone else does.’
He gave me the sad look. He was OK with a pint in his hand, but he didn’t like thieves. Bible basher. Jewish bible. I drove us all up Warden Hill to the Thornton in Everton village: me and Frohlich and his mixed-ranks crew. Tempsford being the funny place that it was, the officers and NCOs spent more off-duty time together than on other squadrons. The bosses looked the other way. Frohlich was a Sergeant Pilot. His Navigator, Klein, was a Flying Officer, and his Radio Operator was a Pilot Officer named Albert Grost. Both outranked him on the ground, but they called him Skip in the air. In my opinion Grost was cack-handed, so I rode him hard over his pathetic Morse signature. The first time I told him to practise he complained to the CO that I was anti-Semitic. Goldie pointed out that the whole of the rest of Frohlich’s crew was from the promised land, and didn’t seem to have a problem with me. I held him back as we all left the bar to hog the small fire in the snug.
I asked him, ‘Look, can I call you Albert, or Al, while we’re here in the pub? I know I’m not part of your team.’
He looked momentarily disconcerted, then, ‘Of course. Albie. You’re Charlie?’
‘Right. I knew another Albie once.’
‘Another radio man? Radio men should stick together.’ Turd. The other Albie was an American tank commander. As soon as I met him I knew he was on the way to shake hands with Dr Death.
‘Right. We got off on the wrong foot. I’m supposed to be the expert, and make sure you’re up to scratch. Not much point if I don’t tell you the truth.’
It had been a bit like fencing, and my last few words had been a definite touch. Touché. He gave me a rueful grin as a reward. He can’t have been more than nineteen.
‘OK. I know my Morse isn’t much good.’
‘I could help.’
‘OK.’ He gave himself a gulp of the hoppy beer. ‘I’ll come to see you tomorrow, all right?’
‘Fine.’ Then I told him. ‘You were right though; I am prejudiced.’
‘I thought so. I’m used to it.’
‘Not this, you’re not. I just hate fucking officers.’
He had that uncertain sort of laugh as we joined the others at the fire.
I slipped out for ten minutes between drink two and drink three, to visit Black Francie where he lay in the churchyard of St Mary’s church behind the pub. He had been an air gunner cut into three pieces by unsociable Germans. We had buried him here about two months earlier. There was a small posy of fresh flowers on his grave. The rich earth on the grave seemed higher somehow, and there was a distinct crack in it at one side. I wondered if it was being lifted by his decomposition gases and moodily pressed it down flat with my foot. Sometimes I said a word or two to him, but on this occasion just being there was enough. The light was fading. Someone had switched on the flare-path lights of the airfield in the valley below us, and I heard the heavy growl of four Hercules radial engines throwing an aircraft into the sky. That would probably be a Hallibag. I felt stupid, a bit lost, and exceptionally lonely. I hated my new squadron, and decided to go and get crocked. The lights flicked off again.
My hangover the next morning was like a deep depression rolling in from south-east Iceland. I vowed abstinence for the rest of my life if God would take it away and give it to Hitler. God didn’t listen to me.
The CO called me up at about 0900. The NCOs all called him ‘Goldie’ because of the colour of his hair and moustache. The officers called him Squadron Leader, knelt, crossed themselves, and wiped their tongues with toilet paper afterwards. That probably explained the toilet-paper crisis: there had been none on the station for weeks apparently. Each bog was hung with wads of cut squares of newspaper, neatly threaded on looped string. I used to look for the crosswords and the cartoons, but someone was always there before me, and nicked the drawings of Jane.
He asked me to sit down, which was never a good sign.
‘Settled in, Sergeant?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Any problems?’
‘It’s been a little difficult sorting my duties out, sir. There’s nothing on paper, and I didn’t meet the man I replaced.’
‘Seen the squadron Radio Officer?’
‘Not yet, sir. He hasn’t been here since I arrived. No one seems to know where he is.’
‘We can be a bit like that sometimes.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘I don’t think that you do, but you will, if you stick around long enough.’
Attack being the best defence and all that, I pressed on.
‘Shall I just carry on then, sir? At present I liaise between the ground staff and the aircraft, and check new men who haven’t flown with you before.’
‘Sounds spot-on, Sergeant. Initiative.’
‘It can be a bit difficult because I don’t actually know what they do on these sorties, sir. I was thinking of hitching a lift on one of them. Bat myself in, so to speak.’
‘Good idea, Sergeant. I shouldn’t be surprised if your predecessors didn’t do the same. Anything else?’
One of us was being a twerp. I wasn’t sure which one.
‘When I left Bawne, sir, my old CO put me up for canonization. They wanted me to continue as an officer. I think that it was a reward for living long
