Silent War Read online

  He had magically produced a pipe of his own from somewhere – a stained, curved meerschaum. What I know now, but didn’t know then, was that you don’t own a meerschaum pipe; you have a love affair with it. Despite what today’s tobacco Nazis tell you, the Brotherhood of the Pipe was once a great leveller; our inclusive modern society started with it.

  We sat on a bench in the garden, and smoked in the sun, which had just enough warmth in it. I was twenty-eight years old, and felt about eighteen. I smoked my Wills Sweet Chestnut, whilst he packed his with Erinmore – that brand was a little hot for me.

  He asked, ‘When were you commissioned, Charlie?’

  ‘In 1945. I was in hospital after a crash at Tempsford in the last few months. I’d flown as a sergeant.’

  He was too canny to ask about Tempsford or the crash. ‘So you’ve been an officer for about eight years now?’

  ‘That’s exactly the point: I don’t see it that way. I’ve only been an officer for three days actually. Before I was demobbed they posted me away for six months – to the place that became GCHQ. It was very informal: most of the time it wasn’t like being in the services at all. No real officering there.’

  ‘Under David Watson, was that?’ Full of surprises, Mr Holden.

  ‘Do you know him, sir? I saw him a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Went to school together. Frightful chap.’ But it was the way he said the word: there was a lot of affection in it. I chose not to tell him about haring across France and Germany behind our armies’ advance in 1945, and my year of wandering around Europe after that. Now I suspect he knew all about it. ‘How do you manage to calculate your officer service to just three days?’

  ‘I spent my first night in an Officers’ Mess at Waddington in 1947,’ I told him. ‘I was on a weather flight that was delayed a day – because of the weather.’ That made him smile. ‘Then in 1948 I spent another night, after I had been discharged; but at Bawne that time – it was under Care and Maintenance; we were the only bods there. The third day was yesterday.’

  He grunted, and asked, ‘So what’s the trouble then?’

  I suppose that I had to tell someone, so I ground it out slowly – a bit ashamed of myself, and looking down at the gravel path in front of us.

  ‘I . . . don’t . . . know . . . how to behave. I don’t know what’s expected of me. I don’t know the little signs and code words that let me into officers’ company without sounding like a prat.’

  He tamped down his pipe, because he’d let it out, then relit it from a box of Swan Vestas, which he then offered to me. I copied him.

  ‘That’s all there is to it,’ he told me. ‘Just copy everybody else. Why don’t you let me show you round the place. You can see how it works. There’s just time before lunch.’

  ‘Very kind of you, sir, but I’m supposed to contact someone from the Mess Committee, and get that sorted out.’

  ‘Which is what you’re doing at this moment, old fellow. That’s me. I’m supposed to support the PMC in my spare time.’

  ‘Just exactly what do you do around here, sir?’

  He waved his pipe around. ‘Masses of stuff, old chap: masses of stuff. Shall we go? It’s a nice walk when the weather’s with you.’

  I don’t know how long the RAF takes to make an officer these days. Months and months probably . . . if not years, and that’s after they’ve earned fifteen Honours Degrees at some obscure university near Huddersfield. Alec Holden did a pretty thorough job on me in just four days, by the end of which that phrase came back to me again: I can cope with this. A few months later I bought him a great curved meerschaum from a side-street bazaar in Port Said: it was carved with the face of a grinning camel. I parcelled it up with printed silk scarves for Mandy and Frances, and sent it back to Abingdon for them on a homing flight. That was because the most improbable people can change your life.

  I was at Abingdon for five nights, and left on the sixth day. On the last evening I put on civvies and joined Lorenzo, Francis and WO Pierce – also all in civvies – for an impromptu going-away bash. We sloped down to a pub named the Prince of Wales: they called it the Three Feathers. You work it out. I suspected that non-commissioned ranks getting rat-arsed with an officer probably broke one of Pierce’s rules, but he didn’t let on. A bunch of my new officer pals stood in one corner and pointedly ignored us. Then they tried to chat up the girls after we were all turfed out at closing time. Some things never change, do they?

  There was a big shiny York parked near the Watch Office when I walked out the next morning. Even with my old flying jacket over my new duds I felt cold. My fellow passengers milling around it all wore more rings than a gypsy fortune teller: I was moving – literally – in exalted company. I should have guessed, of course. The SWO intercepted me before I was close enough for any of the gods of the RAF to turn and look at me.

  ‘Not that one, I’m afraid, sir. Your original transport’s been requisitioned by the top brass. Your new aircraft is now over the far side – I’ve organized a crew bus for you. Over there.’ Everything must have been done in a hurry, because the crew bus still had cobwebs in it; an old Commer that hadn’t been used for months. It was cold inside, and its engine rattled: I doubted it would get us to the other side of the airfield. The AC driver was one of those cheeky chappies it’s impossible to like: he whistled as he drove – pitch-perfect. It was just a pity that the tune was the Sailors’ Hymn about those in peril on the sea. There was one other passenger; a flying officer a bit older than me. He was wrapped in his greatcoat but still shivering. We touched gloved hands – not a real shake.

  ‘Charlie Bassett.’

  ‘Hector . . . Heck. The rest is Macdonaldsmith, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Hyphenated?’

  ‘ ’fraid not.’

  ‘You poor beggar. How do you ever fit it in when you get a place on a form which says “Your full name”?’

  ‘I don’t. I write M apostrophe Smith. Everyone who reads it then thinks I’m stuck up, and hates me instinctively.’

  I think he’d been laughing in between the words since the conversation had begun. A comedian, obviously. With a handle that long you’d have to be.

  ‘I’m glad of your company,’ I told him.

  ‘. . . and I of yours. There’s another dozen on the transport, and I understand they’re not Pongoes, thank God.’ Pongoes were the Senior Service – sailors – and notoriously delicate air passengers. So we had aircraftmen or Brown Jobs. He could have meant either.

  ‘Seeing as the Air Board’s nicked our aeroplane, do you know what type we’ve been bumped on to?’

  ‘I do, Charlie, but I’ll leave it to be a surprise.’ He looked away from me, out of the side screen, and smiled. I glanced at the passenger-side door mirror. We were leaving a trail of black smoke you could see a mile away – I was surprised the fire tenders hadn’t been scrambled to us. The erk still whistled.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake shut it!’ I told him irritably.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  I regretted that immediately, ‘No, carry on – it’s not your fault . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. You’ll love the Jack o’ Diamonds – she h’ain’t let us down yet. Never.’

  The Jack o’ Diamonds came into sight seconds later. It was squatting close to the ground in front of one of the old blast pens. If ever an aircraft looked as if it was taking a shit, this type did. Her fat belly looked as if it was scraping the floor. She was silver in colour, but that was where the similarity to my stolen ride ended. The York I’d been promised was silver because her metal surfaces had been lovingly polished. Jack o’ Diamonds was silver because her fabric had been painted silver. Yes, that’s right – fabric. She was an old Wellington bomber converted to the transport role. She had our nice new RAF three-ring roundels, a large black letter J on her flanks, and a neat picture of the Jack of Diamonds playing card under the sliding clear screen beside the pilot.

  One of the things I’ve never told you before is t
hat I’d flown a dozen training trips in Wimpies – that’s what we called them – from my OTU before I was posted to a squadron. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to forget them. I wanted to forget them because every time I had flown in a Wellington I had been violently sick. I leaned towards M’smith and whispered, ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘I know what you mean. We’re certainly going to be.’

  Oh well, at least he’d been around the block a few times.

  Wellington bombers are not like other aircraft. They are not made of nice metal sheets riveted onto a nice firm metal frame. They are made of a metal latticework of narrow spars and tubes stitched together in diamond shapes, like a lace doily, and then covered in painted canvas. In flight the whole fuselage – which is where we had to sit – flexed. It flexed from side to side, end to end, and up and down. And the wings flapped like a pregnant bird. Some people, I’m told, learned to love the Wimpy. I never actually met one. Bollocks.

  After we had stepped down from the Commer, it made a turn but only managed about a hundred yards, trailing thicker clouds of black smoke, before the engine gave way with an enormous crash and a clatter. I should have felt sorry for Whistling Rufus, but I wasn’t.

  There was a small mob of aircraftmen being contained by a patient SAC close to Jack’s fuselage door. They were all dressed for travelling. Our fellow passengers looked young and excited. National service types I guessed. I wondered if any of them had flown before, and if they knew what they were letting themselves in for. The SAC said in a voice loud enough to echo among the dreaming spires miles away, ‘The officers are ’ere, lads; let ’em through, let ’em through. Mind outta the way. Now we can get off.’ After a rather smart salute, he asked us, ‘Where would you care to sit, sir?’

  I told him, ‘Up the front. As near to the main spar as is humanly possible.’

  ‘It can be a little noisy up there, sir. Between the engines.’

  I wasn’t going to be taken in. ‘We’ll take a chance on it, OK?’

  ‘Ridden the Wimpy before, ’ave you, sir?’ I liked the way he said ridden; as if the Wellington was something you mastered, like a bucking bronco, rather than something you rode in.

  ‘A few times; a few years ago.’

  I might have been mistaken but maybe the ghost of a smile crossed his face for a second. ‘Very good, sir. If you’d care to mount up now, I’ll get the men loaded after you.’ There it was again: mount up. Maybe the SAC knew Wimpies even better than I did. No looking back now. As I climbed up into the belly of the beast I asked M’smith behind me,

  ‘Any idea where they’re taking our original transport?’

  ‘Yes; Stanstead, apparently.’

  ‘Stanstead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That can’t be more than thirty miles away.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You mean that because the gaffers have to get to somewhere they can see even before they’ve taken off, we have to fly halfway round the world in a twenty-year-old aircraft made from hairnets, pipe-cleaners and brown paper?’

  ‘That’s right. Ain’t peace wonderful?’ If he saw the funny side of everything, he could probably get on your nerves.

  The SAC got his mob seated, in equal numbers on bench-type seats on either side of the aircraft. The kitbags were stowed neatly beyond them, nearer the tail. His briefing was about as far away from the flight-safety briefing you get from a bored stewardess today as it was possible to get.

  ‘Listen up, lads, and pipe down. These are the things you need to know. The small box on the fuselage by the hatch you came in is full of brown paper bags and pieces of string. They are paper bags, airsickness for the use of. Once you have used them, and you will use them, tie them off with the string and place them beneath your seats. The reason you will be sick is that you have the honour to be riding in a Wellington bomber, and a Wellington bomber is not a fixed platform like other aircraft. If you look to the rear when we are in flight you will gain the impression that the fuselage is moving independently up and down, and from side to side. Your impression will be correct, and when you dwell on that fact, and you will dwell on that fact, you will be airsick. There is an Elsan for other forms of bodily evacuation the other side of your kit. You can begin to use it once we reach our operating height, OK?’ He looked around his charges and was met with a few nods. A couple of them looked distinctly white around the gills already. ‘Now . . . settle down and buckle your lap belts.’

  One of the aircraftmen held his hand up like a child in a classroom.

  ‘Yes, lad?’

  ‘What do we do if we land on the sea, SAC?’

  ‘Wellingtons do not land on the sea, lad; they crash into the sea.’

  ‘I can’t swim, SAC.’

  ‘Then you will drown, lad. Just try to do it quietly.’

  He took the seat next to mine. ‘If you don’t mind, sir?’

  ‘Not at all, chum. That was a smashing brief: I wish I’d written it down.’

  ‘All in the book, sir, providing you knows where to look. And if you wouldn’t mind . . . the lap belts as well, sirs. I need you to set the boys a good example.’

  M’smith met my eye. We both grinned and complied. A green light came on over the bulkhead door between us and the flight crew. Jack o’Diamonds’ twin engines coughed asthmatically, one after the other. I could see the props through a long window in front of me – the latticework of the construction made it like seeing them through diamond-shaped Tudor glass window panes. The props dissolved into round shields shimmering in the air, and she began to move. The two-striper had been right: the noise was tremendous.

  He winked at me, and produced a ball of cotton wool from his battledress pocket – then he handed us enough to fashion ear plugs for ourselves. The pilot opened the taps, and Jack made her bid for the air. I think we came off sideways. Just like old times.

  At just about ten thousand feet Jack gave up; leastwise, that’s what it felt like. After a lurch we stopped climbing and levelled out. I know the height because there was an altimeter on the bulkhead alongside the crew door. The pilot then went into cruise mode and the noise level dropped. I removed my plugs, but kept them. M’smith and the section leader did the same. The first sprog lurched towards the paper bags.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the SAC.

  ‘Bates, sir, and I’ve heard all the jokes. The teachers used to love my name when I was a nipper.’

  ‘Where have you been posted, Mr Bates?’

  ‘Abingdon, sir; I’m just along for the ride. I have to deliver this lot to Valletta. Then I go back.’

  ‘Malta?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Luqa via Munich: a couple of long hops.’

  ‘I thought I was going to Egypt.’

  ‘You are, sir, but you’re not in a particular hurry, are you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I think you’ll find you’re routed Munich, Luqa and on to Cyprus. We have a service airfield near Limassol. That’ll take you the best part of three days. Cyprus will send you on; they have cruises to the Holy Land and the Land of the Pharaohs every week, on Thursdays. In fact you may not get into Suez for a week, so I hope you brought something to read, sir.’ He had a bit of a wicked grin. Three of his blokes were clutching bags now.

  ‘Why are we taking such a roundabout route?’

  ‘Mountains, sir. This old bitch – begging your pardon, sir – can’t fly over them, and the cabin’s not rigged for oxygen anyway. We have to go round.’

  ‘I could have worked that out for myself, couldn’t I?’

  M’smith was sitting facing me. He said, ‘Don’t worry: it’ll all come back. Coffee?’ He opened a decent-size pack he’d lodged between his feet. It was khaki so he’d probably nicked it from the Brown Jobs. I spotted at least three thermoses among all the greaseproof packages. He must once have been a Boy Scout.

  Munich was under civilian command again and, as airfields go, it looked pretty smart. They’d even had time
to cut the grass and dig flower beds. Or maybe they’d just left the old ones there because, as we banked in the circuit over the end of the main runway, eight empty flower beds came magically together in a large dark swastika. The bastards never learn.

  We’d flown six hundred and fifty miles in just over four and a half hours: not bad for the old Wimpy, I guessed. I wanted to stretch my legs and get some air, but there wasn’t much time. We taxied straight up to a refuelling bay, and started topping up. There was a misty bitter rain in the air, so it didn’t feel much warmer than England. I stood in the open door and looked north. Somewhere up there, near Frankfurt, I owned a big house that was rented out to the Americans. I hoped they were taking good care of it. I had acquired the place and a couple of neighbouring farms in a shady but fundamentally legal deal at the end of the war. It was amusing to think that I owned somewhere in Germany before I did in England.

  Most of the lads took the opportunity to piss in the grass before we fuelled up. The Fraus driving the fuel bowser cracked up over it, pointed out the best specimens, and began cat-calling. The boys didn’t mind: most of them would have promised their dads and elder brothers to piss all over Germany if they had the chance. It was one of the things we still did then. Everything stopped when we were taxiing out for take-off. A Dutch DC-4 had conked out at the junction of the taxiway and the runways, and a queue built up behind it. We were about sixth in line. A smart old civvy tri-motor behind the Dutchman was apparently in unfamiliar colours.

  I know this because the bulkhead door was open, and I heard our pilot ask someone near him, ‘What’s the white job up ahead, Stevie?’

  ‘That’s the new Jerry airline, isn’t it? They call it Lufthansa, just like the old one we broke for them.’

  ‘I thought they hadn’t started up yet? They haven’t any aircraft.’

  ‘They’re poncing about inside Germany in an old Junkers 52 with a new paint job, until they get a proper fleet up and running – just to make a point.’