Fly Boy (17 page)

I shook my head slowly. Fun … was that what I was having? Going up in a plane and having people shoot at me, trying to kill me, while I dropped bombs on them, trying to kill them. Getting to know men, not knowing if or when they might die, but knowing that each night, each mission, would be the end of somebody’s life, that it
could
be the end of my life. Yes, this was
such
fun.

Here I was, only seventeen, but each night I was as close to death as a ninety-year-old man. No, closer. How could I tell that to Chip? What could I write? What
should
I write? I went back to his letter.

I’ve started to write home to my mother to tell her about all the people who are sick at school. You know our mothers talk, so I’m helping to set the stage for “somebody” to get pneumonia and not be able to go home over Christmas. In the meantime, you just keep yourself well and healthy. I’m going to need a good pilot in about ten months, so get your wings before I get there!

All the best—your best friend
,

Chip

I set his letter down. I’d been putting off writing. I needed to write something to my mother, and to Chip. I picked up a pen.

Dear Chip
,

Thank you so much for your letter and for all your support—both for what I’m doing over here but also what you’re doing back home to make it all possible. It’s all pretty exciting over here. Since my last letter I’ve been assigned to a full-time crew as their navigator. They’re a bunch of great guys, from all over the world
.

Both the wireless operator—Jacko—and the bomb aimer—Drew—are from Australia. They’re a little on the crazy side, which is to say they remind me of you! Our flight engineer—Scottie—is a Kiwi. Funny how New Zealand and Australia
are so close together but the people are so different. Somebody told me that the Australians are more like the Americans and the Kiwis are like Canadians. Scottie is very calm, even when all hell is breaking loose around us. Our tail gunner—Sandy—is from England, and the top gunner—Glen—is an American. He’s been on more missions than anybody in the whole squadron. He volunteered to fight the Nazis two years before the U.S. got into the war. Surprisingly both of the gunners are smaller than me! It’s a real advantage to be small when you’re wedging into a turret! And though they may be small, they’re both scrappy. If somebody bothers one of them, he has to fight both of them. Actually if anybody bothers anybody on the crew, they have to fight all of us. Finally there’s our skipper. He’s Canadian and from B.C. He’s married and has a kid almost my age. He’s a good pilot, and I’m lucky to be flying with him because he keeps the whole thing going
.

So far I’ve been with them for six missions. Combine that with the five missions I did in training and I’m almost one-third of the way to being finished my tour of duty. If you don’t hurry up, I’ll be gone before you get here!

I looked down at the words I’d written. Those were all the things I was supposed to write, and while none of it was a lie, I wasn’t really writing what I felt. Maybe I owed Chip more than that.

I know this all sounds pretty glamorous, but I think about being back in school a lot. I never thought I’d miss my old school, old friends, and even old man Beamish so much. Please be sure to give him a hug and a kiss on the top of his bald head for me the
next time you see him. That should either result in you being permanently transferred to the mailroom or being made the class valedictorian
.

I do miss having you around—you are my best friend. I’d like to say that I wish you were here, but I’m so glad that you’re not. I know this seems romantic and exciting from a distance. That’s how I saw it. And it is exciting—if excitement means not knowing if you’re going to live or die from day to day. People do die. Not just people, but people I’ve known, people who have become my friends. I’ll never forget the last conversation I had with the first man I knew who died. I’ll never forget his face
.

I’m not saying that I’m sorry I did what I did to enlist. I know that what I’m doing—what we’re all doing—is important. We are fighting against an evil that needs to be defeated. I’m prepared for what may happen, but I don’t want this for you or anybody else. I’m here to do my job, to try to end things as soon as we can so that you won’t have to come over here. Nothing would make me happier than to have this over before you get a chance to enlist. Actually that’s wrong—nothing would make me happier than to have it end today. I’m sorry if I sound like a killjoy, and I hope you understand
.

I know I’ve already asked a lot from you, but I’d like to ask for one more favour. If something happens to me, I want you to promise not to blame yourself for helping me. This was my idea. You are my best friend, probably the best friend I’ll ever have if I live to be ninety, and maybe that’s why I’m so glad that you’re over there and not here
.

Time passes so strangely here. It seems impossible to believe that it was only a few months ago I left. Sometimes it seems like three years and sometimes it feels like another lifetime ago. I guess in some ways, it is another lifetime ago
.

This is the last letter you’ll get from me before Christmas, so I wish you a very happy Christmas and all the best in the coming New Year
.

Your good friend
,

Davie

I had one more thing to add, something that would explain the letter I was enclosing for my mother, just in case the censor got suspicious.

P.S. Somehow when my brother Robbie sent me his last letter, it mistakenly included a letter he intended to send to our mother. I’ve enclosed it—could you please give it to him to forward to her?

The plane banked sharply to starboard as Jed responded to my latest course correction. I knew without looking that the other planes would be following our change, but I got up to look anyway, holding on to the table as I stood. I looked out of the canopy to the sides and behind, and I could make out the darkened outlines of the other five planes in our formation. The plane levelled out. We were going to come in over the target travelling east to west; the finders had come in north to south, and we wanted to confuse the gunners who would be throwing flak our way.

“What’s our altitude?” Jed asked.

His voice, as usual, was calm, and that always made me feel calmer. He wasn’t just our pilot, he was like everybody’s older brother—or in my case, like a father.

“Forty-two hundred feet,” Scottie replied, looking at the instruments.

“I’m going to drop down another three hundred feet.”

“Drop down a few more and we can shake hands with the ack-ack gunners,” Scottie joked.

“I heard the gunners are all female, so maybe a pretty Fräulein would give me a little kiss,” Jacko chipped in.

“That would be fraternizing with the enemy,” Jed said.
“Although it’s probably better to be kissed by their lips than by their flak!”

The anti-aircraft shells were set with a proximity fuse to go off at a certain altitude. It was probably a pretty safe bet that nobody would set them to explode at
under
four thousand feet. We could still get hit, even have a shell go in the bottom and come out through the top, but it wouldn’t explode. That made it only slightly less dangerous and deadly.

“Any sign of flares, Drew?”

From his perch in the nose cone, he had the best view of the ground below. “Nothing yet, Skip.”

“We’re still three miles from the target,” I answered—wondering if they were doubting my course correction.

“Nobody is questioning that we’re on target,” Jed said, putting my unspoken concerns to rest. He was always able to say the right thing.

“Wait!” Drew cried out. “I’m seeing some flares just off to port … What are tonight’s colours?”

“They dropped pink pansies,” Jacko called from the wireless station. “Look for pink pansies.”

“Are they pink?” Jed asked.

“No, I don’t think so. White, definitely not pink … They must be decoys.”

The Germans would put out their own flares to try to confuse us—make us think that the target was someplace else so we’d drop our bombs and then cause the whole squadron to miss the mark as well, dropping on the false target that we’d marked. The bombers coming in at nineteen thousand feet in the dark couldn’t possibly see the ground. They looked for fire—the result of our incendiary bombs—and dropped their loads right on top of that.

“There they are!” Drew called out. “Straight ahead.”

I looked past Jed and Scottie, through the front of the canopy. There before us were pink pansies, a few scattered in a line and then hundreds of bright pink flares. Down below on the ground I knew there were German soldiers desperately scrambling around trying to extinguish them before we could use them for our mark. It was too late. They weren’t going to see what hit them.

“Opening bomb doors,” Scottie said.

I listened for the hydraulics.

“Sixty seconds,” Drew said. “Correct three degrees starboard.”

“Roger that, will release the bombs on your mark,” Jed said. “We’re staying low and level.”

“Where the heck is all the flak?” Jacko asked.

Almost as if the gunners on the ground had heard his question, there was a series of explosions and the sky lit up! Bright searchlights started sweeping the sky, looking for us.

“You happy now, mate?” Jacko asked.

“I’d be happier if I was sitting beside a fine young Sheila.”

“They can both be deadly.”

“Everybody off the com except Drew,” Jed said.

The flak was well off to the side and above our position. They were lighting up the sky on the same course that the finders had taken; they’d heard our engines but expected us to come in from the same direction. They’d correct that quickly.

“Ten seconds,” Drew said. “Keep it level if you can.”

We were almost over the target. I looked down through Scottie’s feet into the bubble that contained Drew. His darkened silhouette was visible, and beneath him I could see some of the pink pansies. We were coming right over them.

There was a thunderous crash that made the plane shake and bounce, and the whole sky lit up so brightly that my eyes lost focus for a second.

“Hold her steady, will you, Skipper?” Drew called out. “Releasing in three … two … now!”

“Bombs away, bombs away!” Scottie yelled.

I felt the bombs drop and then we shot upward! We were suddenly surrounded by light, and flak was exploding just over our heads. They’d adjusted the timers but not enough—we were still beneath the explosions.

“Flak to the port! Hard to starboard!” Drew shouted.

Almost instantly we banked hard to the right and dropped down even farther to gain speed and defy the gunners. I looked out through the canopy. We’d banked so hard that I could make out the ground below and saw the first bombs hit! The entire area lit up brightly. Below was a rail yard filled with freight cars and locomotives, and I could see that some of them were already ablaze. Beyond them were small houses and a gigantic cathedral, and from this height I could see that the steeple was in ruins. And then I saw the river and the bend that showed on my maps. That was the bearing I’d use for the next mark.

We flattened out, but we were still descending, using gravity to increase our speed. The faster we could get away, the better the chance of avoiding enemy fighters—or at least avoiding them for longer.

“Wow, you should see it from here!” our tail gunner yelled out. “We really lit it up down there … It looks like a barbecue!”

“Then we did our job well.”

“Give me a new heading, please, Davie,” Jed asked.

“Change course to northeast, twenty-two degrees.”

“Are you taking us home or to Berlin?” Scottie asked.

“Have faith. If you don’t expect it, neither will they.”

“Okay, everybody, follow my bearing. Tighten up and expect action,” Jed ordered.

I looked out through the canopy. On the port were two planes, but where were the other three? I scanned the sky, looking for a visual, but couldn’t see anybody else. The Lancasters were big but the sky was bigger, and in the dark it was easy to get lost.

“Jacko, where is everybody?” I asked. “Are they following?”

“I’m getting readings from four other planes.”

“Four?” Jed asked. “Where’s the fifth?”

“Sorry, Skip, it took fire, there were flames … I saw it go down,” Glen said.

“Did you see chutes? Did you see anybody get out?” Jed asked.

“I didn’t see anybody, but when you banked, I lost sight. They could have bailed.”

I knew—everybody knew—that at this altitude you only had seconds to get out, and if that didn’t happen you were going to go down in the plane. I pictured the Lancaster spiralling down and the crew scrambling to get on their chutes, fighting against gravity and the force of the plane, desperately trying to get to the emergency hatches before … before it was too late.

“We got company coming!” Jacko yelled out. “Ten, maybe twelve blips showing on the fishpond. Coming too fast to be anything but fighters.”

“Any visuals from anybody?” Jed asked.