I'll Be Seeing You (15 page)

‘What's the rush, Howard? Why not wait and see what happens?'

‘It's already happened. We've finally got off our asses and I'm sure as hell not going to be left behind.'

‘But why the Air Force? Wouldn't you be safer on the ground?'

‘Not necessarily. And I like it better in the air.' He handed her his handkerchief. ‘Come on, Lola, you'll soon find some other guy.'

She dabbed gingerly at her mascara. ‘Not like you.'

He spent Christmas at home and, soon afterwards, received his Active Duty Orders and reported to a classification centre in San Antonio, Texas. After the physical exam and the clothing and dog-tag issue, he was assigned to a cadet squadron and given a serial number. Then came Pre-Flight: classes, lectures, study, physical training, drill, parades. The senior medical officer gave them a talk on sex and VD which he didn't need – the guy had got it all wrong when he assumed only the married men knew about women. He graduated without trouble and went on to Primary Training at Sikeston, Missouri. His previous flying experience gave him a big advantage over most of the other cadets, some of whom got washed out, but he still had to go through the mill. Aerobatics were the fun part – snap rolls, slow rolls, loops and spins, practised again and again. He figured the better he could show he could do them, the more likely they'd assign him to fighters. For Basic Training he was sent to Independence, Kansas, and, after he'd got through that, he went to Eagle Pass, Texas, to fly AT-6s. It was at that point that he was told, to his bitter disappointment, that he'd been assigned to fly bombers. They gave him some good reasons: he was on the tall side for a fighter cockpit, he had a strong enough physique to handle the heavy controls of a bomber, and, just then, they needed bomber pilots more than they needed fighter guys.

At Pampa, Texas, he learned to fly twin-engined planes. He learned some formation flying, night flying, instrument flying, how to shoot landings, how to fly on one engine, how to compensate drag, all kinds of things. Most of it he found pretty easy, except for night flying in formation, trying to stay in position when all he could see was the white light on the tail of the lead plane. That was tough.

At graduation, he was given his commission – Second Lieutenant, Army of the United States – and his wings. After two weeks' leave, he went off to learn to fly B-17 four-engined bombers.

At Alexandria, Louisiana, he met his crew – three other officers and six enlisted men – and went with them to Moody Field, Georgia, for combat training. Much of the time was spent practising box-formation flying – socked in so tight his waist gunner swore he could have leaned out and shaken the next door tail gunner's hand. He saw planes collide and men die. By the end of the training, Hamilton had made First Lieutenant. He and his crew collected a brand spanking new B-17 Flying Fortress from Grand Island, Nebraska and took it over to Bangor, Maine. From there they flew to Goose Bay, Labrador, where they were holed up for over a week because of lousy weather. They took off across the North Atlantic in company with another forty-five bombers and headed for Iceland, and an overnight stop there. They landed at Prestwick in Scotland, minus two of the other B-17s, on a cold and drizzly morning in late April, 1943, sixteen months after he had left his home in Pasadena.

Daisy had been unchained from the typewriter and sent on an Admin course from which she emerged as Corporal Woods. After several more months had passed, the WAAF flight officer interviewed her again. She was considered, she was told, to have certain qualities that could make a good officer, and good officers were needed. What precisely those qualities were was left unsaid and she didn't ask. Another course – longer this time – turned her into an assistant section officer. The promotion brought her into closer contact with the bomber crews on the station. She saw them daily in the Mess, and around the station, chatted to them, learned their names, attended briefings, and, when she could, went down to the start of the runway with the faithful little band of station personnel to wave them off on ops. She knew which men were in which plane: Bob, Harry, John, Steve, Don, Ken . . . there was no escape from the horrible reality. And when they failed to return – which happened more and more – their faces stayed fixed in her mind's eye for a very long time afterwards. Faces belonging to boys not quite men – adolescent spots, peach-fuzz beards, eager grins. She had fended off the hopeful and clumsy advances as gently as possible, kept what distance she could, but it broke her heart when they went missing.

The rumour about the Americans was true. The RAF were moving out and handing the station over. The WAAF flight officer sent for Daisy once more and told her that she had been assigned to stay on with an RAF liaison officer.

‘Do I have to, ma'am? I'd prefer not to.'

‘Of course you do. It's an order. We all have to make sacrifices in wartime. And I doubt if any of the other WAAFs on this station would have minded making this particular one.' The flight officer, an older woman, stared at her. ‘You're not anti-American, are you?'

‘I've never met any of them, ma'am. But they've taken an awful long time getting over here.'

‘Don't hold it against them. They'll make up for it. You must put any personal prejudices behind you, Assistant Section Officer. It's your duty. The Americans are coming here to help us. We have to work together now to win the war, stand shoulder to shoulder. We're comrades-in-arms. That's going to be part of your job.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘See that you remember it.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

She was given leave and went home to Ealing. Vernon's father had died while she had been away and she went next door to see his mother and sat dutifully in the gloomy and silent house, listening to Mrs Byrne talking of her late husband, and of her son.

‘I hardly ever see Vernon these days . . . the last time was when he came home for the funeral and he looked exhausted. So pale and thin. They're working him much too hard.'

‘I'm sure it's important work, Mrs Byrne.'

‘He won't tell me anything about it. Not a word. Has he said anything to you?'

‘Only that it's to do with government communications, or something like that.'

‘I thought he might have told you more, seeing how much he cares for you. You
do
realize that, don't you? Not that he's admitted it to me, but I can tell. But you don't feel the same about him, do you?'

‘Not quite the same. I'm sorry.'

‘It's not something one can help. All I ask is that you don't hurt him.'

‘I'll try not to, Mrs Byrne. I promise.'

At the end of her leave she returned to Halfpenny Green to find that the first Americans had already arrived and a huge Stars and Stripes was flapping from the station flagpole.

‘We're in a foreign country now,' Flight Lieutenant Dimmock, the RAF liaison officer, remarked drily when she reported for duty. ‘And we don't speak the language.'

She soon saw what he meant. The Yanks looked different, dressed differently, spoke differently, behaved differently. They even saluted differently – a casual, sloppy sort of flick of the hand, nothing like a smart RAF salute. She encountered them loping along like wolves, hands in pockets, chewing gum, leering at her and whistling after her as she passed them on her bike. And she heard them complaining loudly about the conditions – the mud and the draughty tin huts, the trickling cold showers and the useless stoves, and the uneatable food. What had they expected to find in a country that had been fighting for its life for more than three years? Steaks and fresh eggs? Five-star, luxury accommodation?

The Waafery had also been taken over – by American nurses and American Red Cross girls in fancy uniforms and nylon stockings. Instead, she had been billeted with the Layton family whose land had been requisitioned for the airfield. She hauled her kit on her bike over there, wondering if they had been obliged to have her, just as they'd been obliged to give up their acres. There was a black Labrador lying outside the side door of the farmhouse and it got to its feet and wagged its tail. She worked the clapper of the old bell hanging from the wall and patted the dog. The women who came to the door smiled at her in a friendly way, too. ‘That's Susie; she's very gentle. And you must be Assistant Section Officer Woods who's going to live with us.'

She followed her through a scullery into an old-fashioned kitchen where she was introduced to the two children who were sitting at the table, having tea. The girl had long fair plaits tied with ribbons; the boy was smaller and darker and rather solemn.

‘I'm Madeleine and I'm seven,' the girl told her. ‘This is Peter and he's only five.'

‘I'm Daisy,' she said. ‘And I'm twenty.'

Mrs Layton took her upstairs. She was shown a bathroom with the biggest bath she'd ever seen and a lavatory with a box-shaped wooden seat and a china handle that said
Pull
dangling from an overhead cistern. Her bedroom was at the end of the house. Its walls were papered with a pattern of roses entwined with honeysuckle, and the bed had a green silk eiderdown.

‘I hope you'll be comfortable, Daisy.'

‘It's lovely,' she said, thinking of the Nissen huts in the Waafery. ‘Thank you.'

Left alone, she put her belongings away in the wardrobe and chest of drawers. Then she went and stood at the open window, looking out at the view across the airfield – to the woods and fields beyond, and then more woods and more fields beyond those, rolling away into the far distance. She could see the main runway quite clearly – a long dark gash across the farmland – and, as she stood there, a four-engined bomber began its take-off run. She watched it go roaring past, a big white star painted on its flank. It climbed effortlessly into the skies: powerful, pushy, American.

No sooner had Hamilton and his crew landed at Prestwick than the brand new B-17 Fort was taken away from them. They continued, ignominiously, by truck to Glasgow and by train from there on to their assigned combat station in Suffolk, in the east of England. Its name was Halfpenny Green.

His co-pilot, Gene, who had never been out of the US, was bemused. ‘What the hell sort of a name is that?'

‘An English one. A half penny is one of their coins. Only they pronounce it hay penny. I guess the green part is a village green.'

The final stage of the journey was made in a toy train that fussed and puffed its way along. The countryside was beautiful and it was good to see a piece of England apparently untouched by war, unlike other places they'd seen since they'd arrived. The bomb damage had shocked them, so had the dreary shabbiness of it all – people, buildings, shops, streets . . . everything. Grey, grey, grey.

He smoked a cigarette and stared through the compartment window. This was
so
goddam green, the fields
so
small – hedgerows dividing them up into a patchwork quilt. Thatched cottages, little creeks spanned by hump-backed stone bridges, church spires and towers, ancient woods. Straight out of a kid's picture book. Maybe he'd get the chance to do some sketching while he was over. He'd been to England before in 1938, on a vacation trip to Europe on his own, but he'd spent all the time in London before he'd headed off for Paris and Florence and Rome and Berlin, drawing the sights by day, and painting the towns red by night. The German girls had been the best, he'd reckoned; he'd always preferred blondes.

The train stopped at a hundred little toy stations. They had no names and hardly anybody was about. Each time there was a lot of hissing from the engine and clouds of steam, maybe a couple of doors clunking open and shut, some old guy in uniform blowing a whistle and flapping a green flag, and they were off again, huffing and puffing along to the next one.

When they finally got where they were going, it was a different story. The platform was jam-packed with servicemen – mostly British army and RAF, but he spotted some American uniforms among them. From the way they were spruced up and looking so cheery, he figured they must be going on leave to London. The truck that picked up his crew took them on another picture-book ride through English lanes made by English yokels staggering home from the pub. As he had guessed, the Green after the Haypenny was a village green and, boy, what a green and what a village! Not even the rain bucketing down by then could spoil it. They were all impressed – Milo, the little ball-turret gunner from Brooklyn whose life had been spent in pool halls, had his mouth hanging wide open as they went by.

The base was a lot less impressive. During training, they'd all gotten pretty used to a lot of shitty deals, but this one took the cake. Nothing wrong with the surroundings – more gorgeous countryside – but the place had been built from tin on top of mud, the plumbing was a joke and, even in May, it was cold and damp as hell. He stood with Gene, his co-pilot, his bombardier, Lee, and navigator, Don, grimly surveying their new home – corrugated metal, concrete floor, bare-bulb lighting, some kind of stove in the middle with a flue pipe that went up through a leaky roof, eight army issue cots – four on each side and each with a mattress and two blankets. His radio man, Carl, engineer, Cliff and the gunners, Ken, Milo, Merle and Alvin were in another building a couple of hundred yards or so away. They soon found out that there was no coal for the stove and that, even if there had been, the thing wasn't worth a damn, anyway.

The day after they were at the quartermaster, checking out their combat gear and finding their way round – mess halls, officers' and enlisted men's clubs, movie hall . . . all in the same sort of prefabricated metal huts and all within easy walking distance. The admin and flight buildings were a lot further away, out on the southern edge of the airfield, and they were trucked over there. As soon as they could, they bought bikes from some shark in the village who was making a killing selling old wrecks to Yanks. Unlike American bikes, the Limey ones had handlebar brakes and the first time he used them, he went clean over the top. Most of the other guys' brakes didn't work at all and they kept crashing into things.