who flew three miles high on a load of petrol and explosives, and those who didn’t. That was the real difference: those that flew and those that sent them.
I realized the lads had gathered round me, silently, in their soft flying-boots. We looked at each other, then looked away. Gehlen was in Matt’s eyes, in Kit’s, in Billy’s eyes that looked like burnt holes in a white sheet. We’d had it. We were on the chop list and we knew it, just as we’d been before Dadda arrived.
‘Let’s go and hunt up some ham-and-eggs,’ said Dadda. It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order. We piled listlessly into the thirty-hundredweight, and he drove off, slowly.
It was very quiet crossing the Fens; the trees were the faintest possible silhouettes, the sky was flushing a pale pink, nothing like Krefeld, and the birds were just starting to sing. We passed an old farmhand, who wobbled on his bike in our slipstream, but waved just the same. And, slowly, the miracle happened, as it had happened before. The birdsong began to seep into our minds, then the silhouettes of the trees; like water seeping into a leaky old boat. We were back in the here and now, in a beautiful little nowhere; content to be there, and not to think at all. Gehlen began to fade. Oh, he still came, played over and over again, but the birdsong and the trees diluted him. Slowly, gradually, he got weaker and weaker. Dadda didn’t hurry; he wasn’t doing twenty miles an hour: the thirty-hundredweight bumped its springs over the uneven Fenland roads as gently as a cradle. Matt’s cocked-up leg relaxed and slid slowly across the metal bed of the lorry. Paul sighed and wriggled his shoulders back and forward. Kit let his head bounce on his hand where it lay on the tailgate, obviously enjoying the feeling.
Dadda had found the ham-and-eggs farm after a hairy forced landing in a Whitley in 1941. He had left his rear-gunner in charge of the wreck, and just walked into the farmhouse. I suppose the famous Dadda smile did the rest, though people would do anything for somebody in flying gear, in those days just after the Battle of Britain. You could sit and watch the farmer’s wife cutting slices of ham off the joint, which hung up on a beam when it wasn’t in use. If you had the energy, you could go out to the hen cree with the farmer’s kids, and push the hens off the nesting-boxes and take your own personal eggs straight from the straw, still warm. There was never ham-and-eggs like Dadda’s ham-and-eggs. The eggs didn’t turn to glue in your throat and the edges of the ham left the lining of your stomach alone. And after breakfast you could mooch round the farmyard, watching the milk squirt into the galvanized bucket as the farmer milked each cow by hand. Kick the horse manure and smell the pong coming off it. Or listen to the farmer’s wife getting aerated about the Ministry of Ag. and Fish. inspectors. Those farmers were so caught up in their little world, they never thought to ask about ours. Sometimes they asked us to lend a hand, cleaning out a byre. If we had nothing better to do. Because we had the day off, hadn’t we? The whole day off? they asked enviously.
God bless their ignorance; it washed us clean.
Before we left, I took a couple of leaves from a plant that grew in the garden. When you rubbed them between your finger and thumb, they gave off a minty, lemony smell. The farmer’s wife said a couple of leaves under your pillow helped you sleep. I went back to the billet with mine, and slept like a baby.
Next raid, our flight was sent on a diversionary attack, on the docks at Lorient. For once, Lorient was a soft job, practically a milk-run. Dadda took us in at zero feet all the way. Lucky it was a calm night; we still came back with a length of seaweed stuck on the cockpit-canopy. But he got past the flak-ships without a murmur, and under the German radar, and because we hadn’t got to waste time gaining height we arrived ahead of the bomber stream. We had Lorient to ourselves, dumped the bombs somewhere near the harbour and were on our way out before the flak opened up. Dadda for God!
We went out to sea on the way home,