Chapter Eleven
Zero four hundred hours: that was when the squadron was expected to begin returning from Italy.
The station commander, Group Captain Frederick Lacey – Fred, as Robbie had called him – arrived in the glass-walled control room to look out for them all, just as Doverley’s groundcrew had finished relighting the flare path to beckon them home.
A railway marshalling yard near Milan was the target they’d been given.
The squadron, which had left at full strength – twenty-four planes – had been trailed by many hundreds of other crews from around Britain.
Their route had taken them across the sea and occupied France, up and over the alpine ranges – where the weather was always unpredictable, and more than cold enough to cause an unlucky plane to ice up and drop from the sky – then on to that yard, which they’d been ordered to obliterate before turning around and doing the entire perilous journey in reverse.
The control room’s clock ticked above the doorway.
But Mabel’s Fury, like everyone else, was still gone.
And now it was eight minutes past four.
From her seat at the switchboard, Iris stared out into the vast night sky.
The moon was still very bright. It angered her that an operation had been ordered in these conditions.
No one liked flying on a clear night under a full moon.
It made them too easy to spot. She hoped the strategists in Bomber Command were very sure of this railway yard being worth the danger they’d put everyone in.
She dropped her eyes to the glimmering torches. Four ambulances were parked at the head of the main runway, manned and on standby.
Waiting.
To her right sat Clare, headset on, staring out at the night too. Waiting.
Their Supervisor, Sergeant Browning, stood to their left, by a chalkboard bearing the names of all twenty-four planes that had gone up. He had his hands stuffed in his pockets, and his eyes on the sky. Waiting too.
Group Captain Lacey, Fred, stood over at the windows, also with his hands in his pockets. Also watching the sky.
Also waiting.
He’d been to Cologne with everyone the night before, but had stayed behind tonight.
Robbie – who’d served under him at his previous squadron, back in Kent – had told Iris that he, who could fly when he chose, only ever flew on the most dangerous missions, to keep morale up.
He hadn’t felt the need to do that tonight. Not to Italy.
And now it was nine minutes past four.
No one spoke.
The clock ticked, both too slow, and too fast.
Time was playing its tricks again.
Other than for that ticking, there was no other noise in the room, aside from the odd grunt from Piper, who Sergeant Browning had brought in from the weather, and who was lying at his feet.
Watching the sky.
Waiting.
Just a few hours earlier, the base had been all activity.
When Iris and Clare had arrived for their shift, everyone had been preparing to go.
The planes had lined the runway perimeter, spilling light from their open bomb bays as ground crew had loaded them up with flares and incendiaries.
Fuel trucks had racketed around, screeching alongside the Lancasters, filling the last of their tanks.
Engineers had clambered over wings, making final adjustments to propellors and flaps, conducting yelled conversations with their pilots who’d stood beneath them.
(And had one of those pilots been Robbie?
It had been too dark for Iris to tell.) Over at the parachute store, crews had collected their packs from a WAAF called Lydia Jenkins who’d wished them luck and checked them off on a clipboard.
Iris had met Lydia, and all the rest of Doverley’s WAAFs, before she’d left the house earlier.
Clare had insisted on dragging her to the basement for dinner (‘You need to eat,’ she’d said.
‘You’ll keel over if you’re not careful.
’), and everyone had been there, picking at portions of stodgy potato pie and over-boiled greens.
Not wanting to keel over, Iris had done her best to force down that pie too whilst she’d made everyone’s acquaintance.
Prim – who, disappointingly, wasn’t actually called Prim, but Eleanor – hadn’t said much to her, or anyone, but had sat apart, her hair coiffed in blonde waves, flicking through a copy of Time magazine.
The rest of them, including Lydia, had been much friendlier.
Especially Beth Twinton, who’d given Iris and Clare those teacups in the adjutant’s office, and had saved Iris from having to meet Robbie again in front of him.
Already, Iris liked her.
‘He’ll be all right,’ she’d said to Iris with a nudge, as they’d cleared their meal trays into a waiting trolley. ‘He has to be. I’ve got a soft spot for his bomb aimer, Jacob.’ She’d pulled a face. ‘Clearly, I’m a glutton for difficult men.’
She’d be asleep now, up in the attic.
She’d told Iris she preferred it that way.
‘I couldn’t bear to be sitting in that tower with you, watching the sky,’ she’d said. ‘Much better to wake up and find out everything’s fine.’
Iris was inclined to agree.
And she was really regretting that potato pie. She could feel it bubbling, lardy and indigestible, in the pit of her stomach.
She, not Clare, had been the one to take charge of take-off earlier.
Sergeant Browning – a wiry, moustached Scot in his late forties – had given them the choice, and Iris, knowing Robbie would be listening for her, had quickly volunteered, while Clare had gone off to the breakroom to fetch them all some tea.
Unlike the adjutant, Sergeant Browning had worked with female radio operatives before, and (also unlike the adjutant) was very amicable, and grateful to have Iris and Clare’s help in the tower.
He’d said that he’d been all right until now, with ops so often cancelled for the weather, but there’d still been a lot of practice flights taken, and he’d been worried about how long he could go on managing.
‘I’ll take this opportunity to put my feet up,’ he’d said, smiling, and doing just that as Iris had set to issuing each taxiing plane with their order to take-off, starting with Mabel’s Fury.
‘Hello, Oscar,’ she’d said, since that was their code signal: O for Oscar. ‘Do you read me? Over.’ She’d been addressing Henry, the radio operator, but it hadn’t felt like that at all.
‘Hello, Tower,’ Henry had replied. ‘We read you. Awaiting instruction. Over.’
‘That’s a green for go,’ she’d said, just as soon as she’d seen the flash go up.
Then, double-checking Sergeant Browning’s written instructions, which told her that number one plane was to climb to two thousand feet before taking a route out to the coast over a farm some thirty miles away, she’d issued Henry with that order, too.
‘Proceed to angels twenty and vector one ten to Baltimore. Over.’
And, ending the transmission, she’d moved directly on to the next plane, which had been Bucks Boys – Q for Queen, that Lewis with the tartan slippers piloted – who were to climb a fraction lower before ascending.
‘Hello, Queen,’ she’d told them. ‘Proceed to angels seventeen, vector one ten to Baltimore, up to angels twenty.’ Then, it had been straight on to the next plane.
Then, the next.
By that point, Mabel’s Fury had been long gone.
Neither she, nor Clare, had heard from them again.
Unlike several of the other plane’s operators, who’d called back to check their instructions, Henry hadn’t requested any help.
Iris could only hope Mabel’s Fury hadn’t needed it.
They were a well-seasoned crew, after all.
Tim was an experienced navigator. He’d already directed them through sixty-three missions.
Please let him make it sixty-four, Iris silently entreated the empty sky now. Please, please, please.
It was close to twenty past four before the darkness finally fractured with the wing lights of the first returning plane.
‘Here we go,’ said Fred, raising his binoculars, his voice light with relief. ‘They look intact.’
‘Hello, Tower,’ came a voice through Iris’s headphones. A young voice. Elated. Not Henry’s. ‘Romeo here.’
‘Young Guns are back,’ Iris said to Sergeant Browning, who turned to the chalkboard and ticked them off, whilst Clare issued Young Guns’ operator with the instruction to land.
‘Hello, Romeo. Pancake, over.’
And, as she did, more wing lights appeared, and Fred raised his binoculars again, and another voice that wasn’t Henry’s sounded in Iris’s ears.
‘Hello, Tower. Queen here.’
‘Bucks Boys,’ said Clare to Sergeant Browning.
He marked them home, too, and Iris, relieved at least for Lewis and his slippers, gave them the instruction to circle at thirteen hundred feet to await landing. ‘Aerodrome thirteen. Over.’
‘Hello, Lima,’ Clare was already saying to the next arrival, Night’s Knights. ‘Aerodrome fourteen. Over.’
With a roar, Young Guns landed, bouncing along the tarmac, so Iris called back to Queen, instructing them to pancake, over, then switched to Lima, telling them to take Queen’s place in holding at thirteen hundred feet, whilst Clare asked the next incoming plane to circle at fourteen hundred feet.
And so they went on.
For half an hour, they continued bringing the returning planes safely back down to the ground, whilst Fred kept his vigil at the window, and Browning ticked the names off, one by painstaking one, on his board.
Several of the squadron returned with flak damage.
Three radio operatives called in with emergency transmissions that they had wounded men on board, so Browning scrambled the ambulances, who sped those men off to hospital.
Fred ran down to see them before they went, and returned with the news that the Luftwaffe, making the most of the full moon, had sent up night fighters to intercept the stream on their way home over France.