Lost in the Flames Read online

  This book is dedicated to

  Flying Officer John Ross

  186 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command

  And 55,572 others who shared his fate

  International Bomber Command Centre

  The International Bomber Command Centre is being built to ensure that the personal memories of those involved in or affected by Bomber Command are recorded as a means of educating current and future generations about the Command’s fascinating and, at times, difficult history. Contributions from across the world are being collected to add to the archive and inform the exhibition. To find out more please visit: www.internationalbcc.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  HISTORICAL NOTE RAF BOMBER COMMAND 1939–45

  FEBRUARY 1945

  DECEMBER 1934

  CHRISTMAS 1934

  1935

  SEPTEMBER 1939

  1940

  1941

  1942

  EARLY 1943

  SUMMER 1943

  AUTUMN AND WINTER 1943

  1944

  JANUARY 1945

  MAY 1945

  1950

  MEMORIAL, 2012

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  RAF BOMBER COMMAND 1939–45

  Courage

  RAF Bomber Command fought for our freedom from the opening day of the Second World War until the eve of VE Day, the only one of the Services to take the fight to the enemy from the very beginning to the very end. Night after night they went, cramped and frozen in their flying coffins, to strike at Germany’s cities and industries. Each time they flew among the searchlights, the night-fighters and the flak, they did so in the knowledge that many of their number would be dead before dawn.

  Sacrifice

  125,000 men served as Bomber Command aircrew. Their average age was 22. Many were in their late teens. They were all volunteers, most of them civilians before the war intervened. Of every 100 who flew, around half could expect to be killed in the air. On some nights, more men were lost than in the whole of the Battle of Britain. They died in many different ways – from flak wounds and cannon shells, trapped and burning in a spinning plane, hurtling with no parachute from the sky, crushed as their aircraft smashed into the ground, shot or hanged if they reached the ground alive, coming to grief in the fog when landing back at base. At the height of the campaign only one man in six could expect to survive a first tour of thirty operations. One in forty might survive a second. The loss rate was higher than any other Service and the life expectancy of six weeks was on a par with that of infantry officers on the Somme. When it was all over, more than 12,000 Bomber Command aircraft had been destroyed and 55,573 aircrew were dead.

  Betrayal

  Yet for years the sacrifice and bravery of these young men went largely unrecognised. 2012 finally saw the opening of an official memorial to Bomber Command, but it was nearly 70 years in coming – a long time for the dead to be spinning in their graves – and most of the aircrew who survived the war are no longer alive to see it. Churchill backed the bombing strategy but abruptly disowned it at war’s end for reasons of political expediency, snubbing the bomber crews in his 1945 victory speech. The other branches of the Services received their campaign medals but none has ever been awarded to Bomber Command. In the decades after the war, there were increasing attempts, with the benefit of hindsight and the comfortable knowledge of victory, to draw a veil over their contribution, to paint the crews at best as brave but immoral and at worst as war criminals, even drawing comparisons – in A. C. Grayling’s Among the Dead Cities – with the 9/11 bombers. Whatever the controversies that have swirled around the strategy of the bombing campaign, surely they deserve a better epitaph than that, all those boys who were lost in the flames?

  To honour their courage and sacrifice and to regret the death and destruction that the war brought with it need not be mutually exclusive undertakings.

  FEBRUARY 1945

  The route out took them over the Dutch coast and then suddenly they were on the run-in to the target, the master bomber overhead, guiding them in, Jacob in the nose, fussing over the bomb-sight and the selector switches, the target looming beneath him, edging itself inside him now, eating him away, the way it always did. Then Charlie breathing out adjustments to the course, his voice down the intercom like a ghost, Ralph responding in word and action, adjusting B-Beauty’s path, setting his fear aside until the bombing run was over, Roland hurling out bundles of foil strips to scramble the German radar, searchlights lamping up the sky, light flak tracing slow-motion streams of red and green, accelerating as it passed. Then a plane struck away off to starboard, a little lick of flame along the fuselage becoming a stream then a deluge, the flares inside the belly of the pathfinder igniting, dripping bright gobs of light, the plane dipping away, bleeding red and green fluorescence from its guts, spinning down like a Catherine wheel, and Jacob in the front of Beauty, concentrating now, the target coming near, then the aiming point in his sights and he is suddenly cold, and his flares are going down, Christmas trees of cascading light, and the bombs drop away and the plane lifts then settles, freed at last of its bombs. Ralph banks them away as a torrent of flares from other pathfinders goes down, then the intense white light of fighter flares bursting apart the night with their glare, and Beauty is fleeing headlong now, racing towards the darkness, Ralph’s hands shaking violently upon the control wheel, flak bursting beneath, then Jacob coming up from the nose and taking the controls as Ralph goes back to the rest-bed, looking back as he goes, guilty and wrong but forgiven all the same, and Jacob is guiding Beauty now, loving her, taking her away from the target, that thing he never wants to see, slipping away beneath him now, another bad glow in the memory and he is leaving it behind.

  But then a judder, a ripping sound, like gravel, gravel on a corrugated metal roof, explosive shells raking along the underside, the rear gunner shot to pieces, a leg ripped off at the knee, wind raging around his shattered guns, and Jim silent too in the other turret, slumped in his harness, all but dead, his heart spraying his life away, wasting it all over the ribs of the fuselage, blood hissing on the searing metal of the burning plane as a torrent of flame is sucked down its steel tunnel to where the other gunner sits already burnt black. And then another shrieking pass by the Ju-88, incendiary shells ripping through the mid-section, the wireless set bursting into flames, George bursting apart at the seams as the cannon shells tear through the fuselage, in and out of him, up again into the night through the shattered metal above his head, his blood soaking Charlie’s desk, turning the maps and charts blood-black in the light of the flames, the angle-poise lamp throwing its bulb now towards the roof, Charlie on the floor with his oxygen tube around his neck, struggling to throw it off, and Ralph rising from the rest-bed and crawling through slime towards the cockpit where Jacob and Roland struggle to hold Beauty level as she tosses her head and throws her reins and demands to be allowed to let herself fall, tired of the whip, tired of fighting through the fire and the night just to go out again the next day, trailing her mane of fire behind her, shuddering now, shaking again as more shells rip into her guts and another fighter homes in on the blaze and pumps more death inside her, strips of Window cascading up through the cabin in the rush of air that pours in through her wounds as she fills up with smoke.

  ‘We’ve had it, lads!’ shouts Jacob over the intercom. ‘Bale out! Bale out! And get out quick!’

  Ralph is in the cockpit now, looking up at Jacob from his place on the floor, then standing and staring at him as the foil strips swirl around and glycol from the tank in the nose sprays about and Jacob shouts at him repeatedly.

  ‘Get out!’ h
e shouts. ‘Fucking get out!’

  Ralph tries to grab the control wheel, tries to haul it back, but Jacob hands him off and Roland pushes him hard towards the hatch at the front and Ralph goes down the step into the nose, kicks the hatch away, sits on the edge, looks back, drops out into the freezing night. Jacob shoves Roland away too and Roland jumps and Jacob is alone now with the dead men. He stares behind him at the blazing interior of the fuselage. He hauls at the wheel, pulls Beauty level, then stands up and steps back towards the navigator’s desk and slips on something soft that glistens and seems to be moving still, and he bends down and holds his face close up next to Charlie and hears him whimper, or perhaps it is just the gurgle of the blood that bubbles up in his throat, specking Jacob’s face red with spittle as Charlie coughs and tries to say something, then coughs up again and speckles him more. Beauty is pitching forward again now and Jacob lurches back to the wheel and pulls her level and holds her steady then lets her go and returns to Charlie but he will not cough for him now, does not whimper or gurgle, and the blood does not bubble up in his throat but lies flat inside his mouth, flat black ink inside a well from which no more words can come. Jacob looks now to where George is a dark bundle by the main spar and he steps towards him, slipping in a hot slick of blood and slither that is beginning to simmer and burn, and he takes George’s gloved wrist and tugs, pulls him towards him, feels him light beneath his grip, realises he is pulling only half a man, the hips separated from the waist by a cannon shell or a ripping piece of fuselage, and Jacob lets go and slips, then stands and moves again towards the main spar to get at the gunners, but he cannot get across it, Beauty’s metal burns him, burns him through his flying suit, and the flames really get a grip on him now, force him back, and Beauty is tipping again, tipping away down, and he slithers across to the wheel and hauls it back and Beauty shakes, a great wracking judder as an engine disintegrates and hot shrapnel comes zinging in, and she lurches to one side and bows her head and Jacob is aflame and he takes a last look at the dark shapes that were Charlie and George and he stumbles down the step to the bomb-aimer’s dome and he sits beside the hatch, burning he is, burning beside the selector switches and the bomb-sight through which he has seen his war, nights of criss-cross streets of orange, the city’s lattice-work kissed by the silent crump of bombs thousands of feet below, and he pushes his flaming feet through the open hatch and the wind wrenches his burning boots away and he thinks again of Rose, his Rose, the reason he had to get through this war …

  DECEMBER 1934

  It was nearly Christmas. Jacob Arbuckle was standing on the corner of New Street with his older sister Vera and her best friend Rose, snow sheeting down from a cold December sky, falling for him, he thought, layering him in white. His eyes fell on Norman Miller and he sensed Vera’s gaze alight upon him too, observing in that quiet thoughtful way of hers the man who sat stiff and serious on the seat of the trap as the pony tripped up the hill towards Chipping Norton market square, edged by trees and dotted with Model-T Fords and traders’ vans.

  Norman brought his horse to a halt with a tug of the rein and a click of the tongue, stepped down into the market square, and disappeared out of sight behind the Town Hall as his dogs sidled after him.

  ‘Come on, Jacob,’ said Vera, her voice cool but her eyes aflame. ‘I’ve got an errand to run.’

  She stepped out into the whitening street as Rose grabbed Jacob’s hand and dragged him along.

  ‘What sort of errand?’ Jacob called out, griping at the sudden change of plan. They had been on their way to Pool Meadow to skim stones across the pond, an important pursuit for an eleven-year-old boy.

  ‘Mind your own business, Jacob,’ said Vera over her shoulder to where Jacob walked hand in hand now with Rose. ‘Important errands aren’t for little boys like you.’

  ‘I’ll remember that next time you ask me to do something!’

  ‘Shush, you cheeky little bugger,’ laughed Rose. ‘Don’t talk to your big sister like that.’

  Rose grinned at him but he snatched his hand away and stomped after Vera as Rose swayed along behind in a manner she believed to be indicative of elevated aesthetic preferences.

  Jacob caught up with Vera and prodded her.

  ‘I said what sort of errand?’

  ‘Jacob, will you ever stop asking questions?’

  ‘I said what sort of errand?’

  ‘Well if you must know, I need some wool. I have to make some gloves.’

  ‘You’ve already got some.’

  ‘Shut up, Jacob. Please.’

  Jacob saw Norman Miller with an older man on the Town Hall steps, stooping over together as if looking at something small that he was holding in his hands. Vera was looking too, at his hands, big bare reddening things going ruddy in the snow, red with work and cold. Norman glanced up and caught Vera’s eye and she spun away and hauled Jacob into the haberdashery. Rose hovered outside momentarily, then swooned in through the door.

  ‘I shall be requiring some wool,’ Vera declared to the woman behind the counter.

  ‘Well you’ve come to the right place, then, haven’t you?’

  Rose leant down and Jacob felt her breath upon him as she whispered in his ear, just a touch louder than he knew she should, ‘Oh Jacob, don’t you just hate irony in the uneducated?’

  He smiled up at Rose, then smirked at the woman. The woman looked him up and down and readdressed herself to Vera.

  ‘What colour will you be wanting?’

  She stumbled over her words slightly now and Rose smiled and Jacob smirked again. Vera peered past the stuttering woman and the rolls of cloth stacked in the bay window and out through the falling snow towards Norman Miller. Jacob followed her gaze onto the stranger outside and felt something inside himself click into place.

  ‘Brown,’ said Vera. ‘And of the very highest quality. It must be brown like the colour of that man’s suit – you see him, over there. Him.’

  The woman behind the counter looked at Vera, then at Jacob. Jacob shrugged beneath her gaze.

  ‘It’s not my bloody fault,’ he said.

  ‘Mind your language, Jacob,’ said Vera coolly.

  ‘Yes, Jacob, mind your bloody language,’ said Rose.

  The woman glared at Jacob again, then pulled out a box and dropped it on the counter. Up rose a cloud of dust, a small explosion.

  ‘That’s Norman Miller, that is,’ said the woman, regaining her composure in her natural habitat of gossip. ‘Arrived just last month, from up north somewhere. Got a right queer accent, he has. Not unpleasant, mind.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Hard life, by all accounts.’

  ‘A hard life?’ asked Vera, fingering a ball of wool, feigning indifference.

  ‘Yes, poor Norman Miller,’ the woman went on. ‘Lost his father early on. If he was his father. Not confirmed, apparently, his parentage. Slight ambiguity there. Brought up by his grandmother, so they say.’

  ‘So who says?’ said Jacob.

  The woman ignored his interruption.

  ‘So who says?’ he said again.

  ‘You’re a bright little spark, aren’t you?’ said the woman sharply.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s bright, all right,’ said Rose. ‘Started at the Grammar School in September. They say he has an inquiring mind.’

  ‘Do they really?’ The woman studied Jacob down the length of her fulsome nose. ‘Well he should save that for when he’s a policeman.’

  ‘He’s not going to be a policeman,’ said Rose.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said the woman. ‘He’ll be on the land all his life. Or the tweed mill if he’s lucky. Just like every other poor sod round here.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Rose spat. ‘What are you going to be, Jacob? Go on, tell her.’

  ‘A pilot,’ he whispered.

  ‘A pilot? Ha! Setting our sights a bit high, are we?’

  ‘It’s true. I’m going to be a pilot,’ he blurted out now. ‘Father always tells us to aim for the sky, so that’s what I’ll do
. I’m going to fly around the world and back again!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rose. ‘So leave the little lad alone. Just because you have no hope doesn’t mean he should have none too.’

  Jacob felt the woman’s discomfort, shifting about behind the counter now, her unease washing over him like a balm. He knew they had broken her – him and Rose – they had won again like he knew they would.

  Vera was rooting around in the box. She took out several balls of wool of slightly different earthy hues.

  ‘That one,’ said Rose. ‘The others are far too agricultural.’

  ‘Yes, I like that one too,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s the colour of sparrows.’

  The woman would not contradict him now. Rose had quietened her. She had done it for him.

  ‘Right,’ said Vera. ‘I’ll have that one. Sparrows it is.’

  She left her coins on the counter and nudged Jacob towards the door. He glanced back at the woman. She was looking at the floor.

  Norman Miller was still by the Town Hall, talking to the man, his dogs at his heel. He wore a rough tweed suit with a waistcoat and tie and a pair of solid boots. His physical dimensions were of a magnitude that would disincline the beasts of the field to resist if he whacked them with a clubbing paw of a hand and growled at them to get a move on as his pair of border collies harried them about the ankles. He caught Vera’s eye momentarily again as she passed and Jacob sensed Norman’s immensity as he hurried by beneath him, this great hulking man, hulking over him but somehow good, reassuring, like a solid piece of timber, a thing you could make something from, a life perhaps. Jacob grinned at Norman and the hulking thing offered an inclination of the head in return.

  Jacob and Vera left Rose at the door of the Co-operative store, where she went in search of camphor to exterminate the moths that had been up to no good in her wardrobe and gin for her grandmother’s evening pick-me-up.