Christopher Priest - The Separation

I carried on, found a shop, used my clothing coupons to buy a couple of pairs of the socks I wanted and was back at the airfield in time for a cup of tea with the others. I saw JL soon after I arrived, but the incident hardly seemed worth remarking on and was soon forgotten. That night we went to Brest docks, trying to hit the German battlecruiser Gneisenau.

The following day, during the afternoon, I ran into Lofty Skinner, who asked me if I’d seen JL anywhere about. I said not. Lofty told me there was a message for him from Group, but he was nowhere in the Officers’ Mess, nor in his room, the ground crew hadn’t seen him and according to the guardroom he’d not left the base. The next day we saw JL again, talking to one of the other pilots outside the NAAFI.

One evening around the middle of April, Lofty and I came up on the rota for one of the regular perimeter patrols. Perimeter checks had to be carried out twice a day and were one of the more unpopular routine duties, especially in winter. All the crews had to take their turn. It involved a long walk around the airfield, taking the best part of two hours, checking not only that the fence was still intact and that there were no obvious signs of anyone trying to get in, but also testing the navigation and landing lights. In fact these lights were used only rarely or selectively, because of the risk from enemy intruders, but they had to be switched on for night landings and in emergencies, when they were of course invaluable.

We were at the furthest, western end of the airfield, about as far away from the admin and ops buildings as it was possible to get. Here the runway ran out into the countryside, with a main road some distance away on one side, separated from us by a field and some hedgerows, and with several dense patches of woodland on the other. Lofty suddenly touched my arm.

‘Look, Sam,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘That’s the skipper, isn’t it?’

We could see a male figure dimly distinguishable ahead, standing among the trees that grew up thickly against the fence. He was too far away for us to make out his features clearly, but his size and the way he stood were familiar and we both immediately recognized him as JL. He was not in his uniform but was wearing a large, dark brown overcoat. At the moment we first saw him he appeared not to have noticed us, but as we drew nearer he glanced quickly in our direction then stepped back into the trees. By the time we reached the part of the perimeter closest to him, there was no sign of him.

Now, what might seem peculiar is that neither Lofty nor I said anything about what we had seen. At the time I found it difficult, particularly Lofty’s lack of a reaction: did he know something I didn’t?, had I been mistaken in identifying the man?, was Lofty waiting for me to say something about it?, and so on. Three-quarters of an hour later we were back at squadron headquarters.

Soon after we had turned in our guard rifles, we were walking back to the mess and almost the first person we saw was JL. He was wearing his RAF uniform again. He said nothing about the incident in the wood.

Afterwards, I said to Lofty, ‘That was JL standing in the trees, wasn’t it?’

He obviously knew at once what I meant.

‘Yes. Have you any idea what he was up to?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

‘I was talking to Ted this morning. He said he’d seen JL hanging around outside the guard post at the main gate.’

‘No reason why he shouldn’t,’ I said.

‘That’s right. But also, there’s no reason why he should.’

‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘He’s still a good pilot, though.’

‘Yes.’

In the last week of April I was given a weekend pass, so I went to stay with my parents in their house in north London. One of my sisters, Sara, had joined the Auxiliary Nursing Service and was being posted to a hospital in Liverpool. She was also passing through that weekend, before heading up north. We were concerned for her because at that time the Blitz was at its height and the seaports were being attacked regularly. Churchill was still in full control and everywhere you went you heard and saw the effect he was having. Germany could never beat Britain so long as that extraordinary mood of bravery and resilience survived. Sara and I felt stirred by it, but also humbled. You could only do a bit yourself. Dad took us down to a part of Green Lanes that had been flattened in a recent night raid. We walked around for a while, looking in horror at the damage to the area we knew so well, where we grew up. On the Saturday night the whole family went out to a pub, followed by a dance.

My dad was a sports fan and over lunch on Sunday, shortly before I was due to set off on the slow journey back to the airfield, he mentioned that he’d seen our squadron mentioned in one of the newspapers. A former sporting hero had become a bomber pilot with the RAF and was based at Tealby Moor. He asked me if I knew who they meant. Of course, without more clues than that it could have been anyone. Dad said he’d kept the newspaper and he started hunting around for it, determined to show me and to find out the name of the man. He was still searching when I had to leave.

The following evening, when I was back at the base, Dad phoned me from a callbox. His voice was faint and we were limited to three minutes, but his excitement was almost tangible.

‘That chap I told you about,’ he shouted down the line. ‘His name is Sawyer, J. L. Sawyer. Do you know him?’

‘JL’s our pilot, Dad,’ I said. ‘I told you that ages ago, when I first got here. He’ll be in that crew photograph I sent you.’

‘Name wouldn’t have meant anything to me then. But listen, I’ve been looking him up in a book in the library and he took a bronze for Great Britain.’

‘A bronze medal?’ I said stupidly. ‘Like in the Olympics?’

‘That’s right. He was out in Berlin in 1936. The Jerries came first, but it was a hard race and we came in a good third. Has he ever talked about it?’

‘No, never. Not to me, at any rate.’

‘Why don’t you ask him? That was something, going over to Germany like that and winning a few medals.’

‘What event was he in, Dad? Was he a runner, or what?’

‘He was a rower. Coxless pairs. It all comes back to me. I heard it on the wireless at the time. It was him and his brother, identical twins called Sawyer. They did well for England, they did.’

‘Does it say what his brother’s name is?’ I said.

‘They didn’t put first names in the book. All the competitors are there under their initials. That’s the funny thing about those two: they had the same initials. "J. L." That’s what they were both called.’

‘Does it say one of them was called Jack?’

‘No . . . just ‘J. L." for them both,’ my father said, but our conversation ended peremptorily when the money ran out.

Then came the evening of May 10, 1941, the night our plane was shot down.

It began as one of those long evenings of early summer when light seems to hang around for ever, even after sunset. During the long winter we had grown used to the idea that we would take off in the dark and never see daylight again until we woke up the next day, after the raid. But now we were in May and double summer time had been introduced the weekend before. We took off while the sun was still just above the horizon and as we circled for height and set out eastwards across the North Sea we were flying in a serene evening light. The air was soft, free of turbulence. Whenever I went to the navigator’s dome to take a positional fix I could see the long twilight lingering around us.

We were about a hour into the flight, still climbing slowly towards our operating altitude, when Ted Burrage in the forward gun turret suddenly yelled into the intercom.