Len Deighton - Bomber

It was almost overwhelming but it was too late to stop, and anyway I enjoy research. One large room of my London home was devoted entirely to Bomber . I collected everything available: films, air photos, logbooks, letters, recordings, tele-printer orders and target maps. Pasting aeronautical maps together I covered one whole wall with northern Europe. Tapes of the bomber routes, turning-points, dog-legs and feints showed each aircraft in the story. Tabs for times meant I could see where each fighter or bomber would be at any chosen moment.

The anchor of the story was to be found in England’s Bomber Command airfields. I knew many of them from my time in the RAF and I returned to see them again. My RAF veterans were great companions with anecdotes galore, and during my service years I had flown in Mosquitos and in Lancaster bombers. In Germany Adolf Galland found for me some of the best of his night fighter crews. The Dutch air force allowed me to spend some time on a military airfield that was very little changed from 1943. By amazing luck I was able to find, enter and climb around one of the very few Luftwaffe ‘Opera House’ command centres just days before its demolition began. It was a vast echoing place and by chance the demolition crews had left all the electric lights burning, probably for safety reasons. Back in London my good friends at the Imperial War Museum gave me a room filled with Luftwaffe instructional films about the night-fighter version of the Junkers Ju 88 and by bending the rules a little I also got to climb inside one.

Right from the first notes I had decided upon the twenty-four hour time format. It meant that I would describe only one RAF bombing raid but I could depict it in detail. By describing mechanical elements (such as the number of fragments into which the average anti-aircraft shell breaks) I wanted to emphasize the dehumanizing effect of mechanical warfare. I like machines but in wars all humans are their victims.

Len Deighton, 2009

Although I have attempted to make its background as real as possible this is entirely a work of fiction. As far as I know there were no Lancaster bombers named ‘Creaking Door’, ‘The Volkswagen’ or ‘Joe for King’. There was no RAF airfield named Warley Fen and no Luftwaffe base called Kroonsdijk. There was no Altgarten and there were no real people like those I have described. There was never a thirty-first day of June in 1943 or any other year.

L.D.

It was a bomber’s sky: dry air, wind enough to clear the smoke, cloud broken enough to recognize a few stars. The bedroom was so dark that it took Ruth Lambert a moment or so to see her husband standing at the window. ‘Are you all right, Sam?’

‘Praying to Mother Moon.’

She laughed sleepily. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Do you think I don’t need all the witchcraft I can get?’

‘Oh, Sam. How can you say that when you …’ She stopped.

He supplied the words: ‘Have come back safe from forty-five raids?’

She nodded. He was right. She’d been afraid to say it because she did believe in witchcraft or something very like it. In an isolated house in the small hours of morning with the wind chasing the clouds across the bright moon it was difficult not to fall prey to primitive fears.

She switched on the bedside light and he shielded his eyes with his hand. Sam Lambert was a tall man of twenty-six. The necessity of wearing his tight-collared uniform had resulted in his suntan ending in a sharp line around his neck. His muscular body was pale by comparison. He ran his fingers across his untidy black hair and scratched the corner of his nose where a small scar disappeared into the wrinkles of his smile. Ruth liked him to smile but lately he seldom did.

He buttoned the yellow silk pyjamas that had cost Ruth a small fortune in Bond Street. She’d given them to him on the first night of their honeymoon; three months ago, he’d smiled then. This was the first time he’d worn them.

As the only married couple among Cohen’s guests, Ruth and Sam Lambert had been given the King Charles bedroom with tapestry and panelling so magnificent that Sam found himself speaking in whispers. ‘What a boring weekend for you, darling: bombs, bombing, and bombers.’

‘I like to listen. I’m in the RAF too, remember. Anyway we had to come. He’s one of your crew, sort of family.’

‘Yes, you’ve got half a dozen brand-new relatives.’

‘I like your crew.’ She said it tentatively, for just a few trips ago her husband had flown back with his navigator dead. They had never mentioned his name since. ‘Has the rain stopped?’ she asked.

Lambert nodded. Somewhere overhead an aeroplane crawled across the cloud trying to glimpse the ground through a gap. On a cross-country exercise, thought Lambert, they’d probably predicted a little light cirrus. It was their favourite prediction.

Ruth said, ‘Cohen is the one that was sick the first time?’

‘Not really sick, he was …’ He waved his hand.

‘I didn’t mean sick,’ said Ruth. ‘Shall I leave the light on?’

‘I’m coming back to bed. What time is it?’

‘No,’ said Ruth. ‘Only if you want to. Five-thirty, Monday morning.’

‘Next weekend we’ll go up to London and see Gone with the Wind or something.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise. The thunderstorm has passed right over. It will be good flying weather tomorrow.’ Ruth shivered.

‘I had a letter from my dad,’ he said.

‘I recognized the writing.’

‘Can I spare another five pounds.’

‘He’ll drink it.’

‘Of course.’

‘But you’ll send it?’

‘I can’t just abandon the poor old bugger.’

There were cows too, standing very still, asleep standing up, he supposed, he knew nothing about the country. He’d hardly ever seen it until he started flying seven years ago. There was so much open country. Acres and acres young Cohen’s family had here, and a trout stream, and this old house like something from a ghost story with its creaking stairs, cold bedrooms and ancient door latches that never closed properly. He reached out and ran his fingers across the tapestry; they’d never allow you to do that in the V and A Museum.

Some of the windowpanes were discoloured and bubbly and the trees seen through them were crippled and grotesque. At night the countryside was strange and monochromatic like an old photograph. To the east, over the sea beyond Holland and Germany, the sky was lightening enough to silhouette the trees and skyline. Eight-tenths cloud, just an edge of moonlight on a rim of cumulus. You could sail a whole damned Group in over that lot, and from the ground it would be impossible to catch a glimpse of them. He turned away from the window. On the other hand they’d have you on their bloody radar.

He walked across the cold stone floor and looked down at his wife in the massive bed. Her black hair made marble of the white pillow and with her eyes tightly closed she was like some fairy princess waiting to be awoken with a magic kiss. He pulled the curtains of the ancient four-poster bed aside and it creaked as he eased his body down between the sheets. She made a sleepy mumbling sound and pulled his chilly body close.

‘He was just tense,’ said Lambert. ‘Cohen’s a bloody nice kid, a wizard damned navigator too.’

‘I love you,’ Ruth mumbled.

‘Everyone gets tense,’ explained Lambert.

His wife pulled the pillow under his head and moved to give him more room. His eyes were closed but she knew he was not sleepy. Many times at night they’d been awake together like this.

When they married in March it had rained when they arrived at the church, but as they came on to the steps the sun came out. She’d worn a pale-blue silk dress. Two other girls had married in it since then.