Ghosts of the Empire Page 3
‘Yes, sir.’
The CO’s smile had died. ‘Just don’t fuck it up. Dismissed.’
*
Though the water was warm, the cool of the morning air was bracing on Mick’s chest and arms. He darted under the rolling sanctuary of another wave, into the green water before it broke. When surfaced, he saw the mists of dawn were starting to burn off with the rising sun, the grey sky turning surely to blue, and so the ocean. He faced back to the shore, caught a final breaker in, springing to his feet in the bubbling shallows, a first warmth of sunlight on his back.
Jogging up the sand towards a bank where the scrub extended inland, Mick saw he still had the whole beach to himself, its pale yellow brightening out of the early morning gloom. Before dawn, as with most mornings since May, he’d run a few miles up the beach from its south end: He wasn’t about to lose the physical fitness he’d gained and kept since Initial Training – no fear, build on it if anything; a highly satisfying novelty in his life to date. Reaching the base of the sand ridge, he picked up his towel, mopped his face and hair, blinking to clear his eyes of salt water, and turned back around to the surf. To the south, the village and airfield fortifications were barely visible from this far up the beach, and still it seemed to curve forever north.
High above the surf line was a bird: Soaring, then halting on the morning breeze, white head, its wings and body deep rust red-brown. It now hovered, perfectly still in mid-air, then dropped like a stone to the receding tide, hooking up over the sand, some kind of prey in its talons – maybe one of the tiny soldier crabs Mick had seen on his jog up the beach. The bird zoomed to altitude again with its prize and, with the slightest movement from its vast wingspan, headed back towards the south.
Mick followed its flight towards the distant fortifications, until a mere speck, and his vision held it no longer. Yet there he saw another speck. Way down the beach, low to the sand, and tracing the line of the shore.
A speck that grew.
And grew.
Mick squinted to focus.
An aircraft?
It was: He saw its wingspan now. Then the cylindrical form of its fuselage, his ears catching just the slightest hint of its sound: already the unmistakable threat of full throttle. It seemed to touch the sand… Had it landed on the beach?! No, it was still coming: very fast, and now very, very low. It was a fighter, a Wirraway! Mick could make it out quite clearly now as in the subtlest of curves it bore toward him – 300 yards, 200, 100 and OVER, Mick ducking under its throaty radial whoosh. Spinning around he saw its yellow upsides as it climbed away, somehow silent. Then its wingspan slow-rolled left and, as if falling off the climb, it entered a diving curve inland, gathering speed in the descent and was gone, inland over the scrub.
Facing the sand bank, Mick strained to peer over it, his eyes searching for a moment. Nothing. And no further sound. Only insects, birds of morning, the surf at his back… He blew out a breath. Waited a moment longer. Still nothing. Gone…
He bent down to pick up his watch off his sweater, fastened the wrist buckle, scooped up the sweater and towel, and straightened. Right, now for the run back: Looking at his watch, he made it just under thirty minutes until Reveille Parade.
When it came again: the Wirraway, mere feet atop the bank, every yellow metal rivet visible and heading towards him. Some instinct dropped Mick to the sand as directly overhead the fighter roared, already fast and low over the surf and skimming the wave-tops out to sea.
As he watched it become a speck again on the blue horizon, Mick got to his feet. No denying it: He wouldn’t half mind a go in one…
Fat chance, he said to himself; after so many accidents, the base only had one left.
*
One Wirraway. One Wirraway pilot. Mick found him easily.
Pilot Officer Tony Curran, ‘wings’ patch on his left chest, was a fully fledged Instructor.
‘We can talk in there if you like,’ he said, motioning to the gap in the giant sliding door of the hangar outside which they stood. ‘Done your “Decomp” yet?’
‘I’m down for it,’ Mick replied, ‘but, no, not yet.’
‘No time like the present,’ breezed Curran. ‘I’ll sign you in.’
The Decompression Chamber was a large orb-shaped iron cabinet inside this hangar. With internal bench seating for four, the chamber was connected by thick rubber hoses to a separate vacuum unit about as big as the chamber itself. At points around the chamber were thick double-glass portals through which ‘observers’ could peer in.
A few days previously, the blackboard of the classroom hut in which Mick had found himself had stated: Symptoms of Hypoxia.
LIGHTHEADED SENSATION. DIZZINESS. REDUCED VISION. EUPHORIA.
The instructor had put his chalk down, turned to the class and explained.
Hypo – ‘Under’. Oxia – ‘Oxygen’. Hypoxia – Lack of Oxygen to the Brain. Flying at high altitudes, he went on, the higher you climbed, the ‘thinner’ the air became, containing less and less of the oxygen necessary for human respiration. Flying in an aircraft without an oxygen mask on and functioning correctly, the listed ‘symptoms’ started at 10-thousand feet, beginning with the ‘Lightheaded Sensation’. By the time ‘Euphoria’ had been achieved, you’d clean missed the quick 3 minutes available to get the hell back down from that height into thicker air. Blissfully unable to do anything about it, you’d soon be dead from lack of oxygen to the brain, or dead from having ploughed a crater into someone’s farm – Yes, a few had been ploughed already, the man said… A ‘breather’ spot in a ‘decomp’ session – with oxygen breathing apparatus strapped on – was the only way you’d ever get to see what Hypoxia would do to you. Such a session would educate you to recognise the initial symptoms so that, if your oxygen should fail at altitude, you would realise it and could start fighting for your life before you stopped caring. Indeed, before you started enjoying your last experience on earth.
Mick now sat inside the chamber with Curran and two ‘breathers’, these two blokes oxygen-connected like they would be in the cockpit. From outside, the chamber’s circular door was heaved shut. Its iron wheel handle spun, there was a series of hefty clicks, they’d be going up to 30-thousand feet simulated. With only the progressively thinning air to inhale, Mick and Curran would be observed by the breathers and also from outside the chamber. During the exercise, Mick and Curran would perform a simple prescribed task: writing notes to each other without speaking, and combing one’s hair whilst waiting for each written reply from the other. Everybody took a turn as a breather, Mick’s would come later in the day, at such time as the effects of unconsciousness had fully worn off and the MO – the base Medical Officer – had granted a clean bill of health.
Via a bakelite intercom speaker the chamber occupants were informed there would be a short delay while the diesel-powered vacuum unit warmed up. Curran angled to Mick.
‘Had your little chat with Hurst yet?’
‘Yes I have,’ Mick replied. ‘Seems this instructing caper’s a good wicket…’
‘Yes, I dare say it would be,’ returned Curran. ‘If y’don’t mind passing up a Supermarine Spitfire…’
‘Eh?’
The oxygen-masked pair said nothing. Curran continued.
‘Ah… I gather our dear leader omitted to mention to you that our coveted “Exceptional” rating not only qualifies us for our unique position as instructors but also for our pick of the plum flying duties.’
‘No he didn’t mention that,’ Mick answered.
‘Well he wouldn’t, would he,’ said Curran. ‘Our dear leader wants to keep his good instructors and all power to him, I say. But he’s not keeping this one, sonny Jim.’
‘You’re not gunna stick around?’
Curran grinned, shook his head. ‘ One Spitfire, please… I’m off to Old Blighty after this posting or I’ll damn-well strafe Central HQ.’
‘Well,’ Mick returned the grin, ‘nice work strafing me this morning anyway.’
A voice came through the intercom speaker. ‘Time, gentlemen. Silence from now on, please. Exercise begins.’ The chamber now hummed.
Mick took the small notepad and pencil he’d been issued and wrote the first message. He tore off the sheet and handed it to Curran.
‘INSTRUCTING FOR ME I THINK.’
Curran read it, wrote, and handed a sheet back.
‘GOOD 4 U. TRAIN THE BLOKES WHO’LL WIN THE WAR. WITH BOMBS ON TARGET.’
Mick wrote again while Curran diligently combed. He handed the note over, thinking of his family as he did, and of all the money he could bring in for them as an airline pilot: ‘SPOT ON. THO SPITS WILL BE DREAM FOR U.’ He then combed away, noticing the breathers looking on as he took the next slip of paper from Curran.
‘THAT’S WHAT THEY SAY. CAN HEAR OUR AIR BEING SUCKED OUT.’
Mick scribbled again. Thinking of his younger brothers and sisters. With his Qantas paypacket, they could finish school. Cripes, they could go to university! From where he’d been barred for lack of cash. Now they’d be able to go.
He handed over the note. ‘HOW HIGH WE B?’ And started combing.
The flourish with which Curran’s reply was then scribbled and delivered gave Mick a grin. He read it.
‘PASSING NOTES IN CLASS ON TOP EVEREST.’
Now he dashed off his own. What a brilliant feeling it was: His brothers would grow up out of the fucken Yards. Bank Manager. Lawyer. Doctor! They would never want again. He finished the note.
‘TOP OF THE WORLD.’
Handing it over, Mick realised with a start he’d forgotten to begin combing his hair. Locating the comb, he had almost recommenced when arrived Curran’s reply.
‘ME FALL OFF MOUNTAIN INTO TIBET.’
Mick chuckled, his next message flowing.
‘PULL RIP CORD!’
He felt relaxed. His siblings would thrive, bring their success back home, and his old dad would retire happy, and in comfort. Curran passed his reply, patting various points of his chest with the other hand as he did.
‘WHAT RIPCORD?!’
Mick scribbled, handed over.
‘U FORGET PCHUTE AGAIN?’
Curran was trying not to laugh. He passed a slip.
‘SORRY SARGE!’
Mick’s pencil waltzed. ‘LEND ME YA WIRRAWAY WEEL FORGET IT.’ His blood coursed just so agreeably in his veins, the fact he’d now misplaced the comb entirely no longer mattering as Curran passed his next reply.
‘DEEL. CAN U STILL RAED THIS?’
Mick was smiling widely now as he scribbled large: ‘NO.’ Note in hand, he held it out to Curran.
Who squinted to try and read it. Then squinted harder. Snatched the note. Held it close to his face, then closer, his face melting to a giggle.
With a smile Mick couldn’t wipe off now if he’d tried, he peered at Curran and said it aloud: ‘What?!’ Or thought he had…
Curran’s giggles grew. …And grew.
Mick became steadily infected, absolutely no idea what was so funny, but something between them had become very definitely hilarious, and was getting worse.
They never saw the breathers’ slightly worried sideways glance at each other over their oxygen masks, for their laughter now fed on itself. Intensified. And broke them down.
The last thing of which Mick was aware was his view from the floor: Laughing insanely, looking up at the boy with brow very seriously furrowed in vain attempts at pressing a comb into a notepad and combing his hair with a pencil.
September
Mick couldn’t see a thing. Ahead through the Battle’s windscreen, only darkness. Below the windscreen, the dim orange glow of the Battle’s instrument panel dials, and he kept these on absolute minimum brightness setting so as to maximise his eyes’ ‘night vision’ – for what precious little use it served…
Nobody liked night flying. But it would be the chief activity of Mick’s trainee bomb-aimer and air gunner once they got to England: Evidently RAF Bomber Command had deduced from its first operations of the war that if it flew any more daylight ones it would promptly cease to exist. So ‘night bombing’ became the policy; flying at night, enemy fighters couldn’t see you with the naked eye, nor, except with the aid of searchlights, could German anti-aircraft gunners on the ground. Of course, it also meant that Bomber Command couldn’t see what it was bombing… But the RAF had to be working on that, guessed Mick. Right now he flew ‘blind’ – ‘on instruments’, as it was more pleasantly termed, piloting the Battle through the darkness according to the numbers, dials and indicators illuminated before him in dim orange: altitude, compass heading, airspeed, artificial horizon, time, and others. As he did so the bomb-aimer would be looking through a small perspex window in the floor of the aircraft – for Mainstreet, Ballina. In fact, for Ballina, full stop; the town in full military blackout.
Just the previous week the whole of 1BAGS had been to see a film screened in the Masonic Hall of Evans Head: Target for Tonight, it had been called. Made by the ‘RAF Film Unit’, Mick had found it a highly entertaining flick. So had everybody else – There’d been the most appreciative applause and indeed howls of laughter as, up on the silver screen, German model trains were bombed and blown up with uncanny accuracy.
Mick flicked his intercom switch: ‘Pilot to bomb-aimer. You’re getting close to time… I need a heading.’ After long seconds, none was forthcoming. ‘Bomb-aimer, are you awake?’ Mick heard the click of the boy’s face-mask microphone switching on, followed by a voice whose tone was solid, definite.
‘Skipper, I’m sorry; I haven’t the faintest idea.’
Mick took a moment. ‘Down ahead left. See the bend in the river?’
‘Um… negative…’
‘Look, there’s moonlight on it. On it now.’
‘Gottit, Skipper.’
‘Check against your map.’
The boy’s tone came back an entirely different sort of definite…
‘Bomb-aimer to pilot, turn to course 80 degrees, eight-zero magnetic, on my mark. 3. 2. 1. Mark.’
Mick banked the aircraft briefly right – until his compass dial read 80, levelled, and used the intercom once more: ‘Well done.’
And though he expected the boy’s next transmission might sound full of relief, it didn’t…
‘ Bomb doors open…’
It sounded professional.
*
The Pioneer Hotel had never known it so good. The single pub in a peacetime village of 500 swelled to 2500 since the establishment of 1BAGS the previous year, Mick had chosen it as the spot for a drink with his training charges after Saturday evening stand-down as, being LACs, neither was permitted entry to the 1BAGS Sergeants’ Mess. Indeed, if the Evans Head pub had ever observed the Six O’Clock Closing law it certainly didn’t now, the town’s Police Sergeant turning a blind eye. This was apparent to Mick as the copper had just bought a round of drinks. The place was filled with all types: off-duty airmen and officers, soldiers, locals including Volunteer Defence men, sugar-cane workers and gents over the age for military service.
Max Finney was 18. Doing well in his training as a rear gunner as far as Mick was concerned, like everyone Mick had spoken to in the past four months at 1BAGS Finney had dearly hoped to become a pilot. With a shock of blonde hair, he was a little bloke – a lot of them were, Mick had observed since Initial Training – and sounded quite unlike anyone Mick had ever spoken to in his life: sort of English…
‘Y’know,’ Finney smiled, ‘though shit-scared I plucked up the courage to go and see the CO regarding my unexpected lot and the chap said he agreed with me – He actually apologised.’ The young airman shrugged. ‘Said the matter was closed however; I was filling a quota.’
Finney had entered Initial Training in Melbourne straight from school, somewhere called ‘Scotch’, where he’d been Captain of his First XI, the war having deferred his long-planned entry to Medicine. A nice fel
low too, Mick thought: a ready smile, hard-working, and he looked you in the eye whenever he spoke – Make a good doctor.
If Finney was a bright one, Roger Doherty was what Mick called a ‘brain’. In his early 20s, under neatly brylcreemed locks the intensity of his face made him seem much older. At the outbreak of war he’d been at university studying ‘Pure Mathematics’. As his instructor, Mick had seen his file: He’d been no less than Dux of Sydney’s Riverview College. Though Doherty had no tickets on himself. What he did have was a knack for making some of the maths concepts which Mick still struggled with seem suddenly easy to grasp and employ. Funny thing, but Doherty said exactly the same thing about the way Mick explained flying concepts to them.
Doherty raised his beer glass slightly to Mick. ‘Thanks.’
‘Eh?’
‘For instructing us both so well. Getting bombs on target can seem nigh on impossible in broad daylight but the way you fly us through the exercises… How can I put this? You’re methodical and challenging at the same time. Which pushes us two knuckle-heads to do better than we might. You’d be a good teacher.’
Finney nodded. ‘And no error.’
Mick chuckled: He hadn’t expected such a response to his instruction of them. No way. In fact he hadn’t known what to expect from the first two ‘rich kids’ he’d ever met. ‘No worries,’ he smiled back at them. The fact was he was only too glad to be doing the best he possibly could for them; they were bonzer blokes.
Bonzer blokes with a one-in-three chance of survival.
*
23-thousand feet. The Wirraway’s ‘service ceiling’.
Tony Curran skimmed them just above a layer of Cirrocumulus, Curran in control from the rear seat, Mick in front. The sensation of relative speed over this carpet of white, scaly cloud was, for Mick, nothing short of awesome. 600 Horsepower. The mid-morning blue above him was deeper than he’d ever seen – he’d never been nearly this high – and there behind them flew the vapour trail: a ribbon of fluffy white tracing their every rise and fall and curve in the sky. Nor had he known sunlight like this before, high bleached and brilliant on the instruments and levers all around him. Well used to butterflies in his stomach by now, they fluttered like mad despite the serious business of the morning’s exercise: ‘Oxygen Trial’.