Free Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) by Stephen Booth Page B

only a few miles from Edendale. Of course, the factory was long since gone, as were all the Lancasters it had produced. A woman who appeared on the programme had spoken of working on the aircraft as a girl, and of being told by an officious foreman in a bowler hat that if she made any mistakes she would be responsible for allowing the Germans to win the war.
    'I want you to look at the photograph,' said Morrissey, 'because you will be able to see how proud my grandfather was of his uniform.'
    Pilot Officer McTeague was immaculate in his RAF uniform, with his peaked cap, brand new hoops on his sleeve, and a medal on a ribbon pinned to his breast pocket. He stood almost to attention, with his arms at his side. His tie was perfectly straight, and there were sharp creases in his trouser legs. The uniform would have been blue, of course, though the photo was black and white. Probably the original print had been sepia – this looked like a computer-enhanced copy. It had brought out the features of McTeague's face – a small, dark moustache, a proud smile, and a direct gaze at the camera from a pair of clear eyes. He was a good-looking man, who must have turned the heads of a few girls in uniform. And, yes, there was a definite resemblance in his eyes to the granddaughter who sat across the table from Cooper now.
    'He's wearing his Distinguished Service Order, as you can see,' said Morrissey.
    Jepson put his copy of the photograph down on his file. 'January 1945,' he said.
    Morrissey nodded. 'On 7th January 1945, my grandfather was at the controls of Lancaster bomber SU-V,' she said. 'The crew called their aircraft Sugar Uncle Victor.'
    It was Frank Baine who took up the story. This was his expertise, his specialist field of knowledge. Baine had shaved his head, a fashion that had ousted the comb-over as a means of hiding the beginnings of baldness. As soon as he began to talk, Cooper saw why Alison Morrissey had brought Baine along. He hardly needed to refer to any notes to deliver the facts of what had happened on 7th January 1945. The facts as far as they were known, anyway.
    'Lancaster SU-V had suffered damage to the outer starboard engine from an attack by a German night-fighter during a bombing raid on Berlin,' he said. 'The engine had been replaced with a new one, and the crew were on a flight to test the new engine. It was routine – they were due to fly from their base at RAF Leadenhall in Nottinghamshire to RAF Branton in Lancashire. It was a distance of no more than a hundred miles. This crew had flown several operations over Germany and had returned safely. But something went wrong over Derbyshire. SU-V crashed on Irontongue Hill, ten miles from here. There were seven people on board. Five of them died in the impact.'
    Cooper found the crew list in front of him. Seven names. Only one of them was familiar so far – that of the pilot, Daniel McTeague. 'Hang on a moment,' he said. 'Which crew members were killed?'
    'First of all, the wireless operator, Sergeant Harry Gregory,' said Baine.
    'Yes.' Cooper put a small cross next to his name on the list.
    'The bomb aimer, Bill Mee, the mid-upper gunner, Alec Hamilton, and the rear gunner, Dick Abbott, who were all British RAF sergeants.'
    'And one more?'
    'One of the Poles,' said Baine. 'The navigator. Pilot Officer Klemens Wach.'
    'Apart from McTeague, that leaves just one who survived,' said Cooper.
    'Correct.'
    'The last one then is the flight engineer. I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it …'
    'It's Lukasz,' said Baine. 'Like goulash . The other survivor was Pilot Officer Zygmunt Lukasz.'
    *    *    *    *
     
    Grace Lukasz noticed that Zygmunt showed no interest now in attending Dom Kombatanta, the Polish ex-servicemen's club. She was glad about that. These days, the old soldiers and airmen seemed to talk of nothing else but war and death, as if the lives they'd lived over nearly six decades since 1945 had been telescoped into a fortnight's leave from