Free B for Buster by Iain Lawrence Page A

shrieked once as they touched the runway, then hummed along the ground. The nose came up and the tail wheel settled. We coasted past the tower, past the offices, and swung hard right onto the taxi strip.
    The erks were waiting where we’d left them, as though they hadn’t moved in the hours we’d been gone, or as if those hours were really only seconds. With big sweeps of their arms they guided Lofty into place, then threw down the chocks and swarmed around the bomber. One of them found a shrapnel hole pierced right through the wing, and they all rushed over to see for themselves. They shook their fists toward us as they grinned from ear to ear.
    Lofty and Pop shut down the engines, and the silence was amazing. We rose from our places, stretching our shoulders and necks. I took the pigeon box and followed Simon through the bomber, over the struts and out through the door where we’d entered.
    The air was magnificent, so cool and fresh. It tingled on my face where the rubber mask had turned my skin all hot and clammy. I tore off my helmet and shook the sweat from my hair, and it was the most wonderful thing in the world to be standing on grass again. Lofty and Pop went for their circuit round
Buster,
nodding and pointing for the erks, and the rest of us settled on the ground, sitting on our parachutes because there was thick and beautiful dew on the grass. The ones who smoked got out their cigarettes again.
    â€œWell, that’s
one,
” said Ratty. “Twenty-nine to go.”
    He didn’t exactly laugh; no one did. They grunted at him, and someone threw an orange. But all my joy in being alive suddenly ended with Ratty’s words. We had flown one op, just one crummy op, and I couldn’t imagine going through the same thing over and over again for twenty-nine more.
    It had seemed so easy at first. Even that morning it had been a lark. Fly thirty ops and take a rest. Fly thirty more if you like. Or move to something else, and then go home with a row of gongs across your chest. I had seen myself going home the hero, waving the flag and selling war bonds. I’d thought I would barrel-roll my Spit across Quebec and Ontario, and fight off the girls who would clamor around me. Well, so much for that. Already my dream was shattered, my hopes destroyed. They didn’t give out gongs for being afraid.
    The bombers taxied past us, nose to tail, like a parade of elephants. We watched them emerge from the dark and slide back into it, and there was the smell of exhaust and the throaty sound of engines. But the place beside ours, where
E for Eagle
had started, stayed empty. The erks there stood in an awkward-looking group, like the only boys at a dance who had no partners to be with. They looked up at the stars, then kicked the grass and shuffled back and forth.
    They were still there when the truck stopped to give us a lift across the field. By then they were looking at their watches, and their shoulders were starting to slump.
    Nobody talked very much as we rode across to the huts. Lofty and the rest went in for their guzzle of eggs and bacon. I carried the pigeon box and followed the smell of birds down toward the tower where old Bert was waiting with his trolley. There was already a stack of the yellow boxes on it.
    â€œâ€™Allo, sir,” he said. He even saluted. “Did you ’ave a good op, sir?”
    I wasn’t sure what to tell him, but I didn’t want a pigeoneer to know how scared I’d been.
    â€œWasn’t
too
bad, was it, sir?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. “Not really.”
    â€œGlad to ’ear it, sir.” He beamed at me, then took the box and hoisted it close to his face, the hinged end open. He made a kissing noise, and Gilbert’s head came out through the flap. They touched each other, lips to beak, the bird and the pigeoneer. “And ’ow was Gibby, sir? Not a problem, was ’e?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNever is. Not