Free Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson Page B

York Minster—and he recalculated the route to Carlisle.
    â€œI’m losing power in the starboard engine, navigator,” Duff said. “I’m not going to risk crossing the Pennines. Give me a course to Newcastle and then I’ll fly up the Tyne Valley.”
    Gilchrist did it. Ten minutes later Duff said the engine had recovered and he’d decided to risk the Pennines after all. Gilchrist scrapped his calculations and began all over again. He gave Duff the new course. Duff said it would take them over an army gunneryrange: not wise. Gilchrist worked out a large dog-leg to avoid this. Duff then became worried about a nearby Spitfire squadron, notoriously trigger-happy. Gilchrist worked out another big dog-leg to avoid
that.
His map was a mess.
    They missed Carlisle by about forty miles. “That’s Lake Windermere down there, skipper,” the wireless operator said. “I had a jigsaw puzzle of it when I was a kid. Know it anywhere.”
    â€œForget Carlisle, navigator,” Duff said. “Give me a course for Porthcawl.”
    He climbed to twelve thousand feet, above the cloud. Now they were breathing oxygen. Gilchrist could see no landmarks. After two hours of dead reckoning he decided they were four miles north of Porthcawl. “Navigator to pilot,” he said. “ETA Porthcawl two minutes from now.”
    Duff dived through the cloud. To Gilchrist the land was a vast map of a foreign country. “Any guesses?” Duff said. He kept diving. Gilchrist had lost all faith in himself. He saw water but it looked wrong so he stayed silent. Still Duff lost height.
    â€œCardiff,” the wireless operator said. “There’s the Arms Park, where the Welsh play the rugby internationals. By the river.”
    Gilchrist stared at his map, at the thirty-mile gap between Porthcawl and Cardiff. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I double-checked everything. Twice.”
    â€œForget Porthcawl. Forget the bombing range. Have a cup of coffee and a nice piece of cake. I know the way home. Watch out for factory chimneys.”
    Gilchrist drank coffee and looked at factory chimneys. Their smoke was streaming toward Lincolnshire, so the wind was from the southwest. But the meteorological officer had told him the predicted winds were southeast. He had made his course-corrections on the assumption that the airplane was being blown west, when all the time it was being blown east. So his corrections had pushed it even further east.
    That night, in the Mess, he bought Duff a beer. “I made a pig’s ear of that, didn’t I?” he said.
    â€œThings always go wrong. That’s the first rule of flying.”
    â€œEverything
went wrong. You made sure of that.”
    â€œI get bored easily,” Duff said. “It’s my fatal flaw.”
    Word of Gilchrist’s unhappy afternoon soon spread around thesquadron. Pug Duff’s flight commander, Tom Stuart, sent for him. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to do, Pug,” he said.
    â€œI agree, sir. I’m not a very nice person.”
    â€œYou may well have destroyed Gilchrist’s self-confidence.”
    â€œGood. If he’s so fragile, he deserves the chop.”
    â€œNo, I’m not going to recommend that.” Stuart cleaned his fingernails with a paperknife. “When you came here, I took you to be a fairly decent sort. Now you’re developing a thoroughly vicious streak. Keep it up, Pug, and you’ll be a flight lieutenant in no time.”
    â€œGood show,” Duff said.
3
    Flight Lieutenant McHarg got into his Bentley and had a severe shock. The driver’s seat had been adjusted to suit someone with shorter legs.
    Of course that could have been done by Sergeant Trimbull, or one of his mechanics. No it couldn’t. McHarg had a deal with Trimbull. From time to time the sergeant was allowed to fire a machine gun in the butts, which were in a distant corner