Teddy’s first port of call had been a navigator but he liked the look of Keith and if the war was teaching Teddy anything it was that you could often tell a man’s character from the way he looked, an expression in the eyes, a glance here and there, but mostly something indefinable, and he wondered if it had been this elusive quality that had made him warm immediately to Keith. And the fact, of course, that he had overheard an instructor saying that he was a “good bloke, who knows his stuff.” Turned out this was true. Keith may have washed out as a pilot (“Couldn’t land the bloody thing”) but had graduated top of his class on his bombing course.
Australians had a reputation for being rambunctious but Keith seemed steady, his blue eyes thoughtful. He was twenty, brought up on a sheep station, and had spent a good deal of his life, Teddy supposed, gazing at a distant horizon under a harsh sun, unlike the soft green fields of Teddy’s own childhood. It must form your perception of life, he supposed.
He was looking forward to seeing something of the world, Keith said, “even if it’s only the Third Reich on fire.”
They shook hands, like gentlemen, and Keith said, “Well, skipper, best get a move on, we don’t want to be left with just the wallflowers.” This was the first time, Teddy thought, that a member of his crew (his crew!) had called him “skipper.” He felt as though he had finally stepped into his own shoes.
They scanned the hangar together and Keith said, “See that bloke over there, by the wall, laughing at something? He’s a wireless operator. I had a drink with him last night and he seemed like a straight sort.”
“OK,” Teddy said. It seemed as good a recommendation as any.
The spark was a nineteen-year-old from Burnley called George Carr. Teddy had already witnessed George Carr offering to mend someone’s bicycle, enthusiastically taking it to pieces and putting it back together again before presenting it to its owner, saying, “There, better than when it was new, I’ll bet.” He liked fiddling with things, he said, which seemed a useful trait in a wireless operator.
George in turn pointed out an air-gunner for them, again an acquaintance based on a night drinking in the mess. He was called Vic Bennett and he was from Canvey Island and had a toothy grin (he had the worst teeth of anyone Teddy had ever seen), and after he was introduced he hailed “a mate” who he’d been on his gunnery course with. “Sharp as a tack,” he said. “Reflexes of a rat. Looks a bit like one too. A ginger rat.” This was their talkative young Scot, “Kenneth Nielson, but everyone calls me Kenny.”
Still no navigator, Teddy thought, bemused at how quickly he’d lost any control of this process. It was a little like a game of Consequences, or perhaps Blind Man’s Bluff.
How do you tell a good navigator, he wondered, looking round the room. Someone unflappable, but then that was a quality they all needed, wasn’t it? Nose to the table, focused on nothing but the job. From somewhere behind him he heard the slow, imperturbable notes of a Canadian accent. He turned around and, identifying the owner of the voice, caught sight of his navigator’s brevet and said, “Ted Todd. I’m a pilot in the market for a good navigator.”
“I’m good,” the Canadian said with a shrug. “Good enough anyway.” He was called Donald McLintock. Mac, naturally. Teddy liked Canadians, in his time over there he had found them to be reliable and not given to neuroses or over-active imaginations, neither of which were good qualifications for a navigator. And just hearing the accent had brought back fond memories of the big open skies where he had learned to fly on Tiger Moths and Fleet Finches, fluttering above the great patchwork of Ontario. They were fragile little things compared to the Ansons and Harvards he had graduated on to, to say nothing of the hulking Wellingtons that they were going to be doing their training on at the OTU. “Bus drivers” was how fighter pilots referred derisively to bomber pilots, but it had seemed to Teddy that it was going to be the buses that won the war.
“Welcome on board, navigator,” Teddy said. More gentlemanly handshaking all round. They were a mixed bag, all right, Teddy thought. He rather liked that. “We just need a Kiwi for a flight engineer,” Keith said, echoing his thoughts, “and it’ll be like the bloody League of Nations.” They didn’t get a Kiwi, they got Norman Best, from Derby, a rather shy, earnest ex-grammar-school boy with a degree in languages and a firm Christian faith, but not until they reached their Heavy Conversion Unit, so that was that for now. They were a crew. Just like that. From now on they drank together, they ate together, they flew together and their lives were in each other’s pockets.