Teddy was considering giving the order to abandon the aircraft when something even more alarming happened. Mac started singing. Mac! And not some ditty from the Canadian backwoods but a cacophonous performance of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Even allowing for the intercom it was a pretty dreadful rendition, particularly when he imitated the bugle, like an elephant in pain. This was followed, even more shockingly, by their dour Canadian laughing, rather in the manner of Charles Penrose singing “The Laughing Policeman.” Teddy asked Norman to find out what was happening behind Mac’s curtain.
It transpired that his oxygen tube had become frozen. Norman tried to defrost it with the coffee from his flask but the coffee was only lukewarm by now. They dragged Mac out from his seat and managed to hook him up to the central oxygen tank and hoped for the best. Hypoxia tended to make you do the oddest things and then it tended to kill you.
After the war, Mac worked for a big insurance company in Toronto. He married and had three children and had taken early retirement (“made some canny investments”) by the time Teddy met him at a squadron reunion dinner, the only one Teddy ever attended. He hadn’t seemed familiar in any way and it struck Teddy that perhaps he had never really known him. Perhaps he had never known any of them. It had just seemed so because of the circumstances they had found themselves in. This older version of Mac seemed rather self-satisfied to Teddy’s eyes. The awfulness of the time they had shared didn’t seem to have left a mark on him. He supposed that old men had reminisced about old wars since time began. Jericho, Thermopylae, Nuremberg. He didn’t really want to be one of them. Teddy left the reunion early, saying, “Sorry, have to give you the chop, chaps,” slipping back easily into that “lingo” that people now made fun of.
Yet even then, all those years later, he found that in the long dark watches of the night, plagued by insomnia, he would recite those names. Essen Bremen Wilhelmshaven Duisburg Vegesak Hamburg Saarbrucken Dusseldorf Osnabruck Flensburg Frankfurt Kassel Krefeld Aachen Genoa Milan Turin Mainz Karlsruhe Kiel Cologne Gelsenkirchen Bochum Stuttgart Berlin Nuremberg. Some might count sheep. Teddy counted the towns and cities he had tried to destroy, that had tried to destroy him. Perhaps they had succeeded.
On the return from Turin they were caught by flak as they approached the French coast. An ack-ack shell blasted through the fuselage, almost jolting J-Jig out of the skies. They were flying through thick cloud and for a disorientating moment Teddy thought they were flying upside down. The aircraft reeked of cordite and there was smoke coming from somewhere, although no sign of flames.
Teddy did a crew check. “Everyone OK?” he asked. “Rear-gunner? Mid-upper? Bomb-aimer?” Teddy always worried most about his rear-gunner, stuck out there at the back, far away from them. It surprised him that someone as garrulous and sociable as little Kenny Nielson was so cheerful in his cold and lonely nest. Teddy knew he couldn’t have tolerated that cramped, claustrophobic space.
Everyone reported themselves variously “OK,” “Fine,” “Still here,” and so on. Norman went back to check for damage. Some holes in the fuselage and the lower escape hatch blown off. And the hydraulics must be severed, he said, because he’d been sloshing around in fluid, but there was nothing on fire. They were flying lower and slower with every mile. They were below five thousand feet and took off their oxygen masks. Mac had rallied by now and lay down on the crew rest.
Teddy decided that they couldn’t limp on like this much longer and told everyone to prepare to abandon the aircraft, but they were already out over the sea and they all agreed they would prefer to press on than ditch. Their faith in Teddy’s abilities to get them to the target and home again had become unshakeable as the tour had progressed. Possibly a misplaced faith, Teddy thought ruefully.