It was impossible to see their names from this distance, butthey all had them painted on their noses.Harlow’s Heroes. Angel’s Wings. Hell’s Wrath. Heaven Sent.Iris knew them, and their alphabetised code names, by heart. She ought to. She was one of their radio operatives. Another WAAF was on duty for take-off tonight, but shortly, all too shortly, Iris would join her in the control room. There, she’d place her own headset on, and with these planes before her up and away, guide them out of Doverley’s airspace. It would be frantic work, especially in this wind; inevitably, the less experienced pilots would be blown off course, and she’d be inundated with requests for coordinates, all of them coming at once. There were a couple of first timers going up tonight, too; they always wanted to check and re-check everything. For them, Iris would repeat her instructions, as many times as they needed her to, until their connection, and everyone else’s, would start to fray, growing fainter the further they flew from the reach of Doverley’s transmitter.
Eventually, their voices would crackle into silence.
That silence would last for seven, maybe eight, hours.
Iris’s supervisor would advise her to sleep.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She’d remain in the control tower, eyeing the horizon, until the time would come for her to return to her desk, replace her headset, and wait for the static in her ears to fracture once more, this time with the exhausted, euphoric calls of the returning crews requesting permission to land.
Not all of the planes now leaving would come back. Desperately as Iris wished it could be different, she knew that it wouldn’t.
Not tonight.
And actually, it hardly ever happened that a full quota returned. There was almost always one whose silence remained permanent.
Iris had never before known who that would be, though.
She cared about every crew. She did. Even the ones who’d only just arrived.
But there was one crew that she cared about the most.
Mabel’s Fury, they’d called their plane, for the flight engineer’s fiancée, who’d fled her Parisian home when the Nazis had invaded France.
Iris watched them pull to a juddering halt at the head of the runway. She knew it was them. They were always the first to take off.
Eyes wide, stinging in the cold, she pictured the seven men inside the plane: the bomb aimer, Jacob, testing his safety catch; the navigator, her old friend Tim, getting his protractor out; the radio operator, Henry, adjusting his headset; Ames, the flight engineer, cracking jokes with gunners, Gus and Danny, all of them burying their nerves; and Robbie,Robbie, in the cockpit, his handsome face serious, running through his final checks.
Had he reminded everyone to wear their parachutes?
Iris hoped so.
‘Don’t let them tell you they’re too uncomfortable,’ she’d insisted to him, just now.
‘They are too uncomfortable,’ he’d replied. ‘If we need them, we can get them on in no time.’
‘In a tailspin?’
‘I’m going to be trying very hard not to get us into one of those.’
‘You’re going to Germany, Robbie.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he’d said, drily. ‘And I’m not sure I want a chute, if we go down there.’
‘Don’t joke.’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘Just wear the chutes. Please.’
‘All right.’ He’d smiled. That smile she’d loved from the moment he’d first thrown it her way, back when they’d stillbeen children with Tim in the schoolroom. ‘We’ll wear the chutes.’
He’d made her another promise before she’d left him to climb aboard. He’d told her that, as soon as he had everyone back close enough to re-establish radio contact, he, not Henry, would make the call, letting her know that they were on their way.
‘I’ll be doing it before you know it,’ he’d said. They hadn’t been able to touch, not with so many people around, but his eyes, glinting with cold, and so blue in the darkness, had held hers. ‘You’ll guide us in. Get us home. Do you believe it?’
Silently, unable to talk, she’d nodded.
