“Ready, Rob?” Hugh spoke into his microphone.
“Ready, Collie.” Rob’s voice spoke in his headphones.
Hugh lifted a smile. “I’m now standing in the center of the plane between the two massive wings that hold us aloft, with the crew’s engineer. Whilst you work, would you please tell our listeners what you’re doing?”
“Yes, sir.” The engineer, a lanky young man with a Welsh accent, kept to his duty without glancing at Hugh. He turned a crank, and gears clanked. “I’m winching out our bombs.”
“Quite clever, I say.” Hugh studied the contraption as icy air swirled through the open window. “Like a conveyor belt at a factory, moving hundreds of pounds of bombs from inside the plane into position under the wings. Let’s go forward, shall we?”
Hugh worked his way through a narrow door. “I’m passing the stations for our navigator and our radio operator with banks of modern equipment at their fingertips.”
As he passed the radio operator, Hugh covered his microphone to avoid picking up coordinates or call signs. He looped out more cord and entered the cockpit, occupied by two pilots.
Hugh wouldn’t interview them, only observe. “Here in the cockpit, our pilots conduct the crew’s activities like an orchestra. Each man in our crew knows his instrument and plays it well, but the pilots ensure they play together.”
The captain of the aircraft called for bomb release on the bomb-aimer’s signal.
Peering over the pilots’ heads, Hugh saw only the nose of the plane and sky.
The aircraft suddenly lifted. “The bombs have released, and the plane rises from the loss of weight.”
“Hold tight, Mr. Collingwood,” the captain called.
Hugh leaned against the side of the fuselage and grabbed a support beam, and the Sunderland tipped in a tight circle.
Hugh glanced down through a window. “Our bombs have hit the water. White plumes erupt in the sky, with white circles rippling away from the point of impact. How any submarine could survive such an explosion, I can’t imagine.”
After the plane leveled, Hugh talked his way back to the gunners’ platform, gathering cord as he went. Then he climbed the ladder to the platform. “So, chaps, did we sink a U-boat?”
“It was nothing.” Blackie’s voice twisted with disgust.
“No U-boat this time,” Hugh said into the microphone, “but this crew’s vigilance, their diligence, are sure to bear fruit. Their very presence, their ever-watching eyes, force German submarines to stay beneath the waves, where they are slower and less dangerous. No, my friends, those bombs were not wasted. And this patrol has just begun. More bombs and bullets remain, andthe Germans would be foolish to stand up to this Sunderland and her exemplary crew.”
Hugh signaled to Rob and pulled off his headphones.
A flush colored Blackie’s thin cheeks. “Ah, you make us sound more heroic than we are.”
“Not at all.” Hugh wound up the mass of cord. “I report only what I observe. I admire what you do.”
Blackie and his mate exchanged a sheepish smile.
Hugh’s parents insisted his job was nothing but a lark, that his work was meaningless.
Was it? Was it meaningless to show the nation what these quietly heroic men did in service to the crown? Was it meaningless to build up the confidence of those men, to show appreciation by shining the light of attention on them?
“No,” Hugh muttered. Not meaningless at all.
33
HADDENHAM
SATURDAY, APRIL12, 1941
Grayness swirled in the clouds, radiated from the stone walls of Bentley Hall, and permeated Aleida’s spirit.
Her heels clicked along the flagstone path leading to the house.
Tante Margriet stood in the garden to the left of Bentley Hall and waved. “Aleida! You’re here.”
