Thursday, 10th April 00:15 BDST: Dinard-Pleurtuit Airfield, France

Looking out beyond the scratched plexiglass window at the motionless props of the port engine, cast in the shadows of a dark blue night, Rudolf wasn’t sure which was worse: the silence or the idle chit chat by the rest of the crew used to break it as they waited anxiously for flight.

In that charged space in time, as minds searched for distractions from the feelings of fear which tried to seep out with each breath, the silence would often draw Rudolf to thoughts of his mother and a sense of deep sadness that would come when he imagined her hearing of his death. That sadness would often transform into a perverse feeling of warmth inside each time he imagined her crying at the news of his death. 

This always disturbed Rudolf, yet he would replay it in his mind nonetheless, getting a strange sense of satisfaction and comfort from it all each time. Perhaps the thought of someone mourning him gave meaning to it all, giving meaning to taking off into a night sky to face the horrors which could befall airmen and fire was always close to his thoughts. 

He'd burnt himself as a child, tending to the logs in the hearth, a log falling onto his barefoot. He still remembered the pain, and his screams, as his mother carried him to run his foot under cold water and the blisters that formed on his skin.  The fear of being burnt again had haunted him ever since. To burn alive, well, his meandering thoughts always stopped there as he pulled on his seat harness which strapped him in tightly to a bomber full of high explosives and 750 gallons of highly flammable aviation fuel.  But he’d found an extra fire extinguisher, with the help of the quartermaster, and kept it close to the pilot’s seat, so that was that.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t have a sweetheart waiting for him to return to, like the others in his crew, which gave his mother the starring role in his thoughts? He’d told the crew he had a girl back home though.  She looked a bit like the movie star Zarah Leander, he’d told them after they’d watched her in the film The Desert Song last August.  They’d returned in the early hours from a mission over the South coast of England and the film had been shown later that day as a morale booster after it was revealed that the group’s Commanding Officer, Major Friedrich-Karl Schlichting, had failed to return from the mission. The trick had worked, of course, all the thoughts of if he’d got it what about us, evaporating with beers and film night.

Helmut had whistled as he’d pulled his collar away with his finger, to pretend to let out heat, upon hearing Rudolf’s news of his girl back home but Werner just rolled his eyes and sighed, their eyes locking as Rudolf looked away sheepishly, but Werner never said a word. Nobody did in fact, no-one asked him any more questions about his sweetheart after that. Not even to ask him why he didn’t have a photo of her by his bunk as they all had of their sweethearts.

Anyway, on the other hand, the infernal chit chat before flight just got him angry. “It is always the same, every single time!”, he’d voiced when drunk one time when out with a fellow pilot from another crew.  “Egon that bloody wet eater!”, as Rudolf would call him, always talking about the food in Swabia, and what he could eat right now. Always in his stupid thick accent - which Rudolf had to listen so carefully to understand. Just as with Werner, or as the crew called him, ‘The Pole’, always jokingly asking him whose side he was on having come from Schlesien. It always also amazed Rudolf that Werner was the crew’s wireless operator - with that accent. 

Oh, and then there was Helmut, always talking about football. If he heard the story, just one more time, about his trials for Bayern Munich, he would have to shoot him, he often thought. He imagined himself saying, in defence, that the British had done it. Helmut’s story would always unfurl in exactly the same order every time. Always with the same jokes in the same places. “Yes, yes, you trained alongside Rudi Fink and yes we know that if it wasn’t for your knee injury you would have been in goal instead of him. Yes, yes, for Christ’s sake Helmut move on!”,  Rudolf mused to himself until it hit him that Helmut was only doing the same as himself. Just trying to find meaning in a world which was quickly losing it. 

Rudolf sighed and looked out of the cockpit window again, just looking out into the darkness for a moment as the sound of a second hand ticked loudly on the instrument panel clock. 

Finally, well, there was Egon. Egon; he was always whistling and always the same infernal tune.

Right on cue, the sound of “Schön ist die Nacht” whistled out from next to him - Rudolf sighed again as he thought to himself,  “these bloody clowns,” his head shaking, slowly “bloody jokers,” a smile now forming as he thought of them all, his crew, snorting out a puff of air.  “Rudi”, Helmut asked, after coming up to the cockpit from the C gun position. Rudolf began to turn his body then was restrained by his harness, so instead wrenched his neck back as far as it would go.“Yes?”, he replied slightly surprised.  

“Do you think Britain and Russia will form a pact against us?”, Helmut asked. Rudolf paused, a quizzical look forming on his face, then replied, “What’s that got to do with Bayern Munich?” The crew laughed as a blank expression formed on Helmut’s face, his shoulders arching upwards. “I don’t get it,” he shouted over the laughter, “I don’t get it!” Turning to look at Werner at the wireless set behind him, still laughing at him, as he headed back to the C gun position.

“Rudi, look, the crew chief!”, Egon shouts, waving a hand at Rudolf to get his attention, breaking him from his laughter, then turning to point outside to the figure walking ahead of the bomber, holding a lantern in his hand to stand around nine or ten yards in front of them. Rudolf looks up at Egon’s finger, then, preening his head upwards, follows its pointed direction with his eyes to look through the plexiglass and stare intently at the figure ahead.  “This is it lads, all clear!”, Rudolf shouts over the intercom, each crew member replying one by one as they ready themselves for flight, each of them in their own world for a moment, just for a moment, before routine takes over. 

The crew chief too, outside, appears in his own world, looking anxiously into the distance, off to his left, for a signal to come from the take-off and landing officer, his hand smoothing down his hair, again and again, at the back of his neck. “Maybe he’s bored,” Rudolf thinks to himself dismissively, “Are we boring you?” He thinks again. Then feels bad, as he begins to think about how hard all of the ‘Blackies’ work. Right now all over the airfield, these small vignettes are taking place as men await flight and combat, some of them with excitement, but most others with fear. Rudolf inhales and then swallows his fears while his hand wavers over the starter clutch, and his eyes set on the preening crew chief, still looking off to the left. He quickly opens the cockpit window, his hand nudging against the flap lever and waits for his sign to start the engines. 

The signal comes, the crew chief waves his lantern and Rudolf shouts out at him, “clear ahead?” The crew chief’s answer is to turn and point ahead with the lantern at the end of an outstretched arm down the runway before quickly running out of the way to repeat the process with the bomber behind. With confirmation, he shouts out over the intercom, “port free!”, and presses down the starter clutch at the same time. Life comes to 1G+KM, oil-infused smoke belching out of the port engine as a throaty roar grows louder with the life it’s been given. “Starboard free!”, he shouts again, remembering to close the canopy window, as smoke comes in through it. Now both engines have life, their roar growing louder; he pushes forward on the throttle, just a little, to test the generators.

All around the airfield, other crews are giving their own bombers life too, inside them observers and pilots repeating the same preflight checks. Reciting the same often-repeated lines of actors, to themselves in the exact same order, each time, in a long-running play that for some would have very different endings.