B for Buster by Iain Lawrence

chalk, as they flung themselves like blue waves against the wall. Their arms reached up; their legs kicked out. When at last they fell away, Lofty’s name was sixth. At the top of the list was the navigator from
J for Jam,
a big and burly fellow.
    Donny stepped down. He hung the keys on the nail beside the blackboard, where he hung them every time he flew. “First guy gets it,” he said. “Then the next, and the next.”
    He came and stood beside me, flushed and happy— truly happy. “They’ll remember this for years,” he said. “For years and years. In every mess in every squadron they’ll talk about the guy who stood on a piano and gave away a car.”
    I saw that was all he wanted: to be remembered, to be famous in a way. He could easily refuse to fly that night, be marked as LMF and wonder forever if he would have got the chop or not. Or he could give away his lovely Morris and go off on his op, to catch that train to a different place. And even if he was wrong, and he came home, people would remember.
    He seemed his old Kakabeka self, his cares stripped away. He told me, “Kid, if you ever want out, go and see Uncle Joe. Go talk to him, okay?”
    â€œWhy won’t
you
?” I asked.
    â€œWe’re different,” he said. “You can do it, but I can’t. Kid, I gotta go.”
    I thought he wanted to be by himself for a while. So I said, “Okay. I’ll see you later, Donny.”
    But he laughed, and I realized he’d been talking about his op, that he had to go on that. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you will, Kid.” Then he turned around and nearly ran from the room.
    He went and wrote a letter, as it turned out. He wrote a letter to his mom, then left it with his other things, in a tidy pile, so that it wouldn’t be any bother to the fellow who would have to come along and pack it all in a box. That was what bothered me later, thinking how he’d told me that he
had
to go, as though he hoped I would talk him out of it.
    I didn’t try hard enough. In the end, I let him down. I watched him run from the sergeants’ mess, and I saw him only one more time before the op, as he climbed into the back of the truck that would take him out to his bomber. He stopped halfway, with one leg hooked over the tailgate. He waved at me, one-handed. He said, “Hey, Kakky. Look after yourself.” Then he winked. “I’ll be seeing you, Kid, okay?”
    â€œYou’re coming back,” I said.
    He shook his head, and I got angry. “Then don’t tell me that,” I said. “Don’t jinx me, Donny.”
    It was a terrible op, worse than the first one. We nearly collided with another Halifax high above the sea. Nobody saw it in the utter blackness until our wings were overlapping. Then we veered across the bomber stream, shaken by the propwash of aircraft that seemed invisible.
    Gilbert rustled nervously in his pigeon box as we crossed the enemy coast. He fluttered from side to side in there, so violently that a little feather drifted out through the hatch. I looked around, wondering why, and saw through my window that the clouds I’d thought would hide us were worse than no clouds at all. The searchlights splashed across their bottoms and turned their tops into glowing sheets as bright as movie screens. And I thought of the night fighters above us and how, to them, we would stand out against those clouds like a cockroach crawling on a pure white floor.
    Our turrets whined round and round as the gunners watched the sky. But they didn’t see the night fighter that pounced from above. The tracers suddenly flickered past, and Ratty cried, “Corkscrew left!” But Lofty didn’t react; he flew us straight and level. “Corkscrew! Corkscrew!” Ratty shouted. The kite shook from our own guns, and at last Lofty sent us cartwheeling through the sky. We plunged into the clouds and went