Fly For Your Life [antikvár]

Apter lunch Blatchford and Tuck had one more beer together."Like old times," Tuck said as they raised their tankards."Sure," the Canadian agreed. But it wasn't. Now their talk was too quick, too fiercely gay, and their laughter too loud. Too much that each remembered, but kept to himselfbecause there were so many names that couldn't be mentioned without a pang. Men like these had changed the war, but the war had changed them.It was January 28th, 1942, a dank, grey day on which norma! operations were impossible. Legions of tattered clouds, the colour of fractured iron, were scudding over southern England at only a few hundred feet and the airfield at Biggin Hill was shrouded in drizzle and mist. A mean and narrow day, infinitely remote from those they had shared in that blazing, screaming summer of 1940. .They had not seen each other for many weeks. 'Cowboy' Blatchford now commanded a fighter wing of his own at Digby, Lincolnshire, 180 miles away. With his squadrons grounded by the weather, he'd taken this chance to hedgehop across country and drop in for lunch.He was a dumpy, toughly good-looking Albertan in his middle twenties, with a Westemer's rolling gait and measured drawl. As he talked and laughed, little wrinkles went in and out of his plump cheeks and his brown eyes seemed to flash in emphasis of a word or phrase. But to-day he wa§ distinctly subdued."January/' he said, slanting a look out of the window down the long, dark valley which bounded the station, "is just one long Monday morning. You've got a hangover from Christmas, and nothing to look forward to until springand that seems such a bloody long way off!" He had a wry grin, and he spoke without ardour, so that his friend knew that he was merely bored with enforced inactivity."Corne with us this afternoon/' Tuck suggested. "Do you the world of good, Cocky." He nodded across the room towards a young Canadian flying officer, tall as a candle, who was just emerging from the dining-room. Tm taking Harley. It's just right for a 'Rhubarb V"Rhubarb* was the name given to a type of operation specially designed for cloudy conditions. Singly or in small groups, the Royal Air Force's fighters darted across the Channel, dived out of the overcast to shoot up selected targets, then climbed back jnto the murk before the Messerschmitts appeared. These