Maddie listened with her heart in her mouth, holding her headset to one ear and the telephone to the other, waiting for the girl at the RDF screen to pass her new information.
‘Shhh,’ warned the radio officer, leaning over Maddie’s shoulder and taking hold of the telephone receiver for her so her right hand was freed up for taking notes. ‘Don’t say anything – don’t let him know who’s listening –’
The door to the radio room banged open and the subordinate Davenport was back, with one of the WAAF wireless operators hard on his heels. Maddie looked up.
The girl was immaculate – not a blue thread out of place, her chignon of long fair hair coiled in regulation neatness two inches above her uniform collar. Maddie recognised her from the canteen and rare social evenings. Queenie, people called her, though she was not the official WAAF Queen Bee (that’s what we call the senior administrative officer on the base), nor was it her name. Maddie did not know her real name. Queenie had acquired a certain reputation for being fast and fearless; she sauced superior officers and got away with it, but equally she wouldn’t leave a building during an air raid until she’d made sure everyone else was out. Distantly connected to royalty, she was of some rank herself, of privilege rather than experience, a Flight Officer; but she was said to work as diligently at her wireless set as any self-made shop girl. She was pretty, petite and light on her feet, and if there was a Squadron dance on a Saturday night she was the one the pilots went for.
‘Let’s have your headset, Brodatt,’ said the radio officer. Maddie uncurled the gripping earphones and microphone and passed her headset to the pretty little blonde wireless operator, who adjusted the phones to fit her head.
After a few seconds, Queenie said, ‘He says he’s over the English Channel. He’s looking for Calais.’
‘But Tessa says he’s approaching the coast at Whitstable!’
‘He’s in a Heinkel bomber and his crew’s been killed and he’s lost an engine and he wants to land at Calais.’
They all stared at the wireless operator.
‘You sure we’re all talking about the same aircraft?’ the radio officer asked dubiously.
‘Tessa,’ Maddie said into the telephone, ‘could the German plane be over the Channel?’
Now the whole room held its breath, waiting for Tessa’s disembodied reply as, somewhere underneath the chalk cliffs, she sat staring at the green flashes on her screen. Her answer appeared beneath Maddie’s scribbling pencil: Hostile ident, track 187 Maidsend 25 miles, est height 8,500 ft.
‘Why the hell does he think he’s over the English Channel?’
‘Oh!’ Maddie gave a sudden gasp of understanding and waved at the enormous map of south-east England and north-west France and the Low Countries that covered the wall behind her radio. ‘Look, look – he’s come from Suffolk. He’s been bombing the coastal bases there. He crossed the mouth of the Thames at its widest point and he thinks he crossed the Channel! He’s heading straight for Kent and he thinks it’s France!’
The chief radio officer gave the wireless operator a command.
‘Answer him.’
‘You’ll have to tell me the protocol, sir.’
‘Brodatt, give her the correct protocol.’
Maddie swallowed. There wasn’t really any time to hesitate. She said, ‘What did he say he’s flying? What kind of aircraft? His bomber?’
The wireless operator said the name in German first and they all looked at her blankly. ‘He-111?’ she translated hesitantly.
‘Heinkel He-111 – Any other ID?’
‘A Heinkel He-111. He didn’t say.’
‘Just repeat back to him the type of his aircraft, Heinkel He-111. That’s an open reply. You press this button before you talk, keep it pressed while you’re talking or he won’t be able to hear you. Then let go when you’re done or he won’t be able to reply.’
The chief radio officer clarified, ‘“Heinkel He-111, this is Marck de Calaisis, Calais.” Tell him we are Marck de Calaisis.’
Maddie listened as the wireless operator made her first radio call, in German, as cool and crisp as if she’d been giving radio instructions to Luftwaffe bombers all her life. The Luftwaffe boy’s voice responded in a gasp of gratitude, practically weeping with relief.
The wireless operator turned to Maddie.
‘He wants bearings for landing.’
‘Tell him this –’ Maddie scribbled numbers and distances on her notepad. ‘Say his ID first, then yours. “Heinkel He-111, this is Calais.” Then runway, wind speed, visibility –’ She scribbled notes furiously. The wireless operator stared at the coded abbreviations, then spoke into the headset, giving orders in German with confident calm.
She paused mid-flow and jabbed a perfectly manicured fingernail into the script Maddie had passed to her. She mouthed silently, R27?
‘Runway 27,’ Maddie said under her breath. ‘Say “Cleared straight in, Runway 27.” Tell him to dump his leftover bombs in the sea if he’s got any, so he doesn’t set them off when he lands.’
The whole of the radio room was silent, mesmerised by the sharp, precisely spoken and incomprehensible instructions that the elegant wireless operator rapped out with the careless authority of a headmistress; and the anguished, equally incomprehensible gasped answers of the boy in the ruined plane; and Maddie scribbling directions, and the protocol for giving them, on the diminishing notepad.
‘Here she comes!’ breathed the chief radio officer, and everybody excepting Maddie and the wireless operator – whose heads were tied to the telephone and the radio headset – went running to the long window to watch the Heinkel bomber limping into view.
‘When he calls final approach, just pass him the wind speed,’ Maddie instructed, scribbling furiously. ‘Eight knots west-south-west, gusting to twelve.’
‘Tell him the fire service is on its way to meet him,’ said the radio officer. He clapped one of the other radio operators on the shoulder. ‘Get the engines out there. And an ambulance.’
The black silhouette in the distance grew larger. Then they could hear it, coughing and whining on its single belaboured engine.
‘Christ! He hasn’t got the undercarriage down,’ gasped the young flying officer called Davenport. ‘This is going to be one hell of a prang.’