Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson Page A

Not surprising, really. I’ve often thought it’s a damn good job they’re in the RAF, otherwise they’d all be out there blowing up banks.”
    â€œYou really think most fighter pilots are a bit mad?” Fanny Barton asked.
    â€œAll the ones I’ve known.” Kellaway laughed as he remembered. “We had a chap once. He used to fly upside down between the Lines at fifty feet, just to show them what he thought of them.”
    â€œShow who?”
    â€œBoth sides. Everyone was firing at him, anyway. The French always fired at any plane they saw, as a matter of policy. He used to say it was easier to dodge the stuff when you were upside down, because you could see it coming up at you.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œGood question. What
did
happen to him? I know they never shot him down, not when he was playing silly-buggers …” Kellaway screwed his face up in an effort of memory. “I think one day he just didn’t come back, that’s all.” He strolled over to the window and examined the soaking night. He flinched as a gust flung rain at the glass. “Not an uncommon state of affairs, of course.”
    â€œWhat about you, uncle? Were you a bit mad, too?”
    â€œAh, well …” The adjutant smiled roguishly. “I suppose I must have been. I was bloody lucky, I can tell you that.”
    â€œAnd me? I’m a fighter pilot. How mad am I?”
    The question made Kellaway slightly nervous, and he took his time considering it, running a fingernail back and forth along his lower lip. “Let’s put it this way, Fanny,” he said. “My guess is,when it comes to the push, you’ll probably find that you’re a good deal madder than you think you are. Anyway, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?”
    Nothing exciting happened the next day. All morning, the Group controller kept them on fifteen-minute readiness. By lunchtime they were dulled with tedium; they had stopped wearing their flying overalls and boots, because it was too hot; the prospect of the afternoon stretched drearily and endlessly before them, probably even hotter and more tedious. There was a limit to the number of lectures the pilots could be expected to listen to, and Barton had already used up the most interesting ones—emergency landing and ditching procedures; enemy aircraft recognition; how to bale out; ranks and badges of the German Air Force—so he was glad to see a dispatch-rider turn up with an urgent package from Air Ministry.
    It contained two dozen duplicated documents, each numbered and stamped in red CLASSIFIED SECRET. They were titled
Useful Polish Terms and Phrases for British Aircrew.
With the package came a memorandum, signed by Air Commodore Bletchley, to the effect that each pilot must memorize these terms and phrases within twenty-four hours. It was essential, he said, that not only the contents but also the very existence of this material remain secret.
    Fanny distributed them, got each man to sign for his copy, and gave the signed list (with his own countersignature as confirmation) to the dispatch-rider, who roared off to London.
    For a brief and rare moment, the only sound to be heard in the mess was the whisper of turning pages.
    â€œVarmvatten,”
said Flip Moran, “is Polish for ‘hot water.’”
    â€œThey should know,” Stickwell said. “They’re in it.”
    â€œVad ar det som har hant?
means ‘What’s going on?’” Mother Cox said.
    â€œAnd crash-bang-wallop means the
Luftwaffe
has just blown up the railway station,” Cattermole remarked. He lay slumped in an armchair, drowsy after too much lunch, his copy lying unopened on his stomach.
    â€œWhat a cockeyed country,” Billy Starr said. “They eat something called
kottbullar med lingon.
Meatballs with cowberries.” He made a face. “
Cowberries.”
    â€œI like it,” said Moke