‘Heavens! They’re big!’ Mavis gasped, as, along with Kate and Isobel, they stood on the peritrack watching.

‘Who? The Lanes – or the fellers?’ Kate grinned.

Mavis’s laughter bounced on the breeze. She rubbed her hands together, ‘Well, if the crews are as good as their aircraft – wheel ’em out!’

‘Mavis, really! What about the wonderful Dave?’

Mavis turned pink. ‘I can still look, can’t I?’

‘Is it serious with you two, then?’ Isobel asked, but Mavis only grinned and said, ‘Can’t hear you above the racket, Iso, old thing.’

The aircraft taxied past them, several with symbols and pictures painted on them just below the cockpit. A shapely female proclaimed M-Mother and the three girls pointed and laughed.

‘Well, if that’s someone’s mother, I’m a Dutchman.’

‘Look, there’s P-Pluto,’ Mavis pointed. Behind it came another, D-Doggo, depicting a bulldog with an enemy plane – the swastika plainly visible – crushed in its massive jaw.

‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ Mavis said, her admiring glance following the aircraft. ‘Four Rolls Royce Merlin engines and they can carry over twenty thousand pounds of bombs.’

‘I don’t know how they get ’em into the air. They’re massive!’

‘Well, you just watch, sunshine. They will – and tonight if this weather holds.’

Kate gasped. ‘So soon? But they’ve only just got here.’

‘War won’t wait for them to be pampered. That reminds me, Iso, we might have to do double shift tonight. With all these extra kites here, we’re going to be a bit busy. And if it’s long-range, they’re going to be very low on fuel by the time they get back.’

Isobel groaned. ‘Then I’m off to get a bit of shut-eye now.’

Mavis and Isobel turned and walked back across the grass towards the camp gate and the road leading to the WAAF site, leaving Kate staring at the new arrivals and wondering just which aircraft was Danny’s.

Throughout the day the airfield hummed with activity. The arrival of an additional squadron and all its attendant personnel put an additional strain on the new airfield’s resources. And now, with the rumour spreading that the night’s op was to be ‘a big one’, there was an air of tension and scarcely concealed excitement.

‘I must go to Group HQ,’ Philip told her, ‘for a meeting with the AOC.’

‘Sir,’ Kate responded dutifully, but beneath her breath she muttered a frustrated ‘Damn!’ She was so anxious to see Danny before he flew that night, but now she was to be away from the station for most of the day.

At Group Headquarters, Kate found herself with little to do while she waited for Philip. It was always the same, she thought. He was involved in lengthy conferences and meetings whilst she wandered from room to room, feeling in the way, on the edge of all the activity yet unable to take part.