“A timed drill,” I improvised. “No warning, as if we’re under attack. We have ten minutes to get in the air for a rendezvous off Aberdeen. The past week’s been wizard for B-Flight, don’t bugger it up now; let’s show the Old Roundhead what we can do. Kerr, get your trousers on! Tex, do a head count. We need every plane in the air, the trainer as well; we’ll take the shot-up Blenheims and let the ferry pilots fly the ones they brought. Stedman, you’re mostly dressed, you go get them moving. Silver, you come with me and raise the ground crew.”

I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble with the ground crew—they pre-dated Cromwell.

Silver and I met each other’s eyes.

He moved his lips soundlessly. Not a drill?

I shook my head.

“I’m with you,” Silver said aloud.

Louisa:

We were still in bed that morning, 4 December, when we heard the Blenheims taking off.

I sat up and counted and got to ten.

“That doesn’t make the least sense!” I exclaimed. “I thought there were only six aeroplanes in B-Flight.”

“Perhaps they keep spares,” said Jane.

We heard footsteps running in the passage, and the bathroom and toilet doors slamming. Phyllis and Ellen had both leaped into action.

“The planes took off in the dark!” I said. “The moon went down hours ago—I thought they couldn’t fly without a moon!”

Jane squinted at my luminous alarm clock.

“I think they struggle to find targets without a moon. But they can fly, and it will get light in half an hour or so,” she said. “It’s a quarter past eight. You and I are slugabeds. Perhaps they’ve been posted elsewhere.”

Ellen and Phyllis clattered downstairs and the front door banged.

Jane went back to sleep.

I don’t know how she could, except that she had the gift of instant sleep. I couldn’t even make myself lie down again.

Five minutes later I recognized the whomp-whomp of German engines, like the bombers flying over London.

I catapulted out of bed and hauled the blackout curtains from the window facing southeast over the sea. The Kingsleap Light bloomed bright green in the dark, flashing as the lamp swung round. There must be British fishing boats about, or the lighthouse would be dark. I leaped across to the narrow north window that faced the airfield, but I couldn’t see anything there. The terrible throbbing German engines were louder now—they sounded like they were right overhead.

Then the fins whistled as the bombs fell.

I couldn’t see the airfield, but WOW did I see the explosions.

“Jane, Jane!” I screeched. “The aerodrome’s being bombed—come look!” The need to look was fiercer in me than the sensible need to dive for cover. If something was going to blow me up, I wanted to see it coming.