I needed another meeting with Ellen and Louisa and Mrs. Warner all together. Passing messages down the line while dancing in the pub or racing to climb into a Blenheim before an op was doing my head in.

Also, I was dogged by dread of Felix Baer’s warning.

Trap. Enigma.

A snare for B-Flight—not just me. Eighteen of us that I was responsible for.

Bill Yorke raised his voice. “If you ask me, the colored girl knew they were coming.”

“She knows how to transmit Morse,” Chip agreed. “And the old lady speaks German. They could have a radio hidden up there. They could be sending messages in German to the bombers.”

“Come bomb us, please,” Ignacy put in sarcastically, and Derfel laughed.

I sat up in alarm. I had to nip this in the bud.

“Flying Officer Yorke, if anyone’s accused of careless talk, you’re going to be first in the queue for court martial,” I growled. “You’re the one who left German code transmissions on cigarette papers in the public bar.”

“I did what?” Bill Yorke cried. “I copied out the transmissions and turned them in to Intelligence, like I always do! Tex told me to get rid of the scribbling papers!”

“I said to burn ’em,” Chip protested. “Not leave them in an ashtray.”

Everybody went quiet. I couldn’t keep throwing threats at Yorkie, hoping one would make him start playing cricket with the rest of the side.

Give him something to do, Silver had said. He hadn’t said what.

Before I lost most of my old B-Flight in that November op, I’d never had trouble with my aircrews. But had I always leaned on my navigator to point me in the right direction as much as I did now? Was my civil war with Cromwell keeping me from solving my own command problems?

For a start, I could put an end to this stupid scrapping.

“Stow this nonsense about old women and kids being Nazi spies, and go to sleep,” I said. “Nothing happened. Volunteer McEwen found those codes and turned them in. She keeps mum about it, and if she can do it, so can we.”

As I said it, I suddenly knew how to take some of the edge off Bill Yorke.

I could put him in charge of Dougie—get him to keep Dougie’s chattering tongue in line. I’d have a quiet word in the morning. The wireless ops hung around together anyway; Chip and Yorkie were already wingers. Yorkie must have felt like I was nothing but a brand-new sprog bossing him about. It would do him good to earn the respect of the real sprogs.

It would take some of the pressure off me, too.

Ellen:

As long as they were chasing U-boats, Jamie’s lads pulled together. Shut them up for a week of bad weather and they became a cloud of biting midgies.