However, with no winning counterargument, off we went, hoping a few of us would make it back safely in five hours or so. Following orders.

The Blenheims were like a herd of shadowy brontosauri waiting on the airfield in the dark beneath the high cloud.

“Come on, Scotty, buck up,” said David Silvermont, my navigator, as we lowered ourselves in our bulky flight suits through the forward hatch of that night’s plane. Being the only Scot in the squadron meant that I mostly hadn’t been called Jamie for the past year or so, except on leave. “We can’t have you in a funk—it brings everybody down. The lads take your moods very seriously.”

“Wing Commander Cromwell bloody well doesn’t,” I retorted. “I wish he’d have a go at you sometime instead of me.”

“No chance, as you’re the officer in charge. Anyway I am much bigger and older than you, and better looking too and probably smarter, so he doesn’t dare.”

“And you have a bigger head than me!” I laughed.

Most of those things were true, as David Silvermont was two years my senior and had been halfway through a medical degree when the war started. But he was also my best friend. He was easy to like and smooth with girls, with the brooding dark looks of a film star, and was good at breaking up fights and at making me laugh. Silver read poetry before he went to bed; he played Mozart on the cracked fiddle he’d found in the officers’ lounge when we were off duty; but those highbrow occupations didn’t stop him plotting a course by dead reckoning, or spotting enemy convoys, or having a sense of humor.

He was a wizard navigator.

“What’s up?” called our air gunner and wireless operator, Colin Oldham, from his place in the back of the Blenheim.

“Just the usual scrapping with Cromwell,” I grumbled. “Accused me of ‘lack of moral fiber.’”

“Rubbish! He’s not flying tonight, is he!” Colin exclaimed.

“I expect he doesn’t like your poncey double-barreled surname,” Silver teased me. “It reminds the old Roundhead that your dad’s the Earl of Craigie, and then he wants to start the Civil War over again. Can’t have teenage toffs telling him what to do.”

Colin howled. “‘The Old Roundhead!’ Suits him!”

“I don’t tell him what to do,” I protested, checking the instruments and controls while Silver and Colin belted their harnesses in place. “I make polite suggestions about what not to do. And being the youngest of five sons doesn’t mean a thing. They ran out of titles before they got to me.”

“It’s your classical education he doesn’t like,” put in Colin.

“I’ll make a list, shall I? Perhaps if I were taller or bigger or grew a mustache—”

“He doesn’t like me much, either,” Silver said with sympathy.