I took it and my hands didn’t shake. I hadn’t lost my nerve—I was angry. Not just at the Germans, our enemy. I was angry at my commanding officer, at Wing Commander Talbot Cromwell, for being so blind to what we were up against, and at Coastal Command itself, whoever they were, making impossible rules in some comfortable headquarters in England while we bled our lives out in unforgiving sky and sea.

I tried to smoke. Phyllis passed me her ashtray. I was nearly angry at her, too, behaving herself and reporting to them. But she was good at her job, unlike Cromwell; she’d been with us since June and she knew us well.

“When we fly that high the mission is absolutely pointless, but when we come in at a low level to bomb the German ships, we get shot up by their antiaircraft guns,” I said bitterly. “I just want an advantage, you know? I want to know where their submarines are, or if there are night fighters about, before they’re on top of us. Some wee thing. One thing that we can do better than the Germans. One surprising smack in their faces.”

“We stopped the invasion,” Phyllis said. “You helped too, two months ago when we were fighting the Battle of Britain. We made them back off. That was a smack in their faces.”

“Now they’re bombing our cities to blazes—that’s not backing off!”

“We all want revenge,” Phyllis said softly.

That surprised me a little. I didn’t think of earnest, diligent Flight Officer Pennyworth as someone who had unwholesome emotions that might involve a thirst for blood. I glanced up at her, thinking she might be offering mechanical sympathy to another shot-down airman—or I suppose I should say shot up, not shot down, as I’d managed to bring the crate back and land it in one piece.

Her eyes were red and her mouth was set in a stubborn, steely pout. I guess Flight Officer Pennyworth got the job partly because she didn’t cry easily. Maybe she did want revenge.

“We’ll win,” Phyllis said firmly. “We’ll keep fighting, and someday we’ll win fair and square.”

I’d let my cigarette go out. I dumped it in the ashtray. What had Cromwell told me?

We need to change our tactics.

“I don’t want to win fair and square anymore,” I said through my teeth. “I want to cheat.”

Louisa Adair: