Moral Fibre

Kit didn’t plan to die, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that his chances of survival were poor. Statistically, more than half the men in this room would be dead before they completed their first tour. Kit’s unease, however, extended beyond the statistics.

For one thing, Don had been the best skipper imaginable, yet he’d bought it. Clearly a pilot judged “average” had an even lower chance of making it. The odds meant Kit would need good luck, and a profound sense of having already used up more than his fair share of that unsettled him. He’d made it through thirty-six ops without a scratch. On the night Don was killed, the bomb aimer, navigator and radio operator had also been injured, the navigator and radio operator critically. Yet while shrapnel had torn slices through his flight jacket and burned holes in his boots, Kit remained completely unscathed. Kit didn’t think he deserved to escape injury and death more than the others. If anyone had not deserved to die, it was Don. His mother might credit his survival to a ‘guardian angel,’ but Kit thought rather he had been dicing with the devil — and the devil didn’t like to lose, not in the long run.

Of course, there was no reason to assume he would take his whole crew with him when he got the chop, but the RAF had done away with “second pilots” long ago. That meant that if he bought it his crew stood little chance of returning safely. The best they could hope for was to bail-out.

Standing in that echoing hall filled with eager young men chatting, laughing, gesturing and shaking hands, Kit felt like bad luck. Tapping someone on the shoulder would be like the grim reaper pointing a finger at them. On the other hand, if he approached no-one he would be left with the dregs, the men no one else wanted. The result would be a crew of misfits, further diminishing his — and their — chances of survival.