. 1943 .

A deep red glow lit the sky as the sun slipped below the horizon. Huge black forms were silhouetted by the sky; Stirling bombers, their bellies full of high explosives. She'd seen the bombs herself, earlier; huge things, smooth and so deadly.

Titty shifted her camera to the other hand and half wondered if she'd made a mistake…no, she couldn't think about it, not now. The brilliant sky brought to mind orange lilies and quite suddenly, she thought of Crossing the Bar by Tennyson. Why, did she have to think of that? Yet the words ran through her head, inexorably… Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark-"

"You can still change your mind, ma'am."

Titty turned to see Pilot Officer Williams standing next to her. He was the copilot of one of those dark Stirlings out there on the landing strip. She shivered.

"No," She said quietly, "I'm not changing my mind."

She hugged the camera to herself. It was a large thing, bulky, and she knew every quirk and detail of it. It was wrapped in sheepskin…it would need it at twenty thousand feet.

"Where are we going?" she asked suddenly, just gathering her courage.

"Hamburg," he grinned at her. "Can't promise any sight-seeing, however. Coffee shops and things will all be closed by the time we get there."

Titty laughed and shook her head. She couldn't help thinking how much he reminded her of her brother, Roger.

"I hope that thingamabob takes good pictures in the dark," Pilot Officer Williams added a moment later.

"It will," Titty said. Dark? No in the dark it wouldn't, she had the highest ISO film she could get her hands on, but there would be a full moon and when they arrived, she had been assured, there would be the geysers of ack ack, the crisscrossing beams of search lights and the burning explosions in the dark. Light? There would be plenty of light.

Titty shook herself. "I hope we can take off before it gets completely dark, I wanted some pictures of the bombers in formation. Do you think it will be light by the time we come back?"

"Dawn at least," he said, "Has anyone given you a parachute?"

"No."

"That needs remedying," he patted her on the arm. "I'll be back."

She watched him jog away; they all seemed to be full over with energy. She wandered a little closer to the nearest Stirling and saw that they were just jacking the last bomb up into the bomb bay. Somebody glanced over at her and grinned. She smiled back and suddenly felt better. They weren't afraid; she wouldn't be either.

A short fellow, stocky, tipped his cap at her.

"What are you?" She asked, her journalist nature getting the better of her.

"Pardon?"

"Sorry, what do you do on the bomber?"

"I'm tail-end-Charlie," he said. "I man the guns at the very back."

He gestured towards the rear of the plane; the towering tail seemed like a very long ways away from where they stood. Four massive engines took up the air above her head, the huge props black against the sky. Everything was huge. Big white letters on the nose of the plane said, "The Bulldog," and a colorful painting of the same with large teeth and a spiky collar snarled at her from the black paint scheme. The British weren't big on nose art, but this would have rivaled even the loudest American work. Twelve carefully painted white bombs on the nose showed the number of missions The Bulldog had flown.

The Flight Engineer was just dropping down from the wing after inspecting one of the engines. A moment later, Squadron Leader Alden himself, the captain of the bomber, walked past, his yellow Mae West glowing in the setting sun, his parachute over his shoulder.

"Miss Walker," he said extending his hand. "I'm glad to see you again."

"Thank you," Titty said, shaking the hand.

"Might want to skip back a step, we'll be starting the engines."

"Yes of course."

She moved back. She was getting hot. The heavy boots and flight jacket she had borrowed were weighing her down.

"Life jacket and parachute," she looked around to see Pilot Officer Williams. "You don't have to put them on, though you might want the Mae West. Just put the parachute somewhere it's not in the way. Did they give you a crash course just in case we have to bail out?"

"Yes," Titty said, though she'd already forgotten most of it.

Above them, the props on one of the huge Bristol engines began to turn laboriously…then another. With a sudden cough and a billow of smoke, the engine roared into life followed in turn by the others. The yellow tips on the props painted brilliant yellow circles in the dusky air.

All over the field, the Stirlings were erupting into life, their engines settling into a deep thunderous hum. The ground was shaking under Titty's feet and she hurriedly snapped a picture of all those whirling propellers against the glowing sky.

"Right-o," Pilot Officer Williams said, taking her elbow. "Let's get aboard. I'll take the camera."

There was a door on the side of The Bulldog and Titty found herself climbing the ladder and stepping into the near darkness in the narrow, ribbed fuselage of the bomber. Looking ahead, she could see the sunset through the distant windscreen. There was the deep hum of the engines and the whole plane vibrated.

The seven men who clambered in after her went to their various places; the Squadron Leader was already at the controls; Pilot Officer Williams handed her the camera and clambered forward to join him. Tail-end-Charlie went aft, the navigator squeezed in at his tiny table. The bombardier took his place below the pilots in the Plexiglas nose and the wireless operator took his seat behind the pilots. Titty felt herself propelled toward the seat next to the wireless operator.

"Just you sit yourself down there, darling," the Engineer said. "Buckle in, dear."

"But isn't this your seat?"

"It's yours this time around, my girl."

She buckled in and clutched her camera. She was under the Plexiglas observation deck and she had a beautiful view of the airfield, the sky and the whirling propellers. Quickly she snapped a picture.

"Hello crew, skipper here," the drawling voice of Squadron Leader Alden came in her headset, "all aboard and ready to roll?"

A chorus of, "yes sir!" rang in her headset.

"Hello photographer, doing all right there?"

"Roger," she said bravely and everyone laughed.

"O.K. boys."

The plane shuddered and Titty saw between the pilot and copilot's heads that someone with red flags was waving them forward. The engines roared louder and as the plane moved forward; she saw the airstrip, lit with red flares flickering in the dusk. The engineer was bracing himself between her seat and the wireless operator's.

The flags waved and The Bulldog swung around, props whirling. She was moving down the runway, slowly at first then gaining speed. It was frightfully bumpy, then suddenly, there was lift and the ground was moving away beneath them. Titty clung to her camera. She had flown once, a long time ago in Egypt when her brother Roger had taken her up in his airplane he had put together from spare parts. It had been wonderful…this was wonderful too.

The Stirling banked farther and farther and the airfield below them slanted at a dizzying angle through the glass side panels. Titty raised the camera and snapped a shot of all the bombers, tens of them, lined up and ready to fly. There were more taking off, one by one in a long line behind The Bulldog. They fell into formation, nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip, so close it was frightening. Titty brought her camera to bear, balancing it on her knee. Up here, they could still see the brilliance from the sun on the horizon behind them and the black painted bombers were bathed in golden light.

Around her, Titty saw the crew getting out of their seats. The engineer had climbed up into the turret above them and the bombardier was fiddling with the machine guns in the nose.

"Hello crew, test your weapons; fire at will." Then added, probably for her benefit, "We're at ten thousand, probably should put on your oxygen."

Titty glanced around, wondering if they were firing already; she couldn't tell over the roar of the engines. Then the whole plane shuddered violently and she heard the rattling bang of browning machine guns. Spent brass casings danced down from the turret, still steaming. She reached out and picked one up, a souvenir. She could feel the heat from it sinking through her glove. Below her, she could hear the bombardier having a go with the nose guns, and she knew tail-end-Charlie was testing his. Then the racket and vibrating stopped and the bomber was flying smoothly. Titty fumbled for her oxygen mask and put it over her face. She nearly choked with the fumes of black rubber.

There was something almost spiritual about that sunset. They were flying away from the sun, but the slanting rays streaked through the cabin and lit the clouds pink. Above the clouds, the sky stretched deep blue, spangled with stars glittering at them like a million guardian angles. The fifteen miles to the coast passed and their shadow streaked over silent green fields. Then the rolling waves of the North Sea glittered below them and looking back, Titty saw the sun, lowering behind the white cliffs and casting a long golden path across the water to France.

The Stirlings hung in the sky in formation, their engines humming like a giant orchestra. The red paint of their identification numbers burnt scarlet against their black paint schemes. She could see the very faces of the crew of the bomber next to them.

She looked down again, past the whirring propellers of the engine next to the window. She saw the tiny black shadow of the plane streaking across the stretching silver water. It was the North Sea. She'd never flown across it before, but in 1931, she'd sailed across it when she, her sister and her two brothers had accidently drifted out to sea in a fog in a twenty-five foot Bermuda cutter. The silent water 20,000 feet below them looked far different from the crashing waves she remembered so vividly.

The sun was sinking ever lower and the darkness of the sky deepened, stretching to the glow on the horizon. To the right, Titty caught sight of the moon – a bomber's moon – and brilliant. In its silver light, she could see the other bombers clearly, but she knew that the Luftwaffe would see them just as clearly.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note:

This story started out laudably enough when I was young and foolish and didn't know anything about Anything in Particular. That's not to say I'm not still Young and Foolish, but I think I'm not as young and foolish as I was then. I meant to post this a year or so ago, but realized in time that I'd made a muddle out of it. I originally made the bombers Lancasters, but it came to me that British bomber crews were seven vs the American nine. So I switched the Lancasters to the bigger Stirlings, which had a crew of eight, but I'm still not sure if I have it right, and short of actually rewriting it (which I really don't want to) I'm leaving it the way it is. It's based on the story of Margaret Bourke-White, photographer for Life Magazine, who convinced Jimmy Doolittle to let her go on a bombing run with The Twelfth Air Force in Algeria. This is dedicated to her…and to Eve Curie, who almost won the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence in 1944 (her family had high standards). Hope you enjoy!

Further Note: Thanks to Fergus Mason, I've changed a few things that I had wrong.