Winter’s Morning

      Major Richard Winter was a tall man with hard black eyes, a large nose and close-cropped hair. He hated getting out of bed, especially when assigned to dawn patrols on a cold morning. As he always said – and by now the whole Officers’ Mess could chant it in unison – ‘If there must be dawn patrols in winter, let there be no Winter in the dawn patrols.’

      Winter believed that if they stopped flying them, the enemy would also stop. In 1914, the front-line soldiers of both armies had decided to live and let live for a few weeks. So now, during the coldest weather, some squadrons had allowed the dawn patrol to become a token couple of scouts hurrying over the frosty wire of no-man’s-land after breakfast. The warm spirit of humanity that Christmas 1914 conjured had given way to the cold reality of self-preservation. Those wiser squadrons kept the major offensive patrol until last light, when the sun was mellow and the air less turbulent. At St Antoine Farm airfield, however, dawn patrol was still a gruelling obligation that none could escape.

      ‘Oatmeal, toast, eggs and sausage, sir.’ Like everyone else in the Mess tent – except Winter – the waiter spoke in a soft whisper that befitted the small hours. Winter preferred his normal booming voice. ‘Just coffee,’ he said. ‘But hot, really hot.’

      ‘Very good, Major Winter, sir.’

      The wind blew with enough force to make the canvas flap and roar, as though at any moment the whole tent would blow away. From outside they heard the sound of tent pegs being hammered more firmly into the hard chalky soil.

      A young Lieutenant sitting opposite offered his cigarette case, but Winter waved it aside in favour of a dented tin from which he took cheap dark tobacco and a paper to fashion a misshapen cigarette. The young officer did not light one of his own in the hope that he would be invited to share in this ritual. But Winter lit up, blew the noxious smoke across the table, coughed twice and pushed the tin back into his pocket.

      Each time someone entered through the flap there was a clatter of canvas and ropes and a gust of cold air, but Winter looked in vain for a triangle of grey sky. The only light came from six acetylene lamps that were placed along the breakfast table. The pump of one of them was faulty; its light was dull and it left a smell of mould on the air. The other lamps hissed loudly and their eerie greenish light shone upon the Mess silver, folded linen and empty plates. The table had been set the previous night for the regular squadron breakfast at 8 a.m., and the Mess servants were anxious that these three early-duty pilots shouldn’t disarrange it too much.

      Everyone stiffened as they heard the clang of the engine cylinder and con. rod that hung outside for use as a gas warning. Winter laughed when Ginger, the tallest pilot on the squadron, emerged from the darkness rubbing his head and scowling in pain. Ginger walked over to the ancient piano and pulled back the edge of the tarpaulin that protected it from damp. He played a silly melody with one finger.

      ‘Hot coffee, sir.’ The waiter emphasized the word ‘hot’, and the liquid spluttered as it poured over the metal spout. Winter clamped his cold hands round the pot like a drowning man clinging to flotsam. He twisted his head to see Ginger’s watch. Six twenty-five. What a time to be having breakfast: it was still night.

      Winter yawned and wrapped his ankle-length fur coat round his legs. New pilots thought that his fur overcoat had earned him his nickname of ‘the Bear’, but that had come months before the coat.

      The others kept a few seats between themselves and Winter. They spoke only when he addressed them, and then answered only in brief formalities.

      ‘You flying with me, Lieutenant?’

      The young ex-cavalry officer looked around the table. Ginger was munching his bread and jam, and gave no sign of having heard.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said the young man.

      ‘How many hours?’

      Always the same question. Everyone here was graded solely by flying time, though few cared whether the hours had been spent stunting, fighting or just hiding in the clouds. ‘Twenty-eight and a half, solo, sir.’

      ‘Twenty-eight and a half,’ nodded Winter. ‘Twenty-eight and a half! Solo! Did you hear that, Lieutenant?’ The question was addressed to Ginger, who was paying unusually close attention to the sugar bowl. Winter turned back to the new young pilot. ‘You’d better watch yourself.’

      Winter divided new pilots into assets and liabilities at either side of seventy hours. Assets sometimes became true friends and close comrades. Assets might even be told your misgivings. The demise of assets could spread grief through the whole Mess. This boy would be dead within a month, Winter decided. He looked at him: handsome, in the pallid, aristocratic manner of such youngsters. His tender skin was chapped by the rain and there were cold sores on his lip. His blond hair was too long for Winter’s taste, and his eyebrows girlish. This boy’s kit had never known a quartermaster’s shelf. It had come from an expensive tailor: a cavalry tunic fashionably nipped at the waist, tight trousers and boots as supple as velvet. The ensemble was supplemented by accessories from the big department stores. His cigarette case was the sort that, it was advertised, could stop a bullet.

      The young man returned Richard Winter’s close examination with interest. So this rude fellow, so proud of his chauffeur’s fur coat, was the famous Bear Winter who had twenty-nine enemy aircraft to his credit. He was a blotchy-faced devil, with bloodshot eyes and a fierce twitching eyebrow that he sometimes rubbed self-consciously, as if he knew that it undid his carefully contrived aplomb. The youngster wondered whether he would end up looking like this: dirty shirt, long finger-nails, unshaven jaw and a cauliflower-knobbly head, shaved razor-close to avoid lice. Except for his quick eyes and occasional wry smile Winter looked like the archetypal Prussian Schweinhund.

      Major Richard Winter had been flying in action for nearly two years without a leave. He was a natural pilot who’d flown every type of plane the makers could provide, and some enemy planes too. He could dismantle and assemble an engine as well as any squadron fitter, and as a precaution against jams he personally supervised the loading of every bullet he would use. Why must he be so rude to young pilots who hero-worshipped him, and would follow him to hell itself? And yet that too was part of the legend.

      The young officer swallowed. ‘May I ask, sir, where you bought your magnificent fur coat?’

      Winter gulped the rest of his coffee and got to his feet as he heard the first of the scout’s engines start. ‘Came off a mug I shot down in September,’ he bellowed. ‘It’s from a fashionable shop, I’m told. Never travelled much myself, except here to France.’ Winter poked his fingers through four holes in the front. Did the boy go a shade paler, or had he imagined it in the glare of the gas lights? ‘Don’t let some smart bastard get your overcoat, sonny.’

      ‘No, sir,’ said the boy. Behind him Ginger grinned. The Bear was behaving true to form. Ginger dug his knife into a tin of butter he’d scrounged from the kitchen and then offered it to the cavalry officer. The boy sniffed the tin doubtfully. It smelled rancid but he scraped a little on to his bread and swamped it with jam to hide the taste.

      ‘This your first patrol?’ asked Ginger.

      ‘No,