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‘Mayday – mayday –’
– Recognisable in English. Or perhaps that was French, ‘M’aidez’, help me. The rest of the transmission was in German.
The voice was a boy’s voice, young and scared. He broke off each call with a sob. Maddie swallowed – she had no idea where the anguished cries for help were coming from. Maddie called out, ‘Listen – listen!’ and switched her headset on to the Tannoy so that everyone could hear, and then she grabbed the telephone.
‘It’s Assistant Section Officer Brodatt in the Tower. Can I get directly through to Jenny in Special Duties? All right, Tessa then. Anyone with a screen going. I need an ident on a radio call – ’
Everyone crowded round the telephone, reading over Maddie’s shoulder as she took notes from the direction finding station, then gasping aloud as the meaning of her notes sank in.
‘Heading straight for Maidsend!’
‘What if it’s a bomber?’
‘What if it’s still loaded?’
‘What if it’s a hoax?’
‘He’d be calling in English if it was a hoax!’
‘Anyone speak German?’ shouted the officer in charge of the radio room. Silence.
‘Christ! Brodatt, stay on the ’phone. Davenport, you run to the wireless station, perhaps one of those girls can help. Get me a German-speaker! Now!’
Maddie listened with her heart in her mouth, holding her headset to one ear and the telephone to the other, waiting for the girl at the RDF screen to pass her new information.
‘Shhh,’ warned the radio officer, leaning over Maddie’s shoulder and taking hold of the telephone receiver for her so her right hand was freed up for taking notes. ‘Don’t say anything – don’t let him know who’s listening –’
The door to the radio room banged open and the subordinate Davenport was back, with one of the WAAF wireless operators hard on his heels. Maddie looked up.
The girl was immaculate – not a blue thread out of place, her chignon of long fair hair coiled in regulation neatness two inches above her uniform collar. Maddie recognised her from the canteen and rare social evenings. Queenie, people called her, though she was not the official WAAF Queen Bee (that’s what we call the senior administrative officer on the base), nor was it her name. Maddie did not know her real name. Queenie had acquired a certain reputation for being fast and fearless; she sauced superior officers and got away with it, but equally she wouldn’t leave a building during an air raid until she’d made sure everyone else was out. Distantly connected to royalty, she was of some rank herself, of privilege rather than experience, a Flight Officer; but she was said to work as diligently at her wireless set as any self-made shop girl. She was pretty, petite and light on her feet, and if there was a Squadron dance on a Saturday night she was the one the pilots went for.