Swastika

by Michael Slade

  “Hello, Puss,” Dane said, on seeing the tabby in the kitchen now. “Let me know when it’s time, and we’ll put the siren on and rush to the vet’s.”

  Puss was pregnant.

  That was all he needed.

  Dane fed Puss for six kittens or so, then popped the cap off a cold beer and sat down for his takeout feast of Szechuan prawns, with pickles and sweet ginger, and chicken chow mein.

  Finished, he cracked the fortune cookie.

  “Don’t ask, don’t say. Everything lies in silence.”

  * * *

  Tonight, Dane was determined to press on with cleaning out Papa’s house to prepare it for sale. Papa, as in the pa of his pa, the father of his father. But in his heart, he knew that he would accomplish nothing more than digging back into his granddad’s war record.

  Like so many of his generation, Papa had rarely talked about what he’d done in the war. Hidden away with his grandfather’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book, Dane had found some photos and a square box. Two of the photos now had his attention. One was a black-and-white headshot of a pilot in his early twenties. The pilot wore his peaked cap at a jaunty angle, one side lower to his eyebrow than the other. In the center sat an RCAF officer’s badge: the British crown over a pair of bird wings. His uniform was immaculate, and he had a pencil-thin, flyboy mustache like Clark Gable’s.

  The patriot with the easy smile who’d come home from war.

  The other headshot was much starker. It was a candid shot of a pilot just back from an overnight bombing run, still buckled into the cockpit seat of a Halifax heavy bomber. Gloved and fleeced in a thick bomber jacket against the high-altitude cold, he was turned toward the camera as if spooked by its intrusion into his private hell. His head was encased in a skin-tight leather helmet; on either side, leather earmuffs clamped headphones to his skull. Dangling an obscene corrugated hose as long as an elephant’s trunk, the oxygen mask on his lower face dug into the flesh of his cheeks. All you could see of the man within was the intensity in his eyes, and those eyes spoke loudly of what he had just been through.

  Dane was eyeball to eyeball with a warrior of the night.

  * * *

  Over sixty years ago, President Roosevelt called Canada “the aerodrome of democracy.” Far from the battlefields of Europe, this country proved ideal for training wartime aircrews. In all, 131,553 airmen were prepared for combat in Canada. One of those who signed up at the height of the Battle of Britain was Keith Winter, Dane’s granddad. From day one of training—January 4, 1941—he was required to keep a pilot’s flying log. The log would list every aircraft he took up and every bombing run he made.

  This was Keith Winter’s book.

  The log was bound in black leather with gold type engraved on the cover.

  Taped inside the cover were snapshots of two bombing crews, each photo taken in front of the open bomb doors of a Halifax. One crew was bundled up for winter skies over Europe. The other was stripped down to khaki shirts and shorts for the scorching desert sands of North Africa.

  Dane settled back with another beer and read through Keith’s war against the Swastika.

  After he’d completed three and a half months’ training in both the Tiger Moth and the Anson—155 hours and 40 minutes in the air—the RCAF had shipped him overseas to Kinloss, Scotland. There, attached to the RAF, Keith was strapped into the Whitley and taught how to fly a heavy bomber. At that point, the monotonous blue ink in the log was joined by red to denote night flights.

  September 1941 saw Keith posted to #10 Squadron at Leeming, Yorkshire.

  By October, he was outward bound.

  “Ops. to Wilhelmshaven. ‘Bags of Fun’—Caught in searchlights, but not held.”

  * * *

  Outward Bound was the title of the print on the wall of the TV room in Papa’s house. The original painting, all in blue, was as evocative of a night bombing run as war art could be. Every warrior has his weapon, and Keith’s was a pair of deadly flying machines. He began bombing with the Whitley and soon traded up. By December, he was in the cockpit of the Halifax.

  The painting depicted the estuary of an English river shimmering beneath a Handley Page Halifax en route to enemy territory. A trio of criss-crossed searchlights shot up from the shore below, and silver moonlight shone down through the broken cloud cover to sparkle on the sea. Silver-blue was the painting’s only color, except for a hint of yellow around the RAF bull’s-eye insignia on the fuselage of the plane. Guns bristled from the see-through turrets in the nose of the bomber and from behind the dual tailfins, where the rear gunner sat. In front of the whirling propellers on the visible wing, Dane could just make out the pilot who was outward bound with the flames of hell in the bomb-bay belly of the beast.

  What a beautiful war machine!

  Dane recalled himself as a boy asking his granddad where he’d got the picture.

  “During the war, it hung in a uniform shop,” Papa had explained. “I saw it while on leave. I told the shopkeeper that I flew the Halifax and asked if I could buy it. He said no. It was his window attraction. I left a phone number, in case he changed his mind. On VJ Day—the day the war ended—the shopkeeper called. ‘The picture is yours,’ he said. ‘I’m giving it to you for free. When I see you carry it out of here, I’ll know I’m not dreaming that the war is over.’”

  * * *

  The desperate years.

  The years 1941 and 1942.

  Hitler was the master of Europe and Britain stood virtually alone when nineteen-year-old Keith volunteered to fly with the RAF. Fifty-seven straight nights of the Blitz had set London ablaze and reduced much of it to rubble. Wolf packs of U-boats under the Atlantic were on the brink of severing the shipping lifeline from America. Rommel and the Afrika Korps, a panzer division trained in desert warfare, had landed at Tripoli. Then Hitler invaded Russia. Kiev fell, and Leningrad and Moscow were besieged. In December 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked, but even when America entered the war, the bad news kept coming. Japan owned the Pacific. Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines all fell to the Land of the Rising Sun. In May 1942, Rommel went on the offensive and began his push through Libya, which would drive him into Egypt as the British fell back in retreat. By the time the end of May arrived, Keith was in extreme peril. More than ten thousand planes in Bomber Command would be lost in the war. Of the fifty-five thousand airmen killed, ten thousand would be Canadian volunteers. Proportionately, it would be the highest fatality rate of all who fought in the war. Two tours of duty—which is what Keith flew—and the odds of going home were almost nil.

  May 1942.

  The record, thought Dane.

  He set aside the flying log and picked up the square box that he’d also found in the dresser drawer. Peeking inside earlier, he’d been puzzled by the small disk in the plain brown sleeve. It was the size of a 45 rpm. The handwritten center label read, “From Mother to Keith. May 26, 1942. For 21st Birthday.” It was obviously a private recording.

  Intrigued, Dane went to what had once been his room and fetched the Seabreeze record player, a relic so old that it had probably spun his dad’s childhood records. He dropped the disk onto the spindle, set the speed to 45 rpm, and eased down the needle. The voice that spoke to him through time seemed to come from under the sea.

  It’s warped, he thought.

  Wait a sec.

  A 45?

  They didn’t have 45s back then.

  Detective that he was, he figured out that the disk was a miniature version of a 78 rpm. Sure enough, when he cranked the knob over to that speed, a woman’s voice spoke to him from the speaker.

  It was Dane’s great-grandmother.

  “Hello, Keith. Mother speaking to you. Happy twenty-first birthday. Hope you received your parcel. If not, it’s on its way. No matter what happens, Keith, know Mother is proud of you. Keep the flag flying, son. All long to see you, and hope it won’t be long till you and all the other lads come home. It’s cold today, but bright. Goodbye,
my dear. Keep your chin up. All my love, Mother.”

  Dane lifted the scratchy needle.

  Desperate years.

  Desperate days.

  Without a victory in sight.

  And all those dead flyboys listed in the papers.

  So she went off to a recording studio in 1942 and made Keith that birthday greeting—in case it was his last.

  May 26?

  Dane went back to the log.

  Four days after his birthday, Keith entered this:

  “May 30. Ops. to Cologne. Over 1,000 A/C on TGT. Beautiful blaze.”

  * * *

  The Thousand Bomber Raid on Cologne on the night of May 30, 1942, was the first turning point in the war. In February, Sir Arthur Harris had risen to the top of Bomber Command, and he was itching for a way to demonstrate to “the Boche” that they had met their match. He planned to overwhelm Nazi defenses with a continuous stream of awesome airpower aimed at one German industrial city. Churchill approved Operation Millennium. When the moon was full, Harris threw every plane he could gather from any source—1,047 aircraft in all—at the third-largest city in the Reich. The raid was a success, and others followed.

  “June 1. Ops. to Essen. 1,000 A/C on TGT. Good show. Home on 3 engines.”

  “June 25. Ops. to Bremen. Another 1,000-plane effort. Excellent trip, but very ‘hot.’”

  * * *

  Monty versus the Desert Fox.

  That was Keith’s triumphant battle.

  A month after the raid on Cologne, Dane’s granddad pasted a mimeographed slip of paper into his flying log:

  Secrecy

  During the course of special operations taking place over the next sixteen days, no communication will be permitted with any person outside the squadron.

  Keith’s comment beside that, on July 4, 1942: “Attached to Middle East Command (16 Days?).”

  On June 21, Rommel had captured the British garrison of Tobruk. “Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another,” Churchill informed Roosevelt. Hitler was so pleased that he conferred the baton of field marshal on the Third Reich’s “hero in the sun.” The Desert Fox was on a roll across the sands of North Africa, and by June 30, Rommel had shoved the British Eighth Army back into Egypt. In Cairo, at British headquarters, military documents were being torched to prepare for a full retreat. The burning was dubbed “Ash Wednesday.” In front of the Desert Fox lay the Suez Canal and the Persian oilfields. All that stood in his way was the coastal railroad station of El Alamein.

  On July 1, he attacked. A sandstorm thwarted that knockout blow. The only way for Britain to hold the line was to maintain air superiority. That’s why Keith was on his way down from Britain. Rommel had an Achilles heel: his long supply line.

  “July 12. Ops. to Tobruk …”

  For three weeks, the adversaries engaged in attritional warfare. All through July, they slogged away in the lung-choking, sandy horror that was North Africa. At times, Keith had just one cup of water a day to drink and one more to bathe and shave in.

  “July 20. Ops. to Tobruk. Bombed jetties and harbor installations. ‘16’ days up!!!”

  Then, on August 3, Churchill arrived in Cairo. Having decided that the Eighth Army required new leadership, he gave the command to General William “Strafer” Gott. Four days later, Gott died in an air crash. So who took his place? Who else? Montgomery. And Monty bombastically declared that he was going “to hit Rommel for six out of Africa.”

  Some sort of cricket thing.

  Throughout August (“Bombed battle lines”) and on into September, #10 Squadron hammered Tobruk again and again and again. All through September and well into October, Keith’s plane got shot full of holes and he lost friends (“Ginger missing”). By then, the focus of the world had settled on the coming battle. If you want to go down in military history, nothing will do it faster than a title match. Wellington versus Napoleon. Grant versus Lee. Sitting Bull versus Custer. Monty versus the Desert Fox.

  When the Battle of El Alamein began, on October 23, Keith was in the thick of it. Preening, fussy, and picky though he may have been, Monty had a strategic strength: he knew how to coordinate air power to win a battle on the ground. When the Afrika Korps soldiers turned and ran, instead of surrendering, Keith was on them from the skies, “crumbling” their retreat. Monty preferred to let metal, not flesh, do the blood work of battle.

  Keith’s sixteen days extended into eight months. He returned to England at the same time that Rommel was called back to the Reich. Not only was El Alamein the turning point in North Africa, but it, along with Stalingrad, was the turning point in the war. “It is not the end,” Churchill said. “It may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is undoubtedly the end of the beginning.”

  Keith was through with operations.

  From then on, he trained pilots.

  Except for one more raid.

  A final entry was made in red, and after that, the Pilot’s Flying Log Book in Dane’s grip contained nothing but blank, empty pages.

  On returning from North Africa in March 1943, Keith was posted to the #6 (RCAF) Group at Topcliffe, Yorkshire. That August saw the only time in the second half of the war when the whole of Bomber Command attempted a precision raid by moonlight on such a small target, so Keith went out for a last hurrah in one of the bomber stream’s Halifaxes.

  The last entry in red:

  “August 17. Ops. to Peenemünde. Bombed V-2 rocket site.”

  * * *

  The Canadian #6 Group lost twelve of fifty-seven aircraft in the Peenemünde raid, 20 percent of its fleet. Defending Peenemünde was the first time Messerschmitt 110s used their new Schräge Musik—“jazz music”—guns. Those upward-spitting cannons ripped into the underbelly of Keith’s Halifax, where there was no armament or even a window to observe below.

  Keith and his crew were forced to bail out over Hitler’s Reich.

  There were no entries in his flying log after the Peenemünde raid because Papa had spent the rest of the conflict in Europe as a prisoner of war—a Kriegsgefangene, or “Kriegie”—in a Stalag Luft camp.

  * * *

  Dane was surprised, when he glanced at his watch, to see how time had flown. He had his date with the Mountain early the next morning, so it was time to pack it up for the night.

  As he closed Keith’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book on that last entry in red, the Mountie spoke to the cat who’d curled up on the rug.

  “Papa had more lives than you, Puss.”

  He thought it ethical to take the pregnant cat home with him, because the twenty-four-hour vet clinic was near his condo.

  Achtung!

  Nordhausen, Germany

  April 4, 1945

  Damn Bomber Harris!

  SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Streicher was sorely tempted to draw the Walther from the holster at the waist of his Black Corps uniform and empty it in futile anger at the flaming sky. Last night, while he and both of his sons were off in Berlin, meeting Hitler down in the Führerbunker, 247 Lancasters with RAF Bomber Command had relentlessly hammered the Nazi stronghold of Nordhausen, dropping firebombs on what were believed to be the military barracks of Boelcke Kaserne. The barracks, in fact, were a dumping ground for worn-out factory slaves and deportees from the eastern camps that were now being threatened by the Red Army.

  “How many killed?” Streicher demanded of an SS bureaucrat with a tally board in hand.

  Ordnung muss sein.

  Things must be in order.

  “Fifteen hundred, General. They hit us on two nights.”

  Streicher nodded grimly. “At least that’s fifteen hundred Untermenschen who won’t turn on us.”

  The corpse-counter smirked half-heartedly. There were still almost thirty thousand subhumans alive in the Dora-Mittelbau camp system. That was a lot to get rid of.

  “Do we gas the rest of them?” the tallyman asked.

  It had taken the general and his sons all night to journey from Berlin back to the V-2 tunnels. The SS car had
just pulled up in front of the yawning caverns in the mountainside to disgorge its three passengers. The tallyman had rushed out of Tunnel B to greet Streicher with his death-by-bombing damage report. From the storage area that fed supplies to the factory, the general watched Nordhausen burn a few miles to the south. The sky was fiery and alive with a billion sparks, but Boelcke Kaserne was choked behind a cloud of seething black smoke.

  “Fritz!” snapped the general. “Fall into line.”

  The elder Hitler Youth was standing several feet away, fixed to the exact spot where he and Wernher von Braun had stood, gazing up at the wonders of outer space. Mesmerized by the sparks, Fritz shook his head to clear his mind.

  He returned to his father’s side like a dutiful son.

  Tonight, the general stood resplendent in the black greatcoat of the Black Corps. Double-breasted, with two parallel rows of silver buttons down the front, it had two slanting pockets with flaps on the sides and a half belt at the back. The Death’s Head badge leered down from the peak of his high-fronted cap. The silver skull and crossbones matched his silver ring, which had been presented to the general by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler for his meritorious service to the Swastika.

  Here, at Dora-Mittelbau, Streicher stood at the center of his power base. The black holes of the factory tunnels throbbed at his back. A quarter mile to his right, along the Kohnstein’s southern slope, Streicher had built a camp to confine the slaves who had worked, lived, and survived in the tunnels during construction.

  The camp’s entry gate faced the tunnels, and between the two sat the guard compound. The gate was a simple wooden barrier covered with barbed wire. The adjoining buildings housed the Gestapo offices and Camp Dora’s administration. Beyond was the Appellplatz—the roll-call square—a huge open area carpeted with paving stones. From it, cement walkways led to fifty-eight barracks and down the slope to “the bunker,” a prison within the prison that was used for private torture, and uphill to a brothel—the Puff—and the crematorium.