Night Raiders

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The Brigadier could have said that the FE2, which had served in France for two years — a long time in the time scale of aircraft development at that period — had been designed as a fighter, should have been decently retired by now and was, anyway, only a stopgap at this stage. It was not used as a day bomber any longer, because the faster DH4 both carried a worthier bomb-load and had much superior speed with which to evade anti-aircraft fire. Not that it did so with any great immunity these days: the enemy batteries had multiplied and their gunners’ aim much improved.

  “A target nearer to base, next time,” the Colonel said.

  “More heavily defended. We don’t want to lose aircraft and crews on what are, in a way, exercises. We want to give the crews practice; improve their night navigation and bomb-aiming. No sense sending them out to be shot down over strongly defended objectives,” said the Brigadier.

  “The point would appear to be, Brigadier, that they are not yet ready for such long-distance sorties. The evidence suggests to me that they need to polish up their night flying before they venture as deep into Germany as they did tonight.”

  The Brigadier turned to Yardley.

  “What do you think, Yardley?”

  “What I think, sir, is that as we don’t yet know how many aircraft are actually missing, we can’t put a convincing case one way or the other.”

  Again Quinn’s face became brick red. His upper lip twitched three times in quick succession.

  He said, “Are you persisting in your unrealistic pretence that the two missing aircraft may turn up, Yardley?”

  “No, Colonel. I am persisting in my entirely reasonable assessment of the probabilities — having actually been on the sortie; and knowing my crews much better than anyone — which is that at least one of them has a good chance of getting back eventually. Any time after dawn.”

  Tearle, chiding himself once more for thinking in hackneyed phrases and excusing himself on the plea of extreme fatigue, reckoned that if looks could kill, the one Quinn was giving Yardley would be instantly fatal. He hoped that his fear would prove unjustified. He feared that Colonel Quinn, who was ruthless in his ambitions and already had his knife into Yardley, hated contradiction and was deeply vindictive, would exploit his authority to the Squadron Commander’s irredeemable harm.

  Chapter Four

  In the past seven days the sound of her mother’s weeping had been an almost constant background to Ilse’s thoughts. Her only sure escape from it was by working out of doors; feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, feeding the pigs and cleaning their sties. At this time of year there was nothing much to do in the vegetable garden or the flowerbeds.

  “What a terrible start to the year,” her mother kept sobbing. “But at least no greater tragedy can befall us than losing your dear father.”

  The shock had affected Frau Nauroth’s chronic affliction, so that she had been spending only two hours a day out of bed. The house was so small that even when she was upstairs and Ilse was downstairs, Ilse could hear her mother’s tears and lamentations: she had taken to talking to herself in her grief.

  Friends and relations came daily to visit and try to comfort the widow, but she was inconsolable.

  Ilse, in whom there was no cynicism anyway, was no less grief-stricken than her mother. She had seldom heard her parents quarrel or her father raise his voice to her mother, and she accepted her mother’s repeated assertions that he had been the best man who ever lived and they had been ideally happy. Ilse, without any feeling of disloyalty, did not entirely credit these eulogies, but allowed that her parents had been happier than most couples she knew. To hear her mother talk now, one would suppose that they had been inseparable, whereas he used to spend three evenings a week out of the house: drinking beer, playing cards and gossiping with other old soldiers or fellow railway employees.

  In the evenings he had sat in the living room, reading the paper and smoking his pipe, talking little. On Sundays, when they used the parlour, he smoked cigars and was rather more talkative because they had visitors and used to go out visiting family and friends. Half his working time was spent on night duty, and then he slept most of the day and was taciturn when awake.

  He had been what her mother, of course, habitually described as “a fine figure of a man”: tall, heavy, glossy-moustached, with a beer-belly that was even larger than his impressive chest. Frau Nauroth was tall for a woman and before her illness she had carried herself as erect as her husband; and displayed a prominent bust and flashing eyes.

  Ilse’s two brothers, one a year her junior and the other two years her senior, had both joined the Army in 1914. The former had gone to the Western Front as an infantryman and been blown to pieces by a British shell in his first week. The latter had joined the Air Service as an NCO pilot and flown Aviatik and Taube machines on reconnaissance. He had a longer run for his money and was not shot down and killed by the British until 1916.

  The Nauroth family had a deep grudge against the British, although Ilse’s father had often said that Germany’s real enemies were the French. The British and German royal households were, at least, closely related; but there were no blood ties with the French: who were only republicans, anyway.

  “Shells and bullets are neither royalist nor republican,” his wife had sobbed every time he expressed this prejudice after their first boy was killed. “The English have taken my sons and I hate them for it.”

  In fact the fatal shell had been fired by a Scotsman and the burst of Vickers gun fire which killed the second son had been loosed off by a Welshman. Both of them would have been as much insulted by being called English as they would by being called French. To both Germans and French, all British were English. Fine internecine distinctions were no concern of theirs.

  Ilse, exceptionally, did take an interest in such matters. Her loathing for the British was no less than her parents’, but she criticised her own country in her thoughts and blamed the Kaiser for the war and, therefore, indirectly for her brothers’ deaths. She had never dared voice such treachery.

  She had been a good student. Had it not been for her mother’s disease she would have been in some good job by now; at least a schoolteacher. She had abandoned her place at the high school in Schutzstadt, 12 miles away, when her mother fell ill.

  Schutzstadt, the local metropolis, had grown in the past half-century from a market-town of 20,000 inhabitants to twice its size. A leather-goods industry had grown up around a new tannery and soon a garment factory had started up. It still had the air of a town belonging to farmers rather than to manufacturers. Specially timed trains took the workers to and from the town and surrounding villages. It was thus that the cleverer children also attended their schools in Schutzstadt.

  Although Ilse no longer continued her formal education, she read a lot and was regarded in Fichtewald with respect for her knowledge as much as for her devotion to her parents.

  A week after the signalbox had collapsed on top of Herr Nauroth, Ilse received a caller.

  Uwe Gratz was the third of Foreman Gratz’s five sons. There were also three daughters. Foreman Gratz was known to his friends as das Kaninchen, The Rabbit.

  Ilse conceded that Uwe, who was six years her elder, was a decent enough fellow and not at all bad-looking. It would have been better if he were taller than she; or at least her own height. As it was, he stood about an inch less, even when they were both in their stocking-feet (they had argued about it and stood thus back to back once to prove her point). Like his father, he was bulky and would, no doubt, in time, run to fat and as many chins. But he had good, strong features, merry dark eyes and curly hair.

  Like Ilse, he was more intelligent than his siblings. Unlike her, he had been able to progress to technical high school and pursue his engineering studies.

  As soon as he had qualified, two years before the war, he had taken a big risk and, instead of looking for a position in a factory or on the railway, he had joined the Air Service. Flying, he said, was the coming thing. Th
e best future lay before aviation engineers. He would learn to fly and combine his two skills.

  The war caught him unawares. Because he was already an experienced pilot, he was still alive and an Oberfeldwebel, a warrant officer. He had the Iron Cross. In the RFC he would certainly have been commissioned; and most probably in the French flying Service.

  Uwe Gratz had come home the previous evening on a week’s leave. He arrived on his bicycle while Ilse was out in the chicken yard. She heard him tinkle his cycle bell and knew who it was, but did not stop what she was doing. Uwe might think he was her beau, and so might a lot of other people in the village; but as far as she was concerned, she was fancy-free and would remain so at least until the war was over. He was not, anyway, exactly what she had in mind for a husband: there was a conceit and arrogance about him which she found had grown with the years.

  He called from outside the wire-netted enclosure. She was in one of the hen-houses, picking up eggs and replenishing food-troughs.

  “Ilse! I am home! Look, I have come at once to see you.”

  There was a decent sobriety in his tone and she quaked at the thought of having to undergo more condolences. Every time she thought of her father, tears came to her eyes.

  She emerged from the hen-house and managed a smile.

  “Good morning, Uwe. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Ilse.” His face assumed a doleful expression. “My condolences on your bereavement.”

  “Thank you.”

  A lump came into her throat and she turned away. With her back to him, she said, “Won’t be a minute,” and disappeared among the chickens again.

  He heard scuffling and clucking and her voice shushing and shooing them.

  “Can I help you?” he called.

  “No, thank you. This is women’s work.”

  “I am not ashamed to do it.”

  Not as long as nobody was looking, he wasn’t. And she knew from experience why he wanted to get her alone in the hen-house. She didn’t mind a bit of a cuddle and a kiss or two, but not until she was good and ready for it. She was not in the mood. And, anyway, his physique was not all he had inherited from his father: although it wasn’t Rabbit they’d called him around Fichtewald and Schutzstadt when he came home for vacations from his engineering college. They’d called him Hermelin: Stoat.

  Not that she particularly minded him pestering other girls. It relieved her of a considerable irritation. But he needn’t think he was going to get any special favours here.

  When she opened the gate in the fence and went out onto the path, he politely helped her to close it and ventured a smile.

  “You look pretty, even when you are mucking out the fowls,” he told her.

  She ignored that.

  “How long are you home for?”

  “A week.”

  They walked side by side towards the house.

  “How are things at the Front?” she asked.

  “Ilse!” He looked pained.

  “What have I said wrong?” she asked with pretended innocence.

  “You know I have been instructing for the past six months.”

  He sounded huffy at her apparent forgetfulness, caused no doubt by her lack of interest in him.

  “Of course I know that. It was just a manner of speaking.”

  “I wish to pay my respects to your mother.”

  “She is still in bed. She will not get up until midday; and then only for a couple of hours.”

  “I am very sorry to hear that. Please give her my regards.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  She gave him a quick look and he understood that she did not want any more allusion to her father’s death.

  He said, “Anyway, you were not so far wrong: I am rejoining a squadron.”

  “So you will be at the Front once more.”

  She led him into the house.

  “Not exactly...”

  “A cup of coffee? Or so-called.”

  For the past three years food rationing had been severe and many items had been unobtainable. Acorns were poor substitutes for coffee beans.

  “Drunk in your company, it will taste like the finest Brazilian or Turkish coffee.”

  “We’ll see if you still say the same when you’ve tasted the only stuff I’ve been able to get. I often think dried fowl-droppings would be tastier.”

  “I hope you will resist any temptation to try them.”

  “So where is your new squadron?”

  “They are opening a new aerodrome outside Schutzstadt...”

  “What? So far from the Front?”

  “Our duties will have nothing to do with the Western Front. We are to establish a new defence line against the English bombers that constantly attack our rear areas in France and have the cheek to cross the frontier and bomb the Fatherland.”

  Ilse looked concerned.

  “That sounds ominous. Are things getting so bad? And are they expected to get worse?”

  “No, they will improve as soon as we are in position and in action.”

  “Won’t you find life in Schutzstadt dull, after the fleshpots of Lille and Brussels?”

  “There will be one advantage that even Paris would lack if we get there.”

  “What is that?”

  She knew what he was going to say, of course.

  He put a hand on her waist.

  “I shall be near you.”

  She moved away from his encircling arm to pour the coffee.

  “What will you be flying?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said, Ilse?”

  “Yes, and I asked you what aeroplanes you will be flying.”

  “Ilse! You know what I meant. I’ll say it again: I’m going to like being at Schutzstadt because it will be so near to you.”

  “How complimentary!”

  “You don’t care?”

  “I’m very pleased on your account, if that is what you want. Will you be flying Albatroses?”

  “Yes. The Albatros D5. And maybe something even better.”

  “That is good. I hope you will be able to keep the English aeroplanes well away from here.”

  He moved close to her again and laid an arm across her shoulders.

  “You can be sure of that.”

  “Let’s take our coffee into the living room.”

  She was setting cups and saucers, sugar (not much of it) and milk, on a tray, which she now picked up.

  Uwe opened and shut doors and stood looking at her while she poured the coffee.

  She looked up.

  “Here you are, Uwe.”

  He took his cup, put it on a table, took hers away and did the same. Then he went to her and put both his arms around her.

  “Haven’t you got a warmer welcome for me, Ilse?”

  “You know I’m always glad to see you, Uwe.”

  He bent his head quickly and kissed her. She remained passive, enjoying the embrace because she was young, healthy and normal, but not returning it.

  “Your lips are so soft, Ilse; they drive me mad.”

  “I am sure you know what you are talking about.”

  “Dammit, you make me feel like some sort of profligate.”

  “You have every right to be whatever you wish.”

  “I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

  “Oh, I don’t. I am very broadminded...”

  “Ilse! All right, let us talk about something else. Look, there is to be a concert in Schutzstadt on Wednesday evening. Would you like to come with me? Or would you prefer to go to the cinema?”

  “I would enjoy a concert. Thank you. Now have a slice of cake and tell me more about your new squadron.”

  “Wait till you hear who is commanding it.”

  “Richthofen?” she said jokingly.

  “Stahlschmidt,” he told her triumphantly.

  “I’m impressed.”

  Major Stahlschmidt was one of the most celebrated fighter pilots of the whole war.

  “We mean business.
The CO is not the only one of that calibre. There are three others who hold the Pour le Mérite. And the rest are all highly experienced.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Her expression had suddenly changed and her whole face now expressed a suspicion that was matched by the shrewdness in her eyes. From a mildly bantering tone her voice had altered and she sounded captious. A calculating young woman, anyone who did not know her well might have thought.

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t it a military secret?”

  “Hardly. The aerodrome is being constructed quite openly and soon everyone will see the aeroplanes assembling there.”

  “Maybe. But there will presumably not be large notices to say they are there to prevent the enemy bombing eastern France and Germany.”

  “The High Command is not worried, Ilse; it is aware, that is all. I’ll tell you something more. You’ll soon see barrage balloons around the railway junction here and protecting the aerodrome and factories at Schutzstadt. The factories are not major targets, of course, like the munitions and heavy industrial plants in the Ruhr, but they make their contribution to war materials and deserve protection.”

  “It sounds to me as though the authorities are becoming very anxious about the enemy penetrating deep into Germany.”

  “We intend to stop it before it happens. To do that effectively one needs to know all about the offensive before one can defend effectively. Remember, we have been sending our Zeppelins to bomb England for years. We know what the problems are: so we shall be able to present those problems to the enemy.”

  “Have you ever been bombed, Uwe?”

  “Of course I have. When I was flying from bases close to the front line, the enemy often came over.”

  “By night?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “I have. My impression is that they drop their bombs indiscriminately when they are fired on. That is more dangerous for the public than if they aim precisely. Any of us can get hit.”

  Tears showed in her eyes.