101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  But it takes more than spirit to drive an aeroplane; it takes engines. And S-Sugar had only half her engines. They watched her, and they watched a new Messerschmitt rocket fighter flash up behind her, 100 mph faster than any Allied fighter.5

  S-Sugar had hardly started to evade when she blew up.

  Back at Ludford, Barbara was sitting in the Riley as usual, waiting for H-H.

  As one of the last crews was walking in, she asked, ‘Has the Squadron Commander landed yet?’

  ‘No, Ma’am. And he’s not going to. A squirt put a burst into his bomb bay and he blew up.’

  Barbara said, ‘Thank you’, and let out the clutch.

  Not until they saw her driving off alone did they remember that H-H flew with the Squadron Commander.

  They watched the snappy little Riley, a streak of green speeding along the perimeter track. They noticed that it did not turn off towards the village. It was going straight, faster and faster, skimming over the mile-straight stretch of tarmac. It seemed to bounce a little at the end.

  That was when it ran off the tarmac and over the turf. Then they saw a sudden, vivid orange flash and, a few seconds later, heard the muffled, grinding roar as the Riley hit a tree at full speed and exploded.

  Not long afterwards the American Merlin was withdrawn from bomber operations and existing stocks relegated to Training Command.6

  — 7 —

  ‘I enclose a copy of The Med Student which includes your article on altitude toothache. Your extraction treatment for a psychological ache was considered extreme. The Learned Company supported you, though, pointing out that RAF practice would be more conversant with altitude toothache than we students. (Why are professors always so dashed pompous?) Anyway, Robert, thanks for writing a jolly provoking article. Which brings me to my reason for writing.

  An article on morals in the services (with a medical slant somewhere to make it qualify) would give The Med Student quite a fillip. Do you think you could write it for us? I mentioned it to old Potter and he said that the topic was not only unsuitable but that he had known you from a boy and was certain you would not know sufficient of the subject to write on it, and he most definitely thought we should be overstepping the mark to ask you to enter the fray, as it were, in order to find out. But if you could see your way clear …’

  Jackal flicked the letter with the back of his hand. ‘So from here on, dear boy,’ he said, ‘sex for me is a Medical Challenge. ‘Pardon me, madam,’ I shall say, ‘I am conducting a poll.’ And then I shall do any damned thing I like and lay my conscience at the feet of science.

  ‘Come off it,’ said Vincent. ‘Don’t blame science because you’re a rake. You’re like one of my navigators who swore his calculations were right and tried to blame a ten mile error on astronomy. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.’1 You should at least have the courage of your seductions.’

  ‘Do they always talk like this?’ asked a smooth, swarthy sergeant sitting next to Magnetic.

  ‘Not always,’ said Magnetic. ‘Sometimes they talk about food.’

  The sergeant was their new gunner. Yarpi was awaiting court martial. The sergeant looked the kind of man sometimes seen around ill-lit bars in smoky night-clubs sipping pernod and wearing sunglasses.2 Actually his manner belied his appearance. He was respectful and unassuming. His name was Alan Nuffield. Before he joined the RAF he had never been out of Wales.

  The first trip Alan flew with his new crew was full of excitement. Once more it was in daylight, once more it was the Ruhr.

  When Bomber Comand flew in close support of the army they needed perfect weather. A few clouds over the target had prevented many a raid because, in doubtful visibility there would be scope for the tragic mistake of bombing the wrong army.3

  It was expensive, however, to plan a raid, fly to the target, then turn back without bombing. Even a small force of three hundred bombers would waste more than half a million gallons of petrol. Some bombs they could bring back, but it was too dangerous to land with cookies so they always had to be jettisoned in the channel. In addition, it upset the aircrews. Even if they flew over a target, unless they bombed it was not counted as an operation and that hurt morale.

  So Command hit on the ‘free lance’ idea. If a close support target was obscured, the master bomber could give the force permission to bomb free lance. They must then fly at least a further five minutes into Germany, where they could select any target they saw and bomb it. It showed what superiority the Allies now had in the air, though crews soon discovered that this new game could be dangerous.

  The target was obscured when they arrived, and the master bomber gave them free lance. The whole force droned on over almost continuous cloud. After five minutes, one by one the Lancasters bombed and turned back. But M-Mother seemed unlucky. Underneath she saw only solid cloud. The sky around them was growing very empty and still they saw no cloud break with a target under it. Big Bob in the bombing compartment was growing quite anxious, but still he refused to bomb until he saw a target worth the trouble they had gone to.

  After sixteen minutes, when they were sixty miles into Germany, all but one of the main force had bombed and turned back. Their only companion was another Lancaster with 460 Squadron markings which was flying beside them and had shared their patch of cloud-filled sky.4

  It was bright daylight, and they were now without fighter escort. They were one of just two bombers wandering into almost central Germany looking, it seemed, for somewhere to be shot down.

  ‘Germany is like some parts of the female anatomy,’ said Jackal. ‘The nearer you get to it the worse it looks.’

  At last Jackal said, ‘There’s a gap! Fifteen port! It’s small but you might see something.’

  He swung M-Mother towards the patch of clear sky. As they turned, the other Lancaster decided to come with them. Suddenly Bob spoke.

  ‘I can see railway lines! Right five, skip. Bit more! Steadee. There’s a rail-head down there; it looks like a coalmine. Right, right, steady. Steadee, bombs away.’

  It had been a very quick run up, and so small was the gap that the other Lancaster had been unable to bomb. Jackal kept on course just long enough to get his target photographs, then they turned gladly for home. The other Lancaster turned with them, obviously deciding against flying on alone.

  For ten minutes they droned westward and still he did not bomb. There were a few cloud breaks but underneath was always open meadow. It is surprising how little of any country constitutes a target.

  Still the other Lancaster did not bomb. And still, thank God, the Germans ignored them. Within two minutes they would be within ten miles of the front. Unless he bombed now it would be too late.

  Then they saw the village. They did not give it more than a glance; a village is not a target.

  ‘Hell! He’s opening his bomb bays,’ announced Magnetic.

  ‘Oh! the rotten bastard!’

  They looked down at the darling little village. It had, perhaps, fifty houses. A creek ran through it from north to south, and a road crossed over a bridge then ran into a forest. It looked sleepy and delightful, a sweet little village which might have been in Devon or Oxfordshire or Westmorland. And now this oaf was going to bomb it!

  The bombs went curling down toward the quiet villagers, all unmindful of their doom. M-Mother’s crew watched the furthest bombs grow smaller as they fell, like a tapered row of church organ pipes, sharp-tipped and grey.

  It was a perfect piece of bombing. The eleven bombs fell in one straight line, starting at the eastern tip of the village. There were ten thousand pounders and one cookie. The thousands straddled the whole village, one hit the bridge, then the cookie landed just on the edge of the forest.

  As it did so, even before its own explosion had subsided, it was followed by another and even greater blast. Two more eruptions followed, deeper into the forest; sympathetic explosions set off by the first. They had unknowingly bombed a precious ammunition dump.5
/>   Back on the squadron, Yarpi and Joe had been making a fuss.

  Joe had reported to Base and, within a few minutes, his illness had been diagnosed as neuro-diabetes. When excited and over-anxious about flying he suddenly had an involuntary attack of diabetes—the effect was intense though short-lived. Joe insisted that the MO who wanted to reclassify him LMF was either a fool or a spiteful villain, and should be punished. Nobody paid any real attention to Joe’s pleas. Few bothered to wonder how a man would feel to be innocently branded LMF. Joe lay in hospital and sulked.

  Yarpi was doing everything in his power to avoid what looked like an extremely serious charge. Sabotage of one’s own aircraft was so rare and serious a crime that he knew his punishment would not be light. He, too, was appealing for medical justice. It really was a pity that he had not reported his epilepsy when it occurred. Few people would blame him for being sick. But sabotage was a different and far more serious matter. The medical people were not being very helpful. Even if they proved the illness, they explained, that did not excuse sabotage.

  Yarpi’s real hopes were just blossoming. He was trying to exert political influence in South Africa and through the Union officials in Britain. Perhaps, if he could show that his case really came under Union and not RAF jurisdiction, perhaps then he had a chance …

  The next time the squadron flew over the Ruhr they flew only a few hundred feet high, in daylight, and they flew without loss. The Ruhr, Hitler’s arsenal and Europe’s most difficult and most bombed target, had fallen at last to the Allies.

  The Ruhr, the army said, fell without any great battle.

  Without any great battle! The battle of the Ruhr was never seen by soldiers. It had been a hybrid battle between a defence system and an air force. It was a battle which takes its place amongst the military giants. It had been waged throughout terrible years, back and forth, at fearful cost and sickening loss. It had ended, like all mammoth battles, in a crashing climax of attackers utterly triumphant and defenders utterly routed.

  After the battle came the army.

  A very different battle, smaller but as desperately contested, was decided after waging and waning between two continents, between two governments, between two corps of diplomats and two air forces. It was called in the Kroonstad Press ‘The Battle of Hero-Harry van Rijn’, and it hinged on a sabotage charge which they said was trumped up by jealous senior officers.6

  The Jaapie supporters had won. To Britain and the RAF, Yarpi’s future hardly warranted international tension.

  When he took his jubilant departure, Yarpi destroyed any good feeling his old crew might otherwise have felt by saying, ‘Next time you’re crashing in flames, man, think of me sipping iced rum and cokes on the sundeck of the SS Port Elizabeth.’

  — 8 —

  When fear is new and the sight of death has novelty, men will buffet danger to test their strength.

  When the novelty has gone, replaced by confidence and determination, then operations become a challenge. Halfway through a tour, the end is still distant.

  Trip by trip the end is being overtaken but is still too uncertain to dwell upon. It is not until the remaining trips number only five, then four, then three, that their minds dare to compute the cold statistics of deliverance.

  With three more trips to fly, at three per cent losses, the chance is 108 to 9 of living.

  Then it is 108 to 6.

  And then it is the final deal: 108 to 3, good odds but the heart is beating faster and the hand that deals the cards is trembling. It is all or nothing for the final jackpot.

  Men pray for an easy target as their last. They beg the chance to get it over quickly. A final trip to Stettin would seem a cruel omen.

  Even as men’s minds pondered the end of a tour, so, now, were spirits bent upon the end of the war. To end a tour meant a six month reprieve; to end the war meant more than most of them had dared to think on more than lightly.

  When Magnetic expressed the fear that Chiltern would kill them all they had agreed. Unconsciously, it seemed each mind had seen the gamble for life with dice loaded against them. Against loaded dice they had won through. The unexpected could happen. Now the war must soon end, and it seemed that at last the dice were loaded in their favour, yet could not the unexpected happen again?

  Men still flew and men still died. Luck could desert them.

  As Germany shrunk between the closing jaws of east and west the last few trips all seemed to be to Stettin. The army forced its eastward way and soon the only targets left were Halle, Magdeburg, hated Leipzig or far Berlin. The ten or twelve remaining German cities had gathered about them all the defences of the dwindling Reich and each determined to sell its capture dearly. Only distant targets remained and almost all of these had such a vicious reputation that their names still demanded respect even when the attackers knew that victory must soon be theirs.

  Thus the war in the air raged to the end with its old intensity. Here was no falling-off. This was not a mighty army opposing a collapsing, routed force. This was the old battle of planes against cities. The flyers fought with some misgivings. Were they not entitled to want to live after winning so near the goal?

  On 101 Squadron, particularly, the war’s ending would bring disturbing thoughts. The Specials, heart of this unique squadron, still included many Germans. What did unconditional German surrender offer to them? What did the end of the war mean to Johnnie Muller? Berlin was his home but Berlin was in ruins. He would go first to Switzerland and his mother. But England was more his home than Switzerland and England, with his help, was now delivering the death-blow to his homeland. He strove to find the ideal solution, the one right course which would satisfy every justice.

  But after the battle, what would the war have gained? Nazism would have been defeated but the spirit of Nazism might not have been purged from the German heart. The evil of Nazism, defeated by the evil of war, might still be potent: the war might have been fought to prove that two evils don’t make a good. And who was to say that an aggression worse than German aggression and a doctrine more evil than Nazism might not take its place?

  For Johnnie the war held fewer problems than the peace. And so he clung to war and resolved to deal with the peace when it arrived.

  Ulm in daylight was a sobering thought. Deep into southern Germany, almost to Switzerland, and by day. It would have been impossible while the Germans held the line along the Rhine. Perhaps it was still impossible but it was their target so they would soon know …

  As they flew south into the strengthening April sunshine it did not seem thinkable that this could be a rendezvous with war. High above a budding earth sugar-coated with dainty clouds, it was a delight to be alive. The morning sun, rising higher and higher above the dazzling Alps, comforted their cabins with warmth and cheerful light.

  Astonishingly the picture changed as, charcoal grey with pointed ochre centres, crackling flak-bursts drew a smoky road down which they flew.

  Many crews who had flown a first tour in the helter-skelter days after D-Day and screened—often inside two months and with less than a hundred hours of operational flying—were now flying their next tour and found the end of the war more dangerous than before.

  A year before, with 1943’s losses ringing in their ears, Command had ventured little. To fly by day at all was tempting Fate enough. Since then, Command had learned to say; ‘We rule the skies. We fly when and where we please. If men get killed? Well, we have plenty of men and planes. We can spare them. All we must do now is end the war quickly.’

  Nowadays, Command actually routed night attacks over flak areas intentionally. To waken a million workers, spoil their sleep and their morrow’s work, was considered worth losing a bomber or two.

  So had run their ever-quickening course. New weapons and new aids meant only fiercer fighting. The bombers were asked to do more and more.

  For the last two hundred miles the bombers had had no fighter escort, and they watched forebodingly the skies around them.
But German fighters did not come. Perhaps the fighters felt, like the bomber crews, that this would be a damned silly time to get killed.1

  An anti-aircraft gunner, on the other hand, fighting desperately on the ground, although he knows in his heart that all is lost, is not exposed to greater personal risk. He will fight with all the ferocity of hopelessness. He will try to win revenge with his last shell, try to cost the hated enemy one more dead.

  Most of the way to Ulm, Jackal held M-Mother straight and fast. Occasionally Bob, in the nose, or Ray in the rear, called for swift evasion of predicted flak, but shells needed to be close indeed to turn them aside.

  Bob saw the shell which was to mean so much to them. He called a quick evasion, Jackal dropped the nose and M-Mother shuddered as the next shells burst above her.

  Instantly Alan shouted to look up, but Jackal had already seen it. The Lancaster above them had been hit, her starboard engines were afire and her wingtip shot right off.

  Suddenly she was barely inches above M-Mother, weaving and waffling, impossible to avoid because her course was unpredictable.

  Jackal shoved the controls forward and M-Mother fell away, but still the burning aircraft fell above them, followed them down, glued to them as if she had impaled herself on M-Mother’s tall XYZ aerials and now planned twin suicide.

  There came a sudden crash and Magnetic shouted surprise as perspex shattered all over him. The trailing radio aerial from the stricken plane above fouled M-Mother’s starboard inner, its lead weight hurling itself against their cabin. In that moment of confusion, Jackal did not know what was happening. Alan cried; ‘She’s falling port!’, and then they could not see through the smoke as the burning plane poured over them.

  Six hectic seconds and it was all over. Jackal eased carefully starboard and, as they burst out of the trail of smoke they saw the stricken bomber half-flying, half-falling away to port. Her plight seemed desperate but, remembering N-Nuts and Groninberg, Magnetic thought they might make safety. As they watched the burning plane falling below the bomber stream they saw her turn off towards friendly Switzerland.