101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  Then they saw her aerials. It was an XYZ aircraft, one of themselves.

  They looked at the letter.

  ‘Who’s flying Charlie?’, asked Jackal.

  ‘Hell! That’s Johnnie Muller’s crew,’ said Magnetic.

  ‘They bloody nearly collected us. But I sure wish them luck.’2

  The next day was Sunday and they did not fly. The 101 Squadron hangars echoed to a new military sound: of shouted orders and of marching feet. Now that the war was far away and air raids could not reach them it was safe to hold a formal church parade.

  There were roll calls and inspections. Waafs whose uninspected hair had grown luxuriantly all winter were ordered, ‘Have it cut. This isn’t a beauty parlour, it’s an air force.’ Sergeants whose boots had not been polished since the last squadron dance were loudly and publicly upbraided. Officers who had been sergeants the last time they were on parade found themselves in charge of flights and wished the ground could open up and swallow them. Here, indeed, was evidence that peace was coming soon.

  ‘All present and correct, sir!’, came the shouts.

  So many were not present, but few minds thought of that. For most of the thousand and more men and women this was the true beginning of the end, time to get out, time to leave the air force to playing at toy soldiers.

  ‘Roman Catholics and Jews fall out on the left!’ roared the SWO. Everybody else would attend a non-denominational service.

  But men at war take ill to parades and pomp. Bright-eyed Jackal found grounds for protest. He stepped out of position and the Adjutant asked what was the matter.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jackal seriously, ‘what about Druids?’

  ‘Don’t talk rot, Cahill. There aren’t any Druids.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Jackal, with great mock sincerity. ‘I am a Druid, sir. When I enlisted I was asked my religion. I said, ‘Christian’. But they insisted that I be Methodist or Presbyterian, and I pointed out that these were not religions but denominations. I had no denomination, so they wanted to put me down as Church of England, which they said was fundamental to this country. But I pointed out that this country can be more fundamental than that and specified myself as Druid—officially. So, sir, is there a Church Parade for Druids, sir?’

  Jackal was really being too polite. The Adjutant called over the SWO for a whispered conference. Then the SWO made a flamboyant about turn and yelled; ‘Roman Catholics, Jews and Druids fall out on the left.’

  Alone, Jackal clicked his heels, stepped forward, and joined the renegade band.

  Even parades could not keep war away, near though the disciplinarians’ dreams were coming. When next they flew to what remained of Germany, it was by night to Kiel.

  This delighted them. If fly they must, then Kiel—one of those German targets which did not seem to put its heart into the fight—was more harmless than most. Most German cities fought lustily with all the skill and all the venom they could muster. Leipzig, Stuttgart, Berlin, Düsseldorf were four cities which made of war in the air a spiteful, personal feud.

  Perhaps the people of Kiel felt that, not their city but their dockyards and their naval base were the targets. The navy was the target; let the navy defend themselves.

  No matter what the reason, Kiel was far from being a dreaded target in April 1945. Moreover, this attack offered something new: the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, which had shelled Spanish civilians in 1937, was in dock.

  Kiel was an uncomplicated target: sea-leg all the way there, bomb, then out and sea-leg all the way home again. There was only the target to lend any interest at all. That target, however, was a pyrotechnic marvel to behold. Navy ack-ack defences are built mainly to counter low-flying aircraft. Tonight’s attack was from high-flying aircraft but, nothing daunted, the German gunners still sequinned the velvet sky with every gun they had.

  Then the background lit with dangling flares, the marker bombs opened like eyes and blinked up at the unexpected brilliance. The master bomber said; ‘The reds are spot-on. Bomb the reds. Bomb the reds.’

  Jackal, Magnetic and Vincent each spoke one line after bombing.

  ‘Wizard prang!’

  ‘Jolly fine show.’

  ‘Very pretty target.’

  Then they flew home.

  Pussy Newman was writing the raid into his flying logbook. He looked up and asked, ‘How do you spell Admiral Scheer?’

  ‘Why bother?’ asked Krink. ‘There’s a swell picture of it in the paper. ‘This picture’, it says, ‘shows the battleship Admiral Scheer upside down at Kiel. She has been written off by Lancasters which bombed her on Monday night at the cost of ten planes missing. The capsized ship now looks very much like the Tirpitz did after the RAF had finished with her in Tromsoe Fiord.’

  ‘But how do you spell ‘Scheer’? repeated Pussy.

  ‘You mean you’re not going to paste in the clipping?’

  ‘This,’ said Pussy with dignity, ‘is a logbook, not a scrapbook.’3

  Cured of his diabetes and fit again for flying, Joe returned to Ludford. His first visit was to the hospital where he, a flight sergeant, told the MO, a Flight Lieutenant, what he thought of him. The MO did not actually apologise to Joe, but he did say that he now saw that Europe was too fierce a theatre of war for his poor, colonial nerves, and assured Joe that he would arrange, on medical grounds, a quick removal from local operations and a posting to a quieter squadron in Burma.4

  — 9 —

  H-H, now Johnnie—both lost in daylight. One by one the old gang were going. Hyde had gone long ago. It seemed cruel that some of them should have lasted almost to the end …1

  The wreck of Johnnie’s plane was found without survivors. They had crashed high in the Alps, and their would-be rescuers had been forced to leave the frozen bodies there beneath a simple cairn, ringed-in with rugged peaks.

  Vincent was in the mess having an after-dinner drink with Wendy, when the new Specials leader came over and told them that he had just had the confirmation.

  Wendy received the news quietly. She remembered Johnnie saying; ‘We have all the time in the world and suddenly I have faith that romance will come.’

  ‘All the time in the world,’ she mused. ‘How little we know. Johnnie’s tender patience was his charm. I think I loved him for that.’ She had never truly faced the question because he had always said there was plenty of time. And yet, within a little month …

  She wanted to feel sad, and lounging in the mess with a drink at her elbow seemed wrong.

  Vincent’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘May I see you home?’

  In his voice was the same soft, sympathetic note that she had found so reassuring when she had heard it before, when she had walked out on Hyde at their DFC party. But that time Vincent was a flight sergeant and he added, ‘Ma’am’. Now he out-ranked her. Now he seemed older and stronger in every way.

  Vincent had brought her home that night, and been the perfect Galahad. For one moment, at her doorstep, she thought he would become the Don Juan, but again he called her ‘Ma’am’, and rank had stifled whatever he might have said. And so was set the pattern of their friendship.

  She had asked him over to met for tea. He had come, shyly at first, but always she had looked forward to his coming. And then he brought Magnetic and they had suddenly become a part of the office. The four of them: Vincent, Magnetic, Johnnie and Joe. They made the office so alive!

  Wendy remembered, when she had wondered about Chiltern, the chill she felt when she had tried to imagine how she would react if anything happened to those four. Well, now Joe was gone and Johnnie was dead. Somehow she could not feel any more seriously about the one than about the other. She was furious about the dirty trick that Joe had suffered. She felt infinitely sorry for Johnnie, and in her mind she used the phrase: poor little Johnnie.

  She checked herself now and seemed to understand herself. Could she have loved a man she thought of as ‘poor little Johnnie’? Vincent spoke and she stopped in
mid-thought to listen.

  ‘Why are men so brutal?’, he asked. ‘Once you beat a foe, must you pound him to pulp? After Dunkirk, Hitler vowed that he would pursue all enemies to their ‘total annihilation’. We, a little later, demanded nothing less than ‘unconditional surrender’. I’m sure the fighting and flying that is going on now is unnecessary. Did we need to bomb Ulm? Did Johnnie have to get killed?’

  ‘Ours not to reason why …’

  ‘Ours is to reason why!’, corrected Vincent. Johnnie’s death had annoyed him. ‘In wartime we dare not reason why aloud but the war is ending now. When it is over, men must reason why.’2

  They walked from the mess, silent for a moment, and then Wendy noticed that their arms were linked. Vincent noticed it almost with surprise too, because they were suddenly both conscious of it.

  They had reached Wendy’s hut. Although they had walked slower and slower as they drew near, they were bound to arrive eventually. They paused, but before they actually stopped, Vincent tugged her arm and said, ‘Overshoot. Let’s go round again.’

  He stopped and turned and looked at her. The new spring air had enhanced the lovely colouring of her skin; crisp moonlight burnished her hair, casting soft shadows to highlight her aristocratic cheekbones and her baby nose. Her eyes, in shadow, were dark and soft, and her tender lips were trembling into a smile.

  This was the moment to kiss her. But then Vincent thought of Johnnie. Wendy was upset. It was because she was upset that he was seeing her home.

  Their silence grew intense as they resumed their walk. Both of them were tinglingly aware of what had not been said. Wendy realised anew how much she liked this shy, casually graceful young man. He had masculine confidence, and he knew his mind and had thoughts and convictions, right or wrong, that he was not afraid to express. Yet he was shy and she was glad. She knew, now, that she could match his pace.

  ‘This is a precious moment,’ he said. ‘It is just right, except that it has come on an unpropitious night. And it is a week or so too early. Do you think we can recapture this moment?’

  ‘Why must we?’

  ‘There is a little time must pass by first. Don’t fret. The war can’t last more than a few weeks. And then we can speak boldly and we won’t be mourning friends.’

  She shivered slightly in his arms and he kissed her, lightly and tenderly, and suddenly he knew that he was right not to be carried away tonight. It could all happen so easily and uncontrollably and tonight it would be irreverent: a thought, perhaps, to haunt them.

  He smiled at her, admiring the way her mouth remained oval and small as he had kissed it. He said; ‘We have all the time in the world.’

  ‘Oh, Vincent, please don’t.’ She pressed her hand to his lips and, in answer to his look of surprise she explained, ‘Johnnie said that. Those very words.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, softly.

  ‘He is haunting us tonight.’

  ‘Yes. But don’t be sad, please, ‘for here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light’.’

  ‘Is Juliet in a vault?’

  ‘Yes. But only sleeping. she is about to waken to her lover.’

  Standing on the step of her hut, she could almost look straight into his eyes and she could see that they were laughing again. He kissed her softly.

  Then pressing her hands in his, he kissed them, too, and whispered; ‘Tomorrow.’

  He smiled again, then left her. Sadly she watched him go. ‘About to waken to her lover,’ she repeated. ‘But in that story, when Juliet awakened, her lover was dead.’3

  ‘We always have put you in the picture,’ said the Squadron Commander, ‘and we shall this time, too. Though it’s rather a different picture. Your target is Dresden.

  ‘Dresden is an art city and has never been bombed. For that reason, refugees have flocked there. Its population, usually half a million, is now over three millions.

  ‘Right! The Big Three have agreed that it should be Russia’s honour to capture Berlin. The British weren’t happy about that when it was decided, and we’re a damned sight less happy about it now, because Stalin has halted his armies outside Berlin and is making a dash for the Mediterranean to cut off all Eastern Europe. If he does that then we, the British, have lost the war. We entered it to prevent Hitler from upsetting the European balance of power. If Stalin wins all eastern Germany and cuts off Czechoslovakia and Austria and Hungary and Jugoslavia (as he is attempting and as he will if we don’t stop him), then the balance of power in Europe is haywire anyway and we have fought for nothing.

  ‘So we must stop him—and those millions of refugees in Dresden are going to help us do it. The trick is a German one. Before Dunkirk, you remember, Germany bombed Rotterdam to force refugees on to the roads to block our retreat. Right, that’s what we plan: to use German refugees to block the Russians. Dresden is not a target in the normal way, but I think you can see that it may suddenly prove your most important mission of the war.’4

  Dresden was not, as the Wing Commander had warned, a normal target. The bombers flew through almost no opposition. The precious guns which had guarded Dresden had long been moved to more vital targets. In a city which had never needed air raid shelters, refugees in their thousands had turned the shelters into homes. Hotels, shops and houses were crammed with refugees; some people were living in the streets. And into this defenceless mass the bombs struck terror.

  That was exactly what they were supposed to do. Had those people but known it, the British aim in stopping Russia was Germany’s aim, too, but blind fear knows no logic. It was not a big raid; less than three hundred bombers, and it lasted only a few minutes. But the German papers said that in those few minutes 600,000 people died.5

  The RAF have great respect for the German nation. They stood and fought and took a frightful beating and did not cry. Dresden is the only raid that they resent. To wipe out Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Nürnberg, Düsseldorf; all that they understood and forgave. This was total war, they had started it.6

  But Dresden, they said, was not a target. They speak of Dresden as the British speak of Coventry. True, the Coventry Cathedral was destroyed, but nobody can deny that Coventry proper was a legitimate target.

  What, we might wonder, do the Luftwaffe think of British towns? They are bound to speak with respect. By London and by Fighter Command the Luftwaffe was defeated. They could hardly say; ‘This man is not a fighter yet he beat me.’

  So the refugees were frightened out from Dresden; out onto the roads to block the Russians. But we had over-estimated Russian compassion. Their guns and tanks and transports thundered as well over refugees as through blank streets.7 They had orders to strike south, to the Adriatic at least, and only guns, not people, could stop them. The Russians reached Trieste. Dresden had suffered in vain and Yalta had lost us the war.

  Jackal flung the paper aside.

  ‘Well, that looks like it,’ he said. ‘Germany announces Hitler’s death and the next day Berlin falls. They won’t carry on now. We can all go home.’

  ‘Who can call a halt if Hitler’s dead?’ asked Vincent.

  ‘Anybody. The generals. The admirals. I say the war’s over and the first thing I want to do is trounce you for your table tennis title.’

  ‘The G-C forbade it.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re talking like an ex-champion already. Now come along and bring two beers.’

  Vincent won the first game. Jackal won the second. The third would be the decider. They had started it when Flight Lieutenant Lane, the met officer, stuck his head into the games room and asked if they had seen Wendy.

  Then he said, ‘Hello! Not playing him for his title are you, Jackal?’

  ‘Not really playing him for it. Playing with him for it is nearer the truth. Stick around and be the first to congratulate the new champ.’

  Jackal was as good as his word. He was in fine spirits, whereas Vincent’s heart was not in his game. Jackal crashed home the winning drive, then flung his ba
t in the air.

  ‘Shake my hand, Mr Met-man’, he said. ‘Congratulate me.’

  ‘I’ll shake your hand, but in condolence, not praise. You realise that now you’ve beaten this man you’re doomed.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ They were both laughing. ‘The war’s over. And anyway, I can’t get killed because he flies with me.’

  ‘At that rate you’re both doomed. Better play him again and let him win this time.’

  ‘Not on your life! If I did play him again he probably would win.’

  ‘Well, let me buy you a farewell drink. The bar’s as likely a place as any to find Wendy.’

  They never did have that drink. As they walked from the games room the Tannoy called all navigators to prepare for another raid.

  The announcement of Hitler’s death had struck Command as unconvincing. He was to be war criminal number one: naturally he would try to escape. A fake death would deliver him from his own people too; his memory of Mussolini’s fate would still be fresh in his mind. It was quite possible that he had fled, and if so they knew where he would be—Berchtesgaden. Command decided, therefore, to beard him in his lair.8

  Berchtesgaden by day! It was more amusing than ever. Way down to the Alps to find a hole in a mountain-top and fill it in. Ulm had surprised them, now they must fly past Ulm, past dread Munich itself, to the farthest point of the war, over mountains where crash landings were unthinkable and to bale out meant death from cold upon some glacier—and in daylight.

  The crews drew some excitement, however, from what must have seemed the most personal attack of the war. This was not an air raid, it was a manhunt and the quarry was Hitler himself.

  The setting for this raid was even lovelier than it had been for Ulm. This time they were flying right along the line of the Alps. The sun, hurrying up from the south now spring gained momentum, rose even higher.

  Jackal and Magnetic in their flying glasshouse, were soon flying in shirt-sleeves. Beyond Strasbourg they found themselves atop a newborn world of ice and glacier.