The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘When’s that going to be?’

  ‘Not soon enough. I can’t wait to get out of their clutches.’

  ‘You could come down and see me. I’ve a small house and a couple of spare kids alongside a pub on the south coast.’

  ‘That would be nice, Charlie. Thank you.’ She didn’t ask for my address though, and to be honest I was a little relieved. She wasn’t the sort of person you collected.

  Randall told me, ‘We’ll need to tank-up before we move on. Lübeck for tonight, and England tomorrow. OK?’

  ‘Fine, Randall. Anything you say. The airlift is on. The Pink Pig just flew a load of wood into Gatow. The Old Man’s pretty chuffed.’

  ‘I got three Pig-sized tyres in the back for you and five metal boxes for the station commander here.’

  ‘We can stick the tyres under the caravan, and cover them up with a tarp.’

  ‘What’s the Pig taxiing on at present, if I have her new tyres?’

  ‘The Russians gave me a couple. She’s on new rubber.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Charlie, but aren’t the Russians supposed to be the bad guys here? Starving us out, and that sort of thing?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Randall, and I don’t think I’m ready to tell it yet. Shall we walk over to the Watch Office and organize some gas, and transport for your boxes?’

  We overflew the outskirts of Hamburg that afternoon. The vis was perfect, and I could see for miles. There was no escaping the utter ruination of large areas of the city. No wind, and already smoke was rising from hundreds of open cooking fires amid the ruins. It made me feel sick. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I stared on for what seemed like hours, fascinated by the devastation I had helped to create.

  Randall observed, ‘I love coming to Hamburg and seeing this. I suppose they’ll rebuild it all one day and spoil it for me. Then I’ll have to go somewhere else.’

  I grunted a reply which caused him to look briefly at me. He asked, ‘You don’t like this, Charlie?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I was in Bremen when the war ended. The people were living in cellars; like animals.’

  ‘It served them damned well right. They spent years behaving like animals before that: I jest hope that we never let them ferget it.’

  ‘What do you think about the Airlift then? If it carries on we’ll be shipping food and fuel in next – to keep Jerry alive.’

  ‘I think that it’s a waste of time. The Kraut will come back and bite us again as soon as he can.’

  ‘The ones I meet seem to have learnt their lessons.’

  ‘If you’d been this soft in 1944 Charlie, we would have lost . . . an’ the Kraut would not be crying salty tears over you.’

  Randall’s chin was stuck out. I could tell he was looking for a fight over this. I told him, ‘I guess so. Get us away from here, Randall.’

  ‘OK, boss.’ He turned onto a northern heading. I think that he was relieved as well.

  Lübeck wasn’t as bad. We had disappeared the old wooden Hanseatic city centre for them on Palm Sunday in 1942, and it was only plastered a few more times after that – mainly the U-boat ship yards on the outskirts: once by me. By 1948 they’d cleaned up most of the mess, although the bones of the wrecked buildings and churches still reached for the sky, and there were more open spaces than Lübeck had started the war with.

  Both our Oxfords had the old 1154/1155 radio rigs I’d used in Lancasters and early Lincolns. It was good to get a decent radio under my hands again – it had been several weeks since I’d done the job in anger. The RAF Controller at Lübeck was a laid-back type who asked us to circle at five thou so that he could clear five inbound Yorks. The big silver RAF aircraft looked very impressive as they glided in one after the other. I relayed the information to Randall, who said, ‘I wonder if Dorothy is back yet. She was standing on her own two feet when I last saw her.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Week past. They were putting a new skin on her bottom, but her knickers were still showing.’ Then he asked me, ‘Can you wake them up again downstairs, and ask if they’re ready to receive us yet.’

  They weren’t. We had to watch two tiny Vampire jet fighters crawl along the taxiway and launch themselves into the sky. They went like shit off a shovel.

  ‘Ever flown a jet?’ I asked Randall.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Ever wanted to?’

  ‘Nope. Kids’ stuff.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things . . . those things aren’t aeroplanes, Charlie, they’re kids’ toys.’

  ‘That’s from the Bible, isn’t it?’

  ‘One Corinthians thirteen.’

  ‘. . . Where it goes on to talk about seeing through a glass darkly.’

  ‘You never fail to surprise me, Charlie. You go to church?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s just that’s how I see Germany I think: through a glass darkly.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Randall obviously knew his way around Lübeck. A lot of flyers are like that: they keep charts and maps in their heads, and bring them out when they think you’re not looking. They had less accommodation at the airfield, and needed it for operational fliers. Apart from the RAF Yorks and Dakotas I noted three civvy airlines, including the converted Halifax bombers that had been named after the Old Man. Their bomb bays had been so distended to carry freight that they looked pregnant. I was surprised he hadn’t already bought a handful.

  Anyway, we were given rooms at a proud old hotel which had probably seen Napoleon ride by years ago. Randall knew where it was, and we borrowed a clapped-out Hillman Tilley to get there. My room had a huge double bed, with massive bedposts; I was surprised they had managed to hang on to it. The place had a Union flag hanging from the front balcony, was managed by the army, but all the servants were Jerries. This was a pattern I was beginning to recognize. I flung my bag on the bed, and went straight back down to the bar.

  It was run by a friendly Geordie lance corporal and two Jerries. They both looked too intelligent to be natural bar staff, worried and anxious to please. Each wore a spotless white jacket with a name sewn across the breast pocket. The older, heavier one was J Wellington Wimpy, and the other Sweet Pea. The young one had a thick, dark lock of hair that flapped over his forehead, and an occasional piercing angry stare. Blue eyes. He had the look of someone whose image we’d lived with for eighteen years. The lance corporal smoked a corn-cob pipe at the port, like General MacArthur. He also had protuberant eyes, a scrawny neck and a prominent Adam’s apple. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. He told me, ‘Named ’em miself, sir. I didn’t like their Jerry names.’

  ‘Didn’t they complain?’

  ‘No: so I reckon they’re Nazis in hidin’.’

  ‘I met a woman who thinks they’re all Nazis in hiding. Maybe they just like the names you gave them better than their own. What have you got?’

  ‘NAAFI beer. It’s getting better.’

  ‘Any pipe tobacco?’

  ‘Royal Navy Flake any good?’

  ‘I’ll have both. Thanks.’

  ‘Sit down at a table, sir, and one of the boys will come across. I do things Jerry style in this bar. It helps them to feel at home, and the customers feel as if they’re on holiday.’

  Randall came down an hour later. He was moving and talking a little slower, and stank of bourbon. I hadn’t put him down as a decent drinker before. That was interesting.

  ‘Apparently we’re supposed to feel as if we’re on holiday,’ I told him.

  ‘I haven’t had a holiday since 1942.’

  ‘In that case, sending you off on leave is the first thing I’ll do when we get back. Cheers.’

  Sweet Pea had brought him a beer, and Randall savoured it with genuine pleasure. Whatever the cloud between us had been earlier, it seemed to have blown over. We ate at the table –
grilled ham, American style, fried potatoes and cabbage, and processed peas – and then split for an early night. On a table in the large Common Room, I found a Dashiell Hammet book I hadn’t read before, and took it up with me.

  When I woke up I was still fully clothed and lying on the bed. My book was over my face, and there was a hammering in my ears. The hammering in my ears came from the hammering on my door. My watch told me that it was a quarter to three in the morning. Fuck it.

  Randall. He looked pasty-faced, and had beads of sweat on his forehead. He spoke hastily. ‘Sorry about this; and sorry I was on bad form earlier, bud.’

  ‘That’s all right, Randall, but you could have waited until morning to tell me.’

  ‘No I couldn’t. I wanted to tell you that I know this place.’

  ‘I guessed that. You knew the way here.’

  ‘I hate it. I can’t stay here again. It’s fulla ghosts. I gotta go.’

  I yawned. Randall copied me. There has to be an evolutionary reason for infectious yawning.

  ‘Let’s find out if the bar’s still open.’

  Sweet Pea was still at his post, but asleep. He was sleeping bolt-upright on a narrow bar stool. I thought that took some doing. He actually smiled when we bumbled in and disturbed him. He spoke in German. So did I. So did Randall, which surprised me, of course, because he’d never let on before. Of the three of us Randall probably spoke the best German. That surprised me too.

  Sweet Pea asked, ‘Can’t sleep, gentlemen? Too many restless spirits or not enough?’ Neat pun.

  ‘That’s what my friend says. I haven’t met one yet.’

  ‘They need to get to know you first. What can I get you?’

  ‘Thank you. Beer I suppose. Three if you’ll join us. What’s your proper name? . . . I can’t call you Sweet Pea.’

  ‘Reinhardt . . . Reiny. Thank you.’ He gave a correct, fast little bow which finished at the neck. If you do that too quickly, I thought, you’ll flick your bleeding head off. I’ve thought of him as Herr Flick ever since. He brought six bottles of beer to the small round table so that he wouldn’t need to go back for more. We all prosted one another straight from the bottles, and he asked Randall, ‘So. Who did you see? Which one?’

  ‘This time I saw an officer, but I’ve seen other guys here. I woke up when the bastard shook me awake. There was water pouring off of him, and he scared me.’

  ‘This is hard to take in, Randall.’ Me again. ‘Give me a moment.’

  ‘Feel my sleeve.’ He was wearing a thick old khaki mechanic’s sweater. I’d seen him in it before: he loved it. I felt the sleeve. It was soaking wet. ‘Now taste it.’

  ‘I’m not keen, Randall.’

  ‘Damned well taste it!’ Now, you may well have noticed that Randall, like Old Man Halton, was not much given to swearing, so this was an indicator of earnestness. Besides, he was bigger than me. I squeezed the wool, and tasted my fingers.

  ‘Salt water.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘From condensation or from the roof maybe,’ said Reiny helpfully, ‘. . . after all we are a port city.’

  ‘You know that’s not right,’ Randall tried. ‘Tell us the story.’

  ‘He had a beard, this officer?’ It came out as Offizier, of course.

  ‘No. Clean-shaven. He was in his sea clothes, and wringing wet.’

  ‘So. The one with the beard is his captain. His head was bombed off. Sometimes people see him without his head. Sometimes the head is all they see.’

  ‘Different guy. No beard. Who’s my ghost?’

  ‘Thomsen. First or Second Officer. I forget which. He came from a U-boat in the First War. He was killed in an accident: nothing dramatic. First he haunted the boat, then, when it sank, he came back here. Everyone knows him.’

  ‘What about the others? They tramp up and down all night in the corridor. It’s still wet in the mornings.’

  ‘Sometimes they sing – have you heard that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They are looking for Petersen. Petersen deserted after he found dead Thomsen grinning at him one morning. No one has ever seen Petersen. Good story, yes?’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ I told him. The German shook his head, and gave a deprecating little smile. ‘No story,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Why do they come back here?’

  ‘Kriegsmarine place. This is a U-boat hotel. Same in both wars . . . same again when we start fighting the Reds next year.’ I was depressed that so many people I met seemed to expect that. ‘If you’ve got hard money we have a few bottles of schnapps under the bar.’

  I sighed, and then yawned. This time no one yawned with me.

  ‘Might as well.’

  Eventually we drank two bottles. Randall asked me if he could share my room, and I said No. I also heard a child laughing and bouncing a ball in the corridor outside, and some men singing as I drifted off. They sang a sad old German soldiers’ song, ‘Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden’, and the first thing I noticed as I stepped out of the room in the morning was the big damp patches on the corridor carpets and the tang of salt in the air. I’ve told you before that I don’t believe in ghosts. But bugger it, I was hungry by then, anyway.

  ‘When were you there before?’ I asked Randall. We were out over the North Sea. Randall had cheered up, and was humming ‘Stardust’. None of the occasional crackles we heard from the radio were for us. I spotted a formation of three silver dots about five thou above us heading south, about the same time as Randall. His reaction was the same as in wartime – he turned away from them and got closer to the sea. Then he grunted. I think it was a small laugh.

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sorry. Force of habit.’

  ‘Me too.’ I had reached for my earphones, which were around my neck.

  He sighed. ‘You think the war’s ever gonna end, Charlie?’

  It was a good question. The war seemed to condition my response to practically anything.

  ‘No. Not for us. Not for anyone who lived through it. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Guess I do.’

  It was a perfect afternoon. The North Sea looked almost mirrorlike – I’ve only once before seen it that calm, and that was at night. I smoked my pipe, filling the cabin with the tobacco’s sweet, nutty aroma. I realized that Randall hadn’t answered my first question yet, so I tried again.

  ‘When were you in that hotel before, Randall?’

  ‘That would have been in 1943, Charlie.’ I’d always known that there was more to him than met the eye. I suppose that he hadn’t needed to tell me; he could always have found a way of avoiding the question. There was a little something in his voice as he said it: as if something had momentarily come between us and the sun. He sighed again, and said, ‘Fuck it. Times change, don’t they?’

  ‘They do, Randall.’

  ‘Ask me about it some other time, OK?’ I opened the thermos I’d brought with us, and gave him the first cup of sweet coffee. Later he said to me, ‘That little fellar Reinhardt; he said that the hotel was a U-boat hotel. Did you pick up on that?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘. . . But what you don’t know is that U-boat can mean more than one thing in Germany.’

  ‘It means submarine.’

  ‘Yes, Charlie . . . but it can also mean Jew. One of the Jews who went into hiding.’ It was such a stupid thing to say that I didn’t know how to respond. It was as if your English teacher had suddenly told you that the word cow also meant piano. ‘Some Jews didn’t answer the knock at the door when the Kraut came to collect them. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, became submarines and submerged: went underground. Some were even hidden by non-Nazi German families . . . more than you’d credit.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Nobody knows. The SS hunted a few down in the war, but eventually the camps were full anyway. I read somewhere the cops called them U-boats. The people who slipped under the surface of society. Neat, wasn’t it?’<
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  ‘. . . And you were here in 1943.’

  ‘I told you, Charlie, ask some other time.’

  ‘OK, Randall. Is that England?’ I could see a narrow smear of dark grey on the horizon.

  ‘I’ll tell you somethin’, bud – if it’s anywhere else then we’re in a helluva lot o’ trouble.’ I looked at his face. He was grinning. Like all good pilots he never looked at you when he spoke, his head was always on the move as he scanned every patch of sky he could see. I felt myself relax into the seat; I always felt safe flying with Randall. The rest could wait till later. Not long later an air traffic controller from the East Midlands came on air and demanded to know who we were. I liked neither his attitude nor his public school accent. I don’t suppose Randall did either because he answered, ‘Pinocchio.’ Did that make me Gepetto?

  After a few splutters in the ether Randall relented, and reverted to the new formality demanded of us by a civilianized world. I dozed until we were in the circuit over Croydon.

  I had a couple of beers in the Propeller before I called the Old Man from the red box outside. I was worried about something, but hadn’t yet worked out what – you know the feeling. The Old Man wasn’t worried: he invited me to supper in a small restaurant in Purley Way, only a short walk away.

  ‘Do you know any women in London, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, I do, boss. Do you need a couple of telephone numbers?’

  There was a short pause before he replied – I’d pushed too far. Me and my mouth. Then he chuckled. And then he coughed for a week of course.

  ‘No, Charlie, but thank you. I’ll bear it in mind. I wondered if you might bring someone along; company for Freda.’

  I didn’t chance my arm and ask who Freda was.

  ‘I’ll see if I can rustle someone up.’

  ‘Twenty thirty, Charlie . . . and please don’t keep me waiting.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ I felt as if the headmaster was giving me a wigging again. When had I been late for anything? Except the end of the war. I was very late for that.

  I called Dolly. Her landlord Stephen answered, and said that she was in the bath. I knew what Dolly looked like in the bath.