Lotte’s nails lightly scratched up and down Reinert’s back. He shivered with pleasure.
“Because your father says we’ll start campaigning in the spring. The squadron will surely be posted closer to France ... perhaps to France! Then there’ll be a delay ... who knows how long? Let’s get married now ... at Christmas, anyway.”
Her arms went around his neck.
“Oh, my darling, when I’m in this mood, I can’t refuse you anything. That’s not fair. Ask me again when I’m in proper control of my feelings.”
“No. I’m asking you now. Give me one good reason why we can’t be married at Christmas?”
“It would be such a rush ...”
“If you truly loved me, you’d say yes.”
Her arms tightened around him. Her breathing quickened.
“Yes, Liebchen, yes ... whatever you want ...”
*
The gymnasium was permeated by an odour peculiar to such places. Despite the fact that the large windows were kept open all day, whatever the outside temperature, the whiff of muscular exertion lingered in the air. No doubt the central heating brought out the latent aroma when the windows were closed for the night.
Sweat, inevitably, contributed a large part of the special gymnasium smell. Then there were resin and floor polish, rubber and canvas of plimsoll shoes. Leather of boxing-gloves and medicine-balls. Something with which the mats were stuffed.
The mats were impregnated with dust and particles of resin, which rose in invisible molecules when Lent and his girl threw themselves down on one and as they thrashed around locked together in a form of wrestling for which the mats were not strictly intended.
It was a suitable environment for their assignations, for both were heftily built and both were disposed to accompany their transports of delight with feral grunts and cries. The girl was a biter, too. At climatic moments her teeth were apt to sink into the hard flesh around Lent’s clavicle and she had on occasion drawn blood.
They lay panting after the first round of this evening’s bout, the dust of their violence tickling their nasal passages and throats as they gasped for breath.
“Listen,” Lent said. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we ask for twenty-four hours’ leave at Christmas, and go off somewhere on our own?”
“Only twenty-four? Can’t we at least make it forty-eight?”
“Maybe. Reinert told me he wanted to get married over Christmas; and if he does I bet he’ll be able to swing a couple of days’ honeymoon. Especially with his prospective father-in-law being who he is.”
“I hope getting married isn’t going to take his mind off his job. I worry about you. Particularly in the kind of weather we’ve been having, and at night.”
“No need to worry about us. Reinert is an excellent pilot. He seems a hothead, the way he expresses himself sometimes, but he’s always cool and controlled in the air. We make a good combination: he can fly better than almost anyone and I can shoot better than the lot of them.”
She giggled and rolled towards him. “Well, if he’s going to have a honeymoon, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have an unofficial one at the same time.”
“That’s my girl. It’s a date, then: we’ll spend our Christmas doing what we’re doing now: but in much greater comfort.”
In all wars, the young men who have to fight them and the girls for whom, directly or indirectly, they go to battle are, generation after generation, imbued with and fortified by a sense of immortality. The proverb says that man proposes and God disposes. But it is the politicians, the scientists, the engineers, the generals and air marshals who are the instruments of Fate in modern wars. God seems to have very little to do with the ordering of matters. The Devil, perhaps, has more.
Nine
Schillig Roads sounded like a friendly place. Every Briton associated Cowes Roads with yachting. But there was no yachting going on in the winter of 1939 on the broad rectangular inlet with the town of Schillig on its western tip and the naval base of Wilhelmshaven in one corner of the bay, with Bremerhaven at the other.
Along the coast to the west of Schillig the Frisian Islands lay in a dangerous chain, their flak emplacements guarding the approach to the roads. Their names were already familiar to the bomber crews: Borkum, Juist, Nordeney, Baltrum, Langerooge, Spikerooge, Wangerooge. To the north of the last island lay Heligoland; also unpleasantly well known to the R.A.F.
December was wearing on towards Christmas. Everyone was prepared for a spate of flying before the weather deteriorated even further than it had since the last short comparatively fine spell. Wars did not stop for Christmas Day, but surely both sides would reduce their effort for twenty-four hours? Longer, perhaps? People remembered all they had read and heard about the Christmas of 1914 when British and German troops had sung carols to each other from their trenches and then spontaneously forgathered in no-man’s-land to exchange cigarettes and schnapps. No one was naïf enough to think any such event could occur on land this time; and in the air no one was going to refrain from shooting if he saw an aircraft from the other side. But all hoped that an increased effort in the two weeks immediately before Christmas would earn them a respite on the day.
The Empire Air Training Scheme for flying instruction in Canada was new and not yet producing operational pilots or observers. In proportion to the number of crews so far involved in operations, casualties were high. Replacements from pre-war flying training schools in Britain were only a trickle. Crews which had flown on operations and survived became, because of their experience, more in demand for further operations.
Ridley had felt tired after two months of war, even though the newspapers called it a “Sitskreig”. It seemed to him that he had spent an awful lot of that time sitting in an aeroplane being shot at and groping his way about in bad weather. Now, after more than three months of it, he felt mentally stale as well as physically tired.
Sleep was no longer a refreshing rest, it was a comatose oblivion from which he woke still feeling dazed. Three times a week he managed to see Shirley. On two or three other evenings he drank rather more beer than he really wanted, because that was what everyone else in the mess was doing. It did not help him to feel any brighter when he woke next morning.
“A reconnaissance in Schillig Roads,” the C.O. had announced. “We’re putting up twelve and — Squadron are providing six.” That was another Wellington squadron based a few miles away. They would rendezvous over the Wash as usual.
The Met man was frankly pessimistic.
“Ten-tenths cloud all the way, with rain squalls, and cloud base down to under a thousand feet in places.” And more, and worse.
Morale was high, particularly since the fight over Heligoland when the Wimpeys had dealt so expeditiously with the Me 109s. They had all flown often enough in bad weather recently to be able to laugh about it. And, at least, this time they had been warned to expect it.
“The usual form,” the C.O. had told them. “Targets of opportunity. We’ll carry a full load of five-hundred-pounders, fused to detonate on impact, and we’ll attack any enemy shipping we see, naval or merchant.”
The Intelligence officer showed them photographs taken in the area the previous day by Blenheims, and pointed out various vessels which had been identified.
They formed up over the airfield and while they circled it they could see groups of airmen and W.A.A.F. huddled in greatcoats against the drizzle, watching them. Their upturned faces formed clusters of paleness against the dark background of their garments, the glistening black tarmac of the aprons outside the hangars. Now and again one of the girls would wave in the forlorn hope that her boyfriend would see, and recognise, her. To the men in the aircraft there were no individuals among those little groups of well-wishers: they were an amorphous, anonymous link with the daily life they all shared on the ground, and no more than that. The flying crews, in their metal and canvas tubes packed with petrol and high explosives that could turn their aeroplanes into blowtorches in a few sec
onds, were separated from the men and women on the ground by more than the few hundred feet of air between them. Once they were off the ground they were a different race, with communication only among one another, with secret knowledge and thought processes that the groundlings could not share or even imagine.
They had more in common, then, with the enemy’s pilots and air-gunners and observers than they had with those of their own countrymen who did not venture forth into the clouds and the perverse winds, the ice-formation on wings and fuselage, the St Elmo’s fire that lit wavering blue electrical discharges around wingtips and propeller-blades.
Eastern England lay flat and sombre under the steady rainfall. They flew over a long column of infantry, tin-hatted and waterproof-caped, on a route march. They saw a convoy of military lorries winding along a country road. They passed searchlight sites and anti-aircraft gun batteries, where troops took practice aim at them with empty breeches. The Nissen huts where they lived looked bleak, comfortless. The smoke of cookhouse fires suggested stodgy, unappetising meals concocted from monotonous rations. Those poor devils down there may not have to go flying over Germany, but they led a life that none of the flying crews envied.
When they flew over a town or village, people stopped to look up and wave. The gunners in their front and rear turrets sometimes waved back, but the gestures went unseen. All that watchers below could discern was the bright yellow of the gunners’ life-vests and perhaps a white splodge of face.
The twelve Wellingtons slithered through the greyness, the pilots’ windows open to improve their view of their nearest neighbour. They droned on through their soggy, dripping world; thankful that they were at least able to check their position from landmarks and that they did not have to switch on their oxygen, or shiver from cold.
Ridley, contemplating his instruments, the intermittent whipping rain, the unbroken ceiling of cloud, his distance in relation to the aircraft ahead and to either side, thought about the bounty of flying knowledge he had acquired in the past thirteen weeks. Among the things he had learned were some that should never have been left to the mere chance of war: such as just how much runway a fully-loaded Wellington really needed to haul its fuel and bomb-load into the air. Other vital knowledge only a war could provide. Evasive action could be practised time and again, but it was not until a fighter was shooting instead of making dummy passes that you really flew the bomber to its limits. And there was the understanding of the weather that came with having to fly on days like this, when normally you would have stayed on the ground.
By this time next year, he told himself, his crew would be veterans. They would be among the most experienced flyers in the service. It would feel odd to be an acknowledged veteran, after having been a newcomer to the squadron only nine months ago. Veterans were group-captains and Air officers with Great War ribbons, not twenty-one-year-olds with less than two years on a squadron.
The six other Wellingtons joined them and they all headed out to sea; no more checking position from landmarks.
Fifteen minutes after leaving land astern, he spoke to Clive.
“Captain to observer. How are we doing?”
“About five degrees off course, by my reckoning.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me too.”
The squadron-commander was leading them. His observer was, theoretically, the best navigator in the squadron. There was nothing they could do about it if he wasn’t flying the right course. Wait and see.
There was nothing to see. At briefing they had been given an estimated time of arrival in sight of the northern tip of Wangerooge. Their track lay to the west, avoiding the passage between islands and mainland. They would pass to the north of the Frisians, then turn east.
They turned and a few minutes later there was a faint line of surf ahead of them where there should have been open sea.
“Captain to front gunner. See what I see?”
“Land, Skipper.”
“Observer from captain. See it?”
Ridley knew that Clive was at the astrodome and now the answer came, “Land ho, Skipper! Looks like a cock-up.”
“See if you can recognise anything.”
Immediately after, there was a succession of orange-coloured smears along the line of breakers.
Clive remarked, “Looks as though someone has recognised us.”
The air was smudged by shell-bursts and streaked with tracer.
In the bad visibility, the bombers rushed over the beach and were inland before the ground gunners had time to correct their aim, and all the shooting went wide.
“Where the hell are we, Ronnie?” Ridley asked.
“Obviously to the east of the Frisians instead of to the west. We’re over the mainland now, not one of the islands, I think. I’m trying to get a visual fix on something.”
The formation was wheeling to port and wraiths of cloud swept past, partly obscuring Ridley’s view. Either the leading observer’s compass was badly out or the man was an idiot. Or perhaps there had been a tremendously strong side-wind that had swept them badly off their proper track.
“Observer to captain. I can see a large town ahead. Don’t know where it is.”
“May be able to identify when we get closer.”
Another eruption of flak greeted them, littering the sky with puffs of grey smoke, lighting the ground line with flashes of flame from gun-muzzles.
The Wellingtons swung away to starboard and the leading section was lost in the fringe of cloud for a while. The flak continued, making the air boil with near misses.
“Observer to captain ... I think that was Bremerhaven.”
“Good God! We ought to turn west, then, and go out over the roads.”
“C.O.’s observer doesn’t seem to think so.”
The formation was now heading east. Shortly after, it wheeled again and for five minutes Ridley had to hold a turn while the eighteen bombers completed a circle.
“Rear gunner to captain. Bandits five o’clock, range half a mile, same height.”
The Wellington vibrated as, a few seconds later, Noakes opened fire.
The Wellington rocked violently in the slipstream of a pair of Me 110s which raced a few feet overhead, their guns firing at the section next in front. These, in turn, were all firing at the enemy with their rear guns.
A Wellington and a Messerschmitt caught fire almost simultaneously. They both began to lose height rapidly. Parachutes blossomed behind them.
The C.O. had made another turn; due west this time, which would take them out to sea.
As soon as they were over the water, they saw ships at anchor in the roads, widely dispersed. Ridley also saw fountains of foam leaping up where two or three of the Wellington captains had jettisoned their bombs.
One Wimpey was attempting a bombing run. Ridley watched it approach a huge ocean-going tug from which a pompom was maintaining heavy fire. The bomber staggered like a boxer receiving a heavy punch. The nose went down steeply. Its speed increased. Smoke issued from the cockpit. The pilot must have been killed, for the Wellington plunged onto the tug and in a welter of smoke, flames and pillars of foaming water both aircraft and ship disappeared from sight.
“Captain to observer ... go for’ard ... I’m not wasting my bombs.”
Ridley knew this would be an unpopular decision, but although his heart seemed to have come up into his throat he was determined not to leave here until he had at least tried to do some damage.
Redfern’s guns kept up a steady clatter. Ridley’s mouth filled with the acrid flavour of burned cordite. His nose itched with gunsmoke. His eyes began to water, so he pulled his goggles down from his forehead.
Rain smeared his windscreen and window. He could feel the cold damp air rushing in on his face.
Over on his port side a Wellington blew up, flinging wings one way, tail unit another, engine in a parabola above the disintegration and smoke.
“Captain to observer ... target ... merchant ship at eleven o’
clock, about a thousand yards.”
“Got it. Left-left, then.”
Looked about a 3,000-tonner. A gun mounted in the bows. Ridley could see the crew swinging it towards him. There was a pompom on the quarter-deck ... a heavy machine-gun on the port side, amidships. Fire coming at him from three points. The shells from the bow gun every few seconds: he could see the flash at the muzzle. Tracer from the 37mm pompom. More tracer from the machine-gun.
Mustn’t go too low, or we’ll get caught in our own bomb-blast.
“Right, a little ... too much ... left-left a bit ... steady ...”
Might as well make a proper job of this. No point in blundering in with all those guns shooting at them.
“Front gunner ... I’m going to turn and come in from ahead ... see if you can kill the crew on that gun in the bows.”
“Lovely, Skipper.”
Ridley turned away and momentarily the gunners on the ship all turned their attention to another bomber.
Ridley turned back towards the target and went down to 100ft. Redfern’s tracer was spattering all around the big gun in the bows and men were falling to the deck or overboard.
He banked hard into a turn and climbed.
“Good show, Redfern ... Ronnie, I’m coming in again at seven hundred feet from dead ahead.”
“Right, Skipper. Steady now ... right ... right ... left-left ... enough ... steady ... hold it ...”
The front gunner was holding his fire.
From the rear turret Noakes said, “Two one-one-ohs coming in dead astern, Skipper.”
Ridley flew on undeterred. A fresh crew had reached the ship’s bow gun and he saw its muzzle flash once before he heard Clive’s quiet “Bombs gone!” and pulled up in a steep corkscrew to the left.
Looking down in his turn, he saw water swirling around the listing ship, men sliding off her canted decks, sparks rising from her funnel. A lifeboat fell from its davits and splashed onto the sea. The ship began to list further and to settle at the stern.
They entered cloud.
“Course for base, observer.”
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