Ghosts of the Empire

by Justin Sheedy

  She had considered suicide – some girls she had known so very briefly had gone through with it – yet whenever her soul had begged for death her blood had hung on.

  The gangster who ran the brothel promised each girl personally that if she did not work her hours aside from necessary washing, eating and sleeping she would be beaten then thrown out onto the street, where her beaten face and body would turn to bruises and make her unemployable at any his competitors’ establishments. Yes, the bruises would heal, but that would take a few weeks and with winter’s onset early this year, no place to stay out of the freezing cold and nothing to eat, in a few weeks she would be dead.

  Jacqueline looked up again at the university building, pulled her coat tighter around her, turned, and walked away.

  *

  Jack Fraser thought he might just be getting used to this. Perhaps… Perhaps at long last was he settling in to a world of young men for whom insanity was something normal, the shadows of their Mosquitos tearing over the surface of the sea so close beneath.

  This day, a new type of op, for some reason called a ‘No-ball’.

  Their target?

  The launching sites for a new type of German ‘pilot-less aircraft’. In the Pas-de-Calais region of German-occupied France.

  The mission objective?

  Bomb them flat.

  Jack took in once again the new cockpit layout of the Mosquito Mark FB.VI… Its windscreen was no longer the double-paned forward ‘V’ shape as back on the bomber version but a single, back-sloping rectangle of bullet-proof glass. And, most crucially, with multiple machine-guns and cannon now in the nose section, Mick’s control column was no longer the double handgrip type of a bomber; it was the single grip column of a fighter – still with a thumb button for bomb release but now also a button to fire the machine guns and a finger trigger for the quad-cannon.

  Jack flicked his intercom switch.

  ‘Enemy coast ahead, Mick.’

  He heard the return click. Then Mick’s voice.

  ‘They’ll soon wish to hell it wasn’t, mate.’

  *

  Klaus Steinhoff felt good on a motorcycle. And rode one now down the straight, open road heading south-west towards Normandy, Calais somewhere far out on his right. No matter all he’d been through, all he had seen, whenever riding like this it all just didn’t matter for a while. He felt lifted. Almost happy.

  They had given him a brand-new BMW to deliver back to his unit, sidecar fitted though empty with Soldat Beck, his faithful gunner, on a well-deserved spot of leave. Completely and so satisfyingly alone, Klaus had quite a ride ahead of him. He would relish every minute of it, and there was just so much to relish: the sunny, cool morning through which he cruised, the green and sometimes reddish fields of France passing on either side, the smell of grass and sharp herbs in the fast-oncoming air. But most of all he relished the feeling of the bike, as if a living thing allowing its energy up through his limbs, its sound an urgent purr so constant and pleasing.

  A light like a photo-flash touched his goggles, his focus drawn out to the right.

  There, on the horizon, he saw silver shock-waves whipping up into the sky. Now a cluster of them!

  Though he hadn’t heard them, Unterfeldwebel Klaus Steinhoff knew impacting bomb blasts when he saw them, his gloved right hand instinctively twisting down on his motorcycle throttle grip, the BMW responding eagerly. Clutch – shift up – clutch – more throttle.

  Putting on serious speed now, the road curved slightly to the left, Klaus leaning into it – with the sidecar, just as far as humanly possible. As the road straightened again, he saw it was drawing alongside a train line on the right. Topping a slight rise in the road ahead and down the other side he smelt soot, and saw the plume of steam not half a kilometre in front.

  He was steadily drawing up behind the rear carriage of a fast-moving train. As he closed the distance, he saw this rear carriage was a flatbed car, upon it a revolving anti-aircraft gun turret crewed by three of his fellow German soldiers. A fat plume of dirty steam billowing past right above them all, though one of them waved to Klaus they seemed on alert, the turret’s quad 20mm cannon barrels now sweeping smoothly out to the right.

  Klaus now saw the carriages ahead were giant, metal cylinders, ‘SNCF’ of the French Railways on the side of the nearest, fuel containers most likely, beyond them at least one more anti-aircraft car that he could see. But far ahead the engine now whistled, the billowing steam intensifying. As a speck of black soot hit Klaus’s goggles he saw the train was drawing surely away from him and he was on a BMW!

  Yet again the road tended left, another slight rise ahead obscuring the train from sight. At which point some instinct made Klaus ease his grip on the throttle, merely coasting now, and shift the motorcycle down a gear. Topping the rise, the land opened out ahead of him, the train now a few hundred metres distant, its anti-aircraft guns thumping.

  From right to left now thick, bright streams of tracer fire flew flat across the train and INTO it, a mad rattling cacophony of metal like a million dull bells being struck. With an infernal WHUMP Klaus saw the first petrol tank explode, his motorcycle skidding as a red-white-and-blue roundeled wing flashed overhead, green grass in front as Klaus went over the handlebars.

  December 1943

  At the close of a brief initial conference with the Group Captain, Crispin Jessop’s first administrative act in his capactiy as 140 Wing’s new Adjutant was to suggest a party. His administrative rationale for the suggestion, he took pains to point out, was in order that the Wing might make use of an accrued £200 of Mess funds which would otherwise be forfeited at year’s end. The Wing having just relocated to RAF Hunsdon in rural Hertfordshire, Crispin additionally suggested that the vacant manor house now serving as the Officers’ Mess might prove the ideal venue for such an occasion.

  ‘Well,’ reflected Rickard over the accounts ledger Jessop had handed him, ‘any chap who orders a whisky’ll get a bottle.’

  *

  Mick stepped into the manor’s packed main hall to the sounds of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B. With its intro piano bass-line that hooked you in before the Andrews Sisters had even sung a note, Mick had never realised what a ripper of a song it was, and the hall’s radio-phonograph played it loud. He peered over the mass of heads to the far end of the room, there left and right-hand stairways leading to an upper balcony, also packed, though in the whole place not a WAAF or ATA girl in sight. Would have been nice for the blokes, Mick thought; the dancing would have been marvellous.

  As for himself, he thought only of a French girl; with so many low flights over France of late he’d been reminded of her almost daily. On their last op he had been a breath away from requesting a course from Jack for just those few extra minutes further south-west to Saint-Saëns – They’d hit their primary target in the Pas-de-Calais, then even one of the newly-encouraged ‘Targets of Opportunity’, on that day a train. But taking the squadron even bare minutes over Normandy just to over-fly a farmhouse would have put lives at risk, so Mick had taken them home.

  He had to get on the ground in France. And that meant after the Invasion. Which the new year would bring. The invasion of Continental Europe to be spearheaded by the blokes in this very room. These blokes who’d bust their balls to ensure it succeeded.

  ‘Hullo, old chap,’ hailed Crispin Jessop sidling between uniforms close by Mick. And raised his glass.

  Mick smiled. ‘Fancy meeting you here, sir.’

  ‘N-no, Squadron Leader, we’re equals now,’ Jessop smiled back, ‘in rank, anyway.’ He motioned to the left chest of Mick’s tunic: below his wings, the ribbon strip with badge signifying his DFC and Bar, below that his Pathfinder wings. ‘You’ve done so very well.’

  ‘Thanks to you, mate.’

  Crispin paused, his smile softening. ‘You’ll never know how nice it is to be called that by someone finally… Oh, and y’know what our friend Dom tells me?’

  ‘What’s he tell yo
u?’

  ‘These No-ball ops you’ve been doing…’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘The launch sites. Kraut flying bomb thingies. Our dear Dom says it takes you chaps 40 tons of bombs to take one out.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’

  ‘You know how many it takes the Yanks?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘In four-engined Flying Fortresses,’ pressed Jessop.

  ‘Still no,’ Mick shrugged.

  ‘…It takes the Yanks one-hundred and sixty-five tons, old chap. Allow me to buy you a drink.’

  *

  After several, Mick met Stark: New Zealander leader of 487 Squadron RNZAF.

  At 5-foot-nothing, he was known across the Wing as a nice bloke and incredible flyer. He had a sheep farm, he said to Mick, and could think of no finer heaven than to return to it. Mick found himself pondering, just for a moment, where heaven might be for him. Hurst had said something about flying for Qantas Empire Airways. And that meant getting home. He wondered where Hurst was.

  Yet as the evening progressed Mick found his own thoughts and impressions of all that went on around him seeming to get hazier as they got more vivid: After being presented with a bundled hundred foot of French copper wire telephone line that he and Fraser had brought back wrapped around their Mossie’s tail-wheel from their last No-ball op, Mick’s final memory of the night was of Dave Matthews, a half a bottle of Scotch in him, riding a motorcycle up the right-hand grand stairway of the hall, across the upper balcony and seemlessly down the left-hand stairway. After which no less than Rickard himself did the same.

  On a horse.

  *

  In his solitary confinement cell, Piet Vanderheyden had been starved and beaten daily for three months before they started torturing him in earnest: pulling his fingernails off one by one for ten days in a row. Only then did they plug him in. Electrodes of their portable electric generator clipped to his nipples. Then to his scrotum.

  Each day he heard the screaming of cell inmates down the corridor, as the hours crept past the screaming coming closer, closer, closer. Until the bolt drew back, the iron door of his cell thrown open, and the screaming became his own.

  Through the fog of his agony Piet somehow sensed the Gestapo thug supervising his daily hell didn’t honestly believe Piet had any ‘Resistance contacts’. Piet assumed he must be hallucinating from the pain the time he saw the German stifling a nervous, delighted smile. But then Piet saw it again one day. The day, somewhere near Christmas, when his heart stopped.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Friday, February 18, 1944

  Since early morning it had been very firmly assumed that any op would be cancelled; the weather was five types of foul. But at 940 Hours the briefing was called, and turned out unlike any mission briefing Mick had ever attended.

  He and Jack Fraser along with five other crews from 464 Squadron and six each from 487 and 21 Squadrons stood around a large geographic scale model on a table. Central to it was a highly-detailed miniature of a crucifix-shaped building enclosed on all sides by a high rectangular wall. This complex sat at the end of a long, straight, tree-lined road – they looked like poplars, assorted adjacent buildings but mainly what appeared wide open countryside surrounding.

  The Sergeant of the RAF Military Police shut the hall door from the outside, ensuring that all on his security list were now locked in. Group Captain Rickard presided, Dom Hundleby in attendance, also two bods Mick hadn’t seen before: evidently the crew of an RAF Film Production Unit Mosquito. Rickard began…

  ‘Amiens Prison, gentlemen. Located, as you will see at close hand this day, in the Pas-de-Calais region of France. A building whose walls you will this day knock down.’

  He waited until the ensuing hubbub had subsided.

  ‘It houses around 700 French men and women, 120 of whom are members of the Resistance currently imprisoned by the Germans for their magnificent efforts: acts of saboutage, assistance to our SOE agents as well as to downed Allied flyers such as yourselves. Tomorrow, these Resistance members are scheduled to be shot. By the Gestapo. Hence the urgency of your mission today.’

  ‘Streuth,’ whispered Dave Matthews.

  Rickard indicated the tree-lined road heading north-east away from the prison. ‘You will fly in three waves down this road which runs dead straight all the way from the town of Albert.’ He pronounced it Al-bear. ‘Over Albert you will pick up the road which will guide you directly to the prison. Flying at zero feet so as to ensure bombing accuracy, Squadron Leader Stark will lead the first wave of six aircraft from 487 Squadron,’ Rickard indicating points of the model as he went, ‘blasting the east and north walls of the prison at precisely 1200 Hours, thus enabling the escape of Resistance members. Three minutes later, Squadron Leader O’Regan will lead in the second wave, six craft from 464 Squadron, who will blast the wings of the prison housing the German guards,’ – Rickard indicated the east and west wings of the crucifix-shaped building – ‘these sections here… and here. The timing is paramount. For it is at 1200 Hours that the guards will be at lunch in this latter wing and that the prisoners will be out in the exercise yard, here.’ Rickard looked up to Mick. ‘What do you think, Squadron Leader?’

  Mick peered hard at the model. ‘Well, I’d say we can put bombs on target, sir, but it’s spitting snow outside. Just flying today’ll be deadly.’

  ‘The executions are tomorrow, Squadron Leader. We fly today. With me on 464’s tail.’

  Mick hesitated. Looked up at Rickard. ‘Al-right then, sir.’

  ‘The third wave,’ Rickard continued, ‘will be the six Mossies of 21 Squadron. These will act as a reserve which, if the walls have not been breached, will bomb the whole place 10 minutes later on my signal. The signal to bomb will be “Green – Green – Green”, the signal to abort, “Red – Red – Red”. Whatever happens, the FPU Mosquito will film the whole thing.’ He looked up to Hundleby.

  ‘Anything to add, Dom?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We have just received a coded message indicating that armed members of the French Resistance will be standing by in the fields surrounding the prison. These chaps intend to help their comrades escaping through such holes as we make in the walls. So it’s, ah, quite an operation…’

  Mick looked back at the model. ‘ Quite,’ he released.

  *

  Fully kitted up in his flying gear, now only waiting for the final of 464’s Mosquitos to be bomb-loaded, Mick stood just inside a hangar door with Hundleby. He checked his watch, looked out at the weather – it had stopped snowing but the cloud cover was low and solid, visibility near zero. He half angled back to Hundleby. And spoke quietly.

  ‘Dom… I wasn’t going to say anything in front of the blokes, ’cause no matter what they’ve still gotta fly this mission. But, t’call a spade a spade, one or two things about this op seem, well… what’s that word of yours?’

  ‘Bollocks?’ offered Hundleby.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mick. ‘That’s the one…’

  Hundleby’s face was pained. ‘I can only hope you believe me, Michael, when I tell you that my own reason for not speaking up was the same as yours.’

  Mick looked in the young Brit’s so intelligent eyes. ‘Bollocks or not, we go. But if the whole point of this op is to knock down the walls of the prison to give the Resistance a chance to escape, then why’s there a provision to flatten the place if we can’t? If we don’t knock down the walls, the third wave levels the entire place. Which contradicts the whole point of the mission. Or at least,’ Mick peered outside again, hushed his voice a notch, ‘it contradicts what we’ve been told is the point of the mission.’

  Hundleby’s eyes narrowed over his spectacles. ‘I suspect you may just be onto something there, old chap.’

  ‘You do?!’ Mick angled to him.

  ‘Certainly,’ returned Hundleby. ‘Why indeed would you have in reserve a provision to flatten the prison if you can’t knock down the walls and free the prisoners? Simple lo
gic suggests that breaking anyone out of jail is not our chief aim… Simple logic suggests our chief aim is to bomb a jail with Resistance members inside it.’

  ‘And why the fuck a jail?’ flung Mick.

  Hundleby removed his spectacles. ‘You may just have answered your whole question right there.’

  ‘Eh?!’

  ‘Why the fuck a jail?’ said Hundleby. ‘That is precisely what the Germans will be asking. Though presumably in German,’ he grinned, a grin that died. ‘Today we could bomb an airfield, a barracks, a factory and the Germans’d scarcely notice as we bomb those so often nowadays. …But a jail?’

  Mick now focused squarely at Hundleby. ‘The Krauts’ll sit up like hell! Especially on a no-fly day like this.’ He glanced out at it yet again. ‘But why do we want them to?’

  ‘Ah,’ released Hundleby. ‘As with all matters of real estate, it’s about location.’

  ‘Location?’ Mick squinted at him.

  ‘What’s the whole point of this coming year?’ flowed Hundleby.

  ‘The Invasion.’

  ‘So where’s the prison?’

  ‘Amiens.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In the Pas-de-Calais.’

  ‘So why,’ pressed Hundleby, ‘why would we be so keen for the Germans to think this particular piece of real estate is so important to us right now?’ He shrugged thoughtfully, ‘Perhaps even regarding French Resistance forces in the area…’

  ‘Because…’ strained Mick, ‘because somewhere else is important to us… So important to us that we’d kill a whole lot of French people in a jail.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Hundleby. ‘Mind you, it’s just a theory. Isn’t it. In any event you’d better knock down those walls, hadn’t you.’

  Mick let go a breath. ‘ Quite.’

  Hundleby replaced his spectacles. And did his utmost to smile. ‘Good luck, my friend.’

  As he watched the young Australian Squadron Leader trudge away outside across the snow, Dom Hundleby reflected upon a few other points of utter bollocks regarding this day’s mission…