Tears of Autumn, The

by Wiltshire, David

  Yet the terrible sacrifice of men in Bomber Command, especially in Number Two Group was largely unknown to the public.

  He let her go, searching for the keys as she surveyed the portico with its Greek-style columns flanking the heavy door.

  ‘Very nice.’

  He looked up, then led the way up the steps.

  ‘It was grand once, but it’s four flats now, one on each floor.’

  Theirs was at the top, in what was once the maid’s quarters. He opened the door, switched on the light – then had to run to the window to pull the blackout curtains.

  Rosemary let her shoulder bag slide down on to a sofa that faced a fireplace with a gas fire now set in the hearth and looked around. It wasn’t plush, but it was reasonably furnished with a couple of easy chairs, a coffee table with copies of the Illustrated London News, Picture Post, Punch and other magazines. There was a standard lamp in the corner. There were some pictures on the walls and, on a shelf that ran around the walls at picture-rail height, about fifteen large decorative plates.

  ‘Here’s the kitchen. Like a cup of tea or something?’

  ‘Ooh, I’d love one.’

  He filled the kettle, put it on the top of the gas cooker and lit a ring.

  ‘I’ll put on the fire.’

  In the sitting-room he squatted down, and turned the tap. By the time he’d got a match alight and put it to the bars, there was a ‘whump’ as the coal gas ignited with a lick of flame.

  Rosemary stood over him, chuckling.

  Biff looked at her slim legs encased in black stockings. When she leant down and offered her hand to haul him up he dragged her down on top of him.

  In a frenzy they kissed and struggled with their clothing. Eventually Biff stood up, his braces around his waist, picked her up in her navy-blue petticoat and carried her into the cold bedroom, flicking the door shut behind him with his foot, so plunging the bedroom into darkness.

  They were oblivious to the kettle’s whistle, to the sound of bombs and gunfire as he drove into her with a savage animal desire, as if his body knew that he was living a dangerous life, that there was an urgent need to pass on his genetic material to continue his bloodline before it was too late.

  A bomb whistled and exploded somewhere near, shaking the building, making streams of dust drop from the ceiling. There was a sound of plates smashing in the sitting-room.

  Through the window the sky was continually alive with brilliant flashes of light, and the outline of the building opposite was enhanced by a huge redness behind it that grew and grew. As, at last, he could do no more in his animal union with this woman whom he loved and lusted after, he held on to her and took her with him as he fell to the floor, making sure he took the fall, then rolling her under the high bed as the shrill scream of a bomb grew louder and louder.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The whole building seemed to lift from the ground and then drop down again. The window blew in, the door came off its hinges the curtains were torn from their fixings. The room was full of a fog so dense that in the dark they couldn’t see more than a foot in front of their faces.

  Coughing and spluttering they held on to each other and felt their way into the blackened sitting room. He flicked the switch but there was no light, and the gas fire had gone out.

  ‘Ouch.’ He trod on the kettle which rolled unseen on the débris-covered floor. ‘Hang on while I get my shoes.’

  Outside the shrill sound of alarm bells told them that fire engines and ambulances were arriving in the street.

  ‘It must have been bloody close.’

  He found his shoes and crunched back to her, then carried her to the sofa and left her to dress.

  Still coughing he pulled apart the curtains and looked down into the road.

  Two fire engines and an LCC Daimler ambulance were on the tarmac made wet by leaking hoses now snaking out of sight. He couldn’t see the house that had been hit: it was about three doors up round a slight bend.

  ‘I wonder if we can do anything?’

  Even as they watched, another ambulance arrived and shadowy figures wrapped in blankets, seen by the light from fires and by intense flashes that lit up the whole street, were helped into the back. Some were on stretchers.

  In the dark, holding hands, they had to pick their way carefully down the flights of stairs, but eventually they made it to the road.

  Where a house they had passed less than an hour ago had once stood since 1910 there was nothing but a huge pile of wreckage. Next door, on either side, were exposed rooms, the flowery wallpaper and black fireplaces now obscenely on the outside.

  A crowd of men, some in Auxiliary Fire Service uniform and steel helmets, others in blue boiler suits were working frenziedly, tunnelling into the mound of wreckage which was ablaze at the back. The hoses were being played on it, the spray soaking the teams of men. Up the street a broken gas main was sending flames over a hundred feet into the air.

  Biff found a man who was directing operations.

  ‘Anything we can do?’

  The man took in their uniforms.

  ‘Not this time, sir, thank you. Luckily we’ve got a good team on the job.’

  He nodded at the bomb-site.

  ‘Don’t know how many are in there, but our information is that a family of four lived in the basement.’

  At that moment a vicious whine made them all duck.

  ‘Bloody shrapnel – from our own ack-ack. Sorry, miss.’

  He turned away as shouting came from the rescue workers. A woman was being dragged out, face and body blackened, half-naked from the effects of the blast. She was placed on a stretcher and rushed to the open doors of an ambulance.

  They turned and retraced their steps.

  It was too dark to do anything about tidying up. There was no electricity, no gas, no water.

  They went back to bed, blindly shaking and slapping the dust and plaster lumps off it, cuddling up, talking, catching up, interrupted by bangs and crashes. Rosemary tensed up every time, until, still in each other’s arms, they went to sleep as the world outside slowly calmed and peace reigned once more.

  In the morning they were woken by a couple of pigeons, cooing loudly on the paneless windowsill.

  Biff sat up, licking his dry lips, as Rosemary stirred beside him. He looked down at her, and started to laugh.

  Rosemary’s eyes opened wide even as she frowned.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  Then she too began to laugh.

  They were both covered in a white dust from the plaster that had settled, unseen in the dark of the night, on to the bed. Now, with their pink lips and white hair they looked like clowns.

  The hot tap gave only enough cold water from the tank in the eaves to wash their faces and bodies, and the cold one only dribbled, and petered out with the kettle still only two-thirds full.

  In any case there was no gas.

  He turned to the drinks cabinet.

  ‘I can offer you a whisky and soda, a dry martini, a—’

  ‘Ugh.’ Disgust showed on her face. ‘Stop, you’re make me feel sick.’

  He straightened up.

  ‘Right – we’re going out for breakfast.’

  She gestured at the room with her hands widespread. ‘But what about this mess?’

  He found her coat, gave it a shake.

  ‘Breakfast first, then we’ll get down to it.’

  The pain had gone. He felt so much better. He raised a hand to his head, felt his eyes, moved a leg. Yes, everything seemed good, but why was he lying on the bathroom floor? Had he fallen? He rolled slowly on to his side, and then on to his front. Maybe it was the bomb. Carefully he pushed down on his hands and tried raising himself. He was very weak, but he managed to get shakily on to all fours. His body felt as if he had gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. He crawled towards the toilet, needed it to get into a kneeling position. He winced with the hardness of the tiles on his skinny frame. He waited for a while, fighting to get his breat
h back, then he got to his feet, half-falling against the cistern. He grabbed at it, then moved slowly along, holding on to cupboards until he reached the door. He pushed it wide open. She wasn’t there, the bed was rumpled but the room was intact. And then he realized: it was a modern bedroom – it wasn’t the war. It was the year 2007.

  That dreadful time was long gone. Whatever had made him think of it?

  Then he remembered what he had been doing that day. He’d been to the high sheriff’s.…

  He shook his head. Maybe it was the sight of that laid-up RAF colour, or the rays of light falling on to the woman sitting on her own at the front of the church? They had brought so many memories flooding back.

  He made it to the bed, crawled in under the duvet, shivering now. Biff pulled it up over his head to get warm, he was so cold.

  It was the altitude he realized, the four-engined Halifax was at a much higher ceiling than in the early days on the ‘Blimps.’ Flying at 18,000 feet and with draughts like rods of ice blasting in it was appallingly cold.

  They flew in layered silk, wool, and leather, but still shivered. Regularly his sandwiches froze solid – even the scalding-hot coffee became a cold drink after five or six hours.

  He was on his second tour now in 1943, and everything had changed as he had changed. With the increasing number of aircraft deployed – tonight there were over 728 – raids had to be streamed, and Pathfinders – special squadrons with the top navigators aboard, went ahead to drop flares over the target.

  Tonight it was Hamburg, especially the docks.

  Two minutes before the zero hour at 1 a.m., twenty of the Pathfinders had dropped yellow target indicators blind on H2S – the centromeric radar system. Hamburg’s river and coastline gave the city an excellent, sharp image.

  Eight more Pathfinders carrying red TIs aimed visually, and then a further fifty-three backed them up with green flares.

  Now the order had been given to the main bomber force, of which he was one, to attack from zero plus two minutes to zero plus forty-eight, and to overshoot the markers by two seconds in an effort to reduce the ‘creepback’ which had dogged recent attacks. His mind drifted back to earlier in the day, to the briefing which was so much more detailed, crowded, and busier than in the early days.

  He’d flown an air test on his Halifax that morning, the ground crew going along as tradition demanded.

  In the mess they had gathered around the wireless with their drinks to listen to the one o’clock news in complete silence.

  Last night a force of three hundred and ninety aircraft of Bomber Command attacked the German Naval installations at Kiel

  Some scant details followed, then:

  Six of our aircraft are missing.

  When the wireless was switched off they had resumed talking again, but minds remained for a while on those six crews.

  Lunch was followed by the briefing.

  All those listed on the battle order of the day, often over a hundred men, assembled in the briefing room, sitting as crews together. The chatting had stopped as the squadron commander entered, with the navigation officer, the intelligence officer and the station commander. They all stood but the station commander motioned them to sit down again.

  Maps were displayed, with pinned ribbons showing the route and the return course, which was different, followed by short pithy descriptions of the nature of the target, take-off times, the size of the attacking force and order of battle, and bombing heights.

  Asecond large map covered with clear celluloid detailed with crayons the known enemy defences, flak concentrations, and now, different from the early days when they were non-existent, the night-fighter danger zones.

  ‘Met’ had followed with details of the weather en route and over the target, and then the navigation officer gave the turning points, the crew navigators scribbling hard to get it right. It was vital, since in the dark they could not see other aircraft.

  The take-off time had been given, and they had then ambled out of the smoke-filled rooms to call at the intelligence unit to collect a small pack of escape items, containing silk printed maps, energizing sweets, stimulants, a small compass, and money for use in Holland, Belgium or France.

  The next few hours of anticipation and growing anxiety would drag on. Biff had actually gone to the camp cinema, watching without actually taking in George Formby strumming his ukulele and rushing around in some sort of comedy.

  The Halifax was much bigger than the Wellington. He had got out of the transport and walked under the huge black shape, several times the size of a double-decker bus, with its nose pointing at the heavens.

  Inside, as he had settled into the left-hand seat of the cramped cockpit, the distinctive smell of oil, metal and leather of the Halifax assailed his nostrils.

  He had glanced down as usual through the perspex hood at the ground crew with their mobile battery – known as the trolley acc, waiting to start the engines.

  He’d followed the usual drill with his flight engineer.

  ‘Ground/Flight switch – set on ground; throttles set; pitch – fully fine and locked; supercharger – medium gear – radiator shutters open.

  Fuel tanks selected and booster pumps on.

  Ignition.

  Contact.’

  As each of the four Merlin engines roared into life, the ground crew scurried about under the wings, disconnecting the external battery leads and removing chocks from beneath the huge wheels, each as high as a man.

  The heavily laden Halifax had needed a long run on full throttle before, gradually, its tail had risen and he had coaxed it reluctantly into the air, climbing slowly away with throttles locked on.

  Now, as they made for the target in darkness, there were unseen bombers all around them. Above and below were more aircraft, yet, except when they hit the slipstream of another aircraft, they could have been all alone in the night sky, isolated even more by the steady, deafening roar of the four Merlin engines.

  ‘Green TIs ahead, skipper.’

  He came back to the present, the here and now of the continuous war the RAF had been waging for the last three and a quarter years against Nazi Germany.

  He flicked his mike switch.

  ‘Thanks, bomb-aimer. I see them.’

  The radio crackled again.

  ‘Master bomber to all aircraft, bomb the red markers; I say again, bomb the red markers.’

  They’d been to the target before, on 24 July when the use of ‘window’ for the first time had completely fooled the German air defences.

  It had been the most massive attack of the war by Bomber Command.

  And now, in quick succession they were attacking it again, with a force nearly as big, and he felt a deep unease.

  He was carrying five tons of bombs to the city where Konrad and Anna lived.

  It was ironic to think that in a few months’ time they were supposed to meet – and now he was doing his best to kill them.

  He could only pray that they were no longer living there.

  The bomb-aimer, lying in the nose, now took over, directing Biff towards the aiming point. Silent against the roar of the engines, heavy flak burst around them in red angry flashes, which swept past at great speed.

  Flares dropped by night fighters hung above them. A sudden brilliant flash marked the end of a Halifax.

  Through the intercom the bomb-aimer gave Biff continuing guidance.

  ‘Right. Right. Le … ft. Steady.…’

  Searchlights, normally radar-guided, tonight seemed to be aimlessly raking the night sky; then suddenly, just ahead and beneath him, were the red target indicators.

  He held the aircraft dead steady. Seconds passed. He glanced out through the side of the plexiglass and was suddenly transfixed with horror.

  Even as he watched his ears crackled with: ‘Bombs gone.’

  The aircraft leapt into the air. He fought to steady it for a further twenty seconds until a photo-flash went off to record the bomb bursts.

  But i
t was hardly needed. What had horrified him now became apparent to them all as he dropped the nose and banked away to gain speed and get out of the target area as fast as possible.

  In silence they watched as below them a huge firestorm was raging, engulfing what seemed to be miles of streets; hurricanes of flame and smoke were tearing through the heart of Hamburg at incredible speed.

  The black silhouettes of hundreds of aircraft slid in silent formation over the inferno. The searchlights criss-crossing the sky from the edges, suddenly covered one of the black crosses. Tracer and flak bursts were everywhere – all without sound. Only the deafening roar of their own engines filled their ears.

  They’d never seen the battle group bombing over the target before.

  As well as the flares and bomb bursts, marked by beads of intense light that expanded in an instant to the horizon, sudden eruptions of flame – like pictures he’d seen of solar flares, reached up from the seething swirling sea of fire as houses and factories exploded in the heat.

  There could be no doubt; if Anna was down there she must be dead.

  It affected him deeply.

  When they were well over one hundred miles from the target area the rear gunner said the sky was still red raw behind them.

  He was thankful that he wasn’t in the battle order for the final raid on the city.

  When the intelligence reports filtered through a month later the figures were truly staggering.

  Twenty-two square kilometres of the city had been engulfed in the fantastic firestorm. It was reckoned that 42,000 had died, and a million refugees had left the city. Over 40,000 houses had been destroyed, and a quarter of a million flats, and well over 5,000 factories. But it was the 277 schools that got to him, albeit they were empty at night, and the twenty-four hospitals that were probably not. It began to haunt him.

  Shaken, Biff went to see the CO. He was told to take a seat and was offered a cigarette. The ‘boss’ noticed the slight tremor in the hand of the young pilot, who looked older than his record card indicated. He’d checked: Banks had been on operations for two whole tours now and had won a DFC.