Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  The man must have sensed my presence, for he suddenly paused in his work and looked straight at me where I stood in the gaping doorway. He was short and wiry with a broad forehead and his eyes looked startled and afraid. “Wer sind Sie? Was wollen Sie?”

  “I am an English flier,” I replied in German. “I am looking for a friend of mine who may be injured.”

  He put down his fork and came towards me, his dark, frightened eyes peering first at my face, then at my clothes. “Come in then and close the door please. The wind blow it open I think.” He fixed the latch with trembling fingers. “I was afraid it was the Russians.” He laughed nervously. “They want everything—all my crops. For the East, you know.” His speech was jerky. “To feed our pigs we must keep something.” He held the lantern close to me, still examining me uncertainly. Apparently he was finally satisfied, for he lowered the lantern and said, “You look tired. You walk far, yes.”

  “What has happened to my friend?” I asked. “He was brought here, wasn’t he? Is he—is he dead?” I waited, dreading his answer.

  He shook his head slowly. “Nein. He is not dead. But he injure himself very much when he land in the trees. Now you lie down in the straw there. I must finish my work before it is light. Then I get you something to eat, eh?”

  But I wasn’t listening. “Thank God!” I breathed it aloud. Tubby was alive. He was alive and I’d found him. I hadn’t killed him after all. I felt suddenly light-headed. I wanted to laugh. But once I started to laugh I felt I should never stop. I held my breath, fighting to control myself. Then I stumbled into the straw, sinking into it, relaxing, knowing I had done everything I could and that God had been with me. I had found Tubby and he wasn’t dead. “When did you find him?” I asked.

  “Four days ago,” the man answered. He had returned to his work.

  “And you have not handed him over to the Russians?”

  He paused with a fork-full of potatoes. “No, we do not hand him to the Russians. You have to thank my wife for that. Our daughter is in Berlin. She live in the French Sector with her husband who work on the railways there. But for the air bridge, she would be like us—she would be under the Russians.”

  I mumbled my thanks. My head kept nodding. It was very warm and comfortable there in the straw. “Is he badly hurt?”

  “Ja. He is not so good. Several ribs are broken and his arm and he has concussion. But he is conscious. You can speak with him.”

  “He should have a doctor.” My voice sounded very far away. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  “You do not have to worry. Our doctor is coming here to see him every day. He is a good doctor and he do not love the Russians because they take him to the East for a year to work with our prisoners. Once he meet my son. My son, Hans, is a prisoner of the Russians since 1945. Before that he is in North Africa and Italy and then on the Eastern front. I do not see him now for almost six years. But soon I hope he will come home. We have had two letters …”

  His voice droned pleasantly and my eyelids closed. I dreamt I was back in Stalag Luft I, but the guards all wore tight-necked brown tunics and black knee-length boots, and there was always snow and no hope of release or escape—only the hope of death. They kept on interrogating me, trying to get me to admit that I’d killed Tubby—there were intensely bright lights and they kept on shaking me.… I woke to find the farmer bending over me, shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, Herr Fraser.” He pronounced the “s” sharply and not as a “z.” “It is seven o’clock. We will have some food now and then you can talk with your friend.”

  “You know my name?” I murmured sleepily. And then I felt in my breast pocket. My papers were still there. He must have put them back after examining them. I clambered stiffly to my feet. I was cold and very tired.

  “I think perhaps we put your flying clothes under the straw, eh? I do not wish my men to know I have a British flier here. By talking, one of them might be given my farm. That is something they learn from the Nazis.” He said the word “Nazis” unemotionally as one might talk of an avalanche or some other act of God.

  When I had hidden my flying suit he took me across the farmyard to the house. It was a cold, bleak dawn, heavy with leaden cloud that promised more snow. Overhead I heard the drone of the planes flying in to Berlin, but I couldn’t see them, for the ceiling was not much more than a thousand.

  My memory of the Kleffmann’s house is vague; a memory of warmth and the smell of bacon, of a big kitchen with a great, clumsy, glowing stove and a bright-eyed, friendly little woman with wisps of greying hair and the slow, sure movements of one who lives close to the earth and whose routine never changes. I also remember the little bedroom high up under the roof where Tubby lay, his fat cheeks strangely hollow, his face flushed with fever and his eyes unnaturally bright. The ugly, patterned wallpaper with butterflies flying up vertical strips was littered with photographs of Hans Kleffmann who would some day come back from Russia and meet his mother and father again for the first time in six years. There were photographs of him as a baby, as a boy at the school in Hollmind, in the uniform of the Nazi Youth Organisation and finally in the uniform of the Wehrmacht—against the background of the Hradany Palace in Prague, in a Polish village, with the Eiffel Tower behind him, in the Desert leaning on a tank, in Rome with St. Peter’s dome over his left shoulder. And there were a few less formal snaps—Hans in bathing shorts on the Italian Riviera, Hans with a dark-haired girl in Naples, Hans ski-ing in the Dolomites. Hans filled that room with the nostalgia of a boy’s life leading inevitably, irrevocably to the Russian prison camp. They showed me a letter. It was four lines long—I am well and the Russians treat me very kindly. The food is good and I am happy. Love, Hans.

  Tubby, lying in that small, neatly austere bed, was an intruder.

  He was asleep when I went in. The Kleffmanns left me sitting by his bed whilst they got on with the business of the farm. Tubby’s breath came jerkily and painfully, but he slept on and I had a long time in which to become familiar with Hans. It’s almost as though I had met him, I got to know him so well from those faded photographs—arrogant and fanatical in victory, hard-faced and bitter in defeat. There in that room I was face to face with the Germany of the future, the Germany that was being hammered out on the vulcan forge of British, American and Soviet policy. I found my eyes turning back repeatedly to the grim, relentless face in the photograph taken at Lwow in the autumn of 1944 and comparing it with the smiling carefree kid in knickerbockers taken-outside the Hollmind school.

  Then Tubby opened his eyes and stared at me. At first I thought he wasn’t going to recognise me. We stared at each other for a moment and then he smiled. He smiled at me with his eyes, his lips a tight line constricted by pain. “Neil! How did you get here?”

  I told him, and when I’d finished he said, “You came back. That was kind of you.” He had difficulty in speaking and his voice was very weak.

  “Are they looking after you all right?” I asked awkwardly. He nodded slowly. “The old woman is very kind. She treats me as though I were her son. And the doctor does his best.”

  “You ought to be in hospital,” I said.

  He nodded again. “But it’s better than being in the hands of the Russians.”

  “Thank God you’re alive anyway,” I said. “I thought——” I hesitated and then said, “I was afraid I’d killed you. You were unconscious when you went out through the door. I didn’t mean it, Tubby. Please believe that.”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I understand. It was good of you to come back.” He winced as he took a breath. “Did you take the plane back to Saeton?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s got our engines in now and Saeton’s at Wunstorf. They ordered him over immediately to replace Harcourt’s Tudor.”

  His mouth opened to the beginning of a laugh and then he jerked rigid at the pain it caused him.

  “You ought to be in hospital,” I said again. “Listen,” I added. “Do you think you could stand another journey in tha
t cart, up to Hollmind airfield?”

  I saw him clench his teeth at the memory.

  “Could you stand it if you knew at the end there would be a hospital and everything in the way of treatment you need?”

  The sweat shone on his forehead. “Yes,” he breathed, so quietly that I could hardly hear him. “Yes, I’d face it again if I knew that. Maybe the doc here would fix me up with a shot of morphia. But they’ve so little in the way of drugs. They’ve been very kind, but they’re Germans and they haven’t the facilities for …” His voice trailed away.

  I was afraid he was going to fade into unconsciousness and I said quickly, “I’m going now, Tubby. To-night I’ll start out for Berlin. I’ll make it just as quickly as I can. Then, within a few hours, I’ll be back with a plane and we’ll evacuate you from Hollmind. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Good-bye then for the moment. I’ll get through somehow and then we’ll get you to a hospital. Hold on to that. You’ll be all right.”

  The corners of his lips twitched in a tight smile. “Good luck!” he whispered. And then as I rose from the bed, his hand came out from beneath the sheets and closed on mine. “Neil!” I had to bend down to hear him. “I want you to know—I won’t say anything. I’ll leave things as I find them. The plane crashed. Engine failure—ignition.” His voice died away and his eyes closed.

  Bending close to him I could hear the sob of his breathing. I reached under his pillow for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The handkerchief was dark with blood. I knew then that his lung was punctured. I wiped his forehead with my own handkerchief and then went quietly out of Hans’s little bedroom and down the dark stairs to the kitchen.

  They gave me a bed and I slept until it was dark. Then, after a huge meal by the warmth of the kitchen stove, I said good-bye to the Kleffmanns. “In a night or two,” I told them, “I will be back with a plane and we’ll get him away.”

  “Gut! Gut!” The farmer nodded. “It is better so. He is very bad, I think. Also it is dangerous for us having him here in the farm.”

  Frau Kleffmann came towards me. She had a bulky package in her hand. “Here is food for your journey, Herr Fraser—some chicken and some bread and butter and apples.” She hesitated. “If anything happens, do not worry about your friend. He is safe here. We will look after him. There has been war between us, but my Hans is in Russia. I will care for your friend as I would have others care for Hans if he is sick. Auf wiedersehen!” Her gnarled hand touched my arm and her eyes filled with tears. She turned quickly to the stove.

  The farmer accompanied me to the door. “I try to arrange for you to ride in a lorry who go once a week to Berlin with potatoes. But”—he spread his hands hopelessly—“the driver is sick. He do not go to-night. If you go three miles beyond Hollmind there is a café there for motor drivers. I think you will perhaps get a ride there.” He gave me instructions how to by-pass Hollmind and then shook my hands. “Viel Gluck, Herr Fraser. Come soon, please, for your friend. I fear he is very sick.”

  More snow had fallen during the day, but now the clouds had been swept away by a bitter east wind and the night was cold and clear. The moon had not yet risen, but the stars were so brilliant that I had no difficulty in seeing my way as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. High above me the airlift planes droned at regular three-minute intervals—I could see their navigation lights every now and then, green and red dots moving steadily through the litter of stars and the drift of the Milky Way. The white pin-point of their tail lights pointed the way to Berlin for me. I had only to follow them through the night sky and I should arrive at Gatow. For them Gatow was twenty minutes flying time. But for me….

  I turned south on the hard, straight road that led to the town of Hollmind, wondering how long the journey would take me. The snow was deep and crisp under my feet. Kleffmann had given me an old field-grey Werhmacht greatcoat and a Whermacht forage cap; Hans’s cast-off clothing. For the first time since I’d landed in Germany I felt warm and well-fed.

  Nothing stirred on the road. The snow seemed to have driven all transport off it. My footsteps were muffled and I walked in a deep silence. The only sound was the drone of the planes overhead and the hum of the wind in the telegraph wires. I reached the fork where the road branched off that I was to take in order to by-pass Hollmind. There was a signboard there—Berlin 54 km.

  Fifty-four kilometres isn’t far; not much more than thirty miles. A day’s march. But though I had had a good rest, I was still tired and very stiff. I was wearing shoes and my feet were blister-sore. And there was the cold. For a time the warmth of exercise kept it out, but, as I tired, the sweat broke out on my body and chilled into a clammy, ice-cold film, and then the wind cut through my clothing and into my flesh, seeming to blow straight on to my spine. God, it was cold! For miles, it seemed, I walked along by-roads through unmarked snow and there was no traffic. I must have missed the turning back on to the Berlin road, for it was almost midnight when I finally found it again and I saw no transport café—only dark woods and the illimitable miles of white agricultural land, flat and wind-swept.

  Several times I tried to thumb a lift. But each time the heavy, long-nosed German trucks ignored me, thundering by in a shower of snow that spattered icily on my face. However the fourth truck I waved to stopped and a voice called out, “Wohin, Freund?”

  “Berlin,” I shouted.

  There was a pause and then a Red Army soldier clambered down from the cabin. He was sleepy and he’d left his rifle in the truck. That was the only thing that saved me. He asked me in vile German for my papers. Fortunately the edge of the road was wooded. I dived into the dark shelter of the pines, ignoring the branches that lashed at my face, running until I was exhausted.

  Dawn found me trudging through powdery snow along a narrow side road flanked with trees, following blindly the drone of the airlift planes. It was a blood-red dawn, wild and violent and full of cold. The sun was a misty red disc above the pines. I staggered into the shelter of the woods, ate Frau Kleffmann’s chicken and bread, wrapped myself in pine needles and slept.

  All that day I slept, if you can call it sleep. It was more like a bone-chilled coma. I suppose I was suffering from mental as well as physical exhaustion. At all events I found the present and the past inextricably mixed in my mind, so that the urge to reach Berlin became confused with the urge to get out of Germany and I was back on those cold, wretched, starved weeks of escape.

  Night came at last, cold and black. There were no stars. I stumbled to the road and headed south-east, the drone of the planes my only guide. I passed through a small town, not bothering to note its name, joined a broader road where the snow had been churned up by traffic, and the first truck that came along stopped beside me. In the headlights I saw that the country bordering the road was flat. If there had been woods I should almost certainly have dived into them. But it was bare, open plain. “Wo wollen Sie hin, mein Lieber?” the driver called.

  “Berlin,” I heard myself answer in a cracked, trembling voice. Any moment I expected the brown, tunic-clad figure of a Red Army man to jump out and face me. But all that happened was that the driver called, “Kommen Sie rauf, Kamerad. Ich fahre auch nach Berlin.”

  It was almost too good to be true. I hauled myself up into the cabin. The driver was alone. There was no mate with him. The gears ground and the old vehicle lurched forward, wheels spinning in the snow. The cabin was hot and stuffy and smelt comfortingly of exhaust fumes. “Was wollen Sie in Berlin?” the driver asked.

  “Work,” I answered him gruffly in German.

  “Out of Russia into the Western Sectors, eh?” He grinned at me. He was a small, hard-bitten little man with ferrety eyes. “Well, I don’t blame you. If I thought there was a trucking job for me in the Western Sectors I’d be across the border in no time. But I have a wife and family up in Lübeck. Every night I come down this same road. Sometimes I wish I was up there flying the air bridge. I was in the Luft
waffe, you know. Radio operator. Had a little radio business before the war. But now, of course, it is finished. There are so few radio sets. It is better to drive a truck. But those bastards up there get to Berlin a lot quicker than I do. My wife always tells me….”

  He went on and on about himself and the drone of his voice merged with the engine and the eternal distant hum of aircraft throbbing through the clouds. My head nodded, sleepy with the sudden, unaccustomed warmth of the cabin. His voice lost itself in the engine. I slept fitfully, conscious of the lights of a town, of a signboard caught in the headlights that said Berlin 27 km., of the unending, dirty yellow of hard-packed snow slipping away beneath us.

  And then finally he was shaking me. “Aufwachen! Aufwachen! Berlin!”

  I opened my eyes blearily and surveyed unlit, slush-filled streets flanked by the empty, blasted shells of buildings which had not been touched since we’d smashed them to rubble five years ago. So this was Berlin! “Where are you making for?” I asked him.

  “Potsdam.” He peered at me out of the corners of his eyes. “That’s in the Russian Zone. Don’t imagine you’ll be wanting to go there.” He laughed mirthlessly, his breath whistling through broken front teeth.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Oranienburg.” He was still looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. “You are a Pole, no? You are not German. Not with that accent.”

  I didn’t say anything and he shrugged his shoulders. “Na was, schadet es schon?” He eased his foot on the accelerator pedal. “Well, where do you wish to go, eh? In a few moments I turn right. I have to keep inside the Russian Zone. But if you follow this road it will lead you to Frohnau. Frohnau is in the French Sector.”

  Frohnau! Frohnau beacon! Frohnau meant Berlin to every airlift pilot. But the warmth of the truck held me tight in my seat. Frohnau was many miles from Gatow. I should have to walk right across Berlin, more than twenty kilometres. “Where do you go when you turn right?” I asked.