by Hugh Ashton
“Very good, Letz,” replied Eckener, reading the message form.
To Dr. Hugo Eckener, commanding airship Bismarck.
Following embarkation of Confederate dignitaries at Cordele, on signal from ground, special cargo to be jettisoned, and crew to evacuate using all available parachutes. Passengers are not, repeat not, to evacuate.
Major G. Weisstal, Commander, German forces, Cordele.
“Thank you, Letz,” said Eckener. “You did well not to yell this down the tube. Major Weisstal seems to have a strange sense of humor.” Eckener had met Weisstal a number of times, and had a high regard for his abilities and character, but he had never expected him to send a message like this. “Encode in the same cipher, and reply to Cordele: ‘Request confirmation and reasoning for your last message’.” This was swiftly done, and the Morse key was soon tapping away. In a few minutes, the reply came through, and the other radioman, Dorfmann, decoded it, passing the message form to Eckener.
Do not ask further questions. This is for the good of Germany and for the world. Jettison cargo and evacuate airship following embarkation at Cordele. On no account allow any passengers to leave Bismarck.
Dorfmann, who had just decoded the signal, blurted out, “It’s a plot against the Führer’s life!”
“It certainly seems to be something like that,” replied Eckener calmly. He had selected all his crew carefully with a view to their lack of Nazi sympathies, and he was positive that they all felt the same way as he in matters of politics, so he was completely unprepared for Dorfmann’s sudden rush for the ladder.
“I must warn the Führer and save his life!” cried Dorfmann, as he shouldered Eckener aside, climbed the first few rungs and grappled with the sliding roof hatch. “For Führer and Fatherland!”
Incredible, thought Eckener, did people really think and speak like that?
-o-
Without really understanding why he was doing all this, he followed Dorfmann up the ladder through the hatch, and grabbed hold of Dorfmann’s foot. The shoe came off in Eckener’s hands, and he quickly dropped it, but Dorfmann was now off-balance, with only one hand and one foot on the ladder. Eckener swiftly struck sideways at the single ankle supporting Dorfmann’s weight, and the foot came off the ladder.
Now Dorfmann was hanging only by one hand. Half-in and half-out of the radio car, Eckener wrapped his arms round both of Dorfmann’s legs and pulled down. Despite briefly regaining his grip on the ladder with the other hand, Dorfmann was forced to let go of the ladder. He collapsed against Eckener, and crashed, dazed, onto the roof. His glasses fell from his face, and were immediately caught by the slipstream and whisked over the edge of the car. Dorfmann’s fall had taken him away from the ladder, towards the enclosing guard hoops, and his body crashed against them. His fall knocked the older man down a few rungs to collapse on the floor inside the radio cabin, from which position Eckener immediately sprang up and rushed for the ladder again.
As Eckener re-climbed the ladder from the radio cabin and his head emerged from the roof hatch, he saw Dorfmann’s lower body hit the hoop once more, causing a couple of rivets to spring from the joint holding the hoop to the ladder, and immediately afterwards, the airship rolled a little more than usual, throwing Dorfmann against the hoop yet again, with renewed force. Two more rivets popped, and now Eckener could see a gap between the ladder and the hoop. Eckener took two more steps up the ladder so that he was now once more halfway out of the radio car. The slipstream tore at his face.
Dorfmann’s eyes, which had been closed, now opened, and focused on Eckener’s. His hands reached towards Eckener and grabbed his lapels with a white-knuckle grip. Once again, the airship rolled, and Dorfmann’s legs and lower body were slammed against the hoop, which broke free of its mounting. Dorfmann’s legs slid through the newly opened gap.
With the powerful slipstream pulling at his legs, sucking him out of the safety of the enclosed ladder, Dorfmann tightened his grip on Eckener’s coat, and attempted to scramble his way back to the hatch, but it was a losing battle. The wind caught at his prone body and forced it away from the ladder onto the exposed roof of the radio car from which he would undoubtedly be swept to his death almost instantly. Worse, from Eckener’s point of view, he still maintained a vice-like grip on Eckener’s lapels, which was pulling Eckener himself out of the hatch to share Dorfmann’s fate. Eckener did not dare relinquish his grip on the ladder to loosen the grip on his jacket, for fear that he would lose all control and be pulled by the wind, together with Dorfmann, to his death.
“Letz!” he shouted below into the radio car. “Grab my legs and pull down, damn you!”
Almost immediately he felt himself being torn painfully in two, as Letz hastened to obey, but he could feel his slow ascent out of the hatch slowing down, and then stopping. He released his hands from the ladder and attempted to break Dorfmann’s grip on his jacket, hammering at the other man’s knuckles. As one hand eventually relaxed its grip, Eckener grabbed the wrist. Almost immediately, Dorfmann released the other hand, and Eckener attempted to grab that wrist, but it slipped from his grasp. Eckener looked into Dorfmann’s wild and terrified eyes, only an arm’s length away, and tried to pull Dorfmann towards him, straining his shoulder muscles and sending a sharp pain shooting down his entire back.
“Pull harder, damn you!” he shouted down to Letz, despite the fact that he felt as though his spine was already about to snap in two. He could feel Dorfmann’s wrist slipping through his fingers, and hear his desperate wail, and then—nothing.
Dorfmann was gone, and Eckener found himself sitting, winded, on the floor of the radio car, where Letz had pulled him.
“My God!” said Eckener when he got his breath back. “He’s gone.” He climbed the ladder and looked. There was, as he expected, no sign of the recent struggle, except the gap where the guard hoop had been. “Thank you, Letz. You saved my life.” He took mental stock of his body. His back and spine felt as though they’d been dipped in boiling oil, and he felt exhausted, mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.
“I think you’d better sit down, sir,” said Letz, as if reading his mind, and pushing Dorfmann’s chair towards him.
“Thank you, Letz.” He forced his mind to think as he sat. The struggle had driven recent events from his mind. Suddenly he remembered the messages and why he was in the radio car in the first place.
He turned to Letz. “Well, man, what do you make of these messages?”
“Well, sir, it sounds to me like someone wants to leave our passengers floating around in midair. And my guess is that none of them would know enough to get themselves down again. They could be up here for days, it seems to me. Especially if we set a course back to the coast before we all jumped out.” Letz grinned. He seemed to be enjoying the idea.
“Is that what you’re suggesting we should do, then?” Inside himself, Eckener was sure what he wanted to do, but he regarded Letz as being a representative of the crew’s feelings. If the crew wouldn’t follow his lead, there was no point in his acting.
“I don’t like those Nazi bastards. My brother-in-law’s Jewish, and he lost a good job for no reason at all because of those people. Just give us the word to jump, and we’ll all do it, sir, and leave them lot floating all alone around up here.”
“You’re sure the rest will follow? There aren’t any more secret Nazis? What on earth made Dorfmann behave like that anyway?”
“I think he only became a Nazi recently, just before this trip, sir. I’d never heard anything political from him before, and then suddenly he couldn’t talk about anything else.”
“Why on earth?”
“I think it was meeting the Führer, sir, at the reception for the crew before the flight. I know that after that, he became all excited and emotional when he never used to be, sir. I’m certain he’s the only one, though, sir. Of course, I’m only speaking for the men, not the officers, sir.”
“Yes, well, Hitler can be a most impressive personality
, face-to-face. But whoever would have thought that anyone could become so fanatical after such a brief encounter with him?” Eckener made his decision quickly. “Letz, you’ll have to do the ciphering on this one as well as the transmission. Send ‘Understand your request. Will comply’ to Cordele. Sign my name at the bottom. I take full responsibility for all of this. If anyone ever asks you anything—and I am pretty sure that they won’t—then you were simply following my orders. Understand?”
“Aye, aye, sir. Very good, sir. Sir, about Dorfmann…?”
“Yes?”
Who relieves your watch?”
“Becker and Oltrich, sir.”
“I’ll get Becker in to you. Can I leave the three of you to re-arrange the duty roster until we land? Or whenever,” he added significantly.
“Yes, sir.”
“And not a word to anyone about what happened. Tell your fellow radiomen there was an accident on the ladder, but go easy on the details. He went up the ladder, the airship rolled, he slipped, hit his head, knocked the hoop off the ladder, you never saw it happen. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have two parachutes here, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, we do. One more thing, sir?”
“Yes?” pausing with one foot on the ladder.
“Please take care going up there, sir. I think we’re all going to need you in the next few hours or so.”
Chapter 39: Cordele Airship Station, Georgia, Confederate States of America
“My friend,” Goering turned to him, “this is Adolf Hitler, Führer—that is to say leader—and Chancellor of the German Reich.”
This was one of the most exciting days that David Slater could remember. Not only had he gotten to see the President for the first time in his life, but all the other members of the Cabinet were there as well, including General-in-Chief Harrison, Secretary of War, whose massive and imposing bulk was like the unstoppable Army of the Confederacy itself, thought David in one of his flights of patriotic fancy. Then he’d noticed Harrison’s canes, and wondered if his simile was so apt after all.
Colonel Vickers, for whom David was still acting as an orderly, had talked to Harrison, David beside him. David had saluted Harrison, who had acknowledged the salute with a salute of his own.
Not bad, thought David to himself. This was a long way away from his home in Goose Creek Bay, mixing and mingling with the head of the Army himself.
And then, to top it all off, the biggest airship in the world was coming here to land, take off and land again, all in a few hours. David’s one regret was that he wasn’t going to be leading the handling party, but he figured the view from Colonel Vickers’s position would be better, and it was certainly easier work.
David was in charge of Colonel Vickers’s equipment, including his binoculars. Since the Colonel seemed to be in a good mood, and not using the field-glasses at the moment, David picked them up.
Vickers saw what he was doing. “Go ahead, Sergeant. I’ll tell you when I need them myself.” Colonel Vickers, despite his good temper, seemed to be a little distracted. I suppose he has a right to be a mite preoccupied, thought David. After all, it’s not every day that this kind of thing happens, and the responsibility of looking after all the important folks is a big one.
“Thank you, sir.” David raised the field-glasses to his eyes, and scanned the horizon in the direction from which the airship was meant to approach. No sign of the airship as yet. Since he was in full dress uniform, the hot sun made him sweat, and he took the glasses away from his eyes to mop his face with a handkerchief.
For no obvious reason he started to think about Brian, and what he was doing now. Apart from the one time that he’d played chess in the cell with Brian, he hadn’t seen him at all, though he saw many of the other prisoners who were being held in the brig for insubordination and disobedience, as well as the usual crop of would-be deserters. He’d asked Colonel Vickers the previous day, but got no real answer, other a gruff reply than that Brian was still alive and being well-treated.
He replaced the field-glasses to his eyes, and scanned the whole scene around the mooring mast and the airship shed. As well as all the troops stationed at Cordele, many civilians had been invited. The Mayor of Cordele, together with the whole city council, was there, along with the Governor of Georgia (who looked old and decrepit, thought David, examining him through the glasses) and his retinue. As well as President Davis and his Cabinet, the whole of the Senate was there. For the first trip on the airship, only Jefferson Davis III and his Cabinet, together with Davis’s cousin, who served as Leader of the Senate, had been invited. The others would have to wait their turn, weather and the good nature of the Germans permitting.
David continued his scan of the scene. Aha! he thought. There was Major Weisstal, near the mooring mast, with a squad of German soldiers equipped with their newfangled machine-pistols which were so much superior to the Tommy-guns carried by the Confederate elite forces. He’d watched the Germans stripping and testing these weapons at the range, and had been impressed by the speed and power with which the slugs chewed up the paper targets. On one thrilling day, Major Weisstal had even let him handle one and fire off a magazine’s worth of ammunition. Much to his surprise, he’d managed to hit the target with almost every bullet.
A little to one side, David saw that even the black slaves were watching in their own cordoned-off area. They seemed as excited as the white folks, thought David. Well, he’d certainly seen them working hard enough on the shed and the mooring tower and all. They certainly deserved the chance to see the results of their labors.
He swung the glasses toward the shed, where the handling party was waiting (but not under his command) and on the other side of the shed… He stiffened and adjusted the focus on the binoculars, not convinced that he was seeing things properly.
It was! But it couldn’t be, he told himself. It was Brian, half-hidden from view, with a sack or bag or something at his feet. What was he doing out of the cells? He continued watching.
He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Sergeant, hand me those field-glasses,” said Colonel Vickers, who immediately focused them on the area David had just been looking at.
“Goddarn it,” David heard him mutter. “I told him to stay well out of sight.” Vickers turned to David. “Sergeant, whatever happens today, no matter who asks you, you never saw that man there. Understand?” The tone was icy.
“Yes sir.” David was going to ask what was going on, but one look at the Colonel’s tight-lipped and angry face stifled the question in his throat.
“Believe me, Sergeant,” went on Vickers in a slightly less stern tone of voice, “there is no reason for you to know anything at all about any of this. Just keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told.”
David looked back towards the shed where he had seen Brian, but it was impossible to see anything clearly without help. He resumed looking towards the expected arrival point of the airship, but the glare of the sky hurt his eyes, and he soon gave up. He wasn’t going to ask Vickers for the use of the field-glasses again, for sure.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a captain, who saluted Vickers.
“General-in-Chief Harrison’s compliments, sir, and he requests the use of your orderly sergeant, if he’s the one who writes so well.” Since arriving in Cordele, David’s calligraphic skills had become famous. At least once a week he was called on to produce a prize certificate for an inter-company sports competition or similar event.
“Sure, captain,” replied Vickers, with an easy smile. “He’s not busy right now. Take him with you.”
“Thank you, sir. This way, Sergeant.”
As David followed the captain, Vickers called after him. “Straighten your cap, Sergeant.” David obeyed and walked on.
The captain led David into a tent, right into the presence of General-in-Chief Harrison. David exchanged salutes with Harrison, wondering what on earth required
his presence so urgently.
Harrison explained. “Last night the President and myself was talking, and we thought we should give them Germans some kind of certificate of appreciation to show how happy we are about the airship coming and all that bull. Him and me wrote out the words, but neither of us can write worth a damn, and none of my staff is any better. Someone told me that you were the kid who wrote well, so I sent one of my guys to find you.”
David disliked being called “kid”—he was nearly twenty years old, after all, but even being called “kid” by the General-in-Chief was better than not talking to him at all.
“Yes, sir. Most folks seem to appreciate the way I write.”
“So here’s what I want you to write, Sergeant.” He passed over a piece of paper with the draft of the certificate.