The Dawn Patrol

by Todd Kelsey

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hastings by the Sea Reporter

  Obituaries

  ELICIA WALLACE - 1888-1940

  Elicia Wallace of Carlton Coville died on September 7th, 1940, as a volunteer ambulance driver, working in the East of London during the first significant bombing raid on civilians in the Blitz. She was married to George Wallace, who served in the Great War alongside Winston Churchill at Ypres with the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, and who died volunteering as a merchant seaman during the Dunkirk Evacuation. Elicia and George are survived by their son Eric, an RAF pilot, who recently married Edith Rose, who serves as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary.

  Hermann Goering sat in his hunting lodge, burning with injured pride, constantly reminded of his claim that the British would never be able to bomb the city. But they had! And to add insult to injury, when Goering made the claim, he made an anti Semitic joke, saying that if it ever happened, people could call him “Meyer”. And now some people were calling me Meyer!

  The British attack had been ineffective, as ineffective as the mistaken bombing run on London on the 24th, but it had a powerful symbolic value. They hit us in our most vulnerable spot – Hitler’s ego! The attack had enraged Hitler, who immediately ordered retaliation. Goering and the generals had gone so far as to argue with Hitler, even to plead with him, but he went against their advice, and had ordered Goering to begin a relentless full scale bombing campaign against London.

  Goering felt himself beginning to lose the Fuehrer’s complete trust. He looked up at the walls, with an uneasy feeling. It must be the stress has reached new heights. He tried to console himself by strolling past the collection of stolen art on the wall, and even that made him uneasy. He stopped in front of a series of mid 19th Century works taken from France, by the artist Gustav Dore, created for editions of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Dante’s Inferno. He looked at a picture of a noble King on his horse, and it no longer gave him pleasure. He glanced at the other engravings, and they all seemed to speak of death and disaster. He decided to have them burned.

  --

  Eric and Edith stood in front of his mother’s grave, silent. Eric had been numb, beyond weary from incessant fighting. They stood there with one arm around each other, and Edith thought to herself, I’ll support him as best I can.

  “Well, I guess we best be going.” said Eric weakly, and Edith felt concern amidst her sorrow, not just about Eric on the ground, but what it might do to him in the air. His mannerisms, his motion, all seemed to speak as if he had aged 100 years.

  When they got back to the car, before Eric started it up, Edith put her hand on his arm gently.

  “Eric”

  “Hm” he said, looking listlessly at the rain beginning to patter on the windshield.

  “Eric, please look at me” and he turned his face and looked, with weary sorrow. She squeezed his arm. “I just want you to know, that whatever place you go to inside, however long you’re there -- that I’m there with you. If it’s a place of detachment, of shadow, of weariness, of anger, worlds or galaxies removed, I’m there with you. You’ll never have to come back until you’re ready.” Eric looked back at the windshield.

  “Thank you, Edith. I hope we survive this war, inside and out.”

  They drove back through the light rain, silent, and after about an hour of silence, Eric reached over his hand, to take Edith’s, and squeezed lightly, without looking at her.

  “I want you to know that if it weren’t for you, I don’t think I would have survived.” he said. “I guess that daring can bring death. And death can bring darkness. But we’re still here. And I still love you.”

  And they drove back to Biggin Hill RAF base, and on impulse, Eric turned and asked Edith, “care for a small drink”? And they went inside, and when the officers inside turned round, each of them stood up and came round Eric, and gave him quiet condolences. Eric looked round at them, thinking of what his father and mother had died for, what their fellow pilots had died for, and he remembered a little toast they made up at Oxford, when Tolkien was talking about a gathering of warriors after a battle. There had been grieving, sure, but then a celebration, and a particular saying. Eric cleared his throat, and everyone listened attentively, raising a glass.

  “I’d like to make a toast in honor of my mother, and father, and to our comrades in arms who have fallen in battle” he said, looking around the room. “It comes from a story of warriors, a professor at Oxford I met who also had fought at the Somme, and survived. The toast happened to be after a victory, and I want us for a moment to think with hope, that we will be victorious in defending England. So let us say the words of this toast.” and Eric raised his voice, and raised the glass higher, opening up his throat and chest in a roar that surprised Edith.

  “Hail the victorious dead!” and a hundred voices responded. “Hail the victorious dead!”

  And then the gathering went on in small talk, and later that night Eric and Edith lay in each other’s arms for comfort. “That was a nice toast you made, Eric. I’m not one for seeking glory or anything like that, but it seemed just the right thing, to think forward with hope, at a time like this.” And they drifted off into sleep, hoping that they would survive the next day.

  --

  Ernst Grunen sat in a jail cell, wearing his prison clothes, sweating, and shaking, going through the inevitable, terrible withdrawal from Pervitin. The military officers who talked to him had been surprised that he knew English so well, and when they requested information, he held nothing back. At first they were suspicious, thinking he might be a spy, and a plant, but have gave extensive details about the planes involved, their actions, information about the likely equipment and personal effects, air groups and identities, and he spoke with plain utter sincerity, explaining how he had visited America, and how he grew to utterly despise the Nazi regime. When the symptoms of withdrawal had begun, he knew from the past that they would come in waves, both psychological and physical, and he had asked for a doctor, described the medication, and the doctor had actually offered to ease him off of it, since British pilots has sometimes taken something similar. But Ernst had shaken his head, and now he was cursing himself.

  The anxiety was terrible, and his body and mind had revolted. Thankfully it was not a complete surprise, and in his mind, in the midst of convulsions, tremors, and a period of hallucination, he kept on repeating the same statement over and over again. “Not as I am, but as I will be. Not as I am, but as I will be.”. And he rocked back and forth on his bed.

  On the third day of coming off of the drug, still sweating, with a fever and occasional tremors, a knock had come at his cell. He looked up, blearily.

  “Go away!” and he fell back to the bed. But the door opened, and two men entered; the usual attending officer, and another man, who looked like he was dressed as a pilot. The facial expression of the attending officer was grim and non-committal as usual, but the other man had a look of concern on his face.

  “Cousin Ernst?” asked Rudy, and he was shocked, even as he recognized the physical suffering his cousin was going through, all grown up. He felt a hundred things at once – before he had felt a mixture of anger and betrayal – how could cousin Ernst participate in such an evil regime? And he remembered his thoughts in America, which seemed like 100 years ago, when he had thought that they might meet in the skies some day, in some noble way. But now, looking at Ernst, and thinking of all the death and fire and smoke – he was not sure there was any nobility anymore. Now, looking at his cousin, he just felt sympathy, in spite of himself. Two boys grown up to be thrown into battle in the skies.

  Ernst looked at him, not comprehending. And then when it dawned on him, tears came at the corner of his eyes. The crushing weight of his suffering overcame his embarrassment, and he reached out in a pitiful pleading gesture. “Cousin Rudy?” And the attending officer was surprised when they hugged each other. Two grown men crying, a Jerry and a Yank, what will we come to next in
this war.

  They both forgot for a few minutes, how Ernst had shot down Rudy’s comrades, and how Rudy had done the same. Rudy sat with his arm around Ernst’s shoulder, and they stared at the floor, both having the same million thoughts, thinking of battle, and death in the skies, and death down below. Rudy felt Ernst’s tremors underneath his prison garb, and ignored them, not wanting to embarrass his cousin anymore – the officers had told them what they knew, and the surprising fact that the had shot down his fellow pilots. Rudy looked at him and tried to imagine the awful decision Ernst had made, to take a stand against Hitler, which meant having to hurt people that he had fought with. There was nothing to be said. Maybe later.

  “Well, I guess it’s nice to be alive at least.” said Rudy.

  “Yes, cousin.” said Ernst, thinking that this exchange was probably worth a thousand conversations.

  “Well, cousin” Rudy got up, and pulled a book out from his jacket, and offered it to him. “I brought you a book about Persian history, which I thought you might be interested to read, which a friend had given me. Take good care of it.” They looked at each other, and both knew they might see each other again, or never see each other again.

  “If I can I’ll come visit you again, Ernst”

  “That would be nice. Thank you for the book.”

  Ernst read the book, and it gave him something to take his mind off the suffering, as the waves of nausea and anxiety and tremors began to have less strength. He knew it was only a matter of time before they would be talking to him again.

  When they came back, he decided to make an offer, no longer caring whether he lived or died. If they accepted his offer, he was very likely to die. He felt some sense of calm, having been reunited with his cousin Rudy. He hoped he would be able to tell Rudy about his story someday. Perhaps he could write it down.

  “I have an offer for you” he said to the attending officer, as they sat once again in the ‘conversation room’. “I am willing to go back to Germany, and serve as a spy for British Intelligence, but I have one condition” he said, evenly.

  “Which is?” said the attending officer, taking notes without looking up.

  “I would like to speak with Winston Churchill” said Ernst, knowing they would eventually take him up on his offer, because of what it would contain.

  “No chance” said the attending officer, but he had stopped writing, and he looked up at Ernst. “But just for the sake of conversation, why don’t you tell me this plan of yours” he said, “and while you’re at it, convince me of why you’re not a double spy”.

  Ernst smiled.

  “Certainly. But first, let me tell you about the Kroll Opera House in Berlin.”