Bomber (14 page)

‘You mean if those things went off in the fuel tank …’ Harry stopped to take in the implications.

Ernie Benik finished his sentence for him. ‘Coulda blown the wing off. Or at least set off a big fire. You boys have had a hell of a narrow escape.’

Harry thought about those cannon shells as he lay in his bunk, waiting for sleep to come. He wondered too if the guy who had written that message was Jewish like him. What he had done took guts. Harry’s stomach tightened when he thought what the Nazis would do to the worker if they caught him.

*    *    *

Several days passed and they were all wondering when they would get the next early morning call, but Ernie dropped no hints, they heard no other rumours and no missions were flown. Then the weather had changed. Deep low pressure over most of northern Europe, so the weather boys told them. When the clouds were this thick, nobody did any flying.

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, came on October 9th, and Bortz asked Harry if he wanted to come to the service they were having in the base chapel, a small hut used by all faiths at Kirkstead. Harry thanked the lieutenant, and was in two minds about going, but he hadn’t been to a Jewish service since he was ten and he made his excuses.

On that day it rained until the ground turned to sludge and you couldn’t go out the hut without coming back with mud squelching in your shoes and halfway up your trousers. But there were occasional gaps in the rain and they could apply for day passes if they wanted. Harry thought this was a good moment to ask Tilly to take him to Norwich.

He left a note at her grandmother’s and she wrote him a letter telling him to meet her at the bus stop on Sunday, nine o’clock sharp, raining or not.

That was the next day. Harry prayed he wouldn’t wake up to a blue sky and all leave cancelled due to the imminent recommencement of operations. But his luck held with the weather and he walked down to Kirkstead in a thin drizzle, the cloud as low and grey as ever. Tilly was
waiting for him, dressed in a dull brown winter coat, and gave him a dazzling smile when she saw him.

The bus was late but, having both recently returned from London, they had plenty to talk about. They got to Norwich by ten, when the weather took a turn for the worse. Sheltering from the rain they sat together in a half-empty cafe. Tilly took off her overcoat, and shook her hair free of her red beret. She was wearing a Fair Isle cardigan over a green cotton dress and looked so pretty it took his breath away.

As the rain came on stronger the cafe filled up, and they had to squeeze up against each other on a row of benches that leaned against the wall. She didn’t seem to mind. One of the things he noticed about her was a faint aroma of woodsmoke – lots of Limeys smelt like that, or of paraffin oil. It wasn’t unpleasant.

‘Do you have a wood fire at home?’ he asked, in an awkward attempt to make conversation.

She laughed. ‘We spend most evenings sitting right on top of that fire. There’s so little fuel to heat the house, you have to make the most of what you’ve got.’

She asked him what he wanted to do and suggested they visit the cathedral. ‘Just the thing for a rainy day,’ she said.

Tilly had been there many times before and pointed out all the things he would have missed if he’d just been wandering around on his own – the quaint little carvings under the seats in the ornate wooden choir, the extraordinary elaborate stonework of the vaulted ceiling in the nave,
the stone gargoyles leering from corners, like malevolent creatures in a Walt Disney movie.

The choir began rehearsing for a wedding, and as they sang their voices hung in the air, falling to silence like a great silk veil in the vastness of the nave.

Then, for a brief moment, the sun came out and they went to sit in the cloistered garden. There was no one else around the cloister and Tilly quietly slipped her hand into his. It felt like a last gasp of summer and Harry wished, more than anything else in the world, that he could stop time and stay in this peaceful place forever.

They got back to Kirkstead as evening was falling, and Harry was delighted when she took his arm and asked him to walk her to her grandmother’s house. He thought she might ask him in, but instead she said he ought to hurry back to his base as another torrential downpour was imminent. Then she kissed him on the cheek at the garden gate and told him to let her know as soon as he could come and see her again.

Harry was lost for words, and walked back to the base kicking himself for not asking her if she would like to come to the dance they were having at the base mid-month, with a full dance band and everything. He would just have to drop her another note.

Harry was dreaming about his brother. He and David were walking home along the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan on a brilliant summer day, a cool breeze from the East River taking some of the heat off. It was the year they built the World Fair in Queens and you could see some of its amazing buildings out there in the distance. It seemed like the most exciting place in the world and they were both going to go as soon as the crowds died down … Then Harry remembered something he had been dying to tell David for months. ‘We went to this jumble sale – that’s Limey speak for yard sale – and this duchessy old woman was judging the cake competition …’

But he realised, even in his dream, that David was dead and this hadn’t happened to him yet. He woke to a shaking sensation. It was Ernie Benik. ‘Hey, Harry – some dream you were having.’ Ernie was smiling. ‘I brought you a coffee. You guys have to be up for a briefing.’

Harry came to his senses. John and Ralph were already up, and Ernie was shaking Jim Corrales from a deep slumber. ‘Hey, John, what’s happening?’ called Harry.

‘Dunno, buddy,’ he said. ‘Gotta be an op.’

Within half an hour they were all sitting in the Operations Briefing Room, knocking back black coffee and coughing in the haze of cigarette smoke. Colonel Kittering came in with his entourage of senior officers and the whole room fell silent and stood to attention. The colonel looked immaculate, which surprised Harry as he guessed he had been up all night.

‘OK, stand easy,’ said Kittering. ‘Today the Eighth is going to make history.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this already,’ whispered Corrales.

‘Three months back we visited Schweinfurt and Regensburg. Our mission then was to take out the ball-bearing works. I don’t need to tell you the whole Nazi war machine depends on these little things. Well, we didn’t do as good a job as we could have, and today we’re going to finish it off.’

A low groan started in the front rows and spread to the rear as the whole room realised what their target would be.

Kittering drew back the curtain over the map and they all saw a thin red twine stretching from Kirkstead to Schweinfurt, right in the heart of Germany.

Harry wondered if there’d ever been an op where the crew cheered when they saw their destination.

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ said Kittering. ‘But I know you can do it. We’re sending over three hundred Fortresses, and by early afternoon we’re going to have wiped out
the Nazi ball-bearing industry. And the history books will say, this was the moment the war started to grind to a halt.’

Harry remembered his first day at Kirkstead, when they had watched the mauled bomb group return from Schweinfurt and had seen that Fortress crash, and was filled with a sense of foreboding. He tried to cheer himself up. Today was a Thursday and on Saturday he was going to the base dance with the most beautiful girl in England. Tilly had written back to his note immediately but told him she could not see him until then, as she was travelling down to London to stay with her mother. She signed off her letter with three kisses. The anticipation had been killing him, but Saturday was now just another ‘maybe’ too.

When their jeep arrived at the
Macey May
, Holberg was looking worried. He sniffed the air. ‘Look at the fields, boys,’ he said, staring beyond the wire boundary of the base. ‘That’s a fog rising. We’re not due off for another half-hour so I reckon it’ll be all over us by then.’

Harry looked at the wheels of the
Macey May
– the tyres were compressed under the weight of her full fuel tanks and bomb load. Sending heavily loaded bombers off in that fog would be just as dangerous as flying over their target. Surely Kittering and the top brass didn’t think so lightly of their lives and their precious aircraft that they’d do such a thing?

‘Not looking good,’ said Holberg. ‘Maybe they won’t send us.’

Harry was aware of a sensation he rarely felt these days. Intense relief. If there was fog, how were they going to take off? It would be suicide surely.

‘So, Captain, whadda we gonna do?’ asked Corrales.

‘Better go through the motions, I suppose,’ said Holberg.

They grouped together for their ritual moment of prayer. Despite his own dim faith, Harry prayed fervently that they would all make it back.

‘OK,’ said Holberg, slapping each man on the back. ‘Pay attention up there, look out for each other, and tonight I’ll be buying you all a beer in the Green Man!’

With that they dispersed to their stations in the Fortress and began the checks that made up the preflight routine.

Harry always found this one of the most nerve-racking times on a mission. Holberg and Stearley had the most to do, checking the engines and all the other vital systems on the bomber, along with LaFitte the engineer. Once Harry had loaded his guns inside his turret and gone through the basic gunsight, oxygen, communications and suit checks, there was nothing else for him to do. Most importantly, there was nothing to distract him from what lay ahead. He sat there in his seat next to Skaggs in the radio op compartment trying to find something interesting in the
Eastern Daily Press
– a dull read at the best of times.

‘Hey, Skaggs, says here Elsie Ruddock’s won the marrow growing contest, against fierce competition from the Saxmunden WI.’

‘What the hell’s a marrow?’ said Skaggs, barely able to keep the contempt from his voice.

Harry lifted the paper to show him the picture – an ample English matron in her gardening overalls, proudly holding up an equally ample vegetable of some sort. It looked like an elongated pumpkin.

Skaggs lolled back in his chair and let out an almighty snort. ‘Never mind that. I wanna know about the Mayor of Beccles and his garden gnomes.’

Harry had noticed some Limeys liked to decorate their gardens with ceramic figures, like those little guys in Snow White. It was one of the baffling things about being in England. Recently the mayor had had three gnomes stolen from his garden. This had made the front page of the paper.

‘Maybe some of the guys wanted a souvenir,’ sniggered Skaggs.

They settled into a bored silence. Occasionally Harry looked out of the small observation window by Skaggs’s desk. ‘Fog still rising,’ he’d say, and Skaggs would grunt. At any moment, he was sure, a flare would go up instructing them to stand down and they’d all head back to their huts.

But after half an hour the radio transmitter took an incoming message. Skaggs adjusted his interphone and said, ‘Radio to Captain. Start engines.’

Harry’s stomach tightened. They were going after all.

Skaggs saw his concern. He peered out of the large skylight window above his desk. ‘No way can we take off in this,’ he said to Harry. ‘We’ll collide with each other on the concrete.’

The
Macey May
started to shudder as each engine burst into life and soon the noise of scores of aero-engines from other bombers nearby made conversation all but impossible. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if you could hear this racket in Norwich. He was sure the girls in Tilly’s factory could hear it, and he wondered if she had told any of her friends she was going to the dance with him on Saturday.

His wristwatch crawled through another fifteen minutes. He began to fret too about their fuel supply. The longer they sat there on the concrete, engines running, the less fuel they’d have left to get them safely home.

He went over to Hill and Dalinsky in the waist and peered out of their wide gun port windows. ‘Betcha ten dollars we don’t go!’ said Dalinsky.

Harry shook his head.

‘Fog’s still thick on the ground,’ John said to them both.

Then Dalinsky pointed to a signal flare arcing up from where they knew the control tower was. But this wasn’t to tell them to disembark.

‘Shit. That’s it. We’re definitely going,’ said Hill.

Dalinsky gave Harry a slap on the back. ‘Shoulda made that bet.’

*    *    *

‘OK, strap yourselves in,’ said Holberg over the interphone. ‘We’re off.’

The tone of the
Macey May
’s engines moved up a notch. Harry wished he was there in the cockpit. Holberg had let him stand behind them on one of the early training flights they had all made back in the States, and it was fascinating seeing what those three guys had to do to get a B-17 into the air.

They lurched and dawdled from their hardstand, joining the queue of Fortresses waiting their turn on the main runway. Not knowing what was actually happening made things far worse for Harry. The rest of them could see out of a window. He was just stuck there inside the radio compartment with the
Eastern Daily Press
.

Harry thought he sensed a flash of light, then a low muffled explosion rolled across the base, barely audible over the roar of aero-engines. ‘Oh Jesus …’ he heard Holberg say over the interphone.

‘One down, or maybe two,’ said Skaggs. ‘Maybe there was a collision.’

The
Macey May
trundled forward. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t happened on the runway. They were still going.

Holberg’s voice crackled in their ears. ‘Hold tight!’

The
Macey May
picked up speed, her own engines screaming over the background thrum of all the others. Harry hated this bit. The wait until the bumping stopped and the wheels were clear of the concrete. That awful pause
as they climbed, fearing that any second they might plunge to the ground to be consumed by a fiery explosion. Harry often wondered if you died right away when that happened or whether you had to endure an agonising few seconds as the flames ate into you.