Bomber (7 page)

He plunged into the freezing water and was immediately submerged. His heavy flying suit dragged him down into pitch-black water, where he didn’t know which way was up.
Pull your cord
, a voice inside his head said. He fumbled for the cord with clumsy gloves and the life vest filled with compressed air. At once he found himself rising to the surface like a cork, but almost immediately his head hit something hard. He was still underwater and realised he was trapped somewhere under the plane. In his panic he couldn’t find his way free but then felt someone tugging him by the arm.

Now he was above the surface, drawing in gasping lungfuls of air.

John was there by his side, holding on to his arm. ‘Harry’s out,’ he shouted.

Harry realised now that he had come up under the wing. Dalinsky was already up on it, swaying unsteadily in the swell of the sea. Corrales was crouching on the edge, holding the tethers of both the life rafts.

Dalinsky dragged Harry and John out of the sea. So far the B-17 was still level. ‘Who else is out there?’ said Corrales. Cain dragged himself up the wing, and then Skaggs, LaFitte and Bortz followed.

‘Well, that’s most of us,’ said Bortz. ‘Where’re Holberg and Stearley?’

Dark though it was, there was still enough moonlight to see the pilot’s cabin. The right window was closed – a bad sign. That was one of the pilots’ emergency exits. Cain dived into the sea and reached the rear exit in a few quick strokes. Bortz shouted, ‘Come back, Warren. She could go under at any second.’

The water level was already up to the door.

Cain levered himself up and peered into the dark interior.

Harry said, ‘I’m going to help him,’ but Bortz held him back.

‘Friedman, you stay here. This plane is going under any second. There’s no point wasting both your lives.’

Even as he said it, the Fortress’s nose dipped down lower
in the swell – enough for the rear exit to nearly clear the surface of the sea. They all felt the wing tilt, but then the Fortress seemed to steady itself. Harry knew he couldn’t just stand and watch. Bortz had let go his arm, and without another word he dived back into the water. When he reached the hatch, he pulled himself up, his waterlogged clothes hanging heavy on his body.

Peering down into the darkened interior, he realised his task was hopeless. What happened next startled him. The lights inside the plane came on.

Wading through the waterlogged interior, Harry reached the cabin to find Cain and Holberg wrenching at Stearley’s harnesses. The co-pilot had passed out and was trapped in his seat. ‘Warren, get me the toolkit. Just by your table.’

Cain wrenched off his bulky life jacket and threw it to Harry, then squeezed through the narrow passageway beneath the pilots’ seats. As he opened the small wooden door Harry saw freezing cold water gush around his legs. There must be at least a foot of it swilling round in there. They all felt the B-17 dip lower in the water as Cain’s weight shifted the centre of gravity. Within seconds he had found the tool case and quickly returned to the cabin.

‘What do you need?’ he asked.

‘Hacksaw.’

Cain handed it over and Holberg began to desperately saw at the tough canvas strap. Stearley started to moan and then struggle. ‘Hold still, Curtis,’ said Cain, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll get you out in just a second.’

‘You deadbeat,’ said Stearley, with sudden wide-eyed aggression. ‘You got us into this frigging mess.’

Holberg pushed him down in his seat. ‘Not now, Curtis,’ he said angrily. ‘We need to get you out of here. This man is trying to save your life.’

Harry passed Cain his life jacket. ‘You’d better put this back on, Lieutenant.’

Cain gave him a grim smile. ‘Thank you for coming to help,’ he said.

It took another twenty seconds of frantic sawing to cut through the harness.

‘Do you think you can walk?’

Stearley nodded.

‘Let’s go,’ said Holberg. But Stearley was still too unsteady on his feet and quickly collapsed in the swirling sea water.

‘We need to get him out by that rear exit,’ said Cain. ‘He’ll never make it out through a window.’

Holberg, Cain and Harry grabbed Stearley and struggled to drag him through the cramped interior.

‘Let me be,’ said the co-pilot. ‘I can walk.’

The
Macey May
lurched forward and they almost lost their balance.

‘Quick,’ said Holberg. ‘She’s about to go down.’

The interior was constructed of a series of alloy rings, and the three of them grabbed hold of them to steady themselves as they dragged Stearley towards the rear, Cain and Holberg pulling on his arms, Harry behind, holding his feet. As they reached the rear exit the plane lifted right
out of the water by about twenty degrees and Harry lost his footing, sliding down towards the mangled wreckage of the waist.

He hit his head when he stopped and felt momentarily dazed, then saw Cain making his way back to help him. ‘Come on, Friedman, we’ve got to get out of here fast.’

They looked up to see Holberg standing at the exit, pulling the compressed air handle on Stearley’s life jacket and pushing him out back first, then Holberg shouted over to the men on the wing, ‘Into the rafts, boys. Get away from her before she goes down.’

He hesitated at the door, looking down the fuselage at Harry and Cain, struggling to regain their footing. ‘Come on, men, get back up here,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t get sucked under.’

‘Captain, jump,’ they heard Corrales shout from outside.

The Fortress shifted again as the nose filled with water. Holberg started to climb down the interior, but the closer he got the more the plane dipped down. With a supreme effort Harry and Cain managed to claw their way back up to the exit, now fighting gravity as well as their waterlogged flight suits.

‘Come on!’ urged Holberg.

But he waited, knowing his weight was keeping the Fortress from dipping further, and when Harry and then Cain came within reach he held out a hand to help them.

Holberg pushed Harry out and he landed face first in the sea, the shock of the freezing water taking his breath
away. There was another splash right next to him. It was Cain. They surfaced to see Holberg still framed by the doorway.

They watched the bedraggled figure of the captain hesitate at the doorway. Then he jumped too.

Stearley was still floating in the water, too weak and dazed to help himself. Seeing him a few feet away, Harry dragged the co-pilot back to the nearest raft, which Corrales, John Hill and Dalinsky had now occupied. It took the three of them, and several near capsizes, to drag the co-pilot and Harry into the raft.

The tail end of the Fortress was now forty degrees up from the water. The nose had disappeared and water washed around the pilots’ cabin. They could still see the eerie glow of the internal lights just below the surface.

The B-17 swung further to the upright, its massive tail section hanging over them all. There it stood for a few moments as Holberg and Cain swam frantically towards the other life raft.

The
Macey May
gave another lurch then slowly began to sink into the sea. Now the wings were gone entirely and trapped air continued to belch and hiss from within. The tail hung suspended for a few more seconds, then a great bubble of air surfaced around it and it vanished into the depths.

LaFitte, Bortz and Skaggs had boarded the other life raft and they dragged Holberg and Cain in with them. As the two rafts bumped against each other Holberg said, ‘Tie ’em
together, quick.’ He looked utterly exhausted, but he continued with the drill.

‘Emergency compass?’ asked Holberg. ‘Spare radio? Pigeon?’

The rest of the crew looked blank. In their blind panic to escape, they had forgotten almost everything they had been trained to salvage.

Harry expected an excoriating dressing-down from the captain, but Holberg didn’t have the energy or the heart.

‘OK,’ he said plainly. ‘We’re freezing to death, we don’t know where we are, and there’s nothing we can do to call for help. Any suggestions?’

Harry glanced at Corrales, praying there was no smartass quip on his lips. The tail gunner held up a paddle. ‘At least we got one of these, Captain.’

Harry had barely noticed the cold, apart from the initial paralysing shock when he entered the sea. But now he realised he was desperately, dangerously cold – colder than he could ever have imagined.

‘We gotta huddle together, try to keep warm,’ said Dalinsky.

‘You’ve been reading your survival guide,’ said Holberg. ‘Well done, Sergeant.’

LaFitte surprised them all. ‘I got a thermos with me. Let’s hope it hasn’t cracked.’

‘LaFitte, you’re a hero,’ said Holberg wearily. ‘Stearley first, then let’s all take a sip.’

They all took a mouthful of hot milky coffee, except Cain, who waved the thermos away.

Holberg insisted. ‘Cain, you just saved Stearley’s life.’

The men usually joked that the coffee in the canteen was ‘battery acid’, but at that moment Harry thought it was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted in his life. Even a small amount helped clear away the salty taste of the sea from his throat, and warmed him slightly. But seconds later they were all shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering so much it was difficult to talk.

‘We gotta paddle,’ said Hill. ‘Keep warm.’

‘I know,’ said Holberg. ‘But we’ve got to paddle in the right direction. ‘We don’t want to be halfway back to Holland by the time the sun comes up.’

Harry knew they could be half dead of exposure by then.

‘OK, we’ve got to keep the blood flowing,’ said Holberg. He got them to all rub each other’s arms and backs. It took their minds off how cold they actually were.

‘Now let’s frighten the fish with a sing-song,’ he said. ‘What do we all know?’

They sang a mad version of Glen Miller’s ‘In the Mood’, each of them pretending to play the saxophones, trumpets and trombones of that ever-popular instrumental number.

Harry started to laugh. It was bizarre. Here they were, freezing to death but singing at the top of their voices. He looked at Bob Holberg with an overwhelming affection. What a great guy!

The moon came out from behind a cloud, and they could take a fix on where they were.

‘The coast – look!’ shouted Bortz. Harry couldn’t believe his eyes. There were grey cliffs not half a mile away. They cheered themselves hoarse and all at once they began to frantically paddle towards land.

From that moment on, their luck changed. Cain spotted a branch floating in the sea and they grabbed that too as another makeshift oar. Within half an hour they felt the rafts hit gravelly seashore and they leaped out and found themselves on a deserted muddy beach.

Stearley had recovered enough to walk, and the bedraggled crew began to make their way inland.

As they reached the edge of the beach a shot flew over their heads. All ten of them threw themselves to the ground in an instant.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ shouted Holberg. For one horrible moment Harry wondered if they had landed in occupied Europe after all.

‘Sorry, lads,’ came a sheepish voice. ‘Thought we were being invaded.’

It was a squad of middle-aged and elderly men – a Home Guard detachment out on a night patrol. The Guard wasted no time looking after them. Within ten minutes they had been given hot drinks and dry clothes. By the time a truck had taken them back to Kirkstead it was still dark. The station had been alerted that they had been rescued, but when they arrived home no one greeted them
except a few sleepy military policemen. They headed straight to their huts and collapsed in an exhausted stupor. Tomorrow they would have to face Colonel Kittering, who would, most definitely, be wanting an explanation.

In what remained of the night, Harry was tormented by a recurring dream. He was trapped in his ball turret. It felt like a goldfish bowl and it was filling up with sea water. Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and those other top Nazis he’d seen in the newsreels were outside laughing at him. He woke up in the morning spluttering and gasping for air, his body covered in cold sweat.

But at least he was still alive. Coming to his senses in the familiar confines of the hut, he realised the crew of the
Macey May
had had an extraordinarily lucky escape.

Holberg arrived at the hut at 10 a.m., anxious to get something off his chest, and John Hill and Harry woke the guys who were still asleep.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to rest over the next few days,’ he explained as they sat in a weary semicircle around him. ‘I think we’ll all be sent on survival leave. But first there’s going to be an investigation.’

‘Will Cain be court-martialled, sir?’ asked John.

‘That’s very much down to us,’ said Holberg. ‘The evidence is at the bottom of the North Sea, so they’ll
be going on what we tell them. I spoke to Cain before we went to sleep and he said he couldn’t understand why he was so off beam with his coordinates. He did say he felt unusually light-headed and I think he may have been having problems with his oxygen. And that storm didn’t help. That lightning strike definitely messed up the navigation instruments.’

He paused, looking awkward.

‘I’ll be straight with you. I know some of the other officers on
Macey May
want him thrown to the dogs. They think he should have known something was wrong and sorted it out.

‘But I think we need to give him a second chance,’ Holberg continued. ‘He’s as good a navigator as we’re ever gonna get. He did a damn fine job on those training flights we did back home and he got us across the Atlantic …

‘You guys screwed it up as well. We left the Fortress without our radio and other essential equipment. Apart from Dalinsky, who remembered to release the life rafts, we did virtually nothing right when we ditched.’

‘Don’t forget the paddle, chief,’ Corrales said.

‘That’s unlikely to earn you a medal, Sergeant,’ replied Holberg.

He paused again and looked round the group. ‘I’m gonna leave you guys to talk things over. I hope you’ll feel you can back Cain up, just like you’d want your buddies in the crew to back you up.’ Then he left the hut.