Bomber
The girl looked up and nodded agreement. It was 09.05 hours; another hour and a half before morning tea-break.
She said, ‘What was the weather like when you came in, sir?’
‘Quite delightful, a perfect summer’s day – not a cloud in the sky.’
‘I do hope so,’ said the WAAF officer. ‘Last night I had to get out of bed and close the window. The rain came down in torrents.’ She had planned to have her hair done that afternoon: rain would ruin it.
‘My garden needed the rain.’
‘So did the Met people: they’d been forecasting it every day for a week.’
Neither of them raised their eyes to the Met map on the wall where was written the finest weather prediction that money and daring could provide. Each hour it was amended according to reports from weather stations, aeroplanes, and ships at sea.
There was certainly no indication of prevailing weather conditions from inside this underground Operations Room, known to its inmates as ‘the hole’. The air was clean and at constant temperature and the bright lights shone unchanging night and day. Here arrived the strategic requirements from Churchill’s Cabinet War Room and from Air Ministry. From here went the orders that sent four or five thousand airmen into a three-dimensional night battle over Germany.
Every square foot of wall space was crammed with information. At desks around it sat the top brass of Bomber Command, an awe-inspiring array of rank. An Army officer sat near a hot line to the C-in-C Home Forces and a naval captain clutched an armful of Enemy Shipping reports. Two American officers had small change spread across a desk top while a WAAF officer explained for the third time that thirty of these big coins made half a crown. ‘Then what makes a whole crown?’
‘Nothing makes a whole crown,’ said his colleague, ‘it’s like saying what makes a bit. Two bits may be a quarter but you can’t have a bit.’
‘I think I’ve got it,’ said the first American doubtfully.
At this moment the SASO (Senior Air Staff Officer) and the Group Captain i/c Operations began to give the C-in-C a summary of the previous night’s bombing of Germany. All eyes were on the thirty-foot-wide blackboard upon which the previous night’s objectives and orders were chalked in yellow and results added in red.
Even as they spoke a sergeant climbed the ladder and altered the Failed to Return tally from 26 to 25. ‘What’s that make it?’ asked the C-in-C.
‘Four point five per cent.’
‘Not bad, I was expecting worse.’
‘What are we going to get tonight?’ the Met man was asked.
‘Here are the predicted positions of the fronts for midnight. Well-broken cloud all along the north-west coast but clear from Hamburg northwards. Residual thundercloud with thunderstorms near the cold front.’
‘The Ruhr?’ The elderly Wing Commander heard the C-in-C’s question to the Met man and nodded significantly.
The Met man shuffled his notes. ‘At present thunderstorms are moving across the Rhine with this cold front but they will clear by this afternoon. Midnight: thin layer of medium cloud somewhere between 1,000 and 20,000 feet but it will probably have gone by 01.00 hours. There’s a chance of a little stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Expected visibility moderate.’
‘What about Northern France?’
‘Fine; moderate visibility. Well-broken layer cloud in north-west.’
‘And the weather over UK for the aircraft’s return?’
‘Fine. A little stratocumulus at 2,000 or 3,000 feet. Excellent visibility.’
The C-in-C walked slowly across the highly polished floor to look at the quarter-inch map of Northern Europe that almost covered one wall. Each of the target towns was marked by a colour-coded reference on a flat pin. He looked back towards the moon chart, then moved nearer to peer at the Ruhr. The short routes were marked with coloured tapes and his eyes scanned them, calculating the flying times and fuel-loads that each target would demand.
As the C-in-C followed the routes a knot of staff officers moved with him, murmuring discreetly like Harley Street specialists about to collaborate on an expensive job of surgery. Always their glances went back to the Met wall. As the moment of decision arrived the officers ceased to talk. The only sounds were the air-conditioning and the clock. Suddenly the voices began again; the decision had been taken.
‘Target files, Harry,’ a young Group Captain called to the elderly Wing Commander, for, although it was a high rank on the squadrons, in this place a Wingco was a dogsbody. Nora Ashton pushed it towards him. Once again they had guessed the target to within a few files.
‘Krefeld as primary, Bremen as weather alternative,’ said the C-in-C. ‘H-Hour will be 01.30 hours. No gardening tonight.’
In the centre of the room were large drafting-tables. On one was a map showing enemy radar and night-fighter units. Another displayed overlapping photographs mounted together to make a mosaic of the whole Ruhr. The C-in-C walked across to one and tipped it flat. The Krefeld target file was open and large-scale maps, target maps, plans, diagrams and vertical photos were arranged around it.
‘What’s our availability?’
‘We’ve much better deliveries from the factories this month. We are showing 783 heavy bombers, 148 mediums. The strength of the training units is unchanged.’
‘Well, I’ll use 650 heavies and 100 mediums. This target will give them all a chance.’
‘Very good, sir.’ The Staff Officer put a form headed ‘C-in-C’s Daily Allotment of Targets’ on the table, and arranged the most recent reconnaissance photos of the target.
‘Krefeld then, with 750 aircraft. I’m going to increase the proportion of high explosive to incendiary bombs slightly. I know that the HE raises dust at the beginning but we need the blast damage in order to expose the interiors and have something to set alight. Let’s have twenty-five minutes’ pause before the second wave goes in. That increases the risk from night fighters but gives us a chance of killing his firemen and policemen and air-raid people. I’ll give that second wave mostly HE; one-third of the aircraft will carry one bomb fused for long delay to keep them worried.’
While he was talking, the C-in-C filled in the Daily Allotment of Targets form.
‘Put some Mosquitoes over Berlin to make the sirens go and some leaflets on to Ostend. I want the Berlin route and the Ostend route near enough to our main stream route to confuse them.’ The C-in-C passed the written order to the Controller. He got up slowly and left the Operations Room.
As he stepped out into the daylight the sentry gave a smart salute. Bomber Command HQ was hidden in thickly wooded countryside but the sky seen through the beech trees was clear and blue.
The centre of the depression had moved across Northern England and out into sea-area Dogger. It was a young, vigorous depression and pulled the cold front eastwards after it, leaving England to enjoy a period of anticyclonic weather. There would be no rain.
Even before the C-in-C was through the door the SASO was on the phone to the first of the Group commanders.
‘It’s Krefeld tonight, old boy. Weather alternative Bremen. Our Met chaps seem sure the weather will clear but we’ll have the usual Met conference call. I want to leave it as late as possible today. Naturally you’ll plan for sky marking just in case …’
He glanced at the clock marked Double British Summer Time. It showed 09.55 hours. Alongside it another clock set to Central European Time showed that German clocks were set to the same time.
Chapter Three
‘Aren’t you glad we no longer live in Krefeld?’ Anna-Luisa asked.
‘You said there would be lions and tigers, and wild animals,’ the little boy said accusingly.
‘There are lions and tigers, and yesterday I saw an elephant in the woods near Frau Richter’s farm.’
‘You’re always saying that,’ the little boy said with a chuckle. ‘You just make those stories up.’
‘If you’ve finished your egg you ought to get along to school. It’s nearly nine o’clock.’
She took a handkerchief and wiped a trace of egg from his lips. Hansl hurried to get his schoolbooks. ‘Take your raincoat, Hansl,’ she called. ‘I’m sure it will rain.’
Anna-Luisa made sure his coat was buttoned and his collar straight. She checked the schoolbooks in his case and ran a comb through his short hair. When all was approved she gave him a little salute. ‘All is in order, Herr Leutnant, say goodbye to Pappi.’
The little boy saluted gravely. Anna-Luisa reached for a second egg and placed it carefully in the simmering water.
‘Breakfast, Herr Bach,’ she called.
Neither the little boy nor his father, for whom she was preparing breakfast, belonged to Anna-Luisa. She was a member of the RADwJ, a uniformed labour force of mothers’ helps and social workers. A little over a year ago she had gone to work for Frau Bach in Krefeld, twelve kilometres away in the Ruhr district. She had liked the job, adored the child, and Frau Bach had been a not unreasonable employer. Within a month of her starting work Frau Bach had been killed in an air raid. Herr Bach and his elder son Peter, an infantry private just eighteen years old, had been flown back from the Russian Front. The authorities had a simple solution. They wanted to evacuate little Hansl to a Hitler Youth camp in the Protectorate of Czechoslovakia, but Herr Bach preferred that Anna-Luisa should stay with the boy. He wanted some place that he could think of as home, although the cost of renting an apartment just for one ten-year-old made terrible demands upon his Oberleutnant’s pay.
Herr Bach’s cousin suggested that they should move into this apartment in the town of Altgarten not far from the Netherlands border. It had been the home of Gerd’s father but had been unoccupied since the old man’s death almost two years before. Gerd had loaded Bach’s salvaged furniture into his grocer’s van and brought it here from Krefeld. That was a year ago, and since then August Bach, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant and Commanding Officer of radar station ‘Ermine’, had learned to call it home. Now that he was stationed on the Netherlands coast he was able to see his small son every two or three weeks. Last Christmas his grown-up son Peter had also come home on leave. It was a happy time.
‘Breakfast is ready, Herr Bach,’ called Anna-Luisa.
‘Did you hear the thunder?’ asked Bach.
‘I made Hansl take his raincoat.’
‘It’s just a summer storm,’ said Bach. ‘If it does rain it will soon be over.’
‘I hope so,’ said Anna-Luisa. ‘You’ve such a long journey.’
When August Bach sat down to breakfast she noticed that he was wearing his best uniform. She approved of his uniform, for although he was forty-six years old he was tall and slim and his greying hair served only to emphasize the tan on his face. At his throat the Pour le Mérite medal glittered.
‘The milk is sour. The thunder must have caused it,’ said the girl.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘This is the last of the real coffee you brought. Do you know, Herr Bach, I am so used to ersatz coffee that the real beans you bring from Holland keep me awake at night.’
‘Where is an egg for you, Anna-Luisa?’
‘There were only two, Herr Bach, the hens are not laying, and they cost six Reichsmarks each. There is a terrible shortage this month.’
‘Have this one. The Luftwaffe live well in Holland. Only last week Willi, my Stabsfeldwebel, laid his hands on some cream.’ He passed the egg to her.
‘You’ll never believe me, Herr Bach, but I don’t remember the taste of cream.’
‘I believe you,’ said August Bach. ‘I’ll speak to him when I get back and see if he can’t find some for me next month when I come.’
‘Did you notice, Herr Bach, little Hansl has picked up this terrible local accent?’
‘Like my cousin Gerd’s,’ said August smiling.
August Bach watched the girl eating his boiled egg. She looked up and smiled. What did an accent matter? She was very beautiful, especially when she smiled. Without her he would have no home and, unless you counted the occasional printed postcard from a Hitler Youth camp in the Protectorate, no young son either. Nowadays the children were being evacuated farther and farther away. Bombed-out children from Cologne had gone to Bulgaria and Hungary.
‘Herr Bach,’ said Anna-Luisa. ‘Is it true that many RADwJ girls are going to work on flak sites? There is a rumour that they will even be manning the guns.’
Bach had always feared that some day Anna-Luisa would decide that looking after little Hansl was not a great enough contribution to the war effort. Worse still, he feared that the RAD bureau would decide that for her, but here in the country the pace of things was slower. There was no RAD bureau in Altgarten, no SA, and even the Party HQ was closed on market day.
‘Are you unhappy, Anna-Luisa?’ he asked. ‘Are you thinking of leaving us?’
‘I would never leave you, Herr Bach,’ she said. ‘Never. I will look after Hansl all the rest of my life.’
‘Now, now, Anna-Luisa, you mustn’t make promises like that.’
‘I will, Herr Bach. I will. I love Hansl as though he was my own child.’
‘Then why do you ask me about the RAD girls going to the gun sites?’ asked August.
She got to her feet and began to clear the breakfast table. ‘Have you finished your coffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, but there is now only the ersatz.’
‘Answer me, Anna-Luisa.’
‘Herr Bach,’ she said. She was standing at the sink now with her face turned away from him. He waited for her to continue. She was attractive in her neat white blouse and brown skirt with her blonde hair drawn back into a severe knot. Why had he not noticed before her long slim legs and strong young arms? Undressed, she would look … he killed the thought immediately. She was only a child, perhaps a year or so older than his infantryman son. Her service in the RAD was a patriotic duty. It was his job to look after her, not lust after her.
‘Are there’ – she paused – ‘any RAD girls working at your radar site?’
August Bach didn’t laugh, although the thought of girls in that desolate spot on the Dutch coast made him realize how little she understood the rigours of his life there.
‘There are no girls, Anna-Luisa. I only wish there were,’ he joked. And he looked up at her, still smiling, to discover her face racked with tears. He took his handkerchief to dry her eyes. ‘Anna-Luisa, whatever is the matter?’
‘Be careful of the washing-up water on your fine uniform,’ she said, raising her face to him, and the next moment he found that he was kissing her. She was sobbing as though she would never stop. It was difficult to understand what she was saying, but August Bach suddenly found that everything made sense to him. ‘I love you, Herr Bach,’ she said. He smoothed her blonde hair and made little clicking noises with his lips in the hope that it would stop her crying.
‘I love you,’ she said again. ‘Whatever shall we do?’
‘You can stop calling me Herr Bach for one thing,’ he said.
‘What will people say?’ she said.
‘Does it matter?’
‘This is a little country town, Herr August …’
‘Just August.’
‘August … people gossip here. There is no telling what stories will go round.’ He had his arms round her and felt her sobbing gently. He patted her shoulder awkwardly and paternally.
It was a damnable situation. Almost the whole town knew August’s cousin – Gerd Böll the grocer – and through him half the town knew August. Often strangers would talk to him in the street as though they were lifelong friends. ‘We must take things slowly,’ said August. Anna-Luisa nodded.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘do you think they’re not gossiping about us already?’
‘They are,’ said Anna-Luisa, ‘but it does not matter. I love you.’ He held her more tightly and less paternally.
‘And I love you,’ said August and he realized that he did. All these months of spending his leaves in the same house with this young girl. No wonder neighbours talked. To her he must have seemed unnatural or inhuman. He looked at her; she was a simple girl and for her perhaps he was a frightening figure. He asked himself to what extent he had been hurrying back here to see the child and to what extent because it was his home, a home that Anna-Luisa had created, a place where his favourite foods were placed before him and his favourite records near the gramophone. August realized that all these months he had been hurrying back to Anna-Luisa. ‘I love you, Anna-Luisa,’ he said. ‘I want you to marry me.’ She raised her reddened eyes to him. Her hair had fallen forward. She was remarkably beautiful even in this disarray. Even more beautiful, perhaps.
‘There are my parents, Herr Bach. You will have to visit them or at least write.’
‘I will do that today,’ he said. He stroked her head again and took her hand. It was a slim hand reddened by hard work, scrubbing floors and washing Hansl’s clothes and August’s shirts.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ said August Bach under his breath, and then began to undress her, still declaiming loudly about how foolish they were. He unpinned the RAD swastika brooch from her blouse and set it aside carefully.
‘How old are you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Twenty-two,’ said Anna-Luisa.
‘Well, there you are,’ said August. ‘It’s stupid, absolutely stupid,’ but he did not undress her more slowly. The nearby church clock struck nine and a horse and cart clattered past the house. It made their intimacy more conspiratorial to hear the town going about its business just a few yards away.
‘I love you, Herr Bach,’ said Anna-Luisa.
‘August,’ insisted August.
‘You’ll write?’
‘Every day,’ swore August.
‘And to my father?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘I love you, Herr August,’ said Anna-Luisa. ‘I love both of you. We shall make a perfect family. You just see. I will buy new fabric for the front-room curtains, and Hansl needs new shoes.’
He pulled the pins from her hair and it tumbled down over her face. He had never seen her with her hair loose. It had always been rolled tight at the nape of her neck in a style suitable for her uniformed appearance. She laughed and kissed him again. By now they were in the bedroom and the big brass bed creaked loudly as she climbed onto it. August leaned across the bed to her, but she moved aside and giggled at outwitting him. For a moment, a terrible moment, August thought that she was just teasing him. It was the sort of thing that a young girl might do to an ardent lover of forty-six. But no sooner had the thought entered his mind than she undressed herself. Still standing on the bed, she threw her starched white uniform blouse across the room and stepped out of her brown skirt. Her underwear vanished as if by magic and there she was, naked, spinning round before his startled gaze. She pulled back the bedclothes and slid under them. Only her tousled flaxen hair and bright blue eyes were visible as she pulled the eiderdown up to her nose. It was the yellow silk eiderdown, that his wife had been so proud of, Bach remembered. They had saved so long to buy it.
He unbuttoned his uniform jacket and put it across the back of a chair.
‘Don’t come to bed with your medal on, Herr August. It hurts,’ she called.
He pulled the black-and-white ribbon of the Pour le Mérite over his head.
‘Show me.’ He threw the beribboned medal to her. He continued to undress while she looked at it.
She put the ribbon over her head and admired herself in the mirror, stiffening her naked body like a soldier on parade. The blue and gold of the medal matched her eyes and hair.
‘It’s the Pour le Mérite, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘That’s very clever of you.’
‘I asked someone about the cross you wore at your throat. What did you do?’
‘I shot down eleven English aeroplanes in the first war.’
‘You must have been only a boy.’
‘I was seventeen when I shot down the first one.’
She opened her arms to him and he climbed on to the bed with her.
‘You know,’ she told him in a whisper. ‘I have seen this room a thousand times from every place. I have even crawled under the bed to sweep and clean but I never thought I would see the room from this viewpoint.’ Her skin was soft and warm and contrasted with the cold stiffly starched sheets under his touch.
‘In future you will see it from this viewpoint as often as you wish,’ he said with a smile.
‘I shall always wish it so,’ said Anna-Luisa seriously. She touched his face with her fingertips and he caught the harsh smell of kitchen soap as it mingled with her cologne.
‘It’s a gloomy room,’ said August. The wallpaper was dark and the oak wardrobe huge and ancient. They were both reflected in its mirror. Their eyes met. A streak of lightning came through the lowered blind and lit them momentarily like a flashbulb. There was a growl of thunder. Anna-Luisa blushed and looked away. Hung here and there were old family photographs; unwanted in the sitting-room, but difficult to throw away. On the washstand a basin and jug glinted in the rosy light coming through the pink blind. A potted plant silhouetted against it shivered in the draught from the window. Anna-Luisa touched the Pour le Mérite medal. She grinned. ‘It looks better on me,’ she said.
‘It does,’ he agreed, and reached out for her.
‘And the red ribbon?’
‘For the East Front,’ he said. ‘The Eisbeinorden.’ The cold-feet medal.
‘That must have been terrible.’
‘It was.’ His voice was muffled as he kissed her ear.
‘Herr August,’ she whispered as they began to make love. ‘Shall I always sleep in this bed now?’
‘Yes,’ said August. Close to, he noticed that her hair was almost white and under its fringe her eyes were reddened by sobbing, and the tip of her nose was too. She smiled at him again. The light faded and there was the chilly gust of air that precedes a storm. Without hurry August made love to her as the thunderclouds darkened the gloomy room.
Afterwards she clutched him very tightly and made his arm wet with her silent tears. He reached for his cheroots and lit one. He wanted to tell her everything he had ever done and show her everything he had ever seen. There was so little time before he must go.
‘Will you be kind to me, Herr August?’
He kissed the side of her nose. ‘Kindness in a man is a quality few women admire,’ he said. ‘Especially very young, very beautiful women.’
‘I shall always admire you, Herr August. Tell me about the medal.’
We were all victims of these symbols and trinkets, totems and taboos, thought August Bach. Why should the girl be attracted by the blue enamelled cross? What could it mean to her?
‘The aeroplanes were different then. Biplanes: fragile little affairs of sticks and fabric.’ Why was he using those old clichés? They were tough little planes and agile too. Not like today’s sophisticated metal machines so full of fuelpipes, radio gear and delicate equipment that even a heavy bump on take-off made something malfunction.
‘They were painted with strange patterns of mauve and pink and grey. I can remember them.’ It wasn’t true. He could no longer remember the difference between a Halberstadt and an Albatros. It was the smell that he remembered, the fuel and the dope, shrill smells that caught the back of the throat. He remembered too the sound of the Mercedes motor firing and the roar of it echoing against the side of the hangar.
‘I remember the day I shot down my first Englishman. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky.’ Or was he telling it correctly? Surely that was the day he got the telegram about his mother dying. It was pouring with rain the day he shot down his first Englishman.
‘Were you afraid?’ asked Anna-Luisa.
‘I was afraid that someone would think I might be afraid,’ he said. It was a conventional answer. The true answer was that at eighteen he didn’t have enough intelligence to be afraid with.