CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The radar plotting-room was quiet enough to hear the electric clock jump each second.

‘This fellow’s a dud,’ said Willi Reinecke.

‘Keep the other aircraft up close and if this one makes a mess of this interception we’ll not give him a second chance.’

On the Seeburg table the two men watched the dots crawling towards the coast. Both August Bach and his NCO had removed their jackets, but in the heat of the plotting-room their shirts showed patches of perspiration as the night wore on. It wasn’t pleasant to see the destruction of a town happen before your very eyes, even if it was only represented by electronic dots. Willi picked up the glass of tea that had gone tepid. He drank without noticing that he did so. All the time the wax pencil in his left hand traced the moving dots across the table.

‘He’ll mess it up,’ said Willi Reinecke.

It was all right for the others, thought Leutnant Beer, they all regarded flying as a mystical experience. For some of them there was nothing in life more important than becoming expert at controlling these uncertain flying machines. Beer, a motor-racing driver, had gone to his medical examination hoping to become a transport official or an administrative officer. The doctors had classed him fit for aircrew. The aptitude and intelligence tests showed suitable ratings and so he had found himself posted to the A/B School for pilot training. It was typical of the arrogance he’d met in the Luftwaffe that they all assumed he’d be grateful for the chance to fly.

Carefuly he followed every instruction given by the Controller at Ermine but he could tell the man was irritable.

Prussian arrogance! Beer was from Regensburg. His father and his family as far back as the Holy Roman Empire were Bavarian. To them all the so-called Germans outside the frontiers were Prussian. Bavarians were political animals, like the Austrians, and like the Austrians the world had labelled them gemütliche peasants and simple-minded clowns. Beer resented that.

Over his earphones came the voice of August Bach. ‘Order: hold it.’

‘Announcement: impossible,’ said Beer.

‘Give it some flap, man,’ said August, abandoning procedure. ‘You won’t stall.’

Nor will you, thought Beer, in your cosy control hut, but he throttled back and put down more flap, although now he felt he must watch the air-speed needle very carefully.

Beer’s radar man made contact. ‘He’s ahead of us and slightly below.’ Beer eased the antlers forward a fraction.

‘Kettle drums, kettle drums,’ said Beer.

‘The man’s a genius,’ said Willi. He put down his pencil.

‘No, sir,’ called Beer’s radar man desperately. ‘Much too much. I’ll lose him off the top of the screen in a moment.’

The observer had his binoculars to his eyes. ‘There he is.’

Beer cupped his hand against the Perspex to block off the reflections of the instrument panel lights, but his movement tilted the control column and they banked. He sat well back in his seat and brought the controls to normal. ‘Still too far to port,’ said the radar man. ‘He’s very close, you should see him.’

‘I can still see him,’ said the observer.

‘Port and high?’ asked the radar man.

‘Yes.’

Beer still couldn’t see it, but he cocked the guns anyway. The compressed air gave a hiss of anticipation.

‘Too fast again,’ said the observer.

‘Yes,’ agreed the radar operator from the back seat.

Damn them, they showed no respect for his rank. They spoke together as if he were superfluous. He put the nose up a trifle and watched the air-speed needle dip, but now the variometer was edging up to show that they were climbing. This business of matching speed with the target was not only the most difficult but also the most dangerous.

‘He’s turning left.’

‘He must have seen us.’

‘No, just correcting course.’

‘Stop talking so much,’ snapped Beer. ‘I’m in command.’

The observer looked at Beer with cold disdain. TheNCOs called him the cyclist because in the physical manner of a cyclist he trod upon his subordinates while nodding deferentially to his superiors. He wondered if Beer knew of his nickname and glanced at him again, but Beer didn’t notice, he was staring ahead trying to see the Tommi.

Beer stared into the windscreen but could see only a pink sweaty face staring back at him. He could smell stale smoke in his nostrils. Damn that fire-fighting bastard too.

At first he could see only the reflections of the instruments. Then two flickers of light detached themselves and he knew that he was looking at the exhausts of an RAF Lancaster.

‘We’re right on top of him,’ said Beer, staring down at the airspeed needle that was so close to stalling-point. Perhaps he should increase speed. Christ, the slipstream threw the Junkers aside and almost wrenched the controls away from him. Quickly Beer recovered control.

‘We must get closer than this,’ said the observer with a calm insolence. Beer reached for the throttles but changed his mind. He did not increase speed. He knew what a mid-air collision would mean. A giant like that would chop them into fragments and not even feel the bump. ‘Much closer,’ said the observer. There was a note of admonition in his voice.

Damned Prussian! Beer was the captain of this aircraft. Even if the target did not reach the edges of his gunsight, it was plumb in the centre. This was close enough, the Lancaster seemed gigantic and very near. ‘Horrido,’ he called and pressed the gun-button. He was yawing slightly, so the target slid to one side of the gunsight. He corrected with a touch of rudder. Not too much, he warned himself. Watch your air-speed.

The Ju88 was a fine aeroplane—a gentleman’s machine—one that would fly hands off and respond gently and positively to the pilot. Yet it would not turn without plenty of rudder. Beer did not give enough and, as he tried to follow the Lancaster’s turn, the Junkers slid sideways and Beer only recovered by means of a sudden burst of power that put his nose up.

Flash Gordon saw him because he was coming in high enough to be on the skyline. He saw the whole shape of Beer’s Junkers pass across a piece of moonlit cloud. He had told Lambert and now the whole crew waited while these two pilots matched skills—and luck.

‘He’s a real expert,’ said Flash. ‘You can tell by the way he’s waiting out there.’

‘Scared shitless,’ said Binty who was also watching him, but his voice lacked conviction.

‘Keep off the air,’ said Lambert. ‘Flash, give me his ranges.’

‘One thousand five hundred yards. Beginning to close now.’ His voice changed to a more urgent note. ‘Twelve hundred.’ For an instant both gunners saw the Junkers as the moonlight struck the propellers and made them shine like a pair of spectacles in candlelight.

‘Closing fast now.’ Then, from between the glassy discs, there came white blobs that stretched and ran like spilt mercury. ‘He’s firing,’ said Flash. ‘Corkscrew port,’ said Binty. Their voices muddled together on the intercom.

Lambert didn’t corkscrew. He kicked the rudder bar and pulled both starboard throttles fully back. The Lancaster twisted abruptly to the right and jerked almost to a stop. Lambert prayed but also fearfully waited for the impact. Beer’s Junkers came over them still firing, with only twenty feet between the tips of its propeller blades and the top of the Lancaster’s rudders. The roar of it made the Lancaster’s metal body sing with the vibration. Afterwards there was a kick of prop-wash.

‘See him go, Skip,’ said Binty gleefully from the top turret. Lambert was too busy to answer.

Battersby was not looking out of the window. He had watched Lambert’s hands. It was the epitome of all he had been taught never to do. In theory Creaking Door should now have its tail ripped off. Battersby’s hand reached out to the throttles as soon as Lambert’s left them. Lambert nodded and with relief Battersby put the starboard engines back to cruising power. The Lancaster was sliding sideways like a sycamore seed. The compass went spinning as the nose moved right round the horizon and passed their original heading. The nose was inching upwards. The air-speed needle dropped towards stalling-speed and Battersby could see that the controls were mushy. Battersby watched the needle as Lambert pushed the stick well forward to put the nose down. The needle hovered at 160 mph, the aeroplane pulsating as it lost its airworthiness. Grudgingly the nose dropped and the needle started a return journey.

Lambert spared a hand for his microphone. ‘Rear gunner, is the tail assembly OK?’

‘It didn’t half bend, Skip.’

‘OK now?’

‘Looks OK.’

‘Happy, engineer?’

‘Yes, Skipper, but at the HCU they told us never to do that or the tail would come off.’

‘Not unless you give her toomuchrudder. Remember that.’

‘I will, Skipper,’ said Battersby.

‘Any signs of the night fighter, anyone?’

‘We’ve lost him, I think,’ said Digby. ‘Nice work, Skipper.’

‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Binty, ‘you should have seen the bastard go. He was a thousand yards off to port and still firing.’

Beer was still firing long after the target had almost magically stopped in mid-air and sped off under his starboard wing. Now there was just the sound of the motors and the airstream. Beer’s clothes squelched with sweat. They had only missed a mid-air collision by a few feet.

‘I think we hit him,’ said Beer.

‘No, Herr Leutnant.’

‘I saw the cannon shells hitting him.’ There was no reply. Beer wanted a victory. He said, ‘There were flashes, you saw them.’

‘Your ammunition destroying itself at eight hundred metres. I saw them.’

Son of a stand-up, sawdust-on-the-floor Wurstlerei owner in a sleazy part of Nuremberg. How could you shoot down a real flyer? The observer had been washed out of A/B School with flying better than Beer’s best attempts. He found it difficult to hide his contempt for this Bavarian peasant in officer’s uniform.

So did Willi Reinecke. ‘Messed it up,’ he said, ‘the stupid schlimiel.’ The two blips had merged and when they separated again it was hard to know which was which.

‘The Tommi is still going north-west,’ said August. ‘He’s thirty kilometres from the main stream now.’

‘He’s making sure that the night fighter doesn’t get a visual. Shall I call him?’

‘Leave him,’ said August. ‘Call the other fellow in.’

‘The Tommi’s coming a long way north of the stream, sir.’

‘Shaken up a bit.’

‘Faulty compass?’

‘Could be.’

‘He must be here, almost overhead.’

‘He’ll turn.’

‘Yes, there he goes.’

‘Bring in Katze One, Willi.’

Victor von Löwenherz looked at his wristwatch. He didn’t trust the cockpit clock; the ground crews were not careful enough with them. He switched over to his main fuel tank and set the mixture to weak. He might need every last drop of fuel, for the Tommis entering his sector now would take another hour to return through it on the return journey. The last few bombers would be the most vulnerable ones. It was a simple matter of natural selection: the best pilots got promotion and the best aircraft. The best pilots would get the best navigators and would lead the attack. The least skilled pilots lagged behind, missed landfalls, lost their way, muddled their radio signals and had equipment faults that their careless pre-flight checks had not revealed. Sometimes such planes never found the target. Long after the Main Force had gone home they would be wandering alone over some remote heavily defended area presenting a keen Würzburg operator and controller with their only target of the night. If they did get to the target they arrived last when the defences were fully alert and the night fighters airborne with night vision adjusted. These crews got the planes that were slowest and the ones that could not climb. They were vulnerable targets and Löwenherz wanted to be quite sure that he was in the air when they arrived in this sector.

For Löwenherz was still in his assigned sector right over the beacon. Other pilots, like Himmel and even Redenbacher, had disobeyed the standing orders and followed the bomber stream along its route to the target. Löwenherz had not done that. He had patrolled his sector and obeyed implicitly the orders of his Controller, August Bach. Now Bach called him and told him that he had a four-motor Tommi.

‘Announcement: a big car. Order: steer 300 degrees.’

‘That’s clear,’ said Löwenherz. He increased his speed to overtake the Tommi before he was out of the radar range of his sector.

On the anti-aircraft cruiser Held ‘Admiral’ Pawlak and his K3 had had an eventful night of the sort that Pawlak had predicted. Now he reminded his friend of his prediction for the eighth time that evening. From the moon-rimmed cumulus to the south-east came the sound of a plane. Then other planes.

‘From the south-east,’ said Pawlak. ‘Why from the south?’

‘Night fighter.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘He’s firing. He’s got him.’

‘Got him?’ scorned Pawlak. ‘Lost him, you mean.’ He danced a little mime in which he threw a shell upon the loading tray, swung the rammer, spun the elevation wheel and the traverse and fired the gun. Klaus watched him dolefully.

The alarm buzzer made them rush back into their turret. Pawlak banged his elbow on the balancing-spring cover. Klaus smiled to himself.

In the fifty-five minutes that it had taken Lambert to fly from the German convoy one hundred miles to the target and back again the convoy had sailed only nine nautical miles along the coast—although the Held had done a little more than that, for it was now a mile ahead of the convoy instead of at its very rear.

Lambert’s evasive movements had brought him well north of the Flight Plan. Not even the edge of the bomber stream passed over Scheveningen. So the only blip on the Held’s Würzburg was Creaking Door, until Löwenherz came creeping up behind them.

‘Fire!’ It was radar-controlled firing and twelve of the guns were 10.5s like the one that Pawlak manned. The explosions made a straight-line pattern of stars in the air. The radar computer purred smoothly as it corrected the sighting so that the next salvo would compensate for the speed of the aircraft. The pointer moved and the gunners followed it. The guns fired in salvoes, so it was no advantage that Pawlak loaded at almost twice the speed of all the others. He waited. Pawlak only did it to demonstrate to his friend Klaus Munte the way he wanted the loading done in future.

That no better rate of fire was achieved by Pawlak’s haste made the accident especially tragic. There was little for the naval surgeon to do. ‘That damned breech has made as neat a job of amputation as I ever saw.’ He clipped the veins and sewed up the wrist as best he could and let Pawlak sink into a deep, morphia-induced sleep.

Klaus Munte would not open the breech. The Leutnant in charge was about to insist that Munte did it but finally relented and did it himself. When they did open it the unused shell was difficult to remove. It was glued into the mechanism by an unrecognizable substance like raspberry jam.

Radar-controlled flak always bursts in patterns, one burst for each gun in the battery. Some RAF crews remained calm enough to make notes of the flashes for the Intelligence Officer. This salvo was well spaced on a south-easterly axis. The next one was even better and the third was the most accurate of all.

Whether using radar or visual sighting the aiming of an anti-aircraft gun is a complex skill. Both Lambert and Löwenherz were travelling at 240 mph, which required the shells to be aimed at a spot nearly one and a half miles ahead of them. Before each shot the fuse had to be set accurately and even if the target’s course remained constant the range kept changing with the angle of the gun.

The rearmost shell of this salvo exploded seventy-one feet from Löwenherz’s port motor. The theoretical lethal radius of an exploding 10.5-cm shell was fifty feet. This one fragmented into 4,573 pieces of which twelve weighed over one ounce, 1,525 weighed between one ounce and a fiftieth of an ounce and 3,036 were fragments of less than a fiftieth of an ounce.

Twenty-eight fragments hit Löwenherz’s Junkers. Four pieces penetrated the port motor and others went into the wing and fuselage. The antlers were wrenched out of his hands as the ailerons were torn and buffeted by the shockwave. The port motor’s oil pressure and boost dropped, then the oil temperature shot out of its marked place and swept clockwise. The motor was losing oil rapidly. Mrosek could see it escaping into the air looking, not dark and turbid, but white and sugary.

Löwenherz put the nose down and closed the fuelcock. Then he gave the port motor a burst of throttle to use up the last of the fuel and thus lessen the fire risk. Feather the prop, ignition off, extinguisher on. He’d done the whole thing while subconsciously remembering the positions of neighbouring airfields. None was very near. Valkenburg, the nearest, was right under the stream; he didn’t fancy that. In the moonlight ahead he saw the complex pattern of the islands and estuaries of Zeeland where outfalls of the great rivers of Europe fought a meandering battle with the low flat lands of Holland.

He recognized this coast. He’d done many forced landings here—in nightmares just before he awoke. Dump the fuel. He pulled the top off the emergency box beside his seat. The fuel came out of his tail like a fine silvery feather fifty feet long, glistening in the cold moonlight. He closed the cooling gills on the failed motor and gave the good motor a trifle more power. Then he changed the trim to keep her nose high. It was exactly like the emergency instructions in the instruction manual, except that the author of that manual had never flown on one motor in a plane with radar aerials stuck into the nose like a toasting-fork. He watched the ‘turn and bank’ indicator and saw that the Junkers was flying lopsided. It was sinking at five metres a second according to the variometer and he couldn’t lessen the rate of descent. The altimeter crawled backwards.

‘Strap tight,’ said Löwenherz to his white-faced crew. The Ju88 was not an easy aircraft to force-land on one motor. They had all watched one burst into flame at the end of Kroondijk’s main runway only seven weeks ago.

Löwenherz looked at the man beside him. Not a word was exchanged, but Löwenherz was convinced by the look.

‘Bale out.’ Mrosek wrestled with the floor hatch but it had been damaged and would not open. He looked up at Löwenherz in desperation.

Löwenherz detached the rear part of the cockpit cover and it flew off with a terrible roar that left them in an icy gale that whined and hissed across the edges of the windscreen. It spoiled the trim, so he touched the wheel to bring the nose down. Mrosek went first. Carefully he tucked his Zeiss binoculars inside his tunic. ‘Lost in action’—he would not be asked to account for them. Agile as ever, he climbed out through the top like an acrobat. One of his boots swung dangerously near to Löwenherz’s head, then he had wriggled clear. At first it seemed a perfect job, but a nasty thump told them that the slipstream had batted him back against the plane’s tail. The slipstream threw him forward so that the binoculars crushed his rib-cage and broke four ribs. Tumbling head over heels his wrist struck the leading edge of the port tailplane and the fin gave his head a glancing blow before he was sucked away in a slipstream of fuel spraying from the jettison pipe. Overcome by the fuel and the blow on his head Mrosek fell 3,000 feet. Then night air blowing across his soaked clothing refrigerated him. Without fully regaining consciousness he pulled the ripcord and floated down under his canopy safely into a potato field.

Sachs had always been a bit timid. Löwenherz had seen his papers and knew that the pilot’s section and officer candidate board had both failed him because of this. Löwenherz decided that he would need more than just an order. Especially to use the top escape exit.

‘If you don’t go immediately, I’m going to jump and leave the aeroplane to you.’ Sachs climbed out then. Armed with the sort of luck that life had always provided for this rich young radar man, he was carried well clear and made a perfect descent.

The first sharp pang that Löwenherz had felt at the moment of the explosion had by now become a dull wet ache. It was as though an uncomfortably hot barber’s towel had been pressed against his belly and wrapped around his middle. Its cause was a broken fragment of a knurled brass pin from the flak shell’s nose-cone fuse. The pin had punched a tiny hole in the stressed metal skin of the aircraft’s nose and split into three parts after hitting the gyro compass. This piece, weighing only one-sixtieth of an ounce, entered Löwenherz’s belly. It passed through the abdominal wall and the peritoneal cavity, puncturing his ascending colon. It began to tumble as it lost speed, chewing its way through small arteries and a kidney before cracking open one of his lumbar vertebrae. There it nestled against his spinal cord, compressing it slowly.

It was not easy to hold the starboard wing down now that the motor had failed on that side and it was buffeting fiercely under his hands because of the damage to the metal wings and the tattered frabric of the ailerons themselves.

Löwenherz smiled grimly to himself. It was the very devil of a predicament. When he throttled back he began to lose height immediately. Yet with the good motor on full throttle to maintain height it carried him round in huge circles. No matter how much he tried to correct the turn with the ailerons it made little or no difference. The Ju88s were all like this, they needed a lot of rudder to turn them, and Löwenherz couldn’t even feel his feet, let alone use them upon the rudder bar. He pressed a hand upon his left knee to use his lower leg as one might use a stick to prod at the rudder, but the pain on his spine was terrible. He continued to do it until the moment when he almost blacked out.

He called up the Controller and told him briefly that he’d been hit and wounded and was heading due west over one of the great islands south of Rotterdam.

‘Get out, Katze One,’ called August Bach urgently.

‘Announcement: impossible,’ said Löwenherz. ‘I’ve damaged my back.’

‘Order: turn back.’

‘Losing height too fast. These damned aerials.’

‘Order: keep the radio on,’ said August. ‘We’ve switched the emergency service into the circuit. They’ll take a fix on you for the rescue boats. The Würzburg will hold you too.’

‘Thank you,’ said Löwenherz.

The life had drained from Löwenherz’s lower limbs so that only the upper part of him was truly alive. His vision was affected too: the red and green lights on his panel and the bright blue moonlight became a neutral grey. The noise of the one good engine seemed quieter and he wondered if that was why it could not hold the heavy Junkers in the air. The grey aeroplane descended down to the grey ocean and the flash it made as it hit the waves was grey like the water into which it sank.

Sadly the Wuürzburg at Ermine followed the Junkers out over the ocean until the blip became a phosphorescent glow that died away. The tube was blank except for a rain of interference.

When the great red flash appeared far out across the dark water a sentry phoned the Control Room to tell them.

‘He’s gone,’ said Willi. ‘The sentry saw the explosion.’

‘It’s always the best ones we lose.’

‘It was the Staffelkapitän,’ said Willi. ‘I know his voice.’

‘One of the best pilots we worked with.’

‘He was a count or a baron.’

‘Damned bad luck.’

‘That bloody flak ship.’

‘There was no way they could know, Willi.’

‘They’re probably painting a ring round one of the guns.’

‘Probably.’

Each of Creaking Door’s encounters with night fighters had lasted only a few seconds, but between those encounters had come the tension and tiring concentration of one hundred miles of cross-country instrument-flying. After he had evaded Beer by the sudden turn to starboard Lambert continued on, nervously examining every quarter of the sky, but soon it was clear that they had escaped from that attack.

Binty Jones said, ‘Skip, can Jimmy give me a break? I’ve got a touch of cramp.’

‘OK with you, Jimmy?’ Lambert said.

‘OK, Skip.’

‘Quickly, then.’

Lambert felt the trim change as first the wireless operator went back to the upper turret and then Binty climbed down from his seat in the roof and moved farther back to the Elsan just ahead of the tail. Jimmy Grimm, like most of the wireless operators, was a trained air gunner and he enjoyed the view that the turret afforded him. He touched the grips and the turret turned obediently, the machine guns tilting at the merest finger-touch. One of the worst aspects of the wireless operator’s job was the heated-air outlet that emerged near his seat. Even wearing the minimum of flying kit, Jimmy had become uncomfortably hot. He slipped one side of his helmet off and pressed his face against the ice-cold Perspex of the turret. It was like a long draught of cold beer.

‘OK, Jimmy?’

‘OK, Skip.’

Lambert saw the flicker of the navigator’s light as his curtain was pushed aside and guessed that Binty had come forward to the cockpit for a moment. Binty cherished a conviction that flying a bomber was little different from driving a motorcycle and he liked to watch Lambert’s activities and tried to commit them to memory. He noticed that the altimeter was steadily turning as they lost height. It was the usual procedure to exchange height for speed from the time the enemy coast was crossed on the return journey.

‘What about that photoflash, Binty? See if you can push it out, will you?’

‘Can someone give me a hand, Skipper?’

‘No,’ said Lambert.

‘I’ll give a hand, Skipper,’ offered Cohen.

‘OK,’ said Lambert. ‘See what you can do.’

The moonlight that revealed the bombers to the night fighters was also reassuring to an alert bomber crew. Löwenherz was still dancing through the puffy cumulus far behind them over Rotterdam and no one in Creaking Door was aware of his existence. Leutnant Beer had been assigned to a southern part of the Ermine sector. In short, there was not an enemy in sight. Over the ocean one would not expect an 8.8-cm flak gun, but even if by some magic one was there, Creaking Door was nearly three thousand feet higher than the effective range of an 8.8-cm flak gun.

Lambert was relating these facts to himself when a 10.5-cm shell—with its superior range—burst near Creaking Door’s tailplane. It came from the tail; a strangled thump. A giant’s belch that rumbled along the metal throat of stringers and formers. Then came the bad breath of cordite and burning, speeding on the wave of displaced air that pushed Lambert forward against the controls, shook the extinguishers loose and sent Kosher’s charts to fill the cockpit with fluttering paper. There was a flash of light too. That came from inside the fuselage. It made the screen turn white and blinded Lambert, whose eyes were adjusted to the dark night.

The control column came to meet Lambert’s belly and even with all his strength he could not prevent it coming. Door’s nose reared up like a frightened horse and the sound of the motors changed to a new note of anxiety.

‘Micky,’ said Lambert, ‘Micky,’ and Battersby rushed to his assistance, for he knew that he was the one that was needed. Binty Jones had been thrown to the floor by the explosion. As he picked himself up he knew that Door had been mortally hit. Then there was another great flash—bigger than any flak shell—a great white soundless explosion right under Door’s belly.

‘Take a look, Binty,’ said Lambert. ‘Back there.’

Binty got to his feet while Battersby put his foot on the pilot’s seat supports and pressed against the column as hard as he could. His face was beetroot red and the veins on his forehead shiny with exertion.

The controls remained unyielding, although, with little Battersby there to push, Lambert was able to hold them still. Lambert checked the other controls: the rudder bar was slopping from side to side and the trimmer wheels did not respond. The elevators were unmovable and all the time the aircraft’s nose was trying to come up. Both of them were using a lot of energy and Lambert doubted whether they could fight the column forward for the whole trip across the North Sea.

Binty pushed the navigator’s curtain aside and was met by a blinding green light. It was so unnatural that he crossed himself and wondered if they had entered Hell as a crew. The green light flickered and died. Suddenly it was pitch-dark and there was a stench of burning cordite and rags. Binty Jones edged aft through the darkness. He groped towards Kosher’s seat but he was not there. He continued climbing up over the main spar and past the bunk. The interior of the plane was billowing with smoke. Cautiously he stepped into it and walked as far as his turret before he saw the hole in the fuselage. He knew that the metal skin was thin and that a blow with a pencil’s end could drive a hole right through it, but that did not lessen the shock of seeing a gap big enough to drive a small car through.

Because the explosion had broken a section of metal skin away from its rivets and bent it back upon itself the hole was rectangular. The metal rattled angrily in the airstream like a monstrous letterbox flap. For a moment there was less smoke and Binty saw through the hole. There were tripods of grey searchlight beams somewhere near Rotterdam to the east of them, but the Lancaster was turning and the searchlights passed and the smoke closed in again.

‘Jesus!’ said Binty. He expected a reply from Jimmy Grimm in the turret but when he looked up he found that only the upper half of Jimmy remained. The leather-jacketed torso and masked head was staring over the gunsights as though ready to open fire, but the lower part of him was not there. There was just a boggy puddle of bone splinters, blood and liquidized viscera dumped on the floor and dripping from the flare stowage. Into it was pumping oil from the fractured pipes that led to the rear turret. Binty flashed his torch away from the obscene sight and steadied himself against the ice-cold metal skin of the fuselage.

Lambert had no rudder to steer with. Experimentally he held the control column and gently turned it sideways to operate the ailerons without letting it back an inch. For what seemed a long time Door didn’t respond. The fabric covering on the starboard aileron was so tattered that most of the slip-stream was whistling through the holes. The port aileron was spoiling the lift on that wing but the starboard one was not giving extra lift to starboard. Door settled down like a fitfully sleeping dog and dropped fifty feet with a craniumpressing lurch that pinned everyone to the floor. When she staggered across the sky Lambert feared the tail had broken but slowly the starboard wing came up. Inch by inch it came until it cut into the moonlit clouds. Then the nose began to slide sideways and ran gently along the horizon and the compass moved slowly until it pointed the way to England. Lambert knew that they had suffered severe structural damage at the rear. He wondered how much warning they would get if the airstream got busy and tried to rip the back end off. Already the drag was such that he could feel the rear part of the aircraft sagging and bucketing. He reduced speed, throttling back to minimize the strain upon the airframe.

Binty plugged into the intercom. ‘Are you there, Flash?’

There was no reply. ‘It’s Binty, boy. Are you there, kiddo?’

Binty moved gingerly nearer to the gaping holes. Through them he could even see a ragged moon glinting on the black ocean. The floor creaked and tilted under him and nervously he stepped back. There were only a dozen stringers, an ammunition runway and that piece of metal floor-plate holding Creaking Door’s tail on. Binty’s weight might be the last straw.

‘Binty, what’s happening there?’

‘Jimmy’s had it, Skip, and I can’t get no answer from Flash.’

‘Can’t you open his turret doors?’

‘Can’t get as far as that, Skip. She’s full of smoke. There’s half the bloody fuselage side gone. Her tail’s hanging on by its teeth.’

‘Kosher?’

For the first time Binty thought of Kosher. He seemed to have disappeared. ‘Kosher, you all right?’ said Lambert over the intercom. There was an answering noise.

‘Where are you?’ said Lambert. The intercom gave only a monosyllabic grunt. ‘You hurt?’ Again a bubbling sound came over the wires. Mother, perhaps. They never said Father. Mutti? Yes, it could be Mutti.

Lambert had carried dead and injured before. In 1941 he’d brought a Whitley two hundred and fifty miles with everyone, except himself, dead or semi-conscious. By now he knew the signs. The silent ones were either dead or unharmed. The screamers were slightly injured and scared, for no one who was mortally torn could spare the stamina for a long loud scream. It was the soft groans that needed tourniquets and morphine. Voices like Cohen’s.

‘Find Kosher, Bint.’

‘I’ve found him, Skip.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘No.’ A silence. ‘You’ll have to lose altitude, Skip. He needs oxygen.’

‘Connect his tube.’

‘Tube’s OK. He’s got no oxygen mask on.’

‘Put it on.’

‘Can’t, Skip. It’s gone.’

‘What do you mean gone?’

‘Burned away, Skipper. I’m going to have to get the morphine from the box.’

Binty went to the rear. This time he stepped lightly and leaned well towards the least damaged side. He tried not to look down into the clouds and sea below and tried to lose weight by willpower.

‘How much of this tube of morphine do I put into him?’

‘Give him half a tube into the arm. That’s still a double dose.’

‘It’s difficult, Skip. I can’t tell which is arm. Will the leg be OK?’

‘OK, Binty. Digby, go back and give Binty a hand, will you?’

To say that Binty was not a close friend of Kosher Cohen would be an understatement. The two men had so little in common that the overtures of friendship that Kosher had made to the Welshman merely underlined the differences of class, education and interests. Binty had spent his childhood in a children’s home and his youth at an RAF school for apprentices. He had always been shouted at and punished frequently and his life had run according to timetables and rule books. Little that was worth having came Binty’s way and when it did he grabbed for it without worrying who got the elbow.

Cohen had been educated at public school and university. Also formalistic, male-dominated societies, but their rituals had ill-prepared him for conversation with men like Binty, who was truly knowledgeable only about crumpet and motorcycles. Cohen spoke like an officer, a fact that prevented Binty—and others—from being able to confide to him their inadequacies.

‘Here, Cohen.Want a lift to London? Grrr!’ Binty jangled a bunch of door keys. ‘Last time I dropped in on my London piece by surprise she was in the bath. Took me the whole weekend to get my uniform dry.’

‘Thanks, Binty, but some of the fellows from school are climbing this weekend. I said I’d go along.’

Binty flashed the torch around the bare metal interior: racks of signal flares, a first-aid box and the curve of the ammunition runways that sloped gently all the way to the rear turret. Ten feet ahead of him were the remains of his mid-upper turret, bent and bloody. There were no flames, but now and again there was the crackle of a bullet exploding with the heat.

‘I say, what good luck running into you, Binty. Would you like to come down to my parents’ place this weekend?’

‘Not unless there’ll be spare crumpet there.’

Binty tried to pull Cohen forward to the crew bunk built over the main spare, but Cohen was glued to the flare chute by cooked flesh. Binty was frightened that he might pull Cohen apart, for now with the morphia in him he would feel no pain until it was too late.

When the flak shell exploded Kosher had been trying to dislodge the photoflash from the bent chute. He had recovered his balance quickly, grabbed a fire extinguisher and hurried back towards the fire. A parachute was smouldering. It filled the fuselage with the black fumes of burning cloth. Some .303 bullets overheated and popped, making clinks and whines as they ricocheted around the metal structure. Very pistol signals, cartridges and other pyrotechnics caught fire, filling the narrow corridor with blinding light. Bright greens and reds lit up inside the smoke of a winddrift flare. Some of them burned through the metal skin and fell gently to the sea. Jimmy Grimm was past aid. Oh God! His torch was stabbing at the smoke and the lights exploding as Cohen looked back to the great multimillion candlepower photoflash that he had been trying to dislodge from the damaged chute. It was smouldering. There was no one to help him and no one to appeal to. There was only one way to eject it from the aircraft and that was down the flare chute. He pushed at it with the new energy of desperation and dislodged it just a fraction of a second before it exploded. That was the soundless white explosion that had puzzled Lambert.

Perhaps if Kosher had been wearing his heavy leather aircrew gauntlets he would have been less burned but, like most navigators, he wore only his silk linings, having found it impossible to draw pencil lines and turn the circular slide rule while wearing thick gloves. And if only he had not looked down the flare chute to see what he was doing…

Binty cuddled the boy closely. After he had put the quarter of a grain of morphia into him Kosher began to shake like a man in a fit, but then he became still again. Kosher’s eyes remained open but went glassy like a toy teddy bear.

Throughout years of skilled womanizing Binty had never needed words of tenderness, but now he began searching his memory for them. He found none. His childhood had been without kindness or love, but never before had he realized his loss.

‘It’s just a flesh wound, kidoo,’ he said finally, but by then Kosher was sinking into unconsciousness. Binty had got an oxygen mask on him now. The burnt place in Kosher’s chest bubbled with froth and the silk glove that held it disappeared under pink foam.

In the cockpit Battersby rephrased a question in his mind a dozen times before asking it. Finally he said, ‘Shall I follow the elevator controls back to the tail?’

‘Good idea,’ said Lambert.

‘I’m the lightest weight,’ said Battersby. ‘I might be able to get to the rear turret.’

‘See what you can do, Batters. Take your chute with you.’

‘Can you hold her alone?’

‘Ease off your weight and we’ll see.’

Lambert found he could hold the control column forward, but only by jamming his leg against it and twisting his body in the seat.

‘OK.’

Binty shone his torch up at Battersby, who stepped over the two men huddled together on the floor. In spite of an icy wind the smoke still hung inside the plane. Battersby looked down dispassionately when he got to the hole in the fuselage. He had never been afraid of heights and he studied the edges of the damage with a technical eye. Battersby found the rudder control rod badly bent and kicked at it, but his strength was not sufficient to change the bend or even to make another. He reached along the rod to where it entered the tailplane spar but it was undamaged as far as he could reach. He flashed his torch but could still not see the damage. He plugged in his intercom to the connection near the Elsan. ‘The rods are not too bad. Probably the elevators themselves, Skip.’

‘Well, there’s nothing you can do about that, Batters. See if you can get as far as the rear turret to see if Flash’s OK.’

Suddenly they all heard Flash Gordon’s voice. ‘Rear gunner to captain. I’m all right.’

‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked Lambert.

‘Sorry, Skip. My plug came adrift. I’ve been calling you and wondering what was happening.’

Battersby said, ‘Skipper, would you let Flash come forward. His weight so far aft…’ He left the rest of it to Lambert to imagine.

‘Can you come up here, Flash?’ Lambert said. ‘We’re in a bit of a mess amidships, so watch your step and bring your chute with you. Battersby is somewhere back there; do as he tells you, OK?’

‘OK, Skip,’ said Flash. ‘I could tell there was something wrong. My turret would only work on manual and there was a terrible smell.’

Flash came forward. He was stiffened by the coldness of his open-panel turret and impeded by his parachute. When he got as far as Binty and Cohen he sat down on the floor with them. It seemed warm there where the metal structure had smouldered.

The only true tiredness stems from the ball of the foot. First it makes the calves ache and the thigh muscles throb and moves along the spine to produce a pressure upon the cranium that almost forces the eyelids closed. That was the sort of tiredness Lambert knew now. He felt as if he had marched fifty miles in full equipment.

Yet with no navigator to help him and no wireless operator to obtain radio fixes he was trying to draw a triangle of velocities in his head. It was no use him remembering courses they had drawn up at the briefing, for those winds had proved to be hopelessly incorrect and were probably still changing. In any case he had brought the Lancaster down to 4,000 feet so that Kosher wouldn’t lack oxygen and here the winds might be different again.

‘Shall I see if I can work the wireless set for a QDM?’ Digby offered.

‘Stay up front. Help me get a pinpoint when we cross the coast.’

He had wandered far off the track of the bomber stream during Beer’s attack. The moon was bright now, but all it showed him was the sea beneath and irregular formations of cloud ahead. He knew that if he was to make a landfall he must stay below the cloud and when the first particles wetted and darkened the Perspex he put the nose down until he could see again. The ocean was close below them. Those cold spiteful waves looked so gentle from here. Parallel and unmoving, they were patches of white cross-hatching drawn by moonbeams through the clouds.

Lambert had resolved that in this situation he would ask the crew whether they wanted him to turn back over the enemy coast and bale out. But he did not ask them. So many times he had brought back dead and dying. Now once again he was doing it, while he himself was unscathed. Ruth said that he couldn’t hold himself responsible for that, but she didn’t understand. He steered the kite: a touch of the foot, a movement of the hand changed their position by half a mile. Anything that happened was his fault; there was no escaping it. No authority without responsibility. They did as he told them without a murmur of protest. Cohen had gone back to the flare chute. No one had asked to bale out, nor had they mentioned that had he reacted more quickly to the flak ship’s guns they would not have been hit.

‘Battersby, take an extinguisher and have a careful look round amidships. If you can find the Aldis lamp take a look at the engines through the wireless window.’

‘The dials are fine, Skipper. All of them are running beautifully by the look of it.’

‘Stay here, lad, I’m just being neurotic.’

‘OK, Skipper,’ said Battersby.

Racked by the guilt of not being disabled, Binty held tight to Kosher and tried to make amends. In a low voice, stumbling sometimes over the polysyllables and coughing because of the smoke, he recited nut for nut and bolt for bolt every component of the four motorcycles he’d owned. Flash sat on the floor listening to the litany and trying not to look up at the upper turret. At the controls Lambert and Battersby were struggling with the cantankerous unpredictable crippled Door. In the front Digby was staring down at the sea trying to make it into land. Finally he succeeded.

‘It’s the English coast all right: Aldeburgh.’

‘Southwold, I can see the river.’

‘Yes, well, I’mjust a visitor here myself, sport.’Twosearchlights lit and searched the sky, passing close to their wingtip.

‘Skipper to crew. I can put down at the emergency field at Manston or try to find Warley.’

There was no answer for nearly two minutes. Then Binty said, ‘Let’s get Cohen back home.’

‘Home it is,’ said Lambert.

Masked by the effects of the morphine Cohen was slipping into a coma. Binty rocked him in his arms. ‘Nearly home, Kosher, old son.’ Then he began to cut his burned flesh away from the flare chute.

Tommy Carter’s ground crew and aircrew were celebrating the pilot’s twenty-first birthday by bumping him on the hard tarmac. His flying gear deadened the shock of the buffeting. After twenty-one bumps he got to his feet surprised and a little angry, although when he saw Roland advancing on him with a tray of glasses and beer he was suitably placated. Every one of the ground crew was holding a glass of beer before Tommy would take one. The Sergeant electrician held up his glass and said, ‘Many happy returns, Tommy lad. And here’s to you and your next posting, Tapper, old son.’ They all drank happily. They’d hardly begun the second drink when one of them started up the song that had become Tommy’s anthem. It was a well-known RAF ditty, sung to the tune of In and Out the Windows.

‘The captain’s name was Carter,

He was a champion farter,

He could play everything

From God Save the King

To Beethoven’s Fourth Sonata.’

They all joined in the chorus of:

‘Orbiting the beacon,

Orbiting the beacon,

Orbiting the beacon,

As we have done before.’

They were so pleased with the harmony at the end of it that they repeated it all through again and there was more clinking of glasses.

‘Here you are, Tom,’ said Ben Gallacher, toasting his captain. ‘You’re the best bloody driver in the Air Force.’

By the light of the vertical searchlight and the flashing beacon Tommy could see that they were happy and the dangers and difficulties of the night were temporarily forgotten.

Lambert and Digby both saw the vertical searchlight and told each other. For a moment their tiredness disappeared. Using only his ailerons Lambert had brought Door around all the way from the coast. Degree by degree he had prepared the heading so that from fifty miles away he was approaching the main runway. Nine and a half miles from Warley he began his landing.

Flash and Binty held Cohen tight. The funnel lights were coming up too fast but old Door was trying. She really was doing her best. Lambert controlled his height by means of the throttles, letting the aeroplane drop gently through the air as it lost forward speed. The elevators were still useless.

‘I’ll need all your weight, Micky,’ Lambert told Battersby.

The flare path was floating gently up towards them. Battersby put the undercarriage down and to their mutual relief it slid into position and locked with no trouble.

‘Give me 20 degrees of flap.’

‘Flaps down,’ said Battersby.

The approach was good. ‘Flash and Binty—OK?’

‘OK, Skipper.’

‘Hold on tight to the structure. If the tail breaks off it will only be the end bit. Don’t slide out. Digby, come back here. Battersby, 60 degrees of flap, please.’

He was more than four hundred feet above the trees and still dropping nicely. Warley spire came up and pierced the skyline as Lambert struggled with the control column. Now he needed those elevators. Just this last time, Door, my love! Battersby and Lambert strained upon the controls until they both feared that they might bend the metal.

Neither of the men spoke. They were overshooting. Still the wheels hadn’t touched. They were flying across the airfield at 100 mph with an altitude that could be measured in inches.

‘I can’t hold her,’ muttered Lambert. They were sinking almost imperceptibly. Continuing on this shallow slope would bring them into violent and final contact with the ground in the middle of Witch Fen or, even worse, the copse just beyond it. Desperate, Lambert decided to slam all the throttles forward into emergency boost. He even started to reach for them; then paused. He doubted if the fragile machine could stand it and he knew that his subsequent circuit would have to be halfway across East Anglia since he couldn’t use the tail to steer.

The air-speed needle quivered and dropped to 90 mph. Still there was no bump of wheels touching.

‘This is it,’ said Lambert. He cut the throttles right back. At speeds above its stalling-speed any aeroplane is a fairy princess caring nothing for the law of gravity. But, like Cinderella at midnight, a plane going even a fraction below its stalling-speed changes suddenly into a collection of metal components that, exactly as a brick, bomb or pumpkin, will drop earthwards as gravity demands.

Door did that. It fell upon the runway like a fist upon a counter, shaking every rivet. The tyres screeched like halfslaughtered dogs and repeated the scream as the bouncing plane reapplied their hot rubber to the hard ground. Lambert had every last inch of flap down now, but they were still racing at sixty miles an hour towards the line of trees that marked the far end of the runway.

‘She’s swinging,’ said Battersby, but already Lambert was trying to correct it.

Two trees came up through the pale skyline, stabbing their fingers into the air in a rude gesture at having been singled out for doom at the hands of a runaway bombing plane.

Then the world went mad. Battersby knew that it wasn’t possible that they could sink into the runway, and yet he knew beyond doubt that it was happening. Lower and lower. There was a very loud bang that shook the whole aeroplane. There were flashes on every side and a shower of yellow sparks filled the cabin windows. The skyline detached itself from the air-field and danced first round to the port windows and then more determinedly to starboard. This time it kept going and there were hangers in front of them. Then the lighted windows of the Control Tower, and then those damned trees came round again. The noise was tremendous. Metal was ripping itself to pieces in a frantic rhythm that matched the dance of the trees until, as the horizon lost its energy, the tumult slowed and stilled and there was a silence such as they had never known before. Digby for a moment thought he was dead. Then he heard the gurgling sounds of petrol flowing from broken tanks and the creaks and cracks of the bent metal settling down. There was a smell of scorching and of one-hundred-octane fuel and with it the similar sweet perfumes of human juices and fresh blood.

They were all speechless and still. Even had the wreckage been on fire it is doubtful that they would have moved. Nowadays aeroplane accident investigators call it ‘negative panic’; then they called it being stunned.

‘Sorry, lads,’ said Lambert. ‘Had to bring the undercart up. Out as quickly as you can, there’s a fire hazard. Got Kosher there, Binty?’

‘Yes, Skip. We’ll see to him.’

‘Flash?’

‘ ’Kay, Skip. Have you got Flanagan?’

Lambert reached for the cross-eyed rag doll. ‘Yes, Flanagan’s OK,’ he said. Lately he’d begun to hate that doll but never more than now. He stuffed it into his tunic.

‘Dig?’

‘Ready to go.’

‘Unplug, get clear. Side door’s best. Take it easy.’

Only then did the crew recover their senses enough to unplug their microphone leads, release their parachute harnesses and make for the exits. Lambert gave Battersby a blow on the arm to tell him to hurry and he patted the aeroplane an affectionate farewell. For a moment he sat looking at his aeroplane. He felt an irrational sadness at saying goodbye to the wreck.

There was a lot of noise now: bells and shouts and ambulances and fire engines. Flash and Binty carried Cohen about a hundred yards before they sank down with him on to the cold ground and looked back towards Door, bent and broken and well off the runway. One wingtip had snapped and was silhouetted. Pieces of tail were scattered everywhere. Digby came racing past soon after they had stopped. He saw them and droppeddownbeside them puffing and panting with exertion. ‘Lord bless you, Mother Earth,’ he said. The smell of the dew-wet grass almost overcame the smell of Cohen.

There was still no sign of Battersby. He was in the shadow of the wrecked bomber, standing by the exit waiting for Lambert to emerge. He could hear him moving around. Soon Lambert appeared in the doorway carrying something. Battersby moved to assist him, but then found he couldn’t.

‘You’ll be all right, Jimmy,’ Lambert was saying to the wet bundle.

One after another the Lancasters came in on the main runway that took them over the village roofs. Old Sam Thatcher gave up the attempt to sleep and switched on the light by his bed and looked at the clock. ‘That damned wind. I knew she’d move round. I said so to young Cynthia.’

‘Go to sleep,’ mumbled Mrs Thatcher.

He switched out the light but did not go back to sleep. Finally he got up and made himself tea.

In the Briefing Room there was a shot of rum for every returning crewman and a short dark WAAF with carefully applied make-up handed out cups of sweet milky tea. Two airmen were removing the shutters from the windows. There was a trace of watery pink colouring the eastern sky. The debriefing officers were sitting behind folding tables writing furiously as the crews grouped round them trying to recreate the raid. It was not possible; their descriptions relapsed into jargon and cliché. Their voices were shrill, and their grimy faces bore the red ‘scars’ of oxygen masks; like painted smiles on dirty clowns. The sudden realization that they had survived was far more intoxicating than one measure of Air Ministry rum.

‘I got a real good burst in at him; definitely a Messerschmitt, wasn’t it, Cliff?’

‘I didn’t see him, Dave.’

‘You stupid sod.’

‘And this is your twentieth trip, Captain?’

‘Right on the target, but I couldn’t tell what colour the smoke was.’

‘Krefeld as a city no longer exists.’

‘If you don’t believe me, look at my photo.’

‘It sounds like a good show.’

‘A piece of bloody cake.’

For the bombs that missed Altgarten fell upon open land and did not burn, and so from the air the destruction of the little town appeared to be a highly concentrated and remarkably accurate attack upon the sprawling city of Krefeld.

Longfellow was pleased. ‘It will be something to tell your children about,’ he told Lambert, but Lambert had already resolved never to tell anyone.

The crew drifted away to their breakfast, still talking noisily. Lambert did not leave the room when the debriefing had finished; he waited. He always waited, but this time he waited in vain. He saw no sign of Murphy or any of Sweet’s crew.

Out on the cold airfield half a dozen ground crew stood around on S for Sugar’s tarmac pan. They’d heard distant singing from Carter’s crew, but that had made them even quieter. They were wrapped in woollen helmets and long scarves. Their hands were thrust deep into their overcoat pockets and were only removed to light and relight cigarettes. The ground beneath their feet was dotted with white trampled butts. The men did not speak to each other except to ask the time. The Sergeant fitter had done his basic training with Murphy. Finally he said, ‘Go and get some breakfast, lads.’ The distant screech of the London train came clearly across the dark fenland. They walked slowly back across the airfield, staring at the ground and hoping they wouldn’t see anyone they knew.

At Kroonsdijk Christian Himmel was the last of the Staffel to land. The dud engine gave trouble during taxiing but Himmel expected that. He came past the old wreck quite fast and then Kugel brought him into position with hand signals. He hit the port toe brake so hard that his plane swung round abruptly on its pan. He brought the motors up to maximum revs. The motor banged as he tested the faulty magneto. He switched both engines off. The gyros ran down with a sweet musical hum and the cooling motors chimed prettily. Beyond Kugel there was a group of men. The Medical Officer was there and Christian could see Redenbacher too. A nervous Flying-Control officer hurriedly switched off the runway lights.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked Kugel as his feet touched the ground at the bottom of the ladder. Now that he had taken off his mask he was aware of the stink of the Junkers. Burnt oil, exhaust fumes, stale cordite and carbonized guns combined with the smell of his sweaty clothes. Kugel was looking at him in a curious way, perhaps because of this. Himmel stretched his limbs. It was a welcome relief after his cramped, closely fitting bucket seat.

On the far side of the airfield near the dijk there were flashing torches and motor-car headlights. He could tell from the movements of the torches that there was confusion and haste.

Kugel was bursting with news. ‘A fellow from Twente came in to refuel and left pieces of his undercarriage scattered along the runway. His flaps and brakes had failed. It caught fire. Two officers were trapped in it. Horst Knoll rescued them but he’s badly burned on the hands. Funny, eh? him hating officers the way he does.’

‘Give me a cigarette, Kugel.’ The old man selected one and pushed it into Himmel’s mouth. They walked away from the aeroplane before Kugel produced his matches. Although it was still quite dark the birds were singing noisily.

‘It’s been a bad night, Christian. The Staffelkapitän has been snatched and now they think that Leutnant Kokke has also gone. The other Staffeln have lost four.’

‘You’ll have to change that engine, Kugel. She cut on me tonight in the middle of an interception.’

‘It may not have been oiled plugs.’

‘It was oiled plugs,’ insisted Himmel, ‘and the valves are dud too. You heard it. Anyway, the Kommodore said it should be changed if it gave any more trouble.’ Kugel lit a match and Christian bent his head down to it.

‘We’ll put a new motor into her, Christian. By the way, Löwenherz’s Knight’s Cross came through on the teleprinter.’

‘It will be best. Löwenherz dead, are you sure?’

‘The radar people at Ermine saw the explosion out at sea. A shell from a flak ship they think. He would have got his Knight’s Cross from Reichsmarschall Göring in person.’

‘And Kokke?’

‘At first they thought it was his radio but he’s not landed anywhere.’

‘Perhaps they’ll turn up,’ said Christian. ‘Take good care of the dog or Löwenherz will be furious.’

‘The Kommodore’s waiting for you,’ Kugel warned. ‘And that old civilian fellow.’

‘I was expecting them,’ said Christian. ‘In my locker there’s a bottle of brandy and an American parachute canopy. You can have them.’

‘And the Medical Officer is there too,’ said Kugel.

‘Yes, he would want to watch,’ said Christian. ‘He’s a student of human nature.’

Kugel looked over his shoulder to be sure the crew were out of earshot. ‘Hit me,’ said Kugel.

‘What?’

‘Hit me and run. Hit hard so it’s convincing.’

‘You are a good friend, Kugel,’ said Christian. ‘Take good care of the dog.’ He walked towards the group of men waiting for him.

At Warley Fen Munro brought his Lancaster down as lightly as a feather. He kept the wind under his port wing and held off his damaged tyre, tilting the controls gently so that it met the runway as gently as possible. So lightly did it touch that a gust of crosswind plucked the aeroplane back into the air and replaced it on a parallel run ten feet to starboard.

The lower a tyre’s pressure the lower is the speed at which it will come off its rim. In spite of Munro’s skill the soft tyre was punched flat by the hard tarmac rushing past at eighty miles an hour and then ripped into long rubber strips that scattered on to the runway, wriggling like hot black snakes as they curled into strange contortions and went hard and brittle. Devoid of its tyre the wheel hub struck a long gash of white sparks across the darkness before digging into the tarmac, bending and tearing itself into eight pieces that bowled along pealing like a set of bells. But when the oleo leg touched the ground it was as if the port wingtip had been grabbed by a giant and the Lancaster twisted neatly off the runway before settling lopsided on to the dew-wet grass almost undamaged. It was only two hundred yards from the wreck of the Door.

‘Ground flight to ground,’ said Munro, with formal precision. An aeroplane died each time that order ended its flight. The lights flickered off, the instruments ceased to glow, the intercom ceased to talk and the generators and gyros whined to a standstill.

‘Ground flight to ground it is, sir,’ said the engineer, turning the switch without any hurry. Munro released his mask, unplugged, unstrapped, turned and thumped his parachute harness release and reached for his peaked cap and walking-stick.

‘Damn me, look at that, Jock.’ He waved the broken end of his walking-stick. A tiny fragment of shrapnel had cut it in two. Munro shivered and decided he’d never carry a lucky charm again. If before trying that dodgy landing he had known it was broken he’d have been convinced he was for the chop.

‘Congratulations, Skipper,’ said Jock. ‘Good landing and the end of a tour.’

‘Thanks, Jock.’

The Briefing Room was littered with cigarette ends and the air was heavy with stale smoke and the odour of Air Ministry rum. When Munro’s crew had been interrogated the room was almost empty. A large notice on the wall said, ‘Crews: don’t wait around to see your photos. Go to bed’. Before they used that sign the place used to be packed with noisy aircrew until the morning. The Intelligence Officer pulled his greatcoat tighter about him and looked at the clock. Munro saw him looking at it and shook his head sadly. The three missing planes did not have enough fuel still to be airborne. Longfellow gathered the sortie reports together and went out. The three men who had been waiting for friends near the entrance also left without a word to each other.

In the Sergeants’ Mess they played the gramophone and the Mess waiter went around complaining about sergeants who put their wet beer glasses on the billiard table. One Sergeant gunner punched a friend who had refused to corroborate his claim for a Ju88 shot down. A bomb aimer was sick in the bar after drinking whisky mixed with rum. One of the Sergeant cooks who was due on breakfast duty next morning came down to the lounge in his pyjamas and asked them to make less noise. He was greeted with foul abuse. Sergeant Binty Jones allowed his friend Flash Gordon to push his motorcycle out of the boiler house where he kept it. It started at a touch of the kick starter and Binty stuffed a toothbrush into his pocket and was off to his rendezvous with Rose in Peterborough. He bumped his bike across the unofficial footpath behind the Mess to get to the main road by the shortest route. He hurried along it, straddling the bike and letting his toes tap the ground just to keep his balance and giving the powerful engine little twists of throttle. He was almost level with a man coming the other way before he recognized who it was.

‘Some of you fellows…’ protested the Squadron commander in amazement. ‘Were are you going?’

Binty was too surprised to lie. ‘Peterborough, sir.’

‘To see some woman. Is that it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Binty, unable to keep the nervousness he felt out of his voice.

Impulsively Munro said, ‘Well, how about giving me a lift to Peterborough station? I might just be able to catch the mainline train home.’ He touched his pocket and heard the crackle of his wife’s letter.

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Binty in obsequious relief at not being charged with breaking out of camp. He turned the motorbike round. ‘Jump on the back, I’ll take you up to the Officers’ Mess and wait for you.’

‘That’s the spirit, Gordon.’

‘Jones, sir. Gordon’s my oppo. I’m the mid-upper on Creaking Door, O Orange that is.’

‘That’s the spirit, Sergeant Jones. Peterborough, and don’t spare the horses!’

‘No, sir. I won’t, sir.’

When Lambert left the Briefing Room he could hear the gramophone in the Sergeants’ Mess and smell the fried bacon of the aircrew breakfasts. Tommy Carter, Tapper Collins, and Jock Hamilton from Munro’s crew almost dragged him to the Mess to join them for a drink but he wouldn’t go. He heard Digby say, ‘Fair’s fair, Sam’s got to see his missus.’ Tommy had a bottle of whisky that he had put in his locker. It was already half gone. They wished him goodnight and wandered away singing.

‘Happy birthday, Tommy,’ Lambert shouted after them. They were singing the famous soldier’s song:

‘That’s my brother Sylvestre,

He’s got a row of forty medals on his chest.

It takes all the Army and the Navy

To put the wind up Sylvestre.’

The chorus was a tuneless chant sung as speedily as possible.

Don’t push, just shove, plenty of room for you and me,

He’s got an arm that’s like a leg and his punch will sink a battleship.

Digby ended long after the others and clinging to Tommy’s waist he swung round to shout goodbye again to Lambert. Lambert waved again. Digby shared a room with Grimm and Cohen. Tonight he’d have the room to himself, that’s why he’d not be going to bed.

By the time Lambert reached the changing-room it was empty. He was opening his locker when Battersby emerged from the crew toilets even paler than usual. He wiped his mouth and said to Lambert, ‘Was I all right, Skipper?’

Lambert winked at him. ‘Like a bloody veteran, Batters.’

The boy smiled.

‘I phoned the sick bay.’

‘I did too, Batters.’

‘I was going along there but they said it was no use; they’re doing all they can.’

‘Get some sleep, Batters, the worst is over.’

The boy was full of unasked questions but he smiled and turned towards the door. Lambert reached for his shoes on the shelf and in them found the group photo. They were all there, grinning like immortals. He tossed it into the back of his locker and after it threw Flanagan. He pulled off his boots and flying suit and went to have a wash but changed his mind. Someone had been sick in the WC, there was a bulb missing and the only towel had been stolen.

He unlocked his bicycle and pumped up the rear tyre. He had to push the bike through the gap in the wire because the constant battle between the breakers and the repairers was going a little in the latter’s favour. After that it was only ten minutes’ cycle ride to the village.

The sky was dribbling with the first streaks of a new day and the air was cold enough to condense his breath. Lambert liked these rides. The countryside was still and aromatic and there were rustles of animal life in the hedgerows. For Lambert it was the moment to congratulate himself upon surviving another trip. He propped his bicycle against the hedge and opened the front door as quietly as possible.

Ruth was awake when he opened the bedroom door. She was always awake when he returned. He imagined she never slept while he flew, although he never asked her about it. He undressed slowly without the light. The moonlight that had shone so brightly over the Dutch coast was diffused by the thin cloud and dusted the bedroom with just a trace of blue gloom.

‘All right, darling?’

Lambert didn’t answer, and that she knew was bad. The only other times that he’d been silent was when they’d been shot up and lost crew. When he got into bed he lay fulllength with his feet together like a block of wood. Or like a corpse, thought Ruth, and erased that thought. His skin was hard and his breathing was almost inaudible. She put her head against his shoulder. He didn’t either respond or move away. He’d come back, there was that for which to be thankful. It wasn’t only cowards who died a thousand times, it was wives and mothers and sweethearts. Fathers too, perhaps.

‘Cohen and Grimm,’ said Lambert, he didn’t mention Micky.

She said nothing.

‘I promised his father,’ said Lambert.

‘He made you promise,’ said Ruth.

‘I promised.’

She wanted to tell him about the Group Captain but she couldn’t add another worry.

‘It’s Tommy Carter’s twenty-first birthday. They wanted me to go for a drink.’

‘You should have gone.’

‘No.’ A motorcycle came through the village at high speed, changed down at the crossroads and then opened the throttle with a roar as it turned on to the main road. Lambert bent over his wife and kissed her. ‘I didn’t wash,’ he apologized. She could smell the awful night.

‘I sent Dad a fiver.’

‘You are a fool, Sam. He won’t use it to pay his bills. He’ll never be any different.’

‘I know.’

‘You can’t be responsible for all the world, Sam. You mustn’t try.’

‘I’ll not go again. They can do what they like, Ruth. I’m flown out, finished, kaputt.’

She reached to her bedside table and found a sleeping tablet for him. He took it like a small child, not caring what it was or where it had come from.

‘Perhaps you should play cricket on Saturday. We can go to London the following week.’

‘You’re a good girl, Ruth.’ He put his arm round her and closed his eyes but he did not sleep.

That was about the time when they found the Burgomaster. They all said it was the most obvious place to look, but no one said that until after he’d been found. A Hitler Jugend messenger almost ran over him on the wrecked site of his own house. He had collected as many undamaged bricks as he could find and he was building them into walls. He had no cement, of course, which is why they fell over when the boy’s bicycle hit them. The Burgomaster was very upset and so the fourteen-year-old messenger helped him build his little hut again. It was almost an hour before the boy realized that the Burgomaster was trying to build the tiny hut around himself.

In Liebefrauplatz a team of TENO engineers led by Bodo Reuter were heaving at a block and tackle. The sound of the chains rattled around the ruins of the still-warm church. With each pull the tail assembly of Sweet’s Lancaster rose higher until it was strung up in the town centre suspended from a buttress. It swayed a little in the winds that had so aided the great fires of the night, looking like a piece of some prehistoric animal, displayed thus to assuage the anger of the gods. Smoke drifted across the scene. On the rudders there were the red, white and blue markings of Britain and the white stencilled letters that were its identity. Some of the TENO men wanted to leave the body of Sweet’s rear gunner in the smashed rear turret, but Bodo Reuter forbade it. Even before the cables were secured citizens had begun to gather to exorcize the species that had plagued them.

‘Sieg Heil,’ shouted one of them and the others also shouted. Sweet’s wrecked aeroplane would stay there a week and then be melted down and within seven weeks fly again as a German aeroplane.

Luftwaffe Himmelbett Station Ermine was lucky with the mail. They were the first Luftwaffe unit along the coast on the mail route from Rotterdam. There were two letters for August Bach. One was from the jeweller in Altgarten. It was a receipt for the deposit and a bill for the engagement ring. As the jeweller said, an engagement ring is the riskiest item that a man can offer on credit. The other letter was from August’s son. With characteristic confidence it was detalined ‘near Leningrad’.

Pappi,

Haven’t got more than a moment. We were in the line until only four hours ago. Last night I was on patrol trying to get prisoners for questioning. Both died of wounds and tonight the company that relieved us will have to have another try. We are pretty sure that Ivan is all ready to attack us. When he does I shall get my promotion or a wooden overcoat. Either way it doesn’t matter much, as long as I don’t get wounded.

Answers to questions: no. What we get to eat is entirely adequate. Eat your own rations. Yes, we shall be getting leave some time during the next two months. Yes, I am coming home. Do you think I’d miss another roll in bed with that juicy little housekeeper you’ve tucked away. I was telling the boys about her. As one of them said, ‘Trust the Luftwaffe to get itself some civilian rations and then pretend they are going hungry.’ He meant you, of course. And don’t go all sanctimonious on me. See you some time in August and knock before coming into the bedroom.

Yours cheerfully,

PETER

PS. Answer to unasked question: I haven’t forgotten and will pay you back very soon now.

August folded both letters and put them into his pocket. ‘Reinecke,’ he said, ‘after breakfast I’ll sentence the men who lost the bicycles.We’ll see to the cash afterwards.Anyone sick?’

‘Only me, sir,’ said Reinecke and grinned.

‘No,’ said August, ‘there are two of us.’

‘You’ll feel better after some coffee, real coffee.’

‘The herons?’

‘They’ve gone.’

At the guardroom atWarley Fen, Flight Sergeant Bishop was looking at his galleon in full sail. He couldn’t decide whether to call it ‘Cadiz ahoy’ or ‘Gold from the New World’. The phone rang. The operator spoke to Bishop who was for tonight the Sergeant of the guard.

‘It’s some police station with a message,’ she said. ‘I can’t get any answer in Orderly Room or Operations.’

‘OK,’ said Flight Sergeant Bishop. ‘Let’s have them.’

‘Warley Fen RAF?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Cambridgeshire Constabulary here. Sergeant Ford speaking. We’ve got two of your people here. There’s been an accident between a Norton motorcycle and a lorry. They were speeding, by the sound of it. Their names are…’ There was a pause as he shuffled the document on his desk. ‘Munro, John: Wing Commander. And Jones, William Gareth: Sergeant. Know them?’

‘I know the Wing Commander but almost everyone is a sergeant on this station.’

‘Very well. I take it your military police people will phone us in the morning to make your own arrangements and there’s the damaged motorcycle to be moved too.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Bishop, grinning to himself as he thought of it, ‘you can’t hold the Wing Commander in the cells until morning. Not for a traffic offence.’

‘Ah, I’m sorry. I should have explained. Dead. Killed instantly. They hit the lorry at ninety.’

‘OK,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I’ll leave a note about it.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Cadiz ahoy’ he decided would be better.

In the three kitchens at Warley the cooks were still heavy with sleep as they sat drinking their first mugs of sweet hot milky tea before they began to prepare the earliest of the early breakfasts. Maisie Holroyd the Catering Officer had a cup of tea and a joke in all three Messes in spite of having been on duty—supervising the aircrew’s flying rations—until the middle of the previous night. The sun was clinging precariously to the horizon and killing the stars with its stare. Lambert turned in his sleep, groaned, laughed and went silent without waking his wife. For she had not yet gone to sleep and now she watched him like a mother with a sick child.

In the Medical Section two doctors stood upright for the first time in two and a half hours and let Sergeant Cohen die.

In Altgarten they had long since run out of death certificates and were using pages from children’s exercise books with the rubber stamp of the Rathaus imprinted at the top. They had also run out of bandages, blood, splints, burn dressings, iodine and morphine.

There were explosions as the TENOs demolished houses and shops on Dorfstrasse. Voss’ shop was one of many that had become a dangerous ruin. The metallic voice from a loudspeaker van moved slowly along the same road telling the homeless to report to Party HQ for information and assistance. It ordered next-of-kin to report missing persons to the new temporary police station—a house on Ziegler-strasse. The only way to get there was via Koller Meadow, for like many of Altgarten’s streets it was partly roped off because of unexploded bombs.

Not far from Altgarten, Billy Pace was the only survivor from Sweet’s aircraft. His landing, however, had not been a lucky one. He had seen the dark shapes of the fir trees only a moment or so before hitting them. A branch struck his leg and then he was assailed by the sharp edges of more branches before he was jerked to a sudden stop by his canopy catching the treetop. There was a tearing sound and he sank a few feet but then swung without descending more. It was pitch-dark in the forest and he tried to get a grip on a branch, but they were all flimsy and springy and would not bear his weight. He tried to peer into the gloom but could see nothing. He found matches in his pocket and struck one, but that only illuminated the branches close to him and seemed to make his surroundings even darker. He dropped a burning match but it went out before he could see beyond his dangling stockinged toes, for he had lost both flying boots. Suspended in the tight harness he was so uncomfortable that he was tempted to hit the quick release and chance it, but caution prevailed. Especially when he heard the cry of wolves nearby. He dangled there for three hours with his imagination working overtime until the sun came over the horizon and inch by inch lit up the dark forest. It was then that he saw that the earth was only eighteen inches below his toes. He let himself drop to the ground but was still nervous of the wolves until a forester came past and explained that they were caged dogs. Pace had dropped into the small wood behind the Wald Hotel and had heard the noise of guard dogs being rounded up by dog-handlers. He walked along with the forester to his hut and managed to exchange a few words of German.

Behind the forestry hut Billy Pace saw a stiff brown doll-like figure. Its little arms were drawn tight across its front like a boxer’s high defence and its burnt mouth was stretched back in a demoniacal grin that exposed large even white teeth. Pace recognized the charred stubble of a moustache. It was young Speke, who had left S Sweet without permission. He had landed in a patch of blazing forest.

The forester let Pace look at it for a moment or two.

‘Kamerad?’

‘Ja, Kamerad,’ said Billy Pace and he went into the hut feeling hot and faint and slightly sick.

The old man gave him a cup of bitter brown liquid that he claimed was coffee and then he used the fire-warning phone to send for an escort. Billy still had a chocolate bar left from his flying ration. The old man ate it with relish. As the old forester explained, he would be safer with soldiers than walking through the bombed town without protection. He showed the forester a photo of his mother. Pace wondered how long it would take for his mother to hear that he was a prisoner and not killed in action.

For Fleming and his crew no comrades grieved. Their only friends had been each other, and none came back. Their stay at Warley had not lasted long enough to form friendships with the experienced crews and who could blame the men who came back for preferring that their friends survived rather than seven strangers.

In the Officers’ Mess at Warley the Education Officer was collecting together the personal effects of PO Fleming. He’d been made Effects Officer only a week before. He made certain that there were no pornographic photos and read the letters carefully to be sure that they could cause no distress to parents or wives. It was a solemn job. He looked at his list; the next one was Flight Lieutenant Sweet.

When the last of the bombers landed the work of Warley Fen’s Photographic Section began. Each of the bomber’s F24 cameras was unloaded and the five-inch-wide lengths of extra-high-speed film were threaded on to spools and processed. It was all done at high speed. The developer was at seventy-five degrees fahrenheit and they had only a threeminute fix and wash before going into a meth-and-water bath for rapid drying. The Flight Sergeant then took the wet film and ran it across the front of a light-box to check the exposure and development. He noticed nothing unusual, nor did anyone else until the films were being hung in the hot air of the drying cabinet by a WAAF corporal.

She went into the trimming-room and for a moment looked across the airfield. Several of the buildings were lit up, their windows making bright yellow patches, disembodied in the blue morning light. The paths and grass were shiny-wet with dew and the beacon still flashed a morse identity that lit everything like a lightning-stroke. The girl found a shiny photograph that had been taken during a previous attack upon Krefeld and studied it carefully before looking at the negatives again. She told an LAG before telling the Flight Sergeant. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself.

‘Flight Sergeant Booth here, sir, Photo Section. The attack hasn’t hit Krefeld, sir, I’ve just been studying the negs. Street patterns are nothing like it. I don’t know sir. It doesn’t look like anywhere. It doesn’t look like anywhere.’

Gericht der Wehrmachtkommandantur

Berlin	Berlin NW 40, den 23.8.43
L/W KS/78 ui	Lehrterstr 58.

To the Supervisory Board of the Penitentiary in Brandenburg-Görden

On Monday, September 13th, 1943, at 1 pm, the death sentence against former Unteroffizier Christian Himmel, born September 12th, 1922, in Ottobeuren, Bayern, Religion Catholic, will be executed with the guillotine in your prison.

Executioner Rötger is charged with carrying out the sentence. The sentence is to be notified there on the same day at 11.00.

Charged with the supervision of the execution is Oberleutnant Dr Henze who will be attended by Feldjustizinspektor Keyser.

The sentenced is in the remand prison of the Wehrmacht in Berlin-Tegel, Seidelstrasse 39.

The Polizeipräsidium Berlin as conveying authority is requested to send the sentenced to Brandenburg on the morning of September 13th, 1943. Acceptance is requested.

The local prison doctor is requested to be made available for the execution.

by direction

(signed)

JOST

Oberkriegsgerichtsrat

	Administration Officer
August 23rd, 1943	RAF Station Warley Fen

ACH/GD LAMBERT, Samuel Charles

The above-named has been found unsuitable for any further duties in aircrew capacity and his reduction from NCO rank has therefore been ratified by Air Ministry. With effect from this date he will report to the Station Warrant Officer for work assignments with cleaning, sanitation and refuse-disposal working parties.

While these duties are not intended as a punishment no privileges will be granted to AC Lambert until further notice. This to include passes or permission to sleep off the station.

To Station Warrant Officer

RAF Warley Fen