Bomber

Some of the students wrote in their notebooks. Any one of them was liable to be assigned to one of the fire services in the Ruhr, in which case he would need to know what the war was like.

‘That’s the end of the lecture,’ said Johannes Ilfa looking at his wristwatch. The senior fireman called the class to attention and when Ilfa had gone he dismissed them for lunch. Seven of the men lived sufficiently near to eat at home and they hurried to the cycle shed to collect their bikes.

The fire station was at the unfashionable end of Mönchenstrasse. Two young Waffen SS soldiers cycled past it on their way to the shops of Dorfstrasse. The Scheske twins were just eighteen and until last month they had never been more than five miles from their native town of Insterburg on the Pregel in a distant part of East Prussia. Here in the extreme west of the homeland, so near to Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam, about which they had read in their schoolbooks not long ago, there was so much to see. Even this cycle ride into Altgarten to fetch some razor blades for the guard commander held promise enough for both boys to be carrying their new Exacta cameras.

They were shy lads and did not respond to the teasing their Slavic name drew from the race-conscious SS men stationed at the Wald Hotel camp. Everything about the new Nazi Germany was an adventure. Together they had been the mainstay of the Hitler Jugend choir back home and at party celebrations they were invariably chosen to augment the SA men’s choir. Alas, at their camp in Altgarten there was no choir. Mausi had suggested that they find out if there was a choir at the Liebefrau church, but luckily Hannes was in time to prevent him making a complete fool of himself by suggesting such a thing in front of the other SS men.

So now they sang lustily as they cycled through the town. It was the chorus that often ended the Party meetings back home.

‘When the SS and the SA

March up in formation. Taratata!

Firm is the stride.

Firm is the pace,

Left two three four, everyone wants to join

And so one marches today through every little town

And every German girl dreams of this today

Because the black SS and the brown SA

Have what pleases everyone today

And it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.’

They finished it in polished harmony. ‘We’d better hurry,’ said Hannes, ‘or we’ll miss lunch.’

‘What must we buy?’

‘The commandant’s medicine from the druggist, razor blades for the guard commander, a smoking cure for the fat fellow in the cookhouse and I want some colour film.’

‘If we missed lunch we could take some photos of the old market place where the vegetable stalls are.’

‘Good idea, let’s miss lunch.’

An elderly Saxon TENO engineer named Ueberall – Fuchs to his friends because of his red hair, now turning grey – had also decided to miss lunch. He waited as the two cyclists passed him before crossing the road. ‘Nazis,’ he muttered under his breath as he heard the song they sang. He’d heard it as the prelude to many a brawl in which he invariably found his friends ranged against the singers. That was when Fuchs had worked as a diesel fitter for a boat company on the Elbe. As a young man he’d been a keen trade unionist and even now he worried that old documents would be found and bring him under police scrutiny.

Fuchs was a huge man with giant’s hands and a square jaw, but his shrill Saxon voice did not belong to such a man. He, more than anyone else in the pioneer battalion, disliked military life. The previous year some skilled engine fitters had been released to factory work but Ueberall’s application had been turned down. Now he looked forward only to his card-playing evenings, for it was the nearest thing to being a civilian that he’d managed to find in the Army. He liked his two friends very much: Gerd Böll had been a college professor and Oberzugführer Bodo Reuter never had occasion to remind him that he was also his senior officer.

Fuchs Ueberall often missed lunch, and almost always it was in order to play skat. All three men wondered sometimes what they had in common besides a similarity of age and outlook, a lack of family responsibility and an easily renewed faith that they would win the next game. But, as Gerd said one day, wasn’t that enough to have in common?

Chapter Six (#ulink_4f84d881-b4e0-5da0-afc0-73342ffd0711)

When choosing a site for an airfield it doesn’t matter that the ground is not flat, for it can easily be levelled. The deciding factor is drainage. The inhabitants of Little Warley had always known that the potato fields to the east of the village drained into Witch Fen. The land between there and the line of ash trees at The Warrens is hard, fertile and as black as coal. Its subsoil is firm enough to take the weight of a bombing plane. So it was no surprise when, as war began, Air Ministry teams surveyed the place and pronounced it suitable for a Bomber Command airfield. After that came earth-moving machinery, concrete mixers and asphalt pourers. A tarmac cross was drawn across Warley’s countryside and around it went a road complete with a circular pan for each aeroplane. Men dug sewers and drains, laid water pipes and strung power lines. Telex and phone cables crossed the fields. Corrugated-iron Nissen huts appeared as if by magic, huddled together like wrinkled grey elephants sheltering from the cold East Anglian winds. There were hangars too: black cathedrals higher than the church steeple and wider than the graveyard. Finally out of the clouds came the sound of an aeroplane and ten minutes later Warley Fen was truly an airfield.

The box-like Control Tower stood alone, commanding a view as far as Witch Fen. Behind it dozens of buildings provided the complex necessities of Service life from A to Z. Armoury, Butchery, Cinema, Dental Surgery, Equipment Store, Flying Control, Gunnery Range, Hairdresser, Instrument Section, Jail, Kitchens, Link Trainer Room, Meteorological Section, Navigators’ Briefing Room, Operations Block, Photographic Section, Quarters for Married Officers, Radar Building, Sick Quarters, Teleprinter Section, Uniform Store, Vehicle Repair Yard, Water Tower, X-ray Department, YMCA Hut, and a zebra-striped Aerodrome Control Post. Later there were also added a large vegetable garden and extensive pig pens.

A sign was painted – RAF Station Warley Fen – and erected at the entrance. The wooden shed there was painted red and white and adorned with a notice: ALL VISITORS MUST REPORT HERE. In no time at all it seemed as though the village had always known the bustle of one thousand and eighty-three noisy airmen: bicycles were stacked outside the Bell every evening and Mrs Jenkins had had to write NO CIGARETTES on her window in whitewash in order to save a few smokes for her regulars. There were girl airmen too, to the villagers’ dismay. They flaunted painted lips and waved hair and worked as hard as the men. Sometimes they were heard to swear as hard as the men, too. They set an awesome example to the village girls. Some said the whole aerodrome was a ‘black Satan’s nest’ and hurried past it after dark, especially if the roar of aircraft was rattling the village windowpanes like a thousand furies.

Dispersed all round the aerodrome were the Squadron’s bombers sitting on their tarmac circles. The six-foot-high fence that surrounded the airfield was little more than a boundary mark, for human logic had torn great holes in it where it had blocked the paths that led from the dispersals to the Bell. Even the armed sentries who stood all night at the main gate would, their duty finished, wander off through gaps in the fence to save themselves a hundred extra yards walk along the perimeter track. It was through one of these gaps that the Bedford lorry bumped and caused them all to lose their balance. Digby and Battersby hit their heads against the metal uprights. ‘Hold on!’ shouted Flight Lieutenant Sweet from his seat in the cab.

‘Now he tells us,’ said Digby as the lorry pulled up in front of B Flight offices. The tailflap crashed open and Sweet took Mrs Lambert by the waist and floated her down in a movement that would have done credit to the Sadlers Wells ballet company. Still holding her by the waist, Sweet gave her a decorous kiss. ‘Droit du Seigneur, Lambert,’ he called. ‘The driver will take you to the Ops Block, Mrs Lambert; it looks like there’s something on for us. It’s a good thing that I decided to look in here first.’

The Lancaster bombers were alive with airmen. Engine mechanics, riggers, electricians, instrument fitters and radio mechanics swarmed all over the great four-motor aircraft. The newcomers automatically looked across to the north corner of the airfield. There a group of hillocks looked like prehistoric burial mounds with a concrete entrance to each. It was all surrounded with blast walls and laced with pulleys and tackle. Inside that was the bomb store. Around it were queues of bomb-trains. Armourers bent low over fuses and fins, and patted the bombs into place on the trolleys. There were general purpose bombs and high-capacity bombs and target indicators and canisters packed with ninety shiny 4-lb incendiaries. No one was painting ‘Hello Hitler’ on them; that was something the Press photographers did. For armourers there was nothing humorous about a bomb.

‘Looks like we’re on the battle order, chaps,’ said Sweet. ‘There’s a bit of luck. I’ll enjoy putting some HE amongst the squareheads.’

‘Bombs or mines?’ said Digby.

‘Can’t see,’ said Cohen.

The Flight offices were a complex of tin huts which rattled as one by one the engines were tested up to full revs. The Sergeant clerk saluted as Sweet entered the shabby little room marked B Flight Office. Eric, the airman clerk, stopped typing and stood up at attention. It was a dismal place. There were two filing boxes, two tables and two chairs. In the corner there was a sink with chipped railway cups and a brown metal teapot upside down to drain. A notice board on the wall was crammed with ancient announcements and memos. The blackboard was marked to show the serviceability of B Flight’s Lancasters. Above it Sweet had had the lettering bod write ‘B Flight Bombs Best’ in Saxon lettering. There was a dirty smudge under it where another opinion on the subject had been clumsily erased.

‘Good morning Percy, good morning Eric,’ said Sweet. ‘Are we on?’

‘Yes, sir; maximum effort,’ said the Sergeant.

‘I hear you’re making a book on the Squadron cricket match on Saturday, Eric. Put me down for five bob.’

‘On us, sir?’ said Eric.

‘You cheeky sod,’ said Sweet. ‘Aren’t I the best batsman in the Group?’

‘That’s it, sir.’ Sweet smiled appreciatively and patted Eric’s shoulder.

Sweet picked up a tin of pennies and shook it. A hand-lettered label said ‘Village Children’s Xmas Party’. Last year and the one before that, the clerk Eric Sedge and LAC Gilbert, the Squadron artist, had arranged it, but this year Sweet had put the full force of his persuasive personality behind it. Smilingly he demanded contributions from all ranks and insisted that any raffles or sweepstakes held among the lads of B Flight must pay ten per cent ‘tax’ to the Christmas party.

‘How much more since Friday, Eric?’ Sweet rattled the tin again.

‘A few pennies, sir.’

‘Get the names in the book?’

‘I don’t put down less than sixpence.’

‘Get them all in the book, Eric. It’s only fair. Then at Christmas we’ll see which section has contributed most.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And put the teapot on, Eric.’ Sweet walked through the door marked ‘B Flight Commander’. It was very hot inside and a wasp was buzzing hysterically. Sweet hit the wasp with a rolled-up copy of Picture Post and then opened the window. He scooped up the wasp and put it outside. He leaned out far enough to see Lambert talking to his wife. Sweet inhaled the perfume of freshly cut grass and looked long enough at two airmen on fatigues for them to go back to work. Sweet sat down at his desk. Over it a poster with the slogan ‘Bread is a munition of war, don’t waste it’ had a Johnny Walker label obscuring the first word. The office was equipped from many sources. There were pub ashtrays, a cinema seat, a Victorian wardrobe containing Sweet’s working uniform and some spare flying kit. There were also a small stove with a home-made chimney, a threadbare piece of antique carpet and a suitcase full of gramophone records (including a course in spoken German). Through the window were the Lancasters he commanded, standing on the skyline like a frieze.

Sweet’s own plane was S for Sugar, although by now he had persuaded almost everyone on the Squadron to call it S Sweet. It was the newest aeroplane on B Flight. Its Perspex was bright and clear and its interior shiny bright. It had one bomb painted on its nose.

Lambert’s aeroplane – O Orange – on the other hand, was an ancient machine, with line after line of yellow bombs totalling sixty-two. From outside it looked the same as the other bombers, covered for the most part in black matt paint with dull green and brown on the upper surfaces. But if you went inside and looked at the bright alloy formers in its nose and wondered why the port side of the interior had dulled and tarnished while the starboard interior was gleaming fresh silver metal, you might guess that it had not escaped unharmed from its sixty-two trips. She had been back to Servicing Flight for major surgery. She’d had a new tail section, the port flaps were new, and the nose and port wing had several riveted plates where flak had holed her. Bomb-doors were the most vulnerable part and this plane had used up eight of those.