Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse

A flak officer noticed the dark-blue Citroen with its Luftwaffe number plates and came across to apologize for the delay. He was a stern-faced young man, steel helmet, fair moustache and a non-regulation pair of soft kid gloves that came into view as he saluted.

‘There are road repairs in Geldern,’ said Max Sepp. ‘You won’t get these contraptions through the town.’

‘I know, sir,’ said the officer, ‘but we turn off to Wesel before the roadworks.’

‘The road into the Ruhr from Wesel is even worse,’ said Max. ‘I know this district well.’

‘Our destination is Ahaus,’ said the flak officer.

‘Why Ahaus?’ said Max. ‘If it was left to me I’d pull all the flak back into the Ruhr. There you can be sure of a crack at the terror flyers. You’ll be lucky to see any Tommis at Ahaus.’

‘The policy is still an air defence corridor along the Netherlands border,’ said August.

‘My lads are keen,’ said the officer. ‘They’ll be disappointed unless they see action soon.’

August replied, ‘“No great dependence is to be placed in the eagerness of young soldiers for action. For fighting has something agreeable in the idea to those who are strangers to it.”’

The flak officer was puzzled. He pulled at the fastening of his glove.

‘Vegetius,’ supplied August.

‘A Roman military writer of the fourth century,’ explained Max Sepp.

‘As the Herr Oberst wishes,’ said the officer respectfully. Three huge searchlights trundled past them. He saluted again and swung aboard one of the slow-moving tractors to join his young enthusiasts. The Citroen moved forward.

‘You shocked the fellow,’ said Max.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said August.

‘Why worry?’ said Max. ‘With that medal at your throat you can afford to be blasé about heroism. But in case you should think me an untutored serf, Vegetius was also the man who said, “Let him who desires peace prepare for war!”’

‘We all say something we don’t mean once in a while,’ said August.

Max laughed, and August wondered if he had not been too quick to judge his old friend.

There was another quarter of a mile of the traffic jam before the cause of it was revealed. There a Bedford Army lorry and an Opel car were locked in embrace. A young NSKK man was directing the traffic on to the grassy verge around the debris while three other NSKK men were extricating the unconscious driver from under the lorry’s bent steering column. The rear part of the Bedford had broken through a hedge and from it boxes of fruit had fallen and split open. Pigs from the orchard were making the most of their good luck.

‘Those bloody British lorries,’ said Max. ‘They shouldn’t allow them on the road.’

‘But after Dunkirk there were so many.’

‘With right-hand steering. Half of these lorry drivers are Motor Corps kids. They are taught to drive in three weeks and then they come on the road and kill anyone who gets in their way.’

The NSKK boy waved them forward and they bumped on to the grass. It was well ploughed up now and the Citroen’s wheels were spinning for a moment before getting a grip. Max leaned out of the car as they passed the traffic man. ‘Those right-hand drives are death traps,’ he said.

‘I don’t speak German,’ said the traffic man. ‘I am French.’ He had the same green-and-black uniform that the Germans had but he wore a tricolour badge on his sleeve and now he tapped it. Max was furious. ‘What bloody use are they?’ he shouted loud enough for the boy to hear.

August said, ‘We’re short of manpower, Max. Russia is drinking our population as fast as we can get them there.’

‘A Frenchman,’ said Max angrily.

‘They are a logical race. They should make good traffic police.’

‘Huh,’ said Max. ‘Logical. They put a knife between your ribs and spend an hour explaining the rational necessity for doing it.’

‘That sounds like a lot of Germans I know.’

‘No, a German puts a knife into your rib and weeps a sea of regretful tears.’

August smiled. ‘And after the Englishman has wielded the knife?’

‘He says, “Knife, what knife?”’

August laughed.

From there on, apart from a traffic jam in Kleve and a long line of traffic crawling through a military police check at the Waal bridge, they moved fast. August dozed off until Max nudged him.

‘We’ll be at Deelen in five minutes or so,’ said Max.

‘Deelen air base or the Divisional Operations Room?’

‘Number One Fighter Division. They control the whole damned air battle there: the whole of the Netherlands, Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, and even parts of Hesse and Belgium. Been there before?’

‘Last year.’

‘Ah yes, the old sanatorium buildings. Wait till you see the new bunker. When I first saw it, August, I realized for the first time that, no matter what the Amis and Tommis do, they can never win against organization like ours. On the control map there is every night fighter, bomber, flak unit, civil-defence unit. It’s like magic.’

‘We need every bit of magic we can get, Max. Last year the RAF kept flying right through the bad winter weather. There was no chance for a breathing-space. We must stop these people within the next few weeks or we can be sure they’ll keep bombing us right through next winter. What’s the good of winning a war if our families, our homes, our cities, museums, and culture are bombed to destruction. We can move our Tiger tank factories deep underground, but we can’t put Speyer Cathedral or Cologne underground.’

‘The experts at OKL say that if we can crack the morale of the bombers this year, they’ll give up bombing the cities.’

‘The only way I know of cracking their morale is shooting them down.’

‘Well, of course. They say if we could bring their casualty averages up by just two and a half per cent, the RAF would have to change their tactics.’

‘Now you understand why I mustn’t be late back,’ said August. ‘A short summer night like tonight, the moon almost full. If they come tonight and we don’t knock down a record number of them we don’t deserve to win.’

The Luftwaffe Citroen stopped at the first of the HQ’s road blocks. The Luftwaffe sentries with their sub-machineguns looked strangely out of place in the candy-striped sentry boxes. An elderly sentry checked their papers and waved the car on. It had rained heavily here and the striped box made dazzling reflections on the shiny road. The bunker itself was in beautiful forestland south of the airfield. The tall beech trees were dripping on to the sunlit paths and beyond the woodland patches of heather were near to flowering.

They got out of the car. There was a smell of resin from the sun-baked pine trees and also the damp dark smell of mould. Deelen airfield was only a stone’s throw beyond the trees and from there August caught the sound of a light aircraft. He waited until it came into view above the trees. It was a white two-seater biplane climbing steadily and earnestly without showmanship.

‘That’s what I call an aeroplane,’ said August. ‘If only flying had stayed like that, instead of giving way to scientists, horse-power, calculating machines and control systems.’

‘You mustn’t complain about that, my good August,’ said Max. ‘You are a controller, remember.’

The white biplane banked and turned neatly. Its fabric was still wet with rain and its wings flashed in the sunlight. The little plane kept climbing in spirals, like the diagrams in training manuals. Then, just as deliberately, it set course on a reciprocal of its take-off path and passed over them again. Before they could turn away the puttering of the white trainer was drowned by the roar of a twin-engine Junkers. The great black machine appeared over the leafy oak trees like some new sort of flying beetle. Its sting-like aerial array seemed to quiver as it searched for the other plane. In a moment it had gone.

‘What a beauty,’ said Max. ‘For the time being, I’ll take the calculating machines and horsepower every time.’