Bombers’ Moon

by Iris Gower

  Hari stood on the pavement. She felt cast adrift on a blank sea; she had no sister, no Michael and now, no Kate.

  ‘But you have father and Jessie and even poor old Georgie Porgie when he’s home from the front so stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ Her voice rasped as she scolded herself.

  When she got home they all fussed around her. Jessie made her endless cups of tea, giving her a few precious aspirin and talking softly to her of the war being over one day. In the end, Hari went to bed worn out with tears, her head pounding, her eyes so swollen they were half closed.

  She lay on her narrow bed and thought of the past, of before the war when she was free, of when she briefly had Michael in her arms.

  Hari remembered when the air raids began, how Meryl had hidden under the table, peering out at them like a little animal from a lair and she began to cry again, the salt tears hurting her bruised eyes. But at last, too weary to stay awake, she slept and dreamed of peace.

  Fifty-Seven

  Somehow Fritz had got me enough petrol to get to the coast of Normandy. I knew he thought me a silly girl and dispensable. I tied my hair into plaits, wore no make-up and dressed as childlike as I could get away with. I looked at my breasts and grimaced, for all my efforts they were shapely and showed. Still, I could be well developed for my age I suppose. And then I began the long drive from Hamburg to the coast.

  By the time I was close to the beaches of Normandy I was almost asleep. I slid from the driving seat and hid among some trees. I knew the beaches were still a few miles away but dare I take the radio any further? I sighed in resignation; if I put the radio down I might never find it again. I trudged on though the tough grass whipped my legs painfully. What was I doing here, in France, carrying a small but heavy suitcase with a wireless inside—proof that I was a traitor? I would be shot on discovery, nothing was surer than that.

  I heard the noise while I was still more than a mile away: shelling, shots, screams and loud voices. For a moment I quailed. How was I going to get past German lines and how was I supposed to find Fritz?

  I skirted the beach code-named Sword, a shell from seaward landing perilously close. I sank down into the grass and took stock of the situation. From my hole in the grass I peered out and I couldn’t see anyone at all. Perhaps I was the wrong side of the bay, how would I know?

  Fearfully, I looked across the wide expanse of beach; it would take me hours to reach the other side even if I wasn’t killed on the way. Fritz had said the left-hand side but did he mean left facing the sea or left from the sea? Why hadn’t I asked him more questions?

  The truth was I didn’t think I would be daft enough to do what he asked; he said I was a volunteer, didn’t he? I peered out of my grass burrow again and I became aware there were German troops moving a huge gun forward, swearing and groaning at the weight. I lay close against the sharp grass and closed my eyes knowing it was a stupid thing to do, a childish thing to do, it was as if they couldn’t see me if I couldn’t see them.

  I jumped as someone slid into the grass beside me. Dressed as an English soldier, Fritz grinned at me. ‘Well done, kiddie,’ he said and grabbed the case and disappeared over the top of the hole. ‘Now bugger off home!’

  Coward that I was, I crouched there for a long time hearing the sounds of battle raging around me. I wanted to pee and wondered if my knickers were already wet as they’d been when I was thirteen years old.

  At last, I knew I had to get back to the jeep. I took a chance to peer out again and I saw the German army in retreat. I felt triumph, but only for a minute before I was grabbed by my plaits and dragged out of my hiding place.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the German voice demanded.

  ‘I wanted to see what was happening,’ I replied in faultless German.

  ‘You are a spy,’ he said, looking around the hole as if for proof. There was nothing except a wet bit of sand where I had wet myself in fright.

  ‘You are only a child, you are mad or stupid or you are a spy for the English. You will come with me for questioning.’

  I cried out in pain as he tugged on my plaits. He released my hair and grabbed my arm and pulled me towards a truck. I was thrown inside and came down heavily on my knee. And when we were driving away from the beach I peered over the tailboard and saw the ducks, funny little ships with the fronts falling down, unloading yet more troops on to the Normandy beaches.

  We travelled over bumpy ground at a fast speed while behind us mortars still rained and shots whizzed overhead. There were bodies of dead Germans everywhere and it looked as if the battle was going to the Allies; perhaps this was the end for the German army.

  If the gossips were correct Herr Hitler was already losing his mind, getting more and more demanding every day, unable to believe the war was being lost because of his failure to believe in his generals. The road became bumpier; I was being thrown around like a rag doll. I tried to cling to the sides of the truck to steady myself but even though I was getting bruised and battered by the journey I guessed there would be worse ahead. At the very least I would be questioned, perhaps tortured, if what I’d heard of the SS was true.

  At least I’d got rid of the radio before I was caught. The thought was not so much patriotism as self-preservation. With the radio as evidence I would have been shot where I lay in my bunker in the grass.

  We travelled through the night. I tried to sleep but it was impossible with my head constantly banging against the sides or the bottom of the truck. The driver stopped at last and, getting to my knees, I peered outside. It was dawn, the sky was turning pink, the shrubbery coming to life.

  The building was rising from a smelly marshland and I wrinkled my nose at the foul-smelling air; it was as though the scent of hundreds of unwashed bodies of prisoners hung around the building like a forbidding cloud. The truck stopped and I was dragged outside and led into the streets of the camp. I felt small and lost but my lips closed mutinously. I would tell the Germans nothing—now they really were the enemy.

  I was put in a cell-like room and locked in and I knew deep in my mind that I was at the dreaded Ravensbruck camp, notorious for harbouring hardened traitors of the Third Reich. Surely I couldn’t be considered that dangerous without even being questioned?

  At least I could lie down on a hard, rough pallet but it took a while for the room to stay still—I felt as though I was still being thrown about in the truck. I thought about the day I’d endured, I worried about my little, battered jeep left unattended among the trees. I thought of work and my colleagues. Would they be wondering where I was?

  And then, at last, I thought of Michael: my darling, my lover, my man, my husband. I fell asleep at last, too tired even to worry what was to become of me and, when I woke, it was morning and the prison cell was a reality.

  Fifty-Eight

  Hari finished work with a sigh of relief; she would be glad to get home and put her feet up. The bus waiting outside the gates of the munitions factory seemed airless as she climbed up the steps and sank thankfully into a seat.

  ‘Isn’t it awful about Doreen?’ A girl in a turban came and sat next to her and Hari could smell the explosive powder on her clothes. ‘And I hear you lost your friend as well in a bombing raid, bloody awful war. Kate was a lovely girl.’

  ‘Did you work with her?’ Hari asked, grateful to talk about Kate to someone… anyone—at least she was remembered by some of her other friends.

  ‘Aye, I worked with her, sometimes when we had no money we’d walk together to the station. A good girl was Kate, always a smasher, mind, even when she went blind in the explosion. I was told about the bombing of her house. Sad for them to all die like that and yet perhaps that’s what she would have wanted, them all together as a family.’

  She held out her hand and Hari couldn’t help noticing it was stained yellow, even the girl’s nails were yellow; she looked strange, as if she had been dipped in a dye.

  ‘I’m Violet. I was trying to help Kate carry the powder when sh
e was expecting but some of the other girls said she had to get along without help, that we couldn’t afford to carry anyone.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t have been alive today if I’d gone with her. On the other hand I might have been able to push her out of the way or something. I’ll never know.’

  Hari shook her hand warmly. ‘None of us will ever know,’ she said comfortingly, ‘I was in the same room as Kate and the family when the bomb fell and I was the only one to survive. An act of God, fate, a coincidence? We’ll never know.’

  ‘I lost my chap when the war started. About to lose my room too. The man of the house is coming home, too sick and old to stay in the war.’

  The bus jerked to a stop at the railway station and Violet got up. ‘Sorry to be morbid. I’m going to Swansea, you go to Swansea as well don’t you?’

  ‘We’ll go together,’ Hari said. ‘It’s not nice to be alone when you have worries on your mind. Got a family?’

  Violet shook her head. ‘No, they all lived in London, wiped out in the blitz. I was at college but when the war started I was sent to the munitions to work. I’ll stay at the hostel tonight.’

  ‘Come to tea with us,’ Hari said. It was an impulse, but the way Violet’s face lit up was a reward in itself. ‘I warn you there are loads of us living together.’

  ‘That will be a nice change,’ Violet said. ‘I’ll wash and brush up first. What time shall I come?’

  ‘As soon as you like,’ Hari said, ‘just as soon as you like.’

  Violet proved good company and she made Jessie laugh. Georgie seemed taken with the girl in spite of her yellow skin toned down now with powder and sat close to her throughout the meal. Only Hari’s father remained quiet, absorbed in the news on the radio. He’d left the table and sat in a chair with his ear up against the set, his face grave.

  Hari didn’t want to break up the happy atmosphere but at last she couldn’t help but slip over to his side and crouch near his chair. ‘What is it, Daddy?’ she whispered.

  He looked at her doubtfully and then glanced towards Jessie. Anxiety gripped Hari and she shook her father’s arm. ‘What, tell me?’

  ‘A German plane has come down near Carmarthen; no news of the pilot.’

  The group around the table fell silent at once. Hari cleared her throat and her eyes met Jessie’s.

  ‘It could be anyone,’ she said quickly, ‘there are bomber planes over the coast most nights, you know that.’

  In spite of her usual reserve Hari broke down and cried, for Michael and Meryl, for Kate, but most of all for herself.

  Fifty-Nine

  I heard the key being turned in the door of my cell and got to my feet expecting the worst. A German soldier gestured for me to come with him and to my relief he wasn’t holding a gun but his face was set in hard lines and he hardly glanced at me. I felt like I was a piece of furniture, a non-person, dehumanized.

  ‘Frau Euler—’ his voice was not kindly—‘what precisely were you doing on the beach at Normandy?’

  For a minute I felt like being facetious, the word, ‘bathing’ came into my mind but I didn’t think the jack-booted officer of the SS had a sense of humour.

  ‘I had a day off work,’ I said, ‘I wanted to get away from the constant messages coming through my radio with intelligence about the hated English.’ The words stuck in my throat and I coughed. I could see he didn’t believe me; a young married woman cavorting around a beach where a fierce attack was taking place must have a few screws loose in her head. I suppose he wondered why the hell I didn’t get out of there the moment I realized there was a battle going on.

  I smiled in what I thought was a winning manner but I probably looked like an imbecile. ‘It’s my Irish ancestry, you know.’

  He looked at me obliquely. ‘We can make you confess your spying methods with very little trouble,’ he said. ‘Take your shoes and socks off.’

  ‘What?’

  A soldier moved from the door towards me and I hastily undid my laces. When my feet were bare we looked down at them contemplatively. The soldier took something like pliers from his belt and knelt down before me.

  ‘You can’t propose,’ I said, and flashed my wedding ring at him. He didn’t even look up but grasped my big toe in a painful hold. I yelped.

  ‘Removing the nail will hurt even more,’ the SS man said laconically. I began to cry. I was good at forcing tears out, big plopping drops that rolled down my cheek as though I were a baby. In that moment I felt like one.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you want from me,’ I gulped. ‘I had a day off and I went to the coast. I didn’t know all hell was going to break loose there did I? Please get in touch with my father-in-law Herr Euler, he will tell you I’m a simple girl. I don’t know anything about being a spy. I live on my father-in-law’s farm, I go to work at the office, I know nothing of any consequence.’

  ‘Take her back to her room we’ll find out more when she has calmed down.’ Either my tears or my tone of voice convinced him I was harmless if not brainless, after all, the intelligence was that ‘Overlord’ would take place at Pas de Calais not the Normandy coast.

  In my grey cell with the tiny window shedding in very little light I sat on the pallet and studied the calendar on the wall beside my so-called bed. The last dates marked off were the fourth, fifth and sixth of June—the previous occupant of the room had underscored it and must have known about the attack. And then it hit me, the date jogged at my mind, it was almost two months since Michael had been home, two months since I’d had my monthlies. Oh dear God, I was a prisoner and I was pregnant. A little curl of happiness unfolded inside me; I was having Michael’s baby.

  I slept a little and then I was brought some halfway decent soup. I ate hungrily wondering if the tiny being growing inside me would appreciate the nourishment, I hadn’t eaten for many hours.

  I slept some more, there seemed nothing else to do. Used to activity and company I was sometimes afraid but mostly bored. Staring at four walls didn’t appeal to me one bit. And then I was brought supper, some sausages and hard bread with no butter. Still, it was sustenance and I needed it more now than I ever had.

  I slept most of the night away but woke to the sound of blood-curdling screams, a woman’s screams. I thought of the pliers and shuddered. I hugged myself; I felt cold and lost; and, opinionated and determined though I was, I could see little chance of getting out of Ravensbruck concentration camp. I’d heard women came here to confess or to die. My only weapon was my tongue. No, there was my wit, and now I had a baby to think of, my baby and Michael’s.

  ‘Obersturmbannführer Suhren himself wishes to see you, Frau Euler.’ The stern-faced guard came for me and he sounded impressed.

  ‘Oh, good,’ I said. I wanted to talk to the commander as much as he apparently wanted to talk to me.

  He was sitting behind a desk in his well-decorated uniform and he was younger than I’d thought he’d be, very young to be in charge of thousands of prisoners. I sat down meekly and pressed my hands together in what I hoped was an obsequious manner.

  ‘Please, commandant, could I speak with my father-in-law Herr Euler. He will tell you I am the wife of his son, a pilot in the Luftwaffe, and I work in an office with my German friends.’ I looked down modestly. ‘I am also with child by my brave husband, I will bear Germany a fine son.’

  ‘That is the only item of personal history I did not know.’ The commandant spoke with precision. ‘I have contacted Herr Euler, as you say, a respected German officer. I have also intelligence from your place of work.’ He paused and smoothed his well-kept hands. ‘Your friend Frau Eva speaks highly enough of you.’

  ‘My friend Eva is not married, commandant.’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked at me. ‘Quite right. You are expecting a child?’

  I nodded and tried to look modest as though the conception had occurred through concourse rather than intercourse.

  ‘You will see a doctor.’

  ‘A lady?’ I asked quickly.
I had heard of the doctors at Ravensbruck, they experimented on humans with apparent relish and I didn’t want their hands touching me. ‘Please, commandant, I am young, a mere girl, the only male hands to touch me are those of my husband.’ This at least was true except for the punching and kicking and rough fumbling I’d once got from Georgie Dixon.

  ‘We will see.’ He gestured to the guard and I was taken back to my cell, but this time I was not manhandled but led quietly along the road to my prison block.

  I was given better food now, fresh sausage and crude, but fresh, bread. My talk with the commandant had done some good in spite of his attitude of indifference. I slept more easily that night, though I still heard the sound of women crying and the occasional scream. I closed my ears and hugged my stomach and thought of my baby.

  In the morning, my father-in-law came for me and I was released into his charge. Herr Euler took me home to the farm and made a cup of tea and his face was a grey mask.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked fearfully, already guessing the answer.

  ‘It’s Michael—’ there was a hint of a quiver in his voice—‘his plane has been shot down over enemy territory. I’m afraid my dear, Michael is missing, presumed dead.’

  My heart froze and my hands went automatically to my belly, as though trying to comfort the baby inside me. It was a horror worse than prison camp, it was not possible that my beautiful Michael no longer lived or breathed.

  ‘He can’t be dead,’ I gasped, ‘I’m going to have his son.’

  His father came towards me and cradled me in his arms. ‘We must be brave, Liebling, we must be brave.’ And then we cried together, despairing tears that could never wash away the anguish we both felt.

  Sixty

  Hari and Violet strolled together in the autumn sun; it was a hot day with the leaves beginning to turn red and gold, and the grass, in the open spaces, browned by the heat. Violet was pensive. At last she spoke. ‘Sorry, thinking about the war and all that. By the way, have you heard from your sister?’