by Terry Deary
The old woman stayed staring at the sky. ‘I have a Morrison shelter in the kitchen. If they start getting close I’ll go under there.’
‘It’s not as good as a proper shelter,’ a man said.
We looked around to see Sergeant Proctor standing across the street. He was carrying a rifle and his face was as grey as the pavement.
‘She won’t go,’ Sally told him.
‘That may be, but you two kids should be there,’ the man said.
As we turned to head for the Stanhope Street shelter, the Home Guard man said, ‘Not that way – keep away from the houses. If there’s a blast, you’ll be hit by flying bricks and glass and slates off the roofs. Go across to Attercliffe Common – it will take longer, but it’s safer. Here, I’ll come with you.’
The common was bleak and overgrown with damp weeds. The sky all around was glowing orange as Sheffield burned.
Chapter 37
Over Sheffield, England 12 December 1940
Ernst Weiss spoke into his microphone mask. ‘We are through Group 12 fighter defences. We have light damage, but not enough to stop us dropping our bombs on the target. I can see the fires from the first wave ahead. Everyone in position for the bombing run?’
‘Yes, sir,’ came the crew voices over the radio.
‘Ready for Group 13 fighters, Werner?’
‘Ready, Ernst,’ the upper gunner replied.
‘Good lad. You look after us.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Four minutes to target,’ the navigator said.
A searchlight combed the sky and for a moment it caught Ernst Weiss’s Heinkel. Shells from the anti-aircraft guns rose towards them, but the gunners on the ground had miscalculated the height and they exploded a thousand feet below.
‘The lead plane is making its run!’ Ernst said. ‘Bomb doors open!’
‘Fighter on the port wing!’ the gunner shouted over the radio.
‘It’s too late to avoid him, Werner – we’re on our bombing run. You’ll have to deal with it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ernst Weiss glanced to his left. He felt the plane tremble and saw the golden stream of shells as the gunner fired. He turned back to make sure he was on the right flight path – a path that would take them over the factories to the east of the city if the X-Gerat system was working.
Suddenly, the Heinkel bucked like a wild horse. For four long seconds it was pushed across the sky as Hurricane shells tore into it. Then the British fighter was past. Ernst set his plane as straight as he could but there was a problem with the starboard wing. A white mist was streaming away from it and there was little power from the propeller on that side.
‘Starboard fuel tank hit – probably the propeller, too,’ the engineer reported.
‘And Werner? Did you hit him?’ Ernst asked. ‘Come in, Werner. Werner?’
There was no reply.
When Paul Grimley had lifted his Hurricane off Firbeck airfield to meet the second wave of planes, it had felt heavy with fuel and shells.
The German bombers were almost upon them by the time the Hurricanes had climbed high enough to touch the moon. With a tilt of the flight commander’s wings, they dived at the oncoming planes.
Paul was calm now. When he saw a target, he decided to stick with it till he had finished it off. No more scattering cannon shells among the monstrous fleet. ‘Send one Jerry down,’ he muttered to himself, ‘then go after the next one.’
The curve of the River Don showed they were near the eastern edge of the city. He had to bring down one Heinkel before it dropped its bombs – dropped them on his mother’s house, if they carried on this course.
Paul picked his victim, gathered speed, and swung round to attack from the port side. The upper gunner saw him and sent a wave of tracers in his direction. They were wide of his starboard wing, so he carried straight on.
Slowly, the tracer began to curve towards him. Paul held his nerve. When the Heinkel filled his sights, he pressed the trigger on his own cannon.
One second.
Enemy shells found his bullet-proof screen and cracked off into the night.
Two seconds.
He saw puffs of smoke come from the German’s gun turret.
Three seconds.
The enemy cannon stopped firing.
Four seconds.
His shells ripped into the Heinkel’s starboard wing, puncturing the fuel tanks and sparking splinters off the starboard propeller.
He stopped firing as he sped over the enemy bomber. It was wounded but not dead. He soared into the sky, looked around and turned in a wide circle.
‘Werner is … wounded, and our plane has taken light damage,’ Ernst Weiss told the crew. ‘Let’s drop our load and get the hell out of here.’
‘We’re a little north-west of the target,’ the navigator said. ‘For some reason, the beam has taken us away from the factories.’
‘Never mind that. We need to get rid of the bombs. Bomb doors open … and hurry. If that Hurricane comes back, he’ll shoot us like fish in a bowl.’
In the bomb bay, Manfred and Irena sat silent and cold, unsure of where they were or when the girl would have to jump. Suddenly, there was a clank and the doors in the floor began to open. The freezing air hit them like a glacier wall and made breathing hard.
Manfred reached out and wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders; bones and hunger, held together with a fierce will to survive.
The bomb-aimer pulled a lever and, one by one, the bombs clanked into place and dropped from the plane. In the faintest of lights, Manfred saw Hansl’s chalked message roll past him: ‘This one is for you, Tommy.’
With the upper gunner dead, Paul Grimley knew the Heinkel was a safe target on the next run.
As he turned and fixed the enemy bomber in his sights, he saw dark shapes falling from beneath the Heinkel and flashes appearing on the ground.
‘Damn you!’ the pilot screamed. ‘You’ve got your bombs away, but you won’t get home, Jerry.’
Attercliffe Common, Sheffield, England 12 December 1940
As we reached the grassy area, we saw a blinding flash just over the streets we had left. Sergeant Proctor put an arm around each of us and threw us into the deep, damp grass. A moment later, there was a crack like thunder and a blast of hot air roared over our heads. It was followed by a storm of whistling metal and bricks. Some dropped near us with deadly thumps but none touched us.
At last, the noise and rain of steel died. We raised our heads. There was a gap in the skyline where rows of houses had been.
‘A mine,’ Sergeant Proctor groaned. ‘It explodes in the air just above the rooftops and wrecks the houses, but I can’t see any fire. I hope those people got to the shelters in time. And that’s where you two need to be.’
I was shaking and bruised and my legs felt like water as I struggled to my feet. I wasn’t sure which way the Stanhope Street shelter was. All I could see were the flashes in the sky and the glowing ring of fire on the horizon.
‘Come on, son,’ Sergeant Proctor said. In the faint light, I could see he was shaking and his face was streaked with mud.
Sally rose to her feet and looked as confused as me. The Home Guard pointed to the right. ‘This way.’
We set off on trembling legs, stumbling over some of the bricks that had been scattered onto the common. One piece of wall was the size of a door. If that had landed on me, I wouldn’t be walking to the shelter now.
Over Attercliffe Common, Sheffield, England 12 December 1940
Paul Grimley aimed his Hurricane at the Heinkel again. The pilot was trying to turn it now, banking away from the fires below and running for home. One of its engines was smoking and it was already losing height.
With no upper gunner to worry him, Paul was able to fly steadily behind the slow bomber and take aim at the one good engine on the port side.
One second.
The shells flew too high. He tipped the control stick forward as he kept a t
humb on the button on the top.
Two seconds.
Sparks appeared on the enemy’s port wing.
Three seconds.
Smoke and fuel poured from the wing.
Four seconds.
The shells set fire to the escaping fuel and a flower of flame appeared.
‘You won’t be going home tonight, Jerry,’ Paul said as he turned back to Firbeck.
Ernst felt the controls go limp in his hands. There was no power to pull him out of the shallow dive – a dive that would take them into the dark fields of England in five minutes.
‘Bail out,’ he ordered and unfastened himself from the seat. He felt the dive go a little steeper as the plane lurched around and headed back to the city it had just bombed.
The crew had no radios now, but Ernst gave hand signals for them to open the door. One at a time, he pointed to the men to jump into the night.
He glanced over his shoulder and followed. He pulled on the rip-cord of his parachute and looked up to check that it was opening. He knew Werner wouldn’t be bailing out. Werner, the young, happy man who enjoyed playing the piano back at base. Werner, his friend, who had been so full of life and was now dead.
Ernst’s head was so full of Werner, he hadn’t been thinking about the most important person on the plane. In the moments before he pulled his rip-cord to open the parachute, he saw the Heinkel pass over his head, he saw the open bomb doors … and he remembered.
‘Manfred!’ he screamed. ‘Manfred!’ But his screams were lost in the shadows.
Manfred and Irena felt the plane dying and watched as the bomb-aimer struggled towards the crew doors at the front.
The fire from the port engine lit their faces orange but did nothing to warm them. Manfred leaned forward and looked through the bomb bay. He saw parachutes open like mushrooms and vanish behind the diving plane.
‘We are going to crash,’ he shouted over the whine of the wounded engine. ‘The crew have bailed out. Save yourself, Irena. Jump.’
‘You?’
‘I don’t have a parachute,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be dying for Herr Hitler and the Fatherland. This is not your war. Jump!’
‘You would not be here if you had not tried to help me,’ Irena said. Her lips were frozen and it was hard for her to speak.
The plane lurched again. ‘If you don’t jump soon, we’ll be too low. We’ll both die,’ Manfred argued. ‘What’s the sense in that?’
Irena rose to her legs and pulled Manfred up after her. They teetered on the edge of the open doors with the bomb-torn city flashing below. She placed Manfred’s arms around her neck. ‘Hang on tight,’ she said then leaned sideways so they toppled into the smoke-stained sky. Her spy-hat flew off and her fine hair streamed in the wind.
Suddenly, the air went quiet. Irena tugged at the rip-cord and the parachute flared above them. Then she wrapped her arms around the boy’s waist and held him close.
They fell as if in a dark dream.
Chapter 38
Attercliffe Common, Sheffield, England 12 December 1940
Sally stopped so quickly I ran into the back of her. ‘Keep going,’ I shouted. ‘What’s wrong?’
My sister didn’t reply. She just raised a hand and pointed up at the sky. In the flashes of light, we could make out a green parachute.
‘German,’ Sergeant Proctor said and pulled back the bolt on his rifle to load it.
‘It could be one of our Hurricane pilots baling out,’ I said.
‘The British use white parachutes. No, it’s either a German aircrew … or a spy. This is my job – shooting spies is what the Home Guard was made for.’
He put the rifle to his shoulder and took aim. In the glow of the fires, I saw the rifle was shaking.
A bundle at the end of the parachute hit the ground and the silk of the chute slowly collapsed like a punctured football. The bundle beneath seemed to split in two.
‘Hände hoch!’ Sergeant Proctor shouted. ‘Hands up, or I shoot. Throw down your weapon. I have you covered.’
A small figure picked itself up and looked at us. It was a girl as small as Sally, as pale and calm as the distant moon. She raised her hands over her head. As I drew closer, I saw she was a fierce-eyed, crop-haired, starve-faced, scarecrow-clothed, ice-block-cold, unafraid child.
Then a second figure rose from the grass to stand beside her. It was a boy about my age with a round, dazed face.
‘The fiends!’ the Home Guard cried. ‘They’re not sending nuns to kill us – they’re sending children.’
‘They’re just kids,’ Sally said. ‘They can’t do any harm.’
‘Trained assassins, they are. Trained to kill with their bare hands. I bet they have daggers hidden in their socks, ready to stab us as soon as we turn our backs.’
My dazed head was clearing and I looked carefully at the boy and the girl. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hitler Youth, they call the boys. And League of German Girls. They’re like boy scouts only with machine guns hidden in their socks.’
‘Machine guns?’ Sally jeered. ‘The girl’s too skinny to have a pencil in her sock.’
The wave of bombers seemed to have passed. The sky was quieter now, but the fire-engine bells and the rumble of tumbling buildings went on around us. We were lit by the amber glow of the distant fires. The German children didn’t look much like storm troopers to me.
The boy looked at the girl and spoke in German. I found out later what they had been saying.
‘So, Irena, you have come all this way to England only for them to shoot you!’
‘We aren’t dead yet, Manfred.’
‘If those two English children landed in Germany, our army would shoot them,’ he said.
‘But I am not German,’ she reminded him. ‘I am Polish. The Poles have no war with the British.’
‘I think we should run for it. That man is shaking so much he won’t hit us if we run into the dark.’
‘No, Manfred. We are lost and alone. Trust me. I speak a little English. Let me talk to them – you must pretend you are Polish, too.’
‘An under-human? Me?’
‘A live under-human or a dead German. Which would you prefer?’ she asked.
‘Go ahead,’ he said.
The girl turned to us. ‘We are Polish. I am Irena, this is Manfred. We were prisoners in Germany. Dachau prison camp. We escape. We fly to England. We jump out with the bombs.’
‘Ha!’ Sergeant Proctor snorted. ‘We know the German tricks. They give you a cover story.’
The girl lowered her hands. Sergeant Proctor jerked his rifle back up towards her and clattered the bolt back to check there was a bullet ready to fire. ‘Hands up! Hände hoch!’
She didn’t obey. Instead, she stepped towards us, lifted her chin and began to sing. We all knew the song so well. They sang it in the shelters and Vera Lynn sang it on the radio, we sang it in school assembly and the girls even sang it in the school yard as a skipping song. No one – not even Vera Lynn – ever sang it with a voice so sweet it could melt a heart of steel.
‘There’ll always be an England
While there’s a country lane,
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.
There’ll always be an England
While there’s a busy street,
Wherever there’s a turning wheel
A million marching feet.’
Suddenly, I heard two more voices join in and sing. The shrill voice of my sister and the creaking voice of Sergeant Proctor. By the last two lines, I found myself trying to join in, but my throat was full of swallowed tears.
‘There’ll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me.’
The girl stopped and for a few moments the war stopped. The Home Guard didn’t have a heart of steel – or if he had, it was melting like the steel in the fu
rnaces down at Tinsley.
‘No, lass, the Hitler Youth could teach you the words,’ Sergeant Proctor said. ‘But they couldn’t teach you to sing it like that – as if you meant it. Welcome to England … friends.’ He rested his rifle on the ground so he could pull a handkerchief from his pocket and blow his nose. ‘Let’s get you to a shelter till the raid is over and sort you out.’
The girl turned and smiled at the boy who had landed with her. ‘It will be all right, Manfred. They will care for us. We are with friends.’
Chapter 39
We walked off the common and back onto Attercliffe Road. A group of people were walking up the road towards us. One ran forward and cried, ‘Billy? Sally? Why aren’t you in the shelter?’
It was Dad, but his uniform was torn and his hands and face spattered with blood.
‘What’s happened? Why aren’t you at Firbeck?’
‘One of the first bombs wrecked the tram lines and blew in the windows of the tram. There was no way forward, so we thought we might as well come back and help,’ he explained.
‘Fire the anti-aircraft guns?’ I asked.
‘No, lad, find people in the rubble. A warden said he had a call from the town centre. The cathedral’s been wrecked while people were in there praying. Any fit men are needed to look for people buried under the mess. Now get yourselves to Stanhope Street shelter as fast as you can,’ he said and hurried off in the direction of the town.
‘Hang on,’ Sergeant Proctor called after him. ‘I’m coming with you! Can you find your way to the shelter?’ he asked us.
‘Blindfolded,’ Sally told him.
We were left to make our way to safety with the other children. I explained to Irena what we were going to do and she told Manfred. Another wave of bombers began to stream over the city and Sally and I jumped every time there was a noise, waiting for the blast that would spread us over the road like jam. Yet Irena was as calm as a sleepwalker. Her eyes were alive, but she walked steadily and her courage made us fearless, too.
‘Look, Manfred,’ she said. ‘In Germany, you are made to starve. In England, they give away free food on street corners!’
