“Why couldn’t they see the aircraft?” whispered Johnny.
“You Yanks fly daylight missions, but we Brits follow up at night. Mr. Murrow is describing a British flight,” answered Charles. “So it’s dark except for the explosions.”
“Shhhhhhh.”
Ron stood in the doorway now, leaning against the frame.
Murrow’s voice went on describing one dangerous moment after another on the hard-fought journey to the bomb target: “There was a burst of yellow flame and Jock remarked, ‘That’s a fighter going down.’…Suddenly those dirty gray clouds turned white and we were over the outer searchlight defenses…D-Dog seemed like a black bug on a white sheet. The flak began coming up.…
“By this time we were about thirty miles from our target area in Berlin.” Murrow paused for emphasis. “That thirty miles was the longest flight I have ever made.”
“I bet,” Charles muttered.
“Flares were sprouting all over the sky,” Murrow continued, “reds and greens and yellows, and we were flying straight for the center of the fireworks.…Off to the starboard a Lanc was caught by at least fourteen searchlight beams. We could see him twist and turn and finally break out.”
The cadence of Murrow’s voice sped up as he described the Nazi searchlights finding and holding individual planes in conelike beams so the Luftwaffe fighters could see and home in on them. “Another Lanc was coned on our starboard beam.…The German fighters were at him.
“And then, with no warning at all, D-Dog was filled with an unhealthy white light.…Jock’s quiet Scots voice beat into my ears, ‘Steady, lads, we’ve been coned.’”
Patsy gasped.
“Jock’s slender body lifted half out of the seat as he jammed the control column forward and to the left. We were going down. Jock was wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off. I could see his fingernails turn white as he gripped the wheel. And then I was on my knees, flat on the deck, for he had whipped the Dog back into a climbing turn.”
“It’s okay,” Charles reached out and patted Patsy’s hand. “They fly evasively like that to get out of the searchlights.” The pain in Patsy’s eyes hurt him.
“D-Dog was corkscrewing. As we rolled down on the other side, I began to see what was happening to Berlin.…The bombers’ small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice…glowing white and then turning red. The cookies, the four-thousand-pound high explosives, were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad. And then, as we started down again, still held in the lights, I remembered that the Dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in his belly.
“And the lights still held us.” Murrow paused, then added, “And I was very frightened.”
Charles looked down with surprise as Johnny scooched across the floor to lean up against his and Wesley’s legs, like a puppy seeking comfort.
“Finally,” Murrow continued, “we were out of the cone, flying level.”
“Thank the Lord,” murmured Mrs. Ratcliff.
“Shhhhhhhhh,” everyone shushed her.
“I looked down,” announced Murrow, “and the white fires had turned red. They were beginning to merge and spread, just like butter does on a hot plate.…The bomb doors were opened.…There was a gentle, confident upward thrust under my feet…The incendiaries went, and D-Dog seemed lighter and easier to handle.”
Relieved, the Ratcliffs shifted in their seats.
But Murrow’s mission was far from over: “I began to breathe…when there was a tremendous whoomph, an unintelligible shout from the tail gunner, and D-Dog shivered and lost altitude. I looked to the port side and there was a Lancaster that seemed close enough to touch. He had whipped straight under us—missed us by twenty-five, fifty feet.…”
“What an idiot that pilot must be,” Ron sniped.
“Shut up, Ron,” Bobby spoke before Charles could. “Do you know how hard it must be for them to not crash into one another, flying in such tight formations, in the dark, and trying to dodge flak and fighters?”
“Shhhhhhh!”
Murrow was still talking. “Jock was doing what I had heard him tell his pilots to do so often—flying dead on course. He flew straight into a huge green searchlight and, as he rammed the throttles home, remarked, ‘We’ll have a little trouble getting away from this one.’…The flak began coming up at us…winking off both wings.…A great orange blob of flak smacked up straight in front of us, and Jock…began to throw D for Dog up, around, and about again. When we were clear of the barrage, I asked him how close the bursts were and he said, ‘Not very close. When they’re really near, you can smell ’em.’”
Murrow paused again to admit, “That proved nothing, for I’d been holding my breath.”
The Ratcliffs let out their own breaths in unison.
Murrow told more about the homeward flight and then concluded about the raid: “Berlin was a kind of orchestrated hell—a terrible symphony of light and flame.…Men die in the sky while others are roasted alive in their cellars.…Right now the mechanics are probably working on D-Dog, getting him ready to fly”—Murrow paused one last time to drive home the point—“again.”
Riveted by Murrow’s grisly poetry, his depiction of the dangers the aircrew faced, they all remained absolutely still for several moments.
Finally, Charles dared to look at Patsy. Tears were sliding down her face, but her expression was defiant. “That settles it,” she said, breaking the silence. “That could be Henry up there in D for Dog. That’s what he has to endure. I’m not about to sit around and not do anything to help our fight.”
She stood. “Daddy, I ran into Mr. Ewell at the library the other day. He’s been volunteering as a plane spotter for the Aircraft Warning Service, but he’s been called up by the army. He asked me to replace him. He gave me the handbook and the flashcards so I can memorize the planes I’ll need to know. All I’ll be doing is standing on the tower and watching the sky. Then I telephone the civilian defense office to report any aircraft I spot and which direction it’s flying. It won’t keep me from finishing my homework.”
“Now hold on, girl. Wasn’t Ewell doing that at night?”
“Just from four to nine o’clock, Daddy.”
“It’ll be dark when you have to walk home along the road.” Mr. Ratcliff shook his head. “No.”
Charles stood up too. “I’ll go with her, Mr. Ratcliff. I wouldn’t mind memorizing those planes myself. Could come in handy when I return to London. Frankly, sir, some older lads from my school are now RAF pilots. They might have been flying in that very raid Mr. Murrow described. I’ve got to start doing something myself.”
Mr. Ratcliff frowned. “It’s December. You’ll freeze.”
Now Mrs. Ratcliff stood. She smiled at her husband. “I’ll send them off with extra coats and a thermos of hot chocolate, just like those boys in those planes. It’ll be all right, Andy. They need to do this.” She nodded her head toward Patsy and Charles and added gently. “Take a look, honey.”
Mr. Ratcliff opened his mouth to argue some other point. But just as he did, Bing Crosby’s newest song lilted out of the radio: “I’ll be home for Christmas.…”
Charles caught his breath, furious at how the bittersweet song made his throat close up and his eyes burn. He put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder and tightened his grip a bit, knowing Wesley would be feeling the same pangs he was. He willed himself to seem manly in front of the Ratcliffs.
For a moment Charles and Mr. Ratcliff gazed at each other as Crosby crooned on about making it home to family for Christmas.
“If only in my dreams.” Crosby’s voice trailed off.
Wesley sniffed.
“All right, Chuck.” Mr. Ratcliff relented.
It was the best Christmas present Charles could have.
22 January 1944
Dearest Mum,
It was a terrific Christmas, except for not seeing you, of course. We even had a proper snowfall on the 28th with FIVE INCHES of good p
acking snow for snowballs and snowmen. Freddy and I built a fort with escape tunnels. It was brilliant! Even the brothers said so.
The Ratcliffs were awfully kind to us this Christmas. I am far too grown up now for toys, so the Ratcliffs gave me The Flickering Torch Mystery. It is the 22nd book in the Hardy Boys series. It is a cracking good mystery—about rare silkworms disappearing from a scientific research farm. Mrs Ratcliff said it was time I read some American books. I have nearly worn out the ones I brought from home. I hope you will not mind, I gave Freddy my copy of The Jungle Book for Christmas. He has no books of his own except some Uncle Wiggily adventures with the covers falling off that a lady from the Salvation Army gave him.
For Christmas, Patsy took us to see Lassie Come Home. Have you seen it? It is set in Yorkshire and stars a pretty little English girl named Elizabeth Taylor. (She is an evacuee, too!) Hearing all those British accents did make me rather homesick. Lassie is sold because her family is too poor to keep her. But she makes her way back to them through TERRIBLE danger all the way from Scotland. Charles got rather funny about it and wouldn’t talk for the rest of the night.
Do you know there was a group of GERMAN POWs in the cinema? We spotted them as we left. Bobby had to hold on to Charles to keep him from shouting at them. I thought it frightfully strange. Freddy is not allowed in the movie house because he is a Negro. But they let in the Axis?
Oh, here is a news flash: In February, I get to go with Freddy to watch the launching of the aircraft carrier his daddy has been working on. Please stay safe and tell Hamlet he is as good as any old movie dog.
Your loving son,
Wesley Bishop
Dear Dad,
Happy New Year! I have made all sorts of resolutions for 1944. One is I shall never make fun of farmers again. I have certainly learned how hard their lot is, particularly in bad weather. We had sleet on Christmas Day and then a heavy snowfall three days later. The pipes in the barn’s well froze and burst. I must have hauled a thousand pails of water from the creek for the chickens and the mules until we got it fixed. We had to shovel trails to the sheds. There was no just slogging through. Half the orchard trees split from the weight of the ice and snow. Mrs Ratcliff cried when she realised they would only get half the number of apples and damsons in the next few years as a result.
I have started plane-watching with Patsy for the Yanks’ warning system. We stand in a tower and scan the sky with binoculars. Whenever we spot a plane, we dial up Civilian Defense and report what type and where it is headed. We have memorized the silhouettes of 54 planes, their markings, the number and placement of engines, the shape of their noses and tails, that sort of thing. I can now ID German and Japanese planes from a long distance, but we have only seen American aircraft, of course. There are more planes overhead here than you might think. The Richmond Air Base is only five miles away. We see them all the time at the farm. The trainees tend to return up the James and take a right turn over Curles Neck to approach the base for landing.
Identifying planes does make me feel like I am doing something for the war effort. But it is a joke compared to what I know the London skies have been filled with. The air force dropped sacks of flour on Richmond in a mock air raid to show what incendiary bombs could do. But splattered flour is not exactly a good replica of the flames of a firebomb. My mates would fall over laughing at the idea.
Did you make any resolutions for yourselves? I hope you have made one to let me come home this year. The Allies landed at Anzio today. Surely now we shall be able to beat back the Nazis in Italy, and then Hitler will have to shift his attention from bombing England to covering his own bum.
Keep safe and stay well.
Yours ever,
Charles
Chapter Fourteen
“Jiminy Cricket! Just like Daddy said!” Freddy crowed.
Wesley looked up and up and up at the gray sides of the USS Ticonderoga, docked within a massive labyrinth of scaffolding. He whistled. “Blimey! How big is that thing?”
Freddy grinned and recited the stats from memory: “Eight hundred, eighty-eight feet long, the length of two and a half football fields. It has eight boilers and four steam turbines. It’ll carry eighty-two planes and three thousand, four hundred and forty-eight men. And,” he added proudly, “my daddy helped build it.”
“He sure did,” said Alma, patting Freddy’s arm. “It’s the sixth aircraft carrier your daddy has helped build in Newport News in two years.” She and Ed stood behind the boys, their hands resting on Wesley’s and Freddy’s shoulders to shield them from the push and shove of high-ranking dignitaries hurrying closer to the grandstand—a steady tide of naval officers in dress uniform, politicians in felt fedoras and heavy overcoats, and women in pearls, mink coats, white gloves, and Sunday-best hats.
“Thirty-four hundred men? That’s a city of people!” Wesley murmured to himself, as he gazed at the ship towering over him. Bristling with antiaircraft guns, the carrier’s control tower rose in tiers like a titanic steel wedding cake hanging on one side of its wide, pancake-flat flight deck.
How could such a top-heavy, lopsided vessel keep itself aright on the sea? Wesley thought back to the boat he crossed the Atlantic in, how its pointed prow rose and fell in those massive waves, slicing the water in geysers of spray. He started to tremble, remembering the trip, remembering how quickly the sea could swallow something as huge as an aircraft carrier.
“You all right, son?” Ed patted Wesley’s shoulder.
“Yes, sir.” Wesley rubbed his forehead with his scratchy woolen gloves to push the nightmare crossing out of his head. He’d gotten better at controlling his awful flashbacks by concentrating on something around him that was tangible and real.
So he shifted to looking at the crowd. Way down the length of the carrier was a small platform where a lady was supposed to shatter a bottle of champagne on the hull to christen it. Long streamers of American flags dangled from the ship’s deck to the platform where sat admirals and captains and dozens of invited guests.
“Where’s your daddy?” Wesley asked Freddy.
Freddy leaned over the railing and pointed to a lower dock right on the waterline. “He gets to knock free the under-timbers when the lady cracks the bottle on the hull. Here’s how it goes: A lady the navy asked to do the honors will shout”—Freddy adopted a high pitched voice—“‘In the name of the United States I christen thee the USS Ticonderoga.’” He switched back to his own tenor. “Then she smashes the bottle on the bow to bless it. The ship’s supposed to glide magic-like down the shipway ramp into the water, like the lady set it a-sailing with her little tap of a bottle. But it doesn’t move until my daddy knocks free those timbers.”
Wesley peered at the dozens of men in work jumpers down below, packed together, waiting patiently. “Can you spot him?”
“No,” Freddy replied. “But I know he’s there.”
As he spoke, more spectators crowded onto the docks. A white man smelling of tobacco and whisky knocked into Ed with a surly and sarcastic, “Excuse me.” He lingered behind them.
Ed stiffened and kept staring forward. He didn’t turn around to acknowledge the man’s presence or budge from his spot by the railing. Alma tightened her grip on Wesley’s shoulder.
The man moved on, grumbling.
“Pay him no mind, son,” Alma whispered. “The Lord makes all sorts, even rapscallions.” Wesley wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Freddy mutter a bad word.
Before he could puzzle out what that was about, Alma’s face brightened. “Look, boys. They’ll be starting now.”
Way down the dock, elevated from the crowd on the platform, an admiral stepped up to a podium and began speaking. His words didn’t carry all the way down the length of the ship to where Wesley stood. But he could hear the man’s voice rise and fall. Then there was a ripple of hats coming off as a chaplain led a prayer. Finally, a small woman in a long fur coat and white orchid corsage stepped up to take a bottle hanging from a ribboned ro
pe.
“Come on, little lady,” said Ed. “Crack that thing.”
“Amen,” murmured Alma.
“It’s bad luck if the bottle doesn’t break,” Freddy explained to Wesley.
The crowd waited, hushed. She pulled the bottle back and in a graceful little gesture tossed it. It bounced off the ship like a badly served tennis ball off a court net.
The crowd gasped.
One of the naval officers caught the swinging bottle and gave it back to her.
“Aw, maaaan. They shoulda let my mama crack that bottle,” Freddy muttered. “She’d have whacked it. That bottle not breaking is serious bad luck.”
“Shush, child.” Alma silenced him.
The young woman tried again. This time she hauled the bottle way back, guided by the officer, and threw her whole body toward the ship as she hurled the champagne.
SMASH! Even where they stood, Wesley could hear the shatter of glass and see a spray of fizz from the exploding champagne.
The crowd cheered, whistles blew, the shipyards’ sirens blasted, and the waiting tugboats tooted, as down below Freddy’s father and his coworkers set the ship free. The Ticonderoga slid into the wide James River, parting the waters with a great wake of waves and hope.
“That was brilliant!” Wesley chirped, revisiting the excitement of the morning. They’d spent the afternoon with Freddy’s parents and now waited on Washington Avenue outside the dry dock company’s main gate for the bus that would take them home.
“You’re darn tootin’!” answered Freddy.
It was just a few minutes before five o’clock. The round-the-clock shifts were changing. Even though he was a native Londoner, Wesley had grown so accustomed to the quiet of the Ratcliff farm, he was a bit overwhelmed by the ocean of workers on the street, surging to the dry dock company’s gates or flooding out to catch the packed trolley cars going up and down the avenue.
Nearby a truck backfired. Other drivers laid on their horns. Against his will, Wesley started to tremble again. This time because Newport News’s hubbub reminded him of the urgency of London at war.
Across a War-Tossed Sea Page 10
