Bomber

by Paul Dowswell

  The non-coms looked at him quizzically. Then they noticed Stearley was right behind him.

  ‘Lieutenant!’ asked Dalinsky. ‘What’s the story?’

  Stearley gave them all a winning smile. ‘Doc says I’m OK. Another day and I’m A1 fit.’

  Holberg continued with his news. ‘Kittering’s assigning us a new aircraft and we’re all staying together.’

  They gave a cheer.

  ‘He also told me we’re now on combat duty. So congratulations, guys. We passed the audition!’

  Their faces fell.

  ‘What about our survival leave?’ asked Dalinsky.

  Holberg put on a brave face. ‘I’m sorry, boys – that’s been cancelled. We’ve got a war to fight.’

  The men let out a collective moan of disappointment.

  He turned to John Hill. ‘Sergeant Hill, you did a great job with the nose art on our previous Fortress. Can you paint Macey May II on the side of our new airplane as soon as you’re able? Lieutenant Stearley can help you if he feels up to it. We can worry about a picture later, but nothing too racy this time, if you don’t mind.’

  Holberg had them walk over to see their new aircraft at the end of the day. Ernie Benik and his boys were already working on it, changing spark plugs and cleaning oil filters, balancing giros and clearing the static from the faulty interphone system. Holberg had been surprised how calmly his chief mechanic had taken the news that they had ditched Macey May in the North Sea.

  Ernie told them it was his job to ensure none of the crew even thought they were flying a different plane. And if Holberg came back and told him the number-three engine was running warmer than usual, or the hydraulics still needed work, then he’d know exactly who to blame.

  The Macey May boys had quickly realised how lucky they were to have Ernie Benik looking after them. The ground crew hut was close to the one Harry shared with his crew mates and the guys often popped in and out of each other’s quarters when they were off duty. Ernie had hung a notice over the door of his hut: The more trouble found on the ground, the less in the air. And they knew he worked the ground crew day and night to make sure the Macey May was not going to let them down.

  Ernie was especially good at getting spare parts, and he let the guys who didn’t smoke know that their unused cigarette ration could be put to good use with local garages and supply depots, where he could get stuff quicker than the official air force channels.

  It was getting dark by the time Holberg dismissed them. ‘I don’t know exactly when we’re due to fly our first mission, but if you guys have letters to write, then get writing them sooner rather than later. And those of you who want to go to confession, or take Holy Communion – well, you all know where the pastor is.’

  He was trying to be matter-of-fact about it, but they all knew the underlying reason.

  Exhausted from the day’s endeavours, Harry took his black pill and went early to bed. Despite the imminence of combat, he slept better. The vivid dreams did not return to haunt him; instead, he woke at first light with a nameless sense of dread. He asked Hill about the lack of dreams over breakfast.

  ‘Little black pill?’ John said. ‘It’s a placebo. Look it up.’

  Harry went to the mess library and found a dictionary.

  Placebo: n. 1. a. A substance having no medication in its ingredients, given to a patient to reinforce their expectation to recover from their illness.

  The pill was a fake! He didn’t know whether to feel angry or just laugh about his own gullibility.

  CHAPTER 9

  September 17th, 1943

  ‘Wake up, Harry, big deal’s going down today,’ said Ernie Benik.

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Harry, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘Have we got a mission today?’

  ‘They’ll tell you all about it at breakfast,’ said Ernie. ‘But don’t worry. You ain’t flying.’

  Corrales filled Harry in over powdered eggs. ‘Those lucky bastards in Kansas Kate have just finished their twenty-five missions. They came back yesterday from Friedrichshafen.’

  Harry had noticed one bunch from a B-17 being carried aloft by their ground crew, but he’d assumed they’d had a lucky escape, or maybe shot down several Messerschmitts, or something like that. In truth he had been too preoccupied to enquire what all the fuss was about. He didn’t like the airbase ritual of gathering by the control tower to count how many had made it back from a mission. It was too much of a taste of what was to come. The tension on the faces, the sinking feeling when you saw the flare being fired from an approaching Fortress to let the ground crews know there were injured men in need of urgent attention. All too soon the Macey May would be one of those returning Fortresses and who knew what was going to happen to them when they started operational flying.

  Despite it all, the news from Corrales cheered him up. It gave them all a glimmer of hope. ‘Ernie said there was something big happening,’ said Harry.

  ‘Only General Eaker flyin’ in to give them a medal, and the King and Queen of England are coming too,’ said Dalinsky.

  Harry laughed out loud. Eaker was the Eighth Air Force commander-in-chief. He’d seen pictures of him in the air force newspaper, of course, but it would be interesting to see what he looked like in the flesh.

  ‘What are the Limeys doing muscling in on this?’ said Corrales. ‘It’s got nothing to do with them.’

  John shook his head. ‘Don’t be a goofball, Corrales. Whose country is this? It’s a show of friendship.’

  Corrales snorted. ‘Well, I ain’t doing no curtsying.’

  Dalinsky cut in. ‘Hey, Corrales, and I heard they were going to invite you to tea! And then maybe introduce you to one of their daughters. They’re both pretty cute.’

  ‘Very funny. And when they pass by, why don’t you ask the king if you can take his eldest daughter out on the town?’

  The whole airbase came out to welcome General Eaker’s plane. Kittering addressed them all beforehand. There was even a USAAF brass band bussed in for the occasion. As they stood there in the fresh autumn air, waiting for the VIP arrivals, Harry began to get into the spirit of the occasion. There was something glorious about a big parade, and that brass band was pretty good – as good as anything they heard on the radio.

  When Eaker arrived in a green DC-3 and stepped out to ‘The Stars and Stripes’, all gold braid and medals, Harry actually felt a surge of pride. The king and queen arrived shortly afterwards and he was overcome with curiosity. These guys had been part of a family that had ruled this island since before America existed – the America he knew and understood anyway. Actually, these real-life fairytale characters were pretty normal-looking. The king looked like a decent guy, quite shy and quiet really, and the queen looked elegant in her pearls.

  Kittering, Eaker and the royal couple made a stately progress down the rows of flight crews as the brass band played a selection of swing hits Harry knew well. The last time he had heard some of them he had been in his family’s kitchen, listening to the radio, and he ached for home.

  The VIPs passed by the crew of the Macey May and Harry held his breath. They didn’t stop, although Harry noticed Kittering giving Corrales a long hard stare. Maybe that’s why he didn’t say anything. The colonel was a hard-ass, but Harry guessed Corrales wouldn’t care. After all, what was the worst thing Kittering could do to him – take him off flying duty?

  The Kansas Kate boys all stood at the front, and when the inspection was over they had to step up, one by one, to have a medal pinned on their chest by General Eaker. The king and queen had a word with each of them too. Movie cameras filmed the whole thing.

  It was a memorable moment – one to cherish, thought Harry. He’d be able to write home to his mom and dad about this. The day he – almost – met the King and Queen of England. They had been so close he could have touched them.

  But when it was over and they’d all been told to stand easy, Harry felt a nagging unease about the whole thing. He couldn’t put it in
to words, but when he went to the mess that evening John said something that helped him realise what it was.

  ‘Jeezus, the king and queen, and General Eaker, and the whole frigging movie industry. You know what that means, Harry? It means that one of these crews finishing a tour is rare as rocking-horse crap. Ya don’t think these guys spend their whole lives going round airbases congratulating crews who’ve completed twenty-five missions, do you?’

  It was something that Harry hadn’t really thought about. But it made sense. Even if the royal couple spent all their days sitting around in chintzy drawing rooms, sipping tea and talking about horses, he was sure as hell that General Eaker was a busy man. This was a very rare event.

  There was about as much chance of Harry having General Eaker pin one of those medals on him as there was of him marrying Princess Elizabeth. He thought of his brother David and whispered to himself, ‘Come and meet me if it turns out bad. Be there, please.’ Harry didn’t really believe in an afterlife, but if he was going down in a spiralling Fortress he knew in his bones he’d be praying for one then.

  The next day Harry was walking over to the mess with John for lunch when he saw a lone Fortress taxiing along to Runway A. A small group of servicemen had gathered at the foot of the runway, and as the plane turned to face the wind, they could see it was Kansas Kate. As the engines gathered power the men on the ground unveiled a handful of flags and began to wave. They were cheering and shouting, but the noise they made was completely drowned out by the roar of the B-17’s engines.

  As Harry stood on the concrete outside the mess hall that early autumn day, he would have given almost anything to have been aboard that plane.

  CHAPTER 10

  September 21st, 1943

  They picked up the rumour of an imminent mission in the canteen at lunchtime on September 21st. Dalinsky said Benik had told him his boys were going to be up all night. When he’d pressed him for more details, the ground crew chief just winked. ‘Careless talk costs lives,’ he’d said. ‘Especially mine if I got caught telling you.’

  From that moment on, Harry felt like he was in a dream. He still spoke and breathed and walked around, but the world no longer seemed real. In a strange kind of way he felt he had already left it. He found it almost impossible to sleep that night, and when they were called for their preflight briefing in the early morning, it was as though he was watching a film. Kittering appeared with a handful of other brass, striding through a dense fog of cigarette smoke, and told them they were going to Münster to bomb the rail yards. It was a relatively short run, just inside the German border, and both flak and fighter attacks were expected to be light.

  ‘I bet they say that before every mission,’ whispered Corrales.

  Harry and the rest of the crew emerged into one of those fresh mornings where you could see your breath and your lungs smarted with the cold bright air, but it would be warmer later.

  They went through the usual routine of collecting their high-altitude flight suits, and then queuing at the armoury for their Browning machine guns. In all that time, Harry didn’t remember a single conversation he’d had with anyone. People spoke to him and he replied, but nothing was going in. John Hill was the same – totally non-communicative. Corrales, on the other hand, couldn’t stop yakking away. And Dalinsky and Skaggs. Fear obviously affected them in different ways.

  As they assembled at the Macey May Holberg beckoned them all together, and when he suggested a moment for silent prayer before embarking, those of the crew who had a faith bent their heads. Harry remained silent, his eyes lowered out of respect.

  A few minutes later they were all inside the plane and Harry wondered if his feet would ever touch solid earth again.

  Everything became very real again when the squadron had taken off and they were up over East Anglia, manoeuvring into formation. All at once those droning engines seemed to break into his trance and he was there in his turret, looking down over the lower levels of the combat box – the tight formation bomb groups adopted to give them the best protection from fighter attack. It was a comfort, being part of a massive phalanx of so many Flying Fortresses. They had joined with several nearby squadrons and there must have been over a hundred bombers all heading for the coast.

  Harry was sat bunched up inside his turret with his back curved against the padded hatch, his feet curled level with his head. They were flying over Norwich now, and he had the best view on the ship. Ahead, the elegant spire of the cathedral glowed pink in the bright early autumn sunshine.

  It had turned into the kind of afternoon where you could go to the park and play ball until the sun started to sink low in the sky and a chill would fill the air to remind you that summer was gone and winter was on the way.

  That brought him up short. Now they were on operations, ‘tomorrow’, ‘next week’, even ‘later’, no longer existed. Until they finished their tour, they were suspended in a perpetual ‘maybe’.

  Holberg’s voice cut into Harry’s thoughts. ‘Look at that, boys. What a beautiful piece of architecture …’

  Harry fancied he could hear some sniggering from some of the other guys; it was difficult to tell with those four engines roaring away either side of him. But Bortz sighed wearily and cut in, ‘Knock it off, you Neanderthals.’ Bortz was a pretty pious guy. Never swore. Never made lewd comments about the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force girls they sometimes saw around the base.

  Holberg ignored it all, although Harry thought he could hear a smile in his voice. ‘Norwich Cathedral – eight hundred years old. Probably took them a hundred years to build. Well, it’ll still be here when we get back, so don’t get too distracted. Fritz could have a few prowling fighters, even here. We hit the enemy coast at ten hundred hours, so that’s when you have to really start paying attention. Be ready to test your guns as soon as we cross the coast. I want you all to fire on command, so make sure everything’s set.’

  Holberg had already told them all this as they waited on their hardstand. Maybe he was just as nervous as the rest of them and needed to be doing something to occupy his mind.

  Norwich Cathedral receded in the haze, along with the golden stone of the great castle keep in the centre of the city, and Harry wondered if he would get to see them again on their return journey that afternoon. His gut tightened. That was another ‘maybe’.

  As they settled into their flight, Holberg asked Skaggs to tune into the BBC Home Service and patch it through the interphone. They liked hearing those Limey voices, all calm and civilised, and the Brits were as keen on swing as the Yanks. ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ came on and they all sang along … followed by other dance hall favourites like ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ and ‘Tangerine’.

  The Fortress continued to climb. Harry pressed his right foot on the turret control and spun round a full 360 degrees. His left foot moved him up and down. Suspended at 90 degrees, he looked straight down on to the ploughed fields of Norfolk, thousands of feet below. He wondered how long it would take him to fall if the main shaft holding his turret failed.

  A tingling in his arms reminded him he had been dangling down for too long and he moved the turret to the horizontal. Being in his natural position relative to gravity made him feel like a fetus in the womb – like those diagrams in the biology textbooks. But this little steel ball floating in freezing cold air was no cosy haven. Instead of the reassuring rhythm of a heartbeat there was only the ominous drone of engines, an insistent soundtrack that seemed to imply that something terrible was about to happen.

  Stearley’s voice came over the interphone. ‘We’re at ten thousand feet. Oxygen on.’

  Harry hooked himself up to his leather mask without even thinking about it. He noticed an immediate difference, even though he hadn’t been aware of the lack of oxygen before. It was like a noise you only noticed when it stopped. He understood at once how easy it had been for Cain not to have realised his supply had failed. At once he felt more alert and more comfortable. He even felt warmer.

  Jus
t after they crossed the Norfolk coast, Stearley came on again to tell them to test their guns. Harry heard John Hill and Ralph Dalinsky fire above him in the waist. When Jim Corrales fired, he could feel the ship rattle but the guns were drowned out by the engines. And all he could tell of the forward guns was a slight extra vibration above the usual rattle and lurch of a B-17 in flight.

  Everything went quiet after that, save for the regular oxygen checks, so routine Harry barely registered them.

  Holberg interrupted the silence. ‘Enemy coast twenty minutes.’ This was it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  As the minutes slipped away Harry shifted uncomfortably and wished he had not had to jam that folded-up copy of the East Anglia Courier in his back pocket. Next time he’d leave it with his parachute in the main fuselage. He wriggled his left leg, to relieve the cramp that was building, and accidently touched the foot pedal. The turret lurched a full 180 degrees and there he was staring straight at the French coast. From this distance it looked like any old coastline but as they grew nearer, and other aircraft ahead of them in the combat box came within range, enemy flak positions along the seashore began to open up. Harry saw flashes on the ground and then puffs of black smoke exploding in the air ahead. They looked like little balls of dirty cotton wool. His stomach gave a lurch and everything inside him tightened.

  ‘Look at that,’ he wanted to shout. ‘Those bastards down there are trying to kill us.’ All at once he felt terribly lonely. Him and Jim Corrales back at the end of the plane, they had the worst jobs. Not the most difficult – Harry knew the pilots and the navigator were pretty much occupied all the time – but at least the rest of the crew had each other for company. They had someone else to look at for comfort, someone else to help them if their oxygen mask failed, or, God forbid, they got hit by flak or bullets from a Nazi fighter. Harry and Jim could sit there and bleed to death and no one would know.