The End of It, page 5
Beck opens a filing cabinet, takes out brandy and two glasses. Jochen watches him pour, thinking how silly he looks in his riding breeches.
‘If I’d known it was there, I’d have helped myself,’ Jochen says.
‘Prost.’
‘Prost.’
‘There’s some coffee coming.’
‘How many did your guys get?’ Jochen says.
‘Three so far. All Thunderbolts. There are four not back yet.’
‘No bombers?’
Beck shakes his head.
‘It’s the desert all over again, Jonny. We’re being overwhelmed. And getting too tied up with the fighters to hit the bombers.’
The coffee arrives.
‘I was going to ring you but I’m here now.’
‘Problem?’
‘I need to ask your permission to marry.’
Beck laughs. ‘Is that still a requirement?’
‘It’s in the book.’
‘Permission granted.’
‘Well, Jonny, the thing is, I want you to refuse.’
Beck laughs again. ‘Trying to wriggle out?’
‘I wanted to marry her but now I don’t.’
‘What’s this poor girl done?’
‘I can’t marry her, Jonny. She’s a Nazi.’
‘National Socialist.’
‘National Socialist.’
‘You don’t deserve her. Marrying a National Socialist would be a badge of honour for you. I’m a National Socialist.’
‘Just say no. I’ll send the application through, and you can reject it.’
‘I’m not doing your dirty work for you. What reason could I give?’
‘Say I’m not worthy of her.’
‘You’re not but it wouldn’t wash upstairs.’
‘Financial insecurity.’
‘You’re a Hauptmann! That’s a pretty good screw.’
‘I’m too young.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘In your prime.’
‘I’m immature.’
‘The truth at last. But too subjective. I couldn’t write that down.’
‘Please.’
‘Sir.’
‘Please, sir.’
‘Ha! You said it!’
‘Well?’
‘Grow up, Jochen! You should know better. Though it pains me to say this, you’re the best of us, and you know it. They can’t even get you when you’re flying a Storch.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘The story’s all around the Luftwaffe. Everybody knows. 158 in the desert, how many now you’re back home? How many Fortresses?’
‘Two today, so that’s nine. And two Liberators.’
‘Thunderbolts? Lightnings? Mustangs?’
‘I haven’t seen a Mustang yet.’
‘Lucky for them. The others?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I want to know how far behind I am.’
‘A Thunderbolt today, so that’s six. And two Lightnings.’
‘And you reported back…’ Beck looks at his calendar. ‘Three weeks ago tomorrow. He should give you another medal.’
‘There isn’t one. But while we’re on medals, I want to put Bubi up for a Knight’s Cross.’
‘Fine. That’s a proper request. Has he got fifty?’
‘One today makes fifty.’
‘Do the paperwork and send it along.’
‘Bloody paperwork!’
‘Get used to it. Hain’s dead. I’m giving you his gruppe as of now. I’ll send you along the…’
‘Paperwork. I never thought I’d ever have a gruppe. Three staffeln! I didn’t even have one staffel four weeks ago.’
‘Your fiancée will be proud.’
Jochen laughs. ‘Yes. Give Bubi my staffel.’
‘Of course. Now get out.’
Two new guys report. Berger and Diesch. He takes them up early the next morning. It’s cloudy with intermittent sun. He sends them off first and watches. Diesch tries to pull his Gustav off the ground too soon. He’s lucky. The Gustav lifts a wing that threatens to flip the machine onto its back on the grass, which will very likely cause it to burst into flames. Diesch slows and gets the wheels back on the ground and then allows the Gustav to fly itself off. He and Berger have had thirty hours conversion to the Gustav. Jochen and his pals didn’t have that much when they converted to the Friedrich, but they’d all been flying 109s for months or years before that. Berger and Diesch have come from basic training. One hundred hours total flying time. How can he take them up against the Amis with that?
He leads them up to nine thousand metres and tells them to follow him in line astern. He tells them each manoeuvre before leading them into it. He dives, and pulls up into a loop, but rolls out at the top then spirals down to the left, slows and banks into a tight right-hand turn and goes round twice.
‘Shit,’ he hears through the earphone crackle. Berger’s voice. Through the right-hand side of his canopy, he sees a Gustav spinning towards the earth.
‘Keep calm,’ he calls, ‘you’ve got lots of height.’
The spin goes on but finally he sees the Gustav straighten into a dive and eventually pull out.
‘We’ll come down to you,’ Jochen calls and puts his nose down. ‘We’re going down, Diesch,’ he calls. And, ‘Still there?’ when he gets no answer. ‘Diesch?’
As he pulls up alongside Berger at five thousand metres, the sun glints off a silver dot far below them.
‘Diesch!’ he yells. ‘Diesch, wake up!’
There’s no response. A few seconds later there’s the flash and smoke of an explosion in the corner of a field very near some farm buildings.
He’s had enough. ‘Berger,’ he calls, ‘we’re going home.’
They enter the circuit at their airfield at Marx and let down on the grass side by side but fifty yards apart. Jochen pulls back the nose a few feet up to let the Gustav settle itself, but Berger attempts a wheeled landing with the tail up. He sails on across the field with the Gustav refusing to stop flying and settle.
‘Open up!’ Jochen yells. ‘Go round again!’
Berger reaches the edge of the field and hits the hedge. The Gustav tips up on its nose and flips over on its back. If it burns, Berger’s dead. Jochen taxis over and reaches the wreck just as the fire truck does. He climbs out and watches a man with an axe hack the canopy open so that Berger can crawl out. He stands. His face is white. He sees Jochen.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he says.
Jochen nods. But it’s not Berger’s fault. He shouldn’t be here. He should be at a training school doing circuits and bumps and getting time in the air with something more forgiving than a Gustav.
‘Come on,’ he says to Berger, ‘I’ll get you a drink.’ He leads the way to the truck for a ride back.
What happened to Diesch? Oxygen starvation? Or did he pull too tight a turn and pass out. He’ll never know. One useless pilot left and two Gustavs gone.
He sends Berger off in the 108 they keep for getting about in, with orders to practise tight slow turns without falling into a spin or passing out and then do twenty minutes of three-point landings. It’s not a 109 but he can get the technique right. If they get a report of a raid developing, Berger is to get on the ground at once so that no Thunderbolt can kill him.
‘Believe it or not,’ Jochen tells him, ‘your life is precious.’
The day’s turned really chilly. He rubs his arms as he walks back to his office.
There’s a shout in a voice he knows well. ‘Boss!’
He swings round and grins. In a greatcoat and carrying two large bags on his shoulders, Jurg is striding across the apron towards him. Jochen last saw him giving his canopy a final shine before he took off on that flight in the desert fourteen months ago, when his Gustav caught fire. A metre away Jurg drops the bags and comes to attention. They salute. Then they shake hands and Jochen slaps Jurg’s arm two or three times.
‘Let’s get inside, I’m freezing,’ he says.
‘I’ve got just the thing for you then.’ Jurg pulls a jacket out of one of his bags and passes it over; a brown leather flying jacket with a sheepskin lining and a white US Army Air Force star on a blue disc on the upper arm. ‘It’s loot, I suppose. I bought it off a guy in the mess.’
Jochen pulls it on as Jurg continues.
‘If you don’t want it, I’ll sell it on again.’
But Jochen loves it and feels instantly warm.
In the office they drink coffee and talk about Hans, shot or drowned but anyway, dead in the sea.
‘I wrote to his wife,’ Jochen says. ‘It won’t do any good, of course.’
‘She’ll be pleased to have got it. From you. It’ll mean something. He thought you were it. He’ll have told her.’
They think for a moment.
‘Thanks for getting me here,’ Jurg says.
‘I want to be properly looked after.’
‘What about the last guy?’
‘He was good but he’s not you. He’s promoted and got a new job so he’s happy.’
Jurg will be in particular charge of the crews maintaining the Headquarters flight, Jochen, and three others, and will assist the officer responsible for engines in the gruppe.
He writes the recommendation for Bubi’s Knight’s Cross. He’s pleased that Bubi’s lived long enough for him to do this for him – the guy who saved his life. It’s only a futile piece of junk to hang around his neck, of course, but it’s the best there is and he’ll be offered instant respect. And girls love the Knight’s Cross. Jochen will be able to mock him about all the letters he’ll get when the photos come out in magazines. Letters still arrive for Jochen. He has them sorted for anything with a Swedish stamp.
An envelope arrives from Beck, Office of the Geschwader Commander stamped in the corner and Beck’s pencil scrawl across the back, May all your troubles be little ones! Jonny has expedited his permission to marry. The bastard!
Berger reports back. Jochen has watched a few of his landings. They’ve looked all right. A message comes in. Much activity detected in area Dora-Dora, the area on their charts over the North Sea, off East Anglia. The B17s will be climbing and forming up in those boxes of twelve with all the machines guns converging; the Thunderbolts heading up above them.
The pilots gather. His new jacket is the source of comment and admiration. Eric Geiger is still limping from his jump but insists he’s fine to fly as Jochen’s wing-man. They wait in their cockpits for a signal. Jochen sees Berger standing watching. They start their engines.
‘Away you go,’ he hears, and he leads them off, the three staffeln of the gruppe.
Thirty-one serviceable Gustavs out of thirty-six on the nominal roll. They climb to nine thousand and beyond. The altimeter needle goes as far as it can, but they’ve probably gone beyond that. His oxygen is working. The others should be checking too. He reminded them at the briefing. That may have been Diesch’s downfall. Ice has formed inside the canopy as usual. There are many clouds below but up here the sky is dark blue.
‘Vapour trails at twelve o’clock,’ a voice calls.
There they are. Silver specks with white trails just appearing over Germany. Black bursts of flak dot the sky all around the glinting bombers.
‘Follow me,’ he calls and puts the nose down. He’s seen no escorts yet and no one else has called them. The bombers get slowly larger. It’s a head on attack and he aims for the centre of the pack. The rest of the gruppe spread out on either side so all can hit the bombers at the same time. He’s lining up the lead bomber in his sight when Eric shouts.
‘Jochen, break left!’
He does so without thinking and the Flying Fortresses are gone from his vision. He closes the throttle a little to tighten his turn and his arms grow almost too heavy to move. The bomber boxes appear above him and flashing darts of fighters chase each other, turning, diving, climbing. He turns to see behind him but, as usual in a Gustav, sees very little.
‘Anything around, Eric?’
There’s no answer. He climbs in a spiral that Thunderbolts find difficult to follow, aiming at the bombers that are ploughing on towards where? Wilhelmshaven? Hamburg? Before he can work out how to attack again, he spots a silver fighter coming at him from his one o’clock. He turns towards it and fires when it fills his sight. Flashes sparkle around the engine while tracers fly past his own cockpit. The Ami breaks to the right. Square wing tips, a square tailplane, a bulbous radiator on the underside of the fuselage. His first Mustang. He fires again. Splashes of light around the fuselage and wing roots. It’s gone. Hit for sure. Back to England? Or just out of this fight to collect his thoughts?
A Gustav flashes by in flames. A shape tumbles out and falls. Jochen twists his head to watch as he resumes his spiral climb. The parachute streams out and then mushrooms.
He’s still climbing when he spots a Mustang chasing a Gustav. He doesn’t need to shout ‘Break!’ because the Gustav is twisting and turning like a mad thing. Jochen latches on behind the Mustang and on a right-hand turn eases it into his sight. He fires and gets hits on the tail and starboard wing. The Mustang puts its nose down at once and dives. Jochen follows but finds the Ami pulling away. Pulling away in a dive! It’s a shock. Gustavs dive better than anything. But not any longer. He lets the Mustang go and climbs again. The Gustav is circling. He sees the number. It’s from one of his new staffeln and he doesn’t know who it is.
‘All clear, Nine,’ he calls.
He’s still climbing to get above the Fortresses but then he spots the red fuel light. So soon! Those Mustangs have been around up here all the time he has, and they’ve flown from England and they have to get back there. How long can they stay up?
‘Got to leave you, Nine.’
‘I’m coming, too, boss.’
They put their noses down and dive for home. Get back quick, refuel and get back up again. They have to let down gently through the clouds that have gathered while they’ve been up, though, and by the time they’re ready to go again, the sky is overcast and low, and rain is just starting. They’re not equipped for this and hardly any of them are trained for foul weather flying. He stands them down and reports in to that effect.
Five minutes later he’s called to the phone. It’s the General and he’s furious.
‘Why aren’t you up?’
‘The weather, sir. It’s raining.’
‘It’s raining? Frightened of getting wet? You’ve got hoods.’
‘The visibility’s awful, sir. We can barely see the other end of the field.’
‘Too scared to fight them, are you? Is that what you want me to tell the Reichsmarschall?’
Tell him what you like, you stupid shit. How many of us do you want dead?
‘I’ll take that gruppe away from you!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t you “yes, sir” me.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Get up there now!’
‘That’s a direct order, is it, sir?’
‘Of course, it is, Murville!’
He puts the phone down and tells Backhaus of his HQ flight to get the staffel together. The other two staffeln are based in separate buildings. Geiger hasn’t returned or phoned. Perhaps he was the one who jumped from the blazing Gustav. The guys wander in. There are nine of them, plus Jochen.
‘Has anyone ever flown in this stuff?’
Four hands flap up.
‘By accident, when I was caught out,’ Krueger says. A couple of others nod.
‘I trained for all-weather flying when I was on bombers,’ Schaefer says.
‘Listen, I’ve been ordered up. You four may volunteer to come. It’s an invitation only, not an order. The rest of you are grounded.’
‘We want to fly, sir.’ Thomas, one of the grounded.
‘No!’
Jochen walks off to get his kit. The four follow him. He turns. ‘Are you all sure?’
‘Of course,’ Backhaus says.
He looks at Schaefer. ‘You’re the expert, Kurt. Any advice?’
‘Keep your eyes on the artificial horizon. Don’t trust your senses. You may feel you’re banking or upside down or something. You won’t be. Only the horizon knows. On the way up, spread out before you get into the cloud. On the way back down, when you get to a thousand metres, go slowly. Don’t shoot out of the cloud at top speed.’
Jurg is by his Gustav in the rain. ‘You’re going up in this?’
‘Orders.’
‘What if I can’t start her up?’
‘No, Jurg. I’ll just move on to another and then another until one does start.’
Bubi comes running up. ‘What’s going on? Are we going up?’
‘Not you.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t murder everyone, can I?’
In the cockpit he wipes his face and hands with the towel Jurg passes him. The leather of his US jacket glistens with water. He jiggles the stick around. All the controls move. They start engines. Darts of flame and bursts of smoke. He looks around. Whirring discs at the front of each Gustav.
‘Off we go,’ he says into his mask, ‘and no chatter. Concentrate!’
They start to move across the grass. Rain runs down the windscreen but as his speed picks up, the wind blows it clear. They lift off in a wide spread and rise towards the cloud floor; nearly there and then a sudden disappearance of the world and he’s into a claustrophobic grey mass. He drops his eyes at once to the artificial horizon and concentrates on keeping the two lines parallel. It takes an effort of will not to look out at the grey all around. He’s heard enough stories of disorientation and the disaster that can result. He hopes they’ve all got their eyes glued on their instrument panels.
Time goes by. How long? He won’t move his eyes to see his watch. It doesn’t matter how long. But is that some light lifting the gloom in the cockpit? A quick glance up and he sees the grey now thinner, wispier, and immediately gone. Sunlight pours in through the canopy. He keeps climbing. The flat, level, grey cloud floor recedes beneath him. There are three Gustavs visible. He looks up at the blue above.
