The Bomber Balloon (2 page)

‘Realm,' the constable said.

‘The rules we have to stick to. If we don't, my dad will send you to prison.'

‘Your dad?'

‘He's joining the Royal Defence Army. They will arrest people because you policemen are too busy,' she said proudly. ‘What are you busy doing?'

‘Making sure people stick to DORA rules, of course. Making sure there's nobody hanging around under a railway bridge.'

‘We haven't got a railway bridge in this village,' Millie said.

‘No… no, but if we
had
, I'd arrest you for hanging around under it. You could be a spy planning to blow it up.'

‘A spy?

‘There's lots of them about. That's why DORA says no one can send a letter with invisible ink, and no one can fly a kite.'

‘I haven't got a kite,' Millie sighed.

‘If you had a kite it could be a signal to other spies,' Constable Smith explained. ‘You can't speak in a foreign language on the phone. You must never show a light in the street at night, and you have to keep quiet in the street. There are no church
bells after sunset, and it is against the law to whistle in the street.'

‘Or make a dog bark after dark?'

‘Exactly.' The constable nodded. He spoke softly. ‘There could be twenty Germans up there in a Zeppelin, just listening and waiting. Remember that next time you make a silly noise.'

Millie trembled. She wasn't afraid of the dark, but she was afraid of a bomb landing on her head. She whispered, ‘Are they there now?'

‘No, but they are not far away. See the searchlights? They are moving towards us… and listen!'

‘What?'

‘Aeroplanes. I can hear aeroplanes.'

Millie strained her ears and heard the faint buzz like distant bees on a summer meadow.

‘They've sent up aeroplanes to shoot it down. Mark my words, there's a Zeppelin coming this way.'

Captain Alois Bocker's face was frozen. Frozen with the icy winds at four thousand metres above London, and frozen with fear. He stood in the cabin of Zeppelin L33. His crew of eighteen men were staring at him.

At last Sail-maker Ernst Kaiser spoke. ‘What shall we do, sir?'

‘Do?' Captain Bocker said, swallowing hard.

‘The canvas has torn. The gas is escaping,' Kaiser said.

‘Mend it.'

The sail-maker shook his head. ‘A piece of shell ripped through it. It is far too big a hole to repair while we are flying, in the dark. We can only do it when we get home.'

‘So get us home,' the Captain barked at Steersman Siegfried Korber.

He nodded. ‘We head east, then over the English Channel.'

‘We are losing height,' Signalman Gustav Kunischt reminded the captain.

Alois Bocker's brain began to work again. ‘Throw everything over the side that we don't need – landing ropes, food tins… erm…'

‘Bombs?' Sail-maker Kaiser asked.

‘Of course.'

‘Should we throw Signalman Kunischt over the side?' Steersman Korber asked. Kunischt was round as a barrel, but not quite as heavy as a house.

‘Yes, good idea,' Captain Bocker said without thinking. The crew laughed. Captain Bocker managed a thin smile as if he shared the joke. Kunischt didn't think it was funny.

The men were as scared as their captain was. Scared of the word no one spoke. The word
feuer
. Fire. If a spark from the engines
met the leaking gas, the balloon would catch fire and they would fall, burning, onto England.

But the shell had not set the balloon alight yet. They had a chance.

The men hurried to throw as much as they could over the side. Their bombs flashed briefly when they struck the distant ground.

Their hearts rose as the balloon rose. ‘We're going to make it.' Steersman Korber smiled, and wiped an oily hand over the sweat on his bald head.

Then he heard the rattle of a machine gun. He turned to peer through the windows of the cabin and saw the glint of bullets streaming over his head.

‘Captain, we are under attack from English planes!'

‘I can see that, you fool.'

‘Your orders, captain?'

‘Dive, dive, dive! In the dark he'll never find us again.'

‘But if we lose height we'll never get home,' Signalman Kunischt argued.

‘I know that,
Dummkopf
. Climb, climb, climb!' the captain shouted.

Engineer Joseph Wegener called back, ‘That last attack lost us more gas. We'll never climb.'

‘So dive, dive, dive!'

The German airmen crashed into one another as they ran back and forth to obey the changing orders.

‘We'll never get home. We'll drown in the sea,' Signalman Kunischt said.

‘Then let us land on the ground while we can.'

‘We'll be prisoners,' Korber wailed.

Captain Bocker's face was pale with red spots of rage in his cheeks. ‘Tell me, Korber, what would you like us to do? Shall we burn in the air, drown in the sea, jump and smash onto the ground – or live the rest of the war in a British prison camp?'

Korber gave a weak smile. ‘When you put it like that, Captain…'

‘Yes?'

‘Show me the way to the prison camp.'

Engineer Wegener said, ‘We need to cut the engines so they don't set fire to the balloon when we hit the ground.'

The captain nodded. ‘We will land safely and
then
I will set fire to the balloon so the British do not learn the secrets of our Zeppelins.'

He turned to the men in the cabin. ‘Ready, men, prepare to land in England. Where will we touch down, Witthoft?' he
asked a young man who was squinting at a map.

‘The county of Essex,' Witthoft said.

Captain Bocker smiled. ‘I have an English cousin in the town of Colchester. He will make sure we are well cared for. Hold tight,
Kameraden
, we are going to drop into England for a pint of their famous beer.'

In the calm of the night Millie and Constable Smith stood silent, listening. The buzzing of the aeroplanes faded.

Then another, deeper rumble could be heard to the west.

‘Zeppelin,' the policeman muttered. ‘Headed this way.'

As they strained their ears the drone of the engines stopped.

‘That's what you said, Constable Smith.
You said they switch their engines off to listen.'

The policeman nodded. ‘And if everyone stays perfectly quiet he may just glide over us.'

Millie felt she was holding her breath forever. She looked up. There was no moon that night but the purple sky was dusted with a billion burning stars. Suddenly a shadow blotted out a few million of them as the Zeppelin sank towards them.

Constable Smith saw it a few moments after Millie. ‘He's too low to drop bombs,' he gasped. ‘If he drops a bomb now it'll explode underneath him and blow him out of the sky.'

‘So what's he doing?' Millie squeaked.

The monster shadow shone a dull starlight silver as it passed over their heads and they heard a whistling. The air caught in the ragged rips of the canvas and sighed as if the Zeppelin was giving a dying-animal cry… which it was.

‘It's crashing!' the policeman shouted, loud enough to break the DORA rules, and for a moment wondered if he should arrest himself.

His boots clattered over the cobbled road and sparks flew from the nails in the soles. ‘Where are you going?' Millie asked, sprinting after him. He didn't reply.

She raced past Mac the ginger dog, who was too frightened by the sky-shadow to bark. Constable Smith hammered at the door of the house at the end of the row. When the door flew open he panted, ‘Special Constable Elijah Taylor, get your uniform and your bike – there's a German airship landing. I reckon she'll touch down about two miles to the west.'

Taylor was a tall old man, as thin as his bicycle frame. He scrambled for his uniform and his cycle and was still fastening buttons as he wobbled down the road. There were two cycles outside the police station and Constable Smith leapt onto one. Millie grabbed the other and followed. It was too big for her but if she stood up she could just reach the pedals.