The Separation (27 page)

‘Boom! Boom!’ It was Kris’s distinctive voice, loud in my earphones.

‘What’s up?’ said JL.

‘They got him! I see it all. Four Me-109s and a 110. They got him! Boom!’

‘Is he down?’

‘Bloody big bang! Big flames, big smoke! Down in the sea, skip!’

‘What about the 109s?’

‘Can’t see. They scattered.’

‘Kris, are you certain you saw the 110 crash?’

‘Rear gunner has best seat. Germans attacking Germans. Good stuff!’

‘OK, everyone, keep your eyes open for more bandits.’

I clambered awkwardly up through the fuselage, past Col’s radio kit, and returned to the cockpit, intending to talk to JL about what had happened. He was fully alert, scanning the sky in all directions. He registered my presence and unclipped the mike so we could speak direct.

‘Did you see the 110 go down, Sam?’ he shouted over the roar of the engines.

‘No. We’ve only Kris to go on.’

‘Good enough for me,’ JL said, and I nodded vehemently. We both clipped our mikes on again.

‘More Messerschmitts!’ It was Ted again, from the front turret. ‘About three o’clock. Below us again.’

I craned forward, trying to see down and to the right-hand side. JL kept the Wellington on a steady track, still climbing slowly.

‘I can see!’ I shouted. ‘Same thing as before . . . another Me-110, this one heading due north. He’ll cross under us in a moment.’

‘Has he seen us?’

‘Doesn’t look like it.’

He was a long way off to our right, flying low against the clouds, crossing our track.

‘Hold your fire, gunners!’JL said crisply. ‘They’re not looking for us.’

‘What’s going on down there, JL?’

‘Haven’t the faintest.’

‘There are the 109s again!’ This was Lofty, from somewhere down the fuselage. ‘They must have circled round.’

‘No, the last lot buggered off,’ I said. I could see the smaller fighters now, flying fast and low from the south, catching up with the 110. Apart from the different direction from which they appeared, it was an almost exact replay of what we had seen a few moments before. I saw the fighters go into a diving turn, accelerating towards the larger aircraft. Cannon fire glinted on their wings. Tracer curled across the short gap between them.

But once again our track was taking us over the dogfight.

‘We’re losing sight of them, Kris! Can you see what’s going on?’

‘Rear gunner has best seat. Yeah! They go for him!’

I moved back from the cockpit and found Lofty pressing his face against the thick perspex of the port-side nav window. I crammed up against him, trying to see.

‘They miss!’ It was Kris again, from the rear turret. ‘He’s OK!’

‘They’ll go round again, won’t they?’

‘I lost them. Wait!’

JL came on. ‘Don’t forget, if any of those crates see us we’re in trouble. No one relax!’

‘Yes skip.’

‘Sam, can you get a fix for us? I need to know where we are, how far from the coast.’

‘OK, JL. Give me a few minutes.’

From the rear, Kris said, ‘I can’t see them no more. The 110 was OK. I saw him fly on.’

‘Which direction was he going in?’

‘Due north.’

‘What about the Me-109s?’

‘Like you say, they bugger off.’

We remained fully alert, knowing for certain that there were German fighters in the vicinity, knowledge no bomber crew liked to have. A strange sense of purpose settled on us. With remarkable efficiency the gunners reported at regular intervals on what they could see in the skies around us and I completed the fix I had been taking.

When I had worked out our position, I reported the information over the intercom to JL.

‘How far does that put us from the German coast?’ he said.

‘A couple of hundred miles,’ I replied. About two hundred and sixty from the Danish coast, though.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because that was the direction the first lot were coming from. That would place their airfield somewhere on the Danish mainland.’

‘They might have come from Germany’

‘It looked to me as if the second lot did. Either way, the Me-109s would have been close to the limit of their range.’

‘Presumably that’s why they buzzed off as soon as they could.’

‘Right. So what were they up to, trying to shoot down their own?’

‘Beats me.’

We were closing on the German coast and we said nothing more about the strange incident. Other business was more pressing. By this time it was completely dark outside the aircraft and I needed to take another positional fix to be certain of where we would be crossing the coast. I worked it out and reported it to JL: our landfall would be a few miles to the west of Cuxhaven. Not long after, Ted Burrage reported flak coming up from below and the familiar sick feeling of fear rose in me. While we were under attack from anti-aircraft fire, or while we were on a bombing run, I had to sit tight inside my little cubicle, unable to see what was happening outside. All I had to go on was the movement of the aircraft, the change in the pitch of the engines, the explosions of the flak and the often incoherent shouts from the rest of the crew coming through the intercom. On those flights in which we penetrated deep into German or occupied territory the racket could continue for several hours. That night, though, our target was Hamburg, a port about fifty miles inland from the coast on the long estuary of the River Elbe, so we wouldn’t have to be over enemy territory for long. I plotted the route from the coast to our turning point and reported the bearing to JL. After that I worked out the course that would take us directly over the Hamburg docks, the intended drop-zone for bombing. After the plane had manoeuvred round to the new course I heard the voices of the rest of the crew changing when they reported in. As we neared the target everyone spoke more quickly. Their breath rasped noisily in my headset and sentences were left unfinished. They all seemed to be on the point of shouting. While we were still on the way to the bombing zone I began to work out the best course for home: the shortest route back to the German coastline, a dog-leg to take us around the known positions of certain German flak ships moored offshore, then, once we were safely out to sea, swinging round to take us by a direct westerly route towards the beacon on the Lincolnshire coast and after that to our airfield. All the time the aircraft was shifting attitude and position and bucking violently whenever a flak shell burst close to us, but from the sound of Ted Burrage’s voice, and from JL’s responses, I gained the impression that things were going as smoothly as could be expected. Those last moments before the drop were the worst for most of the crew, but it was a time of great concentration for the bomb aimer and pilot. I forced myself to be calm, staring down at my maps and charts and trying to calculate angles and distances, but in reality what I was waiting for was the blessed moment when we felt the bombs being released from the bomb-bay.

‘Let’s go home!’ someone shouted as soon as the aircraft gave its familiar judder of relief. The plane was rising, free of the weight of the bomb load.

‘Keep your eyes peeled!’JL said brusquely. ‘There’s a long way to go yet.’

‘Can’t we lift above this lot?’

‘Bomb aimer, get back to your turret.’

‘Yes, skip.’

‘Christ! That one was close!’

‘Everyone all right?’

‘Yes, skip.’

‘Both engines normal.’

‘Anyone behind us?’

‘Another couple of Wellingtons.’

‘OK, hold on. We can’t turn yet. Searchlights ahead. Some poor devil has been coned.’

‘Can’t we go round them?’

‘They’re on all sides.’

Releasing the bombs had that effect. For a few minutes everyone was talking at once, the held-back fears and excitement rushing out of us. I waited for the others to quieten a little, then I read out our new course to JL. He repeated it back to me.

‘Turning now,’ JL said. I felt the plane moving to port, the engines’ note changing as they took up the temporary strain of the turn. It was all right, it was going to be all right. It felt all right after you dropped the bombs: illogically because the plane was lighter and you were heading for home, you believed the gunners on the ground couldn’t see you. If there were any fighters up they wouldn’t be looking for you anymore. The worst was over.

6

Except that on that night the worst was yet to come.

Something struck us explosively at the front of the plane. I felt the shock of the impact, was thrown against the wall of the aircraft by the blast and scorched by the sudden glare of white flame as it ballooned briefly down the fuselage. I fell to the floor as the plane tipped over.

‘That’s it! Bail out, everyone!’

I heard JL’s desperate words through the intercom, but they were followed by a dead silence on the earphones. The intercom lead had jerked out of its socket as I fell. I think I blacked out for a few seconds. Then I was back, in an agony of pain. Blood was running down over my eyes, gluing my eyelids. Something must have hit me in the leg, high up, close to the hip. When I put my hand down to see what damage there was, I could feel more blood all over my trousers and tunic. Freezing cold air was jetting in through a large hole in the floor, below and slightly to the side of my desk. All the lights were out. The engines were screaming and the angle of the plane’s dive was rolling me towards the front. My injured leg banged against something jagged that was sticking out from the floor and I yelled with pain. Suddenly terrified that I alone had survived the explosion, that I was trapped inside the plane as it plunged towards the ground, I dragged myself from under the remains of my navigation table and pulled myself along the uneven floor of the fuselage. Because of the plane’s steep angle it was easier than it would otherwise have been, but I had to get past the large hole that had appeared in the floor. The broken spars of the plane’s geodetic hull jutted up sharply.

I had managed to squeeze past the hole when I heard the note of the engines change. They throttled back, under control, and I felt the downward pressure of G-force on me as the plane levelled out of its dive. I’d rolled forward so that I had fetched up against the back of the pilot’s seat. I hauled myself up and saw JL sitting there, silhouetted by the dim light from the instruments. He was at a crooked angle, but reaching forward with both hands to hold the control stick. The front of the aircraft had suffered great damage: most of the fuselage ahead of the cockpit had been blown apart. Freezing air battered in against us.

Seeing the difficulty he was having with the controls, I reached over and tried to help him by taking some of the weight of the column, but he brushed my hand aside. My intercom lead had followed me down the fuselage so I plugged it into the socket on the instrument panel.

I shouted, ‘Are you hurt, JL?’

‘No!’ His voice was high with tension. I glanced up at him, but his face was unreadable behind the oxygen mask and flying goggles. ‘Well, nothing serious. It got me in the gut,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s OK. More like a big punch than a wound. What about you? You’re covered in blood.’

‘Head wound. Something wrong with my leg.’

‘What about the others?’

‘I haven’t seen anyone else.’

‘I told everyone to bail out.’

‘I heard that. What about Ted Burrage? Or Lofty?’

‘I don’t know. Remind me of that course to get us home!’

‘Do you think we can make it?’

‘I’m going to have a damned good try!’

The plane was apparently responding to the controls, although there was extensive damage to the fuselage. Both engines were running OK, but JL said that the port engine was starting to overheat. The shock of the explosion wiped all thoughts from my mind and I couldn’t remember the course I’d worked out. I crawled back to the remains of the nav cubicle, holding the emergency torch. By some miracle my pad was on the floor beside the hole, the pages fluttering stiffly in the gale. I grabbed it and hauled myself back to the cockpit. I read out the two courses and JL confirmed them. For a moment it felt as if we were flying normally.

By the time the plane was back on a more or less even keel we had long since crossed the German coast and were heading out over the North Sea. Our course no longer had to be exact, because once we were close to British air space there were direction-finding aids we could use. Getting lost was the least of our worries. Of greater concern was the condition of the port engine, which had obviously taken a hit somewhere. JL throttled it back to ease some of the strain, then a few minutes later he pulled it back a little more.

‘How long before we lose too much height?’ I shouted.

‘An hour maybe.’

‘Are we going to make it?’

‘What’s the distance to the coast?’

‘More than a hundred miles.’ It was only a guess. Without my charts and instruments I couldn’t be sure of anything.

‘I think at least one of us will be OK,’JL said, but he knew as little as I did. Those were the last clear words I heard him utter. Suddenly, the dark sea filled our forward view, pale ripples reflecting the moonlight. We were already much lower than I had realized. Our dive had taken us to about a couple of hundred feet above the sea. JL leaned the weight of his body to the side, shoving the control column to the left - the plane briefly steadied, but we were so close to the surface of the water that we could see the surging shape of the waves.

JL shouted something, but I was unable to understand him.

The engines throttled back, the nose dipped. I could see the waves through the gaps in the fuselage ahead of us where the nose of the aircraft had been blasted away. I stared ahead, filled with a terrible despair. I could smell the salty sea on the freezing air that was rushing in at us. It reminded me, with shocking clarity, of childhood holidays at the seaside. Windy days, huddling out of the rain in a hut on the edge of the beach at Southend, the wide flat sands damp from the ebbing tide. That cold salt wind. I was certain I was about to die. This turned out to be how it was when you died: you died with your childhood before you. I was immobilized with fear, the sight of the sea, the huge black surface rising up towards us at a crazy angle and at a terrifying speed, believing that the end was upon me and that all my life this finality had been selected by that one moment in childhood.