Beneath Us the Stars (10 page)

Mary turned and thanked the inspector, who nodded sympathetically. A great dread filled her heart as she walked away. She hadn’t been able to say she loved him.

They were to support a raid on Stettin.

The weather was foul when they took off and it got steadily worse, the cloud thickening and cross-winds battering the ship as he climbed through 10,000 feet.

As they penetrated further into Germany the turbulence grew, and to make matters worse, icing started to occur. Short transmissions from other pilots indicated that some were aborting the mission because engines were running so rough that they couldn’t stay in formation.

Bill expected the group leader to call it off, but no such order came. Cursing, he struggled with the controls, worried that any moment the turbulence would hit so hard that the artificial horizon would topple – then he’d be in big shit in this cloud.

Abruptly the radio crackled with an urgent voice. ‘Cowboy Green section to Horseback. Bandits all around, seventy plus. Are you receiving, Horseback?’

Cowboy was one of the unseen bomber formations. Horseback was the escorts.

The radio continued to crackle on.

‘We’re in clear sky – looks like they’re coming down for a head-on attack.’

Almost immediately combat messages started to jam the airways. One desperate wit said it all.

‘Jeez – the whole fucking
Luftwaffe
’s out to get me.’

At that moment the order for the bombers to turn back was given at last, since the thick clouds and general
confusion
precluded any effective hit on the target.

The group leader’s voice came over the airways: ‘Horseback one calling all Mustangs – let’s go help Cowboy.’

Bill took his formation to the right, eventually breaking cloud to find themselves right in the middle of the mess.

The Germans had put up everything they could,
including
twin-engined Me110s and Dornier 217s. They were fighting with desperation and immense courage to defend their homeland – just like the RAF boys in the Battle of Britain.

Bill led the attack down on a gaggle of 110s, which
immediately
went into a defensive circle so that each one covered the other’s tail.

Bill went in head-on, and saw hits on one 110, which broke away. He was lining up for a second shot when another Mustang cut in front of him and sent it down in a flaming dive. From then on, like all the others, he was
turning
and twisting, sweating and cursing as he fought more to stay alive than anything else.

The Germans were firing rocket salvos into the massed formations. Airplanes, American and German, were going
down in every direction, gas-tanks burning with intense orange flames, streaming like great fiery rockets towards the earth. And then, as so often happened, the sky was empty, leaving only an awful spectacle to strain his
shattered
nerves. Someone, German or American, there was no way of telling, had taken to his ‘chute. He drifted slowly, swinging gently from side to side – on fire, his body
emitting
flame and smoke like the kid’s dummy he’d seen on a daylight bonfire in England. The flames licked up the shroud lines and started on the canopy. Mercifully it folded up, and the blackened corpse fell away to earth, was lost from sight.

His engine sounded rough. Bill checked his altitude.

The instrument showed 25,000 feet. He radioed his
problem
and turned for home, soon joined by two others from the same squadron.

The cylinder-head temperature gauge started to climb steadily. Bill’s mouth felt as dry as sandpaper, but he remembered how one of the guys had told him he’d got back by enriching the fuel mixture, which helped the engine run cool. Keeping as much altitude as possible, he followed the Kiel Canal to the coast at Schleswig-Holstein.

Nervously, Bill ran his swollen tongue over cracked lips. Only the North Sea to get across now.

The others began weaving over him. Bill told them to leave – they would need all their fuel. ‘Go home – I’ll be OK. I’ll call Air-Sea Rescue.’

He looked down at the expanse of water. It looked flat, but he could just see white flecks. Bill knew that down there it was probably running a heavy sea. Rescue would
be most unlikely.

One of them flew his ship under his and appeared on the other side.

‘How’s it look?’ Bill asked.

When there was no reply Bill suddenly realized what was going on. He flicked over to the emergency ‘May Day’
channel
. As he suspected, the man was talking to rescue giving Bill’s altitude and heading, and adding, ‘There’s oil
everywhere
– he’s not gonna make it. He’ll have to bale out soon.’

‘Can he give us a long transmission so we can get a fix on him?’ said a clipped, steady English voice.

Bill butted in. He meant it to sound flippant, although his heart was in his boots, so what came out of his mouth took him by surprise.

‘’Course I can. Mary had a little lamb….’

Mary
. Oh god Mary.

He made an effort, dragged himself back to the task in hand and finished the rhyme, then repeated it over until the English voice said: ‘That’s fine. You’re a long way out and the weather conditions are bad but we’ll do our best. Good luck.’

Bill waved the others away. All alone, he was left with his thoughts of Mary. Would be ever see her again? Mercifully he had to keep a tight watch on his instruments, on the temperature, the altitude and heading. It didn’t allow for such terrible thoughts.

He was making for Martlesham Heath airfield by Ipswich on the east coast. Half-way across and he was down to 9,000 feet. He was flying on the proverbial wing and a prayer.

At 2,000 feet he reckoned he should be sighting land, but all he could see was grey blending into darker grey. At 1,800 – still nothing. The prayer increased.

At 1,600 –
something
: a low dark line. Bill strained forward, on the edge of his seat. Slowly the sandy
marshland
of Orfordness came into view, but at this angle of approach he was sinking too fast, he would never make it. When he eased the stick as far back as he dared, the plane began to shudder, on the point of stalling.

He nudged it fractionally forward again, aware that there was less than 600 feet between him and the winding estuary below. Bill was preparing to belly-in when he suddenly saw the strip was dead ahead. He dropped the undercarriage, prayed it would get down in time, and heard it thump home just as he eased the stick back, cleared the boundary fence and dropped heavily on to the grass. When he rolled to a halt, Bill sagged in his straps, did
nothing
until his heart, literally banging in his chest, finally slowed down.

Wearily he slid back the hood, unstrapped and climbed out on to the wing. He pulled off his helmet and ran his hand through his wet hair. The crash truck found him, relieving himself against the hedge.

He flew back later that afternoon, getting in just before dusk – risky, as most flying had to be completed an hour before sunset to minimize misidentifications.

The crew chief was looking worried.

‘What happened, sir?’

Bill patted his ship’s nose. ‘Went all temperamental on me – oil loss.’

He was debriefed by an Intelligence Officer in his hut, had his slug of whisky and was about to go for a shower when an orderly found him.

‘Sir, Lieutenant
Riley
at Wing headquarters has been trying to reach you all day. Says he’s going to be in the office late if you’d like to see him.’

Bill forgot about the shower. Still in his leather
flying-jacket
he knocked and entered Riley’s room. Riley was at a bookcase consulting a text. He looked up.

‘Hi there.’

Bill wasted no time.

‘What have you got?’

Riley put the book back on to the shelf.

‘You won’t believe it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Your petition went through channels to General Spaatz, but he’s Stateside on R and R.’

Bill groaned. ‘That’s it then – we’ve got to wait?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘What do you mean – who else can it go to? He’s the top.’

Light flashed off Riley’s glasses as he leant back, clearly enjoying himself.

‘I got in touch with Colonel Clark – he’s the legal adviser to US Forces in Europe and….’

Bill began to be irritated. It had been a hell of a day.

‘Come on.’

‘OK. Currently your application to marry Mary Rice is on the way to SHAEF HQ, to no less a person than Ike himself. You should get a reply in twenty-four hours.’

Bill felt as if the ground had opened up and he was about
to be swallowed.

‘Ike? Now? With all that’s going down?’

Riley nodded. ‘Yep. He still insists on getting through all the day-to-day running of
his
army – when he can.’

Bill left the office in a daze, not sure he wasn’t
hallucinating
from fatigue and stress.

Mary pored over the transcripts. Something in the phrasing was not right, not making sense, at least not to her. She played with it for half an hour or so, then dug out a
manuscript
from an earlier intercept. At last she realized what it was that was bothering her.

She found Sir George in the canteen, sedately sipping his tea. He looked up in surprise. ‘Doctor Rice. Is there a problem?’

‘I think you need to come back to the hut, Sir George. The whole meaning of one of the transcripts to the
Waffen
SS
takes on a new slant if you restructure the sentence – the
punctuation
, that is. The operator was from southern Germany.’

He knew Mary was not one to exaggerate, so he finished his tea less sedately, folded
The Times
and stood up.

‘Very well. Lead on, MacDuff.’

Back in the hut, on the main table where they could lay out the work under a low suspended light taken from a billiard table, she took him through what she had found.

Afterwards, Sir George stayed motionless. After some moments he straightened up.

‘I’m going to take this upstairs – see what they make of it.’ Sir George’s little moustache received a brush with a finger. ‘Whatever they say, very good work indeed, Doctor Rice.’

Flushed with the praise, generous indeed from Sir George, Mary said she’d be in the canteen if he needed her. She’d been very hungry recently.

He didn’t come and fetch her, but was waiting for her in his little cubicle of an office with the door open. He called to her as she entered the hut.

‘Close the door behind you.’

He indicated a chair. As she took it she asked: ‘Is this about the translation?’

Sir George nodded.

‘They’re very pleased with you. As you know,
intelligence
work is like putting together a jigsaw when you haven’t got a complete set and guessing what’s in the blank spaces. Well, my dear, I’m pleased to tell you that what you construed from that passage of German fitted one of those spaces. I’m not permitted, of course, to give you the full picture, and indeed, they don’t tell me any more than I need to know, but it was an invaluable pointer and they are delighted. They have asked me to thank you personally. Your name is being forwarded to some committee or other that might one day see you honoured for your services.’

Mary was flabbergasted. Sensing the interview was over she started to rise but he motioned her down. ‘Care to join me in a celebratory snifter?’

He swivelled in his chair and, with a set of keys, opened a little mahogany wall-cabinet, and produced two cut glasses and a bottle of sherry. Setting them on the desk top he delicately poured out the dark tawny liquid that seemed to sparkle with the sun that had been part of its birth.

As a way of explanation he said;’I’ve had this bottle since
nineteen forty – only toast our little victories in this
department
with it.’

He handed her one of the glasses.

‘Well done. Let’s hope that’s another step, however small, to the end of this beastly affair.’

Mary nodded as they touched glasses.

‘Please God.’

Even as they spoke, Bletchley Park was warning SHAEF HQ of a strange request for American-accented
English-speaking
troops to be sent immediately away from the main front line, to near the quiet Ardennes sector.

But Mary’s work, by its very nature a secondary
intelligence
evaluation, was already being overtaken by events.

Those ‘American’-speaking soldiers, equipped with American Jeeps, uniforms and weapons, were already behind Allied lines.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower had just finished some routine paper work when the first news came in of the Germans’ Ardennes offensive.

The weather all over northern Europe was bad, with low cloud-bases, freezing fog – and snow.

News trickled through to the squadron of the German offensive, and the inability of the Allied Tactical Air Force to intervene.

Men were mooching about, uneasy, the taken-
for-granted
victory suddenly less sure, at least in the near future, all plans, all dreams, on hold.

They were all raging with frustration that they couldn’t get into the fight, even from England. Weather was
predicted to be bad for days – even longer, with heavy snowfalls.

Bill, with his large overcoat on, was stretched out on his bunk writing a letter to Mary when a knock came on the door.

He looked up. ‘Come in.’

Riley stood there.

‘You guys not flying for Uncle Sam today?’

Bill, suddenly tense on seeing Riley, still managed: ‘No. Has the weather escaped you in that fine warm room of yours?’

Riley opened his greatcoat and shook and stamped off some of the snow.

‘
Touché
.’

But Bill was already swinging his legs to the floor and standing up.

‘Well?’

Riley moved to the window, looked out at the drifting snow. ‘You going to try to see Mary? This isn’t going to ease up for days, is it?’

Impatiently, Bill said: ‘Just waiting for a general
stand-down
to be announced.’ He paused, then added: ‘Are you trying to let me down gently or what? I don’t have you down as a sadist.’