Taking the High Ground

CHAPTER TWO Northern France, 1941 BLUE-GREY cigarette smoke drifts in layers across the unventilated briefing room. Restive, nervous, the aircrews cough more than necessary, annoying the meteorologist. He has never been off the ground, a “penguin.” Everyone else in the room flies, as they kid each other, “for a living or for a dying.” Most of the bomber crews based in Occupied France had made enough sorties over England to know the weather was as unpredictable as those Britishers themselves. The weather officer drones on. Air and sea temperatures, visibility, wind shifts, barometric pressure, the goddamned English fog. The wood-slat seats were hard on the rump, a reminder of the hours they were soon to spend sitting down in discomfort. Of course you could also bleed to death while still sitting down. One never knew, except it would likely be the other crew, not you. One thing they knew for sure: the Britishers didn’t quit in 1940, when they were supposed to pack it in, and they weren’t about to quit now. Winning the war would take a lot more of this stuff. Stubborn, idiotic Englanders. Leutnant Karl Wilmer, heavy shoulders hinting at peasant stock, a fresh-faced, fair-haired pilot officer with intelligent, tired blue eyes, doodled on his notepad. Then he stared blankly at his scuffed boots. A nudge in the ribs brought him back from a tense vision of eight Browning machine-guns winking silent, yellow flame as a Spitfire hurtled toward him. ‘Wake up, Karl.’ It was Willy Dietrich. Skinnier and older than most in the room at 25, Willy combined a dark-eyed moodiness with mocking humour that made him an awkward comrade-in-arms. Even his thick brown hair, slight build and Mediterranean complexion contrasted with his fellow officers. Karl Wilmer liked him as a no-nonsense fellow officer, a skilled pilot, but in a wartime way that made you wary of close relationships. Everyone remembered last year. The incredible performance of what Fatty Goering had called the “defeated English air force.” Lots of missing faces. We were winning? ‘He goes on and on, eh Karl?” Willy said, none too quietly. A navigator behind him shushed a warning but was ignored. Willy went on happily: ‘Why doesn’t Old Fogmaker come along with us and say hello to the RAF and the beautiful flak guns, eh!’ Wilmer and Dietrich had already led their crews of the airfield’s Heinkel 1-11s through all versions of hell. Up the twisting river to the London docks, blazing 20,000 feet below; feeling their aircraft lift as bombs were toggled over Birmingham, Liverpool, Coventry, and (they supposed) over the blacked-out English countryside when they got lost or found the anti-aircraft fire too hot. Dorniers and Junkers went over there, too, but it was the Heinkel He 1-11 that did the real work. Great airplane. Designed before the war as a Lufthansa airliner, with the aim of conversion to a bomber when Hitler’s inevitable war arrived, the latest version was faster, better armed and carried more explosive than the planes that had roared above the ant-like infantry and dust-swirling tanks into Poland. Last year – Wilmer of course remembered it was May 14, his birthday – about a hundred He 1-11s had burned down Rotterdam. What was it like, engulfed in flames? Now we knew about that in Germany. ‘So morose, Karl,’ said Dietrich, who was in one of his upbeat moods, grinning like a schoolboy. In the air he was almost manically cheerful. Wild West Willy, some crews called him. ‘It’s nothing. Just thinking about last year.’ ‘Last year, ja. I don’t care to. Frankly I don’t think much about this year, either. And next year? We should live so long.’ Wilmer frowned pointedly at his friend. Such defeatist talk could prompt a visit from unsmiling “penguins.” Gestapo. ‘Do you think we will still invade, Willy?’ he said to steer the conversation elsewhere. It didn’t much help. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Westward bound IT IS HIGH summer. Dawn touches the far horizon, and on the empty ocean, indulgent and on its best behaviour for a suspiciously long time, the new day arrives beautiful yet sinister, dressed in ivory and dark green. The white-hulled boat, underneath its mainsail and huge overlapping genoa, moves as quietly and deliberately as the pod of humpbacks they had seen a while ago. A brass chronometer on the main cabin’s mahogany bulkhead sweeps electric seconds, timing this elegant sunrise along the track of 16th century explorer Verrazano’s lonely westward passage. All the way from the volcanic mountains of Madeira to the long, low coral crescent of Bermuda. Not back then (nor for centuries) but now it was a quiet British reminder of days of empire – financed with U.S. tourist dollars, a prim island of prosperity. For the three sailors such prospects of afternoon tea and safety amid Bermudian decorum remain 20 dawns away or maybe more. It was going well, not always a good sign at sea. Out here, time isn’t what it is ashore. Stand watch, eat, sleep, keep a cheerful look-out in the daylight and a tense one in the darkness. The three men are good enough company but each feels the loneliness of this ocean, in this middle region where few commercial ships are sighted, even on the distant horizon, where aircraft are rarely seen on their contrailed tracks to and from North and South America, Europe and Africa. Out here, the easy cliche of it being a small world nowadays didn’t apply. The boat, westbound at about six knots, day after day, new and efficient in her fibre-glass, stainless steel, synthetic lines, wire and aluminum, but with mahogany and teak trimmings as a lustrous concession to wooden ancestors, carves her way through the dark waters, reaching for the broad purple-green river of the Gulf Stream. The crew do not converse much. No one feels particularly uncomfortable just watching in silence the milky crested waves, or the rising of the moon, the occasional larger wave breaking against the stern quarter. It has been very reasonable, this weather, the Northeast Trades predictably generous, pushing, lifting, pushing as in centuries past. They watch, eyes adjusted to far, empty distances.