Beneath Us the Stars (14 page)

He wriggled deeper into some bushes, pulling the Mae
West with him, and began covering himself with the pine needles and sandy soil, both for camouflage, and to try to keep warm.

Stuck in the top of one of his boots was an air map. Bill took it out, studied it, finding difficulty in focusing. Eventually he realized that he had only a rough idea of where he was – the airstrip wasn’t on it – but the big
question
was, which side of the front line was he on?

Cold, hungry and frightened he found a bar of
high-energy
candy. With shaking hands Bill broke off a piece and rewrapped the rest, determined to conserve it as long as possible. In between chewing he paused, listening for the sound of dogs, or voices shouting commands in German. He was aware only of an intense silence. No bird sang as the darkness of night, made to seem darker by his
condition
, drew around him.

He thought of Mary. What was she doing? Bill realized that by now they might have sent someone to see her, to tell her that he would not be coming home that night.

And for all she knew, he might not be coming home –
ever
.

The agony stayed with him through a sleepless cold night.

Cold as the grave.

The early morning light slowly suffused the room. She’d not slept, just lain on her bed, staring out through the window-panes at the starlit sky. The night had been full of the sound of the RAF on its way to Germany, and now the dawn chorus of war rumbled once again in the brightening
sky – the incessant reminder of the deadly struggle that had consumed all their lives.

And Bill was somewhere over there – she just
knew
. He’d sworn never to leave her – he would be back. Please God, make it true.

Every time the phone down in the hall had rung she’d tensed so badly that she feared for her unborn child. But it had never been for her – so far.

Slowly she got off the bed. Her whole body was aching. She moved to the window and looked down into the garden – now turned over to vegetable production and with rabbit- and chicken-runs.

Ice covered the corners of the panes, and the fields beyond were white, but there had been no more snow.

But it was still bitterly cold. She put her fevered brow against the freezing glass, and cried gently, the first tears of the day.

He was so cold that he seemed to have stopped shivering, and the pain in his hands had begun to recede. Bill realized he was in danger of getting frostbite. He crawled out and stood up stiffly, clutching his hands under his armpits.

In the distance, about 200 feet away, he could see a sunlit glade. He staggered and crashed through the undergrowth until he got into the open sunlight.

He was still swinging his arms and cursing when he heard something. He stood rock-still, then his cold, blue face, with eyebrows covered in hoar-frost suddenly, painfully, grinned. In the far distance guns rumbled again. The front line.

He started in the direction of the sound, moving as quickly as he could, conscious that another night like the last might finish him off. In the escape kit was a compass. Although the rumbling echoed confusingly all around, he got a rough bearing.

Soon he realized how weak he was, and the going got harder and harder. With his hands he scooped some virgin snow, got it into his mouth through cracked lips.

As the day wore on the sound of the artillery repeatedly came and went. About two hours after he’d started his trek he heard planes overhead. They too came and went; the silence returned; the guns had gone quiet.

He so desperately wanted to lie down, but the thought of the night kept him going.

At midday Bill suddenly knew he must be near a road. He could hear, and sometimes see, aircraft flying up and down, obviously searching for targets.

He took more care. Eventually the trees thinned and he could make out a strip of tarmac. Crouching from tree to tree he got nearer, sank down and waited. His breathing was ragged, his body racked with pain. Utter exhaustion slowly overtook him. Despite his best efforts, his eyes finally closed….

Bill was with Mary who had a little baby in her arms, his baby, which she was rocking from side to side in the warm sunlight.

He was tickling it and making baby-talk, when the ground shook and an explosion engulfed them in an orange flame.

Bill came to as the ground shook again. Ice and snow
rained down in a dense cloud from the trees. Disorientated and half blind he struggled up into the fog. Voices were shouting and screaming. It was seconds before he realized that they were German. Bill sank down again, behind the tree, trying to make sense of his surroundings. In the blueish gloom he suddenly realized that it had grown late, and that a German convoy had obviously risked pulling back – and had been caught in a strafing run. As if to confirm his conclusion the snarl of an aero-engine, whining in a dive, grew louder. It was another attack. He burrowed down in the earth and snow as other figures ran into the woods, doing the same. Bill was among the enemy.

The cannon-shells and rockets started ripping into the convoy. As the first plane flashed past he recognized it as a British Typhoon.

Explosions shook the earth he was clinging to, black acrid smoke drifted between the trees, machine-gunfire kept up a continuous background clatter. With deafening roars more low-flying Typhoons swept past at fifty feet, white stripes on their wings showing that they were from the Second Tactical Air Force.

It lasted less than a minute. When silence returned he cautiously raised his head. Black columns of smoke rose into the air from several points. His ears slowly perceived the sound of crackling flames, shouts and swearing.

Bill watched as German troops, their field-grey uniforms a shock to his senses, ran back to the column, and began pulling bodies from the wrecked vehicles.

An officer barked orders as he directed the work. Bill waited, terrified of discovery. He knew that if he was
found, they’d shoot him out of hand, or beat him to death with spades. Troops who’d just been strafed would have no pity on a downed flier.

With much shouting and crashing of boots the convoy was sorted out. In less than ten minutes those vehicles that were still useable were pulling out, troops riding on every available space, their faces pale, drawn, unshaven, the glazed eyes those of soldiers on the edge of extreme fatigue.

A defeated army in retreat.

Only the blackened, still-smoking carcasses of vehicles remained. And the dead.

Bill crawled in closer, waited, despite the overwhelming urge to search for food and warmth.

Eventually he got up to the remains of a half-track
troop-carrier
, its blackened hulk containing charred bodies, eyeless bony faces frozen in grinning horror. A smell of cooked human flesh filled the air. Bill thanked his bloody stars he was in the Air Force.

He stood near to the steel plating, which was still
glowing
with heat. He began to feel his frozen body grow warm and pain come into his limbs. He kept a constant look-out, but nothing moved except for a couple of crows searching through the carrion.

Later, he found some rations. He fought down the urge to stuff himself, found a knapsack and crammed in chunks of black bread and cheese, all the time looking around.

What to do next?

Bill looked at the woods, and then down the long straight road towards the front line – which had gone eerily
quiet. He would have liked to carry on, but his body was incapable.

With the decision to stay, the realization came that he had to be warmer than he had been last night.

He went to the next wreck, a truck, aware of the rapidly failing light. The Germans would be coming out in droves soon: retreating.

Bill put a foot on the burnt out, tyreless wheel and hauled himself up. As his eyes reached the top a German soldier lunged at him. With a scream Bill fell, landed
heavily
on his back. Winded, he couldn’t move.

But no figure appeared above to finish him off. No sound, no nothing.

When he got his breath back he crawled around to the other side, stood up, swaying, and then cautiously climbed up.

The dead soldier had fallen on to his face, and then rolled over on to his back, hands clasped to his belly, intestines spilling out. He was stone-dead, sightless eyes white in the gloom. When Bill got over the shock he began to search, finding a couple of half-burnt blankets, a sergeant’s
greatcoat
, albeit flecked with blood, and a trenching tool.

He’d just got his little hoard into the wood when he heard the sound of another convoy. Hidden, he waited, watching the column drive past before he stirred.

Bill got the overcoat on over his flying jacket, spread one blanket into the depression he’d dug, got into it and brought the other one over him, putting sand and pine needles back over him as much as possible.

He was not unaware that it was like a shallow grave.

He ate some bread and cheese, took a swig of water and tucked down, head under the blanket, feeling pleased with himself. Bill went to sleep so quickly it was like passing out.

But only for a couple of hours. When he awoke with a start, he thought at first it was because of the awful cold coming up through the earth. He struggled upright, used both blankets to cover his shoulders and head, and huddled back against a tree. But then he realized there was something else. The ground shook again, like an earth tremor, and he saw that the sky to the north east was angry red, a shepherd’s delight – except that it was man-made, with sudden beads of intense light expanding out with lightning speed in widening rings to the stars.

Seconds after each one the earth quivered, followed further seconds later by deep detonations.

The RAF was pasting something – using their fearsome Tall Boy bombs by the feel of it.

Behind and to his left the night sky was also rent with great flashes, flickering like sheet-lightning: the front line.

Eventually he was aware of smaller sounds – the steady roar of traffic on the road half a mile away, and,
incongruously
, an owl screeching like a madman in the wood.

Bill tried to get down under his blankets again, overcome with the feeling that the whole world was coming to a violent end.

Götterdämmerung
: the twilight of the gods: of one god.

Hitler.

The madman in the woods screamed again. Bill could only guess at the unimaginable horror that was going on all around him.

Would he ever see Mary again in this life?

Mary decided that she could take the waiting in her room no longer. She called the squadron office yet again, was told there was still no news, and then informed them of what she proposed.

The adjutant came on, sounding concerned. ‘My dear, is that wise? We can contact you so easily where you are.’

Unseen she nodded. ‘Yes, it’s what I want.’

The adjutant relented. ‘I’ll send someone down into the village straight away.’

When she rang off, the adjutant sat back, chewing on a pencil. He liked the girl very much, what he’d seen of her, but he wondered if she was really grasping the reality of the situation. Other pilots in the squadron had seen Bill’s plane go barreling down and explode. No sighting had been made of a ’chute.

That was several days ago now. It wasn’t looking
hopeful
. He’d already given orders for Bill’s effects to be boxed, ready to give to her.

Now she wanted to come and live in the village, to be nearer. It didn’t sound healthy to him. All the same he sent a trusted PFC, on a bike down to the village to ask around, starting at the local pub. He really didn’t want her around the squadron: it wouldn’t be good for moral.

He called her back later in the afternoon, saying quickly, without preamble, so that she wouldn’t jump to the wrong conclusion and think it was news about Bill:

‘We’ve found a room – on a farm, right beside the airfield. They’d be happy to have you – it’s five shillings a
week, and I gather that includes home-grown and cooked breakfast and dinner.’

The adjutant had had a change of heart, and arranged transport for her from the station. He wanted to do what he could for Mary, because arrangements for the transfer to mainland Europe had now been finalized.

By the time that took place, or earlier, they should be in a position to know for certain what Bill’s fate had been.

The Germans were falling back steadily, although with occasional pockets of resistance, but the area where his ship had gone down should be in Allied hands in days, and the drawn-out agony for her would be over.

For Mary it was strange, the first sight of his base with its MPs manning the barrier, their helmets and webbing white, which was why they were called ‘Snowdrops’ – said her driver.

This was home to Bill, where he had lived when she first met him.

After they passed the main gate she could see aircraft and huts in the distance. The adjutant had promised that he’d arrange for her to visit soon.

The car turned up a drive set in trees. After about half a mile they emerged in front of a half-timbered farmhouse adjacent to the airfield, its thatch roof sadly in need of repair. The jeep stopped in front of the oak door. As she got out, a flight of three Mustangs roared over the house,
peeling
off to land one by one in the far distance.

Seeing the planes coming home in the evening sky, like birds to roost, was immeasurably sad.

Bill should have been home, should have been with her. But until he was, she felt nearer to him here.

And he would feel her presence – fly home to
her
.

Bill had started to walk along the middle of the road. Sometimes he realized what he was doing, sometimes he was back home, walking to get gas for his car.

His leg ached and he knew he was hot, so much so that he had undone his great coat.

He heard the column coming even before it appeared around the bend, but when he turned his relief broke through his fever.