Bomber (17 page)

The plane lurched again to fly level but then tilted sickeningly to the right. There it stayed. Holberg was obviously having real problems flying level. Harry wondered how much longer he would be able to maintain control.

When the plane steadied, there was a terrible banging right over Harry’s head. He tried to curl into a little ball, but there was barely space to change his position as it was. He held his hands over his head, feeling the blows mere inches from his flying helmet. They stopped, and when he looked up he could see Stearley had bashed a dent in the thin aluminium hatch. Now he was levering it open with a large wrench from the toolbox in the radio compartment.

Stearley reached in to help Harry out. The
Macey May
lurched again in the sky and the two of them fell against the side of the plane. It was freezing there with a strong rush of incoming air from the bomb bay doors and great holes scattered around the fuselage.

Harry took a look around the waist. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. Now he could see what had happened earlier. An ammunition box had exploded, adding to the bullet holes that peppered the fuselage. In places the whole fabric of the aircraft had torn away.

Dalinsky was pitched over by the left waist window, his back pressed against the side of the plane. He had a great black stain on his flying jacket, spreading out from the middle of his chest. Even though his oxygen mask was still attached to his face, there was a stillness about him that told Harry he was dead. He must have been caught by that last flak burst.

John was there too, lying on his back. Great patches of blood had seeped through his flying suit and blood was also spreading across the wooden floorboards beneath him. His eyes were screwed tight. He was still alive and obviously in a lot of pain.

Harry took off his own glove and one of John’s and held his friend’s left hand, choking back a cry of despair.

‘Harry,’ John said between laboured breaths. ‘A favour … top pocket … there’s a photo.’

It was the one of his girl, Shirley, holding on to her hat on the beach. John had shown it to Harry when they were in London and told him he had just asked her to marry him.

John held the picture in his right hand, his face scrunched up in pain, his breath coming in short gasps. Then something left him. The photo flew from his dead hand, caught in the swirling currents that buffeted the inside of the
Fortress, and disappeared through one of the gaping holes close to the tail.

Harry felt John’s hand go limp in his. He stood up in a daze, overwhelmed by what was happening around him.

The view down to the tail was obscured by the tail wheel housing, but he could see the rear gun position was heavily damaged, with several large holes open to the sky.

‘What happened to Corrales?’ he asked Stearley.

The lieutenant just shook his head.

‘Is he definitely dead? Don’t we need to help him?’

A further shake of the head. Then Stearley said, ‘Friedman, get out now, or stay and help us. It’s OK if you go. LaFitte and Bortz have already jumped.’

‘I’ll stay,’ said Harry. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘We need to see if Cain’s still in the nose. Maybe he’s injured. Maybe he’s gone too. And see what we can do to help Berg …’ Stearley’s words were snatched from his mouth. The
Macey May
gave another lurch from the horizontal. It steadied, still on a ten-degree tilt.

‘Get your chute on,’ said the co-pilot.

Harry reached for his chute, hanging in the waist above his turret, but it was ripped to pieces, silk spilling out under the radio op table.

‘You gotta take Skaggs’s chute,’ said Stearley.

Between them they managed to lift the radio operator’s dead body up from his seat and detach the parachute from his back. Harry realised afresh he had never done a parachute jump before and now he felt horribly unprepared.

The
Macey May
lurched again, forward this time. And began a slight but definite dive.

The dive grew steeper. The two remaining engines were screaming. Another explosion just outside shook the plane, and through the little observation window Harry could see the whole wing was ablaze. Stearley was forcing himself along, battling the inrushing air from the bomb bay and G-forces that were pushing him back like a strong gale.

Harry grabbed the parachute from Stearley’s hand and had strapped it on his back just as the
Macey May
began to tip to the right. For a moment he thought Holberg must have regained control of the aircraft but the turn continued and he realised this was a spin rather than a controlled manoeuvre. If they were going to get out, they had mere seconds to do it.

His body was pressed hard against the side of the plane and Harry scrambled desperately to fasten the parachute. As he locked in the final clip the spinning grew intolerable. He was pinned against the side as surely as if he were held by shackles. He could feel the flesh on his face pulling back and his eyes bulged open. Stearley was close by, struggling to extract himself, a look of pure horror on his face.

Through the fuselage Harry could feel the heat of the wing fire on his back – even through the thickness of his flying suit. The heat and smoke were catching in his throat. The bulkhead partition was pressing hard into his shoulder. Would he burn to death in the air or be killed in one final hammer blow as the Fortress plunged to the ground? Harry
prayed he would not still be conscious when either of those things came to pass.

There was a horrible shearing sound just behind him and he felt the weight of the plane change. The spinning stopped but he was also aware of the sensation of falling even faster through the sky. The intense heat had gone, but that probably meant the wing had broken away. Any tiny fraction of hope that Holberg would retain control of his doomed bomber was gone. The spinning started again and this time Harry felt his blood begin to drain from his head. There was no doubt now. He was going to die. The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was Stearley’s terrified face.

In the blackness there was a grinding, cranking sound, like the sky being ripped to pieces, and Harry’s blood-starved brain told him that was the airplane crashing into the ground. He thought it would be painful but it wasn’t at all, and now he was falling through crisp clear air, feeling strangely serene about his own death. He was terrified before it happened of course, but this wasn’t too bad.

It was cold though – really cold. He could feel wind whipping past his face, and his hair was going all over the place. Suddenly he opened his eyes. He was falling though the sky, and the ground was rushing towards him at terrifying speed. There was a forest below, and fields and hedges, all close enough to see in some detail.

Groggy though he was, he instinctively reached for the release mechanism on his parachute and the silk canopy slithered out of its bag like a high-speed snake. There was a crack of air as his chute billowed over his head, followed by a sharp pain in his crotch – like being kicked in the nuts. The jerk of the harness left him breathless, as the parachute stalled his fall.

All at once the ground stopped hurtling towards him. There was a field with cows in it and the forest he had seen. Harry decided the field was a better place to land and he would steer towards that. He was momentarily distracted by several violent crashes – like a house collapsing. He supposed that was the
Macey May
hitting the ground somewhere behind him. He realised with sickening certainty that those were the moments anyone left in the B-17 met a violent death.

He turned to see two palls of smoke and flame rising from fields maybe a mile away. Mesmerised by the debris that had once been his Fortress, he hit the ground unexpectedly, with a hefty thud that jarred every bone in his body. He was lucky. It was soft and muddy. The chute came down right on top of him, leaving him struggling to unravel himself.

As he emerged from the tangle of silk and cord, he realised he had just made his first parachute jump. Harry had felt so frightened as he fell through the sky it didn’t occur to him that this was an entirely new experience. He felt a momentary relief that he had managed it without breaking a limb.

Harry hoped no one had seen him falling through the sky. He wondered where he was and tried to remember all the things they’d told him in escape classes. Gather your chute and bury it. Make contact with the local Resistance. Get out of your flying clothes as soon as possible. But what was he supposed to do? Walk round in his electrically heated long johns?

He gathered the chute and folded it as best he could, then carried it over his shoulder and dragged his bruised and aching body into the shelter of the trees.

A watery sun peeped out from behind the clouds and Harry stared up through the branches and fading tattered leaves at the sky. He had been up there just minutes before. How had he got out of that airplane? Almost certainly it had broken into pieces on the way down.

He had nearly died several times today. He had survived while many of the crew hadn’t. Cain, Holberg, they had still been on board. They must have died in the crash. Did Stearley escape like him? And he knew for sure John Hill, Dalinsky, Corrales and Skaggs were dead. He didn’t know whether to feel devastated or ecstatic. He had felt a moment of relief when he hit the ground. Now he just felt dazed and numb.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud and exhaustion swept over him. As his eyelids began to droop he noticed another Fortress through the trees, smoke pouring from two right engines. It was maybe a thousand feet in the air. Had the crew escaped? He could see the bomb bay doors open, so maybe they had all jumped. The aircraft was going to crash somewhere around here, but in truth he didn’t care. He was alive. That was all that mattered. This morning, when they had all gathered together in front of the
Macey May
before take-off, seemed like a lifetime ago.

Harry was supposed to bury his parachute, but he knew he might have to sleep outdoors and he was reluctant to
get rid of something that would keep him warm at night. So he carried it over his shoulder and walked deeper into the forest. Here he would decide what to do next.

He needed to stop and rest. Absent-mindedly glancing at his wristwatch, he realised he had lost it. It was probably somewhere in the wreckage of the
Macey May
. He came to a dip in the ground, full of fallen leaves. This seemed as good a place as any to hide. So he wrapped himself in the chute, then covered himself with leaves and in seconds he was asleep.

Back at the
Macey May
’s hardstand at Kirkstead, the ground crew were getting increasingly despondent. It was starting to get dark now and the chill autumn wind didn’t help; even in the fur-lined flying jackets most had managed to beg or steal over the months, they were chilled to the bone. Four of the squadron’s twelve Fortresses had failed to return with the rest, and the last of the stragglers had come in on two engines at least half an hour ago. Ernie Benik glanced at his wristwatch and knew Holberg’s Fortress would have run out of fuel long ago. Ernie gathered his crew around. ‘Boys, they’re not coming back.’

They walked back to their hut. The weight of their loss hung dense and silent, like a great black cloud. Ernie cracked open a bottle of rum and poured them all a drink.

When Harry woke he noticed at once that it was almost dark, and he could see the branches on the trees above
him silhouetted against a blue-black sky. All at once he realised he would now be posted missing and his parents would have no idea whether he was alive or dead. The thought troubled him immensely until he was distracted by the distant sound of barking. He wondered if there was a search party with tracker dogs out to find downed Allied airmen.

With the prospect of capture looming he felt in his flying jacket pocket for his copy of the
Eastern Daily Press
. It had gone. Sometime, during this terrible day, he had lost it. He felt around his neck for his dog tags, remembering that American airmen who had lost theirs could be shot as spies. Those tags were still there. But then he remembered with a start that his tags had an ‘H’ for Hebrew stamped on them. They’d been told the Nazis were supposed to treat Jewish Americans the same as any other soldier or airman. But they’d been told a lot of things and not all of them were true. He wondered if there was anything about his appearance that the Germans might think especially Jewish, and whether this would make him easy to spot.

Harry was warm in his parachute and his flying clothes, but he was also very thirsty and hungry. Reluctantly he stirred himself, folded his parachute and picked his way through the debris of the forest.

After ten minutes he stumbled across a path and, as he could think of no better plan, he followed it. By now it was dark, but a three-quarter moon cast a light that was bright enough to see where he was going.

His thirst was tormenting him now and his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. Ahead he could see a clear horizon between the trees. Here was the edge of the forest. Beyond lay a farmhouse clearing with several surrounding buildings, including a barn. And it was likely the farm would have been built close to a stream or brook.

Harry crept cautiously forward. There was a dim light on in the kitchen, and shadows flitted across the curtains. In escape classes they had warned them that not every French or Dutch civilian would be interested in helping them – indeed, they might immediately betray them.

Harry thought the barn offered him the best place to hide, and when he peered into it, the interior just about discernible in the dim light of the moon, he could see it was a good spot. He also heard two sounds that lifted his spirits: the clucking of hens and the trickle of a brook.

He could wait no longer. Following the sound of running water, Harry went face down on the edge of a small brook, indifferent to the mud on its bank. He drank down the cold, clear water until he could drink no more.

Back at the barn he looked at the hens and wondered if he could eat a raw egg. But with his stomach now full of water, his hunger pangs also subsided. He climbed stacked hay bales to the top of the barn, arranged himself at its far edge and wrapped his parachute around him again.