The Hornet's Sting (49 page)

Leslie Mitchell, the man who had finally authorized his release from Brixton, seemed to understand. He began to come to the office and asked Sneum for his opinion on various matters connected with Denmark. This, though, didn’t do much to lift Tommy’s spirits. He could never forget how some of his former resistance colleagues had found their way into the RAF. Many, such as Kjeld Pedersen and Arne Helvard, saw action every week, while he was left behind to push a pen in London. During his isolation in Milton Ernest, Tommy had tried to hide his jealousy from Arne, who visited him after returning from North Africa. Helvard was now stationed in nearby Cambridgeshire, where he was being trained to fly bombers. Tommy recalled: ‘Helvard came to see me and we talked about flying. He thought it was a bit stupid that he had more flying hours than the instructors on his course. I was just envious of his situation because I couldn’t fly.’

At midnight on 21 June 1943, precisely two years after Thomas Sneum had taken off with Kjeld Pedersen in the Hornet Moth, the midsummer skies came alive over south-east England. Bomber Command sent 705 planes into the air for a massive assault on the German city of Krefeld. The target lay just to the south-west of the industrial sprawl that merges Duisberg and Essen with Dortmund. It was to be a night Krefeld would never forget.

At 00.14 hours on 22 June, Flying Officer Arne Helvard climbed into a Stirling III, registration BK712 HA-D, at Downham Market airfield. The man who had accompanied Tommy Sneum across thicy channel separating Denmark from Sweden was ready to risk his life again over enemy territory, this time to be part of the massive raid. Helvard, who had been attached to 218 Squadron, was joined in the Stirling by seven new colleagues. Pilot Officer W.G. Shillinglaw of the Royal Australian Air Force was his only superior in the cockpit. Five of the crew were British sergeants: R.P. Goward (flight engineer), P.D. McArdle (navigator), T.R. Lunn (bomb aimer), A.E. Gurney and E.D. Hart (air gunners). The last crew member was a New Zealander, Flight Sergeant D.J. Ashby-Peckham (wireless operator).

Pilot Officer Shillinglaw and Flying Officer Helvard were taking their Stirling over Belgium en route to Germany just before 1.30 a.m. when they were spotted by Lieutenant Heinz-Wolfgang Schaufer in a Messerschmitt fighter. When he saw Schaufer closing in for the kill, Helvard must have known that his chances of survival were slim. The Stirling had none of the manoeuvrability of the German plane; and the clear, moonlit skies of a midsummer’s night that virtually guaranteed an accurate bombing mission also left many brave crews at the mercy of the enemy.

It is not known if Shillinglaw and Helvard had time to attempt any form of evasive action before Schaufer unleashed his machine-guns on their cockpit and fuselage. Even if he survived the spray of bullets and resulting flames, Arne could do little to prevent the Stirling from hurtling towards the Belgian fields below. Although he had a parachute, he was unable to escape from the crumbling cockpit. As one of the pilots, he would probably have felt a responsibility to wrestle with the controls until all hope was lost. By then, it would have been too late to eject.

The final impact of the crash was timed at 1.33 a.m. The villagers of Langdorp, Brabant, around sixty kilometers north-east of Brussels, knew long before they reached the smouldering wreckage that no one could be saved, and after the war the Air Ministry concluded that the eight crew members had died instantly. Their broken bodies were buried that same day in Langdorp churchyard. By then, the occupying German forces had arrived to supervise, and to their credit they gave the Allied crew a respectful send-off, with full military honors. Three or four German officers were present, along with six ordinary soldiers. Three rounds were fired over the grave, which was draped in a Union flag. Although no civilians were allowed to participate, a floral tribute was also placed at the graveside.

Helvard had prepared for death or capture. At the time of the ceremony, only three of the crew were identified—Hart, Lunn and an airman known as 1438341 Sergeant Turton. Arne had assumed the name Turton in order to protect his family and fiancée from any reprisals back home. He had been selfless to the last. It was typical of a man who had successfully spied against the Germans at Kastrup Airport, survived the treacherous ice floes between Denmark and Sweden, and stayed loyal to Tommy Sneum when the British thought their agent had been ‘turned.’

His colleagues in the hundreds of remaining bombers made sure that Germany paid dearly for the Luftwaffe’s marksmanship. The devastation caused to Krefeld that night was unmatched up to that point in the war. Forty-seven percent of the city center was obliterated as a bomb-induced fire raged out of control. A total of 5,517 houses were destroyed and 72,000 people lost their homes, as the Allies sought to break both the back of German manufacturing and the collective will of the country’s people. For 1,056 citizens of Krefeld, their lives ended as city buildings collapsed and burned in the firestorm. A further 4,550 German citizens were injured in the carnage

If the price for Hitler’s madness was disturbingly high on the ground, the price in the sky was also considerable. During the night, forty-four Allied aircraft were lost, including nine Stirlings. These were some of the highest Bomber Command casualty figures of the entire war. In the bright moonlight, once spotted and singled out for attack, poor Helvard and many others never stood a chance.

I
N LONDON, CHRISTMAS MOELLER asked Sneum into his private office and began to shuffle uncomfortably in his seat. It was obvious something was seriously wrong. Tommy waited for the older man to speak. The politician came straight to the point: ‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but your friend Helvard has been shot down. I’m sorry.’

Tommy recalled feeling numb. ‘I didn’t know how to feel, apart from sad, because we didn’t know if he had survived or not. Many people were shot down, survived somehow, and turned up at the end of the war.’

In Arne’s case, though, hope slowly faded. At least he had rediscovered the supreme freedom of flight that he and Tommy had first tasted as teenagers before he met his end. Not that his fiancée Vita, waiting back in Copenhagen, would have seen it that way when she heard that all her dreams had been shattered.

Sneum felt helpless, living out his life in a tiny, claustrophobic office, desperate to make any kind of impression on the war that was passing him by. But the monotony was broken temporarily in early July 1943, when SIS suddenly awarded him
£
2750. They didn’t call it compensation; instead, the sum was described as ‘agent’s back-pay.’ It appeared to be a sweetener, a belated attempt to buy back Sneum’s loyalty after a year’s freedom had been denied him. Perhaps they felt he would be less dangerous if they managed to make him feel that he was still on their side.

The sum was a fortune for any young man to have in his pocket. Was it some sort of trap, Sneum wondered, to induce him to behave so erratically that he had to be silenced for ever? He didn’t really care if it was. Temporarily rich in an exciting city, he was determined to spend his new-found riches in style.

On the first Friday night after he received the money, Sneum took an old girlfriend called Rosy, the manageress from the Wellington Club, to another watering hole which had become a favorite Danish haunt in the West End of London. Rosy was one of Tommy’s favorites, and there were good reasons why. He recalled: ‘She was dark-haired, not the most beautiful, but she had nice tits. She was an inch or two taller than me, but then most of them were. What made Rosy special was that she could fuck all day long, and she was the sexiest girl I had in England.’

Tommy was looking forward to a good drink and another night of passion when something suddenly distracted him in that West End pub. For there, to his amazement, he spotted Kjeld Pedersen, propping up the bar alone.

‘You learned to fly properly yet?’ yelled Sneum across the crowded room.

‘My God, they’ve let you out!’ shouted back Pedersen. ‘750. Thust be mad!’

The Danish pilots met in a bear-hug, their first since falling exhausted into each other’s arms in a field near Newcastle back in the summer of 1941. So much had happened since they landed the Hornet Moth and chose separate paths in service of the British. Kjeld explained that he had only recently heard about Sneum’s difficulties, because he had just come back from North Africa for a spot of leave. He had been there since 6 December 1942, with 33 and 94 Squadrons, flying Hawker Hurricanes. He was due to face another six months running the gauntlet above the German guns in the desert, and had already built up quite a thirst.

‘Well, you’re lucky, because we have money to spend,’ said Sneum with a smile.

‘I’ve got some, don’t worry,’ Kjeld assured him.

Tommy was still grinning. ‘I think I may have a little more.’

‘What is this, a competition?’ Pedersen was reaching for his wallet.

‘Not unless you have about three grand in there,’ said Sneum, grabbing his friend’s arm. ‘Now, we’re going to split it between you, me and Rosy here, and see who can spend the most in a weekend.’

Pedersen’s mouth dropped open. ‘How much?’

The trio took the best shops, restaurants and clubs by storm. For forty-eight hours the champagne flowed, the party raged and cash changed hands in extraordinary amounts. ‘We ate goose-liver paté and drank the best champagne, Dom Perignon,’ Tommy explained. Even then, they found it impossible to get rid of more than a thousand pounds between them.

At the end of their orgy of spending, the trio exchanged wonderful presents. Watches, jewellery and the finest clothes were opened by each laughing participant in turn, to the astonishment of fellow customers in the most elegant restaurants and hotel lobbies. Everything was paid for in cash with perfect nonchalance, to the bemusement of stunned staff in each top establishment. Perhaps it was inevitable that they attracted unwanted attention. They began to notice that they were being followed by young men who looked to Sneum like SIS agents. He didn’t care. MI6 had financed the party, so he thought it fitting that their representatives should be allowed a taste of the anarchy. In full view of the agents of his former employers, Sneum continued to spend like there was no tomorrow. They drank to Helvard. They drank to flying. They drank to living for the moment.

Mrs Knauer, Tommy’s landlady, didn’t understand living for the moment, and she was running out of patience. He explained: ‘Reeny, from the farm, came to London and stayed with me sometimes at the house. Mrs Knauer didn’t like that. But then I was also going out with Rosy and Audrey simultaneously, so the Knauers and Christmas Moellers were angry with me for that, too. I had all this money, I had to spend it, and a lot of it went on whoring and fucking. I’ve always loved women.’

However, he would have swapped it all for the chance to get back into the Danish resistance. Nevertheless, the man he had recruited, Duus Hansen, was doing a fine job in Tommy’s absence. And he was about to make London, Tommy’s playground, a safer place for the duration of the war.

On 16 July Duus Hansen recved a radio message from an SIS department known to him as ‘Hannibal.’ It read: ‘Can you report on activity at Peenemunde near Greifswald where enemy are producing and experimenting with long-range rockets. Believe new radio apparatus on Bornholm connected with these experiments. We would like description of rocket and emplacement and scale of rocket and projector production at Peenemunde.’

Even to Duus Hansen, whose network now included the Princes of Danish Intelligence, this must have sounded like an impossible mission. But it was clear that the British were extremely anxious about Hitler’s new rocket technology, because he received a similar request from Ralph Hollingworth of SOE. Once again, rival British departments were vying for center stage in Denmark.

Duus Hansen made discreet contact with resistance sympathizers in the relevant locations, to see what they might unearth. The Danish naval officer in charge on the island of Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen, was one such man. Fate was about to hand him a vital role in helping the British to understand Hitler’s V-rockets.

Back in London, Tommy Sneum knew something big was happening, and all of a sudden he was glad that he had taken the opportunity to enjoy himself while he still could: