World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head. Jack Higgins
for some ten months. They’d flown out of Leipzig learning their airmanship on the old passenger zeppelins, including the famous Viktoria-Luise. They were happy days. But that was a long time ago. Now the war seemed to be a grim contest of endurance.
Oberleutnant Hildmann, the observation officer – who was also second in command – was a martinet who’d served many years with the Baltic Fleet. It was he who had assigned Peter to navigation. Actually this was the steersman’s job, but Peter’s effortless mental arithmetic gave him a great advantage when it came to working out endless triangles of velocity. It was a skill worth having when Headquarters radioed so many different wind speeds, and in the black night they tried to estimate their position over the darkened enemy landscape.
Peter had been given a sheltered corner of the chilly, windswept control gondola in which to spread his navigation charts. Now he scribbled the airship’s course and her estimated speed on a piece of paper, and tried to catch glimpses of the North German coast. Upon the map he would then draw a triangle, and from this get an idea of what winds the night would bring.
There was cumulus cloud to the north and a scattering of cirrus. The forecast said that there would be scattered clouds over eastern England by evening. That was good news: cloud provided a place to hide.
When they reached Norderney – a small island in the North Sea used as a navigation pinpoint – Peter spotted several other zeppelins. The sun shone brightly on their silver fabric. One of them, well to the rear, was easily recognized as the Dragon: her engines were worn out with so many war flights over these waters, so that her mechanics had to nurse the noisy machinery all the way. Nearer was the L23, with another naval airship moving through the mist beyond. It was a big raid today. Rumours said that there were a dozen naval airships engaged, and three or four army airships, too. Perhaps this would be the raid that would convince the British to seek peace terms. The newspapers all said that the British were reeling under the air raids on London, and the foolhardy British offensive along the river Somme in July had been a bloodletting for them.
For Peter, London was just a dim memory. It seemed a long time ago since he had last visited his grandparents in the big house there. He remembered his grandfather and the big English fruitcakes that were served at four o’clock each day. He remembered the busy streets in the City, where Grandfather had an office, and the quiet gardens and the street musicians to whom Grandfather always gave money. Especially vividly he recalled the piper, a Highlander in kilt and full Scots costume. He seemed too haughty to ask for money, but he stooped to pick up the coins thrown from the nursery window. The piper always came by about teatime, and the little German band came soon after. The bandleader was a big fellow with a red face and furious arm movements. He was astonished when Pauli responded to their music with rough and rude Berlin slang.
Peter’s memories of London had no meaning for him now. His boyhood desire to become an explorer was almost forgotten. The war had changed him. He’d lost too many comrades to relish these bombing missions. He was proud of his active, dangerous role, but when victory came he’d be content to spend the rest of his life in Berlin.
The whistle on the speaking tube sounded. Peter took the whistle from the tube, which he then put to his ear: ‘Hello?’ It was the lookout reporting the sighting of a ship: a German destroyer heading for Bremen. Peter noted it in the log and went back to his charts. They were at the rendezvous. Now commenced the worst part of the mission. Here at the rendezvous there would be hours of waiting, the engines ticking over just enough to hold position in the air. A skeleton crew on duty and anything up to a dozen men in hammocks slung along the gangways. No one would sleep; no one ever slept. You just stretched out and wondered what the night would bring. You remembered the stories about the airships that had broken up in mid-air or burst into flames. You wondered if the British had improved upon their anti-aircraft gunfire or perfected the incendiary bullets that the fighter planes fired.
The whitecapped sea would soon darken. But the days were long up here in the sky. Although the sun sank lower and lower, the waiting airships remained bathed in its light, glowing with that golden luminosity that is so like flame.
‘Winter. Leave whatever you’re doing and go to the number-two gun position: the telephone is not working.’
The observation officer was not a bad fellow, but he, too, succumbed to the nervousness of these waiting periods. Peter knew that there was nothing wrong with the telephone. The gunners were down inside the hull, out of the cold airstream, trying to keep warm. Once you got cold there was no way to get warm again: there was no such thing as a warm place on a naval airship. And who could blame the gun crew? There was no chance of enemy aircraft out here, so far from the English coast.
‘Ja, Herr Oberleutnant. Right away,’ Peter saluted him. Saluting was not insisted on in such circumstances, but Hildmann, like most regular officers of the old navy, didn’t like the ‘sloppy informality’ of the Airship Division.
Peter climbed the short ladder that connected the control gondola to the keel. To get to the upper gun position took Peter right through the airship’s hull. As he walked along the narrow gangway, he looked down through the gaps in the flapping outer cover and could see the ocean, almost three thousand feet below. The water was grey and spumy, speckled with the last low rays of sunlight coming through the broken cloud. Peter didn’t look down except when he had to. The ocean was a threatening sight. He had never enjoyed sailing since that day when he’d nearly drowned, and the prospect of serving on a surface vessel filled him with horror.
Some light was reflected from below, but the inside of the airship was dark. Above him the huge gas cells moved constantly. All around him there were noises: it was like being in the bowels of some huge monster. Besides the rustling of the gas cells there was the creaking of the aluminium framework along which he walked and the musical cries of thousands of steel bracing wires.
It was a fearsomely long vertical ladder that took him up between the gas cells to the very top of the envelope. Finally he emerged into the daylight on the top of the zeppelin. Suddenly it was very sunny, but the air was bitterly cold and he had to hold tight to the safety rail. What a curious place it was up here on the upper side of the hull. The silver fabric sloped away to each side, and the great length of the airship was emphasized. What an amazing achievement it was for man to build a flying machine as big as a cathedral.
Peter stood there staring for a moment or two. To the port-side he could see two other zeppelins. They were higher, by several hundred feet. Ahead was a flicker of light reflected off another airship’s fabric. That would be the old Dragon fighting to gain height. She’d caught up with the armada. It was good to see her so close; Peter had friends aboard her. They were not alone here in the upper air.
It was late afternoon. Still the airships glowed with sunlight. Soon, as the sun sank lower, the airships would darken one by one, darken like lights being extinguished. Then, when even the highest one went dark, they would move off towards England. Peter shivered; it was cold up here, very cold.
‘Hennig!’ called Peter loudly. He knew where the fellow would be hiding: all the gunners took shelter, but Hennig was the laziest.
‘What’s wrong, Herr Leutnant?’ He emerged blinking into the light and behind him came the loader, a diminutive youth named Stein, who followed the gunner everywhere. Stein was a Bolshevik agitator, though so far he’d been too sly to be caught spreading sedition amongst the seamen. Still, his cunning hadn’t saved him from several nasty beatings from fellow sailors who opposed his political views. Hennig was not thought to be a Bolshevik, but the two men were individualistic to the point of eccentricity, and neither would be welcomed into other gun teams. So they had formed an alliance, a pact of mutual assistance. Erich Hennig pushed his assistant gently aside. It was a gesture that said that if there was any blame to be taken he would take it. ‘What’s wrong, Leutnant?’ he said again. Hennig was a slim, pale youth of about Peter’s age. His dark eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips thin and bloodless.
‘You should be at the gun, Hennig.’
‘Ja, Herr Leutnant.’ Hennig smiled. It was a provocative and superior smile, the smile a man gave to show himself and others that he was not subject to authority.