I feel like my world has ended.
But it hasn’t – not even the war has ended yet. It just keeps going relentlessly on and on and on, like a concentration camp roll call when they can’t get the numbers to come out right. And I guess I just go on and on too.
I wonder what has happened to Nick since last August. Oh, Nick! I have dreamed of seeing him again for so long, made up all those stories about him coming to rescue me – but what will he think when he sees what a walking corpse I’ve become? How can I tell him what happened to me, all I’ve seen and had to do?
A lot of it is a blur anyway. I don’t remember the first time I thought I was so hungry I was going to die. I don’t remember when the chilblains started, or whether they were on my hands or feet first. I don’t remember the details of being beaten. I know my sentence was ‘with force’ which means on your bare backside, but I don’t remember them pulling up my dress, not either time. I remember trying to count the blows, but not what it felt like. I have blocked it out.
I remember standing through a roll call in the dark, at the end of a twelve-hour workday when I’d been so behind that I didn’t get to stop to eat, and being so cold it hurt, and someone behind me started to cry. And then I started crying too, and in ten seconds the whole block was crying. And they shut us up by threatening us with the dogs, and then they made us stand there for another hour – just those of us who were crying. Everyone else, thousands of them, went to bed, but Block 32 was still standing there trying not to cry while we all slowly froze to death.
But I don’t remember what it felt like to be that cold. Isn’t that crazy? I can’t imagine what it felt like. And it couldn’t have been more than a few months ago.
The strange thing is, nothing about the past winter has taken the edge off the memory of my last ATA ferry delivery, the day I took off from Camp Los Angeles in France and landed somewhere near Mannheim in Germany.
I’m going to write it down. I’m wide awake and I’m sick of thinking over and over about the last twenty-four hours’ worth of disaster. Maybe if I think hard about last September, I will be able to forget about today for long enough to let me go to sleep.
Uncle Roger left Camp LA before I did. The RAF pilot arrived in the Spitfire I was supposed to take back to England and we swapped planes; I stood next to the mechanic who telephoned Caen to say I might land there to refuel. I wonder if Caen ever looked for me. Maybe everybody thinks I ran out of fuel over the English Channel.
I remember that flight as if I had the map sitting on my lap with the route outlined in china pencil and a great big ‘X Marks the Spot’ over épernay. That is where I met the flying bomb. Was it aimed at Paris? Was it one last attempt to destroy Paris? It must have been air-launched, but I don’t know where it was heading. It was too far inland to be aimed at London. I think about this a lot . . . Where that bomb was heading. Other than on a collision course with me, I mean.
I thought it was another plane at first. It looked like another plane. I had a perfectly clear view of it as it came slowly closer and closer, seeming to hover in the same spot just ahead of my wing tip, an unbudging speck in the distant sky like a little black star, or a bug. It didn’t scare me. I assumed it was an Allied plane because I was over Allied territory. So I did exactly what Maddie said she’d done when she saw a flying bomb in the air – I waggled my wings at it. And of course got no response.
I thought, gee whiz, the pilot must be looking at his map – or blind – or asleep – Or there isn’t any pilot.
I should have made a steep turn to get out of its way. This is what I dread telling Daddy. That I went after it on purpose.
I was so sure it was headed for Paris, beautiful Paris. Still intact. And if this bomb hit its target there would be a gigantic crater, broken glass everywhere, dust, summer trees that looked like winter, just like London – I couldn’t stand it.
I pushed the Spitfire’s nose down and went into a screaming downhill dive to gain speed, and the bomb sped straight on about a hundred feet over me. I glanced up and saw it, huge, in silhouette for a fraction of a second, a black cross of wings and fuselage blotting out the sky. Then I thrust on full power and pulled out of the dive in a climbing turn.
Then I was chasing it.
I wasn’t thinking about engine pressure or fuel or anything – I was just hell bent on getting every extra second possible of power and speed out of that Spitfire. And yard by yard, I gained on the bomb.
I must have been going 400 miles an hour. But it didn’t feel fast. It felt like getting your teeth pulled.
‘Come on – come on –’
I talked to the plane like it was a racehorse. I couldn’t hear a thing with full power; I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice.
‘Come on – nearly there!’
And then I’d overshot it. Getting the speed right was the hardest thing I have ever done – probably the best flying I have ever done too. I overtook the bomb four times before I found that sweet place on the throttle that let me scream along beside it in the air. And then I got my wing under the bomb’s wing on the first try. I didn’t even touch it. I saw the bomb wobble in the air and I thrust full power on again to get out of its way. Then I looked back over my shoulder and saw the bomb tip down gently, gently into a spin, just like Celia’s Tempest.
I let out a scream of nerve and fury and exhilaration, and cut the power and set up the Spit for a straight and level cruise, and began to battle the first wave of guilt.
Do you have ANY IDEA how much fuel you just wasted?
I didn’t even see the stupid bomb hit the ground – I was so busy trying to re-establish myself in real life. It must be what Superman feels like after racing through the sky after a speeding locomotive and then ten seconds later peering at the world through Clark Kent’s near-sighted glasses.
How much fuel have I wasted and where the heck am I?
How much fuel have I wasted and where the heck am I and did I damage the engine?
I was starting to panic. I knew I had to calm down, so I began to orbit – long, lazy ovals over rolling French crazy-quilt fields and woods. I was too high to see where my bomb hit – or maybe I was already too far away to see it. I knew I had to figure out where I was and how to get to Caen from there. I’d been relay-racing with the bomb for about a quarter of an hour, which meant I was now ironically south-west of Paris, about halfway between Paris and Dijon – that bomb wouldn’t have hit Paris anyway. I thought and scribbled on my map for ten minutes while I circled. I knew that all the time I was circling I was wasting still more fuel, but I needed to get it right.
I guess Daddy would say I had my head down in the cockpit for too long. He’d say I didn’t keep enough of a lookout. It’s true I didn’t see them coming. But I don’t think I could have done anything about it even if I had.
I didn’t know what the intercepting planes were. I knew they were German and I could tell they had jet engines, but I didn’t have a clue what kind of plane they were. They were in Luftwaffe camouflage, with black crosses on their fuselages and swastikas on their tailplanes. Their engines hung down from their wings like bombs. I’d never seen anything fly that fast.