Dürer’s birthplace was in the Altstadt. Teddy had grown up with two of Dürer’s prints. They had hung in the morning room at Fox Corner—one of a hare and one of a pair of red squirrels. The intelligence officer didn’t mention Dürer, she was more interested in the flak and searchlight positions that were marked on the map with green and red celluloid overlays. The crews, too, paid careful attention to them, their unease growing all the time as they looked at the long straight red ribbon.
But it was the moon that was really upsetting them, upsetting Teddy too. It was an unusually bright half-moon and it was going to be shining down on them like a bright coin through a long dark night. Their unhappiness was compounded when they were told they were to fly through the Cologne gap. It was “unlikely” to be heavily defended this late in the year, they were told. Really, Teddy thought? The route passed close to the Ruhr and Frankfurt defences, to night fighter airfields and their beacons, Ida and Otto, around which the German fighters circled, waiting, like hawks after pigeons.
The Met officer took the stage and gave details of wind speeds, cloud conditions and the weather likely to be encountered. He said there was a “possibility” of fairly good cloud cover on the way there and back that “might” hide them from the fighters. The word “possibility” made them shift nervously in their seats. The word “might” made it worse. “Fairly” wasn’t too promising either. It would be clear over the target, he said, even though the first Pathfinders had already reported cumulus at eight thousand feet, information that wasn’t passed on to the crews. They needed it to be the other way round—cloud on that long leg to hide them from the fighters and the moon illuminating their target.
The CO had confided in Teddy that he was “certain” the op would be scrubbed. Teddy didn’t know why it had been considered in the first place. Churchill liked the target. Harris liked the target. Teddy didn’t. He didn’t suppose Harris and Churchill cared much for his opinion.
The specialist leaders made a few pertinent remarks. The navigators were taken over the route and the turning points. The sparks were reminded of their frequencies for the night. The bombing leaders detailed the payload and ratio of high explosive to incendiaries and the timing and phasing of attacks, the colours of the target indicators that they were to drop their bombs on. Everyone was reminded of the colours of the day. They all knew of crews shot down by friendly fire for shooting off the wrong colours of the day.
Then Teddy was up. A constant course of two hundred and sixty-five miles over well-defended enemy territory in bright moonlight with little chance of cloud cover. For the sake of morale (the quietly confident leader) he tried to spin these bleak facts into something less dire—highlighting again the importance of the city as an industrial and transport centre, the blow to enemy morale, and so on. The long leg will suggest a number of other possible targets to the fighters so they will be distracted from the Cologne gap. The sheer simplicity of the long leg will fool them and the lack of doglegs will conserve fuel, and that means that you can carry heavier bomb loads. And, being more direct, it will mean less fatigue for you, you will get there quicker, and the quicker you get there the quicker you will get safely back here. And keep a tight bomber stream. Always.
He sat down again. They trusted him, he could see it on their haggard faces. There was no going back for them now so it was best that they went out in a good frame of mind. There was nothing worse than setting out oppressed by the feeling that you were for the chop. He remembered Duisburg, the last op of his first tour, how his crew had been jittery, convinced they were going for a burton. Two of them had, of course. George and Vic. Of J-Jig’s original crew there was only himself and Mac left. He had a letter from Mac, telling him that he had got married, honeymooned at Niagara, “little one on the way.” The war was over for Mac.
Kenny had gone on to train new air-gunners at a gunnery school and had written a letter to Teddy in his almost illiterate hand. “Me—an instructor! Who’d have thought it?” A few weeks later he was in an aircraft that crash-landed on return from a cross-country training exercise. Three crew members survived. Kenny wasn’t one of them. One of his many sisters wrote to Teddy, “Wee Kenny is an angel now,” in a hand almost as poor as Kenny’s. If only that were true, Teddy thought, if only the ranks of Spenser’s bright squadrons were being swelled by those of Bomber Command. But they weren’t. The dead were dead. And they were legion.
Kenny should have kept his mangy black cat instead of giving it to Vic Bennett’s baby. A letter had wound its way to him eventually, not from Lil but from Mrs. Bennett, a reluctantly proud new grandmother. “A girl, not much to look at but she’ll do.” A Margaret, not an Edward, and Teddy was relieved that he didn’t have a namesake. Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?