Air Bridge

CHAPTER SEVEN

For a long time after the plane had disappeared I stood there on the fringe of the woods gazing at the empty expanse of the airfield. A small wind whispered in the upper branches of the fir trees and every few minutes there was the distant drone of a plane — airlift pilots flying down the corridor to Berlin. Those were the only sounds. The cold seeped through my flying suit, stiffening my limbs, and at length I turned and walked into the woods. A few steps and I had lost the airfield. The trees closed round me and I was in a world apart. It was very still there in the woods, even the sound of my footsteps was muffled by the carpet of pine needles. I could still hear the planes, but I couldn’t see them. The branches of the trees cut me off from the sky and only a ghostly radiance told me that the moon still filled the world with its white light.

I found a path and followed it to the earth mound of an old dispersal point. The frost-cracked concrete was a white blaze in the moonlight, cutting through the dark ranks of the trees to the open plain of the airfield. I stopped there to consider what I should do. My mind went back to the scene in the plane. We had been flying almost due south when Tubby’s body slid through the open doorway. I had gone straight back to the cockpit and then I had looked through my side window and seen Hollmind airfield below me. That meant that Tubby had gone out north and slightly west of the field.

I followed the line of the concrete till I came out on to the edge of the airfield and turned left, walking in the shadow of the woods till I reached the north-west extremity of the field. Buildings began there, shapeless heaps of broken rubble. I skirted these and entered the woods again, following a path that ran in the direction I wanted to go.

It was four o’clock when I began my search. I remember thinking that Saeton would be at Wunstorf. 1 The plane would be parked on the loading apron in the row of Tudors where it had stood before. Only the crew would be different — and the numbers and the engines. He’d be reporting to Ops and checking in at the mess, finding a bed in the echoing concrete corridors of that labyrinth that housed the human force of the airlift. He’d be one of them now, getting up when the world was asleep, going to bed when others were shaving. In a few hours perhaps it would be his plane I’d hear droning over on its way to Berlin. He’d be up there, with success ahead of him, whilst I was down in these grim, dark woods, searching for the body of the man who’d given two years to help him build those engines. Damn it, it wasn’t even his plane. It was my plane. Nothing was really his. Even the design of the engines he’d pinched from Else’s father.

Blind anger drove everything else out of my head for a moment. Then I steadied myself, forcing my mind to concentrate on the thing I’d set myself to do. I decided to walk east and west, backwards and forwards on a two mile front working gradually northwards. The impossibility of complete coverage was apparent from the start. I had a small pocket compass, that was all. The trees, fortunately, were well spaced out, but they were all alike. There was nothing to guide me. It was obvious that at some points I should be covering the same ground twice, maybe three times, whilst at other times I should be leaving large gaps uncovered. But it was the only course open to me and with a feeling of hopelessness I turned west on my first beat. It was past five when I came to the western fringe of the woods and looked across the dreary flatness of the Mecklenburg plain with the moon dipping over it towards the horizon. And in that time I had stopped a hundred times to investigate a deeper shadow, a dead branch that looked like an arm or a patch of white where a beam of direct moonlight shone on the bark of a pine trunk.

Dawn found me at the end of the eastward beat. The daylight penetrated slowly into the woods, a slight lightening of the deeper shadows, a paling of the moon’s whiteness. I didn’t really see it until I was in a clearing that showed me the bomb-battered ruins of the hangars that lay along the north fringe of Hollmind airfield. It was a grey dawn, still, but pitilessly cold, with great cloud banks rolling in from the north and the feel of snow in the air.

I ate two sandwiches and took a nip from the flask Saeton had given me. There was rum in that flask and I could feel the warmth of it trickling into my stomach. But as I turned westward again on my third beat I was already tired. There was no breath of wind. The woods seemed frozen into silence. The only sound was the drone of aircraft. That sound had been with me all the time. It was monotonous, unending. But God, how glad I was of it! That sound was my one link with the world, with reality. And as the daylight increased, I began to look for the planes in the gaps in the trees. At last I saw one. It was flying across my line of march at about three thousand feet, the thick belly unmistakable — a York. That meant that it had come from Wunstorf. The men in that plane would have breakfasted before dawn with the electric lights on and the mess warm with the smell of hot radiators and food. They had hot food in their bellies and hot coffee.

I stood there in the clearing, watching the plane rill it was out of sight, the smell of coffee stronger than the smell of the pines, remembering a shop I’d known as a kid that had a big grinder always working in the window, spilling its fragrance into the street. As the plane disappeared over the tops of the trees another came into sight, exactly the same, flying the same route, flying the same height. I watched another and another. All Yorks. All exactly the same. It was as though they were on an endless belt going behind the trees, like those little white clay airgun targets you find at fairs.

The smell of coffee lingered with me as I went on into the sombre gloom of the woods.

Shortly after midday it began to snow, the flakes drifting gently down out of the leaden sky, dark, widely-spaced specks until they landed and were transformed to little splashes of virgin white. It was less cold after the snow began to fall. But by then I was feeling sleepy, exhausted and hungry. There were two sandwiches left and half a flask of rum. I saved them for the night and stumbled on.

On my eighth beat I found a crumpled piece of metal. It was lodged in the branches of a tree — a piece of the tailplane of the Tudor Saeton had pranged at Membury. It didn’t seem possible that it was less than twelve hours since I’d slung that fragment out of the open door of the fuselage with these woods flashing by below me.

An hour later I nearly walked into a Russian patrol. I was almost on top of them before I heard the low murmur of their voices. They were in a group, short men with round, sallow faces, black boots and brown tunics buttoned to the neck. The soldiers leaned on their rifles while two officers bent over a piece of metal that gleamed dully.

I wondered what they’d make of these scraps of metal scattered through the woods as I slipped past them and continued eastward. The snow thickened and the sky darkened. Patches of white showed in the gaps between the trees and these I had to avoid for fear of leaving footprints. In the gathering darkness and my growing weakness every shadow became a Russian soldier. My progress became wretchedly slow. Finally it was too dark to go on and I dug a hole for myself close under the low-sweeping branches of a large fir and lay down in it, covering myself with pine needles.

I finished the two sandwiches and drank the rest of the rum. But within an hour the warmth of the rum had completely evaporated; the cold of the night moved in on me, gripping my limbs like a steel sheet. Sleep was impossible. I lay and shivered, my mind a blank, my body in a coma of misery. The cold covered everything. The snow became hard and powdery, the trees cracked.

By midnight I was so frozen that I got to my feet and stamped and swung my arms. My breath hung like smoke in front of my face. The snow clouds had passed. Stars shone frosty-clear above my head and the moon had risen showing me a beautiful, fairy-white world of Christmas trees.

I started moving westward, walking blindly, not really caring where I went so long as I got some warmth into my limbs. And that was how I found Tubby’s flying helmet. I just stumbled on it lying on a patch of snow. I suppose what had happened was that it had been caught on one of the branches of a tree and when the snow weighed the branch down it had slipped to the ground.

I don’t remember feeling any excitement. I think I was too numbed with cold to have any feelings at all. And I had no sense of surprise either. I had been so determined to find him that it hadn’t occurred to me that I should fail. I have always believed that if you go out for a thing hard enough, you get it in the end, and I didn’t bother to consider the virtual impossibility of the task I had set myself. But though I had found his helmet I could find no trace of Tubby himself. There was just the helmet. Nothing else.

After a thorough search of the area I returned to the spot where the helmet had lain. The trees were very thick and in the darkness of the shadows it was impossible to see whether there was anything lodged in the branches. In the end I climbed to the top of the tree that overhung the spot. With my head thrust above the snow-laden branches I looked over a plain of white spikes that glistened in the moonlight. By shaking the tree I got rid of most of the snow. The needle foliage looked very green, but there was no sign of anything that would prove that this was the spot where Tubby had fallen.

I was half-way down the tree, back in the world of half-light and shadows, when my hand slid from the gritty surface of the bark to something softer. My fingers closed on it, feeling the smoothness of light material. I didn’t need to look at it to know that this was nylon. I pulled at it and my hand came away with a torn strip of parachute silk about the length of a scarf.

I was excited then. That strip of nylon silk showed that Tubby had pulled his parachute release before he hit the ground and I went tumbling down the tree, oblivious of the snow that fell on my neck and trickled in icy streams down my back, oblivious of everything but that single fact — Tubby wasn’t dead. He might have hurt himself, but he’d regained consciousness, he’d pulled the release and his parachute had opened. And I realised then how the fear of finding him, a mangled, blood-stained heap of broken bones and torn flesh, had haunted me. In a frenzy I searched the area again, trampling the snow in my haste to find out what had happened to him after he’d crashed through the trees.

But the snow hid all trace.

At length, utterly exhausted, I sat down on a dry patch of ground with my back against the bole of a tree and lit one of my last cigarettes. I had searched the area in a circle extending about fifty yards from the spot where I had come upon the helmet. I had found no trace of him. Clearly one of two things had happened — either he had been all right and had left the area on foot or else he had been injured and some woodman had found him and got him away. Or perhaps it had been the Russians who’d found him. Maybe the patrol I’d seen in the afternoon had come upon him and carted him off to Hollmind. The possibility that he might be dead was nagging at me again. I had to be sure that he was alive.

I got to my feet again. I would have to widen my search, radiate out until I found some trace. I began walking again, circling out from the spot where the helmet had lain. The snow helped me here, for all I had to do was walk outside the footprints I’d made on my previous circuit. The moon was high overhead now and it was much lighter under the trees. At four o’clock in the morning, after walking for over two hours in a widening circle, I stumbled upon a broad track running through the woods. One side of the track was sheltered by the trees and was clear of snow and there I found the marks of a farm cart. I traced it back to a spot where it had stood for some time. The tracks did not continue. They finished there and I knew then that Tubby was either dead or injured. Cold and wretched, I turned westward and followed the track till it left the shelter of the woods and ran out into the bitter flatness of ploughed land that was all white under the moon.

The wheel tracks were lost under the snow now, but the track was still visible — two deep ruts swinging south-west towards a Christmas card huddle of steep-roofed farm buildings. As I approached I saw the yellow glow of a light. It came from the half-open door of a barn. Inside the barn a man was filling sacks with potatoes from a deep, square hole in the floor. Wooden boards heavy with earth were stacked against the heaped-up straw and earth had been piled near the door.

The man must have sensed my presence, for he suddenly paused in his work and looked straight at me where I stood in the gaping doorway. He was short and wiry with a broad forehead and his eyes looked startled and afraid.’ Wer sind Sie? Was wollen Sie?’ ‘I am an English flier,’ I replied in German. ‘I am looking for a friend of mine who may be injured.’

He put down his fork and came towards me, his dark, frightened eyes peering first at my face, then at my clothes. ‘Come in then and close the door please. The wind blow it open I think.’ He fixed the latch with trembling fingers. ‘I was afraid it was the Russians.’ He laughed nervously. ‘They want everything — all my crops. For the East, you know.’ His speech was jerky. ‘To feed our pigs we must keep something.’ He held the lantern close to me, still examining me uncertainly. Apparently he was finally satisfied, for he lowered the lantern and said, ‘You look tired. You walk far, yes.’

‘What has happened to my friend?’ I asked ‘He was brought here, wasn’t he? Is he — is he dead?’ I waited, dreading his answer.

He shook his head slowly. ‘Nein. He is not dead. But he injure himself very much when he land in the trees. Now you lie down in the straw there. I must finish my work before it is light. Then I get you something to eat, eh?’

But I wasn’t listening. Thank God!’ I breathed it aloud. Tubby was alive. He was alive and I’d found him. I hadn’t killed him after all. I felt suddenly lightheaded. I wanted to laugh. But once I started to laugh I felt I should never stop. I held my breath, fighting to control myself. Then I stumbled into the straw, sinking into it, relaxing, knowing I had done everything I could and that God had been with me. I had found Tubby and he wasn’t dead. ‘When did you find him?’ I asked.

‘Four days ago,’ the man answered. He had returned to his work.

‘And you have not handed him over to the Russians?’

He paused with a forkful of potatoes. ‘No, we do not hand him to the Russians. You have to thank my wife for that. Our daughter is in Berlin. She live in the French Sector with her husband who work on the railways there. But for the, she would be like us — she would be under the Russians.’

I mumbled my thanks. My head kept nodding. It was very warm and comfortable there in the straw. ‘Is he badly hurt?’

‘Ja. He is not so good. Several ribs are broken and his arm and he has concussion. But he is conscious. You can speak with him.’

‘He should have a doctor.’ My voice sounded very far away. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

‘You do not have to worry. Our doctor is coming here to see him every day. He is a good doctor and he do not love the Russians because they take him to the East for a year to work with our prisoners. Once he meet my son. My son, Hans, is a prisoner of the Russians since 1945..Before that he is in North Africa and Italy and then on the Eastern front. I do not see him now for almost six years. But soon I hope he will come home. We have had two letters …’

His voice droned pleasantly and my eyelids closed. I dreamt I was back in Stalag Luft I, but the guards all wore right-necked brown tunics and black knee-length boots, and there was always snow and no hope of release or escape — only the hope of death. They kept on interrogating me, trying to get me to admit that I’d killed Tubby — there were intensely bright lights and they kept on shaking me … I woke to find the farmer bending over me, shaking my shoulder. ‘Wake up, Herr

Fraser.’ He pronounced the V sharply and not as a ‘z’. ‘It is seven o’clock. We will have some food now and then you can talk with your friend.’

‘You know my name?’ I murmured sleepily. And then I felt in my breast pocket. My papers were still there. He must have put them back after examining them. I clambered stiffly to my feet. I was cold and very tired.

‘I think perhaps we put your flying clothes under the straw, eh? I do not wish my men to know I have a British flier here. By talking, one of them might be given my farm. That is something they learn from the Nazis.’ He said the word ‘Nazis’ unemotionally as one might talk of an avalanche or some other act of God.

When I had hidden my flying suit he took me across the farmyard to the house. It was a cold, bleak dawn, heavy with leaden cloud that promised more snow. Overhead I heard the drone of the planes flying in to Berlin, but I couldn’t see them, for the ceiling was not much more than a thousand.

My memory of the Kleffmanns’ house is vague; a memory of warmth and the smell of bacon, of a big kitchen with a great, clumsy, glowing stove and a bright-eyed, friendly little woman with wisps of greying hair and the slow, sure movements of one who lives close to the earth and whose routine never changes. I also remember the little bedroom high up under the roof where Tubby lay, his fat cheeks strangely hollow, his face flushed with fever and his eyes unnaturally bright. The ugly, patterned wallpaper with butterflies flying up vertical strips was littered with photographs of Hans Kleffmann who would some day come back from Russia and meet his mother and father again for the first time in six years. There were photographs of him as a baby, as a boy at the school in Hollmind, in the uniform of the Nazi Youth Organisation and finally in the uniform of the Wehrmacht — against the background of the Hradcany Palace in Prague, in a Polish village, with the Eiffel Tower behind him, in the desert leaning on a tank, in Rome with St. Peter’s Dome over his left shoulder. And there were a few less formal snaps — Hans in bathing shorts on the Italian Riviera, Hans with a dark-haired girl in Naples, Hans skiing in the Dolomites. Hans filled that room with the nostalgia of a boy’s life leading inevitably, irrevocably to the Russian prison camp. They showed me a letter. It was four lines long — I am well and the Russians treat me very kindly. The food is good and I am happy. Love, Hans. Tubby, lying in that small, neatly austere bed, was an intruder.

He was asleep when I went in. The Kleffmanns left me sitting by his bed whilst they got on with the business of the farm. Tubby’s breath came jerkily and painfully but he slept on and I had a long time in which to become familiar with Hans. It’s almost as though I had met him, I got to know him so well from those faded photographs — arrogant and fanatical in victory, hard-faced and bitter in defeat. There in that room I was face to face with the Germany of the future, the Germany that was being hammered out on the vulcan forge of British, American and Soviet policy. I found my eyes turning back repeatedly to the grim, relentless face in the photograph taken at Lwow in the autumn of 1944 and comparing it with the smiling carefree kid in knickerbockers taken outside the Hollmind school.

Then Tubby opened his eyes and stared at me. At first I thought he wasn’t going to recognise me. We stared at each other for a moment and then he smiled. He smiled at me with his eyes, his lips a tight line constricted by pain. ‘Neil! How did you get here?’

I told him, and when I’d finished he said, ‘You came back. That was kind of you.’ He had difficulty in speaking and his voice was very weak.

‘Are they looking after you all right?’ I asked awkwardly.

He nodded slowly. The old woman is very kind. She treats me as though I were her son. And the doctor does his best.’

‘You ought to be in hospital,’ I said.

He nodded again. ‘But it’s better than being in the hands of the Russians.’

‘Thank God you’re alive anyway,’ I said. ‘I thought-’ I hesitated and then said, ‘I was afraid I’d killed you. You were unconscious when you went out through the door. I didn’t mean it, Tubby. Please believe that.’

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I understand. It was good of you to come back.’ He winced as he took a breath. ‘Did you take the plane back to Saeton?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s got our engines in now and Saeton’s at Wunstorf. They ordered him over immediately to replace Harcourt’s Tudor.’

His mouth opened to the beginning of a laugh and then he jerked rigid at the pain it caused him.

‘You ought to be in hospital,’ I said again. ‘Listen,’ I added. ‘Do you think you could stand another journey in that cart, up to Hollmind airfield?’

I saw him clench his teeth at the memory.

‘Could you stand it if you knew at the end there would be a hospital and everything in the way of treatment you need?’

The sweat shone on his forehead. ‘Yes,’ he breathed, so quietly that I could hardly hear him. ‘Yes, I’d face it again if I knew that. Maybe the doc here would fix me up with a shot of morphia. But they’ve so little in the way of drugs. They’ve been very kind, but they’re Germans, and they haven’t the facilities for…’ His voice trailed away.

I was afraid he was going to fade into unconsciousness and I said quickly, ‘I’m going now, Tubby. Tonight I’ll start out for Berlin. I’ll make it just as quickly as I can. Then, within a few hours, I’ll be back with a plane and we’ll evacuate you from Hollmind. Okay?’

He nodded.

‘Goodbye then for the moment. I’ll get through somehow and then we’ll get you to a hospital. Hold on to that. You’ll be all right.’

The corners of his lips twitched in a tight smile. ‘Good luck!’ he whispered. And then as I rose from the bed, his hand came out from beneath the sheets and closed on mine. ‘Neil!’ I had to bend down to hear him. ‘I want you to know — I won’t say anything. I’ll leave things as I find them. The plane crashed. Engine failure — ignition.’ His voice died away and his eyes closed.

Bending close to him I could hear the sob of his breathing. I reached under his pillow for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The handkerchief was dark with blood. I knew then that his lung was punctured. I wiped his forehead with my own handkerchief and then went quietly out of Hans’s little bedroom and down the dark stairs to the kitchen.

They gave me a bed and I slept until it was dark. Then, after a huge meal by the warmth of the kitchen stove, I said goodbye to the Kleffmanns. ‘In a night or two,’ I told them, ‘I will be back with a plane and we’ll get him away.’

‘Gut! Gut!’ The farmer nodded. ‘It is better so. He is very bad, I think. Also it is dangerous for us having him here in the farm.’

Frau Kleffmann came towards me. She had a bulky package in her hand. ‘Here is food for your journey, Herr Fraser — some chicken and some bread and butter and apples.’ She hesitated. ‘If anything happens, do not worry about your friend. He is safe here. We will look after him. There has been war between us, but my Hans is in Russia. I will care for your friend as I would have others care for Hans if he is sick. Auf wiedersehen!’ Her gnarled hand touched my arm and her eyes filled with tears. She turned quickly to the stove.

The farmer accompanied me to the door. ‘I try to arrange for you to ride in a lorry who go once a week to Berlin with potatoes. But’ — he spread his hands hopelessly — ‘the driver is sick. He do not go tonight. If you go three miles beyond Hollmind there is a cafe there for motor drivers. I think you will perhaps get a ride there.’ He gave me instructions how to by-pass Hollmind and then shook my hands. ‘Viel Gluck, Herr Fraser. Come soon, please, for your friend. I fear he is very sick.’

More snow had fallen during the day, but now the clouds had been swept away by a bitter east wind and the night was cold and clear. The moon had not yet risen, but the stars were so brilliant that I had no difficulty in seeing my way as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. High above me the airlift planes droned at regular three-minute intervals — I could see their navigation lights every now and then, green and red dots moving steadily through the litter of stars and the drift of the Milky Way. The white pinpoint of their tail-lights pointed the way to Berlin for me. I had only to follow them through the night sky and I should arrive at Gatow. For them Gatow was twenty minutes flying time. But for me….

I turned south on the hard straight road that led to the town of Hollmind, wondering how long the journey would take me. The snow was deep and crisp under my feet. Kleffmann had given me an old field-grey Wehrmacht greatcoat and a Wehrmacht forage cap; Hans’s cast-off clothing. For the first time since I’d landed in Germany I felt warm and well-fed.

Nothing stirred on the road. The snow seemed to have driven all transport off it. My footsteps were muffled and I walked in a deep silence. The only sound was the drone of the planes overhead and the hum of the wind in the telegraph wires. I reached the fork where the road branched off that I was to take in order to by-pass Hollmind. There was a signboard there — Berlin 54 km.

Fifty-four kilometres isn’t far; not much more than thirty miles. A day’s march. But though I had had a good rest, I was still tired and very stiff. I was wearing shoes and my feet were blister-sore. And there was the cold. For a time the warmth of exercise kept it out, but, as I tired, the sweat broke out on my body and chilled into a clammy, ice-cold film, and then the wind cut through my clothing and into my flesh, seeming to blow straight on to my spine. God, it was cold! For miles, it seemed, I walked along by-roads through unmarked snow and there was no traffic. I must have missed the turning back on to the Berlin road, for it was almost midnight when I finally found it again and I saw no transport cafe — only dark woods and the illimitable miles of white agricultural land, flat and windswept.

Several times I tried to thumb a lift. But each time the heavy, long-nosed German trucks ignored me, thundering by in a shower of snow that spattered icily on my face. However the fourth truck I waved to stopped and a voice called out,’ Wohin, Freund?’ ‘Berlin,’ I shouted.

There was a pause and then a Red Army soldier clambered down from the cabin. He was sleepy and he’d left his rifle in the truck. That was the only thing that saved me. He asked me in vile German for my papers. Fortunately the edge of the road was wooded. I dived into the dark shelter of the pines, ignoring the branches that lashed at my face, running until I was exhausted.

Dawn found me trudging through powdery snow along a narrow side road flanked with trees, following blindly the drone of the airlift planes. It was a blood-red dawn, wild and violent and full of cold. The sun was a misty red disc above the pines. I staggered into the shelter of the woods, ate Frau Kleffmann’s chicken and bread, wrapped myself in pine needles and slept.

All that day I slept, if you can call it sleep. It was more like a bone-chilled coma. I suppose I was suffering from mental as well as physical exhaustion. At all events I found the present and the past inextricably mixed in my mind, so that the urge to reach Berlin became confused with the urge to get out of Germany and I was back in those cold, wretched, starved weeks of escape.

Night came at last, cold and black. There were no stars. I stumbled to the road and headed south-east, the drone of the planes my only guide. I passed through a small town, not bothering to note its name, joined a broader road where the snow had been churned up by traffic, and the first truck that came along stopped beside me. In the headlights I saw that the country bordering the road was flat. If there had been woods I should almost certainly have dived into them. But it was bare, open plain. ‘Wo wollen Sie bin, mein Lieber?’ the driver called.

‘Berlin,’ I heard myself answer in a cracked, trembling voice. Any moment I expected the brown, tunic clad figure of a Red Army man to jump out and face me. But all that happened was that the driver called, ‘Kommen Sie rauf, Kamerad. Ich fahre auch nach Berlin.’ It was almost too good to be true. I hauled myself up into the cabin. The driver was alone. There was no mate with him. The gears ground and the old vehicle lurched forward, wheels spinning in the snow. The cabin was hot and stuffy and smelt comfortingly of exhaust fumes. ‘Was wollen Sie in Berlin?’ the driver asked.

‘Work,’ I answered him gruffly in German.

‘Out of Russia into the Western Sectors, eh?’ He grinned at me. He was a small, hard-bitten little man with ferrety eyes. ‘Well, I don’t blame you. If I thought there was a trucking job for me in the Western Sectors I’d be across the border in no time. But I have a wife and family up in Lubeck. Every night I come down this same road. Sometimes I wish I was up there flying the. I was in the Luftwaffe, you know. Radio operator. Had a little radio business before the war. But now, of course, it is finished. There are so few radio sets. It is better to drive a truck. But those bastards up there get to Berlin a lot quicker than I do. My wife always tells me …’

He went on and on about himself and the drone of his voice merged with the engine and the eternal distant hum of aircraft throbbing through the clouds. My head nodded, sleepy with the sudden, unaccustomed warmth of the cabin. His voice lost itself in the engine. I slept fitfully, conscious of the lights of a town, of a signboard caught in the headlights that said Berlin 27 km, of the unending dirty yellow of hard-packed snow slipping away beneath us.

And then finally he was shaking me. ‘Aufwachen! Aufwachen! Berlin!’ I opened my eyes blearily and surveyed unlit, slush-filled streets flanked by the empty, blasted shells of buildings which had not been touched since we’d smashed them to rubble five years ago. So this was Berlin! ‘Where are you making for?’ I asked him.

‘Potsdam.’ He peered at me out of the corners of his eyes. ‘That’s in the Russian Zone. Don’t imagine you’ll be wanting to go there.’ He laughed mirthlessly, his breath whistling through broken front teeth.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Oranienburg.’ He was still looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. ‘You are a Pole, no? You are not German. Not with that accent.’

I didn’t say anything and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Na was, schadet es schon?’ He eased his foot on the accelerator pedal. ‘Well, where do you wish to go, eh? In a few moments I turn right. I have to keep inside the Russian Zone. But if you follow this road it will lead you to Frohnau. Frohnau is in the French Sector.’

Frohnau! Frohnau beacon! Frohnau meant Berlin to every airlift pilot. But the warmth of the truck held me tight in my seat. Frohnau was many miles from Gatow. I should have to walk right across Berlin, more than twenty kilometres. ‘Where do you go when you turn right?’ I asked.

‘Velten, Schonewald Airfield, Falkensee, Staaken

Airfield, past Gatow and then into Potsdam. Choose which you like. It’s all the same to me.’

‘You’re going near Gatow?’ I asked him.

His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you want Gatow for, eh?’ His voice was harsher. He braked violently and the lorry skidded as he swung right off the main Oranienburg-Berlin road. ‘Why Gatow?’ he repeated. And when I didn’t say anything, he added slowly, ‘Gatow is in the British Sector. It’s owned by die verdatnmten Tommies. Night after night they come. Die verfluchten Kerle! I have send my family to my parents in Hamburg. Night after night the English come. They flatten Hamburg and the Schweinehunde kill both the kids — the boy was nine and the girl five. They were crushed when the building they shelter in collapses.’ He stopped talking and stared at me. ‘Why do you want Gatow, eh?’

‘I have a job to go to in the British Sector,’ I answered.

‘What sort of a job?’

I thought desperately. Remembering the crowded Nissen huts at the edge of the off-loading apron at Gatow, I said, ‘Labour corps. I have a friend who is a checker at Gatow, unloading the airlift planes.’

His lips tightened. ‘You say airlift, when we always say. Why do you say airlift?’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Only die verdammten English and Americans call it airlift.’ For a long time there was a tense silence in the cabin. We were entering Falkensee now. Staaken aerodrome lay ahead, and then Gatow. ‘Please, your papers. I wish to see your papers.’

I hesitated. ‘I have no papers,’ I said. I felt empty and cold inside.

‘So! No papers, eh?’ He peered through the windshield, searching the road ahead with his eyes. There were few lights. Falkensee was asleep. Then, far ahead in the gleam of the headlights, I saw two figures in the grey of the German police. The driver’s foot checked on the accelerator and his eyes swung nervously to me. I knew what he was going to do then. I could see him working it out in his mind. There was only one thing for me to do. I felt with my hand for the handle of the door and pushed. It swung back violently and a stream of bitter air struck my face. I heard the door clang against the tin of the cabin, saw the rutted, slushy snow spraying up from the wheels, heard the driver shout as he leaned across to grip my arm — and I jumped.

I hit the snow with my feet and was flung down, striking the side of the lorry with my head. A sudden blackness enveloped me as the snow closed over my face. I could not have been out for more than a few seconds, for the lorry was still screeching to a halt, its horn blaring excitedly, as I lifted my head from the cold, gritty filth of the snow. I pressed myself upwards with my hands, feeling suddenly sick at the sight of my blood scarlet against the yellow, gravel-covered surface of the snow. Then I was on my feet and running for the shelter of a side-street, shouts echoing after me.

As I turned out of the main street, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the two German policemen were level with the stationary truck now and running towards me. Whistles shrilled. The side-street was narrow and flanked with the rubble ruins of shattered buildings. I scrambled over a pile of bricks and mortar and half staggered, half fell into a cleared space that had been the cellars of houses in the next street. An open doorway gaped black and I slid into the welcoming darkness and leaned panting against the wall almost oblivious in my fear of the nauseating smell of human excreta.

More whistles shrilled and voices shouted in the darkness outside. Boots climbed the mound of rubble up which I had scrambled. Mortar dust streamed down in a choking cloud in the open doorway. ‘Hier, Kurt. Hierlang ist er gelaufen.’ The voice was heavy and menacing. The man was standing right above my hideout. There was a clatter of dislodged bricks higher up the crumbling rubble and a voice answered faintly, ‘Nein. Komm hierlang. Hier kann er zur Friedrich-strasse durchkommen.’ The chase went thudding and slithering over my head and gradually faded into the distance. — ,. All the time I had been standing there rigid. Now my muscles relaxed. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. My hand was gritty and I winced with the pain of the grit on raw flesh. It was the old cut in my forehead that had opened up. My hand came away, wet and sticky with my own blood. The moon was shining opaquely through low cloud and the faint, ghostly light of the doorless gap showed my hand all red and dripping. The blood was trickling down my face, getting into my eyes and into the corner of my mouth the way it had done that first time I’d come to Membury. Only there was grit in my mouth now, sharp and hard, setting my teeth on edge as I clenched them.

I wiped my hands on the inside of my clothes and then tied my handkerchief over the cut. For a long time I just stood there, trying to stop the trembling of my limbs. It was very cold. It seemed as though my body had no warmth and the wind cut like a knife through the gaping doorway — nervous reaction and the shock of my fall from the moving lorry! I wished to God I had some liquor with me, something to warm the frozen guts of my belly.

I moved at last and went out of the nauseous cell. I was facing a cleared strip where demolition gangs had been working. There was a railway and a line of loaded tip trucks. The snow was a thin layer of powder that had deepened into windy little drifts in the corners of still-standing masonry. Behind rose a hill of brick and rubble over which the gaunt finger of a building pointed a broken chimney at the pale, luminous clouds. There was no sound except the distant rumble of the airlift rolling into Gatow. The pursuit had moved on and lost me.

I stood for a moment, getting my bearings. This was Falkensee, a western suburb of Berlin. The sound of the planes landing and taking off from Gatow drew me as something familiar, friendly and homelike. I could almost smell the coffee and cakes in the Malcolm Club. But if I went direct to Gatow I should all the time be in the Russian Zone. To the east lay the British Sector and I knew it couldn’t be far away. I faced into the wind and began to walk.

My left leg was very stiff and painful when I moved. I had grazed my knee-cap when I fell and had strained a muscle somewhere in the groin. But I didn’t care about that. My one thought was to get out of the Russian Zone and into the British Sector. The sight of another human being sent me scuttling into the doorway or into the shadows of the broken buildings that flanked the streets. And yet, not more than two or three miles away in the same sort of streets I should be able to stop the first person I met and demand his help.

I twisted and turned through narrow, broken streets, always keeping the sound of Gatow over my right shoulder. At length I came out on to a broad highway that led almost due east. It was Falkenhagener Chaussee and it ran straight like a ruled line towards Spandau — and Spandau I knew was in the British Sector.

It It was three o’clock in the morning and the Falkenhagener Chaussee seemed dead. Nothing stirred. The snow-powdered thoroughfare was deserted. The crumbling masses of the buildings were white mounds in the darkness marked occasionally by a still-standing wall, tottering skyward like some two-thousand-year-old tomb seen along the Appian Way. Somewhere in Berlin a train whistled like “an owl in a forest of dead oaks. There were no lights, no people — no suggestion even that anything lived here. It was all devastation and slow, timeless ruin.

For an hour or more I limped along that arrow-straight road without seeing a living soul, with only the constant drone of Gatow to remind me I was still in a living world and to give me hope. Then at last, when I was tottering with weakness, I saw the distant gleam of lights shining on a road barrier. I was nearing the limits of the Russian Zone. That knowledge gave me fresh strength. I walked to within five hundred yards of the barrier and then turned down a side-street.

At a crossing a small truck slipped quietly eastward without lights. I followed it on to a quiet, rubble-packed track that ran close beside the railway. A goods train clanked noisily, a rattle of buffers that seemed to split the night it was so loud in the utter stillness.

For half an hour I walked eastward, searching the track ahead, trembling and scuttling into the shadows at every sign of movement. But always it was nothing but my eyes playing me tricks. And at the end of half an hour I knew I must have passed over into the British Sector. A blockade-running German lorry had shown me the way through the road checks.

I followed thei railway right into Spandau and there a German railway worker going on duty at five in the morning directed me to a British Army M.T. Section. I must have looked a pretty sight, for all the time he was talking to me the German kept looking nervously about him and when he had given the directions I wanted he was almost running in his hurry to get away from me.

I found the place without difficulty. It was an R.A.O.C. Depot and a big board directed me into the sidings of what had once been a huge factory. I was trembling with fatigue and feeling sick with relief when I faced the German orderly who seemed to be the only person awake in the depot. At first he refused to do anything about me. His eyes were coldly contemptuous. I began to curse him in English, all the filthy words I could think of spewed off my tongue as I consigned the whole German race to perdition with tears of frustration hot on my eyeballs. Still he didn’t move, and then I saw hanging on a peg a web belt complete with holster and revolver. I dived towards it, pulled the revolver out and thumbed forward the safety catch with trembling fingers. ‘Now, get the duty officer,’ I shouted. ‘Quick! Or I shoot.’

The man hesitated and then hurried out, returning a few minutes later with a tall, lanky youth who had an officer’s greatcoat wrapped over his pyjamas, a solitary pip gleaming on its shoulder. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked sleepily, rubbing at his eyes.

‘My name’s Fraser,’ I said. ‘Squadron Leader £ Fraser. I’ve just got out of the Russian Zone. I’ve got to get to Gatow at once.’

He was staring at the weapon in my hand. ‘Do you usually go about threatening people with revolvers?’ He came across to me and took the revolver out of my hands. ‘This is an Army revolver. Is it yours?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I got it there.’ And I nodded to the belt hanging on the hook.

The lieutenant swung round on the orderly. ‘What’s that equipment doing there, Heinrich?’

They began a long discussion as to why an officer had left it in the orderly room. At length I shouted at him, ‘For Christ’s sake!’

He turned and stared at me blankly. ‘Heinrich here says you threatened him with this revolver,’ he said accusingly.

‘Look!’ I couldn’t keep my hands still, I was so angry. ‘Can’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I’m an R.A.F. officer. I’m a pilot on the airlift and my plane crashed at Hollmind. I’ve just got out of the Russian Zone. I must get to Gatow quickly. I want transport. Do you understand? Some transport. I’ve got to get to Gatow.’ I was talking wildly. I knew that. I knew I must seem like a lunatic, but there was nothing I could do about it. My nerves were all to pieces.

‘May I have a look at your papers, please?’

I fumbled for my wallet, dropping the papers on the floor in my nervous haste. The German orderly picked them up for me and handed them back with a click of the heels. His eyes were no longer contemptuous.

The lieutenant glanced through them. ‘You say you crashed at Hollmind?’

I nodded.

‘When?’

When? Was it the night before last or — no I mustn’t say that. It was the original night he wanted, the night when Tubby had gone out through the door. My mind searched desperately for a date, but I’d lost all sense of time. ‘Several days ago,’ I mumbled. ‘What’s it matter when I crashed?’

‘What’s your base?’

‘Wunstorf.’

‘You were flying a York?’

‘No. A Tudor tanker.’

‘A Tudor. His face suddenly cleared and he gave me a sheepish grin. ‘I say, I’m awfully sorry, sir. Of course, I know who you are now. You’re the chap who flew that Messerschmitt out of Germany during the war. I mean — well, there’s been a lot about it in the papers. Nobody could find any trace of the plane and you and Carter were missing.’ He looked at me, hesitating awkwardly. ‘You look as though you’ve had a rough trip, sir. Are you all right? I mean, oughtn’t I to run you down to a first-aid post?’

‘I must get to Gatow,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course. I’ll drive you myself. I’ll just put some things on. Won’t be a jiffy.’ He hesitated in the doorway. ‘Would you like a cup of char? And you’d probably like to get cleaned up a bit. That’s an awfully nasty cut you’ve got.’

He took me through to the washroom. The water was icy cold. However, I cleaned off some of the dirt and he produced a proper bandage from a first-aid kit. Then the German orderly appeared with a steaming tin mug of dark, sweet tea. Ten minutes later we were in an Army fifteen hundredweight roaring along the Wilhelmstrasse.

We turned left on to the Gatower Damm. I knew I was home then, for planes were thundering low overhead with their flaps down and the underbelly of the low cloud was illumined by the brilliant fire-glow of the sodium lights and high-intensity cross bars that marked the approach to Gatow.

We were stopped at the barrier to Gatow Airport and a corporal of the R.A.F. Police came out and peered at the car, a gleam of white-blancoed webbing against the blue of his battledress. Then he asked for our papers. ‘Squadron Leader Fraser is just out of the Russian Zone,’ my lieutenant explained quickly. ‘He’s the pilot of that Tudor that crashed.’

The corporal handed my papers back without looking at them. ‘Glad you’re safe, sir.’ He drew himself up stiffly and saluted. The truck ground forward. ‘Where do you want to go?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘Terminal building?’

All the time I’d been getting closer to Gatow I’d been wondering about what I should do when I got there. There was Diana. That was the first thing I had to do — tell Diana that Tubby was alive and safe. And I wanted to get hold of Saeton. Now that I was back in the organised life of Occupied Berlin I had a feeling that there might be difficulties raised about landing an R.A.F. plane in the Russian Zone. Officially it would be embarrassing. If the plane were captured by a Russian patrol the diplomatic repercussions would be endless and far-reaching. But if Saeton would land there unofficially… He had the nerve to do it. He wouldn’t be hide-bound by regulations and diplomatic dangers. Saeton was the person I had to see. ‘Will you take me straight to the Malcolm Club, please,’ I said.

‘Malcolm Club? That’s down by FASO, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Sure you don’t want to report in to Ops first?’ he asked.

‘No. The Malcolm Club, please.’

‘Okay.’

The truck slipped down through the trees, past the lighted entrance of the mess and then suddenly there were the yellow and purple runway and perimeter lights of Gatow with the concrete square box of the terminal building to the right, rising to the tall, lighted windows of the control tower. The truck turned left through the white-painted boundary fence, skirted a B.E.A. Skymaster and hummed across the tarmac which was streaked with a white, wind-driven powder of snow. The hangars were dark, rectangular shadows to our left and ahead the lights of Piccadilly Circus shone yellow, showing the PLUME standing empty of aircraft. Planes moved along the perimeter track, engines roaring, drowning the thinner sound of planes streaming in along the runway. Everything was normal, familiar. I might never have been outside the organised bus-service of the airlift.

We skirted Piccadilly Circus, tyres jolting rhythmically on the joints of the concrete, and then we were on the FASO apron where big arc lamps blazed and there was the bustle of planes and lorries and German offloading teams. The control tower shack on its scaffold stilts stood high and dark above the line of Nissen huts.

‘Shall I wait for you?’ the lieutenant asked as he drew up at the roundel signboard of the Malcolm Club.

‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right now. And thank you very much for running me out.’

‘Not at all.’ He got down and opened the door for me, his hand steadying me as though he thought I were too weak to climb out on my own. ‘Good-bye, sir. And good luck!’ He gave me a parade ground salute.

I hesitated at the entrance of the club and stood watching him get back into his truck, turn and drive off. The red tail-light dwindled and was lost amongst the litter of lights. I stared at the planes coming in. They were Daks from Lubeck with coal. There was a line of them standing in the slush of the apron. I stared at them dully. A girl checker with the nearest German labour team looked up from her manifest and stared at me. She was big and fair-haired with high cheek bones. She reminded me of Else, except that she was covered in coal dust. I turned towards the entrance to the Malcolm Club, still hesitating, reluctant to go in. If Diana were there it would be all right. But if she weren’t … I’d have to explain myself and the filthy state I was in and I should be surrounded by a barrage of questions as air crew after air crew came in and wanted to know the story of the crash.

A group of R.A.F. boys tumbled out of the hut, laughing and talking, bringing with them through the open doorway that familiar smell of coffee and cakes. There was no point in putting it off any longer — besides, the smell of the place had made me realise how hungry I was. I brushed quickly at my filthy clothing and pushed open the door.

It was hot inside, the stove roaring red and the place full of smoke and cheerful chatter. I crossed the long room, pushing my way towards the counter, conscious of the gradual fall of conversation as eyes fastened on my scarecrow figure. ‘Is Mrs Carter here?’ I asked the girl behind the counter. I had spoken quietly, but even so my voice sounded loud in the silence that had developed.

The girl looked nervously to the mute groups behind me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t come on until seven.’

I glanced at my watch. It was half-past six. ‘I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘Can I have some coffee and a plate of sandwiches, please?’

The girl hesitated. ‘All right,’ she said.

A hand touched my shoulder. I spun round and found myself facing a big blond man with a wide moustache. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. The silent circle of eyes echoed his question.

‘My name’s Fraser,’ I answered.

‘Fraser.’ He turned the name over in his mouth as though searching for it in his memory. And then he suddenly boomed out, ‘Fraser! You mean the pilot of that Tudor?’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Fraser! Good Christ Almighty!” He seized hold of my hand. ‘Don’t know you from Adam, old man. But allow me to do the honours and welcome you back. You look about all in. Here, Joan — the coffee and sandwiches are on me. What happened? Come on, tell us all about it. We’ve got to go in a minute. What happened?’ The circle of faces closed in like a pack of wolves, avid for news. Their eyes shone with excitement. Questions were hurled at me from all directions.

There’s nothing to tell,’ I murmured awkwardly. ‘The engines failed. The plane crashed near Hollmind.’

‘And you’ve just got out of the Russian Zone?’

‘Yes.’ The girl thrust a cup of coffee and a plate of sandwiches into my hand. ‘If you don’t mind — I’d rather not talk about it.’ The heat of the room was making my legs shake under me. ‘I’m very tired. You must excuse me. I must sit down.’

Hands gripped my arms at the elbows and half-lifted me to one of the easy-chairs by the stove. ‘You sit there and drink your coffee, old man. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.’

‘I must speak to Mrs Carter,’ I insisted.

‘All right. We’ll get her for you.’

They left me then and I grasped the coffee cup in my hands, feeling the warmth of it spread up my arms, savouring the glorious, reviving smell of it. I could hear them talking about me in the background. Fresh air crews came in to replace others that went out to their planes. The word was passed on and they took up the story, talking about me in whispers.

Somebody came and squatted down on his haunches beside me. ‘Glad to know you’re back, Fraser,’ he said. ‘You must be the greatest escape merchant alive. All the boys back at Wunstorf will be glad as hell to know you’re back. We thought you’d had it.’

‘Wunstorf?’ I stared at him. His face seemed vaguely familiar.

That’s right. Remember me? I’m the guy that was sitting right next to you at dinner that night you crashed. You were growling at Westrop for talking too much about the Russians. Seems he had second sight or something. I’ll see that the station commander knows you’re back.’

‘Is the Wunstorf wave coming in now?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Just started to come in.’

‘Is a man called Saeton flying a Tudor tanker on the lift yet?’

‘Is he flying the lift!’ The kid laughed. ‘I’ll say he is. Been flying for two days now and he’s got the development section puzzled as hell. Flies on his two inboard engines all the time, except on take-off, and his fuel consumption is knocking holes the size of a hangar door in all the aero engine boys’ ideas. He said you worked on the motors with him at one time. Boy, he’s certainly got them guessing. Boffins from Farnborough are flying out tomorrow with the C.T.O. of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and a big pot from the Ministry of Supply. Saeton will be in shortly.’

‘How soon?’ I asked.

‘About quarter of an hour. The Tudors aren’t far behind us.’

An R.A.F. corporal pushed forward. He had a big web satchel with a red cross on it. ‘I’ve got an ambulance outside, sir. Do you think you can walk to it or shall I get a stretcher in for you?’

‘You can send your bloody ambulance away,’ I said angrily. Why the devil couldn’t they leave me alone? ‘I’m not leaving here until I’ve seen Mrs Carter.’

The fellow hesitated. ‘Very good, sir. I’ll be back in a minute and then we’ll get you patched up. Nasty cut you got there. Sure you’re all right, sir?’

‘Of course I’m all right,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve walked nearly twenty miles already tonight.’

‘Very good, sir.’ He went to the door and opened it, and at that moment Diana came in.

Her face, devoid of make-up, looked quite haggard. At sight of me she stopped as though she couldn’t believe that I was really sitting there in an easy-chair beside the stove. ‘So it is you.’ She said it almost accusingly. Then she came slowly towards me. ‘What happened? What have you done with Tubby? Why didn’t you let him jump with the others?’ Her voice trembled and there was a look of dull pain in her eyes.

‘You needn’t worry,’ I said. ‘He’s safe.’

She stared at me. ‘You’re lying.’ Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘You know he’s dead.’

Tubby’s all right,’ I repeated. ‘He’s alive.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Her voice had faded to a whisper. ‘It can’t be true. If you’re alive, then it’s Tubby whose body-’ Her words died away in a choking sob.

‘Tubby’s alive,’ I said again. I reached out and caught hold of her hand. Her fingers were cold and slack in mine. ‘Diana. I want your help. He’s alive, but he’s injured and we’ve got to get him out. You’ve got to persuade Saeton to fly there and get him out.’

‘What are you saying?’ Her voice was flat and toneless.

I didn’t understand her attitude. ‘I thought you’d be glad,’ I said. ‘I came straight here to tell you.’

‘Glad that you’re alive?’ She turned away. ‘Of course I’m glad, only… I loved him,’ she suddenly burst out. ‘I loved him, I tell you.’

Somebody bent over me, an officer in R.A.F. uniform with dark, boot-button eyes and a thin, aquiline nose. ‘You’re Fraser, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘They just told me.’

‘For God’s sake!’ I pushed him away. ‘I’m trying to tell Mrs Carter something.’

‘Yes, I heard. I think you’d better listen to me first. I’m the I.O. here. We know all about your plane. It crashed two miles north of Hollmind Airfield, dived straight into the ground.’

I stared at him. ‘Who told you it crashed at Hollmind?’ I demanded.

‘The Russians.’

The Russians?’

‘Yes. After denying the whole thing for days, they came through with a report yesterday. They’ve found the wreckage in the woods north of Hollmind.’ He leaned down and lowered his voice. ‘They also found the remains of one body. We didn’t know whether it was yours or Carter’s.’ His glance slid to Diana whose face was buried in her hands. ‘Now you’re safe, of course, we know whose it was.’ He straightened up. ‘Soon as you’re ready, we’ll go up to my office and I’ll get a statement from you. I’ll have to have a report ready for the station commander.’

I stared at him. Why should the Russians make such a report? It didn’t make sense. I felt suddenly scared — scared that they wouldn’t believe what I had to tell them.