“Just Marine Gruppe West, sir. They keep asking for information.”
Reubold turned to Lerch. “Let me know the minute you hear anything. Other than a bunch of Silver Stripes asking questions. Let me know when somebody answers and what they say.” He turned to Zickelbein. “Keep your eyes on Naxos.” The 10-cm radar had been developed from a downed Allied aircraft bearing an H2S radar. It had limited range and the Allies had certainly progressed beyond its capabilities, but it’s all the Kriegsmarine had. “Report anything.”
Reubold quickly made his way topside and waved Kunkel back when the leutnant began to move away from the helm. It was a courtesy to step aside and offer the helm to the boat captain. “Something is going on,” Reubold said. “We may have changed from lautaktik to stichtaktik without knowing it.”
“I didn’t know that we were on either,” Kunkle said in surprise.
“Always one or the other,” Reubold said. “Or the Devil’s Shovel.” He turned and could barely make out the ghostly gray shapes of the other boats trailing behind. The W/T operators on the boats had certainly picked up the flurry of confused messages from Marine Gruppe West and Seekreigsleitung, and the boat commanders were probably wondering what Reubold’s orders were. Reubold was wondering the same thing. His original course had them proceeding another 40 kilometers and turning south-southeast. Things had changed, however. He could loiter about and chance bumping into an Allied convoy, or picking up additional information from Marine Gruppe West, that might, he hoped, clear up the confusion. The one thing he could not do was to lead the 11th Flotilla back to base; even at this distance they could see the bright eruptions peppering the horizon where Cherbourg was. The Allies had come in the night again, and this time it appeared that they meant to level Cherbourg.
Reubold picked up the small, handheld signal lamp, switched on the power, checked the louvers, and aimed it toward the other boats. His index finger squeezed the trigger and spelled out: KMZ. Kriegsmarschzustand 1 — Battle Stations, Code One. A single brief flash came back from the following boats: message received — understood.
Reubold hung the lamp on its hook. He had no answers. He didn’t know what was out there, or if there was something out there, or even what it was. But he and Flotilla 11 were prepared, and there was a chance that Waldvogel’s flying boats with their plump guns might get an unexpected chance to fight.
“Sir?” Lerch looked up at him from the hatch. He handed Reubold a sheet torn from a message pad. “From T-22 to Marine Gruppe West. It’s all that was sent. The transmission was terminated in mid-signal.”
Reubold took the page, flipped up the cover shielding the phosphorescent dial of the compass, and read: Many ships.
Chapter 27
The sky around them was a mass of explosions that robbed the night of absolute darkness, replacing it with a thousand miniature suns. The Germans really meant to kill me this time, Gierek thought.
The Pathfinders had formed up with the Lancasters and although nobody said it, everyone knew that this was the invasion. Far above the speckled clouds that gleamed under the moon’s glare, Gierek saw aircraft, many, many aircraft. They flew at different levels, fleets of them, each carefully tended by its covey of fighters. And then suddenly the aircraft were gone and all that remained were the Pathfinders, and behind them the lumbering, complacent Lancasters.
Gierek felt dread pressing hard on his chest and no songs or words came to him. Jagello listened to High Wycombe for news of the invasion, and babied Gee to make sure that when the pulsating signals intersected, he was where he should be — where they should be; over the E-boat pens of Cherbourg. Gee and Oboe, the two mischievous nymphs who lead the wooden planes to the dangerous skies above Cherbourg with pulsating chirps and whistles. At the right moment Jagello would open the bomb bay doors, push the teat on the bomb release, and a dozen Target Indicators would fall gracefully into the night until their altimeters tripped and the flares exploded.
They’d done it thirty-seven times before. Le Havre, Boulogne, Cherbourg, once down to Lorient, and then back to Cherbourg, and each time Gierek had talked or sung and Jagello kept silent.
Jagello was still silent but Gierek was frightened. It was that damned dog. It had been there every time, collapsed in front of the left tire, looking as close to dead as an animal could be without actually being dead — until the erks came to retrieve it.
Gierek saw a soft band of tracers reach high in the sky and then fall away as if to announce: we see you, we are here waiting — come. He looked overhead through the Perspex canopy and cursed the moon and the men who made them fly when the moon was fat and satisfied. He knew that the moon’s rays gleamed off the aircraft despite the dull paint that coated them, and he knew that German anti-aircraft gunners were waiting to trap him in the lenses of powerful binoculars.
He felt… what was the word… sorrowful? An English word that described sadness coupled with longing for something that remained unidentified. A sweet loss that beckoned like a lover from the platform of a departing train. Sorrowful. He was frightened more than he had ever been. To be scared was one thing, to feel your bowels loosen, and your mouth dry up, that was to be expected. But sorrow? He suddenly realized that his future was preordained. That was to say, I am a dead man.
A range of explosions filled the canopy as the German gunners found the altitude. Next would come the barrage, individual guns firing as quickly as they could; 88s, 105s, big guns with menacing barrels and around their barrel a painted stripe for each enemy aircraft downed.
The firing increased, mushrooms of flame with jutting tentacles that reached into the darkness, seeking a target, searching for Gierek. The Mosquito bounced, and sideslipped, and Gierek saw Jagello’s hand motion casually to the right. The bomb-aimer /navigator’s face was buried in the radarscope and he did not want to move, so the tiny wave with the gloved hand said: You’re off course.
Jagello the iron man, the solitary professional.
Suddenly they were in the flak field with explosions on all four sides. Gierek fought the wheel, his eyes on the compass. He relaxed his pressure on the rudder pedals, knowing that pilots usually overcompensated in their excitement.
This is bad, he thought. The worst he had ever seen. They must have brought more guns in and stuck them on every rooftop. Three blasts, one immediately after another, shook the aircraft so violently that Gierek thought the Mosquito’s back was broken but she continued to fly, untouched. “Good, old Mossie,” Gierek breathed, and he heard Jagello say: “Yes.”
They flew for several minutes more, the constant roar of the exploding shells so great that it was impossible to distinguish one blast from another. The sky was bright with explosions, and the flaming remnants of flak bursts, and slender searchlight beams that swept back and forth until they captured an aircraft and locked on, refusing to let go. Gierek hated searchlights. They were obsolete and ineffective but once a plane was pinned in their evil light, they would follow it until the aircraft disintegrated in a flash.
Jagello’s hand came up, and Gierek heard the soft murmur of the bomb bay door motors and felt the aircraft trembling as the doors deployed.
Gierek began praying, something that he had never done before, because although he professed to a belief in God as a good Catholic, he had seen too much to accept His existence. He has abandoned us, Gierek decided when men he knew, good men, died. He prayed this time because of the fear that rose from deep within his soul, and the certainty that this time; this mission, would end in his death.