“You got him!” In mere seconds, Willi’s cries turned from frantic to celebratory. “I’ll still smack you silly though, for pulling that stunt once we land, you mad Schweinhund! And mark my words, I’ll make sure to bring it up during the next dressing down I’m getting from the Geschwader commander when he calls me a reckless sort.”
The rest of the Staffel was up in the air in no time. The attack was repelled but certainly left a bitter taste in their mouths. They weren’t safe here anymore. The balance of power had shifted◦– ever so slightly it seemed, but enough to leave the men brooding.
It wasn’t, however, the British bombers that had put Johann into a deep state of foreboding today. It was the sky◦– hazy, darkening, as though brimming with some invisible threat.
Wrath of Allah.
Johann quickly dismissed the words as stupid superstitions and returned to writing his two recent victories into his Abschuss◦– an after-action report. A small droplet landed on his papers, smudging the words. Johann lifted his head and felt another heavy drop hit his face.
“What the hell?” He muttered to himself, passing the back of his hand over his forehead to wipe the moisture. He called out to his crew chief, who was working on his Bf-109, “is it raining?”
The young man, with his crisp golden hair bleached by the African sun, scrutinized the sky for some time; lowered his screwdriver and held his other hand out, palm open.
“I’ll be damned! It is, Herr Leutnant!”
Both exchanged uncomprehending looks. In the desert, where they struggled to get enough drinking water and showered only when the occasion presented itself, the rain seemed not only out of place but outright odd. Johann had been studying weather patterns, together with his father, since he was a child and knew far too well by now that such oddities never signified anything good. It didn’t “just rain” in a desert. And those weren’t ordinary, storm clouds to which they were accustomed in Germany. Yet, the pilots, together with crew chiefs and other Staffel personnel poured out of their tents, from under the fighters where they had been resting in rare shadow and started tearing their clothes off, mad with happiness like children.
Despite a gnawing feeling inside, Johann found himself smiling and then laughing even, as though falling under the influence of this general mayhem. Hastily discarding his shirt, shorts, and shoes, he dashed towards his tent to grab some soap. In a few minutes, the whole Staffel gathered under the improvised shower streams pouring down off the wings and propeller blades of their aircraft, lathering themselves generously and nearly bursting with joy.
The rain refused to cease even as darkness started to fall; only increased, if anything. Jests and elation turned into concern as pilots were trying to figure out how to keep their tents’ floors dry. The torrents began beating down onto the waterproof tarpaulin with savage force, gusts of sudden wind tearing into their unsecured ends. They dined with dry rations as it was next to impossible to prepare a traditional dinner in such conditions and ate in their respective tents as well, as the open mess with its long wooden tables was surely no longer suitable for this purpose.
“Water is coming,” Willi noted with a hint of surprise in his voice, pointing at the floor, a piece of bread with a few slices of sausage on top of it, still in his hand.
Johann dropped his sandwich and quickly started picking up their spare footwear and other belongings from the ground.
A Staffeladjutant burst inside, squeezing a shovel. “Outside, everyone, now! Herr Staffelkapitän’s orders. And take your trench shovels!”
Outside, the general commotion was drowned in the torrents of rain which had already started pooling under their feet. The Staffelkapitän and his adjutant had finally succeeded in herding the entire Staffel outside and were standing on top of a truck, Oberleutnant Degenhardt desperately trying to outshout the rain and hurricanic winds.
“A message has just gone through from Staffel 2, which is south to us. They’re being flooded as well. The order from the headquarters was to secure all valuables on every possible elevated position and preserve the aircraft from getting damaged. We’re lucky since our aircraft all sit on top of the hill but we still need to dig trenches to make sure that the water doesn’t rise and get inside the engines. We’ll be left crippled if it does, so get to that digging at once! Pilots; you have exactly five minutes to grab all of your personal belongings and move them to inside your aircraft, after which I expect you to be digging right next to your crew chiefs and myself, right here. Now, get going!”
Back in their tent, drenched to the bone and already shivering unmercifully, Johann began collecting his notes, a journal, papers and photos before thrusting a shaving set, a hairbrush and a change of clothes into his duffel bag. As soon as he noticed Willi positioning a record player under his arm, in which he also held a freshly opened bottle of cognac, he couldn’t help but demand of his friend at least some explanation.
Unimpressed, Willi added a hookah to the already bizarre collection in his hands. “Why? He said to take all the most important stuff. Could you put my records in your bag as well? I brought some nifty new jazz from Berlin and I’ll be damned if I lose it.”
“You’re insane.”
“So my personal record says.”
They pulled their heads into their shoulders and ran into the torrential downpour. Just as they were approaching their respective fighters, the lights, which Staffelkapitän Degenhardt allowed to turn on in the view of the force majeure◦– no Brit would attack them in such weather anyway◦– went out, leaving them in complete darkness.
“What happened?” Johann shouted to no one in particular.
“Generator must have gotten damaged,” a reply came from his right.
Who was it? Degenhardt himself? Johann blinked a few times, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness just enough to make out the outlines of his Bf-109 and threw his bag on top of its wing before climbing it clumsily, slipping and sliding off the slippery metal in the process. He finally made it to the top, threw the canopy open, hurled the bag inside and shut it closed at once, leaving only a shovel for himself. The entire night they had been digging trenches, soaked and miserable, officers and rookies side by side. In the first hours of the breaking dawn, they collapsed in the same manner, huddling together on the most elevated part of their base◦– the hill where the aircraft stood, using the Messerschmitts as the only means of protection from the nature that had suddenly seemed set on annihilating them overnight. The tents were long lost to the wind and downpour.
The following day, yet unbeknownst to them, the British began their ground attack on Tobruk, using the weather to their advantage. Oblivious to the latest news due to the damaged radio, Staffel 1 spent those days digging more trenches to direct water streams away from the fighters and trying to survive the storm in and under their aircraft.
“Wrath of Allah is right,” Johann mumbled as he and Willi curled inside the cockpit of his Bf-109, which offered a short respite from the rain. The cockpit wasn’t built for two by any means, but it would just have to do. They took turns with the rest of the crewmen, so at least for four hours, it was all theirs, warm and snug, familiar and comforting.