Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

Of the nine remaining Canberra bombers that had survived the German Roland missiles, three were hit by SAM-16s, the advance hand-held Soviet surface-to-air missiles in plentiful supply along the Berlin Corridor. One Canberra crew managed to bail out over the Havel River in Grunewald Forest in what used to be the American sector of West Berlin. He pulled the cord for his inflatable vest well before he hit the water, but the carbon dioxide cartridge was a dud. One of the coolest of the cool in aerial combat, the pilot, Kevin Murphy, an Australian born and raised in the outback, had a dread of water, and was now desperately telling himself to calm down, which he did after a few anxious moments, unhitching the chute harness and breaking free before beginning to blow into the mouthpiece of the Mae West. Now his uniform, particularly the elastic G suit, was beginning to soak up water at an alarming rate. His finger slipped from where he was holding the mouthpiece. He grabbed for it and resumed blowing as he heard a power boat start out from the shore. He was going under.

The Stasi people’s patrol boat dragged the river for two hours: slow, monotonous work, a crowd gathering on the eastern shore by the picnic tables to see whether they would find the “terror bomber.”

“Why bother?” said one of the three men aboard the patrol boat.

“Because, you Dummkopf” said the oldest comrade in charge of the boat, “it is important.”

“Why?”

“Because, you Dummkopf, headquarters wishes to know what squadron he is from. This is vital intelligence.”

The crew member, a youth in his midtwenties, made a rude noise at the acne-faced teenage boy who was the third member of the crew. “Intelligence, nonsense,” said the crewman. “We know what squadron they came from. Three of them crashed out near Lübars. Can’t you see?” He was pointing north.

The older man in charge knew he was correct, but the thick, coal-brown smoke that was rising and flattening over Berlin was coming not from the Allied bombers that had crashed but from farther in than Lübars, from Tegel Airport and from around Schönefeld Airport to the east, where storage sheds, hit during the raid, were burning out of control.

“So,” pressed the crewman, “why do we waste our time dragging the river? Let the fishes have him, ja?”

The people’s captain, a thickset man with a game leg, was kneeling awkwardly on the deck, face showing the strain, untwisting one of the lines on the chain-weighted drag. When he looked up, his face was beet red from the effort. “If you don’t wish to be sent to the Fulda Gap, my young friend, you’ll help me and stop your complaining, ja?”

“They cannot send me,” answered the crewman insolently. “I have medical exemption.”

“Ah,” said the people’s captain, pushing himself up from the gunwale. “And if the Americans counterattack? If then-ships do come? What then, eh?” Before the crewman could answer, the people’s captain spat into the lake. “That is what your exemption will be worth, Comrade. Nothing.”

“Their ships will not come,” answered the other boy sharply. “And even if they do — where will they land them? We have all the ports. Bremen will fall in a few days. You’ll see.”

“They will use La Rochelle and Saint Nazaire,” said the captain. “They will not need Bremen or Hamburg if they land there. It will also save them two hundred kilometers.”

This gave the two boys food for thought, but the one who had started the argument was not deterred. “Paris will not permit them to use the French ports.”

The captain had straightened out the drag line. “If one of our bombs lands on French soil, France could be at war with us overnight,” he said, turning, suddenly hearing the drag tackle go taut. But it was only one line, the others still loose. He sat back on the seat behind the steering wheel of the plywood boat and put it on “idle,” letting the current push them — the way it would push anything else.

“You think the French capitalists are that stupid?” challenged the youth. “To let a stray bomb bring them to war? No, Comrade. The French are not idiots. If you bombed a whole French city, they would not come in — they would say it was a mistake. They are waiting like the giraffes, the French.”

“Giraffes?”

“Yes… scavengers… you know.”

“You mean hyenas!” laughed the old man. “Giraffes!”

“Whatever you call them,” the youth replied angrily.

“And what if we bombed Paris?” asked the old man. He saw the lines go taut. “Hey then, Comrade? What if Paris was bombed?”

“Paris is different,” conceded the younger man. “That’s quite another matter.”

When they finally found the dead pilot and pulled him aboard, they discovered the air bag, what the “terrorist fliers” called a “Mae West,” had a small tear in it. They delivered the Australian’s body to headquarters in the old Karl Marx Allee and were cheered by some former East Berliners, including several of the Turkish migrant workers unable to go back home but enraged nevertheless by the NATO bombing. The military commander, flanked by Volkspolizei, personally came out to congratulate the people’s patrol.

As they were leaving, the crewman who had been arguing with the people’s captain noticed a police corporal handing the older man what looked like a voucher of some kind. Now he understood why the people’s captain had been so determined to find the flier. Marx was right, he said to the boy. Money is a corrupting force. Nevertheless, if the party had offered a reward—

He went up to the captain and demanded his share, right there and then. And got it.

In Lübars, on the city’s northern outskirts, a gaping bomb crater thirty yards wide was still steaming with burning debris near the remains of the two four-story apartment blocks. The two elderly couples befriended by Leonhard Meir, who was out at the time, had been in one of the apartments when the six Canberra bombers struck.

With an efficiency they were famous for, the Berliners immediately began to clear the rubble, looking for survivors, moving as quickly as caution would allow around the debris, especially a staircase teetering near the edge of the crater, though it was quite clear they did not expect to find anyone who would be easily identifiable. The strangled horn siren of the Volkspolizei put an end to the clearance, however, as police arrived, quickly cordoned off the area for “investigation.”

“Investigation of what?” asked an elderly Berliner, his wife still shaking but with presence of mind enough to pull him away.

“Investigation of crimes against the state!” answered the policeman.

The old man Berliner threw his hands up in disgust. “Crimes against the state? Against those Russian pigs, you mean. Don’t forget Moscow in your investigations, Kamerad!”

“Silence!” shouted the policeman, and despite the death and destruction that had come upon them like a cyclone, several people began laughing, others joining in, mocking the official’s officiousness. Several small boys were playing war, running around the crater and the cordoned-off debris, one with a plane in his hand. It was an American F-15, ghost gray with U.S. Air Force insignia.

“Whose child is that?” demanded the policeman.

“Mine,” said a woman rather timidly.

“Stop him. It is not permitted.”

“What isn’t?” cut in the old man again.

“Antisocial behavior,” answered the Volkspolizei.

The old man spread his hands again, staring at the sky, his faded coat ballooning about him like a clown. “You talk of antisocial behavior!” He pointed angrily at the crater. “You are the cause of this! You — you fascist!”