Armageddon - Leon Uris

In the Center corridor aircraft of the 40th Troop Carrier Squadron headed back to the joint base at Celle.

In Berlin, ships of Navy VR 6 were being unloaded at Tempelhof.

Nick checked the cargo, came forward. “Every time I look at all this coal, all I can think of is I’m sure glad we don’t have to carry the ashes out of Berlin.”

Scott didn’t hear him. He was trying to face up to a rejection by Hilde. He flirted with the idea of telling her he loved her, even throw out a hint of marriage ... but he knew she would see right through the scheme.

“We’re picking up ice,” Stan said.

This, Scott heard. “Wet the props down.”

Stan adjusted the rheostat that sent a stream of isopropyl alcohol along each propeller blade. When an inch of ice formed on the leading edge of the wings Scott ordered the de-icer boots turned on. Chunks of ice flaked off into the air stream as the boots inflated and deflated.

The engines groaned under the new load until the plane burst on top into the sun at 5200 feet.

Their eyes burned with the sudden light. They fished about for their sunglasses. Below them lay a solid carpet of clouds.

Stan called Tempelhof. The weather was clear to Berlin. As they continued down the corridor the clouds below them scattered and they could see the ground. Today it held a mantle of new snow.

The magnificent cycle continued all around them:

at Rhein/Main the crews were at planeside making their checks;

at Fuhlsbuttel flour was loaded into British Dakotas and on the taxiways;

at Lübeck, newsprint in the new five-hundred-pound rolls was loaded on trailers to be carried out to the craft;

at Schleswigland, garrison supplies for the French and British had been cleared to take off.

Scott’s bloc from Rhein/Main was now under control of Tempelhof Radars. Stan and Nick began the prelanding preparations.

Berlin burst below them, never failing to stun the eye. Chains of lakes and canals interwoven with the stubbed forests. And then mile after mile of gutted-out shells.

Tempelhof Airways slowed the bloc to 140 mph, brought them to 2000 feet. As Scott turned over the Tempelhof Range Beacon, the other bloc, which had flown in down the Northern corridor from Fassberg, had landed at Tegel and were already unloaded and in taxi position to take off.

Scott turned left over the Tempelhof Range. At Wedding Beacon over the French Sector he made his downwind leg to 1500 feet.

“Tempelhof to Big Easy One, use caution. Cross winds fifteen knots gusting to twenty-five knots, west to east. Braking action poor.”

Nick grunted. There was always a kicker to landing in Germany.

“Blowers.”

“Low.”

“Auto pilot”

“Off.”

Flaps were set to 10 degrees.

“Booster pumps.”

“High.”

“Landing gear.”

The wheels groaned out of their prison, thumped down, locked.

“Flaps.”

Scott set them full down. The bird lowered, chopped at the sudden bursts of wind shooting up from the ruins. The blitz of high-intensity lights in the St. Thomas graveyard led them to the runway. Scott’s angle of descent dropped the ship below the level of the four- and five-story apartment houses on both sides of the cemetery.

A Russian spy in an apartment checked off his Skymaster as number 104 to land since midnight. This figure would be checked out against figures received at the Air Safety Center.

A hundred little parachutes billowed from the back door. Cold, numb children ran from rubble piles as the candy bars floated into the cemetery.

The Skymaster was put down deftly two feet after the beginning of the runway in the dead center, giving the full length to nurse it down the slippery steel planking. A FOLLOW ME jeep picked Scott up, led him to the west aprons.

Six seconds after Scott cut engines, a ten-ton trailer was backed to the door of his craft. The first German laborer, bone-thin and ragged, went to the pilot’s cabin. Scott gave him a pack of cigarettes and told him to split it among the crew. Most of the pilots did the same.

Tie-down webs were freed. A human chain emptied the ten tons of cargo in sixteen minutes. Nick lost the toss and waited for the mobile canteen to buy coffee and sandwiches.

He watched the swarm of activity, never failing to marvel at the place. Once Tempelhof had been a parade ground for Prussian pomp. In the early days of aviation it had been made into an airfield with stands for barnstorming shows.

Hitler built an enormous edifice to house Goering’s Air Ministry. Great steel canopies were high enough to shelter a plane while being loaded and unloaded along the crescent-shaped building.

The building itself, one of the largest in the world, ran from seven floors below the ground to seven above it. The Russians had flooded these subterranean basements, where fighter-plane assembly plants were safe from Allied bombers. Yet, with all of this massiveness, there was the irony that room was planned for but one undersized runway.

Stan found the Red Cross girl and gave her the package for the Operation Santa Claus collection while Scott ran down a buddy who promised to deliver Hilde’s package to Ernestine Falkenstein.

A mobile Operations and Weather truck gave them plane-side briefings on the return flight. Good luck ... so far, the low in the North Sea had not developed into a front.

The VIP’s were impressed; Time and Life were impressed.

Women laborers swept the coal dust off the apron and sacked it. Some days they swept up three or four tons.

A short ceremony had been staged for the journalists with their crew being presented with gifts from the Metal Workers’ Union.

A number of the planes were partly loaded with light bulbs in crates bearing the crest of the Berlin Bear and the defiant inscription:

MANUFACTURED IN BLOCKADED BERLIN.

In thirty-two minutes after touching down at Tempelhof they were going through takeoff procedures again. New blocs were en route, on the way back, or being formed up. The immense Traffic Control Center atop the I. G. Farben Building in Frankfurt mapped this endless parade.

Scott’s heart was in his mouth as he cleared Berlin. In an hour and twenty minutes he would call Hilde and she would give him an answer.

Chapter Thirty-three

“HILDE, YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,” Judy Loveless said, coming into the kitchen.

“I used to cry a lot. I haven’t in a long time.”

Judy closed the door behind her. “Scott? Your family?”

“Scott. Could I have your advice?”

“I don’t think I should interfere, Hilde.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

Hilde dried her eyes and poured Mrs. Loveless a cup of coffee from the always ready pot, then she sat opposite.

“Scott is going on leave. He has asked me to go with him. Till now there has been nothing between us, I assure you. But he is how he is and he will not change. Somehow ... I can’t find the words to send him away.”

“What do you want from him? A playmate? A dancing partner? Do you think it’s fair to keep him hanging around?”

“Then what you say is, I must submit.”

“What I say is you are so much on the defensive you’re not giving yourself a chance to discover your own feelings.”

“I don’t love him.”

“Hilde ... look at me. Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe Scott Davidson has either. Eventually you must expose yourself to the risk of finding love.”

“If I could believe I could have something like you and Colonel Loveless have ...”

“We didn’t pick it off of a tree, Hilde, or find it parked at our front door one day. Being in love is troublesome and it brings pain ... and it also means being able to give of yourself.”