Return from Berlin: The Eye of a Navigator

9. Munich I and II

Munich I and II After the aircraft factory raid at Leipzig on July 7, we, the 613th, had four days free. The rest of the group went somewhere on one of those days, but this was our day of stand-down by rotation among the four squadrons. The weather was clear to partly cloudy, and there was a warm wind from the south. Each day in the late afternoon , tall picture-making cumulus clouds built to enormous heights where, taking the full intensity of the sun on their western sides, they certainly were the whitest things in the world. By contrast, the sky was a deeper blue and the Landscape a darker green. It all had the look ofpainter's drawings, so I used warm gray paper from Winsor & Newton and worked with black and iron-oxide red pencils, using fine-grained white chalk to heighten the brightest parts of the clouds and long patches of light that flowed in the fields beyond pools ofshadows from hills and trees. So well were they developing that had they been expertly matted and framed in antiqued gold leaf; they could almost have been taken for seventeenth-century, that is, with some imitation fox markings. But while I had been drawing from nature by concentrated observation , I'd really been drawing from nature through the eyes of Baroque artists. I excused myeclecticism by reminding myselfthat learning by imitation was how it had always been done, until modernism 76 Munich I and II took the bit in its teeth, and that ifyou had a seed oforiginality waiting inside to germinate, it would when it was good and ready. Elizabeth came to visit after an interval of several days. I'd gotten used to her, like something in nature that is remarkable only by its absence, and realized that, indulgent as it might seem, I had come to see her as a pleasant contrast to mission madness. I was glad to see her and even presumed to wonder where she'd been- on her knees digging in the garden or flying on her long-roped swing or sitting at the kitchen table cutting things out of prewar catalogs; though she might simply have gone somewhere with her mom, maybe to visit friends in Kettering. I'd not drawn her in a while, as she effortlessly reminded me. It seemed, although she didn't say so, that I could draw trees and douds any day when it was not raining, but she was there and available for picture making at that time and place, a serious drawing on the best handmade paper that money could buy-not as an idealized peasant girl, ala Bouguereau; instead as realism, Bastien-Lepage on-the-spot realism, and yet maybe not; there was a curiously old-fashioned look about her. Except that she was always barefoot and so lightly dressed, she reminded me ofthe best children's book illustrations done in the 1920S by draftsmen with dear eyes and good hands. As a student the figure and portrait had been my choice, and here was a fine subject. I could look to the youthful Degas for a suggestion. Elizabeth had the well-molded child's face that he would have liked, a light-colored Hortense Valpen<;:on. A serious drawing then, not a freehand sketch. I would use warm-gray toned paper and heighten it with white, altogether suitable for matting and framing; it would be head, neck, and shoulders, allowing her a perfectly unposed rotation and tilt, a semiprofile offine proportion; and ofcourse there it was, she always surprised me, so unselfconsciously did she make the picture for me. On the evening ofJuly II, after my several days in the Landscape, we were posted again, and der Totentanz would begin again- how early? Mter part ofa fitful night, we would see. 77 Return from Berlin July 12. Mission ten. The wake-up caller was a different guy this time. Someone strangled the other one? No, we were disappointed with the news that our regular would be back in a day or so-just a bout with stomach flu, or maybe a bottle too many. We had a fine breakfast, Canadian bacon and fresh eggs. Sometimes it seemed that they couldn't do enough for us-plenty for seconds or thirds or all you could eat. There was even a lot of loud, lighthearted talk and yelling. Maybe we were a bunch of manicdepressives in our manic stage for no reason- up at 0100 hours surely meant that we'd not be daisy-cutting in France. They even hung a different-shaped map to tell us where we were going. It was Munich, the old beer hall putsch place, Hitler's own fabled home town. Maybe we'd bomb a brewery, and beer would be running in the streets. Not really, it was some kind of an ordinance plant-where we would blow up a bunch of105S, or even 88s, or for that matter, anything they could use against us. "Do it men, and it will seriously hurt the enemy," Bowman intoned . Well, that's what we always did, hit them right where it hurt the most. As a matter of fact, the 40ISt had an exceptionally good CE record, printed clearly in Impact magazine. Who should doubt? Munich was a long ride, way down into southeastern Germany, further from home than I'd ever been before. The good news, if there was any, was that the flak was supposed to be a little lighter there than at our previous big jobs. But what about fighters? Would they have a free run? No one said that the Mustangs could get all the way down there. We took off at 0421 hours, up through light morning clouds, up and out of them quickly. Coast-out was Beachy Head, and coast in was again St. Valery-en-Caux, the old familiar road to Paris. In fact, we stayed in France all the way to Strasbourg before crossing the border into Germany. The next check points were DIm and Neu DIm, and still no fighters. Then we made a slight, slow turn to the initial point at Landsburg on the Lech river. The bomb run was only thirty-six miles long, and with a strong tail wind that wouldn't take more than seven minutes. 78 Munich I and II Already it was obvious that the Germans were using tracking flak rather than a barrage, but as we got in closer, near the north end of a long scenic lake, I could tell that these gunners had been to school somewhere, and knew what they were doing. One ofthe B-17S in the 6I5th had been hit and was smoking conspicuously. But God almighty, something crazy was happening. The whole group was turning without dropping-and there was the reason, one of the other groups from the 94th Wing was crossing over in front of us. It was like two galaxies on a collision course. Russell came on, paused a moment, and said that we were going home and that we should drop anywhere along our course while we were still in Germany. As soon, then, as we were completely out of our turn, and on a 290-degree heading, John checked to see that the low squadron was not under us and hit the salvo switch, mumbling, "Bombs dropped." Mter a minute or less, Null came on and said that somebody's bombs had hit a small town and that other bomb ripples were going off allover the place- everybody was getting rid of them as soon as possible. What a bloody screw-up. Somebody would be shot for this, ifthey still did that sort of thing. It took nearly five painful hours to get back to Deenethorp. We were not hit by fighters, but I saw no Mustangs around and expected an attack at any time-I felt tired and on edge. The engines seemed to vibrate louder. The head wind cut our ground speed by quite a bit, and even the sun, which was right overhead, seemed to glare more that usual. The minute hand on my watch hardly moved, and the hour hand was stuck dead. It was like waiting for spring on the coldest day in January. We went back through France by nearly the same route and coasted in at Beachy Head. The thin broken clouds were closing for the most part to solid. My Gee box was useful, and we were right on line for runway two-three. 79 Return from Berlin Of course, interrogation was bedlam, and I was glad to have my two shots of Irish and head for the chow hall. I wondered if we would get credit for the mission, but Russell said he was assured that we would, though he agreed that we'd probably have a return engagement. While we were walking back it started to sprinkle, not really rain, just a drop on the nose or the hand every now and then. Porter said he was going to write this thing up in his little notebook right away, and he wanted to use my map ofEurope, the one pinned over my bed. I said I'd do the same thing this evening since we were not posted. I felt trashed. We'd been in the air for more than nine hours, alien air bristling with hate, with nothing to show for it except, as I pointed out to myself, one mission closer to a long happy life. I took my big black English umbrella, although it was not at the moment raining, and headed for the Landscape. There was a little grassy rise on the hillside under the largest oak where I'd found the right view, sun or rain, and it was there that I dropped down to wait-for what, I wasn't sure. Possibly for some kind ofpeace to descend on me. The breeze had freshened a bit, and little flecks of rain were slanting in under the leaves, but there was no need yet for the umbrella . The barley, beginning to turn yellow, was visible beyond the hedge, and it waved rhythmically in the wind with a never-repeating pattern. It had become a kind of visual music for me, complex yet subtle, and, in a sense, my mind could listen to it. Four days later, on a bright, sunny day, we went back to Munich, as I supposed we would. We used the same route again. You couldn't fool the Germans, so why try? They'd do whatever they could about it, and they did up the price with increasingly intense flak. Their fighters had less fuel, so it became for them, a gradually more difficult vectoring problem. This time we seemed to have hit the target, at least what was supposed to be the target, and nobody was shot down, although the tracking flak chewed us up more, it seemed, than it did last time. It still took over nine hours-probably four or five of those spent in a 80 Munich I and II thirty-two-pound flak suit, depending on how brave you were. Of course, after Hamburg I was quite a dedicated user, even though two or three hours in one was a backbreaker. I suppose it squashed my disks a little. It was still a nice day when we got back, and interrogation was less hectic. The beautiful Red Cross girl gave us frosted doughnuts and coffee with canned milk. Was she there last time? I couldn't even remember . I only took one shot ofIrish because I was tired-fatigued, not a nervous wreck. Most of the guys went to the club, as they often did after a long one, and finished offwith Scotch. There was no mission posted, so the green light over the bar would stay on until 0200 hours, although anyone gotten up at one o'clock would never have made it past ten. I went to the Landscape. 81 ...