Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(2)

There were three other men in the compartment – a second BI7 waist gunner, an RAF flight engineer, and a wild-eyed and constantly shaking tail gunner who had been blasted out of a Halifax somewhere over Holland. Berlin hadn’t met many tail gunners at the interrogation centre in Frankfurt – Tail End Charlies had the shortest lifespan of all the RAF aircrew. Cut off from the rest of the crew by the length of the bomber and the primary target of night fighters attacking from the stern, a tail gunner had a lonely and terrifying job. Probably even worse than being the pilot, Berlin decided, if that was possible.

Berlin and his crew had taken the war and their RAF Lancaster bomber deep into Hitler’s Europe twenty-nine times. Berlin’s men, five Poms and a Glaswegian, had decided early on that the young Australian pilot was crazy, but he was committed to an objective they all agreed on: to get them there and back quickly and safely, no matter what it took, and to get them to the magic number, thirty. Thirty completed missions would allow them to be rated Tour Expired, and end combat for them. Thirty was the charm, and as the missions mounted some began to secretly think that perhaps they had it in the bag.

But over the docks at Kiel on that final mission, Berlin and his bomber and crew had parted company in a blinding flash that left him all alone, hanging dazed in his parachute harness, suspended from tree branches thirty feet above the ground in a German pine forest.

When the interrogations had finished at Dulag Luft near Frankfurt, the initial destination for captured allied aircrew, Berlin was released from solitary confinement into the general containment area to await shipping to a POW camp. He kept to himself, as did most of the other RAF men. In the briefings on what to do if shot down and captured, they had been warned there would be microphones recording conversations and English-speaking Germans in RAF and American uniforms mingling casually with the prisoners.

The Americans were different, speaking loudly and asking each other where they were from, which squadron they were with, and how and when their aircraft had been brought down. Most seemed bewildered or bemused by this twist of fate, unable to comprehend how their heavily armoured bombers flying in tight formation and bristling with multiple 50-calibre machine guns could be shot down. The RAF men had grown used to the heavy losses of night bombing, and Berlin himself was surprised he had made it as far as his thirtieth mission.

He’d carefully searched the faces in the general containment area for any sign of Jock, Wilf, Lou, Gary, Harry or Mick, but found no one. It was the same fruitless search in the camp in Poland. Back in England after the war he finally saw a report that told him the blast that blew him clear and into captivity had also blown his crew into dust and into memory.

There was a long blast from the train whistle and Berlin realised someone had put up the blinds in the compartment. The train shuddered to a stop. Outside on the platform, past the passengers scrambling and pushing to get out, he saw a sign: Pascoe Vale. He looked back around the cramped Victorian Railways second-class compartment, with its centre aisle, lacquered woodwork, bench seats and cigarette-butt-littered floor.

The elderly German sergeant opposite was now a snoring clerk with a sauce stain on his wrinkled tie and a brown leather Gladstone bag parked on his lap. The waist gunner with the itchy trigger finger was a middle-aged lady frantically knitting, her face tight and angry. Pink wool spooled relentlessly upwards to her flashing needles out of a string shopping bag at her feet. She glared across the compartment to Berlin’s right. He looked around. Next to him a young bloke in overalls stared straight ahead, studiously ignoring the couple to his right, a bodgie in pegged trousers and crepe-soled shoes and his shorthaired widgie girlfriend. The pair were wrestling awkwardly, writhing, grunting, pressed hard up against the carriage window. Their lips were locked in a kiss that had probably started a half-dozen stations ago at Flinders Street.

Berlin looked away and glanced down. He was wearing his second-best suit and the grey overcoat. Rebecca wanted him to get a new suit but there was no money, his bloody car was seeing to that. Was it a bad car or did he just have a useless mechanic? His shoes at least looked good, he always made sure of that. A good pair of boots had saved his life on the long march through the blizzards of a filthy Polish winter a dozen years ago. Rebecca was right about the suit, but he’d worn worse. He remembered a pair of dark blue RAAF-issue trousers that stank of urine after he pissed himself during an interrogation by the Gestapo, and the threat of a firing squad.

Berlin’s grey overcoat had held up well – quality always does. He’d taken it off a black marketeer in a Port Melbourne pub ten years back in exchange for his old RAAF overcoat and a quick smack in the mouth. He’d definitely gotten the better end of that deal. But even quality has its limits and the coat really didn’t have another winter in it. He’d have to start saving up for next autumn. The coat held a lot of memories for him, good and bad, and he’d almost convinced himself the faded, rust-like brown stains around the hem were mud and not blood.

The train whistled again. This was his stop, home. How long since he’d had a flashback like that? Was it years? He wouldn’t mention it to Rebecca; she had enough on her plate. Besides, he had other news for her, good news, or at least he hoped she would take it that way. He stood up, grabbing onto the brass luggage rack for support. The rust-red, eight-car Tait train shuddered and swayed as it clattered over the level-crossing where queues of cars waited on either side of the closed wooden gates. They called these trains Red Rattlers for good reason.