The Room on Rue Amélie(24)
Before their first trip across the Channel in late January, the CO stopped Thomas, Harry, and the others on their way to a Nissen hut for a briefing. “Don’t even think about bailing out over France,” he warned. “The place is crawling with Krauts, understand? May as well go down with your plane if you can’t make it out.”
The warning should have made Thomas’s blood run cold, but it was cold already. Now that his mother was gone, no one—except maybe Harry—cared whether he lived or died. He was acutely aware of that every time he went skyward.
A huge map of the English coast and northwestern France was slung across the back wall of the hut, crisscrossed with red string. As he and Harry took seats facing the platform, Thomas noted that many of the airfields around London had string paths to a central meeting point in Canterbury, the launching point for a route across the Channel.
“Listen up, chaps,” the station commander began, and a hush fell across the room. “We’re bringing the war to the Germans now. It’ll be dangerous, but this is a crucial step on the road to victory.”
The CO spoke next, briefing the men on their flight positions, their target speeds, the enemy aircraft, and their mission goal—to keep German 109s from shooting down the British bombers that would drop their loads around Boulogne, a coastal area crawling with Nazis.
“What do you think, then?” Harry asked later as he and Thomas walked briskly through a light snowfall back to their rooms. They had just a few hours to prepare for the mission. “Are we going to turn the tide, or is this suicide?”
Thomas didn’t answer right away. The truth was, he didn’t much care if he lost his life somewhere over France, as long as he brought some Germans down with him.
But Harry, apparently reading his mind, wasn’t having any of it. “Look, I know you’re in a bad way right now. But you’re not alone out there, you understand? I’m your brother, and so are Jarvis, Reeves, Abbott, and the rest. And I notice you didn’t ask me what I think, but in my view, things are about to change. Maybe 1941 is the year we win the war, right?”
Thomas chuckled at this, for they both knew it was false optimism. The war would drag on at least until ’42. The Huns weren’t going to lie down at the first sniff of defeat, that was for sure.
The next morning, with a northwesterly wind at their tails and sunlight sparkling off the Channel, a dozen Blenheim bombers set off for the French coast with an armada of fighters. Thomas was just behind the right wing of the fleet as they crossed over the choppy waters, heading for a green smudge of land in the distance.
As they approached, Thomas rose above the bombing height of 12,000 feet, ducking and weaving through the clouds to check for approaching enemy aircraft. The skies were clear as the harbor of Boulogne came into view, and though there were two dozen German fighters doing practice maneuvers some fifty miles southward, no one had noticed the British incursion yet. Still, Thomas was vibrating with anticipation. Someone could spot them at any moment.
No sooner had the thought crossed Thomas’s mind than the sunny afternoon exploded with whizzing black dots and puffs, anti-aircraft fire from the ground. “Damn it,” Thomas cursed, expecting more. But no German planes appeared from the clouds, and none of the dark bursts hit their marks. A moment later, the Blenheims dropped their bombs into the port. It was hard to see what they’d hit, but from the percussive sounds of explosion and the belches of smoke below, Thomas guessed that they’d found the German vessels snug in the harbor. Well, then, that was something, wasn’t it?
“All right, boys,” the voice came over the radio. “That’s a success. Let’s head back now, shall we?”
Slowly, the Blenheims turned to port and the whole aerial fleet followed them back out over the Channel. In the distance, the British coast gleamed in the sunshine like a beacon welcoming them home.
SEVEN MONTHS LATER, BOMBING RUNS to the mainland were no longer a novelty; they were the pieces that made up Thomas’s life. Each mission was exhilarating in its own way; there were always Huns to look out for, enemy fire to avoid, strategic sites to target. The RAF boys were dogged, determined, undefeatable.
But there were casualties too. In late June, Harry had disappeared over France on a bright, perfect afternoon. It had been a routine mission—escorting bombers in and out—but the Huns had caught them this time, and there had been a dogfight. Thomas had managed to dodge the enemy fire, but he’d heard Harry’s panicked calls over the radio, and he’d seen his friend’s plane corkscrewing toward the earth, its tail breathing fire.
“Harry!” he’d called back as the plane vanished beneath a blanket of clouds. “Harry! Do you read?”
But the sole reply had been a sinister static.
Thomas could only assume his friend—officially listed as missing in action—was dead. He had to be; the way his plane had burned, leaving an ominous shadow of black smoke, had shaken Thomas to the core. There was nothing he could do, and the helplessness was paralyzing.
“This one’s for you, Harry,” he’d said seven weeks later as he engaged in a dogfight with a 109, sending the other aircraft spinning toward the yawning earth. Sometimes, he dedicated his triumphs to Harry; other times it was Oliver; still others it was his own mother, for he was confident that she was up there somewhere, looking down on him and gracing him with a bit of extra luck. How else could he explain the way he seemed invincible?