Chapter 33 Chapter Thirty-Three

A young man in a greasy smock poked his head through the open door. "Sir, the pre-flight training has begun in the b pilot room." "Come on," said Pug.Hastily fastened on the unfamiliar pipes, hooks and straps.The flight suit is too big.The suit had not been washed for a long time, and it smelled of sweat, sludge, and tobacco.Pug quickly pulled on three pairs of socks.Shearling-trimmed leather boots are too big. "What about these?" said Pug, pointing to the raincoat and tweeds he had folded and put on the chair. "When you come back, it will be here as it is, sir."

Their eyes met.In this fleeting glance they both understood each other perfectly well, and there was no particular reason for Pug to risk his life.The young man was sorry for him.At the same time, he was dumbfounded about the situation of the American military attache.Pug said, "What's your name?" "Airman Halton, sir." "Airman Halton, I'm about your size. If I forget to come back for this suit or something, I'll leave it for you." "Thank you, sir." The young man grinned brightly and sincerely. "The material of this dress is very good."

A dozen men in flight suits sat idly in the dark room.Pale faces listened intently to the speech of the air force lieutenant colonel.The colonel gestured for Pug to sit down.Pointing with a long wooden stick at a greyish, grainy aerial photograph of the German capital projected on a large screen, he described Berlin's primary and secondary objectives.Victor Henry drove or walked past the two targets, a power plant and Berlin's main gasworks.It was strange to him when he recognized the lake beside Rosenthal's house in Greenwood. "Okay, let's look at the defense map again."

Another shot of Berlin flashed on the screen, with red and orange signs everywhere.The lieutenant colonel talked about the anti-aircraft gun positions and the searchlight area.The pilots listened intently to the monotonous and low voice. "Turn on the lights." The bare bulbs on the ceiling flicked on.The bomber pilot blinked and shifted in his chair.The screen rolled up to reveal a green and brown map of Europe with a large sign reading in red print: Better to shut your mouth and be thought a fool than open your mouth to dispel all doubt. "Well, that's the way it is. After they've dropped so many bombs on London, Berlin must be heavily guarded, so keep your spirits up." The Lieutenant Colonel leaned his stick against the left wall, put his hands on his hips, and with a gentle The tone said: "Remember, pay attention to the moonlight, don't fly straight into the moonlight, or you will become a cat on the Christmas card. After you cast the bomb and take the photo, dive as fast as possible and get down as fast as possible." Fly home. Load the signal pistol and keep the photo rounds handy. Be quick, the anti-aircraft fire will be very heavy. Our American observer will be on the bomber 'Frandy'. He is Admiral Victor Henry, The most fearless officer in the U.S. Navy."

Everyone turned to Pug.Pug cleared his throat and said, "Maybe I'll be promoted when I get back, sir, but I'm only Captain Henry." "This mission will get you promoted." The Air Force Lieutenant Colonel said, laughing loudly: "Anyone who wants to do such a life-threatening thing that he shouldn't do should be sent to the madhouse." A short, bony pilot, with thick black curly hair and small red eyes, walked up to Pug, took out a cardboard box tied casually with a red ribbon, and said, "General , This is a small souvenir from the squadron to welcome you." Pug opened the paper box and took out a roll of toilet paper.He looked around at the expectant, pale, cheerful faces.

"I'm very grateful. I don't think I need this, though. I'm too scared to shit." Everyone laughed.The diminutive pilot held out his arms. "Come with me, Admiral. My name is Peter, navigator of the 'Flandy'." He led Pug to a row of cupboards, handed Pug his parachute, and showed him how to fasten it to his chest. .He also handed him a paper bag of rations. "You don't need a parachute now. It's a good parachute. You just keep it where you can find it in an emergency. You'll find that you can't move without it. Now you want to Meet the pilots. They're Air Force Lieutenant Keelen and Air Force Sergeant Johnson. We'll call him Sergeant Tiney."

He led Victor Henry into a small room where the two drivers were studying a map of Berlin.and mark it on the diagram.The air lieutenant, with furrowed brows and the neat mustache of a bank vice-manager, was using a magnifying glass.Air Force Sergeant Tenny Johnson rested his booted feet on his desk, examining a map in his hand. "Hello, Admiral, I'm exhausted from running the alarm," he said when Peter introduced Victor Henry to him. "Tired as hell." He was a heavyset man with a ruddy complexion and thick lips. "Pack it up, Tiny," said the first pilot. "Bumped out. We've been sweating for nine hours. The guys from the other squadrons only have a short mission, to the English Channel to chase down the invading fleet. They'll make it back for tea, God knows. I've been over Berlin, But I don't like it."

"You're always bragging about being in Berlin," said the lieutenant, drawing lines on the map. "That was the worst time of my life," said the sergeant, giving Victor Henry a sideways look. "Encountered the most intensive anti-aircraft fire. Numerous searchlights illuminated the night." He yawned and stood up. "Die out. Really out, man, out. You're a brave man, General." He went out. "Tiny is an excellent pilot," the first pilot said in a superior tone, folding up the map and putting it in a canvas case.He talks a lot. Beneath a bare light bulb in the corridor, the six crew members of the "Flandy" bomber gathered together to read notices on the bulletin board and wait for Air Force Lieutenant Kieren's final instructions.If they hadn't been wearing flight suits and life jackets like costumes, they would have looked like six young people casually wandering the streets of London.The radio operator was thin and small, with a pathetic look.The tail gunner was a fine-looking young man, almost a child.It seemed to Pug that he was on his first sea trial.The front-seat gunner with a face full of acne was chewing gum roughly with his big mouth.It's just that they are nervous, fearful, adventurous, and happy, which makes them special.

On hot summer nights, stars twinkle: Vega, Cygnus, Altair, Arcturus, the assistants of ancient navigation, are reliably twinkling in the distance.The first class pilot boarded the plane.The crew walked up and down the grass nearby. "The 'Flandy' bomber," said the air force sergeant, clapping the fuselage hard. "A lot of meritorious service has been done, general." Only then did Pug realize that the Wellington bomber was covered with a layer of fabric, and the sound of slapping it was like slapping on cloth.He was used to the metal planes of his navy.It never occurred to him that the British could make planes out of textiles to attack bombers.He is not a pilot and has never had any knowledge of it.Victor Henry had actually managed to evade the flight in time, but he felt compelled not to board the textile plane and fly over Berlin, just as a murderer had to be hanged.In this quiet night with the fragrance of flowers, the mournful singing of birds echoed everywhere.

"Ever heard a nightingale?" Tiny Johnson asked. "No, never." "General, that's what you're hearing now." On the ground in the distance, one plane after another coughed and roared, spouting flames in the darkness.A truck slowly approached the "Frandy".The mechanic pulled the wires and plugged them into the fuselage.The motor started, belching smoke and fire.At this moment other planes taxied on the dimly lit runway, the sound of the machine thundered, and the plane took off into the sky, Fly into the misty night sky under the blue moonlight.Soon all that was left was the Ferlandy, its crew still lying on the grass.The spinning motor glowed cherry red.In an instant, the engine stopped suddenly.Pug heard the nightingale again.

"Hey, what's going on?" Tenny said. "Don't you cancel the order because the engine assistance has something wrong?" The mechanics walked over quickly and got busy around an engine.They were swearing dirtyly, and tools jingled like music in the open air.Twenty minutes after the other planes had taken off, the "Frandy" started to fly across the North Sea. Sitting in the dark, rickety cabin of the plane rumbling through the cold night sky, Pug seemed to have passed half an hour, but he looked at his watch and saw that only seven minutes had passed.None of the crew spoke.The plane's intercom kept ringing.His helmet was not as tight as his clothes, and it hurt his ears.But when the plane resumed its flight once it left the coast, the crew and navigator fell silent.Victor Henry's clothes were too thick, and the sweat that flowed from him dried and became cold, making him shiver with cold.He sat in the cabin and the watch ticked for another twenty minutes.The air lieutenant gestured to him to look out through the vapor on the Plexiglas, from where the navigator was observing the stars, and made him lie prone in the bombardier's position over the nose transom.Pug did as he was told, but he saw nothing but black water, a bright moon, and jeweled stars. "Pilot, don't turn on the lights!" the Air Force Lieutenant shouted. The Air Force sergeant who had brought Pug the toilet paper was marking the blueprints on the foldable board, trying to block the dim light of an amber flashlight with his fingers.Pug crouched beside him, watching him work tensely in front of celestial charts, horoscope charts, bipods, rulers, and flashlights.What, Pug thought, was the problem of the voyage for him to solve?The young man grinned at him.Pug took the flashlight from him and blocked the light so that it fell only on the paper.Peter gestured and thanked him, and Pug crouched behind the two pilots until the navigator finished his work.The American thought that the British long-range bomber must be as big as a passenger plane, and that the cab must have room to stretch out its arms.In fact, the two pilots, the front gunner, the navigator and the radio operator, five people were packed close together.Pug could only see the gunner at the forward transom in dim moonlight.Other faces were only faintly revealed by the faint flash of light on the telephone dial. Hugging the parachute tightly, clutching the wires, Pug stumbled across the dark fuselage, stumbling across the darkened fuselage, to the gunner's seat by the tail window.The young gunner, without a hat, with disheveled hair hanging over his face, gave him a thumbs up and smiled sympathetically.Pug found the place too lonely, bumpy and cold.The tail of the bomber was bouncing violently.He shouted desperately, trying to drown out the howling wind and the roar of the motor.In the end, he had no choice but to make a gesture of resignation.The young man nodded, and proudly activated the power turret to show him.Pug groped around in the plane and found a clean spot.He sat down on the parachute and hugged his knees.He has nothing to do.It's getting colder and colder.He took something out of the ration bag and ate it, and he stuffed it into his mouth before realizing it was chocolate.He dozed off. A staccato sound in his ear woke Pug up.His nose was numb, his cheeks seemed frostbitten, and he shivered with cold.In the darkness, a hand pulled him forward.He followed the vague figure towards the bright light of the tail cockpit.Suddenly, the cabin was bright as day.The plane tilted and dived, and Pug Henry fell. His forehead hit an iron box, and his skin was scratched and bleeding.Supporting himself on hands and knees, he saw the light disappear.Then it flashed and disappeared, as if taking a snapshot.As he crawled forward, the fuselage swayed dizzily from side to side. Tenny Johnson gripped the joystick tightly and turned around.Pug saw his mouth speak at the microphone: "Hi, General, how are you?" His voice rang through the intercom. "Just flew over the marine searchlight area." "Fine," Henry replied. The air force lieutenant in the helmet turned his head and cast a nervous, serious glance at Henry, then stared at the night ahead again.Tenny pointed to the device with the oxygen label on it with a gloved finger, and said, "Plug it in, come and take a look." Inhaling the fresh air that smelled of rubber, Pug climbed into the bombardier's seat. What he saw was no longer the glistening sea, but the gray earth under the moonlight.Searchlights swung behind them.Directly below the plane, small yellow lights were blinking.There are red and orange fireballs floating upwards slowly above the lights. The faster they go up, the bigger the fireballs become.A few exploded, glowing red and sparkling.A few flew past the front and sides of the plane, galloping upward with blurred flashes of color.Tiny's voice said, "Last time the anti-aircraft fire ashore was much heavier." As soon as the words fell, a purple-white thing was dazzling, and exploded in front of Victor Henry.Immediately, he felt it was pitch black again, and then saw green circles dancing wildly.Pug Henry fell down immediately.With his face pressed against the cold plexiglass, he sucked in the oxygen tube, and he passed out, unable to see anything in both eyes. His hand was tightly held by one.The urgent voice of the navigator Peter rang in his ears. "It's spotlight. It's close, General. What do you think?" "I can't see anything." "Wait a minute. Sit up, sir." The plane continued to fly forward.His eyes were blind for a long time, and then he saw green circles dancing in the blinding red mist.The human face illuminated by the flash of light on the telephone dial, the gunner illuminated by the moonlight, gradually emerged like a scene in a movie.Before his eyesight recovered, Victor Henry had been in pain and worried about whether his eyesight could be restored.On this voyage, he finally saw the clouds rolling in the moonlight for the first time."Should see searchlights and flak fire," said the navigator. "Nothing," Air Force Lt. Kieren said. "A dark night." "Berlin is thirty miles ahead, sir." "Something's wrong. Maybe it's your wind direction again." "Director bearing checked, sir." "Damn it, Peter, that won't make Berlin appear in front." The driver's voice was a little irritated, but not in a hurry. "A dense forest is clearly visible beyond the horizon. There are no outlines, and it is pitch black." Tenny Johnson said sarcastically that during the last bombing, almost half of the planes could not find Berlin at all, and none of the official navigation rules issued by Bomber Command were effective.He also said he had had enough. The tail gunner reported in a high-pitched voice that a searchlight had been spotted far to the right rear of the plane.Almost at the same time, the pilots saw, and pointed out to Victor Henry, a fire blazing on the horizon ahead, yellow flames swaying across the moonlit field.After a hasty exchange of ideas over the intercom, Air Force Lieutenant Kieren turned the plane around and flew in the direction of the searchlights.As for the fire, he thought it was caused by another bomber flying over and dropping the wrong bomb. "That's Berlin," he said shortly, pointing to the balls of fire with his gloved finger. "Fireworks of all sorts going off. Well done, Reynolds. What's next?" The tail gunner replied in a very tense squeaky voice, "Well, I'm fine, sir. Defensive fire is pretty heavy, isn't it?" As they approached Berlin, the gunner on the leading edge of the wing was a black shadow against the brilliance of the anti-aircraft gunfire and the blue fan of the searchlights.Tiny's voice called over the intercom: "The first bastards get burned." The calm and slow voice of the Air Force Lieutenant came: "It looks more terrifying than it actually is, General, as soon as you fly in, the artillery fire will disperse. The sky is really wide, that's right." The "Flandy" bomber flew into this magnificent and terrifying scene at once, and as the lieutenant said, the artillery fire was indeed sparse, and the searchlight beams spread out in all directions, falling to the left and right.Flak from the flak and shells left a vast black space in which their planes could fly unimpeded.The lieutenant and navigator chatted hurriedly in flying lingo. "See that flare over there, General? A few guys really hit the prime targets," Kieren said. "At least a lot of bombs have been dropped around the area," Tiny said. "There's so much smoke that I can't see anything." Half of the bottom is the clouds bathed in moonlight, and the other half is the dark city with searchlights shining.Pug Henry saw a particularly tall gleaming column that must have been an anti-aircraft gun turret.In the other direction, billowing piles of smoke and fire surrounded the houses and chimneys beside the silver river that ran through Berlin.The black smoke and blinding flames of anti-aircraft fire passed by the "Frandy", and the plane continued to fly forward as if it was protected by a god.The Air Lieutenant said, "Well, I'm off to find a secondary target. Change course, navigator." After a while, the sound of the motor stopped, and the nose tilted downward.The sudden silence was surprising. "Gliding down, General," said the Air Lieutenant's voice. "They use listening Devices control lights and anti-aircraft fire.Now the navigator is going to take your seat. " The plane flew to the ground.Pug walked over to the tail gunner.The gunner's round childish face was pale, and his eyes were wide open, watching the moonlit German capital and the anti-aircraft installations glowing like fireflies.The air lieutenant ordered: "Open the bomb bay." This was followed by a rush of cold air and a whoosh.A strong pungent spicy smell rushed into the cockpit, and Pug felt as if he was conducting shooting exercises on the sunny blue sea near the oasis.The smell of smokeless gunpowder is exactly the same in Manila as it is over Berlin.The navigator kept yelling in his disciplined, bright voice: "Left, left...overhead...right...straight forward...no, left, left...forward. Forward. Forward Before. Good." The plane shakes.Pug saw the bombs falling jaggedly behind them, like a dangling string of black sticks.The nose was up, the motors roared, and they flew upward. Below, along a row of buildings and the huge gas storage tower, a series of small red fireballs exploded.Pug thought the bomb had missed.Then, in the blink of an eye, a mass of pale yellow flame with a greenish center rose from the ground like a wave, and almost reached the height of the plane that was flying upwards, but fell far behind the plane.Under the light of this intense flame, the whole city of Berlin suddenly became visible, naked and laid out below, like a postcard printed too heavily in yellow: Kurfürstenburg boulevard, Lindenstrasse, Brandenburg Gate, the zoo The mountains, rivers, bridges, anti-aircraft turrets, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Opera House are all clear and vivid, close at hand, safe and sound, and surprisingly yellow. The cheers from the intercom made his ears ache.He picked up the receiver and yelled in protest. Just as he was shouting, six or seven searchlight beams, swinging back and forth, suddenly focused on the "Frandy".A blue light hung over the tail gunner's transom.The young gunner looked at Pug in dismay, and suddenly screamed with horror, his eyes closed tightly, and his mouth opened wide.There was so much noise around that Pug could barely hear him, he was almost yelling, his tongue and gums black in the blue light.The plane seemed to land on a pyramid of shining blue light.The motor roared, the plane tilted and dived, and slid to one side, but the pyramid stayed motionless under the fuselage.Holding the gun carriage tightly with both arms, Pug steadied himself.The gunner fell to the mount, the microphone fell from his open mouth.The gunner's shouts could not be heard over the intercom, but Pug heard Air Lieutenant Kieren and Tenny talking hurriedly in a whisper.Many orange and red fireballs rose lazily from the ground and floated up towards the "Flandy", flying faster and faster, exploding in all directions, raining fire and blooming everywhere.Pug jerked, heard the motor change its voice, and heard another horrible whistle.A gust of cold wind hit him.Debris from the plane flew in all directions, and the "Frandy" lurched sideways and dived in a curve.Victor Henry thought he was dying.The plane screamed, shuddered horribly, and plunged straight down.Both drivers yelled, not out of fear, but because they wanted to be heard.Henry watched the textile wing through the thin Plexiglas transom, waiting for it to snap and fall apart, announcing the end of his life. The screaming, whistling blue pyramid turned black.The dizzying descent and taxi stopped, and the plane went straight ahead.Pug felt sick.The gunner was unconscious, and in the moonlight you could see his vomit running from his mouth to his chest, bits of chocolate, coffee, and oranges.The young man had eaten his entire ration, and there was a black pool of blood on his left leg in his flight suit. Pug picked up the phone.But the microphone stopped ringing.The communication system has failed.The damaged plane wobbled forward in howling winds.Holding on tight to the lead, Pug bumped into a man who called out that it was Peter.Pug yelled into his ear that Reynolds was injured, and he continued toward the cockpit, past the shattered sunroof on the starboard side of the fuselage, from which the stars could be seen.He suddenly saw the Big Dipper by accident.They are flying west, heading back to London. The pilot sat in the cockpit as before, busy operating the aircraft.Tiny called, "Ah, General. We're going home to tea. Saying goodbye to these unlucky sights. You'll tell 'em you saw the gasworks fire, won't you?" "Of course I'll tell them. How's our plane?" "Shot on the port engine, but barely working. Going overland, afraid we'll have to land. Unless that engine fails completely, it looks like we'll make it home." "Your tail gunner has a wounded leg. The navigator is behind him." The aggressive beams of the outer searchlight area dangled ahead, probing the clouds, but the Ferlandy drilled deep into the clouds, undetected.Tiny rolled his big blue eyes, leaned on the steering wheel with both hands, and yelled at Victor Henry, "Airplanes are the stupidest thing to do, aren't you, General? I've had enough. I should have gone to the Navy." !" Air Lieutenant Kieren took off his helmet and let Tiny fly the plane entirely, while he wiped his face with a bandanna no whiter than his skin.He gave Pug a weary smile, his brow lined with lines. "Probably near land, General. There are still considerable difficulties in maintaining this altitude. How is your French?"