Iris Gower - Bombers’ Moon

‘Help us.’ Her voice was faint but the tapping stopped. ‘Help us,’ she called again.

‘It’s all right, cariad, we’re coming for you.’ A face appeared in a gap above her grimed with sweat and dust. ‘Be still, we’re going to move the debris carefully, love, so not to hurt you.’

The work was painfully slow but the light above her became steadily brighter, the weight gradually lifting away so that she could breathe more easily. Hari tried to lift her head again but her neck was wracked with pain and with a sob she fell back against the bricks again. All she’d seen for her effort was a glimpse of Kate’s hand with the wedding band shining golden in the light.

A lifeless, waxy hand smeared with blood. Her friend was dead, they were all dead. Hari couldn’t stop the gasps of grief and pain escaping from between her swollen lips. Tears scaled her grazed cheeks as she let herself slip away into a fog of darkness.

A week later Hari was discharged from hospital with little more than cuts and bruises. The nurse led her to the entrance. ‘You’ll have two black eyes for a while but you got off lightly, my girl.’

Hari shook her head. ‘Except that I lost people I love.’ Her tone was disconsolate. The nurse touched her shoulder sympathetically.

‘I see that here every day,’ she said gently, ‘we’ve got to keep telling ourselves we’ll win this damn war, somehow.’

Hari stood on the pavement. She felt cast adrift on a blank sea; she had no sister, no Michael and now, no Kate.

‘But you have father and Jessie and even poor old Georgie Porgie when he’s home from the front so stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ Her voice rasped as she scolded herself.

When she got home they all fussed around her. Jessie made her endless cups of tea, giving her a few precious aspirin and talking softly to her of the war being over one day. In the end, Hari went to bed worn out with tears, her head pounding, her eyes so swollen they were half closed.

She lay on her narrow bed and thought of the past, of before the war when she was free, of when she briefly had Michael in her arms.

Hari remembered when the air raids began, how Meryl had hidden under the table, peering out at them like a little animal from a lair and she began to cry again, the salt tears hurting her bruised eyes. But at last, too weary to stay awake, she slept and dreamed of peace.

Somehow Fritz had got me enough petrol to get to the coast of Normandy. I knew he thought me a silly girl and dispensable. I tied my hair into plaits, wore no make-up and dressed as childlike as I could get away with. I looked at my breasts and grimaced, for all my efforts they were shapely and showed. Still, I could be well developed for my age I suppose. And then I began the long drive from Hamburg to the coast.

By the time I was close to the beaches of Normandy I was almost asleep. I slid from the driving seat and hid among some trees. I knew the beaches were still a few miles away but dare I take the radio any further? I sighed in resignation; if I put the radio down I might never find it again. I trudged on though the tough grass whipped my legs painfully. What was I doing here, in France, carrying a small but heavy suitcase with a wireless inside—proof that I was a traitor? I would be shot on discovery, nothing was surer than that.

I heard the noise while I was still more than a mile away: shelling, shots, screams and loud voices. For a moment I quailed. How was I going to get past German lines and how was I supposed to find Fritz?

I skirted the beach code-named Sword, a shell from seaward landing perilously close. I sank down into the grass and took stock of the situation. From my hole in the grass I peered out and I couldn’t see anyone at all. Perhaps I was the wrong side of the bay, how would I know?

Fearfully, I looked across the wide expanse of beach; it would take me hours to reach the other side even if I wasn’t killed on the way. Fritz had said the left-hand side but did he mean left facing the sea or left from the sea? Why hadn’t I asked him more questions?

The truth was I didn’t think I would be daft enough to do what he asked; he said I was a volunteer, didn’t he? I peered out of my grass burrow again and I became aware there were German troops moving a huge gun forward, swearing and groaning at the weight. I lay close against the sharp grass and closed my eyes knowing it was a stupid thing to do, a childish thing to do, it was as if they couldn’t see me if I couldn’t see them.

I jumped as someone slid into the grass beside me. Dressed as an English soldier, Fritz grinned at me. ‘Well done, kiddie,’ he said and grabbed the case and disappeared over the top of the hole. ‘Now bugger off home!’

Coward that I was, I crouched there for a long time hearing the sounds of battle raging around me. I wanted to pee and wondered if my knickers were already wet as they’d been when I was thirteen years old.

At last, I knew I had to get back to the jeep. I took a chance to peer out again and I saw the German army in retreat. I felt triumph, but only for a minute before I was grabbed by my plaits and dragged out of my hiding place.

‘What are you doing here?’ the German voice demanded.

‘I wanted to see what was happening,’ I replied in faultless German.

‘You are a spy,’ he said, looking around the hole as if for proof. There was nothing except a wet bit of sand where I had wet myself in fright.

‘You are only a child, you are mad or stupid or you are a spy for the English. You will come with me for questioning.’

I cried out in pain as he tugged on my plaits. He released my hair and grabbed my arm and pulled me towards a truck. I was thrown inside and came down heavily on my knee. And when we were driving away from the beach I peered over the tailboard and saw the ducks, funny little ships with the fronts falling down, unloading yet more troops on to the Normandy beaches.

We travelled over bumpy ground at a fast speed while behind us mortars still rained and shots whizzed overhead. There were bodies of dead Germans everywhere and it looked as if the battle was going to the Allies; perhaps this was the end for the German army.

If the gossips were correct Herr Hitler was already losing his mind, getting more and more demanding every day, unable to believe the war was being lost because of his failure to believe in his generals. The road became bumpier; I was being thrown around like a rag doll. I tried to cling to the sides of the truck to steady myself but even though I was getting bruised and battered by the journey I guessed there would be worse ahead. At the very least I would be questioned, perhaps tortured, if what I’d heard of the SS was true.

At least I’d got rid of the radio before I was caught. The thought was not so much patriotism as self-preservation. With the radio as evidence I would have been shot where I lay in my bunker in the grass.

We travelled through the night. I tried to sleep but it was impossible with my head constantly banging against the sides or the bottom of the truck. The driver stopped at last and, getting to my knees, I peered outside. It was dawn, the sky was turning pink, the shrubbery coming to life.

The building was rising from a smelly marshland and I wrinkled my nose at the foul-smelling air; it was as though the scent of hundreds of unwashed bodies of prisoners hung around the building like a forbidding cloud. The truck stopped and I was dragged outside and led into the streets of the camp. I felt small and lost but my lips closed mutinously. I would tell the Germans nothing—now they really were the enemy.

I was put in a cell-like room and locked in and I knew deep in my mind that I was at the dreaded Ravensbruck camp, notorious for harbouring hardened traitors of the Third Reich. Surely I couldn’t be considered that dangerous without even being questioned?

At least I could lie down on a hard, rough pallet but it took a while for the room to stay still—I felt as though I was still being thrown about in the truck. I thought about the day I’d endured, I worried about my little, battered jeep left unattended among the trees. I thought of work and my colleagues. Would they be wondering where I was?

And then, at last, I thought of Michael: my darling, my lover, my man, my husband. I fell asleep at last, too tired even to worry what was to become of me and, when I woke, it was morning and the prison cell was a reality.

Hari finished work with a sigh of relief; she would be glad to get home and put her feet up. The bus waiting outside the gates of the munitions factory seemed airless as she climbed up the steps and sank thankfully into a seat.

‘Isn’t it awful about Doreen?’ A girl in a turban came and sat next to her and Hari could smell the explosive powder on her clothes. ‘And I hear you lost your friend as well in a bombing raid, bloody awful war. Kate was a lovely girl.’

‘Did you work with her?’ Hari asked, grateful to talk about Kate to someone… anyone—at least she was remembered by some of her other friends.

‘Aye, I worked with her, sometimes when we had no money we’d walk together to the station. A good girl was Kate, always a smasher, mind, even when she went blind in the explosion. I was told about the bombing of her house. Sad for them to all die like that and yet perhaps that’s what she would have wanted, them all together as a family.’

She held out her hand and Hari couldn’t help noticing it was stained yellow, even the girl’s nails were yellow; she looked strange, as if she had been dipped in a dye.