planning to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night
was appreciably clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin is not a
hard city to locate, since it has the largest square-mile area of any
modern city and is located on a broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out
the River Spree as we approached it, and the Havel. The city was blacked
out, but a city makes a different sort of black from open country.
Parachute flares hung over the city in many places, showing that the R. A.
F. had been busy before we got there and the A. A. batteries on the ground
helped to pick out the city.
There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our
altitude as nearly as I could judge.
The pilot reported to the captain, “On line of bearing!”
The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse
pots of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of
black powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter the dust at a time
after release predetermined by the fuse spot setting. The method used was
no more than an ancient expedient. The dust would have been almost as
effective had it simply been dumped out in paper bags, although not as well
distributed.
The Captain hung over the navigator’s board, a slight frown on his thin
sallow face. “Ready one!” reported the bomber.
“Release!”
“Ready two!”
The Captain studied his wristwatch. “Release!”
“Ready three!”
“Release!”
When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail
and ran for home.
No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about
it. But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did
not feel much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his
courage and undergone a serious operation; it’s over now, he is still numb
from shock but his mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home.
The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my
ship at once and gave me an escort for the off shore war zone. It was an
expensive way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended
some millions of lives in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a
money expense? He gave the necessary orders absentmindedly.
I took a double dose of Nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some
news while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had.
The government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly
after the raid, sneering at the much vaunted “secret weapon” of the British
and stating that a major air attack had been made on Berlin and several
other cities, but that the raiders had been driven off with only minor
damage. The current Lord Haw-Haw started one of his sarcastic speeches but
was unable to continue it. The announcer said that he had been seized with
a heart attack, and substituted some recordings of patriotic music. The
station cut off in the middle of the “Horst Wesser’ song. After that there
was silence.
I managed to promote an Army car and a driver at the Baltimore field which
made short work of the Annapolis speedway. We almost overran the turn to
the laboratory.
Manning was in his office. He looked up as I came in said, “Hello, John,”
in a dispirited voice, and dropped his eyes again to the blotter pad. He
went back to drawing doodles.
I looked him over and realized for the first time that the chief was an old
man. His face was gray and flabby, deep furrows framed his mouth in a
triangle. His clothes did not fit.
I went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard,
chief. It’s not your fault. We gave them all the warning in the world.”
He looked up again. “Estelle Karst suicided this morning.”