Chapter Fourteen
When you hear the warning take cover at once. Remember that most of the injuries in an air raid are caused not by direct hits by bombs but by flying fragments of debris or by bits of shells. Stay under cover until you hear the sirens sounding continuously for two minutes on the same note which is the signal "Raiders Passed".
Air Raid Warnings, 1939
Tommy entered the Vickers Supermarine factory on August 19th, 1940, and the air raid sirens started wailing as soon as he entered the building. Tommy had been in war, had encountered death, but he was afraid. The sirens were extremely loud, slowly rising in pitch to blanket an entire city with a piercing, deafening wail.
“Ok there, let’s just have your identification then and you can be on your way.” said the guard. “Unless you’d like to go straight to the air raid shelter, which I’d recommend.”
“I’ll be off to the air raid shelter then” said Tommy, and joined the flow of people coming out of the factory. Then on impulse he decided to make a run for it in his car. He started breathing faster and trying to think about how long he could spare – he had no idea of how much warning they would have, but he thought about the radar, how close they were to the coast, and he thought he could spare five minutes of driving, and try to get as far away from the factory as he could.
He drove sanely but as fast as he could, dodging obstructions surprisingly little traffic was on the road, and tried to head directly away from the factory; he managed to slip onto a main road and accelerated, and as the road cleared, he accelerated more. Then his instincts told him not to play with fate any longer, and he parked the car, and ran towards a heavy looking stone building that people were streaming towards. As he came up to the door, he saw a mother struggling with four kids, all of whom were crying, and as he heard the distant tell tale explosions begin, he scooped up two of the kids.
“C’mon now! Inside!” shouted an air warden. “On the double!” And the bewildered mother looked thankfully at Tommy, and picked up the smallest two of the children bodily, and they went into the building, as the pace hurried, and followed people down several stairs and into the bottom of the building. The methodical foom, foom, foom of the bombs exploding began to get louder. We’re not deep enough, thought Tommy. I can hear the wail of the bombs dropping now. If a stray bomb hits us, we’re goners.
A calm officer in one of the hundreds of bombers thousands of feet in the sky calmly looked through his eye piece, carefully checking off coordinates, and meticulously marked and confirmed the appropriate quadrant, checking wind direction, and looked down into the eyepiece of the bomb sight, with dispassionate intensity. He vaguely wondered if the war might come back to Germany, as he depressed the trigger to release bombs, and triggered a camera to take movie footage for propaganda purposes.
Tommy tried to calm the children, but there was no use, so he just hugged them, and as the wailing got louder and the explosions got nearer, he said a silent prayer and gathered the mother and four children around him, and covered them as best he could. He tried to comfort himself by thinking about the technical details of the bomb. One in every ten is a dud. One in every ten bombs is a dud. Maybe the dud will hit this building. But then he remembered that some bombs had a delayed reaction fuse. He stopped thinking about bombs.
The ground started shaking and the sound from up above permeated the stone building. He wondered how many levels down they were from the surface. It must have been at least two or three. He found himself calculating what type of bombs the Germans were using, and wondered what it would take to get down this far. His last thought before the bomb hit, was anger, at Hitler, for destroying his beautiful car up on the street above.
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Eric knocked at the door of Edith’s parents’ home, and her mother opened the door.
“Eric” she asked, and before she could continue, Edith gasped behind her.
“Oh my god.” Edith exclaimed and her hands flew to her mouth. Then she rushed at him and hugged him. “Oh thank God you’re ok” she said “I thought you were dead”.
She squeezed him tightly, and he stood there, weary, accepting the embrace, and reached a hand up to run his hand along her hair, as she buried her head in his chest.
“I thought I was too.” he said, and after a few minutes, he spoke again. “And that’s why I’ve come to see you at your parents’ house.” Edith’s father came out from the kitchen.
“Well, lad, it’s certainly good to see that you made it through that battle.” he said, and looked at Edith. “Edith confessed as to how she snuck into fighter command with a friend and witnessed nearly the entire thing . . . and then fainted!”
Eric looked at Edith, surprised, but not angry or shocked. He ruffled her hair again. “Ah well, it doesn’t surprise me.” Collecting himself, he looked at Edith’s father.
“Well sir, seeing as how life is short, and shorter still, I’ve come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”. and Edith looked at Eric, and squeezed his hand, and then at her father. And he didn’t speak for a moment, but his face showed that he was touched, and he breathed in.
“Well, well.” and he stopped, not knowing what to say. “I’m not much of a man for words, Eric, but I’d say the best I can, which is that I’m honored to have you cross the threshold of this house.” and he felt some strength rising in him. “And for however long or short this war is, and for however long or short our lives are . . .” he looked at his wife and then back. “I can speak for the both of us and say – welcome to our family, Eric, and not a moment too soon.” And he took Eric’s hand and put the other hand on his forearm, and he looked him in the eye. “Now you take good care of her, then. I trust you will”.
And Eric breathed in and sighed, and took Edith’s hand. “Well that’s that, then.” And smiled, and spoke to Edith’s mother.
“Now one thing that sustained me, quite honestly, was the thought that I might come by and enjoy some of your cooking. And I wondered if I might be so bold as to invite my mother over, and we have some sort of dinner, and if you have some sugar left, a cake of some kind?”
“I’d be glad to have your mother over, and yes please let’s have dinner.”
“Edith, I’ve spoken to a sympathetic parson, and if you’re willing, given the circumstances and the very small amount of leave I have, I’d like to marry you tomorrow, if that’s ok.” And Edith felt like she was in a daze, but she had the wits to at least prepare somewhat for the possibility. I’ve something to wear, I’ve a little bouquet of flowers, and Edith Rose, there’s no need to stand on ceremony. And she looked up at him.
“I do”, and then opened her eyes wider, realizing what she said.
“Oops, that was premature” and she laughed, and Eric smiled. The pretty ferry pilot and the fearsome flying fool, what a couple we make, indeed.
“That was a rehearsal.” he said. “And though you may be surprised, I managed to think ahead and I was able to obtain the correct rings, so we can at least do the engagement properly one day, and the wedding the next”. And before Edith knew it, Eric was kneeling there in the front hallway before her, as Eric’s mother came gently inside, smiling and nodding at Mrs. Rose, and they all bloomed a bit as Eric opened the little box and took Edith’s hand, and looked up at her.
“Now this modest diamond was actually my grandmother’s ring, passed down to my mother, who wished that I use it once again.” he said, and added “and it is sized accordingly”, with a significant look at Mrs. Rose, who just smiled.
“So, Edith Rose, will you do me the honor of marrying me?” Eric asked.
“Yes Eric.” She said, and he slipped the ring on her finger.
The next day, they were married in a brief, simple ceremony at Carleton-Coville, with a handful of people present. It was relatively early in the morning, and they were off after that. On their way to their one day honeymoon, they stopped to pay their respects to Tommy Cranshaw’s parents, and marveled at the size of the estate.
They grieved with the parents, and were humbled with the gift that Tommy had left them – the large Rolls Royce that he had modified.
“Aye, that lad had more cars than he knew what to do with, and it was one of the others that got him close to the shelter, and of course it was wrecked. I knew something was up when out right told me, ‘if something happens dad, I want Eric Wallace to have the Rolls Royce’, and I was a little shocked that he’d say something like that, but maybe he had an intuition. And I also want to say that we’ve only the one son and three daughters, so if you’d ever have the time to do me the honor, we’d appreciate if you’d come round and tell us some stories of Tommy and what he did at the RAF. He was quiet about it but I knew he loved the work.”
Eric looked at Tommy’s father and didn’t know what to say. “Tommy was the best, and will be sorely missed, Lord Cranshaw.”
They spent the night and were able to detach themselves for the duration from the world, in a gentle frenzy of savoring each other and the precious time they had together. They both yearned that there would be another day, and another, to discover a new life, and they both tried to keep that hope on a leash, in light of the grim reality unfolding every day.
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Rudolf Jodl and Ernst Grunen cruised at near altitude, breaking away with the dive bomber and streaking at low altitude, covered by a mass of bf109 fighters who attacked from the opposite direction into the day’s melee of bombers and fighters. As they converged upon the point where the bombs would be dropped, Ernst came to realize why he had volunteered for the mission. I am going to end the mission.
And before Rudolf Jodl knew what was happening, Ernst had fallen back and let loose a roaring storm of machine gun fire, and Rudolf’s plane exploded. The dive bomber peeled away from their flight path, but didn’t realize it had been Ernst for a split second, as Ernst honed in. The dive bomber weaved back and forth and neared the convergence point, and dropped its bombs. Ernst briefly thought about ramming the bomber, but decided that he may be better use in the war as a prisoner of War of the English. The dive bomber managed to swing around and loose off some shots before it trailed towards the ground, badly damaged. The gunner happened to be good, and Ernst’s engine started to sputter, and he had lost control of the ailerons. But the rudder and elevator still work.
And he guided the plane to a landing in a farm field, exited the plane, and sat on the wing, waiting. When no one came, he gathered his things, made an improvised truce flag from a branch and some material cut out from his parachute, and walked towards the nearest village. And now a new adventure begins.