The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

'Is it because you've bombed Sheffield?'

There was a shocked silence at her question. How bold she was! Even I would not have asked Dieter about his aerial activities over England, although I will admit that, just minutes before, that very point had crossed my mind.

'Because,' Daffy added, 'if you have, you must say so.'

'I was coming to that,' Dieter said quietly.

He continued without batting an eye.

'When the war came, and I was transferred to the Luftwaffe, I always kept the small English 'Everyman' editions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights wrapped carefully in a white silk flying scarf at the bottom of my rucksack, cheek to cheek with Lord Byron and Shelley.

'I decided that when the war was over, I would enroll at a university--perhaps even Oxford, since I already had the language--where I would read English Literature. I would take a double first, and accept a teaching post at one of the great public schools, and would end my days as an honored and respected schoolmaster, somewhat like your Mr. Chips.

''Goodbye, Herr Schrantz,' I used to say. But Fate had not yet finished with me. An order was received that I was to proceed at once to France.

'My father, it seemed, had run into an old acquaintance in Berlin: someone who was high up in the Ministry and could arrange almost anything one might desire. Father wanted to have a son who flew a fighter: one whose name was in all the headlines, not one who mooned about with his nose in a book--and an English book at that!

'Before I could protest, I found myself posted to a reconnaissance group, Luftflotte III, based in France, near Lille.

'Our aircraft were the Messerschmitt Bf 110, a twin-engine machine nicknamed the Zerstorer.'

'The Destroyer,' said Daffy sourly. There were times when she could be quite snappish.

'Yes,' Dieter replied. 'The Destroyer. These ones, though, were specially modified for reconnaissance duties. We carried no bombs.'

'Spying,' Daffy said. Her cheeks were a little flushed, though whether from anger or excitement, I could not tell.

'Yes, spying, if you like,' Dieter agreed. 'In the war, there was reconnaissance on both sides.'

'He's right, you know, Daphne,' Father said.

'As I was saying,' Dieter went on, with a glance at Daffy, 'the Zerstorer was a twin-engine machine with a crew of two: a pilot and a second member, who could be a wireless operator, a navigator, or a rear gunner, depending upon the mission.

'My first day on the line, as I walked towards the briefing hut, an Oberfeldwebel--a flight sergeant--in flying boots, clicked his heels and called out 'Herr Hauptmann! Heathcliff!' Of course it was my old chum, Wolfgang Zander.

'I looked round quickly to see if anyone had heard him, since such familiarity between ranks would not be tolerated. But no one else was within earshot.

'We shook hands happily. 'I'm your navigator,' Wolfgang said, laughing. 'Did they tell you that? Of all the navigators in the land, my name alone was chosen to be carried aloft to the wars in your tin dragon!'

'Although it was wonderful to see him again, we had to be discreet. It was a complicated situation. We developed a whole set of stratagems--rather like lovers in a Regency romance.

'We would walk to the aircraft, pointing here and there with our fingers and ducking under the fuselage, as if we were discussing the tension of cables, but our talk, of course, was of little but English novels. If anyone came close, we would switch quickly from Hardy to Hitler.

'It was during one of these inspections that the great scheme was born. I don't remember now if it was Wolfgang or I who first came up with the idea.

'We were walking around Kathi's tail--Kathi was the thinly disguised name painted on the nose of our aircraft--when suddenly one of us, I think it might have been Wolfgang ... or it might have been me ... said, 'Do you suppose the heather is in bloom today on Haworth Moor?'

'It was that simple. In just those few moments, the die, as Julius Caesar remarked, was cast.

'And then, as if she had been listening at the door, Fate again stepped in. Two days later we were given an objective in South Yorkshire: a railway yard and a bicycle factory thought to be producing Rolls-Royce engines. Photographs only. 'A piece of cake,' as the RAF blokes used to say. A perfect opportunity to deliver, in person, our little gift.

'The flight across the Channel was uneventful, and for once, we were not bounced by Spitfires. The weather was beautiful, and Kathi's engines were purring away like a pair of huge, contented cats.

'We arrived over the target on time--'on the dot,' as you say--and took our photographs. Snap! Snap! Snap! and we were finished. Mission accomplished! The next quarter of an hour belonged to us.

'The parsonage at Haworth now lay less than ten miles to the northwest, and at our speed, which was three hundred miles an hour, it was no more than two minutes away.

'The problem was that we were too high. Although we had descended to seventeen thousand feet for the photographs, for our personal mission, we needed to lose more altitude quickly. A Messerschmitt with black crosses on its wings swooping down like a hawk upon a quiet English village would hardly go unnoticed.

'I shoved the control column forward, and down and down we circled in a giant spiral, our ears popping like