Mosquito Missions by Martin Bowman

Author:Martin Bowman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783830053
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

‘Odd, unusual and not very wholesome! One of the heavy boys used to get the whole squadron to use his Elsan and then he’d make one bombing run - then do a U-turn against all the stream of bombers, make another bombing run to drop his Elsan, shouting obscenities in broken German as he did so.

‘The backroom boys put much thought into bombing. How about high explosive first, to shatter the roofs and the gas mains? This would make the incendiaries infinitely more lethal instead of their bouncing off roofs on to the pavement. How about incendiaries first? Then the ARP and fire fighters would swarm out to deal with them and be killed by the HE. How about a mixed grill? In fact, this was the usual pattern.

‘I tried not to think of cities and people and treasured possessions and pets and children. London had been in the grip of the Blitz. If you went up you would sleep in the tube shelters, all along the platforms. Not a restful night - babies might cry and trains started at 4.30 am. But there was a great feeling of camaraderie - no theft, no mugging. From Cambridge nightly we saw the glow in the sky, fifty miles away. I tried to concentrate on the essential. If Germany won; the whole world would be enslaved. Then one night Ivor Broom the CO said, ‘Berlin tonight - again. A night on the Spree (Berlin is on the River Spree); and it will create chaos. The city is jam-packed with refugees fleeing from the Russians on the Eastern Front’. That night I had a nightmare. I dreamt that I saw, in the cold light of dawn, a great heap of bricks and rubble. Drifts of thin smoke wafted around. A woman, swathed in black, was clawing desperately at the rubble. I could see that her breath was rasping in her chest but everything was completely silent. I could see her nails tearing, her hands bleeding and the desperation in her. Suddenly she saw a child’s thin bony hand poking out of the rubble. She called out and clawed and scrabbled even more desperately; and as she cleared almost to the elbow the hand just went limp and I woke, sweating. I did not sleep for the rest of that cold, frosty night. I just walked round the deserted airfield with Sheba my nuzzled spaniel. There was a full moon, the stars were very vivid and it was very cold. I found a £5 note, sodden, in a ditch. From then on, almost every night and long after the war was over; I had that same dream. Yet I was happy. I was doing something important, something which had to be done; and I was doing it well.

‘Another odd thing; we were strongly individualistic. Unthinking obedience was anathema to us, yet we were disciplined, deeply disciplined. We had very little time for indiscipline. I remember flying over Alconbury, an American base. If the Yanks

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