The Pathfinder by Margaret Mayhew

Author:Margaret Mayhew [Margaret Mayhew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2004-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Ten

Coming in to land at RAF Gatow, the Dakota passed low over the surrounding pine forests and the grey waters of the Havel See. It looked bleak and depressing – as though winter had already taken a firm grip in his absence – and it was raining. The Dakota touched, bounced and settled. It flashed past the two GCA cabins, ran on smoothly and turned towards the unloading apron. Besides passengers, Harrison’s plane was carrying bags of mail, cigarettes, medical supplies, and an assortment of necessities – razor blades, candles, boots and shoes, socks and, ominously, a large consignment of hot-water bottles for the sick and elderly. Another plane had landed just ahead and there would be another close behind, and another behind that, and yet another . . . a continuous succession of them, as precisely spaced as beads on a string.

Harrison was out as soon as the door was open, down the steps and onto the wet and windswept tarmac. A reloaded York lumbered by, heading for the row of blue lamps that marked the taxi track. The Australian Air Force Dakota that had landed ahead of them was already being unloaded – a gang of German labourers heaving sacks of flour fast onto a backed-up lorry. Ten minutes was the calculated unloading time for a Dakota, seventeen for the Skymaster parked next door. Thirty minutes allowed on the apron for unloading and reloading. Fifty minutes, in all, from touchdown to take-off. That was the aim and, more often than not, it was achieved. Beyond the RAAF Dakota stood a brand new Handley Page Hastings and alongside it a row of civil aircraft painted with their company names: Eagle Aviation, Bond Air Services, Skyways, Westminster Airways, the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation. The motley collection contracted from seventeen private civil airlines to the airlift cause was another big headache: many of them were decrepit old machines with no spares or compatible equipment.

He threaded his way through the constant criss-cross traffic of heavy lorries and trucks, passing an RAF pilot and navigator who, from their black-streaked faces, had just brought in a consignment of coal. A group of Berlin children were waiting to board a Dakota, standing patiently among the rain puddles. He paused for a moment. They reminded him of an assembly of British evacuees that he had once seen during the war on a railway station platform in London. Pasty-white and tearful faces, pathetic bundles and baskets, luggage labels tied to buttonholes on shabby, make-do clothes.

He watched the German children begin scrambling up the aircraft steps, a harassed-looking RAF flight lieutenant at the top shepherding them in through the open door. They were the lucky ones, though, Harrison thought. They’d be out of it before winter really set in. A Tudor tanker had landed and was heading for the liquid fuel depot at the back of the unloading apron; beyond that lay the coal depot that was never still. The York’s engines were bellowing at the end of the runway and it began its take-off run.

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