Макс Хейстингс – Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 (страница 4)
The RAF’s Battle of Britain Flight flew me as a passenger from Farnborough to Coningsby in its only surviving Avro Lancaster, an unforgettable experience. I explored every crew position, and occupied the rear turret – albeit with most of my long back protruding through its sliding doors – while an accompanying Spitfire and Hurricane made passes, to give me a gunner’s-eye view of an attacking fighter. As a war correspondent I saw more than a few aircraft shot down, and have myself dangled from a parachute, though happily not as a ‘bailed out’ airman. In 1994 I spent an airsick afternoon in the rear seat of an RAF Tornado of the latterday 617 Squadron, over Lincolnshire and the North Sea.
All these memories have informed my thoughts and stirred my imagination as I wrote this book. Among many previous accounts of Chastise, the 1982 groundbreaker was that of John Sweetman, who performed prodigies of research to transform and much enhance the picture created by Paul Brickhill. I cherish unstinting admiration for Richard Morris, and especially for his 1994 biography of Guy Gibson, which contributed much to Gibson’s portrait in my own 2005 book
Robert Owen, official historian of the 617 Squadron Association, possesses encyclopaedic knowledge, which he is generous enough to lend to other writers. Rob was a perfect companion on my 2018 visit to the dams, which enabled me to understand on the spot much that was previously obscure about the hazards facing the attackers. Charles Foster has recently published an invaluable new work of reference,
An enigma overhangs the personalities of the men of 617 Squadron. Almost all were very young when they attacked the dams, and few survived the war. Records detail what they did; there is much less evidence, however, about what sort of people they were. With the notable exception of Gibson, their stories rely heavily upon adolescent correspondence and anecdotes. They were unformed in almost everything save having been trained for flight and devastation: many still thought it the best joke in the world to pull off a man’s trousers after dinner. In describing them, an author cannot escape surmise and speculation. Much reported dialogue, especially relating to the hours of action over the dams, relies upon later personal memories, probably more reliable in spirit than wording. On such a matter as – for instance – the sporadic affair between Gibson and WAAF nurse Margaret North, historians depend on North’s unsupported oral testimony to Richard Morris.
Since starting this book, I have been repeatedly asked whether it is an embarrassment to acknowledge the name of Gibson’s dog, which became a wirelessed codeword for the breaching of the Möhne. A historian’s answer must be: no more than the fact that our ancestors hanged sheep-stealers, executed military deserters and imprisoned homosexuals. They did and said things differently then. It would be grotesque to omit Nigger from a factual narrative merely because the word is rightly repugnant to twenty-first-century ears.
I have been moved to retell, and to reconsider, the Chastise story, in hopes of offering a new perspective which almost represents a paradox. I retain the awe of my childhood for the fliers who breached the Möhne and the Eder. In my seventies, I muse constantly upon the privilege of having attained old age, whereas the lives of most of those British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and American fliers became forfeit before they knew maturity, fatherhood or, in many cases, love or even sex.
Yet in the twenty-first century it also seems essential to confront – as many past British writers have been reluctant to confront – the enormity of the horror that the unthinking fliers unleashed upon a host of innocents. A Norwegian Resistance hero, Knut Lier-Hansen, wrote words in 1948 that linger in my mind whenever I compose narratives of conflict: ‘Though wars can bring adventures which stir the heart, the true nature of war is composed of innumerable personal tragedies, of grief, waste and sacrifice, wholly evil and not redeemed by glory.’ We shall consider below whether the extraordinary tale of Operation Chastise – its impact upon the Second World War set against its human consequences – is ‘redeemed by glory’.
MAX HASTINGS
Let us begin this story where he began it: in the cockpit of an Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, callsign G-George, forging through the darkness towards Germany on the night of 16 May 1943, amid the roar of four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that drowned out conversation save over the intercom. ‘The moon was full; everywhere its pleasant, watery haze spread over the peaceful English countryside, rendering it colourless. But there is not much colour in Lincolnshire anyway. The city of Lincoln was silent – that city which so many bomber boys know so well, a city full of homely people.’ Guy Gibson’s
The book reveals a sensitivity that few of the squadron commander’s men recognised in him, together with a consciousness of his own mortality, derived from completion of an astounding seventy-two previous bomber operations, together with ninety-nine sorties as pilot of a night-fighter. He describes the fate of an aircraft hit over Germany, plunging steeply out of the sky for an interminable minute, ‘then it is all over and you hit the ground. Petrol flames come soaring up into the sky, almost reaching to meet you as though to rocket your soul to heaven.’ He knew. Unlike some heroes who are bereft of fear, Gibson anticipated his own almost certain destiny. Only its hour remained to be fixed, and this May night seemed more plausible than most.
He was leading 617 Squadron of the RAF’s Bomber Command to unleash upon the dams of north-western Germany a revolutionary new weapon, requiring an attack at extreme low level. Nineteen crews were committed to Operation Chastise, and the eight proven in training to be most proficient now accompanied Gibson himself towards the Möhne. Off his port wingtip flew the dashing Australian Harold ‘Micky’ Martin in P-Popsie, while a few yards to starboard was ‘Hoppy’ Hopgood’s M-Mother, its pilot a twenty-one-year-old who still began his letters home ‘Dear Mummy’.
Gibson again: ‘We were off on a journey for which we had long waited, a journey that had been carefully planned, carefully trained for’ – only eight weeks, in truth, since inception, but such a span represented an eternity to very young men, crowding what should properly have been a lifetime’s experience into a fraction of a natural span: Gibson considered entitling the later memoir of his career as a bomber pilot
Among the sharpest contrasts between the environment of twentieth-century war and that of twenty-first-century peace is colour. We live in a world of reds and whites, blues, silvers, oranges. Allied airmen bombing Europe in 1943 existed by day under sunshine and bright skies, then fought their battles in a universe that was darkened, shaded, shadowed, unless or until it erupted into flame. The undersides and flanks of night bombers were painted matt black; their upper surfaces disrupted foliage-greens and earth-browns. Once airborne, Gibson and his kin inhabited cramped, stunted workspaces, crowded with technology and control mechanisms, black or green save where paint had been worn away by human friction and hard usage to reveal streaks of dull metal.