Last Flight to Stalingrad Graham Hurley (sight word books .TXT) 📖

that nearly worked. Then came a brief burst of fire, the Luftwaffe-blue tracers clearly visible, and the powerful little Soviet fighter was suddenly cartwheeling away, one wing severed, a tiny black dot falling out of the cockpit. Moments later came the blossom of the parachute and a grunt of triumph on the R/T.

Nehmann stole a glance at Messner. The grin, at last, was unforced and Nehmann realised what he should have known from the start, that Messner’s face had been wrecked for exactly an occasion like this. Go through a windscreen, even at ground level, even in the clutches of the Berlin blackout, and moments like these were what remained of life’s pleasures.

‘Kamerad.’It was Messner. He was nodding at the windscreen, talking to himself. The grin, if anything, was wider than ever.

Nehmann tried to focus. At first, he could see nothing. Then, out of nowhere, came a huge engine, wings, a tailplane, even a face in the cockpit. Messner held his nerve. The Ju was falling like a stone, a nearly vertical plunge that made the airframe beg for mercy. The entire aircraft was shaking. Something had come adrift in the cargo area behind them and Nehmann heard a splintering of wood before the big old aircraft began to level out, Messner hauling back on the control column, every metal panel groaning around them.

Below, almost within touching distance, was the first scatter of buildings that signalled a major city. Bomb craters instead of gardens. The charred remains of house after house. Tottering brick chimney stacks. Tank tracks across a patch of grass that might once have been a school playground. Then, all too briefly, a kneeling figure in Wehrmacht grey, crouched over a series of red and white panels. He glanced up, one arm raised as they thundered over.

‘Scheisse.’ Messner’s voice in Nehmann’s headset. ‘We’re too far fucking north.’

*

They landed minutes later. The airfield at Pitomnik was fifteen kilometres west of the city centre. Of the Soviet fighters, mysteriously, there was no sign. The storm had gathered and broken and now – apart from curls of oily smoke from the port engine – there was absolutely nothing to indicate how close they’d come to disaster.

Nehmann let Messner shut the engines down before he removed his headset. The edges of the airfield were littered with the wreckage of planes that would never fly again, broken toys in this pitiless war, but here beside the waiting trucks a line of Tante-Jus were being unloaded. Already, Nehmann could hear hands tugging open the big door in the rear of the aircraft, then a voice raised as someone clambered inside. The whole plane began to rock as the stack of jigsawed cargo was unpicked and the first wooden boxes found unseen hands below. The entire workforce, it seemed to Nehmann, were wearing items of Soviet clothing.

‘Thank you.’ He leaned across and extended a hand. ‘I mean it.’

Messner peeled off a glove. His flesh was warm to the touch and he held Nehmann’s gaze.

‘You see what we do?’ The grin again, exultant. ‘You see what happens? The guy that came at us? That was an I-16. We called them Ratas in Spain. They run out of ammunition, but it makes no difference. Mano a mano,my friend. You speak Spanish?’

Nehmann nodded. What little he knew was enough. Mano a mano.Hand to hand. No quarter.

‘He was trying to ram us?’

‘Of course.’ Messner smacked a fist into his open palm. ‘Bam. You wake up in heaven with an aeroplane in your lap. Tell that to your Promi friends. We were lucky, Nehmann. He could have pushed forward, caught us on the dive, taken our tail off. He didn’t.’

Luck? Nehmann shook his head, struggled out of his harness, still living those moments when his forward view, the rest of his brief, brief life, held nothing but the certainty of oblivion. The oncoming Rata.The manic face in the cockpit. Not luck at all, he thought, but raw nerve, and years of experience, and the fabulous gift of those precious milliseconds that can spare you for another dawn.

‘I used to believe in levitation.’ Nehmann put a hand on Messner’s arm. ‘Now I know it’s true.’

21

STALINGRAD, 17 SEPTEMBER 1942

Nehmann’s contact in Stalingrad was to have met him at the airfield. In his absence, Messner conducted a brief check of his battered Ju,peering at the damage to the engine, pointing out the oil streaks on the bottom of the wing, using his fingers to explore a deep tear at the base of the metal tailplane. The cannon shell, he grunted, had failed to explode. In one side of the fuselage, out the other. Nehmann walked round the tail in the dirty snow to see for himself. Messner was right. The exit hole was even bigger, the aluminium bursting outwards like a flower.

‘Didn’t believe me?’ Messner was stamping his feet again. In the wind, it was freezing.

‘Just checking. Life’s all small print, my friend. Your Generaloberst said that last week and he’s right. In my trade, if you get the details wrong it doesn’t matter because no one recognises the truth any more.’

‘And in ours?’

‘You probably die.’

Messner nodded, tight-lipped. Something had changed between them, and they both knew it. Nothing needed spelling out any more. Friendship was a big word but Nehmann was prepared to give it a try.

Already, the plane was half empty. An engineer, according to Messner, would be along to check out the damaged engine. There’d be nothing he could do to mend it but two engines, with a modest load, would be enough to get Messner airborne again and back to Tatsinskaya. Forward maintenance, he said, was a joke. In all probability the plane would have to be returned to the Reich for proper repair, just another reason why Richthofen was beginning to run out of aircraft.

Nehmann nodded. Messner had never been this candid before. Blutsbrüder,he thought. Blood brothers.

‘Is it like this all the time?’ Nehmann was looking east, towards the city centre, where invisible Heinkels were dropping hundreds of