Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [7]
The Mitchell was a medium bomber, with a payload of over two tons. This plane was carrying incendiaries, firebombs the size of milk canisters. The flak had detonated incendiaries that were still in their bomb bay cradles. The plane had become a roaring torch.
Heydekampf swallowed hard, at once pitying the Mitchell crew and relieved the bomber would fly well over the castle. The plane would land in the orchards north of the castle or in the Mulde River.
The lieutenant's relief was short-lived. Canisters were spilling from the open bomb bay. The plane was quickly out of sight again but the bombs remained, sprinkled across the sky in a ragged formation. And they were growing larger.
Heydekampf blew his whistle. "Dismissed," he yelled in English. "Get into the building."
The POWs were motionless, transfixed by the specks in the sky.
"Now," he bellowed. "Get going."
A stampede began. Guards and prisoners dashed for the doors to the scullery, prisoners' kitchen, chapel, parcel room, solitary block, and the stairs down to the potato cellar, anywhere away from the courtyard. They quickly filled the barbershop, the guardhouse, and the shower room.
Heydekampf raced for the delousing shed at the southwest corner of the yard, where fire-fighting equipment was stored. The shed was a temporary structure made of clapboard with a shingle roof. The lieutenant yanked on the latch cord and rushed inside.
On one wall of the shed were shelves containing insecticide powders and solutions, an assortment of barber sheers, and a dozen flit-guns.
A shower had been rigged but most of the delousing was done with the sprayers. A footbath was in the center of the hut. Tin tubs used to chemically wash clothes were in another corner. Nits, ringworm, fleas, chig- gers; the shed had seen them all. Along another wall were stirrup pumps and buckets of sand.
The lieutenant grabbed a pump and was turning toward the door when an incendiary bomb shot through the shed's roof, showering the room with shingles. The canister slammed into the cement floor and burst open, spewing phosphorous to all corners of the shed and immediately igniting. A second canister blew through the roof, splintering the storage shelves before it split open on the floor and splashed more chemically fed fire across the room.
Furious flames blocked the door, crawled up the wood walls, and surged into the shower and tubs. Acrid black smoke blinded Hey- dekampf. Fire climbed his legs. The German was surrounded by shimmering sheets of orange flame. He tried for the entry, but the inferno beat him back. He doubled over, his lungs unable to draw in the baked air. He dropped the pump. His cap fell to the pool of flames on the floor. Fire splattered onto his uniform. His hair ignited. He sank to his knees, keenly aware that he was about to die.
And he journeyed straight to hell, surely for out of the wall of fire stepped the devil, his skin leaping with flame, his eyes sinister red embers. Fire roiled around Satan's head in a profane imitation of an angel's halo. The devil's arms—limbs of flames—reached for the German.
Satan had the same features as the crazy American. It figured, was Heydekampf's last thought. He toppled toward the footbath.
The American scooped up the lieutenant and charged back out the delousing-shed door trailing flames. POWs immediately smothered the two men with their coats. They wrestled them to the cobblestones and rolled them over and over, choking the flames.
Two other incendiaries