Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [71]
American and English bombers had not settled for changing Berlin's landscape. They had also changed the language. Berliners now called a sunny day a bombers' day. A cloudless night was now known as a smoking night because of the smoke screens from oil-burning canisters placed all over the city. The Elbe River was now Bombers' Alley because the Allies flew along the river toward the city.
Air-raid sirens began their plaintive wail. The sirens were on posts and atop buildings, and the sound eerily came from all directions. Cray was nearing Potsdamer Platz, still within sight of the Chancellery, now behind him. The sirens usually gave Berliners ten minutes. Many refugees looked around wildly, searching for bomb shelters. Cray pushed the wheelbarrow to the curb, passing a poster on a telephone pole that read OUR WALLS MAY BREAK, BUT NEVER OUR HEARTS, then climbed the steps of an abandoned building. The door frame was empty, the door sucked off the building by a bomb sometime before.
Cray walked into the apartment, toward the stairs to the cellar. Perhaps because he had abruptly begun walking like he might know where he was going, Cray was followed by a dozen refugees and a serviceman looking for shelter from the coming attack. He led them down the stairs, ducking under a wall that had collapsed over the steps. He pushed away dangling boards.
The floor had collapsed into the back of the basement. Cray passed a boiler, empty crates, and an overturned cement washtub. Light leaked into the cellar from fractures above. A woman behind him held an infant in her arms, and she followed Cray as if she knew him. The baby sucked on a checkered rag that looked as if it had been torn from a shirt. Cray found the civilians looking at him. He sat on the floor against the concrete wall, and the woman with the baby followed him, and then the others also lowered themselves to the floor. A Wehrmacht private sat at the other end of the room. He had a nose with a knot in it, and eyebrows and hair the color of straw. He tore a piece of paper from a notebook, chewed it for a moment, then stuck wads of the damp paper into his ears. He was missing his cap and was not carrying a weapon.
A low sound came from the north, a persistent and growing rumble. Dust fell from the ceiling. The baby grinned at Cray.
The American rose to his feet and crossed the floor to the wash basin. He tried to drag it across the floor, but it slid only a few inches. The Wehrmacht private obligingly rose to help Cray. They pushed the sink to the wall, then rolled it over and leaned it against the wall, forming a solid shelter. The bombers grew closer, and antiaircraft guns began their stuttering clap. Cray motioned to the woman, and she smiled hesitatingly at him, then scooted under the upside-down basin, her baby waving his rag at Cray. The soldier returned to his corner.
Cray couldn't see the sky, but he knew what it contained. It would be laden with bombers, perfect formations. Smaller planes—American fighter escorts and spotter planes—flitted about, daring the Luftwaffe to send planes skyward. The bombers had taken off from England, but the fighters had joined the formation from captured German airfields, and unlike earlier in the war, fighters could now escort the bombers during their entire mission. The sound of the massed planes seemed to be pressing the basement dwellers into the ground.
High above, the planes' bellies opened. Sticks of explosives fell away from the B-17s, so high the bombs would seem tiny and insignificant to anyone watching from the ground. At first they fell horizontally, resembling ladder rungs. Then the bombs squared away to their purpose and dropped nose-down.
Cray could hear the woman's teeth grind together. She shivered, waiting for her country's due from the sky. Cray reached under the basin for her hand. She gripped his hand fiercely.
Another civilian scrambled down the stairs, tripping over a crate as he stared up at the sky as if he could