I took a shuddering breath and rocked my own wings again: ‘I’M COMING.’
The pilot ahead of me made another long, lazy U-turn. This time I turned after him. The pilot on my rear end followed me around. I could see them wave casually as they passed in the air.
We lined up in formation flying straight and level in the wrong direction, with me in the middle, one hand shaking on the throttle and one hand shaking on the control column, both feet shaking against the rudder pedals, half-blinded by tears and terror. I tried to imagine the report I’d have to file. Controlled flight into terrain was all I could think of. That’s what they call it when you’re flying in a cloud and you crash into a mountain you didn’t see – controlled flight into terrain.
We avoided overflying cities. We avoided overflying camps and troops. We flew high over the front and then over the German border, which was marked on my map as the Siegfried Line. We crossed the Rhine north of Mannheim, where my map stopped. But I didn’t. I kept flying, with a pair of Luftwaffe jets escorting me deeper and deeper into Germany.
I flew with them for 200 miles. They kept taking turns to zip ahead of me and circle back. There was always one of them with me, behind or ahead.
After the first fifteen minutes, once I got used to the whole nightmare weirdness of what was happening, there wasn’t really anything for me to do except keep the Spitfire pointing in the direction they chose for me, and try to figure out where the heck we were and where the heck we were going. I realised this was the most important thing I could do – exactly what you’d do if you accidentally flew into a cloud. Pay attention to your heading, the time and how fast you’re going, so you can turn around and find your way back.
It looked so much like Pennsylvania! All fields and farms and woods and rivers, and there at the edge of the map was ‘Mannheim’, which is the name of the nearest town to Conewago Grove – Mannheim is where we always go for our groceries in the summer. But it’s not the same Mannheim. I can’t remember how to convert my indicated airspeed to true airspeed. I’m not being accurate. I am in Germany. I am off the map.
I reached the point where I started to wonder if I were really still alive. I thought maybe I got killed in my attempt to tip the flying bomb, or when the Swallow shot at me, and now I was in purgatory, doomed to fly forever and ever over fields that looked like Pennsylvania without ever being able to land. The only way to prove I was still alive was to land in a field, or to turn round and fly in the other direction. But if I was still alive, and this was really happening, then the Luftwaffe aircraft on my tail would blast me out of the sky if I tried to get away from them. So I couldn’t risk turning or landing in case I was still alive. I had to keep flying.
I think it’s taken me about the same amount of time to write this as it took me to fly it. That’s kind of incredible. I am writing at a rate of 170 miles an hour and going nowhere. I’m getting tired now. But my brain is still in the air over Mannheim so I’d better land before I try to sleep again or I’ll be counting the miles and reciting the headings in my dreams.
I don’t know the name of the aerodrome where they led me. The leader pulled out ahead of me over the runway with his landing gear lowered. He didn’t touch down though; he went screaming away for another circuit. I was so stupid with fear and confusion that I just followed him back up into the sky. The other guy was orbiting above us now, watching the show from 2000 feet.
They wanted me to land ahead of them, leaving them behind in the sky while I came back to earth all by myself IN GERMANY. I refused to play. They were the only friends I had any more. I was not going to land without them.
We went round and round the aerodrome. Finally the leader landed. I tried to land behind him, but the turbulence of his horrible jet engines knocked my wings around so much I thought I was going to stall, and by the time I straightened out the runway was behind me and I had to go around AGAIN. I was on my fifth circuit now and I was sick of it.
Show ’em how to land a plane, Rosie.
I wish Daddy had seen it. I floated down with one finger on the control column and I had only a third of the runway behind me when I stopped rolling. I didn’t bother to get off the runway. I didn’t want to get out. I didn’t want to look. I rested my forehead on the control panel and waited.
I can’t stay awake another second. It is getting light.
Three hours’ sleep. That’s about as good as it gets. I did dream about flying – I guess that’s no surprise. It wasn’t a bad dream. I was over wooded mountains somewhere – it looked like the foothills of the PA Alleghenies, but it could just as easily have been south-western Germany. It was snowing. I wasn’t scared.
It is a beautiful, beautiful spring morning out there in Paris – my windows are all wide open and the air and sky are wonderful. I woke up because I was cold, sleeping in my birthday suit with no covers. I don’t even try to pull up the covers in my sleep – I just assume there aren’t any. My sleeping brain tells me of course that I am cold. I am always cold, right? Curl up in a ball and try to go back to sleep before the next siren.
I am so lonesome. I thought I’d want to forget last winter’s hell, but now I am in a panic in case I do forget. So busy remembering that impossible list of Polish prisoners, and the flight times and headings, that the faces of my friends, and their kindness and strength and bravery, are fading into a tangled blur of exhaustion and hunger. I am going to write it all down in order, the best I can do. I think writing helped me to sleep this morning – at least it tired me out so much I did sleep. I have really missed being able to write things down. I never thought of writing as a luxury or a privilege. But of course it is. An unalienable right.
So there I was, on the ground in Germany at the unknown airfield, clenching my hands shut for the first time in two hours and waiting for the storm to break.
It didn’t take long. I didn’t see what was happening, because my head was down and my eyes were closed, but after a few seconds the plane started rolling again. I stomped on the brakes, but got unexpected resistance, and I jerked my head up wildly to find out what was going on because the engine was off and the brakes were on and the Spitfire was still inching forward.
Twenty men were pushing and pulling at it. One of them saw that I was up and not dead, and he waved at me frantically and pointed overhead. I looked up – the second Swallow still hadn’t landed and my plane was in his way. They were trying desperately to clear the runway for him. I think he was out of fuel.