A thousand suns

Every man felt it as the time ticked away, and Max knew he was no exception to that rule. The growing sense of dread, those pre-battle nerves, it affected them all… just in different ways. Some men it made feel nauseous, others terribly thirsty. Many of the men he’d commanded in KG-301 suffered a desperate need to shit just before the planes were ready to leave the ground; some of his men had even confessed to feeling sexually aroused just before it was time to go.

Fear really did seem to have a plethora of ways of expressing itself.

With a little knowledge of anthropology, one could explain away most of these symptoms of extreme stress as the body’s way of clearing the decks and preparing itself for danger. Nausea? — The body discouraging the ingestion of bulky food that might slow it down, or hamper its performance. Thirst? — A dry mouth was the body asking for water, hoarding it ready to be consumed after a burst of extreme physical exertion. Defecation? — The body ensuring that unnecessary body weight was quickly jettisoned.

Sexual arousal? — That was an odd one.

Max had a suspicion that it was the body’s desperate plea to procreate one final time, an attempt at some basic level of instinct to ensure the bloodline continued.

All of these stress-symptoms made sense. They were emergency systems designed to ready the human body to fight, flee or face death. Once upon a time, when men had fought with clubs and rocks, those stress-responses must have been invaluable. But war now wasn’t about brute strength, or swiftness of foot. It had much more to do with concentration and patience. And none of these damned symptoms helped at all.

They were made all the worse if there was nothing to do to fill in that dwindling time until zero hour. So he was thankful that for all of them there had been plenty to take care of and plenty more that needed doing in the next couple of days.

Do I get nervous? he asked himself.

More than he would ever let the others know.

‘A little bit, maybe, Stef.’

‘Oh. You never seem to look it, sir.’

Max smiled. If only you knew.

‘We’re going to be in good hands, thanks to Schroder and his men. We’re flying a tough old plane, we’re flying in secrecy and we’re heading somewhere nobody expects us to go. The wind’s in our favour, Stef. We’ll do just fine.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ replied Stef.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, lad. It’s good to be a little jittery, just enough to keep you alert, keep your wits about you.’ Max slapped his back. ‘You’ve done us proud over the last year and you’ll do just as well tomorrow night.’

Chapter 28

On the Move

11 a.m., 28 April 1945, a suburb in Stuttgart

Schenkelmann found the diffuse glare of the thinly overcast morning almost unbearable after months of living by lamplight below ground. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the brightness even though he’d been toiling in the daylight for ten minutes now. The little back street he had seen fleetingly all those months ago when they had dragged him into the building under the railway bridge and down below into the cellar did not seem to have taken any bomb damage, it looked unchanged.

He could hear the thudding of artillery shells landing nearby, or perhaps it was bombardment from above, and the sporadic crack of gunfire echoing off the empty streets.

‘Hurry up, damn it!’ said Hauser, looking up and down the cobbled back street, fear flickering across his narrow face.

Schenkelmann and his two lab assistants had nearly finished loading the weapon components into the back of the truck, where half a dozen of the SS Leibstandarte that Hitler himself had assigned to protect Hauser and the bomb sat guarding the odd-looking collection of crated items.

The U-235 mass and the two U-235 bullets had been carefully transported to the truck separately, but the altimeter trigger was the part of the bomb that needed some degree of protection from the bumping and shaking that lay ahead. This frugile component was in for a turbulent ride as the truck picked its way over cratered roads to get out of the city. The altimeter was carefully padded in a wooden crate filled with coarse sawdust. The detonators for the two U-235 bullets were also packed away in two separate caskets, safely away from the rest of the bomb.

Schenkelmann slowly finished off sealing one of the caskets, taking his time under the bored gaze of the men in the truck. As he finished up and climbed back out of the truck, he looked around. There was no sign of Zsophia and his mother. Hauser had promised they would be brought along with him when the bomb was to be moved.

A crack of rifle fire sounded nearby, its echo rattled off the stone arches running down one side of the back street. It sounded like it had come from nearby, from behind the furniture workshop that faced the bridge and cast a long squat shadow over the cobbles. Or perhaps it was closer?