landed on the city in the middle of the afternoon, when Corporal Little and I were walking along Keizerstraat. Frank did a four-legged jump and cowered against the nearest wall.
“It’s OK, boy,” Corporal Little reassured him, but Frank never did get used to the seismic shock of V-2 explosions, which made the cobblestones knock together like pebbles on the beach. If bloodhounds are capable of having nervous breakdowns, poor old Frank got pretty close to it.
That Sunday, October 15, a rocket destroyed twenty-five houses on Kroonstraat at Borgerhout, killing four people and injuring a hundred more. Over the next few days, more and more V-2s hit the city center. There was a total news blackout—nothing on the wireless, and nothing in the newspapers except vague warnings about “flyingbombs”—so nobody knew what was really happening. The city authorities were desperate to avoid any panic, and, just as importantly, they didn’t want the Germans to find out whether their rockets were hitting their targets or not.
After the Schildersstraat attack, Corporal Little and Frank and I spent three more weeks in Antwerp, searching for any trace of the Romanian Screecher and his German companion, just in case Ernst Hauser had been lying to us, or they had been hiding in some other house when the V-2 struck. But after we had dragged Frank up and down every rubble-strewn street and every smelly alley between Prinsstraat and Lange Nieuwstraat, and talked to more than two hundred people, including police officers and hospital orderlies and priests, we finally had to conclude that they had either left Antwerp and returned to Germany, or else that first V-2 had simply atomized them.
As the winter grew colder and colder, and the Germans retreated, we were sent into Holland. We visited houses in Eindhoven and Breda and Tilburg, and found the grisly evidence that Screechers had been there—men, women and children, with their hearts cut out and all of the blood drained out of them. But the Screechers themselves had long gone, and they had left no trail that Frank could usefully follow.
Whenever I think of that winter, I think of finger-numbing cold, and skies as dark as lead. I think of desperate tiredness, and boredom—driving miles and miles between avenues of poplar trees, and seeing nobody forhours. It felt as if the war had passed us by and we were completely alone in the world.
On the morning of January 16, 1945, a message came through Brussels that my mother had died, and that I should return home immediately. Operation Screecher was over—as far as I was concerned, anyway—because I was never sent back to Europe. Corporal Little was ordered to take Frank back to Antwerp, where he could help the Belgian rescue services to locate buried bodies. The city was still under daily attack from V-2 rockets, and already more than three and a half thousand people had been killed.
The last time I saw Corporal Little and Frank was on the long stone mole at Zeebrugge harbor, where I was due to board a British troopship. It was the middle of the afternoon and it was snowing hard. The lighthouse on the end of the mole was back in action, and every now and then the snow was illuminated by a bright sweeping light.
“Well, Henry, it’s been an experience.”
“Yes, sir, it has.” He hesitated for a moment, and then he said, “Think we did any good, sir?”
“I don’t know. I guess we never will. I can’t see us going into the history books, can you?”
“No, sir. But we’ll remember it. You and me, and Frank.”
Frank made that whining noise in his throat and irritably shook the snowflakes from his back.
I shook Corporal Little’s hand and walked back along the mole to the dockside. Somewhere, in some alternative existence, I think that I’m still walking along itnow, with the lighthouse flashing on and off, and the snow falling all around me, and the bang and clatter of cranes still echoes in my ears.
I didn’t yet know
“It’s OK, boy,” Corporal Little reassured him, but Frank never did get used to the seismic shock of V-2 explosions, which made the cobblestones knock together like pebbles on the beach. If bloodhounds are capable of having nervous breakdowns, poor old Frank got pretty close to it.
That Sunday, October 15, a rocket destroyed twenty-five houses on Kroonstraat at Borgerhout, killing four people and injuring a hundred more. Over the next few days, more and more V-2s hit the city center. There was a total news blackout—nothing on the wireless, and nothing in the newspapers except vague warnings about “flyingbombs”—so nobody knew what was really happening. The city authorities were desperate to avoid any panic, and, just as importantly, they didn’t want the Germans to find out whether their rockets were hitting their targets or not.
After the Schildersstraat attack, Corporal Little and Frank and I spent three more weeks in Antwerp, searching for any trace of the Romanian Screecher and his German companion, just in case Ernst Hauser had been lying to us, or they had been hiding in some other house when the V-2 struck. But after we had dragged Frank up and down every rubble-strewn street and every smelly alley between Prinsstraat and Lange Nieuwstraat, and talked to more than two hundred people, including police officers and hospital orderlies and priests, we finally had to conclude that they had either left Antwerp and returned to Germany, or else that first V-2 had simply atomized them.
As the winter grew colder and colder, and the Germans retreated, we were sent into Holland. We visited houses in Eindhoven and Breda and Tilburg, and found the grisly evidence that Screechers had been there—men, women and children, with their hearts cut out and all of the blood drained out of them. But the Screechers themselves had long gone, and they had left no trail that Frank could usefully follow.
Whenever I think of that winter, I think of finger-numbing cold, and skies as dark as lead. I think of desperate tiredness, and boredom—driving miles and miles between avenues of poplar trees, and seeing nobody forhours. It felt as if the war had passed us by and we were completely alone in the world.
On the morning of January 16, 1945, a message came through Brussels that my mother had died, and that I should return home immediately. Operation Screecher was over—as far as I was concerned, anyway—because I was never sent back to Europe. Corporal Little was ordered to take Frank back to Antwerp, where he could help the Belgian rescue services to locate buried bodies. The city was still under daily attack from V-2 rockets, and already more than three and a half thousand people had been killed.
The last time I saw Corporal Little and Frank was on the long stone mole at Zeebrugge harbor, where I was due to board a British troopship. It was the middle of the afternoon and it was snowing hard. The lighthouse on the end of the mole was back in action, and every now and then the snow was illuminated by a bright sweeping light.
“Well, Henry, it’s been an experience.”
“Yes, sir, it has.” He hesitated for a moment, and then he said, “Think we did any good, sir?”
“I don’t know. I guess we never will. I can’t see us going into the history books, can you?”
“No, sir. But we’ll remember it. You and me, and Frank.”
Frank made that whining noise in his throat and irritably shook the snowflakes from his back.
I shook Corporal Little’s hand and walked back along the mole to the dockside. Somewhere, in some alternative existence, I think that I’m still walking along itnow, with the lighthouse flashing on and off, and the snow falling all around me, and the bang and clatter of cranes still echoes in my ears.
I didn’t yet know