1.

1940 Sunday, August 25^th

Sophia and her oldest daughter Vera stood in the open window mesmerised by the awesome sight before them. High above was the most magnificent and terrifying firework show they had ever witnessed. Most people were in bed at about twelve twenty a.m. that Sunday morning when the sirens began to wail. It was nothing to worry about. The Berliners had heard them before. That's why they didn't worry. Why the Fuehrer and Air Marshal Goering himself had assured them personally there was nothing to worry about. No wonder most of them didn't even bother to get out of their beds. But the two women worried; they always worried when Hans, Sofia's husband was working at night. A couple of streets away the twins, Nadja and Lubja, were caring for their grandparents at their home nearby as they did most nights. It was natural to worry, so they worried and waited and watched.

Standing there in the window they saw and could sense the confusion from their top floor apartment block. They lived in Siemensstadt, right across from the parish church on the junction of Schuckert Damm and Lenther Stieg. The area was renowned for its modern architecture and open spaces. The street lights shone like glittering ribbons, a vast illuminated map glowing in the blackness as the dense cloud cover at high altitude reflected the light down again. Contrasting puddles of light spilt from the opened doors and windows of shops and bars here and there. To the north, everything appeared calm and quiet. To the east, the vibrant nightlife of the city continued unabated, while the dark thunder clouds of war continued to pile ever higher in more distant lands in the west. It was in the south-east of the capital where the action was.

“It looks like something's happened at Tempelhof.” Sophia surmised sounding concerned.

“It sounds like explosions, they've probably had an accident at the ammunition dump.” Vera tried to sound like she knew what she was talking about hoping to still her mother’s fears.

“That's madness! What were they thinking about dumping explosives at the airport with at that aviation fuel and so near to people's houses.” Sophia chided.

They continued watching in silence. The fireflies of tracer shot into the firmament, fast and straight at first then they arched ground-ward as they slowed and vanished. There were single explosions, rapid multiple bursts, barrages, and salvos that appeared to march in advancing waves. Some of the salvos seemed to make to clouds of smoke hung in the air. The firework display seemed to ebb and flow with the droning of engines when the wind was in the right location. Then there were the searchlights. Single ones that flashed back and forth like demented moths strobing the sky, piercing, and slicing the darkness for who knows what for. There were banks of searchlights too. They swept to and fro synchronised in military precision like troops on parade. It was almost surreal, a macabre dance in the sky. There were no barrage balloons she thought. They didn't need them, no enemy aircraft would ever reach the capital with its ring of steel, besides the British bombers didn’t have the range to reach Berlin.

Vera began to see patterns in the explosions making order from the confusion. Squares, rectangles, cylinders, at different heights and different locations. Some of the explosions appeared to be on the ground. They were much bigger and random. The throbbing of engines grew louder, they seemed to be coming closer. Now they were deafening. Suddenly the sky was lit up as a series of loud explosions echoed from just behind her, frightening her. She realised the battery of searchlights, installed between their block and the Siemens factory, had been activated. The light was so intense your eyes needed time to return to normal after seeing it. They would almost blind anyone travelling toward them. The explosions appeared to be smoke rounds. They spread about toward their block and covered a large area around the Siemens factory making too difficult to anyone, even to someone who knew the area, to distinguish it in the thick fog.

Vera suddenly knew what it was they had been witnessing. It was a bombing raid. No! She didn't want to accept it. It couldn't be. They lied! No! But every instinct told her she was right. She glanced at her mother who had her hands clasped over her ears. She screamed at her but the noise of the engines swallowed her words. She pulled her mother from the window. She saw the look of horror on her face as the realisation of what was happening finally struck her and she instinctively knew was about to happen next. Now she understood.

A dark silhouette flashed over them with an ear crushing roar. It was the Siemens factory, the British were bombing the Siemens factory. They felt the ground heave, it seemed like their building had been picked up and dropped by an invisible hand. The noise was almost painful. They fell on the floor together. They clung to one another laying in shock. A second dark silhouette flashed by and the ground shook again. Vera looked at her mother, who had her eyes closed her hands clasped in prayer and touched her talisman. If ever she needed divine intervention it was now. She peered through the dust, there was dust falling everywhere, where did all the dust come from? And the noise, the noise was numbing her brain. She gathered her wits and her courage, muttered herself a silent prayer and started to pull them both across the room. If she could get to the lobby and into the stairwell, maybe they would have a chance.

She looked behind seeing another bomber lined-up for its approach. They were flying so low, trying to get beneath the dense cloud cover. The pilots seem to be fearless in the pursuit of their target. She thought they would surely crash into the ground as they swooped down to the bottom of the clouds. The noise, the lights, explosions, and the confusion were rendering her senseless.

The bombers couldn't see their target with the thick fog and blinding lights, but they had taken a bead on it. They were using her block and the church as a guide she realised, it was only a few hundred meters from the factory. They were aiming straight at her. The acht-acht gun were useless. The Gunners couldn't see the incoming aircraft until they were over her block and then they were too low and too fast for the gunners to respond. She harboured a grudging admiration for the pilots, they were skilful and had planned their approach perfectly.

She watched in slow motion as another predator lined-up and aimed. It swooped lower straight toward her. She saw the forward gunner, strafing the ground before him. The great raptor seemed to leap as it dropped its deadly cargo in the same moment the engines screamed as the pilot hit full throttle and fought for altitude to escape the hell he had just visited upon his fellow man. The noise was deafening. The ground raised and plunged again. There was dust everywhere and that peculiar smell of cordite or whatever explosive the bombs used. She was a chemist, why didn't she know that? What was happening to her? Now she felt herself falling, it was silent, she realised that she had lost hold of her mother, she turned to find her calling to her, as then blackness enveloped her.

----- o O o -----

When the war started Herman Goering¹, the President of the Reichstag and the Commander of the Luftwaffe, had assured them that no enemy planes could ever break through the outer or inner rings of the capital's anti-aircraft defence with its ring of steel, its hundred of miles of acht-acht anti-aircraft guns, its banks of searchlights and its squadrons of fighters. In fact, it was only three days since he'd boasted that the population need not bother to go to their cellars when the sirens sounded. Only if they heard the flak going off near-by should worry, or bother to seek cover. Even if the British bombers could penetrate the suburbs, they would never be able to reach to the city proper. The British planes didn't have the range almost 600 miles most over the sea, or the fire-power, leave alone the will-power. The British were spent, as good as done, defeated.

Berliners were naïve and simple in their faith in the Fuhrer and his cronies. They believed right until the moment they heard the British motors droning directly overhead. Until they heard the 'crump, crump, crump' of the flak ordinance and felt the earth shake with the endless pounding percussion of the exploding bombs. Then they realised. Then they understood. It was etched in their faces, the disillusionment, the stunned disbelief, and primal fear and shock as five million people panicked, fleeing, cowering to their cellars in their nightgowns until the all-clear sounded at three twenty-three a.m.

It had been the greatest concentration of anti-aircraft might ever be assembled until this time. Yet no aircraft was even picked up by searchlights, no aircraft was shot down, not a single defending fighter was sighted. No wonder the Fuhrer was apoplectic with rage next morning.

----- o O o -----

1. Before the war, Goering had bragged “If any bombs fall on the Reich I will change my name to Maier.” Being called Maier in Germany, specifically Bavaria, was like being called Smith in English was to be commonplace, so he was implying a meaning that he would become a nobody.

2. Guns were placed in towers 100-foot-high concrete towers (flakturm). There were three (Berliner Zoo, Friedrichshain, and Humboltthain), each equipped with four heavy anti-aircraft guns.