a very good job. Nothing’s going to change just because I’m here. I’m not replacing Mr Wallis. I’m not planning on altering anything. As far as I’m concerned, I’m here for one reason only.’
The group leader smiled. ‘To take charge?’
‘To learn.’
‘Learn?’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t presume to show you what to do. But I’d appreciate it if you’d help me with what I have to do.’ I paused, wondering if the message was getting through. ‘I’ve been trained. I’ve done a fair amount of work already. But I need to know a lot more.’
Slowly: ‘You wish to … learn?’
‘Yes.’
The German looked from me to the other Feuerwerker and hack again. Finally: ‘My name is Karl.’ He smiled again, more certainly this time, and extended his hand towards me. ‘Welcome to Berlin.’
They took me at my word. Day after day we loaded up the Bedford truck or one of the Jeeps and headed out into the city. Though many of the jobs posed no problems there were always one or two that challenged both expertise and ingenuity. The workload was heavy; even with two or more teams operating, there was a permanent backlog of non-emergency tasks.
The Feuerwerker were always careful, always methodical, operating like skilled professionals. I joined in the discussion, planning and execution, carried out various tasks under Karl’s watchful eye, or stood aside and looked on while new and complex operations were undertaken involving devices I hadn’t previously encountered. Gradually I absorbed the details of every incident, deriving satisfaction, exhilaration and gratitude at the good fortune that had brought me here.
In the coffeeshop off the Ku-damm Karl finished his plate of Bratkartoffeln (sautéed potatoes) and reached for a slice of the Black Forest Kirschtorte. I’d already eaten mine; it was like nothing I’d ever tasted before. Berlin might be divided, it might still be suffering postwar shortages in certain types of goods, but the street corner pubs and the pastry shops and cafés held within them the kind of delights that would have been incomprehensible across the Channel.
‘So,’ said Karl. ‘You learn fast. You like this job?’
I nodded. ‘I also like Berlin.’
‘Ja. It’s a good city. Maybe one day …’ The sentence hung unfinished; you didn’t need to ask what he was thinking. A Berliner by birth, he would have childhood memories of his city before the bombs fell, before the tanks and the troops swept in. He patted his pockets and extracted a pack of cigars. I had to smile to myself. In England I hadn’t come across that many cigar-smokers. Here though, cigars seemed part of the staple diet.
‘Anyway,’ Karl said. ‘You are ready. We let you loose on Berlin, eh?’ He grinned. It was a private joke between the two of us; he knew I didn’t need any civilian’s permission to carry out my duties. But this little game gave the Feuerwerker a sense of self-respect and allowed me to learn more than could be gained from any classroom or workshop.
Karl took another puff on the cigar. ‘You do me a favour though.’
‘What is it?’
‘Try not to knock down any more of my city.’
There was another job to go to, non-urgent, non-threatening, one of the dozens still stacked up despite every effort to reduce the total. The problem was that here in Berlin not only were you up against new difficulties every day, you were also up against the clock; some weeks it seemed that for every incident successfully dealt with, two more were demanding response.
I was acutely conscious of the time that was spent on certain kinds of operation. It seemed to me that we couldn’t go on doing everything by the book: there had to be some incidents where safe short-cuts were appropriate. Blind mortar bombs, for instance. Time after time we were called out to deal with these and on arrival would find that only the tips of the fins were visible. You couldn’t see anything else and you couldn’t get at the damn thing. You had to dig down carefully, scoop out soil and stones, and finally expose the bomb body. After that it was standard procedure: you placed a charge next to the body and detonated it.
In situ destruction was insisted upon for three very good reasons: First, the relatively small amount of high explosive found in land service munitions meant that it was normally possible to protect surrounding property when destruction occurred. Secondly, projectiles normally suffer some physical damage when fired and vital components such as fuzes become impossible to remove. Third, but by no means least, fuzed projectiles which have been fired but have failed to detonate at the intended time are inherently unstable: they can go off at the slightest movement.
Artillery fuzes contain safety devices which react to the pressures and forces occurring at and after firing. Those forces are tremendous: the pressure generated in a chamber on firing can be from 1,000 to 6,000 bar; the acceleration of a shell up the barrel can be anything between 10,000g and 35,000g; the shell can be spinning at between 500 and 4,000 revs per minute. Components designed to react to such pressures include detents: under the pressure of acceleration they overcome the resistance of their springs and slide to the rear of the fuze. In so doing, they can clear the way for bolts which, acting under centrifugal force, move to bring detonators and strikers into line.
By the time a shell arrives at its target, all safety devices should have been rendered inactive. In the case of something designed to explode on impact, when contact is made with a hard surface the striker will be driven into the detonator, which then detonates the main filling.
But theory is one thing and practice another; projectiles fail to explode on impact for many reasons. But if something travelling at several hundred metres a second has collided with a hard surface and failed to explode, then it is not safe to handle.
This meant that whatever kind of blind projectile you found, shell or mortar, movement was highly ill-advised and, unless circumstances overwhelmingly ruled against it, in situ destruction was the norm. In the case of a blind mortar, you cleared the earth or any obstruction around the bomb and then fixed the charge.
Such exertion was acceptable when there was something to show for it. Annoyingly, though, you could spend what seemed an eternity out in the biting wind and rain and, at the end of it all, come up with nothing more than a harmless tail unit, the remains of a bomb which had exploded long ago. Valuable time had been lost for nothing.
So when the next call about a possible blind mortar bomb came in I threw some extra gear into the Jeep and raced out to the location, ready to put into practice the new Gurney Mk I bomb disposal theory. It was eminently practical, safe, and would substantially reduce incident attendance time.
The mortar was not much more than a glint in the earth. On all sides the land stretched away in a soggy expanse; no buildings near by, no people, just another of Berlin’s empty acreages. I dusted some dirt off the fin-tip, then walked back to the Jeep, started her up, and navigated a way through the peaks and hollows of the site to a point about fifty yards from the suspected bomb.
I dug out sufficient soil to expose one of the holes in a fin and unrolled the electric cable I’d brought with me from the depot, tying one end through the hole, and running the rest of it across the ground and fastening it to the back of the Jeep. Both knots were secure; as soon as the Jeep moved off, the cable would take the strain and gradually tug the mortar out by its fin. It beat digging holes any day.
The engine started and I crunched into first gear, then eased back on the clutch while carefully feathering the accelerator. The Jeep rocked slightly, the vibrations running through its frame. More pedal pressure, and with infinite slowness it began to move forwards. One foot covered … two foot. I turned back in my seat, the better to see the bomb.
But there was no progress. The cable was now taut but the bomb was still stuck. More gear crunching, more engine clattering; the Jeep edged forward. I looked back again: nothing. This made no sense at all because (a) the bomb’s mass simply couldn’t withstand this kind of pressure, (b) I had already scooped some of the retaining earth