Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Eighty-Seven
20th April 1962
Mitte, Berlin
There were times when Maria was reminded of just how much Zella had inherited from Emil. Unfortunately, those aspects of him could be incredibly aggravating when they were displayed by their daughter. Maria would have thought that she would be used to it after twenty-one years, but Zella always seemed to find some new way to be infuriating and worrisome in equal turns.
This time a strange story had broken about how an outraged housewife near the University’s Humboldt Campus had been arrested after savagely attacking her husband, a Classics Professor, with a mallet after she had learned of his infidelity. Apparently, she had rather effectively removed her husband from gene pool. It had been regarded with a great deal of humor by the Metro Desk and they had played up that angle. Zella had been gleeful at first as word about the story spread. But later, something about her reaction reminded Maria of the times that Emil had started something only to watch it get out of hand. The police were investigating the matter and there was word that the University of Berlin was conducting a review of its policies regarding fraternization between students and faculty as well. Maria didn’t need to make too many leaps of logic to figure out what Zella’s involvement must have been.
Because the dormitories were undergoing their quarterly fumigation over Easter, Zella was staying at home over the Easter Holiday. Though Maria got the impression that her daughter was hiding in the house, waiting for the trouble she had caused this time to go away. That meant that Maria couldn’t avoid her and that made processing the events of the previous months more difficult than it would have been otherwise. As much as Maria hated to admit it, Zella was easier to deal with when the option of her going back to the dormitory existed.
At the moment, Zella had a pencil in her hand sketching something in a notebook while humming to herself. That was something that she had done since she was a little girl and Maria found it a small mercy that it was an aspect of her that had not changed. Zella was ignoring the television which was on the Evening News at a time when Maria was finding that she couldn’t ignore it. Videos of fighting in Korea was being played along with graphics showing the regions affected. There was also word that the Luftwaffe, Kaiserliche Marine along with the Korean Air Force had announced that they were starting an air campaign in the coming days. Weighing on Maria was not just how the Berliner Tageblatt was going to cover it but how her son Walter was sixteen. If this went on for too long and the Government reinstituted conscription, then there was a good chance that he could get caught up in that mess. There was also the social pressure that he was under. As the son of a Markgraf and Field Marshal, Walter could easily be compelled to do something stupid. Because he lacked his older sister’s pigheaded nature, Maria was worried that it could easily happen.
Mercifully, the news switched to tomorrow’s weather.
Over the Yalu River
They looked like old-fashioned telegraph poles with flames shooting out the bottom. Or at least that was the impression that one had because the damned things moved so fast. Sitting in the cockpit Ben was discovering that he had only seconds to react after the alarm went off when a search radar was detected. None had been fired today, not yet anyway. Then there was the antiaircraft artillery, or it seemed like just anyone on the bank of the river with a rifle. The Chinese Air Force were proving not to be slouches either. The American designed Curtis Goshawk fighters that they flew could just keep up with a Pfeil in level flight but not for long. The Chinese pilots preferred to fly with the minimal fuel and ammunition load to accentuate the Goshawk’s already light wing-loading. The Goshawks carried only two of the heat-seeking missiles named after a sort of rattlesnake endemic to the South-Western American deserts. Ben had only flown a few missions, but he already knew that they only needed one to ruin his day.
What that meant in practice was that the Goshawk could be outpaced under any other scenario other than the one that they were currently flying. The bridges over the Yalu River had been deemed primary targets of SKG 18 as soon as they had landed in Korea. There were only so many attack vectors on those bridges and it seemed like they were all heavily defended. And the Chinese built Goshawks would be covering the likely approaches.
“Fuck!” Ben heard Wim, whose job it was to run the electronic countermeasures as well as being the Bombardier, exclaim from the back seat as a shell burst off to their left. Unlike the Canadian version of the Pfeil, Arado had gone with a full-length canopy, so Wim had a great view of everything outside and in.
Despite the danger lurking around every corner, Ben was finding Wim to be a bit over-excited at times. He tended to react that way whenever an alarm went off. There was supposed to be a wing of FW-270 Größerer Hühnerhabicht fighters providing top cover this time. Hopefully they would keep the Chinese fighters off then long enough to hit the pontoon bridge that they had been tasked with destroying.
As Ben commenced the attack run, entering a steep dive. Tracers flew past the canopy and Ben felt the plane lurch as the bombs fell away. Turning a hard left, he was crushed into his seat, levelling out, he raced for friendly territory. He had no clue if he had hit the bridge or not.