1947 - The Guiding Light

[Calder]

The Guiding Light – 1947

Conference Room, City Hall, New York City 2:00 pm

"Damn", Mayor William O'Dwyer's comment broke the silence that had echoed around the room after the radio broadcast. "Damn".

There was a rustling in the Conference room and that was all. People were still trying to absorb the shock. The sheer size of what was happening was still taking time to sink in. It had been obvious for almost a day now that something big was happening but its true scale, its enormity, was conceptually stunning. There had been the huge air movement almost a day ago now. It had gone on for hours, huge aircraft heading east, the weird rhythmic snarl of their engines beating at the city over and over again., the stream of silver aircraft overhead seeming unending. Now, it was obvious, it hadn't been just New York that had seen and heard the aircraft. The whole of the East Coast had been the springboard for a massive air assault by a force that most Americans had only the dimmest of suspicions even existed.

The B-36. A ten-engined monster that could fly from its base in the East Coast to hit its targets in Germany and then return. Most of the world was having trouble building four-engined bombers that worked well, now American had turned around and built one with ten. Not just built one, but more than two thousand of them. They'd hit their targets across Germany at mid-day local time, that was barely dawn here. At noon East Coast Time, President Dewey had come onto the radio and explained what had happened. What America had done. And the impact of what he had said had stunned an entire country.

They'd destroyed Germany.

Not damaged it. Not inflicted casualties on it. Not destroyed a critical industrial facility. They'd destroyed the whole country. How, the President hadn't made clear. He'd spoken of a new type of bomb, he'd called an Atomic Bomb. The name didn't matter really, what mattered was that it was a weapon with immense destructive power. A new organization had been created to deliver it, a force called Strategic Air Command. SAC had been used to wipe Germany's industrial centers off the map. Anybody who was familiar with a map knew that once the industrial centers were gone, there wasn't much left of Germany.

"Damn." O'Dwyer said again. The President had said that nothing had been heard from Germany but whether the country surrendered or not didn't matter. They had nothing left to fight with or fight for. If the destruction was anything near the level that President Dewey had suggested, there may not be any Germans left to surrender. There were always the armies abroad though. In England, in France and the Netherlands, in Norway, and, most significantly, in Russia. What would they be doing, how would they react to the news? If President Dewey's statements were true, then something very strange had happened, the men who had gone to war were relatively safe while the families they had left behind had been slaughtered.

O'Dwyer found it hard to imagine, America itself hadn't been attacked since the Mexican-American war almost a hundred years before and he wasn't even sure that really counted. The South of course counted itself as having been invaded and conquered but that wasn't quite the same thing. Anyway, President Dewey had been quite clear, Germany hadn't been invaded, it had been destroyed. That was America's policy from now on. America wouldn't fight its enemies any more, it would simply destroy them. Perhaps Sherman's march through Georgia or Sheridan's razing of the Shenandoah Valley could come close to what President Dewey had described. But, even then, the destruction hadn't been a wholesale massacre of every human being in the area.

He walked over to the City Hall window and looked out at the city. Just what kind of weapon could destroy a city this big? President Dewey had said it was a bomb, singular. O'Dwyer tried to imagine a single explosion that could destroy an entire city. It was unthinkable, incredible. Then extend that to every city in Germany, of the numbers of bombs that must have been dropped by that endless stream of bombers. My God, the dead over there must be numbered in millions.

O'Dwyer looked at New York and tried to imagine what the city would look like after being blown apart by a massive explosion. Of the number of New Yorkers who would be killed. He had his political enemies but he knew he was a skilled administrator and he thought over just what such a disaster would mean for his city. If the dead were numbered in their thousands, the wounded would be many, many times that. Yet all the hospitals would be gone, there would be no way to treat them. Damn, even the streets would be impassible, there would be no way to get to the wounded, let alone treat their injuries. And water? Where would that come from? How about food. It was a city joke that New Yorkers lived 24 hours from barbarism and 72 hours from cannibalism but O'Dwyer knew it was true. Cut the city off from outside supplies and the food would run out in 24 hours. Then there would be fighting in the streets for what was left. Perhaps 72 hours was an exaggeration, cannibalism would take a bit longer than that but not much. O'Dwyer had read the stories of Russian cities under siege and knew what they had endured. Order had been maintained only by the ruthless application of force and even then, it was better not to ask what went into the soup. New York was no different from Moscow or Petrograd or Gorkiy. Or from London or Paris for that matter. 24 hours from barbarism. Now spread that across an entire country. Dear God, the people who had planned this must have minds from the very deepest pits of hell.

The silence in the Conference Room was broken by a deep sigh. O'Dwyer turned around. Neal Rosenstein was shaking his head. "Those people, those poor, poor people."

"I was trying to imagine it myself," O'Dwyer said quietly. "Trying to imagine a whole city wiped out in an instant."

"A whole city, Mr, Mayor? Screw them. They're Nazis, they deserved whatever they got and then some. They're just getting back some of what they handed out to everybody else. I meant our bomber crews. God knows what their casualties have been like."

That threw the Conference room back into silence. The B-29 raids in 1944 through to early 1946 had been a horrible lesson in what happened to bombers that tried to fight their way through the enemy defenses. The early casualty rates had been 50 percent or more. Then, they'd climbed higher as the German fighters and anti-aircraft defenses had gained experience and adapted their tactics. The Ploesti raid had been the worst, every single B-29 the Air Force had been sent was shot down, every one of them. One, just one, had got through to bomb the refinery. The newsreels in the cinemas had shown film of B-29s on other raids, ones that had made it back to their bases in Russia, the shot-up aircraft that had landed safely, the wreckage of the ones that hadn't. The wounded being brought out and rushed away in ambulances, the dead laid on the grass by their aircraft.

In the end, the B-29 raids had been stopped. The casualties had been too high to support. The B-29s still appeared over the Eastern Front but they never went deep and they were always surrounded by a cloud of escort fighters. Even then, they still got hit by anti-aircraft fire. And this raid, this was transoceanic. There was no way the B-36s could have had fighter escorts. Their casualties must have been appalling.

"The Navy could have taken them in some of the way." New York was a Navy town with its own Naval Shipyard and the aircraft carrier groups that pounded France and the rest of the European Atlantic seaboard were familiar visitors. Their dark blue fighters had taken a hammering from the Germans as well, but unlike the B-29s, they'd given worse than they'd taken. O'Dwyer wasn't a military man but he knew what the carrier planes could and could not do. They could escort the bombers to the German border, perhaps a bit further, but after that, the B-36s would be on their own. And they had been left with a long way to go.

"Not far enough Neal, not nearly far enough. The bombers would have been on their own for the worst of it."

O'Dwyer shuddered, his mind picturing the stream of heavy bombers that had passed overhead, trying to fight its way through the German defenses, the sky turning black with the streams of fire as bomber after bomber went down. He pictured the crews, knowing what was waiting for them the other side of the Atlantic, patiently flying their aircraft through the night towards Germany, then battling their way to their targets. Now they would be fighting their way through the defenses on their way home, facing another long, lonely flight through the Atlantic night. "Where do we get such men?" he whispered quietly to himself. "How do we find such men?"

Then, he shook himself. There was work to be done. "Right people. We've got a lot to do and not that much time. Those bomber crews are depending on us to look after them when they get home. New York must be ready for them. Neal, take charge of getting everything organized. Do whatever it takes and take whatever you think our boys will need. We'll meet again, here at 7pm. I'll be contacting all the State, County and local administrations to co-ordinate and also find out from the Feds what they want us to do. 7 pm people. And, when you get the chance, say a prayer for our boys.

Conference Room, City Hall, New York City 7:00 pm

"Mister Mayor. This is what we've got so far. We've shut down all the air movements in New York State. All the other states on the Eastern Seaboard are doing the same. The airports are all cleared, every one of them from the big municipals down to the barnstormers and puddle-hoppers. They've called for local volunteers to help with crash rescue, the volunteer fire and ambulance brigades are waiting by the runways. Everything is ready and waiting, the bombers can come straight in. If they can make it to the runway, everything will be waiting for them. The Air Force and Navy have done the same.

"We've mobilized the City, Town and State police forces and as many local volunteers as we can find. They're forming flying columns. If a bomber can't make it to an airport, the flying columns will try and head for the likely crash site. The Air Force will have Black Widows up all night, theyre job is to find the bombers that can't make it and steer the ground columns in. Our aim is to have crash, fire and rescue teams on the site as soon as the aircraft bellies in, God Willing, we'll have the crew out before the aircraft burns.

"We're doing the same at sea. The Navy and Coast Guard are out but we've readied the harbor police and as many private boats and boatsmen as we can find. Same rule, we want rescue teams at a ditching site with as little delay as we can manage. SAC have told us that a B-36 has flotation gear but the aircraft won't stay up for long. Numbers are the key, the more boats are out there, the more likely that some will be in the right place. I'm told there are traffic jams at the harbor entrances with small craft trying to get out to help.

"We've alerted the entire hospital system. Non-urgent, non critical patients have been sent home, the emergency wards are cleared. All medical personnel have been called in, nurses, doctors, retired active everybody. We're doing a blood drive as well. Ambulance and fire crews are ready as well. Transport for the wounded, we've even got taxis waiting to help out there.

"I've been in touch with all the church groups. They're organizing sandwiches and coffee for any crews that land safely, they're also sorting out places for the airmen to stay if they want sleep. We've been in contact with the Air Force and told them what we've got organized. They don't know much themselves yet, the aircraft are operating under radio silence. I've heard from a Navy friend that ships at sea have picked up a large number of planes coming back across the Atlantic so a lot of our boys have made it. Now we have to make sure they get home safely."

O'Dwyer went back to his window. Dusk was falling, the city slipping into its night-time shroud of darkness. Once, many years before, New York had been a gala illumination of a skyline, a cascade of lights. Now, the black-out was in effect and dusk meant darkness. It was a hard-learned lesson, the great German submarine assault of 1942 had a field day shooting at ships backlit by the illumination of America's coastal cities. Dozens, hundreds, of ships had gone down before the blackout had been imposed. Looking out to sea in those grim days, it had been possible to see six or more ships burning offshore at once. One terrible night, the whole of New York had seen Enterprise go down barely a mile past the Sandy Hook point. She'd been surrounded by blazing fuel and gasoline after the torpedoes had hit her and the survivors had filled New York's burns units for months. She hadn't been the only Navy ship to go down but she'd been the worst.

"What'll it be like up there?" O'Dwyer was really asking himself but he got an answer anyway George Blumenthal had been an Air Force pilot before a pre-war crash had invalided him out.

"Lonely Mister Mayor, very lonely. The aircraft will have engines out, they'll have dead and wounded on board. They'll be freezing cold because of altitude and wind, they'll have systems failures from battle damage and just plain breakdowns. The weather is closing in, so they'll have difficulty taking starshots. If their radios are down, they wont have the East Coast navigational systems to use. They'll be navigating by guess and by God. A lot of them won't make in Mister Mayor, that's the honest truth. They'll get off course, get disorientated in the darkness. Its hard to describe unless you've been there but its quite possible some of those aircraft will end up doing a 180 and flying back towards Germany again. More will get lost and fly backwards and forwards until they run out of fuel. Even in daylight, its a hard, hard thing flying over the sea out of sight of land . At night, in a shot-up, damaged aircraft, they'll need a friendly star to steer by.

O'Dwyer looked out of his window again, then suddenly the image clicked. Not a friendly star, something much better. "Then, by God, we'll give them one. We'll give them a beacon to steer for, one so large that they can't possibly miss it. People. GET THE LIGHTS ON. I want every light in the city on. Every office light, every house light, every street light. I want the floodlights on, every searchlight in the city sweeping the sky. Get through to Broadway, tell every theater and every movie house to put their lights on full blast. Tell people to get their cars out into the street and turn the headlights on. If its a light, I want it on.

"Neal, call Con-Ed tell them what we're doing and why. Tell them to generate every scrap of power they can. If they've disconnected people, restore them. Tonight, just tonight, the city will pay the power bill. Get the police, tell them the black-out is over. More than over, its history. Tonight, we're going to have a white-on. Get on the radio, tell people to open their curtains and turn the lights on. George, tell the army batteries to start firing starshell, if there are any fireworks in the city, get them ready. Spread the word people. GET THE LIGHTS ON

O'Dwyer went back to his window and looked out at the darkened city spread out in front of him. He didnt know how long he'd stood there and even when it happened, he wasn't sure if it was his eyes playing tricks or not. But he thought he saw a light, far off. Then it was joined by another, and another. A searchlight stabbed at the sky, sweeping backwards and forwards across the darkness. Down by Broadway, a glow split the night as the theaters turned their long-dormant billboard lights and the floods used to announce new openings relaunched themselves. Then, a giant wave of light swept across the city as the inhabitants got the word.

125th Street New York City 1:00 am

The cliche was that the it was bright enough to read a newspaper. It wasn't. The glare was too painful for the large print and garish pictures of a newspaper. It was, however, bright enough to read the finest print on a legal document. As Patrolman Callahan paced his measured walk down the street, he reflected it was strange the difference 24 hours could make. This time last night, a chink of light through a parted curtain meant a roar of "turn out that light" and a summons for breaking the black-out. Now, it was a worse offense to leave a light off. Not legally, the whole of tonight's display was technically illegal, but morally.

One house was still shrouded in darkness. Callahan pounded on the door with his nightstick. "Turn on your lights." After a couple of minutes a middle-aged and shabby black woman opened the door.

"Doan have no electricity sir. Cumpny turned us off."

"Your powers on for tonight, City's paying the tab. So put your lights on." The woman looked at him doubtfully and reluctantly but her face changed when a Con-Ed car pulled up and an engineer entered her house. Five minutes later, she flipped a switch and her face was a picture of delight as the hall light came. "Sure sir, They'll be on right away."

Callahan walked on, his measured step taking him further along 125th. A glance backwards told him the woman he'd spoken to was as good as her word, her house lights were on. Overhead, there was a dull crack and another barrage of fireworks went off. Macy's had found a stockpile intended for an Independence Day Display that had never happened and were firing them off. Over the noise, Callahan heard another sound, a curious throbbing growl. High over the city, its silver skin reflecting the lights below, another B-36 was using New York as a navigation point before turning up or down the coast to its home base. An hour or so earlier, another one had landed at La Guardia. Just a few weeks before, the airport had been leased to the Port Authority. Now, it was an emergency landing field for the big bombers coming back from Germany.

There was a dark alleyway off to the left. No lights down there to be turned on. Callahan paced down its length, his flashlight shining into the recesses and shadows. Normally, a civilian coming down here would, quite literally, be risking his life and even a cop kept his eyes open and his wits about him. But, tonight, the crime rate was down. Way down. There was a joke that even the Five Families had called a truce tonight.

At the other end of the alleyway was a building site. An old structure had been taken down but its replacement hadn't been built before the war had come along and stopped everything. Since then it was derelict space, sometimes used for the shady transactions of the ladies of the night, sometimes to dump an inconvenient body. Now, there was a light there, one flashing backwards and forwards. Callahan decided this was worth checking.

It was a young boy, five years old, perhaps six, standing on a broken wall with a flashlight in his hands. He was sweeping the sky with it, looking up intently.

"What are you doing son?"

The boy looked at him with earnest eyes. "I'm helping our bombers come home."

Callahan nodded. The boy's father was a few feet away, watching his son. Callahan looked at him "Fine young man you've got there sir." He said, pitching his voice so the boy could hear.

The man started, police officers didn't usually call people in this part of town 'sir'. "Thanks officer. We've been out here for hours now. That's his second battery."

Callahan reached into his belt. He had a spare flashlight battery that looked like it would fit. "Here you are sir. For when that one runs down."

He tapped his cap with his baton by way of salute. Overhead, another bomber was passing, lower than usual, the throb of its engines shaking the alley. This one seemed to be in trouble, even Callahan on the ground could see the damage to its wing. He turned to the boy "The crew can't say it to you themselves so I'll say it for them. Thank you son. Thank you for the guiding light."

[Belushi TD]

This was one of the first shorts I read. Once I read it, I knew that Stuart was a writer to follow.

Belushi TD