Operation Gomorrah

A false dawn lit the south-eastern sky, rouging Mother’s cheeks and painting the walls of buildings on our side of the street a lurid red. Through the openings of blasted windows we could see orange and yellow flames dancing beside pianos, making bonfires of bookcases, curling around bedposts. A torrent of hot wind coursed down Hasselbrook Strasse, bending trees almost double, stripping off branches and leaves and tugging at our blankets. Although antiaircraft guns banged away and searchlights still probed the sky, the bombing seemed to have diminished. Along the street a gusher of water rose more than three feet above the pavement. Everything was unreal. We went back through the arched entrance to our courtyard and saw pink tulips of flame sprouting along the roofline not far from our apartment.

There were firemen in the street, which was encouraging because normally they didn’t come out of their shelters while a raid was in progress. The firemen had unravelled a hose but it was flat. Although some water pressure had been restored after the raids on Sunday and Monday, the mains had been hit during the first waves of tonight’s raid, creating gushers like the one we had just seen.

Some firemen across the street were working with crowbars to open the metal door of a cellar shelter, while a fireman at the top of a long ladder chopped a hole in the roof of the building next door. Although we were afraid to approach for fear of being reported, I went close enough to hear one fireman yell to another that smoke from the building next door had entered the shelter through an exit tunnel. I thought how horrible it must be for those suffocating inside the shelter and was glad for a moment to be in the street. But even as the firemen succeeded in opening the shelter door and began bringing people outside, the terrifying shrieks of falling bombs, followed by thundering explosions, announced a new wave of Lancasters or Halifaxes. Both my eardrums seemed to burst at once as a large bomb landed much too close and collapsed the wall of the building next to the shelter. We watched and moaned, ‘No! No! No!’ as the fireman who had chopped a hole in the roof fell with his ladder into the flames.

More bombs struck in quick succession. Most of the firemen abandoned the smoke victims and began to run for their own bunker. Two who didn’t run were ripped by shrapnel and flying debris from another explosion. One fell on his face on top of a smoke victim and the other sat down on the sidewalk, holding his groin and screaming. Two firemen returned to retrieve their screaming comrade and carry him in the direction of their bunker. Many of the smoke victims were lying where they had been placed on the grassy strip beside the street, but some were staggering about, coughing and blinded, clutching at trees or lampposts for support. We lay in the gutter and watched as two or three from the shelter ran after the firemen. Following another nearby explosion we got up and chased after them, hoping that the firemen might allow us into their bunker. We ran down a narrow side street between high walls of flame until we came to a large commercial avenue. The firemen’s bunker was on the other side, about fifty yards away, but the wind blowing down the avenue was filled with flying brands and was so stromg that I could hardly stand in it. I lost my footing and would have gone tumbling into the flames, but Mother held on to my hand and hauled me to her side. We ducked back around the corner just as another bomb exploded between the firemen’s bunker and us, spraying shrapnel into the wall we crouched behind.

After we’d caught our breath, we started running again, wanting desperately to get away from the flames and explosions erupting all around us. We would run down a street that seemed to have been missed by the bombers and cower for a time in an archway or entrance, but soon more flames would shoot up in front of us. Fleeing the intense heat, we tried to move away from what seemed to be the main flight path of the bombers, but often we found the way blocked by a huge crater or a hillock of smouldering bricks and flaming wood that had toppled into the street. Sometimes we tried to pick our way over the debris, but often we gave up and turned back. Everywhere the bellowing wind drove the flames into a frenzy but the larger streets leading from the Alster lake were the worst. Hot air and gasses flew down these streets with incredible force, carrying everything that wasn’t anchored towards the blazing incinerator that an hour or so earlier had been the districts of Hamm and Hammerbrook.

We found some partial shelter in a basement entrance but soon that, too, was ablaze. It was obvious that we couldn’t stay where we were; pieces of the building had begun to fall on to the sidewalk. Despite the sustained roar of the wind and the sporadic explosions, I could sometimes hear the great cracking sounds made by the fire. I didn’t see how we could avoid being crushed by the collapsing building if we stayed, or consumed by flames if we tried the street. I looked at Mother’s face and read that she was undecided as to whether it would be worse to stay or leave. When there was a pause in the bombing, however, she wordlessly wrapped me like a mummy in my blanket. I could hardly breathe, and coughed miserably as she picked me up and edged back into the wind. By sticking close to walls and taking advantage of every possible windbreak, she eventually managed to get us both to a more sheltered side street.

We were both exhausted — limping, blistered, and bleeding from the ears and nose — when we stumbled into a shallow crater with some water at the bottom. The crater appeared to be in the small front garden of what had once been a handsome brick house with bays and turrets but was now a smouldering shambles. Mother thoroughly dampened her blanket and draped it over us. The terrible explosions seemed to have abated, although hundreds of incendiary bombs had fallen close by, some landing in rubble no more than a dozen yards away. A canister of liquid phosphorus had hit an office building just down the avenue. As the phosphorus burned and dripped its way through floor after floor, it looked as if the lights were being turned on one after the other by someone descending methodically through the building. Before the phosphorus reached the ground, flames were leaping from the windows of the upper floors.

Then a woman carrying an infant came running down the street along the same route we had taken. She was followed by a young man dressed in the khaki shorts and shirt of a Hitler Youth. I thought they must be fleeing from a bomb shelter that had been damaged, possibly the one Mother had been heading for when we first left our apartment building. The woman looked to be about Mother’s age. Her dress and her plaited pigtails appeared to have been burned, and she was almost completely naked below the waist. Despite his agile build and hiking shoes, the boy seemed to be having trouble keeping to his feet. I thought his difficulty might be the hot wind roaring down the avenue in front of us and almost expected to see him lifted up as he ran. Instead, after passing us at a gallop, he slowed to a grotesque caricature of walking, more like slow-motion skating, one leaden foot moving seconds after the other, with his arms spread out from his sides for balance. It took a while before I realized that both he and the woman were wading in molten asphalt. The woman slipped a couple of times and touched the pavement with one hand but managed to recover. Then she slowly fell head first towards the street, twisting at the last moment so that she landed on her back with the baby on her chest. The boy tried to reach her but slipped and fell, got up and fell again, and then again. Despite the incredible noise, I thought I could hear their screams and ducked down into the crater with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears.

Mother climbed to the edge of our crater and for a moment I worried that she was going to dash out to try to save the baby. But the hot wind burned her face and forced her back down. We lay in the crater beneath the blanket, getting hotter and hotter as the strong winds drove the flames into the sky. The image of the woman and the Hitler Youth writhing in hot asphalt remained vivid in the sweltering darkness until I realized that I was gasping for breath like a fish on land. No matter how deeply I inhaled, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. When it seemed that I was about to suffocate, I pulled the blanket away and stuck up my head. Flaming logs and lumber, some of the planks several feet long, were sailing about in the air, along with millions and millions of sparks swirling at such speed they seemed to be tiny streaks of light. Without thinking, I opened my mouth wide and tried to suck in as much air as I could, until sharp needles of pain in my chest told me this was a bad mistake. I slumped back more terrified than ever. When I closed my eyes it felt like we were lying between railroad tracks while an endless train rumbled over us so swiftly that sparks from the wheels prickled my face.

I passed out for a time, awakening to find that breathing was still painful but that the explosions had stopped and the wind, though still almost as hot as steam, was not as strong. The heat was intense and so was our thirst, and we couldn’t remain in the crater any longer without trying to drink the stinking water in the bottom. When we emerged we seemed to be in a winter snowstorm, with white flakes of ash flying in the wind. They looked so cool that I wanted to stick out my tongue to taste them, but there was still enough fire left in them to burn painfully. I’d lost my blanket but Mother wrapped us both in hers and we tried to walk so that the hot ashes were not blowing directly at us.

We hadn’t progressed very far when we began to see bodies. Before leaving the area of the crater Mother had cautiously confirmed that the woman and her child and the Hitler Youth were dead, but she had shielded me from the sight. Although earlier we hadn’t seen many other people in the streets, after the raid they seemed to be everywhere. Some, the obvious victims of exploding bombs, had been terribly torn and dismembered. Fire or heat had killed many more. Most were lying face down. The flames had shorn their hair and clothes, seared and swollen their buttocks, split their skin and raised their hips a few inches off the ground. Though unmistakably human, they looked like huge bratwursts. The smell of burnt flesh wrenched our stomachs and made us want to cry, but we hadn’t enough water in us for tears or throwing up. Instead, I clasped Mother and buried my face into her dress.

Desperate for something to drink, we headed towards the Eilbek canal. Although we couldn’t have been more than six or seven blocks away, it took us another hour to get there. Hundreds of people were still in the water, most of them near the opposite shore, where the canal was shallow, much shallower than usual because of the lack of rain during the past few months. Even more were on the banks, quite a few of them obviously dead. Some had faces as swollen and red as Chinese lanterns: their heads had been cooked while their bodies had been under water. Piteous moans, whimperings and cries of anguish rose from the canal. The screams of children seemed to hang in the air like paper kites. Now and then someone on the shore would start shrieking and jumping about and then they would leap into the water.

Normally, Hamburgers were extremely stoical. Sometimes they muttered curses or shouted insults, but typically they clamped their jaws and endured adversity in silence. That morning, they voiced their pain.

Listening to the voices in the water, I realized that they had been burned by phosphorus. Just as it burned through the floors of a building, it quickly penetrated living flesh and bone. Judging from the grotesque shapes and expressions of the dead, many had died in agony. Those still in the canal had discovered that the phosphorus became inactive when it was immersed but if they left the water it would start burning again as fiercely as before.

When another series of air-raid alarms announced that more bombers were within thirty minutes of Hamburg a spontaneous wailing and cursing arose from the sufferers, and then quickly subsided as if the effort had been too taxing or embarrassing. A few people started moving towards the church, whether to pray or to take shelter in the basement I couldn’t say. Most, like us, remained by the canal. At the second alarm, signalling bombers within fifteen minutes, Mother recovered our blanket and wet it again in the canals and we were sitting with our feet in the water when the final siren announced that the bombers were overhead. The unexpected quickness of their arrival gave us hope. If the bombers were moving so much faster than expected, they were probably the smaller British Mosquitoes rather than Lancasters or American Flying Fortresses returning to pulverize whatever was still standing. We lay on the bank for roughly two hours, listening to an occasional Mosquito buzz across the sky to drop a few more bombs into the billowing smoke. Long before the all-clear sounded, Mother and I began to have stomach cramps and to vomit the canal water we had drunk earlier.