TS01 Time Station London by David Evans Read Free Book Online

into one. We can’t let that happen.”
    “I’ll return at once, sir,” a suitably impressed Whitefeather declared, painfully conscious of his added burden. Back at the transport room, his uniform exchanged for the workman’s clothes of 1940, he hailed the technician. “Isai, it’s back to 1940 for me.”
    “You set a TCAF before you left?” the Tech asked.
    Brian gave a casual wave of his hand. “Do I ever forget?”
    Isai looked grave, despite his wry grin. “If you happen to, neither of us will ever know.”
    With that, Brian stepped into the Beamer and walked out into war-torn 1940 England.

    Time: 0911, European Standard Time, June 14, 1940
    Place: Jagdfliegerführer HO, Beauvais, France

    Removed by 150 miles from Brian Moore in London, Colonel Werner Ruperle paced the floor of the pilots’ sheet metal-clad ready room of his Luftslotte. He cursed the exposed studs of the unfinished walls, the coffeepot steaming on the oil-fired stove, and cursed the stove itself. They had been moving across France so rapidly the last two weeks that construction work never caught up with the next advance. Most of all, he cursed the chill rain that swept across the runways, dripped from the wingtips of the parked aircraft, and pattered like wind-driven sand against the small, square panes of the single window in the cold, damp room.
    Abruptly, he stopped in mid-stride and turned to face his executive officer, Capt. Frederich Kleiber. “It is this verdampten weather that is our real enemy. Only one more mission, the one cancelled for this afternoon, and I would have been qualified for two weeks of leave. Oh, how good it would feel to be back in Diessen. To taste Hilda’s cooking and hold her again. To see her and the boys and our dear daughter. And to know they are safe and far removed from this war.”
    For a moment, his pleasant images of homecoming and family soured when he wondered silently if Bruno, his twelve-year-old, had joined the Hitler Jugend as yet. He hoped the boy could avoid it, at least a little longer. Although he passionately loved his country and did not stint in his loyalty to the Luftwaffe high command, to Col. Ruperle, this cultlike adoration that had grown up around the Fuhrer seemed to be a little much.
    Self-consciously he glanced at the framed portrait of Adolf Hitler that hung on the nonexistent interior wall, crudely nailed to a stud. Hell, there was one of these, or another pose, on some wall in every house, business, and office from the French coast at Calais to the borders of Germany and Austria. They had even shown up in hospital rooms. Heil Hitler, he thought irreverently. But he was a soldier and it was his duty to give total obedience to his superiors.
    He had been a soldier, and a pilot, since 1917. As a callow youth he had idolized Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen. His hero worship had not dimmed with the death of the famous Red Baron. Yet he had admired the tall, dashing young officer who had replaced him. Hermann Göring had been a bold, daring, efficient squadron leader and quickly earned the respect of the pilots of the Flying Circus, and many of the other squadrons. Especially those of Schulflotte 1703, to which Werner Ruperle belonged at the time. That had been then, now was an entirely different matter.
    Unlike many of his brother officers, Werner Ruperle had not embraced the National Socialist German Workers’ Party with unbridled enthusiasm. Something seemed not quite right with the party’s leader. Enough so that he regretted the inevitable time when Bruno joined the Hitler Youth. Abruptly, he reined in his musings. Having such convictions could be dangerous to anyone, especially someone in his position.
    Suddenly the door swung open, admitting his orderly and a sheet of raindrops. “Herr Hauptmann, the latest report from those time-serving meteorology people.”
    Ruperle took the message form and read swiftly. “‘There will be a general clearing over the English Channel and