Byrd's School of English Fish
Swimming
Nelson ran back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his observation post laughing and pointing at his balloon. With streetlights out during the evening blackout no one could see the globs of purple paint dried on his scalp and the streaks of yellow running down his forearms. If he had seen a reflection of himself he would have immediately thought of one of his wife's fingerpainting students . Those few brave men who remained above ground during the raid could hear him shouting from blocks away. He yelled in the direction of one searchlight crew, turned around and jogged in the direction of another before finishing his sentence. The closest spotlight was more than a quarter mile away, and with it running the only thing they could hear was the gas generator used to power it.
"Turn those lights off, you'll melt a hole. Turn them off!" He tripped over a crack in the sidewalk as he pulled binoculars to his eyes to check for signs of heat damage. He found none.
Anyone close enough to see the belly of the balloon knew what was painted on it. Those directly underneath could count individual scales and see the edges of pectoral fins. When the all-clear was signaled the crowds coming out of shelters looked up to see a tremendous, slightly skewed grin smiling down at them.
An elderly man squinted at it and pointed.
"What on Earth is that?"
A seven year old boy, who had not yet been evacuated to the countryside and who had stayed awake the past two nights in the shelters during the bombing, answered. He traced the outline of the balloon as he made his argument.
"A fish. It's got scales, and gills. It's smiling too." The boy's younger sister rubbed her eyes and agreed. "How did the fish swim up there?"
The old man shook his head. "Can't be. A hornet, maybe. Or a bee? Never seen purple and yellow fish before."
Before the children could convince him it was a fish, the lights cut off.
Someone near the top of the chain of command in the Royal Observation Corps radioed angrily that the order to extenguish the lights had been sent and somehow, beams were on. Unauthorized barrage balloon camouflage should not distract the defenders of the Kingdom.
Nelson watched his fish dim as the last light cut off. He put the binoculars in his pocket and walked to check the mooring. A voice blared in the cab of the truck. The first few words were garbled with static. " ...Byrd report to the Centre immediately."
William Leads flew toward London unable to find the three planes he was told by radar operators to look for. The amount of radio traffic decreased enough that only a few reports came in as he switched channels. He stopped rotating the dial when he heard laughter.
"...and the bloody thing is smiling. I'm done. Find out what that was."
"I'm telling you it's a caterpillar. Purple and yellow stripes."
"No, no, no. Doesn't have any legs. Fish. I'm telling you."
Leads saw what they were arguing about. A bright yellow teardrop broke through the smoke rising off the city. He warned local antiaircraft control the he was flying by to assess the damage from the attack.
The searchlights that were swinging around to catch a glimpse of Nelson's work flashed by Leads' cockpit. He swerved to avoid the lights as a precautionary measure. There could be jittery gunners waiting for a wounded Nazi to skim by. Too many of the gun crews never came close to hitting a target. They got some joy out of knowing the sound of their fire boosted the morale of the people who lived in the neighborhood. No one would tell the locals that one in every few thousand shots would hit something.
Even though fifteen years had passed since he saw it, he recognized the curved smirk cutting across the purple and yellow stripes of his fish. Leads pulled away from his wing man and dove low to the side and bottom of the balloon for a better look. He knew where the cables attached and flew between them. He chuckled to himself. Individual scales stood out around the tips of the pectoral fins. The balloon looked exactly as his painting did hanging on the back wall of Mrs. Byrd's classroom.
The searchlights cut off before Leads' wingman began thinking about flying near the wires to see what the chuckling was about. He pulled up quickly as the lights dimmed, remaining well above the city.
"Leads, let's return to the field. I'm low on fuel and I don't want to get any closer to the balloons than I already have."
Widdows died three minutes after radioing that Nelson should come in for a stern reprimand. A Heinkel 111 bomber pilot, eager to hasten his flight home and spare the fuel needed to get him there, dumped his last munition without giving second thought to picking a target. Widdows stepped outside for a cigarette as the bomb burst, exploding a cobblestone bridge. Bits of stone pierced the back of his skull and came to a stop jutting out of his forehead. The radioman who lit Widdows's last cigarette was unscathed, the zippo in his hand was blown out by the rush of air following the shrapnel.
David Marshall replaced Widdows. Marshall, a World War I fighter pilot who remembered the first iteration of barrage ballons, laughed when he heard the radio traffic about Nelson's artwork. As long as the top of the balloon kept its color Marshall was not worried. There were far more important things to deal with during air raids than the color of barrage balloons. Besides, he thought, making the balloons stand out might work better at protecting targets. German pilots would not waste ammunition gunning them down when they knew the RAF wanted nothing more than to catch a lumbering Nazi bomber with empty guns.
Continued...