Reap the Whirlwind

A City Waits its Turn to Burn; A Lancaster Gunner awaits his turn to die.General ’Bomber’ Harris said in his 28 July 1942 radio speech... '...We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end... we are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly...' And one after another, Germany’s cities burned, women and children died in the flames.Meanwhile, Lieutenant Erik Stephanie, German night fighter ace, and Pilot Officer Willie McLaughlin, rear gunner in a British Lancaster, meet in the night skies over Germany in a life or death struggle. Erik must stop the bombers before they reach his family, and Willie must fight to save his crew and return to the woman he loves. Only one will succeed...the other must die.If you like Ken Follett’s writing, you will love Robert Faulk’s dramatic WWII tale, Reap the Whirlwind. ***On 24 January 1943, while Germany’s Sixth Army was taking its last gasp in Stalingrad, the Casablanca Conference produced a unified statement of purpose called the Casablanca Declaration. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill announced to the world that the Allies would accept nothing less than the 'unconditional surrender' of the Axis powers. They threatened to annihilate Germany, Italy, and Japan and accomplished nothing but give Goebbels grounds to call for ’Totaler Krieg,’ ’Total War’ against those who wanted to ’annihilate’ Germany.Despite horrifying losses, Allied bombers ravaged and burned Germany’s cities, terrorizing the population with the naive belief that the people would turn against Hitler. But for Germany’s helpless civilians, there was no route to surrender-to whisper a word against Hitler or the Nazis was a death sentence. They huddled in their shelters, cursing the Englander while the battle to kill them raged overhead. And as the RAF worked its way down the list of targets, Heilbronn’s name came up, the city where Leutnant Erik Stephanie’s family waited for the inevitable.Willy MacLaughlin, rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber, and Erik Stephanie, a Luftwaffe night fighter pilot, played a deadly ’cat and mouse’ game in the dark skies over Europe while their women prayed that God would bring them safely home. But the Gods of War had decreed that only one would survive.