Excerpts - Hamburg

The RAF - acclaimed rhythm section and set designer for one Helga Gerting - initiated their creative partnership during the evening of 23 July 1943; the 11-year-old soprano premiering Lili Marlene to an audience of cowering neighbours during the blockbuster and incendiary bombings of Hamburg - both words latterly used to acclaim her three night stand.

Strictly deconstructionist in form, the RAF's chaotic sorties lent themselves to her brand of interpretive jazz, introduced around midnight when, stirred from sleep, Helga call and responded with St Pauli's intermittent air raid siren, reaching her thick spectacles from the bedside before, seconds later, she was out on the street, her free hand swinging with the beat of falling bombs while the other held tight to her father's.

Tall, strong Georg, head above the crowd, would be ignorant of the ballast his daughter was acquiring below, battling against the drag of each fresh anchor, unthreading the perished to safety like stitches from a wound as Helga stretched out down there among the black trampling chaos. The throng of flailing legs and suitcases of knee level.
She would latch onto wrist, collar, scruffs of necks; encouraging those she rescued to do the same and reach in sympathy to save another and another, so that Georg could only chastise a mercy that might have cost them both dear once the lengthening party finally poured - one long train of held hands - through the narrow doorway of the castle-like Heiligengeistfeld Flakturm IV, an unstiched thread of nearly-trampled souls spilling, gasping for breath, onto the floor of the air raid shelter as the way swung shut behind.