Goshawk Squadron (9 page)

Now, Gabriel's remark met with such a silence that he felt obliged to support it. “This weather blew up without warning,” he said. “It could blow over just as quickly. Who knows?”

“I'll bet you there's no flying today,” Dickinson said. He was a smooth, well-groomed young man with the anonymous
face of an actor. Only when he was gambling did it light up; the rest of the time he wore the patient, professionally vacant look of a man eternally waiting to be auditioned. But he moved well, and flew elegantly. “I bet you a fiver there's no flying today.”

“No, no. It's too early for w-wagers,” Killion said, and got no further: his stammer jumped in. Nobody paid any attention.

Finlayson limped in. “Somebody's plane just got blown over,” he reported.

“I'll take that bet,” Church said carefully. Nobody paid any attention to him. He put his face in his hands.

The tent began to leak. Richards put a bucket under the drips. “It's definitely getting worse,” he said.

“All right then, I bet you there
is
flying today,” Dickinson said. He looked around, but nobody spoke. Church took a piece of toast and carefully buttered it, clutching the knife in his fist.

“This bloody French weather,” Kimberley said. “You can't trust it.”

Church piled marmalade on his toast and spread it thickly and thoroughly. “I'll take that bet,” he said distinctly. Again, nobody paid any attention. He put the toast back on the plate where he'd found it and got up and went out.

“It must be hell in the t-t-t-t—” began Killion.

“Trenches,” Dickinson supplied. Killion nodded.

“Oh well,” said Dangerfield. “They shouldn't have volunteered.”

“Funny to think that people actually did volunteer in the beginning,” said Richards.

“Hilarious,” said Lambert.

Finalyson went to the door of the tent. “Old Churchy's standing out in the rain,” he said.

“I don't think he had any breakfast again,” Kimberley said. “Did he?”

“Don't worry about Church,” Dickinson said. “Church is feeling no pain.”

“Why does he do it?” Gabriel asked.

“The real question is, how does he do it and still manage to fly,” Rogers said. “But he does.”

Woolley came in, wearing a potato sack over his head and shoulders. “Finlayson?” he said. “I want to look at your neck.”

Finlayson stood up. “It aches a bit, but I can turn it all right, sir,” he said. Woolley walked behind him. “Move it,” he said.

Finlayson turned his head from side to side. “Stop moving your shoulders,” Woolley told him. He gripped Finlayson's shoulders. “Do it now.” Finlayson flung his head about. Woolley grunted and let go. Stuck to Finlayson's left shoulder with sticking-plaster was a piece of string. On the end was a small firecracker. “Now look straight in front and nod,” Woolley ordered. He blew on his cigarette and lit the firecracker. “All right,” he said.

Finlayson sat down, looking relieved. The firecracker exploded. He ducked, covering his head. It went off again. He jerked around; again it exploded, and he twisted the other way. The firework hissed and banged, and then he understood, and struggled to throw off his jacket.

“Good God all bloody mighty,” he said, watching the stub fizzle and flutter about.

Woolley was sitting astride a chair, drinking coffee. “Slow,” he said. “Too damn slow.”

“One of the buttons stuck,” Finlayson protested.

“Bugger the buttons, your neck is too slow. You don't turn fast enough.” He leaned across and poured coffee on the dying squib. It sighed furiously. “No future in that,” he said. “Dead end.”

“All right,” muttered Finlayson. “I know.”

“You
should
know. That's what happened last time, you didn't look behind you. By rights you should be cremated. He must have been a very stupid German.”

“I'm exercising it,” Finlayson said, rubbing his neck. “I'm having treatment for it.”

“I don't care if you have mass said for it. Get it right. From
now on I'm going to carry a Guinness bottle around with me. Every time I see you I'm going to chuck it at you and shout.”

Finlayson stared at him, white-faced and hating.

“The Guinness bottle is very good for the throwing. If I hit you once, you're grounded. Twice, you're posted.” Woolley finished his coffee. “No flying today. Everybody get over to the butts. Gunnery practice.”

Half of Goshawk Squadron sat on soaking wet camp chairs and hunched their saturated shoulders against Lewis guns which hissed steadily as the rain washed their hot barrels. The rest of Goshawk Squadron was slithering about in the deepening mud of a seven-foot trench, thrusting the targets up, waving them for a few seconds, and hauling them down again.

Woolley prowled up and down behind the guns, counting the shots. “If you aim right, five is enough,” Woolley told them from beneath his potato sack. “If you don't, it's all wasted anyhow.” Whenever anyone shot off too many, Woolley hurled bits of mud at him. Delaforce was terribly excited, and the shuddering, air-shaking, hot-smelling thunder of the weapon often got the better of him. He hardly felt the clods thudding against his back.

The bitter wind swung veils of rain across the range, blurring the targets. The shooting was poor: only odd bullets nicked the soggy cardboard, and none smashed through the nine-inch white circle that marked the heart. The gunners' teeth chattered, their legs trembled, and their boots attracted pools of rain which seeped inside and sucked the warmth from their feet.

Down in the butts the target men crouched, splay-footed to stay upright, and sucked the water from their upper lips. Bullets cracked overhead, chasing each other like mating hornets.

Woolley rang his handbell. All firing stopped. There was a clinking of safety-catches, and the target men splashed out of the trench, to change places with the gunners. Woolley
trudged down and stood looking at the targets. The rain made an oily sheen on his skin. He took a bottle of Guinness from his pocket and sucked at it until the new men arrived.

“These targets are wrong,” he said. “Look at the hearts. When do you see a heart on your right-hand side?” They stood, shoulders bowed, like cattle in stockyards. “When you face him, you sodding musketeers, you rat-faced gang of stinking honor …” The words fell cold and flat, discarded, worthless. “But we do not face the enemy. We do not fly up to him and slap him with our glove. We shoot the bugger in the back while he's picking his nose.”

Finlayson sneezed. Woolley went toward him. “The man you kill has his heart on your left,” he announced. “You fire at his back, so you aim to the left. Paint a new heart on the other side.”

While they got on with it, Woolley stood above Finlayson and sucked noisily at his stout. Finlayson fumbled with the target, his eyes nervously sneaking back to Woolley's feet. After a while Woolley went away. Finlayson took a deep breath. “I could do with a tot,” he muttered to Killion.

“Finlayson!”
bawled Woolley. Finlayson hurled himself flat. The bottle skimmed Killion's head and skidded along the trench. By the time Finlayson got up, fingering mud from his eyes, Woolley was gone, trudging back to the dripping gunners.

They fired for another hour. Woolley squatted under his potato sack and broke wind at regular intervals, while the pilots blasted away at increasingly difficult targets. Finally a sergeant-mechanic arrived and reported to Woolley. He clanged his handbell and they all went back to camp.

The ground crews had built two box kites, eight feet by five, painted gray. Each kite-string led to the back of a truck. Behind the trucks were two canvas-topped trucks from which the canvas had been removed, leaving the metal hoops. Clamped to the hoops were three Lewis guns, mounted on swivels. The whole outfit waited on the edge of the airfield.

The pilots stood with their hands in their pockets, trying to shrink their freezing bodies inside their icy clothes, and regarded the column without enthusiasm.

“The mechanics will tow the kites,” Woolley shouted above the gusting wind. “You lot take the trucks with the guns. One man drives, three men on the guns. Let the kites get up to about two hundred feet, then start shooting. Right, get on with it.”

Nobody moved, except the mechanics.

“Rogers, Richards, Church, Lambert.” Woolley pointed a muddy boot at one truck. “Gabriel, Finlayson, Killion, Mackenzie.” Three men lumbered to the other truck. Woolley stared at the remainder. “All right, then,
you,”
Woolley shouted at Kimberley. Engines roared. Woolley went up to the cabs. Lambert and Killion were settling behind the wheels. “Drive backward,” he ordered.

“Backward?” Killion said, “I d-d-don't know h-h-how to d-d-drive f-f-f-f-f—”

“Backward!”

The trucks moved off, skidding on the sopping turf, and the mechanics paid out the kites. The wind grabbed them and they soared away at an angle, forced up by their forward speed. Lambert clumsily put his truck into reverse and set off in pursuit. Killion followed, zigzagging wildly. As they headed into the field they began to lurch and jolt: on Woolley's orders one tire had been made flat.

The gunners clung to the hoops and tried to line up the heavy guns on a kite. As the drivers worked their speed up, and the flat tires pounded brutally on the grass, so the zigzagging got more violent. The guns wavered, fired wild bursts, missed hopelessly. The gray kites flitted about the gray sky like bats at dusk.

At the end of the field, the tow trucks made wide, fast turns. On the return trip the gunners had more wind in their faces, they were half-blinded by rain, and the pounding jolt of the flat tires made it impossible to aim steadily. Nobody hit the kites.

“Get out and change crews,” Woolley ordered. “Change crews every lap until the kites are hit.”

After forty minutes one of the kites took a lucky burst, but it still flew. The other was intact. Briefly, the rain gave way to hail. The trucks pounded up and down, roaring in and out of their wheel marks. It seemed impossible that so many rounds could have been sprayed into the sky to such small effect.

After an hour one of the kite-strings broke. Woolley ordered its repair. During the delay he had all the vehicles refueled. The pilots huddled together and tried to thaw their freezing hands. Woolley sat on the only gasoline drum and opened another Guinness. Finlayson edged away.

After seventy minutes the wind dropped, and Dickinson found a kite flying absolutely stiffly and steadily on his quarter. He fired with a spiraling action, blasting bullets all over the corner of the sky until he saw the kite kick. The truck swerved, and his fire swung wide. He raked the gun back and waited, blinking the rain from his eyes. He poured in a second circular volley. The kite fell to pieces.

Lambert said: “God help the Hun if he ever comes at us with kites. We'll murder him. Given time.”

The wind rose again and the remaining kite thrashed all over the sky. It took another twenty minutes to shoot it down. Nobody knew who hit it. They were all still blazing away when the tow truck stopped.

Woolley stood up without a word and headed for the mess tent. The others trailed after him.

Dangerfield slouched along with masochistic slowness. “All I've learned today,” he said, “is that we've been shooting at the wrong bloody target.” He was looking at Woolley's sack-clad figure, up ahead.

“Yes,” said Church, trembling.

They drank soup and chewed bread. Nobody talked. Woolley sat in the middle, impervious to the rage and resentment that stained the air. Once he looked up and
caught Kimberley's eyes. Kimberley glared. He became aware that Woolley was analyzing his glare, rating it, giving it marks out of ten. He looked down.

When they had finished their soup, Woolley stood up. “Back to the butts,” he said.

Behind the trench was a mound of earth, over ten feet high. This formed the actual butts, the barrier that stopped the bullets. Woolley led the pilots up on top of it.

Below, four mechanics stood around a large, primitive seesaw, about five feet off the ground. A small wooden keg, the kind used for storing nails, sat on one end of the plank. A step ladder stood next to the other end.

“Right,” Woolley bawled.

A mechanic climbed the ladder, balanced, and jumped on to the seesaw. It crashed down, catapulting the keg up and over their heads. They watched it land on the other side of the butts. At once a group of armorers moved forward with the Lewis guns and began setting them up where the keg had landed.

“Hit the little barrels,” Woolley said, “before they hit you.” He slid down the bank and went over to the catapult.

The pilots trooped gloomily across to the guns. “Farce upon farce,” Lambert said. He squatted on a camp stool and leaned wearily against his gun. The rain plastered his hair over his forehead like weed on a rock. They heard a muffled crash, and the first keg soared over the butts, hung, and began tumbling down. Lambert just managed to jump sideways before it thumped to earth and rolled behind him. “Bugger me,” he breathed; and then the massive blast of machine-gun fire drowned his voice. Another keg was on its way, and another.

As Lambert got to his feet and wiped the muck from his hands, the first keg exploded behind him. He staggered away, his ears ringing, and was surprised to find himself unhurt. Gray smoke drifted up, acrid and chemical. Another keg went off, further down the line. A new delivery smacked into the
mud less than ten feet away. Lambert woke up and ran to his gun.

Beyond the butts Woolley lit a thunderflash, dropped it inside a keg, closed the lid and stood the missile on the catapult. A mechanic stepped off the ladder and another took his place on top. The catapult righted itself. Woolley loaded it, the man jumped. Each discharge shifted the catapult's position, so that the next keg followed a different course. At intervals, over the steady chatter of gunfire, muffled explosions could be heard.