“I want nothing to do with it. If you don’t like it, bloody well arrest me.”
“Me too,” Lambert said. “I’m as guilty as he is. In fact I demand to be charged alongside him.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted Killion. “Charge us all, charge us all, or don’t charge anyone!” The others applauded.
“No, dammit, you can’t all be scapegoats,” Gibbs said, “that would be absurd … Finlayson, you really must do your bit, you know. I mean, one scapegoat is enough as long as he does his bit.”
“Nonsense.”
“Look here …” Gibbs sat down and thought. “All right, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You make a statement denying everything, professing innocence, know what I mean? I’ll get it typed up. That’ll do nicely. Also, we need a photograph.”
Finlayson laughed coarsely.
“But dammit,” said Gibbs, exasperated, “we must have something to put in the French papers.” Woolley, Gabriel and Callaghan came in. “Can’t you do anything with him?” Gibbs appealed to Gabriel. “I don’t see how you can defend him unless he either denies everything or confesses something.”
Gabriel smiled winningly at Finlayson. “Moreover Abishai the son of Zeruiah slew of the Edomites in the valley of salt eighteen thousand,” he said. “Imagine that, eighteen thousand”
“You seem bloody bright this morning,” Richards said.
“Ahah! I got two flamers.” Gabriel swung his arms.
“And what good did that do?” Lambert muttered.
“Oh, what good does any of it do?” Rogers interrupted. “We kill them, and they kill us. The war still goes on downstairs, doesn’t it? We’re just a rotten little side-show up in the sky. Do you realize—all this was going on exactly the same last March? And the March before? And the March before? And d’you think that anyone will remember us next March? Or care?”
“That reminds me,” Lambert asked him. “What became of our young friend?”
“I don’t know. He folded his wings,” said Rogers. “He sent in his resignation. Another triumph for gravity.”
Beattie turned white. “You don’t mean Tom King,” he said.
“I thought that was the capital of China,” Killion murmured.
“Was that his name?” Rogers shrugged.
“How did it happen? Was he shot down?” Beattie was agitated. “Did you see it? Are you sure he crashed?”
“What does it matter?” Rogers was fed up with the subject. “All I know is he spun in from five thousand on half a wing.”
“You mean he wasn’t shot down? So he could have jumped, then.” Beattie turned on Woolley. “Why don’t they give us parachutes, for God’s sake? You never knew him, you never knew what he was like …” Woolley looked at the twitching, furious face, and turned away. He scratched his armpits.
“I don’t think I’ll do any more flying today,” Finlayson said. “I think I’ll go to the pictures.” He stared across at Woolley, but Woolley stared back. “I’m no good up there, anyhow,” Finlayson said complacently. “I run away all the time. Don’t I, Major?”
“I’d dearly bloody like to know what we’re supposed to be achieving, that’s all,” Lambert bitched. “They’re all over us in the air, and we can’t stop them on the ground. We’re just going through the motions.”
“Until the Yanks come,” Killion muttered.
“Then let ’em come,” Lambert said, “and we’ll keep the war warm for ’em, but for God’s sake don’t tell me I’m helping to knacker the Kaiser by farting round in a clapped-out one-gun flying coffin, because I’ve seen too much of it.”
“The frogs have the right idea,” Finlayson said. “‘We won’t attack. We’ll defend, but we won’t attack.’”
“But surely … to win the war—” Shufflebotham’s voice was drowned in laughter. Rogers and Lambert, Killion, Finlayson and Richards lay back and guffawed and waited for Woolley to do something about it. They watched him with sly greediness. For once they had him by the balls.
“You don’t want to fly,” Woolley said.
“It’s bloody mutiny, Major,” Finlayson said cheerfully. “Don’t you tolerate it. Have ’em all shot. That’ll make ’em respect you.”
“If you don’t want to fly … What do you want to do?”
“Speaking for myself,” Rogers said, “I want to live.”
“I think I’ll have the whole bloody lot of you transferred to the infantry,” Woolley said. There was an unreal atmosphere, like a courtroom where the jury has decided to impeach the judge.
“Oh, you can do that, certainly,” Lambert told him. “You can throw your weight around. What you can’t do is tell us what good we’re doing up there, day after day. Can you?”
“There is no alternative,” Woolley said. “It’s not a question of good. This fucking war has to be fought. So there.”
“The terrible part about that,” Richards said, “is that it’s perfectly true, and it’s also the stupidest thing ever said.”
Woolley swung on him, eyes staring, brows raised, face stiff. The adjutant pushed open the door and cleared his throat. “Corps on the phone, sir,” he said. “We’re off again. Squadron’s transferred to Rosières. It seems that this field is in some danger of being overrun.”
As he spoke, the crack-thud of anti-aircraft fire sounded. Woolley shoved past him. A two-seater was cruising overhead at six thousand feet. The white balls of flak looked close, but Woolley knew better. Suddenly there was a heavier explosion, drowning the guns. A fountain of earth and smoke erupted in a nearby field. “Cheeky bastard!” Woodruffe said. “He’s bombing us.”
“He’s not,” Woolley said. “He’s spotting for their batteries. We’re being shelled, old cock.” A second explosion blotted out a length of hedge. Woolley shouted into the hut: “Get in the air! Quick as you can!” As Rogers came by he grabbed him, “That’s right, isn’t it? You do want to live, don’t you?”
Rogers twisted free and pounded across the grass. Woolley watched, and smirked. A shell scored a direct hit on a gas tank, and he felt the wave of heat from fifty yards off. He made for his aircraft, walking fast.
Jane Ashton heard the shelling as she was packing to get out of her cottage. She opened a window and listened.
“They’re bombing the aerodrome,” she said. “I wonder—”
“Get a move on, before they start bombing us too,” Mary
told her. “If we don’t get on that truck we’ll be walking to Doullens.”
“It sounds very heavy.” She sat on the bed and chewed at a thumb-nail. “I feel so damned helpless.”
“That’s because you are helpless.” Mary was stuffing wet towels into a dirty pillowcase. “What are we going to put the food in?”
“My God!” A violent explosion rattled the windows. “Surely they can’t make them fly through that, can they?” She stared at Mary, white-faced.
“I don’t know what that question means, so I certainly can’t give you an answer. Have we any more string?”
“I bet they move the squadron. It must be too dangerous up there now. They must move them. Mustn’t they?”
Mary shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps they moved them already.”
Jane stared. She turned and dumped everything out of her suitcases.
“We’ll never get a seat, my girl, unless you buck your ideas up,” Mary said sharply. “You haven’t time to fiddle-faddle about like that.”
“I’m not coming.” She was sorting out her clothes, packing some in the smaller case, throwing the rest aside. “You go on as soon as you’re ready, don’t wait for me.”
“I can’t possibly manage all the kitchen stuff on my own.”
“I don’t care. Leave it behind. It doesn’t matter, does it? What does it matter?”
Mary picked up a woolen scarf. “Are you leaving this?”
“You have it, if you want it. Take anything.” Jane changed her shoes to a heavier pair. “I’m not coming to Doullens. I’ve just realized, I can’t come
with you, Mary, I’m sorry. No, I’m not, I’m not sorry, I’m glad.”
“You’re not making very much sense, I can tell you that.”
“I’ll let you know where I am when I know it. Soon.”
“You’re off after that stupid squadron. You’re chasing that—”
“Goodbye, goodbye,” Jane said to shut her up. “I have to go, don’t you see?” She grabbed the case. “How can I go one way when he’s going the other? How can I?”
“You don’t even know which way he’s going.”
“I do, I do!” She hurried out. Mary waited and watched her running down the road. “Bitch,” she said aloud. “Black bitch.” She found herself crying. “Black bloody bitch.”
Rosières turned out to be a big old field, already occupied by a squadron of bombers and a squadron of Bristol Fighters. It was a converted racetrack, with the mess and administration in the grandstand. Goshawk Squadron drifted in by twos and threes. Some had chased the German two-seater all the way back to its own territory, furious at this interference by the military in their air war. Others had scrambled across the field, dodging shell-bursts, and had taken off only to forget where they were supposed to be going. Some flew to the wrong field and had to telephone around before they heard about Rosières and took off again. The adjutant drove Rogers’ car and got there before anyone. Major Gibbs navigated.
It was a well-equipped field, probably the best on the Western Front. It had a cemetery, a hospital, and an up-to-date War Room, with a direct line to Corps HQ and a vast relief map of the Front, beautifully cast in plaster of Paris and painted to show all the woods, canals, roads, railways, towns and villages along a fifty-mile stretch. The zigzag stripes of trench-systems lay on either side like the skin shed by a massive snake. But when Woodruffe took Woolley to see it, nobody was looking at the trench-systems. A great arrow-head, outlined with colored markers, had split the British Front wide open. Soldiers with bits of paper were moving the markers. Before long they would be off the map.
Here and there the advance had flowed around little bunches of markers, now isolated far behind the real Front. “What are they?” Woolley asked an Intelligence officer. “Targets?”
“Lord, no. Those are the last reported positions we got from various units. Let’s see … that’s the 21st/23rd Sherwood Foresters … these are the Manchester Regiment … over here you have mixed units of the Black Watch and the Durham Light Infantry … All last reported positions, you see. Nothing fresh since then.” He picked up a marker. “Two days ago, that lot.”
“Are they still there?”
“Oh, yes.” He thought about it. “Well, they must be. One way or another.”
“Are we still falling back?”
“Well, we’re holding them here and here” He pointed to the extreme ends of the breakthrough. “And we’re consolidating along prepared positions, here” He waved vaguely at the limits of the German advance. “It’s given us a chance to improve our overall strategic attitude by shortening our supply lines, you see.” A soldier moved some markers from one side of a canal to the other. “The general situation is more or less fluid, in some respects,” the officer said.
“Woody, get Corps on the phone,” Woolley said. “As far as I can see, Jerry should capture Arras the day after tomorrow, in which case the Americans can stay at home. The frogs won’t fight if they lose Paris, will they?”
“Paris is quite safe, Major,” the Intelligence officer broke in. “It’s Arras we’re concerned about.”
“You lose one and you’ve lost the other. They’re shelling Paris already with those long-range cannons. From Arras they’ll be able to flatten it. You see where you say we’re holding them?” Woolley pointed to the extremes of the German breakthrough. “Gateposts, mate. Pure gateposts. The gates themselves are wide open.”
Corps ordered trench-strafing. “I flew over there two hours ago,” Woolley told the telephone. “There isn’t a trench to be seen. Our lot doesn't have time to dig them, and their lot don’t need to.”
“Well, strafe the blighters where they stand, then,” Corps said angrily. “How the hell do I know? Just make sure you don’t shoot the wrong men. They need all the help we can give. Fly low, damn you, and get the uniforms right.”
“Where are the French?”
“Mind your own bloody business.”
Killion and Gabriel took off together and crossed the fighting at about six thousand feet. From that height it was impossible to see any action; a great gray-brown mist of smoke covered the battleground, like an old forest fire burning itself out. To avoid attacking the wrong side, Woolley had told them to fly east until the German anti-aircraft fire opened up, and then go down and work their way westward.
Flights of Albatros patrolled at eight thousand, just below the real cloud, but they paid no attention to the SEs. As usual the flak opened up without warning, and it was horribly close. Killion saw a flash of red flames about fifty yards in front, as if someone had opened a furnace door; then a surge of black smoke drowning the brightness; and as it raced toward him he flinched at the deep-throated woof. Then came the harsh smell of cordite and the little chunks of shrapnel slashing at the canvas. The smoke was brown, not black. More barks were uttered all around them, and the planes bounced like boats in surf. They dived away from it.
At a thousand feet they flew into the battle smoke drifting eastward. They went right down to ground level and hunted around. Soon Killion lost Gabriel; presumably he went off to look at something interesting. A shattered village appeared ahead, and Killion raced over the roofless houses. The square was full of men and vehicles, with red crosses everywhere. He kept going, picked up the road to the west and followed it. A car appeared, coming toward him. He dropped a few feet until he was skimming the pavement and gave it a brief burst. The car drove into a ditch and overturned.
War litter cluttered everything now: blown-up artillery, burned-out trucks and wagons, piles of bodies, dead horses. The fields were cratered like the moon; the trees flicked past like fence-posts, every last branch blasted away. Engineers pointed up at him from a broken bridge, and he circled and sprayed them with fire; they were still falling into the water as he left.
A mile away he came upon a German artillery position, just as it fired. The crash, and the flash of their muzzles right in front of him, made him rear up in a panicking turn; two seconds later and he’d have flown slap into that salvo … Machine guns rattled; the gunners were after him. He careered away into the drifting smoke, hoisted the SE over a hedge and saw white faces by the hundred underneath, filling all the field. Gray uniforms. He zigzagged, flicking out sprays of fire to left and right. Bodies tumbled in neat rows of ten or a dozen; for a moment the automatic rhythm of the slaughter fascinated him and he waltzed the airplane across the crowded field with devastating precision, tumbling a dozen to the left, a dozen to the right, a dozen to the left … At last the drum emptied, and still the faces gaped.
Killion flew out of range, went up to five hundred feet and held the controls between his knees while he changed the drum. Then down again. He had lost the field, and was not sorry. For a while there was nothing, only broken ground and clusters of corpses at the usual places—behind houses, behind trees, behind other corpses. The smoke was thicker now, and the racket came from all sides. He followed a stream around a wood and banked past a bunch of men who were firing at a ruin. They looked neither gray nor khaki, but mud-colored. Somebody was mortaring them. A fountain of dirt rose higher than the SE and rocked its wings. Killion sheered off, bullets pinging around him, he couldn’t tell from where.
A farmhouse burned in the distance. He climbed to two hundred feet and flew over it. Shell-bursts smashed into a ridge of ground across which men were retreating, or perhaps advancing. He side-slipped down through the stink of high explosive and watched the activity. It was a retreat: they were firing behind them, and running on. He skimmed lower and saw the unmistakable flare of a kilt as a man staggered and fell.
Killion swung around and headed toward the advance. It was all smoke and the scream of shells; he saw no enemy, just the muzzle flames of machine guns and the isolated crackflashes of rifles. A church loomed up and he flung the SE on to her wingtips to miss it. He glimpsed the graveyard wall, studded with machine-gun posts, all battering away into the murk; straightened up and made three shallow dives parallel with the wall, stitching his bullets into the confusion of bodies groveling and clambering for safety. By then heavy rifle fire was splitting the air around him from all sides, and he fled.
A mile to the east he came across a field battery being set up. The horses were only half-unhitched from the limbers and the gun crews had no small-arms ready. It was like stoning the lunatics in Bedlam. Killion rattled off his remaining half a drum and sailed home.
When Gabriel left Killion he went down to ten feet and hedge-hopped his way to the fighting without seeing anything that was worth a burst. He reached the area of shell-fire and searched up and down, trying to establish some definite lines; but there was no Front anymore. Scattered groups seemed to be firing in any direction, and the smoke and filth disguised all uniform. Once he saw a village being captured, but the fighting was too confused for him to interfere safely. Everybody on the ground had a go at him, however. Eventually he gave up and climbed to three hundred feet.
Immediately he saw, off to his left, the glint of a canal. A Halberstadt was flying just above it and shooting down at the tow-path. Gabriel dived, curling so as to catch the enemy plane from behind. The observer and the pilot were busy spraying fire at an endless line of troops lying in the dip behind the path. Gabriel hurried to catch up, closed to within ten feet of the tail, and held the SE steady for a hammerblow of a burst. It was so simple. One moment the Halberstadt was drifting along, raking death into the infantry, and the next it crashed hard on its nose into the tow-path and burst into flames. Gabriel climbed away and saw men running from the heat. Over his engine he just heard the hoarse roar of a cheer. Salvation, he thought.
He turned east, booming out the words of Psalm 47: O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth … He found a sunken road and followed it, singing and listening to the clatter of his engine rebounding up at him. The road twisted, and when he turned with it a column of infantry six wide was marching toward him, rifles slung. Gabriel had to dive to bring his gun to bear on them, so he switchbacked along, hauling up to forty feet and then diving while he sprayed the packed mass. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet … Gabriel rose and dipped, and hosed the column vigorously and efficiently, as if destroying wasps with boiling water. God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet… Hoist up and ease down, and squeeze the trigger while the bullets pump into the stockaded soldiers, and release and pull out. What a long column. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing praises. Down again, a touch of rudder to the right, how they scramble up those steep banks, squeeze … For God is the King of all the earth!
Goshawk Squadron Page 21
