Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  Here and there, the skeletal wreckage of shattered aircraft also lay about, all as derelict as the rest, but what was of far more immediate interest to Donelson were the defensive works that had been cut into the desert surface bordering the western and south-western edges of the airstrip. It appeared the site had been abandoned before many had been completed, however as she stood on the running-board of the halted GMC truck and observed them through high-powered field glasses, there seemed to be some trench systems and several gun pits that might well suit their purpose.

  “We’re going to make a defensive line about half a mile away, over by those earthworks,” she advised Evan quickly, forcing any fear or indecision from her mind as she pointed across the cabin roof in the appropriate direction. “It looks like there are some pits for the Portees and flak to take cover. I can see some wadis or gullies or something like it about the same distance further on; the trucks might be able to fine better cover there if push comes to shove...” A moment’s pause, then she nodded to herself as if in self-reassurance. “Yes... that shall have to do: see to it please, Evan.”

  “Yes Ma’am...!” Lloyd snapped, recognising an order when he heard one and snapping a crisp salute in return. Climbing down from the other side of the same vehicle, he began jogging back toward the rest of the vehicles. “You heard the lady...!” He bellowed, belt microphone in hand as he reached the next truck in line and leaped up onto the running board beside the driver, ignoring the fact that none of the following convoy could possibly have been within earshot. “Defensive positions two hundred yards north-west of the airstrip...” he advised to all over their ‘local’ unit channel “...We’ve got enemy gunships heading out way and we’re gonna set up flak and Portees there and dig in. Soft-skinned vehicles will take shelter in the gullies half a mile further west. All personnel to ensure they’re armed and prepared for action!”

  The troop left the road and spread out, the armoured vehicles and Portee Bedfords separating to take up positions within some of the abandoned gun pits Eileen had spotted while the GMC trucks and a pair of unarmed universal carriers made best possible speed for a line of small depressions nearby that stood perhaps a metre or two lower than the surrounding desert. It indeed appeared to be a wadi – a dry riverbed of some kind – and ran roughly north-south on the eastern side of a cluster of low, rocky outcrops of irregular shape that provided some welcome shelter against the elements and from attack from a westerly direction.

  The leading carrier carefully picked its way down into gully with the rest of the group following slowly behind. The depression was perhaps one or two hundred metres wide and once inside, the trucks spread out for safety, edging more toward the western side where some cover might be gained from the presence of the nearby rocky ridges. Most of the vehicles were almost completely below normal ground level and impossible to see other than from the air.

  Intended for static anti-aircraft guns and field howitzers, the gun pits weren’t of a shape particularly conducive to receiving trucks or half-tracks but they mostly managed all the same. One Bedford was forced to drive into its position nose first with its rear half protruding up and out at a shallow angle, but the 40mm Bofors gun it carried was clear to fire at most angles all the same and the crew weren’t about to complain. The huge shield of sheet metal hung over the barrel wouldn’t do much against heavy cannon or rockets, but it would at least provide some protection against small arms fire and shrapnel and the crew were able to take some reassurance in the fact that they commanded very capable cannon of their own with which to return fire.

  Eileen had jumped from the slow-moving truck as they’d passed the airfield, and she was now jogging about the trenches and gun pits with an M2A2 rifle in hand, keeping an eye on the organisation of their defences but mostly acceding to Evan’s far superior combat knowledge and training as the young lieutenant rallied the rest of the men around them like the true professional he was. Lacking in the possession of any credible protection such as goggles or the like, she was forced to shield her eyes against the sting of dust and sand as the gusts continued to whirl about the entire area.

  She grimaced as she stood in the middle of a patch of open ground and watched Evan and the other SAS troopers organising the rest of the men into fire teams, taking up thinly-spread positions in trench systems at all four points of the compass. At that moment, the threat of approaching gunships wasn’t her greatest worry: the likelihood of air attack, while a serious concern, was something they could at least meet with some possibility of fighting back.

  The Bofors-armed Bedford trucks were complemented by an American-made M16 AA half-track armed with four Browning .50 machine guns, and a field-converted A-13 Cruiser tank that had had its turret replaced by an open mount sporting a trio of 20mm Hispano cannon. None of the vehicles were invulnerable by any standard but all were quite potent threats that were more than capable of blasting anything the Luftwaffe could throw at them out of the sky should something stray within range.

  Eileen’s greatest concern right there and then was that the actual number of men under her command was pitifully small. Gun crews aside, she had less than twenty men that could stand a defence against a ground-based assault. There’d been no further sightings so far of the mobile enemy force that they suspected had penetrated behind their lines and was looking to trap them, but any force larger than platoon strength – which she very much suspected was the case – would almost certainly be more than they could handle.

  The situation would improve dramatically if and when Thorne’s armoured force was able to meet up with them, and they were only about ten minutes away at current speed, but that was still an excruciatingly long time to wait in Eileen’s considered opinion.

  “Where are they?” Evan queried breathlessly as he jogged up to her position, his chest heaving with exertion. A fine film of sweat glistened on his face and the exposed parts of his arms below sleeves that were rolled to the elbow.

  “Max is about ten minutes away... the gunships are holding station about five klicks to the west...” she answered, not wasting time by asking him whom he was referring to.

  “They must know we’re here!” Lloyd growled nervously, not liking the situation any more than she did. “What the bloody hell are they waiting for?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she shrugged, trying to show a brave face in spite of her own misgivings, “but the only conclusion I can come up with isnae pleasant!”

  “What the fuck are they waiting for, God damn it?” Thorne snarled as the convoy pushed its way through the grit-filled air. “They’re circling about on the fringes like a bunch of bloody buzzards! Any word on air support...?” He fired at Morris, not liking the all-too-likely analogy his own mind had just come up with.

  “Nothin’ yet, sir,” the NCO replied immediately, looking up from his radio and shouting over the general noise of their own engine and those of the rest of the vehicles roaring all around them. “Formidable advises they’re working on it but they have threats all over they need to deal with.”

  “No shit...” Thorne growled softly to himself. He didn’t doubt for a moment that the RAF and Fleet Air Arm would be running ragged trying to keep enough aircraft flying to counter the attacks they were receiving from all fronts and he also had no doubt that most of the urgent requests for assistance they were fielding from every other commander in the 8th Army at that moment were probably just as deserving as his, if not more so. That being said, it still didn’t mean Thorne had to like it one little bit.

  “Can we go on ahead with the Sweepers, sir… let the tanks catch up?” Morris suggested, noting the man’s concern for his comrades and trying to be helpful.

  “Nice idea, mate, but neither they nor this bloody APC can go any faster.” As if to underline his point they hit a series of quite heavy corrugations in the surface of the track at that moment, causing Thorne’s voice to warble with unintentional vibrato. He’d already been forced to take a seat as the high-speed trav
el had made standing precarious to the point of dangerousness, and he’d also suffered several fair-to-middling whacks to the side of his head where unexpected bumps in the road surface had thrown him against the armoured bulkhead on his left side. “Those big-bastard bloody tanks out there are faster than us – I’d send them on ahead if it weren’t for the danger of them being caught in the open without AA defence.”

  “You’re quite fond of Captain Donelson, aren’t you, sir?” Morris ventured loudly over the growl of the engine as the driver very diplomatically kept his eyes forward and pretended to ignore the conversation that followed.

  “Fond…?” Thorne repeated finally after a thoughtful silence, during which he found it difficult to meet the NCO’s gaze for some inexplicable reason. “I dunno if ‘fond’ is exactly the word I’d have chosen, sergeant…” he released a long, obvious sigh as Morris moved from the front of the vehicle and sat beside him, removing the necessity to shout quite so loudly “…but yeah, I s’pose it’s as good a word as any. We have ‘history’, the captain and I…” he added, then – realising from Morris’ quizzical reaction that he didn’t understand the expression – went on to explain: “That means we go back a long way… I guess you could say we’re friends but have also been… more than friends at times…”

  “No offence, sir, but she seems like a fine ‘Sheila’…” Morris observed, his expression serious enough to force Thorne to suppress his urge to flinch over the use of what to him was still such an old fashioned piece of Australian slang. “If you both like each other and ya get along so good, why haven’t ya done the right thing and married her?”

  That question brought a thin, wistful smile to Thorne’s face.

  “Not quite that simple, mate…although it’d take way too much time for me to explain why…”

  Sergeant Morris – a man who’d made a career out of dealing with from all walks of life while in the Army and who had some not-insignificant personal life experience of his own – regarded the officer beside him with a canny expression and considered that remark.

  “You reckon you ain’t good enough for her…?” He ventured shrewdly, the question catching Thorne off guard and causing him to quickly reassess his initial impression of the man’s intelligence and depths of perception.

  “No comment…” he answered eventually with a faint smile, deciding to not answer, and Morris, although he again didn’t recognise the phrase, this time very easily picked up the meaning behind it.

  “There’s not a one of us good enough for ‘em when ya get right down to it, sir…” Morris shrugged, managing a faint smile of his own. “I been in the army long enough to know a man’s mind inside and out, and us blokes might be made in the Lord’s image and all but we’re bloody dirty buggers when push comes to shove, and a fella’s bloody lucky, I reckon, if he finds a good woman who’ll put up with him.”

  That small piece of philosophy, even worded in such crude, simplistic terms, again came as a surprise to Thorne, as had the unexpected reference to God.

  “Wouldn’t have picked you for a religious man, Sergeant Morris,” Thorne observed kindly, taking care to keep any hint of sarcasm or ridicule from his tone.

  “Can’t say I’m a saint by any standard, sir,’” the NCO replied with a sheepish grin of his own, “and I done things good and bad in me time, but I do me best tryin’ to follow the Lord and keep Him close to me heart.” His smile became wider and more genuine as he thought of others that were equally close to his heart. “Met my wife, Lizzie through the church too, so He’s right by me and no worries… I’m a lucky bugger and no mistake!”

  “Kids…?” Thorne ventured, feeling surprisingly eager to open conversation and happy to have something to take his mind of the current situation for a few moments.

  “Just the one, sir… Briony, me stepdaughter… fourteen now and getting way too grown up, goin’ by Lizzie’s letters… ain’t seen either of ‘em since the bloody war started.” The smile faded for a moment as the man recalled less pleasant memories. “Me brother owns the pub back home and Lizzie helps run it with me sister-in-law while we’re away…” the tacit implication that Morris’ brother was also serving with the Australian armed forces somewhere was taken as read at that point. “I know it’s bloody hard for both of ‘em back home on their own sometimes but Lizzie’s seen worse, bein black and all: she’s a strong ‘un and no mistake…”

  The revelation that Morris’ wife was an Indigenous Australian was another surprise for Thorne to add to the growing pile, and there was something in the way the NCO had added that last sentence – something in the faint, angry curl at one edge of his mouth – that made it quite clear to Thorne that there was lot hidden under the surface of that statement that had remained unsaid.

  “That’s a choice that can bring some tough consequences in this day and age...” He ventured, assuming such a mixed-race marriage can’t have been easy for the man’s family or his local community to accept.

  “We had our moments,” Morris conceded with a true Australian capacity for massive understatement, “but we worked through all that in the end.” He shrugged. “Lizzie didn’t have a good childhood though,” Morris explained further, recognising that Thorne had misunderstood. “She ‘lost’ her mum and dad when she was just a kid and got packed off a kids’ home after that.”

  There was another pause as Thorne considered what the man had said. His knowledge of the history of Indigenous Australians and the ‘Stolen Generations’ wasn’t comprehensive but he knew enough to be able to ‘join the dots’ between Morris’ words.

  “You mean she was taken from her parents, don’t you…?”

  “She never liked to talk about it much,” Morris deflected quickly, answering the question all the same. “Said it was all in the past and there was ‘no future’ lookin’ back.” He took a breath, and Thorne was certain he caught the faint glimpse of a tear at the corner of the man’s eye. “You seem like a fair man, sir, and you know what it’s like back ‘ome: poor bloody Blackfellas don’t get much of a break from anyone. Buggers might have a darker skin but they bleed the same bloody colour as us, and the Gov’mint’s ‘appy to give ‘em a rifle and stand ‘em up next to you and me when everything goes to shit and the Germans are knockin’ at the gates, even if they don’t give a tinker’s cuss for any of ‘em back ‘ome.”

  “Some states still legally class Indigenous Australians – Aboriginals – as ‘Flora and Fauna’ if I remember correctly, Arthur,” Thorne ventured in a very careful tone, using the man’s Christian name for the first time. “I’ll warrant most ‘normal’ Australians don’t rate ‘em much better than that either, and some an awful lot worse.” He cocked his head to one side. “What makes you so different?”

  “There was a time when I weren’t any better than any of ‘em, sir, and I’ll be honest,” Arthur Morris answered after a moment’s thought, sounding ashamed for the admission. “I used to call em ‘boongs’ and ‘darkies’ and all them other bad words when I was a kid, and I’m old enough to remember stories my granddad told about going ‘Abo hunting’ up in Queensland when he was a young bloke himself… and how proud he sounded when he talked about it…” He paused for a moment, then gave a shrug of resignation. “Used to front up to church every Sunday too, line up for the confessional and get my absolution like the ‘good’ boy that I was. Lizzie lived on the church grounds and worked there as a maid. I was learning to be a carpenter then, before I joined the army, and I used to do a lot of work about the church helping out. She was the first... “ he hesitated before using Thorne’s terminology for the first time “...‘Indigenous Australian’ I ever really talked to…” as it rolled off his tongue, Morris decided then and there he liked that term far better than some of the others he’d heard and used over the years. “...The first one I ever got to know, anyway…”

  “The first you ever saw as a person just like you?”

  “Not like me…” Morris countered quickly. “Better than me… stronger t
han me... she was pregnant with Briony then… only fifteen bloody years old and already havin’ a kid. My family weren’t real happy to begin with when I told ‘em we was gettin’ married, what with Lizzie having a kid already and bein’ black and all,” Morris replied with a casual tone that didn’t quite hide an expectant stare, “but they got over all that silliness in the end. Lizzie said right from the start that how she got pregnant didn’t mean anything and that God had given her a beautiful daughter to make up for what’d happened.” He glanced up sharply then, realising he might’ve given away more of his wife’s personal history than he’d intended as a very loaded silence followed.

  “Nothing ever happened to him, did it?” Thorne observed eventually, his own feature hardening as he correctly deduced exactly how Eliza Morris had fallen pregnant.

  “She’d been sent to work as a housekeeper at a local sheep station…” Morris growled, his voice dark and hateful despite the passage of so many years. “One of the richest, most respected men in the area.”

  “Of course he was,” Thorne sneered, his own disgust of rapists not hidden in any way. “Who’d believe the word of a young black girl over that of a fine, upstanding pillar of the community after all?”

  “I did…” Morris stated firmly – proudly – with a fiery gleam in his eyes “…so did Father O’Donnell… he let Lizzie live and work at the church…” a smirk almost flickered across his features then as he remembered something else; the denouement of that huge scandal that had swept through the entire region like wildfire. “The narky old bugger wouldn’t let that bastard near her when he came to take her back to the sheep station neither, and when he got stroppy about it, the younger one – Father Brandis – belted the livin’ shit outta him! Wouldn’t have believed it if I’d not seen it with me own eyes!”