The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  The Machine Gunners

  Robert Westall

  First published in the UK in 1975.

  This ePub is version 1.1, published April 2014

  To my mother and father

  who were the mother and father of the book

  1

  When Chas awakened, the air-raid shelter was silent. Gray winter light was creeping round the door-curtain. It could have been any time. His mother was gone, and the little brown attaché case with the insurance policies and bottle of brandy for emergencies. He could hear the milk cart coming round the square. The all-clear must have gone.

  He climbed out of the shelter scratching his head, and looked round carefully. Everything was just the same: same whistling milkman, same cart horse. But there was too much milk on the cart and that was bad. Every extra bottle meant some family bombed-out during the night.

  He trailed round to the kitchen door. His mother had the paraffin heater on, and bread frying. It smelled safe. There were two more panes of glass out of the window, and his father had blocked the gaps with cardboard from a Nestle's Milk box. The lettering on the cardboard was the right way up. Father was fussy about things like that.

  Father was sitting by the heater with his pint mug of tea. He looked weary, but still neat in his warden's uniform, with his beret tucked under his shoulder strap.

  "You remember that lass in the greengrocer's?"

  "The ginger-haired one?" said his mother, still bending over the stove.

  "Aye. A direct hit. They found half of her in the front garden and the other half right across the house."

  "She didn't believe in going down the shelter. She was always frightened of being buried alive." From the way his mother hunched her shoulders, Chas could tell she was trying not to cry.

  Chas's father turned to him.

  "Your rabbits are all right. Chinny had some glass in her straw, but I shifted it. But there's six panes out of the greenhouse. If it goes on this way, there'll be no chrysanthemums for Christmas."

  "It won't be the same without chrysants," said his mother. Her lips were tight together, but shaking slightly. "Here's your breakfast."

  Chas cheered up. Two whole slices of fried bread and a roll of pale pink sausage-meat. It tasted queer, not at all like sausage before the War. But he was starting to like the queerness. He ate silently, listening to his parents. If he shut up, they soon forgot he was there. You heard much more interesting things if you didn't butt in.

  "I thought we were a goner last night, 1 really did. That dive bomber ... I thought it was going to land on top of the shelter... Mrs. Spalding had one of her turns."

  "It wasn't a dive bomber," announced Father with authority. "It had two engines. He came down on the rooftops 'cos one of the RAF lads was after him. Right on his tail. You could see his guns firing. And he got him. Crashed on the old laundry at Chirton. Full bomb load. I felt the heat on me face a mile away." Mother's face froze.

  "Nobody killed, love. That laundry's been empty for years. Just as well—there's not much left of it."

  Chas finished his last carefully cut dice of fried bread and looked hopefully at his father.

  "Can I go see it?"

  "Aye, you can go and look. But you won't find nowt but bricks. Everything just went."

  Mother looked doubtful. "D'you think he should?"

  "Let him go, lass. There's nowt left."

  "No unexploded bombs?"

  "No, a quiet night really. Lots of our fighters up. That's why you didn't hear any guns."

  "Can I borrow your old shopping basket?" said Chas.

  "I suppose so. But don't lose it, and don't bring any of your old rubbish back in the house. Take it straight down the greenhouse."

  "What time's school?" said his father.

  "Half past ten. The raid went on after midnight."

  War had its compensations.

  Chas had the second-best collection of war souvenirs in Garmouth. It was all a matter of knowing where to look. Silly kids looked on the pavements or in the gutters; as if anything there wasn't picked up straight away. The best places to look were where no one else would dream, like in the dry soil under privet hedges. You often found machine-gun bullets there, turned into little metal mushrooms as they hit the ground. Fools thought nothing-could fall through a hedge.

  As he walked, Chas's eyes were everywhere. At the corner of Marston Road, the pavement was burned into a white patch a yard across. Incendiary bomb! The tailfin would be somewhere near—they normally bounced off hard when the bomb hit.

  He retrieved the fin from a front garden and wiped it on his coat; a good one, not bent, the dark green paint not even chipped. But he had ten of those already.

  Boddser Brown had fifteen. Boddser had the best collection of souvenirs in Garmouth. Everyone said so. There had been some doubt until Boddser found the nose cone of a 3.7 inch antiaircraft shell, and that settled it.

  Chas sighed, and put the fin in his basket. A hundred tailfins couldn't equal a nose cone.

  He knew the old laundry would be no good even before he got there. He began finding bits of the plane, but they were only lumps of aluminium, black on the sides and shiny at the edges, crumpled like soggy paper. They were useless as souvenirs—other kids just laughed and said you'd cut up your mother's tin kettle. Unless it was a piece that had a number on it, or a German word, or even... Chas sighed at the tightness in his chest... a real swastika. But these were just black and silver.

  The scene of the crash was a complete catastrophe. It was the partial catastrophes that Chas found interesting —picture frames still hanging on exposed walls five stories up; chimneys balanced on the verge of toppling—whereas the old laundry had been flattened as completely as if the council's demolition gang had done it. Just piles of brick and the bomber's two engines.

  One engine was in the front garden of a council house that had its windows out and its ceiling down. The family were scurrying around like ants from a broken nest, making heaps of belongings they had salvaged, and then breaking up the heaps to make new heaps. Chas watched them as if they were ants, without sympathy, because they were a slummy kind of family; a great fat woman in carpet slippers and a horde of boys of assorted sizes; hair like lavatory brushes, coarse maroon jerseys that wouldn't fasten at the neck and boots with steel heelplates.

  Chas went on staring over the garden wall. The woman paused in her doorway, a slopping handleless chamber pot in her hand.

  "Bugger off staring. Ghoul! Haven't you anything better to do?"

  "Can I see the engine?" said Chas hopelessly.

  "No. It's ours."

  "No it isn't—it belongs to the Air Ministry. By law." Chas sounded confident, but his heart wasn't in it.

  "No it don't. It's ours 'cos it knocked our house down. Bugger off or I'll set our Cuthbert on you."

  Cuthbert, the largest lavatory brush, picked up a stone, a sudden look of interest dawning on his face. The other lavatory brushes closed round him in an offensive phalanx. Chas drew himself up for a parting shot.

  "West Chirton rubbish," he said, in a tone he had often heard his mother use.

  "Balkwell snob. Go back where you came from. S'our engine. The newspaper's coming to take photos of us today." She drew herself up, adjusting a lump of front door that stood propped against the wall. On it was chalked the legend BUSNES AS USUAL.

  The first stone flew from the fist of a lavatory brush. The phalanx began to move forward. Chas took to his heels.

  The other engine was guarded by the local policeman, Fatty Hardy. He was wearing a white tin hat with p on it and looking important, but he was still the Fatty Hardy who had chased Chas off many a building site before the War. Stupid.

  This engine was much
better than the one in the front garden. It still had its propeller. Though the blades were bent into horseshoes, the middle was unharmed, a lovely shiny egg-shape painted red. Chas nearly choked with greed. If he only had that... that was better than any 3.7 inch nose cone! The whole propeller was loose—it waggled when the wind blew. Chas's mouth actually filled with saliva, as if he could smell a pie cooking.

  How could he get rid of Fatty Hardy? An unexploded bomb? Swiftly he bashed his eyes with his fists, throwing handfuls of dust into them until they began to stream with tears. Then he ran toward Fatty Hardy bawling incoherently. As he reached the policeman he put his hand up; school died hard.

  "Please, sir, Mum says come quick. There's a deep hole in our garden and there's a ticking coming from it."

  Fatty looked distinctly worried. Airplane engines was airplane engines and needed protecting from thieving kids. But unexploded bombs was unexploded bombs.

  "Hurry, sir! There's little kids all around it, looking down the hole."

  Fatty grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly.

  "Where, where? Take me, take me!"

  "Please, sir, no, sir. Mum says mustn't go back there, in case it goes off. I've got to go to me gran's, sir. But the bomb's at 19, Marston Road."

  Fatty went off at a wobbling run, his gas-mask case flogging his broad bottom. Before he was out of sight, Chas was at the engine. Its realness was overwhelming. There were German words on the cowling. Öl was the only one he could recognise. Everything was bigger close to. The twisted prop-blades curled into the air like palm leaves. The red spinner, which he had thought as carry-able as a rugby ball, now seemed as big as a brewery barrel. He tugged at it; it came off so far and then stuck. He heaved again at the shiny red newness. It still resisted.

  "Nazi pigs!" he screamed, as his hand slipped and the blood came. He picked up a lump of brickwork, four bricks still cemented together, and, raising it above his head, flung it at the spinner. The beautiful red thing crushed in, but it still wouldn't budge. He hit it again. Another great white flaking dent appeared. It was a mess now, hardly worth having. But still it refused to come off. There was a sudden roar of rage from behind. Fatty Hardy had returned, sweaty face working. Chas ran.

  He wasn't greatly worried. Hardy was puffing already; he wouldn't last fifty yards. The only worry was the piles of rubble underfoot. If he fell, Hardy would have him. Placing his feet carefully, he ran toward the Wood.

  The Wood was in the grounds of West Chirton Hall. At one time, his father said, the people at the Hall had owned everything. But then the factories came, and the council estate, and the owners of the Hall just curled up and died for shame. Now the house itself was just a hole in the ground lined with brick, and a black cinder floor. There was a big water tank full of rusty water, and nothing else.

  The Wood was bleak and ugly too. Grownups dumped rubbish round the outside, and kids climbed and broke the trees. But nobody went into the middle. Some said it was haunted, but Chas had never found anything there but a feeling of cold misery, which wasn't exciting like headless horsemen. Still, it was an oddly discouraging sort of place.

  Each year the briers grew thicker; even Chas knew only one way through them. He took it now, wriggling under arches of briers as thick as your finger, interlaced like barbed wire. He was safe. Fatty Hardy couldn't even try to follow. He picked himself up quickly because the grass was soaking. The sky seemed even greyer through the bare branches, and he felt fed up. Still, since he was here he might as well search for souvenirs. Chirton Hall was another place no one ever looked. He'd found his best bit of shrapnel there—a foot long, smooth and milled on the sides, but with jagged edges like bad teeth.

  He sniffed. There was a foreign smell in the Wood... like petrol and fireworks. Funny, it wasn't Guy Fawkes yet. Some kids must have been messing about. As he pressed on, the smell grew stronger. There must be an awful lot of petrol.

  Something was blocking out the light through the branches. A new building; a secret army base; a new antiaircraft gun? He couldn't quite see, except that it was black.

  And then he saw, quite clearly at the top, a swastika, black outlined in white. He didn't know whether to run toward it or away. So he stayed stock-still, listening. Not a sound, except the buzzing of flies. The angry way they buzzed off dog dirt when you waved your hand over it. It was late in the year for flies!

  He moved forward again. It was so tall, like a house, and now it was dividing into four arms, at right angles to each other...

  He burst into the clearing. It was the tail of an airplane: the German bomber that had crashed on the laundry. At least, most of it had crashed on the laundry. The tail, breaking off in the air, had spun to earth like a sycamore seed. He'd read of that happening in books. He could also tell from books that this had been a Heinkel He 111.

  Suddenly he felt very proud. He'd report the find, and be on the nine o'clock news. He could hear the newsreader's voice.

  The mystery bomber shot down over Garmouth on the night of the 1st of November has been identified as a new and secret variation of the Heinkel He 111. It was found by a nearly unknown schoolboy, Charles McGill of Garmouth High School... sorry, I'll read that again, Form 3A at Garmouth High School. There is no doubt that but for the sharp eyes of this young man, several enemy secret weapons vital to the Blitzkrieg would have remained undiscovered...

  Chas sighed. If he reported it, they'd just come and take it away for scrap. Like when he'd taken that shiny new incendiary-bomb rack to the Warden's Post... they'd not even said thank you.

  And he wouldn't get in the news. It was a perfectly normal Heinkel 111, registration letters HX-L, with typical dorsal turret mounting one machine gun...

  Chas gulped. The machine gun was still there, hanging from the turret, shiny and black.

  2

  Chas reached up and tugged at the gun barrel. One leg of its swivel had snapped with the impact. He wrenched at the other, but the aluminium of the aircraft body just bent without breaking. Besides, a belt of shining cartridges went from the gun back into the aircraft. It supported the gun like a sling against Chas's downward pulls. Perhaps if he loosened the cartridge belt...

  He grabbed the round barrel, put his plimsolls against the curving sides of the plane and went up like a monkey. He peered over the edge of the cockpit.

  The gunner was sitting there, watching him. One hand, in a soft fur mitt, was stretched up as if to retrieve the gun; the other lay in his overalled lap. He wore the black leather flying helmet of the Luftwaffe, and goggles. His right eye, pale grey, watched through the goggle glass tolerantly and a little sadly. He looked a nice man, young.

  The glass of the other goggle was gone. Its rim was thick with sticky red, and inside was a seething mass of flies, which rose and buzzed angrily at Chas's arrival, then sank back into the goggle again.

  For a terrible moment, Chas thought the Nazi was alive, that the mitted hand would reach out and grab him. Then, even worse, he knew he was dead. It was like that moment in a fight when you think you're winning, and then suddenly you're lying on the ground with your mouth full of salty blood and you know you're going to lose, so you start shaking all over. Only this was ten times worse.

  He wanted to let go of the fuselage, drop off and run home. But something in his mind wouldn't let him; something found the dead man fascinating. Something made him reach out and touch the gloved hand. Inside the sheepskin, the fingers were hard as iron. The arm and whole body was stiff. The gunner moved, but only as a statue or a toy soldier would move, all in one piece. The flies rose and buzzed. Inside the goggle was a deep red hole full of what looked like... Chas dropped and was violently sick against a little door marked Nicht Anfassen.

  He thought his mother would be angry at him for having wasted a good breakfast when food was hard to get. Then he heard the nine-o'clock hooter. Everyone set their watches by the factory hooters. They went at seven and eight and twelve and five. But this one, a little silly warbly one, went a
t nine. Chas knew it well, because it told him if he was late for school.

  School! School was half past ten, and he had to get home and change into uniform. He must hurry. He scurried off through the brambles without a backward look.

  But nightmares aren't so easily shaken off. On his way home he wiped the splashes of sick off his jerkin, but his mother noticed how pale he was.

  "Look like you seen a ghost! What you been up to?"

  "Nothing, Mum. Had to run all the way 'cos I was late and I've got a stitch."

  "Where's my basket?" Chas's jaw fell open. The basket was lying by the little door marked Nicht Anfassen.

  "I forgot it. It's all right, I've hidden it in a safe place. I'll get it tonight after school."

  For an awful moment he thought she was going to drag him back for the basket there and then. She did things like that when she got into a temper. But she also had a dread of him being late for school, so she just said, "See you do. You can't get a basket for love nor money these days. Your Dad bought that for me at Newcastle Market when we were courting. Now get off to school before you get the stick."

  He sighed; she would never understand that you didn't get the stick for being late these days.

  But even at school the nightmare persisted. Right through double-Math and into English, usually his favourite subject, that goggled face kept on coming back. His hands turned shiny with sweat. It ran down his forehead. He never even heard the question Mr. Liddell, the English master, asked him. Usually he was first with his hand up.

  "What's the matter with you this morning, McGill? You ill?"

  God, no. Being ill meant being sent home, answering questions, being sent to fetch that basket.

  "Sorry, sir. Couldn't sleep in the shelter. Woman next door had kittens because she thought that bomber was diving on her personally." The class roared.

  The English master regarded Chas sharply for a moment, then decided to join in the laugh. Then he stifled a yawn and ran his hands through his greying hair. Mr. Liddell doubled nights as Captain Liddell of the Gar-mouth Home Guard and found the experience wearing. Besides, McGill was a good pupil usually. But he had too vivid an imagination. A boy to like, but not a boy to trust.