Goshawk Squadron (29 page)

“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!

The drum ran out as the column ended, men fighting each other to get out of his way. Gabriel climbed and changed the drum. He decided not to go back to the column, since they would be expecting him now. He went looking for another sunken road, and found one, only this time it was full of horse-traffic: gun-limbers and ammunition wagons and water-tankers and a few old ambulances—a long column with men riding everywhere to save their legs.

He switchbacked again, leaving a devastation of plunging, rearing, bullet-holed horses, and cursing, fleeing men. The tail-end of the column saw him coming and sent up a hail of rifle fire, but Gabriel swept through. He climbed to a thousand feet and examined the damage below. Away in the distance he could see the first column; men were laying out bodies in the field, at least a hundred already. Gabriel went down in a power-dive and used up his last rounds on the working party. Then he headed for home.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
he boomed.
Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in!

Woolley, Finlayson and Beattie were the only Goshawk pilots who actually found the German advance that day and stopped it for a while. There was a report that a bridge had not been blown in time, that the Germans had grabbed it. The only way Corps could find out was by sending an airplane. Woolley made a patrol out of it.

The bridge was neither lost nor held. At one end men in khaki were throwing grenades; at the other end men in gray were trying to drag a field-gun into position. Once that field-gun began firing nothing would save the bridge. Woolley dived and shot it up and drove the German troops back. As he curled away they rushed forward. Finlayson skimmed over the bridge and drove them back. Beattie followed him
up. By that time, Woolley had circled and was boring in for another attack.

The Germans tried three times. Each time, the gun crew was killed, and under cover of the last attack the British troops ran halfway across the bridge and rolled their grenades up to the abandoned field-gun. The Germans pulled back.

Woolley took his flight up to a thousand feet and circled, watching. After ten minutes he saw the Germans massing for a fresh attempt. As the first men ran forward, the SEs swooped and strafed the bridge. The attack died. The British were stronger now, and they had started mortaring the hidden German positions. Woolley went back up into the sky.

They prowled around for another fifteen minutes. Woolley knew that Corps was waiting for a report, but this was obviously more important. British reinforcements were creeping up all the time. Artillery from somewhere was trying to shell the bridge. It was too good to last: eventually six Albatros arrived to chase the SEs away.

Woolley and Beattie dived westward. Finlayson turned to follow and at once his engine stopped. The comforting clatter up front simply ceased, and he heard instead the snarl of enemy planes above and the crash of explosives below and the stutter of a machine gun. He sat there drifting, naked, appallingly helpless. Obviously Woolley hadn't noticed it; he was probably shepherding Beattie. The machine started to stall, and Finlayson came out of his shock and thrust the joystick forward. The ground hurried upward in a sort of pockmarked silence, dreamlike, and Finlayson nervously flattened the dive to look for a landing place. It was all stream-bank and shell-holes. With a vague fear of fire he went to switch off the engine, changed his mind for no reason and tried the reserve fuel tank. The engine fired at once and roared in perfect health. Finlayson scooted down the valley, soggy with relief until he heard the crackle of machine guns behind him and adrenalin rushed back into his bloodstream.