The Burning Shore c-8

by Wilbur Smith

  I telephoned Division as soon as the first of our planes landed and they had only just received the intelligence themselves. They think Von Richthofen and his circus have taken up temporary residence at the old airstrip just south of Douai- A lot of good that does us now, with Andrew dead. As he said it, the enormity of it at last hit Michael, and his hands began to shake. He felt a nerve jumping in his cheek. He had to turn away to the small window of the cottage that the adjutant used as the squadron office.

  Behind him the adjutant remained silent, giving Michael time to collect himself.

  The old airstrip at Douai- Michael thrust his hands into his pockets to keep them still, and he drove his mind from the memory of Andrew to consider instead the technical aspects -those new gun emplacements, they must have moved up to guard Von Richthofen's jagdstaffel. Michael, you are commanding the squadron, at least temporarily, until Division confirms or appoints another commander. Michael turned back, hands still in pockets, and nodded, not yet trusting his voice.

  You will have to draw up a new duty roster, the adjutant prompted him gently, and Michael shook his head slightly as though to clear it.

  We can't send out less than full squadron strength, he said, not with the circus out there. Which means that we can't maintain full-time daylight cover over the designated squadron sector. The adjutant nodded in agreement. It was obvious that to send out single flights was suicidal.

  What is our operational strength? Michael demanded.

  At the moment, eight, four machines were badly shot up. If it goes on like this, it's going to be a bloody April, I am afraid. All right, Michael nodded. We will scrub the old roster. We can only fly two more sorties today. All eight aircraft. Noon and dusk. Keep the new chums out of it as much as possible. The adjutant was making notes, and as Michael concentrated on his new duties, his hands stopped shaking and that corpse-grey pallor of his face improved. Telephone Division and warn them that we will not be able to cover the sector adequately. Ask them when we can expect to be reinforced. Tell them that an estimated six new batteries have been moved up to-'Michael read the map references off his note-pad -and tell them also that I noticed a design modification on the Albatroses of the circus. He explained the relocation of the engine radiator. Tell them I estimate the boche have sixty of these new Albatros in Von Richthofen's Jagdstaffel. When you have done all that call me, and we will work out a new roster, but warn the lads there will be a squadron sweep at noon. Now I need a shave and a bath. Mercifully, there was no time during the rest of that day for Michael to dwell on Andrew's death. He flew both sorties with the depleted squadron, and although the knowledge that the German circus was in the sector worked on all their nerves, the patrols were completely uneventful. They saw not a single enemy machine.

  When they landed for the last time in the dusk, Michael took a bottle of rum down to where Mac and his team of mechanics were working by lantern light on the damaged SE5 as and spent an hour with them, giving them encouragement, for they were all anxious and depressed by the day's losses, particularly the death of Andrew, whom they had all adored and hero-worshipped.

  He was a good un. Mac, with black grease to the elbows, looked up from the engine he was working on, and accepted the tin mug of rum that Michael handed him. He was a real good un, the major was. He said it for all of them. Don't often find one like him, you don't. Michael trudged back through the orchard; looking up at the sky through the trees, he could see the stars. It would be flying weather again tomorrow, and he was deadly afraid.

  I've lost it, he whispered. My nerve has gone. I am a coward, and my cowardice killed Andrew. That knowledge had been at the back of his mind all that day, but he had suppressed it. Now, when he faced it squarely, it was like a hunter following a wounded leopard into cover.

  He knew it was there, but the actual sight of it as they came face to face turned a man's belly to water.

  A coward, he said aloud, lashing himself with the word, and he remembered Andrew's smile and the tam o shanter set jauntily on his head.

  What cheer, my boy? He could almost hear Andrew's voice, and then he saw him falling down the sky with the burning green scarf around his throat, and Michael's hands began to shake again.

  A coward, he repeated, and the pain was too much to bear alone and he hurried to the mess, blinded by his guilt so that he missed his footing and stumbled more than once.

  The adjutant and the other pilots, some of them still in flying rig, were waiting for Michael. It was the senior officers duty to begin the wake, that was squadron ritual.

  On a table in the centre of the mess were seven bottles of Black Label Johnny Walker whisky, one for each of the missing airmen.

  When Michael entered the room, everybody stood, not for him, but as a last respect to the missing men.

  All right, gentlemen, Michael said. Let us send them on their way. The most junior officer, briefed by the others in his duties, opened a bottle of whisky. The black labels gave the correct funereal touch. He came to Michael and filled his glass, then moved on to the others, in order of seniority. They held the brimming glasses and waited while the adjutant, his briar still clamped in his teeth, seated himself at the ancient piano in the corner of the mess and began to bang out the opening chords of Chopin's Funeral March. The officers of No.21 Squadron stood to attention and tapped their glasses on table-tops and the bar counter, keeping time with the piano, and one or two of them hummed quietly.

  On the bar counter were laid out the personal possessions of the missing pilots. After dinner these would be auctioned off, and the squadron pilots would pay extravagant prices so that a few guineas could be sent to a new widow or a bereaved mother. There were Andrew's golf clubs, which Michael had never seen him use, and the Hardy trout rod, and his grief came back fresh and strong so that he thumped his glass on the counter with such force that whisky slopped over the rim, and the fumes prickled his eyes. Michael wiped them on his sleeve.

  The adjutant crashed through the last bar and then stood up and took his glass. Nobody said a word, but they all lifted their own glasses, thought their own thoughts for a second, and then drained them. Immediately the junior officer refilled each tumbler. All seven bottles must be finished, that was part of the tradition. Michael ate no supper, but stood by the bar and helped consume the seven bottles. He was still sober, the liquor seemed to have no effect on him.

  I must be an alcoholic at last, he thought. Andrew always said I had great potential. And the liquor did not even deaden the pain that Andrew's name inflicted.

  He bid five guineas each for Andrew's golf clubs and the Hardy split-cane rod. By that time the seven bottles were all empty. He ordered another bottle for himself and went alone to his tent. He sat on the cot with the rod in his lap. Andrew had boasted that he had landed a fiftypound salmon with that stick, and Michael had called him a liar.

  Oh ye of little faith, Andrew had chided him sorrowfully.

  I believed you all along Michael caressed the old rod and drank straight from the bottle.

  A little later, Biggs looked in. Congratulations on your victory, sir. Three other pilots had confirmed Michael's shooting down of the pink Albatros.

  Biggs, will you do me a favour? Of course, sit Bugger off, there's a good fellow.

  There was three-quarters of the bottle of whisky left when Michael, still in his flying clothes, stumbled out to where Andrew's motor-cycle was parked. The ride in the cold night air cleared his head, but left him feeling brittle and fragile as old glass. He parked the motor-cycle behind the barn, and went to wait among the bales of straw.

  The hours, marked by the church clock, passed slowly, and with each of them his need for Centaine grew until it was almost too intense to bear. Every half hour he would go to the door of the barn and peer up the dark lane, before returning to the bottle and the nest of blankets.

  He sipped the whisky, and in his head those few seconds of battle in which Andrew had died played over and over, like a gramophone record tha
t had been scratched. He tried to shut out the images, but he could not. He was forced to relive, time and again, Andrew's last agony.

  Where are you, Centaine? I need you so much now. He longed forher, but she did not come, and again he saw the skyblue Albatros with the black and white chequered wings bank steeply on to the killing line behind Andrew's green aircraft, and yet again he glimpsed Andrew's pale face as he looked back over his shoulder and saw the Spandaus open fire.

  Michael covered his eyes and pressed his fingers into the sockets until the pain drove out the images. Centaine, he whispered. Please come to me. The church clock struck three o'clock and the whisky bottle was empty.

  She isn't coming. He faced it at last, and as he staggered to the door of the barn and looked up at the night sky, he knew what he had to do to expiate his guilt and grief and shame.

  The depleted squadron took off for the dawn patrol in the grey half-light. Hank Johnson was now second-incommand, and he flew on the other wing.

  Michael turned out slightly, as soon as they were above the trees, and headed for the knoll beyond the chateau.

  Somehow he knew that she would not be there this morning, yet he pushed up his goggles and searched for her.

  The hill top was deserted, and he did not even look back.

  It's my wedding day, he thought, searching the sky above the ridges, and my best man is dead, and my bride- He did not finish the thought.

  The cloud had built up again during the night. There was a solid ceiling at I2,000 feet, dark and forbidding, stretching unbroken to every reach of the horizon. Below that it was clear to 5,000 feet where straggly grey cloud formed a layer that varied in thickness between 500 and

  1,000 feet.

  Michael led the squadron up through one of the holes in this intermittent layer, and then levelled out just below the top bank of cloud. The sky below them was empty of aircraft. To a novice it would seem impossible that two large formations of fighter planes could patrol the same area, each searching for the other, and still fail to make contact. However, the sky was so deep and wide that the chances were much against a meeting, unless the one knew precisely where the other would be at a given time.

  While his eyes raked back and forth, Michael reached with his free hand into the pocket of his greatcoat and assured himself that the package he had prepared just before take-off was still there.

  God, I could use a drink, he thought. His mouth was parched and there was a dull ache in his skull. His eyes burned but his vision was still clear. He licked his dry lips.

  Andrew always used to say that only a confirmed drunkard can drink on top of a hangover. I just wish I'd had the courage and common sense to bring a bottle. Through the holes in the cloud beneath him he kept a running check on the squadron's position. He knew every inch of the squadron's designated area the way a farmer knows his lands.

  They reached the outward limit and Michael made the turn, with the squadron coming round behind him, and he checked his watch. Eleven minutes later he picked out the bend in the river, and a peculiarly shaped copse of beech trees that gave him an exact positional fix.

  He eased the throttle a fraction and his yellow machine drifted back a few yards until he was flying on Hank Johnson's wingtip. He glanced across at the Texan and nodded. He had discussed his intentions with Hank before take-off and Hank had tried to dissuade him. Across the gap Hank screwed up his mouth as though he had sucked a green persimmon, to show his disapproval, then raised a war-weary eyebrow and waved Michael away.

  Michael backed the throttle a little further and dropped below the squadron. Hank kept leading them eastwards, but Michael made an easy turn into the north and began to descend.

  Within a few minutes the squadron had disappeared into the limitless sky, and Michael was alone. He went down until he reached the lower layer of broken cloud and then used it as cover. Dodging in and out of the cold damp banks and the intervening open patches, he crossed the front lines a few miles south of Douai, and then picked out the new German gun emplacements at the edge of the woods.

  The old airstrip was marked on his field map. He was able to pick it out from a distance of four miles or more, for the wheels of the German Albatroses on landing and take-off had traced muddy ruts in the turf. Two miles out, he could see the German machines parked along the edge of the forest, and in the trees beyond he made out the rows of tents and portable sheds which housed the German crews.

  Suddenly there was a woof and a crack of bursting explosive, and an anti-aircraft shell burst above and slightly ahead of him. It looked like a ripe cotton pod, popping open and spilling fluffy white smoke, deceptively pretty in the muted light below the clouds.

  Good morning, Archie, Michael greeted it grimly.

  It was a ranging burst from one of the guns, and was followed immediately by the thud and crack of a full salvo. The air all around him was studded with shrapnel bursts.

  Michael pushed his nose down and let the speed build up, and the needle of the rev counter in front of him began to wind upwards into the red sector. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the cloth package and placed in on his lap.

  The earth and forest came up swiftly towards him, and he dragged a long smear of bursting shrapnel behind him.

  Two hundred feet above the tree-tops he levelled out, and the airfield was directly ahead of him. He could see the multicoloured biplanes standing in a long row, their shark-like snouts pointed up towards him. He looked for the sky-blue machine with the chequered wings but could not pick it out.

  There was agitated movement all along the edge of the field. German ground crews, anticipating a torrent of Vickers machine-gun fire, were running into the forest, while off-duty pilots, trying to struggle into their flying jackets, were racing towards the parked aircraft. They must know it was useless to take off and try to intercept the British machine, but they were making the attempt nonetheless.

  Michael reached for the firing-handle. The aircraft were parked in a neat line, the pilots crowding towards them - and he smiled without humour and depressed his nose, picking them up in the ring sight of the Vickers.

  At 100 feet he levelled again, dropped his right hand from the firing handle and picked up the cloth package from his lap. As he passed over the centre of the German line, he leaned from the cockpit and tossed the package overboard. The ribbon he had attached to it unrolled in the slipstream of the SESa and fluttered down to the edge of the field.

  As Michael opened the throttle and climbed away again towards the cloud layer, he glanced up into the mirror above his head and saw one of the German pilots stoop over the package, and then the SESa bounced and rocked as the German anti-aircraft guns opened up on him again, and a shell burst just below him. Within seconds he was into the haven of the cloud bank with his guns cold and unfired, and a few shrapnel tears in the belly and the underwings.

  He turned on to a heading for Mort Homme. While he flew he thought about the package he had just dropped.

  During the night he had torn a long ribbon from one of his old shirts to use as a marker and weighted the end of it with a handful Of .303 cartridges. Then he had stitched his handwritten message into the other end of the ribbon.

  He had at first considered attempting the message in German, and then admitted to himself that his German was hopelessly inadequate. Almost certainly there would be an officer on Von Richthofen's Jagdstaffel who could read English well enough to translate what he had written.

  To the German pilot of the blue albatros with black and white chequered wings.

  Sir, The unarmed and helpless British airman whom you murdered yesterday was my friend.

  Between 1600 hrs and 1630 hrs today I will be patrolling over the villages of Cantin and Aubigny-all-Bac, at a height of

  8,000 feet.

  I will be flying an SE5a scoutplane painted yellow.

  I hope to meet you.

  The rest of the squadron had already landed when Michael returned to the base.

  Mac,
I seem to have picked up some shrapnel."I noticed, sir. Don't worry, fix it in a jiffyI haven't fired the guns, but check the sights again, will you. Fifty yards? Mac asked for the range at which he wanted fire from both Lewis and Vickers gun to converge. Make it thirty, Mac.

  Working close, sir, Mac whistled through his teeth.

  I hope so, Mac, and by the way, she is a touch tailheavy. Trim her hands-off See to it myself, sir, Mac promised.

  Thank you, Mac. Give the bastards one for Mr Andrew, sir. The adjutant was waiting for him. We have all aircraft operational again, Michael. Twelve on the duty roster. All right.

  Hank will take the noon patrol, and I will fly at 1530 hrs alone.

  Alone? The adjutant took his pipe out of his mouth in surprise.

  Alone, Michael confirmed. Then a full squadron sweep at dusk, as usual.

  The adjutant made a note. By the way, message from General Courtney. He will do his best to attend the ceremony this evening. He thinks he will almost certainly be there. Michael smiled for the first time that day. He had wanted very badly for Sean Courtney to be at his wedding.

  Hope you can make it also, Bob. You can bet on it. Whole squadron will be there. Looking forward to it no end. Michael wanted a drink badly. He started towards the mess.

  God, it's eight o'clock in the morning, he thought, and stopped. He felt brittle and dried-out, whisky would put warmth and juice into his body again, and he felt his hands begin to tremble with his deep need for it. It took all his resolve to turn away from the mess and go to his tent. He remembered then that he hadn't slept the previous night.