1917 by Kelly Gardiner

Author:Kelly Gardiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Australia’s Great War: 1917
Publisher: Scholastic Australia
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

July, 1917

7 Squadron,

Royal Flying Corps

Proven, Belgium

There’s a whole other world up in the sky, Mags. I never knew. I suppose, in peacetime, it’s full of swallows and bees and all those dandelion seeds we blew into the wind. I wouldn’t know. But here it’s full of different birds. Dangerous ones, like the German Albatros fighters.

There are balloons that look like enormous saggy elephants. They’re tethered to the ground with dozens of ropes, and some poor mug dangling below in a glorified shopping basket, hoping not to get shot at. Rotten job. It’s not like they can fly off if they get attacked. They just have to sit there. Or jump, I suppose. Either way, they’re dead ducks.

Around here, if you don’t have any high ground, you have to send somebody up in the air to have a look or take a photograph. It’s either us, or the balloon chaps. Or both.

When we take off, and climb a bit, we’re in another world. We do see real birds sometimes, crows mostly, and treetops and roofs, and clouds of all shapes and sizes. Once we saw a rainbow, and I was tempted to chase it to the end. It seemed almost as if I could.

There’s no sound around us, but the machine makes its own ruckus—the engine thumps and whirrs (hopefully more whirring than thumping), the wires squeal in the wind, our scarves and clothes flap, the fuselage quivers, and we can barely hear one another shout over it all. Once Burke had to fire off a few rounds just to get my attention.

Even now it’s chilly up there. I hate to think what it’ll be like in winter. So thank you, and thank Ma and especially Flossie, for the wonderful socks and mittens. Charlie was green with envy. I fly with my little good luck kangaroo tucked into my top pocket. I’m going to get one of the fellows in the workshop to paint a kangaroo on Matilda too, so everyone who sees us up in the sky knows that it’s us flying there, all the way from the other side of the world, doing our bit.

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