The Thirty Days' War by Max Hennessy

Author:Max Hennessy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Down on the ground, the men watching from the control tower could see the machines manoeuvring like dark birds along the edge of the escarpment. The larger shapes of the Wellingtons were beginning to move away now and the second wave of aircraft, Audaxes and Harts, began to drop down.

As they watched the smoke rising they heard the first shell coming. It screamed towards them, sounding like an express train, and exploded on the edge of the airfield. The officers ducked instinctively. The accounts officer, a precise man used to exactness, glanced at his watch. ‘Oh-five hundred and fifty-five seconds,’ he said. ‘It didn’t take them long to hoist in the idea and get cracking.’

The shells were beginning to fall faster now and a lorry moving from the hangars towards the polo ground disappeared in a flash and a puff of smoke and dust. From the control tower, they saw the bonnet cover, a wheel and what might have been a man flung out of the centre of it; then, as the dust settled and the smoke lifted, they saw only smouldering wreckage and a man with his clothes on fire running wildly, his mouth open, screaming. Another man appeared from the trees, knocked him over and rolled him in the dust. The flames disappeared and they saw the wretched man squirming on the ground, his clothes smoking. Within a minute an ambulance had roared up and the crew were lifting him through the open rear doors.

The next salvo of shells dropped nearer to the control tower and a group of men moving towards one of the aircraft began to run, their khaki stockings falling round their ankles as they scuttled for shelter. From one of the trenches a head popped up and they heard the iron voice of the station warrant officer. ‘That man! Pull up your stockings and don’t run so slovenly!’ Then a machine gun opened up from the plateau and, as a line of spurts of dust ran along the ground, the head disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared.

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