“Keep that battle damage coming. I’ll call General Kane myself, Haley.”
This time as Haley closed the door Martin jumped up, placing himself between Dennis and the phones on the desk.
“Casey, today it’s recce planes; six weeks from now it will be whole divisions unless we finish this job.”
“We’ll finish, Ted. We’ll make him finish.”
He confronted Martin a second more, his face muscles struggling with his effort to make them show more assurance than he felt. He knew that he should take more time to think this through but he did not dare. He stepped past Martin decisively now; he had to do it and he had to do it fast, before he did think any more. Martin’s face was aghast under its powder smoke as he picked up the phone.
“You’re going to tell him?”
“He’s the Chief.”
Chapter 6
Long before the late nightfall of the British summer the Division Headquarters and its outlying stations again took on the accelerating pulsations of activity.
There was a rhythmic cycle in this life that began its slow rise once more from the final counting in after the mission. For the combat crews this was an ending; another mission checked off, another restorative interlude for the brief unreality of food and sleep, of music, games, or women. Especially after a second successive long mission pure fatigue claimed most of them.
Only a hardy few, those whose natural energy was inexhaustible, those whose nervous structures could not unwind, those who had taken benzedrine too late, lingered on at the mess, thumbed through the records in the lounge, changing them after the first few bars of each tune, and then sat looking numbly at the barren expanse of the V-mail blanks or, taking their bicycles from the racks, wheeled out of the station in quest of different excitement.
Most of the men, with a headshake at that serene twilight sky, made straight for the sack, there to snore or lie tense, trying to evoke the smell of hamburger in juke joints or the patterns of moonlight on country club terraces as the fragments of the phonograph tunes echoed on the corrugated iron roofs.
In the villages around them girls who had learned the new portents of peaceful heavens saw the hope vanishing and settled again to another twenty-four hours of dread. And through their ears, as through those of farmers and villagers, of crews tossing in their cots, of hares and partridge chicks and foxes prowling the beetroot and kale patches in the Lincolnshire gloaming, there drummed now from every side in universal chorus the rising hum of myriad motors tuning.
For now the work of the base personnel rose with a jerky tempo to the tune of the motors. Along the lanes muffled jeep lights bounced crazily over bumps their dim projection had not revealed. Down by the bomb dumps panting tractors chugged the dollies into place. Then their crews cut their switches and paced off through the cool grass the requisite distance for smoking while they watched the coming of the evening stars and waited the details of the loading decision.
Along every highway, through every station, around every perimeter track, and to every parking stand the petrol trucks rumbled on the last lap of the journey that had brought their cargo through sub-haunted waters from Arabia and the Caribbean. Deft hands and wrenches maneuvered the hoses. Then with the soft whirring of still more motors the weary truck tires began to contract again and the bulbous doughnuts of the Fortresses spread and distended under the inflowing burden as dry tanks gurgled and burped.
Now above and around the Forts themselves, on platforms and catwalks and cowlings, with chain hoists that lifted motors like matches and wrenches smaller than matches, the crews clambered and cursed and toiled in a disciplined frenzy of activity. Motors coughed and spluttered, roared into thunder or choked into vacuums of quick silence. Starting engines whined and squealed, generators purred. Hammers and scissors, files
This time as Haley closed the door Martin jumped up, placing himself between Dennis and the phones on the desk.
“Casey, today it’s recce planes; six weeks from now it will be whole divisions unless we finish this job.”
“We’ll finish, Ted. We’ll make him finish.”
He confronted Martin a second more, his face muscles struggling with his effort to make them show more assurance than he felt. He knew that he should take more time to think this through but he did not dare. He stepped past Martin decisively now; he had to do it and he had to do it fast, before he did think any more. Martin’s face was aghast under its powder smoke as he picked up the phone.
“You’re going to tell him?”
“He’s the Chief.”
Chapter 6
Long before the late nightfall of the British summer the Division Headquarters and its outlying stations again took on the accelerating pulsations of activity.
There was a rhythmic cycle in this life that began its slow rise once more from the final counting in after the mission. For the combat crews this was an ending; another mission checked off, another restorative interlude for the brief unreality of food and sleep, of music, games, or women. Especially after a second successive long mission pure fatigue claimed most of them.
Only a hardy few, those whose natural energy was inexhaustible, those whose nervous structures could not unwind, those who had taken benzedrine too late, lingered on at the mess, thumbed through the records in the lounge, changing them after the first few bars of each tune, and then sat looking numbly at the barren expanse of the V-mail blanks or, taking their bicycles from the racks, wheeled out of the station in quest of different excitement.
Most of the men, with a headshake at that serene twilight sky, made straight for the sack, there to snore or lie tense, trying to evoke the smell of hamburger in juke joints or the patterns of moonlight on country club terraces as the fragments of the phonograph tunes echoed on the corrugated iron roofs.
In the villages around them girls who had learned the new portents of peaceful heavens saw the hope vanishing and settled again to another twenty-four hours of dread. And through their ears, as through those of farmers and villagers, of crews tossing in their cots, of hares and partridge chicks and foxes prowling the beetroot and kale patches in the Lincolnshire gloaming, there drummed now from every side in universal chorus the rising hum of myriad motors tuning.
For now the work of the base personnel rose with a jerky tempo to the tune of the motors. Along the lanes muffled jeep lights bounced crazily over bumps their dim projection had not revealed. Down by the bomb dumps panting tractors chugged the dollies into place. Then their crews cut their switches and paced off through the cool grass the requisite distance for smoking while they watched the coming of the evening stars and waited the details of the loading decision.
Along every highway, through every station, around every perimeter track, and to every parking stand the petrol trucks rumbled on the last lap of the journey that had brought their cargo through sub-haunted waters from Arabia and the Caribbean. Deft hands and wrenches maneuvered the hoses. Then with the soft whirring of still more motors the weary truck tires began to contract again and the bulbous doughnuts of the Fortresses spread and distended under the inflowing burden as dry tanks gurgled and burped.
Now above and around the Forts themselves, on platforms and catwalks and cowlings, with chain hoists that lifted motors like matches and wrenches smaller than matches, the crews clambered and cursed and toiled in a disciplined frenzy of activity. Motors coughed and spluttered, roared into thunder or choked into vacuums of quick silence. Starting engines whined and squealed, generators purred. Hammers and scissors, files
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