Eleven Eleven by Paul Dowswell Page B

the sudden silence, he could hear shouting and firing from close by. His plane dropped towards the ground.
    Eddie was lucky. When his engine cut out, he was already flying beneath tree level. He tried to keep the plane level, but the ground was uneven and there were even some fresh shell holes ahead. The aircraft hit the field with a splintering crash and Eddie was jolted brutally in his cockpit as the Camel’s flimsy undercarriage collapsed beneath him. He covered his head with his hands and waited for the grinding, screeching, splintering noise to stop. Eddie didn’t see his life flash before him, although everything did seem to be happening in slow motion. Instead, he kept thinking, Is this it? When is that cylinder going to lodge in my brain? How much is it going to hurt? He even had time to consider whether to peer over his guns to see if the Camel was heading straight into a sturdy obstacle like a house or a big tree, but he decided he would rather not know. All at once his aircraft was thrown into the air, as it hit a dip in the field and flipped over on to its front. As the plane juddered to a halt, Eddie lost consciousness.
    The remaining men of Axel’s platoon turned their fire on the aircraft that had killed so many of their comrades. Bullets poured into the shattered canvas fuselage. The Feldwebel ordered his men to concentrate their attention on the advancing Americans. Even if they hadn’t killed the pilot, the fire that had caught in the engine surely would.
    Some of the German bullets had hit home. Eddie Hertz was jolted from unconsciousness by a sharp stab of pain in his right thigh. He could taste the smoke from his blazing engine in his throat and sensed bullets piercing the length of his shattered craft. He also realised he was hanging upside down by his harness. Fortunately the Camel’s upper wing had held firm in the crash; otherwise he would have been decapitated.
    Instinctively he punched the circular release on his harness and dropped like a stone. He only fell a couple of feet, but he felt weak with pain and nausea as his body landed clumsily on the ground. Seeing him fall attracted the attention of the Germans again and shots began to churn up the earth around him. Eddie saw he had crashed a few yards away from a large shell hole and began to crawl towards it with all his remaining strength.
    As he dragged himself over the lip of the crater, a machine gun began its sweep and a bullet caught his right bootheel just as he flipped into the dirt interior. This time Eddie had been lucky.
     
    Axel Meyer had seen Eddie’s miraculous escape. When the American soldiers had been repulsed, he was going to go into that crater and finish him off. But first they had to stop the incoming attack. He leaned over the tower ramparts and fired several rounds. He hadn’t a clue if he’d hit anyone. He couldn’t get out of the habit of closing his eyes whenever he fired and the rifle butt kicked hard into his shoulder.
    The soldiers were near enough now to tell the men from the officers. Down below, the Feldwebel was ordering them to shoot the ones with the leather straps across their tunics, who were carrying pistols.
    There were a great number of soldiers coming towards him and Axel wondered whether he ought to stop firing from up there in the tower. Stop drawing attention to himself. These Americans were taking heavy casualties as they advanced, and he could not believe they would be happy to accept the surrender of the men who had just been killing them. He was sure there was going to be a massacre. This was how his life would end. At the point of an American bayonet. They were just fifty metres away now. He decided to keep his head down. Stay up there and hope they’d all forget about him.
     
    Over in the crater, Eddie Hertz heard voices near by – American voices!
    ‘Hey, fellas,’ he yelled. ‘Come help me out.’
    Two helmeted heads appeared over the brim of the crater. Doughboys. One of them began