Koch decided their little enclave of boxes of tinned food was good enough. ‘All right, that’ll do. Get your heads down,’ he shouted to the nine men with him. They scrambled across the ground, each finding a safe place behind one of the small stacks.
The enclave formed an arc of two- and three-crate piles around the fuel truck, like half of a mini Stonehenge. Each pile offered decent enough cover for one or two men lying down from the right side of the strip only. If the Americans were prepared to take their time and work their way across the landing strip to the left-hand side and then proceed up the strip towards them, Koch and his men would be successfully flanked, and their hard cover would be useless to them. For now, though, it seemed the Americans were prepared to continue the fight from behind the cover of the sandbags near the entrance and the comparative safety of the far end of the strip.
Koch stuck his head above his pile. He looked for Buller and his men. They were no longer near the entrance, and he hadn’t managed to see which way they had retreated. His other squad leader, Scholn, was curled up behind the next pile of crates along.
The young captain cupped his hands. ‘Scholn! Did you see where Buller and his men pulled back to?’
Scholn pointed towards the large canteen tent, and Koch looked for them amongst the mess: overturned wooden tables, the large iron urns, still steaming with tea and coffee, and the enormous catering pans and serving plates, now knocked to the ground, their contents of scrambled egg, bacon and sausages spread across the decked floor of the canteen. Amongst this chaos, he saw some movement and a tuft of blond hair.
Good man, Buller, excellent position.
From where they were, Buller and his boys would be able to keep the Americans further down the strip from advancing up towards the planes. It was open terrain, and they would be exposed to any fire coming from Buller’s squad and have no cover to dive behind.
The other main group of men by the sandbags near the entrance seemed in no hurry to move in on them either, content to lay down intermittent fire on Koch and his men, now safely tucked behind the crates.
Excellent. It seemed like a temporary stalemate that might last a few more minutes. That would be enough.
But then there were the GIs he’d seen spreading out to the right of the dirt track and heading into the dense foliage and bracken of the woods. They would surely soon emerge from the line of trees that bordered this end, the top, of the strip.
That damned treeline was dangerously close to the parked fighters and the fuel dump in the middle. With hindsight, Koch decided, it would have been smarter of Scholn’s squad to have driven the fuel truck halfway down the strip and left it there, along with the large fuel drums, well away from the treeline that surrounded the airstrip and any other covered positions that the Americans could use to their advantage. But then, the planes, particularly the American bomber, would still need to taxi up to this end of the strip to have enough running distance to get off the ground, the planes would still be vulnerable from shots coming out of the wood.
His thinking turned out to be timely.
From the trees he caught sight of flickering muzzle flashes and puffs of blue-tinged smoke. The bastards were aiming for the fuel drums.
A moment later one of the large fuel drums erupted. The gasoline-fuelled explosion set off the other large drums. Together they produced a large, bright orange mushroom cloud of flame that wafted lazily up into the sky, slowly turning to black smoke.
Max felt the explosion before he heard it; it was like a hot punch between his shoulders. He turned to see the flame cloud drift upwards. The ground where the drums had been was a sea of flames six or seven feet high, and, swimming through it, arms lashing out, he saw several men staggering to escape the flames.
Stef, Hans.
They’d both been handling one of the large drums.
He watched with horror as several men on fire from head to toe staggered around amidst the inferno before collapsing to their knees, and then with agonising slowness to the ground. He hoped they were dead at that point, rather than enduring the unimaginable agony any longer.
The last he had seen of his lads, they had been holding one of the large fuel drums. The blast would have killed them immediately.
He hoped.
He forced his mind to switch to practical matters. With Stef gone, he’d have to handle the navigation himself. He had undergone basic training for navigation, and had, as a matter of habit, always gone through the flight plan with his navigator before every sortie. The skills were a little rusty, but he could just about get them there. Stef had done the hard work finding their way to this small airfield.
Pieter would fly, and he would navigate. The mission could still be completed.
An image of Stef’s face, stretched and contorted by the heat, flickered across his mind. He screwed his eyes shut, pushing the image away. There were fifteen hours of flying time ahead of them. There’d be plenty of time to torment himself and grieve for those two later.
The sea of flames had spread towards several of the Me-109s. He watched as one of Schroder’s pilots scrambled up onto the wing of his plane and into the cockpit, as the flames licked hungrily underneath its belly. The pilot had managed to start up the engine and the plane had begun to roll forward, away from the fire, when it exploded. Two other planes followed suit and exploded in a chain reaction, one setting off the other.
The initial eruption had damaged several of the planes parked closest to the fuel drums, and with the other three destroyed, Max could only count four planes as yet undamaged. He feared, as he watched more of Schroder’s men succumb to the flames, that there were now even fewer pilots left than planes.
He heard Pieter calling out, he didn’t hear the words, but there was a distinct tone of relief in his usually gruff voice. Max loosened the last retaining bolt on the belly-gun blister and it clattered heavily to the ground. He emerged from beneath the bomber’s belly to see Stef and Hans loping across the grass, ducking low to avoid the bullets that passed over the top of Koch’s improvised defences.
He angrily slapped them on their backs as they passed. ‘You two stupid bastards gave me a scare.’ He hastily gestured for them to get inside. ‘We’re leaving, we’ve got as much fuel as we need,’ he shouted, his voice struggling to compete with the deafening gunfight and the roar of the nearby fire.
He waited until Hans had scrambled up through the hatch and then stuck his head up inside. ‘Pieter!’ he shouted, his voice now beginning to sound hoarse, punished by the fumes of the smoke that was gathering around the plane. ‘Start the engines. I’ll be up in a second.’
He heard Stef shout, passing the message up to Pieter in the cockpit as he ducked back outside. He dropped down and made his way on all fours across to Koch’s position.
‘We’re going now,’ he shouted.
Koch turned round, his face a picture of overwhelming relief. ‘About bloody time.’
Max pointed down to the far end of the strip at the Americans who were spread out across it, currently laying down fire on Buller and his men holed up in the canteen. They were going to prevent any of them taking off with the promise of a devastating wall of small-arms fire on any plane stupid enough to rumble down the strip towards them.
‘I need them moved. They’ll shoot us to shreds before we can get off the ground.’
Koch looked down the strip. There were twenty to thirty of them spread out across it, most of them kneeling on the grass or prone. ‘I’m not sure how we can shift them. I’ve only got a few men left here
… what am I supposed to do?’
‘They’ve got to be moved, we can’t take off otherwise.’
The young captain looked around. He had seven men here; amongst the overturned tables of the canteen there were a few more men; inside the hangar with the prisoners were perhaps a couple more. He looked back at Max; ready to shake his head and tell him it couldn’t be done when his eyes rested on the fuel truck.
Max followed his gaze. He could guess what the man was thinking. ‘Yes, good idea.’
‘You get your plane ready to go,’ said Koch.
Max held out his hand. ‘Thanks. You and your men have done us proud.’
‘Last skirmish of the war… wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Let’s just hope whatever it is you’re up to is worth it,’ Koch said, grabbing his hand.
‘It’ll win us the war.’
Koch’s eyes widened, and Max smiled reassuringly. ‘Trust me… this has been worth it.’
