Free The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall Page B

efforts.
    "Oh Gawd," screamed Chas, "you couldn't hit a drunk in Guthrie's Bar of a Saturday night!" This was a phrase of his grandfather's that his mother didn't like.
    It was at that moment that an overenthusiastic antiaircraft team scored a hit. On the Willington Windbag. It made a lovely bang that turned the fighter over on its back.
    "Oh, no." Chas beat a tree in agony. "Where are those bloody Spitfires from Acklington?"
    The German recovered and made straight at them.
    "What... ?" Chas glanced up. The Fish Quay Buster, on its way down, was right overhead.
    "Get down!" Audrey pulled him into the camp they had dug, a shallow pit three feet deep, with a wall of rocks a foot high around it. A week's striving, blisters, broken fingernails, and it felt pathetic now.
    The guns were following the fighter. The flashes were terrible, the shrapnel fell like black rain. Chas threw himself across Audrey protectively. It was a man's duty.
    Then the plane's cannons fired. The air stank with cordite. Shell fragments slashed through the trees and privet of Mrs. Nichol's garden. With a roar, the Fish Quay Buster exploded. The stones of the rockery glowed brighter than day. And the burning balloon was falling right on them!
    They huddled together in a final terror, pressed tight like kittens. Then there was a rustling, a last roar of engines dwindling.
    They got up. The trees above them were full of silver, draped in festoons like a tent roof. It was the remains of the Buster. It looked very large, and they were awed.
    Then reality reasserted itself.
    "Quick, grab some down. That stuff's waterproof. We'll need some for the camp." As Chas climbed and hacked at it, the air-raid warning sounded, and three very angry Spitfires hurtled overhead. You could almost hear the pilots gnashing their teeth above the whine of their superchargers.
    They hid great pieces of the Fish Quay Buster in a disused potting shed.
    "Good stuff, that," said Chas. "Waterproof. It'll roof in the Fortress lovely."
    "What fortress?" asked Audrey.
    Chas pointed to the hole in the rockery. "That will be our Fortress."
    "But it's hopeless," said Audrey. "We've worked for a week and it's only a little hole."
    "We need more help. It's time we buried our differences."
    "Not with Boddser?" said Nicky nervously.
    "No, Cem and Clogger. We must work together for the common good."
    "Pompous ass," said Audrey under her breath, but not so she could be heard. She was tired of digging in the rockery.
    "Ey, Clogger," whispered Boddser. "Want to join my gang? Show you some dirty postcards my uncle got in Port Said."
    "Och, tripe," said Clogger, and walked away. Boddser didn't follow him.
    "Ey, Cem," whispered Boddser. "Want to see my uncle's postcards from Egypt?" Cem, who was rather attached to camels, and pyramids, said yes. Boddser passed across a grubby pack of nude men and women in peculiar positions. Cem looked first incredulous, then embarrassed.
    "Don't like that fellow's moustache," he said, after thought.
    Boddser changed tack.
    "Glad you've broken off with that McGill. Would you like to come round one night and play with my railway?" Boddser's railway was much more highly thought of than his uncle's postcards, being British.
    "I might," said Cem, flattered.
    Then Boddser, over-eager, made his mistake.
    "McGill's got that German machine gun, hasn't he?"
    A look of disgust crossed Cem's face.
    "Yeah. And two Matilda tanks behind his rabbit hutch and a smelly pair of Hitler's underpants in his handkerchief drawer."
    Boddser retired in a deeply hurt silence to his French exercise; his back had the look of a hard-done-by man.
    They'd all been hoping it would happen, but when it did, they were surprised. Chas and Cem were walking to school in the gloom of a December morning. As Gar-mouth High came into view, Cem gave his great guffaw.
    "Cor, look at the new chimney!"
    Chas, who had been carefully kicking a Bovril jar along the gutter, glanced up. A long thin aircraft tail was