A thousand suns

The soldiers who had taken cover behind the poplars began moving. Koch watched them as they ducked under some hedges that lined the track and jogged across into an open field beyond. They stopped and dropped several times as Buller’s men sprayed a little fire in their direction.

‘They’re trying to flank us,’ he shouted above the clatter of their gunfire. ‘Those Yanks are pretty good, not your average bunch of GIs,’ he said to Buller. Buller nodded; these men were almost as good as the Russian convict brigade they’d faced outside of Murmansk. He’d wager a packet of cigarettes that these soldiers had already seen some action.

We spoke too soon.

‘They’re working their way around to the sides. They’ll get to the planes unchallenged unless we pull back. I want you to direct most of your fire on those men moving across the fields to the left there, and those men moving off the track to the right.’ Koch pointed towards a copse of trees to the right of the track. The copse extended around to the top end of the airstrip, where it grew a little thicker and became a narrow stretch of wood. The planes and the fuel truck parked there at the bottom of the landing strip were only fifty, perhaps sixty, yards away from this treeline.

That wasn’t so good.

‘Slow down those ones heading for the trees on the right. If they get to the trees, then keep them ducking with a few shots into the woods. You’ve got to slow them down.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m going to take some of your men and establish a tighter defensive ring nearer the planes.’ Buller nodded and Koch clapped him on the back. ‘Hold your position as long as possible and then fall back towards me.’

A few dozen yards away from the gathered planes was a stack of supply crates; tinned food, probably destined to be relief for the recently liberated citizens of northern Germany. A typically American gesture, he thought. They bomb the fuck out of us, then shower the poor bastards left alive with food parcels.

The crates were small enough to be manhandled. It would take only a few moments to pull them out across the ground around the planes to create some reasonable defensive positions.

Koch pointed towards the cluster of planes and the fuel truck to one side of the strip.

‘That’s where we’ll hold them back.’

Buller turned to look. ‘That’s open ground — ’

‘Don’t worry… it won’t be.’

Koch was up and quickly tapped five of Buller’s squad on the shoulder. They followed him as he ran towards the planes, ducking low as they went.

Max checked the gauge again, it showed only 3270 gallons had been pumped so far. The speed at which it was pumping the fuel was slowing down. The pressure had dropped; the fuel truck must be approaching empty.

Shit.

The sound of gunfire had returned a couple of minutes ago, and now seemed to have intensified. ‘What’s going on? Can you see anything?’ he shouted up to Pieter.

Pieter looked towards the entrance, where a thin haze of blue smoke above the sandbags was developing. He spotted half a dozen of their men running towards them. ‘Ah, fuck it, they’re running away already!’

Max stood up straight. Running away? So much for ‘as good as the Fallschirmjager ’.

He walked around the end of the fuel truck to see Koch and some of his men approaching them. They veered to the right and headed towards a tarpaulin-covered stack of crates. As soon as they were there they pulled savagely at the boxes and began dragging them across the grass.

‘Okay,’ said Pieter. ‘Maybe they’re not running away.’

Max watched as Koch slung his MP-40 over one shoulder and struggled with two of the crates, one under each arm, across the ground to a position thirty feet in front of the fuel truck. He threw them unceremoniously to the ground and raced back for some more.

‘They’re setting up some cover, I think,’ he shouted up at Pieter.

He heard the sound of liquid bubbling in the fuel pipe, and then he noticed from the gauge that the pressure from the fuel pump had plummeted. Either the pump was damaged or the fuel pipe had sprung a leak. He worked his way back to the rear of the truck and found a geyser of fuel spraying from a gash in the pipe. Most of the fuel was spurting out of the hole; only a fraction of it was getting to the B-17. Already a large pool of gasoline was spreading across the rain-moistened turf; the thick fumes floating above it dangerously concentrated.

Dammit.

Max shut off the pump and closed the valve. One spark and the fuel truck, still half full, and their plane would be a smouldering tangle of metal. They needed another 250 gallons to fill the wing tanks. He looked towards the large fifty-gallon drums, there were only four, and they’d need five. Even if there were that many, it was too much fuel to pour manually five gallons at a time.

He called up to Pieter. ‘The fuel pipe’s severed.’

Pieter ducked inside the cockpit for a moment and then returned. ‘Our tank is nearly full, more than three-quarters… won’t that be enough?’

It could be.