Read Online Once More the Hawks by Max Hennessy - Free Book Online

bombs struck, the ground seemed to heave as if in a heavy swell. Almost immediately a second plane came down, followed by a third and a fourth, and Dicken felt the earth moving beneath him as their bombs landed. A house collapsed with a roar and tiles sliced viciously over his head through the yellow smoke lit by tongues of flame that eddied about him.
    The horror appeared to go on for a lifetime while they clawed at the earth, their mouths hanging open, their eyes blinking at every shower of debris. Dimly, they could hear the incoherent cries of women and children, then the last bomb fell only a few yards away in an ear-shattering crash and, as suddenly as it had begun, the bombing stopped and the world was full of silence, an uncanny silence. Dicken lifted his head, breathing painfully, his face blackened by dust. La Motte seemed to have been blown off the face of the earth.
    There was nothing now of the village but piles of rubble and the air was filled with a wailing which rose and fell in an eerie cadence that was broken immediately by the shouts of stretcher bearers, as soldiers ran to do what they could for the injured. The black-clad old ladies had vanished beneath the debris of their houses and the road junction ahead was completely blocked by the wreckage of vehicles and human beings.
    It took an hour to get past. Though it was hard to press on through the misery, it was pointless to try to help. There were already too many helpers and nowhere to put the injured. Beyond La Motte there were still more refugees, waiting limply by the roadside, exhausted and grey-faced with fear, staring mutely as if they were too tired to care at a company of Senegalese troops who were marching past with impassive faces.
    They hadn’t gone more than a mile when the aeroplanes came again, strafing the road to complete the confusion. As they heard the howl of engines, the driver braked and yelled to Dicken to take cover and, as the bombs came screaming down, a wail went up from the refugees. Flinging himself down a bank into a ditch, Dicken found himself shouting at them to lie flat. But, bewildered and shocked, they simply stood gaping at the sky, and scrambling from the ditch, he went among them, pushing at them, sending them flying into the ditch one after another, then finally tossed a baby down to its mother, pushchair and all, as the bombs struck. He saw flashes and people falling like toppled ninepins then something like a huge soft fist hit him in the back and flung him into the ditch on top of the driver.
    As the aeroplanes returned, he saw the Senegalese form up in a group and fire their rifles. By some miracle they hit the leading machine, which was only thirty or forty feet up, and it came lower and lower and finally hit the surface of the field ahead at an angle. It bounced once or twice, sending up showers of dust and clods of earth before finally coming to a stop.
    Heads lifted from the ditch but as other machines howled past stick after stick of bombs whistled down to explode with cracking roars along the side of the road. As the scream of the engines finally faded, Dicken scrambled to the road. There had been no casualties in their immediate neigh-bourhood but up ahead they could hear piercing shrieks from a group surrounding a farm cart that lay on its side, its wheels still spinning, the horse struggling to drag itself out of the ditch, its hind legs trailing like those of a dog run over in the street. The cart had been full of children and small bodies were scattered all over the road.
    The Heinkel which had crashed had caught fire now and the crew, struggling free, started to run. But the Senegalese soldiers started firing and, as one of them went down, the others stopped dead and raised their hands. As the Senegalese advanced on them, one of the Germans reached for a pistol. There was another fusillade of shots and he fell backwards, and the Senegalese, without a change of expression, picked up the other two by