related. Perhaps they are brothers. Is it right to deprive a mother of two sons in a single day? He thinks of his own mother, who lost her two youngest on the Marne, and his finger tightens on the trigger. On impulse he switches his target. The young one first, then as the older one turns he will kill him too. That way there will be less chance of detection. He studies his target. He is no more than a boy, but his two younger brothers were barely a year or so older. He breathes deeply, preparing for his shot, and shivers involuntarily as a cold wind blows over his position.
Something catches in his throat. He stifles the urge to cough. Too late he recognises the bitter taste. Gas, from an earlier bombardment. Most of it has dissipated, but a few pockets still linger in the hollows of the forest. The urge to cough is irresistible, and the more he coughs the more he breathes in – his lungs fill with chlorine. His eyes are streaming now, he is retching and bent double in breathless agony.
Sergeant Franklin hears the man and signals for Ogden and Weale to investigate. They run towards the sound and recognise their quarry in an instant. Blackened face, helmet and uniform covered in leaves and bracken. It is the sniper. He looks at them with desperate, pleading eyes, coughing blood and phlegm. Ogden levels his rifle to shoot, but Weale pulls on his arm and shakes his head. A shot might draw the attention of other snipers.
Poor dead Moorhouse has been his pal for the whole wretched war. Weale lunges forward, a livid rage coursing through his body, and clubs the choking man to death with the butt of his rifle.
CHAPTER 12
9.30 a.m.
High above their heads Eddie Hertz checked his compass and settled into his flight path. This close to the Front you could expect to be attacked at any time after you took off. Or even as you were taking off. That was how he had got his second ‘kill’, three months ago. They were strafing a Hun aerodrome and this bright red Fokker was taking off. Just one on his own, the brave little bastard, coming up to meet the whole squadron. Eddie was flying over and the craft came into his line of fire – tail up, just ready to leave the ground. Eddie let off a long burst from his machine guns. He was close enough to see the pilot’s head jerk back as the bullets tore into him, and he swerved away as the Fokker leaped into the air. The pilot must have pulled the stick back when the bullets hit. The plane flew up twenty feet then stalled, crashing to the ground and bursting into flames. Eddie saw the pyre he had created and felt a fleeting elation. But that wore off quick enough. It wasn’t very ‘sporting’, was it, shooting a man as he tried to take off? It was too easy.
The next kill, three days later, was a damn sight more deserving. That was a day he was really proud of. The story had even made The New York Times. That had been back in August. Eddie and two of his squadron, Flight Commander Doyle Bridgman and Lieutenant Irvin Dwight, had been close to the Front when Bridgman had spotted a Hun observation plane low down on the horizon: a twin-engine Rumpler by the look of it, little more than a black dot skirting to and fro along the edge of the clouds. They had screamed down and made short work of the two-seater plane. Bridgman had fired the only shots needed to kill the crew and see the clumsy plane nosedive down to the pockmarked mud below.
But this was a short-lived victory. These observation planes were often there as bait, and as the patrol regained height Eddie suddenly heard the rat-a-tat of machine guns and saw glowing tracer bullets curve past his plane. At once they were surrounded by brightly coloured Fokkers. The four Hun fighter planes had come in straight out of the sun – just as American pilots had been warned in their training manuals. Eddie’s flight commander was in trouble. Bridgman had been wounded, that much was apparent, and his Camel was banking over to the right. Eddie could see him slumped against the side of his cockpit. He wondered if he was already dead. But then his engine caught and the man began