We Are Your Ghosts (Anglezarke Trilogy, Book One)

7/28/2019 We Are Your Ghosts (Anglezarke Trilogy, Book One)

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Anglezarke Trilogy

Book 1

We Are Your Ghosts

Alex Terego

Anglezarke TrilogyBook 1

We Are Your Ghosts

2004 Alex TeregoBook Cover Design by Grace Howl

www.alexterego.com:
http://www.alexterego.com/http://www.alexterego.com/http://www.alexterego.com/


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of lubricating oil. So, with one hand gripping the stanchion that supported the top wing, he half stood and looked downtowards his feet. His Scottish terrier, Beowulf, returned his glance.

He had brought the dog along thinking it would be treat for both of them to fly together for the first time. He couldnow see from the dogs demeanor, somewhere between terror and anger, that to the contrary, his shivering pet wasmore than a bit put out by the experience. Bede, on the other hand, found that he was becoming ever more invigorated.

He used his boot to push aside his steel helmet with its white cross emblazoned on the front; at last, there behindthe helmet lay the binoculars. By now he was cold as a corpse and his eyes were streaming tears. The thin gloves and

flying jacket afforded very little protection against the onrushing gale, swirling in and around his open cockpit. He finallymanaged to raise the field glasses to his eyes and fumbled numbly to adjust the focus.Bede had been trying for days to cadge a ride in Billys Royal Flying Corps Bristol F-2a. Finally, Billy had acquiesced

to what he repeatedly pointed out to Bede was a serious breach of military discipline.Bede, committing a venial sin of omission but a sin nonetheless, had replied, Right then. Best not to say anything to

the boss, what Billy?Before this day, the extent of Bedes knowledge about the new art of aviation was that the F in F-2a stood for

fighter, and that they may fly as high as three to five thousand feet, barreling along at eighty to a hundred miles an hour.This was all unimaginable for Bede, and more than a little frightening. Still, he badly wanted to see the scene of whichhe had been a part for almost three years as a falcon might. He had wanted to ever since he saw his first plane over the

Western Front two years earlier in 1915.


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Chapter

Thirteen years prior to his first flight, Bede had been a student of history at Oxford. This region of France andBelgium over which he was now at last flying was well known to him, and to military historians, as the Cockpit ofEurope. He and Captain Billy were just two of the latest combatants. The city of Cambrai on the horizon had been theheadquarters of the Duke of Wellington during his epic battle with Napoleon.

Looking down through his binoculars, Bede contemplated how for centuries, the French, English, Dutch, Prussian,Belgian, Austrian and Spanish armies had fought and died here, as the boundaries of kingdoms and empires ebbed backand forth, and the machinery of killing improved. Familial ambitionusually disguised as something nobler, such aspatriotism or honorwas the usual cause of war. This war was no different, except that it had now metastasized intohistorys First World War, and sadly the death toll already exceeded all other wars in history.

Lulled by the aeroplanes droning engine, Bede began remembering the age-old, mutual enmity of France andEngland who, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, continued their bloody rivalry on this same terrain in their

Hundred Years War. He recalled the nearby battle of Crcy, where the English King Edward III confirmed hisPlantagenet rule over northern France in 1346.

Agincourt too was close by, where in 1415 Henry V used the terrible longbow and deadly canon against theoutmoded crossbow of the badly-led French armies to devastating effect, re-conquering Normandy and avenging theEnglish defeat by the Normans in 1066.

He knew the Agincourt region well. It was but a few miles from Ypres in Flanders, where he had first tasted thebitterness of modern battle, upon arriving from England two years earlier. As they flew, he remembered the staggeringloss of life he had witnessed there as if it were yesterday, and he reflected sadly that it wasnt over yet. In fact, it maynever be over, he thought, recalling that Waterloo field was just fifty miles to the north of Cambrai, where in 1815 theever-shifting alliances in Europe had arrayed England, this time with Prussian Allies, against a resurgent Napoleon.Now, once again Europeans savaged each other red in tooth and claw. Bede screamed his thoughts on the conduct ofnations, Plus ca change, tout cest la mme chose!The gale gathered up his words and flung them contemptuously tailwards.

Surveying the sad scene below, Bede contemplated the cynical juxtapositioning of a shifting history that, a centurylater, now linked France and England in a triple alliance along with Russia. This time locking horns with the newPrussia; the envious, expansionist and belligerent Germany, child of Bismarck and now fief of the autocrat Kaiser

Wilhelm, nephew of the English king and cousin to the Tsar.Just another family squabble, I suppose, he murmured to himself as he shook his head sadly.Beowulf must have been listening and responded with a frightened bark. Bede reached down, stroked his

companions head and smiled as he thought of the gulf between the unconditional love that he and his terrier had forone another, and the historic lack of this virtue displayed anywhere below.

Everyone knew that Germany had become a nation less than fifty years before all this, and its Kaiser was alreadynotorious throughout Europe for his envy of French and British colonial possessions.

They just came into the game of empires too late, muttered Bede, again to nobody except the elements.


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Nevertheless there they were beneath his wings: the Huns, arrayed against the French and the British ExpeditionaryForces, and still in much the same position that they had been when the Kaisers hordes had invaded France throughpoor, tiny Belgium, a little over three years, and millions of lives, earlier. Was Kaiser Bill devoid of a conscience,

wondered Bede. Couldnt he see the folly and the slaughter and put an end to it?His meditations were suddenly interrupted as he became aware that the engine noise had moved up an octave. He

became concerned as he felt his weight shift suddenly to the left as the plane banked slightly, giving him anuninterrupted panorama of northwest France. Captain Billy had told him before take-off that he would be able to see

for forty or fifty miles. Bedes first birds eye view took his breath away as his pilot began to fly the plane, still banked, inever-greater circles over the battlefield below.The scene was strange and otherworldly. Bede could clearly see the two rows of trenches that circumscribed No

Mans Land: Allies to the south and the Bosche,as the French called the Germans, to the north, behind their imposingHindenburg Line or SiegfriedStellungastheycalledit.

From a mile in the air, the two lines of trenches with their castellated design looked like the embroidered edges ofsome giants patchwork quilt, with a blackened hole blasted through its center.

Between the opposing trenches, strewn across the pockmarked, lifeless heath with a malevolent precision, werebands upon bands of barbed wire. A product of the American West, the wire was now for the first time put to efficientbut barbarous use here in northern France: separating men from men, instead of wolves from cattle.

This was the Western Front in 1917, a modern day Armageddon. Mans latest, and by far his most gruesome, killingfield. Like Flanders, the Somme and Verdun two years before, this region of Picardy was the only grave that countlessbrave soldiers from the British, French, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, along with the Saxons, Hessians,

Silesians, Prussians and Bavarians, who all now called themselves Germans, would ever know. Its borders had movedbut a few miles, this way and then that way, for the first thirty-six months of this war to which the adversaries hadcommitted all of their national resources. Bede shuddered involuntarily, and wondered if this flight had been worth thethoughts and emotions that it had pried loose.

Beneath him was a swathe of chalk country that prior to the war had once been similar to the South Downs, backhome in Blighty.

This stretch of No Mans Land was not like the battlefields around Ypres and Paschendaele, to the west of here.There, in low-lying Flanders, the mud was a silty-black quagmire; here it was the battleship gray color of the troopshipthat had brought him to this dystopia. Bede didnt have to set foot on this field to know its consistency. Millions ofartillery rounds and boots, along with frequent and liberal admixings of rain and blood, had rendered this once beautifulcountryside into glue. An apt metaphor for the static nature of this awful war, he mused.


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Chapter

Bede suddenly became aware that Captain Billy Hopworth was shouting back at him to get his attention. He abruptlyleft his meditations behind and twisted his head around. He looked back over his shoulder towards the nose of theaeroplane, watched and tried to listen above the roar of engine and wind, as Billy indicated by gesturing and shoutingthat the next phase of their reconnaissance flight was beginning. Billys gloved hands and exaggerated lip movementsindicated to Bede that they were now going to fly parallel to the front lines.

Bede remembered that Billy had asked him to keep his eyes open and to note the enemys positions carefully. Hiseyes were now so teary that his eyesight blurred. He wiped them with the borrowed white scarf, and replaced thegoggles over his eyes. He was cold and ready for the flight to be over. The novelty was wearing off and flyingbackwards, he had decided, was a chore. Beowulfs eyes and whimper were telling him that his terrier was fed up also.

Now, droning along in a straight line, he could see beyond the trenches. To the north was German-occupiedCambrai. Southwards was Peronne and beyond it the rest of unoccupied France, confounding the scene below by its

proximate normalcy.At both northern and southern edges of this wasteland were the vast, extraordinary entrenchments and fortifications

zigzagging like a snipes footprints. Historys latest enemies had created a new and horrid landscape. Its perimeter wascarved and molded by uncounted hours of effort by Sappers and Pioneer battalions of both sides; the lethal middleground belonged to neither side.

Bede turned his gaze again to the south, and once more pushed his goggles onto his forehead and raised hisbinoculars, through which he could see, behind his allied lines, the great encampments for hundreds of thousands ofmen, horses, machines and weaponry. Acres upon acres of tents were laid out like a small town. Herds of horses werelined up tied to fence poles. Hundreds of artillery pieces were arrayed, each the size of a small cottage. Men in khaki

were everywhere. Rows of tanks stood drawn up, like so many brown lozenges, bristling with guns.Proud of his country, but fearful of the battles to come, he looked further south still and squinted through his

binoculars towards the brown, gold and even the partly green countryside fortunate to be out of reach of the Boschesguns. Little French villages with cottages, some with smoking chimneys, were surrounded by fields that in turn wereringed by hedgerows. Peasants were seeding here and ploughing there behind their sturdy shire horses. Carts full of hay

wended their way down narrow lanes and herds of cows grazed on what was left of the meadows. Canals and streamscriss-crossed the landscape.

Farther still in the distance was a small factory, making what he knew not, its tall chimney spewing black smoke. Heknew from his maps that, somewhere beyond the horizon, was the Benedictine monastery near Chimay, famed for itsbeer, and a refuge that he hoped one day to visit, away from the insanity of this war.

The earthbound soldiers at the front and the peasants behind both lines could not see, as Bede could from hisvantage point 5000 feet in the air, this disheartening contrast of sanity surrounding madness.

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to attempt to cross this short divide that in normal times a man could scamper across in a few minutes, even with fullkit on. But cross it the warriors of both sides must. He had seen it attempted often enough, and knew well the cost inhuman lives. It would be in the tens of thousands on either side each time an attack was launched. Even so, he knew it

would be done again and again, in the names of King and Kaiser, President and Emperor. The newspapers back homewere calling it a World War; Bede knew different. It was a war fought along a ribbon of land from Belgium toSwitzerland that stretched some six hundred miles and at its widest was a mere ten miles. This was the Western Front.


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Chapter

After what seemed like another ten minutes or so, Bede heard Captain Billys voice urgently trying to get hisattention once more; this time also banging on a stanchion with a metal bar.

Padre, its a FokkerDreidekker, Billys voice rushed back to Bede, carried by the wind. Bede, down there! Billyshouted, pointing down at a forty five-degree angle, and to the north.

I see it, mouthed Bede as he caught sight through his binoculars of a pillar-box red plane with a stack of threewings. He looked at the aeroplane and saw that the topmost wing was emblazoned at its extremities with black Teutoniccrosses outlined in white. It was rising to intercept them.

In his conversations with Billy about this new way of fighting, Bede had learned that this flying machine was thefavored fighter of the aces of theJagdgeschwader2 squadron, the Royal Flying Corps nearest threat, stationed at Cambrai.

With its 160 horsepower BMW engine it could reach 5000 feet in quarter of an hour, almost twice as fast as their RollsRoyce Falcon power plant could carry their Bristol fighter.

Bede was suddenly gripped by fear. The anguishing thought that a fellow Christian was out to murder them occurredto him, and he murmured a prayer. He struggled to shed himself of the paralyzing dread, and instead become focusedon the onset of this peril.

He tried to remember the briefing before they had come aloft. He again became angry with himself for not havingpaid more attention. His frustration and confusion mounted as he stared impotently at the machine gun mounted on aswivel in front of him.

The powerful Lewis gun, with its drum of .303 ammunition at the ready, should have given him great comfort. Herecalled Billy telling him that it was too complicated for him to use, and he felt sick. In an instinct that had been withhim since childhood, he began to recite the Ave Maria.

His prayer was interrupted, banished from his lips as other thoughts impinged. He remembered Billy telling him thaif an enemy single-seater approached, he would maneuver their aeroplane so that it was always alongside the opponent,since the single-seater Dreidekkercould only fire straight ahead. What either of them was to do once alongside wasunclear. Bede began to panic as the red German tri-plane grew larger, gaining rapidly on them, now close enough forhim to see a lone pilot clad all in black.

However, the Bristol in Billys skilled hands was like a circus acrobat, and Bede and Beowulf were treated to avirtuoso series of stomach-churning moves as Billy eventually brought his plane alongside the Hun. Captain Billy alsocould only fire his machine gun straight ahead, and Bede watched in awe as the two pilots began firing pistols at eachother, clearly not aiming for the plane. The German must be brave, thought Bede, since he could not have known thatthe man in the gunners seat was unable to use the Lewis machine gun on its swivel.

As Billy executed another move to avoid becoming a target, he screamed at Bede over his shoulder.Padre! Bede! The rifle! He motioned downwards towards Bedes feet.


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Bede recalled being told about this weapon. He looked down for it and saw that Beowulf had been sick all over hisboots. He felt just awful for having put his best friend through this ordeal. It did occur to him, however, that it wasappropriate they should die together.

He reached under the seat to find the rifle, without success. He frantically kicked his helmet and some ropes andcanisters out of the way. Finally there it was. A Lee Enfield .303, a gun he had gone hunting with once or twice, andknew how to use.

Thank God, he whispered to himself, before pausing as he became more fully aware of the moral ambivalence of

the situation.He heard Billys voice again and twisted round to see him, Out of ammo. Shoot the bastard! Billy shouted,brandishing his useless pistol.

At that moment the German pilot fired again, and hit the fuselage just beneath Billys right arm. By the look onBillys face, Bede knew the bullet had penetrated the flimsy fabric of the biplane and had hit his pilot.

Anger replaced fear now. Bede raised the rifle to his shoulder. He jerked back the bolt of his rifle, then rammed itforwards and heard the shell enter the firing chamber. He aimed and fired.

He must have missed. Billy screamed at him again, For Christs sake shoot, man!This blasphemy brought Bedes thoughts back into focus, but they were still of the moral dilemma, not the mortal

one. Im a priest, he mouthed the words as it became clear to him that he must take a life if his life, Beowulfs andBillys were to be spared.

He steadied himself with one hand on the stanchion that held the upper wing. He pulled himself to a standingposition, well aware of the target he was becoming. Fearful and shaking, he aimed at the Germans head, yanked and

pushed the bolt action and pulled the trigger.The trigger would not budge, and Bede helplessly slumped back into his canvas seat. The German smiled grimly,

aimed his pistol and fired once more.Bede felt the impact of the bullet as it hit the back of his seat. In shock and disbelief he trembled, as if with fever, as

the full realization hit him that, to his horror, he had just tried to murder a man, and the man had reciprocated.For some reason Bede stood up again. He watched as the German once more took aim with his pistol from thirty

feet away; his plane perhaps ten feet lower than Billys and a little behind them. Bede changed his grip on the rifle tothat of the javelin and, feet apart, still holding on like grim death to the stanchion with his left hand, he hurled the gun,barrel first, down toward the Fokker.

Father, forgive me, he muttered as the rifle, thrown more in anger and frustration than expectation, hurtledtowards the tri-plane.

The Fokker Dreidekkerspropellers suddenly shattered in front of his eyes. Shrapnel-like pieces hurtled back towards

the surprised German, who ducked behind the front wall of his cockpit. Bede held his breath as he realized that theHun was done for and he had killed him. God forgive me, this man died at my hands, Bede said to himself.

He then watched as Captain Billy, with his previously-white aviators scarf now blood red and wrapped around hisshoulder and upper arm, raised his arm in a salute to the doomed German. The German returned the salute, and with a

wry smile, chivalrously saluted Bede also. The priest and unwitting warrior, now quaking like a jelly in its mould,returned the salute and tried also to return the smile, although the cold and his frantic frame of mind turned it into moreof a grimace.

He watched the beautiful but now helpless German fighter gracefully spiral downwards, as the gallant pilot foughtthe controls of his plane, with its rows of little iron crosses painted on its side, each one representing a dead allied flyer.Bede shuddered. The blood of another man was on his hands.

Jolly good shot, old man! exulted Captain Billy over his undamaged shoulder, and then he too turned his attentiontowards the ground. As he did so, Bede heard the loud reverberating booms of the German artillery in the distanceopening their ritual, late afternoon offensive. Soon, he knew, the allied guns would reciprocate with steel salvoes of theirown and yet another cyclone of shellfire would ensue.

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We Are Your Ghosts (Anglezarke Trilogy, Book One)