The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [98]
For a few seconds an unearthly silence and stillness seemed to stop time. Then Diane started to run towards the plane, ignoring the major’s furious command to her to stop.
She had known it would be useless, pointless, but she was a woman after all, and her instincts were those of any woman who had loved a fly boy. It could have been Kit in that plane…it could have been one of a hundred or more men she knew…men who had gone to war and not come back, men who had come back, but so changed that no one could reach them any more, men who had been boys until they had given themselves up to the sacrifice that was war.
The plane had come to rest with its nose crushed up to nothing by its impact with an oak tree. Some of the branches lay on the ground like severed limbs, whilst from those branches that remained attached, leaves fluttered down onto the gunmetal object that was twisted around it and into it; tree and plane clasped together in a deathly embrace.
The passenger side of the plane had been ripped open like a tin can, a huge branch leaning against it so that it was impossible to see inside the plane. The co-pilot had obviously tried to jump out -and failed.
His body was pinned lifelessly to the ground by the torn branch that had speared through him. That he was already dead was obvious, but still Diane would have paused to close the sightless eyes staring up at the sky if it hadn’t been for the low moan she heard from the cockpit.
Behind her she could hear the major making his way through the debris.
‘Get the hell out of here, and that’s an order, soldier,’ he told her angrily as he caught up with her. ‘This thing could go up at any minute.’
Diane knew he was right. She could hear the steady drip of aviation fuel, its smell burning the back of her throat.
‘The pilot’s still alive,’ she told him.
‘Fine – let’s keep you that way as well, shall we? Now get out of here.’
Diane shook her head as the major made to push past her to get to the cockpit. The pilot’s side of the plane lay at an angle, the door pressed against the ground so that the only way into the cabin was through the knot of metal and tree that had been the co-pilot’s side. Anyone could see that it was impossible for a man of his size even to think about trying to squeeze through that tangle of branches and metal to get to the pilot. A man of his size, yes, but a woman of her size might just do it.
‘Soldier, I order you to go back to the Jeep,’ the major told her.
‘There’s a pilot inside there who is still alive,’ Diane told him quietly. ‘You can’t go to him to see how badly he’s injured. I can. That’s another thing you Yanks need to learn about us British females, Major. We may not have the latest fashions or the latest lipstick but we are up to date on the correct procedure for dealing with something like this. That pilot in there is someone’s son, and maybe someone’s husband and father. So far as I’m concerned that’s enough to make me believe that I have a duty to go to him.’
Without waiting to see how he was reacting to what she had said she started to scramble through the twisted wreckage, fighting her way past broken branches that scratched at her skin, and refusing to give in to the fear cramping her stomach as the smell of fuel grew stronger and the foliage closed in behind her. They would be sending help out from Nantwich; the school would have alerted the authorities to the crash in the unlikely event of no one in the town having noticed it.
She closed her eyes as she crawled past the body of the dead airman. The low moans were louder now. She held her breath as she managed to squeeze through the narrow gap between one of the branches of the tree and the side of the plane. She could see the pilot as he lay hunched over the controls, his face turned towards her. Her heart twisted inside her chest, as even in the shadows cast by the tree she recognised that it was the young pilot who had confided in her about his homesickness