Made in Heaven| Terry Martin
It wasn’t the splutter of engines that made Private Veilleux look up, it was the rattle of musket balls against metal. No more than thirty feet above him a young mechanic in a makeshift harness hung precariously from the side of what appeared to be a standard dirigible. Debris, of what must once have been wings, fluttering lifelessly like forgotten washing, said otherwise. It was Veilleux’s first glimpse of the enemy. Stencilled letters along the unnamed craft’s keel proclaimed it had been launched in November 2013, just six months earlier, yet it had seen better days.
At least the kid hadn’t suffered an eight-hour tramp through the ploughed-up trenches to the front line with the prospect of a midday bayonet charge. Looking younger than Veilleux’s eighteen, he frantically fiddled within the engine housing with a spanner and screwdriver, ducking instinctively every so often as bullets ricocheted off the iron surface.
An officer shouted to stop firing, to save ammunition, but the new recruits were oblivious to the command, manically ramming the Minié balls into their muskets and hurriedly taking aim. A cloud of strong smelling cordite, that incongruously reminded Veilleux of Christmas crackers, began to deploy itself along the bottom of the trench.
A whoop of success, followed almost instantly by silence, made Veilleux look up again. A lucky shot had smashed though the boy’s skull spilling its contents onto the fields below as his body swung upside down like a damaged pendulum; a grotesque trophy of marksmanship. A high-pitched wail of remorse, cutting to the heart of everyone who heard, echoed across the front from within the gondola. Veilleux could make out hands pressed against one of the airship’s observation windows in the base of the car, and the face of a distraught young woman, before the damaged craft continued its dying descent deeper into his own lines.
He hadn’t seen a violent death before. The kid had been so young. Two soldiers vomited nearby, their spew soon lost, both physically and odorously, into the calf-deep mud of the forward trench. No boards had been laid here, avoiding the chance of revealing troop movement with the clomp of hobnail boots. No simple comforts for the common soldier. Veilleux couldn’t remove the image of the girl’s stricken face or the gruesome memory of her compatriot. What was a girl doing in the middle of a battlefield anyway?
“Settle down,” were the quiet words Sergeant Proulx used as he moved along the trench between the huddles of les soldats verges. He was medalled; had been their tough instructor during their brief four-week training period. “When the barrage finishes we’ll be going over the top,” he repeated as he passed Veilleux. As if on cue the dreaded whistle of a shell followed by a blast some two hundred yards forward of their position rippled the ground beneath their feet. Dirt and stones trickled down the sides of the dugout. Almost immediately another followed. This time the sergeant shouted “Settle down, boys. Get some rest. Vive la France!”
“Get some rest?” Bernard said next to Veilleux, as he nonchalantly rolled a reefer. “With that going on?” He spread some gum on the outer leaf from his pouch and finished the rollup with a flourish of nimble fingers. He offered the thin brown cigarro to his friend. “It’ll take the edge off.” Veilleux hesitated before taking it.
“Ha!” Veilleux huffed. “Like you’re gonna feel a bullet in the head.” He wondered if the lad had felt anything before his life had been extinguished.
“Not that!” Bernard’s irritation held a hint of fear. “It’ll make it easier to obey the command,” he insisted.
“To die.”
“They reckon the English are crap shots.”
“They reckon this. They reckon that. Who the fuck are they?”
Bernard didn’t answer but finished rolling his own reefer, flicked a match into flame and offered Veilleux a light. Their eyes locked together as they shared the flame and drew in deeply of the drug.
They’d joined the army together - La Résistance de l'Air so they’d thought - with dreams of emulating the great Dr D’arc whose inventions had inspired the revolution to finally free France from centuries of English rule. Their enthusiasm had been further whipped up by the taking of Paris, but Dr D’arc had either been killed or captured and the front had stuck on the boarders of Normandie. It seemed likely the English would retake their European capital. Bernard looked away first as he blew his drag into the cold air. Veilleux watched the cloud dissipate before he let out his own first lungful which caught in his throat. Bernard whacked his back a few times as Veilleux ’s coughing fit looked set to bring up the mutton soup they’d drunk from their helmets a half hour earlier.
“Jesus, Veilleux ! You’re gonna die before the English get a chance to kill you.”
“Thanks, Bernard,” Veilleux managed to say between rasps. “What the fuck’s in this?” He was feeling lightheaded already.
“Just the usual. Only it’s grade A.”
“What!”
Bernard shrugged. “Can’t take the money with us when our time comes.”
Veilleux stared at the reefer in his own hands as if it were a deadly snake, but Bernard hid his behind his back as Proulx re-appeared. Their sergeant took the ciggaro from Veilleux ’s frozen fingers, surprising them both by taking a deep lungful. He looked from one to the other as he let the smoke drift out slowly from his nostrils before handing the reefer back to Veilleux .
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said softly as he walked away. About five steps later he stopped and turned with raised eyebrows. “Good stuff!”
Another five steps and Veilleux ’s world erupted.
It was likely tunnelling and mass explosives. At least that’s what Veilleux surmised later. When he came round he was laying on his back looking up at a grey sky. It was quiet and peaceful until a high-pitched singing began in his ears. He put his hands - at least they were still intact - over them to block out the sound. His helmet was gone. It took a moment to realise the noise was from within and drowning out any other sounds because when he rolled his head sideways he could see shells exploding in the distance and feel the vibrations but not hear their roar of death.
When he looked in the other direction a lone girl of about his age stood at the bottom of a gigantic crater beside a dirigible – the dirigible –staring at him with glazed eyes. The craft must have come down nearer than he’d expected or perhaps he’d staggered away from the underground mine before passing out. It seemed unlikely he’d been thrown this far from the detonation and still survived. The ringing in his ears slowly subsided and the sounds of war began. He needed to get to cover. As he slid sideways down to where the girl stood he noted that, bar a few minor cuts and bruises, he was otherwise unharmed. For a split second he wondered how Bernard had fared.
He was about to stand when the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressed against his forehead. He supressed a belch of fear demanding release, but a second pushed out the first. “Please…” His voice sounded as pathetic as he felt.
“I’m not the enemy.” Could he believe that? “Are you a mechanic?” Her accent was less the slow drawl of Angleterre than the rapid fire of Lorraine province, meaning nothing in a war that pitched father against son, brother against brother. As he looked up into her face he felt a kind of inevitability in her presence, not sexual, more spiritual. He was smitten.
“I’ve a degree in aeronautical engineering,” he stammered. The polished metal of the engine aroused his curiosity. It was like nothing he’d seen before.
She signalled for him to go over to the dirigible as if she’d been expecting someone with his knowledge to appear.
“Can you fix that?”
It looked as if a stray bullet had entered through a weak spot in the engine housing and smashed through a gas pipe, but the engine itself appeared undamaged. “If I had the tools and the parts.” If she were the enemy he’d be a traitor to the cause.
She pointed to a wooden trunk that had strewn spares into a muddy puddle on impact.
“Everything should be there.”
Veilleux was feeling less threatened with each sentence and, as he studied the girl, felt his attraction grow. Coal dust spotted a pale complexion. A dirty brown rag kept sweat from her eyes and her short black hair behind her ears. Her tan leather flight jacket was a size too big and as grubby as her khaki battle pants tucked into Germanic-style calf length boots.
“I’m Pascal,” he said, as he rummaged through what remained of the contents in the trunk before glancing across the murky water where a small piece of piping stuck out like a periscope.
“Are you from the trench that shot Daniel?”
“I saw it happen. I wasn’t firing.”
“He was only seventeen. He was my brother.” The pistol came up again in retribution, but dropped almost as quickly as if she’d remembered something. “Father…” she whispered.
She disappeared through a doorway in the bullet-dented gondola, flaking camouflage paint exposing bright steel. The car appeared otherwise intact, so the dirigible had come to rest fairly gently. Veilleux promptly looked around for a weapon in case she wasn’t what she claimed. As he did so a badly and hurriedly painted laurel branch on the keel stopped him in his tracks. It was the sign of the resistance. His unit had shot one of their own. Artillery shells began to rain down nearby as if they had become a target. He began removing the damaged pipe in earnest.
Ten minutes later he stuck his head through the doorway and called out, “The pipe is fixed. We need to fire up the engine.”
“Come here.” Her voice was close but it was dim inside the craft. The faint chug of another engine came to him as he passed within.
She’d spoken from the front of the gondola, through what appeared to be a store compartment about twenty feet long that led to the bridge. She was bending over a pile of rags on the floor when he entered but as he moved closer some of the rags rose and lifted a blunderbuss in his direction.
“It’s fine father,” she told, what Veilleux now realised was, a badly wounded man, “We made it, just…”
“And… And Daniel?” the man asked.
She didn’t answer but her look of accusation at Veilleux brought up the evil weapon in the man’s hand again.
“No, father,” she assured him. “This man is on our side. He’s helping us.”
Veilleux had moved around so he could see the man’s face. He gasped. Even with a deep gash across his forehead, crusting blood around his ear, and almost as much coal dust on his face as his daughter, he recognised the man he had always wanted to emulate.
“Doctor D’arc!”
The doctor’s fading eyes looked Veilleux up and down, gave his hands a second look. “He’s a mechanic, Joan… Tell him,” he ordered.
She looked from her father to Veilleux, then back to her father. Her words were for Veilleux. “This dirigible holds a weapon that will rid us of the English for ever. They were making my father develop it. We need to get it to safety before it is destroyed or captured.”
“She knows how to work it,” Dr D’arc told him. “She’ll tell you… But more than that.” He coughed blood, adding to that already on his cheeks. “God is truly with us this time.”
Veilleux didn’t doubt it as he looked across at Joan. After almost six-hundred years the Maid of Orleans had returned. And this time she would triumph.
At least the kid hadn’t suffered an eight-hour tramp through the ploughed-up trenches to the front line with the prospect of a midday bayonet charge. Looking younger than Veilleux’s eighteen, he frantically fiddled within the engine housing with a spanner and screwdriver, ducking instinctively every so often as bullets ricocheted off the iron surface.
An officer shouted to stop firing, to save ammunition, but the new recruits were oblivious to the command, manically ramming the Minié balls into their muskets and hurriedly taking aim. A cloud of strong smelling cordite, that incongruously reminded Veilleux of Christmas crackers, began to deploy itself along the bottom of the trench.
A whoop of success, followed almost instantly by silence, made Veilleux look up again. A lucky shot had smashed though the boy’s skull spilling its contents onto the fields below as his body swung upside down like a damaged pendulum; a grotesque trophy of marksmanship. A high-pitched wail of remorse, cutting to the heart of everyone who heard, echoed across the front from within the gondola. Veilleux could make out hands pressed against one of the airship’s observation windows in the base of the car, and the face of a distraught young woman, before the damaged craft continued its dying descent deeper into his own lines.
He hadn’t seen a violent death before. The kid had been so young. Two soldiers vomited nearby, their spew soon lost, both physically and odorously, into the calf-deep mud of the forward trench. No boards had been laid here, avoiding the chance of revealing troop movement with the clomp of hobnail boots. No simple comforts for the common soldier. Veilleux couldn’t remove the image of the girl’s stricken face or the gruesome memory of her compatriot. What was a girl doing in the middle of a battlefield anyway?
“Settle down,” were the quiet words Sergeant Proulx used as he moved along the trench between the huddles of les soldats verges. He was medalled; had been their tough instructor during their brief four-week training period. “When the barrage finishes we’ll be going over the top,” he repeated as he passed Veilleux. As if on cue the dreaded whistle of a shell followed by a blast some two hundred yards forward of their position rippled the ground beneath their feet. Dirt and stones trickled down the sides of the dugout. Almost immediately another followed. This time the sergeant shouted “Settle down, boys. Get some rest. Vive la France!”
“Get some rest?” Bernard said next to Veilleux, as he nonchalantly rolled a reefer. “With that going on?” He spread some gum on the outer leaf from his pouch and finished the rollup with a flourish of nimble fingers. He offered the thin brown cigarro to his friend. “It’ll take the edge off.” Veilleux hesitated before taking it.
“Ha!” Veilleux huffed. “Like you’re gonna feel a bullet in the head.” He wondered if the lad had felt anything before his life had been extinguished.
“Not that!” Bernard’s irritation held a hint of fear. “It’ll make it easier to obey the command,” he insisted.
“To die.”
“They reckon the English are crap shots.”
“They reckon this. They reckon that. Who the fuck are they?”
Bernard didn’t answer but finished rolling his own reefer, flicked a match into flame and offered Veilleux a light. Their eyes locked together as they shared the flame and drew in deeply of the drug.
They’d joined the army together - La Résistance de l'Air so they’d thought - with dreams of emulating the great Dr D’arc whose inventions had inspired the revolution to finally free France from centuries of English rule. Their enthusiasm had been further whipped up by the taking of Paris, but Dr D’arc had either been killed or captured and the front had stuck on the boarders of Normandie. It seemed likely the English would retake their European capital. Bernard looked away first as he blew his drag into the cold air. Veilleux watched the cloud dissipate before he let out his own first lungful which caught in his throat. Bernard whacked his back a few times as Veilleux ’s coughing fit looked set to bring up the mutton soup they’d drunk from their helmets a half hour earlier.
“Jesus, Veilleux ! You’re gonna die before the English get a chance to kill you.”
“Thanks, Bernard,” Veilleux managed to say between rasps. “What the fuck’s in this?” He was feeling lightheaded already.
“Just the usual. Only it’s grade A.”
“What!”
Bernard shrugged. “Can’t take the money with us when our time comes.”
Veilleux stared at the reefer in his own hands as if it were a deadly snake, but Bernard hid his behind his back as Proulx re-appeared. Their sergeant took the ciggaro from Veilleux ’s frozen fingers, surprising them both by taking a deep lungful. He looked from one to the other as he let the smoke drift out slowly from his nostrils before handing the reefer back to Veilleux .
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said softly as he walked away. About five steps later he stopped and turned with raised eyebrows. “Good stuff!”
Another five steps and Veilleux ’s world erupted.
It was likely tunnelling and mass explosives. At least that’s what Veilleux surmised later. When he came round he was laying on his back looking up at a grey sky. It was quiet and peaceful until a high-pitched singing began in his ears. He put his hands - at least they were still intact - over them to block out the sound. His helmet was gone. It took a moment to realise the noise was from within and drowning out any other sounds because when he rolled his head sideways he could see shells exploding in the distance and feel the vibrations but not hear their roar of death.
When he looked in the other direction a lone girl of about his age stood at the bottom of a gigantic crater beside a dirigible – the dirigible –staring at him with glazed eyes. The craft must have come down nearer than he’d expected or perhaps he’d staggered away from the underground mine before passing out. It seemed unlikely he’d been thrown this far from the detonation and still survived. The ringing in his ears slowly subsided and the sounds of war began. He needed to get to cover. As he slid sideways down to where the girl stood he noted that, bar a few minor cuts and bruises, he was otherwise unharmed. For a split second he wondered how Bernard had fared.
He was about to stand when the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressed against his forehead. He supressed a belch of fear demanding release, but a second pushed out the first. “Please…” His voice sounded as pathetic as he felt.
“I’m not the enemy.” Could he believe that? “Are you a mechanic?” Her accent was less the slow drawl of Angleterre than the rapid fire of Lorraine province, meaning nothing in a war that pitched father against son, brother against brother. As he looked up into her face he felt a kind of inevitability in her presence, not sexual, more spiritual. He was smitten.
“I’ve a degree in aeronautical engineering,” he stammered. The polished metal of the engine aroused his curiosity. It was like nothing he’d seen before.
She signalled for him to go over to the dirigible as if she’d been expecting someone with his knowledge to appear.
“Can you fix that?”
It looked as if a stray bullet had entered through a weak spot in the engine housing and smashed through a gas pipe, but the engine itself appeared undamaged. “If I had the tools and the parts.” If she were the enemy he’d be a traitor to the cause.
She pointed to a wooden trunk that had strewn spares into a muddy puddle on impact.
“Everything should be there.”
Veilleux was feeling less threatened with each sentence and, as he studied the girl, felt his attraction grow. Coal dust spotted a pale complexion. A dirty brown rag kept sweat from her eyes and her short black hair behind her ears. Her tan leather flight jacket was a size too big and as grubby as her khaki battle pants tucked into Germanic-style calf length boots.
“I’m Pascal,” he said, as he rummaged through what remained of the contents in the trunk before glancing across the murky water where a small piece of piping stuck out like a periscope.
“Are you from the trench that shot Daniel?”
“I saw it happen. I wasn’t firing.”
“He was only seventeen. He was my brother.” The pistol came up again in retribution, but dropped almost as quickly as if she’d remembered something. “Father…” she whispered.
She disappeared through a doorway in the bullet-dented gondola, flaking camouflage paint exposing bright steel. The car appeared otherwise intact, so the dirigible had come to rest fairly gently. Veilleux promptly looked around for a weapon in case she wasn’t what she claimed. As he did so a badly and hurriedly painted laurel branch on the keel stopped him in his tracks. It was the sign of the resistance. His unit had shot one of their own. Artillery shells began to rain down nearby as if they had become a target. He began removing the damaged pipe in earnest.
Ten minutes later he stuck his head through the doorway and called out, “The pipe is fixed. We need to fire up the engine.”
“Come here.” Her voice was close but it was dim inside the craft. The faint chug of another engine came to him as he passed within.
She’d spoken from the front of the gondola, through what appeared to be a store compartment about twenty feet long that led to the bridge. She was bending over a pile of rags on the floor when he entered but as he moved closer some of the rags rose and lifted a blunderbuss in his direction.
“It’s fine father,” she told, what Veilleux now realised was, a badly wounded man, “We made it, just…”
“And… And Daniel?” the man asked.
She didn’t answer but her look of accusation at Veilleux brought up the evil weapon in the man’s hand again.
“No, father,” she assured him. “This man is on our side. He’s helping us.”
Veilleux had moved around so he could see the man’s face. He gasped. Even with a deep gash across his forehead, crusting blood around his ear, and almost as much coal dust on his face as his daughter, he recognised the man he had always wanted to emulate.
“Doctor D’arc!”
The doctor’s fading eyes looked Veilleux up and down, gave his hands a second look. “He’s a mechanic, Joan… Tell him,” he ordered.
She looked from her father to Veilleux, then back to her father. Her words were for Veilleux. “This dirigible holds a weapon that will rid us of the English for ever. They were making my father develop it. We need to get it to safety before it is destroyed or captured.”
“She knows how to work it,” Dr D’arc told him. “She’ll tell you… But more than that.” He coughed blood, adding to that already on his cheeks. “God is truly with us this time.”
Veilleux didn’t doubt it as he looked across at Joan. After almost six-hundred years the Maid of Orleans had returned. And this time she would triumph.