Cry Heaven, Cry Hell. Howard Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ fell. Craine was busy learning himself and did not see the event. When he found out that night, he marched over to his tent and clobbered the commander so that he flew across the room and beat him bloody with a table leg he broke off the officer’s table. Unbelievably, they had respect and friendship for each other throughout the war after this.

      They had mastered what they had to do in two weeks, instead of six. By the time July came around they got to prove themselves at Verdun. This battle was a 10 month ordeal with Germany trying to secure the western front and France trying not to let them pass.

      Under the command of Petain, the bodies were scattered on the ground with more density than a typical field of wheat. Movement was not successful or strategically advantageous for either side; in the end 970,000 men lay dead for nothing. To defend the area, the air had to be cleared. Malkia hovered behind her husband like a mother bear and sent three Huns crashing to the ground. Craine found her trapped by three Fokker planes. He had one of them in his sights and blasted him into the Kaiser’s mustache. She shot down the one to the side of her, and he led the one in front of her off and lured him to crash into a tree and explode. As he flew off, he tipped his plane at an angle to say goodbye.

      The next cheery opportunity to demonstrate air prowess came at a river that provided a potential breakthrough point for the British army, the Somme. The motivating factor for this battle was a week long artillery bombardment. The Germans had merely to get out of their dugouts and destroy the oncoming waves of British soldiers. As a result England lost 57,470 men. The artillery had to be stopped. Britain needed help in getting out of the way of the guns to get across the river. Lafayette Escadrille devised a strategy to send two bombers to the river with 10 fighters to each bomber. Craine was in a two seater with a Frenchie, named Rodin La Monde. They were holding their own weight, keeping the fighters off of the bomber, when a wolf pack of German planes came out of the clouds. They were led by their own greed into a trap and knew it. They tried to blast their way out of the deadly circle any way they could. They could not get above the Bosches because every time they tried, a German would go up with them. Craine started to climb then quickly descended and nailed the Boche on the bottom, while Rodin threw a grenade on the one above. The flames broke up the circle, and the others could be taken one at a time.

      On the way back to base, they followed the bomber, and the tail caught fire. Craine guided the plane to the tail gunner’s cockpit, and Rodin stretched and instructed the machine gunner to stretch out and reach out for his arms so that he could be pulled aboard their plane. The gunner did so. When the gunner was pulled to the fighter plane, the helmet came off, revealing the long hair of Malkia. Everyone, but her had left the plane, and it crashed onto the German artillery below. The boys were cheered by the rest of the squad and taken out for beers that night. Malkia was with them and saw a French waitress try to make a pass at Craine. Before she could react, Rodin drew her attention away by playing footsies with her after she sat down at their table. After this, the three of them became inseparable.

      Craine and Malkia built a close knit relationship with each other. In their letters, Malkia always asked about her father only to receive silence and an answer from Tyndall. Her brother wanted to break the silence, but he was warned by his father that he would be similarly expelled from the family and shunned if he tried it. However, the two of them were true to their word and sent drawn plans of technical features of French, American, German, British planes, cannons, rifles, and the newly developed tank home to Da. They smuggled them out of the country in loaves of French bread, in the linings of sexy ladies nightwear, under the labels of French wine bottles, and in the linings of the cheapest paintings they could afford at the Louvre. This caused them problems after the war.

      After the third battle of Ypre, the couple found that Malkia was pregnant. The Americans were about to enter the war and to dissolve Lafayette Escadrille. Saying goodbye to Rodin and the two commanders was hard, and they vowed to keep in touch.

      Their homecoming was one of love and happiness. Moses could not show affection for his intransigent daughter. However, he did allow Mendel to run to her and give her a hug and a kiss, while tears came to his eyes, and he blew his nose into a red and white handkerchief which he had found in a field.

      Moses could not ignore his daughter. He felt too much love for her. Besides, if God was indeed a loving God, He could not expect him to turn on his flesh and blood for marrying outside of the religion. He felt that the rejection was a repugnant and hypocritical act. Therefore, he reconciled with Malkia and Craine. He and Mendel joined Craine and the Mikawbers in building a house on a peripheral corner of Tyndall’s land. However, it was on the point closest to the Ornams’ property, and they remembered the burning of their home. Yet they did not remember that Tyndall wanted to spare human life, despite the lust for retaliation and that they had used fire first and put Craine in the hospital.

      The house was built in 3 weeks. The couple was very happy and close to their families, which were rapidly blending into one family. They held Shabbos at the Dolemans and Sundays at the Mikawbers. On Shabbos, Malkia was tired and wanted to stay at home and sleep. Craine put his ear and face to her belly to feel the baby and to hear its kicking. He kissed his wife goodbye and went to join his family at the Dolemans’

      The Ornams picked this time to be lurking in the bushes with their incendiary equipment. Malkia just finished snuggling up to the warmth of her husband’s earlier presence and dozing off. She smelled kerosene and jumped out of bed suddenly. She saw flames. The door was barred by boulders placed against it. She couldn’t open the window and had to break it to get out through the broken glass.

      Four hours later her family found her lying unconscious and bleeding. Tyndall rushed to get the wagon ready, and they got her to the hospital. She lived, and so did the baby, by a miracle. Craine was in a rage and vowed revenge. His fathers did not talk him out of it. Tyndall reported the attempt to the constable and went personally to the Ornams’ with Malkia, who identified Jesse, having seen him through the window. The constable was a Sinn Feiner and arranged an escape for Jesse from the jail in which he was being held for trial. He also happened to have tickets to New Zealand available for him. Craine found out about it and cornered the officer at his rounds at midnight so that he could not be seen at night. He was smart enough to wear black clothes and did not talk, for fear his voice would be recognized. He did not tell his family about this, and they did not know his whereabouts. He came up behind the constable, put him in a headlock, picked him up, and threw him in a garbage can. He then rolled the garbage can into a field where people walked their dogs and dumped a container of feces he accumulated throughout the day into the can. The exhausted constable fell asleep in the can and awoke next morning to an unusual aroma about himself. He was able to figure out what had happened, but he did not have any proof of who the culprit was although he knew who the family was.

       Chapter 4

      Two months later Malkia had a 26 inch boy of 12 lbs. He was named Patrick Tyndall Moses Mikawber. She had to lock Craine out of their house because he kept lining up behind his son to be breast fed and wouldn’t adhere to the six week period of abstinence post pregnancy. He began to spend time with the aeroplane his father and brothers had built from his directions and shipment of stolen parts. He wanted to fly by the Ornams and strafe their house, but he knew that the constable was still angry about being put in a garbage can full of feces and knew who did it. He observed that he had not forgotten the rockets and machine guns and reassured himself that a day would come.

      The time was coming for Pat’s bris, and he had to go to shul with the Dolemans and his family. Afterwards they all went out to a restaurant, and Mendel suggested that he leave Pat’s foreskin as a tip for the waitress. Malkia kicked him under the table. She had the sweetest grin on her face when she did it. Brython started laughing, and everyone else joined in.

      At one site there was no laughter going on. Jesse Ornam did not like the fact that the house was rebuilt and that Malkia and the baby survived. СКАЧАТЬ