David Holbrook
Page from the manuscript of Flesh wounds
[Ashwell, Hertfordshire?, August 1962]
From MS Add. 9987

Transcript:

6

their lightless bellies just visible in the weakening darkness.

There was nothing one could do, but Paul was relieved: the cloaked hostile darkness had been eroding. Now men scrambled to the .300” Brownings mounted on the turrets and fired at the planes which were now turning in for a second shoot. This time it seemed they would touch the trees, as they came from behind the just-visible tips. Their cannon began to sparkle, and the cracking roar of red tracer flying towards them was deafening: but it all flew high, and sailed away like lines of red happy birds into the sky behind. More and more machine guns threw hoses of orange dots into the sky, excited men opened up with rifles, and a half-inch Browning, the use of which everyone was puzzled about, had its first shoot in Normandy, from a special bracket which Paul had invented for it. It threw an unsteady stream of lights skyward, then jammed.

All the effort and display was a waste. The planes buzzed away to their bases. But the regiment was awake, and flexed: and Paul was grateful for the comparative sanity of conflict, after the dissolving darkness.