(Fifties, he thought, way off in the hills. Lifelong ambition of every red-blooded boy: get a machine gun and make like a garden hose with it.)
Wham-wham-wham-wham!
(Oerlikons! Where’d they dredge those things up from? Is this an ack-ack station or is it a museum?)
‘Hip! Hip Barrows!’
(For Pete’s sake, when is that corporal going to learn to say ‘ Lieutenant’? Not that I give a whistle, one way or another, but one of these days he’ll do it in front of some teen-age Air Force Colonel and get us both bounced for it.)
Wham! Wham! ‘Oh… Hip!’
He sat up palming his eyes, and the guns were knuckles on a door and the corporal was Janie, calling somewhere, and the anti-aircraft base shattered and misted and blew away to the dream factory.
‘Hip!’
‘Come on,’ he croaked. ‘Come on in.’
‘It’s locked.’