GOOD HUNTING

Hokitika Guardian, 7 December 1940, Page 7

GOOD HUNTING

TO THE TIRELESS BOYS OF THE A. A. GUNS

(John Macadam of London, in a Sydney, paper).

From the brow of the hill you look across the still valley of the city ot London to Crystal Palace. Smoko units from a chimney stack here and there. By your side, a couple ol wood pigeons preen themselves in a tree. Behind you, like iron fingers raised in a queer benediction on the millions below, just four anti-aircraft guns. In the centre of them is the iJimmind pit. A young lieutenant makes his rounds, checking up on his • instruments. A sergeant •supervises a squad on the predictor . . . A remarkable thing, this predictor. It co-ordinates the work of all the other sections in the command. Over there, a few yards away, is tho h eight-fin der—a great barrel of a thing like an outsize telescope with the spy-hole in the middle. Back here, 100 yards away, a boy sits in a nest of swivelling horns—the listener. The findings of all these go into the dials of tho predictor. This boxed meal brain adds them all together, pauses a second to work out the allowance for wind, speed of the target—Heinkels are just Targets to Ack Ack—and tolls you to within a few yards just what part of the atmosphere to plan your shells in. “•Does everything Hut talk, 'that thing, says the sergeant. As they work a spotter stands on a platform, his eyes ranging the clouds incessantly. Every now and then he stops, his ears straining. As he does, the whistling and talking and cranking of handles stons. Hi of them scan the sky, tense. T)’"d ••'Teuco. The spotter straightens ai irl walks on. “One of nnrs.” he savs, and the work and the talk and the whistling go on.

From a telenhone post helow comes a shout: “Hostile aircraft coming in east.” and the .tension is on again. Awnv to the north, a sonadron flashes out from behind a cloud, and every man in the battery st"’vH to. TTurriooirs.” savs the snot ter. “Hurricanes!” veils the sergeant, twirling madly at the knobs and diala

on the predictor. “Oh for the sight of a luvaly Hurricane !” He explains that he and his men have just come here, exchanging with another battery, for a rest from a post near the coast . . . “And We had to do all our own fighting, / and no luvaly Hurricanes to help us. Come on, boys, get your sights on the beauties!” A lone raider flashes across a piece of clear late afternoon sky. Someone to the north engages him. We sw him no more. “Got away, maybe,” says the sergeant sadly, and looks eagerly up for another, one, a bit nearer. Night falls. The trees on.the brow of the hill stand out black against the sky. The city is a faint dark smudge, awy below. In the pit, muffled j figures, low talk, and the glow of cigarettes. I Suddenly the night wakes up to i the glare of a distant searchlight and the sound of gunfire all round us. Shell-hursts wink in the sky a second and disappear, Above all the throb of plane engines. j “Here they come,” mutters tho ' sergeant. He takes a reading from } the predictor. No. 1 gun is poised ready, si dited and angled. “Fuse 14,” lie yells, (that is. tTiev are firing at a target 14,000 feet • away) . . . . “Fire!” ( A 30-foot mass of flames leaps from the muzzle of No. 1 gun. A thunderbolt of furious noise beats your ears fiat into your temples, and a blast of air hits you like a warm wot towel. Sergeant Harry takes a quizzical look at us. “Not loud enough,” ho says, and bellows fuse numbers at the gun pits. All four stand to. Firel And for a dreadful age the whole surrounding world seems to he split in the brilliant, four-point hell of noise. The glare prints detailed pictures of tho mufled, set-faced soldiers on your mind so clearly that you carry it there for minutes afterwards. Your head .is a dead black singing sounding-hoard.

“Listen,” says Sergeant Harry, and gradually out, of the awful welter of sound you hear, away up, a droning de-crescendo. “Got f im” shouts somebody. 'Sergeant Harry lights another cigarette and says, “Aw, like as not it was just a fuse-cap coming down. Stand down!” They stand down, aU ease, Minutes pass “looks clear,” ho says again. C’mon. Kip, all of you.”

Down they tumble, into a sunken hit, and in ' .a moment or two you hear the sounds of deep sleep. Five minutes pass. “Stand to,” veils the sergeant, and they tumble out 'again tp their, posts. More sighting , and . listening, more fuse mim-' hers, again the shattering burst of noise from the> guns and then-, “Stand down.” A pause as another battery arid another take up the chase of the raiders. Then, again, “C’mon. Kip, all of you,” says the sergeant, and down they’.tumble again. Five minutes’ nuonv sleep, and they’re at it again. Another five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes’ peaceful sleep punctuating ■each time the . hideous cacophony of the guns. Youngsters, mostly. “We’re Field Artillery. Don’t forget that,” says young Betts proudly. “Territorial.” Sometimes these incredible youngsters have a half-hour to stand by. “Let’s have an air raid,” says somebody in the dark. Away up at the end of the hut, or in a far corner of the pit, someone will purse his lips and do the umph-umph of a .Heinkel. Someone else will make the sweet drone of a Hurricane in pursuit.

A- third will cut into the weird synmhony with the cr-ump, er-nmp of. bombs. Yourig Betts is master of the four-five. It- is all unrehearsed. -They' nick- un, their own cues from the noises which the others extemporise. And it nlwa-vs ■ finishes with the whitm of a fa 11 ins Heinkel . So it goes on all nisht lons «ml night after' nislit. Thev haven’t known proper sleep for the best part of a veer. All thev know is the comradeship of that year and the perpetual thrills of the ehnsp. Good hunting. Aok Aek.