The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall

sticking up out of the school roof.
    "Dornier Do 17," said Chas automatically.
    "Cem, it's a Junkers 88."
    " 'Tisn't."
    " 'Tis. Just look at those tailfins." Cem pulled his aircraft recognition book out of his pocket. But the picture of the Junkers 88 had been worn away by long contact with conkers and toffees.
    "Hey, there's Stan Liddell. Let's ask him."
    "Hello, McGill. After another machine gun?" Chas let his mouth fall open in innocent amazement.
    "What you mean, sir?"
    "Skip it!"
    "What is it, sir?" Chas pointed at the long thin tail.
    "I'll tell you what it is. It's an early start to the Christmas Holiday as far as you're concerned."
    "No school, sir? It hasn't made a very big hole."
    "No, but its petrol tank's burst. The school's full of fumes. One accidental spark and up it goes."
    "Aren't we going to another school, sir?"
    "No room. Chirton Junior copped it last night, and Priory Infants was flattened."
    They hung around. The others joined them, and there was the usual bomb gossip.
    "A baby got born in our shelter last night," said Audrey big-eyed.
    "Congratulations, dear. What you going to call it? I didn't know you was expecting." Audrey blushed to everyone's satisfaction.
    "Me dad's busy," said Cem. "Some of the pensioners are dying in the shelters. Bronchitis, with the damp." Everyone was reluctant to go home. It wasn't that they liked school, but it left a gap in their lives.
    "Let's go and work on the Fortress," suggested Chas hopefully. But everybody just groaned.
    Two mornings later, they were in Nicky's garden; with school gone, what else was there to do?
    "Where's Chas?"
    "He said he wouldn't be long," said Cem. "He's got a new idea for making the Fortress."
    "Bet it's like the old idea—shifting rocks."
    "Here we are then!" said Chas triumphantly, from behind them.
    They turned, and drew back in a shocked huddle. There was an adult with Chas, a very large adult indeed, a man of about forty, strong and potbellied. They all knew him. He looked like a photograph of somebody's grandad taken forty years ago—blond hair clipped in the Prussian style and a big bushy Kitchener moustache. He wore an old-fashioned suit with waistcoat watch-and-chain, polished boots and a stiff collar. The perfect Victorian alderman, prosperous and proud.
    "Bloody fool, Chas," said Clogger. "Now ye've blown it!"
    "No I've not. You know John's simple. He doesn't understand a word you say. He's just like an elephant, only not so bright. But feel his muscles!"
    Clogger stepped forward and felt the bulging muscles. John smiled cherubically and said, "Where you going now?"
    "That's all he ever says—where you going now? Otherwise he just grunts."
    "How'd you get him to follow you?"
    "He always helps the milkman give out his bottles. So I got an old milk bottle and waved it at him, and he came."
    "Won't he be missed?"
    "He lives with his mother, and she works all day."
    "What use will he be, if he can't understand what you say?"
    "He'll imitate what you do—just try him."
    Clogger turned to the biggest rock in the rockery—a rock that had already broken two spades, and defied them for a week. He tugged at it, futilely. John bent down and grunted and the rock tore from its earthly bed.
    "Here, John, here," cried Chas, pointing at the place in the parapet where the rock was meant to go. John put it down exactly.
    "Gosh," said Cem, his face lighting up. "He is as strong as an elephant. I just hope he never runs amuck."
    Mr. McGill was tireder than any man should ever be. The Warden's Post had vanished under a direct hit and the fulltime sector leader and his three phones with it. Mr. McGill was now sector leader, with one phone in the front of a boarded-up windowless house. In between, he kept the gasworks together "with tin cans and bent wire."
    Chas hardly saw his father. The moment Mr. McGill sat down, he simply fell asleep, even wearing his tin helmet. Often Mrs. McGill would hurry to the kitchen to fetch his hot meal, only to return