Quill Pen Scratchings

Chapter 15

They were awake late into the night and slept late into the morning.  Edmund had gotten up a couple of times to put more wood on the fire.  Clemence had watched him the first time, looking at the firelight dance across his body, but the second time she was asleep, and did not wake when Edmund got out of bed.  That time, he had to go into Clemence’s room to get more wood, and he was completely chilled by the time he crawled back under the covers, but she only stirred slightly as he slid underneath the sheets and back up against her warm body.  He rose up on one elbow, and looked down at her face.  She looked more at peace than he had ever seen her, and he imagined that she had a slight smile on her face. 

When they finally awoke, the sun had been long in the sky, and Edmund lay on his back, and Clemence lay against him, her legs intertwined with his, and her head on his shoulder.  She was running her fingers lightly across his chest.  She yawned and looked out of the window, through the gap between the shade and the frame.  “We are being so lazy.”

She was silent again, and Edmund was staring hard at the ceiling.  Clemence watched his face.  “What are you thinking about?”

Edmund sighed.  “I have to write to my mother.  And I really don’t know what to say.”

Clemence raised up on her elbow and kissed him on the chin.  “I will help you.”  She kissed him again and said, “In fact,” she slipped out from under the covers and walked across the room.  Edmund watched her open the door and disappear for a moment.  She came back in wearing a robe and carrying a large book, some sheets of stationery and a pen.  She shut the door quickly.

Clemence sat at the foot of the bed and leaned up against the bed frame.  She put the book in her lap like a desk and put the paper on the book and uncapped the fountain pen.  She looked up at him.  “How do you want to start?  ‘Dear Mother?’” she asked and smiled at him. 

Clemence helped him write to his mother and to Lloyd, and they had to address both letters to Lloyd, because Edmund did not know his aunt’s address in Baltimore.  To his mother he said how sad he was, or at least tried to express it, and how much he loved her, and how much he had loved his father.  He also said that he would be home as soon as he was able to come.  He watched Clemence closely as he said this, but he could not see any reaction from her as she wrote it down. 

To Lloyd, Edmund said how thankful he was that he was there to help his mother when Edmund couldn’t be.  They mailed these letters at the post office in town, along with several crates to be sent by train to Clemence’s mother.

They spent the next two days packing up the lives of Clemence and Madam Morel into crates and boxes.  The morning of the second day, the day Edmund had to leave, they packed up Clemence’s bedroom.  They were still in their nightshirts, having started as soon as they got up, before eating breakfast.  Edmund mostly sat on Clemence’s bed and watched as she went through a lifetime of small remembrances, and he felt himself grow strangely nostalgic when Clemence described to him the history of some small object that he had never seen before.  They had two boxes in the room, one to be stored in the basement and one smaller one to send ahead to Marseille.  Clemence sorted her belongings between each box.  As she was emptying out her dresser, Edmund heard her breathe in deeply and quickly as she opened a bottom drawer.  She brought the whole drawer over and laid it on the bed, as she had done the others, and looked at Edmund.  It was filled with her husband’s clothes.  She looked up at Edmund for a moment and paused. 

“I meant to get rid of these things a long time ago.”

Edmund nodded.

“I guess I should bring them, and my brother’s things, over to the church.”

“If you are ready to do that.  I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who could use them. But if you are not ready to part with them, that is okay too.”

“No, it is just silly to keep them any longer.”  She picked up a shirt out of the drawer.  “After he was gone, I used to take these out and smell them.  Sometimes I would get a rush of memory from it, and then I would cry and put them away again.”  She raised the shirt to her face and breathed in and looked down again and was silent.  Then she looked up at Edmund and quickly put the shirt down.  “I’m sorry to keep talking about him.”

“Don’t be.  It’s okay.”

Clemence walked over and picked up the picture of her husband from the dressing table.  She held it against her, just below her navel, and looked down at it, cradling it in her hands.  She stood over the two boxes and hesitated for a moment and then began to put it into the box to be stored in the basement.  Edmund reached out and gently stopped her hand.  “You don’t want to lose that.  Send it ahead to Marseille.”

Clemence looked at Edmund and said,  “But I need to let go.”  Edmund had never heard anyone sound more defeated and helpless.

“Yes.  But you don’t need to forget.”  He gently took the picture out of her hand, and she put both arms around him.  Still holding each other, he put the picture carefully into the box for Marseille.

They finished quickly in her bedroom, leaving her husband’s clothes on the bed.  Clemence said that she would add her brother’s clothes to the pile and take them to the church.  She did know of a couple of things of her brother’s that she would like Edmund to have, some of his nicer clothes, and he agreed to take whatever she wanted to give to him. 

Clemence went down to the kitchen in her nightshirt and brought up the clothes Edmund had come in.  She had washed them the previous day and hung them in a makeshift clothesline that Edmund had put up in front of the stove.  They dressed, and then Clemence cleaned out her brother’s dresser and wardrobe and after setting aside some things for Edmund, added the clothes to her husband’s and tied them into two bundles in a sheet.  She wrote ‘for charity’ on a small card.  She asked Edmund to take the clothes to Saint-Etienne church while she made an early lunch for them. 

Edmund put on his coat and slung the two bundles over his shoulder and walked out of the front of the café.  He had seen the church a few times in passing and knew where it was.  He walked by several people on the streets as he went, mostly older couples and women with young children.  There were two men about his own age, but one was on crutches with only one leg, and the other was missing an arm.  They looked thin and gaunt and used up.  Edmund could see the tower of the grey and brown stone cathedral ahead, and he walked past the ornate arched doorway that led into the sanctuary and around the side of the building, he walked toward the back, and left the clothes, and the small card Clemence had written on the porch of the vestry.  Edmund walked back around to the main entrance and climbed the steps and looked inside.  The sanctuary was lit by sunlight streaming in through ornate stained-glass windows, and the smell of candles filled his nose.  An elderly woman sat in a pew toward the front of the sanctuary with a black scarf over her head.  Edmund took a few steps in and sat down in the back, on the opposite side of the aisle from the woman.  The wood of the pew creaked loudly as Edmund sat, but the woman didn’t turn. 

He looked around for a moment, at the carved stonework and the streaming windows, and at the crucifix at the front of the room.  He put his arms over the pew in front of him and leaned forward.  He clasped his hands together and bowed his head.  He prayed for his father and then prayed that God would comfort his mother and keep her safe.  He prayed for Clemence, to ease her pain and for her safety, and that God would bless her and himself, and that he hoped that God would help them find a way to stay together.  He prayed for Tino and for Knox, and then he prayed for Penny’s soul.  Finally, he asked forgiveness for killing the German soldier and prayed for that man’s soul also.

Edmund arose from his seat, and stood in the aisle for a moment, and the bowed his head again, and thanked God for giving him Clemence, for whatever time they might have together.  Then he turned and walked out of the church.  It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the daylight.  The day was cold and the sky was bright blue.  He walked back to the café. 

When he got there, he went back through the front door and then locked it behind him.  There was a sign that said ‘closed’ in the front window, but people still walked up and tried the door and then stepped back and stared at the building as if they couldn’t believe it.  The smell of the lunch Clemence was preparing warmed him and he walked into the kitchen and up behind Clemence as she stood at the stove.  He put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.   She turned her head and quickly kissed him on the cheek and continued stirring the chicken gravy that was finishing in a frying pan.  She had put a tablecloth and plates and silver on the small table in the kitchen and had placed a bottle of wine on it with two glasses.  It was one of the few bottles that had remained in the cellar.  The day before, they had dumped out two more bottles of older vintages that had turned sour.

Edmund opened the bottle and poured two glasses and sat down at the table as Clemence came over and dished up the chicken, and some potatoes and beans, and then added gravy.  As they ate, they talked easily, but for Edmund, the meal had a sense of finality to it.  He knew that he would only be coming back here one more time, and then to put Clemence on a train and send her away from him. 

When they were done, Edmund helped Clemence clean the dishes.  As he did so, he was trying to fully open all his senses and take everything in so that he could capture this moment and keep it with him.  Finally, the washing done, and the sky darkening with an impending mid-winter storm, they decided that he must go to make it back to Behonne before the weather set in.  While he had walked to the church, she had wrapped up the clothes that she wanted to give him in butcher paper and tied them with twineto fit easily under his arm. 

They walked to the door, and she asked him to wait for a moment, and she went over to the preparation table and opened a drawer and pulled out a smaller package also wrapped in the same paper.  She held it out to Edmund.  “This is for you, but don’t open it until you get back to the camp.  And be careful, it has glass in it.”  Edmund looked at the package and written on it was To Edmund my love.  Edmund looked back at her, and tears were forming along the bottom rim of her eyes. 

“Thank you,” he said, and he held his coat open where he had an oversized pocket.  He put the package in there. 

“Oh, and one more thing,” Clemence said, and she reached up with both hands and pulled a silver necklace out from under her blouse.  There was a slender key on the end of it.  She took it off over her head and lifted his hand and placed the key in it.  It was warm from being up against her body.  “It is a key to this house,” she looked up and around the door frame of the side door that Edmund had come in that first day where they were now standing.  “To this door.”  She looked back at him.  “My father had four made and always made sure we each had one with us.  He always said that having that key meant you always had a place to come home to.  I’ve always carried mine,” and she reached down into a pocket of her apron and pulled out a key identical to the one Edmund now held.  “My brother had his with him when he was killed.  My mother took hers with her, and this one,” she said, touching the one in Edmund’s hand, “was my father’s.  My mother has worn it on that chain since he died but left it with me when she went away.  And now it’s yours.”

Edmund looked down at the key, and then up at Clemence.  “Are you sure your mother…”

Clemence smiled back at him.  “Why do you think she left it?”

Edmund laughed slightly and bowed his head as Clemence put it on him, slipping it inside of his shirt.  She put her hand up to feel it against his chest. Then she stepped around him and opened the door.  Edmund took two steps toward it and stopped in the doorframe.  The bitter cold swept around his legs.

“I don’t know when I can come back.”

Clemence stood close to him, taking hold of the lapels of his coat.  “I know,” she said quietly.

“But I will be back as soon as I can.”

“I know that too.”

“I love you,” Edmund said quietly, and leaned forward and kissed her.  Clemence kept her eyes open as she kissed him back, and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.  Edmund could taste the salt on his lips.  He held her hand as he backed down the step and then let go as he walked out into the street.  When he reached the first corner, he looked back and she was standing in the doorway and raised her hand in a wave.  He waved back and then turned the corner and he could no longer see her.

Edmund walked as quickly as he could because of the cold, and because the winter storm that had blown in looked pregnant with snow.  The temperature had dropped several degrees, and the wind had picked up from when he had gone to the church earlier in the day.  He walked quickly to keep warm, and soon he was out of the town and out among the fields and the woods.  Despite the cold he was enjoying the walk.  The threatening sky overhead filled him with the excitement of impending danger and unpredictability.  He could feel the chain sliding back and forth against his chest as he walked, and he had to keep shifting the bundle of clothes from hand to hand so he could put the free one in a coat pocket to keep it warm.  He thought he knew what was in the package inside of his coat, but he still wanted to see it, but he promised her that he wouldn’t open it until he got back to Behonne.  He didn’t really want to open it in front of Tino though.  He decided that he would open it when he got to the gates of the airfield. 

He thought about Clemence rattling around in the café all alone.  He wasn’t worried about her physical safety, but she was alone in a house that she had shared all of her life with those whom she loved and who loved her.  And one by one they all left her, first her father, then her brother, her husband, and then her mother, and now Edmund. 

He decided that he would find out what was happening at Behonne and then return as soon as he was able to.  He knew that they were planning another mission in the next couple of days, that is, Edmund looked up at the sky, as long as nature cooperated.  They wanted to follow up on the success of the earlier raid and to try and take out as many of the new German Fokkers as they could on the ground.  From what Edmund had heard, the new German planes were faster and better armed than the French Nieuports. 

Edmund rounded the last corner, and he could see the iron gates of Behonne Aerodrome ahead.  He walked over to the side of the road that faced a field.  He sat down on a small overhang where only his head would be visible from the roadway.  No one was near, but he wanted privacy as he opened the package from Clemence.  As he sat, he could feel the coldness from the ground seeping into him, but he wouldn’t be sitting there long.  He sat the clothes down next to him and took the small package from his coat pocket.  He untied the twine, and carefully unwrapped the butcher paper, being careful not to tear the words that Clemence had written on it.  It was a photograph of Clemence.  She was sitting holding a bouquet of flowers, and looking down at them.  Her hair was swept back and had flowers in it.  He looked at the background, and then at the frame, both matched those of the photograph of her husband.  This was her wedding photograph.  He looked at her hair and then followed the line of her neck down to where it met her shoulder, and then into her blouse.  He closed his eyes and tried to remember what she smelled like when he had buried his face in her neck.  And then he thought of what she looked like when she was standing in the bath holding her arms out to him, and water running down her body. 

He opened his eyes again and looked at her face.  He couldn’t see her eyes very well as she looked down at the flowers, but he could see that she was smiling, with that sweet, beguiling smile that she had.  She looked happy.  She didn’t yet know of the pain that she would experience in the next few months.  Still, Edmund thought, she did know that her husband and brother were going off to war.  As he looked again, he thought he could read that on her face as well. Edmund stared at her face until the cold began stinging his eyes, and then he carefully rewrapped the picture, again being careful not to damage the words she had written.  His fingers were very stiff as he retied the twine.  He got up and walked back up to the road and through the gates of Behonne, nodding at the sentry as he went. 

When Edmund got to the tent, Tino was shaving in a bowl using the small mirror.  As Edmund opened the tent flap, Tino shouted, “OY!  You’re letting the heat out!”  Edmund turned and quickly reclosed the flap and set some of the bricks they kept for just such a purpose on the bottom of it to hold it closed.  “Welcome back, Romeo.” Tino said.  “Have a good time?”

“Yeah, pretty good.”  Edmund walked over and put the clothes down on his bed and warmed his hands over the paraffin oil stove. 

“How is your woman?”

“She’s fine.”

Tino reached out and grabbed Edmund’s hand and looked at the clean white bandages on his palms.  “I see she is a better nurse than me!”

“Yes, she took care of me.”  Edmund immediately regretted saying this.

“Really good care, eh?”  Tino said, raising his eyebrows at Edmund.  Tino managed to make everything sound dirty.  Edmund just smiled and nodded and, without taking his coat off, sat down on his bunk and leaned back against the post of the tent. 

Edmund sat for a moment and thought about Clemence standing in the doorway waving goodbye to him.  “I have a picture.”  He reached inside of his coat pocket and took out the photograph.  He sat up and carefully unwrapped the portrait, keeping the words she had written smooth, and placed it on the small table next to a bottle that Tino had sitting there.  Both of Tino’s hands were wet and covered with shaving soap, but he leaned over and looked at the picture where it sat.

“Oh, she is beautiful,” he said.  “And such nice features, eh?”  Edmund watched as Tino held his hands out in front of his chest. 

Edmund snorted and smiled, and Tino stood back up to shave.  Edmund leaned back on the bed again, still looking at the picture of Clemence.

Tino leaned around the post on which the mirror was hanging and looked at Edmund.  “You actually look good.  Better than when you left.”  He leaned back and looked in the mirror again and made another pass at his thick stubble with the razor.

“My father died.”

Tino leaned around the post again and looked at Edmund.  He seemed to be deciding if Edmund was joking or not.  After a moment he said, “I am sorry.”

Edmund nodded at him in thanks but didn’t say anything.

“When did you find out?”

“I got a letter when I was on my way into town.  Read it on the way.  Stroke, heart attack, something like that.  It doesn’t really seem real to me.  I haven’t seen him or heard from him in months.  And when I left, I was very angry with him.”

Tino shrugged and finished shaving and wiped the last of the soapy foam off his face.  “Eh, that is the way it is with fathers, you know.  I can’t remember the last time I saw mine.  I am sure I yelled at him.  He left my mother when I was very young, you see.  I don’t remember any of that.  I used to travel back and forth between them, between Italy and France depending on who had the best fortune at the moment.  It was actually kind of useful.  When I got into trouble in France, I could lay low in Italy with my old man for a while, then when it got too hot in Italy, I could come back to France.  I have two sets of identification papers, and can use whichever is most, um, convenient, you know what I mean?”  He shrugged and smiled at Edmund.  “But here I am going on.  Are you doing okay?”

“I guess.  It just feels strange because the whole time I have been here, I have thought about what it was going to be like when I went home.  Now, my father’s dead, my mother has gone to live with her sister in another city.  So I really don’t have a home to go back to anymore.”

Tino pulled the chair over, so it was closer to Edmund and sat down and looked at him.  “Sometimes your home is just where you are.” Tino paused and neither said anything.  He continued, “And it may not be what you want, but sometimes it is all that you have.”  He sat back in the chair, “But what about this…”  he gestured toward the photograph.

“Clemence.”

“Clemence!  Beautiful name!  What about her?  No husband, widowed mother.  Ready-made home and business.  You could be the man of the house!”

Edmund felt the weight of the key against his chest.  “He mother went to Marseille to get away from the front.  Clemence is preparing to join her in a few days.”

“For good?”

“I don’t know.”

Tino nodded and looked at the floor as if he was considering this information.  “Well, you know the best way to get over the old girl is the next girl.  I always keep two or three around for just such an occasion. Never have to get over any of them.  Not a very dependable species, on the whole.”

Edmund smiled and laughed slightly, and then the two men were quiet again for a moment.  “I don’t know how long I am bound here for.  I guess I should go find out.  Talk to Knox maybe.”

“Is your house in America still there?”  Tino asked.

“Yes, sitting empty.  All closed up.”

“And your father ran a business, eh?”

“Yes, his manager is running things right now, waiting for me, I suppose.”

“Well, sounds like a pretty good situation to walk back into, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know.  Things were bad when I left.  My father sent me away to get me out of some trouble I caused with a fairly prominent family.”

“What did you do?  Knock up their daughter?”

“Not exactly.”  Edmund felt the sting of these words that he knew Tino meant innocently enough.

Tino seemed to see the emotions flashing across Edmund’s face.  He waved his hand, “Well it doesn’t matter now.  Time changes everything, and you would be the returning war hero.  And the only returning war hero in a country full of young boys messing their pants just waiting for your country to join in the fight.  Me, I’m thinking my time here may be up as well.  Hell, I just took this job to stay out of the trenches.  These governments just can’t stand to see an able-bodied young man without trying to see how well he will stop a bullet.  I kept having to skip back and forth across the border, one minute I’m French, the next Italian to keep away from the enlistment squads.  During the last call up in ’15, time finally ran out on me, and I managed to get hired on here, just moments, I think, before I was conscripted.  But now,” he leaned back and patted his injured hip, “thanks to our dearly departed German friend and the lead he left permanently in my bones, I think I am excused from further duty.  I already took my bullet.  And only one, thanks to you.”

Edmund nodded with mock formality to him.  Tino leaned back in his chair and poured from the bottle into a small glass sitting next to it, then he handed the bottle to Edmund and picked up the glass himself.  He raised his drink and said, “To your father, may he rest in peace.”  And he raised the glass and swallowed in on one gulp.  Edmund drank what turned out to be whiskey deeply from the bottle.  Tino put his glass back firmly on the table and stood and picked up a shirt and began to put it on.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re back.  The Americans want to build on their last raid with another the day after tomorrow.  The only thing I couldn’t do was get the Lewis gun down to clean it.  Knox didn’t take any damage last time out, so I just had to clean the engine and check the lines. And you are right about that Luc.  Useless swine.  Said he would help me, but then he was never around when I needed him.”

Edmund sat the bottle back on the table, and Tino corked it and put it in his clothes chest at the foot of his bed.  “Come on.  I have done too much talking.  Let us get some food and some more to drink.”

“No, thanks.  I am just going to stay here.”

“No, you are not.  Sometimes it isn’t good for a man to be alone.”  He reached down and grabbed the lapel of Edmund’s coat and pulled him up.  Despite his wound, he was still very strong.  Edmund stood, and not saying anything, followed Tino out of the tent.  He stopped to look back at Clemence where she sat on the table, looking down at her flowers.

Early the next morning, Tino was tapping the bottom of Edmund’s foot with his cane.  “Get up!  We have some work to do.”  Edmund opened his eyes, and everything was foggy, and it took him several moments of blinking to see clearly.  “You had a little too much to drink last night.” 

Edmund sat up on his elbows.  “No thanks to you.”  Edmund had tried several times to sneak out of the canteen the previous evening, but Tino always saw him and pulled him back inside and gave him more to drink.  He vaguely remembered playing pool until he could no longer line up the cue stick.  He didn’t remember making it back to his tent. 

Tino held at tin cup of water out to him.  “Come on, we need to clean that gun.  The pilots are coming around later this morning to inspect everything.” 

Edmund took the cup and drank deeply, and felt the water absorb into the cotton of the inside of his mouth.  He stood and knelt at his chest and took out new clothes and quickly put them on, taking one of the shirts out of the bundle Clemence had put together for him out of her brother’s clothes.  As he pulled the new shirt on, he held up the key that was still around his neck and looked at it for a moment before putting it inside of his undershirt.  He wanted it to be against his skin.  He looked up and saw that Tino had seen him do this.

“Souvenir?”  Tino asked.

Edmund just nodded his head and continued to button his shirt.  Tino stood by the tent flap while Edmund hastily pulled on his boots and then picked up his coat and followed Tino outside.  They stopped through the canteen, which showed no signs of the wreckage from the night before.  Judging by the way he felt, Edmund thought there must have been much damage to the place, but it looked the same as it always had.  They took as many sausages and bread as they could carry and filled up two tin cups full of coffee and walked back into the cold. 

The hanger was abuzz with activity, as the crews put the finishing touches on the planes and got them ready to fly again.  The Nieuport looked to be in good shape.  Edmund noticed that a couple of small tears that he had been meaning to fix were now neatly stitched.  Edmund ran his hand over the fixes. 

They stood and ate their breakfast, and Edmund’s sat on his stomach like a rock.  Tino lit a paraffin oil stove near the plane.  “Why don’t you climb up…” Tino paused.  “Sorry, you are the boss now, what would you like me to do?”

Edmund looked at him and then climbed up onto the lower wing of the plane.  “Get that tarp out and shut up.”  He climbed into the cockpit and released the catches of the Lewis gun.  He leaned over the side and held it out to Tino.  “You got it?”

“Of course I have it!  I’m not crippled, you bastard!”

“Well, yeah you are.  Now take the gun.” 

Tino took the gun from Edmund and laid it on the ground.  “I can beat you to death with my cane, you know.”

Edmund smiled and climbed down and got the gun oil and rags and the barrel snake out of the supply locker.  They quickly dismantled the gun and laid the pieces out on the tarp, and began wiping the carbon residue off the metal.  “He sure gave this thing a workout.”

“Yes, he did.  Don’t think they are making Lewis’s much anymore.  The new German Fokkers, the D7’s, have guns that fire through the propellers, synchronized with the engine so they don’t shoot their own props.  They are also a hell of a lot faster than these old Nieuports.  The Boche’s just brought in a new detachment of the new D7’s.  We destroyed most of them on the ground before they could get in the air, which is a good thing, because these old girls,” Tino nodded at Knox’s plane, “don’t really match up too well anymore.”  Edmund looked at the airplane but didn’t say anything.  “I heard Spad is putting a new design into production with synchronized guns and bigger engines.  Don’t know when they will show up here though.”  Edmund wondered, and not for the first time, where Tino got this information.  He always seemed to know much more than merely what was going on at the airfield. 

They worked in silence for a while.  Finally Tino said, “Can she cook?”

Edmund looked at him for a moment.  He had been thinking about his mother and wondering how she was doing at her sister’s.  “Can who cook?”

“This Clemence.”

“Oh, yes.  Quite well actually.  I mean, they ran a café.”

Tino nodded and ran the snake through the gun barrel until the inside looked like a spiraled mirror.  They reassembled the gun in silence, and soon, Edmund had it remounted on the upper wing of the plane.  Tino handed Edmund five extra clips of ammunition.  They kept adding more for each mission. 

Edmund climbed down from the cockpit, and they stood back admiring the plane, and giving it one last look over before the pilots came for inspection. 

Tino stood next to Edmund for a moment and picked up his line of thought again.  “So, she can cook.  She has her own business which you could step into.  Face of an angel, body of a devil, you could do a lot worse…”  Tino trailed off and turned his head and looked out of the large hangar door that faced the airstrip.  He limped quickly over to the open door, and Edmund watched him.  Then Edmund heard it too, a high droning sound.  He thought it must be the pilots on their way.  He was glad they had gotten the Lewis gun cleaned and remounted just in time.  Then Edmund heard a sound that he hadn’t heard before, a hand-cranked siren.  Tino came rushing back into the hangar as quickly as he could.  The other crews stared at him.  They had heard the siren also. 

“Incoming!  Get the planes out of here now!”