Chapter 8
The strangest thing Major Burke saw that day, flying recce along the coast, was the giant word EIRE in a field.
Flying in loudly from the sea, over a scarf of beach, then sharp cliffs, they'd passed over a startling deep green field with one word in it, white as chalk:
EIRE
"What's that?" Major Burke shouted over the hurricane of metal frame and fabric skin surrounding him and the un-muffled gnarl of a 950-hp rotary engine. This was his third ride ever in an airplane. Until now, he hadn't realized how deaf pilots were; an enemy plane could sneak right up on you, you'd never know it.
The RAF pilot banked his Lysander lower toward the north above the dark, monotonous waters of Carlingford Lough. Away on the right, the Mourne Coast and the steep, cropped mountains behind. On the left, this place called EIRE, something else apparently.
The sun was brilliant; a rare gift too, he was told, this time of year. The Lysander was an observation plane. It had more window glazing than many of the dark, low Irish farmhouses Burke saw beneath them. But sun didn't make an unheated airplane any more comfortable, even one where you sat beneath a greenhouse.
They flew another half mile up the lough. It looked damned cold, black as an imp. If they crashed in those waters, they'd be dead in minutes. Scream a little. Succumb to a million icy razors.
Again he saw "EIRE." Spelled out in huge, stiff, governmental-style capital letters made of white stones. No small effort, piled in the shorn fields. Then a few of the stones began to run: the sheep fled the noise of