Machine Gunners

The Machine Gunners Extract
Shell Workshop

CHAS McGill emerges out of an air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden.

CHAS (T/A): My name is Chas McGill. And this is my shelter at the bottom of my garden…

Concurrently, we see JACK, dressed in his wardens uniform, sat at the kitchen table. He is exhausted. MAGGIE, dressed in a floral-print dress and pinny, is serving breakfast. JACK makes a sausage sandwich.

CHAS heads towards the kitchen.

…The garden of my house at number nineteen Marston Street, Garmouth

The north-east of England

Overlooking the North Sea
MAGGIE: Come on, Chas! It’s eight o’clock. You’re late for school!

JACK: Yeah, come on lad. Your mum’s made us sausage butties.

CHAS: Hellish! (T/A) Rations mean we never get sausages for breakfast.

MAGGIE: It’s your lucky day, Chas.

Get a move on. I won’t have you late again.

CHAS: But I haven’t got school till half past ten.

CHAS begins putting on his school uniform.

MAGGIE: Half ten. How so?

CHAS: Aid raid went past midnight didn’t it. It’s a new rule.

JACK: Don’t you believe it, mum.

CHAS: Honestly! It’s a new rule.

JACK: Suppose we’ll have to take your word for it. You’re no liar, are yer, Chassy.

CHAS: No, Dad.

MAGGIE: Eat them before they get cold.

JACK eats his sandwich.

CHAS (T/A): Dad works in a factory in the day and as a warden at night. Mum stays at home and keeps our house cleaner than the Haughtons at number twenty-two.

JACK: Terrible raid last night.

MAGGIE: I got no sleep.

I thought it was never going to end. I could swear me and Chas were going to get buried alive in that shelter.

JACK: You hear about that lady in the greengrocer’s?

MAGGIE: Not the ginger-haired one?

JACK: Yeah. Direct hit. We found half of her in the front garden and half right across the house.

MAGGIE holds her hand over her mouth.

MAGGIE (whispers): Jack, why say that in front of the kid? That’s awful!

JACK: He has to learn some time that the world isn’t all warm baths and comics.

CHAS: Was it that dive-bomber that done it?

JACK: No, a Heinkel I’m sure. The RAF lads shot him down and he crashed right onto the old laundry at Chirton. With a full bomb load. I felt the heat on my face a mile away.

CHAS: Is anything left of it?

JACK: Not the laundry.

CHAS: The bomber, I mean.

JACK: Bits I suppose.

MAGGIE: Don’t be getting ideas, Chas McGill.

CHAS: Aw, mum. Let me have a look.

JACK: There won’t be anything but bricks.

CHAS: Mum?

MAGGIE: No.

JACK: Go on, let him.

MAGGIE: I don’t like you playing around bombsites.

CHAS: I’ll be fine.

MAGGIE: Okay. But be careful. And mind, if you bring back souvenirs, they’ll go in the greenhouse. I wont have any of your junk in here.

And remember, I want you in school by quarter past ten… at the latest.

CHAS: Thanks, mum!