Goshawk Squadron

by Derek Robinson

  “I remember that now,” Lambert said. “They didn’t even knock. I mean, we could have been doing anything in there.”

  “I thought I ought to do something,” Dickinson said, “but I couldn’t think what. The driver was still in the cab, you see, so I couldn’t let the tires down.”

  “What?” Woodruffe interrupted. “You were going to let the tires down?”

  “That was my first idea.”

  “Ah.” The adjutant opened his mouth, then closed it. “Never mind,” he said.

  “So what I did was, I got some stones and threw them at the driver.”

  “Quite right,” Lambert said. “When in doubt, always stone the police.”

  “Well, it worked,” Dickinson said defensively. “He jumped out and came galloping down the street, waving a sort of club. I remember he was an awfully big chap. Big, but not fast.”

  “Like an elephant,” Kimberley suggested.

  “Elephants are bloody swift,” Finlayson declared. “I’d like to see you outrun an elephant.”

  “Shut up,” Woodruffe said.

  “Well, I nipped down a little alley. There was a doorway on one side, so I got in there. I still had a stone in my hand, and the moment the bobby turned into the alley I threw this stone up the other end. He thought it was me, and he put on a bit of a spurt, and as he went by I tripped him up.”

  “With your foot?” Rogers asked.

  “Well, yes. I mean, it was all I had.”

  “Just trying to get the picture, old boy.”

  “Walking sticks are best,” Kimberley said. “Walking sticks are bloody lethal.”

  “Shut up,” Woodruffe said. “So down he went.”

  “Oh, rather. He came the most appalling cropper. I think he knocked himself out, or something. Anyway, I removed his belt and pulled his pants down and tied the legs in a knot, just to make sure. Then I came back, just as you chaps were pouring out. Fortunately the engine was still running.”

  “Remarkable, Dicky,” the adjutant said. “I honestly never thought you had it in you. First-class performance.”

  “It did come off rather well, didn’t it? That bit about throwing the stone up the alley to make him rush off after it, I got that from a detective story. The business with the pants was my idea. I must admit—Good God, what’s that dreadful noise?”

  They turned toward a choking, bubbling death-rattle. “It’s only Church being sick,” Finlayson said. “D’you think you could drive a little slower for the rest of the way, Dicky? My ass is raw.”

  “Now that I have the handbrake off,” Dickinson said, “I think it’ll be less of a struggle. I suppose we can go back now?”

  “Why ever not?” Dangerfield asked in surprise.

  “Well, everybody did get out? You are all here?”

  A simple count answered that question. Killion was missing.

  A minority was in favor of abandoning Killion and going home, but the others were persuaded by Rogers. “Killion got hold of the whores and the band,” he pointed out. “Whatever you think about Killion, you must admit that it was a damn good band.”

  They got into the truck and Dickinson drove cautiously back toward St. Denis. When they were still two miles away his headlights caught a half-naked figure trying to scramble through a hedge. He pulled up alongside. “B-b-b-b-bugger off, you w-w-w-w-wogs,” Killion called. “Ooooh!” he added with feeling as a bramble raked his shoulder.

  “Killion, it’s us.” Dickinson got down and held back the prickly branches while Killion blundered out, his lips trip-hammering away at the opening consonants of all the swear words he knew. It turned out that Killion had been in the cellar when the police came, and he escaped through a trapdoor into the street. As he was wearing only pants and shoes he knew that he would soon be picked up in the town, so he got away through alleys and into the country. It was sheer luck that he had chosen the same road as the truck.

  “Now, perhaps, we can all go home,” said Finlayson.

  “N-n-n-n-no, not y-y-y-y-yet.” Killion shook his head emphatically.

  “Who the hell else?”

  “G-g-g-g-”

  “Gabriel,” said Rogers disgustedly. “I’d completely forgotten about Gabriel. Where the devil is he?”

  “I know,” said Killion.

  Dickinson stopped outside a Catholic church on the outskirts of St. Denis. Killion and Woodruffe were in the cab with him. “Are you sure?” he asked. Killion nodded. “He s-s-said he’d b-b-b-be here.”

  Woodruffe said: “I can see a little light. See? In the corner of that high window.”

  They walked through the churchyard. It was bitterly cold, and Killion wore Dickinson’s tunic. Dickinson, in shirt sleeves, shuddered. Faintly they heard music.

  The church door was not locked. Woodruffe pushed it open, and the organized moan of pleading chords reached out to them with a smell of cold masonry and dusty matting and faintly clinging incense. They walked in, feeling their way along the matting: the church was even darker than the night. From the middle they could see, by the limited and spherical aura of two candles, Gabriel’s large and lumpy head, up on high beyond the choir-stalls, outlined against the soaring stalagmites of organ pipes. He leaned slightly to the right, and a high trickle of icy notes began to feel its way toward them.

  “Has he been up to this all night?” Dickinson whispered. Again Killion nodded.

  Woodruffe took a deep breath. “He really does have a problem,” he said; but he too spoke softly. “All the same, we can’t stay here.”

  They stood, feeling the groan of Gabriel’s chords vibrate through their teeth, and tasting the pure crystal of his wandering notes. At last, when there was a brief pause, Woodruffe cleared his throat.

  Gabriel turned his head and stared. He was utterly calm, waiting for the interrupter to explain himself.

  “We’re going back now,” Woodruffe called. “If you want to come with us.” His voice resounded and redounded, searching into every cold corner.

  Gabriel looked sharply in their direction. Then he took his hands from the organ and looked all over the keyboards as if to make quite sure that all the keys and stops were there. He snorted quietly: an unemotional noise; a punctuation mark. He pinched out one candle and took the other to light his way down.

  Nobody spoke on the way back to the truck.

  “Now can we please go bloody home?” Finlayson said.

  “I think we might,” Dickinson said, yawning.

  “You do know, of course, that you’re pointing in the wrong direction,” Gabriel stated.

  Woodruffe stared. “You mean that’s the way back to camp? Back through the town?”

  “Unless you want to make a fifty-mile detour.”

  “We can’t just drive back through the middle of St. Denis,” Rogers said. “They’ll lynch us.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Richards said. “It’s the last thing they’d expect, you know. Besides, I don’t fancy going fifty miles the wrong way at this time of night.”

  “Church has just been sick again,” Finlayson said, “partly over me.”

  “You’re absolutely sure, Gabriel?” Dickinson asked.

  Gabriel gave him a short, flat look. “Yes,” he said.

  “All right,” Dickinson said. “Only you don’t know what’s been going on.”

  “Let’s get started, for God’s sake,” Kimberley growled. “I don’t care if I sleep in camp or the Bastille. There’s damn-all to choose between them, anyway.”

  They got into the truck and drove gingerly through the town. They had to pass the restaurant in order to reach the right road; but as it happened nobody even looked at them. The restaurant was on fire.

  “Not a happy day for our genial host,” Lambert said. They scrambled to the back to see the fire brigade squirting water on the flames. “He must be feeling pretty discouraged.”

  “I expect he did it for the insurance,” Dangerfield said. “Some chaps are like that, you know. Completely irresponsible.�
�� They turned a corner, and the scene vanished. Almost immediately the truck came to a stop. “Police,” guessed Finlayson. “Now we’re for it.” But it was Woodruffe who came around from the cab.

  “You can drive me home, Dudley,” he said. “We’ve found your car.”

  “Don’t have a car,” Rogers said. “Do I?”

  “Well, you drove it here. You might as well drive it back.”

  “I can’t,” said Rogers. “I’m too drunk.”

  “But you must. It has your checkbook in it, and we still haven’t paid for tonight’s meal.”

  “All right.” Rogers got down. The truck rumbled away. With some difficulty he got the car to start and drove slowly along the middle of the road. He gripped the wheel tightly and held his face quite close to the windscreen. They were in top gear, but still moving slowly.

  “We’ll never get home at this rate, Dudley,” Woodruffe said.

  “These hills are a lot steeper than they look,” Rogers said. “It’ll be all right when we go down the other side.”

  After a few minutes Woodruffe said: “You have your foot on the brake, Dudley.” Rogers released it, and the limousine bounded forward. He relaxed and sat back. “Dickinson has the same trouble, sometimes,” he said.

  A few miles later, Rogers asked what Gabriel had been doing in the church.

  “Playing the organ. Rather well, too.”

  “You mean he played the bloody organ all night?”

  “Yes.”

  Rogers frowned. “Odd thing to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds as if friend Gabriel has a bit of a problem.”

  “Perhaps. On the other hand, he seems to be able to relax and enjoy it.”

  They caught up with the truck and followed it back to camp. It was four in the morning when they arrived, and the place was alive with men taking down tents and loading stores and checking supplies. Woodruffe jumped out of the car in a panic and looked for Woolley.

  He found him sitting in his canvas chair beside a brazier, drinking Guinness with the chief armorer. Woolley gave the adjutant a single glance and then looked away. “Get dressed,” he ordered. “We’re moving back to the Front. Fricourt. Takeoff at dawn.”

  “But they can’t,” Woodruffe said automatically. “They’re—” He turned and looked behind him. Killion and Richards, half-undressed and filthy, were carrying Church; his feet dragging in the mud. Behind came Kimberley, holding his head, and Finlayson, barefoot and wrapped in a blanket. Lambert, limping badly, wore a French police helmet, and Dangerfield was wiping mud from his eyes: he had just fallen down. Only Gabriel and Dickinson were fully dressed and erect. As he watched, Lambert tripped over his own stumbling feet.

  The adjutant turned away in shame and disgust. But Woolley was no longer there. His chair was there, and beside it his empty bottle, but Woolley had gone. The pilots dragged themselves over and blinked painfully at the tableau, harshly delineated by the pressure lamps. They shuffled into a semicircle and squinted at Woodruffe.

  “We’re off to Fricourt,” he said miserably. “Takeoff at dawn.”

  Out of the darkness came a squat metal canister. It bounced and rolled between them and lay in the shadow of the chair. Some of them leaned forward and tried to see what it was. The thunderflash exploded with a stunning ferocity that shattered their jagged nerves and twisted their sagging faces with terror. They were home again.

  Force 7: Moderate Gale

  Whole trees in motion

  Goshawk Squadron landed at Fricourt in light drizzle with blinding hangovers, and got away with only two accidents, thanks to the grace of God and an unusually long field. Dangerfield eased his SE5a into a three-point landing while he was still twenty feet above ground and smashed his undercarriage. Lambert touched down shakily, got lost and drove into some bog where his wheels stuck fast, the nose buried itself, and the tail reared high like a flag on a steeple. When they came out with ladders to rescue him he was asleep.

  The squadron spent the rest of the day settling in. Three replacements arrived: Callaghan, Peacock and Blunt, straight from Flying Training Schools in England. The adjutant, holding his head with one hand, took them to Woolley. “Replacements, sir,” he said. “Their names—”

  “I don’t want to know,” Woolley said flatly. He looked at their fresh, serious, eager-to-impress faces and turned away. He was eating a cold sausage; his tongue located a piece of gristle and spat it out. “I am a genial, jovial and well-liked commanding officer,” he told them. “My warmth and charm are exceeded only by my old-fashioned courtesy and my fucking sympathy.” He stared at Lambert’s stranded plane. “As long as you are in this shoddy squadron, there are certain words you will not use. Here they are. Fair, sporting, honorable, decent, gentlemanly.” Woolley felt in his pocket, took out a flimsy telegram, read it, blew his nose on it, and threw it away. “Those are bad words,” he said. “Bad, murdering words. Don’t even think them.”

  The replacements saluted and withdrew, feeling bewildered. The adjutant billeted them separately, each sharing a hut with an experienced pilot. Callaghan got Finlayson. He found him sitting on a bunk, holding a bottle of milk in one hand and cup of gin in the other. “Hello!” said Callaghan. Finlayson winced. “I say, are you all right?” Callaghan asked. He noticed the dirt and congealed blood on Finlayson’s head. Finlayson thought for a good long time, while he stared at Callaghan’s bright new buttons. Then Finlayson put down his bottle and cup, rolled over, and was sick into a fire bucket. Callaghan felt his pent-up excitement go flat. This was not the way he had expected it to be, at all.

  Next morning, Woolley briefed the squadron on its first combat patrol. “Just sweeping-up,” he said. “We have ten miles of Front to look after. We’ll fly in two sections. Rogers leads the other. Each section flies a zigzag from here to the Front and back. Nobody crosses the Front.”

  “What if we’re chasing a damaged Hun, sir?”

  “You’re an idiot, Rogers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Woolley called the replacements to one side and asked them if they had flown an SE before. None had. He looked at them like an auctioneer trying to improve a poor lot in a cattle market. “I won’t depress you with the truth,” he said. “Just remember this. If the engine fails on takeoff, keep going straight ahead and crash-land. Never try to turn back. Never. If you manage to take off, follow me and do exactly as I do. Can you make your head move?” he asked Blunt.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Show me.”

  Blunt turned his head. “Move it right round,” Woolley ordered. “Now up and down. Turn it all the way.” The others watched Blunt rotate his head. “Do that all the time,” Woolley said. “Search for the man who is searching for you.” He sucked in his ill-shaven cheeks and stroked his thin lips, and stared at them. “Finders keepers,” he said.

  The replacements got their planes off the ground and Woolley marshaled them into a broad arrowhead, with Dickinson and Church out on the flanks. The cloud ceiling was at two thousand feet. The countryside lay dead and cold, waiting for spring. The roads shone like strips of lead; every footpath was waterlogged. Nearer the Front the land began to erupt in craters, set and changeless: boiling porridge caught in a photograph. Then the Line itself—supply trenches angling cautiously up to an elaborate hem-stitch of Allied positions, with the wire lying beyond, scruffy and irregular, a tidemark in no-man’s-land. They turned and flew back. There was no enemy air activity at all. For an hour they flew a repetitive zigzag from their base to the Front and back, until Callaghan’s neck was stiff and his eyes ached; but when he suddenly spotted an aircraft he wanted to shout the news.

  After a few moments he realized they were flying on an interception course. Then he remembered that Woolley had changed the course before he, Callaghan, saw the plane. Reluctantly he conceded that Woolley saw it first.

  It turned out to be French: a Nieuport. Woolley led them down in a mock attack, the arrowhead formation swooping in a long,
curling dive that went under the Frenchman’s tail and zoomed up and leveled out, back on patrol. The excitement of that plunge affected Callaghan. If only they could catch a German! But the war was asleep today.

  After two hours Woolley turned for home. Blunt gratefully recognized that they were losing height, and rested his neck; then felt guilty and started searching again. They were within sight of the airfield when Woolley inexplicably wheeled left and they climbed toward the mattress of cloud. Blunt couldn’t see the reason for that. He was four or five lengths away from the next plane when one by one they angled into the quilted grayness.

  Cloud frightened Blunt. It seduced his imagination: woolly wisps streaming past told him nothing; he could be flying into a mountainside … or diving … or two seconds away from a collision … What if the cloud went up to five thousand feet? Or six? Or ten?

  Blunt felt the sweat break out in his armpits and trickle down his ribs. He shut his eyes tight and locked his fists around the joystick. Part of his mind queried the value or purpose of sweating. What possible good could wet armpits do? Deep purple shapes bloomed and turned orange on his eyelids, then everything went bright gray. He opened his eyes. They were in weak, hazy, winter sunlight.

  Woolley flattened out, turned right and prowled over the surface for about a quarter of a mile. Then he led them down into the bloody cloud again.

  Blunt closed his eyes and loathed Woolley. He locked his fingers around the joystick again and gripped it tightly in the angle of the dive, hearing the engine-note climb and the wing bracings develop a piercing whistle that merged into a slow shriek. Fear slowed his thoughts, and grudgingly granted him one consolation: at this speed they must come out at the bottom a damn sight faster than they went through at the top.

  He opened his eyes and searched for a break in the streaming fog. There was nothing, and suddenly there was everything: solid, sodden fields slightly canted over, and three, four German aircraft flying across them at fifteen hundred feet. Three Pfalz scouts and a lumbering two-seater observation plane. A reconnaissance patrol.