A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  “Extraordinary.”

  “Not at all. Quite routine.” Max finished his beer. “Don’t let her break your heart, Paul. She’s not worth it. No woman is.”

  “Thanks. Have you got a degree in psychiatry too?”

  Max stared at nothing, as if thinking hard, and produced a short, soft belch. “You agree it’s a form of madness, then,” he said. “Love, I mean. What I believe the army calls a self-inflicted wound.” He left before Schramm could find an answer.

  Maybe there was no answer, he thought. Maybe Max was right. While they had been talking, this war had killed several hundred men in various parts of the world. Women, too. Convoys were being torpedoed, factories bombed, whole cities fought over, and yet Paul Schramm, who couldn’t even stand up straight, awoke every morning thinking of Maria Grandinetti. It was bizarre. She probably treated him as an amusing example of some middle-aged folly, the kind of thing psychiatrists talked about during the coffee-break at conferences. Bloody foot! It was all the fault of his bloody foot. He kicked it and made it hurt. Serve it right.

  Hoffmann’s return saved it from further pain.

  “I can’t make any sense of this,” he said. He handed Schramm some large photo-reconnaissance prints, still tacky with developing fluid. Some small areas had been circled in crayon. Inside the circles were clusters of tiny dots, tinier than pinheads.

  Schramm peered at them. “The plane was high enough, wasn’t it?”

  “I told the pilot to stay high. If Jakowski’s about to make a kill, I don’t want the enemy scared off by an inquisitive aircraft. Anyway, these pictures were taken early in the morning, so the shadows are good and crisp. The experts with the magnifying glasses tell me those dots are Jakowski’s force. Trouble is, twenty trucks are missing.”

  Schramm made the prints overlap to form a bigger picture. “Trucks don’t get lost in the desert,” he said. “Even if they got burned or shot-up, we’d still see the wreckage . . . They might be in Jalo, I suppose. Under the palm trees.”

  “Why Jalo?”

  “Why indeed? Jakowski won’t find the SAS there.”

  “I don’t like it,” Hoffmann said. “I smell . . . I don’t know what I smell, but it stinks.”

  “Send him a signal. Ask him to confirm that all is well.”

  “Maybe I will.” But Hoffmann didn’t move.

  “Is that the Sand Sea?” Schramm put his finger on a thick bank of ripples, strongly contrasted in black and white, running to the edge of the print.

  “He wouldn’t send twenty trucks into the Sand Sea, Paul. What’s the point? There’s nothing to find in there.”

  “True. Nothing but shadows.” Schramm shuffled the prints together, made them square, and ruffled the edges with his thumb. “Twenty trucks is a lot of trucks to fall off the map.”

  “I’ll leave it until tomorrow,” Hoffmann decided. “I can’t believe . . .” He shrugged.

  “Look: here’s a suggestion. Why don’t I go and pick Captain di Marco’s brains? He knows the Sahara inside out.” Schramm spread his hands. “You never know.”

  “Take the prints,” Hoffmann said.

  * * *

  Next morning, early, Skull told the CO what Hooper had done. Barton was amused. “Bless my soul!” he said. “Fancy that nice Mr. Hooper being so beastly to the Hun! And to think he only came here to learn the tricks of the trade.”

  “If we shoot up their ambulances—”

  “They’ll shoot up ours. I know. Who gives a toss? Do you care how many pongoes get the chop? Neither do I. Sod ’em. Our bloody ack-ack does its best to kill us, doesn’t it?”

  Skull was silenced. He was also hungover. His brain throbbed and his eyes ached. Fanny, by contrast, was bright and brisk. He must have a head like a brass bucket.

  “Coming to briefing?” Fanny said. “You can tell them about the ambulances.”

  “You don’t need a briefing. You’ve only got four pilots left. Just stand in the middle of the field and shout.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Fanny put his arm around Skull’s shoulder as they strolled away. “You’re good at words. Tell me what to shout.”

  Skull squinted at Fanny’s hand. “What’s this in aid of? Last night I pointed out a certain blatant cognitive dissonance within your claims, and you got blotto and tried to kill me.”

  “I can’t shout all that, Skull. Especially the blatant bit, whatever it was. They wouldn’t understand. I didn’t. They’re just decent, friendly, hardworking fighter pilots who want to be loved. Give ’em a bucket of blood for breakfast and they’ll kick an orphan to death if you promise them a kiss afterward.”

  Skull attended the briefing. All five aircraft would patrol at twenty thousand feet. Nothing was said about strafing or about ambulances and the pilots seemed quite cheerful.

  After they took off, Skull went to the mess tent and found the adjutant chatting with Hauptmann Winkler. “Feeling better?” Skull said.

  “Better than what?” Kellaway said.

  “Nothing. Slip of the tongue.” If Kellaway couldn’t remember anything, there was no point in reminding him. Geraldo strutted in, took a long cold look at Skull, and avoided him. “This is Geraldo,” Skull said. “Some say he speaks Greek, but I have tried him on Socrates in the original and his response was discouraging. Forthright, colorful and pungent, but discouraging.”

  “Did you know that our guest has read all of Sherlock Holmes?” Kellaway said. “Damn good show, I’d say.”

  Winkler cleared his throat. “I wish to speak of my sadness at the death of the young officer who . . . with whom . . . He was . . .” He shook his head, unable to find the words.

  “Butcher Bailey,” Kellaway said. “He was an awfully good type.” There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “Tell you what,” Kellaway said. “You can come to his funeral, if you like.”

  Oh double-buggeration, Skull thought. “We’ve done it, Uncle,” he said gently. “Did it yesterday afternoon. Had to. Couldn’t wait.”

  Kellaway’s eyes flickered, but yesterday remained a blank. “We’ve been pretty busy lately,” he told Winkler.

  That was when the doctor came in, holding a printed form. “How d’you spell ‘doolally’?” he asked.

  “I should know,” Kellaway said, and rattled it off. “We had an awful lot of it in India, especially during the hot season. Some chaps can’t take the sun. Go haywire. You see it in their eyes. You look all right,” he told the doctor. “Not so sure about old Skull here. Give him some California syrup of figs, that’s what he needs, a good purge to sort him out . . . Oh well. Time I got back to the office and did some bumf-shuffling. I keep asking Group for replacements, but the buggers never come.” He took his mug of tea and went.

  “Did you have to do that?” Skull asked.

  “Yeah!” The doctor made himself look reckless. “Teasing the lunatics is the only fun I get in my job.”

  * * *

  The sky was an icy blue at twenty thousand feet. The pilots were breathing oxygen, and the Tomahawks wallowed in the thin air like yachts on a mooring. Their Allison engines were toiling manfully and getting precious little reward. If someone made a hash of a turn, he soon lost half a mile and took five grim minutes to catch up.

  Barton constantly looked down, searching for standing patrols of Me 109s. The others looked up and around, heads always turning. Twenty thousand feet was nothing to the enemy. He might be two miles above them, a tiny metal splinter hiding in the sun. Pip Patterson did not spare his neck muscles. Once, long ago in France, he had been part of a squadron that had landed minus two, and nobody had noticed their absence until then. Chilling to think that while you were cruising along, your tail-end Charlies were getting picked off. Too much sky. Too many blind spots.

  The patrol churned and turned, swapped their glimpse of the remote Mediterranean from right to left and back again. Elsewhere, the Sahara rolled to all the horizons like an old carpet worn right through to its biscuity backing.

  After t
hirty minutes Barton grew impatient and took them down to twelve thousand, then eight, then five. The enemy refused to be provoked. The sun climbed higher. Hot air tumbled up and spoiled the formation-keeping. “Sneezy,” Barton said. “This is as good as anywhere.”

  The Pole shoved his canopy back and peeled off. Holding the stick with his knees, he tossed out the golf clubs that had belonged to Tiny Lush and Mick O’Hare. “Take that, bloody Nazi bastard shits,” he said. He rejoined the others. “What I hit?” he asked.

  “Two Blenheims and a Liberator,” Patterson said.

  “No cigar,” Hooper said.

  They flew home. A Bristol Bombay transport was parked in a corner of the field, not far from the Brute. The Bombay had spatted wheels, twin engines on high wings and a blocky fuselage that looked as if it had been assembled from surplus packing crates. It was obsolete, slow and highly reliable.

  Barton taxied to his desert-wagon and drove to his trailer. He could see Air Commodore Bletchley sitting on the steps, talking to the adjutant. Barton kept swallowing to suppress a sickness that attacked his throat. If they’d sent a bloody great Bombay, that meant he’d got the sack. It meant Takoradi had got the pilots and Hornet Squadron was dead. At first he’d thought maybe some replacements had arrived, but the Bombay was far too big for that. Anyway, they could have come in the Brute. It was all over. He got out and saluted: not a good salute, but his arm was weary. Bletchley stood and gave his old familiar half-smile: up one side and down the other. “I’ll push off, sir,” the adjutant said. “See you at lunch, I hope.”

  They went into the trailer. Barton dumped his stuff on his bunk: scarf, sweater, gloves, helmet, goggles, map. Half of it fell on the floor.

  “Iced coffee?” the air commodore said. “Fresh from Cairo.” He unscrewed the top of a giant Thermos. “Shepheard’s best.”

  Barton found a couple of mugs and knocked the sandy dust from them. Bletchley poured. Ice cubes clinked. “Happy days,” Barton said, miserably. Bletchley grunted agreement. They drank. It was blessedly black and chilled and it went down fighting. “Whisky?” Barton said. Bletchley nodded. Barton drank more. You couldn’t have a good wake without good booze.

  “I don’t suppose you brought any replacements, sir,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We haven’t got any kites to put them in.”

  “Well, the Tomahawk’s seen its day, hasn’t it?”

  And so have I, Barton thought. “That sounds fairly final, sir,” he said, and regretted it. Why do Baggy’s dirty work?

  “Nobody blames you for trying, Fanny. Nobody blames you for . . . um . . . not succeeding.” He saw Barton’s wry smile, and said: “That’s how I see it. Not a question of failure, as such. Yours was a promising idea and in other circumstances it might have paid off. Handsomely.”

  Barton looked out of the window. Nothing handsome could ever have happened at dirty, dusty, duffed-up old LG 181, where even the graves were latrine pits.

  Behind him Bletchley was going on about the risks of war and how every operation was a gamble, more or less . . . Barton nodded occasionally, but he wasn’t really listening. The truth was, he wanted to leave now. If his job was over, then cut its throat and be done with it. No handshakes, no goodbyes, no clumsy speech of thanks to the squadron drawn up in a square while the wind chased dust between their legs and Uncle stood by to call for three cheers for the CO. Barton had heard too many such speeches, and more than once the man delivering them had been on the edge of tears; you could tell from his voice, from the way it faded and cracked and suddenly everyone was staring at the ground or the sky and wishing the bastard would end. Barton wondered whether tears would betray him like that. Fighter pilots weren’t supposed to be emotional, and fighter leaders were supposed to be pure steel. It was all an act, of course, and many fighter leaders kept up the act with the aid of half a bottle of whisky a night. Failing that, success was a good stimulant. Fighter pilots were a fairly simple-minded crew; Barton had no illusions about that. They did a complex job, but ultimately it was judged by a brutally simple test: either you blew the other plane to buggery, or the adj wiped your name off the squadron board. There was no other reason to fly. If you couldn’t do the job you were taking up space that another man wanted. Maybe he’d be luckier. Barton wanted to go now, in the Brute, back to Cairo. Let Uncle clean up this mess.

  “If anybody’s to blame,” the air commodore was saying, “it must be the Luftwaffe. Not their finest hour. Remind me to talk about posthumous gongs, by the way. They can’t all have one, but I might get a DSO for Dalgleish.”

  That was when Barton really knew he had failed; and for a moment he found it hard to breathe. A fly landed on his arm, and when he shook his arm it did not move so he became infuriated and banged his arm on the table and hurt himself. “You’d better talk to Uncle about that, sir,” he said. “The sooner I get out, the better.”

  “Certainly not.” Bletchley stared with astonishment. “You don’t imagine I’ve gone to all this trouble just to taxi you back to Cairo, do you?”

  “I thought . . .” Barton was too bewildered to know what he thought.

  “For God’s sake, Fanny, do you want your job or don’t you? The other day you were fighting tooth and nail to keep it. Now you sound as if you don’t give a tuppenny toss if your chaps go to Takoradi and you go into a nursing home.”

  “When you referred to my lack of success, sir, I assumed—”

  “Christ Almighty, man, the Desert Air Force sacks a squadron leader every day and twice on Sundays! Believe me, nobody sends an air commodore to break the sad news and a Bombay to cart the chap away.”

  “No, sir. So why is it here?”

  “Didn’t you get my signal? Obviously not. Another cock-up. I sent it last night by dispatch rider, so I expect he fell down a well and broke his neck, they’re always doing it. Listen. The Bombay will fly fuel, ammunition and food, plus a skeleton ground crew, to LG 250. You will follow in five Kittyhawks which are on their way here now, as soon as they have been adapted for low-level bombing. Your task is to bomb and strafe German fighter airfields. You’ve proved that the 109s won’t come up and fight—which frankly is no surprise, Rommel would be mad to release them before his next attack—so you’ll destroy them on the ground.”

  “LG 250,” Barton said. “Where is that, sir?”

  “A long way behind enemy lines.”

  Barton went out of his trailer and took his shirt off. He let the sun dry the sweat that was running down his body. “Have I got any choice in the matter?” he called.

  “No. Do it or don’t do it.” When Barton didn’t answer, the air commodore said, “Don’t be tiresome, Fanny. You know you’re going to do it.”

  “It sounds bloody lethal.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “I mean, if Jerry finds an LG in his backyard, we won’t stand a chance. He’ll wipe us out.”

  “It’s the last place he’ll look.”

  Barton went back into his trailer and sat on his bunk. His eyes were still screwed-up from avoiding the sun and the dusty wind. “I’m getting too old for this game,” he said.

  “Bring it off and you’ll be a wing commander with a DSO,” Bletchley told him, “and nobody will be more delighted than I.” The air commodore poured out the rest of the iced coffee and handed him his mug.

  “You’ve got a really shitty job, haven’t you, sir?”

  “We can’t all be heroes.” Now that he had got what he wanted, Bletchley allowed himself to relax a little.

  “I wouldn’t know a hero if he came up and bit me in the ass,” Barton said. “I’ve met plenty of killers, and a couple of suicides, and one or two poor sods who should never have been pilots in the first place, and a few blokes who were so thick they terrified the enemy without realizing it, but never a hero.”

  “You’re a hard man, Fanny,” Bletchley said; perhaps mockingly, perhaps not; Barton could not tell.

  Bletchley
borrowed the battle-wagon and made a quick tour of the camp, talking to the troops and visiting the wounded. He said a few words at the funeral of the airman who had died during the night. Afterward he walked to the mess tent with Hick Hooper. “I’m sorry you’re not getting any combat experience,” he said. “Blame the Luftwaffe.”

  “I’ve been good and busy, sir. Made a lot of friends.”

  “And lost a few yesterday, I understand.” Hooper had nothing to say to that. “Still, that’s how it is with strafing operations, I suppose,” Bletchley said. “You’ll let me know when you feel you’ve learned enough, won’t you?”

  “I’d like to stay, sir.”

  “Stay? You mean for good?”

  “Yes, sir. I’d like a permanent transfer to Hornet Squadron.”

  “You’ll be dead before the bumf is cleared.”

  “So forget the bumf, sir.” Hooper was perfectly calm. “I like it here. It’s clean.”

  “I must say you don’t look awfully clean.”

  “I feel clean. Sun, sand, sky and a bunch of fifty-caliber machine guns playing my tune. My idea of heaven, sir.”

  “Good show,” Bletchley said automatically. “Keep on hammering the Hun.”

  He sought out Skull. “Fanny seems a bit twitchy,” he said. “It hasn’t anything to do with those damn fool ambulances, has it?”

  “Ambulances? No. What ambulances? Oh, you mean those ambulances.” Skull wiped dust from his spectacles. “How did you know, sir? They weren’t in my report.”

  “No, but they were in several German reports, and our people have ways and means of eavesdropping that it’s better you know nothing about.” Bletchley looked pleased with himself. “What’s your version of events?”

  “Well, sir, Hooper says he hit an ambulance by mistake and it blew up like Krakatoa. That inspired him to strafe a few more. Half erupted with a colossal and gratifying bang. Half didn’t.”

  “Mnnnnn.” Bletchley squashed his lips together and made a disparaging noise through his nose. “Of course we have only Hooper’s word.”