A Splendid Little War

by Derek Robinson

  A SPLENDID LITTLE WAR

  Derek Robinson

  A SPLENDID LITTLE WAR

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

  Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2013 by Derek Robinson Map copyright © by Emily Faccini

  The moral right of Derek Robinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN (HB) 978 0 85705 229 2

  ISBN (TPB) 978 0 85705 232 2

  ISBN (Ebook) 978 1 78087 810 2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk and

  www.maclehose.com

  Novels by Derek Robinson

  THE R.F.C. QUARTET*

  Goshawk Squadron

  Hornet’s Sting

  War Story

  A Splendid Little War

  THE R.A.F. QUARTET*

  Piece of Cake

  A Good Clean Fight

  Damned Good Show

  Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

  THE DOUBLE AGENT QUARTET**

  The Eldorado Network

  Artillery of Lies

  Red Rag Blues

  Operation Bamboozle

  OTHER FICTION**

  Kentucky Blues

  Kramer’s War

  Rotten with Honour

  NON-FICTION

  Invasion 1940

  * Available from MacLehose Press from 2012/13

  ** To be published in ebook by MacLehose Press

  For Shiela

  FOREWORD

  A Splendid Little War is based on fact. In 1919 Britain sent forces from all three Armed Services to Russia, in support of the White armies in their civil war against the Bolshevik armies. Britain also sent military supplies to the value of more than a hundred million pounds – a billion pounds in modern money – to help the White cause. This policy was known as “the Intervention”. It ended in failure. Many British personnel died in Russia or in Russian waters.

  The Intervention was a complex affair. In the Baltic, the Royal Navy engaged in sea battles against the Soviet fleet and bombarded positions inland. In the far south, British units fought Bolshevik forces on the shores of the Caspian Sea, as they did in the far north, at Murmansk and Archangel. British troops were sent to Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast. Training units went to the heart of Siberia, to assist Admiral Kolchak’s anti-Bolshevik campaign, and took part in the fighting. At various times, Canadian, American, French, Greek, Japanese and Czech forces were all involved in the conflict. But Britain was by far the biggest actor, and the biggest spender.

  The crucial action centred on the White armies in south Russia, where they were hard pressed by the Red armies. In 1919 a couple of R.A.F. squadrons, manned by volunteer aircrews, arrived to help; this provided the theme for the novel. The story it tells is, I believe, true to the history of the Intervention. For greater detail about what is fact and what is fiction, see my Author’s Note at the end of the book.

  D.R.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  IN RUSSIA

  Wing Commander Griffin, C.O. of Merlin Squadron

  “A” FLIGHT (Sopwith Camels) “B” FLIGHT (DH9 bombers)

  Russian Liaison: Count Pierre Borodin

  Adjutant: Captain Brazier

  Radio and Supplies: Lacey

  Lacey’s agent: Henry

  Medical: Dr Susan Perry, Sergeant Stevens

  Chief Air Mechanic: Flight Sergeant Patterson

  Commandant at Beketofka aerodrome: Colonel Davenport

  Visiting Officer: Colonel Guy Kenny

  Contacts at British Military Mission H.Q.: Captain Butcher

  Captain Stokes

  Daddy Maynard’s rescuer: Major Edwardes

  IN LONDON

  David Lloyd George, Prime Minister

  Jonathan Fitzroy, aide to P.M.

  Advisory Committee: Charles Delahaye (Treasury)

  Sir Franklyn Fletcher (Foreign Office)

  General Stattaford (War Office)

  James Weatherby (Home Office)

  COMPLETE CHANGE OF SCENERY

  1

  Bennett had lost the aerodrome.

  Embarrassing. Damned embarrassing.

  It couldn’t be more than a mile or two away, but the Camel was shaking like a wet dog. Whatever was wrong with the engine resulted in this huge vibration. His compass was a blur. Smoke swirled into the cockpit and made him choke and cough. Something in the engine had probably broken, maybe a piston rod or a cylinder head, Bennett wasn’t terribly au fait with the workings of a rotary engine. It stuttered and threatened to quit. It was throwing oil: his goggles were spattered with the muck. If he ducked his head to avoid the oil he couldn’t see where the Camel was going, and he knew he had to find a field, any field would do. But when he raised his head and searched, the oil spatter got worse and he couldn’t see through the smoke. He could switch off the engine and stop the spray of oil but he knew the Camel would glide like a brick and he hadn’t much height anyway. What he didn’t know was this Camel was old and tired. The squadron always gave a new boy the worst aeroplane. He glimpsed the top of a pine tree racing past. Crash meant fire, he knew that, knew he must be able to get out fast. He looked down to unfasten his seat belt and didn’t see the next pine. It clipped his left wing. The Camel spun. Bennett got flung into a black and spiky forest at a speed that left his wits far behind him, which spared him the knowledge of what he hit and what it did to him. The Camel flew on, sideways, and met a tall oak tree. Birds panicked for half a mile around. Then silence again.

  Butler’s Farm aerodrome was three miles from Epping Forest. The airfield had been hastily built in 1917, when Germany began sending formations of Gotha bombers to raid England, and fighter squadrons were hurried back from France to reassure the frightened civilians. The Gothas couldn’t guarantee to hit any target smaller than a town, and sometimes not even that; and the number they killed would have been less than a hiccup on the daily death toll in the Trenches. But the idea of total war was new and shocking to civilians, and so a squadron of the latest Camels came to Butler’s Farm in Essex. The pilots liked it: London was just down the road. A few enemy machines got shot down in flames while Londoners applauded. The threat receded. The Camels returned to France for what, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be the last year of the war. Not everyone lived to be surprised: air combat killed several, and a few Camels went out of control and buried themselves and their pilots deep in the mud of the Western Front. It could be a lethal little fighter.

  After the Armistice, the surviving pilots flew back to Butler’s Farm and the squadron set about rebuilding. Jeremy Bennett was one of the new boys. Eighteen, tall, captain of rugby and cricket at Lancing, he passed out top at Flying Training. The war was over, but his type was exactly what the new Royal Air Force was looking for.

  Now the adjutant couldn’t find him.

  He’d taken off two hours ago, so he was probably out of fuel, and phone calls to all the local ae
rodromes drew a blank. The adjutant had asked a couple of pilots to go up, fly around, make a search. Nothing. It was early March, cold and grey. The day was wearing on. A mist was forming.

  Then the adjutant’s phone rang. The police had heard from a farmer who’d seen a plane go overhead, sounding wrong, making smoke. Heading? Sort of north, he’d said. When? Hour ago, maybe hour and a half. Why had he waited so long? Harrowing his field. Finished harrowing, went home, reported it. The adjutant pencilled a cross on a map.

  It wasn’t much of a search party – two officers and a sergeant mechanic – but then it wasn’t much of a clue. They took the adjutant’s car, got lost in the lanes but eventually found the farm, and the farmer. “Seemed wrong,” he told them. What sort of wrong? “Well, you know. Sounded bad.” He coughed harshly, to demonstrate. “Worse than that. And I saw smoke, too.” Asked how high it was, he pointed to a flock of crows heading homewards. “Twice as high as them.” They got in the car and drove on.

  They were both pilots: Wragge, an Englishman, and Hackett, an Australian. At twenty-two, they were hardened veterans of the air war. They had gone to France in the autumn of 1917 and were lucky enough to have joined a flight whose leader could count up to one. He held up his index finger. “Look after Number One,” he told them. “For Christ’s sake, don’t make the Supreme Sacrifice. That’s not going to win this bloody stupid war. The clown who said it’s noble and honourable to die for your country never knew what it’s like to get a bellyful of incendiary bullets at ten thousand feet. Are you listening? Make the other silly bugger die for his country. Then whizz home, fast. Got it?” They got it. They learned more skills from others, and helped a number of German pilots make the Supreme Sacrifice. They were flight leaders when the war ended, with a reputation for quick and efficient killing. Instead of saying damn and blast, the squadron said wragge and hackett!

  That was in France. Now they were sitting in the back of the adjutant’s car, watching the Essex hedgerows go by while the afternoon slipped away; looking for a lost Camel that might be hiding behind that haystack for all they knew. “This is bloody silly,” Hackett said. Just an idle remark. Not serious.

  “What was he doing out here?” Wragge asked. It wasn’t really a question. “If it was him.”

  “I told him to learn the landmarks. Stay in sight of the aerodrome. Bloody idiot.”

  Rain speckled the windscreen. “You get these nasty mists in Essex, sir,” the sergeant said. “Bad for navigation. Fogs, too. Spring up out of nowhere. Mists and fog.” He sucked his teeth.

  “I hope you know where you’re going,” Wragge said. “I’m completely lost.”

  “Remember that ginger-haired Irishman when we were on the Somme?” Hackett said. “Kelly. Got lost in a fog, flew into a hill, lickety-split. Always in a tearing hurry, Kelly.”

  “Not easy to find a hill in France.”

  “Well, he was very lost. Why have you stopped, sergeant?”

  “Epping Forest, sir. D’you want to go in? It’s big.”

  They got out and looked at the forest. Rain flickered through the headlights. Nothing was in leaf; the trees were black and gloomy. “It would take a regiment a week to search that lot,” Wragge said.

  Hackett put his chin up and sniffed. “Funny smell.”

  “Charcoal,” Wragge said. “It’s a wood. Charcoal burners.”

  Hackett kept sniffing. “Smells funny. We’ve come this far. Let’s go and ask the natives. Maybe they saw something.”

  The sergeant had an electric lantern. They followed Hackett’s sense of smell, and after a hundred yards they found the oak tree with the Camel wrapped around a fistful of branches. A petrol tank was still dripping. Chunks of hot metal had dropped and started a small fire at the base of the tree and it still glowed, but amazingly the flames had not reached the Camel. It was shattered, but the bits were intact. The cockpit was empty.

  They walked in increasing circles and soon found Bennett. He lay with every limb twisted so that they pointed the wrong way. They carried him back to the car. It had a rumble seat, and that seemed the obvious place to put him. It was open to the weather and the rain was hammering down but Bennett didn’t care.

  The car jolted up the lane and sent brown bow-waves flying into the dark. “Take it steady,” Wragge told the sergeant. “We don’t want another accident.”

  “Bloody awful climate,” Hackett muttered.

  “Well, it’s England,” Wragge said. “It’s what we English call a baking hot day in Essex.”

  “It’s rained like a bitch every day for a week. Where the hell does it come from?”

  “We import it from the Atlantic, old boy. Been doing it for centuries. Steady, reliable, phlegmatic stuff. Very traditional. You Colonials wouldn’t understand.”

  The sergeant said, “It’s not like Australia, Mr Hackett. You planning on going back?”

  “Back to what? Sheep and cricket? No thanks.”

  “Get used to the rain, then,” Wragge said. “Settle down here and breed goldfish. The fun’s over.”

  “It was the war to end all wars,” the sergeant said. “Everyone says so.”

  “By Christ, I hope not,” Hackett said. He sounded annoyed.

  They delivered the body to the Medical Officer and gave the news to the adjutant, who thanked them. “Don’t thank us, Uncle,” Wragge said. “He killed himself, poor bastard. We just got wet feet.” The adjutant knew better than to argue. He was an ex-cavalry major, aged forty-five, felt like sixty-five in the company of these casual assassins. He reminded them that tonight was Dining-In Night in the Mess, distinguished guest present, look smart, be sharp; and he watched them go. Younger than my sons, he thought, older than Methuselah.

  He phoned the Medical Officer and confirmed that Jeremy Meredith Tobias Bennett, aged eighteen, really was dead and not the makings of a practical joke. The Royal Flying Corps had become the Royal Air Force, but it retained its undergraduate humour. Only a week ago, the Egyptian ambassador in London had telephoned him to discuss the proposal by His Majesty King Mahomet to make the squadron honorary members of the Royal Camel Corps, in recognition of its pluck and courage. He was pretty sure that the voice belonged to Flying Officer Dextry. Bloody idiots. Problem was, they hadn’t enough to do. Peace was boring.

  The adjutant fished out some papers from his in-tray. Restaurant in Chelsea demanded payment for damages caused by horseplay leading to food-fight. That was “B” Flight. They’d blamed it all on a crowd of American aviators. Self-defence, “B” Flight said … Metropolitan Police were looking for the officers who hired some horses and raced them down Park Lane and up Piccadilly. Probably Hackett’s doing. And somebody’s Camel went and flour-bombed the Brighton Express as it left Waterloo, so now Air Ministry was furious. One flour-bomb actually hit the dining car. Few pilots had that kind of skill. In the margin, the adjutant wrote: Jessop?

  The last paper was the worst of all. The accounts for the Officers’ Mess showed a loss of £483, a horribly huge amount. Flying Officer Bellamy was President of the Mess Committee, but he claimed that his predecessor, chap called Champion, must have pocketed the money, lost it at the races, spent it on floozies, who knew what? The trouble was, Champion was dead, got into a spin, made a hole in the heart of Essex. Left a hole in the Mess funds.

  The adjutant tossed the papers back in his in-tray. Tomorrow was soon enough. Nothing would change, of course. He’d still be surrounded by bloody idiots.

  The camp at Butler’s Farm was built fast, mainly from Nissen huts. Luckily, part of the airfield had been a cricket field, and the pavilion became the Officers’ Mess. Long yards of creamy linen covered trestle tables. There was much silverware, looted in the final advance when the squadron had occupied an aerodrome suddenly abandoned by the German air force.

  Flying Officer Bellamy’s disasters had not yet been made public and he had decided to go out with a bang, if not a cheer. There was a lot of wine. Bellamy knew what the chaps liked: game soup, baked stuf
fed haddock, roast rib of beef, jam roly-poly with custard, welsh rarebit. No fancy frog names, no mucky sauces. Plenty of mashed potato with the beef. He told the waiters to be ready with second helpings. Bellamy was no good at sums, but he knew the chaps.

  Dinner went well.

  The C.O. got them to their feet for the loyal toast, and then introduced their distinguished guest.

  “A man,” he said, “whose achievements in our recent difference of opinion with the Boche have become a thing of legend, both as a pilot and as a leader. He took air fighting to a new level, as the enemy soon discovered, because invariably he was above them, and shortly afterwards they were descending at a great rate of knots, usually without a tail or a wing.” (Laughter.) “I’m sure everyone here knows his astonishing record. Gentlemen: our guest … Wing Commander J.E.B. Griffin.”

  Few fighter pilots were tall. If your head stuck outside the cockpit, it was the equivalent of facing a gale on top of the Alps, which didn’t help eyesight or breathing and exposed you to the enemy’s guns. So nobody was surprised to see that Griffin was short, with broad shoulders. He didn’t look like a hero; but then most heroes look like ploughboys or bricklayers: compact, strong, quiet. The squadron got ready for a few words about how we won and what an honour it had been to serve, and Griffin surprised them all.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “We thought it was all over. But there is still a certain amount of what the infantry calls mopping-up to be done, and I have been asked to lead a new squadron. It seems that our Russian friends need a hand to help put their house in order.”

  He took a sip of water and let the rumble of comments subside. Russia? Wore fur hats and had snow on their boots, didn’t they? Russia. Crikey.

  “For those of you who are looking for a complete change of scenery, I recommend northern Russia. We have bases at Murmansk and Archangel. They are on or about the Arctic Circle and both need pilots. If you relish a challenge, this is the place for you. The natives are treacherous, and the enemy – the Bolsheviks – are savages. The cold is brutal. Last month a general took his gloves off to pin a medal on a chap, got instant frostbite, and pinned his own fingers instead. Fact.”