“I don’t suppose …” Count Borodin began, and waved the thought away as if it were smoke from a cigar. “No. Silly idea.”
“Most of war’s a bloody silly idea,” Hackett said. “Spit it out.”
“Well … I saw some heroic acts when we were fighting the Germans. Truly heroic. The survivors became heroes, and sometimes the Tsar, in person, presented them with the Order of St George, first class, and they were speechless, they felt they had been touched by the hand of God. It begs the question: why had they risked death so recklessly? It wasn’t to win the battle. Usually the battle was lost already. So why …” He gave up.
“Griffin had just met Colonel Kenny, hadn’t he?” Wragge said. “Kenny V.C. The hero of the Somme.”
“He took on all those Bolos just to win the Victoria Cross?” Oliphant said. “That’s crazy.”
“Men on the battlefield are not completely sane,” Brazier said. “I’ve seen soldiers crawl into no-man’s-land in broad daylight just to dig some potatoes. Risk of getting snipered, maybe twenty to one. They weren’t crazy. They just wanted a few new spuds.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a spur of-the-moment thing,” Wragge said. “Maybe Griffin came to Russia to win the V.C.”
“He might get one,” Hackett said. “I bet the Mission in Ekat is tickled pink with him.”
Further down the train, Lacey was playing backgammon with Stevens, the medical sergeant.
“Your pay parade was a big success,” Stevens said. “We all got five times what we expected.”
Lacey threw his dice and made his move.
“I asked the adj how it was done,” Stevens said. He threw his dice and studied the board. “He seemed a bit awkward. Almost shifty. Said it was all up to you.” He made his move and hit a piece left by Lacey and removed it. “Was it all up to you, Mr Lacey?”
Lacey took his time over his throw and got a two and a five, exactly what he didn’t want. “Come on, God,” he said. “Play the game.” He tried a possible move, didn’t like it and took it back.
“You nearly fell in a yawning cesspit there, sir.”
Lacey massaged his eyes. “Before now, you were paid at the official exchange rate, twenty roubles to the pound. That was very stupid, it bought almost nothing. The unofficial rate – on the street, any street – is at least eighty roubles. The Paymaster at the Military Mission gives our man in Ekat our pay in pounds, he gets the street rate, or better, and sends the roubles to me. Simple.”
“Doesn’t sound legal, sir.”
“Of course it’s not legal. This war isn’t legal. The difference is what I do doesn’t hurt anybody. Your move.”
“No, it’s still yours. Any move you make is a disaster. You can concede now, if you like. If not, I’ll clobber you.”
“Where did you learn to play?”
“Salonika. Greeks taught me. Best in the world.”
Lacey decided to play on. He quickly threw a string of double-sixes and played a long, dour defensive game and won by a whisker. “Another?” he said.
“Bloody officers,” Stevens said.
The bar-dining-room had been renamed; it was now known as The Dregs. Several crews from the bomber flight were there, attracted by the poker game. Everyone was flush with Lacey’s roubles. A hazy setting sun warmed the air. The train rumbled along, unhurriedly. There was a feeling of contentment, of a well-deserved holiday after hard work. Memories of non-stop P.T. and leapfrog races on top of a hot breakfast had been rapidly forgotten. Nobody mentioned Griffin.
Daddy Maynard was reading some old copies of the Daily Mail that Lacey had found in Colonel Kenny’s train. “Hullo,” he said. “They’re going to hang the Kaiser.”
“About time,” Junk Jessop said. “That bloody awful moustache. Looks like seaweed. Definite hanging offence.”
“Who’s going to hang him?” Hopton asked.
“Not like seaweed,” Drunken Duncan said. “Seaweed’s green.”
“The French seem first in line,” Daddy Maynard said.
“German seaweed isn’t green,” Jessop said. “German stuff’s all grey and slimy. Ask any sailor.”
“I bet the French won’t hang him,” Gerry Pedlow said. “I bet they guillotine him.”
“Yes. On the Champs Élysées,” Hopton said. “And their top man, Clemenceau, will sell tickets. Make a fortune. Typical frog thing.”
“I suppose you learnt that at your rotten school,” Rex Dextry said to Jessop. “Got beaten senseless all afternoon and then wrote essays on German seaweed.”
“You can’t write on seaweed,” Jessop said. “The ink keeps running.” Nobody laughed.
“They wouldn’t do it on the Champs Élysées,” Pedlow said. “It’s just a road. If they sold tickets, people would get a lousy view. The frogs would riot.”
“They might guillotine Clemenceau too,” Hopton suggested. “Two for the price of one.”
“That was a good joke, writing essays on seaweed,” Jessop said. “Wasted on you peasants.”
“The Bois de Boulogne is the place to hang him,” Pedlow said. “Tons of room. Or maybe the Eiffel Tower.”
Maynard had moved on to a later copy of the Daily Mail. “They can’t hang the Kaiser,” he said. “He’s done a bunk to Holland, and Holland’s neutral.”
“You’re a large fart, Daddy,” Gerry Pedlow said.
“Anyway, Tonbridge wasn’t as rotten as Rugby,” Jessop said to Dextry. “At least we didn’t invent that stupid game where you hack each other on the shins all afternoon.”
“What was the seaweed joke?” Maynard asked Jessop. “I didn’t hear it.”
“I’ve forgotten,” Jessop said. “And it was too clever for you, anyway.”
3
All three trains came to a gradual halt just as the Camel pilots were sitting down to dinner. “Where are we?” Hackett said.
Daddy Maynard got up and looked out. Dying sunlight made a soft yellow backdrop to the steppe. “Nowhere,” he reported. “We’re in a siding in the middle of nowhere. The other trains have stopped too.”
“Locomotive crews must eat,” Count Borodin said. “And rest. We’ll move again at dawn.”
Fair enough. Mushroom soup laced with cream and brandy was served. “Signal Mission H.Q. at Ekat,” Tiger Wragge told Lacey. “Tell them to keep the war hot until we get there.”
They were well into the beef stroganoff when the far-off crack of rifle fire stopped all conversation. They looked at Borodin. “Not hunters,” he said. “Nobody hunts in the dark. Nothing to hunt, anyway.”
“I posted a guard,” the adjutant said. “Maybe they saw something.”
He left the Pullman coach and walked along the track to a boxcar with a fixed ladder. He climbed to the roof. Starlight showed the black shapes of two men and a Lewis gun on a tripod, “See anything, sergeant?”
“Bugger-all, sir. Harris thinks he heard something. Black as sin out there.”
Brazier looked. It was impossible to tell where steppe ended and night sky began. There was nothing to focus on.
“Might be some fuckin’ peasant,” the sergeant said softly. “Fucked his brain with fuckin’ vodka, got kicked out by his fuckin’ wife, went and shot his fuckin’ self.”
“Probably fuckin’ missed,” Harris said.
Brazier walked slowly up and down the boxcar roof. His stroganoff was getting cold, all because a drunken nobody couldn’t shoot straight. Then a rifle cracked the night on the other side of the train, the bullet ricocheted off iron and sang as it soared and died in the night. Then another shot. This time Brazier saw the tiny splash of flame. As Harris swung the Lewis, Brazier said: “Watch for the next muzzle-flash and give it a short burst. Four rounds maximum. This could be a long fight.”
He swung down the ladder. Lit windows in all three trains were turning black. He hurried back to The Dregs and met Hackett at the door. “Tell everyone to lie flat,” he said.
Hackett disappeared, shouted orders, came back, “What’s up?” he asked
.
“God knows. No moon yet. You could hide two or three battalions out there.” Lewis guns made short statements. “I bet the bastards didn’t expect that,” Brazier said.
“This is your kind of show, Uncle. You’re in command.”
A bullet sighed overhead. High overhead. “Sloppy,” Brazier said. “No discipline. But a random shot can still kill you. I’ll get some rifles sent here.”
“Thanks. We officers can shoot at random too. Might even hit it.”
The adjutant chuckled, a rare sound.
He made his rounds of the trains, talking to the flight sergeants, making sure that all the ground crews were armed. He added four more Lewis guns on top of boxcars. Sporadic shots continued. A couple punctured windows, but there seemed no obvious plan to the firing. Brazier walked to Kenny’s train and found, as he expected, that he could teach its Royal Marines nothing. They welcomed the change in routine. They could fire, reload and fire again so fast that a rifle sounded almost like a light machine gun. All they needed was a target.
In The Dregs everyone was on the floor, including Hackett. He felt restless: annoyed that the evening had been spoiled by a few bad marksmen, God knew how many, a dozen, a thousand? Merlin Squadron could strafe the scruffy bastards to bits in five minutes. If it was daytime. If the Camels could be assembled. If the scruffy bastards would stand and fight, which they probably wouldn’t … That was when he remembered the squadron doctor.
Susan Perry was in her Pullman cabin, sitting on the floor, finishing her supper by candlelight and reading a tattered copy of Horse and Hound.
“Just wanted to check that you’re O.K.,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just a few troublemakers. Soon send them packing.”
She ate the last bit and gave him the plate. “In France I worked with surgeons in a Forward Dressing Station,” she said. “Blood up to the elbows and Hun shells dropping like autumn leaves. So this doesn’t worry me.”
“All the same, I think you should be with the pilots.”
“Is there pudding?”
“Um … Treacle tart. Cream.”
“I’m not going to miss out on that.” She got to her feet and picked up a Colt revolver. “Belonged to Colonel Kenny. Don’t worry, it’s loaded.”
“I hope we won’t let any blighter get that close.”
“I’m sure you won’t. This is to fight off randy pilots in the dark.”
“You can trust my chaps.”
“When a man tells a girl she can trust him,” she said, “she knows she can’t trust him.”
They went to The Dregs. “Listen here,” he announced. “There’s a lady present. Mind your manners.”
“God, I hope not,” she said. “I can take war or good manners but I can’t take them both together.”
The night passed slowly. Some of the pilots fell asleep. Hackett organized a system of watches so that two were always awake and alert. The firing lessened but never completely stopped. Brazier would have liked to lead a few volunteers from the ground crews, stealthily patrolling the steppe with blackened faces and sharpened knives, but he knew that such tactics ended with the last war, the one with trenches and no-man’s-land and abundant Huns to be poached. Instead, he made sure that hot cocoa and bully-beef sandwiches were available. The hours drifted by, and just as a tinge of grey began to soften the darkness, the enemy attacked Kenny’s train.
The Marine who was manning the Lewis gun on the roof swung it in a steady, scything action, changed the drum, did it again. Marines at the windows picked off the ghostly shapes that got past the Lewis gun. Brazier, watching from the roof of “B” Flight’s train, said: “They’ll come at us from both sides. Spray the ground on the left. Four-second bursts. Don’t stint the bullets. Where are the grenades?”
He took four grenades, climbed down and walked to the front of the locomotive. There was much shouting and blowing of whistles, and he threw two grenades to left and to right, aiming for the centres of the noise. Brazier had a strong arm. The grenades flew like clay pigeons and exploded like the crack of doom.
When the smoke cleared, the pre-dawn twilight showed attackers running away on both sides of Kenny’s train. The Lewis guns chased them. Some fell.
Brazier walked back to The Dregs. “I think you can safely tell Chef to prepare breakfast,” he told Hackett.
“They weren’t Bolos, were they? Too far south. What did they want?”
“They were rabble,” Brazier said comfortably. “And they wanted what every Russian wants, anything that isn’t nailed down. Given enough time, they’ll steal the nails too.” He patted Hackett’s arm. “This isn’t the Varsity rugger match, squadron leader.” They went into the bar car. Brazier hadn’t felt so satisfied since he watched the lid of Kenny’s coffin being screwed down.
“The bandits have been sent packing,” Hackett told the pilots. “Back to normal again.”
“Congratulations to the adjutant and his men,” Count Borodin said. “As to normal … I wonder if that might be premature.”
“What’s the problem?” Hackett asked. “Fuel dump’s not far. We steam on, grab some coal. Easy.”
Borodin went to a window and tapped his knuckles on the glass. “Double tracks out there. But no train has passed us, going either way, since we left Beketofka. Isn’t that unusual?”
“I smell coffee,” the adjutant said. “Let us examine the situation over the black stimulant. And perhaps also an egg.”
Over coffee, they listened to Borodin. The train drivers, he said, told him that the fuel dump and water tower were in a small town about twenty miles away. He told them its name, and wrote it on a piece of paper.
“You’ve left out the vowels,” Brazier said. He clutched the paper and took a stab at the name, and failed. “Let’s call it Walsall. Near Birmingham. Sounds a bit like Warsaw.”
“That’s in Poland,” Hackett objected.
“Warsaw will do nicely,” Borodin said. “I rather think this Warsaw may be in unfriendly hands.” That might explain the absence of trains. Could the Reds have captured Warsaw? Unlikely. But there were other rogue forces roaming the land. Bands of guerrillas. Hordes of deserters. Warlords’ armies. Why Warsaw? Because trains worth looting would stop there. And maybe a handful of bandits had chanced on Merlin Squadron in the dark, and didn’t know the trains were full of fighting men.
Well, it was possible. Anyway, what next?
No point in steaming into Warsaw if it was stuffed with bad hats. No point in sitting here if it wasn’t.
Borodin offered to go on ahead, by pony, and find out more. Talk to a few peasants. “They’ll tell me,” he said. “They won’t tell you.”
Nobody could think of a better idea. “We’ll look at the battlefield first,” Brazier said. “Might find some clues.”
The Marines were counting the bodies and dragging them into lines. A few of the dead wore odd bits of uniform; most did not; many were barefoot. “Funny thing, sir,” a Marine corporal said. “No wounded. Not many rifles, either.”
“The survivors took all the rifles,” Borodin said. “And the boots. Both are scarce. And the wounded expected to be shot. Or worse. The lucky ones would have been carried away by their friends. The rest …” He waved a hand at the sweep of the steppe. “Crawled off to die in the grass.”
“Bloody hell,” the corporal said. “Sir.”
“Don’t go looking for them, corporal,” Brazier said. “They won’t thank you for it.”
Borodin walked along the line of bodies. He stooped and picked up a black flag. “Nestor Makhno’s badge,” he said. “He leads an Anarchist guerrilla force. They fight anyone and everyone. Makhno calls them his Green Guards.”
“Green Guards,” Hackett said. “With a black flag.”
Borodin shrugged. “They’re Anarchists. They do what they like. They like attacking trains.”
“They didn’t like our Lewis guns, sir,” the corporal said. “Made a big mistake there, they did.”
Count B
orodin took some old and soiled pieces of clothing from the bodies: a sheepskin coat, canvas trousers, a felt cap. “Camouflage,” he said.
4
The squadron caught up on its sleep. The adjutant kept a few guards on top of the boxcars. Fifty yards from Kenny’s train, plennys dug a mass grave. They worked steadily, but they were silent and sombre. They were Russians burying fellow-Russians killed by foreigners. The bloodshed had been unavoidable. If the attackers had got into the trains, they might have slaughtered everyone. All the same, the plennys didn’t like it. Some of the drops that fell in the grave were sweat. A few were tears.
Hackett woke at midday, dressed and walked alongside the trains, looking for damage. He found some bullet holes and Flight Lieutenant Susan Perry. She was changing the dressings on a couple of ground crew, cut by fragments of glass from broken windows. She tied the knot on the final bandage. “Does that hurt?” she asked.
“Agony, ma’am.”
“That’s odd, I didn’t feel a thing.” He laughed, and she dismissed him with a nod and a smile. “I need some exercise,” she told Hackett. “Will you come with me? I don’t want to get massacred by some smelly bandit.”
“Of course. I’ll get my gun.”
“No need. I have the colonel’s revolver in my bag. You hold the rotter and I’ll shoot him in the head.”
They strolled towards the steppe. “You seem very … um … refreshed,” he said. What he meant was delightful, but he was the C.O. and duty came first.
“It goes with the job. A nurse can be dead on her feet, but if she yawns, matron will kill her. Lesson one.”
“I see, I see.” Hearing her voice – after weeks of male gruffness – gave him amazing pleasure. It had a light and easy lilt that was a reward in itself. Never mind the words. Just enjoy the voice. “Yes, I do see.”
“We’re walking in step,” she said. “D’you mind awfully if we don’t? Your legs are longer than mine.”
“Yes, of course, of course.” Why must he say everything twice? It made him sound stupid. He broke step, and to make sure that they stayed out of step he watched her feet. She had legs like a dancer’s. What he could see of them. But she was so slim that he could easily imagine … He sniffed hard and filled his lungs. A rabbit hole gave him an excuse to sidestep away from her. They walked at a safe distance. “Uncle tells me you embalmed Colonel Kenny superbly well,” he said.
A Splendid Little War Page 19