Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  Lynch’s eyes began to work again. He saw a colonel: a tall man with a face that made a brave start with a big, boney nose, then fell away to a thin mouth and a nothing of a chin. “You must be the fearless aviators,” he said. There was Yorkshire in his voice.

  “I’m Lynch, sir. This is Lieutenant Simms.”

  “You attacked the German balloon? Set it on fire?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  The question was so strange that Lynch looked around, hoping for clues. All he saw was dirt walls, a corrugated-iron roof, a telephonist sitting in one corner, a sergeant and a captain in another, boxes for seats, and the usual military litter: weapons, belts, tinned food, plates, maps, blankets, bottles, binoculars. “It was an enemy balloon, sir,” he said.

  “Who told you to destroy it?”

  “Nobody, sir. But —”

  “What harm was it doing?”

  “Well, sir, presumably the Hun observers were spying on our trenches, and on any activity behind —”

  “They’re not your trenches, Mr Lynch. You know nothing about what goes on here. These are my trenches, and my men. Come with me.”

  They went back up the steps and into the dazzling daylight. Now and then the remote boom of artillery could be heard, and the gloomy crump of a shellburst.

  “Look around,” Merrivale said. “What do you see?”

  To the horizon, the landscape was empty, streaked with snow, abandoned. “Nothing, sir,” Lynch said.

  “Nothing worth shelling? Correct. Shells are expensive,” Merrivale said. “Here comes one now.” The express rushed out of the tunnel, but this time it landed much further away, and the explosion merely buffeted their ears. “I’ve lost twenty men this afternoon. Twenty good men gone and nothing gained. Not counting the wounded. Harry!” The captain came up from the dugout. “Harry, be a good chap and take these officers over to Major Gibbons’ batteries.”

  It was another long slog through the same sort of mud. Sometimes the shellfire died out entirely for long minutes; sometimes it awoke and barked furiously. Harry said little. Simms looked at the naked landscape and said: “Must get jolly chilly here.”

  “I don’t suppose you brought any whisky.”

  “Actually, no.”

  The batteries were of field guns. Empty shellcases lay tumbled in heaps: it had been a busy afternoon. Major Gibbons turned out to be a thickset, red-headed Irishman. He looked cheerful, but that was just the face he had been born with. “Jesus wept!” he said. “I knew you flying idiots were all absolute maniacs, but is it utterly necessary for you to inflict your lunatic insanity on us? Eh?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Lynch said. “Evidently I miscalculated.”

  “We miscalculated. We should have blown your idiot heads off when we had the chance. We’ve got a nice, well-managed war going on here. Stay away!”

  Simms was baffled. “Well-managed, sir? I don’t see ...”

  But Major Gibbons had put his fingers in his ears. Simms looked at Lynch. Lynch shrugged. Then the battery fired. When the pilots turned to look, guns were recoiling and ejecting shellcases and exhaling smoke, and men were scrambling to reload. “Beautiful bang, isn’t it?” Gibbons said. “I don’t suppose you brought any whisky.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Buzz off, then. Fly away. Harry, show them to Tommy Skinner. I doubt he’s had much to laugh at today.”

  “Oh, thanks awfully,” Harry said flatly.

  They followed him across more snow-speckled mud, to the beginnings of the trench system. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun had lost whatever little warmth it had had. “This is frightfully good of you,” Lynch said. “I hope we aren’t ruining your afternoon.”

  “It was ruined already.”

  They trudged along communication trenches and into reserve trenches, squeezing past soldiers whose khaki had long since turned to the colour of mud. The men wore greatcoats, mufflers, woollen gloves; many smoked pipes; all wore steel helmets. They had the slack, resigned air of travellers waiting for a train that has been cancelled so often that it might never arrive. The occasional whistle of a shell or the fizz of a bullet did not disturb them. They were at home. It was filthy, cold and lice-infested, but it was home.

  Tommy Skinner turned out to be another major, in another dugout. He wore a balaclava under his cap, two greatcoats and thigh-length rubber boots. He was listening on a field-telephone, and grunting every five seconds. Finally he yawned, and said: “Do my best. Can’t say more.” He handed the phone to a signaller. “My compliments to Mr Arbuthnott, and I need a lieutenant and six men for a raid.” He turned to his visitors.

  “They’re Flying Corps, sir,” Harry said. “They shot down the Hun balloon.”

  “Idiot bastards,” Skinner said. “Bastard idiots.”

  “It was a mistake, sir,” Lynch said quickly.

  “Wrong again,” Skinner said. “It was a crime. We have a tacit agreement with the enemy. Tacit means silent. Silent means they don’t shell us and we don’t shell them.”

  Simms said, “With respect, sir, that’s not war.”

  “Of course it’s not! And I’ll tell you something else: war isn’t war, either. Not all the time.” He fished a Colt revolver from a greatcoat pocket. “I am strongly minded to kill you two sparrows. Nobody would know, would they, Trotter?”

  “No, sir,” said the signaller.

  “Just a couple of bodies. Add ’em to the pile. Yes?”

  “Got hit by shrapnel, I expect, sir.”

  “War isn’t war?” Lynch said. “Too deep for me, sir. I’m just a simple sparrow.”

  “That Hun balloon,” the major said. “It went up every day, took a dekko behind our Lines, saw nothing doing, came down. Likewise with our balloon. Then you winged pricks turn up. Fritz thinks: they popped my balloon, they’ve got something to hide! An offensive, maybe! So he pops our balloon and he shells us like buggery, just in case.” He put the revolver muzzle in Lynch’s ear. “How long is the British Front?”

  “Sixty or seventy miles.”

  He took the muzzle away. “Lucky guess. Can you have a sixty-mile battlefront on the boil, all year round?” He put the muzzle back to the ear.

  “No, sir.”

  “So why didn’t you think of that?” Skinner roared. A rat scampered across the dugout floor and ran up the steps and he shot at it and missed. “See? Even the bloody rats can’t stand you.”

  Lynch smiled. “What are you grinning at?” Skinner demanded.

  “Well ... here you are, sir, threatening to shoot me for being too warlike. I was just thinking how odd that was.”

  “Thinking? Sparrows don’t think. You flap about the sky and you shit on the poor bloody infantry and that makes you a golden eagle. Well, go and see the troops. Find out what they think! Harry, take them up to B-Company. Find Captain Vine.” As they climbed the steps, he added: “And next time you visit the Lines, bring some whisky.”

  The trenches became more crowded as they moved forward. In places the trench-wall had been smashed by shellfire; the chemical stink hung in the air; men in sheepskin jerkins were repairing the damage, shovelling dirt into sandbags. The pilots made room for stretcher-bearers, who were in no hurry; blankets covered the heads and bodies but not the boots. The boots were exposed and angled at forty-five degrees to each other, just as the drill sergeant had taught. Simms touched a boot as it went past, and wished he hadn’t.

  Captain Vine was in the first trench, waiting for the dusk stand-to. Ice had begun to form.

  “What the deuce does Jerry think he’s playing at?” Vine complained. “Nobody starts an attack in January, for God’s sake. This is just a damnfool temper-tantrum.”

  Lynch said, “I’m sorry, we bust their balloon and we won’t do it again.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Vine found that very funny. “Take a squint at this.”

  Lynch climbed onto the step of the parapet and looked through binoculars, pa
st a fuzzy fringe of barbed wire, across the wide wasteland to the German wire. Behind this was a notice, painted red on white. The setting sun picked it out beautifully: TELL YOUR FUCKING FLYING CORPS TO LEAVE US ALONE. WE ARE SAXONS.

  “Sorry about the whisky,” Lynch said. He gave the binoculars to Simms.

  “The odd thing is they’re not Saxons,” Vine said. “One of them deserted, the other night. They’re Bavarians.”

  “That completes the Cook’s Tour of the Front,” Harry said. “Unless you want to look in on our Advanced Casualty Clearing Station?”

  “Another time, perhaps,” Lynch said.

  “Well, think of us, under the stars,” Vine said, “when your servant is tucking you up in your feather bed.”

  But by the time they had walked to the smashed village, and waited for transport, it was black night. They finally scrounged a ride to the landing ground and slept in blankets on the hangar floor. Next morning, unwashed and unshaven, they flew back to Pepriac.

  * * *

  There were three guests at lunch in the mess. Nobody was surprised to see Colonel Bliss, from Wing H.Q. The other two were strangers, in strange uniforms: their breeches were baggier and their tunics shorter than the British Army’s style. One man had a small beard, which the British Army forbade. They were young and they wore more medals than a general would collect if he spent his entire career in the cannon’s mouth.

  The padre said grace. Brown soup was served.

  “Wops,” Spud Ogilvy guessed. “Wops from Italy.”

  Gerrish shook his head. “One’s got blue eyes.”

  “You can’t possibly see that from here,” said Dando, the doctor. “Can you?” The day was gloomy and the mess was dim. He envied their eyesight.

  “The Italian Army is fighting splendidly,” the padre said. He was the tallest man in the squadron, and the most enthusiastic. “The Italians will stand no nonsense from the Austrians.”

  “If they’re not wops, they’re Greeks,” Ogilvy said. “Lots of fighting in Salonika. Is that in Greece?”

  “Ask young Mr Hamilton,” Gerrish said. “He was at school last year, so he should know. Where’s Salonika, Mr Hamilton?”

  Hamilton hated having people stare at him. “Geography wasn’t all that important at Rugby,” he muttered.

  “Well, I don’t suppose they play much rugby in Salonika,” the doctor said. “So you’re quits.”

  The soup plates were cleared. Mutton chops arrived. Lynch, who had been listening carefully, said: “I know who that chap with the beard is. I just can’t remember his name.”

  “How about the fellow next to him?” Gerrish said.

  “Ah, that’s Cleve-Cutler. Claims to be C.O. here. Can’t make up his mind. One day he wants you to go balloon-busting, next day he doesn’t. Bet you wouldn’t have put up with him at Salonika,” he said to Hamilton. “Eh?” Hamilton stopped eating, and his eyes flickered in panic from Lynch to Gerrish, who merely shook his head. Lynch sawed a chunk off his chop and waggled it on his fork. “Say no more.” He was silent for the rest of the meal. Gerrish was glad of this. He found Lynch’s jokes unfunny. If they were jokes. How could anyone tell?

  * * *

  The visiting officers came from Russia. Colonel Bliss told the C.O. and the adjutant that they were on secondment from the Imperial Russian Air Force and they were now attached to Hornet Squadron, to gain experience. “Did you know there is a Russian regiment already in the Lines?” Bliss said. “No? Well, there is. Maybe the Tsar plans to send us a squadron of his latest scouts, too.”

  After lunch, Captain Brazier took the Russians on a tour of the aerodrome, while Bliss and Cleve-Cutler went to the C.O.’s office for a chat.

  “I’m told they don’t speak a word of English,” Bliss said, “which doesn’t mean they can’t understand it. Totally unpronounceable names, by the way. At Wing we called them Steak and Kidney. The beard is Kidney.”

  “How did they get all those medals? They look about my age.”

  “Younger. They’re related to the Tsar, distantly. Steak is a grand duke and Kidney’s a marquee or a flower show or something. I expect the medals came with the titles. Top Marks for Pluck. Cossack Order of Chastity, Third Class. Best Geranium in Show, that sort of thing. You know what the Russian court is like.”

  “No.”

  “Treat them like any other officer.”

  “How well can they fly?”

  “That’s for you to find out, old chap.” Bliss was looking out at the drab, dank afternoon. “This would be considered a bright, sunny day in Russia, so they should feel quite at home here ... Now then. About Captain Lynch.”

  “We’ve sent Colonel Merrivale a case of whisky.”

  “Send him a dozen, he won’t forgive you.” Bliss put on his glasses, looked hard at Cleve-Cutler, then took them off. “The Corps is not universally popular, you know, Hugh. London gets bombed by Zeppelins while we buzz about like flies in a thunderstorm. Some people in high places think the money would be better spent on more anti-aircraft guns. Don’t bugger-up the infantry. Bugger-up the Hun. Otherwise you’ll never get a better Pup.”

  “Let me get this straight, Colonel,” Cleve-Cutler said. “To prove that they need a better machine, my chaps must first succeed with an inferior fighter. Have I got it right?”

  Bliss shrugged on his British Warm and picked up his hat and stick. He put a hand on Cleve-Cutler’s shoulder and leaned forward until his mouth was near the C.O.’s ear. “Don’t tell them,” he whispered, “and they’ll probably never find out.”

  * * *

  Captain Vine had been right: nobody launches an attack in January. The wind moaned over his stretch of trench and from time to time rain pattered or bucketed or lashed down on his men. Their boots churned the mud to a clinging, sucking liquid that made walking a drudgery and running an impossibility.

  Pepriac too was wet and windy, but smoke raced from the stove pipes, the billets were dry, the beds were warm and the food was hot. Every night, Wing H.Q. sent its orders for the coming day. Usually it wanted deep offensive patrols, and usually its orders were cancelled before breakfast. The pilots relaxed again. They settled down to a day of letter-writing and poker, of drowsing in battered leather armchairs while mishit ping-pong balls ricocheted past their heads, of winding up the gramophone to play songs from Chu-Chin-Chow or The Bing Boys Are Here.

  A mess servant brought Plug Gerrish a postcard datemarked London. He read: Bumped into Frank Foster in Piccadilly. Calls himself Timms now and has grown a ginger moustache. Very shifty behaviour. I informed Military Intelligence but M.I. is not what it’s cracked up to be. Cordially, Frank O’Neill.

  Gerrish made a sour face, and tossed the card to Spud Ogilvy. “Hilarious,” he said. Ogilvy read it and grunted.

  Later, an amiable, chubby lieutenant called Munday followed the duckboards to the orderly room. Sergeant Lacey was refilling his fountain pen while listening to a Souza march on his gramophone. It ended with a crash.

  “Such swagger,” Lacey said. “I am preparing myself spiritually for the Americans to enter the war. They wear cowboy hats, you know, like the Boy Scouts. So debonair, so refreshing, so irresistible to flying shrapnel. I see you have read Captain O’Neill’s postcard.”

  Munday gave it to him. “Can you translate? It gave off a bad smell in the mess.”

  “Captain Foster was a flight commander. He had been at Eton with another pilot, Lieutenant Yeo. When Yeo was killed, Foster removed himself to a tent, took up the clarinet and blew his brains out.”

  “My stars!”

  “The whole episode was self-indulgent in a middle-aged way, but then Eton is a self-indulgent and middle-aged school. You can’t dress schoolboys like stockbrokers without damaging their minds.”

  “Captain Ogilvy picked on the phrase ‘not what it’s cracked up to be’.”

  “Foster’s last words. Nothing, he said, was what it was cracked up to be. A flimsy reason for suicide, don’t you think?” He returned t
he postcard.

  “So what on earth is Captain O’Neill up to?”

  “Who knows?” Lacey said. “Be sure to read our next gripping instalment.”

  * * *

  Spud Ogilvy’s parents had a big house in the west of Ireland and Cleve-Cutler thought he looked Irish: plenty of wavy black hair, a snub nose, a quick smile that revealed a couple of chipped teeth. In fact Ogilvy’s parents were Scottish and he had been educated in England – at Eton, like the late Frank Foster – and his speech and habits were thoroughly English; he had damaged his teeth playing cricket. But the C.O. felt that the two Russians needed to be handled with a bit of Irish charm, so he put them into C-Flight.

  Ogilvy found them in their room: half a hut, which was rather more space than two new pilots got. Ogilvy had read some of the exciting bits of War and Peace, so he knew that Russian nobles spoke French. “Bonjour” he said. “Je suis votre chef.”

  “Is a long way to Tipperary,” the clean-shaven man said. “Everyone says. Why?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest. But I do know that it’s customary on this squadron for new pilots to put their hats on and salute their flight commander and call him ‘sir’.”

  “Is customary in Imperial Russian Air Force to call me ‘Highness’,” the clean-shaven Russian said. “Old soldiers kneel and kiss my boots.” He spoke casually: it was not a contest. “But not in Russia now, so ...” They put their caps on and saluted.

  Ogilvy returned the salute. “Tell me your names, please.”

  They gave him their cards. The clean-shaven man was Lieutenant the Duke Nikolai Dolgorankov-Orlovensky-Vladimirovich. The bearded man was Lieutenant Count Andrei Kolchak-Romishevsky. Ogilvy was impressed by their extreme good looks. So many pilots came and went that he usually paid little attention to faces, but these two held his attention, like fine young actors. And their build was short and slim, which added to the sense of neatness. Most pilots were a bit grubby, a bit untidy: the result of long patrols with oil splattering back from the engine and whale-grease on the face. The Russians looked immaculate.