War Story

by Derek Robinson

  “The whole street joined up, so I joined up too. Didn’t know what I was doing. Just followed the others. Didn’t want to be left on my own.”

  “Good man.” Paxton straddled the bike. “I expect you’re looking forward to the Big Push, aren’t you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No? Why not?”

  The answer unrolled like dirty puttees. “Fucking trenches, fucking lousy food, fucking sergeant hates my fucking guts, fucking fritz is going to blow me to fucking bits.” He picked up his rifle and helmet. “Sir.”

  Paxton was shocked. Watkins clearly meant what he said. Briefly, Watkins was in command: he spoke from authority, greater authority than Paxton had. “Perhaps I see things differently,” Paxton said,”but believe me, from upstairs it’s pretty obvious that the Hun is on the run, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Just when he least expected it, Watkins smiled. “I wish I could fly,” he said. “I’d give anything to be able to fly.”

  “Would you? Well, come and see me, and I’ll give you a flip in my plane.” Paxton started the bike. “I’m at Pepriac,” he shouted. “Lieutenant Paxton.” It was a reward for Watkins’ smile. Watkins would never be able to claim the reward, but it’s the thought that counts. He roared off, zigzagging until he got the hang of the lopsided handlebars.

  Chapter 12

  It was like trying to sneak up on a guard dog. At a certain point the dog began to snarl. Get closer and it barked. Push your luck and you’d probably get bitten. Back off and the dog would shut up. But it was always watching.

  Frank Foster in one FE and James Yeo in another had crossed the Lines to see how near they could get to an observation balloon before the dogs barked and bit. Only one balloon was flying that day, opposite the southerly end of the British sector, near the river Somme. The wind had probably grounded the others. It was strong and gusty. Even from a distance Foster could see the basket swinging as the balloon wallowed. What was worse, the gusts sometimes forced the balloon sharply down, making the cable go limp; then as the wind eased, the balloon leaped again. The observers must have had strong stomachs and their observations must have been urgently needed.

  At first the two FEs had pretended to bypass the balloon, as if they were flying from north to south on some other business and the prevailing westerly wind just happened to push them near to it. It was a poor excuse and nobody believed it. A few ranging shots came and went, high and low, looking as harmless as tufts of black wool. Within twenty seconds the German batteries had adjusted for height. A string of shells burst in quick succession, starting wide and racing in for the kill. The last missed by less than fifty yards. Foster heard their gruff barks. The closest was as loud as his engine. Maybe its blast shook the plane, maybe the wind gusted. He dropped a wing and turned away. Yeo left by a different route, just to divide the targets.

  For the next half-hour they tested the defences. Nothing made any difference. Come too close and you got shot at.

  Yeo loathed archie. The FE gave him a lovely view of the world but no protection in front. Other planes had a big heavy engine in front, something to hide behind when the shell splinters came fizzing through the air. Nothing to hide behind in the FE, not even your observer, who was sitting in the stalls while you were in the balcony. It wasn’t the risk of death that upset Yeo. Where would the Army be without death? Like roulette without chips. You had to have something to lose, otherwise what’s the point? Nothing wrong with killing people in war. That was the only way to win medals, and Yeo accepted pain and mutilation and blindness and all the other unpleasantnesses as unavoidable side-effects of the process. But what he loathed and resented about archie was its stinking ugliness. It was worse than being attacked with a filthy bayonet by a chap who needed a bath. It was squalid. It was unmilitary. He despised the Hun for having dirty archie. British archie was white, or at least off-white.

  Foster waggled his wings and pointed upwards. Yeo looked up and saw, very high, a formation of aircraft, at least six. How odd. He had never seen more than four planes together over the Lines before. Six was a crowd. It was like seeing six bishops or six Red Indian chiefs: you wondered what on earth they were up to. His observer put down his binoculars and shouted: “French.” Yeo nodded. “Nieuports,” the observer shouted. So that was all right. Clever little plane, the Nieuport. Came to pieces in a long dive, sometimes, but that was because the frogs were too cheap to tie it up with really strong string.

  Foster gave a signal and the FEs separated again. There was one final test to be made: they would approach the balloon from opposite sides at the same time and see how the archie liked that. Then home for tea.

  It took three or four minutes to get into position. When Yeo saw Foster’s FE lined up with the balloon he opened his throttle to the full, and turned. The six-cylinder Beardmore vibrated like a threshing machine and everything Yeo saw was blurred. Bloody awful engine, he thought. Why don’t they give us decent engines? He began worrying, in a remote, detached sort of way, what would happen if a piston snapped or a crankshaft broke, here and now. Collapse of stout party. Prisoner-of-war camp. He’d forgotten to bring his shaving kit, too. Parents would get a War Office telegram, Missing, believed killed. Hullo, hullo! Where was the German archie? Surely he must be within range by now. This was odd. He throttled back to cut the vibration and something hit him an almighty blow in the back, a huge thump that flung his body forward and jerked his head back. He crashed into the joystick and made the plane dive. His head slammed against the instrument panel, shattering glass and turning his face into a red ruin. Not that it mattered. Yeo was dead.

  The observer did his utmost to reach him and shove him off the joystick. The FE was diving almost vertically, its wires screaming, its engine working hard to help it on its way. The observer was young, strong and fit, but it was like trying to climb up a cliff face and lift a rock that weighs as much as you do. The wires screamed, and in the end the observer screamed with them not from fear but from rage and frustration. He never knew what killed Yeo, and he was facing the wrong way to watch the ground come hurtling up to kill him.

  “D’you know,” Paxton said,”that’s the fourth swimming pool I’ve seen being dug in the last week.” He aimed his mug of tea at a gang of Chinese labourers working a few hundred yards away. “Good show, isn’t it?”

  He was talking to a captain in the Medical Corps. They were standing outside a new Casualty Clearing Station. “Is it?” the captain asked. He sounded doubtful.

  “Well, I bet the Hun doesn’t look after his troops like that. I think it’s jolly thoughtful. It could get pretty hot this summer.”

  “Oh, I think it will. Extremely hot.”

  “There you are, then. I know the chaps at the aerodrome wouldn’t mind having a pool as big as that.”

  “Give those Chinks a dozen loaves of bread,” the doctor said,”and they’ll dig night and day for you.”

  Paxton laughed. “It takes a war to get things going, they say.”

  “It’s certainly done my career a power of good. I’ve learned more about heroic surgery in a year than I would have done in a lifetime. Lucky old me. At this rate I’ll be the world’s greatest expert at high-speed multiple amputation. Did you know that the record for lopping off all four limbs is twelve minutes ten seconds?” He ditched the dregs of his tea.

  “Good Lord.”

  “It’s not good enough.” The doctor looked Paxton in the eye. “I can get that time down to eight minutes dead and throw in an appendectomy, if only they’ll let me use my surgical axe. You see,” he said, flexing his elbows, “it’s all in the follow-through. If this war has taught us doctors anything, it’s the need to use the wrists and follow through.” He lifted Paxton’s right arm and fingered the shoulder. “Otherwise it’s all chopping and hacking,” he said. “Which is. not only distressing to the patient but also very, very time-consuming.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “You’ve nothing to worry about.” H
e let the arm fall. “I could whip through that joint in half a minute. Be sure to ask for me, won’t you? Don’t let those butchers start hacking at you.”

  Paxton wondered about this conversation all the way back to Pepriac. There had been a combative glint in the doctor’s eyes. Could have been drunk, of course. Except that he’d sounded so utterly clear and sure of himself. Queer coves, doctors.

  “They could have been hit by archie,” Colonel Bliss suggested.

  “No, sir,” Foster said. His face looked frozen.

  “I mean you were both deliberately trying to provoke their guns. You went in until they forced you out. Isn’t that right?”

  “I’ve seen planes hit by archie. I know what it looks like.”

  Cleve-Cutler said: “You were a mile away, Frank.”

  “What’s a mile? I could paint a picture of it all.” His voice was dead level. “The Nieuports came down in single file, steep dive, going for the balloon, that’s what I thought and so did the Hun. He turned all his guns on the frogs. Archie all around them. The frogs swung away, kept diving, passed behind Yeo’s machine. The last Nieuport was closer than the rest. I saw it fire, I saw the tracer, I saw it hit the FE, I saw the FE tip up like a … like a wheelbarrow. I saw it crash.”

  They were in Cleve-Cutler’s office. Bliss picked up a pen and examined the nib from different angles. “Perhaps we ought to wait and see what the Hun drops over our Lines. By way of confirmation, I mean.”

  Cleve-Cutler saw the look on Foster’s face and rapidly put himself between the two men. “Captain Foster is a most experienced and capable flight commander,” he said. “If Captain Foster says it was a fatal crash, you can be sure it was exactly that. Captain Foster is an officer I have complete and utter confidence in.”

  “Of course, of course,” Bliss said. He was on his way out. “It’s a shocking business. The French Air Force will be given hell, believe you me.”

  “They’ll get more than that,” Foster said.

  Bliss pretended he hadn’t heard. “Absolute hell,” he said. “It’s too bad you weren’t able to spot the identification letters on those Nieuports.”

  “We got them,” Foster said. “It’s all in my report, for God’s sake.”

  “Is it? I must have lost the file.” Bliss remembered that he was holding the pen and gave it to Cleve-Cutler. “No, it really is too bad, because otherwise I might have been able to tell you that they belong to the 27th Escadrille of avions de chasse stationed at Selincourt. Shame, isn’t it?”

  They walked with Bliss to his car, and then went to the mess. It was the end of the afternoon, a grey day, no wind. Cleve-Cutler sent Private Collins to round up all those pilots and observers who were on the aerodrome. He went behind the bar and began opening bottles. “I’ll make a few gallons of Hornet’s Sting,” he said to Foster. “You’d better hurry if you don’t want to miss the party.” Foster nodded, and went out.

  Paxton went to his billet to change and found that his chest had been painted bright red. Well, it was just another insult. He could tolerate it. He moved the chest and found that the paint was wet. His hands were red. He shouted for Fidler, and sent him to get petrol and rags.

  While Paxton was standing waiting, holding his hands as if supporting an invisible tray, Kellaway came in from the bathhouse. “Hullo!” he said. “You’ve got red hands.”

  “Shut up before I kill you.”

  “Please yourself.” Kellaway began to dress. “There’s a party in the mess, you know. CO’s party. Remember Yeo?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you can forget him.”

  At first Paxton was amazed by Kellaway’s coldblooded announcement; then he realised that it meant another move up the table. To make sure, he said: “What about his observer?”

  “Gone west too. The frogs did it.”

  Paxton didn’t know whether to believe that or not. The more he thought about it, the less it mattered.

  Kellaway put his cap on. Paxton said, distantly: “You might give O’Neill my compliments and ask him to spare me a few minutes.”

  Kellaway left. Paxton walked up and down. He found a loose floorboard and made it creak. O’Neill arrived, whistling. Paxton showed him his red hands. “If you are a gentleman, which I very much doubt,” Paxton said,”you’ll put your fists up and we’ll settle this affair here and now.” His lungs were pumping double-time, ready for the fight.

  “You first.” Nothing seemed to excite O’Neill.

  Paxton clenched his fists and raised his arms and put one foot forward.

  “Your lace is undone,” O’Neill said. Before Paxton could look down, O’Neill had knelt and was retying the lace. He seized Paxton’s ankle in both hands and heaved it waist-high. Paxton staggered. O’Neill turned and walked him out of the room. Paxton hopped behind, shouting and windmilling his arms. O’Neill led him to the mess, passing Fidler as he returned with a can of petrol. By the time he hopped up the wooden steps of the mess, Paxton’s working leg was so exhausted that when O’Neill let go he fell over. He tried to stand on the other leg and fell over again.

  A loud and violent race was going on inside the mess. It involved jumping from one piece of furniture to another, while holding and drinking a tankard of Hornet’s Sting. Paxton lay on the floor and watched furniture collapse and splinter, and heard the raucous howling of his fellow-officers. Collins gave him a full tankard. He got red paint all over it. Nobody cared. O’Neill had vanished. Paxton didn’t care. He drank the filthy muck. It didn’t taste too bad. He finished it and threw the tankard at Collins. Collins caught it, onehanded. Somebody went through the piano with a noise like a harp having a nightmare.

  Foster reached Selincourt and remembered nothing about the journey. He had climbed to three thousand feet; he remembered nothing of that either. He circled Selincourt. It looked just like any other aerodrome, from the air.

  He had to wait twenty minutes for a Nieuport. A monoplane took off, probably a Morane, and a big heavy biplane flew by. He ignored them both. The Nieuport came out of the east, as expected. It carried identification letters and numbers on its fuselage but he didn’t look for them because he didn’t care what they were. He dropped, turning his height into speed, and followed the Nieuport down to the field, gaining on it all the time, until the FE was bouncing about in its wash, only a couple of lengths behind.

  That was when the French began firing off rockets, to warn the pilot. Foster’s observer killed him before he could look around to see what they meant. Foster’s observer shot him dead, in the back, as Yeo had been shot. The Nieuport tumbled as if it had tripped over its own feet. Foster climbed away and watched it crash and burn.

  He flew home, and remembered nothing about the journey. If the French tried to chase him they took too long getting off the ground because they never caught him. He landed and gave the machine to his groundcrew.

  Cleve-Cutler was waiting. “Well, that squares the account,” Foster said. “Now maybe we can get on with the war.” In the distance the racket from the mess rose and fell.

  “I’ve kept it warm for you,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  *

  The noise of snoring woke Paxton, and hatred flared like a fire in sudden wind. It was a primitive, grunting snoring, typical of O’Neill. Paxton snarled. The snoring stopped. Too late, of course: sleep was impossible now. He sat up. The billet was empty.

  Kellaway came in, swinging his sponge-bag. “I can’t tell you how unspeakably filthy you look this morning,” he said.

  Paxton tried to speak but his mouth seemed to be stuck together. He was wearing his uniform, including shoes. He must have slept in his clothes. He got his lips apart and cleared his throat. The effect was nothing to be proud of. “Unspeakably filthy,” Kellaway said.

  Paxton got to his feet and walked to the foot of the bed. His knees wobbled as if taken by surprise and he had to clutch at a chair. For a few seconds the floor receded enormously until he felt as if he were looking down from a mountai
ntop. His ears made a note higher than any violin could reach.

  O’Neill kicked the door open and came in whistling. Paxton had to sit down.

  This whistling was slow torture. It was never loud and it never stopped; it just warbled on and on, endlessly, like the whistle of a kettle always coming to the boil but never making it. Half the time O’Neill was flat. If he had been flat all the time Paxton could have accepted it but instead O’Neill’s whistling slipped off-key and then, after a bar or two, found it again, for a short while. He often skipped a beat; sometimes he skipped whole bars and picked up the tune at odd and disturbing places. His whistling never paused but it was always sluggish. It dragged. It was slipshod. It drove Paxton mad. He hunched his shoulders and clenched his teeth.

  “Hard cheese on Jimmy Yeo, wasn’t it?” Kellaway said.

  O’Neill stopped whistling. Paxton slowly relaxed. “Oh well,” O’Neill said. “There are worse ways to go. Bloke I knew caught the Queensland potato blight. His name was Lewis. He looked so bloody awful he had to go round with his head in a sack. Five years he lingered. They called him Lingering Lew.”

  “You do talk a lot of balls,” Kellaway said.

  “Mind you,” O’Neill said,”he never looked as bad as that.”

  They gazed at Paxton. “A cold bath would do you a world of good,” Kellaway said. “The CO wants to see us all in half an hour.” Paxton tried to stand, but one leg was much shorter than the other. Either that, or the floor was cockeyed.

  Cleve-Cutler assembled his officers in the debris of the mess and held up a canvas message-bag with a German eagle stamped on it. “The enemy dropped this behind our Lines at dawn,” he said. “It’s addressed to me, here. Full marks to German Intelligence. It contains some personal items found in the wreck of Yeo’s FE, and there’s a note saying both men will get a military funeral. I’m glad about that. The padre’s going to say a few words.”