War Story

by Derek Robinson

“The attack failed, because the enemy brought up their heavy mortars. You were in the trenches, weren’t you? Perhaps you experienced minnenwerfers yourself?”

  “Only once. That was enough. Frightful brutes.”

  “A forty-two-inch shell makes a big explosion. We had no answer. We withdrew.”

  “What does Billy say next?” Dando asked Ogilvy.

  “Billy says there was hell to pay and when the dust had settled the colonel was a major.”

  “Two things,” Brazier said. “First: Captain Ashby was the son of a baron. Only the third son, but his blood was blue. Second, I had not shot him quietly. On the contrary, I made sure everyone heard my ultimatum. I shouted, very loud: Ashby, stop. Go back or I’ll kill you. That, after all, was the whole point of shooting him: to influence the others. I suppose Divisional HQ thought I should have shot someone less eminent and done it more discreetly.” Brazier re-lit his pipe.

  Mayo said: “Or perhaps they thought you shouldn’t have shot anyone at all.”

  Brazier fanned the air to dissipate a cloud of blue smoke and looked at Mayo as if he were a child who had unexpectedly wandered into an adult conversation. “Oh, somebody had to be shot. It was just a matter of how and when.”

  Paxton tried to make sense of that, and failed.

  “According to Billy you got shunted off to a different division,” Ogilvy said.

  “There was some expectation that I would get myself killed leading a rather more ambitious attack. My men were given the task of capturing an enemy strongpoint. It was terribly well defended. We got very close to it – at a cost, of course and then a German machine-gun pinned everyone down in a string of shell-holes. I knew we could knock out this gun if we all charged at once but nobody would move. I tried to buck them up but they were all afraid. The longer we waited, the more time the enemy had to organise a counter-attack. So I told my men that they had a choice. They could advance and risk being killed by the Hun, or lie there and be utterly sure that I would shoot them. Then I gave the order to advance. Nobody moved. I shot one man with my Service revolver, a private named Yelland. Scarcely anyone moved, so I shot another private. His name was Haslam. After that they all went over the top in a rush, me with them, and we took that German machine-gun in no time.”

  “At a cost, of course,” Dando said.

  “Of course.”

  “Including your rank. Down from major to captain. Why? You shot nobody eminent, and you did it discreetly.”

  Brazier stood up, and ducked to avoid a hanging lamp. “Yelland died, Haslam didn’t. He made a great fuss and there was an inquiry. After all, it’s a serious matter when officers go around shooting their men in the back. I think I’ll turn in. Goodnight.”

  When Mayo was quite sure that Brazier had gone, he said: “Fancy shooting a chap in the back.”

  “What should he have done?” Ogilvy asked. “Rolled him over and shot him in the front?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No I don’t. I’m damned if I do.”

  Charlie Essex pulled his sock out of the gramophone. “Thank God we don’t have to shoot anybody in our job.”

  “You don’t?” said Dando, startled.

  “No. Only aeroplanes.”

  “With men in them.”

  “Well, that’s their silly fault. Who wants a game of ping-pong?”

  “Ball’s bust,” Goss announced.

  “I’ll play,” Paxton said. “I’ve got a new ball.”

  “Come on then, Pax,” Essex said. It was the first time anyone in the squadron had been slightly friendly to Paxton. He suddenly felt accepted.

  O’Neill came across an invisible, lumpy seam in the weather just above eight thousand feet. Two airstreams of differing speeds jostled each other, creating a layer of turbulence. He let the FE bounce up through it and when he reached calm air he tipped the nose down and let the FE bounce down through it. Then he climbed very gradually. The FE bucked and plunged and shuddered for a long time. Paxton kept his mouth shut and tried to forget his sore, bruised rump. The patrol was more than half over and his lunch was still in his stomach. This was progress. He tried to ignore the smell of whalegrease, smeared on his face to keep out the battering cold air, but every now and then a breath of whalegrease mingled with the aftertaste of stew and threatened disaster.

  The FE bucketed through another lumpy patch. He tightened his jaws and thought of Sherborne.

  Then O’Neill was climbing and the air was smooth. Paxton raised his goggles and blinked hard to clear the tears. O’Neill’s fist banged the top of his helmet and Paxton searched the sky where O’Neill pointed.

  It took him ten seconds to find a speck the size of a pinhead, high to the right, and then he blinked and lost it. The sky was baby-blue, softened by a screen of cirrus two miles above them. He found the speck again. It was bigger and fuzzier, and falling; falling fast. Quite soon he could see the wings, razor-thin lines on either side of the tiny blob that must be the engine and propeller. The FE was booming and vibrating: O’Neill had opened the throttle wide. Paxton swung the Lewis to the right and tested it: only a brief stutter: he was going to need the rest of the drum. The blob was growing. It was a biplane, blue or purple, yellow wheels, and it was diving at a speed that made Paxton feel the FE was standing still. O’Neill shouted something but whatever it was it was lost. Paxton’s brain was so calm that he felt tranquil yet his body throbbed with excitement. The enemy plane was magnifying at an astonishing rate and he knew with absolute certainty that he could destroy it. Tracer pulsed from its nose, searching for him, missing; the range was too great; he did not fire back. The Hun blossomed in his sights, still firing, and he waited and made sure and then squeezed the trigger as O’Neill flung the FE onto its right wingtips and sheared away from the enemy. Before Paxton could stop himself he had fired at the empty sky. O’Neill hauled the FE into a tight circle. By then the enemy – an Albatros – was half a mile away, a dwindling dot.

  Usually, when they got back to Pepriac, Paxton handed over the Lewis to the armourer and got away from O’Neill as quickly as possible. This time he waited.

  O’Neill talked briefly with his fitter and rigger and then headed for the pilots’ hut. Paxton blocked his way. “If you don’t want a gunner, leave the gun behind,” Paxton said. “Leave the ammunition behind. Save weight.”

  “You had your chance.”

  “What? What chance? Precisely when I opened fire, you turned sharp right.”

  “Because I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Wait for what? Until then, that Hun wasn’t in range.”

  “No? We were in his range.”

  “Rubbish. He opened fire when he was miles away.”

  “You know bugger-all about air gunnery.”

  “I know that the bigger the target, the better your chances. And just when that Hun got big enough for me to hit him you lost the target.”

  “I made damn sure he lost his target, that’s what I did.”

  “You ruined my shot.”

  “You were too constipated to fire.”

  It was hot and they were sweating. O’Neill shed his flying jacket. Paxton said, savagely: “If you’re such an expert, why don’t you do the damned gunnery, and I’ll guarantee to get you close enough, and keep you there.”

  O’Neill laughed at him.

  They got out of their flying kit and Paxton wiped off the whalegrease. Brazier heard their report; Paxton contributed little. They walked to the billet in silence. Again and again Paxton kept seeing in his mind that beautiful purple-blue yellow-wheeled Albatros enlarging perfectly in his sights, and being snatched from him just as he squeezed the trigger. It was robbery. He’d been swindled. “You did it deliberately, didn’t you?” he said.

  O’Neill yawned. He was stretched out on his bed.

  “Of course you did,” Paxton said. He walked around the room, kicking a waste basket. “I should have guessed. You don’t like me, you’re certainly not going to give me a chanc
e to pot a Hun, are you?” He booted the basket over O’Neill’s bed and glared at him.

  “I don’t give a stuff about you,” O’Neill said.

  “Well, you’d better start bloody learning, my fine Australian friend.” Paxton found the basket and gave it another boot, aiming at O’Neill’s head and almost hitting it. “Because our job up there is killing Huns, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I’ve killed more Huns than you’ve had wet dreams.”

  “Next time we meet one, I want him. I want you to get me near him and stay there while I kill him. That’s your job. You’re just the blasted driver. You drive. I’ll kill. Understand?”

  “You had your chance, chum. You muffed it.”

  “Peter King and James Duncan never met,” the padre said,”yet now they lie side by side, as brothers. For, as the poet said, he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.”

  There had been a sharp storm half an hour before the funeral and everything in the churchyard dripped. The bodies had been lowered into an inch of water. The air smelt clean and cold, as if it had never been used before.

  “One day, when this dreadful conflict is over, some passerby may pause here and wonder just what King and Duncan achieved. The answer is that they died in a just and decent cause, and that by their deaths they helped to win a splendid victory for freedom and for honour. I need not remind you of their gallantry. Those who go forth to do battle in the skies possess a special courage. They display a golden chivalry that shines in the gloom of war like a torch of inspiration.” He said something about the supreme sacrifice and the triumph of right, and then rounded it off as usual.

  Frank Foster walked back to camp with him.

  “Well done, padre.”

  “Thank you, Frank. I think Jimmy would have liked it.”

  “Jimmy wouldn’t have understood half of it. He was one of the stupidest men I ever met.”

  “Surely not.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Not your fault. He was born thick. Just as well, perhaps. It pays to be thick in our job. Once you start thinking about it you’re heading for a crack-up.”

  “You can come to me at any time, you know.”

  “I know. I don’t belong to your club, padre. I’ve been upstairs often enough and, believe me, there’s no sign of a bloke with a beard and a box full of thunderbolts. So will you do me a favour? If and when I go west, and you get called upon to propose the toast, leave out all the God stuff, will you?”

  The padre hesitated. “I’m by way of being in the God business, you know.”

  “Well, I’m not and it’s my funeral. I don’t want any of that high-minded stuff about dying in a just cause, either. Freedom and justice and honour and whatnot. You can forget all that.”

  “If you say so, old chap.”

  “What I don’t want above all is any waffle about democracy.”

  “No democracy. I see.”

  “Democracy never did me any good, and if I survive this nonsense I shall inherit the family title and a large slice of England and I shall have earned it ten times over, so democracy can keep its sticky fingers off me.”

  “You have grown bitter, Frank.”

  “I’ve grown honest, chum.”

  “But surely there are qualities to admire? Courage, chivalry, truth? Shouldn’t we recognise them?”

  “All right: tell the truth. Tell all the truth. Tell everyone how courageous our late comrade was and also how frightened he was. And lonely. Even in a two-seater. You’ve no idea how lonely and frightened you can feel up there. Just you in several hundred cubic miles of sky, and then all of a sudden here comes the Hun trying to kill you. Nothing personal about it. I’m sure the Hun is the soul of chivalry, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of putting a few bullets in your stomach or your head or your lungs, anywhere as long as the blood comes out in a rush. By all means, you go ahead and recognise the admirable qualities of truth and chivalry. Tell us the truth about chivalry. I’d like to know what it is, because I’ve never seen it in action. If it means that one sportsman waves his hat and lets the other man fire first, that’s not chivalry. That’s suicide. That’s idiocy. So leave it out, will you?”

  The padre jumped nimbly across a set of puddles. “You make my task extremely difficult. I suppose I can safely mention the fact of your death?”

  “As long as you don’t call it the supreme sacrifice.”

  The padre threw up his hands. “What greater sacrifice could there be?”

  “It’s not a bally sacrifice at all! Use your imagination, padre. D’you honestly think poor little King gave his life? D’you think Jimmy Duncan had any choice? D’you think any of us would die if we could wangle some way around it? You make the supreme sacrifice sound like the noblest, cleverest, bravest thing a man could do. That’s rubbish. When we get killed it’s because we got it wrong. Or blind chance. Archie. Nothing clever about that.”

  “No indeed.” The padre put a long, heavy arm around Foster’s shoulders. “You’ve emptied my stock, Frank. Why don’t you tell me what I ought to say?”

  “Just say … Just say: ‘He wasn’t a bad sort, paid his debts, told a few good jokes, and took five wickets for 39 runs in the match against Harrow.’ That’s enough. In fact it’s too much. Cut out the bit about the jokes. They weren’t all that good.”

  Chapter 15

  Rainstorms blundered in from the west more and more frequently. A canvas hangar was blown down and all flying was cancelled. A lot of poker got played and the gramophone never stopped. Lacey fixed up the cinema projector and showed some Charlie Chaplin films, which were enormously popular. Boy Binns drew dozens of cartoon portraits, which were no better than his usual efforts. “That’s libellous,” Spud Ogilvy said when Boy showed him a sketch. “You’ve made me look like Charlie Essex.” Boy held the sketch at arm’s length and closed one eye. “I think this is Charlie,” he said. “I got them mixed up. That one is you.”

  “No, it’s not. It looks horrible. That’s another picture of Charlie.”

  Boy took it over to the light. “Maybe this one is Gus Mayo,” he said. “I drew Gus when he was smiling.”

  “Whoever it is, someone just kicked him in the goolies. Why don’t you put names on the damn things?”

  “I’m an artist,” Boy said,”not a writer.”

  As a flight commander, Foster was entitled to his own room. During a lull between cloudbursts he moved out of his room and into a bell tent, far from the officers’ quarters. He took the dog Brutus with him, and a clarinet that Corporal Lacey had swapped for some of Paxton’s cigars. Foster couldn’t play the clarinet but he tried. Brutus sat beside him and howled. Their wretched duet drifted across the camp, fading and reviving as the wind gusted and fell away.

  Spud Ogilvy and Charlie Essex went to visit him.

  “What’s the idea, Frank?” Essex asked.

  “That’s a good question. It’s a very good question. What the blazes are we all doing here? I mean, what’s the point of it all? Any suggestions?”

  Ogilvy hesitated, but Essex was bouncing on the camp bed, testing its comfort. “Obvious, I should have thought,” Ogilvy said. “We’re here to win the war, aren’t we?”

  “Is that all?” Foster took his clarinet away from Essex, who had begun playing with it. “If that’s all, then I can do it easily. I can end this war with one little bullet. It’s simply a matter of killing the right man.”

  Essex said: “And who’s that?”

  “I’ll find him, don’t you worry.” Foster was standing in the door of the tent, his arms folded, looking through the rain at the billets. “He’s not far away. If I can find him I can kill him.”

  “And that will end the war?” Ogilvy asked.

  “Instantly and for ever.” Foster turned and lifted his revolver from a nail in the tent-pole. “I always keep it loaded, because you never know when your chance may come. True?”

  Ogilvy shrugged. “Charlie’s brought a fruit cake his aunt sent him.
Shall we eat it?”

  “Certainly.” Foster hung up his revolver. For the rest of their visit he was perfectly normal and charming.

  Paxton mooched about the camp. He was more popular now it was known that he and Lacey had organised the flicks, but he didn’t much feel like mixing with people. He met the adjutant and sheltered under his giant golf umbrella. “This is going to sound pretty silly, adj,” he said,”but why don’t we have a swimming pool? I can easily lay on a bunch of Chinks to dig one.” The adjutant told him to go ahead, as long as the pool was well down-wind of the camp, to keep the mosquitoes away. So that settled that. Rain rattled on the umbrella. The windsock stood out horizontally.

  “I was in the anteroom the other night,” Paxton said. “In my opinion you should have been decorated, not demoted.”

  “Funny you should say that. I wasn’t the only officer who had to do a bit of shooting. There was a captain in my battalion who stopped a panic with his revolver. I wrote a commendation afterwards. I wrote: ‘By his presence of mind and resolve he shot a lieutenant and a private of his company, thus preventing the spread of panic and ensuring that the line was held.’ It was a brave act and he certainly deserved a decoration. I believe my commendation was burned. Let me know exactly where you want to put that swimming pool, won’t you?”

  Paxton drew a Lewis gun and two drums of tracer ammunition from the armourers’ hut and carried them to the firing range. The wind was so strong that he had to lean against it; even so, some of the gusts made him stagger. That was good. The stronger the better. He placed the gun two hundred yards from the butts, and fired off the ammunition in brief bursts of five or six rounds, watching each time to see how the wind made the tracer bend. The further it went the more it bent. That made sense. He did some guessing and some simple arithmetic and decided that, firing a Lewis sideways from an FE doing eighty miles an hour, at an enemy attacking head on, you should aim off by one length for each one hundred yards’ range. More or less.

  Worth getting wet for.

  The storm exhausted itself the following morning, leaving behind a trail of battered cloud. By afternoon most of Hornet Squadron was flying (a couple of planes had been knocked about by the wind) and nearly everyone made some sort of contact with the enemy. Gerrish and Ross claimed to have driven down a Pfalz monoplane, or it might have been a Fokker; anyway it was giving off a lot of smoke when last seen. Cleve-Cutler, flying with Boy Binns, had a long scrap with a Rumpler two-seater until they both ran out of ammunition; Binns said he hit the German gunner, maybe killed him. Others chased a variety of Huns but lost them. As usual the balloons were heavily defended; nobody got near one. Tim Piggott’s engine conked out over the Lines but he managed to glide to a field and land between the shell-holes. O’Neill’s FE came back with three inches missing from one wingtip. “Too much cloud,” he told Brazier. “This Hun suddenly popped out and gave me a burst and popped back.”