War Story

by Derek Robinson

  “Well, get pissed and then you’ll be okay.”

  “How can I get pissed when I keep spilling the stuff?”

  Paxton drank the wine. “You’ve got the Australian Disease, old chap. No known cure except death, which I can arrange although it’s very expensive.”

  “Why not?” O’Neill said. “You nearly arranged it once today already.”

  “I hit the Hun, didn’t I? He hardly touched us. You’ve got to have faith, Bunny.”

  A batman knocked and came in. “Captain Foster presents his compliments,” he said,”and would Lieutenant Paxton do him the honour of joining him in his tent.”

  “Me?” Paxton said. “How odd.”

  “I expect he wants you to turn the pages of his music for him,” Kellaway said.

  Foster poured another inch of whisky into Paxton’s tin mug and spilt half an inch over his hand. “I’m telling you all this,” he said,”because I was like you once, and I wish someone had told me. If someone had told me all about women, poor old Stubbs wouldn’t have been a flamer. Women aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Flamers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. And that’s not all. I’m not all I’m cracked up to be, and it’s taken me a hell of a long time to discover that. Hell of a long time. And I’ll tell you another thing I’ve learned. Time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Time isn’t worth a damn. You can take that from me. It comes and it goes, and you can’t do anything about it. See?” He pointed to an alarm clock, loudly ticking on his chest of drawers. “Five seconds just came and went. That’s five seconds of your life you’ll never have again. Paxton. Never mind. Life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. D’you know how many Huns I’ve killed? Forty-two thousand eight hundred and fifteen. I’ve got their names here somewhere. Names aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Take mine. Next stop, a peerage. Who wants to be a bloody silly peer? House of Lords isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, not by a long chalk. Full of Old bloody Etonians. Eton isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Full of thugs and skunks. Half of them are in the boneyard, I expect. Killed in action. Killing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I should know, I’ve killed a few. Killed Stubbs this morning.” He sipped his whisky.

  “I honestly don’t see how it could have been your fault,” said Paxton. He was getting a bit bored with Foster.

  “All it takes is a gun. It doesn’t take courage. You think you’re brave, but courage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I know you. You’re not brave, because you’re never afraid. I’m afraid. I’ve been afraid for months. I was afraid James Yeo might get killed. I liked James, I loved James. Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Didn’t save James, did it? Didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the war, either. Bloody war. It just goes on and on and on. Listen to it. War’s not what it’s cracked up to be. Any bloody fool can go to war. The trick is to get out of it. I wish somebody had told me that years ago.” He pulled open a drawer and took out his Service revolver. “Fucking flies,” he said, and fired three thunderous rounds at the flies circling inside the tent. Brutus bolted. Paxton had fallen off his chair and dropped his whisky. Foster looked at the smoking gun. “Nothing’s what it’s cracked up to be,” he said, and put the muzzle to his head and fired again.

  Four gunshots were nothing unusual on Pepriac aerodrome. The place was rackety with small explosions all day long: trucks backfiring, motorbikes being kick-started, aero engines being tested. FEs were always landing, taxying, revving up, taking off. The armourers fired Lewis guns into a great heap of sand, and above all the barrage made its constant din. Nobody noticed the four gunshots except O’Neill, who was sitting on the grass looking at his shaky right hand and waiting for Paxton to come back so they could go on patrol.

  He found Paxton sprawled beside his overturned chair, staring at the body. “Oh, Christ,” O’Neill said wearily. “Now why did the silly bugger go and do that?”

  Paxton tried to stand, but his legs wanted to have nothing to do with it and he fell heavily on his rump. O’Neill gave him both hands and helped him up. “He said …” Paxton began, but even the words felt thick and clumsy and unwilling to be spoken. He took a good grip of the tent pole and looked into O’Neill’s face. As long as he looked at O’Neill he could avoid seeing Foster and the flies buzzing around his head.

  “What did he say?” O’Neill asked. Brutus had come back and was licking the spilt whisky.

  “He said that … um … nothing’s what it’s cracked up to be,” Paxton said. “And he wanted me to know that.”

  “Let’s get out. Fuck off!” O’Neill aimed a kick at Brutus, who had begun sniffing Foster’s head. The dog bolted again.

  Paxton put his arm around O’Neill’s shoulders and stumbled out of the tent. “Fidler!” O’Neill shouted. “Fidler, you bastard!” Paxton began to cry. “That’s the stuff,” O’Neill muttered,”have a damn good weep, let it all out. Fidler!” He steered Paxton towards their billet. “Fidler!”

  Fidler arrived. O’Neill gave orders: fetch the adjutant, fetch Dando, fetch the Duty NCO. Fidler went. Paxton stopped crying. He felt sick, and said so. O’Neill held him while he threw up. “That’s the stuff,” O’Neill said. “Let it all out.” Paxton, hands on wobbly knees, blinked at the grass, spattered with his vomit.

  By the time they reached the billet, Brazier and Dando had reached the tent. “You want to get that lousy taste out of your mouth,” O’Neill said. He poured two glasses of wine and gave Paxton one. O’Neill’s hand did not tremble. “Beats me, too,” he said. They drank.

  After a while the adjutant came in and asked some questions. As Paxton answered, the whole incident in the tent seemed to recede until it was as if he were describing something that had happened to somebody else; something he had seen in the pictures, perhaps. He felt much better. Dando came in and listened. Brazier reached the end of his questions and stood, head down, hands in pockets, thinking.

  “Look,” Paxton said,”if that’s all you need, it’s time we got off. On patrol.”

  Dando checked his pulse, and thumbed an eyelid up so that he could study the eye. “Do this,” he said, and stretched out his hand. Paxton did it. His hand might have been cast in bronze. “Off you go,” Dando said.

  Cleve-Cutler was flying when Foster killed himself. The adjutant met him with the news as soon as he landed. “Three gone and it’s only lunchtime,” the CO said. “I don’t feel much like lunch.”

  “I’ve sent a couple of men over to the churchyard with spades. A funeral this evening might be advisable.”

  “It was damn near four, or five. Come and look at this.” He showed the adjutant the FE’s instrument panel, shattered by a slash of bullets. He showed him where the bullets had hacked a ragged hole in the nose of the nacelle. “Should have gone through Gus Mayo,” he said, “but Gus was standing on his seat, using the top gun.” They climbed down. “So. A funeral for one, this evening. Agreed. What’s the rush?”

  “Tomorrow will be a very busy day,” Brazier said.

  *

  When the last patrol touched down at 8 p.m. there had been a couple of forced landings; one kill, perhaps two; and many frights and lucky escapes. But the score of dead was still only three.

  Cleve-Cutler called a meeting in his office: adjutant, padre, surviving flight commanders, Dando, Paxton, Essex, Ogilvy. “I don’t want to put Frank in his grave without knowing the facts,” he said. “I want to know, and then forget. I want to bury the poor blighter and bury his story too. Let’s start with the letter. Did Stubbs actually write a letter saying Frank was dead?”

  “Yes, he did,” the adjutant said.

  “Bloody daft thing to do. So when Stubbs snuffed it, Frank went off the deep end. Right?”

  “Yes and no. Stubbs wasn’t the only one who wrote that sort of letter for him. Ogilvy wrote one.”

  “It was all balls,” Ogilvy said. “He kept on about it. I did it to keep him happy, and it didn’t work. He started on Charlie next.”

  The CO looked at
Essex. Essex shrugged.

  The adjutant was looking at his notes. “Ogilvy, Essex, Mayo, Binns, Goss and several others, all wrote letters for him. I found them in his tent. They were never sent.”

  Cleve-Cutler shook his head. “I’m not equipped for this sort of thing.”

  “At least we know he wasn’t responsible for his girlfriend’s death,” the padre said. “Her suicide, I mean.”

  “Frank never had a girlfriend,” Ogilvy said.

  Dando said: “That makes sense. Explains not sending the letters.”

  “How d’you know?” Piggott asked Ogilvy. “Maybe he had someone you never knew about.”

  “Women terrified him,” Ogilvy said. Piggott sniffed. “Listen, we spent our last leave together,” Ogilvy told him. “Went to the races and got drunk. Every day. I knew Frank better than anyone. We were at Eton, after all, you know. He wouldn’t let a woman get anywhere near him, ever.”

  “So as I see it,” Cleve-Cutler said,”he shot himself because Stubbs wrote a letter he never sent to a woman he never knew, who never killed herself. And Stubbs went west.”

  “If it hadn’t been Stubbs it would have been somebody else,” Dando said. “He needed a reason.”

  “I think there was another reason,” Charlie Essex said. The words came out in a rush, but then he was silent. He looked weary and grim.

  “Come on then, cough it up,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  “He wasn’t writing to a woman at all, real or imaginary. I should have worked it out long ago, he made it pretty obvious, poor bugger.” Essex rubbed his eyes. “Jenny isn’t Jenny. Jenny is, or was, James. James Edward Norman Yeo.”

  “J.E.N.Y.,” Ogilvy said. “Yes. Frank liked James. I suppose the letters must have been a dotty way of being with him. And now he’s gone and joined him, or so he thinks.”

  “I never heard such twaddle in all my life. Never mind. It’s done now. Got your speech ready, padre? Let’s go and tuck him away.”

  A dozen hurricane lamps lit the grave, reminding Paxton of the Chinese lanterns on the terrace. The entire squadron was there. As often happened, the wind had dropped when the sun went down and the churchyard was silent apart from the endless drumroll of the distant barrage. Paxton, standing in a corner of the crowd, looked around at the lamplit faces, washed empty by fatigue and a little grief, and he didn’t realise that he was searching for O’Neill until he found him. O’Neill saw him looking, and simply looked back. No nod, no shrug, no half-smile. No need.

  “Frank Foster wasn’t a bad sort,” the padre said. “He paid his debts, told a few good jokes, and took five wickets for 39 in the Harrow match. I’m not sure I can add a lot to that, but I’ll try.” He tried, but he couldn’t add anything that he thought Foster would have approved of, except perhaps at the end, when he quoted a verse from Proverbs, chapter 25: “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep”.

  Chapter 21

  Fidler came in with mugs of tea at 4 a.m. and got cursed for his stupidity. “Don’t blame me, sir,” he told O’Neill,”blame Mr. Haig. He’s decided to have a battle.”

  ‘A’ Flight ate boiled eggs for breakfast and took off at twenty to five. The dawn came up, glowing with goodwill to all men, and German archie spattered the sky like slum kids throwing mud at someone’s washing. The four FEs separated and went looking for troop movements behind the German lines, as briefed, but there was thick mist everywhere. Away to the east, enemy planes could be seen rising from their airfields like hatching flies. ‘A’ Flight landed at ten to six, with little to report to Brazier. “Our guns are still hammering away fifteen to the dozen,” Paxton said. “But of course you can hear that.”

  He was hungry for real breakfast: eggs and bacon, fried tomatoes and devilled kidneys, toast and Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. The mess was full, including a couple of new faces. Private Collins poured coffee for Paxton and O’Neill. They clinked mugs in a toast. “Fuck you,” O’Neill said. “And fuck you too,” Paxton said. The newcomers stared.

  Cleve-Cutler was scribbling with chalk on a blackboard, consulting bits of paper, changing, adding. At length he dragged the easel around so that everyone could see the board. The buzz of conversation got knocked on the head. Chair-legs scraped as men turned to look.

  “The balloon goes up in an hour,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Seven-thirty prompt. Umpteen officers will blow umpteen whistles and over the top will go the poor bloody infantry. Now I’ve written here a very large figure given to me in strict confidence by a very drunken gunner. One million, five hundred thousand. That, he assured me, is the total number of shells fired at the Hun Front Line during the past week. Can a drunken gunner be trusted? Of course not. He was guessing. But a drunken gunner’s guess is as good as anyone’s and my guess is he’s not far out. That means that each area of the German Front Line approximately the size of Paxton’s tennis courts has received about twenty shells. And who knows? Several may have exploded. So much for my simple arithmetic. Next…”

  The steady thunder of the barrage expanded to a degree of savagery that was far greater than anything they had heard before. “My goodness,” Cleve-Cutler said. He had to pitch his voice to cut through the noise. “You see what happens when you poke fun at the artillery. No sense of humour at all.”

  Everyone laughed. It was time for a joke. Might as well laugh now while you still could.

  “I’ve made some changes,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Frank O’Neill is the new flight commander. He takes over ‘C’ Flight.”

  Paxton stared at O’Neill. “Jesus Christ,” he said before he could stop himself.

  “No, I couldn’t get him,” Cleve-Cutler said. “He hasn’t won his wings yet.” More laughter. “And I’ve reshuffled a few people, as you can see.” He went through the changes, ticking them on the board, until he suddenly stopped. The next names were Goss/Stubbs.”How did they get there?” He wet a finger and rubbed them out. “Nothing personal, Dougie,” he muttered.

  After the briefing there were ten minutes to spare before the squadron began taking off at seven. The sun was starting to melt the mist. It would be a hot day. ‘C’ Flight gathered outside the pilots’ hut.

  “I suppose you’ll be twice as bloody obnoxious now,” Paxton said.

  “Stand to attention when you snivel at me,” O’Neill said. “I like to watch the drool running down your chest.”

  Ogilvy belched, resonantly. “That’s better,” he said. “I really shouldn’t have had those tomatoes, they’re death to my tubes.”

  “I knew a chap at Cambridge who swallowed tomatoes whole,” Essex said. “Party trick. He said they did him good.”

  “Did they?”

  “Dunno. He copped it at Mons.”

  “Everyone copped it at Mons,” Ogilvy said. “That’s where I learned to run backwards. Very educational show, Mons was.”

  “Today’s going to be different,” Paxton stated. “Today’s going to be a walkover.”

  “Today’s going to be a balls-up,” O’Neill said.

  “Piss off, Bunny.”

  “Today’s going to be a balls-up, because every battle is a balls-up. The generals always cock everything up, and they’ll cock this up today. You watch.”

  “Bet you.”

  “How much?”

  “Fiver.”

  “Done.” They shook hands.

  The mist was still thick enough to hide the flash of the guns when ‘C’ Flight crossed the Lines, but its surface was disturbed by the thousands of shellbursts beneath it. It reminded Paxton of a time when he had seen a big shoal of fish create ripples in the sea. Must remember that, he thought. Judy will be interested in that. The enemy balloons were up already. Seemed pretty pointless, in all this mist, but Master Fritz knew best. In fact Paxton found it hard to believe that anything special was about to happen down below, it all looked so bland. Then, to the north, there was a massive flash that printed itself on his eyes. A hill of earth climbed through the mist, and kept climbing
until it was as high as the aeroplane, and higher. The first mine had been exploded. Cleve-Cutler had told them to expect large mines to go off under the German trenches, and to keep clear of those spots. Paxton had expected a big bang but this was volcanic in its violence. When its noise reached them it was a clang as if the sky had split and its halves had collided. It tossed the FE on its ear. The column of earth seemed to hang, indifferent to gravity. And it was only the first mine: eight more followed. Paxton was enormously impressed. Nobody could have survived that.

  ‘C’ Flight’s orders were to go trench-strafing in support of the attack, but the mist would have to clear first. O’Neill hung about until the archie became a pest. It was curious how they could see him up here when he couldn’t see them down there. He changed height and course, and flew near some British Nieuports having a scrap with some Fokkers. It was none of his business until a Nieuport dropped out, looking unhappy: one wing down, dirty smoke pumping from the exhausts. It was heading west at no great speed and being overhauled by one of the Fokkers.

  O’Neill flew an interception course and arrived in time to make a nuisance of himself. Paxton fired a drum at long range, the Fokker got distracted, the Nieuport limped across the Lines. O’Neill was ready to leave it at that but the Fokker was determined to fight someone. It wanted to make a flank attack while O’Neill preferred a head-on attack, so they had a head-on attack. Paxton welcomed it. The Lewis clattered cheerfully, the enemy blossomed in his sights, tracer drifted towards the Hun as if it were being hauled in by hand. The enemy tracer flicked harmlessly past, as it always did. Someone stuck a red-hot poker through his right arm, ripped his hand off the Lewis and flung him back in his seat. Then the sun went in.

  It came out again, but the sky was not blue. It was a milky white. O’Neill’s fixed Lewis was banging away. The Fokker was twisting and dodging. Paxton reached out to grab his own Lewis and discovered a right hand and arm covered in blood. There was so much blood he couldn’t work the trigger. There was so much blood, the slipstream blew it along his sleeve. The funny thing was, his arm didn’t hurt. He used his other arm to feel it. That hurt. Oh Christ, did that hurt! The sun went in again. Night fell early.