A Splendid Little War

by Derek Robinson

  “Let us pray we don’t capture another vodka distillery, sir,” Borodin said.

  “That’s beyond our control.”

  “Yes, like our troops. Drunk and incapable. And soon dead.”

  They stood on top of a wooden tower on a small hill, south of Tsaritsyn. Men had cut trees from the banks of the Volga and built this skeletal look-out for the general. Its purpose was obvious, and occasionally a big Bolshevik gun lobbed a shell at it. Sometimes a near-miss sent bits of hot and jagged shrapnel flying through the open framework of logs. It was hard to destroy the look-out and impossible to disturb Wrangel. He was tall and wiry and had a face that someone said was like a hungry eagle. All eagles look more or less alike, hungry or not, but the description stuck. Count Borodin had served on the staff of many generals. None was thin and few stood within artillery range of a battle. Few stood anywhere, if there was an armchair available.

  Borodin pointed at the sky. “Late, as usual,” he said. The White Russian squadron of DH9s was arriving, very high, probably five thousand feet. Their formation was ragged. It changed direction and became more ragged. “Just dots,” Wrangel said. “They won’t frighten anybody.”

  “They fly high to avoid the artillery, sir,” Borodin said. “It also permits them to see the Red aeroplanes a long way off and run away.”

  “They suffer from delayed bravery,” Wrangel said. “I have many officers like that, all seeking a new Tsar to die for. But not yet. Look: that must be the Red arsenal.” A flash of yellow erupted inside Tsaritsyn, and a rolling thunder followed. Black smoke pulsed upwards. “Bang goes the Bolshevik ammunition. We can expect panic, retreat and large slaughter. Time for lunch.”

  4

  Wrangel was right about lunch but wrong about the arsenal. White cavalry had been massing, preparing to charge down a street. Red defenders dynamited houses on both sides: that was the explosion. As the dust settled, the defenders climbed onto the barricade of rubble and shot down the White cavalry, still panicking from the dynamite blast. So there was no retreat, and the slaughter was of cavalry.

  Wrangel sent Borodin to invite the Camels to return to Tsaritsyn.

  “Preferably with many incendiaries,” Borodin told Griffin. “Fire from the skies upsets the Bolsheviks.”

  “Where exactly are the enemy positions? How shall we know where to make our attack?”

  “If you bomb our troops, they will fire at you, whereas the enemy will fire at you whatever you do.”

  Griffin called the Flight together. “It’s a bloody shambles,” he said. “We’re liable to get shot at by friend or foe.”

  “Just like France,” Wragge said. “Frog artillery always potted us.”

  “Is that relevant?” Griffin said in a voice like sandpaper. “Then shut up. Fuel tanks a quarter full. With the weight saved we’ll take extra incendiaries. Attack the north side of the city. That’s the Bolos’ way out. Height, a thousand feet. Let them see the bombs coming.” He looked sideways at Bellamy. “Are you fit?”

  “I’ll manage.” His face was bleached.

  The weight of incendiaries in the cockpits upset the balance of the aircraft, and they bounced and lurched into the air. They kept clear of the west of the city but a few machine guns saw them coming and as the Camels turned to cross the northern side, a bright flicker of ground-fire could be seen. Griffin dropped a bomb and that was a signal for the rest.

  The pilots were very widely spaced and they needed to be: using both hands to heave a bomb sent the machine dipping and skidding. Hackett threw a bomb too hard and his knees lost the stick and his Camel flipped onto its back. At once another bomb fell without his help, so he stayed inverted and punched and kicked at the rest until they dropped. “Sheer bloody skill!” he shouted, and levelled out. Nobody had noticed. Too busy doing it the hard way. They flew home.

  Lucky groundfire had made a mess of Bellamy’s port wheel, but he didn’t know this until he touched down and the Camel slewed so violently that his face whacked the gun butts and broke his nose. Wheel struts snapped; the fighter crabbed along on its belly, spraying chunks of propeller; the engine stalled; nothing caught fire. Bellamy, too weak to move, sat and swallowed the blood that ran into his mouth. Not a good day.

  5

  “Unforgivable,” Lacey said. He had prised the top off a tea chest and was sniffing the contents. “This is Assam, and what’s worse, it was picked from one of the inferior hills. Where is my Earl Grey?”

  “Beats me, old chap,” Captain Brazier said. “I’m not a bloody quartermaster, I just signed for the rations. I hope you’ve got plenty of hot water. Our plumbing died the death when we left Ekaterinodar.”

  “I’ve been shaving in cold water for two days,” Oliphant said. “My chops are chapped.”

  The three men were in a railway wagon full of boxes of food and drink. They were on the train that had brought “B” Flight, the other half of Griffin’s squadron. Now it was in a siding next to Beketofka aerodrome. Six De Havilland DH9 bombers were strapped to flatbed trucks, with their wings lashed alongside. Oliphant was the flight leader.

  “Assam,” Lacey said. “Undrinkable. I shall have a strong word with our man in Ekat about this. Well, I suppose it’s good enough for the troops.” He moved on. “Pears soap, Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, Gentleman’s Relish … Good, good.” He ticked his list.

  Guns rumbled in the distance, and Brazier cocked his head. “Artillery. I’d like to see that. What I really want is a three-egg omelette.”

  “And so you shall. What’s in that barrel you’re sitting on?” Brazier stood up, and Lacey levered off the lid. “It’s my Earl Grey!” he said. “Praise be. Civilisation is saved.”

  “It’s only a cup of tea, for God’s sake,” Oliphant said.

  “Wrong. Or perhaps right. It is tea and it is for God’s sake.” Lacey hammered down the lid. “Now we can go. You shall both have hot baths and fresh eggs in abundance.”

  He padlocked the wagon and they strolled towards the Pullman cars. “You haven’t changed,” Brazier said. “You were a mouthy chump then and you’re a mouthy chump now.”

  “Do you two know each other?” Oliphant asked.

  “Like brothers,” Lacey said. Brazier gave a snort of derision. He was a large, square man with a hard, muscular face, and his snort was strong. “Please,” Lacey said. “You’ll frighten the horses in the next field.”

  “A year ago, I was adjutant to a bunch of ruffians called Hornet Squadron,” Brazier said. “Lacey was my Orderly Room sergeant. He was spoiling the pilots with luxuries, it was all totally illegal, and his peculiar rackets got both of us sacked and sent to the Front Line.”

  “Luxuries,” Oliphant said. “What sort of luxuries?”

  “I can’t remember them all. English pork sausages were one. Also high-proof gin and rum. And coal, we were getting double our ration of coal. Honey. Cotton bedsheets. Lacey wanted silk, but I put my foot down. Canadian bacon. All wangled. Pinched. Fruits of fraud.”

  “None of it was for profit,” Lacey said. “I did it for fun. War can be awfully boring. And those pilots weren’t with us very long, were they? While they survived, the least they deserved was soft toilet paper. The official issue was just like onionskin.”

  “We ran out of coal on my squadron,” Oliphant said. “Last winter of the war. Bloody cold, we were. We froze on patrol and we froze when we landed. One chap got frostbite. Who was that? Parker? Barker? Doesn’t matter. He wasn’t around for long.”

  Brazier grunted. He didn’t care about casualties. They were the small change of battle. “Anyway, here we are again, Lacey and me, back where we began,” he said. “And if you mention the fortunes of war, Lacey, I’ll box your ears.”

  “We’re not exactly as we were, are we?” Lacey said. “Carpe diem. Opportunities came my way and I climbed the greasy pole of rank while you were hammering the Hun. I heard you got killed.”

  “Lightly shot in several places.”

  “Possibly by your own
men.”

  “Possibly. They wanted to retreat. I didn’t. I shot a couple, the rest saw reason and I got a Military Cross out of it. Medals are cheap. But peacetime soldiering isn’t for the likes of me. So I volunteered for this show instead.”

  “Very wise. And we have wonderfully soft toilet paper.”

  “Damnation. Almost forgot.” They halted. “Mission commander asked me to tell you that you’re commissioned. God help us. Acting Pilot Officer Lacey. How did you wangle that?”

  “I have done some service to the State,” Lacey said. “Did you hear of the unsavoury affair of the general’s wife, the blond gigolo, and the gallon of gelatine?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Nor shall you. I wiped that particular slate very clean.” They walked on.

  Griffin came out to meet them. “When will your bombers be ready to operate?” he asked.

  “Well, not before tea,” Oliphant said. It was a joke, but the C.O. stiffened and he stared as if Oliphant had belched at a royal wedding. “As you can see, sir, our machines haven’t been unloaded yet,” Oliphant said. “If the mechanics work overnight, some might be flyable early tomorrow. Maybe breakfast-time. It depends.”

  Griffin prodded him in the chest with his swagger-stick. “Get this straight. We have a city to capture. You can forget tea and breakfast. We’re fighting a war. First light tomorrow I want you bombed-up and ready for take-off. No excuses.”

  Oliphant took half a pace back to escape the prods. “Yes, of course, sir. This is Captain Brazier, by the way.”

  Griffin ignored Brazier. “Bomb the Reds. Bomb the bloody Reds. Bomb the blighters around the clock. No quarter, no mercy. Blow the Bolsheviks off the face of the earth.”

  They watched him stride away. “Quite keen, isn’t he?” Oliphant said. “Almost brisk, at times.”

  “It’s the smell of cordite,” Lacey explained. “Highly intoxicating.”

  “You wouldn’t know cordite from custard,” Brazier said.

  “Chef makes very explosive custard,” Lacey said. “Put too much on your Spotted Dick and it’ll blow your socks off.”

  “More tosh. I wish I’d taken you with me to the Trenches. A month with the infantry would have knocked the tosh out of you.”

  They walked on. What a funny war, Oliphant thought.

  6

  Oliphant’s Flight had six bombers, but he had brought ten pilots and ten gunners. Extra men had turned up at Ekat, and from what he had seen of action in France, he knew there would be wastage ahead. No point in having a machine without a crew.

  The newcomers crowded into the Pullman bar-dining-room for tea, and were impressed to be offered hot buttered crumpets, even if these were square. “Chef hasn’t quite got the knack of it yet,” Lacey said. “Have some strawberry jam.”

  “We’ve been living on Russian bread and potato soup,” Oliphant said. “Allegedly potato. Tasted like turnip to me.”

  “Chef does a very acceptable Gratin Dauphinois. And his Gratin Pommes de Terre Provencale is improving rapidly.”

  “He can’t cook a cheese omelette,” Captain Brazier said. “No cheese in it.”

  Lacey shook his head. “Russians. Hopeless. Square crumpets, and then a cheese failure. Chef shall be shot.”

  Brazier sipped his tea and studied Lacey. “You were never much of a soldier, were you? More of a grocer’s assistant in uniform.” He was six inches taller than Lacey, and his voice had the hard edge of command. “Now you’re suddenly a pilot officer who can’t fly an aeroplane. Promoted from grocer’s assistant to grocer. Nothing to boast about, is it?”

  Lacey had no answer and he was smart enough to keep quiet. Oliphant looked from one to another and told himself that this was not his quarrel. Then Count Borodin came in and said that he had brought a squad of plennys for the new Flight. They all went out to see. “Golly,” Oliphant said. “Shaven heads. And not the glimmer of a smile. Are you sure they’re on our side?”

  “Treat them as batmen,” Hackett told him. “Give one of them a tin of bully beef and he’s happy as a pig in shit. Just don’t salute. It makes them jump like nuts in May.”

  “That’s meaningless,” Wragge said. “You don’t find nuts in May. Nuts mature in autumn. Everyone knows that.”

  “Not in Australia, chum. My best friends were nuts, and they were nutty as hell in May. You see an Aussie nut in May, stand aside.”

  Brazier pointed at the biggest plenny. “I’ll have him. What’s his name?”

  “Rapotashnikov,” Borodin said. “But you may call him Nigel.”

  7

  One by one, the DH9s took off and circled the airfield. The Camel pilots came to watch.

  The bombers were single-engined biplanes, with a crew of two: nothing special about the design except that the machine was almost twice as big as a Camel. Its wingspan was forty-two feet; the Camel’s was twenty-eight. In a Camel, the pilot could sit in the cockpit and talk to his mechanic, face to face. Not in a DH9, which stood more than eleven feet high to the upper wing. Fully loaded, it weighed over a ton and a quarter, including a pair of 230-pound bombs carried inside its bomb bay and smaller munitions hung under the wings. That was why the wings were so long: they provided the lift for this load. What the Camel pilots were most interested in was the engine that dragged this beast into the air.

  The Camel had a Le Rhône rotary, a short-assed job where the cylinders spun in a ring and carried the propeller with them. It was as light as an engine could be, and very compact, so that the pilot sat close to the nose. There was barely enough room for the twin Vickers machine guns between him and the propeller. This arrangement made the Camel highly manoeuvrable. It could jink like a swallow and turn on a sixpence, all from 110 horsepower. But that pull would scarcely make a DH9 taxi, let alone get it off the ground. It needed the Siddeley Puma, which had six big cylinders arranged in line, like a truck engine. The Puma was so hefty that there wasn’t enough room for all of it inside the body of the aircraft: its uppermost length poked out, exposed to the air.

  This was good for cooling, but no help to a pilot who was trying to look ahead. Still, the engine made 230 horsepower, twice the little rotary’s output, power that was needed to haul the bomb load through the sky. It made heat as well as heft, and the designers had added a novelty: a radiator placed just in front of the wheels, which the pilot could lower to catch the slipstream if the Puma began to overheat. So, alongside a Camel, a DH9 was a lot of aeroplane. It needed twice the take-off run before it came unstuck.

  Griffin watched one as it slowly and grudgingly made height. “Pumas,” he said. “You couldn’t get Rolls-Royce Eagles?”

  “We took what they gave us, sir,” Oliphant said. “These Nines got flown in from Salonika, just as you see them.”

  “Nines. Is that what you call them?”

  Oliphant shrugged. “Everyone does.”

  “Sounds like you’re selling shoes. Ladies’ shoes.” They watched a bomber drift down and land. Its engine was misfiring and burning too much oil. “That’s Tommy Hopton,” Oliphant said. “Good effort. He couldn’t have seen much grass through that muck.”

  “Pumas stink.” Griffin turned his back on them, “Air Ministry’s gone and dumped its duff junk on us. Surplus to requirements, send it to Russia. Quick way to lose a headache without spending money. Thoughtless bastards.”

  “I’m sure the troops can make the Pumas work, sir.”

  “Are you? I’m not. There’s one way to find out. Tsaritsyn hasn’t fallen yet. That’s your target. Get bombs on target now. You can crash on the way home if you want.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And drop the sir. I’m not here to be buffed up like a brigadier’s buttons. I’m here to win.”

  Tommy Hopton taxied back to his ground crew, and Oliphant went to meet him. “Sounded like a cracked cylinder head, Tommy,” he said.

  “Felt like a burst valve spring. Smelt like grim death.”

  “Bust exhaust pipe,” his gunner sai
d, and coughed hard. “Maybe both pipes,” he wheezed.

  “Otherwise it’s a good, strong bus. Does what it’s told,” Hopton said. “Pity about the Puma.”

  “We’ll knock it into shape.” That was all balls. He knew it; they knew it. Move on, move on. “See that smoke on the horizon? Tsaritsyn. We’re going to bomb it if we have to crawl there on our hands and knees. Otherwise the C.O. will burst into flames.”

  They turned and looked at Griffin, who was kicking at weeds. Hopton said, “He’s not a happy man, is he?”

  Wragge had joined them. “The skipper may not look happy on the outside,” he said, “but I can assure you that deep down inside he’s as miserable as sin.”

  “What’s the Red defence like?” the gunner asked. “Are their fighters any good?”

  “None. Frankly, it’s not much of a war for us. Either the Bolos haven’t got an air force or someone’s lost the key to the hangar door. It’s very dull up there. My advice to you,” he told the gunner, “is to take a good book. That’s what I do.”

  He left. “Camel drivers,” the gunner croaked. “All piss and wind.” His throat still hurt from that godawful exhaust smoke.

  A WASTE OF GOOD HORSES

  1

  It was midday before the Nines were ready to fly, and by then Tsaritsyn had fallen.

  Count Borodin brought the news. He said that the remnants of the Red Army were in full retreat, flooding out through the northern gates of the city and fleeing panic-stricken by rail, boat and foot. “Actually, Tsaritsyn has no gates,” he said, “and the remnants are too tired to flee at any great pace. All the trains and the boats left yesterday, full of officers. Which leaves the poor bloody infantry on its poor bloody feet, as usual. But, for the purposes of Wrangel’s bulletins, the remnants are fleeing panic-stricken through the gates etcetera.”

  “Good. We’ll bomb them,” Griffin said.