A Splendid Little War

by Derek Robinson

  “Ask him where the three White fighter squadrons are,” Wragge said. “And the aerodrome?”

  Armchairs were brought, and they settled down to a friendly chat. Wragge examined the general’s quarters. Bookshelves, a baby grand piano, family photographs, thick carpet, velvet curtains. Not Spartan. Coffee was served. Good coffee, better than The Dregs. The general was an affable man, and whatever Borodin was saying to him, it made him laugh.

  Then the audience was over. Everyone smiled happily. An aide opened doors and helped them descend from the train without breaking a leg.

  “What did you get out of him?” Wragge asked. “Apart from merry laughter.”

  “For a start, the three squadrons of White fighter aircraft don’t exist. Nor does the aerodrome. Denikin has no machines, except us.”

  “I see,” Wragge said. “No, I don’t. What about that signal from Mission H.Q? Colonel Somebody. Boss of Aviation.”

  “Subasnov. The general was very amused by that story. He knows Subasnov well. The colonel was on Denikin’s staff, the biggest chump in the army, couldn’t be sacked because of his political connections, so Denikin gave him Aviation and sent him as far away as possible to bother someone else. The general says Subasnov talks magnificently. If talk won wars, we would be in Moscow now.”

  “So he lied.”

  “Yes and no. To an Anglo-Saxon he lied unforgivably. To Russians he adjusted the facts to agree with the way the truth ought to be. A great army deserves to have an air force, and of course Mission H.Q. was impressed by what he said.”

  “Absurd. He must have known he’d be found out.”

  “True. But Russians can’t stop themselves. There’s a word for that kind of lying. We call it vranyo. It satisfies some inner need. Russians lie even when they know the listener knows they’re lying. So, vranyo does no harm, does it?”

  “Nichevo,” Wragge said. “Is that right, nichevo?”

  “Excellent. You are thinking like a Russian.”

  “And the promise of an armoured train. Was that vranyo?”

  “In its purest form. By the way: Denikin had one aeroplane. The Halberstadt two-seater. He sent it to count his troop trains because the telegraph line was broken.”

  “We shot down a friendly machine.”

  “General Gregorioff says the telegraph is working now.”

  “So … nichevo again.”

  “His very word.”

  “Mine too. From now on we’ll fight like Russians. We’ll vranyo like fury and if anyone doesn’t like it, nichevo.” Wragge shouted for Maynard, ordered him to fly back to the trains and tell them to move up to the racetrack sidings. “Tomorrow we go to Kursk,” he said. “That’s where the fun and games are happening.” He said nothing about the Halberstadt. Fog of war. Forget it.

  BIT OF SWAGGER

  1

  The gardens at 10 Downing Street were neither large nor glorious, but at least the roses were splendid at this time of year. The Prime Minister preferred to hold his garden parties there. It meant he didn’t have to trudge around somebody else’s pride and joy, shaking hands with strangers until his knuckles ached. It meant that as soon as the party was over, he could get back to his desk. And if it rained, there were always drawing rooms for the guests to shelter in.

  He kept the guest list short. Senior Cabinet members, a few ambassadors, some admirals and generals, maybe an artist or a poet, if they were house-trained. No novelists, no playwrights. Drank too much, got into arguments with other guests. Not garden-party material.

  The guest list was one of Jonathan Fitzroy’s duties, and he quietly added the names of his Ad Hoc Committee on Russia. It was a white-tie occasion, so the garden would look like a penguin colony, and that answered the need for secrecy: his committee would hide in plain sight.

  When the P.M. had done enough partying and withdrawn, and the guests were leaving, the committee gathered in a little summerhouse. Fitzroy put a pack of cards on the table. “A harmless subterfuge,” he said. “In case anyone looks in.”

  Weatherby dealt a few cards. “I can’t play anything except Snap,” he said. “My children are demons at Snap. I never stand a chance.”

  “Mine were like that,” Delahaye said, “until I began to cheat. That fooled them.”

  “You’ve got to be ruthless with children, in my experience,” General Stattaford said. “Or they lose all respect. My parents were quite foul to their children, I’m happy to say. It made a man out of me.”

  “The modern child is over-educated, in my opinion,” Sir Franklyn said. “I heard my granddaughter singing ‘Lloyd George is my father, father is Lloyd George’. The child is only nine. I asked her what it meant and she said she didn’t know.”

  “I bet she did,” Weatherby said. “They know everything.”

  “Perhaps we should ask them to advise us,” Fitzroy said. He was a bachelor; other people’s children bored him. “A little omniscience about Russia might be helpful.”

  “Not any more,” the general said. “The Reds are routed. Denikin’s on a charge. In war, momentum is everything. We proved that in France. Once we broke the enemy line, the Huns couldn’t stop running. Reds are the same.”

  “But not in Siberia,” Sir Franklyn said. “They seem to have the better of Admiral Kolchak.”

  “A sideshow. Denikin’s campaign is the key. Poltava has fallen. Kharkov has fallen. Kiev has fallen. Odessa won’t hold out much longer. Denikin will take Kursk. Then it’s a straight run to Moscow.”

  “Napoleon said that too,” Delahaye said. “Mind you, it probably had more panache in French.”

  “His mistake was getting the weather wrong,” Weatherby said. “Beaucoup de neige. Dreadfully froid. Hadn’t done his homework.”

  “And no railways. So no return tickets.”

  “Denikin has got everything spot-on right,” Stattaford said. “Summertime, and the railways lead to Moscow. All he needed was a spell of training, courtesy the British Army, to stiffen his ranks. I never doubted it.”

  “Excellent. Now, how do we translate this for the P.M.’s benefit?” Fitzroy asked. “Triumph of right over wrong? Death-blow to Communist world domination? Last battle of the Great War, and Britain helped to win it? What’s the message?”

  “Well now,” Sir Franklyn said. “Russia is a very big country. Let us not cheer too soon.”

  “The Treasury will cheer if Denikin takes Moscow,” Charles Delahaye said. “Then we can stop throwing money at Russia with both hands.”

  “Penny-pinchers,” the general said. “We didn’t beat the Kaiser by double-entry bookkeeping. Whatever that is.”

  “There’s a difference. Russia is not about to invade Britain.”

  “Undeniable,” Fitzroy said. “Still, I wonder if there’s something in Denikin’s success for the P.M. D’you remember that excellent phrase of Sir Franklyn’s? ‘Answering the call of freedom and justice’. Well, we’ve done it, and surely it’s earned us the right to … um … to reward ourselves. Or words to that effect.”

  “What effect?” Stattaford said.

  “Reward means only one thing,” Weatherby said. “Higher wages. And if you want to avoid bloody Bolshevik revolution in Britain, that’s what you should do, and do it now.”

  “Money.” The general sniffed. “That’s all some people think of.”

  “Because prices have gone up much faster than wages.”

  “Good point,” Fitzroy said. “I never thought the police would go on strike last year, but they did. Mind you, that was about recognising their union.”

  “Everyone talks of the sanctity of labour,” Delahaye said, “but what they really want is hard cash.”

  Sir Franklyn had begun building a house of cards. “Look here,” he said. “This is what we’ve been doing at these meetings. Trying to create something without foundation. Why are we in Russia? Not to help our gallant allies who fought the Germans. That’s ancient history. Not to guarantee a fair fight. We can’t. Not to do the decent th
ing. War isn’t about decency, it’s about power. Not to answer the call of freedom and justice. In Russia, that’s a fantasy. So why are we there?” He looked up. “What are we trying to achieve?”

  “Beat the Bolsheviks,” Fitzroy said. He sounded weary.

  Sir Franklyn looked at his creation. “Who wants to be the one to blow the house down?”

  Weatherby filled his lungs and blew the cards across the table.

  Fitzroy took a slim gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. “I have a meeting with the P.M. in five minutes. Unless we have any extenuating thoughts … ? No. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

  They watched him cross the garden.

  “Perhaps we’ve overlooked the obvious,” Weatherby said. “Haven’t we got a duty to protect the Empire? The damned Russians have always wanted to get their greedy hands on India.”

  “The Empire is a heritage,” Sir Franklyn said. “Future generations won’t thank us if we lose it.”

  “Future generations don’t pay to keep it,” Delahaye said.

  “Explain.”

  “Riots and rebellions. We’re always rushing off to defend bits of Empire. Not cheap.”

  “The White Man’s burden, I suppose.”

  “Not a burden,” Stattaford said. “Debt of honour. It’s why God created the British Army. And, to a lesser extent, the Royal Navy.”

  “I sometimes wonder,” Delahaye said. “I wonder whether we own the British Empire or it owns us.”

  “If you don’t like it, go and live in Denmark.”

  “It has its attractions.”

  Time to leave. They walked across the garden. “This whole Russian affair,” Weatherby said. “Intervention and so on. It would be interesting to know just what future generations will make of it.”

  “Nothing,” Sir Franklyn said. “We’ll file it and forget it. Nobody will ever know it happened.”

  2

  Kursk was burning.

  A strong wind from the west blew the smoke away but it also kept the fires alive and made more smoke. Kursk was an old city. The onion domes were brick but the houses were wood and they burned easily.

  The trains stopped in a siding a couple of miles from town, and Borodin talked to the drivers. “The line runs through the centre of Kursk,” he told the C.O. “Need I say more?”

  Wragge looked at the field alongside the track. “Pretty flat,” he said. “If we get rid of those dead horses, and fill in that shell crater, and pull down that fence … What d’you think?”

  “The horses can go in the crater.”

  “Good thinking. Uncle can organize that. And you and I will take a stroll, and try to find someone on Denikin’s staff who speaks English.”

  They walked along the track. “No roads to speak of,” Wragge said. “Everything is railways in your country, isn’t it? Even the rivers dry up in summer. Before the railways came, how did Russians get from here to there?”

  “They walked. Rather like most of the English, until quite recently.”

  “Slight difference, old chap. Russia’s vast. Belgorod to Kursk is, what, a hundred miles? With not much in between. We passed the odd village. Can’t image the odd peasant tramping fifty miles to have his appendix removed.”

  Borodin was amused. “A Russian peasant would sooner die than pay a doctor. He dies anyway. Most men are old at thirty-five and lucky to see forty.”

  “Good God.” Wragge thought about that. “How can you possibly know? You’re not a peasant.”

  “The Britannica. 1911 edition. But you’re right about our railways. If Denikin were to march his army from Taganrog to Moscow, it would take six months, his men would be exhausted, the supply columns would be raided by Nestor Makhno and a dozen like him, and we’d be up to the hips in snow. So we fight our battles on the railway. It’s easier to advance by train.”

  “Unless the enemy rips up the track and blows the bridges,” Wragge said.

  “Oh well. Nobody said that war was fair. And unless I’m mistaken we’ve found Denikin’s Staff H.Q.”

  The train had once belonged to the Tsar, and the carriages bore the Imperial emblem of the double-headed eagle. Planted alongside the track was the red, green and white flag of Denikin’s One Russia, Great and Undivided.

  A sentry saluted and they climbed aboard, into a very military setup: maps, typewriters clacking, paperwork, officers with a lot to say to each other. Immediately, Borodin recognized several people and was welcomed with smiles and embraces. He said something about Wragge, and everyone applauded. A servant offered a chair and a glass of tea. For the first time since Tsaritsyn, Wragge’s spirits were lifted by the feeling of momentum found in an army that believed itself unstoppable.

  Borodin introduced a young colonel whose English was good enough to say that unfortunately Denikin was elsewhere, awarding medals, but undoubtedly the arrival of the R.A.F. would thrill him. Kursk would soon be taken. The enemy was in full retreat. He might attempt a rearguard action. Denikin would wish the squadron to bomb him to … He looked at Borodin.

  “Smithereens.” To Wragge, Borodin said, “When can we start?”

  “Tomorrow,” Wragge said. “Early.”

  The colonel embraced him and he spilled his tea, and they all laughed. “Na Moskvu?” Wragge said.

  “First, na Orel,” the colonel said. “Second, na Tula. Then, na Moskvu.” He spoke with all the confidence of a man who has added one and two and made three.

  “And the Red air force?” Wragge asked.

  “N’existe pas,” the colonel said, and everyone laughed again. It was going to be a cakewalk.

  3

  The wind strengthened. Ground crews turned the aircraft so that they faced into it. They pegged down the wingtips and the tails. They lashed canvas covers over the engines and secured the propellers. The western horizon was as black as spilled ink. They rammed chocks behind the wheels and tied the joystick in a central position.

  When the storm came, the wind howled for half an hour and then moved on, leaving the rain to play a drum roll on the carriage roofs all night.

  “Listen to it,” Maynard said. “The cockpits will be full to the brim.” He was playing dominoes with Borodin, Jessop, Dextry and the doctor, in her Pullman.

  “Unlikely,” Dextry said. “Those Camels are pretty moth-eaten specimens. Plenty of drainage holes. If I look down, I can count the daisies between my feet.”

  “I wonder if I ought to get married,” Jessop said.

  Maynard cleared his throat and nudged him.

  “Don’t be so damned sensitive, Daddy,” Susan Perry said. “I’m a war widow. I’ve seen enough blood to drown you all, and I shan’t get a fit of the vapours because someone mentions marriage. You can’t play a five,” she told Jessop.

  “Yes, I can. Bloody good move.”

  “Not against a three. Have you played this game before?”

  He took back the domino. “I could have sworn it was a three. Honestly, the light in here …”

  She leant sideways and looked at his pieces and picked out a three and played it. “Do up your laces and then blow your nose,” she said. “You’re dribbling on my carpet.”

  “I say, steady on, doc. Play the white man.”

  “Marriage would suit you, Junk,” Borodin said. “You’re ugly and stupid and you talk a lot of bollocks, and somewhere there’s a girl, not very bright, just waiting for you to help her make lots of little Jessops.”

  “You chaps have minds like sewers. One doesn’t want to get married for … for bedroom reasons.” Jessop rearranged his dominoes.

  Maynard, feeling left out, said: “I was conceived in a hammock. In India.”

  “I, on a grand piano,” Borodin said. “With the top down, of course.”

  “In my case it was in a hot-air balloon,” Dextry said. “Over Windsor Castle. On a Thursday. Quarter to three. They rang all the church bells.”

  They looked at Jessop. “I have nothing to add,” he said.

  “Do you underst
and how the human plumbing arrangement works, Junk?” she asked. “See me tomorrow and I’ll draw you a picture.”

  “That sounds fun,” Dextry said. “Can we all come?”

  She played her last domino. “I win,” she said. “And heaven help the poor girls who marry you lot.”

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it began. It woke the C.O., and he lay in bed wondering how soggy the airfield would be. But when he walked its length with his flight leaders, the turf was wet but firm. “Chalky soil,” Tusker Oliphant said. “Drains well. Last night’s rain was probably the first for ages. Ground just sucked it up.”

  “Good,” the C.O. said. “Test flights. Then we’ll all go and find some Bolos to biff.”

  The fires of Kursk had been doused, and the squadron flew low around its onion domes. There were five, clustered together, each topped by a cross. The domes were of different heights and styles: the tallest and biggest was gilded; some were sky-blue with gold stars; others were ribbed in blue and white, or cross-hatched like pineapples, or swirled upwards in bands of yellow and green. Dextry liked their cheerful splendour. He had seen too many grey Irish churches, hunched defensively against the rain, with nothing outside or inside to warm his heart except the threat of eternal fire and brimstone. The Russian God did not object to brightly striped onion domes. He seemed like a friendly God. Made you wonder why Russians had to be so bloody to each other all the time. Never smiled. Or, if they did, they made it look as if it was coming out of their wages. Oh, well. Nichevo.

  Nobody in Kursk fired at the squadron, so Wragge turned north and followed the line.

  After the storm came a battalion of small clouds. Showers fell from a few. Rainbows formed and glowed and faded and appeared elsewhere. The morning sun made shafts between the clouds that increased the theatrical effect, and the C.O. gave everyone a little innocent fun by climbing towards the biggest rainbow and swerving around the clouds. It made for good practice in formation-keeping. He was leading them down a shaft of sunlight when dirty brown blots of shellfire stained the sky. Some came so close that he could smell the cordite.